YAYYYYYYYYY

My faith in Congress just went up by a minute micropercentage of a notch.

It is still way down there with whale shit, but not *quite* as low as it was an hour ago.

OTOH, everyone who was freaking out about the bailout now seems to be freaking out about the bailout failure.

And this, folks, is why we need to legalize weed.

What, about 125 Repubs and 90-some Dems voted against it?

That many congresspeople told the nominee of their respective party to go fuck themselves.

Countdown to martial law…

So what does any of this have to do with Heather Locklear getting busted for drunk parking?

We dodged a bullet. We honestly have to thank Republicans on this one. The majority of them in the House gave Bush the Scalia gesture.

Brad,

You wonder how many more of these fuckups it will take before people realize the truth of Harry Truman’s most famous quote regarding politics:

“If you want to live like a Republican, vote Democratic.”

Makes a change.

My faith in Congress just went up by a minute micropercentage of a notch.

Pandering or good sense? Calling Occam…

I’m still waiting to see exactly what a “meltdown” of our financial institutions looks like. I mean, I have never seen a train wreck before, in person, but it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to picture what it looks like. Lots of train cars laying on their sides, lots of frozen pizza scattered all over the road after the truck they were being carried by blew up when the speeding train rammed it…. But a financial meltdown? I am pictureless.

Will Jonah still be able to buy Cheetos?

Thanks, um…Republicans? Wow.

Recession now or depression later, I say. Though nothing much sexxay will come out of this in the short run.

Righteous Bubba said,

Pandering or good sense? Calling Occam…

OK, Righteous Bubba, good point there. The words “good sense” and “Congress” simply don’t even belong on the same planet, let alone the same sentence.

You know when Kevin Bacon plays tractor “chicken” in “Footloose?” Um, (cough) me neither. But if I HAD seen it, I would GUESS that the NYSE is Kevin Bacon right now, and the American people represent that jerk who wants Lori Singer all to himself.

/soothes self about age with chocolate, Celexa

I really hate that it is the House fucking Republicans who made the right call, for whatever wrong reasons.

I’m scratching my head over how this is possible, but still.

I can’t believe we owe the failure of this bill to the Republicans. Never thought I’d ever say this, but thanks guys! Did our congress briefly switch places with the one on Earth-3?

Billions to buy up junk assets with no oversight? Gee, I can’t imagine why they’d think that’s a bad idea…

Palin help us all…

Will Jonah still be able to buy Cheetos?

Last year, banking on insider knowledge of an approaching calamity, The Scaife Foundation purchased an abandoned coppermine in New Mexico…

Biologists in Mexico are puzzled by the discovery of orange dust on the feathers of migratory birds…

Half the votes were political.

As detailed elsewhere in the blogosphere, votes were being traded by vulnerable parties (guys up for re-election) to guys in safe districts.

Nobody, Dem or pig, wanted to be held to this super-unpopular bill.

Since there were enough guys that needed to show the “safe” (no bailout) vote, that side won.

I’m still not sure what happens next, but Newt’s gov’t shutdown in 1994 should give a glimmer of an idea.

Nothing to worry about, right? Wait until you turn the tap on and nothing comes out, or your toilet backs up because the guys went home that work at the sanitation dept.

As I’ve stated in the past, I’m not in favor of bailing out rich fatcats. Maybe the alternative bailout schemes linked to by the OP will work.

The problem with the alternative schemes, however, might be that they don’t give enough money to the fatcats. And the fatcats might very well just let America go Mad Max, because they still have the dough for private guards at their estates.

America, basically, could very well be in the grips of a republican-engineered extortion racket. Great.

Lucky I have lots of booze in the basement.

Hey, I know! Let’s ask Hu Jintao to give us a trillion bucks, in exchange for a promise that we won’t intervene in any PRC attack against Taiwan.

The Chinese pwn us already, why not make it official?

I think you could’ve been more informative and more succinct in why the bill was a bad idea.

Like, the compensation clauses don’t do anything to current CEO’s golden parachutes they take out of the cash given to bailed out companies.

Sorry, Bradrocket. You’re still wrong.

Dude! Srsly?? You gots a deal!

I’m still trying to work it out.

