Virginia Foxx ... 'What, Me Worry?'

Asked yesterday, Are you worried that the markets are now tanking, after you voted against the financial rescue bill? Madam Virginia Foxx replied:

"No, I'm not. The market may be down, but the Constitution is up!"

Whatever that means.

Such blissful assurance from The Madam! No agonizing, no second-guessing, no visible nervousness, no discernible concern about the lives and finances of her constituents.

Said Ben Salt, spokesman for Roy Carter, the Madam's opponent in this election, "Foxx's blind belief in an unregulated, greed-is-good ideology that leaves no constructive role for government, combined with campaign contributions from the subprime mortgage industry, have seriously affected her judgment."

For specific instances of that (lack of) judgment at work, try these:

Foxx voted NO on HR 3915, "The Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act," which would have established licensing and registration requirements for residential mortgage originators and would have provided certain minimum standards for consumer mortgage loans. The bill passed the House with bipartisan support 291-127. (Roll Call 1118, Nov. 15, 2007)

Foxx voted NO on HR 1252, the "Federal Gas Price Gouging Prevention Act," which also passed the House with bipartisan support 284-141. (Roll Call 404, May 23, 2007)

More recently, Foxx voted against HR 6853, a bill to establish the FBI's nationwide mortgage fraud coordinator and to address mortgage fraud. The bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan support 350-23. (Roll Call 618, Sept. 22, 2008)

Foxx, true to her species, has usually voted to protect the predators.

A Second N.C. Poll Puts Obama in Lead

It was Republican pollster Rassmussen last week that had Obama leading McCain by two points in N.C.

Today the Democratic polling shop of Public Policy Polling, a home-grown N.C. outfit, has Obama up by the same two points, with the tanking economy leading the way as the number one reason for the turn-around.

"Independents are moving toward Obama in droves," saith PPP. The economy moves them too, of course, but the kind of racist caricaturing of Obama that came to us today in three different e-mails -- Obama as a shoeshine hunched over a triumphantly grinning Sarah Palin's feet -- is not helping John McCain among the independents (who happen to be in large part the youngest members of the electorate and who have managed to get a few steps beyond this kind of gutter racism, unlike their elders).

Palin herself encouraged the racist attacks by referring to Obama as "Sambo" when he beat "that bitch Clinton" in the primaries.

Obama's leading McCain in N.C. polling actually seems to have something to do with Sarah Palin as a negative drag on McCain among Tarheels. The same PPP poll found that Palin's favorability rating went from +8 to -3 in North Carolina in three weeks, a negative shift of 11 points:

She is particularly unpopular with independents in North Carolina. 46% of them now say her selection makes them less likely to vote for John McCain compared to just 36% who say her spot on the ticket makes them more inclined to support him. Even among Republicans enthusiasm for her has dropped from 75% to 67%.

Buyers remorse.

Out of the Loop and Irrelevant

Just hours before members of his own party sent the financial bailout legislation down in flames, Sen. John McCain was in Columbus, Ohio, taking credit for making the deal happen. It's like, uh, nobody among the Republican House leadership bothered to tell their standard-bearer that the measure was going to fail ... as they surely had to know as early as last night.

Makes it clear that McCain's rushing to Washington last week was all part of a staged event so that he could take credit for the legislation. But ... oops. His own party let him down. Only 65 Republican members of the House voted for it. Some 95 Democrats voted against it.

They'll either write a better, fairer bill, or they'll watch the smoke rise over Wall Street a day or two and come back. At least half of my brain is glad they voted it down. The other half is rigid with terror.

Crap Sandwich

That's the term House Minority Leader John Boehner used to describe the financial rescue package, but he could have been speaking of any number of meals served up in the waning days of the failed Bush presidency.

Just this a.m. are headlines that would have attracted major fainting spells in any normal universe but which, under the present circumstances, get only yawns:

Citigroup Eats Wachovia Whole; Charlotte Can't Find Its Pulse

US Congress Passes $25 Billion Loan Guarantees to Fossils in Auto Industry

While her congressional leadership all prepare to munch on Bush's failure, Madam Foxx has been signaling furiously that she'll vote against the financial industry bailout. We think we'd join her in that. We think. Hard to know, since the wrong vote could actually be crucial in sending the whole she-bang into some bottomless tank.

Monkey Behavior and John McCain

Others, we discover this a.m., are also puzzling over John McCain's inability to make eye contact with Barack Obama last night during the first presidential debate. Josh Marshall links to Chris Matthews and Eugene Robinson discussing it last night on teevee, and Josh excerpts opinions from others, including a psychotherapist...

...he doesn't want to make eye contact because he is prone to losing control of his emotions if he deals directly with the other person, or, his anger masks fear and the eye contact may increase or substantiate the fear.

And (my favorite!) the animal behaviorist:

...I study monkey behavior -- low ranking monkeys don't look at high ranking monkeys.

