ONLY GAME IN TOWN

Today's market bounceback suggests either that the situation is not as bad as we're being told, or that the stcok market is utterly ungrounded in facts on the ground. Probably both are true. But the message is: there's no rush.

Therefore a better plan could be devised - but anything better than the current plan, in my view, is unpassable because it runs afoul of that substantial portion of the population which remain Reaganite free market, anti-government believers. So it's either do nothing, or pass what we've got.

Andrew Sullivan, whom I otherwise respect, says everyone has to take responsibility for protecting and benefiting himself - i.e., no one should count on the government for help. He actually cited Adam Smith, But here's the problem: you can only be responsible for what you control. So while Rupert Murdoch can be responsible for not only his own welfare but for the view the public holds of many things, I can only be responsible for making sure I don't drown.

That's the part people like Sullivan never get: I can't stop Bush from torturing; government can. I can't stop banks from raping the economy; the government can. In other words, the operative word is "we" - a word which Sullivan does not use.

Since Sullivan's views - the essence of Reaganism - are widely held, this is not the time for New Deal measures. So whatever you call the modified Paulson plan, that's the only game in town.

GREEN

Here's the template for the way much of America thinks these days:

Cadillac is running a TV ad for a hybrid Escalade. At the very bottom of the last scene of the ad, in tiny type, it promises MPG of 12 city/19 highway.

Hey, but this is a hybrid! So it's green!

I TAKE IT ALL BACK

I take back every negative thing I have ever said about Katie Couric. I cannot imagine any other anchor coming close to doing the job she did with Sarah Palin.

PROBLEM

Tom Brokaw has become a problem. He is either single-handedly, or as a corporate shill, trying to reverse the perception of NBC as leaning left. He needs to be interviewed on the question of exactly why he is doing this. Bill Maher?

Read.
Read.

THE BEST SOLUTION

I've been struggling to explain myself on this financial mess. Now I think I've got it - so here it is:

The primary goal is to keep the economy moving. The primary threat to that is the credit freeze. So - if banks don't want to lend, they should be displaced. That would be by the government.

Instead of handing out billions to financial institutions to keep on doing things the way they have, the government should use that money to make direct loans to businesses, consumers, etc. The loans should be at a reasonable interest rate - not so low that it promotes bubbles, and high enough so that the returns on the loans will pay the costs of running the program and maybe even contribute to the reduction of the deficit. Bad loans should not be made. No loans made - mortgage or otherwise - should be securitized or sold off. The government should remain the lender and administer the loans.

Let the banks deal with the problems they created. Loans should be made by the government even to people who default on loans to banks - with severe penalties in case of default on government loans - and banks should be prohibited from reaching the government loaned funds.

If the result is that private financial institutions go down, that will not have a major impact on the stock market, and it will force the country to recognize that for years the major product of America has been financial instruments, i.e. debt. Other profit sources will have to replace it. Kids will stop rushing from college into the financial sector and start innovating in more productive areas. The ones who can't will do menial work, as they should.

I understand that in post-Reagan America this plan would never be approved. That doesn't mean it's not the best solution.

STILL ...

What's really "socialism" is the idea that every American deserves to own a house. All kids should not go to college. People who can't afford houses shouldn't have them. The solution to this situation is not bailing out mortgagees. Long term, it's preventing the issuance of the kind of financial paper that created the situation. I.e., oversight. That kind of oversight was not built into the bill which failed.

I still insist that if the government is going to commit all that money, the government should be easing the credit crunch by making direct loans - car loans, mortgages, business loans, etc. - maybe even credit cards - at a fixed interest rate which would hold down rates charged by private concerns.

Problem remains that Reaganites can't accept this kind of government activity. And it will require a good-sized bureaucracy. But then that will provide a lot of jobs to replace the ones we're losing. It's FDR style public works. Whether it is feasible depends on the election results. Democrats could ram it through the House now - although I doubt they have the votes even within their own party - but it will not pass the Senate.

Still, if the situation can be kept from boiling over until after the election, that may become a viable alternative.

GOOD IDEA

Since it is no longer possible or necessary to keep presidential politics out of the financial situation, I suggest the Democrats come up with a new plan which addresses the objections of constituents (and is based on advice of economists who are not tarred with the Wall Street brush), give it to Obama and let him present it as his plan.

NOTHING ELSE TO DO

Republicans have now accepted the risk of an economy tanking because the Paulson bill failed.

Of course they will do whatever they can to slip that risk. What that means, I think, is that they must draw up a bill which contains what's important to them and sell it to the American people, so that they don't get constituent calls which threaten their reelection.

The Democrats should do the same.

Since neither bill can pass without compromise - which I think has now been blown into impossibility - they would be strictly aimed as political talking points. The problem would be that the Republicans would immediately attack any Democratic plan as partisan. So it would probably be wise for Democrats, while they drsft this bill, to invite the Republicans to come up with a workable solution to the problem. And then take it apart from a populist perspective. The problem with that is that a populist perspective coming from the left can't satisfy the populist perspective on the right. But what happens is the two political philosophies are thrown into stark relief. The public can choose which it wants - and the losers can buy plane tickets out of here.

One thing's for sure: no input from the Bush administration is wanted or will be listened to. Democrats should spend the next four weeks pointing out that the entirety of McCain's position is an attack on his own party. They have been doing this; they need to do more of it.

I don't think there's anything else they can do.

PREDICTION

Today was the last chance. Now everyone knows the thing is broke. Right now, there is nothing left to do. Even if the current bill is passed, it will not stanch the flood.

The market will drop over the next week or so to the 7000 level. It will not come back up - perhaps ever, but certainly not for months.

HELPFUL TO KNOW

What I keep asking myself is: is this - the collapse of the functioning of American democracy - somebody's intended end? Was this planned for long ago? Did somebody figure out how to bring us to this pass?

The more I think about Bush and the current Republican campaign, the more I think the long-term focus had to be the elimination of democracy. Grover Norquist apparently is going to get his wish - the end of American government. What Norquist has never attempted to explain, though, is what happens when that is accomplished. Was anarchy his intended end - or a dictatorship? Was it to benefit the capitalists, or the hoi polloi? I wish someone would ask him. It would be helpful to know.

BAILOUT FAILS IN HOUSE

Here's to all those Congressman who have decided that the opinions of people who still believe Saddam pulled off 9/11 should control what happens to America. No one understands the concept of representative democracy. I think America just broke.

So now we'll wait for the solution to percolate up from the public. Maybe we can short-circuit that by asking Sarah Palin.

Here's what's really funny: the people who want to hang the financial fat cats are calling this bailout "socialism." Suppose the plan provided for direct government loans to the public instead of to the banking industry? That's more socialistic than what was done. Would the same public have rejected that? If so, there is no solution that the public will accept. They don't want government in it, they don't want capitalists in it. They're in a nhilistic place. They want to destroy.

We have gotten dumber than it is possible to be.

I told you this country was coming apart. Wait til you see what happens if nothing is done. I guarantee there will be blood in the streets.

Oh, and one other thing: Bush's complete inability to push this plan through guarantees his place as the Worst President Ever. Of course, that assumes we're going to have another president, or that if we have one, he has any power at all. Doesn't sound like he will to me.

If it gets bad enough, look out for a coup. It's either that or anarchy. If what I suspect is going to happen happens, the public will be looking for a dictator - a Hitler. That will not be Barack Obama.

EVIL

HHS reports violations of federal health and safety standards in 94% of the nation's nursing homes, worst in for-profit facilities. How can we fix this problem? Easy. Get rid of HHS. Get rid of the standards. Then there won't be any violations.

I wonder just how much of this pervasive attitude is due to the shift from the old mission of Jesus to dollar Christianity? I mentioned earlier I was reading "The Family." It's getting much better as it goes on, and it explains why we are who we are these days.

If I were a religious soul, I'd be saying that the Devil is loose in America (and Israel). Not to mention in Islam. He's everywhere. Demons run the economy, run the war machine. Demons sit in the White House. And the exorcists are corrupted, tempted by the Devil with little altar boys. I'm beginning to believe in Evil, but it's not what we're told it is. It's the people who are running things, and all the people who love them.

CURSED IN THE SHULS

Ehud Olmert has said Israel must withdraw from most of the West Bank and East Jerusalem to attain peace with the Palestinians. He also called thoughts of attacking Iran "megalomania." He said traditional Israeli defense strategists have learned nothing from the past. "With them it is all about tanks and land and controlling territories and this hilltop and that hilltop. All these things are worthless. Who thinks seriously that if we sit on another hilltop, on another hundred meters, that this is what will make the difference for the State of Israel's basic security?" Admitting that for 35 years he had been on the right wing, he said "For a large portion of those years, I was unwilling to look at reality in all its depth."

They'll be cursing him in the shuls on this Rosh Hashanah night. But I take satisfaction that, in Israel and here, some people are speaking up who are not (or are no longer) neocons.

CHECK IT OUT

This article is extremely interesting.

GET THESE PEOPLE OUT

Fort Hill, SC Mayor Danny Funderburk said he forwarded a chain email suggesting Barack Obama is the antichrist because he was “just curious” if it was true:

“I was just curious if there was any validity to it,” Funderburk said in a telephone interview. “I was trying to get documentation if there was any scripture to back it up.”

The e-mail, which has circulated in the last six months, claims the biblical book of Revelation says the antichrist will be in his 40s and of Muslim ancestry. The Charlotte Observer reports, “There is no such scripture. And Obama is not a Muslim. But that hasn’t stopped the e-mail.” In March, CNN’s Glenn Beck wondered aloud “Is Obama the antichrist?“

Henry Paulson is the Antichrist. What's the matter with this mayor?

Seriously - when I wrote about the unbridgeable divide between the North and the South, this is what I was talking about. And here's how it translates directly into politics. Please, get these people out of my country!

FILTHY RICH QUICK

"The Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 300 points, while demand for safe-haven buying in government debt remained high ahead of the vote. Wall Street is fearful the government's plan to buy up toxic debt wouldn't be sufficient to resuscitate nearly frozen credit markets."

Who says that's what Wall Street fears? It's bad enough the whole thing is a casino, and then to have it explained by wild guesses - or purposely misleading opinions - on top of that?

Wall Street doesn't like the reregulation, the cuts in executive pay, etc. They wanted the pure Paulson plan - that's what drove the markets up a week ago. They don't want to hear that the big money days are over. Which proves to me that nothing that happens in the market has anything to do with any reality other than the intention to get filthy rich quick.

And this is the part that bothers me. What's being billed as "oversight" has no teeth. Decisions should be made by the overseers, not the Treasury Department - or, at a minimum, the overseers should have the right to veto any decision. They don't.

So what's the market bitching about? All they have to do is get to the Treasury Secretary.

The NYT says the market is dropping because people don't believe the bailout will work - i.e., that it will free up credit. Banks are either refusing to lend or charging exorbitant interest. Geez, what a shock. Banks with no public spirit.

If that's the case, the answer is obvious - as I suggested a while ago. Instead of giving the money to the banks, let the government lend it out at fair fixed interest rates.

Of course, that's "socialism", so no good. OK, if people don't trust Wall Street and don't trust the Federal government, give me the money and I'll lend it out. I couldn't do a worse job than the professionals did. Or give it to a redneck. He'll be fair.

WHAT PRESIDENT DID IT?

What president is most responsible for the current economic mess? Not George Bush. Bill Clinton.

It was on Clinton's watch that mortgage derivatives and credit default swaps were specifically exempted by legislation from federal regulation, setting the stage for what we're seeing today.

And you wonder why I didn't want Hillary.

SIMPLE

The Iraqi government has put off elections, scheduled for October, until January. Why would that be, do you suppose?

Because they want to know who the next president will be before they set their policy. In fact, they probably want that president actually in office. Why?

They know Bush, who practices the contradictory policy of supporting a Shi'a government and yet keeps troops in Iraq to prevent sectarian violence. One might assume this means the troops are there to protect the Shi'a, but it's more likely they're there to protect the Sunni, with whom we are allied all over the Middle East. They don't see any point in doing anything while Bush is there. They'll make the move when the change is made.

If it's McCain, the best they can hope for is more of the same. Or worse, because since McCain is smarter than Bush, he may understand that the present Iraqi government is not likely to produce the democratic regime he says he wants - meaning one which favors the US. And then he'd tilt to the Sunnis.

In either case, the Shi'a are likely to conclude that there's little point in holding the violence back. Then we find out that the surge is a joke.