See, I’ve lived for twenty-five years distrusting every single word a Republican ever said, every action they ever took, every vote they ever made, waiting for the inevitable fiendish trick.

So the House Republicans defeated the bill.

What’s that mean, then?

My only conclusion is that the $700 billion bailout wasn’t good enough anymore, and that the same guys who defeated the bill will reintroduce an even more stupid, cruel, vindictive bill that will include all the requisite stupid parts: tax cuts for the rich, more money lost, maybe increased salaries for Congress, a private island chain in the Mediterranean for Gus Bilirakis to retire to. And that will probably include an even more stupid number to pay out to the financial companies.

And a pony for everyone who defeated this bill.

Like, the compensation clauses don’t do anything to current CEO’s golden parachutes they take out of the cash given to bailed out companies.

It’s insulting that those guys get paid a lot but the the bill – I don’t think – shouldn’t be conditional on whether a bunch of dicks get paid too much but whether or not it does something to prevent something more awful than the bill itself.

Selling pencils on the street is not going to compensate for the sweet feeling of CEO Asshole not being quite as rich.

Wasn’t the Dodd Bill actually reasonably good in terms of what we can get, I mean I guess we can keep this up until January, and hope to have like 1932 Numbers then have Obama push nationalization. Also am I the only one who’s a bit sad that we might effectively be wasting a guy who could be possibly our Reagan at a time when Economics might turn him into Carter (who with the exception of Iran- and even then he did the moral thing- the rescue was the dumb thing– seriously that was never going to work) a guy who does the right things to fix the economy (Volker was absolutely lambasted but basically did what Reagan got credit for) but is doomed to be a 1 termer and unable to fix things. I guess the other possibility is that this is the crucible that could push Obama into FDR type status, think about it he invest in infrastructure, rocks it Keynes/ Huckabee style and boom its all good– Hell he might be able to sell single payer now (point out how it will revitalize American Manufacturing by allowing them to cut health care costs) (Can I just say how happy I am that Huckabee isn’t the GOP nominee, he’d run a Huey Long style campaign and we might be screwed, hell Mitt could actually be a plus right now for the GOP– though he could also be a massive minus) .

I can’t believe that my Rep., Tom Allen (D – ME), actually voted FOR this bag o’ dicks!

And after I called the fucker six times over the past week telling him NOT to. Apparently my bribe wasn’t as big as some others.

Today the Republican’t Party has guaranteed that in its next life it will be a as a swarm of mosquitoes instead of a den of cockroaches. Slowly, slowly they move up the karmic ladder…..

The fact is, can I get a Malfunctioning Sarah Palin Robot shout-out?

Curses! Foiled again! (twirls moustaches)

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

umm, before you all hurt yourselves congratulating the Republicans, keep in mind that they probably voted against the bailout because it wasn’t ENOUGH of a giveaway

after all, it contained some minor gestures to consumers and homeowners….

Somebody over at The Great Orange Satan hypothesized that the repeal of Prohibition helped begin the climb out of the Great Depression (financially as well as psychologically, I suppose) by enabling the govt to realize beaucoup new revenues from the controlled sales – AND, natch, suggested that we might do the same NOW with mah-ree-jeh-wanna.

Personally, I think that’s a great ( . . . . inhales deeply . . . . blink . . . . exhales noisily) . . . . . . .

Wait! What?

I’m looking forward to various columns by Broder and Cie. bemoaning this. I can see it now: “The Center didn’t hold” and such. Good times!

keep in mind that they probably voted against the bailout because it wasn’t ENOUGH of a giveaway

I thought it was because Pelosi was ungracious.

Rotten, you’re absolutely right. This bill failed because it wasn’t healthy and protective enough for most Dems to buy in, and it wasn’t evil and one-sided and corporatist enough for most Reps to buy in.

Look for both sides to float different versions that better suit their take on reality, and for the Dems, as usual, to cave. I don’t think the proto-spines some of them are growing are really going to be able to hold up to DOW 8000!

