Palin Praises a Terrorist

Sarah Palin is pals with, and praised and asked for God's blessing for, Joe Vogler, the raging anti-American who founded the Alaska Independence Party. Read about at Salon.com, The Palins' un-American activities.

Palin forgot that people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

For you non-Republi-cons out there remember -- sticks and stones may brake our bones, but a crap fight will make us all stink. Stick with the issues, this year the Republi-cons lose on the issues.

Taxpayers are Chumps

After the $85 million bailout, AIG executives held a week-long retreat for its executives at the St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, Calif. The cost of $440,000 included $200,000 for rooms, $150,000 for meals and $23,000 for the spa. Read about it here and here.

More proof that the bailout was a con job.

The War on The Middle Class

What are the causes of the economic crisis, They include ignorance, regulatory and oversignt failures, and the relentless Republi-con war on the middle class over the past several decades, on behalf of the controling corporate interest of the party (social conservatives are just voting suckers). Read more, New York Times, A Fool’s Paradise by Bob Herbert. He thinks that what "we haven’t paid close enough attention to is the fact that there haven’t been enough good paying jobs to sustain an adequate standard of living."

Of course, thanks to China Inc., AKA Wal-Mart, the American standard of living has peaked. See New York Times, What’s Your Consumption Factor by Jared Diamond.

It was good while it lasted, but the party is over.

Are you a Republi-con? If so, are you a rich corporate Republi-con, or the conservative sucker?

The Great Palin May Walk on Water

The Great Palin will honor us here in Pensacola with a personal appearance today. And the local media will cover it like some big cultural event. Kids are even being excused from school. Of course there will be no press conference appropriate for a political candidate, with questions and answers, but perhaps she will walk on water.

If the media has any time, I recommend they read the following:

• Washington Post, This Debate's Biggest Loser
  
• Washington Post, The Flimflam Strategy
  

Who is the Real John McCain, Part II

I once admired John McCain, but I have my doubts after reading the none too flattering bio of McCain in Rolling Stone, Make-Believe Maverick. It is a "closer look at the life and career of John McCain [that] reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty."

The McCain Campaign

Lies, distortion, distractions, character assassination, stunts, gimmicks, erratic moves, and a Hail Mary or two, standard Rovian tactics, nothing maverick-y about it.

Wall Street Say Thanks Suckers!

On your behalf, the government just agreed to give Wall Street a $700 billion bailout. That amounts to about $2,330 per person for everyone in America. Who need your help.? These Wall Street executives, who collectively took home more than $1 billion in pay 2003 to 2007.

Thanks to Congress, we've been suckered.

The Republi-con Squel, McBush and Mini Cheney

At the vice presidential debates on Thursday, Sarah "Mini Cheney" Palin made it known, in her usual opaque way, that she clearly admires Cheney's views:

"Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president's agenda in that position. Yeah, so I do agree with him that we have a lot of flexibility in there, and we'll do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation. And it is my executive experience that is partly to be attributed to my pick as V.P. with McCain, not only as a governor, but earlier on as a mayor, as an oil and gas regulator, as a business owner. It is those years of experience on an executive level that will be put to good use in the White House also."

Listen to Palin's own words in this humorous animated editorial cartoon.

But Mini Cheney is no Cheney says blogger Marcy Wheeler, who writes:

"Dick Cheney has succeeded because he is a master of bureaucracy. He knows how to manipulate the machines of our government at every level--and does so with consummate skill.

Palin, by contrast, can't even manage to pull off personal vendettas in Alaska's small government without leaving blood and tracks in the snow revealing her work. Sure, she's got Cheney's instinct for punishing disloyalty. But aside from that, she's got none of Cheney's skill."

And see this editorial cartoon.

Now That Would Be Scary

One thousand George Bushes and one thousand Dick Cheneys, now that would be scary. But rocker Bruce Springsteen has a message of hope:

"I've continued to find, wherever I go, America remains a repository of people's hopes, possibilities, and desires, and that despite the terrible erosion to our standing around the world, accomplished by our recent administration, we remain, for many, a house of dreams. One thousand George Bushes and one thousand Dick Cheneys will never be able to tear that house down."

Bush's Rovian Politics of Fear

McCain's campiagn has learned that fear can be an effective tools to achieve a political objective. Read this from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), Statement on Congressional Approval of Bailout, which states in part:

"This is the first time in the history of the United States that the president has sought to provoke a financial panic to get legislation through Congress. While this has proven to be a successful political strategy, it marks yet another low point in American politics.

