Dark Star

Peter Robinson:

In Hugh Hewitt's interview with her earlier this week, Sarah Palin proved lively, tough, smart and completely herself. Hugh's final question: Have you heard from your son now that he has been deployed in Iraq?

That little stinker. I guess he’s called his girlfriend a couple of times, but can you believe he hasn’t called his momma yet?

Read it all here. In the hours before debate, it'll keep you encouraged and calm.

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Kathryn Jean Lopez: This Will Come Up Tonight:

URGENT Putin accuses Ukraine of weapons sales to Georgia

MOSCOW, Oct 2, 2008 (AFP) - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Thursday accused Ukraine of delivering weapons used by Georgia to fight Russia during a brief conflict in August.

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Rich Lowery:

From New York Times:

A review of his finances found that when it comes to some of his largest expenses, like the purchase and upkeep of his home and his use of Amtrak trains to get around, he has benefited from resources and relationships not available to average Americans.

As a secure incumbent who has rarely faced serious competition during 35 years in the Senate, Mr. Biden has been able to dip into his campaign treasury to spend thousands of dollars on home landscaping and some of his Amtrak travel between Wilmington, Del., where he lives, and Washington. And the acquisition of his waterfront property a decade ago involved wealthy businessmen and campaign supporters, some of them bankers with an interest in legislation before the Senate, who bought his old house for top dollar, sold him four acres at cost and lent him $500,000 to build his new home.

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Little Green Footballs - Ifill Didn't Tell Debate Commission About Book, But It Doesn't Matter

Ed Morrissey is continuing to follow the outrageous story of Gwen Ifill, the insanely biased debate moderator: Ifill: I never told the Commission about the book.

But at this point, it simply doesn’t matter how much evidence of bias you can dig up, because John McCain said he was sure Ifill would be fair and objective. He signed off on her, when he could have objected. This battle is over.

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I think it came out too late for him to do anything about it anyway. The fact is, Ifill should have disclosed it to the commission herself. She didn't. Now that it's come to the foreground, she will be criticized harshly if she even appears biased in her questions. Like she said, Wait and watch the debate and then make your judgment about any bias. Of course, if she does ask biased questions, it will be too late. The damage to Palin and McCain will be done. She won't be moderating another debate, but, it might be a small sacrifice for her.

... If he can make himself stick to it.

The Weekly Standard

The Politico reported a couple days ago that the strategy is to go easy on Palin so as to avoid sounding condescending:

“If she makes a gaffe, he underplays it,” one of the people prepping Biden for his vice presidential debate told me. “At most, he says, ‘I am not sure what Gov. Palin meant there.’”

There are three reasons for this. First, Biden does not want to look condescending. For the same reason, he plans on referring to Palin as “Gov. Palin” during the debate and never as “Sarah.” (He will sometimes refer to John McCain as “John,” however, because they have been senators together for many years.)

Biden will allow the media to slam Palin for her mistakes and concentrate on going after the top of the ticket

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From the Jawa Report:

al Qaida + Pirates = Jihad on the High Seas

Al Qaida has claimed responsibility for the increased pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia this year. So far this year there have been around 60 attacks against cargo ships in the Gulf of Aden, in 2007 there was 13. The islamic pirates are currently holding up to 300 crewmen hostage and 14 cargo ships for ransom.

It's the trifecta:

Somali pirates hijack cargo ships in the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia. Then the pirates collect the ransom paid for the release of cargo ships and crewmen. This is known as jihad al-mal, monetary jihad.

Large sums of the ransom money goes to al Shabaab, the islamic Youth Movement. Al Shabaab uses the ransom money to fuel the jihad on land. Both groups are linked to al Qaida, it's all about the jihad.

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Stephen Hayes:

In response to the latest provocation from the North Koreans, Hill and his colleagues are proposing a new "choreography" for the futile negotiations. Dancing seems somehow appropriate at this stage, given the stories about Hill's collegial drinking with his North Korean counterparts and his friendly toasts to honor them...

...If the current US-North Korea relationship follows the trajectory of a Hollywood romance, we are in trouble. First comes drinking, then dancing. And finally, well...let's just say we'll all be screwed.

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Little Green Footballs - ElBaradei: Idiot

Today’s jaw-dropping example of United Nations idiocy comes from the head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, who declared that his agency is powerless to do anything about nuclear proliferators who don’t tell the truth.

He actually seems surprised to discover that nations like Iran and Saddam-era Iraq would try to hide their nuclear programs.

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Relevant links on LGF.

Michelle Malkin » A message from Dish Network

Last night, I reported on the Obama Channel on Dish Network.

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VP Debate Preview: Will Biden Gaffe? Will Palin Be Set Free?

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Uhm... Yes and Hopefully.

Charlie Martin: Making Sense of Our Financial Mess

It started ten days ago, with a series of events that had the result of “freezing” the credit market. What that means is that banks and other financial institutions stopped lending one another money and people started moving away from money markets and similar kinds of accounts — the savings accounts of really big companies — and moving their money into Treasury bills. They were so frantic to get out that, for a short while, Treasury bills were down to zero yield. This is pretty much the definition of fear on Wall Street: they were so worried about losing money that they were willing to lose money.

If this goes on, here’s what could happen.

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I disagree with the assertion in his last few lines that Democrats will now pass a much more Liberal bill with a party line vote. This argument doesn't make sense to me and this isn't the first time I've seen it. If the Dems had the guts to do that, they would have done it the first time. They already own the cause of the vote, they don't want sole ownership of the vote, too.

Power Line: The stakes tonight

Sarah Palin's fans have had a ready response to those who criticize her addition to the ticket on grounds of inexperience: she has, they say, as much or more relevant experience as Barack Obama.

This argument has considerable merit. However, it overlooks the fact that over the past year and a half Obama the candidate has been thinking and talking about the full range of policy issues that are expected to confront the next president. Palin, by virtue of her status as a new governor and non-candidate, has not been doing this.

It's extremely doubtful that thinking and talking about a wide range of issues counts as experience that will materially assist Obama if he is elected president. But it does give him at least one significant advantage in his electoral quest -- it enables to come across as knowledgeable during debates.

Tonight we'll see if Sarah Palin, without the assistance of thinking and talking about the full range of issues for an extended period of time, can come across as knowledgeable during a debate. I offer no predictions about this. But I do predict that if Palin fails to come across that way, voters will be understandably reluctant to forgive John McCain for putting her on the ticket.

An interesting point, but I would argue strongly about that last line. I think Palin is the only reason McCain is anywhere close to contention at this stage.

Funny post concerning ongoing feud between John Hinderaker of Power Line and Paul Krugman. This time the argument is about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Power Line: Misty watercolor memories: When Krugman was right

In his August 2005 column "That hissing sound," Princeton economics professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman warned that housing prices constituted a bubble.

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Krugman is a hack.

Oh, wait... you mean Al Gore never led George Bush in the recounts, not one time - ever?

Deroy Murdock:

Election Day? Who needs it?

Americans already are casting ballots, five weeks before November 4. This is a boon for vote fraud and a bust for democracy.

