Here is today's Haaretz It looks like the administration has backed down on its criticism of settlements and that America is, yet again, putting all the onus on the Palestinians. Bibi is one happy guy today.

Meanwhile, the House is planning to vote Tuesday to support the Israeli position that the Gaza war was a praiseworthy exercise in Israeli restraint and sensitivity to civilians.

The good news is that J Street is opposed to it.

The bad news is that the 800 pound gorilla, AIPAC, and its satellite organizations are pushing it hard.

The House resolution which will pass on Tuesday basically endorses everything Israel did in the horrific Gaza war while bashing Judge Richard Goldstone for documenting war crimes committed in that war (320 dead Palestinian kids!).

After the vote I'll post the roll call and you will see that some of your favorite "courageous" liberals are none too courageous when it comes to this issue. Some of the very House members who denounce the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war and God knows how many other US military actions (often rightly) go mute when it comes to Israel. In fact, most of them do. In other words, they are courageous when there is no cost for it. (I'm curious about my current hero, Alan Grayson. Does he buckle on this issue?)

Passing this resolution will damage US security by stating to the world that when Bibi asks us to jump, we jump even higher. (Note to Congress: Did you ever consider just saying you don't agree with Goldstone's findings or did AIPAC reject that approach?)

Here is the Post story. Here is the resolution. Here is a Jewish Telegraphic Agency report by its fine reporter, Ron Kampeas, showing just how bad this resolution is.

Next week: the names of the Democrats who vote for it, just so you know why John F. Kennedy would not be writing "Profiles in Courage" about Congress in the 21st century.
I douby they will pass it by voice vote because then they can't get "credit" from AIPAC.

California is hardly the only state that has identified sweetened sodas as a major contributing factor to the growing obseity epidemic among children. Now, as the state considers legislation that would tax sweetened sodas, the American Academy of Family Physicians has weighed in a most surprising way. If you think they support the legislation, you'd be wrong. Instead, in what is one of the most outrageous and corrupt practices in medicine, the AAFP has just created "an alliance" with Coca Cola, describing their product as just another snack. For that partnership , according to a health policy person at AAFP, they received a grant somewhere in six figures.

It was hardly worth it.

Reaction from doctors has been swift and dramatic. Standing outside the Contra Costa County hospital in Northern California, Dr. William Walker, the county's health officer, and a group white-coated group of other physcians, pointed their thembs downward as Walker issued a strong condemnation of the AAFP for undermining the efforts of family physicians to improve the health of their patients. ">http://cchealth.org/groups/health_services/aafp_protest.php

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Last year here I criticized enlightened denizens of the Chattering Classes Zoo for trying to rehabilitate David Brooks, an ingratiating neo-con who's as doomed as a charming, brilliant vampire to suck the blood of the American republic while thinking he's in love. (It's Halloween, okay? But this is dead serious, too.)

In his Times column today Brooks gives us yet another sinuous warm-up for the strength-sapping passion that drives his comic lines and citations from "experts." Linking Afghanistan's dark prospects to doubts about Obama's "tenacity" against real evils, Brooks tries to seduce us into a real war. As with Iraq, he's sublimating primal fears and resentments that fuel his and other neo-cons' great undertakings.

But mightn't they be right this time? Afghanistan isn't Iraq, and Obama isn't Bush. The problem with writers like Brooks is that, in their bones, they're jingoists: Their patriotism requires enemies, and they live to fight wars with other people's blood, while currying Established Power's favor with all the determination of heat missiles seeking heat. The world is hard, dark, and cruel, as they tell us -- and some people do need to be told. But Brooks & Co. have faith in only one way to save it. Watch David run:

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This past week the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) issued another one of their typically hysterical press releases. This time they were aghast at the fact that former Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) was appointed to serve on the President's National Intelligence Advisory Board. Besides talking about this appointment as if it signaled the end of western civilization as we know it, RJC took the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) to task for not denouncing such an appointment -- especially since we had pointed out in the past that Hagel was not the favorite of many pro-Israel supporters.