It was incredibly irresponsible for President Bush to tell the American people on national television that the country could be facing another Great Depression. By contrast, when we actually were in the Great Depression, President Roosevelt said that, "we have nothing to fear, but fear itself."

It was even more irresponsible for him to seize on the decline in the stock market five hours later as evidence that his bailout was needed for the economy. President Bush must surely understand, as all economists know, that the daily swings in the stock market are driven by mass psychology and have almost nothing to do with the underlying strength in the economy."

Ya Get the Government Ya Want

For more on the consequences of evading reality, see this article from the Washington Post, He Told Us to Go Shopping. Now the Bill Is Due.

Another Great Palin Parody

Saturday Night Live did it again with a parody of the Biden-Palin debate. SNL "poked fun at Palin’s performance during Thursday night’s debate and took aim at Joe Biden as well. They even parodied the moderator of the debate, Gwen Ifill." Watch it here. It was hilarious. Don't you agree?

The scary part was that the real Sarah Palin makes almost as little sense as the SNL version.

Ask the Parrot

Polly the parrot is back! After near-perfect predictions for the 2004 election, Polly is ready to predict this year's U.S. Presidential Election. What does Polly say? "Polly’s latest forecast has McCain taking 230 Electoral College Votes, against Obama’s 308. This is the biggest spread between the two candidates since the first of September, when Polly inaugurated the PollyElectoral Vote."

Palin is a Terrorist

A terrorist uses fear to achieve an ideological goal, often a political objective. In the next month, listen closely as the Republi-cons try to use fear to win the election. The Republi-cons are great at exploiting fear to win elections, but as the last eight years have shown, fear is not a great governing philosophy.

And if McCain wants to talk about pals, he should explain his association with OBL's financial terrorist in Washington, and McCain's former economic adviser, former Texas senator Phil Gramm. See Washington Post, A Pal Around McCain.

"Gramm was always Wall Street's man in the Senate. As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee during the Clinton administration, he consistently underfunded the Securities and Exchange Commission and kept it from stopping accounting firms from auditing corporations with which they had conflicts of interest. Gramm's piece de resistance came on Dec. 15, 2000, when he slipped into an omnibus spending bill a provision called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA), which prohibited any governmental regulation of credit default swaps, those insurance policies covering losses on securities in the event they went belly up. As the housing bubble ballooned, the face value of those swaps rose to a tidy $62 trillion. And as the housing bubble burst, those swaps became a massive pile of worthless paper, because no government agency had required the banks to set aside money to back them up.

The CFMA also prohibited government regulation of the energy-trading market, which enabled Enron to nearly bankrupt the state of California before bankrupting itself.

The problem with this exercise, of course, is that Gramm's relationship to McCain is not comparable to the relationships that Ayers or Wright have with Obama. The idea that either Ayers or Wright would have any impact on the workings of an Obama administration is nonsensical. But Gramm and McCain do have an enduring political and economic alliance. McCain chaired Gramm's short-lived presidential campaign in 1996; Gramm is co-chair of McCain's current effort. McCain has not repudiated reports that Gramm is on the shortlist to become Treasury secretary if McCain is elected, even after Gramm labeled America "a nation of whiners."

If we are to believe his managers, McCain will charge into tomorrow night's debate seeking to "change the subject" from the economy to Obama's dangerous liaisons. It's not, however, likely to be a winning tactic. Obama will argue that in a time of deepening economic crisis, the public deserves a debate in which the candidates focus on their ideas for recovery rather than tendentious attacks on their rival's presumed associates. If pressed, though, he can mention that it is McCain's senior economic adviser who has diminished American solvency and power beyond the wildest dreams of anti-American terrorists."

Gramm should be given credit for destroying the American economy.

Why Competitive Endeavors Must Be Well Regulated

"The forces that produced the current crisis actually reflect a powerful dynamic that afflicts all kinds of competitive endeavors. This may be seen clearly in the world of sports." Read more.

McCain has No Honor, Part II

McCain only hope, and current strategy, is the Us. vs. Them strategy -- raise doubts about Obama's patriotism and attempt to persuade independent voters that Obama is a threat to the country. In part, this strategy will try to build on doubts some have because of Obama's race.

But because of the current economic crisis McCain will likely lose the election (mostly because he is a Republi-con), and in the end McCain will lose his honor.