In Ohio, most dramatically, an individual can register to vote between September 30 and October 6, then immediately receive an absentee ballot. Existing and brand-new electors also can cast ballots at early-voting centers. This is a gourmet recipe for voter fraud.

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Instapundit.com -

WHAT THEY SAID ABOUT FAN AND FRED: The Wall Street Journal rounds up some pre-meltdown quotes on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from the likes of Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, and Charles Schumer. My favorite:

Rep. Frank: I do think I do not want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness that we have in OCC [Office of the Comptroller of the Currency] and OTS [Office of Thrift Supervision]. I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing."

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No more bets, please...

(Hat tip: Michelle Malkin)

Max Schulz:

Palin could throw a few crucial statistics at Biden tonight. One is that coal provides fully half the electricity Americans consume. Nuclear power and natural gas — neither of which is beloved by environmentalists — provide about 20 percent each. Large hydropower plants like the Hoover and Grand Coulee Dams (also hated by Greens) provide 7 percent. That’s 97 percent — virtually all of America’s electric power. How about wind and solar, the renewables that Biden favors? Combined, they provide less than one half of one percent of America’s electricity. Does Biden really believe that we can meet our future energy and economic needs without fossil fuels?

Palin can bring up nuclear power to highlight another key difference. Both McCain and Obama claim to support nuclear power. But catering to environmental interests (not to mention Nevada voters), Obama vows he will shut down the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste repository near Las Vegas if elected. McCain supports opening Yucca as a critical part of expanding nuclear power’s role in our energy mix.

Curiously, Obama doesn’t suggest any alternative to Yucca Mountain, and without an answer to the nuclear-waste problem, the country’s nuclear renaissance may stall. So Obama can say he’s for nuclear power, which is what the American people want to hear, while still signaling to greens that nuclear will go nowhere on his watch. John Kerry got in trouble four years ago by claiming he was for the war in Iraq before he was against it. When it comes to nuclear power, the Obama campaign is trying to be for it and against it at the same time.

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It will be hard to get people's minds off the bailout. Beyond that, though, he's exactly right. Joe Sixpack isn't feeling the hurt from the credit crisis. But he is certainly feeling the hurt from energy - and has been for sometime.

America’s Nervous Breakdown by Victor Davis Hanson

Should that heart of American financial power in New York falter — or even appear to falter — then eventually the sinews of the American military will likewise slacken. And then things could get ugly — real fast.

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Scary.

Sarah Biden by Victor Davis Hanson on National Review Online

Journalists continue to ask, “What was John McCain thinking in selecting the gaffe-prone Gov. Sarah Palin?”

In what has now become a disturbing pattern, the Alaska governor seems either unable or unwilling to avoid embarrassing statements that are often as untrue as they are outrageous. Recently, for example, in an exclusive interview with news anchor Katie Couric, Palin gushed, “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’ ” Apparently the former Alaskan beauty queen failed to realize that in 1929 there was neither widespread television nor was Franklin Roosevelt even President.

Sometimes the Idaho-native Palin seems to confuse and embarrass her own running mate. Shortly after her nomination, she introduced a “John McAmerica;” then she referred to the Republican ticket as the “Palin-McCain administration;” and finished by calling Sen. Obama, “Senator George Obama.” The Palin gaffes seem to be endless: on her way to Washington to meet the national press corps, Palin, the mother of five, once again stumbled — this time characterizing Senator Biden as “Congressman Joe Biden,” who, she chuckled, was “good looking.”

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Speaks loudly, huh?

American Thinker: Sarah Palin and the Experience Factor

Why is it that liberal misrepresentations are never fully addressed before they become established as received wisdom? Whatever the topic may be, the left is consistently allowed to set the terms on which the argument takes place. Opponents may then debate minor points, split hairs, and count angels, but nobody ever seems to get around to looking the basic premises over, even when they're transparently bogus.

In the past few years we've seen "WMDs were the sole reason for invading Iraq", "CO2 is the major driver of climatic trends", and "Karl Rove is the Devil Incarnate", to consider only three. Each case is demonstrably false, yet each case has been allowed to dominate the public debate.

In the 2008 election, one of these ruling myths is "Sarah Palin does not have the experience to be vice-president."

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Secret defense programs have their place, but surely it is wrong to create secret social programs. The meltdown of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac demonstrates why. Everybody thought Fannie and Freddie were boring old government-sponsored enterprises dealing in nice safe mortgages for middle-class Americans. Only they weren't.

You can understand why President Clinton decided to crank up Fannie and Freddie to deliver sub-prime mortgages in the 1990s. It seemed like a great idea to amend the Community Reinvestment Act to bully the banks into lending more money into inner-city areas. And it was certainly a success in political terms. By the end of his administration, Bill Clinton was wildly popular in the African American community. Of course he would be, after sluicing billions of dollars in mortgage money to the house-hungry women of America's red-lined neighborhoods.

But who really understood what was going on before the whole thing blew up and tossed the nation into a global credit crisis? A few people did, and a few people tried to warn us. A few politicians tried to reform Fannie and Freddie, but they were no match for the lobbyists and the Friends of Angelo.

It is hard enough trying to reform headline programs like public education or Social Security. At least everything is out in the open.

But with stealth programs burrowed into the Community Reinvestment Act our liberal friends are learning to emulate the methods of the cold war Pentagon. They have learned how to keep controversial programs under the radar, and they usually succeed. It's only when a program blows up that people realize what is going on.

We are going to see more of these meltdowns in the future. Fannie/Freddie isn't the only government program adapted to serve a hidden agenda.

But how did we get from open and accountable government to the new era of stealth social programs operating under the radar?

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So I'm flipping channels, and I happen upon MSNBC's new Rachel Maddow show, and she's doing a segment on conservatives who have turned against Palin (David Frum, Charles Krauthammer, David Brooks, etc), and much to my surprise, there was my photo and name (misspelled-"Stephen"—common mistake) as being among those conservatives on the list. I must have missed this article. Have I been sniffing too much glue? When did I do this? I'm wondering how to register a complaint with MSNBC. Probably a waste of time, given how far gone they are.

See how good that feels?

Mayor Palin, Barack Obama is a handsome, charismatic demigod. How many boxes of Kleenex will you need after your crushing loss?

Senator Biden, what is your favorite color? And if you have time for a follow-up question: Why?

Mayor, you talk funny and you own a tanning bed. Why haven't you released Trig's birth certificate?

Senator, have you seen those pictures of Obama in his swim trunks? If not, I have them right here.

Mayor, what are the names, ages, and blood types of all 71 members of the Belgian Senate? And why are you unwilling to admit that your inability to instantly produce any and every fact I demand makes you unfit to stand in the way of history?

Senator, you've spoken at length. Could you please continue?

Mayor, which is your preferred method of stifling dissent, banning books or burning them? Since it's both, please explain how you can deny the accusation that you're a fascist, which I am making now.

Senator, could you please sign my book?

I'm getting such a kick out of this. The more he does it, the more I chuckle.

Never did I think there'd come a day when I'd agree with Bill Clinton this often, and yet, here I go again. As I was saying yesterday, Bill Clinton has been perhaps the strongest voice against the Obama-created meme that deregulation and the free market are at fault for a crisis actually caused by government interference.

