Science makes no value judgments, unless you try to take their funding.

Hey you guys are the ones supporting a political system that allows people to vote other people's money into their own pockets.

What I kind of worry about, is let's say the economy really does go in the ****ter, to the point that a large percentage of Americans are destitute and desperately seeking Government handouts/entitlements. Shouldn't that be a great thing for Democratic ideals, and shouldn't that help their party take off? That scares me.

I actually hope you are right

That's really what i consider myself .. a libertarian republican ... so i would be thrilled

is anybody else looking forward to seeing palin getting utterly destroyed in a debate?

Palin vs Biden has potential to be an all time hilarious debate. Palin's repetition of talking points and Biden's potential to rant about God knows what.

Im interested in the debate

i'll admit im a little scared for palin

but, biden is known to put his foot in his mouth too.

dont be scared. did you hear any of her interview with katie couric

Biden isn't exactly a rhetorical master.

I'm sure both will stay on script and the whole debate will end up being pretty boring....

I agree...

And since I'm a registered Democrat (LOL), I guess that means I'm a Libertarian Democrat....

Bush is addressing the nation at 7:45 AM EST tomorrow morning. If its anything like his earlier fearmongering address to the nation on the economy, then we should expect a lot of fear mongering

Oberman did a funny bit on that that I'll try and find on youtube- can't find it

BTW, I'm impressed that 3/4 of the house republicans and a decent percentage of house democrats had the balls to not bend over to pressure from above and voted down the bailout measure. Us voters made our opinions known and our representatives actually listened. Woot.

shouldn't we wait to see if the whole economy implodes before celebrating? I think the no vote was the right thing, but I'm still scared as hell, as should you be.

BTW, I really agree that the fearmongering is one of the things that really really started me thinking about this mess. It's such a cheap sales ploy. A clean rational discussion of the situation would go a long way in my book.

For me to accept a bailout proposal, it needs to include a harsh dose of accountablility and consequences.

I could see the Republican party going more libertarian, though not all the way to Ron Paul type stuff. The main reason for this is that it still looks very likely that some massive bailout plan will be put into effect, probably with a lot of opposition on both sides, but certainly a lot more from Republicans. In 4 years the economy is likely to suck still not matter what happens now and the bailout will be a nice scapegoat, especially in the Republican primaries. I could see a candidate that rails against that getting some traction even if he is libertarian on social issues or wants to actually cut military spending.

"Libertarian Democrat" is one of the funniest things I've ever heard.

as opposed to fascist democrat

which in California which has made it illegal to talk on a cell phone in the car, illegal to homeschool children, and so much more, isn't far from the truth

making trans-fat illegal in NYC is pretty ghey too

This is true... But I'm also convinced that grand scale tinkering by the government isn't in the long term going to affect the pricing of our stock market or economy and will quite possibly hurt it.

When did credit start to dry up? A year ago when mortgage backed instruments really began to tank OR just recently after we started bailing out banks (i.e. Bear Sterns)? Why should any bank worry about solving their problems when a government bailout will give them a taxpayer paid rescue.

agree mark

it's not the deregulation that caused this
it's the deregulation with the socialist security blanket known as the govt that did

Hehe, yeah... I've been a registered Democrat since I was able to vote because my Dad was a left-wing pro-union anti-business blue collar liberal.

Because of economic fortune in my life, I've moved (grown?) way way to the other side of the spectrum. I haven't voted for a Democrat in ages. I'm just too lazy to change my party affiliation.

Have you guys tried out what they do in China? If you screw up instead of a taxpayers paid bailout you get a taxpayers paid bullet.
Im sure bankers would screw up a lot less.

I don't see how that would effect their sex life.

Mark,

The Fed did not stop publishing the M3 (the statistic which measures the total money supply) this week. That was done well over a year ago. You can't just keep pumping money into the economy without destroying the dollar via inflation.

And there was a 612 billion dollar defense appropriations bill passed this week.

Watch the Ron Paul video I linked to earlier where he discuss how many billions in new credit the Fed has pumped into the economy just this week. Banks are borrowing from the Fed over 100 billion/day.

Whats happening right now is systemic and has little to do with whether or not this bailout happens. The bailout is just a band-aid designed to enrich the banks and help stave off disaster just a little longer

/doom and gloom