Clinton Runs from a Moment of Greatness
September 18, 2008
Could the woman, who a few short months ago was fiercely battling to take the most powerful position in the world, succumb to juvenile vanity? More

Fannie Mae and Congressional Dems
September 18, 2008
Check out this video with president of Fannie Mae discussing the close relations between the institution and the Black Caucus. There is no doubt that Fannie and Freddie are Democrat-dominated institutions.Hat tip: Milton... More

Astroturfing, the new propaganda plague
September 17, 2008
If you're reading this article online, you probably do know about astroturfing, but your friends who are less computer savvy do not More

Beyond the Palin
September 17, 2008
A group calling itself "anonymous" (sound familiar?) hacked into Sarah Palin's private Yahoo email account and posted excerpts online. More

Just Blame the Crises on Freedom
by Jacob G. Hornberger

The amusing part of the current financial crisis is how liberals are blaming it all on “the free market” or on “unfettered capitalism.” Not surprisingly, their solutions call for socialist and interventionist measures, in order to “save freedom and free enterprise.”

The liberal attitude toward the financial crisis is really no different from the conservative attitude toward the terrorist crisis. That crisis, as conservatives never cease to remind us, is because we’re “free” and the terrorist hate that. Not surprisingly, their solutions call for totalitarian infringements on civil liberties, in order to preserve our “freedom.”

As everyone knows, the financial crisis and the terrorist crisis are not the only crises Americans are facing. Other crises include: the drug-war crisis, the immigration crisis, the education crisis, the Social Security crisis, the healthcare crisis, the dollar crisis, the federal-spending crisis, the Iraq crisis, the Afghanistan crisis, the rising-prices crisis, and the Latin America crisis.

Conservatives and liberals will tell you that all these crises should be blamed on “freedom and free enterprise.” It’s all just a coincidence that the federal government is the common denominator of all these crises. If only Americans weren’t so free, everything would be hunky-dory. Just turn your lives, freedoms, and fortunes over to the federal government and everyone will be prosperous, safe, and secure.

It would be difficult to find a better example of the life of the lie and denial of reality. In actuality, what is cracking are the socialistic welfare state and regulated economy and the federal government’s overseas military empire, which both liberals and conservatives love and embrace. These people simply find it too painful to accept that discomforting truth. So, they steadfastly continue believing and repeating their little fiction that it’s all the fault of “freedom and free enterprise.”

When the Franklin Roosevelt administration was abandoning America’s founding principles of economic liberty in favor of of the socialist principles of the Soviet Union and the fascist principles of Mussolini’s Italy (see here and here), advocates of economic liberty warned that in the long run such principles would have very bad consequences for the United States.

But the statists cavalierly responded, “In the long run we’re all dead.” But there was one big problem with that cavalier statement: The grandchildren of the people who adopted the socialistic welfare state and the regulatory economy would be alive in the long run. That’s us — the people living today! And we’re now paying the price for our grandparents’ abandonment of America’s founding principles of individual freedom, free markets, and limited government and their embrace of socialism and interventionism. We’re living in their long run.

Lest anyone suggest that libertarians haven’t been warning of the possible crackup of the socialistic welfare state, the regulated economy, the pro-empire foreign policy, and the out-of-control federal spending that comes with all this, here are excerpts from some of my blog posts during the past few years:

“In fact, it is quite possible that we are approaching a ‘perfect storm’ in which these socialist and interventionist federal programs all go into major crisis at the same time.” —Jacob Hornberger blog, April 13, 2006

“As I have written before, thanks to the federal government — or federal god as many American statists choose to perceive it — Americans just might be facing a perfect storm of crises, all of which are rooted in federal socialism, interventionism, and empire-building.” —Jacob Hornberger blog, April 10, 2007

“In fact, it could well be that we’re facing a perfect storm of federal disasters on the horizon, especially given that there are so many critical federal programs in crisis — Social Security, the dollar, Iraq, the war on immigrants, the drug war, education, healthcare, the IRS and income taxation, and terrorism.” — Jacob Hornberger blog, April 16, 2007

“If America continues to move in the same direction of militarism, interventionism, war, and welfarism and if all this pushes our nation into a perfect storm of financial, monetary, and economic crises, combined with lots of caskets containing the remains of U.S. soldiers as well as victims of terrorist blowback, Americans will be left with a sad lament: ‘If only we had listened to the libertarians rather than the welfare-warfare statists who took us down this road.’” —Jacob Hornberger blog, January 11, 2008

“The welfare-warfare vise continues to squeeze the American people, especially through a constantly depreciating currency to pay ever-increasing welfare-warfare expenses. Time will tell whether this turns out to be just another recessionary blip in the history of the welfare-warfare state or whether Americans are indeed facing a perfect storm of welfare-warfare crises.” —Jacob Hornberger blog, February 4, 2008

“But what happens if there is a perfect storm of several industry-wide collapses? For example, instead of a few banks failing what happens if there are bank runs on 90 percent of the banks? How is the government going to cover everyone’s losses?” —Jacob Hornberger blog, July 25, 2008

“Time will tell whether Americans are facing a perfect storm of crises, both foreign and domestic. If so, a bit of pork and lard in an economic “stimulus” bill will be the last thing on people’s mind.” — Jacob Hornberger blog, January 28, 2008

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

• 
  Rove says Palin was political choice
  By Alex Koppelman
• 
  Obama and the rules for Angry Black Men
  By James Hannaham
• 
  Why McCain and Palin have to lie
  By Alan Wolfe
• 
  Is it really OK to use the word "retarded"?
  By Lynn Harris
• 
  What does Palin have to hide in her e-mails?
  By Glenn Greenwald

Money talks, Barack. Are you listening?
With the fall of the Dow, Obama has the chance to change the national conversation to something more important than moose hunting

By Walter Shapiro

• McCain ad portrays Obama as tax and spend liberal
• With the focus of the campaign shifting, for now, to the economy, John McCain is falling back on some old Republican arguments
  
  By Alex Koppelman
  
  War Room
• Glass-Steagal and the fall of the modern investment bank
• Deregulation allowed commercial banks to invade Goldman Sachs' playground. Did that spell doom for the likes of Merrill Lynch and Lehman?
  
