WELL, AMERICA ....

HERE WE ALL ARE ...

THE QUESTION IS, WHERE IS THE McCAIN CAMPAIGN?

CONFUSED?

OR LOST IN SPACE?

OR SOMETHING ELSE ....

And so ....

"McCain's backdrop baffles California school"

Fri Sep 5, 6:26 PM ET

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Staff at a California school were scratching their heads on Friday after their facility mysteriously appeared as a backdrop during John McCain's Republican Convention speech.

A giant image of Walter Reed Middle School in the Los Angeles suburb of North Hollywood was one of several pictures projected onto a backdrop at the Republican Convention on Thursday as McCain addressed delegates.

However ABC and online reports have speculated McCain's campaign could have intended to show a picture of the prestigious Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C. rather than a relatively obscure school in California.

A McCain campaign spokesman was not immediately available to comment on the reasons for the selection of the photo.

But Walter Reed Middle School's principal Donna Tobin said in a statement that use of the school's image had come as a surprise.

"It has been brought to the school's attention that a picture of the front of our school, Walter Reed Middle School, was used as a backdrop at the Republican National Convention," Tobin said.

"Permission to use the front of our school for the Republican National Convention was not given by our school nor is the use of our school's picture an endorsement of any political party or view."

Walter Reed hospital was at the center of a national scandal in 2007 after revelations of negligent patient care at the facility.

Reports revealed how wounded soldiers convalescing at the hospital were often lost in a bureaucratic morass as outpatients, or housed in rooms with moldy walls, holes in the ceiling and infestations of rodents and cockroaches.

"Historic White House race enters final stretch"

By JIM KUHNHENN, Associated Press Writer

6 SEPTEMBER 2008

ST. PAUL, Minn. - They embody four uniquely American stories.

They offer messages of transformation with two distinct world views.

They pursue one goal.

Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama and their respective running mates, Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, begin the final eight weeks of their historic and remarkably close presidential contest ready to rewrite national politics.

Race, gender and age barriers are at stake.

A shifting political landscape will take the fight to previously ignored states.

Advertising will suffocate the airwaves with intensely negative exchanges.

Debates could be as decisive as the final Carter-Reagan debate of 1980.

And more money will be spent by the hour in politics than ever before.

Armed with a bigger bankroll and a partisan Democratic advantage, Obama is competing in more states than John Kerry did in 2004, including typically Republican states like Virginia and North Carolina.

Soon, strategists predict, the number of states in play will narrow to nine or 10, resembling past elections with Virginia the new battleground in the mix.

As election day closes in, they say, McCain needs to shore up his position in previous Republican states and hope the only states left in play are Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

"Whoever wins two out of those three will probably win the election," said Scott Reed, a Republican strategist who managed Bob Dole's 1996 campaign and is close to the McCain camp.

Obama and McCain march into the fall campaign with their parties newly unified — tasks they accomplished by each reaching out to a female political figure.

Obama joined hands with former rival Hillary Rodham Clinton and sealed the deal with many of her supporters.

But McCain's selection of Palin proved most stunning and has the potential to change the game.

Obama sits atop a mountain of advantages.

President Bush and the Republican Party remain highly unpopular, Democrats have displayed greater intensity, Obama has expanded the electorate, and he has set huge records for political money.

McCain, however, has managed to remain far more popular than his party or his president.

Independent voters and even some Democrats remain unsure about Obama, either because of his race or his rapid rise from obscurity.

And while Obama's election would represent a monumental milestone for the nation by putting the first black man in the White House, Palin gives voters a chance to make history, too, by electing the first woman as vice president.
___

THE ISSUES

The economy is a driving issue in the election and both candidates are making direct appeals to the working class.

"I fight for Bill and Sue Nebe from Farmington Hills, Michigan, who lost their real estate investments in the bad housing market," McCain said, using the kind of populist language usually heard at Democratic conclaves.

And Palin, upon introducing her husband, Todd, to the delegates, defied the party's antipathy toward big labor by describing him as "a proud member of the United Steelworkers' Union."

"The underlying reality of this election is the nation is fundamentally convinced we are headed on the wrong track," said Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist who was a senior adviser to Kerry 's 2004 campaign.

"The person who convinces people they are about change will win."

In casting themselves as change agents, both candidates also are creating caricatures of each other.

McCain brands Obama a mere "celebrity," and his ads say Obama represents "old ideas masquerading as change."

Obama, in turn, ties McCain to the unpopular Bush.

"My friend John and George Bush are joined at the hip."

"And we need a hip replacement," Biden said Saturday while campaigning at a Philadelphia union hall.
___

THE BATTLEGROUNDS

Both candidates have targeted 11 states with advertising this week.

They are Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

McCain and the Republican National Committee also are up with an ad in Minnesota.

Obama, however, has expanded the field for now, placing ads in Indiana, Michigan, Montana, and North Dakota.

Timing is also crucial.

Five battlegrounds — North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Missouri and Michigan — begin distributing absentee ballots between Sept. 19 and Sept. 23.

McCain must ensure a state like Montana, which voted for Bush 59-39 percent over Kerry in 2004 doesn't flip.

But the state has two Democratic senators and a Democratic governor.

He must shore up North Dakota and hold on to other states Bush won such as Nevada and Colorado, where there's been a growth in the population of Democratic-leaning Hispanic voters.

"The secret of the next 30 days is to get these traditional Republican states back in our column," said Reed.

It won't be easy.

Obama has the financial resources to keep those states competitive, forcing McCain to divert money he will desperately need in tossup states.

Palin will be McCain's ambassador to vulnerable Republican "red" states.

She'll cross paths with Biden in small cities and rural hamlets in Pennsylvania and Ohio in competition for working class white men and women.

McCain would be free to promote himself as a maverick and independent in states such as New Hampshire and in the suburbs and ex-urbs where independent and undecided voters might live.
___

DEBATES

McCain and Obama will face each other in debates three times, each lasting 90 minutes and one conducted in a town hall format.

The first opportunity to see the two candidates side by side will be Sept. 26, at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Miss., with domestic policy as the sole subject.

Obama has the upper hand going in, with polls showing voters trust Obama more than McCain to fix the economy.

If the race is tied as the debate begins, Obama could help change the dynamic.

Vice presidential debates aren't decisive, but can put a campaign on the defensive.

The public is likely to tune in to the Oct. 2 Biden-Palin debate for the novelty of it.

The next two debates favor McCain.

On Oct. 7 they will meet at Washington University in St. Louis for a town hall styled meeting on any subject.

McCain likes the format and uses it regularly on the stump.

A week later, the two will meet at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., to discuss foreign policy.

In polls, McCain leads Obama on questions of defense and who would best deal with Iraq.

That debate, held almost three weeks before election day, could prove to be as key as the final debate was for Ronald Reagan in 1980 when his performance broke him out of a tie with Jimmy Carter.

Indeed, debates are about the show — who best connects with voters on the subject at hand, who stays on message and doesn't fumble a name or a country.

Who doesn't look at his watch or sigh with disdain.

And, in these particular debates, how will the 72-year-old McCain compare with the 47-year-old Obama.
___

MONEY:

Obama is the first major party candidate to opt out of the general election public financing system since the post-Watergate reforms of the 1970s.

His fundraising has dazzled.

Now Biden will be his chief fundraiser, using his connections to tap deep-pocketed trial lawyers and donors once loyal to Hillary Rodham Clinton in Florida, a top money state where he has ties to big contributors.

Obama's most powerful financial weapon is an online network of nearly 2 million donors who can respond to a money appeal with a few strokes on a keyboard.

Palin's rousing convention speech Wednesday invigorated conservatives, but a call for cash that night by the Obama campaign generated $10 million in less than 24 hours.

Still, Obama will have to raise money in unprecedented sums.

Democratic fundraisers say he and the Democratic National Committee, which can raise money in larger individual donations, must jointly raise $200 million to $250 million this fall to make the venture outside the public funds system worthwhile.

McCain is staying within the public system.

That means he gets $84 million without effort.

But to compete with Obama's money machine, the Republican National Committee is picking up the slack, already airing hybrid ads with the McCain campaign that help stretch McCain's spending limits.

McCain raised an impressive $47 million in August, a campaign record.

In a testament to Palin's role, the campaign said $10 million of the total came in the three days after McCain announced her as his running mate.

The McCain campaign says its combined campaign and party resources entering the fall campaign are between $220 million and $240 million.

It expects the Victory '08 committee to raise at least $60 million over the next two months.

Palin is the draw.

Until the election, she's booked for fundraisers at the rate of one every two days.

"Obama takes first hard hit at Palin"

Carrie Budoff Brown

6 SEPTEMBER 2008

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — Barack Obama took his first direct swipe at Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin on Saturday, criticizing her for supporting congressional earmarks before opposing them.

“I know the governor of Alaska has been, you know, saying she is change,” Obama said at a town hall meeting here.

“And that is great."

"She is a skillful politician."

"But when you [have] been taking all these earmarks when it is convenient and then suddenly you are the champion anti-earmark person?"

“That is not change, come on,” Obama continued.

“I mean, words mean something."

"You can’t just make stuff up."

"You can’t just make stuff up."

"We have a choice to make and the choice is clear.”

The comments were his harshest attack yet on Palin, who sought millions of dollars in earmarks as mayor of Wasilla but later began criticizing them as governor.

The Obama campaign has been searching for an effective line of attack against Palin since she burst onto the national scene a week ago as John McCain’s running mate.

The McCain campaign issued a statement that accused Obama of distorting the Republicans' record on earmarks, and hit back at him for pursuing the spending requests as an Illinois senator.

"Barack Obama has requested the equivalent of $1 million in new pork barrel spending for every working day he's been in the U.S Senate, while John McCain has never once asked for an earmark, and Gov. Palin has vetoed hundreds of millions in government spending, including killing the infamous 'bridge to nowhere,'" spokesman Tucker Bounds said.

"Just like so many other issues, Barack Obama is all talk, has no record to back it up and isn't ready to make change."

Obama also took on McCain’s inner circle Saturday, saying the presence of former lobbyists at the highest tier of his campaign makes him incapable of meeting his pledge to shut down special interest influence.

“Suddenly, he’s the change agent,” Obama said of McCain.

“He says, ‘I’m going to tell those lobbyists that their days in Washington are over.’"

"Who’s he going to tell?"

"Is he going to tell his campaign chairman who’s one of the biggest corporate lobbyists in Washington?"

"Is he going to tell all the folks who are running his campaign who are the biggest corporate lobbyists in Washington?"

“Who is it that he’s going to tell that change is coming?” Obama asked.

“I mean, come on, they must think you’re stupid!”

SHE'S NOT MY "MOM" ....

FAR, FAR FROM IT, IN FACT ....

And so ....

"McCain-Palin becoming Palin-McCain?"

By SARA KUGLER, Associated Press Writer

6 SEPTEMBER 2008

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - The banners, buttons and signs say McCain-Palin, but the crowds say something else.

"Sa-rah! Pa-lin!" came the chant at a Colorado Springs rally on Saturday moments before Republican nominee John McCain took the stage with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a woman who was virtually unknown to the nation just a week earlier.

The day before, thousands screamed "Sa-rah! Sa-rah! Sa-rah!" at an amphitheater outside Detroit.

"Real change with a real woman," read one sign at a Wisconsin rally.

"Hurricane Sarah leaves liberals spinning," cried another.

