Congress will never be bipartisan UNTIL we gain control of it

I am not sure Pelosi understands what bipartisan means.  It does not mean the ability to do whatever the Democrats desire.  If the Dems gain to 60 senators, the conservative voice will be shut off.  No filabusters, no chance to override a veto (I can’t think of a scenario where this congress would override an Obama signing) and even no chance to have a radio station/tv station worth watching. 

The First Amendment was put in place to ensure healthy debate.  If one party has the control the debate is slashed, burned, and tossed to the wayside.   Two parties involved in the governental process, that is the definiton of bipartisan!!! Somehow a PC version of bipartisan has entered our vernacular.  Bipartisan now means to compromise with flowers in our hair whilst we ride on the backs of unicorns  to the free health clinic.  Who cares if there is argument and indecision.  That is how it was meant to be.  When one party is too powerful the will of the people is not always carried out.  Pelosi somehow thinks that if the Dems carry congress bipartisanship will magically emerge.  Man are we in trouble.

-reagan21

Financial Crisis in Bullet Points

Found this linked from Redstate. It is pretty much a verbal distillation of what went wrong. From the adam smith blog: 

• Anti-redlining laws in the US, passed in 1977 and strengthened in 1995, forced lenders to give mortgages to people they knew might not be able to afford repayments. People who haven’t had a full-time job in years were lent six figure sums.
• In order to manage the risk this exposed them too, lenders packaged these sub-prime mortgages up with other ones and traded them as derivatives (collateral debt obligations, or CDOs).
• People start to default on mortgages, but because the CDOs are so opaque, no one knows how much liability they, or others, are exposed to. So the banks stop lending to each other and the credit crunch begins.
• Now the banks which have overextended themselves – lending far more money than they have in deposits, and relying on being able to borrow cheaply to finance their business model – are in serious trouble. Ultimately, it’s a cash flow problem.
• Word gets out and Britain witnesses the first run on a bank in over 100 years. Confidence evaporates on both sides of the Atlantic. Share prices plummet, as one bank after another is infected. Investment banks, which do not take deposits and therefore rely most heavily on the ability to borrow, are hardest hit.
• Two possible policy responses emerge. One, motivated by the idea of moral hazard, says that banks must be allowed to fail. If government bails them out, they’ll behave even more riskily in future. Plus, why should the taxpayers fund a welfare state for bankers? The other school of thought stems from the idea of systemic risk, that allowing banks to collapse would endanger the entire financial system (and, by extension, the capitalist economy).
• Fears about systemic risk win out. Governments intervene to try and restore confidence. In the US, the Bush administration attempts to buy up all the bad debt, aiming to get banks lending to each other again.
• This what happens when a bubble bursts. For years, the availability of cheap consumer goods from emerging economies like India and China kept down inflation. This meant governments and central banks thought they could flood the market with liquidity (i.e. cheap credit) and get away with it. They couldn’t. With too much money chasing too few goods, an asset bubble built up. House prices, in particular, were hugely over-inflated. It got worse after 9/11 when, facing an economic downturn, the US and the UK both pumped even more liquidity into the market. With breathtaking arrogance, politicians claimed to have abolished the economic cycle. In reality, they had simply swapped an immediate and relatively minor readjustment for a much harder landing several years down the line.
   

Karl Rove Destroys Pelosi

The blame for this mess falls squarely at the feet of Nancy Pelosi. SHe had the ability to force this turd sandwich through but failed to lead.

Megan McArdle: Pelosi’s Big Screw Up

Megan McArdle at the Atlantic:

Pelosi screwed up royally.  She is the Democratic Tom DeLay.  Newt Gingrich was an ideologue, but Tom DeLay was simply a partisan, most keenly interested in maximizing his party’s political power.  Pelosi cut a deal in which, as far as I can tell, every single Republican in a safe seat had to vote yes so that the Democrats could maximize their no votes.  Given that the Republican caucus is pretty much in open revolt, this was beyond moronic.  She then spent a week openly and repeatedly blaming the Republicans and the Bush administration for the current crisis.  The way she set things up, it was “Heads I win, tails you lose”:  vote for the deal and I’ll paint you as heartless reactionaries bailing out your fat cat friends.  If you’re going to do that, you’d better make sure you have some goddamn margin for error in your own party.  She didn’t.  Then she got up and delivered yet another speech blaming the Republicans for the bailout deal she was about to pass.

Great take on this. Pelosi’s battle cry was ridiculous. She will be remembered as one of the worst speakers of the house. She couldn’t pry ten more votes? Did she even try?

Politico: McCain on the Failout

From Politico:

Shortly after the bailout vote, a statement from the campaign of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) blamed the loss on “the Democratic leadership: Senators [Barack] Obama and [Harry] Reid, Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi and others.

“Their partisan attacks were an effort to gain political advantage during a national economic crisis. By doing so, they put at risk the homes, livelihoods and savings of millions of American families,” said the statement, released in the name of senior policy adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin.

[…]

“From the minute John McCain suspended his campaign and arrived in Washington to address this crisis, he was attacked by the Democratic leadership: Senators Obama and Reid, Speaker Pelosi and others. Their partisan attacks were an effort to gain political advantage during a national economic crisis. By doing so, they put at risk the homes, livelihoods and savings of millions of American families.

“Barack Obama failed to lead, phoned it in, attacked John McCain, and refused to even say if he supported the final bill.

“Just before the vote, when the outcome was still in doubt, Speaker Pelosi gave a strongly worded partisan speech and poisoned the outcome.

“This bill failed because Barack Obama and the Democrats put politics ahead of country.” — McCain-Palin senior policy adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin

Before McCain Came To Washington, Senate Democrats Called On McCain For Leadership In Economic Crisis

Video of House Republicans Blaming Pelosi

AllahPundit at Hotair has it linked here

Pelosi Speech that Killed the Bailout

From what I understand, House Republicans including our man crush Eric Cantor are indicating that the partisan tone of Nancy Pelosi, including shutting out Hosue Republicans from negotiations led to the failout. The above video is apparently the straw that broke the pig’s back.