Well, on the plus side, most states are allowing felons to vote, so Obama shouldn't lose too many votes over this.

Posted by: Ace at 03:28 PM | Comments (25)
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Just over FoxNews. The spin? John McCain's presence has been "destructive," he has not suspended his campaigning, he has merely imported it into the Capitol, and if the deal falls apart (which Democrats are busy working on!), "John McCain deserves most of, if not all of, the blame."

Chris "CountryWide" Dodd calls it a "a rescue plan for John McCain."

"Extremely contentious." "Extreme anger." House Republicans are sticking to their free market fantasies and inviting calamity. (Write these bozos, please.)

Guess Who's Pushing This Line the Hardest? How about the cocksucker most responsible for the crisis in the first place?

Via Dan Riehl.

Chris Dodd, Too: Allah with the quotes.

On one hand, some Democrats like Harry Reid say McCain's presence was a "stunt" because he didn't say anything at the meeting.

On the other hand, Chris Dodd claims he came in pitching a completely new plan, upsetting the apple-cart.

These guys need to get on the same page as far as their smears.

Posted by: Ace at 03:22 PM | Comments (161)
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I never believed a deal had been reached. I believed Democrats claimed that, dishonestly, so they could later say "McCain's leadership meant nothing, his stunt had no effect, we'd already reached a deal before he landed in DC."

So I didn't link it.

Now comes the truth (see updates): This deal is nowhere close to struck, because Republicans are foolishly balking, and so are Democrats. Neither party wants to take ownership of the issue without the other party being more responsible for it; they're both playing political games.

True, some are genuinely opposed to this for ideological reasons. Most, however, are playing chicken.

If you're in favor of this, now would be a good time to call your representatives, Republican or Democrat. Bear in mind the outrage on this issue is almost all on the other side, so that's who they're hearing from, and they're taking that as a proxy for their constituent's wishes.

Call them or email them to push back.

If there's no deal announced by tonight, at least in tentative form,
there will be a massive sell-off in the market tomorrow. There won't be a deal, and so there will be sell-off.

Tomorrow's sell-off is just the warning light, though.

It's Monday that looms as the day of Reckoning.

Write Your Reps: Better yet, call, but I don't have their numbers handy. There are a lot of them.

Write your Rep.

Write your Senators. (Phone numbers included there.)

Bear in mind -- pressure needs to be put on both parties.

Call Democrats and begin by saying, "As a concerned atheist life-long Democrat..." Seems to be a popular opening gambit.

Posted by: Ace at 03:01 PM | Comments (112)
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Sullivan whines that Goldfarb and Kurtz published his private emails, which was a gross violation of his privacy and basic standards of decency.

One week ago Sullivan linked merrily to Sarah Palin's hacked emails, happily noting that hackers were doing the "vetting" that McCain didn't.

So, Sullivan:

McCain's man Goldfarb just vetted you.

And high time, too, I'd say. The American people have a right to know the qualifications and judgment of -- what was that again? -- the proprietor of the "most popular one-man blog in the world," don't you think?

I mean, my God, man! The most popular! One man blog! In the world!

We have a right -- nay, need -- to have the questions answered that you refuse to even acknowledge.

When are you going to hold an on-line press conference, buddy? So we can probe your thinking?

You are, after all, the -- in your felicitous phrasing -- the writer of "the most popular one-man blog in the world."

Scumbag.

(PS: Have you ever heard of a chap named Instapundit? He runs a one-man blog. Seems rather popular. More popular than yours, in fact. And he doesn't have a permanent link on Drudge to inflate his traffic.)

(That link goes to The New Editor, by the way, but he breaks my rule by linking Sullivan. No problem, just read his post, don't hit his links. He's accurately summarizing Sullivan. I read Sullivan so you don't have to.)

Irony Overload: Sullivan chagrined, appalled, sickened, nauseated and in all other ways greatly put off by Sarah Palin's church. (Protein Wisdom link.)

I guess she'll have to give a Gettysburg Address quality speech and her problems will all go away.

Because You Demanded It: Once again, the Allah version of the Sullivan Freak-Out Advisory system.

Caution: Light blasphemy. more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:14 PM | Comments (76)
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Great catch. I'd swipe the video, but that would be a dick move, wouldn't it?

So I'll put another great catch under the fold, which will piss off New England fans, who, quite frankly, really don't need any reminding or additional piling on at this point.

So, okay, New England fans, don't click. You know what it is. I'm surprised Steven King hasn't written a novel about it yet, a story about a writer from Derry, Maine who dreams of a perfect season but begins having precognitive nightmares about a transdimensional force of ancient evil that makes footballs stick to people's helmets.

I still get shivers over this.

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Posted by: Ace at 01:57 PM | Comments (26)
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The Fed was largely responsible for converting what might have been a garden-variety recession, although perhaps a fairly severe one, into a major catastrophe. Instead of using its powers to offset the depression, it presided over a decline in the quantity of money by one-third from 1929 to 1933 ... Far from the depression being a failure of the free-enterprise system, it was a tragic failure of government.

—Milton Friedman, Two Lucky People, 233

It sounds to me like Milton Friedman was saying that the government could have mitigated the Great Depression through a proper intervention.

"Offset the depression" I take to mean "use the massive backstop power of the federal government to push back against prevailing (irrational, vicious-cycle) market forces until a more rational equilibrium was reached."