This attack on President Barack Obama and NJDC was picked up by more than one conservative website. We were pleasantly surprised when The Weekly Standard gave us a chance to respond to the "controversy."

Our first reaction is that it is truly fascinating that over the nearly entire course of Hagel's twelve years in the U.S. Senate (serving as a Republican Senator), RJC never found anything wrong with the Senator's record of support for the U.S.-Israel relationship. Only when Hagel's elected career was coming to an end and he expressed some sympathy for the candidacy of Democratic nominee Barack Obama did the RJC have a revelation that the Senator's record was less than stellar. It was if Matt Brooks, RJC's Executive Director, was cribbing from the old Christian hymn, Amazing Grace -- "I once was lost but now am found, Was blind, but now I see."

Our second point is that conservatives look pretty silly when they elevated a part-time, advisory position on intelligence as a potential stake in the heart for the U.S.-Israel relationship. JTA took a similar point of view of this tempest in a teapot when they said: "...the position Hagel has been named to is hardly a major one -- it's not full-time and has no day-to-day responsibilities."

The U.S.-Israel relationship is certainly robust enough that the pro-Israel community does not have to shrei gevalt (scream "woe is me") every time someone we might disagree with is appointed to any position. It is also dysfunctional to demonize someone like Hagel. We told The Weekly Standard that if Hagel had been appointed Secretary of State or Assistant Secretary for Near East Affairs, we would certainly express our concern to the press ... an appointment to an advisory board with no day-to-day responsibilities -- not so much.

It is hard to imagine that the United States Congress can outdo its own record of rousing support for any and all Israeli actions and policies. But now, according to a report by Spencer Ackerman in the Washington Independent, it is preparing to do just that.

Next week the Democratic House is slated to vote on a resolution - introduced by Howard Berman (chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee), Gary Ackerman (chairman of the Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East) and two Republicans, Ranking Members Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Dan Burton.

The legislators pushing the resolution say the Goldstone report is unfair and biased against Israel. Although the report condemns both Israel and Hamas for "war crimes," the representatives take strong issue with Goldstone's finding that Israel took little care to protect civilians during its massive onslaught.

Of course, the numbers themselves support Goldstone. According to B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, "Israeli security forces killed 1,382 Palestinians during the 22-day military operation. Of those, 774 did not take part in the hostilities, including 320 minors and 109 women over the age of 18."

Number of Israelis killed: 9 (3 by friendly fire).

The resolution ignores those numbers, offering not even a word of sympathy to those who were killed. 320 kids!

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From this morning's Washington Post.

Nearly half the members of a powerful House subcommittee in control of Pentagon spending are under scrutiny by ethics investigators in Congress, who have trained their lens on the relationships between seven panel members and an influential lobbying firm founded by a former Capitol Hill aide.

Five of the seven are Democrats. Obama and Pelosi need to clean house. Get this ethics investigation going immediately so that if they are guilty we can get new candidates in place to run in 2010. As Obama said yesterday, the task of reforming the Pentagon has just begun. What he didn't say was that the forces arrayed against that reform are mighty and corrupt.

Undaunted in his campaign to ferret out "anti-Zionists," yet apparently wondering if his own powers may be faltering, Jeffrey Goldberg has called in his Balthazar, "the erudite Yaacov Lozowick," to deal with a hard case:

"My impression of The Hebrew Republic thesis is that [Avishai is] talking about medinat kol exrachai'ah, the country of its citizens. This idea was formulated and mostly promoted by folks who were not only non-Zionist, they were anti-Zionist; it was a ploy to weaken the Jewish aspect of Israel until eventually the Jewish state would be submerged into its Arab environment. Yet Avishai isn't Azmi Bishara. I get the impression he's a caring Jew who is attracted to the medinat kol exrachai'ah idea because it fits so nicely into his broader Weltanschauung, the one that praises the European Union as the way of the future, the goal of human history and so on. On that level, he's non-Zionist because he's joining forces with a particular group of enemies of Zionism, even though he and they are using the same concepts for very different goals."

