Gerald Shields's Blog

I maybe wrong, but . . . (featuring yet another funny David Horsey Cartoon)

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 03:31:12 EST

This man is going to make being an American "cool" again:

Time to Change Gears for a Fuel-Efficient Future

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 10:16:31 EDT

Before I post this Washington Post story, I've and most probably a lot a people here and everywhere have been reading about the recent drop in oil prices and the reasons why it's happening. What hasn't been reported as much is how we are giving the Big Three Automakers 25 Billion. I even hear that GM wants 10 Billion more to smooth out a possible merger with Chrysler. As I said previously, that's fine if the purpose is to save American jobs. However, as a precondition for giving out this "corporate welfare" (When the Republicans say that Barack Obama is a socialist, tell them "It takes one to know one!), they should start making the cars we need to drive: Conventional Hybrids (Both Gas-Electric and Diesel-Electric ), Plug-In Hybrids, Clean Diesel whatever will reduce our dependence on foreign oil. If they can't do that, then maybe they should die. Moreover, what's the point of these automakers suing our state governments just because we want what they've won't give us?

Also, we need to aid companies like Tesla Motors, Aptera Motors, AFS Trinity and Phoenix Motorcars who are struggling to design and build the vehicles we need.

Until that happens, keep riding that bus or and train to work. Keep pedaling on that bicycle to get where you need to go because we need to resist that "crack pipe" which is oil.

Time to Change Gears for a Fuel-Efficient Future

By Warren Brown
Sunday, October 26, 2008; G02

We have the chance to remake the automobile industry, to strengthen America's technological muscle. But we are frittering away the opportunity.

We are mired in nonproductive, ideological arguments over "socialism" vs. "free enterprise." Worse, I fear, we are being suckered by the siren song of cheap gasoline.

The national media are celebrating the fall of pump prices below the $4 a gallon for regular unleaded nearly all of us were paying this summer. In many parts of the country, pump prices have now sunk below $3 a gallon.

Statistical evidence does not yet support suspicion of recidivism in the matter of American consumer profligacy in the consumption of fossil fuels. But there is anecdotal reason to worry.

I have been getting calls and receiving e-mails from readers asking whether now is a good time -- to paraphrase the sense of those communications -- to buy a truck or a full-size sport-utility vehicle. The thinking goes thusly: Almost all car companies are offering massive rebates on slow-selling trucks and SUVs. That makes them a bargain. Big rebates plus falling gasoline prices now make those big rides a good deal.

It is delusional thinking, but no more so than that taking place in the halls of Congress, where lawmakers apparently are laboring under the illusion that we have time to save the domestic automobile industry, to beef up America's prowess in fuel-efficient technologies.

We don't.

American car companies and the tens of thousands of jobs connected to them, directly and indirectly, are in bad shape. Soaring gasoline prices this summer and frozen credit this autumn have walloped their sales. Global regulatory changes requiring increased fuel efficiency and cleaner emissions rapidly are increasing product development costs.

We can wag fingers and self-righteously shout that the domestic car companies are reaping the unhappy fruits of the thoughtless seeds they planted. Schadenfreude is joy in hypocrisy. We bought all of those big trucks and big-engine cars. And we demanded more of them as long as we had access to the developed world's cheapest gasoline. But we whined like babies and screamed for more fuel-efficient vehicles like infants crying for nipples when gasoline topped $4 a gallon.

Put another way, we -- consumers and politicians -- were complicit in the automobile industry's reluctance to do better in the arenas of fuel economy and emissions control. The natural tendency in a purely profit-oriented, capitalist system is to give consumers what they are demanding at a price that returns a handsome reward on investment in product development.

Increased fuel efficiency and emissions controls usually require increased development costs. If consumers aren't demanding those things and, by implication, are not willing to pay more for them, why invest the enormous amount of money to make them available?

Aware of that capitalist conundrum, governments, the U.S. government chief among them, exercised the socialist lever of regulation. Car companies would have to improve fuel economy and emissions control by government mandate. But this is where things got dicey in the United States.

In Europe and Asia, governments provided financial incentives to the car companies to move forward in the development of alternative fuels and propulsion systems. In the United States, we embraced socialism when it came to regulating the industry but demanded hard-knuckles capitalism in compliance with our regulatory demands.

It is an approach designed for failure.

What is needed now is a concerted application of common sense.

Congress can do that by immediately releasing the $25 billion it has promised the industry in direct, low-interest loans to help it redesign cars and trucks for a more fuel-efficient future. It can do that by supporting independent companies, such as AFS Trinity of Washington state, in advanced propulsion research. It can do that by making consumers assume some responsibility for energy conservation -- by placing a floor, such as $4 a gallon for regular unleaded, beneath pump prices for gasoline.

There is nothing wrong with socialism as long as it actually produces something for the general good. Saving domestic car companies speaks to that good. Helping those companies become competitive in future technologies will ensure the continuation of an American economy attached to something real -- product development and manufacturing. That helps to create a future for American employment.

It's time for the government to stop fooling around and release the money it promised the industry in those direct, low-interest loans.

Scary, but Not Very! Yet another funny David Horsey Cartoon

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 21:51:39 EDT

Ah heck! Let me get a piece of that PB&J sandwich! And can I play with some of your toys?

Sen. Bond Warns Palin Crowd That Obama Wants Judges Who Empathize With “The Gay”

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:41:00 EDT

This is weird considering that the Republican Party has supported many gay politicians and government officials on the "down low" even as they have drafted anti-gay legislation! ;) Not to disrespect the GBLT community, but aren't ya'll tired of being used as a "wedge issue" by these hypocrites?

October 30, 2008, 10:30 AM

Sen. Bond Warns Palin Crowd That Obama Wants Judges Who Empathize With “The Gay”Posted by Scott Conroy|

(CBS)From CBS News' Scott Conroy:

(CAPE GIRARDEAU, MO.) - Taking the stage as one of the pre-program speakers at a Sarah Palin rally here in Rush Limbaugh’s hometown, Sen. Kit Bond, R-Missouri, fired up the crowd by warning them about Barack Obama’s judicial philosophy.

“Just this past week, we saw what Barack Obama said about judges,” Bond said. “He said, ‘I’m tired of these judges who want to follow what the Founding Fathers said and the Constitution. I want judges who have a heart, have an empathy for the teenage mom, the minority, the gay, the disabled. We want them to show empathy. We want them to show compassion.’”

Bond then seized on Obama’s comments to Joe The Plumber, saying the Democrat wants to redistribute wealth.

“He thinks this country should be a government—not a government of laws, but a government of compassion and empathy, not of laws,” Bond said.

Bond was referring to Obama's answer to "Joe the Plumber's" question earlier this month "Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?"

"It's not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance for success too," Obama said on Oct. 12 in Holland, Ohio. "My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody ... I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

Palin is scheduled to take the stage in just a few minutes, but there are still thousands of people in line outside waiting the Show-Me Center.

After this event, Palin heads to Erie, Pennsylvania, for a closed national security roundtable and a rally. She’ll end her day with a rally in Williamsport, home of the Little League World Series.

Obama for President?! Whud you say, boy?! Another funny David Horsey cartoon.

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 10:10:38 EDT

How to Deal with Obama Sign Stealers

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:22:51 EDT

Like that kid on the Simpsons say, "Ha-ha!" :

How to Deal with Obama Sign Stealers
by: Karl-Thomas MusselmanSun Oct 26, 2008 at 11:10 PM CDT
Make your yard sign more permanent. After all, it's harder to steal the entire yard. Emailed to us from an Austin resident...

I need another sign, as mine was stolen. And, tired of having Obama signs stolen from my neighborhood, I decided to make one that can't be (easily) taken; and I spray-painted a giant 14-foot Obama logo on my front yard.

U.S. should not aim to save carmakers: McCain adviser

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:37:16 EDT

I'm posting this story in part because the comments uttered by some McCain supporters would affect thousands of workers and because I disagree with these comments. Though I have in the past have suggested that the Big Three automakers shouldn't be helped, I felt I needed to clarify theses statements. I believe these automakers should be helped in only in the context of saving thousands, maybe millions of American jobs. However, this aid should come with stipulations, stipulations that up to this point haven't been met. The first stipulation would be for American automakers to implement a program to design, produce and market fuel-efficient vehicles. The second one: To achieve an average of 40 MPG on all vehicles driven in the U.S. The third? To give aid to other American vehicle manufacturers who are making the vehicles of tomorrow. The fourth? To stop the outsourcing of auto manufacturer jobs to other countries. Sadly, there are those in the McCain campaign who think it makes sense to put American automakers in the cold even though doing so would endanger jobs. That doesn't make sense and it's my hope that Senator Obama doesn't share the views of some in the McCain campaign:

U.S. should not aim to save carmakers: McCain adviser

37 mins ago

DETROIT (Reuters) – The U.S. government can assist automakers but cannot save them and any aid should be limited so taxpayers do not become ensnared in a long-term investment in the embattled industry, an economic adviser to Republican presidential candidate John McCain said on Monday.

"I don't think the government can rescue the industry," Carly Fiorina, former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard Corp, told Reuters at an event in suburban Detroit.

"Whatever the government does, it should not take away the fundamentals of risk-taking. Sometimes it leads to rewards and sometimes consequences, downside," she said. "In other words, the auto industry cannot be saved from its own bad bets."

Fiorina also said it remained an open question whether the U.S. auto industry needed aid beyond the $25 billion of low-interest loans already approved by the Bush administration and said any additional aid "depends on the particulars of the circumstance."

Her remarks came as a source told Reuters the U.S. Treasury Department was considering aid of at least $5 billion to facilitate a merger between General Motors Corp and Chrysler, through direct capital or purchases of auto loans.

The U.S. auto industry is struggling with a long-term decline as sales in the United States have slumped to two-decade lows and the economic slowdown that pressured North America has spread to Europe and other regions.

"One of the things I think will happen is that the government will expect taxpayers to be repaid, at a minimum in a neutral way and potentially in a profitable way," Fiorina said.

The government, now as an investor, will "have the requirement to understand how those investments are being used to protect taxpayers," she said.

On Sunday, McCain said in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press" that his preference would be for the auto industry to use the recently authorized $25 billion in low-interest loans that target retooling of plants first.

The sharp downturn in auto sales this year has left analysts questioning whether GM, Chrysler and rival Ford Motor Co have the liquidity to withstand the slump and complete restructuring plans.

The slump has set off fierce lobbying on behalf of the auto industry ahead of the U.S. presidential election, with supporters arguing that a bankruptcy of an automaker would have a cascading impact across the country.

David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research, estimated that a failure of GM or Ford could threaten up to 2 million jobs including suppliers and dealers.

(Reporting by Soyoung Kim, writing by David Bailey, editing by Matthew Lewis)

Copyright © 2008 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.

Republicans are such bad, badddddd folks

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:39:57 EDT

Republicans everywhere are losing their flippin' minds except for the ones voting for Obama! ;) Take for example this news story from the Huffington Post:

Jason Linkins
jason@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting From DC

California Candidate Launches Bizarre, Phone-Sex Robocall

October 27, 2008 12:54 PM

Zane Starkewolf is a ninth-level elven warrior from Dungeons and Dragons and self-professed "Green Republican" who's running against Mike Thompson in California's First District, and he's spent his Monday morning attempting to explain a robocall his campaign sent out over the weekend. Here's Starkewolf's statement on the matter:

I want to officially address the topic of the phone call that went out today from my campaign to individuals in District One. I acknowledge that the idea behind the ad, and indeed the execution of the call, was not the safe route to take. And if my run for office was simply for personal gain, I would not have taken a risk. But the content and the facts within the message were there and need to be discussed. Hopefully this call opens up the forum for discussion on the issues and on the representation which is so essential to our system.

What we are discussing today is the lack of alignment in representation in this district. Things are stagnant in Washington and accountability for one's actions and to one's district is severely lacking. I take the credit or the blame for the statement that went out today. The unpaid staffer who recorded and submitted the message may have been a little overly enthusiastic in the delivery, but I believe it is good to get enthusiasm back into politics.

As it turns out, the "overly enthusiastic" staffer basically thought the best way to get the "enthusiasm back into politics" was to put all of that enthusiasm into the pants of voters, because the robocall she sent out is basically a phone sex call.

"Mike Thompson has been a baaaaaad boy. We all said no to the bailout, but Thompson backed Bush. Just like he did with the Patriot act, uhhhhhh, vote YESSSSSSSSS! for Zane."
You can listen to this nonsense here.

http://zane2008.com/uploads/soundclip.wav (Right click the link and select the "Save target as" option to save the file as a .wav to play with any supported media player)

"Let's think outside the box, let's not be scared, let's talk about the issues that really matter," says Starkewolf, who sadly, doesn't add, "And let's have this discussion whilst on the verge of explosive orgasms, together."

A Message for Sarah Palin (Given in cartoon form by David Horsey)

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 21:25:46 EDT

Bachmann Tapes Apology Ad

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:16:30 EDT

I forgive you: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/24/bachmann-tapes-apology-ad_n_137689.html

Now people of MN: What's the word?! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJBpL5ORWUo

McCain Communications Director Gave Reporters Incendiary Version Of "Carved B" Story Before Facts Were Known

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 18:51:54 EDT

Things are getting a bit crazy now for the McCain campaign. Gots to stick to the issues!:

McCain Communications Director Gave Reporters Incendiary Version Of "Carved B" Story Before Facts Were KnownBy Greg Sargent - October 24, 2008, 5:12PM

John McCain's Pennsylvania communications director told reporters in the state an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established -- and even told reporters outright that the "B" carved into the victim's cheek stood for "Barack," according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions.

John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain's Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, "You're with the McCain campaign? I'm going to teach you a lesson."

Verrilli also told TPM that the McCain spokesperson had claimed that the "B" stood for Barack. According to Verrilli, the spokesperson also told KDKA that Sarah Palin had called the victim of the alleged attack, who has since admitted the story was a hoax.

The KDKA reporter had called McCain's campaign office for details after seeing the story -- sans details -- teased on Drudge.

The McCain spokesperson's claims -- which came in the midst of extraordinary and heated conversations late yesterday between the McCain campaign, local TV stations, and the Obama camp, as the early version of the story rocketed around the political world -- is significant because it reveals a McCain official pushing a version of the story that was far more explosive than the available or confirmed facts permitted at the time.

The claims to KDKA from the McCain campaign were included in an early story that ran late yesterday on KDKA's Web site. The paragraphs containing these assertions were quickly removed from the story after the Obama campaign privately complained that KDKA was letting the McCain campaign spin a racially-charged version of the story before the facts had been established, according to two sources familiar with the discussions.

The story with the removed grafs is still right here. We preserved the three missing grafs from yesterday:

A source familiar with what happened yesterday confirmed that the unnamed spokesperson was communications director Peter Feldman. Feldman was also quoted yesterday making virtually identical assertions on the Web site of another local TV station, WPXI. But those quotes, which we also preserved here, are also no longer available on WPXI's site, for reasons that are unclear.

This is problematic because the McCain campaign doesn't want to have been perceived as pushing an incendiary story that not only turned out to be a hoax but which police officials said today risked blowing up into a "national incident" and has local police preparing to file charges against the hoaxster.

There's no evidence that anyone from McCain national headquarters put out a version of events like this.

After the story appeared on KDKA's site and this and other pieces in the local press started flying around the political world, an Obama spokesperson in the state angrily insisted to KDKA that it was irresponsible for the station to air the McCain spokesperson's incendiary version of events before the facts were fully known, according to two sources familiar with the discussions.

After that, KDKA went back to McCain's Pennsylvania spokesperson, Feldman, and asked if he stood by the story as he'd earlier told it, but he started backing off the story, a source familiar with the talks says. That prompted KDKA to remove the grafs.

Feldman couldn't immediately be reached, and a McCain HQ spokesperson declined to comment.

Fox News VP: If McCain Worker 'Mutilation' Story Is a Hoax His Campaign Is 'Over'

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:40:30 EDT

Concerning the quote that John Moody, executive vice president at Fox News made: John, it is SO OVER MAN!!!

Greg Mitchell

Posted October 24, 2008 | 11:42 AM (EST)

Fox News VP: If McCain Worker 'Mutilation' Story Is a Hoax His Campaign Is 'Over'

It had drawn wide local and national -- even political attention, with the McCain and Obama campaigns weighing in -- but now the Ashley Todd story has fallen apart. Police in Pittsburgh have now declared the tale a hoax and the woman, who has confessed, now faces charges for her deed.

Earlier today, John Moody, executive vice president at Fox News, commented on his blog there that "this incident could become a watershed event in the 11 days before the election. If Ms. Todd's allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee.

"If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain's quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting."

He titled his posting: "Moment of Truth." Indeed.

It started yesterday afternoon with Matt Drudge screaming at the top of his site this afternoon in red type -- but no siren -- that a Pittsburgh campaign worker for McCain, age 20, had been viciously attacked and the letter "B" carved into her face, presumably by a Barack Obama fan. Her name, it soon emerged, was Ashley Todd and she had come to Pittsburgh from College Station, Texas, to help out.

It started to appear overblown (Drudge downgraded it to smaller, black type) as the police noted that it seemed to be a robbery ($60) and she did not seek medical attention. But later press reports said she would visit a hospital, Sarah Palin and maybe John McCain had reportedly called her and Obama has condemned the alleged assault, although McCain/Obama angle to story not yet confirmed.

Still later, conservative columnist Michelle Malkin, and some others, grew skeptical. For one thing, the "B" was carved a little too lightly and perfectly -- and backward, as if done using a mirror. Smoking Gun probed a too-pat "Twitter" angle and Gawker and Wonkette looked at her MySpace page.

Now police say that evidence from the ATM that she reportedly visited did not match her account. And it turns out she changed her story, admitting that her assailant did not see a McCain bumper sticker and adding to her account a sexual assault and losing consciousness. Liberal bloggers poked all sorts of holes in the story, including the fact that the attack allegedly took place in a very public place. Drudge added a link titled "B...or B.S."?

Finally, early this afternoon, came word that she had made it all up.
*
Greg Mitchell is editor of Editor & Publisher and its hot new blog The E&P Pub. His latest book on Iraq and the media is titled "So Wrong for So Long."

Hey Americans, Take Tom Tommorrow's Real American Quiz!

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 14:04:22 EDT

Why Some Smart Women Think Palin is a Good Choice

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 12:01:52 EDT

Ok, posting my first "Pro Palin" article! (Okay, stop booing, stop hissing until you read this article):

Pam Atherton
Posted October 24, 2008 | 08:17 AM (EST)
Why Some Smart Women Think Palin is a Good Choice

I was at the dentist yesterday and the hygienist asked me what I thought of the upcoming election. I looked at this woman who had sharp objects in her hand and I thought it might be prudent to take the non-committal route.
"Wow! Sure is something, huh? Most exciting election in my lifetime," I said, eyeing those tools of doom carefully. "What do you think?" (Years of working in radio has taught me to turn the question back on the questioner.)
She told me that she didn't like Obama because he was "too slick, like a car salesman," but she showed disdain for John McCain's claim of 'I know how to do that.' She smirked at me "Well," she said "if you knew how to do it, why weren't you doing it? Why didn't you find bin Laden, and solve the financial mess?"
I nodded. (I couldn't really do much else). When she removed the buzz saw and pick axe from my mouth I said "What about Sarah Palin?"
"Oh, I like her."
Nowadays when people say that, I ask them why, largely because it is a concept that befuddles me.
"Well, she's gutsy. And I think she's probably dealt with the Russians, being as how they are right there."
We moved on to the economy with which EVERYone has a problem, so we were in safe territory, as least as far as my mouth and pain were concerned.
But the interchange brought forward something that had been niggling at the back of my brain. Why do some smart women think Sarah Palin is a good choice for Vice President? Why do some smart women like her?
This has been bothering me for some time. I have some very smart women friends and a few of them think Palin has what it takes. I don't get it. Why can't they see what I see and what many conservative pundits are falling all over themselves to say? Palin is not qualified.
I called my friend Betti Hoeppner, the therapist. She reminded me of a situation from over 10 years ago when I had worked for a man who was very smart about some things, but would not accept that he was a bad manager. Everyone told him he was a dreadful manager, and still he would not believe it. I was befuddled then, too.
In the course of our conversation she explained why. She told me that sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.
For example: You think you are an honest person. That is your core belief. But you cheat on your taxes. Cheating on your taxes goes against the idea of you being an honest person. This is a very uncomfortable feeling, the cognitive dissonance. You really want to continue believing that you are an honest person, so you may rationalize that the government "owes" you anyway.
But why do people hold the core belief that Palin is qualified in the first place? My friend Dr. Susan Bartell, the psychologist, was my next phone call.
"Think of it as a relationship," she told me. "Women are relationship-oriented, and many women feel that they are having one with the people they choose in the election. Some women say they could imagine themselves having coffee and pie with Palin around the dinner table."
All right. I get that. Not my thing, but I get that.
She told me that many women idealize their relationship partners. They see all the positive characteristics about that person and ignore the bad. This is especially true, Dr. Susan added, in the beginning of a relationship.
Okay. This I get. Who hasn't fallen in love with the "idea" that we have created of a person, instead of the actual person? And lots of really smart women have done that!
So for whatever reason they have chosen, some smart women have fallen in love with the "idea" of Sarah Palin. She's smart. She's gutsy. She's a woman. And she would be the first woman 'this close' to the Presidency.
And what happens when these smart women are presented with contradictory evidence? "Let's go back to the relationship analogy," Dr. Susan says. "When our eyes finally open to someone, we have choices. We can either get out of the relationship (divorce), or we stay and deal with the cognitive dissonance."
But Dr. Susan says that some women feel they don't have a choice. Their core belief is so strong that they don't believe they have an alternative. For example, perhaps they are strongly against pro-choice. Or they want a woman in the Executive Branch no matter what. Or they cannot subscribe to any of the democratic platform of ideas. At that point, they have no choice but to continue their idealization of Palin, thereby finding a way around their cognitive dissonance, albeit in an unhealthy way.
So in order to keep idealizing her, our smart friends either deny (that Alaskan report didn't find her guilty of doing anything unlawful), rationalize (and besides, they were partisan), or ignore (I never heard about any report. Besides, I just like her!).
The bottom line? When it comes to our smart women friends, we probably aren't going to be able to change their minds about Sarah Palin. They are either still idealizing her, or they have a core belief too strong to accept any alternatives. But at least now we know why these smart women are choosing to consider Palin qualified and will check the Republican box on the ballot. We just don't have to like it.

Trivia Question:

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 11:48:26 EDT

Who was the highest paid individual in Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign during the first half of October as it headed down the homestretch?

Hint: It's not the usual suspects:

October 24, 2008, 8:16 am Palin’s Makeup Stylist Fetches Highest Salary in 2-Week Period

By Michael Luo

Who was the highest paid individual in Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign during the first half of October as it headed down the homestretch?

Not Randy Scheunemann, Mr. McCain’s chief foreign policy adviser; not Nicolle Wallace, his senior communications staff member. It was Amy Strozzi, who was identified by the Washington Post this week as Gov. Sarah Palin’s traveling makeup artist, according to a new filing with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday night.

Ms. Strozzi, who was nominated for an Emmy award for her makeup work on the television show “So You Think You Can Dance?”, was paid $22,800 for the first two weeks of October alone, according to the records. The campaign categorized Ms. Strozzi’s payment as “PERSONNEL SVC/EQUIPMENT.”

The payment on Oct. 10 made Ms. Strozzi the single highest-paid individual in the campaign for that two-week period. (There were more than two dozen companies that got larger payments than Ms. Strozzi). She easily beat out Mr. Scheunemann, who received $12,500 in the first half of October, and Ms. Wallace, who got $12,000.

In September, Ms. Strozzi was also paid $13,200 for “communications consulting.” But several individuals were paid more by the McCain campaign that month, including Mike DuHaime, the political director, who received $25,000 for “GOTV CONSULTING,” and Mark Salter, one of Mr. McCain’s senior advisers, who got $13,224 in salary.

There has been much scrutiny this week, of course, over the $150,000 Republican National Committee spent outfitting Ms. Palin in September at high-end department stores like Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus, as well as for makeup services.

The campaign finance reports filed on Thursday night, which showed the McCain campaign and the R.N.C. had about $84 million left in the bank on Oct. 15, did not immediately appear to show any similar payments in the first half of October.

The Real Problem with Sarah Palin

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 10:24:20 EDT

The real problem with Palin: Politicians who hype themselves as average working class parents, who are in reality, aren't who they say they are. What makes it worse is on the Huffington Post website, where most of the news about the $150,000 shopping spree that Sarah Palin took, there was another story just below in small print that had a YouTube Video featuring how the Obama Family Dresses on a Budget. In a campaign where Obama's opponent had described him as a "celebrity", this was an inelegant reminder on how John McCain had left the pretense of running an honorable campaign. These days, it important for a politician to “walk the walk” as well as talk the talk. Check out the Obama video at (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/22/the-obamas-discuss-dressi_n_137009.html):

The problem with Palin

Story Highlights
Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin hit by revelations over clothes spending
Analysts asking if Palin is more a liability than an asset to Republican campaign
Prominent Republicans have publicly criticized Palin's lack of experience
Opinion polls also indicate that Palin is falling out of favor with voters

By Jonathan Mann

(CNN) -- Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin likes to portray herself as an average American working mother.

But how many typical moms get $150,000 worth of merchandise from stylish stores and have strangers pay for it?

This week's revelation about the purchases was just one more surprise in the fast rise and apparent fall of the Republican Party's sudden superstar.

Remember, it was only two months ago that Palin was just the popular governor of Alaska, still an obscure figure in American politics. That changed in late August when John McCain chose her as his running mate.

Within days, she was generating the biggest excitement the McCain campaign had ever enjoyed, captivating the Republican Party, swelling the crowds at its rallies and drawing media coverage that overshadowed the Democrats.

One McCain advisor told me then that one of the practical problems she discovered as she criss-crossed the country was that she didn't bring enough clothes.

It seems her family didn't have enough clothes either, because suddenly there was some serious shopping.

A single visit to the fashionable department store Neiman Marcus cost more than $75,000, but that was only half of the total. The bills ultimately went to the Republican Party, which means that although they probably didn't know it, party donors paid for them.

Palin's problems go beyond clothes, though, to her very candidacy. In recent days, prominent Republicans, from former Secretary of State Colin Powell to Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, have publicly criticized her lack of experience.

Ordinary Americans agree. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that in early September, when Palin was just starting out as a candidate, 47 percent of voters had a positive opinion of her, compared to 27 percent who felt negatively.

Now 47 percent have negative feelings, compared with 38 percent who feel positively.

And the new poll found that concern about Palin's qualifications is voters' top concern about McCain, ahead of every other issue in the election.

Voting day is less than two weeks away and most polls suggest that Barack Obama is headed for victory. The surprise is that Palin went from being McCain's best asset to his biggest problem. And the Republicans don't have much time, or an obvious way, to fix it.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/23/mann.ct.palin.clothes

2008 Cable News Network

The Real Problem with Sarah Palin

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 10:24:20 EDT

The problem with Palin

Story Highlights
Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin hit by revelations over clothes spending
Analysts asking if Palin is more a liability than an asset to Republican campaign
Prominent Republicans have publicly criticized Palin's lack of experience
Opinion polls also indicate that Palin is falling out of favor with voters

By Jonathan Mann

(CNN) -- Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin likes to portray herself as an average American working mother.

But how many typical moms get $150,000 worth of merchandise from stylish stores and have strangers pay for it?

This week's revelation about the purchases was just one more surprise in the fast rise and apparent fall of the Republican Party's sudden superstar.

One McCain advisor told me then that one of the practical problems she discovered as she criss-crossed the country was that she didn't bring enough clothes.

It seems her family didn't have enough clothes either, because suddenly there was some serious shopping.

Now 47 percent have negative feelings, compared with 38 percent who feel positively.

And the new poll found that concern about Palin's qualifications is voters' top concern about McCain, ahead of every other issue in the election.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/23/mann.ct.palin.clothes

2008 Cable News Network

McCain's Home State Party Imploding, Plagued By Infighting And Scandal

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 17:25:06 EDT

Just posting this article from The Huffington Post:

Dawn Teo

Posted October 21, 2008 | 07:21 PM (EST)

McCain's Home State Party Imploding, Plagued By Infighting And Scandal

PHOENIX -- The Republican Party in John McCain's home state is fracturing under the weight of a series of misconduct charges that threaten to sink the party's already deeply troubled Arizona candidacies. The GOP problems here, which include infighting and ideological splits, underline arguments made nationally in the final weeks of the presidential campaign that the Republican party is in crisis.

Asked for comment at a fundraiser last week, a Republican consultant here simply said that the state GOP is in "desperate straits."

At the top of the list, perhaps, is news that the party is being forced to return $105,000 to an unidentified group originally reported only as "SCA" and which increasingly appears to be linked to GOP candidate Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Party insiders are also now publicly feuding with one another, some vowing to unseat the state party chair after the election season. Local television stations, meantime, are refusing to air at least one state GOP ad and perhaps two for stretching the facts even beyond the standards that presently govern election campaign TV ads. As if these problems weren't enough, Democratic Party officials are asking incumbent GOP Rep. John Shadegg embarrassing questions concerning election-season espionage after a credit card belonging to Shadegg's campaign manager was found under a desk in the offices of the Arizona Democratic Party headquarters.

Last tuesday Democratic Party Executive Director Maria Weeg filed complaints with the Arizona Secretary of State and the Maricopa County Recorder requesting the swift and formal investigation of the Arizona Republican Party, one of its affiliated committees Arizonans for Public Safety, and the a contributor known at the time only as "SCA." It has since been reported that the acronym stands for "Sheriff's Command Association."

Arizona Republican Party Chairman Randy Pullen says he accepted the funds from SCA (two donations, $80,000 and $25,000) under the assumption that SCA would provide him with the names and information of donors, but those names haven't been delivered. Arizona Democrats are accusing the GOP of using SCA to funnel donations to candidates while hiding the identity of the donors, a felony violation of campaign finance laws.

In addition, the Arizona Democratic Party alleges that SCA violated the law by failing to register as a political organization and failing to report its financial activities to the Arizona Secretary of State or the Maricopa County Recorder.

Pullen apparently also told the Arizona Capital Times that the SCA money was "set aside for county races" despite an Arizona statute that prohibits political entities from accepting earmarked contributions. Although the Arizona Republican Party only reported a $100 payment to Arizonans for Public Safety, Pullen also told the Arizona Capital Times that it transferred $78,000 of the SCA funds to Arizonans for Public Safety, which is also headed by Pullen, for county races.

The East Valley Tribune uncovered the identity of the person behind SCA, Division Captain Joel Fox of Sheriff Arpaio's Maricopa County office. Fox is listed as the contact person for SCA. Because Sheriff Arpaio's campaign could not legally collaborate with the ads run by Arizonans for Public Safety, this connection has further raised suspicions of illegal campaign activity. Sheriff Arpaio has emphatically denied any knowledge or collaboration with the group and the ad buy, calling it an "independent expenditure."

