We'll need a couple of days of polls to really gauge the effect of this debate, but it seems pretty clear that McCain is still alive and in there with a chance.

This shouldn't be. No Republican presidential candidate should be in striking distance of the Democrat this year. I'm not going to bore you with yet another laundry list of disasters, we could all recite them like schoolboys can recite the lineup of baseball teams. Bush and his administration have trashed practically everything (everything?) that they have laid their hands on. Obama should have a lead of about twenty points: this year the Republicans should lose like Mondale did against Reagan.

This does not look like happening and I believe that it is because voters are simply not convinced about Obama and perhaps race matters for only about six percent of them. The rest is simply the failure to connect with his message and his personality.

At this point I thinks Barack Obama is very vulnerable. The Republicans are sure to spring something very nasty and Rovian on Obama in the next few days (the famous “Michelle Tape”, perhaps?) and he should have at least a ten point lead to absorb the damage. With Bush fumbling so badly, he should have that lead already… he doesn’t.

The fact that he doesn't makes more people doubtful, a vicious circle.

As I say, this is weird, the American people have such doubts about the Democratic Party and about Barack Obama's fitness to run US affairs that a Republican president that makes Jimmy Carter look like Abraham Lincoln can't give them a solid ten point lead as the United States of America apparently circles the drain.

http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/

I'm reading a lot of crowing here about how McCain is "chickening out" by leaving the campaign and the first debate and returning to Washington (where he and Obama are paid a salary to be, BTW).

I'm afraid that McCain is anything but scared, I think, on the contrary he smells blood.

No, I don't think he is scared at all, if anything McCain's defect is being reckless.

What he knows and Obama should know too is that we are looking at something like the crash of 1929 and that is a couple of days a lot of people will begin to realize how bad it is and forget about the campaign and focus on Congress. McCain is a much more important Senator than Obama, much better connected, even to ranking Democrats and that he can get a lot of favorable attention and show off his "leadership" qualities... this is a major surprise attack. I think McCain's role model is Nathan Bedford Forrest

McCain is supposed to be a good debater and effective in town meeting venues and there have been some doubts that Obama is that good at free form debate. In theory this would have been an opportunity for McCain. I don't think he's "chickening out". I think rather, that he is trying to "change the game" again, as he did naming Palin for veep.

What I think McCain is gambling on (and he is a gambler) is that this economic crisis is real and the possibility of an economic meltdown is real and that in a few days this reality will have permeated the consciousness of the average undecided voter, whose panicked attention will be shifting from the campaign circus to the one in Washington and who will be asking him or herself, "These guys are all senators, the sky is falling, where are they, what are they doing?"

McCain is a big man in the Senate and Obama has only been there a couple of years. McCain is counting on looking good in that context and Obama fading into the wallpaper there. It is all about the perceptions of panicked voters.

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said on Tuesday a $700 billion Wall Street rescue plan would likely delay some campaign spending promises, as the reality sank in of the costs of the mammoth bailout. Obama said if elected he might have to phase in some of his plans such as an overhaul of the U.S. health care system. (...) The Wall Street bailout proposed by the Bush administration would cost almost as much as Washington has spent fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since late 2001. The estimated cost of those wars so far is around $800 billion, with about two-thirds of that for combat in Iraq. Together, the wars and the bailout could add about $1.5 trillion to a national debt quickly approaching $10 trillion. Reuters

Still seeking to gain entrance into Troy, clever Odysseus (Ulysses) ordered a large wooden horse to be built. Its insides were to be hollow so that soldiers could hide within it. Once the statue had been built by the artist Epeius, a number of the Greek warriors, along with Odysseus, climbed inside. The rest of the Greek fleet sailed away, so as to deceive the Trojans. One man, Sinon, was left behind. When the Trojans came to marvel at the huge creation, Sinon pretended to be angry with the Greeks, stating that they had deserted him. He assured the Trojans that the wooden horse was safe and would bring luck to the Trojans. Only two people, Laocoon and Cassandra, spoke out against the horse, but they were ignored. The Trojans celebrated what they thought was their victory, and dragged the wooden horse into Troy. That night, after most of Troy was asleep or in a drunken stupor, Sinon let the Greek warriors out from the horse, and they slaughtered the Trojans. Stanford.edu

I found this wonderful photograph/metaphor for the Bush/Paulson/Bernanke bailout  (take a look here).

In it, there is an elephant, who represents the Republicans, and a lady who represents the Democrats.

The elephant, having thoroughly enjoyed his meal, is happily filling the lady's bag with its excrement. The lady is left holding the bag.

Get it (nudge, nudge)?

The bailout will probably not keep America from sliding into recession, but it will certainly keep the next president and congress, if they be Democrats, from creating a public health system or anything like it. If the Democrats are left overseeing a deep recession without any money to spend on welfare, the Republicans will retake congress and the White House in 2012 and then take credit for the next cyclical upswing. Thus, the American people will never get socialized medicine or money to pay off their mortgages or anything else that would justify the Democratic brand. With the bailout, the Republicans would win, even if they lost the White House and both houses of Congress.

This is why I think that, if the Democrats get their fingerprints on Paulson's plan, it would be better if they lost this year, something that, happily, they seem trying their best to do.

The Democrats would be fools to sanction this scheme for crippling them.

