Cassandra Calling By: Mark W Adams

Unfortunately, while we were all dreading the Rovian October Surprise, like bomb, bomb, bombing Iran using predator drones with smart bombs and minimal collateral damage; the real thing was an attack on Wall Street using predator lending by dumb investors with minimal collateral period.

A couple of days ago I half jokingly asked if we could nationalize the health care industry the way we did the bulk of the housing and insurance sectors with the Fanny/Freddie (re)acquisition and bailout of AIG. I didn't know we'd end up completely nationalizing the entire mortgage industry at that point.

Noting McCain's desire to give health care the same "innovative" treatment we gave banking, and the resulting disasterous consequence most surely to follow such idiocy, Anonymous Liberal connects the dots:

Then again, if we bring the same approach to health care that we brought to the banking industry, maybe in eight years or so, our health care system will completely collapse and the government will have to step in and take over. Voila! A national health care system. Brilliant.

Consider this observation by brand new Kossack (User No. 179910), Roydeeboy:

Did those neocons at 1600 Pennsylvania have this on file and they just spent a day running it through spellcheck? Will we ever know what it contains, or will the Congressional leadership just rubber stamp this and put a 1,000-page bill on the floor Monday with a "vote-or-else" rule?

I guess I'm just a little wary of all this because I'm just finishing Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism." This is so typical of the episodes in the book where ideological pols make vicious use of "crisis" situations to impose economic doctrines they can't get passed into law.

This bailout - with its associated inflation - is going to take down a huge number of humans - probably including me - while rescuing the institutions that caused it. And never you mind about the greedweasels already have milked the calamity for millions of dollars.

Now I don't want to go all "Truther" on you, so I'm not going as far to say that the capital meltdown was planned. But that doesn't mean these Mayberry Machiavellis won't take full advantage of the situation. That's what they do -- and they've had a dry run lately turning Iraq into supply-side heaven.

Not that they were any good at it, but seeing clones like Caribou Barbie repeat the phrase, "mistakes were made," they probably think they've learned enough from the experience to give it a try in the big leagues.

While a lot of us certainly hope that President Obama can guide us back to the principles of liberal democracy that has been the hallmark of progress and prosperity for Western Civilization, there are two concerns we must be aware of.

The most obvious is the repugnant concept of a President McCain. It should go without saying he would go down in history as Pinochet on steroids if he got a chance to institutionalize some patented neocon market reforms the Bushies are almost certain to implement.

That implementation of course will be a fait accompli, which is my biggest concern. However, there looks to be little if anything we can do to stand in its way. Not now, not with the proven cowardice of the current Congressional leadership who've caved to FISA and offshore drilling when there wasn't a gun to their heads.

My fondest hope is that the dirty details of the plan Paulson presents can merely be criticized by history as closing the regulatory barn door after the pony died, yet I have zero confidence this crowd won't insist on slipping a poison pill into the small print.

Also, be absolutely certain that the millionaire investment pirates that created this fiasco in the first place will end up immune, insulated from bearing any responsibility, and getting off without so much as a tax increase to help fix this mess.

Welcome to your New World Order, brought to you by BushCo.