There is more to his letter. You cannot really understand the surreal quality of intellectual life in Israel today--the rhetoric you hear from talk shows to academic conferences--unless you take a moment to digest it whole. Yet beyond the glib "impressions" of books unread, the illogic ("non" = "anti"), the cozy appeal to dogma ("the Zionist way"), the guilt by association, the condescending tone, the last-minute finessing of obvious contradictions (viz., "the Zionist way" that takes Israeli Arabs as a "constituency and responsibility"), even the yanking-in of hackneyed German to sound, well, "erudite"--beyond all of this transparent demagogy--is a common claim that requires a moment's thought.

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After taking part in discussions of several excellent foreign policy books over at TPMCafe Book Club, I'm grateful to the editors here for letting me join the fun as a regular blogger in the Cafe. I should quickly add a plug for my original blog home of Democracy Arsenal, a thriving collective of card-carrying foreign policy wonks.

So let me start with the negotiations over Iran's nuclear program -- conservative drumbeats for imposing stronger sanctions in particular. In Thursday's Washington Post, Bob Kagan gave his version of the real-presidents-bring-the-hammer-down argument (Peter Feaver of Shadow Government was ahead of Bob by a month). These arguments are only partly aimed at achieving the desired outcome with Iran; to a great extent they're a continuation of the debate over toughness, resolve, and the proper use of American power. They also reveal conservatives' lingering naivete about both the practicalities and likely effect of a premature push for sanctions.

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Not long ago, no mainstream media personality would ever allow himself to be associated with anyone who suggests that diplomacy, not war, is the way to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Being thought of as not 100% down with the government of Israel was a career killer. And, if it wasn't, media and show business figures believed it was and that was the same thing.

That era ended with the rise of Jon Stewart, the most trusted television personality in America (and the only one the kids pay attention to). Unlike the Jewish organizational figures who are always screaming that the sky is falling on our Jewish heads, Stewart is anything but scared of his own, or anyone else's, shadow.

Because Jon Stewart is so utterly at home as an American and as a Jew, he can say what he thinks about the Middle East. And that seems to be be that diplomacy is better than killing people and that no lobby should inhibit debate on an issue that affects all Americans.

Jon Stewart, all by himself, has created a sea change in the mass media's approach to the Middle East. Once others in the business see that Stewart says what he thinks -- and not only survives but thrives -- others will do it too.

And who will be the beneficiaries: Americans, Palestinians and, most of all, Israelis. Israel will not survive if it stays on its current course. Stewart understands that and feels compelled to help save Israel from its suicidal policies. And Stewart matters.

My friends and I have been involved in the struggle to help secure Israel for decades. Jon Stewart is the most effective ally we've ever had. In the names of the American people, the Jewish people and the State of Israel, I thank you!!!

Check out yesterday's Daily Show interview. Stewart received a slew of threats when the word went out that he was going to air this segment. He went ahead anyway. J Street and J Stewart all in one week. Bad times for the lobby!

Part 1

Part 2

MJ Rosenberg is Senior Fellow on foreign policy at Media Matters Action Network

This is a must read and a must watch, especially now that AIPAC and its friends are struggling to deal with the J Street phenomenon which, following its blockbuster of a conference, is now a force they must reckon with.

Max Blumenthal takes on the Israeli ambassador, Elie Wiesel, John Hagee, Jeff Goldberg and Michael Goldfarb in one beautiful piece of truth-telling.

It's all here.

Last week, I heard a baffling statistic. More Americans followed news of the runaway balloon than coverage of the war in Afghanistan.