Like I said in an earlier comment, I think some people are taking the general precepts of Friedman and reading out of him any, um, nuance on this subject whatsoever. Friedman's rules are being parroted; his caveats and exceptions are being ignored, to the extent they are known at all.

The word "Keynesian" gets tossed out a fair amount. I'm not sure what a "true Keynesian" is, but I think it is fairly standard economic thinking -- even among very conservative economists -- that the basic notion of Keynesian economics -- that the government should act in a countercyclical fashion to offset the the sometimes-irrational excesses of the market and economy -- is true, to one degree or another.

For those who think a recession is overdue -- I wouldn't sweat it. We're going to have a recession.

For those who worry that credit has been too loose (I agree!) -- I wouldn't sweat it. We're going to have a great tightening of credit.

The question I think at this point is whether we're going to have a credit crunch, higher unemployment, and a fairly deep recession, or if we're going to have a credit meltdown, unemployment up to 10% or 12% or higher, and a severe, long-lasting recession that has a good possibility of being worse than the awful one of 1981-82 and even has an outside chance of being downright catastrophic.

So those who want the market to punish us for our excesses: Do not fear, punishment is on the way. It's a question between punishment and cruel and unusual punishment.

Thanks to Jack Straw.

Posted by: Ace at 01:31 PM | Comments (114)
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Yes, I'm being ironic. Up is down, black is white, Margaret Cho is talented.

Zogby: McCain now up by two thanks, supposedly, to his decision to suspend his campaign in a statesmanlike manner. The fact that he did this just yesterday and this could not possibly affect the whole three-day sample is, um, either proof Zogby doesn't know what he's talking about or McCain's single day bounce was so huge it's lifted him based on that day's results alone.

Gallup Dead even at 46%, a three point improvement for McCain; hateful communist Stalin nut-licker Rasmussen shows Obama with his first three point lead since he gave The Most Important Speech in the History of History, or somethin'.

My take: No one knows what the hell is going on, which is itself reason for 1) optimism and 2) a redoubling of efforts.

Posted by: Ace at 12:32 PM | Comments (74)
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You may remember the fight from last summer when Republicans wanted to strip a bill of a provision that gave all sorts of welfare benefits to illegal immigrants.

Congressman Michael McNulty of NY admitted that he made ‘a mistake’ (I believe that’s the approved euphemism) and now a bipartisan House panel confirms what everyone already knew.

Democrats incorrectly closed a vote on the House floor in August 2007, which would have resulted in Republicans prevailing on an immigration issue, according to a special bipartisan House committee.

The committee found that "the vote tally of 212 yeas and 216 nays that was finally announced was incorrect. It is either 215 yeas and 213 nays, which would have reflected the tally at the time the chair prematurely announced the result, or 211 yeas and 217 nays."

The committee, led by Reps. Bill Delahunt (D-MA) and Mike Pence (R-IN), issued a final report on what Republicans alleged was a "stolen vote" and spent a half million dollars on an investigation.

During a rancorous House session late on the night of August 2, 2007, presiding officer Rep. Michael McNulty (D-NY) closed the vote and announced it was tied at 214-214. By rule, tie votes in the House lose. That was the result Democrats wanted on this particular vote. But the unofficial "scoreboard" in the chamber briefly flashed 215-213 in favor of the Republicans, meaning votes were still being cast electronically.

As Majority Leader Steny Hoyer shouted that night, "We control this House, not the parliamentarians". Apparently itÂ’s true, even when the rules and the votes go against them.

Most ethical Congress EVAH. Thanks Nancy!

Posted by: DrewM at 12:23 PM | Comments (18)
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Just because this seems to be the core point upon which we disagree:

In, short, given enough time, markets will sort this out, at far less expense to us all.

Posted by: Ace at 11:17 AM | Comments (141)
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And he has some basis for asserting that. The US turned a profit on the Mexican bailout. Which was only an incidental benefit. The primary benefit was arresting a financial panic in that country which would have spooked other emerging markets and turned Mexico into an even more dysfunctional country than it already is.

“We might actually get all our money back and then some, if we manage it right,” Clinton told Ballasy.

To make his point, Clinton said that previous federal bailouts, including the bailout of Chrysler and also the bailout of the Mexican government that Clinton engineered when he was president, turned out to be profitable for the government.

“So the devil here is in the details, and that’s what’s being debated, and I think it’s very important that, the American people understand this,” said Clinton. “It is necessary to stabilize the stock market. Over half of the American people have investments in the stock market. But you don’t want any unjust enrichment of just throwing the taxpayers’ money away. So, in the Chrysler bailout, so called, the American people made money. When I made the emergency loan to Mexico, which was very unpopular at the time, they paid the loan back three years early and we made $600 million in interest payments. We made a profit off of it.”

Over at the WSJ, a guy argues that the US could wind up making, um, about a 200% profit on this. $700 billion in, $2.2 trillion out.

I doubt that. No, I don't doubt it. I say it's flat-out ludicrous.

Nevertheless something has to be kept in mind: Markets are not entirely rational. In fact, in one instance -- a panic -- they're completely irrational, and they get spooked into a stampede that crushes anything in its path.

Which, in the present case, could be the entire US economy.

It wasn't "rational" that we had a depression from 1929-1936. The country was making money hand over fist in 1929. Within three years, 25% of all able-bodied men would be unemployed. Does anyone really believe that the basics of the American economy had changed so much in three years that a (guessing) 7% unemployment rate (which would be "full employment" for the era) went to 25%?
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Posted by: Ace at 10:54 AM | Comments (57)
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