In an Early Morning Vein

Some links to kick off your Monday morning:

* Bill Kauffman looks back at Norman Mailer's mayoral campaign.

* Gene Healy analyzes the bizarre, fascistic Depression-era drama Gabriel Over the White House. (For my take on that movie and its imitators, go here.)

* Jeffrey Rogers Hummel explains why "we now have the worst of both worlds: a massive bailout financed BOTH by Treasury borrowing, in order to avoid inflationary pressures, and a monetary base increase, heralding future inflation anyway."

* Simon Jenkins devotes his final column to decrying the sorry state of civil liberties in England.

Comments

[Mad Max]

From Jesse Walker's 2004 article on Presidential movies:

"Though on second thought, I kind of like the idea of Bush as a rapping socialist after all. Bring it on!"

That's not fair - Bush doesn't rap.

[P Brooks]

So now the government transfers that uncertainty from private financial institutions to the general taxpayer. Just in case markets failed to notice, Bernanke--rather than calming them as you might expect the Fed to do--combined forces with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and President George W. Bush to scare hell out of the American people in order to ram their ill-advised Bailout through Congress.
-Hummel

I read this yesterday, but it still makes me want to get back in bed and pull the covers over my head.