Besides the petty viciousness, the hypocrisy of the speech was staggering. The McCain campaign has been screaming for the last couple of days that the Media coverage of Palin and her family should have been “off limits.” So what does she do? Drag the whole tribe up on stage including the knocked-up teenage daughter (who was conspicuously feeding her brother during the evening) and her soon to be husband for a great big photo op. I guess the message here is that family is off limits unless they’re being used to score political points.

What I wonder is this. In an election cycle where so many people have been motivated by the Obama’s difference in tone, his appeal to a post partisan ideal, is this really going to play? I can’t imagine that with so many people (myself included) feeling energized by his candidacy, are people really going to wallow in what divides us?

As much as this sucks, no one should doubt that extensive losses in these complex derivatives will have major effects in the “real” economy. Look at the WaMu failure. They didn’t get killed because of losses resulting from crappy mortgages, but rather from an old fashioned run on the bank. People lost confidence because of the presence of bad mortgage loans of indeterminate value, pulled out 16.7 Billion since September 16, and overnight they were part of JP Morgan. What were those mortgages really worth? Who knows? They had been sliced and diced into so many tranches that value of the underlying mortgages cannot be determined without the help of forensic accountants. But as long as the market perception was that they sucked, their value plummeted.

What gets lost in all this is that all the equity and debt holders got annihilated in the process, to the tune of $30 Billion. That’s pensions and mutual funds eating the sandwich, and costs real people real money. Could the system take any more? Based on the shotgun wedding between Wachovia and Citigroup, I’m guessing the answer is no.

Is this the direct result of 30 years of unrestrained deregulation that culminated with legislation that specifically exempted the complex derivatives behind this whole mess from oversight? Unquestionably. (The Commodities Futures Modernization Act, sponsored by none other than McCain Campaign advisor Phil “Stop Whining” Graham. ) During that entire 30 year period, a permissive, anti-regulatory, anything goes culture fundamentally reorganized the relationship between American government and the financial market for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. That cannot be fixed with this bill. That can only be fixed with the consistent election of candidates who over the long term engage in responsible economic policies that seek to balance our free market ideals with appropriate regulations.

I'm sure John McCain will run for the cover of the popular position, and in so doing, promulgate the continued rot that brought us to where we are today. The House members who voted against this bill would probably yell at a guy who wandered in the ER complaining about chest pain, telling him the bacon was a bad idea. Right though they may be, poorly timed.

Credit is the grease that lubricates the gears of the World Economy. No credit, hello Great Depression, Part II.

So now the Blue Dogs are the same as the Bush Administration? They are fiscally conservative members of congress who represent socially conservative districts. Short of a putsch, they are not going anywhere. But is that really that bad?

First, true fiscal conservatism is not anathema to progressive goals. Forget for a second the B.S. that the right has been parading around as fiscal conservatism for the last 30 years. No one who believes in responsible fiscal management of government would look at the tax-cutting for its own sake that has been the hallmark of Republican policy and think that it was anything other than top-down class warfare in service of the wealthiest among us.

Keeping the national debt low means that countries have the flexibility to successfully pursue progressive goals. Take health care. Canada has an enviable universal health care system, and a national debt of about $750 billion. The Brits have a national debt of around $400 billion and a solid single payer system. Us? Crap healthcare and $10 Trillion in debt. It is increasingly hard to make the case for social programming if you’re broke.

Second, having the Bush administration’s bizarre social evangelical programs rammed down our throats for the last 8 years has given everyone a finely articulated gag reflex. This does not mean that all people of faith are somehow anti-progressive. It is a question of how their faith informs their involvement in public life. Are you going to have people opposed to abortion and gay marriage? Yes. Are you ever going to be able to set up a ruling majority in Congress in the absence of people who are opposed to one or both of these issues? Probably not.

Rather than exclude them from the discourse by calling for their ouster, why not seek middle ground that enables both sides to seek what they achieve? I’m old enough to remember what it was like to have solid majorities, and how compromise needed to guide our discourse. I’m also able to remember what happened when a progressive wing of the party pushed rapidly for change, alienating a reliable block of voters, a condition we are still trying to recover from.

Incremental change is not sexy, but it will serve us better in the long term.