Bipartisanship is a nice concept and I think it might even be successful if Republicans were playing the same game, but they're not. Obama offers his hand to a band of unrepentant cutthroats who laugh at human suffering, who dismiss history and science and anyone who doesn't share their tax-cut idolatry.

What good is "bipartisanship" when the partisans you pull out of the drink work furiously to sink your ship?

Perhaps the President believes that unconditional love will eventually warm the curdled Republican heart, that someday they will join him in good faith to cure the American malady. I suppose it could happen, but I think a show of strength, of unflagging commitment to resolving the disaster that threatens us all (a commitment that brooks none of the clown-act that Republicans have been sabotaging the process with) would make more sense than Obama's perpetually outstretched hand of welcome.

Obama said it himself in his inaugural speech, "It's time to drop the childishness." Republicans will continue with their childish hijinks until they are made to pay for them, and only Obama can make them pay.

-Ted

In fact the entire bubble and collapse cycle we are now dealing with is part of the same basic confidence scheme that sharks have been pulling on the public since the invention of money: Using their advantaged access to capital and official sanction, the sharks create the illusion of respectable instruments with better than average return. Investors flock to the higher returns, sharks make their money on transaction fees and frenzy-inflated value, and then when things start going south, when the instrument's unexpectedly mundane performance is revealed to all, the sharks have already bailed, floating away on rafts of cash, leaving the common investors to scramble for remaining pennies on their dollar.

The whole point of regulation is to diminish the sharks' unfair advantages, to keep the investment landscape flat and predictable and risk-managed. It's so boring. When the Republiclowns say that regulation stifles competition and innovation, they're right, but notice what kind of competition and innovation comes into play when regulations are relaxed: ARM's and CDO's and thousands of other tricks to lure investors into participating in a rigged game that always favors the sharks.

The only difference between Madoff and the rest of the sharks is that Madoff admitted the fraud when it started to unravel while the rest of the sharks are still collecting. They tapped out the investor monies and now they're collecting TARP dough from taxpayers. Now that's a hell of a scheme!