In the short time since McCain spirited the 44-year-old first-term governor out of Alaska and onto a national stage as his running mate, Palin has become an instant celebrity.

And since her speech at the Republican National Convention, watched by more than 40 million Americans, she is emerging as the main attraction for many voters at their campaign appearances.

"She's the draw for a lot of people," said Marilyn Ryman, who came to see her at the Colorado rally inside an airport hangar.

"The fact that she's someone new, not the old everything we've seen before."

McCain has sought to portray Palin as a bulldog who will help him "shake things up" on Capitol Hill.

Washington, he said Saturday, is "going to get to know her, but I can't guarantee you they'll love her."

"We do!" came a cry from the crowd.

Perhaps recognizing the excitement she is generating, the McCain campaign was planning to keep Palin with McCain for several more days, rather than dispatch her to campaign by herself, as had initially been discussed.

On Saturday, McCain and Palin rode their post-convention wave into the competitive West, where Democrats have made recent gains in traditional Republican strongholds.

After a day of talking up economic themes in the Midwest, the pair attracted thousands at a rally in Colorado Springs, a city at the foot of Pike's Peak that is home to many conservatives and military families.

They were to head later to New Mexico.

It was McCain's first appearance in Colorado since the Democrats had their convention in Denver last month.

Both campaigns consider the battleground state in play with the election less than two months away.

"Colorado, it's going to be a hard-fought battle here," Palin said.

As soon as she began speaking, a group of supporters interrupted her with a cheer of "Sa-rah! Sa-rah!"

Palin is even getting the star treatment from celebrity magazines, Web sites and television programs, which have played up her personal story as a mother of five children, one of whom is 17 years old, unmarried and pregnant.

The excitement with which people are turning out to see Palin could complicate a key line of attack that the McCain campaign has been building against Democrat Barack Obama for months.

Republicans have sought to cast Obama's support as nothing more than shallow adoration and hype befitting a movie star.

They have mocked his appeal among Hollywood types and compared his star status to that of lightweights like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.

They say there is nothing of substance to back up the candidacy of the Illinois senator.

Palin herself asked in her convention speech what happens "when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot — what exactly is our opponent's plan?"

Obama has been careful in his comments about her, saying Saturday that she has flip-flopped on spending earmarks, but also calling her a "skillful politician."

Voters interviewed at rallies said their support for McCain has been cemented with his pick of Palin, who is a social conservative and reassures many who were wary about McCain on those issues.

Patricia Hoskins said she was already backing McCain but that Palin "really lit the fire under me."

And in the brief time that McCain and Palin have been campaigning since she introduced herself to the nation, many women at their events have said they identify with her personal struggles.

"She's every mom," said Lindsey Denny, a mother of 7, including a set of quintuplets, two of whom have special needs like Palin's infant son with Down syndrome.

Denny said Palin's inclusion on the ticket was "110 percent" the reason why she went to see her Saturday.

This morning, I thought I was being creative when I remembered the old TV Show, Paladin--
Have Gun, will Travel. I later Googled the term and found the web was full of that connection...

Well, you were still being creative, rla ....

Maybe you started a "STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS" that then turned into a wave ...

And when you think on the role that PALADIN knights played in society way back when, fighting for the cause of THE TRUTH, it is clear that Sarah Palin is no PALADIN, unless you really want to stretch the definition of the term to include "BLACK KNIGHTS" as well, or maybe "BLACK BASHERS", anyway ...

And so ...

PALADIN a champion of a medieval prince ....

An outstanding protagonist of a cause ...

- Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary

I think there might have been a paladin in Ivanhoe

"Rep. Frank: gov't will stabilize Fannie, Freddie"

By ALAN ZIBEL, AP Business Writer

6 SEPTEMBER 2008

WASHINGTON - A top House Democrat confirmed Saturday that the government is planning to intervene to stabilize troubled mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said in a statement that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson "intends to use the powers that Congress provided it" in a law passed in July to enable Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to keep functioning.

But Frank, who spoke with Paulson late Friday, said he did not "know the details of the proposed interventions," and a Treasury spokeswoman declined to comment.

A person briefed on the matter Friday said the government was planning to take over both companies, which together hold or back half of the nation's mortgage debt.

The intervention, which could cost taxpayers billions, was expected to include the departure of Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd and Freddie Mac CEO Richard Syron, according to the source, who asked not to be named because the plan was yet to be announced.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and James Lockhart, the companies' chief regulator, met Friday afternoon with the top executives from the mortgage companies and informed them of the government's plan to put the companies into a conservatorship as early as this weekend.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have lost a combined $14 billion over the past four quarters as a record number of Americans fell behind on their mortgages and went into foreclosure.

While both companies said they had enough resources to withstand the losses, many investors believe their financial cushions could wither away as defaults and foreclosures mount.

In July, Congress passed a plan to provide unlimited government loans to Fannie and Freddie and to purchase stock in the companies if needed.

Critics say the open-ended nature of the rescue package could expose taxpayers to billions of dollars of potential losses.

The Bush administration, however, may have little choice but to support Fannie and Freddie.

Their role in the U.S. mortgage market has grown dramatically over the past year as other lenders collapsed under the weight of bad subprime loans.

The companies guaranteed about three-quarters of all new mortgages in the second quarter of this year, up from under 40 percent in 2006, according to the trade publication Inside Mortgage Finance.

Fannie Mae was created by the government in 1938, and was turned into a public company 30 years later.

Freddie Mac was established in 1970 to provide competition for Fannie.

A government takeover could cost taxpayers up to $25 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

"Regulators Shutter Silver State Bank"

By DAVID ENRICH and DAMIAN PALETTA

September 6, 2008 5:13 p.m.

State and federal regulators on Friday shut down Silver State Bank, the latest in a series of bank failures and one that could ripple through the presidential campaign.

Until recently, the son of Republican nominee Sen. John McCain sat on Silver State's board and was a member of its three-person audit committee, which was responsible for overseeing the company's financial condition.

Andrew McCain left the Henderson, Nev., bank July 26 after five months on the board, citing "personal reasons."

He is Sen. McCain's adopted son from his first marriage.

There is no evidence that Mr. McCain, 46, committed any wrongdoing.

Nor are there signs that Sen. McCain, the Arizona Republican who on Thursday accepted his party's presidential nomination, had any knowledge of or involvement in Silver State's problems.

McCain spokesman Taylor Griffin issued this response:

"Silver State, like many regional banks, is struggling in the midst of very difficult economic conditions."

"Andy realized after joining the Silver State board in April that the bank needed directors who could devote a great deal of time and attention to guiding 'the bank through this challenging time'."

"Living in Phoenix and having just accepted the chairmanship of the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, Andy realized that it would be difficult for him to devote the time and attention that Silver State's shareholders and depositors deserved."

"So, he stepped down."

Efforts to reach Andrew McCain Friday night at Hensley & Co., the family-owned beer distributor where he is chief financial officer, were unsuccessful.

BANKS THAT WENT BUST

The lender, the 11th bank to fail in the U.S. this year, was overexposed to risky real-estate loans, a problem that's vexing many banks amid the worst financial crisis in a generation.

Silver State had nearly $2 billion in assets and 17 branches in Arizona and Nevada.

The FDIC said Nevada State Bank, a Las Vegas-based unit of Zions Bancorp., is taking over the insured deposits of the failed bank, as well as some of its assets.

Some $20 million of Silver State's $1.7 billion in deposits were uninsured by the FDIC, representing about 500 customer accounts, the agency said.

Silver State's failure will be costly to the FDIC's already-strained deposit insurance fund.

The FDIC estimated it will incur a $450 million to $550 million hit.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. had been preparing to shut down Silver State late last month, but the agency encountered resistance from the Nevada Division of Financial Institutions, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Nevada regulators had final say over whether to pull the plug on the state-chartered bank, and wanted to keep it open.

Founded in 1996, Silver State specialized in construction and land-development loans to finance real-estate projects in Nevada and Arizona.

In July 2007, Silver State raised about $30 million through an initial public stock offering.

Its shares debuted at $20.

The business unraveled this year.

By June 30, borrowers had fallen behind on about $252 million worth of loans, compared to about $11.5 million six months earlier, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

The bank's capital ratios, which represent the bank's cushion to absorb losses, have dropped sharply.

Mr. McCain's ties to Silver State date to 2006, when he became a director of Choice Bank, a small Scottsdale, Ariz., lender that Silver State acquired that year.

Mr. McCain's family was an early investor in Choice, according to people familiar with the matter.

Choice was smaller than Silver State, but its finances deteriorated just as quickly and hurt the parent company.

As of March 31, 2008, Choice was facing $7.9 million worth of delinquent loans, up from $1.6 million three months earlier.

Silver State recently logged an $18.8 million write-down, representing the full remaining value of its investment in Choice, to reflect the "continued deterioration" of the franchise's credit quality, according to securities filings.

In June, Silver State planned to raise up to $40 million through a stock offering.

As a way to entice investors, the company's 10 directors each agreed to participate.

Mr. McCain, who at the time owned 1,126 shares of Silver State stock, pledged to buy another 170,648 shares, according to regulatory filings.

At the $3.26-a-share offering price, it would have cost him $556,312.

A successful stock offering could have bought Silver State some time.

But the offering never was consummated, in part because Silver State couldn't drum up interest from investors.

If Mr. McCain had remained on Silver State's board another four days, his position on the audit committee would have required him to sign off on the company's second-quarter financial statements.

Three weeks after Mr. McCain quit, Silver State had to revise those second-quarter numbers to reflect a loss of $72.3 million, which was larger than previously reported.

It warned in the Aug. 15 regulatory filing of "uncertainty about the company's ability to continue as a going concern," a sign the bank's survival was in doubt.

Silver State said at the time its insurance carrier planned to cancel policies protecting Silver State's directors and executives from liability due to the bank's elevated risk profile, effective Oct. 7.

Mr. McCain's public role in his father's presidential campaign has been mostly limited to appearances at several events last month.

A person close to Mr. McCain says he left Silver State's board because his busy schedule meant he wouldn't be able to devote enough time to the struggling bank.

Mr. McCain was a quiet presence on Choice's board, say former associates.

He would occasionally ask executives about how the bank's loan portfolios were holding up, but rarely pressed for details.

William Robert, a co-founder of Choice, says Mr. McCain didn't play an active role on the boards of either Choice or Silver State.

"He got on [the Silver State] board, he looked around, and he decided he shouldn't be on it," Mr. Robert said.

"There's nothing suspicious here."

--Elizabeth Holmes contributed to this article.

Write to David Enrich at david.enrich@wsj.com and Damian Paletta at damian.paletta@wsj.com

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1220664268...ews_us_business

Another question I was wondering about, Did the Light skinned people of the Caucus Mountains
originate the term, "Causacian Race" and what was their relationship to Christianity?

"Obama, McCain call for changes in mortgage giants"

By CHARLES BABINGTON, Associated Press Writer

6 SEPTEMBER 2008

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. - Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said Saturday that any government takeover of troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac must put the interests of taxpayers and homeowners first.

His opponent, GOP nominee John McCain, said it was essential to restructure the mortgage giants.

"Any action we take must be focused not on the whims of lobbyists and special interests worried about their bonuses and hourly fees, but on whether it will strengthen our economy and help struggling homeowners," Obama told reporters after a campaign stop in Indiana.

