It pretty much is straight-up unconstitutional to just give DC a vote in the House without either a) making it a damn state or b) making it an amendment to the Constitution, but to be fair it was a particularly stupid part of the constitution, making the capital a weird lawless phantom zone. So we're sympathetic to critics of the bill who are, like, constitutional scholars! We're not sympathetic to the fucking disingenuous conservatives who happily signed up for warrantless wiretapping (and waging undeclared wars!) now wringing their hands that the nation's founding document is in peril because Eleanor Holmes Norton is allowed to have a vote that will be canceled out by the Congressmen from Utah's newest district.

Anyway she should get a lot of voting in before the case reaches the Supreme Court, that's all we're saying.

*Correction: the thing about poor black people is actually why they are upset.

Palestinians and their terrorist sympathizers streamed into Second Life Israel last week, as Real Life Israel launched missiles at Real Life Gaza. The aggrieved protesters promptly began destroying the quiet peace of the digital holy land, carrying signs and shouting obscenities at passing Jewish furries.

Second Life Israeli officials promptly beat back the threat.

Ms. Odets helped create SL Israel, so she maintains land permissions to the region. She began ejecting the most obstreperous protesters. "I had to be careful not to boot people who didn't actually do anything wrong," as she puts it. But the protesters kept coming, and eventually she felt forced to close all of SL Israel to outsiders. "Just shut it down for a little while. Just to make it stop. 'Cause people weren't wanting to be logical, or talk."

An intrepid reporter—truly a Second Life Joe the Plumber—ventured into the disputed territories and brought back reports of impassioned political debate between a Jew, a Muslim, and a rabbit named Shmoo Snook.

DC is an incestuous town and everyone knows and is basically friends with everyone else. The media-political complex has lots and lots of intermarried "journalists" and "operatives" and everyone has politely agreed to assume that everyone else is totally professional about it. So they get a bit tetchy when the Columbia Journalism Review is all "disclose your relationships or just be more independent or something" because what do those kids know?

If Tom Brokaw wants to play golf with John McCain that is his business (note: we don't know if John McCain can play golf but the two are still definitely probably friends). The standard argument is that one has to find concrete evidence of "bias" before one can claim these chummy relationships are no good, but honestly the "bias" is so ingrained in the process that it's a useless task and one is best served by appyling a gimlet-eyed suspicion to everyone one sees on the TV and then voting for Ron Paul.

The fact of the matter is regular work-a-day journalists, even the high-falutin well-off name ones, don't get finance. Because no one really gets finance besides financiers, and journos are all soft-sciences arts majors. Math is hard! Even now they don't "get" it (though everyone's on the tail end of their "conversant at cocktail parties" crash course, and it shows). Honestly, we spent a couple years studying for BFA, of course we have no fucking clue what happened here.

And as both media producers and media consumers, we're reasonably more conversant on many national public interest issues than Joe Sixpack Americans. And yes, in 2004 when the SEC decided to allow investment banks to self-regulate themselves we heard about it on Kos or something and were outraged and all that. But:

Yet major newspapers did not report on the voluntary program's adoption in 2004, which the Times now trumpets as a turning point. (The Journal ran an eight-paragraph piece on Page C4.)

And honestly there were so many other things to be outraged about in 2004!

The fact that serious business and finance journalism is written in opaque for-experts-by-experts style certainly helped the crisis along. The fact that the first real attempt at populist entertaining business journalism was the fact-free Bud Lite-sponsored happy hour that is Fox Business is obviously indicative of the larger problem here, which is that no one understood that the nation's economy was built on a house of cards except for the people who didn't care, the people who constructed the house of cards, and Ron Paul.

So we understand the crisis through an unhelpful lens of politics—we can explain the political machinations behind the bailout bill, yes, but is it good or bad policy? Paul Krugman says it's bad-but-necessary, or something. What a cop-out!

The People are actually to blame, yes; the stupid people who didn't pay attention to the terms of their loans and lived outside their means and gambled everything away while gorging themselves on bacon-wrapped shrimp at Red Lobster. Except who were the ones pushing the "ownership society," giving huge incentives for homeownership to people who shouldn't own homes, never providing anything but misleading information, convincing themselves that housing prices would never ever ever fall? Both political parties, two presidents, and all the respectable press. There was a dereliction of duty by everyone in the nation responsible for serving the public trust, which certainly used to mean journalists too.