  By Andrew Leonard
  
  How the World Works

• The lying game
• Like George W. Bush, McCain and Palin have to lie. Because if they told the truth about their policies, they'd lose the election
  
  By Alan Wolfe
  
  Opinion
  
  58 letters
• Sarah Palin, faith-based mayor
• How the vice-presidential nominee brought fringe biblical teachings to her work as the chief of Wasilla, Alaska
  
  By Sarah Posner
  
  News

ECONOMY
The New Hoovers
This week started off rough. In fact, Monday was the first "Black Monday" of the century, comparable, as the Center for American Progress's Andrew Jakabovics notes, to "the 20th century's signature day in financial history back in the Fall of 1929." By the end of the day, the Dow Jones had dropped 504.48 points, "the biggest decline since Sept. 17, 2001 -- the day the index reopened after the 9/11 terrorist attacks -- when it fell 7 percent, or 684.81 points." Topping that off were the failures of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, and AIG, as well as new worries over Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. "What we are witnessing may be the greatest destruction of financial wealth that the world has ever seen -- paper losses measured in the trillions of dollars," writes the Washington Post's Steven Pearlstein today. Presiding over this chaos was President Bush, who has consistently chosen to deny that anything was wrong with the markets. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has also been there cheering on this disasterous de-regulation, and is only now trying to pretend that he had always favored more robust oversight. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has ordered a probe of Wall Street and in the coming days, and she plans to demand testimony from various Bush administration officials and other Masters of the Universe.

HOOVER 2.0 -- GEORGE BUSH: As recently as a few months ago, when it was already clear that the financial markets were in turmoil, Bush was trying to continue his do-nothing economics. "The President's hands-off attitude is reminiscent of Herbert Hoover in 1929 and 1930," Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) said in March. Last year, Bush was telling reporters that he wasn't very good at economics since he received only a "B in Econ 101" (in reality, he received the equivalent of a C-). However, this hands-off approach is what has propelled the current financial crisis. According to the Washington Post, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike "said the crisis is in part result of insufficient government regulation on Wall Street." "Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke need to face squarely the vast array of mistakes made by the Bush administration's financial regulators over the past eight years," notes Jakabovics. Last year, instead of aggressive measures to help home mortgage borrowers, lenders, and investors work out payment problems with federal supervision, the Bush administration embraced Paulson's "voluntary debt workout plan, called Hope Now, which (let's be frank) failed to help homeowners or the larger home mortgage marketplace," Andrew Jakobovics of the Center for American Progress observed.

HOOVER 3.0 -- JOHN MCCAIN: McCain often says he tries to model himself after President Teddy Roosevelt, but perhaps Hoover might be a better comparison. Over the past year, McCain has described the economy's fundamentals as "strong" at least 18 times. He said it most recently on Black Monday: "Our economy -- I think still, the fundamentals of our economy are strong." His rhetoric echoes what Hoover said on Oct. 25, 1929, a day after what is now known as Black Thursday : "The fundamental business of the country, that is the production and distribution of commodities, is on a sound and prosperous basis." McCain is now trying to portray himself as a financial wizard, someone who believes "in excess government regulation" and "warned" federal officials of a potential subprime mortgage crisis as far back as two years ago. In reality, McCain has been clueless about the economy. "I'd like to tell you that I did anticipate it," McCain said in November 2007 of the financial crisis, "but I have to give you straight talk, I did not." In fact, he has been a leading advocate of deregulation. New York Times columnist and Princeton economics professor Paul Krugman has pinpointed Phil Gramm as one of the architects of the current financial crisis and the "odds-on favorite to be the Treasury Secretary" in a McCain administration. Gramm orchestrated the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, which "destroyed the Depression-era barrier to the merger of stockbrokers, banks and insurance companies." He also pushed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act in 2000, which made legal "the mortgage swaps distancing the originator of the loan from the ultimate collector." The Nation writes that "those two acts effectively ended significant regulation of the financial community."

MAKING THE COUNTRY SAFE: In order to restore confidence in the financial markets, policymakers need to "protect homeowners and communities by preventing the continued acceleration of home foreclosures and by restoring confidence in the credit markets," the Center for American Progress notes. With this goal in mind, earlier this year, the Center for American Progress proposed a Saving America's Family Equity (SAFE) program, which recognizes that "both borrowers and investors, and ultimately taxpayers, are better off when loans are restructured rather than allowed to proceed to foreclosure." This plan would "promptly facilitate the bulk transfer of mortgages into the hands of new private owners with the incentive and ability to modify or refinance the loans." The housing bill recently passed into law reflects these principles, mandating a Treasury study of mortgage pools base on the SAFE program. As Jakabovics writes, a first step for the Bush administration would be to accelerate this study so that "regulators can get down to the real business at hand -- finally fixing the problem in the mortgage marketplace at its source."

EDUCATION -- FEDERAL PELL GRANTS TO FACE $6 BILLION SHORTFALL: The Bush administration has warned Congress "that the most important federal [college] aid program, Pell Grants, may need up to $6 billion in additional taxpayer funds next year." As of July 31, "800,000 more students had applied for grants than on that date last year," an increase that is "one of the largest ever year to year." According to the Department of Education, "Congress appropriated $14 billion for the grants for the current fiscal year, but because of the increase and because of accumulated shortfalls from previous years, lawmakers will need to add $6 billion in new funds next year or cut the size of the grants." "It's the mother of all shortfalls," said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. "There's more unmet need than anyone predicted." Federal aid applications of all kinds are rising, as "in the first six months of 2008, almost nine million students nationwide completed the federal aid application required for federal grants and loans, a nprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=9724&elq=05B920A060134EF1B0F44CC491500A07" over last year," the New York Times noted.


