"This Republican Party Needs to Be Burned"

"This Republican Party needs to be burned, razed to the ground, and the furrows sown with salt." So says Brad DeLong after the bailout vote, and I heartily agree, especially since McCain, in one of the stupidest, most shameless pieces of demagoguery since Hitler burned down the Reichstag, is trying to blame Obama for the bailout's defeat. This is the most contemptible, dishonest smear I have ever heard in politics. If there are McCain supporters reading this, I dare you: Defend this walking piece of excrement to me. Don't expect a polite response.

For those of you who are glad the bailout plan failed ... I think this comment on Kevin Drum's blog sums up the stakes pretty well:

Credit is the oxygen of global business, and because the market has been flooded with toxic assets that no one knows how to value and that everyone previously thought was "good as cash."

As a result, no one knows who is solvent and who is credit-worthy, so the commercial paper market -- which floats short term loans to businesses and banks so they can balance their books each night -- has shut down. Businesses are living on lines of credit right now, but those will soon dry up as well.

And when that happens, the hardware store down the street will go out of business because, suddenly, it can't get a line of credit to buy inventory. Farmers will go bust because they can't get credit to pay for seed and labor. Big corporations will have to severely cut back operations because they won't be able to fund them.

This is no longer about stocks and bonds. It's gone way beyond that. The unregulated global commercial banking system is collapsing because of a crisis of confidence, just as the consumer banking system collapsed in 1929. If it isn't stopped, the effects will be just as profound.

We were on the edge of the abyss and the Republican Party just pushed us over. There's no telling when we'll hit bottom.

KILL KILL KILL

I thought I couldn't get any more pissed off, but then, to borrow Tama's phrase, the RNC shit in a ziplock bag and mailed it to us, in the form of this lovely new video:

They never come out and say "Obama is responsible for the bailout" of course. They just juxtapose his rallies with the meltdown of Wall Street. (I'm sure their next ad will mash them up with the Battle of Stalingrad or something.) Then they say we can't afford Obama because we have to save the banks, even though they're making sure we don't save the banks, while blaming their vote on Obama and Pelosi and ... CAN WE FINALLY BE RID OF THESE LYING SACKS OF SHIT, PLEASE?!?!?!