We’re going to be keeping a very close eye on the negotiations in Congress over this epic bailout proposal, but things are moving very quickly, so we need help from our readers on the Hill. The broad outlines of the deal are starting to emerge, but we want to know the specifics. What’s on the table? Who are the holdouts? On what issues? What is getting added to sweeten the deal? How unified are the caucuses? Those are the kinds of things we want to be able to report to readers, so if you’re on the Hill, drop us a line about what’s happening.

Republicans have decided that their argument on the credit crisis will be to argue that Democrats created the crisis by forcing banks to give too many loans to black people and other minorities.

And here’s a similar argument written by Kevin Hassett for Bloomberg. In case you don’t remember, he’s the genius who wrote Dow 36,000 just before the tech bubble burst.

Time‘s Mark Halperin has declared that John McCain “wins the week.” Which week he’s referring to is anybody’s guess, because the prevailing consensus on the past week of financial turmoil is that John McCain lost badly:

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

This morning in an interview with John McCain on Today, Meredith Viera reasonably enough pointed out that, while McCain has been railing against golden parachutes for CEOs, his adviser and surrogate Carly Fiorina received a $40-million-plus severance package when she was fired from H-P.

McCain said he didn’t know anything about Fiorina’s compensation, but was back at it soon after, railing against golden parachutes at a rally later this morning:

McCain camp quite touchy about being pegged as liars. Very upset at the NYT for revealing that Rick Davis got $2 million from Fannie and Freddie to help them fight off tighter regulation.

According to McCain enforcer Steve Schmidt, reporting on Davis’ Fannie/Freddie connection means the Times “is not today by any standard a journalistic organization.”

I guess Schmidt is pining for those 2002-2003 lickspittle days.

Sen. Ted Steven’s corruption trial got underway today, and he’s contemplating calling a slew of fellow senators and other luminaries, like Colin Powell, to testify in his defense.

As Zachary Roth points out at TPMmuckraker, the McCain campaign has largely succeeded in its mission to shut down the Trooper-Gate investigation into Sarah Palin until after the election.

The legislative investigator still plans on issuing his report in October into whether Palin abused her power as governor, but with Palin and the McCain camp refusing to comply with his subpoenas of key witnesses, his report will be incomplete at best.

If there’s one lesson to be drawn from the Bush years, it’s that the old chestnut about the cover up being worse than the crime is just not true. It’s a lesson the McCain camp has learned well. They made the calculation that whatever political price would be paid by impeding the duly authorized investigation of the Alaska legislature would be less than the political damage resulting from a full investigation. So far, it looks like they calculated correctly.

In case you missed it, Newsweek did a tally on the number of cars owned by the two candidates and their spouses: McCains 13, Obamas 1.