With this noise clogging the media landscape, it's hard to get the general public to pay attention to anything important, much less understand the tremendous sacrifices of the 1 percent of Americans serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fortunately, some extremely talented musicians are working to change that.

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So Joe Lieberman thinks he's a mighty force? Here's what Harry Reid could tell him and his stalwart allies:

Show us the mettle, Joe & Co. If you want to filibuster, make it a real filibuster. None of this namby-pamby virtual stuff, but the real made-in-America kind--the stay-up-all-night, read-from-the-telephone-book, keep-the-chamber-pot-nearby kind, as described memorably by Eleanor Clift in Newsweek a few years back:

They used to call it "taking to the diaper," a phrase that referred to the preparation undertaken by a prudent senator before an extended filibuster. The late South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond holds the record for a solo filibuster from the time when he rambled for 24 hours and 18 minutes to prevent the Civil Rights Act of 1957 from coming to a vote. Thurmond geared up by visiting the steam room to get dehydrated so he could drink without needing a bathroom. An aide stood by in the cloakroom with a pail just in case.

Surely if it's so important to keep the country from lurching into a public option, it's worth putting your body where your sanctimony is. The memory of Strom Thurmond deserves no less.

Update 1, Oct. 28: Don't miss Michael Tomasky in the Guardian on Lieberman's "moral vanity."

Update 2, Oct. 28: When Ryan Grim of HuffPost explicitly asked Lieberman yesterday whether, to block the bill, he'd be prepared to "read from the phone book," in full-voiced filibuster style, he said: "I'd be prepared to."

My inclination as a diehard Obama supporter is to assume that, in the long run, his decisions turn out to have been right.

But it became ever more clear yesterday hat his "forgive and forget" policy toward Joe Lieberman was a big mistake. (See Reober Scheer here).

I understand why Obama did what he did. It is summed up in two adages. The first states that the difference between a caucus and a cactus is that, on a cactus, the pricks are on the outside. The other states that it is better to have the bad guy pissing out from inside the tent, than outside pissing in.

These are wise adages. But they don't apply to Lieberman. He has been pissing inside the tent for a decade, at least. His treachery was capped off by his opposition to Barack Obama in the 2008 general election. His whole raison d'etre is to harm the Democratic party (and push an aggressive policy toward Iran, much like his Iraq policy, only worse).

He is not a Democrat. He is a neocon. No, he's not a Republican because he does not believe in any kind of party loyalty. By stating that he won't even stand with the Democrats on a filibuster vote, he has demonstrated that our 60 vote majority is a chimera anyway. It's time for him to go, if for no other reason than to send a message to right-wing Democrats. And also retribution.

A comparable Republican would have been sent packing years ago. I don't like to emulate them but, sometimes, I do admire that they at least stand up for their odious principles. Why don't we stand up for our good ones?

It doesn't seem as though the news has gotten to the folks working on regulatory reform in Congress. If it had, they would try to think how their proposals would have worked during the years leading up to the crisis and during the crisis itself.

For example, the proposed council of regulators to assess systemic risk would have been a pointless source of greenhouse gas emissions. Alan Greenspan would have insisted that the housing market is just fine and that there is no risk of a nationwide fall in house prices. Given Washington ways, everyone would have deferred to the Maestro, and seen nothing wrong with AIG's trillions of dollars of credit default swaps. After all, if AIG gave life insurance to 50 million people, no one would get on their case because they would not be able to pay off if everyone died at the same time.

The plan to have large banks cover the cost of bailouts of their brethren would not have been made by anyone who remembered the financial collapse last fall. When AIG went down and the world was in full-fledged financial crisis does anyone think that the Fed/FDIC would have insisted that Citigroup, Bank of America and the rest cough up additional funds to cover AIG's bad debts? Are these people serious?

Between sessions at the amazing J Street conference, people mill around talking to friends and, sometimes, just a person standing near by.

