A New Opportunity

Over the past week I'll I've heard a lot of members of Congress say "no one likes the proposed bailout plan, but its the best we could come up with". Well, the best they could come up with failed to get the support of many Republicans in the House of Representatives today, and as a result the Dow lost 777 points. 

I say its time for the Democrats to come up with a plan they truly believe in and pass it. Who is going to stop them? They have majorities in both houses, and the administration apparently has no friends left in Washington. This means they will probably be happy with anything they can get at this point. 

If the Dems come up with a good plan that ends up working, I really think progressives have an opportunity to put the final nail in the coffin of the philosophy that got us into this mess in the first place. 

More Voices More Choices

Friday night Ralph Nader was on Realtime with Bill Maher. In this clip Ralph makes his most salient point of the entire show. 

I have to say, Obama's position on Afghanistan has been starting to worry me as of late. I think he tends to highlight the military component of his policy because it allows him to project strength. He did state in the debate that there has to be other components to our strategy in Afghanistan. Namely, working to cleanup the corruption of the government and providing agricultural aid that will help improve the Afghan economy. 

But Nader's point is an extremely good one (just ask the Russians). I would also add that the United States and its NATO allies have been increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan. Yet, the violence there is at its highest levels since the beginning of the war. So while additional troops may help with the security situation, we have to have more comprehensive strategy moving forward. The question is, who do you trust to develop and implement that strategy? John McCain or Barack Obama?

Conservatism May Need a Bailout When this is All Said and Done

I'm going to make this short. The past two weeks have really been bad for the U.S. economy. Congress is in the midst of $700 billion bailout of wall street. The consensus seems to be that without it we may be facing another great depression. I just feel like these last couple of weeks have done a lot of damage to the conservative philosophy of government. To be sure, there are those hardcore conservatives out there that oppose this bailout, but even the President seems to be 100% behind it. I have a hard time believing that these die hard "conservatives" would not do the same if they were in Bush's position.

Let's reflect on this for a moment. These are the guys that push for more and more deregulation of the private sector. Their argument is that everything will work out fine if people would just let the market do its thing unfettered. After this last week, I find this argument laughable. Not only that, these are the people that say a national healthcare system that provides insurance for every man, woman, and child is tantamount to socialism. From their perspective it's just an expensive, big government solution to a problem that is handled best by the free market. But come next week the U.S. government will be in the business of propping up its most important financial institutions to the tune of $700 billion. Sounds an awful lot like socialism to me.