He was right there on C-SPAN, an actual congressman and opponent of the Bush Administration's bailout of Wall Street, speaking on the House floor about those mysterious warnings Henry Paulson supposedly gave to the doubting lawmakers before the $700 billion bill was first rejected by Congress.

"The only way they can pass this bill is by creating and sustaining a panic atmosphere," Congressman Brad Sherman said Thursday. "Many of us were told in private conversations that if we voted against this bill ... there would be martial law in America."

The next day, the House passed the Senate's version of the bailout -- the one McCain approved, with all those pork earmarks he loves so much -- and we were miraculously saved from an American Police State. For a few more days, anyway. But would it really be so bad, to live under Bush-Paulson-McCain tyranny?

Twenty-seven years after it was first established, he Congressional ban on offshore drilling officially and quietly expired today. The ban was not a prohibition on drilling per se. Rather, it was a ban on appropriating money for the Interior Department to process of new drilling leases. With the beginning of the new fiscal year, that prohibition will end, once Congress passes a budget resolution that restores the funding. After years of opposition to increasing domestic supplies of energy, a full year of fighting House Republicans on the issue, and a summer of defending itself against a vocal Republican minority and overwhelming public support for increased oil drilling, Congressional Democrats agreed last week to allow the ban to lapse this year.

New drilling, and the economic activity it will bring in the form of jobs, investment, and lower gas prices, could not come at a better time for the American economy. American oil companies, barred from exploration in domestic waters for so long, could be eager to return home to do business in America's relatively friendly business clime. They will bring jobs and capital with them that otherwise would have benefit ted the economies of other countries.

Exploration in the Outer Continental Shelf will likely lead to greater than anticipated yields. Historically, estimates of total recoverable reserves in a given field are low, and advances in drilling and recovery techniques will almost certainly increase the expected yields from offshore drilling. That oil will eventually hit the world market, some estimates run as little as three years, increasing overall supplies and lowering the price of a barrel of oil. Oil prices have been on a steady decline since mid-July, interrupted only by Hurricane Gustav and the financial turmoil of the last two weeks, when President Bush lifted the Executive branch ban on offshore drilling. Oil prices ended the day at $102 per barrel, up slightly recently. But that price represents a 31 percent drop from the record high of over $147 a barrel set on July 11th, four days before the president lifted the Executive ban.

House Republicans deserve all the credit for the expiration of the drilling ban. It was the August Republican protest on the floor of the House that finally convinced Democrats they would be held accountable if they continued to stand in the way of increased production in the face of high gasoline and oil prices. Democrats wisely decided not to force the issue roughly six weeks before an election, handing the Republicans a legislative victory of enormous proportions.

What we've witnessed over the course of the last week is something of a perfect storm. With the financial sector teetering on the brink, and election year politics in full swing, reason, foresight, and an orderly distribution of life preservers, have been sacrificed for tantrums of the here and now. Who is to blame for the economic mess we are only starting to glimpse? Everyone. You, me, Wall Street, the Bush Administration, Congress, television pundits, the whole lot of us. A pox on all of our houses!

Americans have long been living on credit. Not just the poor, who often didn't qualify in the first place, but all Americans. As our economy shifted away from manufacturing to a service-centric model, we should have raised a red flag. When we all started playing the stock market back in the 1970's, by tying our retirement savings to Wall Street performance, we didn't blink. When we grew to expect double-digit growth on the value of our homes every single year, we convinced ourselves we'd settled into a new paradigm. In a way, our obsession with the housing and stock markets was itself a big smokescreen for the fact that Americans no longer make things.

Politicians on the left and the right were only too happy to feed the illusion that said, because the Titanic hasn't yet hit an iceberg, it will not hit one anytime soon. Well, we've hit it. And, surprise, there aren't enough lifeboats. To make matters far, far worse, this crisis comes in an election year. Every one of the members of the House of Representatives, and many in the Senate is up for re-election, so forget about them doing what's right for the country, it's political expediency time.

Sen. Barack Obama today proposed a specific idea to help solve the financial bailout impasse gripping Washington. Obama came out behind a plan to more than double the limit on deposits insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) from the current $100,000 to $250,000. The idea is to bolster confidence in bank customers that their savings are safe and to prevent future bank runs like the one that hit Washington Mutual last week just before it collapsed. It is an idea that has potential to win some more votes for the beleaguered bailout package that failed its first test in the House yesterday. Sen. Obama surely hopes to gain credit for proposing it and perhaps for rescuing the bailout package.