And, here he goes again...

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Should have kissed the ring, Barack.

The ISI, the Pakistani spy service, helping to train and arm the taliban...nothing new here.

A Spanish report from Spain's Defense Ministry says that the ISI provided training, intelligence and set up camps on Pakistani soil to help train the taliban use explosives to assisnate Afghanistan officials. The ISI of course denies these claims but I'm inclined to trust Spain's Defense Ministry over the ISI.

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Power Line: Memo to the House: Vote "No"

I said on Monday that if I were in the House, I would vote, reluctantly, for the bailout package as negotiated by the Republican leadership over the weekend. This was based on the many warnings from economists and others across the political spectrum to the effect that failure to enact the measure would result in potentially disastrous consequences for the economy.

I've changed my mind. The bill failed in the House on Monday, and the sky didn't fall. Those who predicted doom are a bit like the cartoon characters who don white robes and climb mountains carrying signs that say "the world will end tonight." They feel silly when the sun comes up the next morning.

There are two separate issues here, and two separate crises. The first crisis afflicts those banks and other institutions who invested too heavily in mortgage-backed securities that turned out to be worth less than they thought, or, in some cases, to be simply incomprehensible. These institutions stand to lose money and would prefer that the taxpayers lose it instead.

The second crisis is the one that policy makers legitimately need to address. Mortgage-backed securities of dubious value have spread so widely through the financial system that they have become a drag on credit generally. We are experiencing a liquidity crisis in which banks find it increasingly difficult to borrow from one another and credit generally is drying up. This is a world-wide phenomenon, not limited to the U.S.

There are a number of measures that can be taken to address the liquidity crisis; some already have been. Revision of the SEC's mark-to-market rule should help considerably to free up banks' lending capacities. Likewise, extension of the FDIC limit from $100,000 per account to $250,000 will help prevent runs on banks. Other relatively modest regulatory measures are no doubt available that will also make incremental contributions toward freeing up national and international credit markets.

As far as the broader issue of what to do (if anything) about the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of questionable mortgage-backed instruments is concerned, I have heard no coherent explanation of why the taxpayers need to buy those assets. This is the most expensive, most intrusive, least free-market-friendly solution to the problem. The House Republicans proposed an insurance system, funded by financial institutions themselves, as an alternative. Respected bankers have suggested that the government could lend money to affected institutions with the dubious instruments as collateral. These and other alternatives seem to be better, more modest approaches than the $700 billion blank check bailout that remains the essence of the pending legislation.

In all of the arguments that the administration, Congressional leaders and Presidential candidates have made in favor of the bailout proposal, the consistent theme is that the bailout is better than doing nothing. That could well be true. But I have not yet heard a single word of argument from the bailout's proponents as to why that plan, which can fairly be described as extreme, is better than an insurance program, or a loan program, or a combination of regulatory initiatives to free up credit, or other alternatives that may be devised by banking experts.

There is only one thing we know for sure about a bailout program, as opposed to those alternatives: it will constitute a massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to investors in banks and investment houses. I can easily understand why financial institutions that made bad investments would consider this desirable. It is not so clear why Congressmen looking out for the interests of taxpayers would find it so.

The panic of the last week appears to have been overblown. This is reflected in what has happened in the stock market. There is no reason why we need to commit $700 billion of taxpayer money--tomorrow!--without taking a careful look at the consequences of such a program, and at the available alternatives. I'm pretty sure that if we have that debate over the next few weeks, alternatives will emerge that are far better than the legislation that passed the Senate today.

Members of the House should vote "No" tomorrow.

Here, here.

Former US Representative and current Green Party candidate for president Cynthia McKinney says the government executed 5,000 prisoners and dumped their bodies in a Louisiana swamp, during Hurricane Katrina.

Yes, really.

A New Opportunity for McCain:

...McCain then needs to project to America a long-term economic recovery plan that would get America booming again, like it did in the 1980s, and the mid-to-late 1990s. We know how to do this. It involves changing the permanent, fundamental incentives that govern our economy.

First, McCain, a supposedly reform candidate, needs clearly and formally to advocate a pro-growth tax reform plan. He has mumbled a few times about a two-rate optional income tax system. He should clearly and forcefully propose, right after the bailout plan is resolved, the freedom of each worker to choose an alternative flatter tax plan with just two tax rates, 10% and 25%. These rates would involve a cut in tax rates for all taxpayers. He has already proposed reducing the federal corporate tax rate to 25% as well. He has also proposed expensing for capital investment, maintaining the dividend tax rate at 15%, abolishing the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), and reserving the death tax only for the very richest. Along with the above mentioned zero capital gains tax, this would cause the economy to soar, with millions of new jobs, higher wages, increased savings and investment, new and growing businesses, and a bullish restoration of the dollar.

McCain has also already proposed a budget freeze, and sharp overall spending limitations, leading to a balanced budget at the end of his first term. He should call for a budget cut of $150 billion in the first year, which would be the equivalent relative to the size of the budget of Reagan's 1981 spending cuts

Thirdly, McCain should insist on anti-inflationary monetary policies at the Fed, with adoption of a strict price rule that would short-circuit the Fed discretion that produced the housing bubble. The price rule means that the Fed should conduct monetary policy to keep market prices stable for a representative basket of commodities, including gold. This would cut off budding inflation, and reduce bulging oil and food prices.

Fourthly, McCain should propose regulatory reform that would allow vastly increased production of domestic U.S. energy, including oil, natural gas, and nuclear power, as well as the alternatives of wind, solar, geothermal and others. This would fuel the booming American economy with ample supplies of low cost energy.

In contrast, can you imagine the impact of Obama's 1930s style tax rate increases in this economy? Or his protectionism? When McCain called in the debate for tight spending restraints, Obama specified further welfare spending increases he thinks are necessary. Obama in the debate also equated tax cuts, which allow people to keep more of their own money and grow the economy, with spending increases that do the opposite. McCain also rightly noted that Obama's health plan would ultimately produce a government takeover of health care. McCain rightly noted as well that Obama and his lefty Democrats could not be trusted to increase energy supplies and lower the price of gas. These are the reasons why, contrary to the copycat pundits, McCain won the economic portion of the debate by more than the foreign policy portion.

The above economic recovery plan would precisely get America booming again, and the American people would see that. Indeed, it has the same four components as the Reagan 1980 economic recovery plan. Obama, by contrast, the supposedly forward-looking candidate, is countering with the 1930s Roosevelt plan, which actually did not work to revive the economy. What Obama is advocating across the board is precisely the change we DON'T need.

McCain can get bold, and fresh, and fight, or he can go quietly into history as he now appears to be, too tired, too old, too out of the loop, to fight to save our country from the Hugo Chavez Democrats.

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Let's hope he's still got some game.

American Thinker: Wrecks, Lies and Barney Frank

Democrats have a lot to hide about their role in creating the current financial crisis and are doing their best to appear blameless with charges directed elsewhere.

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There is but one issue in the 2008 election. The economy. Or more to the point, the economic meltdown. Whoever wins this debate will win the election. Or perhaps more accurately, whoever loses this debate will lose the election. Period.

