Republicans: It Wasn't Pelosi's Fault After All

A bigger bunch of lying incompetents I can't imagine.

Bailout Vote Fails -- An Example of the Tragedy of the Commons?

The Tragedy of the Commons describes a situation where individuals each have an incentive to try to maximize their use and benefit from a shared resource, but where that leads to overuse that harms everyone in the group. I think a version of this is what we are seeing with the financial bailout plan, which just failed to pass in the House, leading to a sell-off on Wall Street.

Democrats and Republicans have a strong collective incentive to pass this bailout, because as distasteful as it may be, the alternative is worse. But the deal is unpopular with voters, and this gives individual representatives who are facing re-election an incentive to vote against it.

I'm sure further attempts will be made to get something done, but the timing of this, only a few weeks before Election Day, couldn't be worse.

The Unofficial Republican Lie About McCain's Stunt

I won't call it spin, because it is flatly a lie, not spin. They are claiming that it's somehow Reid's fault that McCain went to Washington because they say Reid told him to. Wrong. Reid asked McCain to make clear where he stands. He did not ask McCain to lie about suspending his campaign (which McCain never did, he is still campaigning and his ads are running), hold the debate hostage to try to pressure the negotiators, and then race to Washington to embolden the House GOP leaders to kill the deal.

Summarized nicely by a 538.com commenter:

What turns this from McCain merely answering Reid and Paulson's call to come help bring House GOP members on board to a naked political ploy:

1) Making a big announcement about "suspending his campaign" on national television and making an irrelevant call to postpone the debates.

2) Not actually leaving NY or canceling any appearances until it was already time to bring a proposal to Paulson and the President.

3) Not contacting the banking committees in both the Senate and the House to learn of the negotiations on the proposal.

4) Not following-up any potential meeting with the Congressmen actually working on the proposal with a meeting with the House delegation opposing it *before* any compromise could be presented to the White House.

5) Sitting silently through the White House meeting instead of, oh, I don't know, *actually trying to negotiate a compromise*.

You are right that Reid et al. asked McCain to step up and show some leadership on this. He didn't. He stepped and grandstanded on it, and did absolutely nothing to help negotiate a working compromise. Instead his actions seemed to have given the dissident GOP House delegation cover not to reach any compromise at all. And his only motivation for doing this would be to take over another news cycle.

What McCain *could* have done would have been to quietly cancel his interview appearances and his talk to Clinton's Global Initiative to return to Washington to help broker the compromise. He could have quietly worked to bridge the gaps between at least most of the House GOP and the compromise worked out *within* the banking committee. If he had done this, no doubt he would have gotten a lot of well-deserved praise that would have played *very* well in the media, and would have fostered his image as a bipartisan bridge-builder.

But, the fact is, he's gone and done the opposite, and his actions appear to have set the bailout bill back tremendously. This is about the worst example of leadership in a crisis I can imagine.

Did McCain Go Back to Work on the Bailout Deal or Kill It?

He's already with the Palin pick that he puts his campaign ahead of the country, so this is always a possibility.

Does nobody in the GOP have the balls to stand up and stop this madness?

What the Hell is John McCain Doing?!

I went outside for a couple of hours to do some yard work. I come back in and it's chaos.

Overall it seems McCain went to Washington, sat there, and did nothing except try to gum up the works by offering new proposals. Now the deal may be off, and everyone is confused. (Especially me.)

I am running out of adjectives to describe just how flabbergasted I am at John McCain's behavior. He has completely devolved to narcissistic, self-absorbed behavior. And yet Republicans are still defending him playing political games with the future of the economy.

Sad.

Right on Schedule: McCain Hack Credits Him with the Bailout Deal

Gee, who didn't see this coming?

Um, what exactly did McCain do on this deal? Nothing that I can see.

The McCain camp just continues to go after the few remaining morons they haven't already wrapped up. Good thing for them that there are so many.

And as someone said to me earlier, is this something McCain really wants credit for anyway? It's not like the bailout is particularly popular.

I guess they are so desperate they'll take anything they can get. Pathetic.

Crises Dispel Reputation Myths

John McCain has a reputation as a gung-ho, serious he-man "warrior dude". Barney Frank has a reputation (in many circles) as being an effete lightweight.

And yet in this economic crisis we see what these men really are like underneath. I'm no fan of Frank, but as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, he plays an essential role in brokering the bailout deal currently being negotiated in Washington, and he seems to be doing a reasonable job. That's in contrast to McCain, who only thinks he plays an important role, and is actively gumming up the works.

And so, in this crisis, we end up with an interesting situation where the "he-man" acts weak, confused and scared, and the soft-speaking gay man* from uber-liberal Massachusetts behaves strongly and decisively:

Frank says that House and Senate Democrats have agreed upon what should be in the Wall Street bailout legislation. This morning Frank, his Senate counterpart -- Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, D-Conn. -- and top Republicans will meet to try to hammer out a final agreement. He was optimistic.