I was lucky enough to find myself talking to a young man from Gaza, in Washington for the conference. He is not on the program. He is here to learn. And he is a remarkable person in every way.

Yusuf Bashir is 20. He's tall and handsome and, if I had to guess based on his looks, I would have taken him for a well-off American Jewish college kid.

He most certainly is not.

Yusuf is from Gaza, specifically from Deir el-Balah. Until Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ended the military (and settler) occupation of Gaza in 2005, Yusuf, his parents, and four siblings, lived in a house next to the Israeli settlement of Kfar Darom, right next to a military base.

In 2000, the Israeli army decided to seize the house and use it as a sentry post. The army had already destroyed or taken other houses in the neighborhood.

But Yusuf's father refused to move his family.

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American religious historians have identified three Great Awakenings since the 1740s. In each, a lot of the country was swept up in torrents of enthusiasm that rattled defenders of established order (including churches that joined altar to throne) and dismayed the secular, Enlightenment-minded, too.

Some say that a fourth Great Awakening crested in 2004 but was deflected into America's "civil religion" in 2008, thanks to Barack Obama's biblical cadences. G.K. Chesterton called the U.S. "a nation with the soul of a church," and Obama massaged it enough to win Pastor Rick Warren's blessing at the Inauguration.

But if Obama is carrying on Martin Luther King, Jr's. religious republicanism, he's also one part Harvard neo-liberal and one part Chicago pol. Only a stronger, cannier faith can get us past these parts' inadequacies right now. The faith needn't be "religious" but it must be deep enough to face down great dangers and seductions. And many of us will have to share it, as I suggest in a World Affairs Journal essay I hope (against hope?) that you'll read. Here's why.

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I hope there is no truth in the reports that the White House is telling Reid it will not help cement the 60 votes for an up or down decision on a Senate bill with the opt-out public option -- Option Squared we might call it. This is the least Obama can do -- stand firmly behind this compromise. He and Emmanuel need to cajole and bargain and speak up to get this done!

If Obama's White House does not come through, progressives should let him understand that we will have little enthusiasm for him and for Democrats going forward. It is not just Congress that has skin in this game -- so does Obama for 2012 and for all his policy decisions going forward. Many of us on the moderate left have put up with a lot of wavering and disappointing decisions from him. We won't accept a betrayal of even Harry Reid (!) on the last reasonable prospect for a public option in health care reform. Indeed, we will not accept anything less than enthusiastic mobilization for this public option.

Get off the dime, Obama! Tell your weak-kneed Clinton advisors to stop signalling cave-ins or "I told you sos" that will just encourage backsliding in the Senate. Back up the Democrats in making something of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in heath care reform. If you want continued support with other steps toward middle-muddling-caution, this is the price: get a decent health reform law signed into law. Otherwise, face fired up Republicans versus tepid and disillusioned Democrats. You will not like the result.

On the 17th of October this year, I interviewed Hamas leader Khaled Mashal in his offices in Damascus, Syria on a wide range of topics. I did the interview as part of a launch effort for a new political blog, The Palestine Note, which is releasing the interview today.

The questions I asked Meshal to reflect on were:

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In spite of the best efforts of the insurance industry and their followers in Congress and the media, it is still very possible that the health reform bill passed by Congress will include a robust public plan. This is a case where the simple facts and persistent grassroots pressure may overcome the political power of a major industry.

If the bill passes with a serious public plan, it could make an enormous difference for the future of health care in the United States. However, the fact that the public option is even on the table at this point, after all the political experts had counted it out, shows the enormous potential for popular pressure to influence policy debates in this country.

The basic story is that President Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress had always been lukewarm in their support of a public plan. President Obama had included it in his original proposal, but has made it clear on numerous occasions that he did not view it as an essential part of his health care plan.

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I don't know what did it.

