Let’s just say that while Edwards was greedy and corrupt, I don’t think he had the “fire in the belly” to really hurt people that these recordings of Blagojevich have shown.

I’m not a great political blogger and for the truly astounding depth of scumbagginess that the Governor of Illinois has fallen to, start with Althouse, here and here. Her commenters are having some fun with this.

Gateway Pundit - just keep scrolling.

Classical Values - just keep scrolling.

UPDATE: From the comments below, you’ve got to read this, it’s short and makes a valid point I’ve not seen elsewhere.

WHOOPEE!!

Nothing I write is going to change anybody’s mind at this point (if ever).

There is something that I would like everyone to consider:

The President IS NOT as powerful as some would like to think. His veto can be torn up by Congress. Judges ARE NOT that powerful. If they strike a law down as unconstitutional, Congress can rewrite it and overcome the constitutional problems.

Outrage at the President and judges is misdirected, but it’s so much easier than outrage at the people who are truly responsible for our problems: our 535 congressmen.

The people who are powerful are Representatives and Senators, our Congress, all elected by various groups of us. And it is broken, rotten to the core with corruption with rules that encourage self-dealing.

It’s going to be difficult to do a makeover on Congress because the system requires us to do it from the inside, one congressional district and one state at a time.

For this to happen, citizens are going to have to come together and support good people to represent us. Neither party has a lock on corruption. Neither party has a lock on good people.

Joe is defined too narrowly as merely a plumber. Joe is more than that, don’t you think? He represents my pipefitter husband, his welder brother, whose two sons are actually plumbers!

And how are they different from my dad the logger and sawmiller, my stepbrother who followed in my dad’s footsteps? How are they that different from my brother who didn’t, but perhaps wishes he had?

How are my sons – a teacher in training and AF National Guardsman and a disabled, but determined man different from Joe? Do they not have dreams? Are they not working to make them reality? Why, yes they are. Are they perfect? I wish… though I love them as if they were.

Truly, I can’t think of a more “perfect” example of the American working man than today’s plumber. While no more dignified than ditch-digging, it requires more education and training (yes, there’s math and physics involved).

If I understand Democrat ideals (it’s entirely possible I do not), Joe the Plumber should be their poster boy. Yet… he’s not. Why? Why are middle Americans not represented by the Democrat Party? And why do so many of them think they are?

See Dean’s Forum Wide-Ranging Discussion of Financial Crisis, Taxpayer-Funded Rescue Bill - full video or clip from the University of Texas McCombs School of Business blog – McCombs Today.

Then scroll down the comments (7th one) and read what Economics Professor Brandl has to say:  

Bernanke, the Fed and the Treasury have to make it clear where the “bailouts” are going to stop.  This will help to put a floor under the financial markets and decrease uncertainty.  They need to be more transparent and clear as to who will be and who won’t be saved.  The piecemeal approach they are following is not working.  Also this “drawing of the line in the sand” should be coordinated with policymakers in other OECD countries as well as Russia and India.  Notice, I deliberately left out China.

Structuring the bailout as buying of assets was a mistake.  Instead the Treasury should have injected capital into the banks and taken an equity stake in return.  This would have punished stockholders in these firms by diluting their ownership stake.  This would also give the Treasury power in setting executive compensation at these firms.  Is this socialism?  No, it is a step in internalizing the fiduciary responsibility these firms have to the broader financial markets and economy.  The current “leaders” of these firms have demonstrated they are incapable of performing this role satisfactory.

The Treasury should be buying the mortgages of people and families who were truly victims and there are many.  But, the Treasury should not be using taxpayer money to bailout real estate speculators or those who should have know better as to what they were getting themselves into with these sub-prime and Alt-A mortgages.  But how does the Treasury make this distinction?  They need to set up some system, with oversight, to do this.  A mortgage-based RTC is what is needed.

Oh, yeah… remember the Resolution Trust Corporation? Why not use a model that worked fairly well?

Since the bailout has been structured as it is, Paulson should have named someone to run it, and the buying of bank assets, who has a great deal of experience and credibility.  Potential names include:

Bill Gross, Chief Investment Office at Pimco, who the Washington Post described as “the nation’s best-known bond-fund manager.”

Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the Board of Governors

Don Powell, former head of the FDIC and famed Texas banker

Glenn Hubbard, Dean of the Columbia Business School, former head of the Council of Economic Advisors

So who did Paulson pick?  A 35 year old former Goldman Sachs underling named Neel Kashkari. Needless to say, this was not a great confidence building move.

Once the current liquidity crisis ends the Fed, Treasury and the new President are going to have to put in place measures to ensure this doesn’t happen again.  Among the things they need to consider should be:

• Overhaul of the financial regulatory system.  Paulson’s idea on this in the spring was a first (but bad) attempt to do this.
• Ensure high quality regulators.  This means paying a decent salary to attract well educated and trained “bank examiners.”  The Fed, FDIC and other regulators need to pay salaries of say $125,000 a year to attract the best and the brightest if we expect them to correctly “oversee” sophisticated financial firms.
• Establish the “rules of the game” for future bailouts.  If any entity is going to be labeled as “too big to fail” who is going to pay “the price” for the bailout?  What will that price be?  My suggestion is to do the following:  make it clear to the board of directors as well as the executives of financial firms, that if the firm they control receives federal government assistance these people will pay personally.  That means, if you run a TBTF firm and that firm requires a government funded bailout, the Federal Government will seize your home, retirement funds, children’s trust funds and demand repayment of your salary for the last 5 years.  This is called internalizing the externality on a personal level.

