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David Gregory asks Dick Durbin if the public option is "buried and gone" and Durbin reiterates that the most important thing is controlling costs and assuring competition. Howard Dean says he agrees with Senator Durbin and they'd drop the public option in a heartbeat if we got some meaningful regulation of the insurance industry. Of course the ones taking all of their money aren't going to want to do either.

MR. GREGORY: Let me ask you about a key policy provision here, what's gotten so much--taken up so much oxygen in the room in this debate, and that is the public option, the idea of a government plan in these exchanges that would compete with private insurance plan. The president stood behind the idea of competition, keeping the insurance companies honest. But this is what he said about the public plan Wednesday night.

(Videotape, Wednesday)

PRES. OBAMA: The public option is only a means to that end, and we should remain open to other ideas that accomplish our ultimate goal.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY: Senator, that was an important statement. Is the public option now buried and gone?

SEN. DURBIN: No, it's not. I support the public option, but I also think the president stated it correctly. What we're looking for is real competition. Understand, the health insurance companies hate this public option, as Dale Bumpers used to say, like the devil hates holy water, Because it means that there's going to be a force in place there that is going to put in competition and keep costs under control. The so-called Lewin Group that's been quoted by many senators on the floor about how this is going to get out of control happens to be an organization that is owned by the United Healthcare Group, a health insurance company. So they've been discredited. The fact is that we understand that putting in a public option means that people will have a choice in markets where there are only a handful of private health insurance companies and people have nowhere to turn...

MR. GREGORY: But, Senator, it can't pass the Senate, can it?

SEN. DURBIN: ...they have to have an affordable choice.

MR. GREGORY: It can't pass the Senate.

SEN. DURBIN: Well, it--I wouldn't go that far. I would say at this point that the House of Representatives includes a clear public option. I don't know what the Senate bill will look like coming out of the Finance and HELP Committee. But we've got to have--at least be true to the principle the president said: Make sure there's competition for these private health insurance companies. These companies do not want the competition, but if we don't have it the prices will not come down.

MR. GREGORY: All right. But, Dr. Dean...

DR. DEAN: Yeah.

MR. GREGORY: ...White House officials I've spoken to have been very clear, saying that the left in the Democratic Party has overshot the runway here, overstating the importance of a public option. Did the president put it away?

DR. DEAN: I don't think so at all. I'm, I'm with Dick on this. Look, the president said yesterday that if you can find another way around it to control the insurance companies' costs, that would be fine. There's another way. There's two countries in Europe that have universal health care without--and it's entirely run by insurance companies. But they treat the insurance companies like regulated utilities. If the insurance companies would prefer to be treated like regulated utilities, we'd drop the public option in a heartbeat.

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From GoLeftTV:

Thanks to an almost complete lack of regulation, the executives on Wall Street were able to gamble our economy for their own personal gain, ignoring ethics and in some cases the rule of law along the way. And while Congress is still trying to figure out whether or not to take action, the labor movement in America has decided to take matters into their own hands. Mike Papantonio of Air America's Ring of Fire talks with Richard Trumka, the secretary treasurer of the AFL-CIO, who has some big ideas on how to reign in the corruption and greed that has become too commonplace among Wall Street insiders.

The nice thing about having the Democrats in charge is, you actually do get some much-needed regulation instead of idiotic blather about the self-healing properties of the Almighty Free Market:

In response to the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, Geithner outlined a six-part framework that would result in the most significant new regulation of the financial system since the broad changes made during that crisis more than 70 years ago.

"We have an opportunity we have not had in generations to put in place a stronger and more resilient system," Geithner said.

The key elements of the Obama administration's proposals are:

• Give a single government entity, possibly the Federal Reserve, the power and authority to oversee the entire economy for signs of "systemic risk."

• Establish a government mechanism to seize and dismantle large institutions whose failure threatens the nation's financial stability.

• Enact tougher requirements for the amount of money and assets financial institutions need to have on hand so they can withstand economic troubles.

• Require large private investment funds to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

• Set up a new, comprehensive framework of regulation of the complex financial instruments known as derivatives, including a central clearinghouse for trades in that market.

• Develop new, stronger requirements for money market funds so increased withdrawals won't threaten the broader financial system.

"What we need is better, smarter, tougher regulation," Geithner said.

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From Fareed Zakaria GPS, Eliot Spitzer weighed in on the regulatory system that is in place overseeing Wall Street, the bonuses that have everyone outraged and what he thinks of the job President Obama is doing so far.

