headbonk.com

I just heard a good one from Frank Schaffer of the Baltimore Sun on the Rachael Maddow show:

John McCain: If your campaign does not stop equating Sen. Barack Obama with terrorism, questioning his patriotism and portraying Mr. Obama as “not one of us,” I accuse you of deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore of potentially instigating violence.

The scary mobs… I’m actually suprised that John McCain would stoop so low. It’s really gross.

More from the opinion piece:

John McCain: In 2000, as a lifelong Republican, I worked to get you elected instead of George W. Bush. In return, you wrote an endorsement of one of my books about military service. You seemed to be a man who put principle ahead of mere political gain.

You have changed. You have a choice: Go down in history as a decent senator and an honorable military man with many successes, or go down in history as the latest abettor of right-wing extremist hate.

And finally…

You are unleashing the monster of American hatred and prejudice, to the peril of all of us. You are doing this in wartime. You are doing this as our economy collapses. You are doing this in a country with a history of assassinations.

I really dig this first part from Thomas Frank’s recent piece in the WSJ:

OK, let me get this straight: The central axiom of conservative Republicanism is that government is inherently corrupt and can’t do anything right.

Over many years of ascendancy, conservative Republicans have filled government agencies with conservative Republicans and proceeded to enact the conservative Republican policy wish list — tax cuts, deregulation, privatization, outsourcing federal work, and so on.

And as a consequence of these policies our conservative Republican government has bungled most of the big tasks that have fallen to it. The rescue and recovery of the Gulf Coast was a disaster. The reconstruction of Iraq was a disaster. The regulatory agencies became so dumb they didn’t even see the disasters they were set up to prevent. And each disaster was attributable to the conservative philosophy of government.

Yet now we are supposed to vote for more conservative Republicans because we learned from the last bunch of conservative Republicans that government just doesn’t work.

Just like Republicans in the Senate since 2006 have filibustered every major piece of legislation and then blamed the Democrats for being a do nothing congress.

As the day grows on, the more I read, the more convinced I become that it was a really good thing the bailout bill failed. We have before us a great example of bi-partisan agreement in congress.

I’m hoping that congress doesn’t just put a few more bells on the Paulson plan and pass that when they get back.

I’ve read somewhere about other possible plans that haven’t really been part of the debate in Washington, but I can’t find the link.

One thing that a number of people seem to mention is increasing unemployment coverage. I like the idea of solving this with a demand side solution after all the supply siders got us into this mess..

Paul Krugman and Robert Reich have pretty good statements about the whole mess one their blogs. Also worth listening to is this lecture from Robert Reich last week at the World Affairs Council.

One of the best lines I’ve read so far comes from Brad DeLong, professor of economics at UC Berkeley, via TPM

As I said, raze the Republican Party to the ground. Plough it under. Scatter salt in the furrows so it can never grow back.

We need another, very different opposition party to face the Democrats. We need it now.

Though Paul Krugman may have a better one:

So what we now have is non-functional government in the face of a major crisis, because Congress includes a quorum of crazies and nobody trusts the White House an inch.
As a friend said last night, we’ve become a banana republic with nukes.

(Update:)
Another good one for the day, this attributed to Winston Churchil:

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.

(Update:)
I found some links to other alternatives to the dressed up Paulson plan.

I like the sound of this one put forward by George Soros. When corporations need cash, they generally trade it for stock. Thats what Warren Buffet got when he bailed out Goldman Sachs. I doubt the concervative republicans will go for anything with George Soros’s name on it, but maybe no one has to tell them.