Despite the large amount of the donations and the high profile identity of Captain Fox, Pullen says that he "never even talked to [Fox] before I got the check. I didn't know him from Adam." Pullen says that he was unaware that Fox is a ranking member of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.

Although the Arizona Republican Party now says it will return all $105,000 of the SCA donations, Secretary of State Jan Brewer is asking the Arizona Republican Party for a formal response to the complaint, along with a list of the SCA donors by October 31. The Arizona Elections Office has referred the case to a local law firm. The Arizona Democratic Party is asking the Arizona Secretary of State and the Maricopa County Recorder to fine the GOP the requisite three times the amount of the funds received.

The bad press and possible financial set-back comes when the state party has already been suffering from long-term infighting and diminishing enthusiasm. According to the Democratic Party, the latest reports show the Arizona GOP with only $73,000 on hand in non-federal money, and the SCA donations were already being used to fund controversial television advertisements. One of those ads was the one "pulled" by the party after a local station refused to air it and another station questioned the ad's assertions.

Pullen said the ad was pulled after further research showed that the ad "wasn't quite accurate."

Republican party membership has also declined dramatically in Arizona over the last few years, with most defectors re-registering without party affiliation.

Republican consultant and former state Senator Stan Barnes says it is the my-way-or-the-highway attitude that is driving away Republican supporters. Others say it is the lack of an adherence to Republican principles. Pullen, a long time immigration-control activist, for example, took over the state party last year and has made it his goal to return the state party to its core principles.

Infighting within McCain's home-state party has been cut throat. Many party leaders, office holders, and key supporters have divided themselves into factions based on ideology and specific issues such as immigration, with party leaders calling other party leaders out. Indeed, much of the party infighting has centered around the issue of immigration, and many party members have cited John McCain's immigration policy as a primary reason for leaving the party. Barnes also notes that McCain is "reviled" by many in the Arizona Republican Party leadership.

The party has been in a civil war for the last few years, with a conservative grassroots arm pitted against libertarian-leaning Republicans, and Pullen has been at the center of the controversy as a conservative stalwart. Last year, some party leaders even voiced concern that Pullen would sabotage McCain's chances in the presidential election due to longstanding political differences on immigration and other conservative issues.

And just Monday evening, news broke that the Arizona Democratic Party found a credit card belonging to an Arizona Republican operative under a desk in the state headquarters of the Democratic Party.

The credit card was issued to Ryan Anderson, the re-election campaign manager of Republican Representative John Shadegg. Anderson claims that he went into the Democratic Party office to purchase an Obama bumper sticker. However, because all merchandise purchases are legally considered to be donations, a signed donation form is required each time an item is purchased.

No record exists of Ryan Anderson's purchase, but a "Bryan Anderson" whose address is a "near match" did fill out a donation form. According to the Democratic Party, each number in the street address is one digit off. Nevertheless, the Shadegg campaign sent an email to PolitickerAZ claiming that Anderson gave the card to a volunteer who stopped by the Democratic office to buy an Obama sticker.

Democratic Party officials believe that Anderson was the one who came to the office and that he purposely lied about his identity in order to access their office for information about the Bob Lord campaign for Shadegg's Congressional seat. Emily DeRose, spokesperson for the Arizona Democratic Party said,

Why would Anderson need to lie if he was just there to buy a bumper sticker? Why would a Republican campaign operative go to a Democratic office to buy bumper stickers when they're online? This story just doesn't hold water.

Arizona Democrats are asking Shadegg to fire Anderson.

As I was finishing this article, I received a robocall from Pullen asking for volunteers to help with phonebanking at the Arizona Republican Party headquarters. It smacks of desperation when the home state party of a presidential nominee is forced to robocall potential volunteers.

People in MN, Michelle Bachmann has got to go. . .

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:01:16 EDT

What's the word? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJBpL5ORWUo

People in MN, Please vote for Elwyn Tinklenberg

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 18:54:06 EDT

I say it again: People in MN, Please vote for Elwyn Tinklenberg. Why?! Because Michelle Bachmann MUST GO!! Let's get medival over the Radical Right Wing Agenda and let's destroy the Michelle Bachmann menace once and for all!!!

http://www.actblue.com/page/nonewmccarthy

Bachmann Doubles Down: ‘Barack Obama’s Views Are Against America’By Matt Corley at 4:32 pm

On the defensive over her controversial Hardball appearance last Friday, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) told the St. Cloud Times yesterday that she regretted suggesting that Barack Obama held “anti-American” views. But at the same time Bachmann was apologizing for her remarks to traditional media outlets, Bachmann continued to cast aspersions on Obama’s patriotism in a series of appearances on right-wing radio shows.

On Hugh Hewitt’s radio show yesterday, Bachmann declared that “Barack Obama’s views are against America”:

BACHMANN: All I did on Chris Matthews is I questioned Chris Matthews and said, “look, if John McCain had friends like Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers and Father Pfleger, you’d be all over him Chris, but you’ve laid off of Barack Obama.” And so, he was using the word “Anti-American” and I told Chris, what I question are Barack Obama’s views. Because Barack Obama’s views are against America. They won’t be good for our country.

On Mike Gallagher’s radio show this morning, Bachmann attacked Obama’s policy proposals, asking rhetorically, “Are they for America or will they be against traditional American ideals and values?”:

BACHMANN: And they can’t take it because the point is what are Barack Obama’s policies? Are they for America or will they be against traditional American ideals and values? And I’ll tell you what. Punishing tax rates, redistribution of wealth, socialized medicine, inputing censorship in the form of the un-Fairness Doctrine and taking away the secret ballot from the worker has nothing to do with traditional American values. That’s why your listeners need to know. Otherwise the United States may be literally changed forever.

When Gallagher asked, “How is it not reasonable to wonder if that’s anti-American?,” Bachmann did not disagree with him. Instead, she simply replied, “what I did is touch a nerve, just like Joe the Plumber touched a nerve.” Listen to clips from both shows here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK9-uhrEHuo

During her appearance on Gallagher’s show, Bachmann claimed that media scrutiny of her “anti-American” comments was a coordinated effort “to get my scalp on a platter.”

Transcript:

HEWITT: Now Michele, you’ve got a great organization, you’ve got a great great reputation and so, I assume your guys are not folding under the pressure that they’re rallying. Is that true?

BACHMANN: Yes, I mean, we’re working hard, but we just don’t have the financial resources that they have. I did all the work that I needed to. Laid all the foundation, but this will be like nothing we’ve ever seen. Plus, it’s the in kind donation that all the local media, local TV stations, they’re all running statements saying that I’m Joe McCarthy and that I am saying that Barack Obama is anti-American.

All I did on Chris Matthews is I questioned Chris Matthews and said, “look, if John McCain had friends like Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers and Father Pfleger, you’d be all over him Chris, but you’ve laid off of Barack Obama.” And so, he was using the word “Anti-American” and I told Chris, what I question are Barack Obama’s views. Because Barack Obama’s views are against America. They won’t be good for our country. And so, anyway, it went on from there. And if people want to read the transcript, you know, I encourage them to please read the transcript. But all of a sudden this is out of control and the Speaker of the House made a visit here to Minnesota to make sure that I’m taken out.

[…]

BACHMANN: I touched something that’s off limits. I called Chris Matthews on the carpet and I said, “Chris, look, if John McCain had named as two of his three life mentors, Jeremiah Wright and Father Pfleger.”

GALLAGHER: Right.

BACHMANN: “You would have been all over him. You have failed to do your due dilligence as the national media to check out Barack Obama.” And they can’t take it because the point is what are Barack Obama’s policies? Are they for America or will they be against traditional American ideals and values? And I’ll tell you what. Punishing tax rates, redistribution of wealth, socialized medicine, inputing censorship in the form of the un-Fairness Doctrine and taking away the secret ballot from the worker has nothing to do with traditional American values. That’s why your listeners need to know. Otherwise the United States may be literally changed forever. If Barack Obama becomes the next president, Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, Harry “We lost the war” Reid, the head of the Senate. And then they have the power to appoint three more Ruth Bader Ginsburgs to the Supreme Court. What are we going to do then?

GALLAGHER: Well, that’s precisely whats at play here. I mean, you know, I was watching CNN, Willie Brown from San Francisco talk about all, the agenda of pushing forth gay marriage, and you know, under a liberal Democrat president and Democrats in the Congress, I mean, as San Francisco goes, let’s face it, so goes the rest of the country. I mean we’ll see a different country than the one we recognize. And yet your comments were so mainstream. I mean, and that’s what’s fascinating. There’s nothing you said, even on the show, and I know that you’ve been now, people tried to corner you about your comments on the show. You didn’t say anything that isn’t what ordinary Americans are wondering about a presidential candidate who talks about spreading around the wealth and cavorting with a guy like Bill Ayers and a woman like Bernadine Dohrn who wants to overthrow capitalism. How is it not reasonable to wonder if that’s anti-American?

BACHMANN: And what I did is touch a nerve, just like Joe the Plumber touched a nerve by questioning Barack Obama’s punishing high tax rates.

GALLAGHER: Right.

BACHMANN: And then Barack Obama saying that he wants to spread the wealth around. That’s exactly what happened to me on Chris Matthews. I touched a nerve, which shows how ultra hyper-sensitive leftists are right now in this country. They know we’re a center-right country and they know Americans would shrink back if they truly come to understand how Obama will radically change this country. I mean they’re so afraid, Nancy Pelosi came here to Minnesota. She went in front of the media and she said to the Minnesota media that me, Michele Bachmann, has dishonored the position that I hold in Congress and that my statements discredit me as a person.

GALLAGHER: Wow.

BACHMANN: And then she got on her plane and left. I’ll tell you, right now…

GALLAGHER: She’s got a bigger plane, by the way, she didn’t like the plane she had originally. She demanded a bigger plane so she could fly around the country and discredit people like Michele Bachmann.

BACHMANN: And that’s why shows like the Today Show are banding together with Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews to get my scalp on a platter. Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews alone have raised $1 million for my opponent just since last Friday.

GALLAGHER: You’re kidding me.

BACHMANN: No no, over a million dollars in online contributions.

GALLAGHER: Wow.

BACHMANN: In that amount of time to take out my scalp. They’re serious about it. Because they can’t stand that I’m fighting them. And Nancy Pelosi also pledged to donate $1 million toward my opponent. So, $2 million have come in since Friday to make sure that I lose this election. That’s why I need. I’m desperate for help right now or else I lose.

Yet another funny David Horsey cartoon

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 15:58:24 EDT

Poor Sarah Baby Part 3:

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:21:53 EDT

You are going to laugh at this one, I guarantee it! Now after you read this article mind you that though the Vice President serves as President of the Senate, this is considered ceremonial. The Vice President holds a tie breaking vote in the Senate and does not usually preside over the Senate. In short, the VP is there only to break a 50/50 senate vote. However, Sarah Palin seems to imply that this limited role is actually more than what it really is:

Palin Claims The Vice President Is ‘In Charge Of The U.S. Senate’»

Yesterday, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) sat for an interview with KUSA, an NBC affiliate in Colorado. In response to a question sent to the network by a third grader at a local elementary school about what the Vice President does, Palin erroneously argued that the Vice President is “in charge of the United States Senate“:

Q: Brandon Garcia wants to know, “What does the Vice President do?”
PALIN: That’s something that Piper would ask me! … [T]hey’re in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom.

Watch it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l40nrw3V3GA

Indeed, while Palin suggests that questions about what the Vice President does is something only her daughter Piper would ask, Palin herself asked this very question on national television in July. Apparently, she still hasn’t learned the correct answer.

Article I of the Constitution establishes an exceptionally limited role for the Vice President — giving the office holder a vote only when the Senate is “equally divided”:

The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided.

Moreover, the U.S. Senate website explains that the modern role of Vice Presidents has been to preside over the Senate “only on ceremonial occasions.” ThinkProgress contacted Senior Assistant Paliamentarian Peter Robinson, who also disputed Palin’s characterization of the Vice President’s role:

In modern practice the Vice President doesn’t really control the Senate. … If anyone has a responsibility to try to govern the Senate, it’s the responsibility of the two leaders.

Update:

We have replaced the original video with a YouTube version.UpdateThinkProgress obtained the following statement from Jim Manley, spokesman to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV):

This comment is all the more puzzling because this is at least the 2nd time she has said this. Gov Palin needs to re-read or perhaps read for the first time the Constitution. While the Vice President presides over the Senate, he or she is not in charge of it. Article 1 says The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided.

The Senate is part of a co-equal branch of the federal government.

Karl Rove is dead (Ah, fooled ya!)

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 18:59:43 EDT

Yet another 'smack in the face' commentary by Arianna Huffington. Not only that, but Obama's web site is also a weapon against the McCain/Palin campaign:

Arianna Huffington

Posted October 20, 2008 | 11:25 PM (EST)

The Internet and the Death of Rovian Politics

Age has finally become an issue for John McCain. But the problem isn't the candidate's 72 years; it's the antediluvian approach of his campaign.

McCain is running a textbook Rovian race: fear-based, smear-based, anything goes. But it isn't working. The glitch in the well-oiled machine? The Internet.

"We are witnessing the end of Rovian politics," Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google told me. And YouTube, which Google bought in 2006 for $1.65 billion, is one of the causes of its demise.

Thanks to YouTube -- and blogging and instant fact-checking and viral emails -- it is getting harder and harder to get away with repeating brazen lies without paying a price, or to run under-the-radar smear campaigns without being exposed.

But the McCain campaign hasn't gotten the message, hence the blizzard of racist, alarmist, xenophobic, innuendo-laden accusations being splattered at Obama.

And it seems that the worse McCain is doing in the polls, the more his team is relying on the same gutter tactics. So over the next 15 days, look for the McCain campaign to become even uglier. That's what happens when following Rovian politics is your only strategy -- and Rovian politics isn't working.

McCain has stockpiled his campaign with Rove henchmen, including not one but three of the people responsible for the political mugging inflicted on him in 2000.

Just last week he brought on Warren Tompkins in an "unofficial" capacity to see how receptive North Carolina would be to some Rovian slime. After all, it's right next door to South Carolina, where in 2000 Tomkins and his buddies in the Bush campaign spread race-baiting rumors about McCain having an illegitimate black daughter (referring to McCain's adopted Bangladeshi daughter Bridget).

And those disgraceful robo-calls that McCain is running? They were done with the help of Jeff Larson and his firm FLS-Connect -- the same firm that created the robo-calls smearing McCain in 2000.

At the time, McCain's reaction to the attacks on him was: "I believe that there is a special place in hell for people like these."

His reaction now? I have a special place in my campaign for people like these!

So the Karl Rove specials keep coming. Obama and Ayers. Obama the Socialist. Obama and ACORN "destroying the fabric of democracy." Palin (herself the manifestation of Rovian decision-making) delineating which parts of "this great nation of ours" are "pro-American." (Interestingly, the sites of the 9/11 attacks didn't make the list.)

And, did you hear, Obama is also... black! And he wants to give your money to all the poor black people! McCain didn't come right out and say that, but it's surely what he insinuated in his radio address this weekend: "Barack Obama's tax plan would convert the IRS into a giant welfare agency." Somewhere, Karl Rove is smiling, Richard Nixon's southern strategy is waxing nostalgic, and John McCain's missing moral compass is getting steamed about John Lewis' evocation of the civil rights struggle.

But there is a diamond amidst all this dung: the lack of traction this Rovian politics is getting. It's as if Rove and his political arsonists keep lighting fires, only to see them doused by the powerful information spray the Internet has made possible.

The Internet has enabled the public to get to know candidates in a much fuller and more intimate way than in the old days (i.e. four years ago), when voters got to know them largely through 30-second campaign ads and quick sound bites chosen by TV news producers.

Compare that to the way over 6 million viewers (on YouTube alone) were able to watch the entirety of Obama's 37-minute speech on race -- or the thousands of other videos posted by the campaign and its supporters.

Back in the Dark Ages of 2004, when YouTube (and HuffPost, for that matter) didn't exist, a campaign could tell a brazen lie, and the media might call them on it. But if they kept repeating the lie again and again and again, the media would eventually let it go (see the Swiftboating of John Kerry). Traditional media like moving on to the next shiny thing. But bloggers love revisiting a story. So when Palin kept repeating her bridge to nowhere lie, bloggers kept calling her on it. Andrew Sullivan, for one, has made a cottage industry of calling Palin on her lies. And eventually, the truth filtered up and cost McCain credibility with his true base: journalists.

The Internet may make it easier to disseminate character smears, but it also makes it much less likely that these smears will stick.

As a result, the McCain campaign's insinuation-laden "Who is Barack Obama?" was rendered more comical than spooky. Who is Barack Obama? The guy we've been watching over and over and over during the last two years. We've seen him. We know him. And we can remind ourselves about him with a quick Google search and a mouse click.

Obama "has shown the same untroubled self-confidence day after day," and "over the past two years, Obama has clearly worn well with voters." Those are the words of David Brooks, who has gotten to know Obama just like the rest of us.

Four years ago, McCain's Rovian race-based appeals to our darker demons might have worked. This year, they are blowing up in McCain's face. And in the face of the entire GOP.

Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama as "a transformational figure" was powerful. But even more powerful was his withering indictment of the state of the Republican Party and the cancer of Rovian politics.

It was similar to the diagnosis of Christopher Buckley following his endorsement of Obama: "To paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan, I haven't left the Republican Party. It left me."

There are many other anti-Rove Republicans abandoning their party. I've had several Republican friends tell me privately what Powell and Buckley told the world publicly: that they're voting for Obama. Most of them not because they like Obama, but because they can't stand what Bush, Rove and now McCain and Palin have done to their party.

Rovian politics may or may not end up destroying the GOP. But, thanks to the Internet, with a bit of luck it will no longer have the power to befoul our democracy.

McCain Muslim Organizer gets dissed . . . by his own campaign

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 10:41:12 EDT

Funny. A McCain Organizer who is Muslim states in a heated exchange with a McCain rally attendee over some anti-Muslim literature he was hawking, then his own campaign, the one he defended pulls him from a CNN interview with Rick Sanchez. Yet another misses opportunity for the McCain campaign, all because they want to "suck up" to their "base". Makes you think what the McCain campaign is telling us or not telling us. Granted, the Obama campaign has had it's muslim issues but at least they have owned up to them (video clips are at ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/21/cnn-host-mystified-by-mcc_n_136479.html ):

Sam Stein

stein@huffingtonpost.com

HuffPost Reporting From DC

CNN Host "Mystified" By McCain Camp Silencing Muslim Organizer

October 21, 2008 09:51 AM

CNN Host Rick Sanchez said he was "mystified" by a last minute decision by the McCain campaign to pull a Muslim grassroots organizer from appearing on his show.

The aide, Daniel Zubairi, had been scheduled to appear on Sanchez's mid-day program after he was caught on video talking down an anti-Muslim protester outside a McCain rally in Woodbridge, Virginia. But, even after telling the network that an interview was "good to go," the McCain shop pulled Zubairi at the last minute, leaving Sanchez in limbo on live TV.

"Wouldn't you think they would have wanted him to come on?" the CNN host would later tell the Huffington Post. "What the guy did was courageous. I called him heroic. I'm mystified why they wouldn't embrace him for his actions. Maybe they didn't like the story, but I'll tell you. I thought it was presented it in a very transparent way, if anything I kind of gushed philosophically about how impressive and real his reaction was to the protester's hateful message. It seemed to show some of the best of McCain supporters, didn't it?"

The American News Project captured Zubairi this past weekend intervening when a racist McCain supporter got into a heated exchange with rally attendees over the anti-Muslim literature and message that he was promoting. We don't "endorse that behavior" said Zubairi. The tiff ended with the man walking away from the rally with his pamphlets and bumper stickers in hand.

Noting how the incident went against the prevailing narrative of McCain crowds festering with hateful, occasionally racist speech, Sanchez booked Zubairi for his show. But minutes before the interview was to take place, the McCain campaign wouldn't let him go on air.

"I had instructed our guys before the show to find this guy, vet him and get him to talk," said Sanchez. " I was briefed by one of our producers and told we were good to go. Then just as I went to introduce him, it all changed. I may know more tomorrow. I guess that's a long way of saying I don't know why."

Christopher Hitchens: McCain is not Great

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 23:04:18 EDT

Funny. This man is getting ripped by a woman who recently said she wouldn't vote for McCain:

Christopher Hitchens: McCain "Losing Capacity, He's Just Not Quite The Man He Was"

Huffington Post

Nicholas Graham

October 20, 2008 05:43 PM

Christopher Hitchens defended his endorsement of Obama on The O'Reilly Factor on Friday. Subbing in for O'Reilly was Laura Ingraham, and the exchange (who would have thought!) got a bit heated at times. Ingraham was rather incredulous as to how Hitchens could support Obama. Hitchens responded that everything Obama has said since his first debate with Hillary Clinton "has been getting better." Hitchens also, reluctantly, uttered rather harsh criticism of McCain:

"McCain is, in my judgment, I hate to have to say it of such a person, is losing height, losing capacity, he's just not quite the man he was. One proof of that, you might add, is his choice of running mate and potential vice president."

On a lighter note, during a testy exchange about Obama and Pakistan, Hitchens, while refuting Ingraham, said, "No, I'm sorry, I'm sorry darling." Quickly catching himself, Hitchens asked the host, "May I say darling?" Ingraham replied with a firm, "No, you may not."

An inelegant way of finding out you're winning.

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:45:10 EDT

My sincere condolences to the woman canvasser that got attacked in WI. I hope she didn't get seriously hurt.

Ken Adelman defects to Obama

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:11:12 EDT

The Neocons are starting to run. Rush Limbaugh going to have a hard time with the character assassinations since they will be too many people to go after ;) :

George Packer writes about foreign affairs, politics, and books.

October 20, 2008

First Colin Powell, Now…

Ken Adelman is a lifelong conservative Republican. Campaigned for Goldwater, was hired by Rumsfeld at the Office of Economic Opportunity under Nixon, was assistant to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld under Ford, served as Reagan’s director of arms control, and joined the Defense Policy Board for Rumsfeld’s second go-round at the Pentagon, in 2001. Adelman’s friendship with Rumsfeld, Cheney, and their wives goes back to the sixties, and he introduced Cheney to Paul Wolfowitz at a Washington brunch the day Reagan was sworn in.

In recent years, Adelman and his friends Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz fell out over his criticisms of the botching of the Iraq War. Still, he remains a bona-fide hawk (“not really a neo-con but a con-con”) who has never supported a Democrat for President in his life. Two weeks from now that’s going to change: Ken Adelman intends to vote for Barack Obama. He can hardly believe it himself.

Adelman and I exchanged e-mails today about his decision. He asked rhetorically,

Why so, since my views align a lot more with McCain’s than with Obama’s? And since I truly dread the notion of a Democratic president, Democratic House, and hugely Democratic Senate?
Primarily for two reasons, those of temperament and of judgment.
When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird. Having worked with Ronald Reagan for seven years, and been with him in his critical three summits with Gorbachev, I’ve concluded that that’s no way a president can act under pressure.
Second is judgment. The most important decision John McCain made in his long campaign was deciding on a running mate.
That decision showed appalling lack of judgment. Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office—I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency. But that selection contradicted McCain’s main two, and best two, themes for his campaign—Country First, and experience counts. Neither can he credibly claim, post-Palin pick.
I sure hope Obama is more open, centrist, sensible—dare I say, Clintonesque—than his liberal record indicates, than his cooperation with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid portends. If not, I will be even more startled by my vote than I am now.

Be a "bud" and take this poll

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 13:21:12 EDT

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/files/specials/interactives/wdc/yahoo_poll8/index.html?SITE=YAHOO&SECTION=HOME

Spreading the wealth and giving the middle class a tax break = socialism?!

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:26:30 EDT

Not my words, Sarah Palin and John McCain's words. However, McCain, Obama and Biden voted for a bailout that has been perceived as an example of socialism. Interesting. If you are on a committee with a washed up domestic terrorist, then you're called a terrorist yourself. If you were born to a former Muslim who was an atheist at the time of your birth, then you're called a Muslim. Hey! I got this Republican name calling nonsense in the tank! Another example that the Republicans haven't thought of (But will): If you support stem cell research, you should be called a "baby killer"! Oh-oh, here's another: If you support all theories on global warming, you’re just a bleeding heart treehugger! Stupid game isn’t it! But that's how the Republicans "spin it" every day.

Vote Early, get called a "cheater" by a McCain supporter

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 10:51:39 EDT

I want all of you to spread this post around, especially to your conservative friends. This is ridiculous and it shouldn't be happening. What was funny was some of these "protestors" also voted early. Hahahahaha

P.S.: Watch out for those "Homer Simpson" voting booths ya'll (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtwZSF7uQLw):

Christina Bellantoni

Posted October 20, 2008 | 09:04 AM (EST)

McCain supporters heckle early voters, call them 'cheaters'

First published at WashingtonTimes.com

PRINCETON, W.V. — Over the last few days I've been through Southwest Virginia, down in North Carolina and now back up into the mountains on the West Virginia side near Bluefield for some stories about the political climate in red states.

Sen. Barack Obama has set up a massive organization across the country, and especially in North Carolina.

The campaign has given supporters lists with hours and locations of early voting sites, and collected the names, e-mail address and cell phone number of each attendee at the Fayetteville rally Sunday afternoon. (There were a few thousand who had to listen to his speech from the parking lot after the coliseum hit about 10,000 capacity.)

An organizer at the rally rattled off the addresses of early vote sites nearby that would be open after the event.

Photographer Joe Eddins and I headed over to the closest one and found a steady line of voters hoping to cast ballots early. Most seemed to be Obama supporters and several had come from the rally. Nearly all the voters were black.

Also at the polling site was a group of loud and angry protesters who shouted and mocked the voters as they walked in. Nearly all were white.

As you can see from these videos, no one held anything back. People were shouting about Obama's acknowledged cocaine use as a young man, abortion and one man used the word "terrorist." They also were complaining that Sundays are for church, not voting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R75OMc2SkvA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te5LBn0ofN0

The first video closes with Roger Farina (who won NHL fan of the year in 2003) going into detail about why he was heckling the voters.

I sent Stephen Dinan a quote from Farina about former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's endorsement of Obama yesterday. Read his story wrapping up that news and Sen. John McCain's reaction here.

At the voting site, I asked a local sheriff monitoring the scene if the protesters were allowed. "They're fine," he said. I asked if he'd ever seen anything like that and he said he'd never seen Sunday voting.

Most voters in line ignored the hecklers but a few heckled back. One black woman told me she was deeply saddened to see people protesting the most fundamental right of democracy.

I also spoke to a McCain supporter who was voting early even though he also had been protesting across the street.

One group was handing out fliers "comparing" McCain and Obama on social issues such as abortion and gay marriage. Among those listed on the sheet were:

Opposes gay pride? McCain YES Obama NO
Supports human cloning? McCain NO Obama YES

The flier is a lie, Obama does not support cloning. Also, I know the McCain camp would dispute him "opposing gay pride."

I have a story in today's paper taking a look at Obama's TV ad strategy, aided in part by his record fundraising haul.

ROANOKE, Va. | In the span of one hour, voters here are told - twice - that good Virginia jobs have vanished because "Washington sold them out with the help of people like John McCain."
Sen. Barack Obama's fundraising juggernaut has steamrolled his Republican rival, burying voters with ads - many of them negative - that he can afford to broadcast into the living rooms of red-state voters. There's no chance it will let up, as the campaign announced Sunday that Mr. Obama had raised more than $150 million in September alone.
The Obama ad attacking Mr. McCain as responsible for trade deals that led to job losses was one of nine 30-second spots that voters could see Friday during the 6 p.m. news.
Mr. Obama's ads that night painted him as someone who will fight for the American dream, who has a centrist health care plan and who will uphold gun rights. They portrayed Mr. McCain as an ally of President Bush whose health care plan would harm families.
The positive health care spot was Mr. Obama's largest buy - it ran more than 20,000 times across the country from mid-September through mid-October, according to Campaign Media Analysis Group.
In this Southwest Virginia region, just two of every 10 ads played Friday were positive. Two Obama attacks on Mr. McCain came in quick succession during the broadcast of "The Late Show" with David Letterman, followed by a Republican National Committee spot depicting Mr. Obama as inexperienced.
All the Republican ads shown Friday were negative, and an independent pro-Democratic veterans group ran a whopping six spots slamming Mr. McCain for his voting record.

Read the full story on campaign ads here.

The spending overload hurt Obama during the primary season, with many voters saying they were seeing too much of the Illinois senator. But he has the cash to play offense on a wide electoral map - adding Kentucky and West Virginia to his TV advertising schedule recently - and quickly defend any attacks that may come his way in the final days of the campaign.

On Sunday, I also shot this video of these young girls detailing their support for the Democratic nominee:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KTuikMR_r0

— Christina Bellantoni, national political reporter,
The Washington Times

Please bookmark my blog at
http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/bellantoni

Find my latest stories here and visit my YouTube page

From Door to Door, Foreclosure Knocks Here

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 14:00:30 EDT

Getting back to some of the REAL issues facing this country:

October 19, 2008

From Door to Door, Foreclosure Knocks Here

By MANNY FERNANDEZ

At times, this stretch of 118th Avenue in South Jamaica, Queens, feels not so much like a neighborhood but a memory of one.

A red-brick house with overgrown weeds in the yard is boarded shut. A house with a dirty awning has a thick chain looping out from a hole in the door where a deadbolt once was. On the front window of a vacant property around the corner, someone has taped a sign warning that the water supply has been shut off and antifreeze added to the sinks and toilets.

Newton and Ronda Whyte have gotten used to living next door to no one. “Every two or three houses it’s empty,” said Ms. Whyte, 36, a nurse assistant. “It’s not a good feeling. You see the weeds growing tall and the junk mail piling up.”

This area at 118th Avenue and 153rd Street is at the center of New York’s foreclosure crisis. Roughly one in four homes in this working-class neighborhood just north of Kennedy Airport have been in some phase of foreclosure since 2004, and its census tract leads the city in foreclosure filings.

More than two years ago, most homes here were occupied and the neighborhood was making strides against the drugs, violence and abandonment that had plagued it in the past, residents and merchants said. But today they mostly talk about decreasing property values, increasing crime, struggling small businesses and fraying community bonds. They talk of leaving, and wonder whose house is next.

“It’s not even worth getting to know anybody because nobody is going to stay around anyway,” said Fernando Espinal, 23, who grew up on 118th Avenue.

The gates are down for good at the Mega Deli Grocery at one end of the avenue. Pansy Johnson, who owns Yaad Food, a nearby Caribbean restaurant, said she often has to ask for a rent extension because her sales have decreased by nearly a third. And there have been two burglaries of empty homes in foreclosure this year in the area of 118th Avenue and 153rd Street, the police said.

The telltale signs that a house is empty come not from a bank or real estate agent, but pizzerias and Chinese takeout restaurants: The length of time a house has been abandoned can be measured by the number of old menus, fliers and junk mail that collects on doors and stoops.

