I was listening to the BBC this morning and their correspondent argued that if the Dem leadership would have fully whipped the bill, it would have passed, but they saw that the Republicans weren't going to go for it and the Dems weren't going to take the fall alone.
I'm not sure how much I really believe this. The first rule of the leadership is not to make vulnerable members walk the plank. There was a high correlation in both parties between supporting the bailout and having a safe seat. But suppose it's true. What would that say about the true beliefs of the leadership about the bill? Wouldn't it suggest that they know it's bs? That they're just doing this because finance capital demands it, not because they believe that it is necessary and sufficient to address a crisis? Pelosi's speech on the floor got a lot of attention because the Rs blamed her "partisanship." But what I heard in that speech was a denunciation of the bailout - ie, the very bill that she was supporting. (This is a pattern for Pelosi - in 1998, supporting the bailout of the IMF, she said something to the effect of, "These institutions need to be totally reformed. Maybe they need to be shut down. But right now we need to give them 18 billion dollars.") If it were truly an emergency, they could work on Rosh Hashana. During the peace talks with Egypt, Begin flew on the Sabbath. He made a big show of getting permission from the Rabbis. In Jewish law you can break any commandment to save a human life. If it were truly an emergency, they could have got some Rabbis to say that they should work on Rosh Hashana. After all, most markets in the world remain open, so if it is really an emergency.... -- Robert Naiman Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ambassador Pickering on Iran Talks and Multinational Enrichment http://youtube.com/watch?v=kGZFrFxVg8A _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
