The pundits--even on MSNBC were giving this debate to McCain tonight.  I agree with them.

Now most liberals/Democrats, etc... will scoff and say that Obama clearly bested McCain up and down the line throughout the debate.  All well and good I suppose.  But over and above the intellectual, highly interested, highly motivated Democrats, what types of voters would share that assessment?  Methinks very few indeed.

This is always the problem for the Democratic Presidential nominee.  For some reason the air of Washington seems to inoculate Democrats from common sense and the need to understand the concept of "winning" in a debate as we had tonight or as in an election as we will have in November.  Winning is not about impressing your partisan supporters which is merely singing to the choir.  Winning is about winning in the eyes of those who will actually decide the election.  That would be voters who are persuadable and there are many millions of them this year as there are every year.

This year, the dynamics are highly favorable to Democrats generally and thus for the highest office in the land the dynamics are favorable to Obama.  He has continued to fail to capitalize on these favorable dynamics.  Some of these reasons he can influence from one degree to another and others are beyond his control.  One set of tactics that Obama continues to fail to employ that would be highly beneficial to him are partisanship and agressive attacks on John McCain and his record of flip flops, lies, and toadying for the rich and powerful.  Obama not only continues to fail to deploy this set of weapons, he personally opposes their use.  This is a gigantic error.  And, as the economic situation worsens dramatically, Obama's failure to use partisanship to his advantage and to attack McCain grows in significance.

It is doubtful that we will ever see the Republican Party as unpopular as it is at this moment and I distinctly remember how unpopular they were in the wake of Watergate and in comparison, the level of disgust and mistrust for the Republicans and their policies now is off the chain in comparison to that time.  Thus, strategically, it only makes sense to tie McCain as closely to his party and to Bush as possible.  Obama has in his own tepid fashion been trying to make the point that we don't need more of the same, but the direct, clear connection between McCain, his party, his President and their collosal failures is missing.  That's why Obama never clearly breaks away from McCain in the polls.

Rarely int eh debate did you hear either the word Democrat or the word Republican coming from Obama.  Never did you hear him use a phrase even similar to "the failed Republican policies of George Bush and John McCain."  You never heard Obama say "John, you're lying about this just like you have been lying in your commercials..."   You didn't hear McCain identifying himself with Bush or the Republican Party either.  So Obama's hands off policy toward his most powerful weapons is, actually, helpful to McCain's campaign.  Did McCain associate himself with even one Republican tonight?  I don't think so, but he sure did try to connect himself both to Teddy Kennedy and to Hillary Clinton.  That speaks volumes about how incredibly unpopular the Republicans are right now and it is precisely why Obama should be beating that drum daily and in as loud a fashion as he can.

If Obama would just come to terms with the reality that his starry eyed fantasy about "bipartisanship" coupled with his refusal to get down and dirty and fight to win the Presidency is depressing his level of support, then he could quickly begin to roll out some devastating blows on the aire and rhetorically on the stump.  Why Obama, who I think is fairly smart guy, doesn't get this basic political calculus is a mystery to me.  But whatever the reasons for Obama's ongoing foolish choice, he better get a clue and fast or he'll end up just like the war hero we nominated four years ago.

Throughout my entire life I have had to endure the ceaseless bleating of the right regarding every inch of progress made in America since 1932 as though Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton were all representatives of the antichrist sent to destroy all that is sacred in America.  It has been constant.  It has never ended. 

When I was a very little boy the liberals were firmly in charge of government nationally and in most states but beginning with the reactionary tideof the elections of 1966 the liberal retreat slowly began building and reached a fever pitch by 1968.  The assualt of the reactionary Republicans upon all things liberal was unending even once they had firm control of the national government.

The carping, bitching, cheap shots and general derision heaped upon liberalism has been the background noise of American politics now for over 40 years.  There are many angles and many nuances to this that one can talk about, dissect, reconstruct, and so on with respect to the Republican offensive against the modern world but in the most fundamental way, it all rested upon one big, simple lie.  In fact, it was and is the biggest lie of them all.  The lie was and remains that the New Deal and it's descendants the Fair Deal and the New Frontier and all progressive, proactive government policies somehow failed and that the underlying philosophy of those political efforts was quintessenially both flawed and unrealistic.  They never stopped denouncing every effort on the part of elected or appointed officials to represent the people's interests and instead claimed that all the interests of the people were best left to "the market" and/or to the businessmen who "know" how to run successfull enterprises and produce value.
 