“It’s like a depression,” said Ms. Johnson, who is from Jamaica, and whose restaurant is near 118th Avenue and Sutphin Boulevard. “I’ve never seen so much houses boarded up in all my life in this country. It’s so desolated. It hurts the heart.”

This corner of South Jamaica is much like neighborhoods in other cities around the country where foreclosure has spread like an epidemic. In many of those places, a spate of subprime lending made it easy for people with modest incomes and poor credit histories to buy homes — even as they increased their risk of foreclosure with adjustable interest rates and other types of complicated and costly loans.

This census tract — No. 288 in southeast Queens — had 226 foreclosure filings on one- to four-family homes in the past five years, the highest in the city, according to an analysis of housing data prepared for The New York Times by the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at New York University. In 2005, 69 percent of the homes purchased in the tract were bought with subprime mortgages.

“What you see in that community is incredibly high rates of high-cost and subprime lending,” said Vicki Been, director of the Furman Center.

Within Tract 288, four blocks — encompassing 118th Avenue between 155th Street and Sutphin Boulevard, and 153rd Street between 118th and 119th Avenues — are some of the hardest hit by foreclosures.

Thirty-nine of the roughly 140 properties on those blocks have been in various stages of foreclosure since 2004, according to data on PropertyShark.com, a real estate site. Once a foreclosure petition is filed, the owner and lender can work out a settlement. But if they do not, the home can be repossessed and sold at auction.

The disposition of the foreclosure filings and scheduled foreclosure auctions of the 39 homes is unclear. About a dozen are vacant, blending in with other empty properties on those blocks. Two homes have eviction notices posted on them and others are undergoing renovations.

People here seem not to have moved out so much as vanished.

The unlocked screen doors of unoccupied homes sway in the breeze. At a red-brick home at 152-09 118th Avenue, the front door and the living room window are boarded up, but the DirecTV satellite dish remains, as does the message that a former occupant traced into the top step’s wet concrete long ago: three hearts and the words “Dez-n-Duke.” A foreclosure auction on the property is scheduled for Friday.

Despite the tightness that comes from living side by side in mostly narrow two-story homes, people largely keep to themselves. Few ever know for certain that neighbors are at risk of losing their homes. Departures happen quickly, mysteriously.

Newton and Ronda Whyte remember the man who lived next to them for years in the yellow house at 152-37 118th Avenue. Mr. Whyte called him Trini, because he was from Trinidad, but he never learned the man’s full name. The house the man left behind a few months ago, like the other foreclosed houses on these four blocks, quickly developed the feel of an abandoned property.

On the grass of their former neighbor’s small yard, next to the “For Sale” sign, someone stuck a placard advertising the “New York Foreclosure Showcase” at the Long Island Marriott Hotel in Uniondale. The sign is so big and so close to the Whytes’ house that some of Mr. Whyte’s visiting relatives thought that he was the one at risk of foreclosure.

“It’s a reminder of what’s staring us in the face,” said Ms. Whyte, who has lived on 118th Avenue with her husband and two children for 12 years.

Many of the homes on these four blocks are squeezed onto narrow lots no bigger than 1,350 square feet. At one end of 118th Avenue is Baisley Pond, a swath of lush greenery that gives the area a serene suburban feel. Joggers circle the pond, dodging squirrels.

In 2000, the median household income in Tract 288 was $44,348. Residents, many of them African-American, or of Guyanese or Jamaican descent, take pride in sweeping their stretch of sidewalk. Their ranks include custodians, nurses, civil servants and retirees.

Adeline Marshall, 66, broom in hand one recent afternoon, said the neighborhood had come far since 1991, when she bought a two-bedroom house on 153rd Street for $75,000.

Back then, there were no sidewalks, just dirt. One of the lots at the corner was trash-strewn and vacant. In July 1995, gunfire erupted during a basketball tournament at Baisley Pond Park, killing two spectators. Seven years earlier, also at the park, a high school basketball coach volunteering as a referee was beaten to death after drug gangs bet thousands of dollars on the game and the referee made a call someone did not like.

Ms. Marshall, a retired practical nurse, said things had started to turn around in more recent years. The city installed sidewalks and pavement. A new residence went up on the once-empty corner lot. The population in Tract 288 grew to 4,300 in 2000 from 3,400 in 1990.

But now, Ms. Marshall and other residents said, the foreclosures have stalled the neighborhood’s progress.

William Knight’s 15-year-old son found a drug user’s syringe in the yard of the empty house next door to them on 118th Avenue in June. “In the one year being here, I’ve watched it just kind of spiral down,” said Mr. Knight, a civil engineer. “There’s definitely less people, and due to less people it brings the negative element.”

On a recent Tuesday afternoon on 153rd Street, the smell of marijuana lingered in the air. A group of men sat at a table on the street near Ms. Marshall’s house playing a boisterous game of dominoes. They said they were “just visiting.”

A few months ago, Ms. Marshall’s glass storm door was shattered by a gunshot. “Look at the sign,” Ms. Marshall said, pointing to the Foreclosure Showcase notice in the yard of the empty yellow house. “What am I going to do? You think I want to stay here? I want to sell, too.”

People in MN, Please vote for Elwyn Tinklenberg

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 13:15:15 EDT

Why?! Because of this woman: http://www.actblue.com/page/nonewmccarthy

And Yet another FUNNY David Horsey Cartoon

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 18:42:06 EDT

Yest another FUNNY David Horsey cartoon

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 18:37:22 EDT

Poor Sarah Baby. Part 2

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 15:52:19 EDT

Hate to say this to Sarah but ALL THE AREAS OF THIS COUNTRY ARE PRO AMERICA BABEE! From the streets of New York to Small Town America to the Great Northwest of this country which I'm saddened that you are from.

Again: Anyone from New York who's attending tommorrow's SNL, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't:

1. Boo

2. Hiss

3. Groan

4. Moan

If ya haft ta, just sneak in with a Obama/Biden '08 sign and wave it proudly!

Sam Stein stein@huffingtonpost.com

HuffPost Reporting From DC

Palin Explains What Parts Of Country Not "Pro-America"

The McCain campaign is seeking to clarify a remark reported from a Sarah Palin fundraiser in North Carolina yesterday in which the Alaska Governor declared that she loved to visit the "pro-America" areas of the country -- implying, implicitly, that there were some parts of the United States she viewed as not pro-America.

The reporter who broke the story, the Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin, sends over the following, extended quote from a more detailed version of the pool report.

"We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington, D.C. We believe" -- here the audience interrupted Palin with applause and cheers -- "We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation. This is where we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans. Those who are running our factories and teaching our kids and growing our food and are fighting our wars for us. Those who are protecting us in uniform. Those who are protecting the virtues of freedom."
Not sure how much this helps Palin out. Is the VP candidate saying that small towns are more authentically American than, say, suburbia or cities?

As Eilperin writes: "The upshot? Washington D.C. is neither 'real America' or 'pro-America.' Other parts of the nation? It's unclear, but if you live in a small town, you're probably patriotic from Palin's point of view."

Ahhh. Poor Sarah Baby.

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 10:56:58 EDT

I would like to ask anyone from New York City who will be attending the next SNL when Sarah Palin will be hosting to PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE don't:

1. Boo

2. Hiss

3. Scream nasty words such as s**t, b*t*ch, whore, etc.

In fact, if you MUST do something to express your displeasure at Mrs. Palin, then try the following:

1. Take a "Obama/Biden '08 sign with you to SNL

2. If the anger starts to overwhelm you, wave the sign and whoop, holler, whatever

And now this post from Huffington Post:

Palin's Staffers Keep Her Away From The News To Avoid Being "Depressed"

Huffington Post/Washington Post
Katharine Zaleski |
October 17, 2008 08:43 AM

A day after The Washington Post's Dana Milbank wrote about how the Secret Service is blocking press at Sarah Palin's rallies, it appears Palin's staff is blocking her from listening to the press. Palin revealed at a fundraiser last night that she is in an ever-growing media bubble.

"So North Carolina, I appreciate you all so much, who are here who already get it. You know, maybe I'm preaching to the choir a little bit here, but being here encourages me because I know that I'm not alone and I'll send this message back to John McCain also. At those times on the campaign trail when sometimes it's easy to get a little bit discouraged, when, you know, when you happen to turn on the news when your campaign staffers will let you turn on the news," she said, prompting laughter from the group. "Usually they're like 'Oh my gosh, don't watch. You're going to, you know, you're going to get depressed.'"

She added that while she doesn't always appreciate the way reporters portray the GOP ticket, she's been bolstered by the prayers of many of the campaign's backers.

"But yeah, sometimes you do get depressed watching what it is that they're reporting and the spin and some of the distortion of what our message is and what we stand for. Sometimes that, that gets draining," she continued. "But it's at events like these and our rallies that we are so energized and inspired and we know that we are not alone. We feel your strength and we feel the power of prayer, so many of you tell us that you are praying for us and praying for our country and that's why we so appreciate you being here."

Palin also attributed polling numbers to God. "We even saw today, thank the Lord," she said, looking upwards and raising her fist, "We saw some movement."

How the Recession Could End the Iraq War

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 10:23:35 EDT

Here's one for the "Well Duh!" column. The Recession ending the Iraq War. Hate to say this, but it's starting to NOT MAKE FINANCIAL OR FISCAL SENSE to spend our dollars on a nonsensical war based on lies and exaggerations when folks are losing their jobs and their homes here. Let's stop the Kellogg, Brown and Root / Halliburton/Blackwater "corporate welfare" fund ya'll!

Friday, Oct. 17, 2008

How the Recession Could End the Iraq War

By Tony Karon

John McCain has made a point throughout his campaign of pooh-poohing Barack Obama's promise to withdraw all U.S. combat forces from Iraq within 16 months of assuming office. McCain has steadfastly refused to set a withdrawal date, suggesting that to do so would be defeatist and vowing instead to bring the troops back when they've won. During Wednesday's debate, McCain saw progress in the fact that U.S. and Iraqi negotiators are close to reaching a Status of Forces agreement governing the future presence of U.S. troops there. But the agreement they're reportedly close to concluding does, in fact, set a withdrawal date: At the insistence of the Iraqis, it requires that all U.S. forces leave Iraq by the end of 2011. The schedule may be longer than Obama's, but the Iraqis appear to have walked the Bush Administration back to accept the principle of setting a departure date. The plan reportedly also requires U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq's cities by next summer, and removes their right to continue the practice of open-ended detention of Iraqi citizens.

The agreement is not yet complete, of course. There are still points of contention over immunity for U.S. forces, and over the Iraqis' demand for the right to inspect weapons and military equipment being brought into the country "to ensure they are suitable for the security mission", as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki put it in an interview with The Times — i.e. to ensure that Iraq's territory is not being used as a staging ground for any U.S. action against Iran. The pact will have to be approved by Iraq's cabinet and parliament, where it could still encounter opposition. Iraqi government officials have also suggested that a new agreement could be negotiated in 2011 if conditions required it.

Still, the deal leaves little doubt that the Iraq war is being drawn to a close —and not necessarily because the U.S. has achieved its benchmarks on the ground. A new U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, intended to guide the next U.S. president on the situation there, is reportedly near completion. Reflecting the consensus among the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, the new NIE will reportedly warn that, contrary to the rosy picture of progress stressed by McCain on the campaign trail, the situation in Iraq remains precarious. Although violence has been reduced to its lowest levels since early 2004, U.S. intelligence officials believe that the surge involving an extra 30,000 U.S. combat troops was only one contributing factor. Other key factors in tamping down violence may yet be the cause of further violence and instability; these include the truce declared by the radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and the anti-Qaeda alliance the U.S. forged with the Sunni insurgents of the Awakening Movement. Deep distrust remains between the Awakening Movement, many of whose members were aligned with the Saddam regime, and the Shi'ite dominated Maliki government. The recent move by the U.S. to transfer control, and responsibility for paying the wages, of the Awakening militias to Maliki's central government is likely to exacerbate those tensions.

Meanwhile, intra-Shi'ite political competition between Sadr, Maliki and the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council — all of them backed to some degree by Iran — continues, and may intensify in local elections scheduled for early next year. Relations between Baghdad and the Kurdish autonomous region in the north remain troubled, with tension rising over the future status of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. Indeed, General David Petraeus, the man most quoted by McCain in making his case on Iraq, has warned that the gains achieved in Iraq over the past year are "fragile" and "reversible." While the security situation has improved dramatically, progress has been limited on the political reconciliation that the military surge was intended to foster.

That assessment could back up McCain's case against a hasty withdrawal from Iraq, although the fact that the Iraqi government has demanded it makes that a more complicated argument. Then again, if the intra-Iraqi power struggle creates a new security breakdown, various Iraqi political leaders may yet see considerable value in a continued U.S. presence, if directed against their foes.

But it may not be the situation on the ground in Iraq that determines the future of the U.S. military mission there. For one thing, the fragile calm in Iraq coincides with an increasingly perilous Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan, raising pressure on the U.S. to divert more combat resources from its over-stretched military into that theater — an expanded military commitment favored by both John McCain and Barack Obama. Sending more troops to Afghanistan will require drawing down in Iraq.

Then, there's the financial crisis and looming global recession that will inevitably impose a far greater austerity on Washington. America's military deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan are expected to cost close to $200 billion for 2008 alone, and maintaining that commitment will become considerably more burdensome as Washington is forced to funnel many hundreds of billions of dollars into simply averting financial collapse. The looming global economic recession will further slash tax revenues available to the U.S. government.

A year ago, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the cost of funding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars from 2001-2017 to be around $2 trillion, or more — factoring in some $705 billion in interest payments in recognition of the fact that the war is being funded with borrowed money. (Nations typically increase taxes in order to finance protracted military conflicts; the Bush Administration, having cut taxes, has had to rely on the credit of others to wage its wars.) The current credit crisis and economic slowdown will considerably raise the pressure on the U.S. national debt, which had already grown from around $6 trillion in 2001 to near $10 trillion today.

Financial pressure is not, in itself, sufficiently strong right now to hasten a pullout from Iraq. But the fact that it coincides with a gloomy intelligence assessment of that country's political prospects, growing demands for U.S. reinforcements in Afghanistan, and the elected Iraqi government's insistence on a withdrawal deadline, suggests that the end of the U.S. mission in Iraq may be coming into view — and that its terms may fall short of victory as defined by the war's authors.

Find this article at:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1851258,00.html

Low Blow Robocall

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:34:09 EDT

This is the newest low blow by the McCain campaign and the RNC. So much for "I don't care about some washed up terrorist". You do care and you're hoping that if you tell a lie often enough, folks will believe you:

Sam Stein stein@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting From DC

Wave Of McCain Robocalls Reported, Some May Violate State Law

October 16, 2008

The McCain-Palin campaign and the Republican National Committee launched a massive robocall campaign on Thursday designed to alarm voters about Barack Obama's past association with former radical Bill Ayers. The committee may be violating state law in the process.

The call begins: "Hello. I'm calling for John McCain and the RNC," before telling recipients that they "need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home, and killed Americans."

More remarkable than the message (coming after a presidential debate in which John McCain said he didn't care about a "washed up terrorist") is the reach of the campaign itself. The Huffington Post received dozens of emails from voters who had either received the call or gotten a voice mail with a recording. Reports came from Ohio, Colorado, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Missouri, North Carolina, Florida, Texas, West Virginia, Maine and even Georgia

Several readers in Minnesota also reported receiving the call, which could be a violation of that state's laws. Explains Shaun Dakin, CEO & Founder of the National Political Do Not Contact Registry:

"Most robocalls are supposed to have two things, "paid for by X" and a phone number of the group making the call. Most do that. Now, that being said, there are some states that have their own robocall laws and they are much stricter. Minnesota pretty much bans robocalls entirely unless they are introduced by a human voice. And that pretty much never happens because it defeats the point."

The RNC did not immediately return request for comment. Here's audio of the call:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ManvViFZ4l4

The majority of responses from the Democratic and independent readers who received the Ayers robocall were sharply (perhaps not surprisingly) negative.

Story continues below

Vic from New Mexico wrote: "l just received [a robocall] from McCain and the RNC, calling Obama a 'terrorist' after McCain's claim last night that he's not running a negative campaign."

Ali in Missouri wrote: "I have already received two McCain calls. The one yesterday was relatively benign but the one today linked Obama directly to the 'terrorist Bill Ayers,' describing Ayers' violent activities."

Kimberly in Virginia writes: "I would like to feel shocked by the offensive nature of the message, but can't say that I am that surprised, given the Republican tactics of the last month, and the last eight years."

Kirk in Wisconsin emailed: "My guess is it will cost McCain 2 votes for each one he gets."

Multiple readers wrote that they had been receiving robocalls from Republican sources well before the recent wave, and that those calls were mild in comparison. A reader in Colorado said he recently received a call about Obama's association with ACORN. A self-described independent in Colorado said she has been receiving "an average of about 10 calls a week- almost exclusively from Republicans." Others recalled getting calls about Obama and his Hollywood friends.

Again, if you hear these things, feel free to contact the Huffington Post.

Is this comic over the line?

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 17:49:17 EDT

Please comment:

The Six Things McCain Has to Do Tonight

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:46:35 EDT

The things that McCain must not do to win the debate:

Richard Greene

Posted October 15, 2008 | 03:53 PM (EST)

The Six Things McCain Has to Do Tonight

As a communication strategist, I love to think about how I'd solve really intractable communication challenges. John McCain has one of the most difficult ones I've ever seen in politics so, just for fun, here are the six things I'd suggest he do tonight at the debate and between now and November 4.

1. Bash George Bush tonight. Bash him deeper and more authentically than any Republican has in the past eight years. This is essential. Explain, sincerely (if it is possible to do so) how difficult it has been for you to be a "team player" and support an administration, out of party loyalty, that did not have a clue as to what it was doing or, worse yet, was not representing the real interests of America.

Then you could even begin to call yourself a "maverick" again.

2. Praise Barack Obama. Disappoint all of your little hate-filled supporters and step up to the plate as a class act. You know you have great respect for your colleague. You know how smart and patriotic and honest this guy is. Be real and share this openly, far beyond what you did in that Town Hall meeting on Monday.

3. Admit that the Republican Party is the No-Tax and Spend Party and that that has been worse for America than any Democratic administration in history, and that the entire party has lost its soul.

4. Get Rid of Sarah Palin. You can't win with her. Every day that goes by intelligent independents and moderate Republicans see that she is not capable of holding national office. It is more embarrassing to keep her than to dump her. Take the hit and blame it on new information that has come out of Alaska since you chose her.

5. Ask Robert Rubin or Warren Buffett or Mike Bloomberg or another true master of economics to serve as your running mate since you clearly know nothing about the biggest issue facing the country. And resist the urge to invite Phil Gramm, even though he has a degree in economics.

6. Stop whining about earmarks, stop whining about talking to world leaders without "Pre-conditions" (what confident adult needs those to have a conversation), stop whining about your opponent's "associations" unless and until you apologize and explain all of yours that are far worse, and admit that we can't continue to afford a $10 Billion "Occupation" and that even though your lovely "surge" may have "worked", the entire invasion and occupation has not and will not.

In other words, short of the largest caging operation and electronic voting machine theft in the Republicans' sorry history of stealing elections or a trumped up national security emergency that will paralyze the nation with Reptilian Brain fear, you, Senator McCain, have nothing. You don't have the courage to do any of the things I've listed and that, sadly, is the deepest point. You used to, you used to have courage. You used to be a maverick, but it is so clear that you have sold your soul and lost your way.

Your consolation, however, is that a Barack Obama Administration will truly bring all of the wonderful things to this country that I'm sure you also want. The world will respect us again, we will have sensible and forward thinking policies in all areas of our national life and will have a calm, steady, intelligent leader. It's all good, John, especially if you don't take my advice.

The Conservative Purge Has Begun

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 10:16:27 EDT

Yes, the purge has begun. I'm hearing about some distant rumors of Colin Powel endorsing Obama. If that happens, it will hurt the republicans bad:

Jacob Heilbrunn

Posted October 15, 2008 | 05:31 AM (EST)

The Conservative Purge Has Begun

Christopher Buckley's announcement that he's supporting Barack Obama for the presidency comes as no surprise to me. Years ago Buckley, who worked as a speechwriter for George H.W. Bush and reveres him, expressed his consternation to me about George W. Bush's dismal performance. He seemed to watch the self-destruction of the Bush presidency with a kind of fascinated horror. Now, in the wake of the Sarah Palin debacle, Buckley deserves a place on the conservative intellectual honor roll for breaking with John McCain.

He won't get it, of course. Instead, the National Review has apparently terminated Buckley's column -- high comedy when you consider that his father merely founded the magazine and fought to make conservatism intellectually respectable, banishing the anti-Semites and other riff-raff who tainted the movement. Now conservatism is regressing, turning into a Frankenstein. Other members of the old guard at National Review such as Jeffrey Hart have also denounced the mendacity of the Bush administration. Their voices were not heeded.

Today, as the McCain campaign lurches to its dolorous conclusion, conservatives are beginning to blame each other for the collapse of their movement. Instead of excommunicating Buckley and others, conservatives should be debating with them. But intolerance is winning out over intellectual inquisitiveness. As an intellectual movement, conservatism is suffering its death throes. And with the Buckley affair, the purge has begun.

Hoodwinked by the Republicans

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 23:15:33 EDT

Oh yeah. This article is how I feel:

Last updated October 13, 2008 11:04 a.m. PT

The mask slips on the conservative Republicans

By BOB HERBERT
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

The lesson for Americans suffused with anxiety and dread over the crackup of the financial markets is that the way you vote matters, that there are real-world consequences when you go into a voting booth and cast that ballot.

For the nitwits who vote for the man or woman they'd most like to have over for dinner, or hang out at a barbecue with, I suggest you take a look at how well your 401(k) is doing, or how easy it will be to meet the mortgage this month, or whether the college fund you've been trying to build for your kids is as robust as you'd like it to be.

Voters in the George W. Bush era gave the Republican Party nearly complete control of the federal government. Now the financial markets are in turmoil, top government and corporate leaders are on the verge of panic and scholars are dusting off treatises that analyzed the causes of the Great Depression.

Bush was never viewed as a policy or intellectual heavyweight. But he seemed like a nicer guy to a lot of voters than Al Gore.

It's not just the economy. While the United States has been fighting a useless and irresponsible war in Iraq, Afghanistan -- the home base of the terrorists who struck us on 9/11 -- has been allowed to fall into a state of chaos. Osama bin Laden is still at large. New Orleans is still on its knees. And so on.

Voting has consequences.

I don't for a moment think that the Democratic Party has been free of egregious problems. But there are two things I find remarkable about the GOP, and especially its more conservative wing, which is now about all there is.

The first is how wrong conservative Republicans have been on so many profoundly important matters for so many years. The second is how the GOP has nevertheless been able to persuade so many voters of modest means that its wrongheaded, favor-the-rich, country-be-damned approach was not only good for working Americans, but was the patriotic way to go.

Remember voodoo economics? That was the derisive term George H.W. Bush used for Ronald Reagan's fantasy that he could simultaneously increase defense spending, cut taxes and balance the budget. After Reagan became president (with Bush as his vice president) the budget deficit -- surprise, surprise -- soared.

In a moment of unusual candor, Reagan's own chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Martin Feldstein, gave three reasons for the growth of the deficit: the president's tax cuts, the increased defense spending and the interest on the expanding national debt.

These were the self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives who were behaving so profligately. The budget was balanced and a surplus realized under Bill Clinton, but soon the "fiscal conservatives" were back in the driver's seat. "Deficits don't matter," said Dick Cheney, and the wildest, most reckless of economic rides was on.

Americans, including the Joe Sixpacks, soccer moms and hockey moms, were repeatedly told that the benefits lavished on the highfliers would trickle down to them. Someday.

Just as they were wrong about trickle down, conservative Republican politicians and their closest buddies in the commentariat have been wrong on one important national issue after another, from Social Security (conservatives opposed it from the start and have been trying to undermine it ever since) to Medicare (Ronald Reagan saw it as the first wave of socialism) to the environment, energy policy and global warming.

When the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to the discoverers of the link between chlorofluorocarbons and ozone depletion, Tom DeLay, a Republican who would go on to wield enormous power as majority leader in the House, mocked the award as the "Nobel Appeasement Prize."

Reagan, the ultimate political hero of so many Republicans, opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In response to the historic Brown v. Board of Education school-desegregation ruling, William F. Buckley, the ultimate intellectual hero of so many Republicans, asserted that whites, being superior, were well within their rights to discriminate against blacks.

"The White community is so entitled," he wrote, "because, for the time being, it is the advanced race..." He would later repudiate that sentiment, but only after it was clear that his racist view was harmful to himself.

The GOP has done a great job masking the terrible consequences of much that it has stood for over the decades. Now the mask has slipped. As we survey the wreckage of the American economy and the real-life suffering associated with the financial crackup of 2008, it would be well for voters to draw upon the lessons of history and think more seriously about the consequences of the ballots they may cast in the future.

I got a wonderful idea . . .

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 15:52:01 EDT

Let's start a "Right Wing Pundit Detox Program". Why?! So we can save guys like Chris Buckley from a life of dumb Republican punditry. Just think: If the son of Bill Buckley can be "turned" from the "Dark Side of the Force", who knows what could happen. We can get Rush Limbaugh, we can get Bill O'Reilly, and we can get Ann Coulter and get HER A MAN! Maybe hook her back up with Bill Maher! The possibilities are endless. Let's save Republican pundits from their stupid, silly selves!:

Buckley leaves National Review over Obama

Christopher Buckley, who last week endorsed Obama, has now resigned from the National Review -- the conservative magazine founded over a half-century ago by his father, the late, great William F. Buckley.

Since my Obama endorsement, Kathleen [Parker] and I have become BFFs and now trade incoming hate-mails. No one has yet suggested my dear old Mum should have aborted me, but it’s pretty darned angry out there in Right Wing Land. One editor at National Review—a friend of 30 years—emailed me that he thought my opinions “cretinous.” One thoughtful correspondent, who feels that I have “betrayed”—the b-word has been much used in all this—my father and the conservative movement generally, said he plans to devote the rest of his life to getting people to cancel their subscriptions to National Review. But there was one bright spot: To those who wrote me to demand, “Cancel my subscription,” I was able to quote the title of my father’s last book, a delicious compendium of his NR “Notes and Asides”: Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription.

Within hours of my endorsement appearing in The Daily Beast it became clear that National Review had a serious problem on its hands. So the next morning, I thought the only decent thing to do would be to offer to resign my column there. This offer was accepted—rather briskly!—by Rich Lowry, NR’s editor, and its publisher, the superb and able and fine Jack Fowler. I retain the fondest feelings for the magazine that my father founded, but I will admit to a certain sadness that an act of publishing a reasoned argument for the opposition should result in acrimony and disavowal.

McCain Transition Chief Aided Saddam In Lobbying Effort

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 15:38:13 EDT

Okay. That's it. McCain HAS GOT TO GET OFF OF THAT LOBBYISTS "CRACK" or at least stop hiring lobbyists that don't jibe with his world view. Doesn't make sense to hype kicking Saddam out of Iraq then hire one of the guys trying to get him off of U.N. sanctions! I suppose he can help Saddam any more or help Saddam smooth things with McCain since he's dead:

The Huffington Post

October 14, 2008

Murray Waas

murraywaas@gmail.com | HuffPost Reporting From DC

McCain Transition Chief Aided Saddam In Lobbying Effort

October 14, 2008 02:49 PM

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William Timmons, the Washington lobbyist who John McCain has named to head his presidential transition team, aided an influence effort on behalf of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to ease international sanctions against his regime.

The two lobbyists who Timmons worked closely with over a five year period on the lobbying campaign later either pleaded guilty to or were convicted of federal criminal charges that they had acted as unregistered agents of Saddam Hussein's government.

During the same period beginning in 1992, Timmons worked closely with the two lobbyists, Samir Vincent and Tongsun Park, on a previously unreported prospective deal with the Iraqis in which they hoped to be awarded a contract to purchase and resell Iraqi oil. Timmons, Vincent, and Park stood to share at least $45 million if the business deal went through.

Timmons' activities occurred in the years following the first Gulf War, when Washington considered Iraq to be a rogue enemy state and a sponsor of terrorism. His dealings on behalf of the deceased Iraqi leader stand in stark contrast to the views his current employer held at the time.

John McCain strongly supported the 1991 military action against Iraq, and as recently as Sunday described Saddam Hussein as a one-time menace to the region who had "stated categorically that he would acquire weapons of mass destruction, and he would use them wherever he could."

Timmons declined to comment for this story. An office manager who works for him said that he has made it his practice during his public career to never speak to the press. Timmons previously told investigators that he did not know that either Vincent or Park were acting as unregistered agents of Iraq. He also insisted that he did not fully understand just how closely the two men were tied to Saddam's regime while they collaborated.

But testimony and records made public during Park's criminal trial, as well as other information uncovered during a United Nations investigation, suggest just the opposite. Virtually everything Timmons did while working on the lobbying campaign was within days conveyed by Vincent to either one or both of Saddam Hussein's top aides, Tariq Aziz and Nizar Hamdoon. Vincent also testified that he almost always relayed input from the Iraqi aides back to Timmons.

Talking points that Timmons produced for the lobbyists to help ease the sanctions, for example, were reviewed ahead of time by Aziz, Vincent testified in court. Proposals that Timmons himself circulated to U.S. officials as part of the effort were written with the assistance of the Iraqi officials, and were also sent ahead of time with Timmons' approval to Aziz, other records show.

Moreover, there was a major financial incentive at play for Timmons. The multi-million dollar oil deal that he was pursuing with the two other lobbyists would only be possible if their efforts to ease sanctions against Iraq were successful.

Story continues below

Vincent, an Iraqi-born American citizen with whom Timmons worked most closely, pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges in January 2005 that he had acted as an unregistered agent of Saddam Hussein's regime. Tongsun Park, the second lobbyist who Timmons worked closely with, was convicted by a federal jury in July 2006 on charges that he too violated the Foreign Agent Registration Act.

As part of a plea bargain agreement with the Justice Department, Vincent agreed to testify against Park and others in exchange for a reduced prison sentence. He was the government's chief witness against Park during Park's trial. Park was sentenced to five years in prison after his conviction.

A U.N commission headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker conducted an exhaustive investigation of the oil-for-food program, in which various individuals were found to have paid illegal kickbacks to Saddam Hussein. The findings of the Volcker Commission detail the roles of Vincent, Park and Timmons in trying to ease the sanctions.

* * * * *
Timmons testified that he first introduced Vincent to Tongsun Park and encouraged him to hire Park to work on the deal.

