Bloomberg reports: “The U.S. government is prepared to lend more than $7.4 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers, or half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, to rescue the financial system since the credit markets seized up 15 months ago.” But where is it all going to come from?

With that staggering sum, James Pinkerton observes, “I think that we will have to add some zeroes to our notion of ‘stimulus.’  And to our calculations for the deficit and the national debt. And, oh yes, to inflation.  So the prudent investor will go long on wheelbarrows.”

Smart counsel from Paul Weyrich: “Will Republicans come back significantly in 2010? It is difficult to say. Unless Republicans become more credible as conservatives – conservatives who actually do something about public schools, energy, the economy and government reform – their gains in elections will probably be meager. Nevertheless, there is the possibility that the leftist majority in Congress will overreach the limits of their power. . . But when a team has to depend upon its opponents mistakes and fumbles in order to score, that team probably will lose.”

The smartest take I’ve yet read on the Minnesota Senate recount is here.

A handy summary on Eric Holder.

This says it all: “Congress encourages Detroit to focus on electric models, even though they’re not yet profitable.” Perhaps the auto companies would do better without the federal government’s “help.”

None of these candidates for the RNC Chair strike me as the sort to remake the GOP into an effective national party again. That task, it seems, is going to have to be done by activists, state houses, and Congress and, most especially, by governors. Still it would help to have someone to improve the nuts and bolts of fundraising, communication, and party organization.

Advice to President-elect Obama on a Middle East peace “deal”: “Manage it as best you can: help support an Israeli-Hamas ceasefire, train PA security forces, pour economic aid into the West Bank and Gaza, even nurture Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on the big issues, but don’t think you can solve it; you can’t.” I’m not so game on “pour economic aid into the West Bank and Gaza,” since it would be a bigger waste than giving it to the Big Three auto companies. But the rest is sound.

A compendium of half-truths and scare tactics designed to drum up support for an auto bailout. What is missing? Any reasoned explanation for how a bailout would return the car companies to health. Even the President-elect isn’t giving them the money without that.

Chuck Todd catches the President-elect fudging on “creating”/”saving” 2.5. million jobs.

Leave it to the Democrats to turn Maine Senator Susan Collins into an aggrieved partisan. Nice work, fellas. In all the years they’ve been trying, Republicans haven’t done it.

Tony Lake and Susan Rice are being marginalized, one observer notes: “How strange it would be if Obama is arranging his foreign policy team so as not to offend the woman whose foreign policy provided the foil for his primary candidacy.”