He stopped short of making detailed proposals, saying "we need to carefully address" the possible impact on community and regional banks.

"But we must not allow government intervention to protect investors and speculators who relied on the government to reap massive profits," he said.

In Colorado, McCain said, "today we're looking at a federal bailout of our home loan agencies."

His running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, said a "McCain-Palin administration will make them smaller and smarter and more effective for homeowners who need them."

She did not elaborate.

McCain said in an interview for CBS "Face The Nation" to be aired Sunday that the mortgage giants need to be restructured.

"I think that we've got to keep people in their homes," McCain said.

"There's got to be restructuring, there's got to be reorganization, and there's got to be some confidence that we've stopped this downward spiral."

"It's hard, it's tough, but it's also the classic example of why we need change in Washington."

"It's an example of cronyism, special interest, lobbyists, a quasi-governmental organization where the executives were making hundreds of — some billion dollars a year while things were going downhill, going to hell in a hand-basket."

"This is the kind of cronyism, corruption, that's made people so justifiably angry."

Obama, talking of possible changes to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, said:

"We can't have a situation in which, during boom times, management and investors are soaking up huge profits, taking extraordinary risks, and thinking to themselves that if they get into trouble because of these risky investments that somehow the taxpayers are going to be there to bail them out."

What took place at the two institutions, he said, "was in many instances irresponsible," even if it was legal.

"They were boosting profits as a priority," he said, which produced management bonuses.

"I think that has led to some of the problems," he said.

Obama restated his call for a second stimulus package this year, which would involve a tax rebate for individuals and aid to states for education, health care and other costs.

Obama and McCain said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson briefed them on the mortgage crisis and the administration's steps toward a government takeover of the two financial companies.

"Lawmaker accused of politicizing Palin probe"

By MATT VOLZ, Associated Press Writer

6 SEPTEMBER 2008

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A Republican lawmaker wants the Democrat overseeing an investigation into Gov. Sarah Palin's dismissal of her public safety commissioner removed because he seems intent on damaging her vice presidential candidacy.

Democratic state Sen. Hollis French "appears to be steering the direction of the investigation, its conclusion and its timing in a manner that will have maximum partisan political impact on the national and state elections," state Rep. John Coghill said in a letter dated Friday.

Coghill, from North Pole, is on the Alaska Legislature's Legislative Council, the body that appointed French to oversee the investigation.

The letter was sent to the council chairman, Sen. Kim Elton, D-Juneau, whom Coghill asks to convene a meeting to discuss whether French should be replaced.

Coghill said the council instructed French, an Anchorage Democrat, to keep politics out of the investigation.

"He just failed that, in my view," Coghill told The Associated Press Saturday.

Elton did not immediately return a message left at his office.

In July, the council approved $100,000 for an investigation into whether Palin abused her power by firing Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan.

Monegan has said he felt pressure form Palin family and staff to dismiss a trooper, Mike Wooten, who went through a messy divorce with her sister before Palin's election as governor.

Coghill wrote in the letter that French was quoted in media reports that the results of the probe were going to be an "October surprise" that is "likely to be damaging to the administration."

The comments lead Coghill to believe the investigation is lacking in fairness, neutrality and due process, he wrote.

Coghill said he was not approached by the McCain-Palin campaign to draft the letter, but that he called the campaign to "apprise" them of the letter.

"I'm on my own in this one," he said.

French said he said some things he probably shouldn't have, but noted that he is not in charge of gathering the facts and writing the report.

Prosecutor Stephen Branchflower was hired to conduct the investigation and the integrity of the probe remains intact, he said.

"The reason we hired Steve Branchflower was to avoid this entire discussion."

"Sooner or later everybody gets accused of partisanship no matter what you're doing," French told the AP.

A recent decision to not subpoena the governor in the probe was evidence that the investigation was not politicized, French said.

On Friday, French said the Legislature will subpoena seven other witnesses and that the investigation on a fast track now that Palin is Republican John McCain's running mate.

The investigation previously was expected to end on Oct. 31, five days before the Nov. 4 election.

The new target date for Branchflower to complete the report is Oct. 10.

Wooten divorced Palin's sister and served a five day suspension after the Palins filed a complaint against him for threatening Palin's father.

The Palins also accused Wooten of using a Taser on his stepson, drinking in his patrol car and illegally shooting a moose.

Monegan was fired by Palin in July.

She has strongly denied that Monegan's dismissal had anything to do with her former brother-in-law and has said she welcomes the investigation.

Coghill's efforts were initially reported by Newsweek.

HERE WE ARE, ALRIGHT ....

HISTORY HAS JUST BEEN MADE HERE IN WHAT USED TO BE OUR AMERICA ....

AND BECAUSE IT IS SUNDAY ....

THERE IS NOT A PEEP ABOUT IT ....

GEORGE W. BUSH IS NOW THE HUGO CHAVEZ OF NORTH AMERICA ...

HE IS NOW AN AMERICAN DICTATOR WITH THE GOD GIVEN DICTATORIAL RIGHT TO NATIONALIZE AND APPROPRIATE PRIVATE PROPERTY WHENEVER HE WISHES ...

TO TAKE FROM US WHAT HE WILL WHEN HE WANTS ....

AND TO THEN STICK US WITH THE BILL ...

TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION ALL OVER AGAIN ....

AND THIS TIME AMERICA SUCKS ITS THUMB AS IT SHOPS ON BORROWED MONEY ....

And so ....

HAIL CAESAR BUSH!

OR IS IT HEIL HITLER BUSH?

And so ...

"AP - Officials announce takeover of mortgage giants"

Sunday September 7, 12:34 pm ET

By Alan Zibel and Martin Crutsinger, AP Business Writers

Government assumes control over mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

WASHINGTON (AP) -- [u]The Bush administration, acting to avert the potential for major financial turmoil, announced Sunday that the federal government was taking control of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Officials announced that the executives and board of directors of both institutions had been replaced.

Herb Allison, a former vice chairman of Merrill Lynch, was selected to head Fannie Mae, and David Moffett, a former vice chairman of US Bancorp, was picked to head Freddie Mac.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson says the historic actions were being taken because "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are so large and so interwoven in our financial system that a failure of either of them would cause great turmoil in our financial markets here at home and around the globe."

The huge potential liabilities facing each company, as a result of soaring mortgage defaults, could cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars, but Paulson stressed that the financial impacts if the two companies had been allowed to fail would be far more serious.

"A failure would affect the ability of Americans to get home loans, auto loans and other consumer credit and business finance," Paulson said.

Both companies were placed into a government conservatorship that will be run by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the new agency created by Congress this summer to regulate Fannie and Freddie.

The Federal Reserve and other federal banking regulators said in a joint statement Sunday that "a limited number of smaller institutions" have significant holdings of common or preferred stock shares in Fannie and Freddie, and that regulators were "prepared to work with these institutions to develop capital-restoration plans."

The two companies had nearly $36 billion in preferred shares outstanding as of June 30, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Paulson said that it would be up to Congress and the next president to figure out the two companies' ultimate structure.

"There is a consensus today ... that they cannot continue in their current form," he said.

Paulson and James Lockhart, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, stressed that their actions were designed to strengthen the role of the two mortgage giants in supporting the nation's housing market.

Both companies do that by buying mortgage loans from banks and packaging those loans into securities that they either hold or sell to U.S. and foreign investors.

The companies own or guarantee about $5 trillion in home loans, about half the nation's total.

Lockhart said that both Fannie and Freddie would be allowed to increase the size of their holdings of mortgage-backed securities to bolster the housing industry as it undergoes its worst downturn in decades.

Lockhart said in order to conserve about $2 billion in capital the dividend payments on both common and preferred stock would be eliminated.

He said that all lobbying activities of both companies would stop immediately.

Both companies over the years made extensive efforts to lobby members of Congress in an effort to keep the benefits they enjoyed as government-sponsored enterprises.

Both Paulson and Lockhart were careful not to blame Daniel Mudd, the CEO of Fannie Mae, or Freddie Mac CEO Richard Syron for the companies' current problems.

While both men are being removed as the top executives, they have been asked to remain for an unspecified period to help with the transition.

"Obama: Recession could delay rescinding tax cuts"

7 SEPTEMBER 2008

WASHINGTON - Democrat Barack Obama says he would delay rescinding President Bush's tax cuts on wealthy Americans if he becomes the next president and the economy is in a recession, suggesting such an increase would further hurt the economy.

Nevertheless, Obama has no plans to extend the Bush tax cuts beyond their expiration date, as Republican John McCain advocates.

Instead, Obama wants to push for his promised tax cuts for the middle class, he said in a broadcast interview aired Sunday.

"Even if we're still in a recession, I'm going to go through with my tax cuts," Obama said.

"That's my priority."

What about increasing taxes on the wealthy?

"I think we've got to take a look and see where the economy is. I mean, the economy is weak right now," Obama said on "This Week" on ABC.

"The news with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, I think, along with the unemployment numbers, indicates that we're fragile."

Obama was referring to the two mortgage companies taken over by the federal government Sunday in what could become a huge taxpayer bailout.

The nation's unemployment rate climbed to 6.1 percent in August from 5.7 percent the month before, the government said last week.

It was the first time in five years that the unemployment rate had topped 6 percent.

Obama and McCain have sparred over tax policy for months.

Obama says McCain wants to continue Bush administration policies, noting that McCain had voted against the Bush tax cuts but then embraced them as he campaigned for the Republican presidential nomination.

"John McCain likes to talk about fiscal responsibility, but there is no doubt that his proposals blow a hole through the budget," Obama said.

McCain has repeatedly hammered Obama over taxes in an attempt to paint him as a typical tax-and-spend liberal.

McCain wants to make permanent the Bush tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of 2010.

"We can get this economy back on it's feet," McCain said in an interview aired Sunday on "Face the Nation" on CBS.

"Don't raise their taxes."

"Get it going again."

"Americans are hurting in a way that they have not hurt for a long time."

The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama's tax plan would benefit middle-income taxpayers more than McCain's.

However, Obama would raise payroll taxes on taxpayers with incomes above $250,000, and he would raise corporate taxes.

Small businesses that make more than $250,000 a year also would see taxes rise.

McCain's plan cuts taxes across all income levels.

It would cut taxes for those in the top 1 percent by more than $125,000, raising their after-tax income an average 9.5 percent, the center concluded.

"McCain touts Palin on foreign affairs"

Jen DiMascio

7 SEPTEMBER 2008

Touting the credentials of his running mate, John McCain and his campaign suggest that Gov. Sarah Palin’s role as commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard qualifies as foreign affairs experience.

It’s been a familiar argument this election cycle, one made by other governors ranging from former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican, to Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat.

“You're the commander in chief of your National Guard and, in this context, many of us have been to Iraq and Afghanistan."

"We've been deploying Guard over there."

"We talk to the families of those who have died over there,” Napolitano told The Associated Press in July.

“So I think the current crop of governors has more relevant foreign policy experience perhaps than our predecessors.”

That may be true, but there’s a caveat: governors don’t have any command role in overseas deployments, or in the national security and foreign policy decisions surrounding them.

That’s the prerogative of the president.

Governors are commanders of their state National Guard units, but their roles are restricted to deployments of soldiers and airmen within their states, said Randy Noller, a spokesman for the National Guard Bureau, the federal defense agency that oversees the Army and Air National Guards.