Yeah, would someone with Sekrit Nollidj please explain to me why the compromise bill that Obama had worked on was so horrible that we should be thanking the Republicans for shitcanning it? I understand that the original Paulson Plan — which consisted mainly of Hammerin’ Hank sticking his hand out and saying “Gimme” — was a bad idea. And I understand that the bill as drafted apparently didn’t contain all the sparkle ponies and unicorns that you all might have wanted, but (a) I’m not sure what all those sparkle ponies and unicorns were and (b) I’m not sure why the bill was worse than the nothing we have now.

On a different but related note: I see that 95 Dems refused to go along, representing about 40% of House Democrats, compared to 133, or about 2/3, of the House Repubs. I’m not sure what this says about Obama’s leadership within the Democratic Party — he kept 60% of the House Dems with him — but here’s what it says to me about McCain’s: either he was complicit in the Republican decision to vote the bailout down (cuz he’s a maverick, of course), or he cannot effectively lead his party (when he’s not maverickin’). Either way, take your pick, this speaks volumes about his aptitude for the presidency. Unfortunately, this is the sort of thing that the Obama campaign won’t be able to capitalize on — politicizing the crisis response, etc. — but someone oughta.

So, the GOP caucus is now a leaderless, undisciplined swarm, instead of a lock-step rubber stamp. That’s good, I guess. Dems should take advantage of that.

umm, before you all hurt yourselves congratulating the Republicans, keep in mind that they probably voted against the bailout because it wasn’t ENOUGH of a giveaway

I think it’s more likely they voted against it ’cause they were up for reelection and this was very unpopular with the public.

Seems Leon Trotsky is the only one here can see through the fog.

My only conclusion is that the $700 billion bailout wasn’t good enough anymore, and that the same guys who defeated the bill will reintroduce an even more stupid, cruel, vindictive bill that will include all the requisite stupid parts: tax cuts for the rich, more money lost, …

I have mixed feelings about the bill but I pretty much fall into the Krugman camp: it aint good but it’s not the evillest and will probably work as intended”

But consider – the R’s whined and whined to include the totally unrealistic “insurance” scheme which is among the worst ideas anyone presented. At least Dodd’s version got us an equity stake. Anyway, so they whine and whine because it’s not bad enough for them, then say they’ll go fo it, then trun around and say no. The R’s (and the D’s as well) didn’t vote because the bill was right or wrong, they voted their politics. Pure and simple.

And now, we’ll see the D majhority capitualte to even more of their stoopid kleptocrat bastard demands.

It’s cocktail time somewhere, isn’t it? I need gin.

All this back-slapping will help keep us warm as the credit markets seize up. Can’t wait to watch Main Street try to make those payrolls!

The bill sucked in a lot of ways, but it wasn’t all a Wall Street giveaway.

Not to slight those that chimed in later. It took me a while to type all that…

You have to realize that the repubs hated it because it wasn’t just free money. A good outcome, but for all the wrong reasons…

mikey

Or they got their feelings hurt. Yay for the maudlin persecution complex of American conservatism!

Repubs are saying the voted Nay because Nancy P. said mean things about their best buddy Bush.

Those guys are such teases. One minute they can’t run far enough away from Bush the next minute they want to hug him and squeeze him and call him George.

Socraticsilence, It’s no less than FDR Obama time! We will never recover with last century, Vietnam War hero McCain. We’re in the games’s last few seconds to make a touchdown and McCain can’t kick shit! It’s the economy and the future, stupid (not you SoSi)!

Dan Someone —

AFAIK, Obama didn’t actually work on the compromise bill that was up for a vote today. He worked on negotiating agreement among Dems to a set of principles/conditions that the specifics of the ultimate legislation were supposed to satisfy. And the specifics of the bill satisfied those conditions in the same way that a Hostess Twinkie is nutritious.

BTW – here’s an odd thing: after falling a bit, post-vote, the USD appears to be gaining in strength. WTF?

game’s

MaineMan said: “… the USD appears to be gaining in strength. WTF?”

Maybe the rest of the world noticed that your politicians actually pulled back from the brink of doing something monumentally criminal and stupid for once? That has to increase confidence, if only a tiny bit.

And this, folks, is why we need to legalize weed.

You really think having pot brownies in the executive lunch room would help?

You really think having pot brownies in the executive lunch room would help?

Legalizing marijuana is an essentially conservative policy, slowing the business of government down to… I’m hungry.