It took Time until March of this year to explain credit default swaps, but at least they did explain it in March. And now we're probably in for another corrective period, in which like after the Lewinsky free-for-all and the credulous lead-up to the Iraq war, the press will spend a self-flagellating year promising to do better in the future. When honestly all they need to do is edit the business section so we can understand it and move that shit to the front page every now and then.

It'll go back to another vote in the House. Maybe. Something weird happened here, by the way, because in the modern era, votes don't go to the floor of the house until party leaders know how the rank and file will vote. Bills don't make it out of committee unless they're going to pass. This was either too volatile and rushed to work, or Pelosi lost control of her own party, or Boehner lied to her about how many House Republicans were going to grin and bear it.

So. Now, because of the Jewish Holidays, nothing will get done until Wednesday.

"Asked about the next step, Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said it would be up to those who opposed the bill." That is troubling!

Basically, nothing can get done until the election is done. Which is still a bit of a ways away! So let's hope this collapse of the entire financial sector can hold off, for a few weeks, while either another almost-identical bailout bill is drafted and pushed through or Dems create their own fuck-you bill that maybe nationalizes everything like Krugman and Brad DeLong want. (We like that option!) (It's a fantasy, but a guy can dream.)

The Dems, obviously, don't want to make this a one-party bill, because then they'll own the "HUGE BAILOUT." But, you know, they could draft an entirely different plan (the Dodd/Frank plan as proposed originally seemed sufficiently different from the Paulson "plan" to warrant a different name) and try to reframe the debate as Paulson's BAILOUT versus their tough love or whatever, but their majority is too small and their instincts too chickenshit to do that. So basically they'll muddle along as the banks burn, or something. Maybe we'll all be fine! Who needs credit anyway.

ANYWAYS President Obama is going to inherit one hell of a shitshow.

Abercrombie
Aderholt
Akin
Alexander
Altmire
Baca
Bachmann
Barrett (SC)
Barrow
Bartlett (MD)
Barton (TX)
Becerra
Berkley
Biggert
Bilbray
Bilirakis
Bishop (UT)
Blackburn
Blumenauer
Boustany
Boyda (KS)
Braley (IA)
Broun (GA)
Brown-Waite, Ginny
Buchanan
Burgess
Burton (IN)
Butterfield
Buyer
Capito
Carney
Carson
Carter
Castor
Cazayoux
Chabot
Chandler
Childers
Clay
Cleaver
Coble
Conaway
Conyers
Costello
Courtney
Cuellar
Culberson
Cummings
Davis (KY)
Davis, David
Davis, Lincoln
Deal (GA)
DeFazio
Delahunt
Dent
Diaz-Balart, L.
Diaz-Balart, M.
Doggett
Doolittle
Drake
Duncan
Edwards (MD)
English (PA)
Fallin
Feeney
Filner
Flake
Forbes
Fortenberry
Foxx
Franks (AZ)
Frelinghuysen
Gallegly
Garrett (NJ)
Gerlach
Giffords
Gillibrand
Gingrey
Gohmert
Goode
Goodlatte
Graves
Green, Al
Green, Gene
Grijalva
Hall (TX)
Hastings (WA)
Hayes
Heller
Hensarling
Herseth Sandlin
Hill
Hinchey
Hirono
Hodes
Hoekstra
Holden
Hulshof
Hunter
Inslee
Issa
Jackson (IL)
Jackson-Lee (TX)
Jefferson
Johnson (GA)
Johnson (IL)
Johnson, Sam
Jones (NC)
Jordan
Kagen
Kaptur
Keller
Kilpatrick
King (IA)
Kingston
Knollenberg
Kucinich
Kuhl (NY)
Lamborn
Lampson
Latham
LaTourette
Latta
Lee
Lewis (GA)
Linder
Lipinski
LoBiondo
Lucas
Lynch
Mack
Manzullo
Marchant
Matheson
McCarthy (CA)
McCaul (TX)
McCotter
McHenry
McIntyre
McMorris Rodgers
Mica
Michaud
Miller (FL)
Miller (MI)
Mitchell
Moran (KS)
Murphy, Tim
Musgrave
Myrick
Napolitano
Neugebauer
Nunes
Ortiz
Pascrell
Pastor
Paul
Payne
Pearce
Pence
Peterson (MN)
Petri
Pitts
Platts
Poe
Price (GA)
Ramstad
Rehberg
Reichert
Renzi
Rodriguez
Rogers (MI)
Rohrabacher
Ros-Lehtinen
Roskam
Rothman
Roybal-Allard
Royce
Rush
Salazar
Sali
Sánchez, Linda T.
Sanchez, Loretta
Scalise
Schiff
Schmidt
Scott (GA)
Scott (VA)
Sensenbrenner
Serrano
Shadegg
Shea-Porter
Sherman
Shimkus
Shuler
Shuster
Smith (NE)
Smith (NJ)
Solis
Stark
Stearns
Stupak
Sullivan
Sutton
Taylor
Terry
Thompson (CA)
Thompson (MS)
Thornberry
Tiahrt
Tiberi
Tierney
Turner
Udall (CO)
Udall (NM)
Visclosky
Walberg
Walz (MN)
Wamp
Watson
Welch (VT)
Westmoreland
Whitfield (KY)
Wittman (VA)
Woolsey
Wu
Yarmuth
Young (AK)
Young (FL)

