The bailout is a bust!

With a "$2.9 trillion gap between what the economy could produce and what it will actually produce. And $800 billion, while it sounds like a lot of money, isn’t nearly enough to bridge that chasm." -Paul Krugman, Failure to Rise, Published: February 12, 2009, NY Times OpEd.

Then David Brooks chimes in with: "Between 1990 and 2007, the total mortgage debt held by Americans rose from $2.5 trillion to $10.5 trillion." -The Worst-Case Scenario, Published: February 12, 2009, NY Times OpEd. That's $8 Trillion we have to absorb.

What the hell is going on?!

Do the Republicans also believe the bailout is a bust and are positioning themselves to be the political party of "I told you so!"?

And we wonder why the Taliban are willing to destroy the tranquility of their nation for an ideological belief?

THE TALIBAN WING OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.... From time to time in recent years, liberals have identified the "Taliban wing" of the Republican Party -- those conservatives who reject church-state separation, taking marching orders from James Dobson, and wonder why the government doesn't do more to promote and endorse their vision of Christianity.

The phrase is generally considered offensive by most Republicans, and it's easy to understand why. Indeed, no U.S. political contingent wants to be compared to the Taliban.

It came as something of a surprise, then, to see a leading House Republican make the comparison unprompted.

Frustrated by a lack of bipartisan outreach from House Democratic leaders, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said House Republicans -- who voted unanimously last week against the economic plan pushed by President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- will pitch a "positive, loyal opposition" to the proposal. The group, he added, should also "understand insurgency" in implementing efforts to offer alternatives.

"Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban," Sessions said during a meeting yesterday with Hotline editors. "And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person's entire processes. And these Taliban -- I'm not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban. No, that's not what we're saying. I'm saying an example of how you go about [sic] is to change a person from their messaging to their operations to their frontline message. And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with."

He added that if Democrats don't give the minority party more "options or opportunities," Republicans "will then become an insurgency."

- Political Animal
by Steve Benen and Featuring Hilzoy,
February 5, 2009
WashingtonMonthly