This is Abraham Lincoln, then an Illinois state representative, speaking in the legislature on January 11, 1837. He’s referring to a dispute between private shareholders of the Illinois State Bank:

It is an old maxim and a very sound one, that he that dances should always pay the fiddler. Now, sir, in the present case, if any gentlemen, whose money is a burden to them, choose to lead off a dance, I am decidedly opposed to the people’s money being used to pay the fiddler…all this to settle a question in which the people have no interest, and about which they care nothing. These capitalists generally act harmoniously, and in concert, to fleece the people, and now, that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people’s money to settle the quarrel.

Lincoln’s speech was given just as one of the greatest speculative bubbles in US history was bursting. This was followed by the Panic of 1837, which led to a six-year contraction described by Milton Friedman as “the only depression on record comparable in severity and scope to the Great Depression.”

Nir Rosen has a new article out about Lebanon’s (latest) descent into chaos, as usual aided and abetted by the US:

Omar and his friends followed the fatwas of scholars associated with al Qa’eda.

Omar’s sitting room was a shrine to jihad: he had a large collection of ammunition shells and grenades on display in a cabinet and framed pictures of the September 11 attacks – the Twin Towers aflame and a smouldering Pentagon – greeted visitors near the doorway. When his little boy wandered in, Omar asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, and the child, grinning, said “a mujahid!”…

I visited often in the spring and summer. Omar was never without his 9mm Glock pistol; it was always in his hand, his lap, or next to him on the table. The gun was another symbol of the spread of the Iraq war – like many Glocks I had seen in Lebanon, it had been smuggled into the country after being issued by the Americans to the Iraqi security forces.

The rest.

Twenty-five years ago this weekend, people all over the world woke up and went about their lives, unaware that human civilization had just been saved from nuclear armageddon by Stanislav Petrov.

Wow. This may be the douchiest thing in the history of presidential politics (which is saying a lot). After McCain turned into a drama queen on Wednesday and declared that he was going to suspend his campaign (which he didn’t) in order to rush back to Washington (which he didn’t) and save the economy (which he didn’t), he suddenly decided that even though negotiations on a potential bailout are worse now than they were 24 hours ago, enough had been done for him to shout “Time In!” and travel to tonight’s debates with his tail between his legs. Yet with his new stance revealing that his previous act of faux-bravery was just a political charade, McCain still found a way to one-up himself by declaring victory in a debate he hadn’t even agreed to attend :

My new book. You won’t make any money on it, but your investment will be rewarded many times over with gut-clenching laughter so intense, you may suffer physical injuries requiring medical attention.

It’s really a mystery to me why I didn’t go into advertising, being such a natural salesman and all.

But in all seriousness: if we don’t move some numbers on this one, I think I may take a break from publishing for awhile. I’ve been on that little treadmill for sixteen years (my first book came out in ‘92); the novelty of having books in print has kind of worn off and it’s starting to seem like a hell of a lot of work for a diminishing return. So this would definitely be fish-or-cut-bait time: if, in theory, you support what I do, time to put that theory into practice.

I mean, what the hell, you’re going to be buying loaves of bread with wheelbarrows full of cash before too long anyway.

Jonah Goldberg posts this email from a reader:

Jonah,

I’m in my 40s. My IRAs and 401Ks are in the toilet and will take years to recover. We still have a ways to go on the DJIA before it approaches post-9/11, but I have faith we can get down there without much effort. Between me and my wife and 2 kids, we are on the hook for $40k for the bailout…

Based on this, I would wonder what planet we were living on if I heard McCain or Obama Friday night waxing poetic about reengaging North Korea to re-give up their nuclear ambitions, who was for the surge before the other guy was against it, or what to do about Iran, or Georgia or Chavez for that matter. My tolerance for these crackpots is nil. My tolerance for questions about what are now abstractions is even less. Our adversaries are creating additional crisis and are engaged in a defacto war already. Cancel the debate and earn your paycheck as a US Senator first. Secure the financial system. As to the foreign policy—the zeitgeist could be turning away from nuance and a lot more people could be ready to kick a little tail. The mood is changing and people are ticked. We don’t have an enemy like we had on 9/12 in this case, but I pity the next tin-pot that pushes a little too hard.

And then Goldberg updates the post with another email in response:

Amen! Amen! Amen!

Sometimes I think I’m alone and then I see an entry like this and I think – Thank God.

Holy crap. It’s at moments like this I fervently pray I’m correct that America is too fat for fascism. But even if we are, we’re not too fat for Timothy McVeigh X 10, particularly with a black-Arab-Muslim president.

Speaking of which: I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess both of Goldberg’s confused, angry monkeys are white.

(via Cunning Realist)

—Jonathan Schwarz

• Find an action near you saying NO to the Bush bailout.

• Call your Senators and Representative at (202) 224-3121 and tell them to say NO to any plan without the strongest possible protections for taxpayers and homeowners. Don’t be afraid to tell them how angry you are. Ian Welch is reading the tealeaves and suspects Barney Frank may have already cut a deal with Bush, selling us all out. But if so, it may still be possible to stop it if members, both Democrats and Republicans, keep hearing (as they have for the past few days) how many of their constituents are extremely pissed off.

• Read Billmon’s post from Tuesday about the dire possibilities the US economy now faces. The collapse of the housing bubble would be troublesome by itself, but probably not catastrophic. The danger is that it comes on top of our gigantic foreign debt, itself exacerbated by the trillion-dollar Iraq war and ever-higher oil prices. Getting out of this will require a type of enlightened worldwide leadership (and followership) that humans have displayed approximately zero times in history.

The McCain campaign thinks his campaign strategy of “suspending” his campaign helps reinforce his “Country First” slogan, but it really just makes him look like an old man who can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.

Limbaugh says liberals are declaring war on … mortgages. Seriously, he really said this: liberals are socialists who don’t want people to own their own homes.

Oh and hey, how about that Joe Biden! Does he say some wacky stuff or what?

Don’t make me do that again.