The House bailout countdown

The House is expecting to vote on the big bailout (oh, sorry, rescue) bill around 12:30. Jay Newton-Small has a story up on TIME.com explaining that the fiscal-conservative Blue Dog Democrats in the House, who mostly supported the bill on its first go round but are ticked off at all the junk the Senate added to it, may be crucial to its success.

Blue Dog chairman John Tanner got up and spoke on the House floor a little while ago. He said he was filled with "disgust" at what "the other body" (the Body-That-Must-Not-Be-Named) had done, but he still voted yes.

Then one of the Nunes boys from Tulare got up and said something about how when times were good the Wall Streeters wanted Washington to leave it alone, and now that times are bad they want Washington to nationalize their debts (I had typed out the exact quote but deleted it by mistake). Which is absolutely correct. And I'm not just saying that because I was a reporter for the Tulare Advance-Register when Devin Nunes was a sophomore at Tulare Union High. He's voting no, by the way.

So is Pete Stark, a former banker who was elected to Congress in 1972 on the strength of his opposition to the Vietnam War (I remember his bank HQ in downtown Walnut Creek, Calif., used to have a big peace sign painted on it). Although he used the whole this-is-the-Iraq-war-all-over-again argument, which I think is pretty silly. I don't care which way you vote, I just want you to make cogent arguments, people!

Ooh, but Republican Gresham Barrett of South Carolina is changing his vote to yes.

Anyway, there's no point in doing a blow-by-blow. I think this is gonna pass. Not that I know anything.

Update: Barney Frank, after a Jeb Hensarling warning about the bailout's socialistic tendencies: "Ever mindful of the danger that George Bush will lead us down the road to Socialism, we will be monitoring this very closely."

Update 2: Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan has a big chart of the TED spread next to him as he speaks! So cool!