Because who doesn't love Sarah Silverman

So McCain suspended his campaign. The previous statement is only true if by “suspend”, he means carried out all campaign events yesterday and today, met with the wife of a bajillionaire british aristocrat, Bono too, oh and taped an interview with Couric. (Did we see Palin’s interview with Couric? Really, this is the woman that you want a heartbeat away from the presidency? Really?) I heard that he has stopped airing campaign ads and fundraising. An interesting statement seeing as since he is taking public financing, he’s not allowed to fundraise. Perhaps he meant that he was suspending fundraising by the RNC, somehow I doubt it. (and he's still running ads, and Palin is having an event at Ground Zero today, yes, GROUND ZERO.)

Oh, and now he wants to delay the debates so he has time to address the crisis. Because 1) he can’t do two things at once, and 2) though he had time for the wife of a british aristocrat, Bono, and Katie Couric, he does not have to have an honest debate with the other candidate in front of the American people.

The truth is, he’s not ready to debate. The truth is that he wants to delay that presidential debate until next Thursday, which is the VP debate, then reschedule the VP debate. Something tells me that the VP debate would never be rescheduled. And the truth is, she’s not ready. They may have been able to keep her from the press, but when she’s on stage with Joe Biden, there’s nowhere to hide….and he will eat. her. up.

McCain also skipped an appearance on Letterman last night saying that he had to get back to Washington immediately to address the financial CRISIS. While taping the show without McCain, Letterman was surprised to hear that McCain was not actually on a plane back to Washington, but was instead at another CBS sound stage, taping an interview with Katie Couric. He then showed the live feed of McCain with Couric, yelling at the image “Can I give you a lift to the airport?” In retribution, he had Keith Olbermann on the show. I haven’t seen it yet, because I fell asleep like a baby last night before 10:30, but I’ll review it later, and I’m sure I’ll post a clip or two.

I did manage to stay awake for Bush’s address to the nation, but only because he kept talking about what a dire crisis it was, and if Congress doesn’t immediately hand over a check for $700 BILLION that the economy would tank, we would be thrown into another Great Depression, unemployment would soar, small businesses and farmers would suffer and basically we would all DIE. But let’s walk through this whole bail out (which Republicans don’t believe in, bailouts, I mean – it goes against the free market that they love so much. Except when it’s in tatters, then it’s ok to give government assistance to the tune of $700 BILLION).

1. Financial institutions made a lot of bad investment decisions, specifically purchasing an exotic financial instrument called mortgage backed securities.
2. The housing market crashed and a LOT of people found that they could no longer afford the interest rates that had been reset on their mortgages. They stopped paying.
3. The securities that financial institutions had purchased were now backed by nothing but trash.
4. LOTS of financial institutions fold because they had lots of money in these trash backed securities.
5. Bush belatedly decides that we can’t have the whole of Wall Street crashing down and decides that we need to take the worthless securities off the hands of Wall Street and give them to the American people while bilking the public out of $700 BILLION. A fair trade, right? Oh and we’d be giving $700 BILLION to the people that fucked up in the first place.

(That’s like your gambler friend losing $50,000 (that his mother gave him for safe keeping), the loan sharks are after him they’re going to break his legs etc etc. So, to get him out of the mess, you give him your life savings, and your parent’s life savings, and your coworker’s life savings, and everyone you know, their life saving’s too. And to top it all off, you give him permission to spend it however he wants without your input or veto. AND he gives your name as a guarantee to the loan shark, so that if he were to go and lose all the money again, without paying off the loan shark, the loan shark would break your legs, and not his. Nice friend huh? He gets the money, and you’re the poor schmuck holding the bag of doggy doo doo, except you’re also holding if for your parents, your coworkers and everyone you know.)

Oh and LOTS of economists say that we shouldn’t rush into anything….not that anyone in the Bush Administration cares what experts say…

In the mean time, while McCain is off campaigning today (yes, campaigning) Congressional Dems and Republicans are hammering out the bailout – they should have it pretty much wrapped prior to Bush’s photo op at 4 eastern. And as Keith O pointed out last night, it’s a good thing that Bush called this “Economic summit” for today, because had he not, McCain would have arrived in Washington with nothing to do. See, the bailout is being hammered out by those congressman that are actually on the relevant committees, behind closed doors. Harry Reid even told McCain to stay away and not inject presidential politics into the process. And yet, now that campaigns will be descending on Washington today because of McCain’s bizarre hissy fit. So photo op = yes. But debate Obama in front of the American people = no.

SusanG makes an excellent point over at DailyKos –

McCain will skip the debate because of the “seriousness of the financial crisis” but he hasn’t read the 3 page proposal that is the Paulson Plan. See the video.



There is an excellent op-ed in today’s New York Times (jen e brought it to my attention) by Roger Cohen. Here are several excerpts, but I urge you to read it in full.

“...Sarah Palin loves the word “exceptional.” At a rally in Nevada the other day,the Republican vice-presidential candidate said: “We are an exceptional nation.” Then she declared: “America is an exceptional country.” In case anyone missedthat, she added: “You are all exceptional Americans...."

...But exceptionalism has taken an ugly twist of late. It’s become the angry refuge of the America that wants to deny the real state of the world...

American exceptionalism, taken to extremes, leaves you without the allies you need (Iraq), without the influence you want (Iran) and without any notion of risk (Wall Street). The only exceptionalism that resonates, as Obama put it to me last year, is one “based on our Constitution, our principles, our values and our ideals....”

I’m going to try to make this simple. On the Democratic side you have a guy whose campaign has been based on the Internet, who believes America may have something to learn from other countries (like universal health care) and who’s unafraid in 2008 to say he’s a “proud citizen of the United States and a fellow citizen of the world..."

Which leads me to write, In 2004, Barack Obama giving the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, said “I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper.” In this age of global connectedness, that idea does not stop at the border. From human rights to immigration, AIDs to poverty, we must address these issues from Washington to Moscow, Beijing to Tehran; because like Senator Obama said we are “fellow citizen[s] of the world.” From London to Santiago, Tokyo to Sarajevo, we are all brothers.

Enough mushy stuff. Here's a hilarious video from Sarah Silverman as part of a project called "The Great Schlep" - it's aim is to get Jewish grandkids to visit their grandparents in Florida, and ge them to vote Obama. Watch the video, laugh out loud.