Sure Jeremy Ben Ami worked for two years to get to this moment, and then assembled a terrific team. Obama helped. So did the disastrous Gaza war and its ugly aftermath. And then the haters piled on, only causing hundreds of people to sign up for the conference at the last minute. (I stood on line to get my credentials behind a mob that didn't sign up in advance at all).

One woman said, "We're from New York and don't do 'conferences.' But then we saw that e-mail from that settler who condemned J Street for accepting a contribution from an Arab-American girl and had to come."

There are many more people in attendance than J Street expected. All the last-minute folks have made it impossible to get into the sessions unless you push your way in early. I heard that Ben Ami expected a thousand but it's looking more like 1700-2000.

I gave my seat in one session to one very old man. He grabbed my hand. "These are the Jews I've been waiting for since 1967. Actually, I feel like I've been waiting for them since the Balfour Declaration. I feel like saying a sheheceyanu." That is the prayer thanking God for letting us live to see the day.

And, although I am not a praying man, I said, "let's say it." And we did Quietly.

"Baruch ata adonai elohenu melech ha olam, shehecheyanu, v'kiyimanu, v'higiyanu laz'man hazeh.

Blessed are You Adonai our God, Ruler of the Universe who has given us life, sustained us, and allowed us to live to see this day."

Amen.

With all the Bloviators pulling out their "Afghanistan=Vietnam" analogies, Joshua Kurlantzick writes in the Washington Post, that we should only be so lucky.

76 percent of Vietnamese say U.S. influence in Asia is positive, according to a 2008 study by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs -- a greater percentage than in Japan, China, South Korea or Indonesia. When President Bill Clinton visited Vietnam in 2000, citizens greeted him like a rock star, mobbing him whenever he stepped out in public. Two-way trade now surpasses $15 billion annually, compared with virtually nothing in 1995, the year the two countries normalized diplomatic ties. American companies have descended upon Vietnam, and last year foreign direct investment in the country tripled compared with 2007.

Ever since President McKinley sent a declaration of War against Spain to Congress in April of 1898, the Washington Establishment has equated American influence with our military power. But as Intel builds new fab plants in Vietnam, we must understand that our real influence stems from our financial and cultural power. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan erode both of those sources of soft power.

Support for the Public Option Keeps Getting Stronger. 

 

"New Life for the Public Option" is the headline of Dan Balz's excellent article in Sunday's Washington Post.  It's not an accident that this powerful idea has made yet another comeback.  And it is not surprising that public and Congressional support, always strong, has surged again, just as the insurance industry has ham-handedly tried to manipulate the choices of key decision-makers in the US Senate.  In the crucial next few days - and in the weeks to come - advocates of the public option will be arguing that the principle of majority-rule democracy should be allowed to work.  And the insurance and drug industries (and Republicans) will be basing their strategy for stopping the public plan on undemocratic procedure called the filibuster.

 

The public option has been part of the national health care debate since January 2007, when the Economic Policy Institute published Jacob Hacker's Health Care for America plan.  From that moment to this, many in the media and the pundit class have periodically dismissed its chances.  But that was also the moment that Hacker, Diane Archer and I started having discussions with three essential audiences:  leaders of activist citizen organizations, Congressional leaders, and presidential candidates.  (For a record of that early organizing, click here.)  Our message:  a public insurance option is crucial to the success of real reform in America's mixed system of private and public health insurance - especially if our government agrees to the demand of insurance companies that all Americans must be forced to buy insurance.

 

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I have spent the day in Washington, first at the Americans for Peace Now board meeting, where I am an officer, and later at the J Street conference, where I am a participant. I go to sleep tonight with this sentiment dancing on my brain: the promise of Israel needs to be embraced and supported, promoted and defended--fought for. That is not the case presently in much of American political discourse.