At the time Timmons introduced the two men, Park's notorious background was well known:

In the 1970s, Park had admitted to making hundreds of thousands in payments and illegal campaign contributions to U.S. congressmen on behalf of the South Korean government. Park was indicted on 36 counts by a federal grand jury, but fled to South Korea before he could face trial. All of the charges were later dismissed in exchange for Park providing information about which public officials received funds from the South Korean government.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, not long after Timmons suggested that Vincent hire Park to assist their influence, lobbying, and back-channel diplomatic efforts on behalf of Saddam Hussein's government, much of that effort became increasingly bizarre, corrupt, and - on occasion - illegal.

Vincent testified that Park covertly received millions of dollars from Saddam's government that was supposed to be used to bribe then-U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali to ease international sanctions against Iraq. But both men simply pocketed the money, according to Vincent. (There is no evidence that Boutros Ghali even knew of Iraq's intention to bribe him.)

Investigations by the Justice Department and the Volcker commission disclosed that Park also served as the middleman for a million dollar payment that investigators believed was a bribe for another senior United Nations official. That official in fact admitted receiving the money from Park, but said he did not know that the funds originated with Saddam's regime.

Timmons told federal investigators that he was unaware of these particular activities, and investigators were unable to uncover any evidence to contradict that claim.

Timmons also claimed that he was motivated to push forward with the lobbying campaign with Vincent and Park not only to assist Saddam's regime but also because he believed that his actions would serve U.S. interests, that they would help the people of Iraq obtain needed medicine and food being denied them by sanctions, and would serve to facilitate a rapprochement of relations between Hussein and the U.S. that would be beneficial to both countries.

But there was a financial incentive in play as well. During the same period, Vincent was hard at work obtaining contracts with Iraq to purchase and resell Iraqi oil allowed under international sanctions; Timmons would have stood to benefit financially from those contracts.

Timmons claimed to investigators that any contracts offered to him, Vincent, and Park would be awarded solely on merit, and had nothing to do with their lobbying efforts.

But Vincent told investigators that their work clearly gave them an inside track. And in other instances, in which Timmons was not involved, Vincent profited from lucrative oil-for-food contracts awarded by Iraq as compensation for his effort to buy influence in the U.S. and at the U.N. for Saddam's regime.

At Park's trial, Vincent testified that he, Park, and Timmons stood to make as much as $45 million in profits from one particular oil venture with Saddam's regime had it gone forward. Park testified that he was unsure exactly what percentage of the proceeds each of the three men would have personally received. The deal ultimately fell through.

An investigator who worked on the U.N. investigation of the oil-for-food program told me that Timmons clearly should have or did understand that he was the possible recipient of oil contracts from the Iraqi government because of his lobbying and back channel diplomatic efforts on behalf of Saddam: "He would have to be the most naive person in the world to believe that was not the case," the official told me. "I guess William Timmons is just a natural born oilman. He is either deceiving himself to rationalize what he has done or taking the rest of us for fools."

Between 1997 and 2001, according to the Volcker report, Vincent received five such contracts from Saddam's regime.

In his guilty plea agreement with the Justice Department, Vincent admitted: "I received those allocations because of the work I had done on behalf of the Government of Iraq in helping set up the oil-for-food program."

* * * * *
Samir Vincent was well positioned for the task at hand when he began his influence and back channel diplomacy campaign with the Iraqis; he had been boyhood friends of two of Saddam Hussein's closest advisers, Nizaar Hamdoon and Tariq Aziz.

Hamdoon, who died in 2003, was Saddam's foreign minister, and Tariq Aziz had variously served as Baghdad's ambassador to the United States, ambassador to the United States, and Iraq's deputy prime minister.

But Vincent also sought to enlist the help of a Washington insider or lobbyist if his efforts were to have any chance of success.

His initial plan to purchase Iraqi oil through the American Red Cross faced opposition from the U.S. government. Vincent's partner at the time, an American businessman named John Venners, suggested that they needed "help from some people that he knew very well" who "used to be high up in the government." Venners recommended William Timmons.

As Time magazine's Michael Scherer recently reported, Timmons is "a Washington institution," having worked as a senior aide to every Republican president since Richard Nixon. He also serves as chairman emeritus of Timmons and Company, "a small but influential lobbying firm he founded in 1975 shortly after leaving the White House."

According to Vincent's testimony, Timmons immediately opened doors for the Iraqi-American lobbyist. He talked to then-Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger on Vincent's behalf. He also contacted then-Sen. Bob Dole and John Bolton, then-undersecretary of state for international affairs, to discuss Vincent's plan.

In a meeting with U.N. officials, Vincent pressed his case armed with "talking points" that Timmons had written for him. Before using them, Vincent said that he first sent the talking points to Nizaar Hamdoon and Tariq Aziz, with Timmons' approval.

After the meeting, Vincent traveled all the way to Baghdad to report back to Tariq Aziz what had occurred. Later, he had another meeting with Hamdoon and Aziz at the United Nations mission in New York to plan on next steps. Vincent testified he made formal minutes of that meeting, typed them up, and then traveled to Washington to personally give them to Timmons. This was routine practice as Vincent, Timmons, and the Iraqis worked together.

Timmons himself was apparently loathe to meet with Hamdoon or Aziz personally. But virtually the entire time they worked together, Vincent would relay to Timmons what the Iraqis had to say and vice versa.

After Vincent's first meeting with U.N. officials, Aziz and Hamdoon suggested that something called a "non-paper" be presented the next time Vincent met with the same officials. Non-papers are diplomatic communications in which parties can propose positions in writing, but do not have to fear if they leak to the public or press, because they do not officially represent positions of the government.

At the request of Aziz and Hamdoon, Timmons authored the non-paper which Vincent could rely on for that second meeting. Both Aziz and Hamdoon also reviewed the paper before Vincent used it.

On March 15, 1995, Timmons wrote a memo (which is a matter of public record as an exhibit in the case) advocating that they and the Iraqis should enlist the assistance of U.S. oil companies to make their case.

Timmons once again apparently understood that his audience was the Iraqi government. Vincent testified that Timmons gave him the memo knowing that the document was "supposed to solicit the thoughts of the Iraqi government, if this is something they would seriously consider." Vincent dutifully passed Timmons' memo on to Nizaar Hamdoon, he testified.

Weeks later, in April 1995, Vincent was summoned to Iraq to meet with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.

As to Timmons' claims that he kept his distance from Vincent and Park and did not know much about what they and the Iraqis were up to, this exchange between a federal prosecutor and Vincent once again suggests otherwise:

Q: And when you returned to the United States, did you tell anyone about your visit with Saddam Hussein?

A: I told Bill Timmons and Tongsun Park.

Q: Why did you tell Bill Timmons about your visit with Saddam?

A: To let him know that we were talking to the leader of Iraq, and in essence we have access and assure him that any messages we were relaying between Iraqi and Tariq Aziz and anyone else, it was being transmitted to the president, Saddam Hussein, in Iraq.

* * * * *
Presciently, Time's Scherer noted that McCain's own staffers had early concerns that appointing Timmons could prove detrimental to the Arizona Senator's presidential ambitions:

His [lobbying] registrations include work on a number of issues that have become flashpoints in the presidential campaign. He has registered to work on bills that deal with the regulations of troubled mortgage lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, a bill to provide farm subsidies and bills that regulate domestic oil-drilling.

By tapping Timmons, McCain has turned to one of Washington's steadiest and most senior inside players to guide him in the event of a victory -- but also to someone who represents the antithesis of the kind of outside-of-Washington change he has recently been promising. One Republican familiar with the process said the decision to involve Timmons could become a political liability for the campaign's reformist image, especially in the wake of the controversies over the lobbying backgrounds of other McCain staffers, including campaign manager Rick Davis. "It's one more blind spot for Rick Davis and John McCain," the person said.

Timmons' work to relax international sanctions against Iraq, as well as to benefit financially from Saddam Hussein's regime, may be another such flashpoint.

The Volcker report makes clear that when Timmons first got involved with Vincent and the Iraqis, the lure of millions of dollars was at least one incentive. By early 1992, Timmons and his associates were already "pursu[ing] the purchase of sale of Iraqi oil and the exploration by a consortium of companies of the Manjoon field in Iraq," the report said.

According to the report, the venture was dependent on Vincent's belief "that sanctions against Iraq would be lifted immediately and that the Iraqi government might grant a long-term concession to an American oil company."

Later, when Timmons pressed the case even more aggressively that sanctions against Saddam's regime be eased, he, Vincent and Park hoped to profit as well, according to the Volcker report. "Continuing through 1994 and 1995, Mr. Vincent and Mr. Park, along with Mr. Timmons and others, persisted in their efforts to establish a foothold in the Iraqi oil business," the report stated.

At one point, Timmons even boasted to investigators that it was his ideas that later became the basis for the United Nations' oil-for-food program.

Under that program, the United Nations allowed Iraq to sell its oil under U.N. supervision, with the proceeds placed in U.N. escrow accounts to buy food, medicine, and other humanitarian goods for the Iraqi people.

However, a major flaw in the program was that Saddam Hussein's regime was allowed to play a role in the selection of oil companies awarded contracts. Because of lax oversight of the program, Saddam's government was able to demand that foreign oil companies -- including American ones -- provide more than $1.7 billion in kickbacks to his regime.

One of the most outspoken critics in the U.S. Senate of the oil-for-food program was John McCain:

"We need to have a full and complete cooperation on the part of the U.N. about this whole oil-for-food program, which stinks to high heaven," McCain told Fox News in Dec. 2004. "We're talking about billions and billions of dollars here that were diverted for many wrong purposes. And this is an example of corruption.

"And by the way, it's an argument, maybe a small one, but maybe an argument that justifies our action in Iraq. Because clearly the sanctions and the framework of those sanctions was completely eroded."

Additional reporting by Patrick B. Anderson.

When Supporters become the enemy

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:18:59 EDT

This is truly funny and it's getting worse. Tina Fey is going to lose her mind if McCain/Palin wins the election. Pray for Fey will ya?:

Palin mistakes fans for protesters at Va. rally
October 13, 2008 06:19 PM EST

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RICHMOND, Va. — Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin mistook some of her own fans for hecklers Monday at a rally that drew thousands.

A massive crowd of at least 20,000 spread across the parking lot of Richmond International Raceway, and scores of people on the outer periphery more than 100 yards from the stage could not hear.

"Louder! Louder!" they began chanting, and the cry spread across the crowd to Palin's left. Some pointed skyward, urging that the volume be increased.

Palin stopped her remarks briefly and looked toward the commotion.

"I hope those protesters have the courage and honor to give veterans thanks for their right to protest," she said.

Some in the crowd tried to shout toward her what was really being said, but she couldn't hear them.

Some in the crowd had stood in place for more than three hours on a sunny day without shade. At least 25 people collapsed from heat-related illnesses and three were hospitalized, according to authorities with the Henrico County fire department.

Palin had campaigned earlier Monday with John McCain in Virginia Beach, only the second time the GOP ticket has campaigned in Virginia since June. Democrat Barack Obama or his running mate, Joe Biden, together have visited the state eight times over that span.

Virginia has been solidly Republican for 40 years but is now an electoral battleground with both sides locked in a very close race for the state's 13 electoral votes.

Addressing the crowd, Palin largely steered clear of her recent criticisms of Obama. Instead, she acknowledged the emotion that has built up on both sides, particularly since the financial collapse.

"There is a lot of anger. There is anger at the inside dealing and anger at lobbyists and anger at the greed on Wall Street. There is anger at the Washington elite and there is anger at voter fraud," she said.

She promised a spending freeze if she and McCain win, and evoked cheers of "Drill, Baby, Drill!" in calling for greater domestic mining and oil drilling. The crowd roared when she criticized Biden for remarks he made in Ohio that the United States had little interest in coal-fired electrical power.

The afternoon's loudest ovation came when country music star Hank Williams Jr. offered a rendition of his hit "Family Tradition" that opened by assailing "the left-wing liberal media."

With friends and allies like these . . .

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:20:19 EDT

The fight between John McCain and Republican Party celebrities continues:

Jason Linkins
jason@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting From DC
Lashing Out: McCain Flack Turns On Bill Kristol
October 13, 2008 12:48 PM

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The state of the McCain campaign is drawing fire from its own ostensible allies. At the head of the line of Republicans looking to be the first to flick dirt on McCain's grave is Bill Kristol, who says in today's New York Times, that if "the race continues over the next three weeks to be a conventional one, McCain is doomed." Since that's coming from a guy who, through his own bad advice, has contributed mightily to the grave McCain is measuring, it makes sense that he be given the first shovel of dirt.

But didn't Kristol get the message? Today, the key line of John McCain's rebooted stump speech is directed at his rival, Barack Obama, and it goes a little something like, "We have him right where we want him." That was the plan, all along, you see! Be down double digits in the polls, possessed of the necessity of campaigning in West Virginia, and in need of tempering your supporters' passions because they have suddenly veered wildly in the direction of psychosis. I love it when a plan comes together, even if that plan is only indicative of the fact that McCain's moved to the "denial" stage of grief. Brace yourself, because anger and depression are still to come!

Amid this turmoil, McCain's attempts to relaunch his campaign have encountered a new obstacle: his fellow Republicans, who, like Kristol, are prepping themselves for an old-fashioned circular firing squad. Over the weekend, the New York Times noted that party leaders "were worried Mr. McCain was heading for defeat unless he brought stability to his presidential candidacy and settled on a clear message" for his campaign. And in today's edition of The Hill, a chorus of disapproval weighs in on McCain's muffed punt of the Paulson bailout package.

But leading that particular pack of wolves is Kristol, who says that the "McCain campaign, once merely problematic, is now close to being out-and-out dysfunctional. Its combination of strategic incoherence and operational incompetence has become toxic."

Of course, a smart observer might have suggested that the incompetence-slash-incoherence was extant at the moment McCain selected Sarah Palin (inexperienced, embroiled in abuse-of-power scandal, earmark lover) as his running mate, and the toxicity was apparent after a week of all-Ayers-all-the-time campaigning. And we'd remind you that both the Palin selection and the Ayers-bashing had few supporters as frenzied as Kristol. But hey! If the Times was interested in good sense or accountability or even intellectual consistency from their columnists, they wouldn't have hired Kristol in the first place.

Naturally, McCain's responded through Nancy Pfotenhauer, who's accused Kristol of "buying into the Obama campaign's party line." These sentiments were similarly voiced by the ubiquitous Tucker Bounds later in the day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wbjg9Hh17lI

So what's the new party line from John McCain? In the first place, McCain is now saying, "What America needs in this hour is a fighter." Doesn't that mess up Sarah Palin's constant contention that McCain being "the only man in the race who has ever really fought for you" was something that she had to say because McCain was too modest to admit it? More to the point, doesn't this mess up the Sarah Palin Stump Speech Drinking Game? Ever since she dropped the "I sold it on eBay" line I've been practically teetotaling!

But the crux of McCain's case seems to be this line:

I come from a long line of McCains who believed that to love America is to fight for her.
So there you have it! Vote for McCain! He's the McCainiest!

Noonan, York, Toobin And Others Take Aim At McCain

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:13:19 EDT

Just posting another article on the "implosive" campaign of John McCain:

Sam Stein
stein@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting From DC
Noonan, York, Toobin And Others Take Aim At McCain

October 13, 2008 03:04 PM

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With 22 days left before the voters hit the polls, conservative pundits and media commentators are scratching their heads over the lack of direction - indeed, the near schizophrenic judgment - of the McCain campaign.

Appearing at the Time Warner Summit conference on the 2008 election, a host of prominent electoral observers were all bearish on the Arizona Republican's presidential ambitions. Not one panelist took the chance to defend the Senator's choice of Sarah Palin as vice president. Others simply saw death by electoral numbers.

"Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Missouri, Iowa, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada," declared Byron York of the National Review. "Bush won everyone of those states except Pennsylvania. McCain has to do it all. And it is hard to do that by going on Letterman."

The reference was to the Arizona Republican's upcoming appearance on the Late Night Show this Thursday. For the panelists it symbolized yet another instance of what Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan described as "herky-jerky" behavior coming from the Republican ticket.

"Obama seems older in a way," said the former Ronald Reagan speechwriter. "McCain has seemed herky-jerky. Obama has seemed like the older, steadier fellow since the economic crisis began."

It was a sentiment echoed by most everyone else. Josh Marshall, the publisher of Talking Points Memo, made the case, as he has done many times before, that the senator by and large has dug his own grave.

"By the way he has conducted his campaign, McCain has got himself in a hole," he said. "That dramatic gesture [that he might turn to]... even if, on its own terms, it might be good for him, he has so effectively created this view as erratic it might not work."

The main object of ridicule and criticism, however, was Sarah Palin. York called her interviews with CBS's Katie Couric "very bad" and immune to political spin.

"She may be a very effective governor of Alaska who wasn't able to pick up on what you need to be an effective vice presidential candidate," said the National Review scribe.

Added Noonan: "Her performance from day one mattered. What the American people saw over the period of five or six weeks, it has been very up and down. From an unveiling that gave rise to questions to a very strong convention speech, to interviews that were disastrous, to a debate in which she came back very strong, to now, ten days on the campaign trail, where I think it is fair to say: that didn't work."

It was a fairly brutal affair, remarkable for its intense, sometimes overbearing, bipartisan focus on the ailments of the Republican ticket. Thirty-five minutes into the discussion, Jeffrey Toobin actually had to remind his fellow panelist that there was another candidate in the race.

"We haven't commented yet," said the CNN analyst, "on what a sensational campaign Obama has run."

Intuition + Money: An Aha Moment

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:29:31 EDT

Interesting tech article for you solar power lovers out there in Obamaland:

October 12, 2008

SlipstreamIntuition + Money: An Aha Moment

By JOHN MARKOFF

IT started with a Harvard physicist acting on a hunch. It ended up producing a new material, called black silicon, that could have a broad impact on technologies ranging from ultrasensitive sensors to photovoltaic cells.

On Monday, Harvard plans to announce that it has licensed patents for black silicon to SiOnyx, a company in Beverly, Mass., that has raised $11 million in venture financing.

This would never have happened if the physicist, Eric Mazur, and his graduate students had stuck to the original purpose of their research. He says their experience offers a lesson in government financing of science and technology, which is becoming so narrow and applied as to make discoveries like theirs much less likely.

A more narrow focus does have its advantages: for one, it can be more likely to produce an immediate payoff.

But in the current research environment, “you are less likely to be open to serendipity,” said Judith L. Estrin, an electrical engineer and author of “Closing the Innovation Gap: Reigniting the Spark of Creativity in a Global Economy” (McGraw-Hill, 2008).

Black silicon was discovered because Dr. Mazur started thinking outside the boundaries of the research he was doing in the late 1990s. His research group had been financed by the Army Research Organization to explore catalytic reactions on metallic surfaces.

“I got tired of metals and was worrying that my Army funding would dry up,” he said. “I wrote the new direction into a research proposal without thinking much about it — I just wrote it in; I don’t know why.” And even though there wasn’t an immediate practical application, he received the financing.

It was several years before he directed a graduate student to pursue his idea, which involved shining an exceptionally powerful laser light — briefly matching the energy produced by the sun falling on the surface of the entire earth — on a silicon wafer. On a hunch, the researcher also applied sulfur hexafluoride, a gas used by the semiconductor industry to make etchings for circuits.

The silicon wafer looked black to the naked eye. But when Dr. Mazur and his researchers examined the material with an electron microscope, they discovered that the surface was covered with a forest of ultra-tiny spikes.

At first, the researchers had no idea what they had stumbled onto, and that is typical of the way many scientific discoveries emerge. Cellophane, Teflon, Scotchgard and aspartame are among the many inventions that have emerged through some form of fortunate accident or intuition.

“In science, the most exciting expression isn’t ‘Eureka!’ It’s ‘Huh?’” said Michael Hawley, a computer scientist based in Cambridge, Mass., and a board member and investor in SiOnyx.

Black silicon has since been found to have extreme sensitivity to light. It is now on the verge of commercialization, most likely first in night vision systems.

“We have seen a 100 to 500 times increase in sensitivity to light compared to conventional silicon detectors,” said James Carey, a co-founder of SiOnyx who worked on the original experiments as a Harvard graduate student.

Dr. Mazur is an investor in SiOnyx and chairman of its scientific advisory board. As a result of his research, a number of academic and corporate research groups are still exploring the material, which absorbs about twice as much visible light as normal silicon and has the ability to detect infrared light that is invisible to the current generation of silicon detectors.

SiOnyx is already commercializing sensor-based chips as a technology development platform for other companies and for use in next-generation infrared imaging systems.

The new technology has a tremendous cost advantage in that it is compatible with current semiconductor manufacturing plants, according to Stephen Saylor, SiOnyx’s chief executive. It is certain to attract broad attention from a range of industries, including scientific and medical imaging markets.

In the future, the low cost and higher sensitivity of black silicon may also make it a contender in the multibillion-dollar digital camera and video markets, an area currently dominated by silicon and charge-coupled-device sensors.

SiOnyx is continuing to experiment with the photovoltaic properties of black silicon, but Mr. Saylor said the company had no plans to jump into the market to become a solar cell manufacturer. “Our engagement is going to be as a technology provider, not as a producer,” he said.

Instead, he is eager to get a new generation of a supersensitive light detectors into the hands of entrepreneurs and experimenters who will be able to take the technology in unpredictable directions.

AND that is how this technology got to where it is today. To Dr. Mazur, that should be a lesson to technology funding agencies like the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency of the Pentagon.

“This is a very strong case in point for funding science for the advancement of science,” he said.

Economic Dishonor Roll

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 12:34:45 EDT

And now, here's the guys who screwed us:

Economic Dishonor Roll

The Huffington Post

Nicholas Graham

October 12, 2008 04:53 PM

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Just like HuffPost's honor-roll of those who predicted and even warned against actions that have landed us in today's economic crisis, we have a dishonor roll chronicling those who helped create the situation.

Below is the beginning of our look at some of those figures--politicians, economists, pundits - whose recklessness and own greed have created the situation we're in today. Please check back as more names are added to our list and by all means let us know who else deserves to be on our dishonor role.

Alan Greenspan

The New York Times took a hard look at former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's legacy in Thursday's paper, leading with this rather statement of Greenspan's from 2004: "Not only have individual financial institutions become less vulnerable to shocks from underlying risk factors, but also the financial system as a whole has become more resilient."

Stronger regulation of derivatives would have done much to stem the current financial crisis, but Greenspan argued against such measures:

"What we have found over the years in the marketplace is that derivatives have been an extraordinarily useful vehicle to transfer risk from those who shouldn't be taking it to those who are willing to and are capable of doing so," Mr. Greenspan told the Senate Banking Committee in 2003. "We think it would be a mistake" to more deeply regulate the contracts, he added.
---

Phil Gramm

Story continues below

Gramm, McCain's chief economic adviser, helped craft the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act, "a bank deregulation bill that swept away a Depression-era law known as Glass-Steagall" as the Times writes. The Times also notes of Gramm:

For more than two decades in Congress he argued that the forces of the market had to be freed from government interference. Just a year after the passage of Gramm- Leach-Bliley, he was largely responsible for another bill -- the Commodity Futures Modernization Act -- that clearly did contribute to the current crisis. That law unleashed the derivatives market and paved the way for banks to become more aggressive about investing in mortgages. As recently as this summer, he was still saying that the biggest problem facing the American economy was excessive regulation.
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Chris Cox

Currently head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Cox helped put greater deregulation into effect, and as of last March, was saying the following:

"We have a good deal of comfort about the capital cushions at these firms at the moment."

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Henry Paulson

Paulson, currently the Secretary of the Treasury, is leading the government's efforts to rescue the economy, but he himself was a major proponent of rolling back what he called "excessive regulation" and reducing the power of financial regulatory agencies.

They wanted an exemption for their brokerage units from an old regulation that limited the amount of debt they could take on. The exemption would unshackle billions of dollars held in reserve as a cushion against losses on their investments. Those funds could then flow up to the parent company, enabling it to invest in the fast-growing but opaque world of mortgage-backed securities; credit derivatives, a form of insurance for bond holders; and other exotic instruments.

The five investment banks led the charge, including Goldman Sachs, which was headed by Henry M. Paulson Jr. Two years later, he left to become Treasury secretary.

---

Joe Cassano

Cassano, the executive of AIG, the insurance giant which received an $38 billion bailout loan from the federal government, is identified by CNN as number 10 in their top 10 list of people behind the current financial crisis. AIG, under Cassano, gambled huge amounts of money on mortgages that ultimately went bad. AIG boasted that it had once pioneered some of the exotic investments that are now bring Wall Street to it's knees. Watch the CNN report below

---

Richard Fuld

Fuld, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers (the storied firm went bankrupt during the current crisis), is pegged by CNN as the 9th in their top 10 list of culprits to blame for the economic crisis. CNN reports that Fuld drove the company deep into the subprime market, and instead of scaling back the firm's investments when the market began to go south, Fuld doubled down and ultimately drove the company off the subprime cliff. Watch the video on Fuld below.

---

Martin Sullivan and Robert Willumstad

Martin and Willumstad were both CEOs of AIG during a time when documents show that the company knew of potentially serious problems in evaluating derivatives contracts:

Top officials at American International Group Inc. knew of potential problems in valuing derivative contracts long before these risky transactions caused the insurer's shareholders severe pain, according to documents released by congressional investigators.

The disclosures come as prospects dimmed this past week for AIG's efforts to quickly sell assets to repay its bulging debt to the government. The derivative-contract problems would have driven AIG into bankruptcy; in the past month, the government has made available to AIG nearly $123 billion in a rescue plan.

The Man Behind the Whispers About Obama

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 01:56:34 EDT

Just posting this from the NYT:

October 13, 2008

Andy Martin is known for filing many lawsuits

The Man Behind the Whispers About Obama

By JIM RUTENBERG

The most persistent falsehood about Senator Barack Obama’s background first hit in 2004 just two weeks after the Democratic convention speech that helped set him on the path to his presidential candidacy: “Obama is a Muslim who has concealed his religion.”

That statement, contained in a press release, spun a complex tale about the ancestry of Mr. Obama, who is Christian.

The press release was picked up by a conservative Web site, FreeRepublic.com, and spread steadily as others elaborated on its claims over the years in e-mail messages, Web sites and books. It continues to drive other false rumors about Mr. Obama’s background.

Just last Friday, a woman told Senator John McCain at a town-hall-style meeting, “I have read about him,” and “he’s an Arab.” Mr. McCain corrected her.

Until this month, the man who is widely credited with starting the cyberwhisper campaign that still dogs Mr. Obama was a secondary character in news reports, with deep explorations of his background largely confined to liberal blogs.

But an appearance in a documentary-style program on the Fox News Channel watched by three million people last week thrust the man, Andy Martin, and his past into the foreground. The program allowed Mr. Martin to assert falsely and without challenge that Mr. Obama had once trained to overthrow the government.

An examination of legal documents and election filings, along with interviews with his acquaintances, revealed Mr. Martin, 62, to be a man with a history of scintillating if not always factual claims. He has left a trail of animosity — some of it provoked by anti-Jewish comments — among political leaders, lawyers and judges in three states over more than 30 years.

He is a law school graduate, but his admission to the Illinois bar was blocked in the 1970s after a psychiatric finding of “moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character.”

Though he is not a lawyer, Mr. Martin went on to become a prodigious filer of lawsuits, and he made unsuccessful attempts to win public office for both parties in three states, as well as for president at least twice, in 1988 and 2000. Based in Chicago, he now identifies himself as a writer who focuses on his anti-Obama Web site and press releases.

Mr. Martin, in a series of interviews, did not dispute his influence in Obama rumors.

“Everybody uses my research as a takeoff point,” Mr. Martin said, adding, however, that some take his writings “and exaggerate them to suit their own fantasies.”

As for his background, he said: “I’m a colorful person. There’s always somebody who has a legitimate cause in their mind to be angry with me.”

When questions were raised last week about Mr. Martin’s appearance and claims on “Hannity’s America” on Fox News, the program’s producer said Mr. Martin was clearly expressing his opinion and not necessarily fact.

It was not Mr. Martin’s first turn on national television. The CBS News program “48 Hours” in 1993 devoted an hourlong program to what it called his prolific filing of frivolous lawsuits. He has filed so many lawsuits that a judge barred him from doing so in any federal court without preliminary approval.

He prepared to run as a Democrat for Congress in Connecticut, where paperwork for one of his campaign committees listed as one purpose “to exterminate Jew power.” He ran as a Republican for the Florida State Senate and the United States Senate in Illinois. When running for president in 1999, he aired a television advertisement in New Hampshire that accused George W. Bush of using cocaine.

In the 1990s, Mr. Martin was jailed in a case in Florida involving a physical altercation.

His newfound prominence, and the persistence of his line of political attack — updated regularly on his Web site and through press releases — amazes those from his past.

“Well, that’s just a bookend for me,” said Tom Slade, a former chairman of the Florida Republican Party, whom Mr. Martin sued for refusing to support him. Mr. Slade said Mr. Martin was driven like “a run-over dog, but he’s fearless.”

Given Mr. Obama’s unusual background, which was the focus of his first book, it was perhaps bound to become fodder for some opposed to his candidacy.

Mr. Obama was raised mostly by his white mother, an atheist, and his grandparents, who were Protestant, in Hawaii. He hardly knew his father, a Kenyan from a Muslim family who variously considered himself atheist or agnostic, Mr. Obama wrote. For a few childhood years, Mr. Obama lived in Indonesia with a stepfather he described as loosely following a liberal Islam.

Theories about Mr. Obama’s background have taken on a life of their own. But independent analysts seeking the origins of the cyberspace attacks wind up at Mr. Martin’s first press release, posted on the Free Republic Web site in August 2004.

Its general outlines have turned up in a host of works that have expounded falsely on Mr. Obama’s heritage or supposed attempts to conceal it, including “Obama Nation,” the widely discredited best seller about Mr. Obama by Jerome R. Corsi. Mr. Corsi opens the book with a quote from Mr. Martin.

“What he’s generating gets picked up in other places,” said Danielle Allen, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University who has investigated the e-mail campaign’s circulation and origins, “and it’s an example of how the Internet has given power to sources we would have never taken seriously at another point in time.”

Ms. Allen said Mr. Martin’s original work found amplification in 2006, when a man named Ted Sampley wrote an article painting Mr. Obama as a secret practitioner of Islam. Quoting liberally from Mr. Martin, the article circulated on the Internet, and its contents eventually found their way into various e-mail messages, particularly an added claim that Mr. Obama had attended “Jakarta’s Muslim Wahhabi schools. Wahhabism is the radical teaching that created the Muslim terrorists who are now waging jihad on the rest of the world.”

Mr. Obama for two years attended a Catholic school in Indonesia, where he was taught about the Bible, he wrote in “Dreams From My Father,” and for two years went to an Indonesian public school open to all religions, where he was taught about the Koran.

Mr. Sampley, coincidentally, is a Vietnam veteran and longtime opponent of Mr. McCain and Senator John Kerry, both of whom he accused of ignoring his claims that American prisoners were left behind in Vietnam. He previously portrayed Mr. McCain as a “Manchurian candidate.” Speaking of Mr. Martin’s influence on his Obama writings, Mr. Sampley said, “I keyed off of his work.”