It is important to understand this for anyone trying not to lose this upcoming election. That would ostensibly include Arizona Senator John McCain. And it may not be as simple as what side of the Paulson Plan debate you are on. The housing-mortgage virus is eating up billions of dollars of wealth daily and this tends to irritate those who are losing the wealth. That would now include everyone in the country who owns any stock, mutual fund shares or real estate. In other words, a large share of voters.

When folks are this angry, there is hell to pay and "hell to pay" includes figuring out who to blame. For all of McCain's wanting to stay "above the fray" and his too-clever-by-half comment that now is not the time to assign blame, he is not hearing the public. It is indeed time to assign blame. With this kind of financial destruction on the part of most American families, someone is going to get blamed. You can count on it.

Let me repeat. Someone will get blamed. You will either enter that debate or you will lose that debate. Period.

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Gwen Ifill is moderating the debate tomorrow night even though she has a pro Obama book coming out. Andrea Mitchell is reporting on the financial crisis, no doubt with some guidance from her former Fed chairman husband. And David Gregory's wife just stepped down as a major poobah at Fannie Mae. But when a conservative judicial nominee is reported to have eaten at a questionable taco stand in the 1970s, the press worries somberly about whether such a conflict of interest makes it possible to be impartial.

The Corner on National Review Online

A reader is thinking ahead to the second and third presidential debates. In the first debate, he says, “how many times did Obama try to tie McCain to President Bush? About a million? McCain needs to answer that.” And he suggests that McCain answer as follows:


“Say what you will about President Bush, senator, but he is the twice-elected president of the United States and a good and honorable man. I would rather be associated with him than with Billy Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and Tony Rezko, to begin with.”


My reader says this would be a “showstopper” and a “debate clincher.” I don’t know about that, but I like it . . .

Barack Obama yesterday:

“I don't think me calling House Republican members would have been that helpful. I tend not to be that persuasive on that side of the aisle”

Barack Obama today in Wisconsin:

“I’ve been reaching out to leaders in both parties to do whatever I can to help pass this plan.”

Dean Barnett:

Jeff Dobbs over at the excellent Voice in My Head blog makes a great catch. Here was Barack Obama on “60 Minutes” a full nine days ago:

KROFT: Why you? I mean, why do you think you would be a good president?

OBAMA: Well, I was going to get to that.

KROFT: Go ahead.

OBAMA: You know, I’m a, I’m a practical person. One of the things I’m good at is getting people in a room with a bunch of different ideas who sometimes violently disagree with each other and finding common ground and a sense of common direction.

Now here he was yesterday, explaining why he eschewed playing a leadership role during the current crisis, and never considered sullying his hands with something as quotidian as “finding common ground” with Republicans on the Hill:

"I don't think me calling House Republican members would have been that helpful. I tend not to be that persuasive on that side of the aisle."

By this point in time, we’ve all come to understand that most Obama promises and pledges come with a built in expiration date. But eight days from being the guy who brings together violently disagreeing people to not being “persuasive” on the other side of the aisle? That’s got to be a new record...

There's an astounding admission buried in this NYT account of the failed bailout vote yesterday:

Aides to Mr. Obama said he had not directly reached out to try to sway any House Democrats who opposed the measure. But where Mr. McCain had accused Mr. Obama of taking a hands-off approach to the financial crisis, Democratic advisers said they believed that Mr. McCain now had a role in the legislation’s failure.

Really? The man who was ostensibly working the phones such that he was confident enough to predict the passage of the bill in prepared remarks sent to reporters yesterday, in fact, made no phone calls to assure the passage of said bill. The man whose party has no particular philosophical aversion to government interference in the markets and is in control of Congress. The man who's been assuring voters of his very serious weighing in by phone from the campaign trail...didn't actually pick up a phone. This is the real Obama. He is a leader of crowds, not crises.

This won't be a story, but it should be, and Republicans and McCain should point it out. The argument against Dems is the utter lack of competent leadership by Obama and Pelosi, not whining about a Pelosi speech...

Both House and Senate have been at work today to create an alternative bailout bill after the modified Paulson plan went down in a surprising House vote Monday. With both liberal and conservative members (and constituents) rejecting the biggest government bailout of private industry in history, neither party's leadership was able to whip enough people into acquiescence. The Dow tumbled more than 700 points Monday afternoon, but regained several hundred Tuesday.

The new bailout bill, originating in the Senate, will be attached to a tax-break extender, and will require 60 votes to pass instead of a simple majority. The high threshold was part of the deal for getting it to the floor on Wednesday, according to reports.

The House has already rejected the energy and business tax breaks this new version of the bailout will be attached to, but the Senate is also set to add important AMT relief, which would be palatable for both House Dems and Republicans.

The new version of the bailout is also said to include an increase in the FDIC cap, from $100,000 to $250,000, and possible reforms to "mark-to-market" rules, which "require banks and other financial institutions to adjust the value of their assets to reflect current market prices, even if they plan to hold the assets for years."

House Republican leader John Boehner has already said he backs the new bill, the text of which is not available in any form yet, as far as I can tell:

"He (Boehner) was consulted on it and gave it the green light," [a spokesman) said of the measure that the Senate intends to consider on Wednesday.

Some of the tax relief, however, has House Democrats iffy:

But Senate leaders attached the measure to a package to extend business and energy tax breaks that a number of House Democrats have opposed, which could imperil votes there after Monday's narrow defeat of the original bill.

House Republicans leaders quickly embraced the revised package, while House Democratic leaders issued cautious statements.

Nancy Pelosi, utterly useless as usual, had this enlightening quote to offer:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said House Democrats remained "strongly committed to a comprehensive bill that stabilizes the financial markets, restores confidence, and protects taxpayers, and we hope Congress can agree on legislation in the very near future."

Leadership.

McCain and Obama will return for the vote.

CNBC has a run-down of possible inclusions in the alternative bailout bill. This list was crafted by House Republicans, so it's unclear how much of a shot any of this has of getting in a final Senate version, even if the House and Senate are working closely.

* Require the Treasury Department to guarantee, at up to 100 percent, bank losses resulting from failed mortgage-backed securities originated prior to the plan's enactment. Such insurance, supporters say, would provide immediate value to the securities and a foundation for which they could then be sold. The Treasury Department would finance that insurance by assessing a premium on outstanding mortgage-backed securities.
* Allow companies to carry back losses arising in tax years ending in 2007, 2008, or 2009 back five years, generating a tax refund and immediate capital
* Allow a "repatriation window" for profits earned by U.S. firms overseas. Such repatriation amounts would not be taxed if invested in distressed debt (as defined by Treasury) for at least one year.
* Allow banks to treat losses on shares of preferred stock in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as ordinary losses, not as capital losses
* Suspend the capital gains tax rate for two years
* Limit backing of high-risk loans by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
* Schedule Fannie and Freddie for privatization
* Suspend "mark-to-market" accounting until the SEC can issue new guidelines that will allow firms to mark these assets to their true economic value
* Stabilize the dollar by repealing the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act, which alternative bailout supporters say diverts the Federal Reserve's attention from long-term price stability to short-term economic growth
* Require the Treasury to write rules prohibiting excessive compensation or golden parachutes to executives of failed companies
* Task the SEC with regular, annual audit reports of entities the federal government has brought under conservatorship or now owns

The bill should be available in its final form for members and the public before a vote is taken, but I have my doubts. I'll keep you updated. Voting is set to start at 7 p.m., with a vote on the bailout around 9 p.m.

