What's Bush's Plan B Win?

This is the strangest political week I've ever seen.

If nothing you know adequately explains what you're being told, then it's something else, right?

Item: McCain's suspending his campaign today makes no sense on its face. He needs to campaign even harder now that he's sliding in the polls. Besides, he, like Obama, can do what he needs to in the Senate by phone and by public statement. His presence in DC is not needed unless the vote is perilously close--and it won't be. Both parties are desperate to fully share responsibility for this vote.

So what's going on? Is he setting up some kind of October Surprise, either for himself or for Palin, or is he simply exhausted? It would seem so. The mistakes are raining down. Is he using the financial crisis as a cover for suspending so that he can rest? Or does he need to pow-wow about what the hell to do with Palin, who looks more like an albatross every day? Or. . .what?

Item: Is this whole financial catastrophe perhaps not what it seems to be at all? I myself do not really believe that all of Wall Street and all the banks in the USA will be in all tha big a hurry to shoot each other and die, regardless of what we're told. In fact, the more Bush says so, the LESS I believe it. Besides, I know there are other alternatives for handling the crisis than the $1 Trillion give-away.

I think that we're not being told the truth at all, and I think Congress thinks so, too. I can tell because Bush's lips are moving. I can tell because tonight he looked EXACTLY like he looked when he was explaining that Saddam had WMD, only older. He had that wooden Howdy Doody in a Suit look, his eyes like black beads starting out of his head as he read his teleprompter.

The only problem with that theory is Bernacke. But then, on the other hand, I don't have any reason to believe he can't be co-opted.

So where we are now is in a wait-and-see. If the bailout (it's a bailout, not a rescue)takes more time than BushCo says we can afford to take and yet the world doesn't end afer all, what would that mean? What will happen if Congress calls Bush's bluff?

Might a counter-move on Congress' part become -- or have been strategized all along as -- the rationale that Bush will use to suspend the national election?

It's an extreme supposition. But to be fair to myself, plenty of wiser people have observed Bush's massive encroachments on the Constitution and the separation of powers over his terms in the White House and speculated that he and Cheney are not likely to turn the massive powers he's grabbed for the Executive over to a Democrat. But in order to pull off the last move in a collosal shock doctrine coup, he would require a huge, huge crisis. And since evidently he couldn't nuke Iran in time, are the money problems of his rich Wall Street friends a sufficiently plausible disaster whether they are real or conjured?

I don't know, but something isn't right. I still haven't heard a plausible explanation for why the Bushies waited until the 11th hour to declare a crisis, when they knew a long time ago that it was coming. I think it was to stampede Congress, but for that to make full sense, the Bushies would have to have a Plan B in mind, an an alernative "win" in case Congress balked. So what's that alternative win?

That's what we're waiting to find out, isn't it?