Mr. Martin’s depictions of Mr. Obama as a secret Muslim have found resonance among some Jewish voters who have received e-mail messages containing various versions of his initial theory, often by new authors and with new twists.

In his original press release, Mr. Martin wrote that he was personally “a strong supporter of the Muslim community.” But, he wrote of Mr. Obama, “it may well be that his concealment is meant to endanger Israel.” He added, “His Muslim religion would obviously raise serious questions in many Jewish circles.”

Yet in various court papers, Mr. Martin had impugned Jews.

A motion he filed in a 1983 bankruptcy case called the judge “a crooked, slimy Jew who has a history of lying and thieving common to members of his race.”

In another motion, filed in 1983, Mr. Martin wrote, “I am able to understand how the Holocaust took place, and with every passing day feel less and less sorry that it did.”

In an interview, Mr. Martin denied some statements against Jews attributed to him in court papers, blaming malicious judges for inserting them.

But in his “48 Hours” interview in 1993, he affirmed a different anti-Semitic part of the affidavit that included the line about the Holocaust, saying, “The record speaks for itself.”

When asked Friday about an assertion in his court papers that “Jews, historically and in daily living, act through clans and in wolf pack syndrome,” he said, “That one sort of rings a bell.”

He said he was not anti-Semitic. “I was trying to show that everybody in the bankruptcy court was Jewish and I was not Jewish,” he said, “and I was being victimized by religious bias.”

In discussing the denial of his admission to the Illinois bar, Mr. Martin said the psychiatric exam listing him as having a “moderately severe personality defect” was spitefully written by an evaluator he had clashed with.

Mr. Martin, who says he is from a well-off banking and farming family, is clearly pleased with his newfound attention. But, he said, others have added to his work in “scary” ways.

“They Google ‘Islam’ and ‘Obama’ and my stuff comes up and they take that and kind of use that — like a Christmas tree, and they decorate it,” he said. For instance, he said, he did not necessarily ascribe to a widely circulated e-mail message from the Israeli right-wing activist Ruth Matar, which includes the false assertion, “If Obama were elected, he would be the first Arab-American president.”

He said he had at least come to “accept” Mr. Obama’s word that he had found Jesus Christ. His intent, he said, was only to educate.

Kitty Bennett contributed reporting.

Ya can't fool mother nat er, the markets

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 23:45:01 EDT

Another interesting commentary from Tom Friedman:

October 12, 2008

Op-Ed Columnist

The Post-Binge World

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

My friend Rob Watson, the head of EcoTech International, has a saying about Mother Nature that goes like this: “Mother Nature is just chemistry, biology and physics. That’s all she is.” And because of that, says Rob, you cannot spin Mother Nature. You cannot bribe Mother Nature. You cannot sweet talk her, and you cannot ignore her. She’s going to do with the climate whatever chemistry, biology and physics dictate. And Mother Nature always bats last, and she always bats a thousand.

There is a parallel with markets. At their core, markets are propelled by fear and greed. They’re just the balance at any given moment of those two impulses. Over the long run, you cannot spin the market. You cannot sweet talk it into going up or beg it not to go down. It’s going to do whatever it’s going to do — whichever way greed and fear tug it. And the market always bats last and it always bats a thousand.

What am I saying? We are where we are today because we went on a credit binge and we’re now paying the price. Because it was the biggest credit binge the world has ever been on, a lot of wealth is going to be wiped out. Now what you’re witnessing is the market re-evaluating and re-pricing every asset in the world, without mercy, telling each stock, bond and bank what its value is in a post-credit binge world.

So why, despite the Congressional bailout, haven’t banks started lending again?

You have to go back to the beginning of the problem. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, virtually every economy in the world moved to a capitalist system, which eventually made the world awash with money looking for investments. It didn’t take long for financial engineers to figure out how to move home mortgages and commercial loans from a transaction between you and your local bank — or between your company and a syndicate of banks — to something much more diffused and fragmented. While your bank may have initiated the mortgage or the corporate loan, it was quickly sold to an aggregator who turned these different loans into bonds and then sold them all over the world in small pieces to banks and money market and pension funds.

The good news about this democratization of finance is that it powered enormous growth around the world. More people than ever grew out of poverty faster — or got rich faster. But the process became so lucrative that people — imbeciles — who should not have been selling these things got into the food chain of selling them. Banks and insurance companies that should not have even nibbled on them, gorged on them. And companies that should not have been dependent on raising capital through them became dependent.

So when some of these loans inevitably turned bad, the whole financial system got infected. Eventually everyone stopped lending to everyone else because no one knew what the other bank’s assets were worth. Indeed, if all the banks were really honest about the value of these toxic assets on their balance sheets, many of them would be under water.

The whole story of the last few months has been about different government plans to get the banks lending again. But the market is not waiting. It just keeps saying to the big banks and insurance companies: “We think you’re carrying a lot of junk on your books, and if you don’t mark it all the way down and re-price it to what it is really worth today, we will re-price you — fairly or not.” The market is going to do what it is going to do.

So what could ease this crisis? “There is going to have to be a workout,” said the financial strategist David Smick, author of “The World Is Curved,” a book about the hidden dangers in today’s global economy. “There will have to be a restructuring of all these institutions to clean up their balance sheets and recapitalize them.” Banks and insurance companies will have to be reconstituted, merged or left to die, until these toxic assets are properly priced and off the books.

The government’s job — which it is still trying to figure out exactly how to do — will be to provide a safety net of guarantees for the surviving banks, so they will be honest about pricing their assets, and then, once they have been, to help recapitalize them. “Government’s other job,” added Smick, “is to quickly establish the new rules of the road for truth-in-lending on a global basis. We still need these kind of lending facilities if the economy is going to grow again.”

This workout promises to be painful, complicated and protracted. Government will have to do its part. But it must regulate the excesses without smothering the underlying innovative, entrepreneurial and risk-taking attributes of our economy, which are what will ultimately bail us out — as they always have.

“I have no idea what the stock market is going to do next month or six months from now,” Warren Buffett told CNBC on Friday. “I do know that the American economy, over a period of time, will do very well, and people who own a piece of it will do well.”

Nicholas D. Kristof is off today.

How to make a troll STFU

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 20:01:22 EDT

Since we are getting some Republican trolls lately (Desperate scum, aren’t they?), I feel some pointers in proper troll dealing etiquette are in order:

Make a troll shut up

NICK DOUGLAS — Other bloggers want to tell you how to get their attention. But since everyone wants to stay out of this blog, I figured I'd explain how to make us (and any other troll) shut up.

Prelude: What's trolling?
Trolling is saying:

All the people I like from the PodTech podcast network tell me they don't like their boring company.
Technorati is a disappointing blog search engine (especially considering the outstanding team working there) that's lost its focus with weird features like "Where's the fire" and a daily "Buzz" show; it wants to become a portal, but it's doing this all wrong. Meanwhile the actual search engine sucks. Luckily for Technorati, so do all its competitors.
Startup culture is boring because there aren't enough clever dicks like Weblogs, Inc. founder Jason Calacanis.
Wired News bloggers think linking to Valleywag makes them look cool.

See what I did there?

Prevention: Don't stick your neck out.
Some of us just have to pick fights or declare ourselves king or something else that makes us a target. But if you can suppress this, you'll be hard to troll. For example, if TechCrunch or Valleywag ever wrecks itself, crowds will gather to laugh at the carnage and use our burning corpses to light marshmallows. If another Silicon Valley blog, Om Malik's GigaOM, went tits up, there'd be no glee. The other two are brash (TechCrunch's editor says he wants to replace CNET; Valleywag is just a dick to everyone); Om is just sane, strategic, a worker. Therefore, fewer trolls.

Response: Don't respond.
So someone trolled you, and you're pissed. You have a really great response. You're gonna take that troll down and make him cry! Geez, you are so playing into the game.

Do nothing. Repeat this to yourself. Then go do something unrelated. When anyone brings up the troll attack, say "Oh, I didn't really think about it" and change the subject. When they bring it up again, feign boredom. Not amusement (the laughter behind "Oh man, it's so great that they compared me to Bush!" rings hollow), not frustration at your idiot friend's persistence with this topic, but boredom. And a new topic.

If you must: The snappy comeback
Granted, some people are smart enough to craft a good response to a troll. How can you tell if you're one of them? Well, do you troll people? Are you strategic? Are you witty? Are other people reporting on the trolling incident and asking for comment? Jesse Oxfeld, then-editor of Valleywag's New York sister blog Gawker, could say "yes" to all this when fellow gossip blogger Perez Hilton published the phone numbers of him and his colleagues. So Oxfeld delivered dryly, "We're thrilled to see that [Perez] has learned to use the phone book."

Here's how to properly compose a comeback:

Belittle the troll by belittling their attack. (Not their person; people have more sympathy for a person than for a dumb move.)
Raise a good point. (Obvious but often missed.)
Don't be self-righteous. (You lose the game.)
Be witty. (If you're wittier than the troll, you win.)
Don't attack in kind. (That just raises the stakes for round 2.)
Consider saying "mea culpa." (Wittily.)
Never let them see you bleed.

Photo: Genista. Nick Douglas writes for Valleywag, Prezzish, and Look Shiny. He's proud that after he criticized the awful programming of his last trolling victim, PodTech, the company responded with a front-page video that called him a cheap whore.

Blaming the Poor

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 18:26:43 EDT

Just posting this article from the Huffington Post:

The Huffington Post

October 12, 2008

Sasha Abramsky

Posted October 11, 2008 | 12:12 PM (EST)

Blaming the Poor

I posted the following article on the Guardian's Comments is Free site yesterday. It says things that I think need to be said, about the moral crassness of the commentators who have taken to blaming poor people for the financial collapse we're undergoing. With the permission of the Guardian, I'm republishing it today on the Huffington Post. If you've already read it, please forgive me. If you haven't, I hope it will be of interest.

A funny thing has happened on the way to the forum. As the institutions of super-capitalism continue to implode, a number of conservative commentators have started to lay blame for the mess on poor people.

Now that might seem strange given that poor people control approximately no major financial institutions; and it might seem unfair in light of the unprecedented redistribution of wealth away from the working and middle classes and toward the wealthy these past several years. According to the Urban Institute, these days sixty percent of low-income families still don't own homes - despite years of the hard sell designed to get them to buy; more than a third of them don't own cars, which in many instances means they can't get jobs since they have no way of getting to work; and nine out of ten of them have no retirement savings. By contrast, Forbes recently estimated that America's 499 billionaires (a number that has doubled in the past eight years) control $1.4 trillion in assets -- or at least did until the catastrophic market failures of the past month.

It might even seem bizarre given the fact that millions of desperate men and women signed onto utterly manipulative, usurious, "creative" mortgages during the sub-prime gold-rush years, and, as a result, ended up losing what little capital they had accumulated over lifetimes of hard work as well as losing the roofs over their heads. To stretch a point, one could even view such a suggestion as offensive, since so many banks got into trouble by "bundling" mortgage securities that only preserved their value and generated profits so long as enough poor people signed on for the ride and agreed to be screwed.

But, apparently, that's because you and I, dear readers, don't understand the intense psychological pull poor people have on rich folks, a pull that can, apparently, make the world's hardest, meanest, and most ruthless CEOs - highly educated men and women who've spent years honing the fine arts of profit-making -- part with good money on a whim and hand it over to a bunch of irresponsible, check-bouncing lay-abouts. Fox News's Neil Cavuto went so far as to explicitly link banks' lending to minority customers - a move they only reluctantly agreed to after decades of redlining minority neighborhoods and effectively removing most African-Americans from the home-ownership society -- with the current financial collapse. Thursday night, on Larry King, a conservative spokeswoman accused the community organizing group ACORN of "pressuring" banks to give mortgage loans to people with no jobs. Obama is supported by ACORN. QED: the whole bloody mess is Obama's fault.

Let's forget for a minute about the attempt to blame the collapsing global financial edifice on a man who in one breath the Republicans accuse of having no government experience and in the next try to position as being single-handedly responsible for the creation of trillions of dollars in dubious loans. Let's look at the deeper notion that manipulative poor people are responsible for all of our current pocket-ache.

Earlier this year, researchers from Demos, the think tank of which I am a fellow, published a book on America's escalating personal debt crisis, titled Up to Our Eyeballs. Among the findings: starting four or five years back, mortgage brokers were being paid by sub-prime lenders to trawl low-income and minority neighborhoods looking for marks whom they could hang high-interest rate loans on. The brokers were paid "yield spread premiums" for getting borrowers to accept higher interest rate loans than the baseline rate the company would have been prepared to lend them money at. The loans were front-loaded with high fees and adorned with such small-print items as pre-payment penalties. Between 1994 and 2005, the authors found, "subprime home loans increased from $35 billion to $665 billion."

Many of these loans were given to people who in fact would have qualified for regular mortgages had they only known where to look and how to go about applying; had they gotten those regular mortgages they might not have faced personal ruin when their variable rates kicked in in 2007 and 2008. But then, again, had they got those mortgages a whole lot of sub-prime middle-men wouldn't have gotten their profits.

That unqualified borrowers were given huge loans is, at this point, a given. That these borrowers, en masse, are to blame for the resultant crisis makes no sense. Sure, some people took out huge mortgages they had no intention of paying off simply because they were selfish. But that's not the story experienced by most of the low-income borrowers.

Let's get real here. People borrowed because they were presented with offers they couldn't refuse. They were told that home ownership was the path to prosperity, and, like everyone else, they wanted their chance to realize their dreams. When they held back from buying property, they found the decks stacked against them: the same people who urged deregulation of the mortgage industry also lobbied for an end to rent controls and curtailments of government-funded public housing.

And for those who still held back, who risked ever-rising rents and an ever-greater economic disempowerment, they were bombarded with pre-approval notices regarding mortgage applications from banks and finance companies who thought they could make a few quick bucks. They were repeatedly told, by financial specialists who ought to have known better, that buying, and then refinancing, their homes was a painless way to cushion their lifestyles. After all, the shills said, property values would inevitably keep soaring. And they were misled by brokers who didn't tell them what sub-prime loans really entailed.

So I'll say it again: yes, many people made bad bets, didn't read the small print, didn't understand what they were getting into. But these are poor people, most of whom don't have the benefit of years of specialized higher education. When the times were good, conservatives were gleeful at the moneys liberated by lending to them at inflated rates of interest. How truly shameful that now the chips are down they're asking the poor to shoulder the moral responsibility for the country's fiscal collapse. It's as stupid a notion as Marie Antoinette telling Paris's starving masses to eat cake when they could no longer afford their daily bread.

Econmomic Honor Roll

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 18:08:45 EDT

Interesting article about some of the economists who saw this econmomic mess coming:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/12/economic-honor-roll_n_133928.html

McCain Co-Chair Calls Obama "A Guy Of The Street," Raises Drug Use

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 19:19:55 EDT

This is from the "Oh you got to be kidding me" department. Looks like the McCain campaign is in full desperation mode and . . . ah heck! I THINK THERE ARE ON DRUGS!!! Keating looks like he's "foaming at the mouth" like a mad dog! Amazing. Obama admits to some drug use early this year and NOW they are talking about it now that the polls are against them. Cindy McCain looks like she's "relapsing" (wink) a bit with those "dishonest campaign" comments.

McCain Co-Chair Calls Obama "A Guy Of The Street," Raises Drug Use

October 9, 2008 04:30 PM

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, a McCain campaign co-chairman, edged up to an explicitly racial attack on Barack Obama on Thursday, describing the Illinois Senator as a "guy of the street" before raising his youthful drug use.

Appearing on Dennis Miller's radio show, Keating charged that the Democratic nominee was covering up his "very extreme" record, and urged Obama to be more honest with Americans. "He ought to admit," Keating said, "'You know, I've got to be honest with you. I was a guy of the street. I was way to the left. I used cocaine. I voted liberally, but I'm back at the center.'"

Keating began to address Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright -- a topic that John McCain himself has said should be off-limits -- but Miller interrupted him to return to the discussion of cocaine.

Listen to the audio here.

The criticism is the latest in a spate of increasingly aggressive attacks from the McCain-Palin camp.

It's unclear what Keating meant by "a guy of the street," but his assertion that Obama should "admit" his brief drug use in high school makes little sense, since it was Obama himself who did disclose it in his memoir published 12 years ago.

Keating was one of McCain's earlier supporters, endorsing the Arizona Senator even before he officially launched his 2008 presidential bid. Keating is a member of McCain's National Campaign Committee, and serves as co-chair for various campaign groups, such as Catholics for McCain and Sportsmen for McCain.

Here's the transcript from Miller's program today:

MILLER: It's the most liberal, let's just say that. We're talking to Frank Keating, former Oklahoma Governor, John McCain supporter. Frank, let's just say, it's the most liberal. The thing that bothers me the most about all this with Barack Obama is not the -- I know he's the most liberal guy. You know, I know he's gotten this close to the White House and I know most people don't realize he's probably the most liberal senator we have. The thing that bothers me the most is I recognize the obfuscation and the smoke and mirrors as Clinton-esque. When I hear him reduce Ayers to "this is a guy who lives in my neighborhood" or Rev. Wright, "I was there 500 times and never saw him." The acts themselves don't bother me as he's starting to treat me like an idiot too when he's blowing this smoke my way. He ought to just come clean and say, "listen, I came up through Chicago, you make some errors there." I'd almost be able to absolve it more easily then. Story continues below

KEATING: Well, and that's what concerns me, Dennis, because when I was in the State Senate and statehouse of my state, if someone had voted against the entire state budget because it had too much money for corrections, all of us would have, you know, strained our necks to find out who is this because that would have been a very extreme position, basically saying to a law enforcement officer as I was or my son was a state trooper, "you know, you make an arrest, you risk your life, for nothing" because we're going to make sure that person doesn't go to prison even though the laws of the state require it. So, that puzzles me. Just he ought to admit, "you know, I've got to be honest with you. I was a guy of the street. I was way to the left. I used cocaine. I voted liberally, but I'm back at the center." I mean, I understand the big picture of America. But he hasn't done that...

MILLER: He's copped to that...

KEATING: Jeremiah Wright is...

MILLER: Wait, I've got to jump in Frank. He has copped to the blow use, right? I mean, he did so in his own book he said he did blow.

KEATING: Oh yes, he did.

MILLER: Well, I'm just saying that doesn't enter this to me.

A New Nickname for Senator Obama . . .

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:09:26 EDT

That One.

10 rules for winning a debate

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 11:00:16 EDT

Just posting some debate basics:

Commentary: 10 rules for winning a debate

Story Highlights
Paul Begala: To win, keep the message simple and don't get lost in details
Begala: Use humor to help make your key points
Candidates should create a moment that will be captured on video, he says
Begala: Confident candidates who trust their instincts will do well

By Paul Begala
CNN Contributor

Editor's note: Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist and CNN political contributor, was a political consultant for Bill Clinton's presidential campaign in 1992 and was counselor to Clinton in the White House. Begala is not a paid political consultant for any politicians or candidates. His new book is "Third Term: Why George W. Bush Loves John McCain."

(CNN) -- I have been involved in most of the presidential and vice presidential debates over the past 20 years.

I've done debate prep, been a spin doctor, convened the greatest comedy writers in Hollywood in a one-liner factory, even played George W. Bush for Al Gore's practice debates.

So now that I'm merely observing the debates as a CNN political analyst, I thought I'd offer our readers and the candidates my Top 10 rules for debates:

1.Debates are easy. It's a dirty little secret, but for all the hype, debates are easier than news conferences, town-hall meetings or in-depth, one-on-one interviews on Sunday morning television. You hit your mark, you deliver your lines, you try not to pass out or throw up, then you declare victory. So relax, candidates, you might even have fun.

2.20 questions, 20 answers, one message. This is not "Jeopardy," where you're at the mercy of the topics Alex Trebek (or in this case, Jim Lehrer, Gwen Ifill, Tom Brokaw and Charlie Gibson) select. There is really only one question in an election: Why should we vote for you and not the other candidate?

Your answer to that question -- your basic message -- should be marbled throughout your substantive answer on everything from Waziristan to Social Security. iReport.com: What would you ask Palin, Biden?

John McCain's basic message, it seems to me, is, "I'm experienced, Obama's too risky." Barack Obama's, on other hand, is, "I'm for change, McCain is more of the same."

Each answer to each question should be a variation on that theme. A good debater introduces or ends lots of answers with "That's another example of why we need change... (or experience, or whatever it is he or she is running on) ..."

3. Familiarity matters. The best debate preps are like SAT courses; they focus on test familiarity more than substantive details. Familiarity brings comfort. Comfort breeds confidence. Confidence delivers victory. In 1992, we Clintonites were so eager to make our man comfortable in the town-hall debate in Richmond, Virginia, that we brought the stools we'd used for debate prep to the debate site.

Then someone -- and I'm not ratting anyone out here -- replaced the "official" stools at the debate site with the ones we'd been practicing with. We wanted Gov. Bill Clinton to be completely at ease in his surroundings, right down to his butt.

4.Don't cram. If your debate prep is dominated by propeller-heads, you're in trouble. I love the nerds, Lord knows, but they can overwhelm you. In 1984, the brilliant Richard Darman overloaded Ronald Reagan with minutiae, perhaps in an effort to dispel rumors that the Gipper had lost a step.

The strategy blew up in the Reagan campaign's face. In his first debate with Walter Mondale, Reagan stumbled and stammered. There was too much new information clanging around in his brain. But by the second debate, he blew away concerns about his age. He did this not with a rapid-fire recitation of statistics, but with a classic Reagan quip: "I will not use my opponent's youth and inexperience as an issue in this campaign." Which leads me to my next rule:

5.Wit is sticky.John Kerry bested George W. Bush in all of their debates, according to the polls. And yet voters were left without any take-home point. That's because Kerry not only lacked a clear, coherent message (see No. 1 above), he didn't use humor. In fact, I was told that one of his aides later bragged that Kerry had refused to use any of the "cute lines" my Hollywood writers had sent his way -- as if being witty were beneath him.

The most memorable lines are often the funniest. Think of jug-eared Ross Perot crowing, "If you have a better plan ... I'm all ears." Or former POW McCain saying of a plan to build a museum at the site of the Woodstock concert, "I'm sure it was a cultural and pharmacological event. But I could not attend. I was tied up at the time."

Chris Rock recently told Larry King that people only laugh at a line if they see some truth in it. Smart candidates ought to heed Rock's observation.

6.The camera is always on. So, by the way, is the microphone. Al Gore had been promised that there would be no reaction shots in his first debate with George W. Bush. That, of course, was wrong. So, while Gore trounced Bush on the issues, the post-debate cut-and-paste jobs caught Gore sighing repeatedly and rolling his eyes endlessly.

Gore was in fact frustrated, perhaps understandably so. But never let 'em see you sweat -- or sigh. No matter what they tell you, the camera (and the microphone) is always on.

One of the most important skills for a debater is knowing what to do when the other candidate is attacking you. Poor Dan Quayle had his famous deer-in-the-headlights moment when Lloyd Bentsen skewered him ("Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.") But Obama was better coached.

Every time McCain launched a broadside, Obama would shake his head slowly, paint a half-smile on his face, look down and jot a note. It doesn't matter what he was writing. It could have been gift ideas for his daughter's birthday. But he did not glare angrily or stare blankly.

7.Create a moment. The voters who will decide the election are unlikely to be watching the debate in its entirety. Instead, they will see brief clips repeated frequently.

The job of a debater is to force his or her way into one of those clips by creating a moment. The easiest way to do this is by a direct address: "John, you said we would be greeted as liberators. You said we knew where the weapons of mass destruction were. You were wrong."

They say actors have a hard time knowing what to do with their hands. For debaters, the challenge is what to do with their eyes. The best debaters -- Reagan, Clinton -- spent much of their time creating moments by either fixing their eyes on their opponent when launching a barb or looking directly into the camera.

In the first debate, McCain rarely if ever engaged either Obama or the audience with his eyes, preferring instead to direct all his remarks to moderator Jim Lehrer. You can bet his team will correct that mistake by the second debate.

8.Don't be a lawyer. I am burdened with a legal education, as are Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Civilians think lawyers are good debaters. Wrong. They're often effective advocates, but the structure of a legal argument is often this: facts, reasoning, supporting evidence, conclusion. A political debater must start with the conclusion, then follow up with reasoning and facts and analysis.

Compare McCain's strong performance at Pastor Rick Warren's Saddleback Civil Form with Obama's thoughtful, but meandering, answers. It was McCain's best moment of the campaign thus far.

But by the time the first debate rolled around, Obama had in part stifled his inner law professor. Still, his habit of conceding a small point to make a larger one, ("Senator McCain is right when he says we need earmark reform, but ...") while effective in a classroom or a courtroom, was taken out of context and caricatured as weakness. Look for Obama to start more sentences with "Senator McCain is wrong, and here's why ... " or "Senator McCain just doesn't get it, because ... "

9.Small people make small points. Both Obama and McCain got lost in the weeds in the first debate over whether Henry Kissinger supports presidential negotiations with Iran. With all due respect to Dr. Kissinger, who the heck cares?

McCain should have gone to his larger message: "This is just another example of how dangerous and risky Senator Obama's lack of experience is." And Obama should have gone to his: "The failed, old status quo of Bush and McCain has only strengthened Iran. I want a tougher, smarter, new approach."

When Bob Dole was hammering Bill Clinton on what Clinton thought were cheap attacks in their 1996 debate in San Diego, California, Clinton went big, winning the debate not by responding, but by going to his larger message. "I could respond in kind," he lectured Dole, "but a political attack never created a single job, a negative ad never educated a child, a cheap shot never comforted a senior citizen or cleaned up a toxic waste site ..." Clinton went big and he won big.

10.Debates are more often lost than won. When Gerald Ford told Jimmy Carter that Eastern Europe was not under Soviet domination in 1976, it might have cost him the election.

Candidates can be certain that any mistake will be played -- and overplayed -- in the media. How do you avoid gaffes? Well, by observing points 1 through 9 above. But even more than that, I believe self-confidence is the best defense mechanism.

I coach Little League. The best way to ensure that a kid strikes out is to tell him as he walks up to the plate, "Don't strike out, Charlie. Whatever you do, don't strike out."

Politicians are a lot like Little Leaguers (although I don't think I'd trust them with aluminum bats). They crave confidence. And the more confident they are, the better they're likely to do.

Before every debate, the last thing I'd whisper in Bill Clinton's ear before he walked on stage was, "Trust your instincts. They're the best I've ever seen. If something pops into your head, say it." Of course, it helps if your candidate truly is the best you've ever seen -- as Clinton was.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/01/begala.debate/index.html

2008 Cable News Network

Just when "McNasty" can't get any nastier . . .

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 09:58:25 EDT

Now he's seems he all but condoning assassination. I guess that's par for the course when desparation sets in. McCain is clearly imploding and as a result, anything's acceptable. Nonsense. If you don't have any ideas to help this country, then what's the point of you runni ng for office? Sometimes, I think that the only reason that McCain is running is that so he can finally outrank his father and grandfather (former Navy Admirals).

Obama Hatred At McCain-Palin Rallies: "Terrorist!" "Kill Him!" (VIDEO)

McCain was speaking today in New Mexico, doing his usual personal attack on Barack Obama, as the stock market plummeted (you can see the ticker next to McCain on the screen, an apt reminder of what McCain and his fellow Republicans represent), and McCain asked the crowd "who is Barack Obama?" Immediately you hear someone yell "terrorist." McCain pauses, the audience laughs, and McCain continues on, not acknowledging, not chastising, not correcting. Oh, but McCain does say in the next sentence that he's upset about all the "angry barrage of insults."
Watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvXf9AUHTqM

Marc Ambinder notes that the shouter advances McCain's Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright attacks, while Jonathan Martin suggested the campaign would need a third party to do it:

Judging by McCain's slightly startled reaction, he clearly didn't anticipate that reaction, and McCain's in no way responsible for the utterances of anybody in his audience. But he must have some idea of how deeply this fear/outsider/other meme has spread. A tripartite strategy isn't needed.
UPDATE: The Washington Post reports on a similar moment at a Palin rally today:

"Now it turns out, one of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," Palin said.

"Boooo!" said the crowd.

"And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,'" she continued.

"Boooo!" the crowd repeated.

"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.

Pointers for tommorrow's debate Senator Obama:

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 22:26:05 EDT

1. Stick with the issues, stick with the selling of your economic plan.

2. Be prepared for an aggressive John McCain who will try to attack your character Senator.

3. If you must attack, go after his fitness to get the U.S. out of this economic crisis (Anyone who has crashed three planes as an naval aviator shouldn't have the right to fly a kite much less run this country! ;) ).

4. "Professor Obama" definitely has to stay home. Don't meander through your answers; Refrain from any "John, your right" phrases from the last debate.

5. Have Fun. The pressure's on McCain to shine tommorrow, so enjoy the fun.

The "Blow by Blow" Real John McCain story

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 23:19:14 EDT

After I've read this story on John McCain from Rolling Stone, a lot of the claims in this story make sense. Anyway, check the link and tell your Republican friends about the MCain folks don't hear about:

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/23316912/makebelieve_maverick/print

Joe McCain's view of Northern Virginia? A Communist Country

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 15:02:17 EDT

Funny since I'm a native of Norfolk Virginia. I left this article thinking "So Hampton Roads Virginia must be 'All American' with it's various military installations after all huh?!" On an even funnier note, those "brain dead" gaffes run deep in the McCain family eh?:

The Huffington Post

October 5, 2008

McCain's Brother: VA Suburbs "Communist Country"

STEPHEN OHLEMACHER | October 5, 2008 01:21 PM EST |

WASHINGTON — Republican presidential candidate John McCain's brother made an apparent joke at a campaign rally this weekend that might not play well in parts of newly competitive Virginia.

Joe McCain, speaking at an event in support of his brother, called two Democratic-leaning areas in Northern Virginia "communist country," according to a report on The Washington Post's Web site.

"I've lived here for at least 10 years and before that about every third duty I was in either Arlington or Alexandria, up in communist country," Joe McCain, a Navy veteran, said at an event in Loudoun County, Va.

Joe McCain then apologized, but the remark drew laughter at the event, according to the report.

Virginia has long been a Republican stronghold in presidential elections, but Democrat Barack Obama is running even or ahead of McCain in recent state polls. Obama is being helped by fast-growing communities in the Washington, D.C., suburbs of Northern Virginia, which tend to vote more Democratic than other parts of the state.

One of those areas is Arlington, Va., where John McCain owns a condominium.

"This was Joe McCain's unsuccessful attempt at humor," said McCain campaign spokeswoman Gail Gitcho. "John McCain and Sarah Palin are committed to winning the support of voters in Northern Virginia and understand the region's importance to victory statewide."

