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Nightly Ramble:More Bailout;Acorn Vote Fraud, More

Welcome, dear reader, to the most intense nightly read in the ‘sphere… The Nightly Ramble….

  • Leaving aside the issue of the Republicans who bolted off the bailout plan yesterday, changing their vote from ‘yes’ to ‘no’, (I’ll get back to that) I note with some interest that there was a large number of Democrats voting ‘no’ on this one. Now, the fact is there’s a great deal of opposition to the bill, at least from the ones being vocal at the moment. A few more down days on the market, and we’re going to see this thing pass. But if you look at Democrats who voted ‘no’, an interesting pattern emerges. To a man, these are people who hold office in battleground states.  This would seem to suggest, among other things, that the Democrats do not have a lock on increasing their hold on the House… and one may logically assume the same for the Senate. That’s an important lesson from this, that only a paltry few are mentioning. I see Limbaugh mentioned it yesterday during the 2:00(eastern) hour, and 538 mentioned it [1] last night. (By the way, that 538 link has a full vote breakdown of the battleground states, too. ) I’ve seen it mentioned in a few Email groups I monitor, but few others have noted it. And certainly, you will not see the press dare to menton it. The reason? It doesn’t fit the usual mantra, of course.
  • Now, what caused so many Republicans to jump ship? Some folks, myself included will include Nancy Pelosi’s self-serving [2] anti-Bush diatribe. [3]

    [wp_youtube]ey3ZlsmIkz4[/wp_youtube]

    No, Barney, you blithering fool,  this is not about hurt feelings [4]. This is about correct problem identification. The Republicans were quite willing to try to save your sorry backsides, but when you start trying to deflect blame onto the people you’re asking for votes… when in fact the whole thing is demonstrably YOUR fault, it’s just too much. I suppose the Republicans who voted had reached their BS limit. In my view the gloves come off, now, if the Republican leadership has any smarts.

  • An interesting aspect of this is that Nancy Pelosi is a first class idiot, if she thinks this kind of BS is generating a ‘spirit of cooperation’.  And you know, if she wanted to scuttle the bill, I can’t think of a more effective way to do it, than what she did yesterday in the well. Come to think of it,  it’s to the Democrats’ advantage to set things up this way, because in a few days, or weeks when she finally gets around to bringing this up for a vote again, she’s going to have congress critters begging to get screwed over, just so we can get the damn thing passed. The Democrats will be able to slip in about anything to that bill, and the desperation level will be high enough that nobody will object… or so she must figure. So, no, I wouldn’t put it past her to have planned things just so.
  • Indeed, there seems some question if the Democrats really think ths thing a crisis. KJL was the first [5] I saw to mention the point.

    We’re on the verge of financial meltdown, but Congress can afford to take a day or two off? I understand that it’s a major religious holiday for some members, but this is an “emergency.”

      Jay Tea  [6] agrees.

    So, to me, it seems abundantly clear that the Democrats don’t see the current situation as a crisis, and are acting like everything is business as usual. To me, that says — far more clearly than their words — that they don’t think things are anywhere as bad as they say they are.And that is what convinces me that things are far worse than they think.
    Because the Democrats have been consistently wrong on the whole situation, and have been for years. There is no end of videos of leading Democrats praising Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s stability, of their performance, defending the leaders (most notably Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson), and thoroughly denouncing and scuttling numerous attempts to head off the problems that have started to come to a head in the past month or so.

    It’s a kind of negative evidence, but it’s persuasive to me: the Democrats have a solidly established record of being utterly and completely wrong on the whole mess. They are now acting as if the situation isn’t so bad, and are still far more interested in playing their run-of-the-mill political games with the whole process. If they are still wrong (and the odds are highly in favor of that conclusion), then we are in real trouble and the bailout that they don’t seem to care about whether or not it passes is probably a necessary evil.

    Well, that may be true. Since their actions brought all of this about, only an idiot would not think that such actions would eventually cause a collapse. Indeed, even the New York Times, no less, predicted such failure back in 99 [7]. So, said collapse may be part of the plan.  A stretch? Yeah, maybe. But at the moment, ‘Maybe not” looms large in the mirror, too, so I mention it. The part that keeps my attention and should peak yours a little at least is that based on the record of the last several years, I wouldn’t put it past them, anymore.

  • The fact is, though, that the more likley scenario was that she couldn’t get her own people to vote for it, and so she launched her bomb, and stood back.  As the New York Post notes this monring [8], something like 95 House Democrats voted against it, despite the serious arm-twisting we hear was going on.  But she gets up, opens her yap, and because she caused a number of Republicans to back off the thing, loudly, she now can place the blame on those nasty Wascuwee Wepubwicans, in spite of the facts, and thus saving face, she thinks. (I’ve seen her face… it ain’t worth saving, gang..) Such a move doesn’t hurt Obama’s chances at the election, either, given the blame game. And yes, I think she’d do it… crash the economy to gain an election. In one hot second, she’d do ti.
  • Roger Kimball has a great peice [9] on all this, you should read.
  • Boortz lists Acorn Vote Fraud [10].
  • YetAnotherJohn gets an Honorable Mention at OTB’s Caption Contest [11]. Me, too.
  • I have my differences with PJ O’Rourke.  But, you gotta admire anyone who can write:

    I looked death in the face. All right, I didn’t. I glimpsed him in a crowd. I’ve been diagnosed with cancer, of a very treatable kind. I’m told I have a 95% chance of survival. Come to think of it — as a drinking, smoking, saturated-fat hound — my chance of survival has been improved by cancer.

    A sense of humor is the best medicine possible. Best wishes from here, PJ on your recovery.

  •  Amidst all of this, is the bit tith Tony Rezko, Apparently, he’s been visiting the courthouse of late, and rumor is, he’s singing like a canary. [12] One would hope that if in fact there’s enough to pull Obama down, they’re going to act before November, and spare the nation another Clintonseque embarrassment. But this is Chicago we’re talking about, after all, so who knows?
  • I mentioned last night that Europe seemed to be affcted by reality with regards to it’s enviro-whackjobs laws.  Today, McQ looks closely at that subject. [13]