To allow to fail or not to allow to fail? That is the question facing Congress as the bigwigs of the Big 3 come groveling again tomorrow.

Angry Bear points to some of the dangers of letting them go under, and concludes by observing:

There are no easy answers any more. We have undoubtably backed ourselves into a corner, with thoughtless tax policies for the rich, incoherent tax policies that might have guided our economic development, and a complete disregard for our manufacturing sector as we celebrated our miserable and miserly banking system that has skimmed, scammed, and leveraged its way to disaster.

No easy answers, yes. And no good ones left, either. GM is done, and the UAW as we've known it is probably done, as well, no matter how much money Congress throws their way.

Updated for the current financial crisis. A key passage:

"I heard the thugs in Washington were trying to take your Rearden metal at the point of a gun," she said. "Don't let them, Hank. With your advanced alloy and my high-tech railroad, we'll revitalize our country's failing infrastructure and make big, virtuous profits."

"Oh, no, I got out of that suckers' game. I now run my own hedge-fund firm, Rearden Capital Management."

"What?"

He stood and adjusted his suit jacket so that his body didn't betray his shameful weakness. He walked toward her and sat informally on the edge of her desk. "Why make a product when you can make dollars? Right this second, I'm earning millions in interest off money I don't even have."

He gestured to his floor-to-ceiling windows, a symbol of his productive ability and goodness.

"There's a whole world out there of byzantine financial products just waiting to be invented, Dagny. Let the leeches run my factories into the ground! I hope they do! I've taken out more insurance on a single Rearden Steel bond than the entire company is even worth! When my old company finally tanks, I'll make a cool $877 million."

Their eyes locked with an intensity she was only beginning to understand.

Heh.

After an extended break, blogging should resume with the usual punctuated infrequency tomorrow.

It won't be quite the same, as the blogosphere has lost one of its most talented voices today.

I'll be heading home to Moab on Election Day, to gather with old friends at the local watering hole to watch the returns.

In a sense, this marks a full circle return for me, an end to a journey that began eight years ago when I sat down at the Rio Colorado in utter disbelief as the election between Al Gore and George Bush was called, then not called, then called again before descending into 35 days of purgatory that led eventually to the hell that we've all experienced as the Bush presidency.

In a very real sense, that night led me soon enough to Burlington, Vermont and the Dean campaign, and to the last five years of fighting for Democratic candidates and progressive causes.

Perhaps for a moment that night we'll all be able to pretend that the last eight years hasn't happened -- that the failure of George Bush to protect America on 9/11, the shredding of the Constitution, the senseless war in Iraq, the rape of our environment and plundering of the Treasury for the benefit of Republican cronies -- that all of it was just a bad dream.

But of course, it wasn't. It stuns me to remember that as bad as I thought George Bush would be in 2000, I truly had no idea how bad he would actually be. I knew he'd bankrupt the nation, but didn't really comprehend what that would look like. Now we know. I knew he'd be bad for public lands, but never really conceived the degree to which his policies would transform the once-vast West into a vermiculate network of dirt bike trails and drilling rigs. But one needn't venture very far outside of Moab now to see the physical damage that his administration has done to some of the last wild places in America. It's heart-breaking -- so heart-breaking that even the Governor of Utah recently protested to the Bush administration at the extent to which the Bushies have lain waste to so much of the beauty of the West.

And who could have even conceived that eight years later we would live in a country that spied on its own citizens without a warrant, that practiced torture, and that turned the rule of law into a schoolyard mockery?

But at the moment, we do, and somehow 25% of people who live in America still think that that is alright.

Years ago, Paul Shepard, evoking William Golding's The Lord of the Flies, wrote that "the only thing more frightening than a world run by children is a world run by childish adults." It's a phrase that I often think of when I think about George Bush and his supporters, and the petulant nasty crowds that have attended the rallies of John McCain and Sarah Palin in the closing weeks of this awful era.

If all works out, the adults will be back in charge, starting tomorrow -- though of course George W. Bush will mess up the sandbox a bit more before he leaves, with the atrocious last-minute environmental actions that he has planned, which are his way of flipping the bird to God and his creation, just because he can.

There's going to be a hell of a lot of cleaning up to do, after the mess these people have made of this great country.

But for me, and I'm sure for millions around the country, I'll just be glad to be home again.

Light posting as I disappear into the canyons for a while....

Interesting:

Akhil Reed Amar, a professor of law and political science at Yale... raised the possibility that the 2008 election could be remembered as the fifth "pivot point" election in the presidency's 219-year history.

In Amar's reading, history was changed and the United States was headed in new directions by the elections of 1800, 1860, 1932 and either 1968 or 1980, depending on whether you believe the conservative ascendancy we are living through right now began with Richard Nixon in 1968 or with Ronald Reagan in 1980...

Amar then expanded the idea by arguing that the "pivot point" elections were quite similar to each other -- and to the election of 2008. Each of them, he says, was marked by the same conditions: economic decline, over-reactive wars or war talk that led to repression of civil liberties at home.

In 1800, John Adams ended Federalist rule by over-reacting to war fever and pushing through the Alien and Sedition Acts, which were the repressive Homeland Security laws of their day. The Jefferson-Jackson era lasted until the 1850s, when the country moved toward civil war because Democrats, many of them Southerners, proved incapable of finding a national policy to deal with the issues of slavery. Lincoln's party reigned until economic collapse led to the Great Depression and the election of Franklin Roosevelt. Failed wars in Southeast Asia and the Iranian hostage crisis led to the elections of Nixon and Reagan. The Democrats managed to elect two presidents in the Nixon-Reagan years, but neither of them, Jimmy Carter nor Bill Clinton, ever won 50 percent of the vote...

And now 2008. The country is engaged in two unpopular and probably unwinnable wars, the economy is in dangerous decline, and civil liberties have been aggressively repressed by the Bush administration in the name of the war on terror.

Therein, historically, lies the strength of the candidacy of Barack Obama. Despite his obvious political talents, it is hard to imagine a young, black two-year senator rising toward the presidency if his Republican opponent could have preached the winning doctrine of peace, prosperity and low taxation.

But there is no peace. There is no prosperity. And, whether through taxes or borrowing, the voters are going to foot the bill for the misjudgments and mistakes of the last eight years. The next question, in Amar's terms, is how solid a coalition and how many Democratic terms might follow an Obama victory -- or, to be consistent, a Bush-Reagan defeat.

As always. Rest in Peace.

Who'da thunk it?

59 percent of voters surveyed said Ms. Palin was not prepared for the job, up nine percentage points since the beginning of the month. Nearly a third of voters polled said the vice-presidential selection would be a major factor influencing their vote for president, and those voters broadly favor Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee.

And in a possible indication that the choice of Ms. Palin has hurt Mr. McCain’s image, voters said they had much more confidence in Mr. Obama to pick qualified people for his administration than they did in Mr. McCain.

Arizona Capitol Times:

"This is shaping up to be the worst landslide for a Republican since (former Arizona Senator Barry) Goldwater. I realize the irony in that," said one distraught Arizona Republican operative who asked for anonymity to speak frankly. "If I were to place a bet today, I'd say McCain loses" his home state."

Q: What's the difference between John McCain in 2008 and Barry Goldwater in 1964?

A: Barry Goldwater was a man of principle.

This country is headed for better days.

Patrick.net has an illuminating powerpoint from Merrill Lynch (opens in PDF).