Despite all the abundant evidence, the facts, the historical reality and the experience of our people in the real world, this biggest of all lies has gone virtually unchallenged for decades until now.  Now, right now, is the time to make the point once and for all just what a grotesque and obscene lie Americans have been sold by the right wing extremists of the Republican Party.  The financial "crisis" has laid bare for all to see what a complete and utter disaster the Coolidge/Hoover approach to government is in the modern world and it is no exaggeration to say that the "modern" Republican approach to governance is that of Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover.  Today, just as back in the early part of the 20th century, the Coolidge/Hoover approach yields precisely the same results it always did: dramatic boom times for the wealthy and disasterous busts for everyone else.

The remedy today, for the financial problems created in the wake of the dismantling of New Deal and New Deal inspired regultions is to reinstitute those regulations and others, for government to intervene and stabilize the economy and in that effort the government must actively represent the interests of the people instead of simply serving as an arbiter parceling out favors between a variety of powerful interests all wanting what they consider "their" fair share of largesse.

So, as our capitalist system once again lies prostrate in critical condition from collapsing as the result of an all too predictable binge of unrestrained greed, the fog of free market delusion is lifting from the eyes and consciousness of our people once again.  It is apparent for all to see what shameless, irresponsible and dangerous hypocrites the Republicans and their masters on Wall Street and the big business community really are.  It is quite clear that the only solution will have to come from the government and that it cannot be a series of remedies dictated by the lobbyists by and for the wealthiest of special interests.

Surveying the destructon left in the wake of the return of Cooolidge/Hoover governemtn is on display for all to see.  That is why now is the time when liberals, progressives and Democrats must make clear that the biggest lie of all is and has been that the New Deal was a failure.  The truth is that the New Deal was a success so spectacular it is difficult to quantify and that our mistake was not to have too much of the New Deal type programs and initiatives.  Our biggest mistake was the abondment and dismantling of the many programsa and policies that served us so well for so long and our failure to expand the very same approaches and philoosophies into other areas of American life such as healthcare, the workplace, education, and housing.

Liberalism/progressivism can rise from teh ashes of Wall Street's disaster like a phoenix and deliver at long last on some of the most fundamantal promises our nation has and the Democratic Party have left undone for so very long.  My advice to all who read this and care about moving the country forward before they die is, do not miss any opportunity to point out how this dramatic failure of conservative Republicanism has made it clear what a sham it has been all along and it is time to return to the successes that brought our nation into modernity and prosperity at the same time.  No more apologizing, no more excuses for being a liberal.  Liberalism, the New Deal and it's offspring never produced failure such as that we have witnessed in these past few months.  Quite the contrary and it's about time people were made aware of it so we can once again get the nation moving in the right direction.

Bush and all the factotems of officialdom and their lackies (in both parties)are barking and howling and yelping every minute of the day now it seems, to make sure we all buy their line that unless the common people agree to take on nearly a trillion dollars in additional debt, the sky itself will fall.  Well guess what folks?  They are lying.  They are creating this big lie and mass psychology of groupthink in order to pull off a thoroughly illegitimate and unnecessary act of fraud and theft.  It's the same kind of con job we got on how we "had" to surrender our liberties because of 9/11 and how we "had" to invade Iraq or they would nuke us.  Except this time, the dire threats are totally without credibility and the lies are even bolder than in the other cases.  Why anyone would trust the tyrant Bush and his henchmen under these circumstances boggles the mind.  The world must be looking upon this spectacle scrathcing it's head and wondering what the hell is going on in the once great United States.

It is time for cool heads to preval.    The lies, hype and propaganda cannot stand the light of day.  Speed is the only element that favors this spectacular heist.  Slow things down (as our system is intended to do to protect us from unwise decisions) and they thieves will be thwarted.  Regardless of the threats and attempts to scare the nation, our leaders need to stand firm against the hype and demand a high price from Wall Street, fully comensurate with the exceptionally huge request they are making of the common people of America.  If they fail to do so, it will mean they will be back for more and soon.

What is the truth of the matter here regarding the financial problems Wall Street has and is trying to foist upon the taxpayers?  The truth is not what we're hearing on tv or reading in the newspaper.  The truth is that if the nation's greediest and most irresponsible businessmen are not rescued, the sky will not fall.  The people will not suffer anymore than they already do.  The economy will not collapse or stabilize based upon whether we assume the bad debts of the wealthy speculators who crapped out on fraudulent, worthless "securities" they knew were no good.  The whole idea of having to hand over nearly a trillion dollars right away or else is little more than the most brazen scam ever perpetrated on any people in history!  

