For those of you who have noticed the similarity in the rhetoric and rush to act on the bailout rescue plan to the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, here is something else for you to chew on (via Digby):

Paulson said Congress and the administration must move rapidly. “We must do so in order to avoid a continuing series of financial institution failures and frozen credit markets that threaten American families’ financial well-being, the viability of businesses both small and large, and the very health of our economy,” Paulson said in remarks as prepared for delivery. “The market turmoil we are experiencing today poses great risk to U.S. taxpayers.” Fratto said it would be “unthinkable” for Congress not to pass legislation this week, asserting the result would be a “very, very serious situation” for the U.S. economy. “It shouldn’t take much analysis to remember what happened last week, which was a very serious freeze-up in our credit markets,” Fratto said. “Our financial markets right now do not need uncertainty, they need increased certainty as to how this rescue plan is going to go forward — and that they can be sure that there is a plan to go forward — and that will begin the correction in our financial markets.”



Fratto insisted that the plan was not slapped together and had been drawn up as a contingency over previous months and weeks by administration officials. He acknowledged lawmakers were getting only days to peruse it, but he said this should be enough.

Hey, as Andy Card said, “You don’t roll out a new product in August.” It worked the last time, so you can’t fault them. Last time, the threat was mushroom clouds over our cities. Now it is mushroom clouds over our 401k’s.

This whole thing is stinking more and more, and I have completely lost faith in Dodd. At the end of the hearings before the Code Pink protestors, it seemed pretty clear he was resigned to ramming this down our throats.

*** Update ***

And just to illustrate what these guys are asking for, someone in the comments to another post googled up some numbers:

Whoops! Just did a little bit of googling, and it turns out that 700 b-large is enough to get Hank invited to the G7 all by himself: Budget expenditures 2008 Country Ranks 1 United States $2,731,000,000,000

2 Japan $1,575,000,000,000

3 Germany $1,477,000,000,000

4 France $1,372,000,000,000

5 United Kingdom $1,237,000,000,000

6 Italy $1,029,000,000,000

7 China $634,600,000,000

Time to break out the pitch forks, folks.