Wall Street has greeted the new Goldman Sachs Bailout Bill by dropping like a stone, even though Henry Paulson and his Congressional play-things described the bill as must-pass legislation. But never fear. Paulson is going to have that give-away operation up and running in no time. Today he named, predictably, a former Wall Street banker to hand out the loot. Just as predictably, the lucky guy comes from Goldman Sachs. Paulson, as I've noted in the past, never concerns himself with appearances of impropriety and has surrounded himself in the Treasury Department with other Goldman Sachs executives.

The Bloomberg article neglects to mention that the former Goldman Sachs VP now in charge of the $700 billion slush fund, Neel Kashkari, is only 35 years old; that his undergraduate degree is in engineering; and that he had the wisdom, with his wife, to donate $4000 to George Bush's re-election campaign. That's worked out well for Kashkari.

It takes a certain level of desperation for the McCain campaign to rush into a campaign that suggests we should be concerned about unsavory people who have passed through the periphery of the lives of our candidates. Just how many degrees of separation are enough for a relationship to matter?

Judging by Sarah's standards, she can only lose at that tactic and lose big, given her very close relationships with violent secessionists and indicted felons.

The McCain campaign is shifting entirely to negative advertising. In fact, McCain is so desperate that he's going to resume trying to tar Obama by linking him to more controversial Chicagoans, including people like William Ayres who are little more than acquaintances. It's not just that this tactic has sputtered out in the past, and holds little chance of success anyway when so many voters are worried about the economy and other serious issues. That would be indication enough that McCain is at a loss about how to turn his campaign around.

More remarkably, the new tactic practically invites Obama to respond by raising an issue he has so far assiduously avoided: John and Cindy McCain's close association with the late felon Charles Keating. Keating is the elephant in the room neither campaign wants to mention. If Obama decides it's finally time to remind voters about McCain's record in the Keating Five scandal, McCain will probably lose his cool once and for all and in any case it torpedoes his elaborate self-presentation as a maverick reformer.