But that hasn’t stopped the McCain campaign from claiming Palin’s role with the state Guard, and her visit to Alaska Guard members in Kuwait last year, as foreign policy experience.

“She’s been the commander of the National Guard, of Alaska’s National Guard, who’s been deployed overseas,’’ said McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds during a heated exchange Monday night with CNN anchor Campbell Brown, adding:

“That’s foreign policy experience.”

A day earlier, on "Fox News Sunday," McCain defended Palin’s background with a similar explanation.

“The point is she has been to Kuwait."

"She has been over there,” he said.

“She has been with her troops, the National Guard that she commands, who had been over there and had the experience."

"I’m proud of her knowledge of these challenges and issues.”

Responding to a question about the link between stateside command of the National Guard and foreign policy experience, Ben Porritt, a spokesman for the McCain campaign on vice presidential matters, took aim at the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama.

“We will stack Palin’s foreign policy credentials against Obama’s any day,” Porritt said.

“She understands the surge in Iraq is working."

"She supports our troops on the front lines."

"Barack Obama voted against them.”

Porritt added that being a governor — who handles budgets and bureaucrats, among other many other things — has long been considered qualification to be in the White House.

Palin herself mentioned her role with the Guard when the Republican senator from Arizona first introduced her as his vice presidential running mate in Dayton, Ohio.

“It was Sen. McCain who refused to hedge his support for our troops in Iraq, regardless of the political costs."

"And you know what?” the governor said.

“As the mother of one of those troops, and as the commander of Alaska's National Guard, that's the kind of man I want as our commander in chief.”

Palin’s son Track enlisted in the Army a year ago and is headed to Iraq later this month.

In Alaska, the Guard's adjutant general, Maj. Gen. E. Craig Campbell, said Palin has been "very supportive" of the National Guard.

Before she was even sworn in as governor, she traveled to welcome soldiers returning from Iraq and Kuwait, he said.

The Alaska National Guard, which has about 3,850 members, has units regularly deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan and recently had a small presence in Louisiana, helping with Hurricane Gustav relief, said Alaska Guard spokeswoman Kalei Brooks.

The Alaska Guard dispatched a C-17 cargo jet with two HH-60 Pave Hawk search and rescue helicopters in response to a call from fellow Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana.

Only about 18 members of the Guard currently are deployed overseas, but another “large” group is preparing to leave this month, she said.

Another small group from the Alaska Air National Guard is returning from Kyrgyzstan, where they guarded air strips.

The state always retains enough of a presence to respond to disasters that come with springtime flooding, wildfires and earthquakes, Brooks said.

“Never at any time do we have soldiers out of Alaska that can’t fulfill that homeland defense role,” she said.

GUESS WHAT, AMERICA ....

SARAH PALIN UNDERSTANDS THE SURGE IN IRAQ IS WORKING ....

EXCEPT ...

THE SURGE IS OVER, SARAH!

Sorry ....

But it is ...

ALL the surge troops are now gone from IRAQINAM ...

So the SURGE is not working, Sarah ....

The SURGE is PAST TENSE ...

It is now a part of American history, just like the CIVIL WAR ...

YOU'RE A LITTLE OUT OF DATE HERE, AREN'T YOU, SARAH?

Must be all that pressure of attending all of those FUND RAISERS has you a little flustered and confused, Sarah .....

AND THIS IS JUST THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL!

If you can't keep your facts straight now, how can we trust your judgment should you get into the Oval Office if John McCain should suddenly die of old age ....

And so ...

"Sarah Palin has yet to meet the press"

Michael Calderone Sat Sep 6, 6:21 PM ET

When political junkies flip through television stations on Sunday morning, they'll find policy-driven interviews with three of the four candidates on the presidential tickets — John McCain, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

They won’t, though, see Sarah Palin.

Less than two months before voters hit the polls, Palin has yet to sit down for or even schedule an issues-oriented interview with any newspaper, magazine or television network.

Meanwhile, the McCain campaign has significantly scaled back the access of the national press he used to jokingly refer to as his “base,” and several speakers, including Palin, took shots at the media in their speeches at last week's Republican convention.

Since her debut in Dayton, Ohio, the McCain campaign has been receiving about 80-100 requests a day from news organizations around the world, according to spokesman Ben Porritt, who said interest in an interview was "through the roof" and that the campaign was going through them now.

"There's no doubt in my mind that the McCain campaign would like to run out on the clock on this," said David Chalian, political director for ABC News.

He expects the campaign will tightly manage access to Palin, but give some national interviews shortly before the Oct. 2 vice presidential debate with Biden, moderated by PBS' Gwen Ifill.

"They know they're not going to get through the next 60 days without doing interviews and being tested and prodded," Chalian said.

But even if Palin does submit to a few carefully selected interviews around the October debate, that means another month before the 37-million-plus viewers who tuned into Palin's speech and others get their first look at how the newcomer to the national stage performs outside of a campaign-controlled setting.

In the meantime, Fox News is rolling out a special (as are other networks): "Gov. Sarah Palin: An American Woman," a one-hour biography hosted by Greta Van Susteren that includes "exclusive video and photos" and "interviews with her family, friends and colleagues" — but not Palin herself.

Palin has already become a ubiquitous presence on newsstands.

Presently, her face adorns the cover of traditional newsweeklies Time and Newsweek, Beltway favorites The New Republic and The Weekly Standard, and even celebrity glossies Us Weekly and Ok!.

While everyone from the New Yorker to CNBC has rushed to republish their older interviews with the Alaska governor, it's People magazine that has the only actual interview she’s done since joining to the ticket.

Larry Hackett, managing editor of People, said the McCain campaign offered the magazine an opportunity to photograph McCain and "Nominee TK" at the Aug. 29 event in Dayton.

In addition to a brief Q&A with both Republicans (as well as their spouses and McCain’s daughter Meghan) and an accompanying article that was mostly based on months-old reporting, the magazine also ran a lifestyle feature on Palin’s life as a working mother running a statehouse and her own house.

People has a long history of reporting on the personal side of candidates and their families, but Hackett acknowledges that "we have a different job" than overtly political titles.

"Are we going to ask about Pakistan?" Hackett said rhetorically, adding that it's not a focus for their readers.

That said, journalists are pushing hard to ask Palin about Pakistan — and Iraq, Iran, Russia, North Korea and Al Qaeda, not to mention a host of domestic issues, from the economy to health care.

Jay Carney, Time's Washington bureau chief, questioned McCain spokesperson Nicole Wallace about the lack of access on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" last Thursday, resulting in a heated exchange that quickly got passed around via YouTube.

"We know now that Sarah Palin can give one hell of a speech," Carney said.

"She's a natural."

"And that's no mean feat."

"We don't know yet and we won't know until you guys allow her to take questions, you know, can she answer tough questions about domestic policy, foreign policy?"

"But I mean, like from who?” Wallace asked.

"From you?”

When Carney answered "Yes," Wallace followed up with, "Who cares?

"I think the American people want to see her," Wallace continued.

"Who cares if she can talk to Time magazine?"

Later that day, Carney — who last week had a much-buzzed about interview with McCain in which the candidate became testy, and refused to answer some questions — told Politico that the McCain campaign is acting "condescending and smug" toward the press.

"The national media," he added, "will be kept far away" from Palin.

They may be at once close and far away.

Top newspaper reporters will be on the trail with her day after day, including The Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin.

The New York Times will have a rotating cast, beginning with Monica Davey.

And each network will have an off-air producer, or embed, devoted to the Palin beat: Matt Berger (NBC/ National Journal), Shushannah Walshe (Fox), Imtiyaz Delawala (ABC), Scott Conroy (CBS), and Peter Hamby (CNN).

The bigger-name, on-air correspondents will also be on the road with Palin from time to time.

Sam Feist, CNN's political director, said that since Palin has had to focus on regional issues as Alaska's governor, he expects she'll begin with media avails on the road and only offer wide-ranging interviews after getting thoroughly prepared for them by the campaign.

However, he said, "if a presidential candidate or a vice presidential candidate declines to do interviews, the news organizations will note that."

Even when Palin does begin taking interviews, it remains to be seen if she’ll grant them to outlets with which the campaign has had a hostile relationship — most notably the New York Times.

"There's no question that we've had less and less access to McCain himself," said Richard Stevenson, the paper's political editor.

"Certainly the Times has had a strained relationship with that campaign for a while."

"Strained" might be putting it mildly.

Since February, when the McCain campaign talked about going to war with the paper over a front-page article that included allegations of an improper relationship with a female lobbyist, there have been several public disputes.

This past Tuesday, a McCain spokesperson described Elisabeth Bumiller, one the reporters on the McCain beat, as a "fiction" writer.

"I know whether or not they cooperate with us, we will be very actively looking into who [Palin] is, what she's done, what her record is — as much as we can learn about her in as concentrated a time as we can," Stevenson said.

"One of the costs to them of not putting her out there," he added, "is the coverage is going to define her as much as the campaign."

In deed, America, Here we are: In the USA portion of America (including Alaska and Hywaii)
and whatever remnants of Empire we maintain Dominion over, in the Candid World? While Some of us are Documenting and rooting out what is wrong with us, we need to stay coordinated with those of us who are Building Altennative Sub-systems for the Total Human Social System...just winning the Gottcha Game, even with world Shaking Consequencies, may be defeating Evil and still not Building a better Alternative...As Individuals and as a N ation, all the best evidence, indicates a need
to add Wellness to our traditional Menue of Goals:Peace and Prosperity...

The MAIN PROBLEM for John McCain is that while she is vivacious ....

And she is very practiced at reading words off of a TELEPROMPTER from her days as a SPORTSCASTER ....

AT THE SAME TIME, SARAH PALIN IS VACUOUS ...

VACUOUS: emptied of or lacking content ...

Marked by lack of ideas or intelligence ...

- Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary

IF the McCain CAMPAIGN were to allow the press unfettered access to "HURRICANE SARAH" the LIBERAL BASHER in a situation where she was not reading somebody else's scripted words for her off of a TELEPROMPTER, she would launch into a HUGE DIATRIBE about THE SURGE IN IRAQINAM IS WORKING, despite anything that Barak Obama might have to say about it ....

And then somebody from the press, when they could finally get a word in edgewise after a RAMBLING DISSERTATION about THE SURGE from Sarah of about 45 or 50 minutes duration, would ask her if she was aware that ALL of the SURGE TROOPS are now out of IRAQINAM, and THE SURGE is HISTORY ....

And there would be Sarah ....

MOUTH AGAPE ....

DEER IN THE HEADLIGHTS LOOK PLASTERED ALL OVER HER FACE ....

And then the obscenities would start ....

THE PRESS IS BIASED!

THE F***ING PRESS IS UNFAIR!

THE G** D*** PRESS IS FOR OBAMA!

OBAMA IS A CELEBRITY!

On and on and on and on and on .....

WHAT A SPECTACLE THAT WOULD BE, ALRIGHT!

I'd love to see it myself ....

"HURRICANE SARAH" ROARS INTO TOWN!

RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!

SHE'S GOT A GUN!

And so ...

I was a point man in the jungles of Viet Nam, rla ....

I can tell you with some authority, anyway, that if you don't know where you have been, there is no way in hell you can know where you are right now ....

And if you don't have a clue as to where you are right now, you don't stand much of a prayer of getting anywhere but dead .....

