At last! This week of mostly conservative-instigated stupidity, lies and corruption is over!

About the only thing positive that can be said about this week is that it's over. Between the conservative-caused destruction of the American banking system and its associated theft of unbelievable amounts of money from taxpayers by Congress on the one side and the utter idiocy of having to take the concentrated ignorance, immorality and ambition of Tracy Flick Sarah Palin reading note cards to the American voting public as she avoids answering questions on national politics, this weeks has reached a new low in American history.

Ian Welsh nails the bailout stupidity.

Who cares if the government is massively incentivized to protect the value, even assuming the government cares which is far from clear to me since for this plan to do anything it has to buy at far above market value? They're going to be sold the shittiest parts of the shitpile by far because what would you sell to them if you were the banks? Think about it. This stuff isn't called toxic waste for nothing. MBS's may have something behind them, but much of what's going to be sold are massively internally leveraged instruments like first loss bonds, credit default swaps, and other noxious stuff that hardly even has a name. Much of it won't even be mortgage based, and that which is won't necessarily give clear title to the mortgage proper (you can sell different parts of the mortgage to multiple different MBSs). The 700 billion will probably be gone before Obama even gets in power, so you're not betting on what Obama will do, you're betting on what Paulson and Bush will do. Furthermore Wall Street is already saying 700 billion won't be enough. (So, ok, you might be betting what Obama will do with the next 700 billion or so.) [Snip]

Exactly as written this is a huge giveaway of government money to private interests. That is its purpose. It is meant to bribe banks into lending to each other again. "Sure, it's not profitable to loan at below inflation, but we're making it up to you by buying your shit."

Of course, it is nice to know that our political leaders currently campaigning to become President and Vice President are taking the destruction of the American economy for the next two generations seriously and want to do something about it. That's clearly demonstrated in the seriousness with which last Thursday's "debate" between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin was taken.

Oh, wait. Sarah Palin was there. The "debate" was actually a great "Let's shove Palin up the ass of the American voters and see if they will notice." Aden Renkei of ph33r and loathing caught the zeitgeist very nicely.

Sarah Palin is a stupid, self important, ignorant bitch who I wouldn’t put in charge of wiping her own ass. And it’s not just that she’s dumb - which she is - it’s that she’s willfully ignorant of the facts and yet absolutely dead-bang certain that she’s right about her opinions. It’s more of this “governing from the gut” bullshit that we’ve been Chimping along with for the past eight years. I don’t know why it’s a taboo to say someone is too dumb to be President. Hell, most people don’t have the kind of mental sharpness necessary. That’s why it’s so important to pick the right person out of an entire country of potential leaders. But Sarah Palin? She’s not even worth considering. She’s fucking dumb, okay? [Snip]

I’d like to do a bit of a run down. A list, if you will, of the things we’ve learned about Sarah Palin from her very limited, groomed, handled private interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric.

• Sarah Palin isn’t sure what the Bush Doctrine is. She couldn’t even take a wild guess. Everyone who heard her ask “In what respect, Charlie?” knew it, no matter what sort of semantics argument you want to get into over what different meanings that phrase has encompassed.
• Sarah Palin doesn’t know that Freddie Mac and Fannie May weren’t being funded by the federal government before their collapse.
• Sarah Palin thinks that the $700 billion bailout has something to do with health care costs.
• Sarah Palin can only name one Supreme Court case - Roe v. Wade. She couldn’t even conjure up Dred Scott, which even Bush was able to do in the second debate with John Kerry. Speaking of Bush, she couldn’t think of Bush v. Gore. Or Brown v. Board of Education. Or Hustler v. Falwell. Or FCC v. Pacifica (Carlin’s seven words). Or, and this is most stunning of all, Exxon v. Baker - concerning the Exxon Valdez. A case which rendered a ruling during her time as Governer of Alaska, and about which she made public statements in protest of the decision.
• Sarah Palin either could not or would not name a single newspaper or magazine that she reads. She couldn’t think of one. Not the New York Times, the Daily News, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune. Not Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Reports. Hell, she couldn’t even think of a local paper in Alaska. Sarah Palin, by the way, has a degree in Journalism. No shit.
• Sarah Palin cannot name a single instance of John McCain favoring regulation of industry, despite being more than willing to lie right into the camera and say that McCain has been championing regulation for twenty-six years.

There’s probably more, but I could be here all night. The point is, she doesn’t know shit about shit. She has opinions - uninformed ones - and she’s sticking to them come hell or high water.

Click the link to ph33r and loathing, scroll down a bit and look at Renkei's most excellent flowchart that shows how Palin dealt with the debate questions. Or click the Mark Kleiman link Palinflow for the same flowchart.

It's hard to watch the vacuous Palin acting like someone who is significant and then watching the media lap it up and treat her seriously. The media is wasting its resources on her as the American economy is restructured on the fly in ways that will make America a much poorer nation for the next two more more generations.

Consider "The Wink" that Palin threw out at the end of the "debate." That was exactly like the wink that a topless dancer on stage throws at a guy in the audience who she thinks she can induce to give her a tip for taking off her clothes. Palin thought it was "cute." I can see what McCain saw in the aging cutesy beauty queen, but it damned sure had nothing to do with choosing someone to become President if President McCain died in office.

Palin, for all her flaws, is not at fault for the way she has been inflicted on the American public. John McCain did that.

It is a clear demonstration that McCain doesn't have the judgment necessary to be President. Instead of working to resolve the economic disaster that the Reaganite conservatives have bequeathed to America over the last three decades, John McCain has chosen the incompetent Sarah Palin as his Veep to shock and occupy the media and to simultaneously gather the support of the social conservatives. Actually, there is good reason to think that McCain is not yet aware that the bail out bill is about serious economic problems and not just another inside-Washington political exercise. The Palin crap is the direct result of John McCain's desperation to win the Presidency before he dies. Chalk it up to McCain's over-sized ego and lack of good judgment.

Sadly, it has worked. Now all he has to do is to run his lying super-negative campaign for the next five weeks and hope that his roll of the dice will succeed.

Who cares what happens to America as long as the privileged McCain gets elected President at last. The fact that America is spinning down the toilet in front of our eyes doesn't matter as long as John McCain's super-sized ego is satisfied, Right?