The Sunshine Empire

I am a bit under the weather, and am enjoying my favorite green beverage, but being home in the afternoon I turned on the television just in time to see the economy of the United States start to crater. Now I am a bit torn on this bill. I feel by all accounts those who feel that we do not have the money to bail out Wall Street, and that we should not bail out Wall Street on principal are right. Yet those who say that the credit crunch now strangling the credit markets will directly end up in massive job losses are right too.

The massive political opportunism on the part of the Republican candidate is plain for all but the hardened Bushies to see. The Arizona Senator said he suspended his campaign, which he did not. He said that he was going to be in the middle of the bail out bill negotiations and have a strong voice, which he did not. He asked no questions in a meeting with Senator Obama and the President that he demanded. He said he would not debate until there was an agreement, and it’s now three days after he debated and we still do not have an agreement. He ridicules Senator Obama for wanted to phone it in, then justifies one of his days during the negotiations where he did not step foot on Capitol Hill through a spokesperson by saying that he could manage business by phone and did not want to be there. Meanwhile Senator Obama said he would not insert himself into the process, something both Democrats and Republicans say John McCain did, and Senator Obama did not.

Whether you are a supporter of Senator Obama’s or Senator McCain’s, no one can deny that the political gambit that McCain tried has been a moderate failure. Obama got a little more than the average bump that a candidate’s campaign can expect from a debate win, which is to say barely nothing. John McCain threw his third straight Hail Mary, and it fell incomplete.

I found the schizophrenic performance of John Boner of Ohio (I know I misspelled his name. I’m not the one that distributed buttons during one election for the House that said, “Say Bay-ner”) particularly impressive. The day before giving lukewarm endorsement to the plan and saying bravely “I don’t know how many votes we’ll get” then effortlessly pivoting to blaming a man who wasn’t even in the building for the collapse. Brilliant.