ADMINISTRATION -- AS BUSH'S VP VETTER IN 2000, CHENEY SIDESTEPPED 'THE SCRUTINY HE IMPOSED ON OTHERS': In July 2000, after serving as the head of then-Texas governor George W. Bush's vice presidential search committee, Dick Cheney became the Republican vice presidential nominee. As the vice presidential vetter, Cheney required at least 11 potential candidates to fill out "an extraordinarily detailed, 83-question form" delving into their backgrounds. Bush's staff assured the press at the time that Cheney "subjected himself to the same kind of scrutiny" as the other contenders. But a new book by Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman reveals that Cheney "never filled out his own questionnaire." "At the time, when Cheney's selection was announced, the campaign's spokespeople claimed he did put himself through the same process as everyone else and I've established that that's simply not true. He didn't fill out the questionnaire, which would have called for a giant box load of documents to be delivered," Gellman said on Tuesday. In 2000, the Bush campaign claimed that it was "Bush himself who did the final, most sensitive background check" on Cheney while then-campaign manager Joe Allbaugh "oversaw the examination of Mr. Cheney's voting record and public history." But Cheney refused to turn over much of the pertinent information. In an interview with Harper’s, Gellman describes Cheney’s selection process as “a kind of prologue to the play of the Bush-Cheney years.” AFGHANISTAN -- GATES TO REVIEW AFGHANISTAN STRATEGY AMID INCREASING VIOLENCE: NATO and allied military leaders in Afghanistan "had hoped to seize the initiative from Islamic militants" this summer. But the heavy fighting there "has instead revealed an insurgency capable of employing complex new tactics and fighting across a broad swath of Afghanistan." In fact, "over the last three months, insurgents have exacted the most punishing casualty tolls on Western forces since the Afghan war began nearly seven years ago. The numbers of foreign troops killed have exceeded U.S. military deaths in Iraq." The changing situation in Afghanistan is now leading the Bush administration to seek a change in war strategy. Citing the change in Iraq strategy last year, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said yesterday that "you have an overall approach, an overall strategy, but you adjust it continually based on the circumstances that you find," adding, "We did that in Iraq. We made a change in strategy in Iraq and we are going to continue to look at the situation in Afghanistan." When asked for details of the potential change, Gates would only say, "We're look

SALLY KOHN
Exploiting Poverty Caused The Financial Crisis ourfuture.org — Sure, the CEOs and hedge fund managers were greedy. There's no question that wealth and the pursuit thereof led to the sub-prime fiasco and the decline of Lehman Brothers, AIG, Merrill Lynch and more. But what's really at play here is persistent poverty and Wall Street seeking to make a dime off the poor, consequences be damned, while Washington looks the other way. AMY TRAUB
Education Is Great, But We Need More Unions ourfuture.org — The American Dream is a middle-class dream. We occasionally fantasize about striking it rich or becoming famous, but Americans mostly aim to achieve and hold onto a middle-class standard of living.

WILLIAM GREIDER
The Scent of Fear thenation.com — The house of global finance is on fire and everyone is running for the exits, no sure way to turn them around. What's next? The question itself is ominous, because there are no good answers.

ROGER ALTMAN
Modern History's Worst Regulatory Failure ft.com — This will come to be seen as the greatest regulatory failure in modern history. The degree of leverage that these institutions took on is indefensible. They were not regulated by any prudential supervisor. In effect, they regulated themselves. More fundamentally, we allowed a second, huge financial system to develop outside the normal banking network. It consisted of investment banks, mortgage finance companies and the like. It was unregulated, not transparent and way too leveraged. But these risks were ignored. That is, until this second system crashed.

MICHAEL MANDEL
Is It the Dawn of the Re-regulation Era? businessweek.com — The implosion in financial services — until recently seen as the shining example of U.S-style free market capitalism — is the definitive sign that deregulation has lost its allure. In areas ranging from food safety to airlines to trade, increased government supervision is becoming acceptable to business as well as to voters.

ROBERT WEISSMAN
The Financial Re-Regulation Agenda huffingtonpost.com — The current crisis is the culmination of a quarter century's deregulation. Even as the Fed and Treasury scramble to contain the damage, there must be a simultaneous effort to reconstruct a regulatory system to prevent future disasters.

MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD
Wall Street Socialism progressive.org — If there are no atheists in a foxhole, there certainly aren't any capitalists in a financial crisis. After making one reckless bet after another, Wall Street firms have run to Washington with their tails between their legs.

DANIEL STONE AND DEBORAH GOLDSTEIN
Who's Paying the Bill? newsweek.com — The taxpayers are already feeling the pain from unfair and deceptive loand, many of them losing their homes to foreclosure. Even people who are not experiencing foreclosure experience a decline in their home value because of the foreclosures next door. So the taxpayers are really bearing the burden twice because of the initial failures of the market regulators.

THE WASHINGTON POST
Back to Bailouts washingtonpost.com — Congratulations, taxpayers, you are now the proud owners of a debt-strapped insurance company.

GAR LIPOW
Renewable Energy Requires a National Grid gristmill.grist.org — A mostly renewable grid without long-distance transmission will cost at least double one that includes such transmission.

Is the 'Good Life' as America Knows it Over?

By Steve Fraser, Tomdispatch.com

Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace: The relationship between Washington and Wall Street has changed fundamentally and as a result, the road ahead is dark and unknown.

Andy Warhol Would Have Loved Sarah Palin -- the Ultimate Soup Can

Patricia J. Williams, The Nation

Election 2008: What Warhol did with Mao Zedong and Marilyn Monroe is precisely what the Republican Party has done with Sarah Palin.


Fixing Wall Street Won't Fix Our Economy

Sally Kohn, Movement Vision Lab

Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace: What's really at play here is persistent poverty and Wall Street seeking to make a dime off the poor, while Washington looks the other way.


Polls Show Palin Is Starting to Drag Down McCain

Markos Moulitsas, Daily Kos

Election 2008: The intense focus to reveal the truth about Sarah Palin's credentials has taken its toll on her numbers.

We're Paying the Price Today for Decades of Relentless Dam Building

Rachel Olivieri, AlterNet

Water: Decades ago three new dams were started every day. But the debts of temporary prosperity are all coming due and payable today.