Those of us who live in the real America have been aware of dire economic circumstances for years.  The doctored unemployment statistics do not reflect the actual unemployment rate in the nation.  Wages have been stagnating or dropping for decades despite continually increasing productivity on the part of our workers.  Health care now is for the fortunate and destitute only: everyone in between just gets and stays sick until they're bankrupt.  All the while our people have been suffering their increases in productivity have ot been used to reward them but to allow the corpulent rich to gorge themselves even more than they used to do.  

The "dire" consequences we are all supposed to care about are, in fact, dire only for the predatory rich people.  The suffering of these wealthy people, if you can call it suffering at all, is not a problem at all for most common Americans and won't have a negative impact on their lives.  It actually might have a postive impact.   We plebians have been in dire conseqences for the longest time and few (if any) of the aforementioned factotums, lackies, etc... of either party gave a tinker's damn about us, our relatives, friends, children or neighbors.  I think it's high time then that the common people return the favor and say to Wall Street and to the wealthy and their tribunes "Go fuck yourself!"

If Wall Street is made to suffer the consequences of it's own irresonpsibility and greed how does that negatively impact the America I live in where people are and have been suffering for years much more than the wealthy on Wall Street will ever suffer if they have to own up to their fraud and incompetence?  The truth is that it doesn't.  The powerful have found it acceptable to have our people suffer and struggle so I think it high time we told our "betters" now that they want to steal our money on top of screwing us for the past 30 years that it's time they tasted the medicine we've been swallowing forever!

Ultimately, this financial problem/collapse/crisis highlights a much bigger and overarching truth that Americans have not faced and the powerful are even now laboring very hard to keep from coming out.  That greater truth is that our capitalist system, left to it's own "genius" is a collosal failure.  This lesson was learned well by the American people during the New Deal and the right wing has never ceased to do all it could to make sure people forgot it.  Well they got their wish and it has delievered precisely what it always delivers: riches for the rich and subsistence for eveyrone else regardless of how much wealth is available.  It is a system, that, left to it's onw devices, never fails to fail.  The system has gone bust once again because it doesn't work.  It isnt malfunctioning at all.  It's now functioning just as the wealthy wanted it: unfettered by regulation, under the total control of the modern day Babbit's of America who care not at all about anyone but themselves and who simply cannot control their shortsighted greed even if, in the long run, it is to the benefit of the sacred shareholders.

During the Prague Spring of 1968 Alexander Dubcek and those whose hopes rested upon his efforts talked about fashioning what they called "Socialism with a human face."  We in America need to look clearly at our system and decide pemanently that we must have a "Capitalism with a human face."  If we do not demand this, then the system will eventually collapse in chaos and revolution.  Is that what the predatory elite really want?

I believe that instead of glossing over the titanic failure of the conmen of Wall Street, our leaders should let the predators crash and burn and only move in when we, the taxpayers and common people of the country, set terms very favorable not to them, but to us!  Like any financial institution or investor rescuing a bankrupt company we should provide no capital without a full $1 in equity for every $1 dollar we put up.  We should demand the best and most favorable terms for us, not for them and for a seat in every boardroom and to set terms for operations of such businesses moving into the future.  After all, we are not rescusing families here or poor people.  We are rescuing large, money making institutions that exist solely for profit.

The failure of Wall Street is not a crisis for the common American people at all.  This is a crisis only for the powerful representatives of predatory wealth in America and their benefactors.  FDR called them the "maelfactors of great wealth" I believe.  Only the calendar has changed, but the nature of the interests FDR and the New Dealers battled haven't changed one whit. 

What's happening is The Battle at Kruger with human participants instead of peaceful water buffalo vs a pride of hungry lions taking place right in front of us.  If you haven't seen The Battle at Kruger just put that title into Youtube or a search engine and go watch it.  It will be worth your while.  We, the people through our government, hold all the cards in this situation, but we are so used to being cowed and belittled and told what to do by the predators of Wall Street that we are hesitant to charge them, take command, set terms and force them to do our will for once.  It is time for our leaders to assert the power of the people and provide not one penny in relief for the predators without a direct, equitable exchange that benefits us.  Anything less, and the US Congress, as the representative of the people's interests, should say no to any action at all.

The more I consider it, the more convinced I am that the common people of the United States have absolutely nothing to gain from the alleged rescue of the financial industry.  There's all this chicken little rhetoric being bandied about regarding how "our" economy is at risk and so forth just like before the Spanish American or Iraq Wars.  It's all lies designed to gain legitimacy for an illegitimate and unjustified course of action.

All this sudden hysteria about having to take quick action is a red herring designed to get us to buy into the preposterous idea that if we don't allow them to rob us and payoff the most irresponsible, foolish and reckless crowd of financiers in American history that somehow things will be worse.  I don't think it is in any way an exaggeration to say this is a simple robbery in broad daylight but it doesn't have to take place if only we object.  Anyone with eyes can see what is going on here as long as you don't fall for their bullshit story.