I'm not playing a GOTTCHA GAME in here, myself ....

I am chronicling ....

Sorting information as it develops, sometimes commenting ....

Sometimes drawing conclusions ....

All the time knowing that right now, things in the world are very fluid and dynamic ....

Not static, at all ...

And at the same time, influenced by our thoughts, both positive and negative ....

And so ...

Yes, I agree that you and I have fortunately grown quite permeable personal construct systems,
and are not likely to get fooled forever, thinking its better to be right than to get laid...Winning an Argument just means being able to argue longer, not Changing the World...

Arguing in the first place is a major waste of time ....

And so ...

Common Sense, Common Ground (Community)

"Pakistan suicide blast death toll reaches 35"

By RIAZ KHAN, Associated Press Writer

7 SEPTEMBER 2008

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - The death toll in a massive suicide blast in Pakistan's militant-plagued northwest reached 35, officials said Sunday, as the country prepared for Benazir Bhutto's widower to take over as president.

The attack Saturday demonstrated the severe militant threat facing the Muslim nation and President-elect Asif Ali Zardari, who overwhelmingly won lawmakers' votes the same day as the blast and was expected to be sworn in by Tuesday.

Zardari has vowed to be tough on militancy, a stance that plays well in Washington, where U.S. officials worried about rising violence in neighboring Afghanistan have pushed Pakistan to clamp down on extremist havens in its borders.

Nonetheless, Zardari has a fine line to walk.

Coming down too hard on insurgent activity risks inflaming Pakistani public opinion and even a tribal uprising.

At the same time, he faces pressure from opponents to reduce the powers of the presidency, something he and his party have vowed to do without specifying the extent.

Ahsan Iqbal, a spokesman for the chief opposition party, told Dawn News Television that Zardari's election was a stop on the way to restoring full democracy in Pakistan, and that the transition required giving up some presidential powers.

The president has the power to dissolve Parliament and appoint army chiefs, and chairs the joint civilian-military committee that controls Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

Dozens were wounded in Saturday's attack, in which an explosives-packed pickup truck blew up at a police checkpoint on the outskirts of Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province.

Police said the large amount of explosives indicates that the bomb may have been intended for a more important target.

Television footage showed a blast crater 3 feet deep, destroyed vehicles and pieces of debris scattered across a large area.

Some buildings in a nearby market collapsed, leading civilians to dig frantically with their hands to find survivors.

A teacher and school guard were among the five dead newly recovered from the rubble, police official Rashid Khan said.

On Sunday, the Election Commission said Zardari's win had been certified.

His aides said he could be sworn in within a couple of days.

Newspaper editorials marking Zardari's ascent noted that a recent U.S.-led ground assault in a Pakistani tribal region along the Afghan border signaled American impatience with Pakistan's progress in battling insurgents.

Far from being confident, however, the opinion pieces warned that Zardari is yet unproven and still tainted by a history of corruption allegations.

"What Mr. Zardari needs to do is to dispel the impression that he is a political wheeler-dealer who is adept at making backroom deals but unable to rise to the requirements of statesmanship," said an editorial in Dawn, a leading Pakistani English-language paper.

"Candidates weigh in on stabilizing Fannie, Freddie"

By ALAN ZIBEL, AP Business Writer

7 SEPTEMBER 2008

WASHINGTON - The historic takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which could come as soon as Sunday, moved to the forefront of the presidential campaign Saturday as candidates and congressional leaders seized on the enormous implications for taxpayers and the economy.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac together hold or back half of the nation's mortgage debt, and have played an increasingly important role in the real estate market since the credit crisis started in August 2007.

A government bailout could cost taxpayers around $25 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and two other regulators are working on a plan to put the troubled mortgage finance companies into a conservatorship, and remove Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd and Freddie Mac CEO Richard Syron, according to Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

The government is expected to control the two companies at least a year as it evaluates and debates whether Fannie and Freddie should remain government-run entities or be restructured in some fashion, Frank said in an interview.

At a rally in Colorado Springs, Col., Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin said, "They've gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers."

"The McCain-Palin administration will make them smaller and smarter and more effective for homeowners who need help."

Democratic nominee Barack Obama, speaking in Terre Haute, Ind., said, "These entities are so big and they're so tied into the housing market that it is probably true that we have to take steps to make sure they don't just collapse, because the housing market, which is already weakened, would be in even worse shape if we didn't take some steps."

News of the likely government takeover Friday followed a report by the Mortgage Bankers Association that more than 4 million American homeowners with a mortgage, a record 9 percent, were either behind on their payments or in foreclosure at the end of June.

That confirmed what investors saw in Fannie and Freddie's recent financial results: trouble in the mortgage market has shifted to homeowners who had solid credit but took out exotic loans with little or no proof of their income and assets.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lost a combined $3.1 billion between April and June.

Half of their credit losses came from these types of risky loans with ballooning monthly payments.

While both companies said they had enough resources to withstand the losses, many investors believe their financial cushions could wither away as defaults and foreclosures mount.

Frank said the companies' financial picture was better than Wall Street investors assumed, but "it just plainly became clear that elements of the market wouldn't' accept that."

The epic decision highlights the size of the threats facing the housing market and the economy.

On Friday, Nevada regulators shut down Silver State Bank, the 11th failure this year of a federally insured bank.

And earlier this year, the government orchestrated the takeover of investment bank Bear Stearns by JP Morgan Chase.

"Any government action must help to strengthen our economy, which is suffering a crisis brought on by the administration's failure to stop predatory lending," said Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., who chairs the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.

"Any intervention also must minimize the cost to American taxpayers, and should not put other financial institutions at risk."

The crisis surrounding Fannie and Freddie promises to be a major challenge for the next president.

The role the two companies play in the U.S. mortgage market has grown dramatically over the past year as other lenders collapsed under the weight of bad subprime loans.

The companies guaranteed about three-quarters of all new mortgages in the second quarter of this year, up from under 40 percent in 2006, according to the trade publication Inside Mortgage Finance.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and James Lockhart, the companies' chief regulator, met Friday afternoon with the top executives from the mortgage companies and informed them of the government's plan to put the companies into a conservatorship as early as this weekend.

In July, Congress passed a plan to provide unlimited government loans to Fannie and Freddie and to purchase stock in the companies if needed.

Critics say the open-ended nature of the rescue package could expose taxpayers to billions of dollars of potential losses.

Fannie Mae was created by the government in 1938, and was turned into a public company 30 years later.

Freddie Mac was established in 1970 to provide competition for Fannie.
___

Associated Press Writer Charles Babington contributed to this report from Terre Haute, Ind. and AP White House Correspondent Terence Hunt contributed to this report from Colorado Springs, Colo.

"Obama rolls up his sleeves, hits hard"

Carrie Budoff Brown

7 SEPTEMBER 2008

TERRE HAUTE, Ind.—His shirtsleeves are rolled up higher, his tone is a bit more biting.

Stirring up supporters at a fairgrounds show barn here with a sharp critique of John McCain, Barack Obama looks and sounds like a candidate who realizes time is running out.

With an expiration date in sight on a presidential campaign that once seemed interminable, Obama enters the final 58 days with the polls tight, his opponents appropriating his mantra of change, and the political deck reshuffled with a new wild card in the first female Republican vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin.

Obama arrived in this battleground state Saturday with a renewed urgency and a modified stump speech, delivering his most unforgiving assessment of his challengers since the Democratic National Convention, when the Illinois senator began lambasting McCain as someone who “doesn’t get it.”

And after days of tiptoeing around Palin, Obama even took his first direct swipe at the Alaska governor:

“I know the governor of Alaska has been, you know, saying she is change,” Obama said at a town hall here.

“But when you (have) been taking all these earmarks when it is convenient and then suddenly you are the champion anti-earmark person?"

"That is not change, come on."

"I mean, words mean something."

"You can’t just make stuff up.”

The increasingly harsh appraisals fill out the tableau of a nominee almost singularly focused on the economy in the post-convention phase of the campaign.

Obama has spent most of the week since accepting his party’s nomination in Rust Belt states, appearing on factory floors, talking up his vision of a new economy and casting McCain as out of touch with working families and a clone of President Bush.

The economy “will dominate both our schedule and our speeches in every appearance we make now through Election Day,” Obama senior strategist Robert Gibbs said.

Honing an “us-versus-them” battle cry, Obama is positioning himself as the champion of the working class.

Venturing into towns and counties in the past week that Hillary Rodham Clinton carried by 2-to-1 margins in the Democratic primary, Obama could sound strikingly similar to his one-time rival.

“They haven’t spent any time talking about problems that ordinary Americans are going through every single day,” Obama said last week in York, Pa., echoing a theme repeated throughout Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Michigan.

“Not a word about how we are going to make college more affordable, how we are going to create more jobs here in the United States."

"Not a word about how to increase people’s incomes."

The focus on the economy comes as the country’s jobless rate has just hit a five-year high and home foreclosures have jumped to record levels.

At a press conference Saturday, Obama renewed his call for lawmakers to approve a second economic stimulus package, and argued that any government bailout of mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—widely reported to be imminent—must put the interests of taxpayers first.

“Any action we take must be focused not on the whims of lobbyists and special interests worried about their bonuses and hourly fees, but on whether it will strengthen our economy and help struggling homeowners,” Obama told reporters after the forum here.

Once dominant in political debate, the Iraq war is practically a footnote on the campaign trail, raised near the end of Obama’s speech and linked to his economic message: If the government wasn’t spending so much money in Iraq, more would be available for veterans’ care and other domestic needs.

Obama concentrated his time last week in states with struggling economies, and will return this week to Michigan and Ohio—two rustbelt swing states essential to a winning the electoral map, and newly receptive to his economic message as the economic outlook appears to worsen.

Continuing to eschew the arena rallies that marked his primary campaign, Obama appears in small settings, usually at a workplace where he can tell a story about the economy, aides said.

Wearing safety goggles, he tours a factory floor in what amounts to a photo opportunity before sitting down with employees in public town hall settings.

On Saturday, standing on a show barn floor layered with hay, Obama feigned disbelief as he railed against McCain for telling Republican convention delegates last week that “change is coming” to Washington.

“Now think about this coming from the party that’s been in charge for 8 years, they’ve been running the show,” Obama said.

“John McCain brags, ‘90% of the time I have voted with George Bush.'"

"'He and I, we were right there’ and suddenly he’s the change agent."

"Hah!"

“What are these guys talking about?” Obama asked near the end of his riff.

“Do you think we haven’t been paying attention over the past 8 years?”

Gibbs said voters will continue to hear this message for days, if not weeks, to come.

"McCain and Obama Vie Over Whether Palin Means Change"

James Rowley

Sun Sep 7, 2:35 PM ET

Sept. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Republican presidential candidate John McCain defended his running mate, Sarah Palin, as having a "clear record of doing what America wants,'' while Democrat Barack Obama said her policies aren't much different from those of President George W. Bush.

McCain, on CBS's "Face the Nation,'' said Palin's outlook and political experience as the governor of Alaska and a former small-town mayor "not only qualifies her, but brings to Washington a kind of an energy and a fresh wind.''

Obama said Palin is "even more aligned'' than McCain is with the policies of fellow Republican Bush.

Her selection undermines McCain's claim that he would depart from Bush's agenda, Obama said on ABC News's "This Week.''