If it's Obama, they'll likely wait him out as long as he intends to withdraw the troops. The end result will be the same - full-scale resumption of sectarian warfare - with the difference that now American troops will not be in the middle of it. That alone is an improvement.

We know the violence will resume because Iran has been training Iraqi Shi'ite insurgents. The US seems to believe that the US is the target. The target is the Sunnis.

The Sunnis have to know this is coming. Interestingly, someone - either al Qaeda or homegrown Sunnis - have been attacking the Shi'a lately, with the clear intention of provoking them into resuming warfare now. The probable intention is to draw American troops back into the fight - they hope on the Sunni side, which would be logical if it were not for the weird Bush belief (and McCain stated belief, which I think is a deception) that the Shi'a represent US-friendly democracy.

Why are the Sunni doing that now? Because it doesn't appear that McCain will win. And why are the Shi'a not taking the bait? Probably because they think the same.

It's simple.

WINNING IN IRAQ

The string of explosions in the capital Sunday began near sundown as Muslims were preparing for Iftar, the meal that breaks the daily fast during the holy month of Ramadan.

The deadliest blasts occurred in the Karradah neighborhood, where a parked car loaded with explosives blew up in a commercial area about 7 p.m., killing 19 people and wounding 72, police and hospital officials said.

Police said that about 90 minutes earlier, two car bombs exploded nearly simultaneously in the Shurta Rabaa and Amil districts of west Baghdad, but the U.S. military said later that the car in Amil blew up due to an electrical fire.

Twelve people were killed and 35 wounded in the Shurta Rabaa blast, and one person died and two were injured in the Amil explosion, police said.

Also Sunday, snipers fired on an Iraqi army checkpoint, killing two soldiers and a civilian in the eastern Zayona neighborhood of Baghdad. A roadside bomb killed an Iraqi soldier on a patrol in Mansour, a mostly Sunni area in the city's west, police officials said.

Two civilians were killed in an armed attack in the town of Khan Bani Saad by a group believed tied to al-Qaida, a police official in Diyala province said. The town is near the provincial capital of Baqouba.

The same official said two Iraqi soldiers were killed and 10 wounded when a bomb targeted them in Balad Ruz, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad late Saturday.

We are clearly winning in Iraq.

THE AMERICAN WAY

Thanks, Persephone, for this.

It's a great idea, but politically impossible. In order for something like this to be given a chance, a populist mindset would have had to set in a long time before this crisis hit the fan. The problem is not only that regulation has been deregulated; it's more that the public has been convinced that they're all going to get rich on the stock market and live happily ever after. They're only angry now because they're going to get hit with a bill for that mindset before they finished getting rich. Americans like speculators - it's the American way.

This one is good too - and more doable.

I would like to hear Naomi Klein's thoughts on the package as it is finalized.

DON'T CARE

"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."

I'm against this bailout. I don't care how fucked we are. I want these people to go down.

MIND YOUR OWN SHOP

Persephone sent me this. I edited it:

Britain is Repossessing the U.S.A.

A Message adapted and updated from Mr. John Cleese:

To the Citizens of the United States of America:

In light of the strong possibility you are about to elect an elderly gentleman with a bad temper and a lady who thinks she can run foreign policy because she can see Russia from her house, as President and President-In-Waiting of the USA and thus to risk Life As We Know It for everyone else on the Planet, we hereby give notice of the
revocation of your independence, effective immediately.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas , which she does not fancy). She won't actually be in charge, but she'll greet foreign leaders as necessary and not put her foot in it or vomit on anyone at dinner.

Your new prime minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a Governor for America without the need for further elections. He will choose someone who does not have his or her hand in the till and has significant experience in running Big Things. You have not had one of them for almost a decade and trust me, it is a big plus.

A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether more than half of you still believe Saddam Hussein was behind 9-11. Information to the contrary will again be provided by the rest of the world and we request you read it this time and refrain from invading the wrong country ever again if you possibly can.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

3. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication.

5. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent.



9. The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline)-roughly $9/US gallon. Get used to it. Your driving armoured cars to buy groceries is unnecessary, boorish and killing the planet.

11. We will require that people running things, like your government, are at least moderately competent and not related by blood or bribes to those who benefit from their decisions. We know it makes you more cozy when your leaders know as little as you do, but, honestly, it is short sighted: you need doctors who know more about medicine, pilots who know more about flying and leaders who know more about leading.

12. We respectfully request you give up this notion that Politics is Entertainment, and that very complicated things can only be explained to you in less than fifteen seconds. If you wanted to have a democracy, honestly, you'd really need to have taken the time to understand things a bit more before you voted. And may I suggest the startling notion that politicians don't need to look good to do a good job?
And it really is acceptable if they are a bit boring, so long as they do their homework. It's especially important if evidently you have not done yours. Poor old > Al Gore. Poor old John Kerry. And by the way, are you happy now you chose a Governor for California based on his teeth?

15. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.

God Save the Queen. But at least God won't instruct your President to invade any more wrong countries.

Now - all this would be more acceptable if it didn't come from a Brit, whose prime minister had his nose up Bush's you-know-what, who elected Margaret Thatcher and whose labor movement looks like a Boy Scout troop, whose greatest export was the Fab Four(I mean I love the Beatles, but how many emails can you send on a Paul McCartney?), and whose football yobbos make American skinheads look like pacifists?

Mind your own shop, Mr. Cleese.

The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

THANKS, REPUBLICANS

Some people think race is going to play a major role in this election. I wonder.

Most people, these days, who don't like blacks are not reacting to their skin color but to perceived cultural attributes. They see black men as unintelligible slobs who practice indiscriminate sex (and are immensely sexist), won't work, commit crimes, etc. None of that applies to Obama. Let's face it, in the cultural context he's about as white as they get.

Maybe more importantly, Obama does not linger on "black issues." A lot of resentment of blacks on the right is based on the conviction that they want to be treated, not as equals, but as more than equals, because of their "victimhood." They (and gays, and women) want something for nothing. What hurt Jesse Jackson (who is at least as bright as Obama) is his obvious identification with blacks and black issues. Obama has none of that.

So maybe race will be minimalized in November.

If so, we have three groups to thank: sports, for obvious reasons; the media, because they have put up a lot of very articulate black reporters and commentators; and the Republicans, who have found every white black except Obama (well, maybe not every), who have put Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice and a host of others to the forefront.

Ironic, isn't it? The Republicans have made it possible for a black man to be president.

VP DEBATE PREDICTION

Can a simple mind beat a loquacious mouth in a debate?

Biden will stick his foot in his mouth five times. Palin will not know what she is saying, but she won't know that. She'll just keep pumping. Ignorance is bliss.

Answer: yes. Palin wins.

WINNER: MCCAIN

McCain kept saying Obama didn't understand. That was Reagan's "There you go again." Obama has to have been prepped to watch out for this, and yet he never responded. He kept saying McCain was right about this or that. That was entirely unnecessary. Obama missed important arguing points. For example, he could have said that we were not winning in Iraq, because Iraq was going to end up a Shiite country allied with Iran. He could have said that the surge was a fraud, that the violence was down mostly because the Shiites were waiting us out. He could have said that the next president will have to deal with a hostile Iraq. He missed it.

Other points Obama missed:

I'm glad to hear you oppose torture, because you voted for it.

I still haven't heard you say what sort of plan you prefer to deal with the current crisis.

It was just as I predicted. McCain will go up 5-10 points.

SEEMS APPROPRIATE

Word is the KKK will make an appearance at Ole Miss tonight. It seems appropriate.

Since I believe we are refighting the Civil War, how fitting that one of the candidates should be black - and how fitting that the debate should take place at one of what used to be viewed as the South's Last Stands.

Students of the Civil War will recognize that the vicious rhetoric and the slick maneuvering we are seeing now are echoes of what preceded the Civil War. I don't think there was quite as much lying then - both sides were more interested in a positive presentation of their principles and a negative (but truthful, as they saw it) representation of their opponents. Except in the case of blacks - there the lies flew fast and furious. So why shouldn't they now?

Who needs Islamic terrorists? We have begun to terrorize our own.

WHO KNOWS? NO INFO

It has been almost impossible to learn details of the House Republicans' alternative plan for the financial crisis. What little I know of it sounds interesting enough that it should be given serious consideration - particularly in view of the national bipartisan protests against giving Wall Street the benefit of anything.

The idea of providing government insurance for bad mortgages has not been sufficiently described for me to get a sense of it. Apparently, the House Rep plan would also offer temporary tax relief (to whom?) to free up capital for companies to lend; a temporary suspension of dividend payments by financial institutions (not a bad idea); a requirement that participating companies tell Treasury the value of mortgage assets on their books (not a bad idea either); forbidding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from securitizing unsound mortgages (a very good idea) and requiring the SEC to investigate credit-rating agency performance (another very good idea).

What else is in there I don't know. I think it would be helpful to understand why these people didn't come up with these positions until negotiations on the Paulson plan were almost completed - which might bear on the sincerity of their proposal.

ENOUGH

I looked at the Huff Post this morning, and there is so much bad stuff going on that I can't even list it.

This country is coming apart - and I'm all for it, even if I have to move to New England. I can't live with these people any more. Let the South secede, and with it anyone who shares their point of view.

Let's apply Biden's Iraq plan to the US: split the country along the Mason-Dixon line, make McCain president of the South and Obama president of the North. Anyone who would rather be elsewhere than where he is can do what was done at the beginning of the Civil War - move. Considering the level of lies and vituperation going on now, I wouldn't be adverse to a little "political cleansing" - "helping" people to move on to where their views are accepted.

I think this would solve the economic crisis, too. People who don't want to bail out Wall Street won't have Wall Street to bail out. Probably it would make Americans enmployable again, as both countries scramble to fill essential jobs vacated by people who have moved on.

Best of all, evangelicals can have their own country. I'd give the South the flag and the national anthem, too. They need it a lot more than I do.

If we don't do this, and particularly if Obama wins, I'm afraid the killing will begin.

It's too much. I've had enough. Lincoln was wrong.

WHO'S LEARNED THIS STUFF FROM WHOM?

Daniel Levy
Posted September 25, 2008 | 09:48 PM (EST)

Happy New Year from Israel's Radical Right

Israelis awoke today to what most would consider to be very scary news. Hebrew University Professor and peace activist Ze'ev Sternhell received minor injuries after being the target of a pipe bomb attack. OK -- maybe this rates not so high on the Israeli scariness scale, but it's a warning sign to Israeli democracy -- a serious one. Sternhell himself commented from the hospital that "if this act was not committed by a deranged person but by someone who represents a political view, then this is the beginning of the disintegration of democracy" -- a sentiment he has echoed before. Israel's internal security service, the Shin Bet, is treating this as an act of political violence, inspired by far-rightist settler ideology. Fliers and pamphlets were found in nearby areas offering 1 million NIS (about $296,000) for the assassination of any Peace Now leader.

Professor Sternhell would be the first to recognize what an ironic target he makes: he is one of the world's preeminent scholars on the origins and development of European Fascism. He certainly is no stranger to the threat any democracy, Israel's included, can face by indulging domestic expressions of Fascism -- and the settler right is providing plenty of them.

The Israeli police are now providing stepped up security around Israeli peace leaders, and Israeli TV tonight unearthed vile videos threatening the Secretary-General of the Peace Now movement, Yaariv Oppenheimer, a former colleague of mine. Israeli progressives -- you know the kind of people, who believe in hard-headed diplomacy, security through peace, de-occupation -- are used to being vilified and branded as traitors, even if a majority of the Israeli public supports their solutions to Israel's problems.

And of course it would not be the first time that the thuggish political rhetoric of the radical right would be translated into criminal action. On U.S. Presidential Election Day, it will be the thirteenth anniversary of then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassination at the hands of Yigal Amir. And years before that, in an often forgotten episode, Peace Now activist Emil Grunzweig was killed during a peaceful protest march against the Lebanon War in 1983, the victim of a grenade attack hurled by a right-wing activist.