Except that the FDIC limit increase is not Sen. Obama's idea. It's a feature of the House Republicans' alternative bailout plan that Sen. Obama criticized at last Friday's White House meeting. That criticism lead to the meeting degenerating into a partisan shouting match, as Democrats, led by Sen. Obama, used Treasury Secretary Hank Paul son's notes on the Republican plan to attack the Republican leaders present at the meeting.

Sen. Obama has a history of claiming credit for other people's ideas and exaggerating his role or influence on legislation. Members of his own party have bristled at his tendency to include himself for praise over issues in which he has little input. During the Democratic primary, the Washington Post published a story detailing how Sen. Obama claimed in 2006 that he was a central player in an immigration compromise, to the great surprise of the Senators who actually worked on the bill. Earlier this year, while traveling in the Middle East, Obama claimed credit for serving on the Banking Committee in the Senate when he does not. And just last week, Sen. Obama claimed a key role in crafting the economic stimulus package passed in January; a claim the Washington Post called, "a big stretch."

Now Sen. Obama is seeking to claim the Republicans' FDIC insurance limit increase as his own. But Obama also claims that it is Republican policies that have caused the financial troubles on Wall Street. It seems that Sen. Obama was against Republican ideas for fixing the nation's economy before he was for them.

The Corner:

We are in the greatest financial crisis of our lifetimes.
Congressional inaction has put every American and the entire economy at the gravest risk. Yesterday the country and the world looked to Washington for leadership, and Congress once again came up empty-handed.

I am disappointed at the lack of resolve and bipartisan good will among members of both parties to fix this problem. Bipartisanship is a tough thing; never more so when you're trying to take necessary but publicly unpopular action. But inaction is not an option.

Ugh, sigh. Excuse me while I bang my head against the desk.

BANGBANGBANGBANG.

OK, I'm a little calmer now. 35 days before an election. On a day when the public was expressing its overwhelming contempt for Congress and the attempt here to giveaway $700 billion dollars of taxpayer money to Wall Street banks. A move that has never been promised to ultimately fix the problem.

McCain keeps pounding on this mealy mouthed mushy moderate crap that even most of his own party and 40% of the Democrats can't handle.

Does he wonder why he keeps going down in the polls? As Rush Limbaugh said today, bipartisanship is not hard. All you have to do is sell your principles down the river. And keep in mind that McCain's poll numbers were never higher than when he and Sarah Palin were pushing their message that was very partisan.

Yes, I do believe that inaction is not an option here. But inaction is better than bad stupid, throwing-money-down-the-drain and not solving the problem action. God bless the House Republicans and the 95 Democrats who couldn't swallow this plan.

It's up to the Senate tomorrow.

Now that the financial markets bailout plan has failed to pass the House, at least for the time being, both sides are settling down to place blame for the failure. Democrats were quick to blame House Republicans for not bringing enough of their members along to vote for the bill. Republicans counter that as the majority party, Democrats can pass any bill they want without even a single Republican vote. So who is right? The time line of the negotiations favors the Republican version of events.

Early last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) made it clear that there would be no bailout bill brought to the floor unless Republicans could bring along significant support from their minority caucus. Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) openly called on the White House to guarantee the support of Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, calling it crucial to final passage of a bill. Reid later changed his mind after Sen. McCain dramatically announced that he was suspending his campaign to come to Washington for the negotiations, saying McCain's presence, "would not be helpful."

Before Sen. McCain could arrive in Washington, however, Democrats announced that they had reached a deal on a bailout package. The House GOP objected, saying it was not a party to any agreement. The lead Republican negotiator at the talks, Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL) said that he had not been authorized to agree on behalf of the House GOP, and Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) confirmed that Republicans were not part of any deal that Democrats may have made amongst themselves. Republicans, frozen out of serious participation in the Democrats' negotiations, began drafting an alternative proposal to present at the White House meeting called for last Friday.

But Democrats got wind of the Republicans ideas, thanks to allies inside the Obama campaign and the Treasury Department, and turned the White House meeting into a partisan shouting match. Democrats allowed Sen. Obama to run their side of the meeting, after criticizing Sen. McCain for allegedly injecting partisan politics into the negotiations by coming to Washington. Sen. Obama proceeded to attack the Republicans in attendance over their alternative plan, using Secretary Paulson's own notes of concerns with the proposal, and any hope of a substantive, bi-partisan negotiation was scuttled.

Update: The Associated Press agrees with my assessment, saying that, without a bailout agreement, McCain's campaign has reached "a political dead end.