The Jawa Report: The Bailout : I'm at a Loss

A whole lot of folks I've always trusted as staunch free marketeers are telling us it's time to put all that "nice theory" aside and accept that massive government intervention is an "unpleasant reality" if we're even going to HAVE a market system tomorrow.

I feel a little bit like I might feel if my pastor advised me on the sly to visit the mosque every once in a while--ya know, just in case this whole "Jesus" thing doesn't end up panning out.

Rich, that list of Bailout Bill earmarks gives the game away.

When this thing first came up, a lot of us felt like the Mister Average Joe guy at the start of a conspiracy thriller who gets a call saying the place is gonna blow, you got 30 seconds to get outta there, jump out the rear window, and get into the unmarked car with the fellows in reflector shades.

"Whu..? Why? Er, lemme think..."

"Clock's ticking, pal."

Now it turns out the once-in-a-lifetime save-the-global-economy emergency-measure has got time for all the business as usual. Well, which is it? I'm willing to be persuaded of the merits of a bill for "wool research", or the merits of a billion-trillion-gazillion-dollar bill to save the planet from economic meltdown. But the same piece of legislation cannot plausibly contain both.

I suppose sophisticated insiders would assure me that regrettably there's no possibility of earmark reform; this is just the price of doing business in Washington. But that's why non-sophisticated non-insiders hold the political class in contempt. The same blowhards who run for office on a platform of lowering ocean levels and healing the planet then turn around and insist they're unable to do anything about the one small area of human endeavor for which they bear sole responsibility.

If this is an emergency, hold the wool research. If it's an emergency that's got time for wool research, let's chew it over for another few months.

We're poor little lambs who have lost our way. Bah, bah, bah.

[UPDATE: A reader adds:

So now the line will go something like this:

"...you got 30 seconds to exit the building or you're toast...but be sure to stop by Quinzos on your way out for a free cup of soup with any qualifying sandwich..."]

Love that Steyn.

Andrew McCarthy:

My pal Diana West points me to Ken Timmerman's must-read Newsmax column — which naturally is getting no coverage in the MSM — about Sen. Obama's eye-popping fundraising operation. Bottom line: the would-be President of the World is raising goo-gobs of money from foreigners outside the United States (a violation of federal law), and matching goo-gobs of money inside the United States from phantoms who are blowing out the individual contribution limits by, among other devices, making up identies and breaking up contributions in amounts less than $200, for which reporting requirements are less rigorous.

According to Ken, the Obama campaign has raised nearly half a billion dollars ($429.6M) but refuses to provide the names of most of the donors. Election law requires the campaign to track this information but not for it to disclose the names of those who donate less than $200, which is most Obama donors. (Sen. McCain discloses the names of all donors.) The Obama campaign has raised millions upon millions of dollars from outside the United States. Only Americans living overseas may lawfully contribute, but because the Obama vetting machinery is negligent (or worse), the probability is that enormous sums are coming from foreigners. The campaign knows the FEC is a lethargic agency and won't have a full accounting until perhaps years after the election.

This typifies the domestic fundraising issue:

In a letter dated June 25, 2008, the FEC asked the Obama campaign to verify a series of $25 donations from a contributor identified as “Will, Good” from Austin, Texas. Mr. Good Will listed his employer as “Loving” and his profession as “You.”

A Newsmax analysis of the 1.4 million individual contributions in the latest master file for the Obama campaign discovered 1,000 separate entries for Mr. Good Will, most of them for $25. In total, Mr. Good Will gave $17,375.

Following this and subsequent FEC requests, campaign records show that 330 contributions from Mr. Good Will were credited back to a credit card. But the most recent report, filed on Sept. 20, showed a net cumulative balance of $8,950 — still well over the $4,600 limit.

There can be no doubt that the Obama campaign noticed these contributions, since Obama’s Sept. 20 report specified that Good Will’s cumulative contributions since the beginning of the campaign were $9,375.

In an e-mailed response to a query from Newsmax, Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt pledged that the campaign would return the donations. But given the slowness with which the campaign has responded to earlier FEC queries, there’s no guarantee that the money will be returned before the Nov. 4 election.

Similarly, a donor identified as “Pro, Doodad,” from “Nando, NY,” gave $19,500 in 786 separate donations, most of them for $25. For most of these donations, Mr. Doodad Pro listed his employer as “Loving” and his profession as “You,” just as Good Will had done. But in some of them, he didn’t even go this far, apparently picking letters at random to fill in the blanks on the credit card donation form. In these cases, he said he was employed by “VCX” and that his profession was “VCVC.”

Following FEC requests, the Obama campaign began refunding money to Doodad Pro in February 2008. In all, about $8,425 was charged back to a credit card. But that still left a net total of $11,165 as of Sept. 20, way over the individual limit of $4,600. Here again, LaBolt pledged that the contributions would be returned but gave no date.

In February, after just 93 donations, Doodad Pro had already gone over the $2,300 limit for the primary. He was over the $4,600 limit for the general election one month later. In response to FEC complaints, the Obama campaign began refunding money to Doodad Pro even before he reached these limits. But his credit card was the gift that kept on giving. His most recent un-refunded contributions were on July 7, when he made 14 separate donations, apparently by credit card, of $25 each.

Just as with Mr. Good Will, there can be no doubt that the Obama campaign noticed the contributions, since its Sept. 20 report specified that Doodad’s cumulative contributions since the beginning of the campaign were $10,965.

Bear in mind that we only know about Messrs. "Good Will" and "Doodad Pro" because someone detected that they went over $200 in aggregate contributions. If more clever Obama supporters have given thousands of dollars to Obama by structuring it in a variety of different phony names and amounts under $200, we might not learn about that for years ... if ever.

And then there is the foreign money. A sampling from Ken — though all of it should be read (italics are mine):

The FEC has compiled a separate database of potentially questionable overseas donations that contains more than 11,500 contributions totaling $33.8 million. More than 520 listed their “state” as “IR,” often an abbreviation for Iran. Another 63 listed it as “UK,” the United Kingdom.

More than 1,400 of the overseas entries clearly were U.S. diplomats or military personnel, who gave an APO address overseas. Their total contributions came to just $201,680. But others came from places as far afield as Abu Dhabi, Addis Ababa, Beijing, Fallujah, Florence, Italy, and a wide selection of towns and cities in France.

Until recently, the Obama Web site allowed a contributor to select the country where he resided from the entire membership of the United Nations, including such friendly places as North Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Unlike McCain’s or Sen. Hillary Clinton’s online donation pages, the Obama site did not ask for proof of citizenship until just recently....
In July and August, the head of the Nigeria’s stock market held a series of pro-Obama fundraisers in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city. The events attracted local Nigerian business owners. At one event, a table for eight at one fundraising dinner went for $16,800. Nigerian press reports claimed sponsors raked in an estimated $900,000. The sponsors said the fundraisers were held to help Nigerians attend the Democratic convention in Denver. But the Nigerian press expressed skepticism of that claim, and the Nigerian public anti-fraud commission is now investigating the matter.