Both Obama and McCain have made changing U.S. policies a focus of their presidential campaigns.

McCain, 72, has defended Palin's readiness for the Republican ticket since he picked her as his running mate 10 days ago.

Half of U.S. voters said Palin, 44, doesn't have the experience needed to be an effective president, according to an ABC News poll released Sept. 5.

Forty-two percent of the voters said she has the necessary experience, the poll said.

Obama, 47, wouldn't comment on whether Palin is qualified for the vice presidency, calling her a "skilled politician'' and saying the "resume contest that's been going back and forth is not what the American people are looking for.''

'I Didn't Hear'

"What I didn't hear from Governor Palin, what I didn't hear from John McCain,'' was "how are they going to put people back to work?"

"How are they going to deal with health care,'' said Obama, a first-term Illinois senator whose political resume has been called thin by Republicans.

McCain, on "Face the Nation,'' said he has to "make a strong case that we're going to bring about'' change, and Palin can help him.

"Who better in the political landscape who could do that than Governor Palin, whose whole life has been engaged in that, taken them on and winning,'' McCain said.

"I have taken them on and won less than she has.''

McCain cited Palin's successful campaign to unseat a governor her own party, Frank Murkowski, as evidence she was a political maverick like him.

Voters are enthusiastic about his choice of Palin because she backs reform in Washington, McCain said.

'Excited Our Base'

"She has not only excited our base, she has excited Americans,'' McCain said.

"All over this country we have campaigned together."

"The electricity has been incredible,'' he said.

"She is kind of what Americans have been looking for.''

McCain called Palin "the most popular governor in America'' because she "passed ethics and lobbying reform'' and "gave money back to the taxpayers'' and "cut spending.''

Obama won't be able to change Washington because "I don't think he has the judgment,'' McCain said.

Obama "never took on his own party on any single major issue, I have taken them on a lot,'' he said.

Obama's running mate, Delaware Senator Joseph Biden, said debating Palin won't be different from debating "a lot of very tough, smart women'' he encounters every day in the Senate.

"What is new is I have no idea what her policies are,'' Biden said on NBC's "Meet the Press.''

Biden predicted that Obama's rival for the Democratic nomination, New York Senator Hillary Clinton, will campaign side by side with Obama as well as independently in the eight weeks before the election.

Deferring Tax Increases

Obama suggested that if elected president, he might defer tax increases on wealthiest Americans if the U.S. economy were still in a recession.

The Illinois Democrat has proposed increasing taxes on high-income Americans to finance cuts for middle-income taxpayers.

"We've got to take a look and see where the economy is,'' Obama said, adding he still planned to push through tax cuts for middle-class Americans.

"That's my priority''

"I want to accelerate those tax cuts through a second stimulus package, get more money in to the pockets of ordinary Americans,'' he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: James Rowley at jarowley@bloomberg.net

I don't know if she is what Americans have been looking for ....

But randy old John is doing his own looking, just to check and see ...

And the electricity seems to be getting him a bit hot and bothered ....

Dirty old man John ...

And so ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RN5xbWtNSU

Obama did this very well. He needs to follow-up with three or four Legislative Initiatives each week...
Obama needs to take more Initiative in Leading the Narrative that is being built by the various levels of Media...if We don't know where we are going, we may not get there...

I can see some of this in John...I usually correct by a factor of one half to remove whatever projection I may be bringing to the scene...

"Bush: Takeover of housing giants 'critical'"

7 SEPTEMBER 2008

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Sunday that the historic federal government takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is needed to keep them from failing, a risk he called "unacceptable" for an economy battered by housing and credit crises.

"Allowing the companies to fail or further deteriorate would damage our home mortgage market, and could weaken other credit markets that are unrelated directly to housing," Bush said in a statement released Sunday afternoon.

"Americans should be confident that the actions taken today will strengthen our ability to weather the housing correction and are critical to returning the economy to stronger sustained growth."

The Bush administration announced Sunday it was taking control of the two institutions to avert the potential for major financial turmoil.

The companies, which together own or guarantee about $5 trillion in home loans, about half the nation's total, have lost $14 billion in the last year and are likely to pile up billions more in losses until the housing market begins to recover.

Both companies were placed into a government conservatorship that will be run by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the new agency created by Congress this summer to regulate Fannie and Freddie.

The executives and board of directors of both institutions are being replaced.

In a statement, the president called the moves temporary until the appropriate role for the companies can be determined.

He said they must be reformed so that "they not pose similar risks to our economy or the financial system again."

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said the actions were being taken because the failure of either of the mortgage companies "would cause great turmoil in our financial markets here at home and around the globe."

The huge potential liabilities facing each company could cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.

But Paulson stressed that the financial impacts if the two companies had been allowed to fail would be far more serious.

Bush said the federal regulator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac determined they could no longer operate safely and conduct their public mission.

He said that posed "an unacceptable risk to the broader financial system and our economy."

"Palin agrees to interview"

Mike Allen

Sun Sep 7, 3:41 PM ET

Under pressure for being shielded for questioning, Sarah Palin has a agreed to sit down with Charles Gibson of ABC’s “World News Tonight,” according to an ABC News official.

No other interviews are scheduled.

It will be the first TV interview for Palin since she was named 10 days ago as running mate to John McCain.

Palin had planned to return to Alaska this weekend but is so popular on the stump that she is going to stay out a few more days before returning home.

One of her sons deploys to Iraq on Thursday.

Palin plans to sit down with Gibson later this week in Alaska, the source said.

The McCain campaign kept her off Sunday shows this weekend and plans to be sparing with high-risk network encounters, which they contend are unimportant to voters despite the media’s fixation on them.

But McCain officials could see her reticence was feeding the narrative of her being unprepared for the job.

Joe Biden of Delaware, her counterpart on the Democratic ticket, challenged her Sunday to submit to network questioning.

“She's a smart, tough politician,” Biden told Tom Brokaw in a “Meet the Press” interview live from Wilmington, Del.

“So I think she's going to be formidable."

"Eventually, she's going to have to sit in front of you like I'm doing and have done."

"Eventually, she's going to have to answer questions and not be sequestered."

"Eventually, she's going to have to answer on the record.”

she will walk around the snow-covered Alaska, and point out the scenery...

over there is where my daughter...

over there is where I had an affair...

over there is where I burned the evidence of the bad emails...

over there is where I first met Karl Rove eight years ago and we put this plan into place...

and over there...


oops, I just woke up ....she will walk hand in hand with Charlie and he will lob softball
questions like the good Baghdag Bob Charles Gibson is...
after all, they already destroyed Obama in that debate if you remember

I would like to see Bidden, with a good Media Crew, put together some Adult Education
Sessions about Understanding Your World Better...

"Patriotism unites, divides race - Candidates announce ground zero meeting for Sept. 11 as campaigns engage in flap over flags"

Combined wire services

First published: Sunday, September 7, 2008

WASHINGTON -- Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama said Saturday they will put aside partisan politics for a joint appearance at ground zero to mark the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Democratic and Republican presidential nominees, in a statement, said they will appear together at the World Trade Center site on Thursday "to honor the memory of each and every American who died" in the 2001 attacks.

The campaigns already had agreed to suspend television advertising critical of each other on Sept. 11.

The McCain campaign has said it will air no ads that day.

The candidates' announcement was marred by the two campaigns bickering Saturday over the American flag.

In Colorado Springs, Colo., a radio personality emceeing an event for McCain and his vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin announced that veterans were going to give the crowd thousands of small American flags that were discarded and rescued from Obama's massive Democratic National Convention rally at Denver's Invesco Field at Mile High Stadium.

The emcee, radio host Dan Caplis, told the estimated audience of 12,000 that the flags were going to be thrown away or burned, soliciting loud jeers.

McCain supporters said the flags were found by a vendor at Invesco Field after the convention.

The vendor allegedly found trash bags full of flags in and around garbage bins, recovered them and gave them to McCain's campaign.

When McCain and Palin took the stage to a sea of waving flags, McCain proclaimed, "I love those flags."

The Democratic National Committee and Democratic convention organizers said the flags were snatched -- not discarded -- from Invesco Field by the McCain camp.

"American flags were proudly waved by the 75,000 people who joined Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention," Karen Finney, a Democratic National Committee spokeswoman, said in a written statement.

"John McCain should applaud that, but instead his supporters wrongfully took leftover bundles of our flags from the stadium to play out a cheap political stunt."

The McCain campaign stood by the story of how it obtained the flags and accused the Democratic National Committee and convention organizers of operating in "crisis control."

Also Saturday, Obama criticized McCain's approach to Social Security while addressing the AARP, saying it would undermine the government program aimed mainly at retirees.

Obama said McCain's campaign has suggested trimming Social Security benefits and raising the eligibility age, according to prepared remarks of his speech to a gathering of the AARP.

McCain has not specifically embraced or denied such plans.

Obama also made his first direct criticism of Palin.

Speaking in Terre Haute, Ind., the Democratic presidential nominee ridiculed McCain and his running mate for describing themselves as agents of change.

"I know the governor of Alaska has been saying she's change, and that's great," Obama said.

"She's a skillful politician."

"But, you know, when you've been taking all these earmarks when it's convenient, and then suddenly you're the champion anti-earmark person, that's not change."

"Come on!"

"I mean, words mean something, you can't just make stuff up."

ACCORDING TO THE RADIO NEWS THIS MORNING, THERE IS AN EXPECTATION THAT WE, THE AMERICAN TAXPAYERS, WILL HAVE TO PONY UP $100 BILLION FOR EACH OF THESE TWO COMPANIES, FOR A TOTAL OF $200 BILLION IN ADDITIONAL TAXES ON TOP OF ALL THE OTHER BILLIONS OF BORROWED MONEY THAT WE ALREADY OWE FOR ...

THANKS TO THE IDIOT GEORGE W. BUSH ....

AND THE IRRESPONSIBLE U.S. CONGRESS ...

YES, NANCY PELOSI, THAT MEANS YOU ....

NANCY PELOSI AND GEORGE W. BUSH ARE JOINED AT THE HIP ....

AND AMERICA NEEDS A HIP REPLACEMENT REAL BAD ...

And so ...

"US government takes on big role in mortgage market"

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER and ALAN ZIBEL, AP Business Writers

8 SEPTEMBER 2008

WASHINGTON - Uncle Sam has just become the 800 pound gorilla in the U.S. mortgage market.

The Bush administration announced Sunday it was seizing troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in a bid to help reverse a prolonged housing and credit crisis.

But private analysts worried that it may not be enough to stabilize the slumping housing market given the glut of vacant homes for sale, rising foreclosures, rising unemployment and weak consumer confidence.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com predicted that 30-year mortgage rates, currently averaging 6.35 percent nationwide, could dip to close to 5.5 percent.

That's because investors will be more willing to buy the debt issued by Fannie and Freddie — and at lower rates — since the federal government is now explicitly standing behind that debt.

"Effectively, the federal government has now become the nation's mortgage lender," he said.

"This takes a major financial threat off the table."

Officials announced that both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were being placed in a government conservatorship, a move that could end up costing taxpayers billions of dollars.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said allowing the companies to fail would have extracted a far higher price on consumers by driving up the cost of home loans and all other types of borrowing because the failures would "create great turmoil in our financial markets here at home and around the globe."

The plan touched off a global stock rally Monday.

