Brains! Live from WTFistan!

[elfs]

Can I just say that this Halloween, I intend to find a pinstripe jacket two sizes too big for me, pad the shoulders out to Hell, shave off all my hair, wear one-inch lifters in my shoes, and lurch with my shoulders forward and my back stooped. I'm going to be Henry Paulson, the scariest man on Earth!

Barack Obama says nothing should impede bailout

Obama has apparently come out against any bankruptcy reform being added to the current emergency spending bill, and this has seriously pissed off some progressives in the Congress. His statement that we should legislate one thing at a time and revisit the bankruptcy issue later has strong, wonking merit, but it's also opposed to the passions on Wall Street.

Ezra Klein: The Palin 'bot is overloaded

Ezra floats the thesis that McCain's team has tried to stuff too much into her head at once, and that when she's asked a question she sorts through the keywords she heard, tries to find one answer that matches it but instead comes up with three or four, and mashes them all together badly. It's a very human thing to do-- even I do it-- but it's embarassing and you should know when you're doing it, when you're out of your depth. Palin is. It's not just that she could learn to swim eventually, but that she's in the deep end now.

McCain says little, does nothing, maybe makes things worse in DC

Sullivan points us to two articles, one of which indicates that John McCain "said very little" at the bipartisan meeting, but apparently caused a ruckus behind closed doors with the Republicans, leading to the collapse of talks last night. Henry Reid said that McCain, returning to Washington for the first time since April (even Hillary and Obama took time out from the primary campaign to cast significant votes on topics about which they cared), "only politicized this process" and did not help it along.

McCain seems to be positioning himself as "the guy who went with what the American people want." Which might be a winner for him, but he can't say that "there is a deal and I helped make it," because he didn't, and the press is reporting that he didn't, and he can't say "there is no deal and that's the way I want it," because he hasn't done very much and he promised he wasn't leaving Washington until he had a good deal, and he can't bow out of the debates even without the deal, so... He's fuxed.

I'd like $19.1 million for three weeks work, yeah!

Washington Mutual (known around Seattle as WaMu) collapsed last night, the Feds took it over and handed it to JP Morgan, a nice toxic bundle of joy.

,Apparently, WaMu's new CEO, Alan Fishman, is going to receive $11.6 million in cash severance because he lost his job due to factors beyond his control, and will be allowed to keep his $7.5 million signing bonus, despite the fact that he only came on board three weeks ago.

Don't you wish you could make money like that?

Another call for a "blue ribbon" panel!

Everyone laughed when McCain floated the idea, and that was before Paulson walked up and demanded our money. Now the Republicans have tacked a line asking for a "blue ribbon commission" into their alternative proposal. Sadly, the Wikipedia article on Blue Ribbon Panel doesn't include a description of why "blue" or "ribbon". There's comedy gold waiting to be made there.

Wow. Kathleen Parker asks Sarah Palin to bow out for God and Country.

I remember when Parker came out with the column Steve Benen refers to, in which she said that it was okay to judge Obama unworthy of the presidency because his "bloodlines" could not trace "generations of sacrifice" to American ideals. Now she's come out and told Sarah Palin that, after her dismal interview with Katie Couric, she should "bow out of her nomination" for the sake of God and Country. She writes of Palin, "You are clearly out of your league." Ouch!

Glenn Greenwald: Hey, David Brooks, where've ya been?

I've had this one sitting in the queue for a couple of days. Gleen Greenwald blasts David Brooks for Brooks' naked hope that a benevolent oligarchy of Financial Wise Men will take the reins of power from the quant kids and the idiot legislators and run things properly.

As Greenwald notes,

One of the most enduring and intense pundit fetishes is the fantasy that there is a small, elite group of trans-partisan, centrist, responsible Establishment Wise Men -- the Ultimate Safe and Loving Daddy Figures -- who can ride into any political crisis and rescue the warring partisan masses with their Sober and Powerful Integrity.

And then Greenwald asks correctly, "Who's been running economic policy up until now?" Where are these wise men? Who are they? Are we going to be stampeded into a $700 billion solution to the worst financial meltdown in seventy years by the very people who brought us the worst financial meltdown in seventy years?

This fetish, by the way, is not uniquely righty. Greenwald wisely doesn't say it is; it used to be more prevalent on the left, but ever since Reagan it has become a fixture of the right just as badly. If only there were an incorruptible someone to take the reins, all would be well. Sadly, this is a holdover from heirarchal thinking and our evolutionary past; we'll never be able to run ourselves or our world properly as long as we dream of deference without a full vetting for merit and without expectations that that merit will apply only to the sphere of influence in which it was vetted..

A movement conservative comes clean about movement conservatism.

In a column for National Review Online, a far-right-wing outlet, Jim Manzi contemplates if conservatives will spend forty years wandering in the desert after the current disaster. I have my doubts. He recommends returning to the "intellectual spadework" of trying to show how conservative positions are beneficial to us as individuals and as a nation, which I think is all well and good, but then he drops this little bombshell:

But how should conservatives react to realignment if it occurs? First, by adopting more critical distance between the conservative movement and the Republican Party. The faster we can see the hidden advantage of no longer having to defend everything George Bush has done, the faster, we can develop a successful reform program.

The very fact that Jim says "conservatism" had to "defend everything George Bush has done" shows just how corrupt and indefensible the conservative movement has become. There is nothing "conservative" about torture, about the invasion of privacy and the suspension of individual liberty that is the Patriot act, about a war of choice, about cutting off our international allies at the knees. Conservatives felt they had to defend these things for purely tribal reasons, for reasons related to the accumulation of power, and not for the good of the country as a whole.

And finally, I have to say that I'm pretty much through writing about Sarah Palin unless she gets much worse, or much better. You have no idea how often I've had to go back and correct myself, that it's rude to refer to "Biden," "Obama," and "McCain," but say "Sarah." Sometimes I've left it in for effect; she encourages that kind of mockery. But worse are the typos: "Pain" and "Plain" flew off my fingers with straight out regularity.

Comments

You're Way Ahead of Me

[psi-star-psi.livejournal.com]

Dammit! I was thinking at breakfast this morning that there will be a run on bald wigs for Paulson costumes. Of course, all I need is the bad suit. Well, I guess I should shave the goat, too.

[(Anonymous)]

I think the $700 billion figure is completely off the table at this point. The proposal that nearly (?) went through yesterday was for $250 billion, with more forthcoming only if further need could be demonstrated.

Not that that's a whole lot better, but...well, actually, it is a whole lot better. But it's still pretty bad. Nonetheless, it now appears that a majority of Americans support some kind of bailout, though very few like the Bush/Paulson initial proposal.

Anonymous Blog Reader #127

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

"This fetish, by the way, is not uniquely righty. Greenwald wisely doesn't say it is; it used to be more prevalent on the left, but ever since Reagan it has become a fixture of the right just as badly. If only there were an incorruptible someone to take the reins, all would be well"

"If only the Czar knew" was a common theme in Russian stories.

Hell, even Bujold uses it in her Vorkosigan stories, to a certain extent. Emperor Gregor rarely does wrong (and even then it's because he has a rare crappy advisor.)

[(Anonymous)]

You seriously need to check out the Bastard Operator episode where the PFY has a "stack overflow" theory in relation to the boss, that is almost exactly what you describe in Palin.