Well ya know what?  I'm one of the little people and it is no more "our" economy than it is "our" interests that are threatened by third world nationalism.  It is "their" economy and "their" interests that we are always supposed to be all worked up about and has been now for 30 or more years. In return for our backing and support of "their" interests our wages have stagnated, our jobs have disappeared and our schools and communities have been left to rot on the altar of "their" profitability.  What real difference will it make in the lives of average Americans if the "financial industry" goes sour?  Very little indeed.  You can make an argument of the negative effect on workers, etc... when industry slows down but we are already living with all that.  It's only with this consensual rape of the taxpayer we will also have to pay off "their" bad debts while being unable to support our families or educate our kids or go to the doctor when we need to.  Fuck that!  Yes, the finance interests have employees, but bad times won't mean they all lose their jobs.  It could, however, mean that for once, the rich guys asses get handed to them and maybe they FINALLY lose THEIR jobs!  That's a cause for joy not a cause for alarm!  The system that has bilked us all and screwed us daily for years needs to be exposed for the utter and complete failure it is.

I think that would be a good thing to see the Wall Street Welfar seekers go down in flames and I have no problem at all saying so.  Screw those bastards just as they've screwed us for decades.  They deserve to be horswhipped and imprisoned for what they've done.  A little financial discomfort won't hurt em.  It may actually be good for them.

So folks, don't fall for this rhetoric about how the world will come to an end and "our" economy will go into recession.   The recession has been here for years for most of us.  It's time the Wall Street boys and their ilk get a taste of it.  The average American has no more at stake here than we do when they gin up the propaganda machine for starting a war so they can attempt to seize Iraq's oil to enrich the very same interests.  It's hype, bullshit, lies!

Don't let them rob the American people under the guise of saving "our" economy.  It's all a lie.  Let them crash and burn.  The lives of the common people will be unaffected.  In fact, refusing to bail out those assholes will mean the average man and woman will be better off because we won't have another Trillion dollars in debt to pay off on top of the rest of the messes we are being asked to cleanup now that the wealthy predators have finished gorging themselves.

Pardon me for asking, but just why is it, exactly, that it makes any sense for me or anyone I know or run into during my life to bail out the investment banks?  I really would like to know.

Let's say we let them crash.  What difference would it make to the millions that have been working for declining wages, losing benefits, even losing their homes?  I am beginning to think that the only reasonable response to the "crash" on Wall Street is to let them go ahead and take their lumps.  We little people are going to get fucked either way.  It's just that if we don't hand these crooks a Trillion dollars in the next couple of weeks, we'll still have some money left to spend on health care, fighting poverty, economic and community development, education, the NIH and a thousand other things that are worth spending our tax money on.

I honestly do not see how saving those rich assholes benefits the common people of this country.  All it does is load us down with debt that will, at some point down the road, turn into an enormous tax obligation and you can be damn sure the rich will not get stuck with the tax tab.  Nope!  The rich will escape higher taxation while the little people once again are forced to work like slaves to keep the rich growing richer.

The average homeower in America is being asked to bear an increasing burden in terms of home mortgage costs at the family level.  The same people are being asked to bailout the rauds and con artists of Wall Street which means the same folks who are to expect no relief for themselves are being told they will shoulder the burden of keeping the rich as rich as possible.

I smell a rat!  A big, fat, corrupt, Republican rat.

If these idiots had provided direct mortgage relief to homeowners they could have paid off those outrageous ripoffs they had agreed to pay during refinancing and averted this entire problem.  But God forbid the government should help the people who are not rich!  Seems to me rather ridiculous and not in the interest of the American people to bailout the rich guys andleave the normal, average homeowners to fend for themselves at the same time they protect the investments of the wealthiest Americans.

There should be no bailout at all without first providing American homeowners direct, low-interest mortgages.  We could freeze all foreclosures and establish a program where any American can qualify for a fixed rate, low-interest mortgage backed by the United States.  Why not?  If it's good enough for the rich, why isn't it good enough for those of us who actally pay our taxes?

If the people who got hoodwinked and snookered into mortgages they couldn't pay, could just pay them, then we would have avoided this whole financial "crisis" righ?  Right.

That being the case, it only stands to reason that the best means of staunching the bleeding and having the financial system recover is by offering mortgages to all Americans that they can, in fact, payoff.  Not only does this benefit the average American who, in the end, will have to pay for any "rescue" that comes out of DC, but it would be much cheaper than trying to cover all the losses that the corrupt, irresponsible con-men of Wall Street have created.

