Restitutor Orbis

I was watching Obama this morning, speaking to a Town Hall gathering in Florida. He told the crowd, "I'm not going to tell you that this plan is perfect. I mean, it was produced in Washington." The crowd laughed. I like this president. He speaks to people, not down to them like Bush.

I'm glad to see that he has gone on the offensive, selling his plan to the American people after days of putting up with Republican propaganda and obstructionism. As I always say, if you let the other side control the terms of the debate, you also let them control its outcome. The past few days are proof of that. I just hope Obama did not wait too long to take the offensive. He pointed out to the crowd that, "there was still work to be done to reconcile differences between the Senate version and a $819 billion bill passed earlier by the House of Representatives."

Huffington Post reports that the Senate has passed the stimulus bill.

Just three Republicans helped pass the plan on a 61-37 vote and they're already signaling they'll play hardball to preserve more than $108 billion in spending cuts made last week in Senate dealmaking. Obama wants to restore cuts in funds for school construction jobs and help for cash-starved states.

In Washington,

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner unveiled a bank rescue plan to remove up to $500 billion in bad assets and support $1 trillion in lending.

But the stock market, hoping for more details, tanked on the news.

"Wall Street, I think, is hoping for an easy out on this thing and there is no easy out," Obama told ABC News in an interview, adding the problem was caused by some banks whose books were not as transparent as they should have been.

They're saying more banks will fail. I've seen it suggested that people switch to credit unions where their money will be safer. These are truly frightening times, and nobody knows just how bad things are going to get. The International Monetary Fund has already said that the U.S. is in a depression. Now, I can honestly say I never imagined I'd live to see a depression. I grew up on horror stories from the first one. My mother was born one year before, in 1928, and her first years were spent during the Great Depression. She never got over it. She was very frugal. The same with my father. Neither lived to see this second depression, and I hope that this one will not earn the sobriquet "Great". I find it interesting that we did not quite make a century without this happening again.