The End of the American Era

I've often said that we are witnessing the zenith of American military and economic power. The following article explains: Washington Post, 9/11 Was Big. This Is Bigger. It begins:

"Two September shocks will define the presidency of George W. Bush. Stunningly enough, it already seems clear that the second -- the financial crisis that has only begun to unfold -- may well have far greater and more lasting ramifications than the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

That's because while 9/11 changed the way we view the world, the current financial crisis has changed the way the world views us. And it will also change, in some very fundamental ways, the way the world works.

Of course, the Sept. 11 attacks left a deep scar on the soul of the country and caused immense tragedy. Beyond human losses, they also revealed that being the sole superpower did not make us safe. But the attacks themselves were not, in a real sense, as significant a turning point in world history as they may have seemed at the time. (Remember, it was actually Bush's father who had first been put in charge of an American "war on terror" during the 1980s when he was Ronald Reagan's vice president.)

The current economic debacle is far more likely to be seen by historians as a true global watershed: the end of one period and the beginning of another."

Only a Heart Beat Away

Remember, Sarah Palin will be only a heart beat away from being the president. Is she ready? These ladies don't think so:

• Washington Post, Sarah Palin's Bridge to Somewhere by Kathleen Parker (She was often too cute by half -- winking and gosh-darning her way through the debate -- but she did what she needed to do. . . Over and over, Palin skipped past Ifill, as well as Biden, to speak directly to the American people. I am one of you, she told them. And these people -- Democrats and the media -- are neither of us, nor for us. And she said it in the nicest, gosh-darn way, bless her little heart. The GOP loved it, but did anyone else? Did Palin change hearts and minds? Probably not. . . With the very first question about the bailout bill -- was this the worst of Washington or the best of Washington? -- Palin went straight to her hockey mom narrative, though she switched to the more mainstream soccer field. "As we try to figure out has this been a good time or a bad time in America's economy, is go to a kid's soccer game on Saturday, and turn to any parent there on the sideline and ask them, 'How are you feeling about the economy?' And I'll betcha you're going to hear some fear in that parent's voice." . . Palin's strategy throughout the evening was to avoid questions to which she didn't have answers and rely on the American people to like her so much they didn't care. "I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also," she said when asked to respond to a Biden comment about deregulation. . . Before we relax into giddiness or cynicism, however, it's important to consider that a debate differs from an interview in significant ways. A debate is a point-counterpoint exercise that allows little opportunity for probing or follow-up. An interview requires that a candidate explain an idea in depth and offer specifics. The Katie Couric interview that was such a disaster for Palin -- and that prompted me to conclude that she was out of her league and should leave the ticket -- was awful precisely because Palin couldn't explain anything. For whatever reason, she couldn't even speak coherently. The debate format clearly worked better for her because she could control her message and keep pounding well-rehearsed talking points. Does that mean she's ready to lead the free world should circumstances warrant? That question remains.)
• New York Times, Talking in Points by Gail Collins (Palin did indeed answer each question with poise and self-confidence, reeling off a bunch of talking points that were sometimes totally unrelated to the matter at hand. When she was asked to respond to Joe Biden’s critique of the McCain health care plan, she announced: “I would like to respond about the tax increases,” cheerfully ignoring the fact that tax increases had never been mentioned. After the recent Katie Couric unpleasantness, Palin told the viewers that this time they were getting a chance to hear her “answer these tough questions without the filter.” And, indeed, her answers were murky in the extreme. She railed repeatedly about government regulations getting in the way of the private sector, then announced that the financial rescue plan “has got to include that massive oversight that Americans are expecting and deserving.” She said that she didn’t want to discuss what caused global warming, only how to ease its impact. . . When the moderator, Gwen Ifill, asked under what circumstances the candidates would consider bringing America’s nuclear weapons into play, Palin said: “Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be-all, end-all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet, so those dangerous regimes, again, cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, period.” . . Since [her nomination], she has spent most of her time going from one Republican rally to the next, repeating chunks of her convention speech, which have grown more disjointed with every stop. (In an airplane hangar in Ohio recently, she told the people of Youngstown she was happy to be there because Alaska has, per capita, the nation’s most “small planes and small pilots.”) For reporters hoping to question her, she has been determinedly unfindable, a Judge Crater from Juneau. And after the Couric debacle, you can bet your boots that the campaign is going to take Palin’s debate performance, declare victory and wrap her up until after the election. . . The people boosting Palin’s triumph were not celebrating because she demonstrated that she is qualified to be president if something ever happened to John McCain. They were cheering her success in covering up her lack of knowledge about the things she would have to deal with if she wound up running the country. )
  

How Low Can He Go, Part II

From Dan Froomkin's White House Watch at the Washington Post on Thursday:

The newest CBS News poll finds: "President Bush's overall job approval rating has dropped five points from last week and is now the lowest of his presidency. Only 22% of Americans approve of the job he's doing -- a new low -- while 70% of Americans disapprove -- a new high. President Bush's job approval rating has dropped 68 points from his all time high of 90% back in October, 2001. . . .

