No holds will be barred so the Republicans stay in power. It would be fascinating to watch if we weren't the victims in the whole deal.

Bush and pals have decided to capitalize on the failing economy produced by greed by forcing an artificial crisis. The real crisis is, of course, a Constitutional one.

Bush calling Obama to Washington is pure bullshit political theatre designed to blunt Obama's rise in the polls and to screw up the campaign. McCain's taunt and head fake earlier today didn't work, so now Bush has to use his authority as lame duck head honcho to straighten it out. What's Obama going to do when the Boss Man calls him to the big house? What could he do really, tell Bush to W himself?

The debates have been scrubbed to further confuse the issue and prevent everyone from seeing that McCain for what he is, in fact, is. McCain is so confident he is going to win hell or high water, votes be damned--he won't even be bothered to debate Obama this weekend because it doesn't matter. The push is to cancel the VP debate next week so we can only hear about the campaign refracted through ads.

Things are bad in the economy, of course, but the Republicans have pushed things to the point of saying, as Bush did tonight, that the entire economy is in danger of collapse and panic. Why are so many saying otherwise?

We know Bush is a liar, and we know his party lies as a matter of policy. So why believe this?

Grasshopper and the ant and the boy who cried wolf and all of that shit.

Such a crisis demands the kind of blanket handover of power and money without oversight that Paulson asked for. Over the weekend we were all supposed to freak out and make safe rooms in our foreclosed houses with duct tape and plastic, but instead people seemed to get actual backbones.

But Congress will fulminate, it will gnash its teeth and shake its fist, and eventually it will pass a bill not-too-terribly different from the Bush power grab because this is a crisis. "We don't want the next market fall to be a mushroom cloud." We have heard this before. We are hearing it again because it works.

Then we get the Reichstag fire. Pick your pleasure--it could come in any number of forms.

The easiest is that the bailout doesn't work and shit really happens. People on Wall Street lose their second homes in the Hamptons, you and me and everybody gets squeezed even more. Emergency measures, some construed from the overly broad bill and some newly created for the moment are passed, and of course the Republicans stay in power. Real power this time, since the opposition is reduced to a little debating club. Obama is forgotten, maybe he is getting W's cleaning.

McCain is Hindenburg. Palin is the Fuhrer in waiting. She is utterly insulated from scrutiny so the public won't really know her until her icy fingers are squeezing our collective testicles, and she is smiling that bewitching smile.