Paul Begala: Palin's "Guilt By Association" game could backfire in John McCain's face (posted from Politico)

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 14:38:11 EDT

Honestly, Palin's Ayers comments are stupid. Why? It's been refuted and Obama has condemned Ayers' past with the Weathermen. Moreover, John McCain has plenty of "dubious assoications" of his own that are far more damaging:

October 05, 2008
Categories: Barack Obama

A shot across the bows

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBBbUf5BJKY

Paul Begala, in a shot on Meet the Press that sounds like something other than an offhand remark, suggests an Obama comeback to an expected McCain ad blitz on the Ayers relationship.

Obama, he was asked about this in a debate in the primaries with Hillary Clinton sitting there, and George Stephanopoulos of ABC asked him about it. He answered it, pointed out that the despicable acts this guy committed were committed when apparently Barack Obama was eight years old.

And I think Governor Palin here is making a strategic mistake. This guilt by association path is going to be trouble ultimately for the McCain campaign. You know, you can go back, I have written a book about McCain, I had a dozen researchers go through him, I didn’t even put this in the book. But John McCain sat on the board of a very right-wing organization, it was the U.S. Council for World Freedom, it was chaired by a guy named John Singlaub, who wound up involved in the Iran contra scandal. It was an ultra conservative, right-wing group. The Anti-Defamation League, in 1981 when McCain was on the board, said this about this organization. It was affiliated with the World Anti-Communist League – the parent organization – which ADL said “has increasingly become a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact for extremists, racists and anti-Semites.”

Now, that's not John McCain, I don't think he is that. But you know, the problem is that a lot of people know John McCain’s record better than Governor Palin. And he does not want to play guilt by association or this thing could blow up in his face.

The guilt-by-association attacks on Obama are as much about tapping into a range of hazier doubts as they are about the details of any given charge, so I'm not sure they'd work on the better-known McCain. There is no shortage of mud like this on both sides, though, from Ayers and Rezko to Gordon Liddy and the Alaska Independence Party.

Excerpts from the YouTube clip:

And I think Governor Palin here is making a strategic mistake. This guilt by association path is going to be trouble ultimately for the McCain campaign. You know, you can go back, I have written a book about McCain, I had a dozen researchers go through him, I didn't even put this in the book. But John McCain sat on the board of a very right-wing organization, it was the U.S. Council for World Freedom, it was chaired by a guy named John Singlaub, who wound up involved in the Iran contra scandal. It was an ultra conservative, right-wing group. The Anti-Defamation League, in 1981 when McCain was on the board, said this about this organization. It was affiliated with the World Anti-Communist League - the parent organization - which ADL said "has increasingly become a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact for extremists, racists and anti-Semites."

Three things that McCain/Palin will hit Obama on before Nov. 4:

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 19:48:59 EDT

1. William Ayers: Come on. A 60's radical who was a terrorist wannabe, but was a failure at it. Now he's a respected college professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, holding the honor of Distinguished Professor. To this day, I still think: If this so-called "terrorist is "all that", then why is he out of jail?!

2. Tony Rezko: This is rich too. Obama is sadly guilty of the act of . . . (wait for it) . . . buying land (And Obama got ripped: It was $60,000 over the assessed value!) from guy who's now convicted of fraud and bribery. (Maybe the republicans wish Obama "involvement was as bad as Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, but nope.

3. Rev. Wright: Maybe something there, but let's remember, though Obama is black, that's like saying that actress Halle Berry is black or Professional Golfer Tiger Woods is black. There's a part of Obama that quite frankly, cannot agree with the reverend's views.

Sarah Palin attacks over Barack Obama's link to a '60s radical

With exactly one month until election day, will Bill Ayers, the anti-Vietnam war radical who helped found a bomb-planting protest group, morph into what some observers earllier had predicted -- the Willie Horton of the 2008 presidential campaign?

Horton, for those too young to remember, was a felon who, while on a weekend furlough from prison in Massachusetts, committed a heinous crime in Maryland. It happened under Michael Dukakis' gubernatorial watch and in the final months of his 1988 White House bid the case was effectively used against him by his rivals.

With this year's race entering its final stretch -- and Barack Obama having staked out a solid lead in recent polling -- John McCain's campaign has sent out word it's really ready to play hard ball against Obama (and here we naively thought the game already had been rough).

Out of the gate, it looks like hammering home Obama's link to Ayers (at left) could be central to that strategy.

The matter first arose several months ago during the Democratic nomination battle, and the Obama campaign felt compelled to post a page on its Web site that depicted his association with Ayers as tenuous.

Today, in a front-page story, the New York Times took its crack at airing out the Ayers connection. Here's the key part of the piece:

A review of records ... and interviews with a dozen people who know both men, suggest that Mr. Obama, 47, has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, 63. But the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.”

Sarah Palin, campaigning in the Denver area, took that ball and ran with it.

The Times' Robin Abcarian relates that Palin, speaking at a fundraiser, used a wry reference to one of the well-publicized questions she faced recently from CBS' Katie Couric to broach the Ayers issue. Said the Republican vice presidential candidate:

There is a lot of interest, I guess, in what I read and what I’ve read lately. Well, I was reading my copy of today’s New York Times [audience boos] and I was interested to read about Barack’s friends from Chicago [audience cheers]. I get to bring this up not to pick a fight, but it was there in the New York Times, so were are gonna talk about it. Turns out one of Barack’s earliest supporters is a man who, according to the New York Times -- and they are hardly ever wrong [audience laughs] -- was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote: launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and US Capitol [end quote from story]. Wow. ...

Referring to Obama, she continued:

This is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America. We see America as the greatest force for good in this world. If we can be that beacon of light and hope for others who seek freedom and democracy and can live in a country that would allow intolerance in the equal rights that again our military men and women fight for and die for for all of us. Our opponent though, is someone who sees America it seems as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country?

Palin gave the Associated Press the obvious lead for its story : Obama accused by her ...

... of "palling around with terrorists" as part of a stepped-up effort to portray him "as unacceptable to American voters."

That effort can be expected to accelerate. And, most immediately, Ayers' name alomost assuredly will surface in Obama's faceoff with McCain in a town hall setting this Tuesday.

Just as assuredly, the Obama campaign can be expected to use every means at its disposal to keep the spotlight on the issue that seems to have turned the election its way: the nation's economic turmoil.

Indeed, here's how Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan handled the react to Palin's Colorado comments:

Gov. Palin’s comments, while offensive, are not surprising, given the McCain campaign’s statement this morning that they would be launching Swiftboat-like attacks in hopes of deflecting attention from the nation’s economic ills. In fact, the very newspaper story Gov. Palin cited in hurling her shameless attack made clear that Sen. Obama is not close to Bill Ayers, much less "pals," and that he has strongly condemned the despicable acts Ayers committed 40 years ago, when Obama was eight. What’s clear is that John McCain and Sarah Palin would rather spend their time tearing down Barack Obama than laying out a plan to build up our economy.

The N.Y. Times' story, by the way, quickly got hit from both the left and the right.

At Daily Kos, it was lambasted as a cave-in by the paper to the conservative critics who never tire of carping about it.

At the National Review's site, it's dismissed as a whitewash job that serves Obama's purposes.

-- Don Frederick

Photo credit: Associated Press

Five words you DON'T want to hear and Five words you DO want to hear

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 15:18:55 EDT

After reading this story, I've become convinced that in a bad economy, the last or worst five words you want to hear is "Buddy, you're on your own" and the five words you best want to hear is "Buddy, I got your back!" When you lose a job like Jim Piccillo, those worst five will scare you, piss you off or both and those best five will reassure you. It's something that the "ownership society" Republicans may want to think about.

October 4, 2008

StatesideIn Florida’s Economic Pain, Obama Gains Ground

By DAMIEN CAVE

NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla. — Jim Piccillo lost his job as a bank vice president in August, applied for food stamps to support his two young daughters and swore off a life of loyalty to the Republican Party. He now volunteers here in Pasco County for Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.

Madeline Aquanno’s change of heart came more recently. Two weeks ago, she said, she had planned to vote for Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Republican, who impressed her with his knowledge of the world. But as the economy began to scare her more than terrorism, she reconsidered.

“Obama is more for the people,” she said, near the pool at her middle-class retirement community in Broward County. “I’m worried about the jobs that are being lost, for my son, my daughter, my granddaughter. You have to look down the line.”

Here in a swing state of severe economic hurt — a leader in foreclosures where empty offices now litter strip malls — there are signs that Mr. Obama is gaining ground. In interviews and surveys, voters across Florida said the debate in Washington over how to fix the credit crisis had fueled frustration with the Bush administration and pushed them away from the Republican ticket.

The four most recent polls from late September put Mr. Obama ahead of Mr. McCain by three to eight percentage points, a sharp swing from the previous six weeks, when Mr. McCain led by as much as 10 points.

Also in Mr. Obama’s favor, Florida as of August had 498,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans, up from an advantage of 373,000 four years ago.

And yet, this state has a history of defying electoral math, and the challenge for Mr. Obama remains profound. For one thing, Florida’s population is older than average, a demographic that tends to favor Mr. McCain.

Meanwhile, the schisms of race, sex and class opened by the bitter Democratic primary contest between Mr. Obama and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York have not fully healed. Many older Democrats quietly admit they will not vote for Mr. Obama because they fear he would put too many blacks in power, or be hamstrung in office by racial opposition.

Add to the mix a new voting system that lost 3,000 votes in a local election this summer, rumors that new laws to prevent voter fraud will lead to long lines or legal battles, and Mr. McCain’s surprise pick of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate, and the Sunshine State starts to look cloudy.

That is why, many analysts say, both campaigns are focusing on the ground game that they believe they can control.

“The battle in Florida comes down to one word,” said Susan MacManus, a political scientist at the University of South Florida who served on the Florida Elections Commission under Gov. Jeb Bush. “And that’s ‘turnout.’ ”

The Obama campaign is trying to bring out young voters and African-Americans, historically an unpredictable bunch when it comes to voting, while also peeling off former Bush supporters in Republican areas.

It now has 350 paid staffers in Florida, a budget of at least $39 million and more than 50 offices everywhere from heavily Republican Pensacola to the Democratic stronghold of Fort Lauderdale.

Mike DuHaime, Mr. McCain’s national political director, acknowledged that the McCain budget was smaller (he did not give a dollar amount), though it is expected to grow now that the campaign has pulled out of Michigan. Mr. DuHaime also said it was clear that the Democrats were “trying to emulate what Republicans have done” by contesting areas where they had little hope of winning.

Still, he said he was confident of victory because with the help of the state’s Republican Party, “what we have is a team in Florida that has done this before.”

Pasco County is just one place where the Republicans’ experience is running up against the Democrats’ new arrivals. It was here, among the rural areas and exurbs north of Tampa, where President Bush ran up the big margins that helped push him to victory in 2004. Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee that year, did not open an office in the county, making the Obama outpost here in New Port Richey a novelty.

The handful of paid organizers in their 20s have been a welcome sight for Democrats like Dan Callaghan, 66, a retired English teacher whose son is serving his fourth tour in Iraq. The goal, Obama advisers say, is to use these local supporters to influence their Republican neighbors and turn out more Democrats, who make up about 37 percent of the county rolls.

It will not be easy. Of the 16 people Mr. Callaghan encountered during a recent canvassing trip, only four said they would vote for Mr. Obama. Of the rest, two people said they were McCain supporters, seven were undecided and three did not intend to vote.

Anecdotally, though, Mr. Obama seems to have made some headway. At Christina’s, a family restaurant in downtown New Port Richey, the red leather stools at the counter held both Republicans tried-and-true, and Republicans, like Chris Hart, 48, who had begun to sour on Mr. McCain.

“Every time you turn around, he flips,” Mr. Hart said. A front-desk clerk at a local Y.M.C.A, he said he was also motivated by his need for health insurance, which had recently forced him to buy antibiotics at pet stores because it was cheaper than the pharmacy.

While not sure that Democrats could get him the coverage he needed, Mr. Hart said he wished Mr. McCain focused more consistently on the issue. “I was in the Navy, in aviation like John McCain, so I feel like I’m getting punched by one of my own,” Mr. Hart said.

For Mr. Piccillo, 34, skepticism arrived with the Republican convention. After voting twice for George W. Bush, he said he was especially turned off when Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, mocked Mr. Obama’s early work as a community organizer.

“Those are the people I’m looking to for help,” said Mr. Piccillo, a former mortgage banker who said he had sent out 1,500 résumés without finding a job.

There are, of course, enthusiastic McCain fans in Pasco County, perhaps none more so than Bill Bunting, chairman of the county’s Republican Party. Mr. Bunting said he had opened four offices this year, up from two in 2004, to compete with the Obama campaign’s one.

Inside his headquarters, the walls are covered with photographs of Republican leaders, including Gov. Charlie Crist — a sign of the party’s local dominance, and one reason Mr. Bunting is confident he can get far more people to the polls.

Outside, taped to the door, is another hint at why Republicans think they can win: a picture of Ms. Palin firing a gun below the Obama catchphrase “change we can believe in.”

Mr. Bunting and other party officials said Ms. Palin had electrified the race. In Tampa, the day Mr. McCain announced that she would be his vice-presidential pick, 20 women showed up to volunteer at the campaign’s local headquarters, said Greg Truax, the office’s campaign director. In Pasco County, 95 new people appeared.

“Every one of them said they were motivated by Palin,” Mr. Bunting said.

Less clear is whether that motivation can be sustained. Polls have shown support for Ms. Palin dwindling, and the McCain-Palin offices in Tampa, Pasco County and Broward County all seemed emptier than Mr. Obama’s during several visits over the last two weeks.

Ms. Palin seems mainly to have crystallized partisan divisions. In Pasco County and in South Florida’s strip malls and gated communities, Republicans like Dennis Colado, 50, a chemical salesman, said they found her refreshing.

But others shared the view of Sherry Kruta, a Democrat and former Clinton supporter from Highland Beach who only a month ago said she might vote for Mr. McCain. “The thought of her maybe being the president scares me to death,” Ms. Kruta said.

Fear, in fact — of Mr. Obama or Ms. Palin — seems to be widespread. At Wynmoor Village, the retirement community in Coconut Creek where Ms. Aquanno said she was leaning away from Mr. McCain because his snap judgments made him seem “more like Bush,” others said they were afraid of what an Obama administration might mean.

Some older residents, in whispers over lunch, said they worried that African-Americans like the Rev. Jesse Jackson would be given too much power in an Obama administration.

Gertrude Weinberg, 91, head of the Wynmoor Democratic Club, said such views were common. “They’re not looking at the man as a whole,” Ms. Weinberg said. “They’re looking at color.”

At the same time, the Obama campaign has made blacks, who supported Mr. Obama by as much as nine to one in the primaries, an important component of its Florida strategy.

On Sunday, the rapper Jay-Z is to hold a free concert in Miami where organizers are asking Obama supporters to bring friends who are not yet registered to vote.

The campaign has also recruited owners of 50 to 60 barber shops in South Florida, giving them voter registration forms to pass along to their patrons.

Steve Schale, Mr. Obama’s Florida campaign manager, said the results statewide had been encouraging. “We have 600,000 African-American voters who are registered to vote who did not vote in 2004,” Mr. Schale said.

Victory, though, most advisers and analysts agree, will be determined by whether Mr. Obama’s supporters vote in the same proportions as Republicans.

Over the last few weeks, the Obama campaign has been battling false rumors that the state’s so-called “no match no vote law” will keep people from casting ballots if the address on their driver’s license does not match the address on the voting rolls. (Just the name and license number need to match, state election officials say.)

Campaign volunteers were encouraging people to vote absentee or early to avoid problems. Some supporters were even arranging with as many as a dozen friends to drive older, poorer or disabled Democrats to the polls on Election Day.

It is exactly the kind of thing that Florida Republicans have used to get out the vote and win.

John McCain, hate to tell ya this, but

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 17:38:47 EDT

YOU'RE RICH BEEYACH! (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/02/mccain-says-im-not-a-rich_n_131225.html)

Top Secret meeting by FL Repugs to stop Obama's advance in state polls

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 17:29:39 EDT

Uh-oh! Here come the FL fixers:

Obama passes McCain in polls

By Alex Leary, Jennifer Liberto and Steve Bousquet, Times staff writers

Published Wednesday, October 1, 2008 11:24 PM

TALLAHASSEE — Florida Republican leaders hastily convened a top secret meeting this week to grapple with Sen. John McCain's sagging performance in this must-win state.

Their fears were confirmed Wednesday when four new polls showed Sen. Barack Obama leading, a reversal from just a few weeks ago when McCain was opening up an advantage.

The polls come amid a cascade of bad news about the economy, an issue that McCain has struggled with in recent days.

With some grass roots organizers complaining about coordination problems with the campaign, Republican Party chairman Jim Greer gathered top officials at the state headquarters in Tallahassee on Tuesday afternoon. He swore the group to secrecy.

When asked about it by the St. Petersburg Times, Greer confirmed the meeting. He largely declined to discuss what was said, but sought to play down any strife.

Over the course of an hour, described by some as tense, Greer offered a forceful assessment of where McCain stands in Florida and what needs to be done to win in a battleground state that could decide the election.

"I have a responsibility to make sure things are done right, and we win these campaigns," Greer said. "I'm sure everyone in the room understands that I take that responsibility very seriously."

One of the concerns has been the relationship between grass roots volunteers across the state and far fewer paid campaign staffers. Complaints range from not getting yard signs quickly enough to knowing who will speak at events and overall manpower coordination.

"The biggest challenge is communication," said state Rep. Ellyn Bogdanoff, R-Fort Lauderdale, who is involved in the campaign but was not at the meeting. She said the Broward County effort is running smoothly but that her overall impression is that state campaign officials are somewhat limited due to national directives.

This friction and fretting goes on all the time in stressful campaigns, and especially when one side's candidate has hit a rough patch, as McCain has. Buzz Jacobs, the campaign's Southeast regional director, who sat in on the meeting, denied any tension and declined comment.

McCain supporter and former Republican Party of Florida chairman Tom Slade said he's been hearing rumblings over the past few weeks that the campaign is not fully utilizing volunteers, though he said that was not the case in Jacksonville.

"I get the sense that on the statewide basis, the grass roots Republicans don't quite feel like they have a natural fit within the McCain organization," Slade said.

The four polls released Wednesday show Obama leading, and for the first time, he has broken the 50 percent approval mark in the biggest battleground state.

What's more, a rolling average of Florida polls shows Obama ahead, albeit barely, for the first time.

• Quinnipiac: Obama leads 51-43.

• InsiderAdvantage/Poll Position: Obama leads 49-46.

• CNN/Time magazine: Obama leads 51-47.

• Suffolk University showed Obama leading 46-42.

• Real Clear Politics average of all Florida polls: Obama up by 3 percentage points.

"The Wall Street meltdown has been a dagger to McCain's political heart," said Peter Brown of the independent Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, who also cited a softening in enthusiasm for McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

The Quinnipiac poll, with 5 percent undecided and 1 percent saying they would vote for another candidate, involved 836 likely voters and had a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points. It was conducted Sept. 27-29, after last week's debate, which focused heavily on the economy.

The McCain campaign dismissed the poll findings.

"Between now and Nov. 4th there will be numerous polls, but the only one that matters will be the last one on election night," spokesman Mario Diaz said.

Palin remains a big draw, and the McCain campaign plans to bring her to Clearwater and Fort Myers on Monday, and Jacksonville and Pensacola on Tuesday.

The participants in the Greer meeting included McCain's top Florida staffer, Arlene DiBenigno, as well as RNC staffers by phone from Washington.

Greer, whose hands-on approach has sometimes come across to fellow Republicans as too controlling, has spent the past two years, along with Gov. Charlie Crist, making inroads in the African-American and Hispanic communities. Greer said he wanted to make sure the campaign is adequately tapping those resources, along with state party staffers he has made available. The McCain campaign is housed in the state headquarters.

"It was just to ensure the ship is on its proper course as it relates to working with local party leaders and the grass roots volunteers," Greer said of the meeting. "I felt confident that the campaign is doing that."

Sarah, the issues matter

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 17:14:03 EDT

Just posting this story folks . . . Ah what the heck, it's time for Joe Biden to layeth the smackdown on this "The issues and details don't matter, non-answering excuse of a politcian" Sarah Palin:

The Huffington Post

October 2, 2008

Sam Stein

stein@huffingtonpost.com

McCain Camp's Pre-Debate Spin: Palin Doesn't Need To Pass IQ Test

October 2, 2008 03:36 PM

Listening to surrogates and aides to John McCain on Thursday, one is left with the impression that there is no great need for Gov. Sarah Palin to actually answer questions during tonight's vice presidential debate.

Indeed, the spin coming from McCain surrogates and strategists is that all Palin has to do is pass a sort of artificial personality test, in which she strikes an emotional thread with the average voter -- question, answers, or intellectual capacity be damned.

Such were the talking points mere hours before the debate in St. Louis, which peaked with Sen. Joe Lieberman - a man not unaccustomed to the pressures of such a forum - actually proclaiming that Palin's relative ignorance helped her relate to "regular people."

"She's not lived in the world of Washington, so she doesn't know every detail of all the questions senators deal with," Lieberman told NBC's Andrea Mitchell. "But, frankly, that's her strength. I think that's why a lot of regular people out across America think she's going to be their voice."

Mitchell interjected, "Senator, she wants to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. You know, that doesn't mean just being an average mom, it means bringing other skills."

But Lieberman stayed on the point, stating later, "I think tonight is not a kind of final college exam. I think the point is who is she as a person... Whether she can answer every detailed question, I don't think that ultimately matters to the American people so long as they think she passes those other personal thresholds."

It was the ultimate setting of expectations -- a political get-out-of-jail-free card should Palin stumble this evening. And it wasn't an isolated incident. Over on Fox News, Chris Wallace was relaying a conversation with a McCain "strategist" in which the metrics for debate success were once again defined in strictly personal terms.

"They say they want to show that she is plain spoken, that she relates to Joe Six-Pack and embrace the contrast her to a smooth-talking Washington insider like Joe Biden," Wallace reported. "I said: 'But what if she does not know some of the answer to something?' They said, 'Look, she should not be embarrassed by that. She should say 'I'm not a Washington insider. I'm going to learn about that but I was a reformer in Alaska and I shook things up.'"

Earlier in the day on Fox News, McCain aide Meg Stapleton was also playing up Palin's "Joe Six-Pack" attributes, even arguing that Palin's "experience as an ordinary American" qualified her to be "one heartbeat away" from the Oval Office... "god forbid."

"So if it's the economic crisis, she can certainly speak to the fact that she carries a mortgage. She's got kids ready to go to college, she has a son who is also heading off to the military. So from a military perspective, she is engaged just like any ordinary American. So if she is one heartbeat away, as she is one heartbeat away as a vice presidential candidate, and she assumes the presidency, god forbid -- in terms of John McCain, I don't wish ill, but as your question points -- if she becomes president of the United States, she is ready, and that is because she has the experience of an ordinary American who can get in there and knows what is on people's minds and what people need."

My Resonse to Lakeysha's comments

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 23:13:47 EDT

I'm sorry to respond so late, but I felt my reply should be shared: This is in response to a previous blog entry about Sarah Palin's debating skills (http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/geraldshields/gGxjs4/commentary#comment-gGZWcv):

That maybe true, but outside of a university or college, most folks can't decipher the details and statistics of a particular issue. Palin's strength is she can play to that weakness that most of us have. She may the first politician I've seen since George W. Bush that doesn't seem to be interested in the details of the issue, who glosses over them as if they don't matter.

Perhaps that's why she's doing so badly in interviews and why she's avoiding them. In interviews, you are forced to answer tough questions in the most specific detail possible and if those answers aren't accurate, then more questions get asked or they must elaborate further by providing details. Palin can't do that because deep down she thinks it doesn't matter.

In the Alaska Governor debate clip, Andrew Hacro (hoped I spelled his name right) could've won that debate. He was smooth and he knew his stuff, but compared to Palin's "Folksy Charm and Gloss" style, it didn't matter. It's Populism over Substance. That's what Biden will be fighting tommorrow.

What it's like to debate Sarah Palin

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 10:04:32 EDT

Good Luck Sen. Biden . . . you going to need it:

What it's like to debate Sarah Palin
I know firsthand: She's a master of the nonanswer.

By Andrew Halcro

from the October 1, 2008 edition

Anchorage, Alaska - When he faces off against Sarah Palin Thursday night, Joe Biden will have his hands full.

I should know. I've debated Governor Palin more than two dozen times. And she's a master, not of facts, figures, or insightful policy recommendations, but at the fine art of the nonanswer, the glittering generality. Against such charms there is little Senator Biden, or anyone, can do.

On paper, of course, the debate appears to be a mismatch.

In 2000, Palin was the mayor of an Alaskan town of 5,500 people, while Biden was serving his 28th year as a United States senator. Her major public policy concern was building a local ice rink and sports center. His major public policy concern was the State Department's decision to grant an export license to allow sales of heavy-lift helicopters to Turkey, during tense UN-sponsored Cyprus peace talks.

On paper, the difference in experience on both domestic and foreign policy is like the difference between shooting a bullet and throwing a bullet. Unfortunately for Biden, if recent history is an indicator, experience or a grasp of the issues won't matter when it comes to debating Palin.

On April 17, 2006, Palin and I participated in a debate at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks on agriculture issues. The next day, the Fairbanks Daily News Miner published this excerpt:

"Andrew Halcro, a declared independent candidate from Anchorage, came armed with statistics on agricultural productivity. Sarah Palin, a Republican from Wasilla, said the Matanuska Valley provides a positive example for other communities interested in agriculture to study."

On April 18, 2006, Palin and I sat together in a hotel coffee shop comparing campaign trail notes. As we talked about the debates, Palin made a comment that highlights the phenomenon that Biden is up against.

"Andrew, I watch you at these debates with no notes, no papers, and yet when asked questions, you spout off facts, figures, and policies, and I'm amazed. But then I look out into the audience and I ask myself, 'Does any of this really matter?' " Palin said.

While policy wonks such as Biden might cringe, it seemed to me that Palin was simply vocalizing her strength without realizing it. During the campaign, Palin's knowledge on public policy issues never matured – because it didn't have to. Her ability to fill the debate halls with her presence and her gift of the glittering generality made it possible for her to rely on populism instead of policy.

Palin is a master of the nonanswer. She can turn a 60-second response to a query about her specific solutions to healthcare challenges into a folksy story about how she's met people on the campaign trail who face healthcare challenges. All without uttering a word about her public-policy solutions to healthcare challenges.

In one debate, a moderator asked the candidates to name a bill the legislature had recently passed that we didn't like. I named one. Democratic candidate Tony Knowles named one. But Sarah Palin instead used her allotted time to criticize the incumbent governor, Frank Murkowski. Asked to name a bill we did like, the same pattern emerged: Palin didn't name a bill.

And when she does answer the actual question asked, she has a canny ability to connect with the audience on a personal level. For example, asked to name a major issue that had been ignored during the campaign, I discussed the health of local communities, Mr. Knowles talked about affordable healthcare, and Palin talked about ... the need to protect hunting and fishing rights.

So what does that mean for Biden? With shorter question-and-answer times and limited interaction between the two, he should simply ignore Palin in a respectful manner on the stage and answer the questions as though he were alone. Any attempt to flex his public-policy knowledge and show Palin is not ready for prime time will inevitably cast him in the role of the bully.

On the other side of the stage, if Palin is to be successful, she needs to do what she does best: fill the room with her presence and stick to the scripted sound bites.

• Andrew Halcro served two terms as a Republican member of the Alaska State House of Representatives. He ran for governor as an Independent in 2006, debating Sarah Palin more than two dozen times. He blogs at www.andrewhalcro.com .

Fannie and Freddie Get Flatter

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 23:36:54 EDT

As I read this article, said to myself "This is bad?!" Given what's happened in the past two weeks, I say "Big Government is back with a vengance!:

SEPTEMBER 27, 2008

Fannie and Freddie Get Flatter

By JAMES R. HAGERTY

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are rapidly stripping out management costs and acting more like government agencies than the shareholder-driven financial companies they used to be.

Three weeks after the mortgage companies' regulator seized control of them, Freddie Mac announced Friday the departure of three senior executives: Patricia Cook, chief business officer; Buddy Piszel, chief financial officer; and Timothy J. McBride, a senior lobbyist.

Bloomberg News/Landov

The chief executive officers of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are currently in the middle of a major reorganization.

Ms. Cook's post was eliminated as part of a reorganization under which the heads of business lines will report directly to David Moffett, the chief executive officer installed three weeks ago by the regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, or FHFA. Mr. McBride's job vanished because the regulator has told Fannie and Freddie to cease all lobbying. Freddie said it will search for a new CFO to succeed Mr. Piszel.

The shakeup comes a week after similar moves were announced at Fannie as part of what its new CEO, Herbert Allison, described as a shift to a "flatter" management structure.

Employees and managers of Fannie and Freddie are waiting nervously to hear within the next couple of weeks which of them will be awarded cash "retention" payments. The amounts paid will vary based on employees' performance and "criticality to the company," Fannie disclosed in a recent securities filing. Some employees will receive no retention award while others will get as much as 150% of the amount that had been targeted for their annual bonuses under the former pay system, Fannie said.

Fannie and Freddie are the main providers of funding for U.S. home mortgages. The regulator grabbed control of them under a legal process known as conservatorship, citing the risk that losses stemming from mortgage defaults would gobble up their capital and prevent them from raising new money. The Treasury has acquired preferred stock in Fannie and Freddie and promised to provide capital if needed.

The regulator is deeply involved in decision-making at the companies, including how much they should spend to purchase mortgages and related securities in their efforts to push down interest rates on home loans, according to people familiar with the situation. As a result, these people say, the chief executives are effectively serving as chief operating officers, carrying out policies set by the regulator.

Morale is low or even "funereal," according to some people who speak regularly with employees of the companies. Working for a federal agency, with tight constraints on pay and policy-making, "is not the gig they signed up for," says an employee who resigned recently. Among those most likely to bolt are accountants and computer experts whose services are in high demand outside the depressed mortgage business.

The regulator and senior executives are trying to determine within a few weeks to what extent Fannie and Freddie can reduce fees they added over the past year to protect against the growing risks of lending at a time when house prices are falling swiftly in much of the country.

In a congressional hearing Thursday, Fannie's Mr. Allison said: "The taxpayers are, in effect, indirectly equity holders, and we have to keep their interests in mind." The desire to boost the housing market has to be weighed against the risks of heavier default losses that might be paid by taxpayers if the Treasury is forced to pump in large amounts of capital.

Fannie and Freddie may be operated by the regulator for years. Eventually, though, Congress will have to decide whether to transform them into true government agencies or adopt some other structure. In the past, they were often described as "quasi-government entities," with private shareholders but a public mission of supporting housing. That left ambiguity over the extent to which the government would have to bail them out in a crisis.

Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat who was long a supporter of Fannie and Freddie, said during a House Financial Services Committee hearing Thursday that Congress will have to think carefully about how to structure them in the future. "Clearly, the word 'quasi' is an adjective that should probably not be applicable to the new structure," she added.