Enouraging Signs That the Government Is Rethinking Sending Drug Offenders Straight to Prison

Phillip S. Smith, Drug War Chronicle

DrugReporter: The powerful Sentencing Commission has signaled that it intends to focus next year on developing alternatives to imprisonment.


Not a Gaffe? McCain Campaign Willing to Destroy Relationship with Europe to Conceal Confusion

Max Bergmann, Huffington Post

Election 2008: Apparently they care so little about governing that they are willing to potentially nuke the U.S.-Spain relationship just to get elected.

Over 2,200 Doctors Agree: John McCain Should Release His Medical Records

Post by ZP Heller
Video: Why is McCain so secretive about his health history? More »

• Full Post

What Privileges Do McCain and Palin Receive Because They're White?

Tim Wise, BuzzFlash

Rights and Liberties: 13 ways McCain and Palin have enjoyed preferential treatment in the presidential race.


Only a Roosevelt-Scale Counterrevolution Can Prevent Great Depression II

Robert Kuttner, The American Prospect

Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace: Free-market extremists brought us this needless economic collapse. Here's a rundown of the mistakes we've made and the reforms we need now.


Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are

Emily Wilson, AlterNet

Rob Walker, author of a new book on consumer culture, explains how consumers embrace brands as part of their identities -- often without knowing it.


How the GOP Wired Ohio's 2004 Vote Count for Bush to Win

Steven Rosenfeld,

Democracy and Elections: A Republican computer data security expert tells how cyber-partisans could have stolen the 2004 election.

Where Do We Move When America MovesOn?
Ben Brandzel
September 18, 2008
Victory could pose an existential challenge for the grass-roots groups that arose in opposition to Bush. A decade after it was founded, a MoveOn.org veteran examines the challenges and opportunities of success.

The group blog of The American Prospect
Country Second.[/color]
Posted at 4:22 p.m.



A respectable liberal blog
Think Allen Will Bring His Noose?
Posted at 10:14 a.m.


Dean Baker's economic commentary
[color="#800000"]The Post's Chutzpah.
Posted at 6:37 a.m.

Obama's Foreign Policy Advantage
Matthew Yglesias
September 18, 2008 | web only
Nouri Al-Maliki's endorsement of Obama's withdrawal timeline was a coup for the candidate. And even though economic issues have elbowed foreign policy out of the headlines, Obama shouldn't forget it.

Mistress of Disaster: Jamie Gorelick
C. Edmund Wright
Ken Lay and Jack Abramoff must be green with envy over the all the mischief that has been accomplished by Jamie Gorelick, with scarcely any demonization in the press. More

A Taxpayer Stickup
Jim H. Ainsworth
Will Congress Sell Life Insurance Now? More

Why Islamists Cheer For Obama
Vasko Kohlmayer
One of the most striking aspects of this presidential campaign is the enthusiasm the candidacy of Barack Obama has engendered among Muslims both at home and abroad. More

Allies Want McCain
September 19, 2008
The people overseas who are fighting with us in the war on terror mostly support McCain, despite what the press tells us about the "world" loving Obama. More

Palin email hacker suspect identified (updated)
September 18, 2008
No official confirmation yet, but it appears that the suspected email hacker is David Kernell, son of a Democrat member of the Tennessee state legislature. More

Palin 'Disinvited' From anti-Iran Rally
September 18, 2008
No Hillary. No Palin. No Democrats. No guts. More

Moonbat Alert: Op Ed writer says he "Doesn't Support the Troops"
September 18, 2008
Don't you dare question their patriotism. More

Moonbat Alert: Op Ed writer says he "Doesn't Support the Troops"
September 18, 2008
Don't you dare question their patriotism. More

Will mandates work for flex fuel?
September 18, 2008
As the Federal government considers significant new mandates on an already struggling automobile industry, problems loom. More

Biden: Paying higher taxes is patriotic
September 18, 2008
Joe Biden has given us a perfect illustration of how liberals see your money More

Livni set to form coalition government in Israel
September 18, 2008
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has narrowly won election as Kadmima party head thus setting the stage for her ascension to the office of Prime Minister once she forms a coalition. More

Obama back on top in latest polls
September 18, 2008
Barack Obama is once again in the lead as this tight, unpredictable race for the president enters its final weeks. More

Rangel's further abuses exposed
September 18, 2008
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman John Conyers' (D-NY) violation of the Congressional rules (and tax law) continues More

Obama Trash Talk Alert - 9/18/08
September 18, 2008
Barack Obama continues to dial up his trash talk, offering more evidence of his proclivity to use such language when under stress. More

The Times Selective Outrage at Pork Spending
September 18, 2008
This is one more sign of the disgraceful fall of the New York Times which has become just an adjunct of the Democratic Party. More

Newspaper death spiral accelerates some more
September 18, 2008
The decline in advertising revenues at the NYT accelerates again, and now the largest newspaper in New Jersey, the Star-Ledger of Newark, is threatening to shut down next January More

• A Portrait of American Wisdom: John McCain - Kyle-Anne Shiver

• Presidents and the Economy - Randall Hoven

• Palin, the Base, and the Northeast Corridor Conservatives - J.R. Dunn

• Obama and Bush agree on more than you think - Ben Voth

• Election 2008: Hollywood Redux - Pamela Meister

The Case McCain Needs to Make - Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal
Obama, Playing It Cool - Howard Fineman, Newsweek
Obama and McCain Just Don't Get It - David Weidner, MarketWatch
How Wall Street Lied to Its Computers - Saul Hansell, New York Times
McCain Squandered His Bump - Abe Greenwald, Commentary
Biden is Right: It's Patriotic for the Wealthy to Pay More - Joe Klein, Time
Paying Taxes is Not Patriotism - Jon Sanders, Townhall
Obama's Foreign Policy Advantage - Matthew Yglesias, American Prospect
Obama Camp Slimes David Freddoso - Matthew Vadum, American Spectator
Meet the New Map--Same as the Old Map (Almost) - Larry Sabato, CFP
RCP Nat'l Average: Obama +1.9% / RCP Electoral Map: McCain +14 EVs
RCP Blog: Big Ten Polls | Pew: Dead Heat | McCain: I'd Fire Cox / New