In June, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi gave a public speech praising Obama, claiming foreign nationals were donating to his campaign. “All the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man,” the Libyan leader said. “They welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success, and they may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to enable him to win the American presidency..."

[O]n July 31 that donors from the Gaza strip had contributed $33,000 to the Obama campaign through bulk purchases of T-shirts they had shipped to Gaza.... A pair of Palestinian brothers named Hosam and Monir Edwan contributed more than $31,300 to the Obama campaign in October and November 2007, FEC records show. Their largesse attracted the attention of the FEC almost immediately. In an April 15, 2008, report that examined the Obama campaign’s year-end figures for 2007, the FEC asked that some of these contributions be reassigned. The Obama camp complied sluggishly, prompting a more detailed admonishment form the FEC on July 30. The Edwan brothers listed their address as “GA,” as in Georgia, although they entered “Gaza” or “Rafah Refugee camp” as their city of residence on most of the online contribution forms.... The latest Obama campaign filing shows that $891.11 still has not been refunded to the Edwan brothers, despite repeated FEC warnings and campaign claims that all the money was refunded in December.

A Newsmax review of the Obama campaign finance filings found that the FEC had asked for the redesignation or refund of 53,828 donations, totaling just under $30 million.

But none involves the donors who never appear in the Obama campaign reports, which the [Center for Responsive Politics] estimates at nearly half the $426.8 million the Obama campaign has raised to date.

Safe in my think-tank, as the Wall Street Journal puts it (although my personal banker would laugh at the idea), I am bemused by the number of people who are saying that we have to "do something" about the financial mess. As Andy's correspondent below points out, "do something" is rarely a recipe for success.

Let's look at the main issue for many here: the credit squeeze. As Jeff Miron says today, that is overblown and is in part *caused* by all the bailout talk:

Thoughtful advocates of the bailout ... argue that a bailout is necessary to prevent economic collapse. According to this view, lenders are not making loans, even for worthy projects, because they cannot get capital. This view has a grain of truth; if the bailout does not occur, more bankruptcies are possible and credit conditions may worsen for a time.

Talk of Armageddon, however, is ridiculous scare-mongering. If financial institutions cannot make productive loans, a profit opportunity exists for someone else. This might not happen instantly, but it will happen.

Further, the current credit freeze is likely due to Wall Street's hope of a bailout; bankers will not sell their lousy assets for 20 cents on the dollar if the government might pay 30, 50, or 80 cents.

Of course, these are reasonably sensible people responding to stimuli and signals from government. And of course, that's what got us into this mess in the first place.

Now as it happens there are lots of things we can do which do actually rise to the level of "doing something," but which don't involve giving bureaucrats the keys to the kingdom (incidentally, this is statism, not socialism — socialism at least purportedly wants to redistribute wealth for the benefit of the working man, which the Paulson plan does not aim to do, even if some House members on the left would like a bailout to do so).

The administration can reform mark-to-market accounting, we can break up and privatize the GSEs, we can reform certain insurance practices such as requiring lenders, not borrowers, to pay for PMI. We can abolish the bank/thrift divide and reform the CRA. There may be a case for some sort of structural stability office in the Treasury as a least-worst option, but we're still thinking that through. Oh, and the President can fire Henry Paulson, whose over-the-top reaction turned a big but manageable problem into an international crisis...

Andrew C. McCarthy:

I’ll be blunt: Sen. Obama and his supporters despise free expression, the bedrock of American self-determinism and hence American democracy. What’s more, like garden-variety despots, they see law not as a means of ensuring liberty but as a tool to intimidate and quell dissent...

Congress is never more ridiculous than when it tries to look like it is serious.

In the midst of a major national financial crisis, what was one of the first things Congress zeroed in on? The pay of Chief Executive Officers of financial institutions.

If all those CEOs agreed to work for nothing, that would not be enough to lower the bailout money by one percent. Anyone who was really serious would start with the 99 percent and let the one percent come later, if at all.

But however insignificant the pay of CEOs is economically, it is big stuff politically. Whatever the shortcomings of the Democrats, they are consistent in their message, and class envy is a great part of that message.

People who say that they cannot understand how CEOs in general get so many millions of dollars seem not to realize what a trivial thing they are saying. Most people do not understand most things. But that is no reason to have national policy guided by their ignorance.

I do not understand one percent of what there is to understand about the very computer on which these words are being written — nor about the Internet on which these words will be transmitted to the syndicate that distributes this column. I don’t have a clue about how a syndicate is run, much less how much someone should be paid for running it.

What really sets some people off is the fact that a CEO who has mismanaged some corporation into losing billions of dollars is rewarded with a severance package worth millions.

Think about it. If the CEO’s decisions are costing the company billions, it is a bargain to get him out the door immediately for millions, rather than having his departure delayed by either internal struggles or battles in the courts.

It is the same principle if you are married to someone who is impossible to live with. The divorce may cost far more than the marriage — and still be worth every cent of it.

But what about the “social justice” of it all?

Such questions seem to carry great weight with people who act as if they are God on Judgment Day. But one of the little overlooked differences between themselves and God on Judgment Day is that God does not have to worry about what is going to happen the day after Judgment Day.

Rewarding someone for being impossible to live with may offend our feelings, just as rewarding someone for mismanaging a company does. But the real question is — what is the alternative and how will that alternative affect the future?

Politically imposed limits on the pay of CEOs is one of the most penny-wise and pound-foolish things that can be done. The difference between a top-notch CEO and a second-rate CEO can be billions of dollars on the bottom line.

That is what drives up the pay of CEOs. If you want someone who will be top-notch in running organizations as huge and complex as Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, there is no point offering $5 million a year if similar enterprises elsewhere are paying $20 million for people with the kind of ability required.

Who is going to take a $15 million pay cut to go run these enterprises, in addition to having to put up with politicians?

The money that can be saved by limiting CEO pay is chump change compared to the money that can be lost because you cannot attract top-notch talent.

Congress itself is a classic example of what can happen when penny-wise policies restrict the caliber of people who can be attracted.

No top-level doctor, lawyer, economist, engineer or CEO can become a member of Congress without taking a big pay cut, perhaps costing that person’s family millions of dollars over a lifetime.

On the other hand, if you paid every member of Congress a million dollars a year, it would cost less than the cost of even a small government boondoggle, much less a whole agency.

It is not that the turkeys in Congress today deserve a raise. They don’t even deserve their current pay. But that is the very reason for attracting different people. Cheap politicians are actually very expensive and the same principle applies to CEOs.

That last paragraph is a winner.

You know the old joke about Winston Churchill seated next to a woman at a posh dinner party? Churchill says “Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?” The socialite responds: My goodness, Mr. Churchill. . . . Well, I suppose I would.” Adjusted for inflation were talking tens of millions of dollars after all. Then Churchill replies, “Would you sleep with me for five pounds?”

Lady: “Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!”

Churchill: “Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.”

It’s a joke worth keeping in mind when looking at the two political parties, particularly for those who think there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between them.