Write to James R. Hagerty at bob.hagerty@wsj.com

McCain and Team Have Many Ties to Gambling Industry

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 21:27:59 EDT

I won't lie to you: I hate gamblers. I frown when my mom does the lottery! It amazes me when folks spend their hard earned money on chance and weak statistics, not on tangible stuff to try to get more money. Wall Street is in trouble now partly because it gambled on risky homeowners. We don't need a gambler in the White House:

September 28, 2008

McCain and Team Have Many Ties to Gambling Industry

By JO BECKER and DON VAN NATTA Jr.

Senator John McCain was on a roll. In a room reserved for high-stakes gamblers at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, he tossed $100 chips around a hot craps table. When the marathon session ended around 2:30 a.m., the Arizona senator and his entourage emerged with thousands of dollars in winnings.

A lifelong gambler, Mr. McCain takes risks, both on and off the craps table. He was throwing dice that night not long after his failed 2000 presidential bid, in which he was skewered by the Republican Party’s evangelical base, opponents of gambling. Mr. McCain was betting at a casino he oversaw as a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, and he was doing so with the lobbyist who represents that casino, according to three associates of Mr. McCain.

The visit had been arranged by the lobbyist, Scott Reed, who works for the Mashantucket Pequot, a tribe that has contributed heavily to Mr. McCain’s campaigns and built Foxwoods into the world’s second-largest casino. Joining them was Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s current campaign manager. Their night of good fortune epitomized not just Mr. McCain’s affection for gambling, but also the close relationship he has built with the gambling industry and its lobbyists during his 25-year career in Congress.

As a two-time chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, Mr. McCain has done more than any other member of Congress to shape the laws governing America’s casinos, helping to transform the once-sleepy Indian gambling business into a $26-billion-a-year behemoth with 423 casinos across the country. He has won praise as a champion of economic development and self-governance on reservations.

“One of the founding fathers of Indian gaming” is what Steven Light, a University of North Dakota professor and a leading Indian gambling expert, called Mr. McCain.

As factions of the ferociously competitive gambling industry have vied for an edge, they have found it advantageous to cultivate a relationship with Mr. McCain or hire someone who has one, according to an examination based on more than 70 interviews and thousands of pages of documents.

Mr. McCain portrays himself as a Washington maverick unswayed by special interests, referring recently to lobbyists as “birds of prey.” Yet in his current campaign, more than 40 fund-raisers and top advisers have lobbied or worked for an array of gambling interests — including tribal and Las Vegas casinos, lottery companies and online poker purveyors.

When rules being considered by Congress threatened a California tribe’s planned casino in 2005, Mr. McCain helped spare the tribe. Its lobbyist, who had no prior experience in the gambling industry, had a nearly 20-year friendship with Mr. McCain.

In Connecticut that year, when a tribe was looking to open the state’s third casino, staff members on the Indian Affairs Committee provided guidance to lobbyists representing those fighting the casino, e-mail messages and interviews show. The proposed casino, which would have cut into the Pequots’ market share, was opposed by Mr. McCain’s colleagues in Connecticut.

Mr. McCain declined to be interviewed. In written answers to questions, his campaign staff said he was “justifiably proud” of his record on regulating Indian gambling. “Senator McCain has taken positions on policy issues because he believed they are in the public interest,” the campaign said.

Mr. McCain’s spokesman, Tucker Bounds, would not discuss the senator’s night of gambling at Foxwoods, saying: “Your paper has repeatedly attempted to insinuate impropriety on the part of Senator McCain where none exists — and it reveals that your publication is desperately willing to gamble away what little credibility it still has.”

Over his career, Mr. McCain has taken on special interests, like big tobacco, and angered the capital’s powerbrokers by promoting campaign finance reform and pushing to limit gifts that lobbyists can shower on lawmakers. On occasion, he has crossed the gambling industry on issues like regulating slot machines.

Perhaps no episode burnished Mr. McCain’s image as a reformer more than his stewardship three years ago of the Congressional investigation into Jack Abramoff, the disgraced Republican Indian gambling lobbyist who became a national symbol of the pay-to-play culture in Washington. The senator’s leadership during the scandal set the stage for the most sweeping overhaul of lobbying laws since Watergate.

“I’ve fought lobbyists who stole from Indian tribes,” the senator said in his speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination this month.

But interviews and records show that lobbyists and political operatives in Mr. McCain’s inner circle played a behind-the-scenes role in bringing Mr. Abramoff’s misdeeds to Mr. McCain’s attention — and then cashed in on the resulting investigation. The senator’s longtime chief political strategist, for example, was paid $100,000 over four months as a consultant to one tribe caught up in the inquiry, records show.

Mr. McCain’s campaign said the senator acted solely to protect American Indians, even though the inquiry posed “grave risk to his political interests.”

As public opposition to tribal casinos has grown in recent years, Mr. McCain has distanced himself from Indian gambling, Congressional and American Indian officials said.

But he has rarely wavered in his loyalty to Las Vegas, where he counts casino executives among his close friends and most prolific fund-raisers. “Beyond just his support for gaming, Nevada supports John McCain because he’s one of us, a Westerner at heart,” said Sig Rogich, a Nevada Republican kingmaker who raised nearly $2 million for Mr. McCain at an event at his home in June.

Only six members of Congress have received more money from the gambling industry than Mr. McCain, and five hail from the casino hubs of Nevada and New Jersey, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics dating back to 1989. In the presidential race, Senator Barack Obama has also received money from the industry; Mr. McCain has raised almost twice as much.

In May 2007, as Mr. McCain’s presidential bid was floundering, he spent a weekend at the MGM Grand on the Las Vegas strip. A fund-raiser hosted by J. Terrence Lanni, the casino’s top executive and a longtime friend of the senator, raised $400,000 for his campaign. Afterward, Mr. McCain attended a boxing match and hit the craps tables.

For much of his adult life, Mr. McCain has gambled as often as once a month, friends and associates said, traveling to Las Vegas for weekend betting marathons. Former senior campaign officials said they worried about Mr. McCain’s patronage of casinos, given the power he wields over the industry. The officials, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity.

“We were always concerned about appearances,” one former official said. “If you go around saying that appearances matter, then they matter.”

The former official said he would tell Mr. McCain: “Do we really have to go to a casino? I don’t think it’s a good idea. The base doesn’t like it. It doesn’t look good. And good things don’t happen in casinos at midnight.”

“You worry too much,” Mr. McCain would respond, the official said.

A Record of Support

In one of their last conversations, Representative Morris K. Udall, Arizona’s powerful Democrat, whose devotion to American Indian causes was legendary, implored his friend Mr. McCain to carry on his legacy.

“Don’t forget the Indians,” Mr. Udall, who died in 1998, told Mr. McCain in a directive that the senator has recounted to others.

More than a decade earlier, Mr. Udall had persuaded Mr. McCain to join the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. Mr. McCain, whose home state has the third-highest Indian population, eloquently decried the “grinding poverty” that gripped many reservations.

The two men helped write the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 after the Supreme Court found that states had virtually no right to control wagering on reservations. The legislation provided a framework for the oversight and growth of Indian casinos: In 1988, Indian gambling represented less than 1 percent of the nation’s gambling revenues; today it captures more than one third.

On the Senate floor after the bill’s passage, Mr. McCain said he personally opposed Indian gambling, but when impoverished communities “are faced with only one option for economic development, and that is to set up gambling on their reservations, then I cannot disapprove.”

In 1994, Mr. McCain pushed an amendment that enabled dozens of additional tribes to win federal recognition and open casinos. And in 1998, Mr. McCain fought a Senate effort to rein in the boom.

He also voted twice in the last decade to give casinos tax breaks estimated to cost the government more than $326 million over a dozen years.

The first tax break benefited the industry in Las Vegas, one of a number of ways Mr. McCain has helped nontribal casinos. Mr. Lanni, the MGM Mirage chief executive, said that an unsuccessful bid by the senator to ban wagering on college sports in Nevada was the only time he could recall Mr. McCain opposing Las Vegas. “I can’t think of any other issue,” Mr. Lanni said.

The second tax break helped tribal casinos like Foxwoods and was pushed by Scott Reed, the Pequots’ lobbyist.

Mr. McCain had gotten to know Mr. Reed during Senator Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign, which Mr. Reed managed. Four years later, when Mr. McCain ran for president, Mr. Reed recommended he hire his close friend and protégé, Rick Davis, to manage that campaign.

During his 2000 primary race against George W. Bush, Mr. McCain promoted his record of helping Indian Country, telling reporters on a campaign swing that he had provided critical support to “the Pequot, now the proud owners of the largest casino in the world.”

But Mr. McCain’s record on Indian gambling was fast becoming a difficult issue for him in the primary. Bush supporters like Gov. John Engler of Michigan lambasted Mr. McCain for his “close ties to Indian gambling.”

A decade after Mr. McCain co-authored the Indian gambling act, the political tides had turned. Tribal casinos, which were growing at a blazing pace, had become increasingly unpopular around the country for reasons as varied as morality and traffic.

Then came the biggest lobbying scandal to shake Washington.

Behind an Inquiry

At a September 2004 hearing of the Indian Affairs Committee, Mr. McCain described Jack Abramoff as one of the most brazen in a long line of crooks to cheat American Indians. “It began with the sale of Manhattan, and has continued ever since,” he said. “What sets this tale apart, what makes it truly extraordinary, is the extent and degree of the apparent exploitation and deceit.”

Over the next two years, Mr. McCain helped uncover a breathtaking lobbying scandal — Mr. Abramoff and a partner bilked six tribes of $66 million — that showcased the senator’s willingness to risk the wrath of his own party to expose wrongdoing. But interviews and documents show that Mr. McCain and a circle of allies — lobbyists, lawyers and senior strategists — also seized on the case for its opportunities.

For McCain-connected lobbyists who were rivals of Mr. Abramoff, the scandal presented a chance to crush a competitor. For senior McCain advisers, the inquiry allowed them to collect fees from the very Indians that Mr. Abramoff had ripped off. And the investigation enabled Mr. McCain to confront political enemies who helped defeat him in his 2000 presidential run while polishing his maverick image.

The Abramoff saga started in early 2003 when members of two tribes began questioning Mr. Abramoff’s astronomical fees. Over the next year, they leaked information to local newspapers, but it took the hiring of lobbyists who were competitors of Mr. Abramoff to get the attention of Mr. McCain’s committee.

Bernie Sprague, who led the effort by one of the tribes, the Saginaw Chippewas in Michigan, hired a Democratic lobbyist who recommended that the tribe retain Scott Reed, the Republican lobbyist, to push for an investigation.

Mr. Reed had boasted to other lobbyists of his access to Mr. McCain, three close associates said. Mr. Reed “pretty much had open access to John from 2000 to at least the end of 2006,” one aide said.

Lobbyist disclosure forms show that Mr. Reed went to work for the Saginaw Chippewa on Feb. 15, 2004, charging the tribe $56,000 over a year. Mr. Abramoff had tried to steal the Pequots and another tribal client from Mr. Reed, and taking down Mr. Abramoff would eliminate a competitor.

Mr. Reed became the chief conduit to Mr. McCain’s committee for billing documents and other information Mr. Sprague was digging up on Mr. Abramoff, Mr. Sprague said, who said Mr. Reed “did a great to service to me.”

“He had contacts I did not,” Mr. Sprague said. “Initially, I think that the senator’s office was doing Reed a favor by listening to me.”

A few weeks after hiring Mr. Reed, Mr. Sprague received a letter from the senator. “We have met with Scott Reed, who was very helpful on the issue,” Mr. McCain wrote.

Information about Mr. Abramoff was also flowing to Mr. McCain’s committee from another tribe, the Coushatta of Louisiana. The source was a consultant named Roy Fletcher, who had been Mr. McCain’s deputy campaign manager in 2000, running his war room in South Carolina.

It was in that primary race that two of Mr. Abramoff’s closest associates, Grover Norquist, who runs the nonprofit Americans for Tax Reform, and Ralph Reed, the former director of the Christian Coalition, ran a blistering campaign questioning Mr. McCain’s conservative credentials. The senator and his advisers blamed that attack for Mr. McCain’s loss to Mr. Bush in South Carolina, creating tensions that would resurface in the Abramoff matter.

“I was interested in busting” Mr. Abramoff, said Mr. Fletcher, who was eventually hired to represent the tribe. “That was my job. But I was also filled with righteous indignation, I got to tell you.”

Mr. Fletcher said he began passing information to John Weaver, Mr. McCain’s chief political strategist, and other staff members in late 2003 or January 2004. Mr. Weaver confirmed the timing.

Mr. McCain announced his investigation on Feb. 26, 2004, citing an article on Mr. Abramoff in The Washington Post. He did not mention the action by lobbyists and tribes in the preceding weeks. His campaign said no one in his “innermost circle” brought information to Mr. McCain that prompted the investigation.

The senator declared he would not investigate members of Congress, whom Mr. Abramoff had lavished with tribal donations and golf outings to Scotland. But in the course of the investigation, the committee exposed Mr. Abramoff’s dealings with the two men who had helped defeat Mr. McCain in the 2000 primary.

The investigation showed that Mr. Norquist’s foundation was used by Mr. Abramoff to launder lobbying fees from tribes. Ralph Reed was found to have accepted $4 million to run bogus antigambling campaigns. And the investigation also highlighted Mr. Abramoff’s efforts to curry favor with the House majority leader at the time, Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas, a longtime political foe who had opposed many of Mr. McCain’s legislative priorities.

Mr. McCain’s campaign said the senator did not “single out” Ralph Reed or Mr. Norquist, neither of whom were ever charged, and that both men fell within the “scope of the investigation.” The inquiry, which led to guilty pleas by over a dozen individuals, was motivated by a desire to help aggrieved tribes, the campaign said.

Inside the investigation, the sense of schadenfreude was palpable, according to several people close to the senator. “It was like hitting pay dirt,” said one associate of Mr. McCain’s who had consulted with the senator’s office on the investigation. “And face it — McCain and Weaver were maniacal about Ralph Reed and Norquist. They were sticking little pins in dolls because those guys had cost him South Carolina.”

Down on the Coushattas reservation, bills related to the investigation kept coming. After firing Mr. Abramoff, the tribe hired Kent Hance, a lawyer and former Texas congressman who said he had been friends with Mr. McCain since the 1980s.

David Sickey, the tribe’s vice chairman, said he was “dumbfounded” over the bills submitted by Mr. Hance’s firm, Hance Scarborough, which had been hired by Mr. Sickey’s predecessors.

“The very thing we were fighting seemed to be happening all over again — these absurd amounts of money being paid,” Mr. Sickey said.

Mr. Hance’s firm billed the tribe nearly $1.3 million over 11 months in legal and political consulting fees, records show. But Mr. Sickey said that the billing statements offered only vague explanations for services and that he could not point to any tangible results. Two consultants, for instance, were paid to fight the expansion of gambling in Texas — even though it was unlikely given that the governor there opposed any such prospect, Mr. Sickey said.

Mr. Hance and Jay B. Stewart, the firm’s managing partner, defended their team’s work, saying they successfully steered the tribe through a difficult period. “We did an outstanding job for them,” Mr. Hance said. “When we told them our bill was going to be $100,000 a month, they thought we were cheap. Mr. Abramoff had charged them $1 million a month.”

The firm’s fees covered the services of Mr. Fletcher, who served as the tribe’s spokesman. Records also show that Mr. Hance had Mr. Weaver — who was serving as Mr. McCain’s chief strategist — put on the tribe’s payroll from February to May 2005.

It is not precisely clear what role Mr. Weaver played for his $100,000 fee.

Mr. Stewart said Mr. Weaver was hired because “he had a lot of experience with the Senate, especially the new chairman, John McCain.” The Hance firm told the tribe in a letter that Mr. Weaver was hired to provide “representation for the tribe before the U.S. Senate.”

But Mr. Weaver never registered to lobby on the issue, and he has another explanation for his work.

“The Hance law firm retained me to assist them and their client in developing an aggressive crisis management and communications strategy,” Mr. Weaver said. “At no point was I asked by Kent Hance or anyone associated with him to set up meetings with anyone in or outside of government to discuss this, and if asked I would have summarily declined to do so.”

In June 2005, the tribe informed Mr. Hance that his services were no longer needed.

Change in Tone

After the Abramoff scandal, Mr. McCain stopped taking campaign donations from tribes. Some American Indians were offended, especially since Mr. McCain continued to accept money from the tribes’ lobbyists.

Resentment in Indian Country mounted as Mr. McCain, who was preparing for another White House run, singled out the growth in tribal gambling as one of three national issues that were “out of control.” (The others were federal spending and illegal immigration.)

Franklin Ducheneaux, an aide to Morris Udall who helped draft the 1988 Indian gambling law, said that position ran contrary to Mr. McCain’s record. “What did he think? That Congress intended for the tribes to be only somewhat successful?” Mr. Ducheneaux said.

Mr. McCain began taking a broad look at whether the laws were sufficient to oversee the growing industry. His campaign said that the growth had put “considerable stress” on regulators and Mr. McCain held hearings on whether the federal government needed more oversight power.

An opportunity to restrain the industry came in the spring of 2005, when a small tribe in Connecticut set off a political battle. The group, the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation, had won federal recognition in 2004 after producing voluminous documentation tracing its roots.

The tribe wanted to build Connecticut’s third casino, which would compete with Foxwoods and another, the Mohegan Sun. Facing public opposition on the proposed casino, members of the Connecticut political establishment — many of whom had received large Pequot and Mohegan campaign donations — swung into action.

Connecticut officials claimed that a genealogical review by the Bureau of Indian Affairs was flawed, and that the Schaghticoke was not a tribe.

The tribe’s opponents, led by the Washington lobbying firm Barbour Griffith & Rogers, turned to Mr. McCain’s committee. It was a full-circle moment for the senator, who had helped the Pequots gain tribal recognition in the 1980s despite concerns about their legitimacy.

Now, Mr. McCain was doing a favor for allies in the Connecticut delegation, including Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, a close friend, according to two former Congressional aides. “It was one of those collegial deals,” said one of the aides, who worked for Mr. McCain.

Barbour Griffith & Rogers wanted Mr. McCain to hold a hearing that would show that the Bureau of Indian Affairs was “broken,” said Bradley A. Blakeman, who was a lobbyist for the firm at the time.

“It was our hope that the hearing would shed light on the fact that the bureau had not followed their rules and had improperly granted recognition to the Schaghticoke,” Mr. Blakeman said. “And that the bureau would revisit the issue and follow their rules.”

Mr. McCain’s staff helped that effort by offering strategic advice.

His staff told a lobbyist for the firm that the Indian Affairs Committee “would love to receive a letter” from the Connecticut governor requesting a hearing, according to an e-mail exchange, and offered “guidance on what the most effective tone and approach” would be in the letter.

On May 11, 2005, Mr. McCain held a hearing billed as a general “oversight hearing on federal recognition of Indian tribes.” But nearly all the witnesses were Schaghticoke opponents who portrayed the tribe as imposters.

Mr. McCain set the tone: “The role that gaming and its nontribal backers have played in the recognition process has increased perceptions that it is unfair, if not corrupt.”

Chief Richard F. Velky of the Schaghticokes found himself facing off against the governor and most of the state’s congressional delegation. “The deck was stacked against us,” Mr. Velky said. “They were given lots of time. I was given five minutes.”

He had always believed Mr. McCain “to be an honest and fair man,” Mr. Velky said, “but this didn’t make me feel that good.”

Mr. Velky said he felt worse when the e-mail messages between the tribe’s opponents and Mr. McCain’s staff surfaced in a federal lawsuit. “Is there a letter telling me how to address the senator to give me the best shot?” Mr. Velky asked. “No, there is not.”

After the hearing, Pablo E. Carrillo, who was Mr. McCain’s chief Abramoff investigator at the time, wrote to a Barbour Griffith & Rogers lobbyist, Brant Imperatore. “Your client’s side definitely got a good hearing record,” Mr. Carillo wrote, adding “you probably have a good sense” on where Mr. McCain “is headed on this.”

“Well done!” he added.

Cynthia Shaw, a Republican counsel to the committee from 2005 to 2007, said Mr. McCain made decisions based on merit, not special interests. “Everybody got a meeting who asked for one,” Ms. Shaw said, “whether you were represented by counsel or by a lobbyist — or regardless of which lobbyist.”

Mr. McCain’s campaign defended the senator’s handling of the Schaghticoke case, saying no staff member acted improperly. The campaign said the session was part of normal committee business and the notion that Mr. McCain was intending to help Congressional colleagues defeat the tribe was “absolutely false.”

It added that the senator’s commitment to Indian sovereignty “remains as strong as ever.”

Within months of the May 2005 hearing, the Bureau of Indian Affairs took the rare step of rescinding the Schaghticokes’ recognition. A federal court recently rejected the tribe’s claim that the reversal was politically motivated.

Making an Exception

That spring of 2005, as the Schaghticokes went down to defeat in the East, another tribe in the West squared off against Mr. McCain with its bid to construct a gambling emporium in California. The stakes were similar, but the outcome would be far different.

The tribe’s plan to build a casino on a former Navy base just outside San Francisco represented a trend rippling across the country: American Indians seeking to build casinos near population centers, far from their reservations.

The practice, known as “off-reservation shopping,” stemmed from the 1988 Indian gambling law, which included exceptions allowing some casinos to be built outside tribal lands. When Mr. McCain began his second stint as chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee three years ago, Las Vegas pressed him to revisit the exceptions he had helped create, according to Sig Rogich, the Republican fund-raiser from Nevada.

“We told him this off-reservation shopping had to stop,” Mr. Rogich said. “It was no secret that the gaming industry, as well as many potentially affected communities in other states, voiced opposition to the practice.”

In the spring of 2005, Mr. McCain announced he was planning a sweeping overhaul of Indian gambling laws, including limiting off-reservation casinos. His campaign said Las Vegas had nothing to do with it. In a 2005 interview with The Oregonian, Mr. McCain said that if Congress did not act, “soon every Indian tribe is going to have a casino in downtown, metropolitan areas.”

Prospects for the proposed California project did not look promising. Then the tribe, the Guidiville Band of Pomo Indians, hired a lobbyist based in Phoenix named Wes Gullett.

Mr. Gullett, who had never represented tribes before Congress, had known Mr. McCain since the early 1980s. Mr. Gullett met his wife while they were working in Mr. McCain’s Washington office. He subsequently managed Mr. McCain’s 1992 Senate campaign and served as a top aide to his 2000 presidential campaign. Their friendship went beyond politics. When Mr. McCain’s wife, Cindy, brought two infants in need of medical treatment back to Arizona from Bangladesh, the Gulletts adopted one baby and the McCains the other. The two men also liked to take weekend trips to Las Vegas.

Another of Mr. McCain’s close friends, former Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, was a major investor in the Guidivilles’ proposed casino. Mr. Cohen, who did not return calls, was best man at Mr. McCain’s 1980 wedding.

Scott Crowell, lawyer for the Guidivilles, said Mr. Gullett was hired to ensure that Mr. McCain’s overhaul of the Indian gambling laws did not harm the tribe.

Mr. Gullett said he never talked to Mr. McCain about the legislation. “If you are hired directly to lobby John McCain, you are not going to be effective,” he said. Mr. Gullett said he only helped prepare the testimony of the tribe’s administrator, Walter Gray, who was invited to plead his case before Mr. McCain’s committee in July 2005. Mr. Gullett said he advised Mr. Gray in a series of conference calls.

On disclosure forms filed with the Senate, however, Mr. Gullett stated that he was not hired until November, long after Mr. Gray’s testimony. Mr. Gullett said the late filing might have been “a mistake, but it was inadvertent.” Steve Hart, a former lawyer for the Guidivilles, backed up Mr. Gullett’s contention that he had guided Mr. Gray on his July testimony.

When asked whether Mr. Gullett had helped him, Mr. Gray responded, “I’ve never met the man and couldn’t tell you anything about him.”

On Nov. 18, 2005, when Mr. McCain introduced his promised legislation overhauling the Indian gambling law, he left largely intact a provision that the Guidivilles needed for their casino. Mr. McCain’s campaign declined to answer whether the senator spoke with Mr. Gullett or Mr. Cohen about the project. In the end, Mr. McCain’s bill died, largely because Indian gambling interests fought back. But the Department of Interior picked up where Mr. McCain left off, effectively doing through regulations what he had hoped to accomplish legislatively. Carl Artman, who served as the Interior Department’s assistant secretary of Indian Affairs until May, said Mr. McCain pushed him to rewrite the off-reservation rules. “It became one of my top priorities because Senator McCain made it clear it was one of his top priorities,” he said.

The new guidelines were issued on Jan. 4. As a result, the casino applications of 11 tribes were rejected. The Guidivilles were not among them.

Banks love bailout, hate credit card curbs

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:28:46 EDT

More and more reasons to diss the bailout:

Banks love bailout, hate credit card curbs

David Lazarus, Consumer Confidential
September 28, 2008

You've got to love the banking industry.

As our friends in the financial sector were passing the hat among taxpayers last week for $700 billion in bailouts to cover their crappy mortgage investments, they were simultaneously condemning the House of Representatives' passage of a "Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights," which aims to crack down on some of the industry's more troublesome practices.

The legislation -- HR 5244 -- would, among other things, end card issuers' self-proclaimed right to change interest rates at any time. Instead, a 45-day notice would be required for any increase.

It also would give cardholders more time to pay by requiring issuers to mail bills at least 25 days before the due date, as opposed to the current 14 days.

Similar measures are being considered by the Federal Reserve, the National Assn. of Credit Unions and the Office of Thrift Supervision. But they wouldn't carry the force of law and could be weakened by more industry-friendly regulators down the road.

The House bill still needs to be tackled by the Senate, and it's unclear what its chances are there. The Bush administration has signaled its opposition to the legislation.

"The timing of all this couldn't be more glaring," said Bill Hardekopf, chief exec of LowCards.com, a website that tracks credit card rates and trends. "While banks say they would be tanking without taxpayer money, here comes a bill that would help taxpayers, and the banks say it isn't right.

"I'm amazed that there's not more humility at a time like this."

Humility? The banking industry couldn't have been bolder in its opposition to the House bill. Within minutes of the 312-112 vote approving the legislation, American Bankers Assn. President Edward Yingling issued a statement denouncing the move.

He said the bill would "increase the cost of credit for consumers and small businesses across the country, result in less access to credit for consumers and businesses alike, and may further roil the securities markets -- all at a time when our economy can least afford it."

JPMorgan Chase & Co., which became the largest U.S. bank by deposits Thursday when it acquired much of Washington Mutual Inc., similarly wasted no time in blasting the House bill as the wrong medicine at the wrong time.

"In today's turbulent economic times, consumers deserve a careful and balanced approach when considering potential changes to consumer credit and the credit card industry," the bank said in a statement. "Consumers have benefited from a competitive marketplace that allows for pricing based upon risk."

The banks essentially are arguing that enactment of the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights would make plastic more expensive for consumers by preventing issuers from imposing higher rates on riskier customers, although the bill includes no such language.

"We are very concerned that this bill would significantly hinder our ability to price the risks of lending and would result in less credit being made available to creditworthy borrowers at the worst possible time, with generally higher prices for those who do receive credit," said Bank of America Corp. spokeswoman Betty Riess.

Nonsense.

"They're using the I'll-take-my-toys-and-go-home argument," said Linda Sherry, a spokeswoman for Consumer Action. "But that won't be the case. They'll keep fighting for our business."

She said banks would still be able to offer competitive terms for preferred customers. And for riskier customers, she said, banks could still raise rates or even do the unthinkable: turn them down for cards.

Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing. According to the Consumer Federation of America, the 50 million U.S. households that carry a credit card balance from month to month face an average debt load of $17,000.

With the economy going down the toilet and home foreclosures at record levels, I can think of more than a few families that would benefit from less plastic in their lives.

A Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights would level the playing field by protecting consumers from questionable late feesand sudden rate hikes, and requiring clear disclosure of terms and conditions.

That doesn't seem too much to ask of an industry that has no problem asking taxpayers to cover its bad bets.

Enjoy the bailout, boys. This isn't over yet.

Consumer Confidential runs Wednesdays and Sundays. Send your tips or feedback to david.lazarus@latimes.com.

But then again . . .

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:17:47 EDT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbQwAFobQxQ

And in case you missed it here's the text of the question and answer concerning the bailout:

COURIC: Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the—it's got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.

For those who Biden will "clean palin's clock" . . .

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 18:42:36 EDT

http://gregransom.com/prestopundit/2008/09/sarah-palin-debates-tony-knowl.html

Let me know what you think after checking this video clip out.

Good Debate, but . . .

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 18:16:06 EDT

It helps that McCain made several gaffes which the blogs quickly pounced on. Moreover most polls suggest that Obama won the debate and assured voters that his weakest point foreign policy isn't as weak as some may think. However, Sen. Obama's got to work on those quick, simple answers. I said it before: Senator, leave "Professor Obama at home! I think next up is the VP debate where if, judging from the now imfamous Katie Couric interview, Joe Biden should do well. Biden must:

1. Hype his running mate well

2. Diss Mrs. Palin's running mate as clearly out of touch with regular Americans and ill-suited to fix the economy.

3. Diss Mrs. Palin herself as an inexperienced, out of depth VP candidate (This maybe too easy a task given what I've seen so far ;) )

How is it . . .

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 06:48:35 EDT

That while the automotive industry bailout loan was approved by the House (http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/us-house-approves-25-billion/story.aspx?guid=%7B903404D5-A88C-4E2E-B716-88431801304C%7D&dist=hppr), but the "mutha" of all bailouts couldn't be agreed to? John McCain.

Sounds like a formula for a recession: Agreement for bailout + John McCain = dodo. Ah. leadership at it's most odorous!

President Bush: Please stop bailing out John McCain

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 16:54:13 EDT

Okay, let's be real: Congress has alreay agreed to a deal to bailout Wall Street. So why is President Bush "inviting" some of the members of congress to the White House?

Answer: To bailout John McCain.

Sometimes, I wish the late Sam Kinison was still alive if only to slam this latest B.S. by Bush & McCain.

Mimicking Kinison: WHY CAN'T YOU TALK ABOUT THE ISSUESSSSSSSSSSSS?! STOP ACTING LIKE YOU'RE A LEADER!!! Augh, Augh Auggggh!

P.S. : Barack going to send ya a post card from Mississpi McCain: Wish U was here.

On John McCain "Time Out" request . . .

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:26:04 EDT

Are you kidding me?! Like Barney Frank said: The Congress is trying to save the economy, not John McCain's campaign. It makes no sense to do any political granstanding now especially if the bailout is agreed to already. These politicians are messing with our money (What with both the bailout and the "loan" to the auto industry [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/25/house-loans-automakers-25_n_129145.html]) and HE WANTS A PHOTO OP?!! It won't work. period.

Bernanke: Approve bailout or risk recession

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:43:20 EDT

Approve Bailout or risk recession?! Someone forgot to tell this guy WE ARE IN A RECESSION!