Campaign Lies, Media Double Standards - Stuart Taylor, National Journal
Election Could Come Down to Colorado - Stuart Rothenberg, Roll Call
Taxes and Patriotism: Biden's Absurd Remark - David Harsanyi, RCP
McCain Flunks Economics - Eugene Robinson, Washington Post
Obama Is Stoking Racial Antagonism - Rush Limbaugh, Wall Street Journal
Sarah Quaylin - Jonathan Chait, The New Republic
History Will Judge Bush's Legacy - Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post
The New Energy Consensus - David O'Reilly, RealClearPolitics

Back to Bailouts - Washington Post
The Fed and AIG - Wall Street Journal
Gen. Petraeus: A Job Well Done - Miami Herald
Pelosi Drills for Cover - New Hampshire Union-Leader

Political News & Analysis
Government Drafts Sweeping Plan to Fight Crisis - Wall Street Journal
For Candidates, Crisis Poses On-the-Fly Tests - New York Times
Advisers Give Clue to Candidates on the Economy - USA Today
Financial Industry Lobbyists Go After Candidates - Wall Street Journal

Transcripts & Speeches


Obama's Remarks in New Mexico - Barack Obama
McCain's Economic Remarks in Cedar Rapids - John McCain
Panel on Bush, Paulson, and the Economy - Special Report w/Brit Hume
Obama's Remarks in Elko, Nevada - Barack Obama
McCain's Michigan Auto Plant Statement - John McCain

Best of the Blogs
Obama Flip-Flop on Commissions - Ed Morrissey, Hot Air
The Spanish-American War - Christopher Orr, The Plank
Big Think on McCain's Zapatero Gaffe - Josh Marshall, TPM
Red Sox Democrats Needed - Fester, Newshoggers
Something About Sarah - Jay Nordlinger, The Corner

McCain’s Negatives
Posted: September 18th, 2008, by Richard Obama’s negative is that he left not a trace of accomplishment in either the Illinois legislature or the U.S. Senate.

McCain has the opposite problem. He has left a long and lingering trail to follow.


Remember the Keating Five?
Go back twenty years, and you’ll turn over an episode that left him tarred with the moniker of “the Keating five”. The five being senators who lent the prestige of their office to interfere with proper regulatory oversight of one of the leading buccaneers of the Savings and Loan scandal that ended very badly for the U.S. taxpayer.

McCain survived this better than the others, and the voters forgave his enthusiasm and naivete in springing to the defense of his tarnished constituent.

But his most serious relapse while in office was his ecumenical, reach across the aisle, bipartisan bid to restrict, prohibit and ration political free speech.


The Unintended Consequences of Campaign Reform
Of course, that’s not how it was presented. It was known as the McCain-Feingold Campaign Reform act, and it led to the serial abuses of lobbyist-influenced legislation and the rise of the so called 527 groups that heightened partisan advocacy.

The final poke in the eye came when Obama rejected public financing of the general election campaign, thereby making a mockery of so-called campaign finance reform.





It’s the Economy, Stupid…
McCain has a long history of speaking his mind, and it’s not pretty cleaning up the mess afterwards. His comment that “the economy is not my strong suit” speaks to the truth, but it is a truth that did not need to be accentuated.


Neither candidate has a clue as to how the economy works. Both are lifers, who have toiled only in the government arena, and never engaged in private sector employment of any real significance.

Obama would never leave himself exposed in such a fashion. He is too much the lawyer to commit such a gaffe.

What drives the Republicans up the wall about McCain is his sentimental and emotional responses to complex issues. He can demagogue big business, oil companies, and pharmaceutical companies and stand his ground with the most extreme populists in the other party.

In moments of despair…or clear insight…it seems like the campaign this year is not a clearly demarcated contest between competing ideologies.

In their rush to the center, it more closely resembles yet another primary contest, pitting the more liberal democrat, Obama against the moderate democrat, McCain.

This explains why McCain did not gain immediate traction within his own party. That enthusiasm was not ignited until he chose his running mate, one much more congenial to the traditional Republican agenda.

And so we are left with this impression. An unguided missile, with a very tenuous grasp of party loyalty.

Added to that short fuse of his legendary hot temper, and you have a very combustible combination.

http://www.bluejeansmillionaire.com/blog/

Amy Goodman:
Wall Street Socialists


Kathleen Barry:
Using Pseudo-science at HHS


Robert Koehler:
Goo-Goo America


Steve Fraser:
Wall Street and Washington


Harvey Wasserman:
The Senate's 'Drill Drill Drill' Bill Hides Nuke Power Mega-Theft


Steve Almond:
Supporting Our Troops


Sally Kohn:
Exploiting Poverty Caused the Financial Crisis


Jason Flores-Williams:
Screw Wall Street


Tim Enstice:
Does Your Child's School Get an A+ in Lunch?

Just Blame the Crises on Freedom
by Jacob G. Hornberger

The amusing part of the current financial crisis is how liberals are blaming it all on “the free market” or on “unfettered capitalism.” Not surprisingly, their solutions call for socialist and interventionist measures, in order to “save freedom and free enterprise.”

The liberal attitude toward the financial crisis is really no different from the conservative attitude toward the terrorist crisis. That crisis, as conservatives never cease to remind us, is because we’re “free” and the terrorist hate that. Not surprisingly, their solutions call for totalitarian infringements on civil liberties, in order to preserve our “freedom.”

As everyone knows, the financial crisis and the terrorist crisis are not the only crises Americans are facing. Other crises include: the drug-war crisis, the immigration crisis, the education crisis, the Social Security crisis, the healthcare crisis, the dollar crisis, the federal-spending crisis, the Iraq crisis, the Afghanistan crisis, the rising-prices crisis, and the Latin America crisis.

Conservatives and liberals will tell you that all these crises should be blamed on “freedom and free enterprise.” It’s all just a coincidence that the federal government is the common denominator of all these crises. If only Americans weren’t so free, everything would be hunky-dory. Just turn your lives, freedoms, and fortunes over to the federal government and everyone will be prosperous, safe, and secure.