The House GOP has come under a lot of criticism for its failure to deliver on its end of the bipartisan bailout deal, including from yours truly. Meanwhile, the Democratic leadership has come in for some moderate pro forma criticism for failing to do what was necessary to see the legislation passed.

It is a funny — though not ha-ha funny — double standard: When the GOP ran the show, it was always held responsible for every “bad” outcome. Now that the GOP is in the minority, it’s still held responsible for every “bad” outcome. I suppose it’s a similar standard that somehow allows the Democrats in charge of overseeing the financial sector to whine that there hasn’t been enough oversight without even the slightest sting of embarrassment.

On that point, you know what I haven’t seen in all of the coverage of the bailout-blow-up? I haven’t seen a single interview with a Democrat who voted against this deal. I’ve seen interviews of Republicans who’ve voted for it. I’ve seen interviews of Republicans who voted against it. And, of course, I’ve seen interviews with the Democratic leadership in which they blamed the Republicans who voted against it but not the 94 Dems who voted against it.

Now I certainly haven’t watched every bit of news coverage nor have I read every story about the failed bailout vote, so I’m sure I’m missing some counter-examples. But I think the discrepancy of coverage is real. The press is eager to hear from these free market zealots, these Herbert Hoover* mini-mes, who would put their bizarre ideological concerns ahead of the country’s interests. Never mind that these alleged zealots actually believe what they are doing is in fact in the long term interests of the country. The press always knows that when conservatives refuse to compromise it’s because they are dogmatic ideologues, brainwashed acolytes in the cult of Milton Friedman and Adam Smith.

But why didn’t those Democrats vote for the bailout that their own leadership contends is vital for the financial health of the country?

That’s a question that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention.

Part of the explanation stems from the combined incompetence and partisanship of Nancy Pelosi who let many of her closest allies in the Congress — including five committee chairs who owe their positions to Pelosi — vote no. (Karl Rove’s lecture on this point is extremely instructive.). Pelosi let 16 Democrats in tight races vote against the bill in order to save their seats. If that standard is good for the majority party, I would like to hear Nancy Pelosi explain why it’s unacceptable for the minority party. As Jim Geraghty says, “She’s the speaker, she controls the chamber. You can’t say, ‘vote for this bill, it is necessary’ and ‘we will target any Republican who votes for this bill’ at the same moment. Of course, you can actually say it, because that’s what the Democrats have been saying. You just can’t say it with any integrity.

But I’m interested in the Democratic equivalent of the Republican ideologues. A majority of the hyper-leftwing Congressional Black Caucus — the self-anointed “conscience of the Congress” — voted against the bailout, even though they come from some of the safest districts in America. A majority of the Hispanic caucus voted no, too. Half of the Congressional Progressive Caucus voted against the bailout.

Have you heard anyone denounce these people as “left-wing ideologues”? I haven’t.

What would have brought these people around? Renowned intellectual Jesse Jackson Jr. says that he voted against the bill in effect because it didn’t cost enough. If it was more of Christmas tree of left-wing New Deal policies he’d be in favor of a bailout. Indeed, you can be sure that most of these Democrats would have voted for the legislation if the old 20-percent-off-the-top for La Raza and ACORN provisions were still in there. Read the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s letter to Nancy Pelosi. The short version: We’ll vote for it — if it nationalizes America’s financial system.

Now, the interesting thing here is how different the motives are here, and how they run counter to the liberal conventional wisdom and the prevailing media narrative. The Mike Pence “ideologues” opposed this bill on principle even though we’re always told by the Thomas Frank crowd that those laissez-faire Republicans are merely the willing pawns of America’s financial ruling class. Their principles are mere window dressing for grasping, evil capitalists. But the financial ruling class supports this bill. They’re begging for it in fact. These right-wing ideologues believe there must be a cheaper and better way to protect the American taxpayer that preserves economic liberty.

Now look at the ideologues of the Democratic party. This crowd voted against the bailout because the government simply didn’t meet their price. If the bailout proposal came with a $100 million no-strings-attached earmark for every congressional district, does anyone doubt that Jesse Jackson Jr. would hail this “heroic” legislation? Does anyone doubt that Mike Pence would still have voted against it?

In short, we’ve already established what kind of party the Democrats are, now we’re just haggling about their price.

Shortly before the House rejected the $700-billion “bailout” of the U.S. financial system, Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused Republicans of causing the problem. She said, “They claim to be free-market advocates, when it’s really an ‘anything goes’ mentality: no regulation, no supervision, no discipline.” The timing of Pelosi’s remarks was curious: One would think the moments before a tense vote in which Republican support is essential would be a time to avoid partisan attacks. Not our Nancy.

Pelosi’s timing was off, but we agree in part with her assessment. An “anything goes” mentality toward two firms in particular contributed substantially to the financial meltdown. “No regulation, no supervision, no discipline” is definitely the right way to describe the attitude that allowed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to grow into unstable behemoths that helped inflate the housing bubble and left taxpayers holding a mountain of bad debt.

Of course, the “free-market advocates” pilloried by Pelosi long ago recognized the risks Fannie and Freddie posed to the financial system. Fannie and Freddie are government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs). As long as they’ve been around, investors have assumed that the U.S. government would never let them fail. Their implied taxpayer backing allowed them to borrow at low rates and maintain debt-to-equity ratios that would have caused concern at other firms.

Direct and indirect government subsidies allowed the GSEs to grow huge. Starting in 1970, they doubled the amount of mortgage debt on their books every five years — from $15 billion in 1970 to over $5 trillion when they finally collapsed. Free-market advocates warned that Fannie and Freddie’s heedless growth was, to quote Alan Greenspan, “placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk.” But the GSEs built an impressive lobbying machine to keep would-be regulators at bay.

Over the past ten years, Fannie and Freddie spent over $200 million on lobbying and campaign contributions. Democrats Chris Dodd, John Kerry, and Barack Obama — the top recipients of Fannie and Freddie largesse — have all broken the $100,000 mark. It should come as no surprise that Senate Democrats were the key obstacle to reforming Fannie and Freddie when Congress had a chance in 2005, before the mortgage crisis spiraled out of control.

Fannie and Freddie’s defenders in the House were no better. Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank maintained that Fannie and Freddie did not pose a risk to the financial system, even as they helped inflate the housing bubble by subsidizing mortgage debt. Then, when the bubble finally burst, Frank tried to loosen Fannie and Freddie’s constraints so they could reinflate it. They might have succeeded if they hadn’t collapsed, requiring a bailout from taxpayers that could cost as much as $200 billion.

Fannie and Freddie were not the only irresponsible players whose behavior led to the mortgage meltdown. The Federal Reserve held interest rates too low for too long, making mortgage debt look like a better investment than it was. The Community Reinvestment Act, championed by Democrats, coerced banks into lowering their credit standards to meet diversity targets. And certainly, Wall Street deluded itself into thinking that relentless securitization could make risk disappear. But Fannie and Freddie were definitely the biggest players, and the Democrats’ “anything goes” mentality allowed their worst excesses to go unregulated, unsupervised, and undisciplined.