ZAKARIA: Was the regulation -- was the regulatory regime in place strong enough? And I'm thinking particularly of the New York Fed, which was headed by Tim Geithner, of the SEC?

Where do you see the flaw having been over the last few years?

SPITZER: Here's my answer to that. The regulatory system was structurally flawed, but that's not why this happened.

After the last round of scandals -- Enron, et al. -- we passed Sarbanes-Oxley. And we said, aha, we've solved the problem. Now we have another set of scandals.

There are enough laws, enough regulations on the books for smart, aggressive regulators and prosecutors to make all the cases. What was missing was judgment. And you can't legislate judgment. You can't regulate judgment. Either the people who are the regulators will walk into a bank and say "Your leverage is too great. We are going to take actions to pull it back," or "This type of investment is flawed," or they won't. You can't pass a law that says, you must use sound judgment.

Bubbles have been there through history, through over-regulation and under-regulation. This is a question of judgment and of failure of judgment.

When I was attorney general, people said, "Oh, you're using this crazy little statute," the Martin Act in New York, "to bring all these cases." The Martin Act had a simple anti-fraud provision. That's all we used.

The federal government has exponentially more regulatory power than we did. What was lacking was the judgment, the tenacity, the desire to rein in a financial system that was spiraling out of control.

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I just got around to going back for this clip but it's worth sharing. Jon Stewart smacks down John Sununu for Republican hypocrisy over their sudden new found religion on deficits now that it's for domestic spending and trying to get our economy out of a free fall, not wanting to regulate industry as well as their lack of concern for our future generations paying back what the occupation in Iraq and the Bush tax cuts have added to the deficit.
John Amato:

Stewart also asks Sununu if Judd Gregg just learned that he was a conservative? Wouldn't he have known that two weeks ago?
And then Jon talks about how the Bush tax cuts killed the Fed budget and, well...you know...

Stewart: I'm not an economist, but let's say I start out with a surplus and I say lets have a tax cut to stimulate the economy, lets make it 1.2 trillion dollars and that surplus turns into a deficit. Why would I at that point go, hey you know what could fix that? A tax cut.

Heather: As much as the villagers are trying to protect the Republicans over their Bush behavior, the only ones that are left to expose them are the late night comedy/talk show battles as of late. Whether anyone thinks SNL's skit of the Republican leadership was funny or not, which I actually didn't think was all that funny, doesn't really matter and that was not what I was trying to convey by posting it.

I posted it because like this clip, their two faced concern over how our tax payer dollars are spent is being made a mockery of as it should be. It's just sad that our MSM is so corrupted they're not reflecting how they should be scorned for their actions and it's taking our comedians to call them out for it, whether anyone thinks they are funny or not.

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During an interview with Candy Crowley on The Situation Room, when asked if he was going to bail out the auto industry or not, George Bush says they're working on a solution because he does not want to see the entire economy collapse. He then adds "I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market system." He goes on to say that there have been excesses in the financial markets and how sorry he is that it is affecting hard working people's retirement accounts. Not sorry enough to have done anything about it when it mattered, before the collapse of the markets.

What Bush abandoned was the government doing the job of overseeing those financial markets and these bailouts have done nothing to address those problems. These people love to tout the free market until something goes wrong. Then they're all for corporate welfare. Welfare for people, not so much.

  Hannity's infomercial notwithstanding, Sarah Palin is now 0-2 in media appearances. When Katie Couric asks her to name specific steps McCain has taken with regard to pushing for more regulation, Palin is stumped and says she's gonna have to get back to her.

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Palin: I can give you examples of things that John McCain has done, that has shown his foresight, his pragmatism, and his leadership abilities. And that is what America needs today.

Couric: I'm just going to ask you one more time - not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation.

Palin: I'll try to find you some and I'll bring them to you. 

Maybe it's actually smarter to keep her away from the press, no? Check out this report from Politico's Jonathan Martin:

McCain then looked around the room and gestured as if to welcome questions. The AP reporter shouted a question at Gov. Palin ("Governor, what have you learned from your meetings?") but McCain aide Brooke Buchanan intervened and shepherded everybody out of the room.

Palin looked surprised, leaned over to McCain and asked him a question, to which your pooler thinks he shook his head as if to say "No."

As TPM's Greg Sargent says: Letting Sarah Palin Answer Questions Is Very, Very Dangerous

Full transcript below the fold:

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