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And now there are five -- five Wall Street behemoths, bigger than they were before the Great Meltdown, paying fatter salaries and bonuses to retain their so-called"talent," and raking in huge profits. The biggest difference between now and last October is these biggies didn't know then that they were too big to fail and the government would bail them out if they got into trouble. Now they do. And like a giant, gawking adolescent who's just discovered he can crash the Lexus convertible his rich dad gave him and the next morning have a new one waiting in his driveway courtesy of a dad who can't say no, the biggies will drive even faster now, taking even bigger risks.

What to do? Two ideas are floating around Washington, but only one is supported by the Treasury and the White House. Unfortunately, it's the wrong one.

The right idea is to break up the giant banks. I don't often agree with Alan Greenspan but he was right when he said last week that "[i]f they're too big to fail, they're too big." Greenspan noted that the government broke up Standard Oil in 1911, and what happened? "The individual parts became more valuable than the whole. Maybe that's what we need to do." (Historic footnote: Had Greenspan not supported in 1999 Congress's repeal of the Glass Stagall Act, which separated investment from commercial banking, we wouldn't be in the soup we're in to begin with.)

Former Fed Chair Paul Volcker, whose only problem is he's much too tall, last week told the New York Times he'd like to see the restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act provisions that would separate the financial giants' deposit-taking activities from their investment and trading businesses. If this separation went into effect, JPMorgan Chase would have to give up the trading operations acquired from Bear Stearns. Bank of America and Merrill Lynch would go back to being separate companies. And Goldman Sachs could no longer be a bank holding company.

But the Obama Administration doesn't agree with either Greenspan or Volcker. While it says it doesn't want another bank bailout, its solution to the "too big to fail" problem doesn't go nearly far enough. In fact, it doesn't really go anywhere. The Administration would wait until a giant bank was in danger of failing and then put it into a process akin to bankruptcy. The bank's assets would be sold off to pay its creditors, and its shareholders would likely walk off with nothing. The Treasury would determine when such a "resolution" process was needed, and appoint a receiver, such as the FDIC, to wind down the bank's operations.

There should be an orderly process for putting big failing banks out of business. But this isn't nearly enough. By the time a truly big bank gets into trouble -- one that poses a "systemic risk" to the entire economy -- it's too late. Other banks, competing like mad for the same talent and profits, will already have adopted many of the excessively-risky banks techniques. And the pending failure will already have rocked the entire financial sector.

Worse yet, the Administration's plan gives the big failing bank an escape hatch: The receiver might decide that the bank doesn't need to go out of business after all -- that all it needs is some government money to tide it over until the crisis passes. So the Treasury would also have the authority to provide the bank with financial assistance in the form of loans or guarantees. In other words, back to bailout. (Historical footnote: Summers and Geithner, along with Bob Rubin, while at Treasury in 1999, joined Greenspan in urging Congress to repeal Glass-Steagall. The four of them -- Greenspan, Summers, Rubin and Geithner also refused to regulate derivatives, and pushed Congress to stop the Commodity Futures Trading Corporation from doing so.)

Congress is cooking up a variation on the "resolution" idea that would give the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation authority to trigger and handle the winding-down of big banks in trouble, without Treasury involvement, and without an escape hatch.

Needless to say, Wall Street favors the Administration's approach -- which is why the Administration chose it to begin with. If I were less charitable I'd say Geithner and Summers continue to bend over bankwards to make Wall Street happy, and in doing so continue to risk the credibility of the President, as well as the long-term financial stability of the system.

Wall Street could live with the slightly less delectable variation that Congress is coming up with. But Congress won't go as far as to unleash the antitrust laws on the big banks or resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act. After all, the Street is a major benefactor of Congress and the Street's lobbyists and lackeys are all over Capitol Hill.

The Street obviously detests the notion that its behemoths should be broken up. That's why the idea isn't even on the table. But it should be. No important public interest is served by allowing giant banks to grow too big to fail. Winding them down after they get into trouble is no answer. By then the damage will already have been done.

Whether it's using the antitrust laws or enacting a new Glass-Steagall Act, the Wall Street giants should be split up -- and soon.