The particular danger now is the extent to which settler radicals are out of control, armed, and are going about their violent destructive business largely unimpeded by Israel's law enforcement authorities. When some Israelis first crossed the old 1967 border, the Green Line, and became the settler movement, they also began to cross all kinds of red lines both of international and domestic Israeli law. Radical settler violence is now a sadly prevalent and well-documented phenomenon. Israeli academic Idith Zertal and Haaretz award-winning journalist Akiva Eldar have painstakingly documented what they describe as the land of the settlers and its struggle with the state of Israel, in their book Lords of the Land. Another thoughtful Israeli, Bernard Avishai, has described Israel as being comprised of essentially two separate states, with a democratic, Hebrew civil society defining the one, and a revolutionary, Jewish settler ideology marking the other (see, for example, his comments here).

Of course, the acts of extreme violence and lawlessness are a penchant of a minority of more radical settlers. In fact, the majority of Israelis living in the occupied territories are enjoying economic benefits rather than realizing deeply held ideological convictions. But the recent episodes point to a disturbing new trend. After the disengagement in Gaza, a radical wing of the settlers basically disengaged from Israel, viewing the state as the enemy and increasingly taking the law into its own hands. When the tiny outpost of Yad Yair was evacuated by the IDF earlier this week, settlers went on the rampage against Israel's own military, wrecking the property of Israeli reservists at a local army base and physically attacking and breaking the hand of one soldier. Oh -- and they frequently call the Israeli soldiers Nazis for good measure. This, in addition, to the ongoing harassment and violence meted out against the Palestinian civilian population. Rampaging settler outrages have become a frequent feature of the nightly Israeli news and constitute an embarrassingly large number of hits on YouTube (the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has launched an innovative response operation called "Shooting Back", consisting of 'arming' local Palestinians with cameras in order to both document and deter).

While there has been widespread condemnation in Israel of the ongoing radical settler violence, and in particular of last night's outrage, little action has been taken with the army that oversees the settlement areas -- not wanting to get involved, and the police not making this a priority. The leader of the Meretz party in Israel, MK and former minister Haim Oron, struck a timely note of caution today when he urged people to focus not only on the few bad apples, but to also recognize the culture of incitement that has been cultivated in Israel's political environment by large swathes of the ideological, settler right. So that's the Happy New Year calling card from Israel's radical right.

And where does the U.S. come into this? Well, in addition to ongoing American fecklessness in the face of Israeli settlement expansion, which of course does no favors to Israel itself, there is also the noteworthy private contribution of the right-wing in America, including John Hagee's Christians United for Israel, in directly funding settlement expansion and entrenchment. And then there are the usual suspects -- Sheldon Adelson and Irving Moscowitz, chiming in with their own brand of helping Israel commit suicide. And who would have thunk it--these are some of the same people who are funding the distribution of the anti-Muslim hate film Obsession in swing states right now. Shana Tova!

GOOD-HEARTED

The parallels between the bailout negotiations and the Middle East peace process are striking.

The Dems (Kadima) negotiate with moderate Republicans (Abbas). House Republicans (Hamas) stand aside intending to scuttle any deal. And McCain? He's Netanyahu, waiting for the Dems to fall so he, like Hamas, can trash any deal.

There are always good-hearted people and bad-hearted people in any negotiation.

It appears what's really happening is that extremely conservative members of the House have decided it's time to reshape the Republican party in their image. They are standing on their ideology come hell or high water, and, because they don't believe things are as bad as Paulson is saying, they're willing to take the risk of an economic meltdown to preserve ideological purity. That would be Hamas in a nutshell.

They may be right that Paulson is overblowing it, but that's a pretty big risk to take. The pragmatists don't want to take that risk, and have been working to minimize both the risk of a meltdown and the risk of a bailout that only helps the rich.

And where's McCain? Having already said that the crisis is so huge that he has to suspend campaigning, go to Washington and broker a deal, he seems to be supporting those who will not compromise.

"Bush is no diplomat," said a Democratic staffer, "but he's Cardinal freaking Richelieu compared to McCain. McCain couldn't negotiate an agreement on dinner among a family of four without making a big drama with himself at the heroic center of it. And then they'd all just leave to make themselves a sandwich."

LATE

Here's my bet for what happens tomorrow:

Some time in the early afternoon, McCain announces that he has convinced House Republicans to support the modified Paulson plan. He insists on an immediate vote. He probably doesn't get one. But he says he is satisfied that the crisis is solved. He arrives in Mississippi ten minutes after the time for the debate and tells the world what a hero he is. The only part of this I am absolutely sure of is that he will show up after Obama has begun the debate without him. That's the way they've been playing everything.

What maverick means is no respect for rules. Can you imagine the kind of president he'll make - keeping the world on tenterhooks all the time as we all wonder what the hell he'll do next?

A FEW YEARS ON

It may be difficult to realize, but John McCain has not expressed a single opinion about the Paulson plan, any other plan, what should be in a plan, or any other detail relating to the financial crisis. He can't, because his party is split down the middle. He has had no conversations with Paulson, Bernanke or anyone out of his congressional party. He hadn't read the Paulson plan as of two days ago. He has not attempted to learn anything which could be useful in these times.

What McCain has expressed is that this is a crisis which requires immediate action (which his Republican colleagues appear to dispute) and that he has the personality to force people to come to a solution and pass a plan - which he can always disown if it turns out to be wrong because he's never said whether he liked it or not.

To quote the McCain campaign:

"At today's Cabinet meeting, John McCain did not attack any proposal or endorse any plan.John McCain simply urged that for any proposal to enjoy the confidence of the American people, stressing that all sides would have to cooperate and build a bipartisan consensus for a solution that protects taxpayers.

This is presidential? I don't care about his history - this is the coward's way out.

I am so sick of seeing and hearing the man that if he's elected I will probably slit my throat just to avoid 4 of 8 more years of him.

We made a mistake not impeaching Bush and Cheney. We thought if we just let them go things would improve. If we'd impeached them, we would at least have had the practice for what we are likely to have to do a few years on.

It appears, from Huff Post reporting, that McCain conferred with House Republicans to the plan and then blew it up at the White House meeting, vaguely mentioning the House Republicans' alternative plan, discussing no specifics giving no opinion. The man is a coward, so much so that one has to wonder what actually happened in Vietnam.

BREAKUP?

Are we watching the breakup of the Republican party? It's the weirdest thing I've ever seen.

House Republicans, hearing from their constituents, are saying they oppose a plan that gives money to Wall Street. Wall Street - one of the bulwarks of the Republican party. And they're proposing a plan - which people who hate Wall Street are allegedly insisting on - which depends on further deregulation, which of course in normal circumstances Wall Street would adore. So the people who hate Wall Street want to help Wall Street without knowing it. Paulson's initial plan would have suited them to a T - except that he wanted to give Wall Street money.

Wall Street has shown itself willing to accept compromises, forced on them by Democrats, that are anathema to them - in fact, they're even throwing some of their own under the bus. There are two possible reasons for that: 1) this situation is really as dire as they say, or 2) Wall Street really wants to get its hands on that money. House Republicans apparently believe the second. They don't want to give Wall Street any money at all. And they are clearly willing to take the risk that no bailout and FURTHER DEREGULATION will take us down to the depths of the abyss.

So the jerks hate Wall Street (so do I, but I'm not a Republican.) Wall Street has contempt for the jerks (so do I). How do you stitch these two back together again?

I don't know, but my bet is it will be done. Jerks can't bribe Republicans, and Wall Street needs the votes.

It's America that needs to break up.

CHOICES

Judging from all the complaining I'm hearing on TV, a lot of women are realizing that when they bought into the feminist credo that "you can have it all!" they missed a part of the message, or the message wasn't transmitted: if you want a job and children, you need 1) high energy and 2) either a start-up bankroll to pay for a nanny or 3) talent that's marketable at a high salary level. It is expensive to have it all.

So stop complaining. You made your choices. I don't want to hear it.

WHEN WILL THEY GET ANGRY?

The unemployment rate around here is going through the roof. Why? A lot of the unemployed were working in home construction when Florida overbuilt itself into a housing bust. I hate to say it, but they should never have had jobs - and if they couldn't do anything else, they should not have been in Florida, where they were also buying these houses they were destined to lose.

It was inevitable that these jobs would go sooner or later. If Florida developers had the slightest concern for the greater good instead of for lining their pockets, we wouldn't be overbuilt, these people would be elsewhere, and Florida would be quiet and relatively stable.

When will people get angry at the developers?

INTO THE STREETS

Nobel Peace Prize winner and environmental crusader Al Gore urged young people on Wednesday to engage in civil disobedience to stop the construction of coal plants without the ability to store carbon.

Gore is calling people into the streets! I've been waiting for that since Reagan was first elected, and particularly over the last eight years. I just wish they'd gone into the streets over a few other issues - like the war, the Constitution, this bailout deal.

Hey, kids, it was fun getting teargassed by the cops! Think of what you're missing! Good music, fun clothes, adventurous art and theater, good dope ... and a purpose!

SUSPENDED

McCain says he's suspending his campaign - and the media idiots say he's suspended his campaign. The only thing he's suspended is TV advertising, and the coverage he's getting over his "campaign suspension" should more than compensate for that. In the meantime, his state operations are moving ahead full stride. Not one McCain office has shut down.

Do you think the media will point that out? Did it even occur to them to check?

The only suspension I'm seeing is the media's usual suspension of disbelief. That's a theater term. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go find out.

And for God's sake stop all the chatter about there being or not being a debate. There was never going to not be a debate. And the Democrats who say McCain is ducking the debate are delusional. McCain just wants to be able to walk into that debate saying he personally brokered the deal that saved America. It will be a lie, of course - he'll have had little or nothing to do with it - but he'll say it and the media will report it, probably without challenge.

To clarify, when I speak of the media, I mean most of it. I exclude the papers and TV shows which have - at least since the beginning of this crisis - been reporting much more in depth than they have for years. The rest of them are as ignorant of what's going on as the public is. When you hear much of the media these days, you're hearing yourself talking. Since you bloody well know how ignorant you are, why not extend that view to the press?

By the way, the National Enquirer is reporting that Palin had an affair with her husband's former business partner. The story was not on the new I watched. How long did it take local news to pick up the Edwards story, also broken by the National Enquirer.

People are scared of Palin. And they shpuld be.

DONE DEAL?

WASHINGTON — Warned of a possible financial panic, key Republicans and Democrats reported agreement in principle Thursday on a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry and said they would present it to the Bush administration in hopes of a vote within days.

Emerging from a two-hour negotiating session, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., the Banking Committee chairman said, "We are very confident that we can act expeditiously."

"I now expect that we will indeed have a plan that can pass the House, pass the Senate (and) be signed by the president," said Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah.
But there were fresh signs of trouble in the House Republican Caucus. A group of GOP lawmakers circulated an alternative designed to attract private capital back into the credit markets with less government intrusion.

Under the proposal, the government would provide insurance to companies that agree to buy frozen assets, rather than purchase them directly as envisioned under the administration's plan. The firms would have to pay insurance premiums to the Treasury Department for the coverage.

"The taxpayers haven't done anything wrong," said Rep Eric Cantor, R-Va., adding that rather than require them to bear the cost of the bailout, the alternative "pretty much puts the burden on Wall Street over time."

McCain, as far as anyone knows, had nothing to do with the deal. Rep. John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, the minority leader, was huddling with McCain on the rescue. Earlier, asked whether the GOP presidential nominee could corral restive Republicans to support the plan, Boehner said, "Who knows?"

So - if there is a done deal, the most McCain will be able to claim is that he brought reluctant Republicans along. (As to that, read.) I suppose that's consistent with what he claims to be able to do - but it still leaves the point that the problem with this deal came from the Republican side. Do we really want a president who'll have to spend all of his time bringing his own party into line?

ASBURY PARK

Sarah Palin's pastor believes that when the Rapture happens everyone left behind is going to come to Alaska for refuge. I can't think of one good reason why anyone would go to Alaska - can you? Can he? I haven't seen his explanation for that train of thought.

Maybe because Alaska is pure - geologically, not humanistically? Maybe because it's better to be really cold than really hot - like in Hell, for example. But we're all going to Hell anyway, so why waste time in Alaska?

I think we'll all go to Asbury Park, NJ.

Read
Read

GENETIC DEAD END OF ROVISM

This McCain debate delay maneuver - like all of McCain's moves - seems simpleminded to me. Designed to elicit one immediate response, without regard to either the long-term consequences (to him) or unintended responses. For example, this from the Huffington Post:

Q: What is your perspective on John McCain's proposed $300 million prize to the auto company that develops a next-generation battery?