The McCain campaign has been reduced to trying to blame the side that overwhelmingly favored the bill, whose failure precipitated the biiggest one-day point loss in the Dow's history, while defending the crybabies who voted it down because Nancy Pelosi hurt their feewings. Richer still is their insistence that this is no time for the "blame game."

The fact that the ostensibly uber-neutral AP is reporting thiscould be devastating for McCain. It puts me in mind of Walter Cronkite's pronouncement, following the Tet Offensive, that the Vietnam War was unwinnable. Right or wrong, this perception will be tough for McCain to shake. Time for another "Hail Mary."

Sept. 29, 2008 8 pm This is baaaad for John McCain. He's like a drunken, amateur fireman who hosed down a burning building with gasoline. Now, he's got to convince us to make him the fire chief.

The news of the failure of the bailout bill sent the stock market into a sickening 777 point plunge, and photos of panicked and forlorn stockbrokers tell the tale that will be on voters' minds through the final days of this campaign. Whether you liked the bill or not, its failure is unmistakeably the cause of this disaster, and John McCain, right or wrong, is the owner of the monkey wrench.

The House Republicans who led the revolt against this bill, right or wrong, will own the wreckage of this day, and their hopes of voters shaking their fists skyward and screaming, "Pelosi!!!" would be cute in a less dire situation. Maybe voters will revile panicky investors for not having faith that a better bill would come along, but I don't really see that happening.

The McCain spin on this issue has been embarrassingly transparent. He first tried to spin his way out of his left-footed "fundamentals are strong" comments by saying, against all common sense and rudimentary understanding of english, that he meant the American worker is strong. Then, he feigned urgency by suspending his campaign to rush to the rescue, stopping only to conduct a round of network interviews, continue his campaign operations as though nothing had happened, and to read the three-page summary of the plan. Oops, strike that last one.

Then, he tried to cast his ignorance as a virtue, "patiently listening" during the meeting. Through his grandstanding, though, he took possession of the mantel of Republican leadership, or failure thereof.

"Maverick" sounds good when you're naming a light-hearted western, or feeling the need, the need for speed, but sometimes, you want a horse that knows how to behave itself.

Tommy Christopher co-hosts "Unusable Signal",on BlogTalkRadio, Tues through Thurs at 10pm, and Fri, and Sat at 11pm. (Eastern) Click here for the Unusable Signal homepage.

Politico.com

In a closed-door session with House Republicans, Minority Leader John A. Boehner just called the financial rescue deal a "crap sandwich" – then said he'll vote for it when it comes to the floor Monday.

House Republicans are the key to the bill's passage – Speaker Nancy Pelosi said earlier today that it's a "bipartisan" bill and will need "bipartisanship" to pass – and it now appears that a substantial number of them will put cast their votes in favor of it.

According to a source in the room, the plan has so far won endorsements from Minority Whip Roy Blunt, who negotiated it on behalf of the House Republicans; Eric Cantor, the chief deputy whip; and Paul Ryan, a hard-core conservative from Wisconsin who may hold more sway with conservatives on this issue than any other member of the House.

I've come to the reluctant conclusion that the Republicans in the House, and John McCain should blow up this bill. It is now an undisputed fact that McCain and the House Republicans blew up a very bad deal forming on Thursday. This was a good thing. In it's place we have a better bill, as the link to the side by side comparison shows. The GOP by exercising their leverage was able to strip out some of the onerous things, but not enough in my view to be worth it.

The debate is so on.

Apparently John McCain realizes his presence isn't doing all that much good as negotiations continue over the $700 billion bailout package.

This just in from his campaign:

"Much of yesterday was spent fighting over who would get the credit for a deal and who would get the blame for failure. There was no deal or offer yesterday that had a majority of support in Congress. There was no deal yesterday that included adequate protections for the taxpayers. It is not enough to cut deals behind closed doors and then try to force it on the rest of Congress -- especially when it amounts to thousands of dollars for every American family.

"The difference between Barack Obama and John McCain was apparent during the White House meeting yesterday where Barack Obama's priority was political posturing in his opening monologue defending the package as it stands. John McCain listened to all sides so he could help focus the debate on finding a bipartisan resolution that is in the interest of taxpayers and homeowners. The Democratic interests stood together in opposition to an agreement that would accommodate additional taxpayer protections.

McCain says after morning talks with members of the administration and Congress, he is "optimistic that there has been significant progress toward a bipartisan agreement now that there is a framework for all parties to be represented in negotiations."

"The McCain campaign is resuming all activities and the Senator will travel to the debate this afternoon. Following the debate, he will return to Washington to ensure that all voices and interests are represented in the final agreement, especially those of taxpayers and homeowners."