Oh! Duh, I forgot about the Acupolco Gold Standard.

BTW – here’s an odd thing: after falling a bit, post-vote, the USD appears to be gaining in strength. WTF?

Um, what’s this vote got to do with the coming arrival of 21 January, 2009?

Anyone notice what happened after the bailout failed? Biggest stock market crash in history. Ooops.

And just as this shit was going down, I was delivering our application to refinance.

Life is funny sometimes.

Not funny ha ha, but funny peculiar.

I have mixed feelings about this whole sorry mess. But look who got hung out to dry by the House GOPers:

John Sydney McCain

“What Senator McCain was able to do was to help bring all of the parties to the table, including the House Republicans, whose votes were needed to pass this.” — McCain senior Steve Schmidt

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer couple of fellows.

The Dow is now in free fall.

Careful what you wish for, fellas.

The Dow is now in free fall.

Well, thank GAWD that someone finally cut the bungee cord on the Dow! All that bouncing up and down was making my eye ache worse than Jenna Jameson cheerleader porn!

Nancy Pelosi’s Millions are vested in Wall Street. Huh, I’d like to have seen her face when the bill failed!

Thank you Republicans!

I wonder if the ATM machines will work tomorrow.

I still don’t know why this bill was “monumentally criminal and stupid,” as someone upthread put it.

I still don’t know why this bill was “monumentally criminal and stupid,” as someone upthread put it.

You’ve heard of junk bonds? This beast would create a new category – Putrid Dogshit Bonds.

Yeah, I’m oversimplifying (there IS gold mixed in amidst the dung), but shelling out that sort of green for paper KNOWN to be worthless is leagalized theft, in light of where all the cash was going to come from.

It also maintains the very trend that’s led to this fugly mess to begin with: responding to Wall St. theft & looting with rewards instead of prison terms – a trend whose sole reliable output is to render said looters & crooks ever bolder & more grandiose in the scale & scope of their barbaric lust for yet more fixed games to run on “the small fish” (me, thee & everyone else that doesn’t have their own sports-team/oil-tanker/island-chain/etc.) … oh, & there’s damn little chance that it’s able to solve the problem it purports to address – & a solution is needed badly, & soon.

If this keeps up for the rest of the week, you better not expect to be able to do much shopping with plastic … or anything else besides cleaning your toenails with it: credit across the board will be seized up like an engine-block full of sand by then, if not sooner.

My guess is that the pols will get spooked & take their marching orders from their REAL masters, i.e., you’ll soon see a modified version of what they just spiked today. Funny how the Dow doing a swan-dive gives them apoplexy … yet many thousands of average folks losing their homes were – & still ARE – largely met with a big fat ho-hum.

If this keeps up for the rest of the week…

I challenge anyone to click on the link jim’s provided, scroll down about halfway, look to the right, find the video titled ‘McCain – “It’s time to fix the problem,” and attempt to watch McP.O.W.’s pathetic and baldfaced lying for its entire 3+ minutes without bursting a blood vessel, throwing a large stone, or vomiting.

When this election is over, I want to see this guy physically and emotionally humiliated in the most public way possible. Then, he needs to be locked up.

What a loathsome sack of shit this guy is.

Smarter alternatives exist.

Simpler ones too. See-
http://tinyurl.com/3qm7wf [James Galbraith, WaPo]

Anyone notice what happened after the bailout failed? Biggest stock market crash in history. Ooops.

In 2008 dollars, yes. Not in 1987 dollars, and I don’t recall economic catastrophe preventing big hair and neon fashion. We can disagree on what to do, but alarmism just now failed to get anything done, hm?

When this election is over, I want to see this guy physically and emotionally humiliated in the most public way possible. Then, he needs to be locked up.

That already happened once, and he made it the basis for an entire political career.

And this, folks, is why we need to legalize weed.

Barney is the guy to get it done.

You really think having pot brownies in the executive lunch room would help?

I think it’s cheaper than the current crack-hooker-12-houses-yacht-private-island brownies the CEOs are nomming on currently…

Isn’t your assumption that congress, specifically congressional republicans, actually wanted an effective solution kind of a bit much?