A: It is a monumental waste of time and total campaign B.S. because $300 million won't buy squat in that arena. McCain and his handlers are clueless and amateurish when it comes to the auto industry. Just showing up at a plant saying he "cares" about the auto biz doesn't mean he "gets" it. Far from it, in fact.

McCain actually is simpleminded in that way. Why? He says: "I've always had a pretty good idea about how to define something as to whether it's right or wrong. I don't mean that I'm better or worse than anybody else. I just mean that when I see an issue and think about it and talk to people, I do generally have the ability to know what's the right course of action, even if it may not be what the majority wants. So I have a certain amount of confidence that I don't have to have a majority opinion on my side."

Rove isn't simpleminded.

This - and Rove's comment that some of McCain's lies are over the top - suggests to me that Rove is not running this campaign. It would look as if McCain was actually running it, if I could believe that he could come up with maneuvers like this. It's much more likely it's being run by Rove proteges, and that they are being run by some central Republican wealth source(s) with the typical Texas shoot-first mentality, the same people (or the same kind of people) who were running Republicanism when Clinton beat them, before Rove came . There is none of Rove's sophistication in this, the thinking three or four steps ahead.

So I conclude Steve Schmidt is like an heir to a father's fortune - he just doesn't have what his father (Rove) had and he squanders the inheritance. Somewhere inside this campaign is the genetic dead end of Rovism. That's why I think there's a chance Obama could pull this out.

Another example of Rove's detachment: At a dinner in Toronto this week, a Canadian businessman asked him if he thought Sarah Palin would make a good President. "I don't know," said Rove.

ONE OF US

Sarah Palin on Afghanistan - about what you'd expect you'd hear from patrons at the local bar in Wasilla:

Sarah Palin: The logistics that we are already suggesting here, not having enough troops in the area right now. The... things like the terrain even in Afghanistan and that border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where, you know, we believe that-- Bin Laden is-- is hiding out right now and... and is still such a leader of this terrorist movement. There... there are many more challenges there. So, again, I believe that... a surge in Afghanistan also will lead us to victory there as it has proven to have done in Iraq. And as I say, Katie, that we cannot afford to retreat, to withdraw in Iraq. That's not gonna get us any better off in Afghanistan either. And as our leaders are telling us in our military, we do need to ramp it up in Afghanistan, counting on our friends and allies to assist with us there because these terrorists who hate America, they hate what we stand for with the... the freedoms, the democracy, the... the women's rights, the tolerance, they hate what it is that we represent and our allies, too, and our friends, what they represent. If we were... were to allow a stronghold to be captured by these terrorists then the world is in even greater peril than it is today. We cannot afford to lose in Afghanistan.

She may be "one of us", but she isn't one of me.

PEOPLE ACTUALLY THINK THIS IS OK FROM A VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE

NO DOWNSIDE

Okay, now I have a fix on what Obama should have done:

He should have said: I have been talking to the best economic minds I can find about this crisis, and I have been saying all along what I thought needed to be done. I expect there will be a bipartisan deal on this legislation by the time of the scheduled debate. If there is a vote called, I will be there. If our Congressional leaders need me to come to Washington, for any purpose, I will come. If there is a stumbling block, I will gladly give my advice. If there's gridlock, and I can be helpful, I will be. If John McCain doesn't want to debate, I'll agree to that. I think the public already knows where I stand.

What I don't get is this: by insisting on this debate, Obama is suggesting that he needs it to beat McCain - i.e., that he's still got weaknesses, that he's the underdog. Those are not positions you want to take at this point in the campaign.

I see absolutely no downside in cancelling this debate.

WHO BENEFITS?

Let's look at one simple point: who benefits if this debate is cancelled and never rescheduled?

The debate is about foreign policy - McCain's strongest suit.

I think it's Obama who's throwing the Hail Mary pass on this one.

OBAMA LOSES

McCain is now saying he will not show up for the debate unless there is a bailout deal by Friday.

It is extremely likely that there will be a bailout deal by Friday. In fact, Democrats are now saying it's the Republicans who are blocking it. Maybe they are holding out specifically so that McCain can go to Washington and claim credit for the inevitable deal. Whether they are or not, there has to be a deal, and McCain will certainly take credit for it. Then if he fucks up the debate he can say he's tired or he's not prepared because he's been solving the financial crisis. It's a win-win tactic, short-term. It's another Palin nomination.

The Democrats' position is that it's more important for the candidates to explain to the people their positions on the economy than to be in Washington, unless there's a vote on a deal. Problem is: this debate is not about the economy. The explanation is hollow, and they are falling into the trap.

The least they could do to get out of it would be to suggest to McCain that the debate should be about the economy. The problem with that? There will be a bipartisan deal by Friday. Neither candidate would be in a position to say anything other than that they support what's been done. I.e., there's no debate on the economy once this deal is done. Assuming the Democrats haven't just caved. Which they might. And then what? Obama attacks his own party, like McCain is doing?

It's just getting too absurb for words.

Obama loses on this one. Expect a McCain surge in the polls.

RIGHTEOUS ANGER

Whatever else you can say about the McCain campaign, their political maneuvering instincts are extraordinary. Would it ever have occurred to you to call off the debate? Not me, not in a million years. The creativity over there is always so unexpected - always rocking you back on your heels, since the day they named Palin - that you have to conclude either God or the Devil is speaking to Steve Schmidt. (I wouldn't take his answer as to which it was.)

If McCain really doesn't want to debate, all he has to do is not show up. Boy, that will get attention paid! And his voters won't hold it against him, now that he's explained his reasons. If he's got enough clout to actually get a deal done between now and Friday, while he's in Washington and Obama is not, he'll take all the credit for it, and Obama will be flatfooted again.

I don't think he doesn't want to debate. I think he wants to maneuver Obama, one way or the other. If the debate goes on, I think he will blame Obama for making him come back to the debate (and maybe get enough Republicans to block any resolution in DC so he can blame Obama for that, too) and I think he will wipe the floor with Obama - as I have thought for some time. Because McCain's righteous anger is a thing to behold, and he has been hauling it out a lot lately.

This is the kind of psychout the Dolphins pulled on the Patriots. They want to keep Obama rattled. If he isn't, he's the calmest man history has ever seen.

POSTPONEMENT

McCain has asked to postpone Friday's debate in view of the economic crisis. If I were Obama, I'd take him up on it - because I think Obama has made a mistake.

McCain wanted the first debate on foreign policy because it is his strong suit. Obama wanted the last debate on economics, his strong suit. McCain's thinking is better. The first debate will get the largest audience, and a lot of opinions will be fixed as a result of it. If I were Obama, I'd want my strong suit first.

McCain seems to be proposing that the two of them go back to Washington and attend to business. The truth is McCain will contribute next to nothing to a solution of the crisis - and Obama probably won't contribute much more. This one is in the hands of experienced Congressional leadership. Still, as a purely image-building move, it's not a bad idea, I believe. Refusing to do so will open Obama to heavy critique. Since he's ahead right now, what does he have to lose? And if he loses economics, he may lose the election.

Obama at this point seems determined to go ahead with the debate. The reason given: he doesn't want to be seen to be following McCain's lead. That's foolishness - his entire campaign focuses on the need for bipartisanship, and he turns this down? Wow, will he catch it! I'm sure he can find a sufficiently desultory way of approving this proposal.

A senior McCain adviser, Mark Salter, also said the campaign would suspend all advertising and campaign events until a workable deal is reached on the bailout proposal _ but only if the Obama campaign agrees to do the same.

That is a purely leg-up move. There is no real reason for it, and it stops Obama when he's building a lead. Very clever, but I would not agree - although Obama will take a hit for refusing this, too.

OH, TERRIFIC

Republican officials said that Paulson had bowed to demands from critics in both parties to limit the pay packages of executives whose companies benefit from the proposed bailout. Well, great.

That is the least of the fixes this bailout package requires. CEO compensation outrages people but has no real effect on the problem they say they're trying to fix. Let's move on to the real stuff, which I've outlined before.

And, by the way - what limit? If it isn't zero, it doesn't do what it's supposed to do, which is to fix blame and hold people accountable. Oh you rotten boy you've screwed up everything so you can only take $100 million with you when you go.

NOT A BETTER WORLD

The Dow seems to be stabilizing. The gambling public apparently has come to terms with the problems with Paulson's proposal. I think they're beginning to realize that Paulson's dire predictions are overblown. The loss of three major investment banks doesn't seem to mean all that much, and neither will the loss of a few more.

The biggest threat is of a credit lockup. But let's face it, if people who are in the business of lending money don't lend money, they don't make money. If they stop making loans to bad risks, they make less and some people don't get houses and cars - but that's a good thing, considering the consequences of the opposite. If nothing whatsoever is done by the government, these people will adjust and muddle through, because all we'll be doing is returning to the days before finance went crazy and raped the rest of us.

That doesn't mean I wouldn't do a bailout. It does mean that a bailout only makes sense as a quid pro quo to the market for a hefty package of re-regulation which would include mandatory pre-approval of new financial instruments like mortgage securities and credit default swaps. In a better world, a quid pro quo to people who don't give a damn about the rest of us would not be necessary - but this is not a better world.

BAD JEW MOVES ON

Fox News has fired Jessica Herzberg, the freelance producer responsible for the "Obama's baby mama" chyron from June, according to Chickaboomer.

In June, during a segment on Fox News' "America's Election HQ," a chyron read: "Outraged Liberals: Stop Picking On Obama's Baby Mama!"

At the time, Fox News' Senior Vice President of Programming, Bill Shine, acknowledged Herzberg's poor judgment, saying, "A producer on the program exercised poor judgment in using this chyron during the segment."

Herzberg has reportedly moved on to CNBC.

HIS BEST AND MY BEST

Bill Clinton is doing his best to insure that Hillary runs for president in 2012. In return, I will do my best to make sure that doesn't happen.

WHO CARES?

The media are all upset because they have no access to Palin and very little to McCain. Unfortunately, nobody gives a shit.

After 40 years of attacks on the "liberal" press, no Palin or McCain supporter cares what the press says. And after eight years of Bush and the press' abandonment of its function of reporting the truth as opposed to what someone says, not many Obama people care either. Obama people only care about that part of the press that either comes up with stories that support their position, or, like Olbermann and Maddow, says what they want to hear.

Nobody respects the press any more. For which they have only themselves to blame. Well, not only themselves - Spiro Agnew helped, Rove helped, McCain helped and their corporate bosses helped a lot.

SOMEBODY COMPETENT

I've heard newscaster after newscaster say they can't explain what's happening because they don't understand it. By God, they have no idea what a credit default swap is!

Well, why the hell don't they find out? Or get off the air and let somebody competent do the news.

SCARE

Somebody in the world remembers America in the '20s.

Couldn't we have just a little of this here? No murders, God forbid - but could somebody scare them a little?

PALEOCON

Read.

A FLY ON THE WALL

Sarah Palin is going to meet with Hamid Karzai, President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, Henry Kissinger, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili and Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Then she'll know everything she already thinks, and she'll be qualified in foreign affairs. Right?

How about Ahmedinejad? He's in New York, too.

McCain has essentially banned the press from these meetings, so we'll probably never know what she actually said. But God it would be great to be a fly on the wall.

CIVILIZATION

Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., says: "This massive bailout is not a solution. It is financial socialism and it's un-American."

I'm always thrilled when someone with responsibility to deal with something complex and unprecedented responds with ideology idiotics (that's semiotics for dummies.) What the fuck is he talking about? It's un-American to help capitalists? The only way you can square this opinion with sense is to conclude that what Bunning is saying is that it's un-American to help anyone. Period. And that, I think, is the basis of Bunning's politics.

Socialism? Theoretically socialism is intended to protect the widest spectrum of people and move in the direction, at least, of eliminating inequalities. That's what this bill is for?

It would be helpful if people who used the word had some understanding of it. What these people think the word means is this: any government action which takes money from me and spends it on something that benefits someone besides me is socialism. Of course, it's also fascism. It's also democracy. It's not socialism, it's civilization. Which makes Bunning a barbarian. Which is what I thought anyway.

NOT GOOD

This is not good. They're sounding like McCain.

SPACE ALIENS

Want to try to prevent what's happening now from happening again? Try addressing the root causes.

Mortgage securitization triggered the whole thing, because the guy who wrote the mortgage had no risk - he got paid up front. Credit default swaps brought AIG into the troubled picture. Both of these should be made illegal.

