Back in February, during the winter meeting of the National Governors Association, I watched some goober on C-SPAN interview Sarah Palin. It was just a few softball questions, and other than the one about whether she was interested in the vice-presidential nomination, which she deflected easily, I don’t remember much of the interview.

I do remember being impressed and thinking she might actually be a strong choice for a running mate. She came across as competent and knowledgeable and ... pleasant. Approachable. And, of course, she’s easy on the eyes. But I’m not one to be distracted by a pretty face. Much. For long. Whatever.

Then, a month or so ago, I read about the ongoing abuse of power investigation in Alaska. It was pretty obvious from the articles I read that Governor Palin fired a man solely because he refused to fire her ex-brother-in-law. I figured that put an end to all consideration of her as vice-presidential nominee.

So I was a bit surprised when The Original Maverick®, in a sign of his increasing desperation, went ahead and chose her for his running mate, even more so when the press started digging into her past. Turns out she’s a fundie. An honest to goodness, anti-science, teach-creationism-in-the-classroom, anti-abortion, abstinence-education-only, fundamentalist god-nazi. Shit!

I’ve grown used to Republican pandering to the religious right, but since the only god they truly worship is capitalism, I never figured they would actually let a fundie anywhere near the reins of power. This is truly scary. It’s bad enough that under darth Cheney vice-presidential powers have been greatly expanded and the office itself has essentially been moved outside the executive chain of command (and outside the law); a fundamentalist could do a great deal of damage to our country from there, but even worse, she would be one heartbeat away from the presidency, one heartbeat in the chest of the oldest president ever. The very thought of this woman making Supreme Court nominations gives me chills.

By making this pick, McCain has fully energized his evangelical base. When Sarah Palin makes her speech tonight, and flashes that 100 Megawatt smile, the bubba vote will be in the bag also. I still think this election is Obama’s to lose, but I also think it’s about to get a lot closer.

After spending the past few months throwing tens of billions of dollars away bailing out individual financial institutions, our government is now reportedly spending the weekend putting the finishing touches on The Bailout To End All Bailouts. The plan appears to be quite simple; just add another trillion or so to the already massive federal deficit by assuming all the bad mortgage-related debts for pretty much the entire investment industry.

Every politician and talking head out there seems to be parroting the same line, that the alternative would be even worse, that our entire financial system could collapse. It seems to be taken as a given that we cannot allow this to happen. The prevailing mentality is that the rich must be allowed to remain rich.

Well, I have questions. Many questions.

Time after time we have seen what happens when our government hands one sector of the market the authority to regulate itself, providing it enough leeway to manipulate the system and start pushing the entire market around. It inevitably generates a boom that turns out to be built on air. Isn’t it obvious that this “system” our government is hell-bent on saving is broken? Isn’t it equally obvious that it’s broken in just such a way that every boom-bust cycle winds up benefitting the rich at the expense of the middle and lower class in homes, jobs and tax dollars?

Why are all these financial institutions and money market funds so heavily invested in home mortgages anyway? (Is that the same as asking why America doesn’t actually make anything but war any more?) We're a nation of heavy debtors in a recession with seemingly nothing to invest in except the paper backing our own debts.

I can’t shake the feeling that, under the guise of conservatism, corporate America has attached itself to our nation's revenue and is siphoning off as much as they can, as fast as they can. Is it truly irrelevant, as our political leaders seem to believe, whether our government is economically sound as long as corporate America turns a profit?

I find it interesting that our system of unrestrained capitalism ultimately has the same result as that of communism. Commerce ends up in the hands of government, and vice versa; the line between government revenue and corporate profit no longer exists. When government becomes nothing more than a life support system and safety net for unrestrained capitalism, can it really still be called a democracy?

And lastly, if one were to set out to deliberately destroy a country economically, could one possibly do it any less efficiently than our current government’s system of cutting government revenue through massive tax cuts followed up with insane deficit spending on meaningless, open-ended wars and propping up of collapsed financial markets on credit?

As Flimsy Sanity pointed out in the comments to my last post, this bailout smells. Especially the urgency with which dubya and his minions are pushing it. These are, after all, the same brilliant minds that convinced Amurka Saddam Hussein and his imaginary WMDs were on the very brink of invading us and taking away our jeebus. It makes me wonder if this might be more of the same phony urgency, based more on the preznit’s rapidly dwindling time in office than any genuine financial need.

So, is this one last looting of our Treasury on the way out the door, or are we truly on the brink of a financial crisis? How can you trust an administration that has so thoroughly screwed the pooch on every issue they’ve addressed to handle it correctly anyway? (Remember when sending every taxpayer $600 was going to solve all our economic woes?) As one wag in the comments over at Sadly No put it:

Shorter Entire Bush Administration: I’ve just totaled your car. Quick, give me the keys to your house.

One of the things that makes me think our country might really be in deep shit here is that all the talking heads on my teevee are endlessly repeating the same tired, old lines. Stuff like “Never sell the American workers short” and “Never underestimate the power of the American economy.” Soothing platitudes meant to reassure themselves as much as the public. These guys are scared and it shows.

But I’m also hearing a lot of talk about the need to “restore investor confidence”. Who would have guessed that millionaires have such delicate psyches that we taxpayers need to pony up a trillion dollars to soothe them? It’s all very confusing, as if all the so-called experts don’t actually know any more than I do. I’m not of the investor class, but none of this is doing much for my confidence.

Despite the fact that economics generally makes my head hurt, I’ve been making an effort to educate myself a little. A friend sent me a link to Chris Martenson’s Crash Course under the subject line: Worth Your Time. I couldn’t agree more. The whole thing takes about three hours, but it’s divided up into bite-size sections, and I highly recommend it. When you finish it, you will have a fairly solid understanding of how our economy works. You will not, however, be happy with your new-found knowledge.

As my readers (all 4 of them) may have noticed, I added a list to my sidebar of books I am currently reading. Though I aspire to be a writer, I am first and foremost a reader. It is a lifelong passion. And even though a lot of what I read now is via the intertoobz, I still much prefer the dead-tree version and I generally have several books lying about in various stages of completion. Hence the list.

My plan (laziness permitting) is to occasionally write a brief review and/or recommendation of books I complete and deem worthy as I work through them and update the list. I’m not going to bother with all the trashy, lightweight fiction I read just for fun, but rather concentrate on the stuff I originally picked up thinking it might provide me a little knowledge or personal growth. I’ll begin with the four books listed as I write this:

Simon Singh’s engrossing Big Bang relates the history of development of the Big Bang Theory of our universe’s origin, from the earliest attempts to shrug off mythology, replace the supernatural with the natural through naked-eyed observation of the heavens right up through modern satellite spectroscopy and the search for dark matter and dark energy. Singh’s ability to reveal the personalities behind the science makes for a very good read.

I’ve always found a combination of brains and beauty in women attractive, and it’s not often I get to use the term “physicist/babe”, but Lisa Randall fills the bill. Sadly, her book is not as stimulating. Warped Passages; Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions is as dry as a popcorn fart. It’s been on my nightstand for over a year and I’ve still not managed to slog halfway through it.

It’s just the opposite for Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winner, The Road. I read it in two sittings, hoping in vain for a happy ending. It’s a gripping, post-apocalyptic treatise on despair.

Lastly, Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, is one of the best novels I’ve read in quite some time. It’s a memorable story that takes place against the backdrop of a radically changing Afghanistan. I’m probably going to see the movie, but I expect to be disappointed.

As our Congress prepares today to give away hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars we can’t spare, I’m off to the library while it’s still there.