McCain proposed a spending freeze (except for defense and entitlements).

In a time in which credit markets are frozen, unemployment is up, and the nation (and world) are on the bring of a calamitous meltdown. 

This puts McCain squarely with Herbert Hoover, and against FDR and Keynes.  Does it not put hin against pretty much every reputable economist, and show his utter cluelessness about economic affairs.  Should this not be a lead point of attack tomorrow?

Today, John McCain tried to parry questions about his lurching debate-skipping histrionics by lashing back at Obama for rejecting, months ago, McCain's proposal to do  multiple town hall  meetings.

It wouldn't surprise me if McCain raises this point again, perhaps even in the debate tomoroow (if he shows).

Shouldn't Obama respond with something like, "You know, now I'm especially comfortable with that decision, because I'm not sure the public could stand the drama, week after week, about whether you would show up."

. . . when a mere shark just won't do.

Courtesy of NRO, here is Newt Gingrich on McCain's debate-quitting gambit (as Jonah Goldberg calls it):

This is the greatest single act of responsibility ever taken by a presidential candidate and rivals President Eisenhower saying, ‘I will go to Korea.

The Humane Society Legislative Fund (the arm of the HS that is allowed to support candidates) today announced its endorsement of the Obama-Biden ticket. .  This is the first time the organization has ever endorsed a candidate for President.

This is an unusually important endorsement.  The Humane Society is a  very old and very well respected.   Its membership is huge, and its legislative endorsements, are distinctly bipartisan.   Concern for animals cuts across party lines – and while animal welfare is not a top issue for many people, for some it is a deal-breaking issue.  And for still others, the issue rises to the top only if, as in this election, a candidate distinguishes herself as unpalatably extreme – so much so, that her views on animal welfare issues cast doubt upon her fundamental decency and reasonableness in other areas.  

Some excerpts from the endorsement:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has been a solid supporter of animal protection at both the state and federal levels. [* * * *]

Importantly, Obama's running mate, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) has been a stalwart friend of animal welfare advocates in the Senate, and has received high marks year after year on the Humane Scorecard.
[* * * *]

On the Republican ticket, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has also supported some animal protection bills in Congress, but has been inattentive or opposed to others.[* * * *]

While McCain's positions on animal protection have been lukewarm, his choice of running mate cemented our decision to oppose his ticket. Gov. Sarah Palin's (R-Alaska) retrograde policies on animal welfare and conservation have led to an all-out war on Alaska's wolves and other creatures. Her record is so extreme that she has perhaps done more harm to animals than any other current governor in the United States. 

Palin engineered a campaign of shooting predators from airplanes and helicopters, in order to artificially boost the populations of moose and caribou for trophy hunters. She offered a $150 bounty for the left foreleg of each dead wolf as an economic incentive for pilots and aerial gunners to kill more of the animals, even though Alaska voters had twice approved a ban on the practice. This year, the issue was up again for a vote of the people, and Palin led the fight against it -- in fact, she helped to spend $400,000 of public funds to defeat the initiative.

What's more, when the Bush Administration announced its decision to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, Palin filed a lawsuit to reverse that decision. She said it's the "wrong move" to protect polar bears, even though their habitat is shrinking and ice floes are vanishing due to global warming.

The choice for animals is especially clear now that Palin is in the mix. If Palin is put in a position to succeed McCain, it could mean rolling back decades of progress on animal issues.

Voters who care about protecting wildlife from inhumane and unsporting abuses, enforcing the laws that combat large-scale cruelties like dogfighting and puppy mills, providing humane treatment of animals in agriculture, and addressing other challenges that face animals in our nation, must become active over the next six weeks to elect a president and vice president who share our values. Please spread the word, and tell friends and family members that an honest assessment of the records of the two presidential tickets leads to the inescapable conclusion that Obama-Biden is the choice for humane-minded voters.

This deal is big enough that we ought to have a real national conversation about it.  Not a conversation involving some quick negotiations among a "bipartisan" group of legislators and Bushite undersecretaries -- in occasional and frenzied discussion with two distracted presidential campaigns.  A real conversation about where to take the country, a la 1860 or 1932. 

Ramming through something quickly now will almost certainly result in multibillion dollar mistakes due to haste and to the fact that the people with the most information are implicated in the screw up one way or another, or stand to gain enormously from the bailout.  Doing the deal now necessarily gives a central legislation framing and implementing role to the current administration -- which nearly everyone now recognizes to be inept, as well as venal and possessed of an economic and political philosophy that got us in this pickle in the first place.  They can't be trusted to clean up their mess, however fair that would be.  So how about let's adopt some stopgap measure for a couple months, then have the remainder of this election cycle be about what kind of country we want this to be or become, and how the financial risks and burdens the bailout would entail should be distributed to American citizens and their progeny? 

Discuss.

The Administration is proposing to commit up to a trillion dollars in taxpayer money and give complete discretion -- expressly removed even from judicial review -- to the Bush Administration as to how it performs this socialization of large portions of U.S. financial markets.

Whatever its economic merits -- and they appear to be quite poor -- this is an unacceptable outrage in a democratic republic.

There has never been a lamer duck than George W. Bush.  His invisibility during the late fiscal crisis recalls his furtive behavior right after 9/11, yet he does not have the excuse of needing to protect himself from possible physical harm this time.

The current mess seems to be further that the ideology that has dominated this country since Ronald Reagan's Administration has failed miserably.  And yet the Administration that asks for blank-check authority to respond to the disaster itself is a creature of a particularly inflexible version of that ideology.  Even if they are acting in good faith -- despite a long track record of running every aspect of the government to further narrow political agendas -- they cannot be trusted even to be competent.
 
I don't profess to have any insight worth your time about how to stabilize U.S. financial markets.

But I do profess to have some understanding of the Constitution and of the system of popular sovereignty it establishes.   And it is contrary to that system to the Constitution's vision for an plan that will effect generations of American's to be made over a few days, with representatives of a lame duck Administration -- whose vision of government has failed in every way -- essentially blackmailing members of Congress into a plan that asks every American taxpayer (and though John McCain doesn't understand this, that means all of us) to bail out private companies that

And one principle that should guide Congress's response to this crisis -- and that of both presidential candidates -- is that the American people should have some say in the matter.  And given that pretty much every major issue that this Administration has touched has turned out disastrously, it would be profoundly wrong to let this Administration saddle out grandchildren with crippling debt, without having an open debate, and a national vote, about what the basic countours of the rescue policy should be, and who should lead us out of it.

Congress should not give this Administration any more authority than is required to keep things afloat until November; then it should work closely with the November 4 winner on a long-term solution, to be signed into law by the next President.