And the bailout law should require that any new financial device be approved by Congress before it can be used. Not that I trust Congress to do the right thing. But no space alien has volunteered to come down and help.

UPDATE: Before Congress. A third witness, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox, urged Congress to regulate a type of corporate debt insurance that figured prominently in the country's financial crisis. "I urge you to provide in statute the authority to regulate these products to enhance investor protection and ensure the operation of fair and orderly markets," he said. The debt insurance is known as credit default swaps.

See? I am beginning to get a handle on this.

EITHER WE'RE BOTH CRAZY OR ...

Read.

IGNORANT OF THE WORLD

Want to know what it would be like to have a person entirely ignorant of the world - Sarah Palin - be your president? I was going to say it might be fun to watch, but after eight years of Bush, we already know.

The difference between Bush and Palin is that Bush grew up in a very worldly family. He chose to ignore the benefits, but adding Harvard, Yale, Skull & Bones, something must have seeped through. When Palin claims experience with Russia because you can see it from Alaska, she means it. I remember when I worked in Newark, NJ, there were secretaries who had never been to Manhattan, which you could see from the office windows. But they at least made no claim to expertise on Manhattan. This Palin idiocy by itself should have turned off any voter. But it didn't. What can I say?

By the way, when McCain appeared in Tampa a few days ago he drew 2500 people. Palin drew 60,000 at the Villages. The Villages is a huge retirement community - actually I think 30 connected communities. People don't use cars there, they use golf carts. Their activity schedule is immense. If you don't like to be alone, you never will be. It's Paradise as envisioned by people with no imaginations. Palin could fit right in.

Correct: 1

TOTALLY SCREWED

If the purpose of this bailout was to fix the housing problem, why not have the government make loans at reasonable terms to homeowners who bought into unaffordable mortgages - and then let the holders of the old mortgages choke? If the purpose is to fix the problem permanently, why not make mortgage securities illegal? I haven't heard a single person mention that obvious solution.

If the real problem is a credit lockup, and we follow my suggestion below, why bail out any financial institution? Someone will come along and make new ones. The people who ran the old ones have made enough. Why can't we exile them all to the Hamptons and Nantucket, quarantine those areas and let them live out their lives in whatever peace they can find among their own?

One caveat - we do need to reimburse foreign banks for their losses. Because without them we are so totally screwed.

UPDATE: Bernanke told the Senate Banking Committee that Congress risks triggering a recession if it doesn't act on the plan. He said inaction could leave a range of businesses unable to borrow the money while consumers could find it impossible to finance big purchases like cars and homes.

Like I said - this plan gives money to the wrong people.

THE DIFFERENCE

Want a good example of the effects of unfettered capitalism? 56,000 Chinese babies have been poisoned by an additive in powdered milk which the manufacturer included while knowing it would make babies sick.

What's the difference between there and here? The Chinese shoot people like that.

HORSE MANURE

In Sam Stein's latest Huff Post story, he reports that in response to Congressional insistence on limiting executive pay as part of the bailout: "This past weekend, word circulatied that Wall Street executives may not play ball (refusing, gently, to help unload the bad investments versus the somewhat promising ones) if Congress tried to cap the funds they earn. In essence, they would rather take their chances with failures and buyouts."

Right there is where any board of directors with any understanding of its fiduciary duties to stockholders would csn the executives and cut off their compensation. But these days directors are mini-CEO's - if not CEO's of other corporations. They're on the boards not to benefit the company but to benefit the executives.

I say fine, let the company go down. And if shareholders don't locate the CEO's home address and cover his house with horse manure, they deserve what they get.

50 INCHES

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley will now be allowed to open commercial banks. The reason? So they can get capital to keep themselves afloat.

Knowing this, would you put your money in their banks?

They'd better be giving away 50" TVs.

THE SHOCK DOCTRINE

Hey, Andrew: what obligations - if any - do you feel you have to the rest of humanity, or in fact anyone beside yourself?

I, who was crazed by The Shock Doctrine, didn't make the obvious connection to current events. And Sullivan seemed like he didn't want to hear it. Frankly, I'm not sure he even knew what it was, because he might agree with it if he did. He wanted to spread the blame to the average American - which was entirely beside the point. Sure, people bought houses they knew or should have known they couldn't afford. But that has no bearing on what's happening right now, and Klein is exactly right to predict that the end of this crisis will be the further neoconization of this ignorant nation - in which I include Sullivan, on this issue at least. He would have done himself a favor if he'd shut up and listened. Because he isn't going to like where this ends up.

NOT A BAD IDEA

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.

This bailout is another Cheneyesque ploy. The above language should stop it in its tracks.

Here's my question: if the problem this bailout is supposed to address is a credit lockup, why not have the government make the loans directly instead of bailing out finance companies so they're free to make loans (or not - why wouldn't they just run off to the Cayman Islands with the money Paulson wants to give them?)? That way the government gets oversight over what's done with the money and the capacity to at least attempt to pull it back if something's wrong?

Yes, this will require a new bureaucracy. If people don't want another government burueacracy, why not cut the government out entirely and just send their tax money directly to the corporations?

Now that I mull that over - it's not a bad idea. The only thing we need the government for is to tell us how much we owe. Or, if you're a libertarian, you can decide how much you want to give. Not only that, each of us can decide who we want to give it to. Do we prefer Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley? GM or Ford? HP or Dell? The restaurant on the corner or the tailor down the block? Which would we rather see survive? It would be like a school voucher program - only the popular would make it.

The downside? Can you imagine how many TV commercials we'd have to watch from companies wanting us to give them money? Not just finance companies, every company which needs short-term cash to operate. Meaning every company. Because that's what this bailout is all about, right? Helping everybody.

EQUITY WON'T WORK

A lot of people are insisting that in return for taking over companies' bad debt, the government get equity in those companies. This is essentially partial nationalization. Republicans are going to go for that?

It would be more of a problem than a solution anyway. When companies are nationalized, government agencies are created to run them, specifically directed toward the business those companies do. Nobody's talking about creating any agencies to run partly nationalized companies - and anyway there are so many of them, potentially, that the government would be all over the map.

So - who's going to vote those shares the government gets? To what end? Pursuant to what policy? Who's going to watch the companies' managements to make sure the value of those shares isn't reduced to nothing?

We don't want to get screwed, but equity won't work.

MAY BE THE CHANCE

This country is in dire financial straits due to the lying, cheating, bribes, outright theft, propagandizing and diversion tactics of what has become the new ruling class (including some of the media.) But we are in worse trouble since, because of the above, no one trusts anyone to act in the public interest in times like these - or at any time.

Perhaps it's time for Obama to invoke Roosevelt. Maybe he should declare, at the next debate: Let's take this country back from the liars, the thieves, the people who have ruined it for their own gain. Let's make a government that acts in the interests of all. Small town, big town, rich, poor, middle class, white, black, Latino, Christian, Jew. That, as you may remember, is what America is supposed to be.

This may be the chance to put the oligarchs back in the box that the New Deal put them in, and kept them in for forty years, until Reagan let them out.

NONE OF OUR BUSINESS

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraqi Shiite fighters who trained inside Iran to operate in assassination squads are starting to return home, the U.S. military told CNN.

"We are beginning to see indications that some 'special group' members are returning to Iraq and may be planning assassinations of key [Iraqi] government and security officials, as well as coalition forces," a U.S. military spokesman said.

Excuse me? The government is Shi'a. Exactly why would these men attack it?

Assuming the report is correct, what we are seeing is fighters returning trained for the power struggle between Sunni and Shi'a which will inevitably happen when we leave Iraq - or before that, if we keep hanging around. Currently, I've heard news of Sunnis attacking Shi'a in Iraq, not the other way around. Redressing that balance is what these men are for.

This is none of our business.

INTERESTING

So now McCain is boxed.

The Democrats are insisting that reforms be included in the bailout. (They probably won't get them, but at least they said it.) In order to be consistent with his position of the last few weeks, McCain is going to have to follow them. In order to be really consistent, he's going to have to oppose the bailout completely. But his backers will never allow him to do either. And if he doesn't, he's open to attack on his sincerity.

He will probably say that reforms are necessary but should wait until they've been thoroughly thought through, and that the bailout is immediately required. He's still open to attack.

It will be interesting to see what he does with this.

NOT HISPANICS, REALLY

After the Palin hoopla and all the rest of it, Florida seems to be settling back into the voting patterns of 2000 and 2004. State polls show a dead heat. Obama leads with women 48-41; McCain leads with men 51-42. 58% of South Florida says it's going for Obama; 56% of north Florida is going the other way. None of this is particularly new.
Not even the fact that, while nationwide Obama leads with Hispanics 66-23, in Florida McCain leads 48-41.

The reason is that most of these Hispanics are Cuban. They are traditionally Republican; in Florida they are not a working class; they consider themselves capitalists and, in fact, superior to other Hispanics. In fact, I don't think they think of themselves as Hispanics at all. They have more in common with McCain than they do with the Mexicans who are cutting their lawns.

So the state could go either way. GOTV and voter challenges will determine this one.

NOT GOOD WITH ABSTRACTION

Why did McCain focus his "fix" of the financial crisis on firing Chris Cox?

It's a simple-minded solution. In fact, it's no solution. But it focus resentment on one person. It creates an Antichrist - even though Cox is only marginally on the list of government demons responsible for this, and McCain is much more central to it himself. It keeps the focus off the real Antichrists.

And I think it's the way McCain thinks anyway. He's not good with abstractions. He picks an enemy and he pounds him, her or it. This is the military way of thinking, and it's not advisable in a president. Civilians identify the enemy for the military, which does not have to think about why it does what it does. Then the military goes out and pounds the enemy.

McCain might make a good general, but he doesn't have the mental approach capable of reasonably and intelligently defining an enemy. And McCain clearly needs an enemy - as he has leapt from one to another ceaselessly.

DISBAR THE BANKERS

Lawyers can be disbarred. Usually it happens to the guy who steals from one widow, not guys like John Yoo who screw up the country. But it could happen. The reason behind it is that lawyers handle other people's money.

Financial industry people handle a whole lot more of other people's money - yet there are no consequences of negligence or, mostly, for fraud. Why not, along with this bailout, create an Ethics Commission to oversee finance, so that when someone pulls what many of them have been pulling, he or she can be barred from continuing in the business.

I'm sure it would be rarely enforced, but it would make me happy.

WHICH GONIFFS

Next, Paulson was on Face the Nation. He didn't answer a single one of the pointed questions Schieffer asked him. Message to TV interviewers: this is not normal politics. This is the most important matter you will ever have to deal with. It behooves you not to accept people ducking questions. And if they refuse to answer a second and third time, it behooves you to note, when you move on, that they never answered the question.

Barney Frank and Dick Shelby were much more helpful, although I don't think either of them really understands what Paulson is doing. No fault of theirs - who does? But it heartened me to see a Republican and a Democrat in general agreement on the need for regulation, and for help for the middle class.

Shelby noted that Republican policy does not support passing laws regulating CEO pay. He says its a matter for corporate boards. In fact, I think any legislation regulating CEO pay would be unconstitutional. However, I take Shelby's point, and I amend my private proposal: if the Feds are going to buy a company's bad loans, the Feds should require that the officers, directors and perhaps the shareholders of that company - those who profited from greed - disgorge those profits to the government before receiving any assistance. I.e., if directors want help, they're going to have to get their CEOs to give it back. That would satisfy constitutional and Republican issues. Strictly voluntary, of course. Companies don't have to accept bailouts. But the public should know which goniffs continue to be problems.

RE-REGULATION

On Meet the Press, both Paulson and Bloomberg insisted it is necessary to fix the immediate crisis now and leave discussions of reregulation to later. The only reason that is true is that everyone knows there will be arguments, obstructionism and dirty tricks done when the discussion of regulation comes front and center. Republicans - even McCain and the rest of them who are now clamoring for regulation - will dig in their heels when the rubber meets the road. Bloomberg asks for bipartisanship. It's been his focus for some time. I find it hard to understand how a man with his perspicacity could believe it's possible. Regulation is anathema to Republicans - it's a repudiation of all their central tenets. They will say they'll go along with it, but they never will. They can't and remain viable. The only way we are going to get reregulation is with a Democratic president and a strong Democratic majority in Congress.

