Countdown Thursday: Making Bail
Posted: Thursday, September 25, 2008 8:59 PM by Countdown
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Blogging the Countdown
Suspending Disbe: The bipartisan leadership of the Senate, this afternoon reaching "fundamental agreement" on principles for a bailout bill... Amid a financial crisis purportedly so "urgent"... the Republican nominee pretending to suspend his campaign to attend to it. Which he might have been able to do... had he not metaphorically **parachuted** into the Capitol as the agreement was already being announced. Our fifth story on the Countdown: Late this afternoon, House Republicans abandoning the agreement... to float an entirely new plan... starting over from scratch. The only urgency for House Republicans... the White House... and the McCain campaign concerning the bailout... is that Senator McCain be seen taking credit for it.
McMismanagement: It may take some time to adequately assess just how much Senator John McCain contributed to the ever-changing mess of today's bailout, turning suddenly into a craft bailing water... But the Senator's non-suspension suspension of his campaign injected presidential politics into it, instead of making the process more bi-partisan. And his stance may still scuttle an actual presidential debate in favor of a false one, full of surrogates and lies. So in our fourth story on the Countdown... what does all of it say about his management style... His ability to be the President?
ODDBALL: A corn maze sarah palin, and oddball's favorite criminal rides again
Baked Alaskan: The first irreparable crack might have come the day it was first suggested that any Governor of Alaska had inherent foreign policy credentials because, at the Bering Strait, Alaska is just 53 miles away from Russia. That the governor's residence in Juneau is actually only about 130 miles closer to the Russian capital in Moscow than is New York City to Moscow... Reduced that thin gruel to a transparency. And now in our third story on the Countdown, in her latest interview, the Governor seems to have reduced herself... to a punch-line. Part two of Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric of CBS... And the wheels have fallen off the whole "I Can See Russia From My House" thing.
Worsties...see below.
WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD: Neil Cavuto, Thomas Soderman, and Steve Doocy vie for tonight's top honors.
The Littlest Idol: In understanding the relevance of John McCain's non-appearance on Late Night With David Letterman, there is one paramount fact about one of the nights he did make it: February 28th 2007. That's when -- and where -- McCain announced... he was running for President. Our number one story on the Countdown: in absentia what McCain said -- and didn't say -- to Letterman, may ultimately prove to have been even more important than the time he told him he was announcing his candidacy. Letterman says McCain called him, personally, after 3 P-M yesterday, to explain his own bail-out. Said he was rushing to the airport to get back to Washington, and suspending the campaign. But in the middle of the taping of the show, Letterman was advised, to his great surprise, that McCain had gone not to D-C, but to 57th Street, to tape a different interview with the same network, without telling Letterman -- or anybody at his show. The worst was yet to come. McCain didn't even go to Washington after the Couric interview -- he was still in New York -- and still campaigning, at the Clinton Global Initiative, this morning. Hours after a McCain spokesperson revealed McCain's story to Letterman was... simply... a lie.
