Does he have a first name? What is his job?

These are things we don't learn from your little column.

I think if I'd written this for my high school newspaper, I would have been scolded.

That is so unimportant compared to letting the American public be saddled with hundreds of billions of dollars of bad debt. I personally don't care if Bank X overpays executive Y by 500%. What's important to me is that, if executive Y drives Bank X into the ground with bad debt, they shouldn't be able to tax me to pay for their mistakes.

The fact that the Democratic leadership is considering this to be a fair trade-off indicates to me that, yet again, the party is being run by morons. How about just saying 'no' instead of getting a tiny, unimportant 'concession' in return for letting the American taxpayer be raped?

The purpose of the 50-state strategy is not to try to win all 50 states immediately. Nobody ever held such a "stupid" idea as its motivation. No, the purpose of the 50-state strategy is to stop letting wide areas of the country be completely neglected by the national party, and thus let them be cakewalks for the Republicans.

Furthermore, the 50-state strategy is not simply something that Obama thought up for the Presidential election. It has been around for a couple years, and the purpose is to strengthen the party in regions of the country and make competitive races all over the nation. Hence you see people like Jon Tester, the Democratic Senator from Montana. If people like Schaller had their way, Tester would never have gotten any national support, since Montana is "obviously" never going to elect a Democrat to a statewide office. Nor would Kathleen Sebelius, the Democratic governor of Kansas.

For an example of the purpose of the 50-state strategy in action, consider the state of Indiana. Indiana votes Republican consistently every election. And yet, Senator Obama opened offices in Indiana early in the season, while Senator McCain virtually ignored it. Over the course of months, Obama's presence in Indiana led him to cut into McCain's lead, eventually leading to him even leading in some polls. McCain has been forced to spend time and money defending Indiana - time and money he would prefer spending in traditional "swing states" like Ohio and Florida.

I'm not saying Obama is going to win Indiana. But what is going on here is basic to any kind of tactics of any kind of competition. You do not ignore undefended fronts.

Thomas Schaller thinks this is "stupid". One wonders why he is employed at all. I suspect it's because his writing is "thought-provoking", which is considered by Salon to be more important than "intelligent".

McCain objected to the bailouts, said he would fire the chairman on the SEC or FEC. I would fire both just to be sure.

You would fire the chairman of the Federal Election Commission?

As for the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, if elected President, John McCain would have no more authority to fire him than you or I would. The commissioners of the SEC do not "serve at the President's pleasure".

Its time to turn our government upside down and McCain is liable to do it.

Can we use that as a bumper sticker?

People need to pay attention to who is on Obama's advisory team.

(random talking points omitted)

You do know who Charles Keating is, don't you?

Congress has no greater fan of banking deregulation than John McCain. But he's a communist compared to his financial advisor, Phil Gramm. Gramm, unlike the assorted of Obama advisors that you refer to, was a leading figure in the movement that led to all the banking deregulation and all the lack of oversight that has led to the current mess.

But go ahead, keep your fax machine on, so the RNC can tell you what to think next!

Where is the $700 billion coming from?

How is the US economy supposed to handle the shock of a 25% increase in government spending? I'm presuming that, since it's an election year, nobody is going to even whisper about raising taxes to cover that. So, we're talking about a massive increase in the US debt, happening all at once.

How about that?

A lot of people who favor the bail-outs talk, correctly mind you, about the bad things that will happen if the institutions are "allowed to fail". But let's be realistic about the problems of passing the cost on the the taxpayer, shall we? It seems like people view a $700 billion solely from a political perspective, and don't give a damn about the economic damage that increasing the debt does to the US.

I agree, that it's a Shitpile one way or another. But why should it be our shitpile?

I, personally, think my individual lot would be better off if AIG and some other institutions were allowed to fail, as opposed to being forced to see the US bail them out. Yes, the former option is bad, but so is the latter. And the former option is less bad for me.

Ignorant ass.

Ignore the content of any comment that disagrees with your conclusions and just resort to namecalling.

Go outside and get some sun and spare us your drivel.

Atrios has been talking about "Big Shitpile" for most of 2008, if not longer. There's been plenty of time for debate. As Glenn points out, this problem has been years in the making, and astute financial observers like Warren Buffet have known about it for a long time.

No, the world "didn't change" (and no, it didn't "change" on 9/11 either, but I digress). If, perhaps, the media gave 1% of the attention to budgetary matters that it does to the inane trivia that governs our discourse, these problems could have been dealt with rationally in a timely manner, over the course of many months.