"Just 18% of Americans approve of the way President Bush is handling the economy, while 77% of Americans disapprove. Even a majority of Republicans disapprove of the President's handling of this issue."

Massimo Calabresi reports that in the latest Time poll, Bush's "approval rating is 23%, the lowest number ever found by Abt/SRBI, the company that conducted the poll for Time; 73% of respondents disapprove of his performance as President. Only 26% approve of his handling of the current financial crisis."

Gee, those numbers make the 26 percent approval rating in the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll that I wrote about yesterday look pretty good.

Don't Blame FDR and Carter for the Finanacial Mess and Bailout

Contrary to what the Republi-cons would have you believe, the financial mess isn't the result of the FDR's New Deal, Carter, or simply because of subprime loans.

First, understand the recent legislative and regulatory changes, which were summarized in this New York Times article, Don’t Blame the New Deal:

"But the failures that have landed us in the mess we are in today are not mainly structural. To assert that they are masks deeper failings and sets false terms for the upcoming debate on regulatory reform.

Under a law passed in 1994, for example, the Federal Reserve was obligated to regulate banks and nonbank lenders to curb unfair, deceptive and predatory lending. Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, ignored his responsibility, even as junk mortgage lending proliferated in plain sight.

Mr. Greenspan later said the law defined “unfair” and “deceptive” too vaguely. If so, he should have asked Congress for clarification. Instead, he did nothing — and the Republican-led Congress did not question him. When Ben Bernanke took over as Fed chairman in early 2006, the negligence continued. It was not until mid-2007, after the housing bubble had begun to burst, that federal regulators offered guidelines for subprime lending.

The systematic dismantling of laws that called for regulation also contributed to the current crisis.

In 1995, Congress passed a law that restricted the ability of investors to sue companies, securities firms and accounting firms for misstatements and pie-in-the-sky projections. That helped inflate the dot-com bubble and contributed to the Enron debacle. It also engendered a sense of impunity that helped to foster the excessive risk-taking so prevalent in the mortgage mess.

Then, in 1999, Congress dismantled the Glass- Steagall Act, a pillar of the New Deal, which separated commercial and investment banking. That enormous change was undertaken with no thought or effort — or desire — to regulate the world that it would help to create. Now we know that an entire “shadow banking system” has grown up, without rules or transparency, but with the ability to topple the financial system itself.

But perhaps no deregulatory effort had more catastrophic effect than the 2000 law that explicitly excluded derivatives, including those credit default swaps, from regulation under the Commodity Exchange Act of 1936.

And there is probably no greater missed opportunity than the reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac passed by the House in 2005. If the law had been enacted, the takeover of those companies may have been avoided. It failed in large part because President Bush wanted to fully privatize them and feared that if they were adequately reformed, privatization would lose steam.

Indeed, it was in the Bush years that antiregulation and deregulation found full expression, fueled by an ideology that markets know best, government hampers markets, and problems will magically fix themselves."

Then there was the development and enormous recent growth of CDOs (colateralized debt obligations) and CDSs (credit default swaps). A rule change made by the the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2004 under a Republi-con President and Congress is the primarily reason these new financial instrument spun out of control. See:

• New York Time, Agency’s ’04 Rule Let Banks Pile Up New Debt, and Risk

You can listen to the associated audio Back Story with The Times's Stephen Labaton, which includes excerpts from the SEC meeting in April 2004, or even an audio recording of the whole meeting, and hear meeting participants laughing about the risk.

These changes were made based on a faulty assumption, that the financial institutions and regulators understood and properly evaluated the risk(s) involved. As we now know, that was not true. See:

• Washington Post, A Mountain, Overlooked, How Risk Models Failed Wall St. and Washington
  

Deliberately ignorant assumptions and stupid decisions to reach a desired conclusion and objective, does that remind you of anything? Can you say Iraq?

But of course, the Rebubli-cons never had much concern for objective reality. So something must be done. See:

• Washington Post, Thanks to the Wing Nuts