This bailout is obviously the Republican's "Trojan Horse": and I, alas, am left the role of Laocoon, the priest who warned his fellow Trojans:

‘O wretched countrymen! What fury reigns?
What more than madness has possess'd your brains?
Think you the Grecians from your coasts are gone?
And are Ulysses' arts no better known?
This hollow fabric either must inclose,
Within its blind recess, our secret foes;
Or 't is an engine rais'd above the town,
T' o'erlook the walls, and then to batter down.
Somewhat is sure design' d, by fraud or force:
Trust not their presents, nor admit the horse.’
Aeneid - Virgil

http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/

Flying in the face of Congress and both presidential campaigns, Treasury is resisting efforts to impose pay limits on Wall Street executives and bankers whose companies stand to be helped by the government’s $700 billion rescue plan for the financial markets.(...) Treasury argues that the requirements will make it harder to convince companies to sell their troubled assets to the government. - Politico

Up to 10,000 staff at the New York office of the bankrupt investment bank Lehman Brothers will share a bonus pool set aside for them that is worth $2.5bn (£1.4bn), Barclays Bank, which is buying the business, confirmed last night. The revelation sparked fury among the workers' former colleagues, Lehman's 5,000 staff based in London, who currently have no idea how long they will go on receiving even their basic salaries. Independent

I have concluded that Americans, who pretend in public to be straitlaced, are in fact rabid masochists addicted to whips, black leather and the application of fists. Juan Cole

"It is certainly not conspiracy that causes revolution, and secret societies -- though they may succeed in committing a few spectacular crimes, usually with the help of the secret police -- are as a rule much too secret to make their voices heard in public. The loss of authority in the powers-that-be, which precedes all revolutions, is actually a secret to no one, since its manifestations are open and tangible, though not necessarily spectacular; but its symptoms, general dissatisfaction, widespread malaise, and contempt for those in power are difficult to pin down since their meaning is never unequivocal. Nevertheless, contempt, hardly among the motives of the typical revolutionist, is certainly one of the most potent springs of revolution; there has hardly been a revolution for which Lamartine's remark about 1848, 'the revolution of contempt' would be altogether inappropriate. Hannah Arendt - "On Revolution" pg-260

There is a very dangerous mood about. Simple contempt for the political representatives, the media and the giants of finance abounds. This is an inflammable mass, like gasoline vapors, just waiting for a spark. So much contempt for others always contains much self-contempt, which is perhaps humanity's most murderous emotion.

America has the good fortune to possess noble, time-tested, institutions, but institutions without people to color in the lines are only historical curiosities to be studied in libraries. Society and institutions are not one and the same thing. Great institutions, of themselves are not enough, the society that inhabits them counts for much more. Institutions and societies can be hollowed out and the process is mysterious to all who live through it. We must also include our new technologies in the mix; they lend the speed of light to man's natural cupidity and stupidity and make our era look even more sordidly tacky than it would if all we had were the steam engine and the telegraph to magnify our will and transmit our desires.

We have come to a point where, with this alignment of the planets, in many countries around the world anything could happen. Only our long democratic history and our constitutional traditions reassure us that all will finally be well.

However, if we say that Guantanamo is twenty first century America's answer to habeas corpus, FISA, twenty first century America's answer to English common law, and Paulson's bailout, twenty first century America's answer to free market capitalism; then how much of all that is really left?

A global village is bound to have a global village idiot.

http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/

If you think Henry Paulson’s three-page rewrite of the nation’s financial and governmental systems was vague and open-ended, you might want to check out the responses to his plan from John McCain and Barack Obama. The presidential candidates are hardly powerless bystanders in the financial crisis — as senators and as leaders of their respective parties, either could have suspended his campaign and headed to Washington to lead his party’s legislative response to the proposal. Far from that, neither McCain nor Obama has yet to venture so much as a detailed comment on the substance of today’s proposed $700 billion bailout. Instead the candidates are sticking to party-appropriate bromides while waiting to discern the public’s reaction, and also what move their parties’ respective congressional leaders are planning to make. Saturday was tiptoe time. Politico

I am trying to get a handle on the great "bailout" of Wall Street and I admit I haven't got one yet. However my olfactory nerves are sending me distinct signals that they have picked up the hints of a significant quantity of equine excrement hovering around this question.

What I see (smell), is that the same folks that brought us the War in Iraq are again in a big hurry. That always makes me wary, how about you?

Certain things are striking.

People that contribute a lot money to both party's political campaigns are set to lose a lot of money and we are all being asked to cough up an immense sum to keep that from happening... We are being told that if we don't the sky will fall.

The odor hanging around this is pretty rank and I imagine that people are going to get very angry in increments when they stop to think about it.

Politically this issue is as tender as rotten dynamite.

History's most unpopular president is about to negotiate this "pennies from heaven" deal with history's most unpopular congress. This is a deal, that as far as I can understand it, is going to put a great burden of debt on the American people well into the future. Nobody is talking about sending anybody to jail. Nobody is talking about where the money is going to come from, nobody is talking about raising taxes. And since nobody is talking about cutting defense spending to pay for it, I imagine that it will have to come out of "entitlements"... But why go on? You can see the picture.

Both presidential candidates should be very careful how they grasp this question, both are taking a lot of contributions from Wall Street, but at the same times they hope to get the votes of a lot of people who are going to get angrier and angrier as the week wears on. Certainly this is our Berlin Wall and today's most relevant American politicians may soon be looking like dear old Egon Krenz.

http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/