Japan's Nikkei stock average jumped 3.4 percent and Hong Kong's Hang Seng index surged 4.3 percent.

In morning trading, Britain's FTSE 100 jumped 3.81 percent, Germany's DAX index rose 3.21 percent, and France's CAC-40 surged 4.44 percent.

U.S. stock futures pointed to a huge rally, jumping more than 2 percent ahead of Monday's open in New York.

The companies, which together own or guarantee about $5 trillion in home loans, about half the nation's total, have lost $14 billion in the last year and are likely to pile up billions more in losses until the housing market begins to recover.

The Treasury Department said it was prepared to put up as much as $100 billion over time in each of the companies if needed to keep them from going broke, in exchange for senior preferred stock.

Treasury will immediately be issued $1 billion of such stock from each company, which will pay 10 percent interest.

Further purchases of preferred stock will be triggered if quarterly audits find that the companies' capital cushion is below prudent standards.

The government, which will receive warrants representing ownership stakes of 79.9 percent in each company, is hoping that its moves will reassure nervous investors that they can continue to buy the debt of the two companies.

In a statement, President Bush said, "Americans should be confident that the actions taken today will strengthen our ability to weather the housing correction and are critical to returning the economy to stronger sustained growth."

The conservatorship will be run by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the new agency created by Congress this summer to regulate Fannie and Freddie, a move taken at the same time that Congress greatly expanded the power of the Treasury Department to make loans to the two companies and purchase their stock.

The executives and board of directors of both institutions are being replaced.

Herb Allison, the former head of the TIAA-CREF retirement investment fund, was selected to head Fannie Mae, and David Moffett, a former vice chairman of US Bancorp, was picked to head Freddie Mac.

Paulson was careful not to blame Daniel Mudd, the outgoing CEO of Fannie Mae, or Freddie Mac's departing CEO Richard Syron for the companies' current problems.

While both men are being removed as the top executives, they have been asked to remain for an unspecified period to help with the transition.

Fannie and Freddie both purchase home loans from banks and then repackage those loans as mortgage-backed securities which they either hold on their own books or sell to investors around the globe.

This process provides banks with more money to make more home loans, greatly expanding home ownership.

The impact of the government takeover on existing common and preferred shares, which have slumped in value in the last year, will depend on how investors react to Paulson's assertion that they must absorb the cost of further losses first.

Under the plan, dividends on both common and preferred stock would be eliminated, saving about $2 billion a year.

Analysts were split on how much the takeover could eventually cost taxpayers although they all agreed the up-front costs will be substantial, possibly hitting $100 billion as the Treasury is called upon to bolster the capital cushions at both institutions.

However, if the plan does the trick of stabilizing the housing market and home prices stop falling and rebound, then the assets of both Fannie and Freddie should rise in value and the government should be able to sell off the companies and recoup its investments.

But it could take a long time to work through that process given all the headwinds facing housing at the moment from the plunge in home prices to soaring defaults on mortgages which are dumping more homes on an already glutted market.

The weak economy has pushed unemployment to a five-year high of 6.1 percent, further reducing demand for homes.

"I think the government will end up having to put in far more money then they are planning right now (given all the problems facing housing) but the important thing is the agencies have been taken over by the government," said Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at California State University Channel Islands.

"That means there will be less panic in financial markets."

Under government control, the companies will be allowed to expand their support for the mortgage market over the next year by boosting their holdings of mortgage securities they hold on their books from a combined $1.5 trillion to $1.7 trillion.

Starting in 2010, though, they are required to drop their holdings by 10 percent annually until they reach a combined $500 billion.

In addition, officials said the Treasury Department plans to purchase $5 billion in mortgage-backed securities issued by the two companies later this month, the first of a series of purchases planned by the government in an effort to bolster for these securities, which was badly shaken a year ago when the credit crisis first erupted with soaring defaults on subprime mortgages.

Paulson said that it would be up to Congress and the next president to figure out the two companies' ultimate structure and the conflicting goals they operated under — maximizing returns for shareholders while also being required to facilitate home buying for low- and moderate-income Americans.

"There is a consensus today ... that they cannot continue in their current form," he said.
___

Associated Press Writer Ben Feller in Washington contributed to this report.

When Socialism is added to Militarism you have Facism which is what we are moving towards...

What we need is Humanitarian Constitutioal Representative Democratic Republic with an
Open Market Econmy..

Privitization did not work, again.

"China and Japan hail U.S. mortgage rescue as doubts linger"

By Yoko Nishikawa and Mike Dolan

8 SEPTEMBER 2008

TOKYO/LONDON (Reuters) - China and Japan, the biggest buyers of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae bonds, on Monday praised Washington for rescuing the ailing mortgage giants, but investors said the bailout had not ended global credit market misery.

As battered financial stocks rallied and investors sold safe-haven bonds, analysts cautioned that the plan announced on Sunday was more a sign of the perilous state of the global financial system than of an imminent recovery.

"We find it difficult to see how it is bullish that the heavy hand of government is needed to such an extent," Merrill Lynch economist David Rosenberg said.

"In our view, the takeover of Fannie and Freddie is actually a testament to how broken the financial system is at this time."

China and Japan, the biggest and the second-biggest holders of the Fannie and Freddie bonds, welcomed the bailout.

"I think it will have a positive impact on the world economy as it eases worries over the U.S. economy through more stable financial markets in the United States," Japanese Finance Minister Bunmei Ibuki told reporters on Monday.

Freddie (FRE.N) and Fannie (FNM.N) bond holders are the most likely long-term beneficiaries of the U.S. government's move which puts existing shareholders last in line in any claims.

Bonds from the agencies -- around $180 billion of which mature by the end of the year, according to Reuters data -- were trading a full percentage point above U.S. Treasuries on Friday.

On Monday the bonds they were effectively as safe as U.S. government debt, but bond dealers said none had changed hands during morning trade in London.

"We think a compression is likely," Goldman Sachs said in a note to clients, of the spread over Treasuries.

The price of U.S. government bonds sank on Monday and yields jumped as the bailout removed some of the fear that had crept back into markets in recent weeks and had fuelled a 'safe-haven' bid to bonds.

The cost of insuring against the risk of a U.S. government default on its debt rose, with credit default swaps (CDS) widening on five-year and 10-year Treasury debt.

U.S. stocks futures and Asian and European share markets soared after the news of the takeover that could become the costliest U.S. bailout ever.

UBS (UBSN.VX) and Mizuho Financial (8411.T), two casualties of the year-long credit crisis, jumped 10 percent and 11 percent respectively, leading rallies among banks in Europe and Asia.

Financial firms have posted over $500 billion in credit losses and write-downs since credit markets seized up a year ago after defaults on U.S. home loans.

"We expect the action would lead to stabilize the U.S. MBS (Mortgage-Backed Securities) market, financial market and the international financial market," Bank of Japan Governor Masaaki Shirakawa told reporters in Basel on the sidelines of the Bank of International Settlements meeting in Switzerland.

According to U.S. Treasury data, Japan is the second-biggest holder of U.S. agency debt with $229 billion, after China with $376 billion as of mid-2007.

"Different people may have different responses."

"From my point of view this is positive." China's central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan said.

PAULSON TO EXPLAIN TO G7

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in an interview with U.S. radio broadcast on Monday that the plan had been structured in a way to protect U.S. taxpayers.

He also told WAMU radio, monitored via the Internet in London, that the move had been taken after the Treasury had found "major structural flaws" in the two agencies.

Paulson was due to explain the details of the rescue to his Group of Seven counterparts later on Monday, Japan's Ibuki said.

By rushing to the rescue of institutions that own or guarantee almost half of the $12 trillion in U.S. home mortgage debt, Washington has removed one source of anxiety that has plagued markets and helped push Japan, Europe and United States toward recession.

But investors and analysts were quick to point out that a risk of collapse of the lenders and a U.S. housing market meltdown were not the only threats looming for the world economy.

"You've got to try and separate this GSE deal and what's going on with the banks (shares) from what's going on in the economy."

"That's not changed because of what has happened with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac," said Kenneth Broux, financial markets economist at Lloyds TSB in London.

The cost of protection against default in U.S. Treasury debt edged up and the dollar gained against the yen , but lost to the euro and several other currencies.

The Treasury took $1 billion in preferred senior stock in each company, but its equity stake could reach as much as $100 billion in each.

Freddie Mac shares tumbled more than 50 percent in Frankfurt (FRE.F) when trading began on Monday.

Freddie and Fannie, which serve a government mission to support housing, were put in a conservatorship that allows their stock to keep trading but puts common shareholders last in line in any claims.

Paulson had hatched a plan in early July to shore up the struggling firms with a promise of fresh loans and a government injection of capital if either company was pushed to the brink of collapse.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were so large that "a failure of either of them would cause great turmoil in our financial markets here at home and around the globe," Paulson said.

But talks on an aid package ended abruptly in the past few days and policymakers decided to seize the firms, industry sources with knowledge of the events said.

"We were given an ultimatum -- do you want to die slowly or do you want to die quickly?" one company source said.

(Reporting by Yoko Nishikawa in Tokyo, Tamora Vidallet and Natsuko Waki in Basel, Patrick Rucker in Washington, Kevin Plumberg in Hong Kong, Rob Taylor in Canberra, Vidya Ranganathan in Singapore, Jamie McGeever in London; Writing by Tomasz Janowski)

Perhaps, after we fail as a nation, rla, we will finally start to wake up ....

But in the meantime, like many populations of failed nations before us, we will be sold into slavery ....

In fact, we just have been ....

And so ...

if we wake up
sometimes people just die in their sleep and never wake up

(like all the democracies that came and went before the USA tried (and failed).

(oops, you just said the same thing, didn't you)...

People are stupid.
(btw, I do not consider myself anywhere near as smart as either livyjr or rla... however we all have something in common...
people do not seem to actually read what we actually mean when we write, they just see the thing in front of them, but not the reason
(sort of like see the WTC fall and just allow all that happened after to happen...but never see the real cause
same after 12-12-2000
it happens
it is written
people just say okay

when they said "never again" people thought it was a fact (like people think Irving Berlin wrote God BLESSED America)
instead of the warning it was, instead of the plea to never let it happen again (in fact Irving Berlin wrote a plea...Please God, won't you Bless America????)
They just heard never again and said great, it will never again happen

If they had a stupidity meter at an amusement park, maybe one of those tall boards, where you get a sledge hammer and a strong man picks it up swings it down, and hits the thing which is suppose to ring a bell,
the ball would still be streaking passed the moon to infinity...
that is how stupid we are

The Reform Game
by Jacob G. Hornberger

The campaign season is abuzz with all four of the presidential and vice-presidential candidates exclaiming how they’re going to “reform” Washington. Not surprisingly, the establishment media is excited about the theme, calling on the candidates to come up with the “specifics” of their respective “reform” plans.

There are two implicit assumptions in this reform game. The first assumption is that the welfare-warfare system is now a permanent feature in American political and economic life and the American people had just better get used to it. The second assumption is that the crises associated with the welfare-warfare system are capable of being fixed through some type of not-yet-discovered “reform.”

Look at the fruits of the welfare-warfare system that McCain, Palin, Obama, and Biden believe in and embrace. Aren’t there crises everywhere? Social Security. Medicare. Medicaid. Federal spending. The dollar. Immigration. Terrorism. Drug war. Iraq. Aghanistan. Foreign policy. Gitmo. Rendition. Kidnapping.

