It’s a Swindle

I’m beginning to suspect that the really wild day of chaos in Washington, DC, and the House GOP “rebellion,” was simply a setup to fake a large “rift” with the White House on “free market principles” that admittedly were first written down earlier the same day (read the article).  The reason? So that John MeCain can “negotiate with House GOP rebels” tomorrow and “save the deal” that the Democrats, Bush White House, and finance lobbyists had already worked out and finished before McCain’s plane touched down. Of course this won’t be allowed to happen until about 30 minutes too late for a plane to make it from Washington, DC to Oxford, Mississippi, thus scuttling the Presidential Debate. Oh, and the pension funds of America’s retirees, riding the resulting roller coaster on Wall Street? Fuck em, says John MeCain. P.S.  The spelling of MeCain’s name is intentional, not Freudian.  And I know that’s a Politico article, possibly the first one ever linked by this blog.  Here are a few quotes from last night, from various sources:

[Barney] Frank gave reporters copies of the House Republicans’ set of principles, and he said that their primary goal — insuring bad bank loans, rather than buying them — had already been rejected by Paulson as unworkable. He noted that no House Republicans raised the insurance idea at a House hearing yesterday; if anyone had, he said, Paulson would have rejected the idea out of hand. 

In fact, when Boehner brought up the ridiculous, last minute sketch of a “new Republican plan” during the White House meeting, it was none other than Barack Obama that immediately asked Paulson if the plan was workable. Paulson’s reply? “No.”

“I think Sen. McCain was hurting politically on the economic issue,” Frank just told reporters. “I think this was a campaign ploy for Sen. McCain. I think they then had this problem that there might not have been enough of a deadlock for him to resolve. I don’t know what motivated what, but the next thing we know, he’s in a position, frankly, where he’s making it harder to get things done rather than negotiate differences.

Kevin Smith, a spokesman for House Republican Leader John Boehner, said the speed with which Dodd’s plan was put together was designed “to deny Senator McCain a role in trying to craft a bipartisan solution.”

How DARE a bipartisan group of senior Democrats and Republicans work all week to make a deal, and succeed, without waiting for John McCain to arrive late Thursday afternoon to take credit for everything they’ve done? But never fear, tomorrow (after the markets crash) he’ll put them all straight and “save the day.”