“All of a sudden, now that we’re on the verge of making a deal, John McCain drops himself in to make a deal," Frank said. "I really worry about this politicization of it."

"Frankly, we’re going to have to interrupt a negotiating session tomorrow between the Democrats and Republicans on a bill, where I think we’re getting pretty close, and troop down to the White House for their photo-op, and then come back and get on to it," Frank said.

“We’re trying to rescue the economy, not the McCain campaign,” he added.

* Lest anyone accuse me of saying gays are weak in this article, let me be clear that I am saying the exact opposite. Frank has the reputation I mentioned in some quarters in part because of his orientation, and my point is that such views are frequently based on bigotry and not reality.

Congress Must Not Reward McCain's Debate "Hostage Taking"

I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt at first, but by now all of the evidence clearly shows that McCain's "suspension" of his campaign yesterday was a purely political stunt. Whether it was to try to appear "presidential", to shake up the media, to distract attention from the Rick Davis scandal, or to delay the debate, McCain did this for his own selfish reasons, just like everything else he's done in this campaign. (For one thing, if you are really suspending your campaign because of a crisis, do you honestly prepare talking points about it in advance?)

Now were are put in a position where McCain is holding tomorrow's debate "hostage", insisting that he won't be there unless a bailout package is passed by tomorrow. Is this really the right basis for a critically important $1 trillion package negotiation? Is it truly "putting country first" to pressure the Bush administration and Congress with a totally unnecessary, artificial deadline?

The facts are that McCain and Obama are not involved in the congressional leadership working on this deal. They never were and they are not needed in Washington while the discussions are going on. Not only would their presence not help, it would likely harm matters by creating more confusion and stress in an already delicate situation.

Despite McCain's claims of doing this because he wants to set politics aside, by foolishly making himself and the debate the center of attention, he has politicized the entire process.

John McCain has made himself the proverbial little boy who will hold his breath until he turns blue if he doesn't get his way. Let him, if for no other reason than to avoid rewarding his childish behavior. Because if he does get away with this stunt, we'll never see the end of them.

Color Me Confused

If the bailout package is such a "crushing emergency", why is McCain going forward with his appearance at Bill Clinton's conference tomorrow?

Oh, he also had time to meet with Lady Lynn de Forester de Rothschild de Whatever and get interviewed by Katie Couric. Some crisis!

Will McCain's Feet be Held to the Fire on the Bailout?

Many folks, including me, have expressed concern that the Republicans might try to ram this bailout package through, then have McCain blame the Democrats for "selling out the taxpayers" or whatever. (Cynical and stupid, but then what hasn't been in McCain's campaign?)

Anyway, seems there is at least a good chance that Congress isn't going to let this happen:

"If McCain doesn't come out for this, it's over," a Top House Republican tells ABC News.

A Democratic leadership source says that White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten has been told that Democratic votes will not be there if McCain votes no -- that there is no deal if McCain doesn't go along.

McCain, taking questions from the traveling media today for the first time in 40 days, said he doesn't yet know how he will vote on the bailout.

But when he was asked by ABC News' Ron Claiborne what he would do if the fate of the bill was in his hands, he said Senate Democrats should not use his vote as the determining factor on the success of the bill.

"This issue should be - and their vote should be determined in how we can resolve this crisis and get America going again," McCain said.

...

Some senior Democrats on Capitol Hill have voiced concern that McCain will continue to oppose the Bush administration's plan as a way to position himself as a critic of Wall Street and the Bush Administration.

If McCain doesn't vote for the legislation, other Republicans might follow suit, leaving the Democratic-led majority to fight in Congress to pass the risky bailout plan.

However a Democratic congressional leadership source tells ABC News' Jake Tapper that Paulson went so far as to assure Democratic leaders that McCain "won't be a problem" -- in other words that McCain will vote for the proposal.

Wow, maybe the Dems really are wising up.

Are the Republicans Setting Up the Democrats on the Bailout?

The theory being put forth is that the GOP is going to get the Democrat-controlled house to cooperate with Bush on the "emergency, must-do-now" bailout, then have McCain use this as a cyncial wedge issue to demonstrate his "maverickitude":

Think of this as like one of those periodic votes on raising the public debt limit. It has to pass, of course, but there's zero percentage in supporting it for any one individual. The speculative costs of the legislation actually failing are completely intangible and ultimately irrelevant, while the costs it will impose are tangible and controversial from almost every point of view. For McCain and other Republicans, voting "no" on Paulson without accepting the consequences of that vote is the political equivalent of a bottomless crack pipe: it will please the conservative "base," distance them from both Bush and "Washington," and let them indulge in both anti-government and anti-corporate demagoguery, even as Democrats bail out their Wall Street friends and big investors generally. You simply can't imagine a better way for McCain to decisively reinforce his simultaneous efforts to pander to the "base" while posing as a "maverick."