I say, bailout the homeowners of America but make those rich bastards take responsibility for their fraud and failure.  If the Democrats allow any approach that does not put the homewowner/taxpayer first then it will mean that the people who will pay the bills in the end anyway will get screwed coming and going. 

This current bailout proposal is simply socialism for the rich.  It maintains profits for the elite who don't deserve them and bleeds the little guy to do it.  This is no only bad policy, it is immoral.  It is thievery of the highest order.  Democrats have been cowed into a long string of bad laws under the Bush tyranny of the past 8 years like the Iraq War Authorization, the Patriot Act, the FISA Bill and so on.  All of these bad bills were presented as laws that needed enactment immediately and that we could not afford to even review them.  Many of us knew each time these bad deals came down the pike exactly what would happen.  In each case those of us who recognized these pigs in a poke were right with a vengeance.  Sadly, the cowardly Democrats of Washington DC seem to have learned absolutely nothing from these experiences and so are now eagerly lining up, not only to support bad legislation, but to screw their own constituents to a degree never deamed of until now.

It is time to let the rich pay the price of capitalism (for once) and to let those who will be forced to rescue the system in any event at least get an affordable mortgage out of the deal.  If there is no direct benefit to the average people of this country (not just a small slice but a majority of all Americans) then the Democrats in Congress should simply refuse to pass any sort of bailout legislation at all.  It's that simple.

As discussions seem to speed along (Patrioti Act style) regarding the bailout of the rich, greedy and utterly irresponsible con-men of Wall Street, the President is asking Congress for $700 billion to do it with.  Now I'm no economist, nor am I even much of a math whiz, but I smell a rat... a big, fat, corrupt, Republican rat.  After the past 8 years it's an easily recognized smell.  Why the Democrats in Washington don't seem to recognize it horrifies me.

This whole question of bailing out the crooks who have brought our financial system to the point of ruin may be the ultimate and perhaps final test of whether the Democrats who run Congress have any cajones at all. 

Let's review the basic lay of the land in DC: Bush is the worst President in US history on any important measure.  He is personally and morally corrupt and has facilitated corruption throughout the government at every level, his lies make Nixon's pale in comparison, he is a war criminal, he has presided over the destruction of our economic strength, has weakened our military and diplomatic positions in the world, and he has trampled the Constitution over and over again.  His incompetence is truly staggering.  His ability to ruin everything he touches is remarkable.  I wouldn't trust him to successfully borrow a cup of sugar from the neighbors.  Yet, out of shear cowardice and stupidity, the Democrats in Washington have repeatedly gotten in line behind this bozo and supported his proposals and made his malfeasance possible.  They have offered tepid opposition at best and have spent most of the years of Republican misrule cowering in fear of what the mean President might do if they actually did what was right.

Now this clown of a President proposes that he be given the authority to use nearly a trillion dollars of our money to bail out his friends and that we taxpayers get absolutely nothing in return for rescusing their asses.  What a load of crap!  If there's ever been a bigger rat to get a whif of I don't know what it was or where it was!

Democrats in Congress must stand firm against this outrageous additional transfer of wealth to the wealthiest and must, at minimum, demand to that the government be repaid every penny, over time, being used to rescue these crooks from their own wanton irresponsibility and greed.  Congress should also demand that no deal of any kind be granted without immediate relief be given to mortgage holders so we can staunch the bleeding that will certainly continue if the little people continue losing their homes because they can't meet the mortgage payments.  After all, the whole house of cards we call the financial system rests on the ability of the common people to pay their mortgages monthly.  There are a number of ways to do this, but one possibility is to provide every homeowner in the US the opportunity to apply for and receive a low-interest, fixed rate mortgage.  Interest rates are extremely low but the greed of Wall Street is forcing the little people to pay higher interest rates which in turn are making the mortgage crisis worse.  We don't have to stand idly by and allow this situation to continue.  Why not provide mortgages to the people at 1% over the prime rate rght now to stabilize the system instead of bailing out the rich crooks while simultaneously putting the screws to every family in America?  This is the minimum Democrats in Congress should do to salvage what we can from this additional Republican debacle.

But in any event, what Democrats must not do is simply had a blank $700 Billion check to the incompetent tyrant who resides temporarily at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  If Congressional Democrats allow that to happen then they should all be taken out and shot for cowardice and stupidity.  Democrats must oppose this "socialism for corporations" and demand that the interests of the people, at long last, be the prime consideration in any effort to stabilize the financial system.  That we hear no Democratic voices in Washington even bringing these sorts of things up is extremely disturbing.  Perhaps the netroots can nudge the cowardly Dems into demanding something in return for our $700 billion?