The economy is in shambles and even President Bush and Senator McCain have finally noticed. The president has proposed his oversightless $700 billion bailout, but McCain and his GOP colleagues at the crisis summit came up with a less-regulation-more-tax-breaks counterproposal. Let's look at that again. The proposal is from Bush and the counterproposal is from McCain. Both republicans. Could they be setting up the democrats and thereby the US taxpayers?

Think about it. What better way to get the democrats to sign on for the bailout than to propose an alternative that is patently insane? Unless the dems can get some interest in their own proposals, they can only flee to the bailout from the McCain proposal. Unfortunately, we are not in a situation where we can just wait and bicker. Either something has to be done or a firm decision to do nothing must be reached. Right now, the republicans are arguing between the two ideas, but with majorities in both houses of Congress, it should be the democrats leading this discussion. Sadly they are not rising to the challenge at this point.

Senator Obama, I think correctly, sees it as the responsibility of the Congressional leadership and White House to come up with a solution. He has said he is willing to help if asked, but it is not the job of a presidential candidate (of either party) to play president presumptively. Whomever wins the election will have the problem in their lap soon enough and we don't need the election stress piled onto an already grievous situation.

But, as they have for two years, the democratic Congressional leadership has found themselves unable or unwilling to provide the necessary leadership. This has been a well enough established pattern for this Congress that the idea of a straw man setup by McCain to push through Bush's plan is not out of the question.

What we must wait to see is if the democrats in Congress will fall for it. And if they do, we must be prepared to make them pay.

Edit: Found a better post on the same subject: No Mr. Obama, the Best Solution is a DEMOCRATIC solution to a REPUBLICAN mess from Firedoglake.