Paulson et al say they don't want to talk about reregulation is because it would be very complicated and no one knows exactly what to do. Well, how about using McCain's idea? Create a commission to study it in the bailout bill. It's a sop, but it's important to keep the focus on reregulation. Passing the bailout with no mention of reform means we start at square one when reregulation gets considered, with the immediate crisis driver over and no pressing reason even to think about it. Which, I'm sure, is exactly what Bush and Paulson want.

Let's see the Democrats propose a commission and see what Paulson has to say about that innocuous idea.

NOT WHAT IT SEEMS

Do you wonder why the government saved everyone else, but let Lehman Brothers go down?

Since 1989, Lehman Brothers's employees and political action committee have given $9.2 million to federal candidates, parties and political action committees, with 54 percent of that going to Democrats. In the current Congress, 271 lawmakers have collected nearly $3 million since 1989, with 72 percent going to Democrats. Democratic presidential candidates and senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama top the list of all-time recipients for the company, collecting $410,000 and $395,600 respectively. Read.

We must remember that in Republican World, nothing is ever what it seems. Neither is this bailout proposition. Read. Read this, too.

NOT FUN

Ayatollah Khamenei says Iran hates Israelis, not just Israel, and the two countries are on a collision course. He was supposed to be the voice of moderation.

Well, if he says so, I guess it's true. That ought to convince Israel to move.

The 21st century is not going to be fun.

GODFORSAKEN

At least one economist believes the bailout will reduce the level of foreclosures. He says having the government own mortgage assets could make it easier to arrange refinancing because the government would be more concerned with trying to facilitate a healthy housing market than investors would.

Nice, but not likely. Why? Because Paulson is not creating a Federal agency like the RTC to administer this program. He's outsourcing it to outside "advisers." My God, they're privatizing this thing, too! And we're supposed to believe these people are going to focus on the public good? Where are they going to find any outside "advisers" who aren't knee deep in the creation of this crisis?

Nobody knows how this plan is going to work. They only know they have to do something now - never mind what it does to the future. The New York Times says economists are warning of an explosion in federal debt, higher financing costs, escalating reliance on foreign capital, higher inflation and further erosion of American economic sovereignty. Also higher taxes and lower expenditures. I.e., watch for Republican pressure on social programs. Somebody's going to have to be blamed if the rich have to pay more taxes - and that will be the public, I'm afraid. Watch out for Social Security. Watch the infrastructure crumble. All I can say is, if these are the risks, I want certain people sent to jail. For treason.

I do not trust this plan, I say. I do not trust it at all. Read.

By the way, oil went back over $100 a barrel yesterday. Why? Investors who were terrified and would not speculate in oil now are not, and are back to their old tricks. Which is exactly what we can expect once this bailout is in place. Nothing is going to change in this godforsaken country.

IT'S IN THERE

The financial crisis is starting to smell like Iraq.

Republican hostility to regulation and promotion of greed created the preconditions for this meltdown. Now the shit hits the fan - which they swore for a year it wouldn't - and now they're stampeding the Congress to pass the greatest bailout since the Great Depression on two days notice, or maybe five.

Bush presents this as a bipartisan effort. It's the same kind of bipartisanship we saw in Iraq. Democrats want to include middle class assistance,possibly expansion of jobless benefits; tighter regulations, corporate reforms or limits on executive compensation as part of the measure. (I would like to see a requirement that before the Feds buy any company's bad debts, all money paid out in bonuses, CEO compensation or golden parachutes is paid to the Fed fund by those who received; otherwise, they can go to hell.) Paulson refused all of it. This is Bush dogma: create a crisis which requires immediate resolution, then refuse to negotiate. The Democrats will cave, because they don't have the votes to do otherwise, and they'll be afraid of being painted as economic Antichrists. (They should at least make some serious efforts to get this stuff included, because Republican opposition will provide good election talking points.)

All I'm asking: before this package is passed, somebody needs to find the scam. You can bet your bottom dollar it's in there somewhere.

DOES WALL STREET PREFER OBAMA?

The Wall Street Journal says:

In a crisis, voters want steady, calm leadership, not easy, misleading answers that will do nothing to help. Mr. McCain is sounding like a candidate searching for a political foil rather than a genuine solution.

I wonder whether some on Wall Street are beginning to conclude that they would prefer Obama, with whom they can reason, over McCain, who tends to knee-jerk responses and lashes out unreasonably.

WILL THE TITLE BE ENOUGH?

McCain began his campaign by promising an essentially bipartisan administration. I guess he's abandoned that, because the hatred he's incurred with Democrats for his campaign of lies will never die as long as he lives. If he wins, he starts where Nixon started, and where Bush leaves off.

That, of course, is no problem for most Republicans. If Obama wins, they'll hate him like they hated Clinton, and for the same reason - he beat them and interrupted the flow towards a permanent Republican majority. Republicanism is a religion, and Democrats are the Antichrist. They will never, ever change.

But McCain ... I think he meant what he initially said. I think he's very angry now that he's being dissed - although he ought to blame the liars who are framing his campaign, not the people making hay out of the lies. I wonder if he realizes yet that if he is elected he will never govern. I wonder if the title will be enough for him.

ALL THE EVIDENCE

The Troopergate prosecutor says he has enough to go ahead with his report by the end of October. Assuming his integrity, that means he's made his case.

Palin's husband and others have refused to respond to subpoenas, advised by the typical amoral Republican lawyers. But in this case, that is not very bright.

Firstly, the prosecutor has sworn statements taken from many of these witnesses by the state Attorney General. Secondly, he obviously feels he has the evidence he needs from other sources. If defense witnesses refuse to show up, they lose their chance to "set the record straight." (They don't, however, lose their chance to pooh-pooh the final report as politically driven - as if that was a sin in Republican World.)

The prosecutor could have gone to court on contempt citations, but that would be counterproductive, since any rulings would have been appealed and a final decision delayed til well past election day. If he doesn't need their testimony, he can just drop the matter and proceed to his findings without them. Smart move.

Too bad Congress hasn't figured this out. They don't need Karl Rove's testimony - if they want to indict him they have all the evidence they need.

BAD JEW-NAZI

I have said many times that radical conservatism is Nazism. Listen to the 9/12 edition of the podcast of Bill Moyers Journal (get it on iTunes). In it are quoted right-wing authors condemning liberals in the precise language the Nazis used to condemn the Jews - and with the same pathological hatred showing through.

One of these authors is Michael Savage. Savage is Jewish - his real name is Michael Weiner.

I find it deeply saddening that Jews can think like Nazis, and act like Nazis, after what we have been through. And I don't believe Savage is in any way unique in this - many neocons are Jewish, and many supporters of Israel think of and describe Palestinians as Nazis described Jews.

I have condemned Muslim moderates for not speaking out against radical Islam, and moderate Christians for not condemning radical Christianity. Now I condemn moderate Jews for doing nothing to disown the scum among us.

I used to do a series of posts called Bad Jews. I now re-inaugurate that series with Michael Weiner, an insidious verminous bacillus in the body politic. Does that sound sufficiently Nazi? In his case, it's the truth - based not on who he is but what he does.

HOW A PRESIDENT KNOWS

No presidential candidate can know everything, obviously. So the key to the quality of a candidate is the quality of the people whose advice he listens to. If Palin were a statesman (stateswoman?), she could have said the above, when her foreign policy experience was questioned, and then identified her advisers. Unfortunately, she doesn't even know who her foreign policy advisers might be; she only knows the Rove politicos.

Today Obama is meeting with Warren Buffett, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, former Treasury secretaries Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers and Paul O'Neill and Laura Tyson, former head of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton to decide what his response to the current crisis should be. He's acting like a president - and should make the point in upcoming ads.

That being said, I don't like the people he's meeting with - and progressive economists seem to be notably missing. With the possible exception of Buffett, all the named people are implicated in the mess we're in. How he's going to get decent advice from them is a mystery I hope will unravel soon.

IN CASE YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW

Jeff Sharlet's book "The Family" is about the Opus Dei of evangelicals - a group which uses Jesus to rule the world - literally. The book is so vivid and terrifying it's hard to believe it's not fiction. It's sort of the "Protocols of the Elders of Washington" - its list of participants will blow you away: Sam Brownback, James Inhofe, Chuck Colson, Pete Domenici, Bill Nelson, Melvin Laird, Rehnquist, Reagan, Ed Meese and plenty of foreign leaders, just to name a few. They're the ones who brought George Bush to Jesus. They scare the hell out of me. I'm waiting to see if I find out who really killed Kennedy.

Just in case you thought you knew how this country actually works, you ought to read it and disabuse yourself of your illusions.

AD, PLEASE

Paul Begala points out on Maddow that if Social Security had been privatized - as McCain advocated - people's benefits would be in the tank. The really funny thing is that he has been castigating Wall Street as thieves and gamblers, when he was ready to turn the Social Security system over to them. He just learned who they were?

He defines hypocrisy.

Ad, please.

LUDICROUS

McCain today announced his two-part plan for the economy:

1) Fire the chairman of the SEC
2) Create an RTC type government entity to soak up the bad debt

As to the first, I'm not sure how much responsibility the SEC actually has for much of what's gone wrong. I do know that most of the problems occurred in parts of the financial system which are entirely unregulated - due to the efforts of Republicans in Congress and in the White House, and not at the SEC.

As to the second, McCain presented this as his idea - although Paulson had brought up the idea well ahead of McCain's announcement. Back in the Keating 5 days, McCain opposed the creation of the RTC. This is pretty dangerous ground for him to be playing around in.

These are just examples of what turns out to be Republican stupidity - quick responses to problems which don't work well. (Obama pulled back from the campaign to meet with his financial advisers to discuss whether he would endorse Paulson's plan - which is what you would expect a smart guy to do.) But what follows is far worse.

Today I heard McCain say that Sarah Palin knew more about energy than anyone else in the United States. RealLy? How about Cheney? The Enron guys? Oil company execs? T. Boone Pickens?

The statement is entirely ludicrous. There is only one way McCain could possibly have believed it: that is, if he's losing his mind. Some 527 has to come with this - and here's another one we need a 527 on.

Todd Palin says he will not obey a subpoena to testify in Troopergate. Who does this remind you of? The point needs to be made.

The Democrats have figured out that swiftboating falls over its own illogicality if you push back. They're doing OK with that so far. They need to stay on top of it.

IF I WERE MCCAIN

People are coming to Republican rallies to see Palin - and then walking out on McCain. Palin has begun referring to the "Palin and McCain" administration.

Mark my words, they will be a repeat of the Bush administration: the neocons will run it through Palin, as Cheney ran Bush, and Palin will be the front as Bush was. McCain will be ignored.

If I were McCain and he wins this election, I'd watch what I ate and I wouldn't let anyone near me when I was asleep.

VP FOR ARMAGEDDON?

I told you Palin was a Christian Zionist.

I assume I'm going to stop seeing all those AIG TV ads?

WOW

Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, who, after supporting Hillary, now fundraises for McCain, calls Obama an elitist.

Read her and her husband's history.

What kind of America would we have had if Clinton had been elected with this broad behind the scenes? Now I know I was right to oppose Hillary. I just didn't know it was this bad.

THE AMERICAN DREAM

Since I'm on a roll, I want to bitch:

I didn't know the American dream was home ownership.

I thought it was living in a free, civilized society. I thought it was common wisdom. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

As the chances of universal home ownership go through the floor - they never were very good anyway - will the next American dream be owning a Wii? Eating a tuna fish sandwich? Seeing a Red Sox game?

NOW THAT'S RELIGION AS IT OUGHT TO BE

HALF DEAD

McCain is beginning to look like a dog whose leg is caught in a wolf trap. He's not sure why he got into it, and has no idea how to get out.

When distraction stops working - which may be very soon - the Republicans are going to be left with nothing to say. They can't explain what they'd do to get us out of this mess - because Republicans don't want to do anything that would work, and they haven't given solutions a moment's thought.

McCain is hanging out there, half-dead. Obama can administer the coup de grace by staying on message relentlessly and as often as possible. Palin should be responded to if necessary, but otherwise written off - by public declaration - as absolutely useless in today's America.

I hate the circumstances, but I have to admit I'm getting a lift from the way things have turned lately.

OMIGOD!

Read.

VERSAILLES

America's going to hell in a handbasket, and all American right-wing Jews can think about now is Israel? Read.

What they should be thinking about is what I'm going to do to them if I wind up getting blamed, as a Jew, for this financial collapse - which a fair percentage of them probably facilitated. Talk about self-fulfilling prophecies. What is the oldest stereotypical basis for antisemitism? And in what circumstances does it tend to rise?

