After watching this latest too-scary-to-be-funny SNL skit, it seems pretty clear we should all be waiting for Wednesday's announcement that there's a cat stuck in a tree in Alaska, and Governor Palin must interrupt her campaign (and, unfortunately, cancel the VP debate) to go coordinate the rescue efforts.

Everything Glenn just wrote is right, but Glenn didn't tell us the answer to the fix we're in.

I've been principally disappointed by the virtually complete acceptance of the Bush Administration's premises throughout the last two weeks of "negotiations" over what to do -- it is mind-boggling that the malevolent narcissists in that Administration are still being suffered to dictate not just the creation of disasters, but even supposed "solutions" for them, and Glenn's post addresses this well -- but I'm still concerned that there's a real and devastating problem out there and something has to be done to forestall it, even if not "cure" it, and if that means the government needs to print up some new money so that the country can limp along exchanging the old money among itself while this esoteric rich guy "problem" sorts itself out, maybe that works. I seriously don't know, I'm not proud of that, but I get the part about this probably being pretty important to average folks on a daily basis.

But driving in to work this morning, for laughs I thought I'd check out Limbaugh's take on this.... Well, he's agin it. But the "argument" supporting the "why" was truly interesting: In doing the "this is socialism" thing, Rush actually read his audience the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States. The whole Preamble, and he said it was "important". Now, it's true that Rush chose to focus on the phrase "promote the general welfare", which he found inconsistent with the bailout package's recited purpose of "insuring" the integrity of the economic system. Yes, Rush railed away at how any SecTreas told he had a statutory mandate to "insure" that should resign immediately because of it's unconstitutionality, based on the Preamble's use of the word "promote".

Yet if Rush starts reading the Constitution, do you think maybe he would end up recognizing it says things about "Liberty" in there? Put another way, all of Rush's wailing about how respecting the Constitution is "so pre-9/11" when it comes to things like Liberty and the like might be subject to question if he wants to invoke the Constitution to advocate Unfettered Capitalism? That some might detect inconsistency or hypocrisy?

I know, it isn't much of a silver lining. Now, back to economics....

It's convenient this week for the Neocons to refer to the United States Constitution. Never mind this is the same Constitution that has been "so pre-9/11" throughout the Bush Administration -- you know, the Constitution that refers to things like habeas corpus, prohibitions on search and seizure without probable cause, cruel and unusual punishment, a limited Executive or a co-equal Congress.

I heard Rush give his "this is socialism and it's unconstitutional" rant on Monday, channel surfing on the way to work. His thought process was this: the Preamble to the Constitution provides, in part, that the Constitution is being adopted "to promote the General Welfare." True enough. From this statement, Rush derives his mantra that the bailout bill's recitation of purpose as including "insure economic stability" is unconstitutionally inconsistent with this concept of "promote". Since "insure" and "promote" cannot co-exist in Rush's world, the bailout is "unconstitutional"....

How does this thought process translate to the rest of the Preamble? Spell it out for Rush. How does anything the Bush Administration has done in the name of the War on Terror jive with the Preamble's more decisive direction to "Secure the Blessings of Liberty to Ourselves and our Posterity"? If "promote" cannot tolerate "insure", can "secure" accept "vitiate"? And since "Liberty" being secured means that Liberty has been achieved and obtained (what was that Revoloution for, if not that? "promoting" general welfare is aspirational of a future state, "securing" Liberty is protective of an existing reality), what of the fact that when Locke wrote "Life, Liberty and Property", the framers consciously changed that to "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" in the declaration of the Independence they then fought for? Capitalism isn't actually in the Constitution; freedom from oppression is, though.

Rush wants to use words in the Constitution, let him. I can live with "promote the General Welfare"; can Rush live with the rest of it?

What these neocons are saying isn't funny, it's sick. And it's so easily disposed of by reference to the very document they're trying to rely on. None of the neocon quotes Glenn has arrayed actually purport to explain what it is about the Constitution they think is being disregarded; when Rush tried, he invites attention to his own hypocrisy.

It seems to me like this is a great opportunity to take the neocons on directly over the hypocrisy of their criticism of the Left over the demise of the Constitution in American government. There's another book in there somewhere, Glenn. Better still, there's a great Op-Ed waiting for someone capable of penning it, and I vote Glenn.