• Last night the White House & Friends finalized Paulson’s $700 billion bailout plan. It’s a lot better than the original version, because both sides made Important Sacrifices. [Wall Street Journal]
• Oh hooray, the House is voting today on Paulson’s Famous Bailout Plan, with the Senate voting maybe as soon as Wednesday, and people for the most part think it’s going to pass. But still, all taxpayers in America hate Hank Paulson and his stupid plan. [Washington Post]
• Obama and McCain are pretending they’re fine with the plan, but Obama says he was holed up with Paulson in a bailout shelter filled with calculators for days while McCain was just pretended to do this thing. [AP]
• Thanks to the vagueness of his new Plan, Demigod of the Treasury Hank Paulson now has unseemly amounts of power, more so than every other financier, ever. [Los Angeles Times]
• Citigroup and Wells Fargo are said to be in competition over Wachovia, which is failing and up for grabs. [Reuters]
• Bombs killed 34 in Baghdad on Sunday, making it the bloodiest day in the city this Ramadan. [CNN]

* Have ridiculous political views? Dying for attention? Don’t waste time starting a blog — call C-SPAN and loudly hurl insults at Jimmy Carter. [Think Progress]
* Brooklyn hipsters who spot Barbara Bush out drinking can’t decide between whether to “vomit on” or “hate fuck” her. [Williamsboard]
* Giant pink house conspires with illegal Guatemalans to keep Mitt Romney out of giant White House. [DCeiver]
* Bloggers who post their “enemies list” — including recently elected members of Congress who haven’t had a day on the job yet — need to switch to decaf. [The Blogometer]
* The Corner bloggers’ had the delusional idea that Rick Santorum will replace Bolton. [The Corner]
* Hank Paulson: administration coffin nailer. [Robert Reich]

• The proposed constitutional amendment to ban flag burning falls one vote short in the Senate. [WP; NYT; LAT]

• Israel sends ground forces into Gaza and executes air strikes on bridges, in an effort to rescue a kindapped soldier. [WP; NYT]
• Bush again urges the Senate to give him line-item veto power. [WP; NYT]
• Bush’s “signing statements” are criticized by lawmakers and scholars at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. [WP; NYT]
• At his confirmation hearing, Hank Paulson, Bush’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, declines to give details about Bush economic policy goals. [NYT]
• New report by Surgeon General Richard Carmona stresses the dangers of secondhand smoke. [WP; NYT; LAT]

We tend to think of Cabinet officials as “goody two-shoes” types. People who never got into trouble when they were kids — like that piano-playing, figure-skating prodigy, Condoleezza Rice. (And no, we don’t believe the latest rumors about her.) MORE »

* Short week, short review. First thing you need to know is: on Friday, Wal-Mart tried to answer the questions, “Why you acting shady? Why you ain’t callin’ me baby?”, by having Beyonce and Taylor Hicks perform at their shareholder meeting. CostCo admits they were served. MORE »

The new guy’s kinda… weird, don’t you think? MORE »

* Marsha Blackburn is voted “hottest woman in politics.” It’s good to know that all the money DeLay’s PAC gave Marsha went to the makeup counter at Saks. [Politics 1] MORE »

Seriously, is it just us? The one one the right is a like a John Turturro/John Waters-lookin’ guy. MORE »