"McCain, House Republicans, Hate America!"

There that sounds much better.

Celebrate! The bailout plan has not passed; it failed in Congress! Apparently the taxpayers' opposition to it has had its effect and democracy isn't dead in the USA.

And yikes(!), I'm listening to the Republicans in a press conference touting their victory and blaiming the Democrats for pushing for this bailout. Gives weight to my suspicion that one purpose for this bailout plan was to save the Republicans' reputation in the eyes of the American people after the PR decline they've received from marching in lockstep with the Bush adminstration for the last eight years.

And yikes(!), I'm listening to the Republicans in a press conference touting their victory and blaiming the Democrats for pushing for this bailout.

Meanwhile, other Republicans are trying to blame Obama for the bailout's failure to pass. Talk about not having their act together...

I'm a Dem and love Obama, but I feel like that site is really biased. I just don't see numbers skewed so far blue on the others. Anyone have any insights on the people who run it?

Indeed Nate very quickly and effectively posted this phenomenon; when a career is on the line, legislators tend to vote for whatever seems safe.

But Nate has a very different take on the situation than Salon, Daily Kos, and the other bastions of the Internet Left:

"...the schadenfreude of certain liberals on this issue is absolutely obnoxious. A lot of people are going to be hurt by this, and not just those in the investor class. I tend to see this more as a failure of our democracy than a reaffirmation of it. The congressmen who are retiring this year -- and who therefore can perhaps be described as the most neutral arbiters of the public good -- voted overwhelmingly for this measure."

Framed in this light, it is a different situation altogether.

Yes, we are delighting in watching banks squirm, but those same banks hold my mortgage, my car loan, and provide lending ability for everything from new construction to bonding for roadway infrastructure. Do we want a better bill? Yes, but if both sides continue in their refusal to compromise, we could continue down this path until the market implosion becomes a runaway train destined to land in the valley of a next Depression.

And while I am at it, how many who peruse this site have benefitted from the lending largesse? I got a home some years back with little in the way of a down payment, and and delighting in my ability to fix it up. A tighter credit market would have excluded me from home ownership.

I am embarrassed to see the Left engage in the same Us-versus-Them BS that the Right is so well known for. Take a page from Barack Obama and knock it off.

Supporting the most nakedly corrupt piece of House legislation since the impeachment of Clinton had to be a loser. I hope all but the two-faced mouthpieces for Silicon Valley, Shakers Heights, Marin County etc - the Democratic leadership, who could pull out razors and cut debate opponents and still get 55% - pay the penalty this November. Maybe electing Obama won't be a one-party deal after all.

That's not just me speaking. It's the judgment of most professional economists. Nouriel Roubini, who predicted this mess in detail in 2006 and knows more about it than anyone, wrote a blog post yesterday in which he pointed out that in 42 similar credit crises around the world, having the government buy up the bad paper is the one plan that DID NOT WORK.

This bailout is like having your house on fire and the fire dept shows up with buckets of gasoline. Congress spoke to no economists; they considered no alternatives. This is a bad plan for America and the House Repubs did us all a favor in shooting it down.

Dennis Kucinich spoke to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now. He stated that NO relief for mortgage holders was required, only "encouraged." Basically, he described the bailout as a massive trickle-up relief package for corporations.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/29/stream

I'm not delighting in any of this. My spouse and I have been hoping to finally buy a house next spring -- that may not happen, even if we're both still employed. I have a small TIA-CREF retirement account that's been taking a beating for months, and is probably now bleeding like a stuck pig but I can't bear to look.

I'm not an economist, but from what I understand this bill was not an it's-better-than-nothing compromise. This wasn't a case of the perfect being the enemy of the good. It was a case of the bad not being clearly better than the nothing, and potentially being worse.

And I am really fucking tired of being presented with false either/or choices, generally by people with a vested interest in ignoring third (and forth and fifth and ...) alternatives.

...bailout or no, the only losers will be the taxpayer. That's you and me. We lose either way if this plan ever passes. And I'd rather see the riff-raff in Wall Street go down in flames than hand them a Pass Go and Collect $200.00/Get Out of Jail Free card so they can go their merry way at our expense. I say we keep our $700B+ and let Wall Street sort it out on their own.

We've all been struggling with this administration's BS for way too long, and Congress needs to wake up and start listening and representing the taxpayer instead of playing lip-service to us, and rolling over every time Walls Street and the dork in White House threaten us with fear tactics and more empty promises. I say let Wall Street and these politicians go down in flames. In the long run we'll be better off. It might hurt for a bit, but we'll manage. Our parent's parents survived the Great Depression, and, if it comes to that, so will we. It's time time to put our foot down and say enough is enough.

Fuck 'em.