On the 8 Spot

Remind me of the West Wing!

Need to get this thing down, I believe looking back the heroes , villains and heroes of this crisis must be remembered, villified and villified.

Wild White House meeting sets back deal

By DAVID ROGERS | 9/25/08 9:58 PM EDT Updated: 9/25/08 9:58 PM EDT

After White House meeting, Dems complain of being “blindsided” by a new conservative alternative.

A high-profile White House meeting on Treasury’s $700 billion Wall Street rescue plan ended on a sour, contentious note Thursday after animated exchanges among lawmakers laced with presidential politics just weeks before the November elections.

“I can’t invent votes,” House Republican Leader John Boehner warned the administration about the lack of support in his conference for the massive government intervention. And House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) angrily accused House Republicans — with the tacit support of Republican presidential candidate John McCain — of crafting an alternative to undercut Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

Both McCain and his Democrat rival, Sen. Barack Obama, left without any joint endorsement. A beleaguered President Bush had to struggle to maintain order and reassert himself. And when Democrats left after the meeting to caucus in the Roosevelt Room, Paulson pursued them, begging that they not “blow up” the legislation.

The former Goldman Sachs CEO even went down on one knee as if genuflecting, to which Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) is said to have joked, “I didn’t know you were Catholic.”

The White House meeting had been called at the urging of McCain, but Democrats made sure Obama had a prominent part. And much as they complained later of being blindsided, the whole meeting turned out to be something of an ambush on their part—aimed at McCain and House Republicans.

“Speaking professionally,” said one Republican aide, “They did a very good job.”

When Bush yielded early to Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D- Nev.) to speak, they yielded to Obama to speak for the assembled Democrats. And it was Obama who raised the subject of the conservative alternative and pressed Paulson on what he thought of the idea.

Wild White House meeting sets back deal – David Rogers – Politico.com.

Hmm,  This is a nice study and it shows that the feminist movement for eqaul pay for equal work must include not only the disadvantaged women but also the men who have support equal pay.

thanks to matt yglesias here:

Study Ties Wage Disparities To Outlook on Gender Roles

By Shankar Vedantam

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, September 22, 2008; Page A02

Men with egalitarian attitudes about the role of women in society earn significantly less on average than men who hold more traditional views about women’s place in the world, according to a study being reported today.

It is the first time social scientists have produced evidence that large numbers of men might be victims of gender-related income disparities. The study raises the provocative possibility that a substantial part of the widely discussed gap in income between men and women who do the same work is really a gap between men with a traditional outlook and everyone else.

The differences found in the study were substantial. Men with traditional attitudes about gender roles earned $11,930 more a year than men with egalitarian views and $14,404 more than women with traditional attitudes. The comparisons were based on men and women working in the same kinds of jobs with the same levels of education and putting in the same number of hours per week.

Although men with a traditional outlook earned the most, women with a traditional outlook earned the least. The wage gap between working men and women with a traditional attitude was more than 10 times as large as the gap between men and women with egalitarian views.

If you divide workers into four groups — men with traditional attitudes, men with egalitarian attitudes, women with traditional attitudes and women with egalitarian attitudes — men with traditional attitudes earn far more for the same work than those in any of the other groups. There are small disparities among the three disadvantaged groups, but the bulk of the income inequality is between the first group and the rest.

“When we think of the gender wage gap, most of our focus goes to the women side of things,” said Beth A. Livingston, co-author of the study. “This article says a lot of the difference may be in men’s salaries.”

Study Ties Wage Disparities To Outlook on Gender Roles – washingtonpost.com.

This quote was a gem:

BARTLET Because the idea of American exceptionalism doesn’t extend to Americans being exceptional. If you excelled academically and are able to casually use 690 SAT words then you might as well have the press shoot video of you giving the finger to the Statue of Liberty while the Dixie Chicks sing the University of the Taliban fight song. The people who want English to be the official language of the United States are uncomfortable with their leaders being fluent in it.

Op-Ed Columnist – Aaron Sorkin Conjures a Meeting of Obama and Bartlet – Op-Ed – NYTimes.com.