RUSH: God Bless the House Republicans

So there's a lot at work here, and it's simple to understand. There were five committee chairmen that owe their careers to Nancy Pelosi, who voted against the bailout. She didn't try to twist their arms. She didn't do anything of the sort. She goes out there looking all ash-faced yesterday like it's the dregs of disappointment. She got exactly what she wanted today. She's got the idiots, the economic illiterates at CNN, at MSNBC, at ABC, CBS, wherever, blaming McCain, blaming Republicans, 35 days before an election. Five weeks out, the Drive-By Media is following right as they should, blaming Republicans for an upcoming economic disaster. They played election issue politics yesterday disguised as trying to help the country and save the country. The Democrats want as much economic chaos as they can create. They want as much angst; they want as much concern; they want you thinking crisis, crisis, crisis, crisis, crisis; they want all of this happening so that you will elect Obama. The Republicans in Congress, I think went out there and said some things about Pelosi's speech yesterday that a lot of Republicans, a lot of conservatives, "Come on, you guys, can you grow up? Don't tell us that you changed your vote on saving the country because Pelosi delivered a partisan speech." I, frankly, think that's what they said, but I don't think that's at all why they changed their vote, if they changed their vote at all. I think that's what they went out there and said.

The speech by Pelosi was irresponsible. She is stupid. One trillion of wealth was lost yesterday with that 777-point drop. But it's coming back a little bit today as it's up 264 points at the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Now, I think what happened -- this is pure politics -- the Republicans in the House are sitting there watching the vote go, and they're seeing all these Democrats vote "no." Do you know that 12 members of Barney Frank's committee voted "no"? Barney Frank wasn't running around trying to change any votes. So the Republicans are watching all these Democrats vote "no" after being told all week it was their responsibility to join with Democrats to make this happen, and after knowing full well that the Democrats really wanted this to happen, they could have passed it on their own without Republican help. That was the spin. And then they sit there and they see all these Democrats voting against it, voting nay, and they say, wait a minute, what's happening here, and they figured it out. They figured out that the vast majority of public opinion around the country is dead set opposed to this, isn't even close, and they see Democrats in crucially close districts voting against it so they can run around and campaign, "I voted against that bailout, I knew it was the wrong thing to do, but our Republicans voted for it."

It was a setup from the get-go, and however it is that the Republicans decided to change votes or to vote against it, it was the wise and smart thing to do. Now there's time to put something together that makes some sense, but this is not the bunch to do it! This is the bunch that caused it! I sit here in continual amazement that we are willing to let the very thieves that stole from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the very thieves -- I'll tell you something else. Not only do Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, et al, need to leave office, we need to shut down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, shut 'em down. What have they done for us? What is the value that they have provided? They are at the root of all of this. Had Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac not done what they did and had it not been papered over and ignored by regulators in the House, the oversight committees, we wouldn't be where we are today. It's just that simple. You might say, "Rush, Pelosi is looking really bad. How do you know she got what she wanted?" You gotta understand, you have to understand how they look at things. The country is second or third on their list right now. Power is number one, winning the White House, number one, holding the House and Senate, blaming Republicans is number two for everything that has gone wrong.

They'll fix, they think, whatever mess they create in the process, after they get what they want. But the very people that are going to fix this are the very people that caused all of this. So what happened yesterday was exactly as I suspected, before we left the air yesterday, before this program concluded, we all were sitting here thinking, oh, wow, oh, it failed, oh, no, panic, crisis, down 777 points, Pelosi goes out all ashen-faced, Bush is distressed, he's upset, and a lot of Republicans, conservatives are upset because they think the Republicans stand in the way of government doing the right thing. God bless the House Republicans. God bless 'em, folks. This whole thing was a setup. From the very moment that they started talking Armageddon-type crisis, I kept saying, why wait? Why wait a week? We don't have two weeks. We don't have a week, Armageddon-type crisis. Then the Democrats refused to do anything until they were assured that the Republicans would be on board.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Unreal! Pro-Obama Partisan Gwen Ifill Will Moderate Palin-Biden Debate ...Update: Ifill Wonders If Palin Can Be Good Mother and VP Candidate!

INTRODUCING GWEN IFILL--- THE PALIN-BIDEN DEBATE MODERATOR--
Here she discusses her new book, "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama."

Thursday's Vice Presidential Debate between Governor Sarah Palin and Senator Joe Biden will be moderated by a staunch Obama supporter.
Gwen Ifill wrote a book on her friend, Barack Obama, that will be released on January 20, 2009... Inaugural Day...

I highly recommend you read the whole thing and watch the video before you watch the debate tomorrow night. Why the the world do Republican's keep agreeing to show up for these when the moderator isn't impartial is beyond me.

UPDATE: Malkin reports that McCain campaign didn't know about her new book.

Trailing six points in Rasmussen’s poll, having fallen four points since he suspended his campaign last week, the question for John McCain is: Haven’t you learned anything?

His failure to do much of anything in Washington, after teasing the whole country and riveting its attention on him by suspending his campaign, has let the voters down — and they are turning away from McCain.

But there is still time for him to make his move. The House Republicans bought McCain another shot by turning down the $700 billion bailout package on Monday. With no House vote scheduled until Thursday, McCain still has time to do the right thing.

He should publicly announce his support for the House Republican alternative package of insurance, loans and tax changes to deal with the financial crisis. He should attack Barack Obama and the Democrats for supporting the use of tax money for a massive bailout when the same purpose can be accomplished by other, cheaper means. McCain should draw a line in the sand and take a firm position.

The Democrats are not prepared to pass their bailout proposal by themselves. If they were, they would have done so on Monday. Instead, they withheld the votes of their most vulnerable congressmen and let the package fail. If the Republican Party poses a united front in the House, with McCain’s leadership, the Democrats will have to fall in line. They cannot not do anything. By taking a firm line, McCain can turn the whole process around to his — and his country’s — advantage.

Who would have imagined that John McCain would lose the election because he had a failure of courage at the last minute? Who would have guessed that he would fail to stand on principle for fear of being criticized and would fail as a result? If John McCain is to lose this election, let it at least be fighting for principle, as he has done throughout his storied career.

By backing an alternative, McCain forces Obama to defend the Democratic/Bush package. He can tie Obama to Bush and to the Washington insider/Wall Street crowd. He can give his populism a programmatic reality and a topical relevance. Obama would have to spend the rest of the election defending the $700 billion turkey the length and breadth of the country.

America detests the bailout package. Polls show better than 2-to-1 opposition. Were McCain and the Republicans able to project that there is another alternative that works, the opposition would swell to even greater proportions.

Obama and the Democrats could cite the views of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Wall Street executives that the Republican relief package would be too little, too late. But voters can be pardoned for skepticism. Paulson, a few years removed from Wall Street, and Democrats, in hock to the street for campaign contributions, are naturally eager to get their hands on $700 billion. If Obama lends himself to that cause, it could cost him the election.

McCain needs to have the courage to free himself from the web of Washington deals and take a principled stand for the right side and stay there. Then the inevitable dynamics of the process will bring the country around to him. Otherwise, his campaign will have missed the opportunity to draw the kind of clear issue that would have gotten him elected president.

It is admirable to see a candidate of principle and conviction lose an election by standing on his beliefs. It is sickening to see one lose by abandoning them.