Think Germany after Versailles.

A LOT OF WEIGHT

Okay.

Americans are scared shitless. Now Sarah Palin drops off the radar, because Americans haven't a clue what to do about Wall Street, and they know she hasn't either, because she's just like them. They'll be looking hard at McCain - and this is his weakest point. Read Anything he says can be contradicted by what he's already said and done.

This is a killer moment, and the Democrats seem to be seizing it. When they're done, McCain will be the new Herbert Hoover. The smartest move they could make, I think, is to get Bill Clinton out there often and hard. People remember things were good when he was President. What he says now will carry a lot of weight.

FUNDAMENTALS

McCain says American workers are the fundamentals of our economy, and they are strong. If they are, it's no thanks to Republicans who have busted unions and labor laws, abetted corporations in distributing their profits everywhere but in salary increases and in shipping jobs overseas and opposed an increase in the minimum wage.

Everywhere they turn they are hoist on their own petard. God willing, enough Americans will figure this out.

MENCKEN II

The United States has never developed a true proletariat, which often shows fine generosities and chivalries. Instead, it has simply developed two bourgoisies, an upper and a lower. Both are narrow, selfish, corrupt, timorous, docile and ignoble; both fear ideas as they fear the plague ... The boobs hope to rise and believe that they will rise - they want the loot protected so that it will still be there when they come to collect it. Until this universal belief in prosperity around the corner dies out in the American people, there can be no serious radical movement in the republic. Nor can thee ever be any genuine passion for liberty, or any organized movement against harsh laws, or any effective punishment of profiteers. Such things, to the bourgeoisie, are not evils; they are goods; upon them the whole structure of bourgeois society rests.

Plus ca change ...

COLLAPSE

Damien Hirst is the Sarah Palin of art. No discernible talent, great marketing. Well, let's give him some credit - he does his own marketing (like Warhol); Palin has a huge agency (the Republican party) doing hers. There simply can't be anyone out there who thinks Hirst's stuff has any intrinsic value. Its value is entirely as an investment.

So here's my prediction: the market for Hirst collapses as people realize they have been buying absolute crap. The Brits bail him out to keep the world's economy from collapsing with him. The British Museum ultimately owns all Damien Hirsts, and puts them in a room into which no one ever goes.

MENCKEN I

Lest we believe we are going through unique times, here is H.L. Mencken in 1920:

The first and last aim of the politician is to get votes, and the safest of all ways to get votes is to appear to the plain man to be a plain man like himself, which is to say, to appear to him to be happily free from any heretical treason to the body of accepted platitudes - to be filled to the brim with the flabby, banal, childish notions that challenge no prejudice and lay no burden of examination upon the mind...

When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental - men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand ...

As democracy is perfected, the presidency represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

... The sense of justice, like the sense of honor, is the exclusive possession of a small and usually miserable minority of men.

MORE GOOD AD IDEAS

Gosh, there are so many!

One With this added.
Two
Three

THREE QUESTIONS

What did it take to get Obama voters to switch to McCain?

A woman on the ticket.

What would it take to get McCain voters to switch to Obama?

Jesus on the ticket. If that's not possible, Obama's promise that he will do everything it takes to guarantee that they will be Raptured before the end of his term.

Nah, that wouldn't work - they know McCain will take care of it.

I don't know the answer. Do you?

Why won't Republicans let the government fix the economy?

Because it's theirs, goddammit. They can crap it up if they want. So bail 'em out, and let 'em take another shot at it.

THE IGNORANT

Carly Fiorina, a key surrogate for John McCain on economic issues, said on Tuesday that Sarah Palin does not have the experience needed to run a major company like the one that Fiorina formerly headed.

"Do you think [Sarah Palin] has the experience to run a major company, like Hewlett Packard?" asked the host.

"No, I don't," responded Fiorina. "But you know what? That's not what she's running for."

Get the impression Fiorina thinks HP is more important than the US government? You would be right, and so do plenty of corporate execs.

We have to hope that one of these statements sinks in somewhere.


McCain: "I warned two years ago that this situation was deteriorating and unacceptable," McCain said on "Good Morning America" on ABC. "And the old-boy network and the corruption in Washington is directly involved and one of the causes of this financial crisis that we're in today. And I know how to fix it and I know how to get things done."

Considering this happened on a Republican watch, McCain's prior opposition to regulation and his involvement in the S&L scandal, I think we have the right to demand he tells us exactly what he knows.

McCain economics and policy adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin said any plan should include regulation of all sorts of financial institutions, consumer protections, improved corporate governance and "systems stability" programs. Wow! And these are Republicans?

But they won't get more definite. "There's no magic solution, and I don't think it's at this moment imperitive to write down exactly what the plan has to be," said Holtz-Eakin. "But there should be an understanding that when you walk out of the Congress with a piece of legislation in the next administration, those boxes are checked and those things are effectively accomplished."

This is as far as McCain is willing to go. He called for a high-level commission to study the current economic crisis and claimed that a corrupt and excessive Wall Street had betrayed American workers.

Actually, this is very slick. Because the rednecks have no idea that they are allied with big money in the Republican party, or that big money is using them. They identify Wall Street with the Starbucks crowd. They don't know Fiorina is a Republican. So McCain attacking Wall Street makes perfect sense, and they will buy his sincerity.

Time to take the vote away from the ignorant.

LIKE ARABS

If Tom Friedman is right that innovation is the key to the survival of any nation in the 21st century, rednecks are standing in the way.

There are always exceptions to generalities, but in general rednecks do not create. They do not innovate. The only innovations I can think of in their case is new ways of selling the same old stuff - new forums for country music, better marketing of NASCAR. And I'm not even sure the rednecks are responsible for those - they may actually be in the hands of Starbucks types.

Good example - Britney Spears is a redneck, was a great success and in some ways her records were quite innovative. But she didn't design that innovation. Starbucks types producers, writers and engineers did.

I think of rednecks the way I think of Arabs. Many of them have no interest in something new, and those that do are clueless as to how to bring it about. Now, you may say, hey, they like iPods, too. Well, bin Laden likes modern technology, but what does he use it for? What have the Arabs invented in the last 800 years? I'm sure there's something, but who can think of it?

A redneck presidency in these times would be disastrous - just like the current redneck presidency was. Of course, real rednecks won't be running the government. I could tolerate a redneck president if the people behind him or her were not entirely self-interested and ideologically motivated. That is something I never expect to see.

If Palin is elected, I'll have to change my views. I have been out of sympathy with entrepreneurs who don't kick back to the less fortunate and oppose government policies which would work that way. But hell, if the less fortunate don't want to helped, I'll have to go with the entrepreneurs. What that means is the two Americas become frozen in position - one succeeds, one fails and there is no interaction. Unfortunately, this is beginning to make sense to me.

I don't like Dale Earnhart. I don't appreciate redneck women. Every rodeo I've been to for the last forty years is the same. One America moves ahead, one moves back. In most nations in history, this dichotomy ultimately leads to revolution. But that isn't going to happen here, because they like where things are at. And they don't like to have to deal with something new. So to hell with them.

OUT OF MY FACE

In a talk show discussion this morning about upcoming Congressional investigations of high gas prices in the face of record oil company profits, one man said he wanted no such investigations. It's the oil companies' oil, he said, and they can charge what they want for it. That's okay because if you want to share in those profits, you just buy oil company stock.

That assumes that the directors pass the profits on to shareholders, that the share price accurately reflects those profits, and that people with a million shares don't manipulate the price. But we can ignore all that. It's all very simple for a simple mind.

But he gave me an idea, and here it is: we sell off all governmental functions (including the military). Then we dismantle the government and the Constitution. If you want a part in deciding how America goes, you don't vote, you buy stock. If you like what a company's doing, you buy; if you don't, you don't. This will ensure that everyone's desires and opinions play a role.

Is there something wrong with this? If there is, it's too complicated for me to see. So just leave me alone and let me fend for myself. I don't need you, I don't care about you, so get out of my face.

HELL OF A WAY TO RUN A COUNTRY

What makes this election difficult is that it is now entirely divorced from reality. It will likely be decided by amorphous unformed ideas, beliefs and concepts floating around inside voters' heads - of which they are more than likely not consciously aware. That means that polling on questions more specific than "who do you like" is likely to be extremely unreliable. It also means that predictions as to when people have locked in their choices can't be trusted either.

I believe the key to success is getting a voter committed and then staying on top of that voter every possible minute - coupled with the ability (extremely rare) to read the moment when flux disrupts a fixed choice. Any prediction made now is essentially worthless - and therefore should not be made public, the risk being that this worthless prediction may have an untoward influence on the way some people vote.

If this election were being held in 1860, a confirmed abolitionist might vote for a pro-slavery candidate. Ideas are less important than undefinable urges.

This is a hell of a way to run a country.

23%

The latest poll shows McCain ahead by 23% among rural voters. Palin did that.

These were voters Obama had a chance at only so long as the campaign remained dispassionate and issue-focused. Once it was dragged back to guns and religion, he was finished in the country-music burgs. He's black, he's a big city boy and he went to Harvard. He stands for everything they despise.

Other than the large-scale farmers who run agribusiness, these are the people the world is passing by. They're Walmart modernists - they like the tech toys, but they don't relate to the world that produces them. Palin is a shitkicker, the Dems don't have one. Done deal. And it will stay that way. Because they like things the way they is. One wonders how the Russian Revolution would have fared if the peasants and workers had ignored their economic interests and clung to religion and the comfortable past - comfortable in that it was habit, not that it was pleasant.

The poll also shows McCain leading by 13% among men and senior citizens. This one is harder to understand. Seniors may be more reflexively anti-black, but I think we'll need this figure broken further down before we can understand what it means.

THE DOCTRINAL CORE: TELL LIES

Obama put out an ad noting that McCain had voted against a proposed law providing for equal pay for women. The Republican response:

"Barack Obama says he's for equal pay for women, but women working in his Senate office earn an average of $9,000 less than men," wrote spokesman Brian Rogers. "By contrast, women in John McCain's Senate office actually earn an average of nearly $2,000 more than men. The American people understand that real leadership for the change we need is all about what you do, not just empty words."

This is not precisely a lie - it's a half-truth. What it ignores is the back half of the equation - equal pay for equal work. The wage disparity for women in each office, it should be noted, has nothing to do with gender discrimination. Rather, McCain has a greater number of female employees in senior positions.

Now, McCain could have said that and gotten some credit. But they feel compelled to twist the truth. And this circumstance seems to prove that these Republicans feel an obligation to twist the truth, even when not necessary.

I.e., one of their doctrinal cores is: tell lies. In this case, it actually operated against their interests.

MORE EVIDENCE

I take this as further evidence that McCain is not in charge of his campaign.

MORE LIES

Read.

REALITY

If you watch Tucker Bounds in this clip, you'll see him use one of the Republicans' favorite tactics, which another writer has identified as projection. Anything that can be legitimately said about their candidate they turn directly on the opposition.

I used to think they were actually so fucked up that they believed this stuff. But now I think the point is to muddle the argument and weaken it so it's useless against anyone. Some people will believe what they say, but many more will simply discount the entire argument both ways. Effectively it destroys good opposition arguments by making the whole issue sound absurd.

And here's more of it - note the Republican response to Biden.

I'm rubber, you're glue
Whatever you say about me sticks to you

Reality, maturity - America never touches the stuff.

DRILL, BABY, DRILL

Hey let's do more drilling in the Gulf of Mexico!

THE SURGE WORKED?

Couldn't have said it better myself.

We used to have good newspapers like this. Now we have McClatchy - and sometimes the Washington Post and sometimes the New York Times. Ignorant countries do ignorant things. And pay for them.

PALIN AS YID

I keep seeing Palin in the context of the Yiddish Policemen's Union. Because Alaska may not be Jewish, but it's as weird as it is in that book. When I finish the book, I'll know what kind of president she would make.

NEW AD SUGGESTION

This one needs some polishing, but ...

Who's worse? John McCain, who knows his campaign is lying but thinks that's just fine - or Sarah Palin, who thinks the lies she tells are the truth? Does it really matter which is worse? After eight years of Bush-Cheney, do you really want more liars anywhere near the White House?

MUST STEP OUT

In view of this, what happens in the Congressional races is critical. Democrats must step out and beat the Republicans' national attacks down.

