All aboard!

Surprise! But not really, since they "could not be allowed to fail":

Holders of the companies' common and preferred stock are ``very unlikely to come out of this at all happy,'' and the chief executive officers will be forced out, Frank said. Senior and subordinated debt holders will likely be protected, said other people who were briefed on the plan.

Fannie and Freddie own or guarantee almost half of the $12 trillion in U.S. home loans and the government had been leaning on the companies to help pull the economy out of the housing crisis. Instead, they got caught in the same slump that left the world's banks with more than $500 billion of losses since the collapse of the subprime-mortgage market last year.

Fact: the Federal government will not voluntarily relinquish any power it is not compelled to by the People, as it is antithetical to the nature of government.

Fact: the Federal government expects to spend its way out of a problem that it started by, you guessed it, spending. I'm looking at you, Keynesians.

Fact: the Federal government, like a drug-addled junkie, won't come to terms with its habit until it hits rock-bottom, and the excrement really hits the ventilation. A fundamental problem remains with the recovery strategies proposed for this recession: the money is still being printed at a break-neck pace, and that is devaluing the currency at such a rate that we may not be able to recover gracefully, or even unbloodied.

I'm making an educated guess that rather than cut unnecessary expenditures, something akin to this will occur. Combined with the documented lack of domestic control that the government has shown in natural disasters to date with copious forewarning, expect "domestic upheaval" on a scale previously unknown in this country.

Such being the case, I'm suggesting a new candidate for the White House, one that more accurately represents our American zeitgeist, one that can bring us to the train-wreck with unprecedented alacrity and trash-nouveau style: Paris Hilton.

Paris has the track-record we're looking for:

- Unrestrained spending on questionable, frivolous and otherwise useless items or services
- A Hollywood-shiny exterior with a petty, all-consuming soulless interior
- Room-temperature IQ, which should resoundingly trounce any notion of "elitism"
- Religiously-devout in the worship of Mammon
- "Full-transparency" in her private-life, which can be utilized in public schools for sex-ed; likely support for a "Soma"-type dietary supplement
- Utter impulsiveness, necessary for the current incarnation of our Foreign Policy
- A criminal record with corresponding jail time, for an instant 2.3 million-strong constituency; Paris can likely rely on Democratic support for reinstatement of the voting privilege right to felons

Clearly, she is the most qualified candidate, with more than twenty years of rigorous training. And considering the way that the public is eating up Palin's sex-appeal in spite of the numerous vitriolic attacks against her policies or association with McCain, I think the test-case for a shine-over-substance campaign is solidly established; the impulse to continue to worship at the altar of materialistic hedonism will trump any protests to the contrary.

I for one prefer the predictability of stupidity to the insatiable hunger for power in a Caesar. The former is less likely to create problems for the citizenry, whereas the latter causes no end of misery.