To a new world of gods and monsters!

I wrote this yesterday morning but didn't get it finished. In light of the Senate's asshattery today I'm going to add a little update at the end.

Here's how I would sum up the state of things in Washington right now with the financial crisis.

A = A lame duck President who may be sincere about the need for action or may be cynically using the crisis to rob the federal piggy bank one last time before he leaves office.

B = The Democratic leadership (Pelosi/ Reid) who believe they need to do something or they'll get blamed with the inevitable collapse.

C = The actual Democratic segment of the Democratic congress who won't sign on to any plan that doesn't help regular Americans through this crisis.

D = Die hard Republican members of congress who want to use this crisis to push through more deregulation. Plus they want to pose as populists who actually care what voters think.

A proposed the original $700 billion dollar bailout and in negotiation with B they worked out a "compromise" that was really just the initial plan with progressive bobbles attached.

C and D hated the plan and torpedoed it. After the vote D blamed B for their votes because B said something mean about them.

There appears to no situation in which A and B working together will be able to provide a bill that would appeal to either or both C and D.

Any solution generated by D would be no solution at all and should be rejected out of hand. They need to be removed from the equation.

I say we let C propose a solution and push it through. They seem to be the only group that have the country's best interests in mind.

UPDATE 10/1 - The absolute worse thing we could do would be to ignore my suggestion about rejecting solutions from D out of hand, but that appears to be exactly what Senate Democrats are trying to do.

Fuckers are tacking right. God, I hate our Democratic leadership.

There's another old saying, Senator: Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining.

One of my favorite simian bloggers responded ably to my challenge to identify victories achieved by the Democratic congress since they took over in 2006. Without re-opening that particular can of worms, I do want to take issue with his comment that "I must have been one of those kids that got everything I wanted for Christmas as a child."

No, no I didn't.

In the end I don't think the analogy works very well when you factor in the fact that Santa isn't on my payroll and my local congressman is. One of them works for me and the other's a chubby elvish freelancer. (Both like milk and cookies.)

But, for the sake of argument, let's run with the analogy. Let's say you wrote a letter to Santa reminding him that you've been a good little boy or girl and listing out some of the things that might make good gifts, if he was in the mood. At the top of the list you put the things you really, really wanted like a shiny red bike or that Malibu Barbie you've had your eye on. At the bottom of your list was things like baseball cards or school supplies.

Now let's say Santa skipped everything else on the list including the bike with the only gift you had under the tree on Christmas morning was school supplies. It'd be hard not to be disappointed, no? Especially when your elephantine brother who constantly misbehaves gets everything he wants.

You'd find yourself asking what the point is of being good in the first place? You'd start to wonder if there was any justice in the world. You'd probably find yourself getting to the place where you had no use for Santa since he doesn't listen anyway.

You'd ultimately wind up voting Santa's sorry ass out of office the first chance you got since he was an ungrateful son-of-a-bitch who doesn't give a rat's ass about people like you who leave cheap cookies rather than the gourmet cookies he enjoys.

If God didn't want them sheared, he would not have made them sheep.

Like much of the progressive side of the web I don't hold out much hope that congress will hold firm in the face of a tantrum by President Veruca Salt screaming for retroactive immunity for telecoms. Having said that; one of the things that strikes me as more than a little odd about the current situation is that the House is currently the voice of reason while the Senate has become a rubber-stamp for the passions of the moment.

Isn't this the diametrically opposed to the framer's intentions with our two great legislative bodies?

It's like, how much more black could this be? and the answer is none. None more black.

In answer to a question regarding the incoming Democratic congress' differing approach to the war in Iraq Bush said:

We're not going to leave before the job is done. And obviously, we've got a lot of work to do with some members of Congress. I don't know how many members of Congress said, get out right now - I mean, the candidates running for Congress in the Senate. I haven't seen that chart.

I'd like to see that chart myself because if you were to ask the question "how many Democratic congressman say we should immediately pull out of Iraq" the answer would be none. None congressmen.