As Arte Johnson used to say, "Verrry interestink!"

The First Debate

We will make an initial concession re: Barack Obama ... he's greatly improved as a debater. He held his own through a flurry of McCain jabs. But he's still too cerebral, too bloodless for our taste, and repeatedly let McCain's soft, unprotected underside go by without sinking teeth. We'd frankly like more killer instinct in our candidate. I counted seven different versions of "John is right" coming out of Obama's mouth.

Meanwhile, McNasty won on points. He dominated the stage. He also revealed, quite incidentally, a "tell" ... he couldn't look Obama in the eye. Couldn't do it. The one time we noticed McCain's eyes locking on Obama's, "the maverick" looked away quickly. Embarrassed? Why?

Obama SHOULD have said, "Look, if you're gonna say this shit about me, you better look me in the eye."

Obama did get better through the evening. He began to counter-punch effectively. Apparently, McCain's relentless attacks came across to many uncommitted voters as snide and condescending, since most of the instant polling we've seen gave the win to Obama. That's not the debate we watched, but who are we to argue with others' perceptions?

The Big Loser: Gov. Sarah Palin. The nit-wit running mate, who cannot form a coherent sentence unless it's written out for her, was nowhere to be seen last night, though Joe Biden was on every talking-head show there was. Palin has become the BubbleBoy of the McCain campaign. Every time she breaks the hermetic seal on her confinement, she reveals a noggin stuffed with insoluble cotton candy, the beauty queen who can't locate the U.S.A. on a world map.

As we almost got a cancellation on the first debate by a grandstanding McCain going to D.C. to save the day, wouldn't surprise us at all if there's a last-minute cancellation of Thursday's face-off between Palin and Biden. The pretext would be inventive, we bet.

He Shaved His Legs for This?

If there is a decided downturn today on Wall Street, John McCain owns it. It's his fault. Evidently, the market dropped 130 points in the first two minutes of trading, discouraged by Sen. McCain's race to put a monkey wrench into the agreement being worked out yesterday.

The Senator comes roaring back to Washington, crying, "I'll fix it! I'll fix it!" and then sits mute through the White House conference, offering precisely zero, while the House Republicans bail out of an agreement that Senate Republicans, Senate Democrats, and the White House had basically agreed on (it was NOT the Paulson plan, which was dead as a doornail approximately 15 minutes after it was proposed).

Some House Republicans are apparently now comfortable taking the whole country down to prove a point: "According to one GOP lawmaker, some House Republicans are saying privately that they'd rather 'let the markets crash' than sign on to a massive bailout. 'For the sake of the altar of the free market system, do you accept a Great Depression?' the member asked."

Unless this is all just a giant fake-out meant to save John McCain's candidacy. Maybe it's all just a set-up so that today McCain could pretend to get the House Republicans in line, who were in line already all along but pretended otherwise. Now wouldn't that be something if McCain could ride triumphantly into Oxford, Mississippi, as the conquering hero who saved the American economy from complete collapse?

It was perfectly clear yesterday at the White House pow-wow that McCain had no plan of his own, other than grandstanding for the photo-ops. Meanwhile, the impression of the man as dangerously erratic sinks deeper into the American psyche.

Obama Now Leading McCain in N.C.

Scott Rasmussen, founder of the Rasmussen Reports polling firm, was also co-founder of ESPN and an evangelical Christian to boot and is generally regarded as a "Republican pollster." His polling company is also credited as one of the most accurate during the 2004 presidential election and the 2006 mid-term elections.

So?

Rasmussen just released a North Carolina poll showing Obama with a two-point lead over McCain.

I've taken a solemn vow not to get distracted by polls, but this is a head-turner.

It Wasn't a Frickin' Stream!

As John McCain was using the financial crisis as a means to save his mortgaged candidacy, and decided to air-drop himself into the negotiations, El Presidente graciously invited both candidates and a host of Congressional leaders in this afternoon to share in the disgrace of his presidency.

For those many voters who told us in 2004 that, although they thought George W. was a bald-faced liar and multitudinously inept, they were afraid "to change horses in the middle of the stream," we wonder how they're feeling now that El Presidente has ridden us into the deep blue sea.

Thrown us into the drink and then announced that we'd have to pay MUCH more for a life preserver and that we needed to pay for it RIGHT NOW.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's original demands of Congress are posted in their entirety here, for your amazement and edification. Be sure to get a load especially of the notorious Section 8, titled "Review," which runs one whole sentence, to wit:

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

That's the Bush administration in a nutshell.

NUT. SHELL.

Sen. Chris Dodd's counter legislation is also posted here, but we understand that it's been tinkered with further in consultation with U.S. House leaders, so this isn't the final version being discussed this afternoon at the Booby-Hatch (a.k.a., White House).

John McCain's grandstanding about all of this is just this side of pathetic. We're supposed to get BACK on this particular horse/elephant? Gee thanks, but this time I think I'll walk.