Here's John Carney on what House negotiations will look like now:

Washington insiders were divided on what the decision to send [GOP whip Roy] Blunt to the negotiating table meant. One former House leadership staffer believes it signals a surrender of Republican resistance. Another longtime observer of Capitol Hill politics disagreed, saying the Blunt could be sent to give the impression that Republicans were cooperating and trying to reach a solution without actually committing the Republicans to action on the bailout. The editor of National Review, Rich Lowry, reports that the collapse of Washington Mutual and the "swoon" of Wachovia may have Republicans fearing they could be blamed for a broad financial collapse.

So. Either stalemate or the Dodd/Frank plan is alive, again. What is sort of alarming is that the news hasn't shifted an inch since this morning. No word from Congress. Once again, either stalemate or secret backroom negotiations are leading us to the unprecedented massive bailout that we still don't know a damn thing about except that Bush tricked us into doing it by presenting it in an even more awful form earlier this week so Democrats could make a slightly more palatable version that is still political poison, probably. Sheesh.

We're sympathetic to the idea that something huge is necessary (we're also sympathetic—quite sympathetic!—to the "fuck them all and let it burn" argument but we honestly don't know what the consequences of inaction might be, and we wouldn't survive a post-apocalyptic future, what with not even owning a car), but until the problem can framed coherently and the Democratic solution can be framed palatably, no one gains any advantage in the ongoing horse race. (Except god bless McCain for making his economic idiocy the narrative, instead of just general "oh noes what will we do.")

Update: Eric Cantor, the Serious Republican responsible for their Serious Response, caved. Caved in the goofiest way, too, by saying the most alarming bit of the Paulson plan—the government buys the most "toxic" of the mortgage-backed securities with money we won't be seeing back—is the part he'll compromise on.

Expert #1 is Michael Robinson, an SVP at DC-based crisis specialist Levick Strategic Communications. He's an ex-NYT reporter who used to run communications for Nasdaq and the SEC, and has worked in the White House. "With regard to your question...about potential paths for Gov. Spitzer to follow, the only realistic outcome is for him to resign," he writes. Shucks!

I say this primarily because his "brand" was that of a squeaky clean politician and now it's just squeaky. It as if another famous Elliott - Elliott Ness - was in Al Capone's pocket all along. For somebody who built their entire image and reputation fight crime, his continued tenure in office just can't be sustained. As it turns out, the entire foundation of who he was (at least as far as the public is concerned) was built on sand.

Expert #2 is an exec and a respected media expert at a well known PR agency. Her take:

I think he is screwed without question no matter what he does. But, I would have absolutely told him to resign immediately out of respect for the office and out of respect for the great state of New York and his party. To prolong the inevitable is stupid, shallow and pointless

Eliot: That'll be $87,000.