It would be difficult to find a better example of the life of the lie and denial of reality. In actuality, what is cracking are the socialistic welfare state and regulated economy and the federal government’s overseas military empire, which both liberals and conservatives love and embrace. These people simply find it too painful to accept that discomforting truth. So, they steadfastly continue believing and repeating their little fiction that it’s all the fault of “freedom and free enterprise.”

When the Franklin Roosevelt administration was abandoning America’s founding principles of economic liberty in favor of of the socialist principles of the Soviet Union and the fascist principles of Mussolini’s Italy (see here and here), advocates of economic liberty warned that in the long run such principles would have very bad consequences for the United States.

But the statists cavalierly responded, “In the long run we’re all dead.” But there was one big problem with that cavalier statement: The grandchildren of the people who adopted the socialistic welfare state and the regulatory economy would be alive in the long run. That’s us — the people living today! And we’re now paying the price for our grandparents’ abandonment of America’s founding principles of individual freedom, free markets, and limited government and their embrace of socialism and interventionism. We’re living in their long run.

Lest anyone suggest that libertarians haven’t been warning of the possible crackup of the socialistic welfare state, the regulated economy, the pro-empire foreign policy, and the out-of-control federal spending that comes with all this, here are excerpts from some of my blog posts during the past few years:

“In fact, it is quite possible that we are approaching a ‘perfect storm’ in which these socialist and interventionist federal programs all go into major crisis at the same time.” —Jacob Hornberger blog, April 13, 2006

“As I have written before, thanks to the federal government — or federal god as many American statists choose to perceive it — Americans just might be facing a perfect storm of crises, all of which are rooted in federal socialism, interventionism, and empire-building.” —Jacob Hornberger blog, April 10, 2007

“In fact, it could well be that we’re facing a perfect storm of federal disasters on the horizon, especially given that there are so many critical federal programs in crisis — Social Security, the dollar, Iraq, the war on immigrants, the drug war, education, healthcare, the IRS and income taxation, and terrorism.” — Jacob Hornberger blog, April 16, 2007

“If America continues to move in the same direction of militarism, interventionism, war, and welfarism and if all this pushes our nation into a perfect storm of financial, monetary, and economic crises, combined with lots of caskets containing the remains of U.S. soldiers as well as victims of terrorist blowback, Americans will be left with a sad lament: ‘If only we had listened to the libertarians rather than the welfare-warfare statists who took us down this road.’” —Jacob Hornberger blog, January 11, 2008

“The welfare-warfare vise continues to squeeze the American people, especially through a constantly depreciating currency to pay ever-increasing welfare-warfare expenses. Time will tell whether this turns out to be just another recessionary blip in the history of the welfare-warfare state or whether Americans are indeed facing a perfect storm of welfare-warfare crises.” —Jacob Hornberger blog, February 4, 2008

“But what happens if there is a perfect storm of several industry-wide collapses? For example, instead of a few banks failing what happens if there are bank runs on 90 percent of the banks? How is the government going to cover everyone’s losses?” —Jacob Hornberger blog, July 25, 2008

“Time will tell whether Americans are facing a perfect storm of crises, both foreign and domestic. If so, a bit of pork and lard in an economic “stimulus” bill will be the last thing on people’s mind.” — Jacob Hornberger blog, January 28, 2008

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Stocks soar on rescue hopes
The creation of a giant US government-sponsored vehicle to take on toxic assets looked possible as Treasury secretary Hank Paulson, Fed chief Ben Bernanke and top lawmakers convened a dramatic meeting to discuss the financial crisis. The move sparked sharp stock rallies in Europe and Asia. Regulators in the US and UK moved to curb short-selling of stocks

Desperate times need the right measures
An RTC-type agency to buy distressed securities will not solve the main problem - lack of capital in the financial system. There is a better solution, writes Raghuram Rajan

Progressive Silence On Television
Last week, MSNBC debuted a new prime-time political show hosted by Rachel Maddow, a progressive radio host on Air America. The debut attracted more viewers than both Larry King and Glenn Beck's programs, on CNN and CNN Headline News, respectively. After one week on air, Maddow's was MSNBC's highest-rated show on Tuesday, with Keith Olbermann's Countdown in second place. When Olbermann announced Maddow's new show last month on the progressive blog Daily Kos, he wrote to its readers, "Yes, you had something to do with it." Maddow's show is one of the few success stories of the efforts by progressives to see more progressive voices on TV. In fact, the day before Maddow's debut, MSNBC announced it was pulling Olbermann and Chris Matthews from its election coverage -- a move the New York Times said was a "direct result of tensions associated with the channel's perceived shift to the political left." Despite Olbermann and Maddow's rating successes, MSNBC and the other networks still don't seem to be getting the message: Americans want to hear progressive voices on television.

ANTI-WAR VOICES SHUT OUT: After 9/11, and particularly in the lead-up to the Iraq war, news programs purged their ranks of several voices seen as remotely hesitant about President Bush's foreign policy. After political commenter Bill Maher criticized the war in Afghanistan, "he was quickly alerted that he had gone beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse -- even though that's his job. (Remember, his show is called 'Politically Incorrect.')," David Talbot at Salon.com noted. In fact, then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer declared ominously, "Americans need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that; there never is." At MSNBC, progressive host Phil Donahue was fired in February 2003 for his anti-war views, despite the fact that his show was the network's highest-rated program. An internal NBC memo said Donahue presented a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war. ... He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration's motives." The memo outlined a possible nightmare scenario in which the show would become "a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity." The same week Donahue was fired, the network brought on Jesse Ventura and right-wing shock jock Michael Savage.

