Bailout Fails, Mandatory Sunrise Bill Falters

Gotta love Scrappleface!

“The sun will come out tomorrow,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, “but only if Congress takes action now to eliminate uncertainty.”

Conservatives in Congress immediately expressed reluctance to support the Mandatory Sunrise Act, noting that government intervention is unlikely to have the intended effect, and could produce many unintended, and unpredictable consequences.

Why $700 Billion?

According for Forbes.com:

In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

Read the entire article.

Thanks to Michelle Malkin, who linked to the LA Times Blog who dug this little nugget out.

Fox News analyzes:

But why $700 billion? Why not $500 billion? Or $1 trillion? And why hasn’t anyone explained that price tag?

No one seems to know.

The number is even more confusing given that one of the reasons the U.S. financial system needs bailing out is because no one knows the value of the securities that $700 billion is earmarked for purchasing.

One thing everyone (economists and market participants) agrees on, though: $1 trillion would have been too scary, frightening taxpayers and Congressman alike with the prospect of a bailout of that size. (It turns out $700 billion was too scary, as well. Congress rejected a first draft of the proposal on Monday, sending stock markets plunging.)

And $500 billion might not have been enough purchasing power at a given moment. (The language in the bill says $700 billion "outstanding at any one time.") Congress didn’t want to have to go back to the taxpayers and ask for more if $500 billion had turned out not to be enough.

So $700 billion was just right.

A Vote for Sarah Palin

Here's a really good read about why a Democrat (at least, a former Democrat) will be voting for Sarah Palin and the guy that picked her for vice president.

A Vote for Sarah Palin by Suann Therese Maier

Here are some key paragraphs that I particularly like:

I will vote for Sarah Palin because she has guts. We’ve never met, but I suspect I know something about her life, and so do a great many other women. I know what it means to have a son with Down syndrome. I know what it means to talk a good line about religious faith and then be asked to prove it. I know what it means to have a daughter pregnant and unmarried.

...

I will vote for Sarah Palin because she is intelligent, tenacious and talented. Nobody made her rise easy, and no one is making it easy now. And—is it only moms who notice this?—unlike Senator Biden, she does seem to act consistently on her beliefs about the sanctity of life, at considerable personal cost.

I will vote for Sarah Palin because she doesn’t come from Washington or New York or Chicago or anywhere else the political and media aristoi like to hang out. In fact, I especially like the idea that the state she governs actually produces something—like some of the oil that powers the hair dryers and klieg lights at MSNBC.

Sounds like she might need to get over to the "I am Sarah Palin" store.

Thanks to Michelle Malkin for the link.