Democrats are right to demand significant substantive concessions before offering their support for the Paulson Plan. But just as importantly, they need to demand Republican votes in Congress, including the vote of John McCain. If this is going to be a "bipartisan" relief plan, it has to be fully bipartisan, not an opportunity for McCain to count on Obama and other Democrats to save the economy while exploiting their sense of responsibility to win the election for the party that let this crisis occur in the first place.

The Democrats do have a history of being sufficiently politically inept as to fall for this sort of thing.

Could it Be? Democrats Have Actually Learned from Their Mistakes? I Sure Hope So.

Democrats are starting to fight back against the Bush administration's attempts to ram a huge bailout package through Congress with virtually no strings attached for the recipients, and the mistakes made after 9/11 have been specifically cited as a reason why:

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) says he’s seen this movie before: The Bush administration, citing an unprecedented national threat, puts the hammer on Congress to ram through gargantuan legislation with a minimum of review — and the murkiest of repercussions.

“We will do something this week — but if we learned anything from right after 9/11, it’s that the biggest mistake is to pass anything they ask for just because it’s an emergency,” Leahy says.

...

“They can’t get away with what they did in 2001,” Leahy said. “This will be ‘trust but verify.’ The biggest mistake they can make is holding a press conference while we’re negotiating to say there’s going to be a worldwide depression if Congress doesn’t do exactly what we want them to.”

...

"We will not simply hand over a $700 billion blank check to Wall Street and hope for a better outcome. Democrats will act responsibly to insulate Main Street from Wall Street,” Pelosi said. "As we proceed to deal with this crisis, this is clear recognition that the party is over for the Bush administration's anything goes, failed economic policies that have damaged our economy, undermined the middle class and further pointed out the need for a new direction."

Wow. Do they Democrats actually have spines after all? Stay tuned.

The GOP Leads a "Socialist" Bailout

Funny how the Republicans love to label Democrats as "socialists" but have no problem being even worse in that regard when necessary to save their corporate masters:

"I'm always for less regulation," John McCain, March 3, 2008

"Casual oversight by regulatory agencies in Washington" is responsible for the crisis, John McCain, Sept. 17, 2008

Which is it, Sen. McCain: regulation or deregulation?

If a liberal Democratic administration had put hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money at risk by bailing out Bear Stearns and nationalizing American International Group (AIG), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, wouldn't conservatives accuse Democrats of "socialism"? Can Mr. McCain now square a circle by calling himself a conservative while favoring increased regulation?

...

Now I know what former Sen. Gary Hart meant when he told an audience of wealthy Republican businessmen during his 1984 presidential campaign, "I know why you are conservatives -- you favor private enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich."

...

Mr. Obama will trigger the great liberal versus conservative debate so long needed in this campaign. Is government our friend or enemy? Can the private market always be trusted? What is the best mix of regulation and private enterprise? Who pays? Who wins? Who loses?

That debate is long overdue. If it occurs, the American people will be the winners, whoever wins the election.

Obama: No Blank Check for Wall Street

,Obviously far more important for Obama to say it than Reich:

As of now, the Bush Administration has only offered a concept with a staggering price tag, not a plan. Even if the U.S. Treasury recovers some or most of its investment over time, this initial outlay of up to $700 billion is sobering. And in return for their support, the American people must be assured that the deal reflects the basic principles of transparency, fairness, and reform.

...

First, there must be no blank check when American taxpayers are on the hook for this much money.

Second, taxpayers shouldn't be spending a dime to reward CEOs on Wall Street.

Third, taxpayers should be protected and should be able to recoup this investment.

Fourth, this plan has to help homeowners stay in their homes.

Fifth, this is a global crisis, and the United States must insist that other nations join us in helping secure the financial markets.

Sixth, we need to start putting in place the rules of the road I've been calling for for years to prevent this from ever happening again.

And finally, this plan can't just be a plan for Wall Street, it has to be a plan for Main Street.

I hope people are listening.

The Rich Take the Profits, the Taxpayers Cover the Losses - Is this What America Has Become?

I dunno about you, but I'm getting pretty pissed off at all the money that I, as a taxpayer, am having to shovel out to cover the losses of irresponsible Wall Street giants, now estimated at up to $1 trillion. I sure didn't get a chance at all the profits made by these firms when they were flying high, making billions in fees on loans they knew they shouldn't have been making.

These bailouts are wrong, period. They are doing them because our entire economy is based on a sham of fiat currency and debt, and I understand the desire to keep the balls in the air as long as possible. But it is criminal to set up scenarios where private companies can make risky moves, keep the profits when they succeed, and get public bailouts when they fail.