'IF IT'S SUNDAY, ITS CONSERVATIVE': In early 2006, Media Matters for America published a study showing the overwhelming dominance of conservative voices on the most influential Sunday political talk shows. Analyzing guests on the shows between 1997 and 2005, Media Matters found that -- though the balance between progressives and conservatives was relatively equal during President Clinton's second term -- "conservatives held a dramatic advantage" during Bush's first term, "outnumbering Democrats/progressives by 58 percent to 42 percent." Counting only elected officials, the conservative advantage during Bush's first term was 61 percent to 39 percent; in the late 1990s, by contrast, the progressive advantage was only 53 percent to 45 percent. What's more, during both the Clinton and Bush years, journalists who appeared as guests were far more likely to be conservative: "In Clinton's second term, 61 percent of the ideologically identifiable journalists were conservative; in Bush's first term, that figure rose to 69 percent." Finally, the study found that "congressional opponents of the Iraq war were largely absent from the Sunday shows, particularly during the period just before the war began." These shows often "define the people and arguments that represent 'reasonable debate' in the nation's capital," and so the conservative bent affects a far wider audience than those who are watching the programs.

DOUBLE STANDARD FOR FOX NEWS: MSNBC's decision to pull its outspoken progressive host Keith Olbermann from its election coverage received wide play throughout the media and the blogosphere; Fox News and right-wing blogs celebrated the silencing of Olbermann's "disgraceful," "hard-left views." But for the last 12 years, since its inception in 1996, Fox News has presented a strong and unabashed right-wing perspective -- with hardly a peep of protest from the rest of the mainstream media. It's no secret that Fox News both caters to and generates a hard-right, conservative audience. An August poll showed that 67 percent of Fox News viewers planned to vote for the Republican candidate for president, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). The poll "lines up neatly with a poll that showed that in the 2004 election, 88 percent of those who watched FNC supported George W. Bush over John Kerry" -- making Fox News viewers Bush's most loyal demographic. A 2003 New Yorker piece described the network as "opinionated and conservative, and its news is delivered by people who themselves are often unabashedly opinionated and conservative." With dominion over Fox News, conservatives own an entire third of the cable news programs, and yet CNN and MSNBC are perpetually concerned about being perceivedeven slightly to the left -- or they ignore their success when they do present progressive views. Conservative views are consistently accepted as being mainstream. Progressive opinions are therefore outside of the norm and more risky. As the New Yorker's Ken Auletta noted, "Fox found its niche; MSNBC hasn't, and CNN seems to have lost the one it had."

JUSTICE -- PODESTA: TOO MUCH SECRECY PUTS OUR NATION AT RISK: This week, John Podesta, the President and CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and Mark Agrast, Senior Fellow at CAPAF, testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution. In his testimony on Secrecy and the Rule of Law, Podesta explained that "most Americans appreciate the need to keep secret national security information whose disclosure would pose a genuine risk of harm. But as the 9/11 Commission concluded, too much secrecy can put our nation at greater risk, hindering oversight, accountability, and information sharing." "Over the past seven years," he said, "the Bush administration has increased secrecy and curtailed access to information through a variety of means." He cited the slow pace of declassification of government records, the withdrawing of previously unclassified documents, failure to preserve White House communications, excessive invoking of executive privilege, and the threatening of journalists and whistleblowers. Agrast explained that "it is time to consider how Congress and the next administration can begin to turn the page on this appalling chapter in our history." Podesta made many recommendations for the next administration, including the establishment of "a presumption against classification," tightening the standards for preservation of electronic records, and enacting protection for whistleblowers. Yesterday, Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC) introduced legislation that "would require the U.S. Attorney General to tell Congress whenever the executive branch decides it is not bound by federal law."

ECONOMY -- BUSH TAX CUTS LOOK EVEN MORE RECKLESS IN LIGHT OF FEDERAL BAILOUTS: On Tuesday evening, the Federal Reserve announced that it would lend troubled insurer AIG $85 billion in return for a 79.9 percent stake in the company. This move comes on the heels of the bailouts of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and just months after the bailout of Bear Stearns. CNBC has put the total tab for the recent government rescues by the Fed and the Treasury Department at $900 billion. The rescues, while necessary to prevent a wider financial meltdown, will cause the already near-record federal deficit of $407 billion to explode. Before the bailouts, the projected federal deficit for 2009 was $546 billion. When President George Bush came to office eight years ago, it was projected that America would have a budget surplus next year of $710 billion. So what happened? As an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows, 42 percent of the "fiscal deterioration" was due to the Bush tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003. For FY2009, roughly $1 trillion of the $1.3 trillion deterioration in the nation's fiscal finances stems from policy actions. Tax cuts account for 42 percent of this $1 trillion deterioration.

RADICAL RIGHT -- VIRGINIA GOP RALLY REACHING OUT TO MINORITIES WILL FEATURE FMR. SEN. GEORGE ALLEN : The Washington Post reported this week that "Northern Virginia Republicans, realizing they need to improve their appeal among the region's large ethnic population, will stage a 'unity' rally Saturday that they say will draw 1,000 people." Yet the rally will feature former Republican Virginia senator George Allen, who, when running for re-election in 2006, famously called a young man of Indian decent the racial slur "macaca." When Talking Points Memo checked in with the state GOP to ask if Allen is "really an effective front-man for the party's efforts to win over minorities, communications director Gerry Scimeca said, "George Allen has an excellent record on issues of diversity, reaching out to people...his whole career, his whole life have been a testament to a guy who's treated people equally across racial lines, across every kind of line."

Homeless advocacy groups and city agencies across the country are "reporting the most visible rise in homeless encampments in a generation." These tent cities -- reminiscent of Hoovervilles during the Great Depression -- continue to grow with "with foreclosures mounting, gas and food prices rising and the job market tightening."

Though it was near completion a month ago, an agreement to extend the American military mandate in Iraq beyond this year "has stalled over objections by Iraqi leaders and could be in danger of falling apart." The major point of contention is whether American troops and military contractors will be "subject to the country's criminal justice system for any crime committed outside of a military operation."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a class-action lawsuit yesterday against Bush administration officials, "seeking to halt what it describes as illegal surveillance of Americans’ telephone and Internet traffic." The lawsuit parallels legal action EFF sought against AT&T in 2006 that was derailed this year when Congress granted immunity to telecom companies that had assisted the surveillance program.