Bernanke: Approve bailout or risk recession

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS and JEANNINE AVERSA, Associated Press Writers 5 minutes ago

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke bluntly warned reluctant lawmakers Tuesday they risk a recession with higher unemployment and increased home foreclosures unless they act on the Bush administration's $700 billion plan to bail out the financial industry.

Despite the warning, influential lawmakers in both parties demanded changes in the White House-backed proposal, and conservative Republicans recoiled at the prospect of federal intervention into private capital markets.

Six weeks before the elections, both major party presidential contenders also insisted on alterations in the administration's prescription for the worst financial crisis in decades.

Bernanke's remarks about the risk of recession came in response to a question from Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., who seemed eager to hear a strong rationale for lawmakers to act swiftly on the administration's unprecedented request.

"The financial markets are in quite fragile condition and I think absent a plan they will get worse," Bernanke said.

Ominously, he added, "I believe if the credit markets are not functioning, that jobs will be lost, that our credit rate will rise, more houses will be foreclosed upon, GDP will contract, that the economy will just not be able to recover in a normal, healthy way."

GDP is a measure of growth, and a decline correlates with a recession.

Dodd later spoke disparagingly of the administration's proposal. "What they have sent us is not acceptable," he told reporters after presiding over a lengthy Senate Banking Committee hearing at which Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson urged swift action by Congress.

Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the panel's senior Republican, added, "We have got to look at some alternatives" to the administration's plan.

The legislation that the administration is seeking would allow the government to buy bad mortgages and other troubled assets held by endangered banks and financial institutions.

Getting those debts off their books should bolster the institutions' balance sheets, making them more inclined to lend and easing one of the biggest choke points in the credit crisis. If the plan works, it could help lift a major weight off the sputtering national economy.

The White House and key lawmakers have been in negotiations since the weekend on terms of the legislation. It was not clear what impact the new congressional complaints would have on the discussions.

"Nobody is happy" about the bailout request, said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., although he spoke of possible passage of legislation by the weekend.

"Nobody wants to have to do this," agreed Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader. He said he was hopeful of a quick agreement.

Presidential politics have become part of the debate.

Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, called a news conference to urge changes in what he called the administration's "stubborn inflexibility."

He said Wall Street executives must not be allowed to walk away from the mess with multimillion-dollar severance packages, taxpayers who are bearing the risk of the bailout must benefit if it succeeds and homeowners should be able to get relief from unaffordable mortgages.

Obama's Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, has also said he wants steps to limit the compensation of CEOs who leave financially wrecked firms.

The stakes were unmistakable.

"I understand speed is important, but I'm far more interested in whether or not we get this right," Dodd said at the hearing.

Later, he told reporters he hopes for legislation soon.

"But it is not going to be a blank check or a simple signing on to a bill that sends a blank check to this secretary or any other secretary." He noted that either Obama or McCain would probably be appointing a new treasury secretary after he takes over in the White House.

Across the Capitol complex, Vice President Dick Cheney and Jim Nussle, the administration's budget director, met privately with restive House Republicans, some of whom emerged from the session unpersuaded.

"Just because God created the world in seven days doesn't mean we have to pass this bill in seven days," said Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas.

Added Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., "I am emphatically against it."

Still, prospects for legislation seemed strong, with lawmakers eager to adjourn this week or next for the elections.

Differences include a demand from many Democrats and some Republicans to strip executives at failing financial firms of lucrative "golden parachutes" on their way out the door.

The administration balked at another key Democratic demand: allowing judges to rewrite bankrupt homeowners' mortgages so they could avoid foreclosure.

Paulson, seated next to Bernanke at the committee hearing, objected strongly when Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., asked if $150 billion might be enough to get the program started, with a promise of more to come.

Paulson said that would be a "grave mistake," and would fail to give the markets the confidence they need to rebound.

Paulson repeatedly fielded questions from committee members asking why taxpayers should accept the burdens of a bailout.

"You worry about taxpayers being on the hook?" he replied at one point. "Guess what — they're already on the hook." Paulson suggested that the fallout from the credit crisis would hit everyone's pocketbook unless forceful action was taken. Moreover, a flawed and outdated regulatory system, which didn't catch abuses, needed to be overhauled, he said.

Despite the unresolved issues, President Bush predicted the Democratic-controlled Congress would soon pass a "a robust plan to deal with serious problems." He spoke before the United Nations General Assembly.

In his testimony before the Banking Committee, Paulson told senators that quick passage of the administration's plan is "the single most effective thing we can do to help homeowners, the American people and stimulate our economy."

But even before Paulson could speak, lawmakers expressed unhappiness, criticism of the plan and — in the case of some conservative Republicans — outright opposition.

"This massive bailout is not a solution. It is financial socialism and it's un-American," said Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky.

So far this year, a dozen federally insured banks and thrifts have failed, compared with three last year. The country's largest thrift, Washington Mutual Inc., is faltering.

The U.S. has taken extraordinary measures in recent weeks to prevent a financial calamity, which would have devastating implications for the broader economy. It has, among other things, taken control of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, provided an $85 billion emergency loan to insurance colossus American International Group Inc. and temporarily banned short selling of hundreds of financial stocks.

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McCain/Palin: Be wery wery quiet : We ditching news hounds . . . Hahahaha

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:27:04 EDT

Looks like The Straight Talk Expess don't wanna talk to tha reporters no more ;) Maybe McCain thinks the press (or what most conservatives call "The Mainstream Media") is in the tank for Obama. Why is McCain antagonizing these folks?!

The Huffington Post

September 23, 2008

Networks Revolt Against Reporter-Blocking Palin UN Meeting

The Huffington Post | Rachel Weiner | September 23, 2008 11:57 AM

UPDATE: The McCain campaign gave in and agreed to let a CNN producer into the UN meetings. The New York Times adds that reporters were let in for the preliminary part of Palin's meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Here's what they got:When Gov. Sarah Palin sat down with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan on Tuesday afternoon, the polite preliminaries to their conversation centered around children, as Mr. Karzai spoke of the birth of his first child last year. "What is his name?" Ms. Palin was heard to ask, as she met with Mr. Karzai in the suite of a midtown hotel, according to a pool report."Mirwais," Mr. Karzai replied. "Mirwais, which means, 'The Light of the House.'""Oh nice," Palin responded."He is the only one we have," Mr. Karzai said.Then the pool of journalists was escorted out, and the meeting began. The pool was allowed in for a whopping 29 seconds.

ABC News reports that all of the networks are objecting to the John McCain campaign's attempt to get photographs of Sarah Palin at the U.N., but no news coverage: There's a battle going on right now over how the networks will be allowed to cover Sarah Palin's big day of visits in NY with world leaders. Palin is scheduled to meet with Afghan President Hamid Karzai shortly, followed by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and then with McCain advisor, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The networks had arranged for a "pool" camera- one camera to cover the meetings, whose video would be pooled or shared with all networks. Such arrangements are standard when dealing with intimate high-level meetings between leaders and candidates. But typically, along with cameras, there is an editorial presence-- at least one print reporter, one TV reporter and one radio reporter is standard. Today, the McCain campaign had said it would allow only one editorial person inside. Now, the campaign is saying it wants only the camera inside with no editorial presence. All of the networks are objecting. Stay tuned.

P.S.: The networks have just voted to BAN any use of the photographs/video in protest. The AP reports that CNN has pulled its TV crew from the event until a producer was allowed in. Campaign spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt said it was all just a "miscommunication."And CBS News adds to the news media's grievances:Television networks, including CBS News maintain a policy that if they are prevented from having an editorial presence at an event, they will not allow cameras to shoot it.
The McCain/Palin campaign's effort to stifle editorial coverage of the candidate's meetings with world leaders comes a week after CBS News asked Palin an impromptu question about the AIG bailout, while Palin made an off-the-record stop at a Cleveland diner.After the Cleveland event, a Palin staffer told CBS News that questions "weren't allowed."In Orlando on Sunday, Palin had another off-the-record stop at an ice cream shop, but the pool producer who was assigned to be in Palin's motorcade was not notified when the candidate departed to get ice cream, and so there was no editorial presence at the event. Press frustration with the McCain campaign was also evident in Strongville, Ohio on Tuesday. Sam Stein reports that one reporter was moved to give the candidate's bus a new name -- the "No Talk Express":Relations between John McCain and the press corps that was once described as his "base" have fully deteriorated. After an appearance in Strongsville, Ohio, on Tuesday, the Senator blissfully ignored questions about the bailout plan from nearby reporters, prompting one journalist to scream out: "Has your bus become the No Talk Express?"
McCain offered a smirk at the line but kept on walking. "Ok, pool, back to the vans!" said an aide. "That was fun."

The Politico reports that McCain will actually take questions from the press today. But national reporters will get short shrift.

McCain Loses His Head

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 09:47:15 EDT

What freaks me out about this commentary I'm posting is George Will is a fairly reputatable conservative. If guys like him diss McCain then we have a chance to get the White House:

McCain Loses His Head

By George F. Will
Tuesday, September 23, 2008; A21

"The queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. 'Off with his head!' she said without even looking around."

-- "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.

Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts, John McCain furiously, and apparently without even looking around at facts, said Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, should be decapitated. This childish reflex provoked the Wall Street Journal to editorialize that "McCain untethered" -- disconnected from knowledge and principle -- had made a "false and deeply unfair" attack on Cox that was "unpresidential" and demonstrated that McCain "doesn't understand what's happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does."

To read the Journal's details about the depths of McCain's shallowness on the subject of Cox's chairmanship, see "McCain's Scapegoat" (Sept. 19, Page A22). Then consider McCain's characteristic accusation that Cox "has betrayed the public's trust."

Perhaps an old antagonism is involved in McCain's fact-free slander. His most conspicuous economic adviser is Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who previously headed the Congressional Budget Office. There he was an impediment to conservatives, including then-Rep. Cox, who, as chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, persistently tried and generally failed to enlist CBO support for "dynamic scoring" that would estimate the economic growth effects of proposed tax cuts.

In any case, McCain's smear -- that Cox "betrayed the public's trust" -- is a harbinger of a McCain presidency. For McCain, politics is always operatic, pitting people who agree with him against those who are "corrupt" or "betray the public's trust," two categories that seem to be exhaustive -- there are no other people. McCain's Manichaean worldview drove him to his signature legislative achievement, the McCain-Feingold law's restrictions on campaigning. Today, his campaign is creatively finding interstices in laws intended to restrict campaign giving and spending. (For details, see The Post of Sept. 17, Page A4; and the New York Times of Sept. 20, Page One.)

By a Gresham's Law of political discourse, McCain's Queen of Hearts intervention in the opaque financial crisis overshadowed a solid conservative complaint from the Republican Study Committee, chaired by Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas. In a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, the RSC decried the improvised torrent of bailouts as a "dangerous and unmistakable precedent for the federal government both to be looked to and indeed relied upon to save private sector companies from the consequences of their poor economic decisions." This letter, listing just $650 billion of the perhaps more than $1 trillion in new federal exposures to risk, was sent while McCain's campaign, characteristically substituting vehemence for coherence, was airing an ad warning that Obama favors "massive government, billions in spending increases."

The political left always aims to expand the permeation of economic life by politics. Today, the efficient means to that end is government control of capital. So, is not McCain's party now conducting the most leftist administration in American history? The New Deal never acted so precipitously on such a scale. Treasury Secretary Paulson, asked about conservative complaints that his rescue program amounts to socialism, said, essentially: This is not socialism, this is necessary. That non sequitur might be politically necessary, but remember that government control of capital is government control of capitalism. Does McCain have qualms about this, or only quarrels?

On "60 Minutes" Sunday evening, McCain, saying "this may sound a little unusual," said that he would like to replace Cox with Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic attorney general of New York who is the son of former governor Mario Cuomo. McCain explained that Cuomo has "respect" and "prestige" and could "lend some bipartisanship." Conservatives have been warned.

Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

georgewill@washpost.com

Dodd bill more aggressive than Treasury plan

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:54:33 EDT

Just posting this article:

September 22, 2008
Categories: Housing crisis

Dodd bill more aggressive than Treasury plan

Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd is taking much more aggressive approach to the Treasury bailout plan, demanding foreclosure assistance, limits on executive compensation and profit sharing for taxpayers if the Treasury begins to make money back on the bad debt it plans to purchase.

Dodd's legislation, obtained this morning by Politico, has just started to circulate among Senate legislative directors. His plan addresses many of the concerns raised by Democrats and Republicans who are concerned about handing over $700 billion blank check to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

While the Treasury would receive much of the authority that it wants to buy up distressed assets, Dodd's add-ons have many of the populist ideas that will appeal to skeptical Democrats. His plan is also broader than the one unveiled by House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), so there will be significant negotiations in the days ahead between the House and Senate if Congress is to pass a bill by the end of the week.

Among the major provisions Dodd is adding:

* Authority for bankruptcy judges to restructure mortgages for homeowners facing foreclosure. This was considered a poison pill in a housing bill that passed Congress earlier this summer, but it has gained much more currency now that Washington wants to bail out Wall Street.

* A provision that would require the Treasury to take a 65 percent portion of 20 percent any profits it makes from the newly purchased assets and put it into the federal government's HOPE program, an affordable housing program.

* An oversight board that not only includes the chairman of the Federal Reserve and the SEC, but congressionally appointed, non-governmental officials.

* Limits on executive compensation. This is a major stumbling point for Paulson in his negotiations with Congress, but cracking down on Wall Street executive salaries will be a major selling point for lawmakers. Dodd and Frank have put in place what's known as a "claw back" provision aimed at revoking compensation that executives received based on fraudulent claims.

* An independent inspector general to investigate the Treasury asset program, appointed by the president.

32 words that's a "deal breaker" in the bailout

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:33:34 EDT

The Democrats in Congress are going to have to be very careful about drafting their version of the bailout since most folks are going to flat out against ANY BAILOUT. Or at least dump these 32 words:

The Huffington Post

September 22, 2008

Jason Linkins

jason@huffingtonpost.com

| HuffPost Reporting From DC

Dirty Secret Of The Bailout: Thirty-Two Words That None Dare Utter

September 22, 2008 02:06 PM

A critical - and radical - component of the bailout package proposed by the Bush administration has thus far failed to garner the serious attention of anyone in the press. Section 8 (which ironically reminds one of the popular name of the portion of the 1937 Housing Act that paved the way for subsidized affordable housing ) of this legislation is just a single sentence of thirty-two words, but it represents a significant consolidation of power and an abdication of oversight authority that's so flat-out astounding that it ought to set one's hair on fire. It reads, in its entirety:

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

In short, the so-called "mother of all bailouts," which will transfer $700 billion taxpayer dollars to purchase the distressed assets of several failed financial institutions, will be conducted in a manner unchallengeable by courts and ungovernable by the People's duly sworn representatives. All decision-making power will be consolidated into the Executive Branch - who, we remind you, will have the incentive to act upon this privilege as quickly as possible, before they leave office. The measure will run up the budget deficit by a significant amount, with no guarantee of recouping the outlay, and no fundamental means of holding those who fail to do so accountable.

Is this starting to sound familiar? Robert Kuttner cuts through much of the gloss in an article in today's American Prospect:

The deal proposed by Paulson is nothing short of outrageous. It includes no oversight of his own closed-door operations. It merely gives congressional blessing and funding to what he has already been doing, ad hoc. He plans to retain Wall Street firms as advisors to decide just how to cut deals to value and mop up Wall Street's dubious paper. There are to be no limits on executive compensation for the firms that get relief, and no equity share for the government in exchange for this massive infusion of capital. Both Obama and McCain have opposed the provision denying any judicial review of decisions made by Paulson -- a provision that evokes the Bush administration's suspension of normal constitutional safeguards in its conduct of foreign policy and national security. [...]

The differences between this proposed bailout and the three closest historical equivalents are immense. When the Reconstruction Finance Corporation of the 1930s pumped a total of $35 billion into U.S. corporations and financial institutions, there was close government supervision and quid pro quos at every step of the way. Much of the time, the RFC became a preferred shareholder, and often appointed board members. The Home Owners Loan Corporation, which eventually refinanced one in five mortgage loans, did not operate to bail out banks but to save homeowners. And the Resolution Trust Corporation of the 1980s, created to mop up the damage of the first speculative mortgage meltdown, the S&L collapse, did not pump in money to rescue bad investments; it sorted out good assets from bad after the fact, and made sure to purge bad executives as well as bad loans. And all three of these historic cases of public recapitalization were done without suspending judicial review.

Kuttner's opposition here is perhaps the strongest language I've seen used, pushing back on this piece of legislation, in any publication of repute, and even here, Section 8 is not cited by name or by content. McClatchy Newspapers also alludes to Section 8 with concern, citing the "unfettered authority" that Paulson would be granted, and noting that the "law also would preclude court review of steps Paulson might take, something Joshua Rosner, managing director of economic researcher Graham Fisher & Co. in New York, said could be used to mask previous illegal activity." Jack Balkin also gives the matter the sort of attention it deserves on his blog, Balkinization.

But elsewhere, the conversation is muted. The debate over whether Congress is going to pass the Paulson bailout package, or pass the Paulson bailout package really hard seems to have boiled down to a discussion of time and concessions. The White House has made it clear that they want this package passed yesterday. Congressional Democrats seem to be of different minds on the matter, with some pushing back hard, and others content to demand a small dollop of turd polish to make the package seem more aesthetically pleasing, at which point, they'll likely roll over and pass the bill. Neither candidate, John McCain or Barack Obama, seem all that amenable toward the bailout, but neither have either demonstrated that they are willing to risk their candidacies to do much more than exploit the issue for electoral purposes.

Sunday morning came and went, with Paulson traipsing dutifully from studio to studio, facing nary a question on Section 8. Front page articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal detail the wranglings, but make no mention of this section of the legislation. On TV, cable news networks are stuck in the fog of the ongoing presidential campaign.

Throughout the coverage, one catches a whiff of what seems like substantive pushback on this power grab, but it largely amounts to a facsimile of journalistic diligence. Most note, in general terms, that the bailout represents a set of "broad powers" that will be granted to the Department of the Treasury. Yet the coverage offsets these concerns through the constant hyping of the White House's overall message of "urgency."

But one cannot overstate this: Section 8 is a singularly transformative sentence of economic policy. It transfers a significant amount of power to the Executive Branch, while walling off any avenue for oversight, and offering no guarantees in return. And if the Democrats end up content with winning a few slight concessions, they risk not putting a stop-payment on the real "blank check" - the one in which they allow the erosion of their own powers.

Over in the Senate, Christopher Dodd has proposed a bailout legislation of his own, which critically calls for "an oversight board that not only includes the chairman of the Federal Reserve and the SEC, but congressionally appointed, non-governmental officials" and would require the President to appoint an "independent inspector general to investigate the Treasury asset program." In Dodd's legislation, Section 8 is effectively stripped from the bill.

Nevertheless, the fact that Section 8 of the Paulson plan seems to strike few as a de facto dealbreaker can and should astound. The failure of Congress to hold the line on this point would be truly embarrassing. But if we make it through this week with nobody in the press specifically informing the public about the implications of this single sentence - in the middle of a complicated bill, in the middle of a complicated time - then right there, you have the single largest media failure of this year.

Obama, Not McCain, Shows Steady Hand in Crisis

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 10:28:24 EDT

The experts agree: Obama is showing a "steady hand" in this crisis:

Obama, Not McCain, Shows Steady Hand in Crisis: Albert R. Hunt

Commentary by Albert R. Hunt

Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- For the first time since 1932 a presidential election is taking place in the midst of a genuine financial crisis. The reaction of the candidates was revealing.

John McCain, railing against the ``greed and corruption'' of Wall Street, won the first round of the sound-bite war. He came out with a television commercial on the ``crisis'' early on Monday of last week, and over the next three days gave more than a dozen broadcast interviews. He and running mate Sarah Palin would reform Wall Street and regulate the nefarious fat cats that caused this fiasco.

It was a great start. It then went downhill as he stumbled over his record of championing deregulation, claimed the economy was fundamentally strong, and flip-flopped over the government takeover of American International Group Inc.

For his part, Barack Obama didn't come across as passionately outraged and wasn't as omnipresent or as specific.

More revealing, though, was to whom both candidates turned on that panic-ridden morning of Sept. 15, and how the messages evolved before and after that day.

McCain called Martin Feldstein, the well-known Republican economist and Reagan administration adviser, John Taylor of Stanford University, who served in President George W. Bush's Treasury and Carly Fiorina, once the chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard Co.

Obama called former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, and former Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Larry Summers.

It was a mismatch.

Towering Volcker

Feldstein, for all his intellect, was ineffective in the Reagan administration; then-White House deputy chief of staff Dick Darman cut him out of important action. Volcker, first at the Treasury and then as chairman of the Federal Reserve, was a towering figure in every way.

Taylor is a well-regarded academic. In four years as undersecretary of the Treasury, he left few footprints. Summers, as both deputy secretary and secretary, left a lot.

Fiorina is smart and quick; to put it charitably, Rubin will forget more about financial markets than she'll ever know.

When it comes to governance, and either Democrat Obama or Republican McCain will inherit this miserable financial mess, the best guide is who they talked to, what they said, where they've been, and how knowledgeable they are.

Obama's record and earlier speeches belie some of his more populist rhetoric. Yet they also suggest, as do his advisers, a much more activist government role than is likely under a McCain-Palin administration.

Comfortable With Subject

Obama called for the overhaul of the financial-regulatory system and tougher enforcement well before this past week's traumas.

Detached observers who watched him last week, especially in a Bloomberg Television interview, were taken by how conversant and comfortable he was on the subject, despite his thin record. Few detached observers came away with that impression watching the Arizona senator.

Much of the re-regulatory fever focuses on the Federal Reserve and any new agencies created to clean up the fiasco. Central, however, will be a more vigorous Securities and Exchange Commission, or whatever holds that investor-protection function.

McCain displayed a sudden interest in the SEC last week when he demanded that Chairman Chris Cox be fired. When his campaign was asked if the senator had ever criticized the current commission's performance before, they failed to respond.

All For Obama

Tellingly, three former SEC chairmen, a Democrat, Arthur Levitt, and two Republicans, David Ruder and Bill Donaldson, have endorsed Obama. Levitt is a board member of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.

Donaldson, who was tapped by Bush to head the SEC, says Obama called him last year about the financial-regulatory problems. He has never heard from McCain.

``Obama has been talking about the need for better financial regulation well before this crisis hit and has done some real thinking about it,'' says Donaldson, a lifelong Republican. ``McCain comes across as someone who suddenly realized changes have to be made.''

There is a case for McCain: it's if you believe in less regulation, that the government should get out of the way and let the markets work their will.

No `Real Understanding'

``I don't think anyone who wants to increase the burden of government regulation and high taxes has any real understanding of economics,'' McCain said this spring at an Inez, Kentucky, town hall meeting, where he also declared ``the fundamentals of our economy are good.''

Until recently, he repeatedly invoked Ronald Reagan's calls for less regulation. He voted for the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley corporate-governance regulations -- then last year said he regretted that vote.

McCain isn't averse to some regulations. He has strongly championed a greater federal role in campaign finance, tobacco and boxing. In each case, he saw a clear villain -- special- interest money, a tobacco product that puts profits ahead of lives, and unscrupulous boxing promoters.

There has been little evidence that prior to last week he ever put financial firms in this category. Although he assailed excessive corporate compensation last week, McCain has opposed a tepid House-passed bill that would give corporate shareholders the right to cast a non-binding vote on compensation of top executives.

Turning to Gramm

The person he has turned to most for counsel on such matters is his ex-Senate colleague Phil Gramm. Gramm is a political Gordon Gekko, a brainy economist with a Darwinian view of markets and public policy.

It's not easy to remember what the financial world looked like 10 days ago much less 10 months ago. Decisions that will be reached after this election will be the most important since the 1930s.

Obama, as more than a few Democrats are complaining, hasn't been as quick, sharp -- or demagogic -- as they would like. McCain has been beset by deeper difficulties: an inchoate and inconsistent message that seems to reflect political exigencies more than principled convictions.

On the financial crisis, last week belonged to Obama.

(Albert R. Hunt is the executive editor for Washington at Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Albert R. Hunt in Washington at ahunt1@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: September 21, 2008 09:33 EDT

Cash for Trash

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 10:12:43 EDT

Chicken Little is about to get dissed:

September 22, 2008

Op-Ed Columnist

Cash for Trash

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Some skeptics are calling Henry Paulson’s $700 billion rescue plan for the U.S. financial system “cash for trash.” Others are calling the proposed legislation the Authorization for Use of Financial Force, after the Authorization for Use of Military Force, the infamous bill that gave the Bush administration the green light to invade Iraq.

There’s justice in the gibes. Everyone agrees that something major must be done. But Mr. Paulson is demanding extraordinary power for himself — and for his successor — to deploy taxpayers’ money on behalf of a plan that, as far as I can see, doesn’t make sense.

Some are saying that we should simply trust Mr. Paulson, because he’s a smart guy who knows what he’s doing. But that’s only half true: he is a smart guy, but what, exactly, in the experience of the past year and a half — a period during which Mr. Paulson repeatedly declared the financial crisis “contained,” and then offered a series of unsuccessful fixes — justifies the belief that he knows what he’s doing? He’s making it up as he goes along, just like the rest of us.

So let’s try to think this through for ourselves. I have a four-step view of the financial crisis:

1. The bursting of the housing bubble has led to a surge in defaults and foreclosures, which in turn has led to a plunge in the prices of mortgage-backed securities — assets whose value ultimately comes from mortgage payments.

2. These financial losses have left many financial institutions with too little capital — too few assets compared with their debt. This problem is especially severe because everyone took on so much debt during the bubble years.

3. Because financial institutions have too little capital relative to their debt, they haven’t been able or willing to provide the credit the economy needs.

4. Financial institutions have been trying to pay down their debt by selling assets, including those mortgage-backed securities, but this drives asset prices down and makes their financial position even worse. This vicious circle is what some call the “paradox of deleveraging.”

The Paulson plan calls for the federal government to buy up $700 billion worth of troubled assets, mainly mortgage-backed securities. How does this resolve the crisis?

Well, it might — might — break the vicious circle of deleveraging, step 4 in my capsule description. Even that isn’t clear: the prices of many assets, not just those the Treasury proposes to buy, are under pressure. And even if the vicious circle is limited, the financial system will still be crippled by inadequate capital.

Or rather, it will be crippled by inadequate capital unless the federal government hugely overpays for the assets it buys, giving financial firms — and their stockholders and executives — a giant windfall at taxpayer expense. Did I mention that I’m not happy with this plan?

The logic of the crisis seems to call for an intervention, not at step 4, but at step 2: the financial system needs more capital. And if the government is going to provide capital to financial firms, it should get what people who provide capital are entitled to — a share in ownership, so that all the gains if the rescue plan works don’t go to the people who made the mess in the first place.

That’s what happened in the savings and loan crisis: the feds took over ownership of the bad banks, not just their bad assets. It’s also what happened with Fannie and Freddie. (And by the way, that rescue has done what it was supposed to. Mortgage interest rates have come down sharply since the federal takeover.)

But Mr. Paulson insists that he wants a “clean” plan. “Clean,” in this context, means a taxpayer-financed bailout with no strings attached — no quid pro quo on the part of those being bailed out. Why is that a good thing? Add to this the fact that Mr. Paulson is also demanding dictatorial authority, plus immunity from review “by any court of law or any administrative agency,” and this adds up to an unacceptable proposal.

I’m aware that Congress is under enormous pressure to agree to the Paulson plan in the next few days, with at most a few modifications that make it slightly less bad. Basically, after having spent a year and a half telling everyone that things were under control, the Bush administration says that the sky is falling, and that to save the world we have to do exactly what it says now now now.

But I’d urge Congress to pause for a minute, take a deep breath, and try to seriously rework the structure of the plan, making it a plan that addresses the real problem. Don’t let yourself be railroaded — if this plan goes through in anything like its current form, we’ll all be very sorry in the not-too-distant future.

Exclusive: New Doubts Over Palin's Troopergate Claims

Gerald from Seattle, WA — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 23:51:40 EDT

Just posting the story:

Exclusive: New Doubts Over Palin's Troopergate Claims Internal Government Document Contradicts Sarah Palin, Campaign

By JUSTIN ROOD

Sept. 19, 2008—

An internal government document obtained by ABC News appears to contradict Sarah Palin's most recent explanation for why she fired her public safety chief, the move which prompted the now-contested state probe into "Troopergate."

Fighting back against allegations she may have fired her then-Public Safety Commissioner, Walt Monegan, for refusing to go along with a personal vendetta, Palin on Monday argued in a legal filing that she fired Monegan because he had a "rogue mentality" and was bucking her administration's directives.

"The last straw," her lawyer argued, came when he planned a trip to Washington, D.C., to seek federal funds for an aggressive anti-sexual-violence program. The project, expected to cost from $10 million to $20 million a year for five years, would have been the first of its kind in Alaska, which leads the nation in reported forcible rape.

The McCain-Palin campaign echoed the charge in a press release it distributed Monday, concurrent with Palin's legal filing. "Mr. Monegan persisted in planning to make the unauthorized lobbying trip to D.C.," the release stated.

But the governor's staff authorized the trip, according to an internal travel document from the Department of Public Safety, released Friday in response to an open records request.

The document, a state travel authorization form, shows that Palin's chief of staff, Mike Nizich, approved Monegan's trip to Washington, D.C., "to attend meeting with Senator Murkowski." The date next to Nizich's signature reads June 18.

In response to inquiries about the document Friday, the McCain-Palin campaign provided a statement from Randy Ruaro, another aide to Palin.

According to Ruaro, Monegan asked for -- and received -- approval for the travel without telling Palin's staff his reason for going. "As a matter of routine, the travel was approved by Mike Nizich ... weeks before the actual purpose was made clear by former Commissioner Monegan," Ruaro wrote.

"When you receive permission to travel, it does not mean that you receive blanket authorization to discuss or do whatever you would like on that trip," he added.

Last week a legislative panel approved a subpoena for Nizich to be interviewed by Stephen Branchflower, the prosecutor hired to conduct the Alaska Legislature's inquiry into Troopergate. The Attorney General informed the Legislature earlier this week that Nizich and other state employees subpoenaed in the matter would not submit to interviews.

Nizich did not respond to a message left Friday afternoon.

In Palin's court filing Monday to stop an investigation by her state Personnel Board she earlier had requested her lawyer, Thomas V. Van Flein, included numerous emails from her staff expressing confusion and incredulity over Monegan's planned D.C. trip. None of those emails were sent by or to Nizich, although he was cc'd on several.

Contacted Friday, Monegan confirmed the travel authorization was to pursue funding for the anti-sexual-violence program. He said the travel authorization form was completed in a fashion consistent with practice, even though it showed no expenditures. The signed form approved the travel, he said, and authorized him to use a government credit card or seek reimbursement for expenses he incurred during the trip.

Monegan said he didn't know why Palin's chief of staff approved a trip that confounded her other aides. "It sounds like it's a breakdown of communication internal to the governor's staff," he said.

Click Here for the Investigative Homepage.