Politicana

… says Dean Baker, at TPM’s Coffee House.

“The Banks Have a Gun Pointed at Their Head and Are Threatening to Pull the Trigger.”

There is no plausible scenario under which the no bailout scenario gives us a Great Depression. There is a more plausible scenario (but highly unlikely) that the bailout will give us a Great Depression. There is no way that the failure to do a bailout will lead to more than a very brief failure of the financial system. We will not lose our modern system of payments.

I’m no economist, but really, this whole thing is starting to stink, stink, stink. One of the comments on the post, linked above, reads:

A $700 billion commitment will tie the hands of the next administration significantly. We’re a little over a month away from the election. Would things truly deteriorate so badly that we can’t address insolvent banks without this bailout over the next two months?

You want my theory? This is, in effect, an October surprise, but it’s geared to the reality of the coming Democratic Party takeover of government. Every dime that goes to the financial system today is a dime that Obama won’t be able to use to improve our lives in the coming year (at least).

Meanwhile, over at the Reality-Based Community, Jonathan Zasloff is arguing that today’s failure to pass a bill means Democrats should push harder for the provisions they want, including bankruptcy reform. If Republicans balk, the Dems can say of their November challengers, “My opponent thinks it’s a great idea for the stock market to drop 800 points!”

On the other hand, there’s Hilzoy, arguing for cautious support. And if I respect anyone in the world of blogging, I respect her. This is all very frustrating. Where do y’all stand on this mess?

Peter wanted me to let everyone read an e-mail I sent around a few days ago:

Even the Libertarians are freaking out … and urging everyone to vote for Obama …

David Brin is a science-fiction author and essayist, and (I believe) a longtime champion of libertarian causes. He’s also known for his book called the “Transparent Society,” in which he basically argues that privacy is a mirage and the best we can do is to give everyone access to all the information that’s collected about all of us, instead of leaving it in the hands of corporations and government agencies.

I disagree, btw …

Anyway, here’s his two latest blog posts:

http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2008/09/who-is-credible-to-fix-mess-its-time.html

http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2008/09/scary-stuff-political-lamp-is-lit.html

Settle down all you emailers who are bugging me because I haven’t commented on Friday’s debate yet.  I do have something of a life (even if it does involve spending half of yesterday talking with my wonderfully geeky cousin about W.O.W. and Spore).

By now, I assume that most of you have a) formed your own opinions about how the debate went and b) have heard what most of the polls say.  In case you have not, here is where we stand:

Continue reading Lay of the Land, Debate #1…

Does this even make sense?

As Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America, where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there, they are right next to our state.

Honestly, I can’t even keep track of all the crazy shit she says anymore.

This is why we are going to win this election:

So click on the tab and check them out.

Courtesy of Troy:

Courtesy of Barney Frank:

It’s the longest Hail Mary pass in the history of either football or Marys.

I love this visual:

Continue reading Driving Mr McCain…

As I had suspected, Obama-Biden have steadily improved in both the national and state-by-state polls as the McCalin bubble has popped.  They now sit just slightly better than they were before the conventions, which is to say, in a modest lead (a +4.0 points average over the last 10 national polls, all of which Obama leads in).

So, with a bit of momentum, we head into the debates.  Barring any international drama/personal scandals, I think the debates are the last real hurdle Obama and Biden have to clear; do a good job on these and I think they head into the election in a comfortable place.

So, given that I am sure David Plouffe reads my blog daily, I thought I would share what I think our guys need to do/not do during these debates:

Continue reading My Advice to the Campaign…