These are only a few of the things that should be done.  Here is hoping the discussion continues long after the current crisis ends.

The above is also on Professor Brandl’s Macroeconomic Updates page (for now). I think you have to be a UT student or alumni or know a secret “hook ‘em” handshake to subscribe to the email list.

Of all the characteristics of a successful politician, none is more essential than bare-faced cheek. Never has this been more evident than in the past fortnight, as senior Democrat members of the US legislature have sought to lay all the blame for the country’s financial crisis on the executive arm of Government and Wall Street.Neither of these two institutions is blameless – far from it. Yet when I see such senior Democrats as Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and Christopher Dodd, Chairman of the Senate’s Banking Committee, play the part of avenging angels – well, I can only stand in silent awe at the sheer tight-bottomed nerve of it. These are men with sphincters of steel.

Once again, have supposed “do-gooders” hurt the ones they profess to love and help?

The saddest outcome of all this within America – apart from the crippling cost to the nation’s taxpayers – is that the very people the Democrats had intended to help will be the biggest victims: for many years to come banks will demand the most stringent terms for mortgages to the least well off.

We can hope that won’t be true, but even if it is — if one cannot afford the mortgage payment, it’s better they be denied.

via Classical Values

If you have an expert, a supposedly unbiased expert telling you that this is a good investment, should you question their motives?

Apparently so.

Read An Expert-Induced Bubble.

I still think that while the creation of Fannie Mae was a good idea 70 years ago, it should have been phased out instead of encouraged to grow. In every instance where its growth has been phenominal, it’s been a Democrat controlled Congress that has spurred it on. Note that I am not blaming Democrat or Republican presidents, but Congress.

Note also, that neither party is capable of always getting its way even if it is in the majority. Everything is ultimately bipartisan to some extent.

Finally, this entire fiasco is a good time to review whether government programs can improve the financial well-being of poor people, regardless their color. It is also a time to examine the playing of the “race card” every time regulation, oversight, or cutbacks are called for.

But does it go further than that? Do they fear it the spending bill will fail? Do they want they economy to fail, with or without the spending bill? I think that Pelosi is playing politics, fast and furious. She said the bill was in response to “failed” Bush policies of the last 8 years. Hasn’t it been adequately documented that the policies of the last 30+ years are responsible?

With all due respect (which may be none) I am of the opinion that Nancy Pelosi did not want this bill to pass. The reasons why may be numerous.

If I may quote myself (a comment on Ambivablog)

If Pelosi had really wanted this bill to pass, it would have. You cannot convince me that there were not 12 of the 95 Democrats who voted “no” that she couldn’t persuade to a “yes”. She has a bunch of carrots and a wheel barrel full of sticks to use, but she chose not to. Then she did everything she could to ensure that no “on the fence” Republican would be swayed to vote “yes”.

Yet she ( and her Democrat cronies) are doing a very good job of making it look like this was all the Republicans’ (and by default, John McCain’s) fault.

That takes a lot of talent if you ask me. Talent put to use NOT for the good of this nation or for its citizens.

Nancy Pelosi is not stupid, she’s mean-spirited and evil.

I do not want my blog to become a political blog. I’d much rather post pictures of my grandchildren. At one time, I thought about this place as a money-making venture. Being political is one way to do that. But it really isn’t a way suited to me. Been there, done that, found it’s only useful once every four years.

I’m a registered Republican, because I wanted to vote against David Duke 10.. 15… how many years ago was that? The only bumper sticker I’ve ever even considered putting on my car was one for Edwin Edwards, the crook, when he was opposing the racist (truly racist, not just a politically incorrect racist) David Duke.

(I also considered putting a “Don’t blame me, I voted for Jindal” sticker on my car. But I didn’t. I really hate bumper stickers.)

Bottom line – it’s Amba’s to promote if she chooses. Michael Reynolds doesn’t think I get the “politics” of this fiasco. Of course, I disagree!

One of those things is Congress. We’ve both agreed for some time now that most of them are self-infatuated idiots. This is not determined by party affiliation.  It’s come about watching them “work” on CSPAN.

The Anchoress has a few details: 545 people with too much power. I might add that those 545 people have a fundamental misunderstanding of their job description.

It’s performance review time for many of them. Let’s not be shy about imposing term limits.

Why were they both pissing me off? Well, Obama for dishonesty. His tax plan (or any other tax plan) cannot cut taxes for 95% of Americans and not bankrupt the country. When you consider that far more than 5% of the U.S. pay no federal income tax at all, it’s mathematically impossible. McCain for not following through on some of his statements and not responding to some of Obama’s accusations.

I was never enthusiastic about Obama. He never appeared to me to be inspiring, uplifting, intelligent beyond normal, or well-spoken above the high school debate level. Much as I disagree with Clinton on various issues, she’s mostly a policy pragmatist first. Obama is a policy shapeshifter.

My first choice on the Republican side was Fred Thompson. After that it became anybody but Huckabee. That anybody turned out to be McCain.

No matter who “wins” tonight’s debate, I’m still voting for McCain. I can’t stomach and we can’t pay for Obama’s plans. I come to that conclusion after having read his books and some (there’s tons) of his issues statements on his website.