Federal officials told the Associated Press that after a "lengthy investigation into his lurid messages to underage congressional pages," no charges will be filed against former Republican congressman Mark Foley.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne "pledged yesterday to squelch the 'ethics storm' exposed by investigators who said agency workers rigged bids, accepted gifts, and had sex with energy company officials doing business with the government." Inspector General Earl Devaney told Congress he was disappointed that two now-retired employees were not prosecuted by the DOJ.

The federal government is now "embracing the need for a comprehensive approach to the financial crisis." Regulators are considering a number of proposals that would "take bad assets off the balance sheets of financial companies." Congressional leaders and regulators met yesterday to discuss the plan which would “require what several officials said would be a substantial appropriation of federal dollars."

And finally: "People who startle easily in response to threatening images or loud sounds seem to have a biological predisposition to adopt conservative political positions on many hot-button issues," according to a study published yesterday. It concludes that people "who adopt political views you disagree with are not be stupid or irrational. Rather, they may arrive at their positions in part because they are predisposed to be more or less worried about risk.

The Bright Side of a Total Financial Collapse
- Michael Lewis, Bloomberg
Five Myths About the Wall Street Crisis
- Daniel Ben-Ami, Spiked
America Will Need a $1,000B Bail-Out
- Kenneth Rogoff, Financial Times
Fortunes Will Be Made Amid Uncertainty
- David Wighton, Times of London

This Greed Was Beyond Irresponsible
- John Gapper, Financial Times
Divided Government Best for Markets
- Don Luskin, Wall Street Journal
Ultimatum by Paulson Sparked Frantic End
- Deborah Solomon et al, WSJ

CHUCK COLLINS
Tax the Speculators: A Fair Plan to Fund Recovery What happens when a whole sector of the economy has been cooked and billions of dollars have already been stashed in offshore bank accounts? How are the crooks held accountable for robbing our entire economy? Here are six actions that will fairly generate over $400 billion a year to pay for a broad-based economic recovery and reduce the extreme inequalities that fueled speculation at the outset.

AMY GOODMAN
The Wall Street Bailout: Why Politicians Can't Be Trusted alternet.org — Now that the government is bailing out the finance industry, taxpayers should be in the driver's seat — not politicians beholden to Wall Street.

STEVE FRASER
How the Rules of the Game Have Changed tomdispatch.com — At moments of crisis since the mid-1980s, the relationship between Washington and Wall Street has changed fundamentally, at least when compared to anything that would have been recognizable in the previous century. As a result, the road ahead is dark and unknown.

NICHOLAS VON HOFFMAN
Great Depression II thenation.com — In sum, the less that is bought, the lower the demand for goods and services and the only thing that goes up on the graphs is unemployment. As the construction industries, among our largest employers, go down the toilet, unemployment rises.

HALE STEWART
CRA Has Nothing to Do With It huffingtonpost.com — There's a meme going around the right wing blogs. Deregulation has nothing to do with the current problems in the market. The real culprit is the Community Reinvestment Act signed into law by President Carter in 1977. Nothing could be further from the truth as a reading of the facts of the matter reveal.

THE NATION
Foreign Policy Myths Debunked thenation.com — The Iraq War is a testament to the great damage a foreign policy based on myths, lies and distortions can do to our nation's security and well-being. As the election draws near, a new set of myths and fallacies as misleading as those that led the Senate to support George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq have become embedded in our foreign policy discourse.

EUGENE ROBINSON
This Is the Man Who's Going to Fix the Economy? truthdig.com — McCain now calls for better regulation, too — after enthusiastically playing a major role in the frenzy of deregulation that helped create this awful mess. In other words, McCain is running against his own record.

DAVID SIROTA
No Time for Obama's "Minimalism" The most amazing facet of the presidential campaign is not how close the overall race is, but how close the polls are specifically on economic issues.

TRADE REPORT: Will Dems Expand NAFTA In a Lame Duck Congress? In this week's edition of The Trade Report, Democrats consider passing NAFTA-style trade deals in a lame duck session of Congress, just after campaigning against that trade policy in the fall campaign.

RICK PERLSTEIN
Panic Politics Econoblog The Big Picture points out one of the components of the ridiculousness of the Securites and Exchange Commission's temporary ban on short selling.

New York Times Makes Up Fairy Tale About Politics of Abortion No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of front page articles in the New York Times.

The Difference Between Both Candidates' Misleading Ads. (And Yes, They Are Both Lying Now.)
by Jonathan Chait
Will A Rebounding Dow Mean A Rebounding McCain?
by Nate Silver
Postwar Intrigue In France, And Woody Allen's Romantic Fabrications In Barcelona
by Stanley Kauffmann
Everyone's Talking About Adopting The RTC Model To Get Us Out Of The Economic Crisis. But, Er, What Is it? And Will It Work?
by Clay Risen

Sarah Quaylin: We've Put Our Faith In A 'Quick Study' Before
by Jonathan Chait
Barack Obama, Big Spender? Sure, If You Consider Healthcare, Education, And Alternative Energy To Be A Waste Of Money
by Jonathan Cohn
Alan Ball's '"epithet deleted"' And The Prejudices Of Anti-Prejudice Movies
by Christopher Orr
Why Michigan Is Going To Be This Year's Florida
by E.J. Dionne, Jr.

The Return of Big Government
Posted 09:39 PM | 09.19.08
Today's Polls: Obama Now Better than 2:1 Favorite

Historic Swindle
William Greider: Paulson's rescue plan is all sugar for the villains, lasting pain for the rest of us. Don't let Wall Street get away with this without enacting significant reform.

AIG Underwrote McCain's 'Reform' Mark Ames: John McCain's critical of the bailout of AIG. But it turns out the insurance giant is one of the largest donors to his pet think tank.

The Mother of All Bailouts
Nicholas von Hoffman

Even without knowing the specifics of Paulson's staggering rescue plan, you can kiss the environment, preschool education and health insurance for all goodbye.

Crashing the Election
The Editors :

Puncturing John McCain's Teddy Roosevelt persona will require brutal honesty from Barack Obama--about the causes of the crash and the regulatory solutions.

How Wide Will Bush's War Be? | In the waning months of his pres