How You Feelin' About Banks? And McCain?

Who's that scary little man behind the curtain?

The McCain lobbyist brigade-- take AEI scumbag and senior McCain economic advisor Kevin Hassett for example-- is working overtime to try to blame the financial collapse on Democrats. It's absurd but... well, the severe deterioration of the education system, the super abundance of brain cell toxic fast food, a drastic shrinking of Americans' attention span and a near iron grip by the reactionary forces on the media all adds up to a people susceptible to exactly this kind of absurdity. Limbaugh was squawking and oinking yesterday about how Obama is an Arab. Today a pastor in a Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Tennessee is repeating it.

Or am I wrong? A CNN poll released late yesterday finds that twice as many Americans blame the Republicans as blame the Democrats for the Wall Street calamity. And Diageo's polling this morning is showing the same thing.

In the new survey, released Monday afternoon, 47 percent of registered voters questioned say Republicans are more responsible for the problems currently facing financial institutions and the stock market, with 24 percent saying Democrats are more responsible. One in five of those polled blame both parties equally, and 8 percent say neither party is to blame.

The poll also indicates that more Americans think Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, would do a better job handling an economic crisis than McCain, the Republican presidential nominee. Forty-nine percent of those questioned say Obama would display good judgment in an economic crisis, 6 points higher than the number who said the same about McCain. And Obama has a 10 point lead over McCain on the question of who would better handle the economy overall.

And the latest electoral projections show Obama with 312 electoral votes with Ohio, Nevada, Florida, Indiana, Missouri and North Carolina all teetering. I'll believe KKK Nation voting for an African-American when I see it. Meanwhile I'll just keep reading Naomi Klein (not a relative) and preparing myself for even greater shocks in the future. Last night she wrote that another "shock has certainly arrived, along with gloves-off attempts to use it to push through radical pro-corporate policies (which of course will further enrich the very players who created the market crisis in the first place...)."

The best summary of how the right plans to use the economic crisis to push through their policy wish list comes from Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich. On Sunday, Gingrich laid out 18 policy prescriptions for Congress to take in order to "return to a Reagan-Thatcher policy of economic growth through fundamental reforms." In the midst of this economic crisis, he is actually demanding the repeal of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which would lead to further deregulation of the financial industry. Gingrich is also calling for reforming the education system to allow "competition" (a.k.a. vouchers), strengthening border enforcement, cutting corporate taxes and his signature move: allowing offshore drilling.

It would be a grave mistake to underestimate the right's ability to use this crisis -- created by deregulation and privatization-- to demand more of the same.

Will Chris Dodd's intervention save us from the tender mercies of Bush and Paulson? It could be better-- and there's no reason on earth why it shouldn't be. Damn shame they don't just throw Bush, Paulson and the rest of the crooks in prison and put Bernie Sanders in charge, No? How about Mojo Nixon then?