I’m throwing my support behind Dave Ramsey’s suggested plan to fix this mess. I’d love to blog more on this, but I’ve got no time! I must spend it calling my congressmen. (I can’t just email, apparently Americans have already overwhelmed the congressional email servers to the point of a crash!) In the meantime, you should all read his plan and take the steps to let your congressmen know! Right now Dave’s site is being slammed and running slow, so here’s a download of the plan in PDF form.

This isn’t a bailout, and it doesn’t reward recklessness by letting Wall Street line their pockets with tax payer money. Read it for yourself, and feel free to discuss it here.

And a poll for fun!

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UPDATE: Good luck even getting the House or Senate website to load. They’re being slammed as well. And once you even get the House website to load, you see this. Apparently there are a lot of people upset about this proposed (and currently the one-time failed) $700 billion bailout.

UPDATE II: I was able to get through to the Senate’s site, and I found the numbers for my Senators. For my fellow Tennesseans, I provide their numbers. Call them and leave a message. No need to be too verbose, they only count calls in aggregate, so just voice your rejection of the $700 billion bailout and your support for Dave Ramsey’s plan. Mention, as well, that if they vote again for the bailout and not in support of a more sensible plan, they will lose your vote in the fall. And I mean it. If Alexander or Corker vote again in support of the bailout, I’ll be voting for their Democrat challenger.

Lamar Alexander (R-TN): (202) 224-4944

Bob Corker (R-TN): (202) 224-3344

Sometimes it’s nice to take a step back, breathe, and have a good laugh. Enter Stinson, his surprising header photo, and the sarcastic commentary he’s added the Pelosi crap sandwich she gave the House today before the bailout vote.

Note to anyone who might ever want to persuade: deriding the very people whose support you desire doesn’t usually end well.

Take note, this is how conservatives do their reporting on the other side. When we get it wrong, we say so. Allahpundit even wears the lenses of reason with his initial assumption that The One couldn’t possibly be as big a hypocrite as it seemed. But as The Anchoress notes, the McCain camp is still playing by the old rules of politics, not realizing the far-reaching effect that Obama’s Chicago thuggery has had on his faithful. Perhaps one could congratulate McCain on running an up-and-up campaign, but against the likeness of Obama, it may very well lose him the election.

As he exited the hotel for his dinner break, Biden was asked “Senator, can we get your reaction to the House bill not passing?” 

Biden interrupted the question with a “Hey folks,” to reporters and then said “Oh, things are going well.”

…

Prior to Biden’s departure, the press was moved further away from the hotel’s exit, perhaps far enough away that it prevented Biden from clearly hearing the question.

How wonderfully helpful of this reporter to give Anchor Joe the benefit of the doubt here. Meanwhile, every major news agency has folks on the ground in Alaska and Arizona desperately searching for any scrap of evidence that can bring down the McCain-Palin ticket. I’m serious, the media’s on their last leg this election cycle.

I say another because my buddy Dave at The Redemptive Angle already posted one example of an American Parable. This one comes via my brother in the Navy:

The Little Red Hen

She called all of her Democrat neighbors together and said, ‘If we plant this wheat, we shall have bread to eat. Who will help me plant it?’

‘Not I,’ said the cow.

‘Not I,’ said the duck.

‘Not I,’ said the pig.

‘Not I,’ said the goose.

‘Then I will do it by myself,’ said the little red hen, and so she did. The wheat grew very tall and ripened into golden grain.

‘Who will help me reap my wheat?’ asked the little red hen.

‘Not I,’ said the duck..

‘Out of my classification,’ said the pig.

‘I’d lose my seniority,’ said the cow.

‘I’d lose my unemployment compensation,’ said the goose.

‘Then I will do it by myself,’ said the little red hen, and so she did.

At last it came time to bake the bread.

‘Who will help me bake the bread?’ asked the little red hen.

‘That would be overtime for me,’ said the cow.

‘I’d lose my welfare benefits,’ said the duck.

‘I’m a dropout and never learned how,’ said the pig.

‘If I’m to be the only helper, that’s discrimination,’ said the goose.

‘Then I will do it by myself,’ said the little red hen.

She baked five loaves and held them up for all of her neighbors to see. They wanted some and, in fact, demanded a share. But the little red hen said, ‘No, I shall eat all five loaves.’

‘Excess profits!’ cried the cow. (Nancy Pelosi)

‘Capitalist leech!’ screamed the duck. (Barbara Boxer)

‘I demand equal rights!’ yelled the goose. (Jesse Jackson)

The pig just grunted in disdain. (Ted Kennedy)

And they all painted ‘Unfair!’ picket signs and marched around and around the little red hen, shouting obscenities.