Despite the manifest failure of their beloved welfare-warfare state, the statists continue to exclaim to the American people, “Elect me! Elect me! I’ll be the one who finally brings success and victory to the socialistic welfare state and the U.S. military empire. I’m running against Washington! I’ve got a secret reform plan, including balancing the budget by 2020.”

So, what is the presidential election really all about? It’s a vicious fight over who is going to get to control the money and wield the power that comes with the welfare-warfare state. The candidates are motivated by power and their trough-feeding supporters are motivated by the money that comes with all the government transfer programs, both for domestic welfare and military-industrial-complex welfare.

The magic word through it all is “reform.” It’s a game that both conservatives and liberals have become masters at playing. The beauty of the reform game, from their standpoint, is that it leaves the government programs in existence. Since such programs are inherently defective, they’re always in need of reform. That provides conservatives and liberals with the perpetual opportunity to carp about the failures of the programs and call on people to support their new “reform.”

Whenever you’re unsure whether a particular article, person, or organization is libertarian in philosophy, a quick test is to check their recommended solution. If they call for reform, the likelihood is that they are either conservative or liberal. If they call for repeal, abolition, or termination, the likelihood is that they are libertarian.

Libertarians, of course, are not interested in reforming the cancerous monstrosity that conservatives and liberals are devoted to reforming. We’re interested in restoring a free society to our land. By necessity, that entails the repeal, not the reform, of socialist, interventionist, and imperial government programs.

For libertarians, the issue is both moral and pragmatic. Freedom entails the right to live one’s life any way he chooses, so long as his conduct is peaceful and doesn’t violate the rights of others. Freedom also produces a peaceful, prosperous, charitable, and harmonious society.

That’s why our American ancestors chose to live without the types of programs that today’s conservatives and liberals embrace — e.g., Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, income taxation, drug war, public (i.e., government) schooling, Federal Reserve, wars of aggression, military industrial complex, subsidies, and welfare. It’s why they also fought for bans on such things as cruel and unusual punishments, including torture and sex abuse, unreasonable searches and seizures, arbitrary arrests, and indefinite detentions. It’s also why they fought for protection of such things as due process of law, habeas corpus, right to counsel, and right of trial by jury. It’s why they fought for such things as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, right to assemble, and the right to keep and bear arms.

Our American ancestors knew what freedom means. They never confused a loss of freedom with freedom itself. And they were never willing to trade freedom for the pretense of “safety.”

Can we restore freedom to our land? Of course. But obviously it won’t come from the likes of Obama, McCain, Palin, and Biden, whose philosophy of “reform” is nothing but a desperate attempt to get their hands on the levers of power and money over a corrupt welfare-warfare system that is responsible for the morass in which our nation has been plunged.

Meaningful change — a change toward liberty — can only come from the bottom up — from Americans who discover the libertarian heritage of our nation and demand its restoration.

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

One of my favorite descriptive sayings for the "human condition" is "BORN SLEEPING, DIE DRUNK" ....

Well done as always, Snuf ....

If we are not informed, it is difficult to make informed decisions ...

And so ...

So George W. Bush, the HUGO CHAVEZ of America, nationalized PRIVATE PROPERTY ....

He got rid of Boards of Directors ....

If George W. Bush can NATIONALIZE Freddie and Fannie, he or any other American president including Obama and McCain and Sarah Palin can now nationalize anything they wish ....

And so ...

Talk about a pregnant phrase, alright ....

THE MOVE HAD BEEN TAKEN AFTER THE TREASURY FOUND "MAJOR STRUCTURAL FLAWS" IN FANNIE AND FREDDIE ....

I'm surprised that that sentence drifted right on through with no challenge whatsoever ....

MAJOR STRUCTURAL FLAWS .....

HOW, Hank?

HOW WERE THERE MAJOR STRUCTURAL FLAWS?

WHO WAS SLEEPING AT THE SWITCH HERE, Hank?

YOU?

George W. Bush?

Nancy Pelosi?

ALL OF YOU?

WHO, Hank?

And so ...

THE FINANCIAL TIMES

"Markets wary after Fannie and Freddie bail-out"

By Michael Mackenzie in New York and Krishna Guha and Andrew Ward in Washington

Published: September 8 2008 19:22 | Last updated: September 8 2008 19:22

Financial markets gave an initial vote of confidence to the US Treasury’s in effect nationalisation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on Monday, but investors grew more cautious later and share prices surrendered some of their early gains.

The plan announced on Sunday by Hank Paulson, Treasury secretary, received broad support from congressional leaders, but it remains unclear how much it would change the outlook for the US housing market and the economy.

Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate banking committee, said there were still “many unanswered questions” about the plan.

“Americans need to know if this plan will alleviate, not deepen, our current economic problems,” he said.

Mr Paulson said the discussions over how to prop up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were “all consuming”’ in recent weeks, when he was forced to make a decision he would rather have avoided.

“This is the first time in my career I had trouble sleeping, and it wasn’t because it was a difficult decision,” Mr Paulson told Bloomberg television.

“Government intervention is not something that I came here wanting to espouse, but it sure is better than the alternative.”

Global equities rose sharply at first but, in afternoon New York trade, the rally was losing steam.

The S&P500 was up 0.8 per cent, down from an opening surge of 2.6 per cent.

Financials led out of the gate with a rise of 6.2 per cent, only to pare that back to a rise of 1.4 per cent.

A surge of buying sent yields on mortgage-backed securities lower across the board.

Yields on mortgage bonds and debt issued by Fannie and Freddie fell particularly sharply, raising the promise of lower rates on home loans backed by the companies.

However, Fannie and Freddie shares plunged more than 80 per cent to less than $1 as investors judged that the Treasury plan would all but wipe out the common equity.

Some measures of systemic risk eased – indicating the US move was helping to reduce stress in the global financial system – but remained at high levels.

In a reminder of the troubles still plaguing the financial sector, shares in Lehman Brothers fell 18.5 per cent as investors worried that it would not be able to raise more capital ahead of its earnings report this month.

Elsewhere, stocks closed out strongly with London’s FTSE100 near its high for the day, up 3.9 per cent.

The FTSE Eurofirst 300 climbed 3.2 per cent.

Asian stocks were mainly higher across the board as Japan rose 3.4 per cent, while Hong Kong gained 4.3 per cent.

Trading was volatile in the US fixed-income markets.

The yield on Fannie Mae mortgage bonds fell 0.3 percentage points.

Dominic Konstam, head of interest rate strategy at Credit Suisse, said: “Foreign holders of agency debt and mortgages should be happy with this move by the Treasury.”

Technical factors made it difficult to assess the ultimate impact of what could end up being a giant bail-out on the US government’s own borrowing costs.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note initially jumped above 3.85 per cent, but fell back to 3.72 per cent, reflecting hedging strategies in which investors seek a balance between their mortgage holdings and the general level of rates.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/179a02a4-7dd2-11...?nclick_check=1

THE FINANCIAL TIMES

"US move triggers CDS default"

By Aline van Duyn in New York

Published: September 8 2008 19:21 | Last updated: September 8 2008 19:21

One of the largest defaults in the history of the $62,000bn credit derivatives market has been triggered by the US government’s seizure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, raising questions about how dealers will unwind billions of dollars worth of contracts.

Although the $1,600bn of debt issued by the troubled mortgage groups is regarded as safe after the US government’s move to take control of the companies, their move into “conservatorship” counts as the equivalent of a bankruptcy in the credit derivatives market.

This triggers a default on credit default swaps – instruments that provide a form of insurance on fixed-income assets.

Dealers in the market are now working to settle these contracts.

The exact amount of CDS on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not known, reflecting the private nature of the market, but they are part of widely traded indices and the amounts are likely to be significant.

Analysts at Lehman Brothers said: “There is likely to be a considerable amount of notional protection outstanding.”

The industry body, International Swaps and Derivatives Association, said on Monday it would launch a protocol to facilitate settlement of credit derivative trades involving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and would publish further details in due course.

The uncertainty surrounding the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac CDS contacts highlights the need for improved settlement and trading procedures.

Already, regulators have put pressure on CDS dealers, including all the large financial institutions, to reduce settlement and trading risks.

The near-collapse of Bear Stearns in March highlighted the extent to which many large financial institutions were linked together through the CDS market, and the Federal Reserve and other regulators want to reduce such systemic financial risks.

The growth of the CDS market over the past decade has outpaced development of settlement systems and trading infrastructure.

One worry is the lack of standard procedures in contracts for dealers to agree ways to settle defaulted credit derivatives.

The actual payments on credit default swaps on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are expected to be limited because the value of the mortgage agencies’ debt remains high after the US government stepped in to back it.

That means that meeting any claims on CDS may not be that costly, although the details are still being worked out and the impact is unknown.

Analysts at Creditsights said regulators could “use the bail-out as another lever” to enhance the CDS market’s efficiency.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ed1e14c6-7dd0-11...0077b07658.html

"Survey: Doctors alter treatment based on insurance company"

By CATHLEEN F. CROWLEY, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union

Last updated: 2:03 p.m., Monday, September 8, 2008

New York doctors say they change the way they treat patients based on restrictions from insurance companies, according to a survey released today by the Medical Society of the State of New York.

The survey, based on responses from more than 1,200 New York physicians, appears in the September issue of News of New York, the medical society's monthly publication.

The results indicate 90 percent of physicians surveyed said they have had to change the way they treat patients based on restrictions from an insurance company, and 92 percent said insurance company incentives and disincentives regarding treatment protocols "may not be in the best interest of the patients."

Physicians' biggest complaint (93 percent) was that health insurers required them to change prescription medications.

More than three-fourths (78 percent) said an insurance carrier had restricted their ability to refer patients to the physicians they believed would best treat their patients' needs; and 87 percent said that they sometimes feel that they are pressured to prescribe a course of treatment based on cost rather than on what may be best for the patient.

For the full study, go to http://www.mssny.org.

"Bethlehem cops probe attack on Obama supporter"

By SCOTT WALDMAN, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union

Last updated: 6:30 p.m., Monday, September 8, 2008

BETHLEHEM - A woman wearing a Barack Obama campaign button says she was attacked by a man who used a racial epithet, but police say they don't have enough evidence to call the attack racially motivated.

The woman, who is white, told police she had left Beff's bar and was walking home alone just off Delaware Avenue around midnight Friday when the man approached her near St. Thomas church and tripped her, Bethlehem police Lt. Thomas Heffernan said.

The woman, whose name police did not release, fell to the ground and hit her face, cutting her lip, he said.

Heffernan said police are still looking into whether the Obama campaign button fueled the attack based on the victim's statements and the attacker's use of a racial epithet.

But a direct link has not been established, he said.

"She told us she had earlier been at an Obama fundraiser and had a support pin on which would lead one to believe that's where his comments came from,'' Heffernan said.

"But not knowing who the suspect is ... it would purely speculative to draw any conclusion.''

The victim said the man used a derogatory term for African Americans during the incident, Heffernan said.

Police monitored the area for two nights, but did not find a man matching the assailant's description, Heffernan said.

Police are still searching for the suspect, who is described as a white male in his 40s, 5 feet, 8 inches tall and weighing approximately 140 pounds.

Heffernan said the attack occurred at the intersection of Adams Place and Kenwood Avenue.