Then the farmer (Obama) came. He said to the little red hen, ‘You must not be so greedy.’

‘But I earned the bread,’ said the little red hen.

‘Exactly,’ said Barack the farmer. ‘That is what makes our free enterprise system so wonderful. Anyone in the barnyard can earn as much as he wants. But under our modern government regulations, the productive workers must divide the fruits of their labor with those who are lazy and idle.’

And they all lived happily ever after, including the little red hen, who smiled and clucked, ‘I am grateful, for now I truly understand.’

She never again baked bread because she joined the ‘party’ and got her bread free. And all the Democrats smiled. ‘Fairness’ had been established.

Individual initiative had died, but nobody noticed; perhaps no one cared…so long as there was free bread that ‘the rich’ were paying for.

I just want to say that with all that is happening in Congress and with the Presidential race, my head is about to explode, and I can’t even write about it because I’m so freakin’ busy. My apologies. Please don’t assume that my lack of posts means I’m not interested. In the meantime, here’s some stuff I have been looking at.

Here’s Speaker Pelosi lying about the past:

And here’s the video of the past she was lying about:

Note the Republicans begging for the very regulation that Pelosi is pretending only Democrats recommended. Four years ago, when the Democrats all praised the riskless and progressive nature of their affordable housing deal, Republicans signaled the warning. They were branded as being out to lynch Franklin Raines. Now, in typical slimy political fashion, Pelosi is trying desperately to rewrite the past.

She also blames the Republicans for killing the bailout bill. Frankly, I applaud all the congressmen and women who voted against it, including the 95 Democrats. But she can’t give Republicans all the credit. If she’d kept her own in line, the bill would’ve passed.

Without saying anything about the McCain-Palin ticket or Joe Biden, the topic is this:

Barack Obama’s legislative accomplishments

The rule of a discussion topic on in medias res: stay on topic, or I will delete your comment.

This comment response grew to the point of absurdity in length and earned itself the status of a post. It is in response to my friend Larissa’s comments here about Braceletgate. Wait, I promised not to do that.

Well! To which comment shall I respond? First, glad to have you here. I always enjoy a lively debate.

I haven’t gotten an opportunity to really opine on the happenings of Friday night’s debate yet as I’ve been working and getting sick all weekend. The one probably led to the other.

In short, my thoughts are this: reactions to the debate are absolutely all over the place. Pundits have a mishmash, smorgasbord of opinion. A poll can be found to agree with almost anyone’s perception of the debate. Diehard Republicans and Democrats, a group to which I believe you reside, seem to be sure their respective candidate wonderfully trounced the other and came off looking great. In the last two days, I’ve seen and read The Faithful of both camps feverishly repeating the rhetoric from spin alley, and the broad spectrum of polls taken after the debate, both scientifically and otherwise, seem to reflect the defined positions of those being polled more than anything else. What’s funny is that much of the criticism of the candidates could be, and actually is, applied to either. You mentioned that you thought McCain was rude and disrespectful. I’ve heard the same argument leveled at Obama for his continuous interruptions and references to McCain as “John.” (I had actually not read the arguments about McCain being disrespectful anywhere until I looked up network news coverage of the debates to get their poll numbers. Seems that was a common thread amongst former Democratic operatives like Stephanopoulos.) What a person saw in the debate depends largely on the political lenses through which they watched. More…

The mother of the fallen soldier asked him not to.

…she has turned down any subsequent interviews with the media because she just didn’t, she just didn’t want it to get turned into something that it wasn’t. She had told me that in an email that she had asked, actually asked Mr. Obama to not wear the bracelet anymore at any of his public appearances.”

And apparently Obama even minced her request to end the war:

“I didn’t get to say what I wanted to say. I just cried,” Tracy Jopek told the newspaper. “It wasn’t for anything but for him to know this is real, something he needed to know. . . I do believe (the war) needs to end, but I believe it needs to be done very carefully and very thoughtfully.”

To me, there is a clear difference between wanting the Senator to know the reality of war and putting in a personal request to end the war because it hurts too much. Either way, of course, I’d rather have a Commander in Chief that understands just how horrible and necessary war can be. The desire to pull out of Iraq because soldiers have died and are dying is simply ridiculous. Do we seriously give up when the scenario is anything other than no lives lost? How did we get to this idea that it isn’t our soldiers’ duty to protect and defend our country at any cost?

Let’s be straight on this: we ALL want the war to end. But I for one am not willing to tuck tail and run. And anything less than victory is defeat. That’s not hawkishness. That’s reality. It’s a concept with which Obama desperately needs to become familiar.