THE WAR

The Republicans have succeeded in putting this election back on the 2000-2004 track. It is no longer about Bush's record. It's redneck vs. effete. McCain being no redneck, they found Palin. It should be no surprise that we've been here before.

So this election will be just like the others. With the difference that after eight years of redneck propaganda, most people already know where they stand.

In one sense, whether Obama responds to swiftboating effectively makes a difference. But I don't think it will matter to the ultimate outcome. The difference it makes is in the approval of Obama's base - they'll like him better if he fights. If he does, we might have some clarity after this election, as we didn't in 2000 and 2004. If both candidates perform as they are expected to, we will know exactly where we stand after this one.

As I've said, I think where we stand is in a cold Civil War. No guns, but everything else. This war is winnable only if there is an unlikely sea change in the fundamental views of one side or the other. Barring that, I think both sides would agree that they are far more likely to see progress as they define it if they cut their ties to the other side.

Think about it. The Civil War was ostensibly fought over slavery, a high moral and constitutional issue. It was actually fought for power and wealth and the preservation of two different lifestyles and world views. The equivalent high moral and constitutional issue now is abortion, but it's as much an excuse as slavery was. The war is the same, will stay the same, and has to be resolved.

WHERE IS HE?

The hurricane hit his own state. Has Bush been there since?

SOUTHERNIZED

People have been saying Palin is Bush. They probably didn't know how right they were. Read. And note how Alaska was Southernized.

CONTEMPTIBLE

Have you seen the ad which calls Obama "disrespectful" for "insulting" Sarah Palin? This is not just aimed at women. This ad is about the black boy who didn't step into the gutter and avert his eyes when Miss Palin walked by. It doesn't play the race card. It plays the Klan card. This is the most atrocious political ad of our times, and Obama needs to call McCain out on it as the contemptible human being he has become.

THE FIRST REDNECK CANDIDATE

McCain is drawing no crowds while Palin is away, while she's still packing them in. Clearly, she is the entire campaign. Why is she so popular?

Because she's a woman, of course. But I think, more than that, because she is the first genuine redneck in modern times to run for national office.

For rednecks, the cultural identification is complete. That's why the fact that she's lying, for them, is a positive. They can't wait for her to put an end to the black guy and his San Francisco friends. There is no way they are going to be shaken off her bandwagon. Obama's issues mean nothing to them. This is umpteen recent country songs come to life.

These are votes Obama would never have gotten. For McCain they might have stayed home. For Palin they'll come out swinging.

So it turns out that voter turnout will be critical. The Republicans recognize that - that's why they've already geared up for voter challenges. Republican fraud in the election process is a given. Democrats must be prepared for a hundred Katherine Harrises. Including in Florida, where an odd new voting law may bar thousands of new registrees from casting votes that count.

There's nothing new here. We've seen it at least twice before. What Democrats have to remember is that all of this is inevitable, will continue in every election for the foreseeable future, maybe until the end of time. Democrats have to be permanently motivated. And Obama has not being doing his part in that.

So, once again, we'll see.

Meanwhile, here's another good ad.

TEMPTED

If Galveston gets trashed tonight, do you think any preacher will say that God is punishing Texas for giving political birth to George Bush? You know, sort of like the things evangelicals said after 9/11 and after Katrina?

I won't say it. But God, I'm tempted.

DON'T LET 'EM VOTE

"In the last two election cycles, the very notion that the facts matter seems to be under assault," said Michael X. Delli Carpini, an authority on political ads at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication. "Candidates and their consultants seem to have learned that as long as you don't back down from your charges or claims, they will stick in the minds of voters regardless of their accuracy or at a minimum, what the truth is will remain murky, a matter of opinion rather than fact."

You can blame the media for this. For years they have defined "fair and balanced" reporting as giving equal time to "both sides" of an issue, when one side is clearly unadulterated horseshit. In a religious society which claims to condemn moral relativism, factual relativism has become a staple. Of course, that tends to help religion, so why not?

The media may say they have been led down the garden path by the political parties. But note this:

With a test of a cyclotron (or whatever it was) impending, to assess the validity of the big bang theory, one idiot scientist made the claim that the experiment could mean the end of the world. That idiot got heavy coverage on the evening news. As a matter of fact, reporters didn't even get a response from the myriad of scientists who knew this was crap. Let's face it: TV is a tabloid medium now. Maybe it isn't that they don't care about the truth, but they certainly will present anything which will drive their ratings up.

Of course, the world didn't end. It didn't end when evangelicals said it would, either, but that didn't stop evangelicals from just advancing the date and staying with their pathological theories. Most situations are not this easy. No one can deny that the world didn't end. But anyone can deny the Holocaust, and there will always be people out there who will believe it didn't happen. Anyone can say Obama will raise middle class taxes, and the facts will never enter into it. They WANT to believe that Obama will raise their taxes, or they want to believe there was never a Holocaust. People who believe things contrary to the facts simply because they insist on believing them, evidence aside, I'm afraid should not be allowed to vote.

However, since they will continue to be allowed to vote, politicians had better learn that what gets out first sticks. The Republicans know it. The Democrats don't. It's all very well to govern from a positive view of human nature, but it is not wise to campaign from that perspective.

THE COUNTERATTACK BEGINS, THANK GOD

Good. But not spread wide enough.
Good, but limited.
Good, but preaching to the Starbucks crowd. Westerners kill wolves to protect their stock. This ad proves that Obama should not have reined in the 527's. And this one is even better. And another. Seems like the 527's have been at the starting line waiting for Obama to drop the checkered flag.
All right! I can call him Obama again.
Here's the next ad, please ... Take him down with his own words. This clip is a gift from God.
And here's another one.
Both pretty good, the second better.
And this I'm glad to hear.
Here's another coming ad, I hope
This wouldn't be because Alaska knows better, would it? Another potential ad.
Check out the button. Where can I get one of those?
Another great potential ad. And another.

WHAT I EXPECT

My view on "The View" is that it generally panders to the lowest common denominator of womanhood. But check this out. This is what I expect of women - and men.

Whoopi Goldberg asked McCain if he didn't have at least some hesitation in selecting a VP candidate who had doubts about the separation of church and state. She was giving him a chance to claim he was still honorable. He didn't take it. He knows.

BRILLIANT!

A truly brilliant response to latter-day Tweet:

Your analogy of our election to what it felt like to be a politically aware Jew in Germany of the 30s was incredibly perceptive. But unlike the 30s I believe something much more insidious is going on on the planet now.

Every FOUR days there are 1,000,000 more humans on Earth. We fight valiantly and generously to combat AIDS and malaria and cancer and flu . . . and we breed. We no longer have pandemics to weed out the weak. We still believe multiplying ourselves is a political and moral virtue (unless we are the woman bearing 10 children who in many cultures still has no choice in the matter).

McCain is a second rate man who not only wants to be, but feels entitled to be president so he can die in peace and stop bragging he was 6th from the bottom of his graduating class. Obama, on the other hand, already feels he's a certain type of man he respects and doesn't want to lower himself . . . and that to him is more important than really WANTING IT. He shows no hunger; no need to accept your suggestions as to how he might beat out his opponent; no need to "stoop to conquer".

You are perhaps fortunate you have no children. I will leave my blood behind. I would easily take a bullet for either of my sons; yet I know I'll die in a decade or so and leave them here without me to protect them . . . as if I could.

So I think politically or biologically we are headed for a considerable population reduction. Maybe Obama could have stopped one of those two trains. But you can't make a man WANT what he only sort of wants.

DUKAKIS

On July 16th I posted: "Does one get the feeling that the folks who run Obama were really good at primaries but not so good at generals?" But I had no idea exactly how "not so good" they are.

Apparently they thought the mini-slime Hillary unloaded on Obama was as bad as it was going to get. That is inexcusable. And now, despite untold numbers of webbies telling them exactly what they have to do, they are still not listening, and they are still dicking around. As I said yesterday, a candidate has to meet his supporters' expectations - and if he can't do that, how can he possibly meet anyone else's?

The supreme arrogance, I think, was in insisting on defunding Democratic 527's. If you are going to eliminate the possible participation of people who could be very helpful, you had damn well better justify that decision in the end. The Obama campaign seems to be isolated - and when the Rovians clicked in with Palin they seem to be clueless, too.

And Biden? Saying Hillary might have been a better choice? Doing exactly the opposite of what he was selected for. Who is controlling this man? Who's even watching him?

How is it possible that a campaign doesn't even understand the basics of the times?

And how is it possible that, as each day disappears, we wake up the next morning to find the Obama campaign still fucked? They've gone on mental vacation. Unbelievable.

This from Adam Nagourney of the New York Times, with my comments:


After back-to-back attack ads by Mr. McCain, including one that misleadingly accused Mr. Obama of endorsing sex education for kindergarten students, the Obama campaign is planning (NOW?) to sharpen attacks on Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin in an effort to counter Mr. McCain’s attempt to present himself as the candidate of change with his choice of Ms. Palin.

Mr. Obama's campaign released two new advertisements this morning that underscored the tougher road it is taking, criticizing Mr. McCain for, among other things, favoring tax cuts for corporations and acknowledging that he doesn't know how to use a computer or send e-mail. "Things have changed in the last 26 years, but John McCain hasn't," an announcer says in one advertisement. "After one president who was out of touch, we just can't afford more of the same." (OH WOW! TOUGH STUFF! HOW ABOUT CALLING THEM LIARS? HOW ABOUT USING THE SUBSTANCE OF THE ADS I SUGGESTED EARLIER THIS WEEK?)

The new tone is to be presented in a speech by Mr. Obama in New Hampshire and in television interviews with local stations in five swing states (I HAVE SAID OVER AND OVER AGAIN - SPEECHES DON'T GET COVERED), backed up by new advertisements and appearances across the country by supporters.

In addition, advertising themes will be pay equity for women, an issue that has particular resonance as the campaigns battle for female voters (OH, FOR CRISSAKE! WOMEN ALREADY KNOW THIS. IF IT WAS IMPORTANT TO THEM, THEY WOULDN'T BE VOTING FOR MCCAIN.), and a more pointed linking of Mr. McCain to President Bush and Republicans in Washington. (WOW! THAT OUGHT TO SCARE THE REPUBLICANS! AND WHY ARE THEY TELLING THE PRESS ALL THIS? JUST IN CASE THE REPUBLICANS DON'T HAVE ENOUGH ADVANTAGE ALREADY?)

But Mr. Obama’s aides said they were confident with the course of the campaign. They said that, other than making some shifts around the edges (!!!), particularly in response to Mr. McCain’s effort to seize the change issue from Mr. Obama, they were not planning any major deviation from a strategy that called for a steady escalation of attacks on Mr. McCain as the race heads toward the debates. (SO THEY'RE TELLING US THEY PLANNED FOR THIS? I DON'T BELIEVE IT - AND ANY KIND OF DECENT PLAN WOULD NOT HAVE LET THE REPUBLICANS GET UP ON OBAMA FOR TWO WEEKS WITH NO EFFECTIVE RESPONSE.)

That response is characteristic for a campaign that has presented itself as disciplined and unflappable and is reminiscent of the way Mr. Obama’s campaign reacted a year ago when it came under fire from allies who said it was not being tough enough in going after Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“We’re sensitive to the fluid dynamics of the campaign, but we have a game plan and a strategy,” said Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe. “We’re familiar with this. And I’m sure between now and Nov. 4 there will be another period of hand-wringing and bed-wetting. It comes with the territory.” (BED-WETTING? OH, SO WE'RE ALL STUPID, I GUESS.)

Still, Democrats outside the campaign suggested (HOW ABOUT DEMANDED?) Mr. Obama should be urgently working to regain control of the message.

“The Obama message has been disrupted in the last week,” said Representative Artur Davis, Democrat of Alabama. “It’s a time for Democrats to focus on what the fundamentals are in this election.”

Phil Singer, who was a press secretary for Mrs. Clinton in her primary campaign against Mr. Obama, said, “The Obama people need to reboot and figure out ways to make the McCain-Bush argument newsworthy again.” (NO THEY DON'T!!! THEY NEED TO FOCUS ON MCCAIN AND CALL HIM OUT FOR THE LIAR HE IS. NEVER MIND BUSH. HE'S OLD NEWS. WHY NOT CAMPAIGN AGAINST NIXON WHILE YOU'RE AT IT?)

The uneasiness among Democrats is the result of a confluence of factors in the week since Mr. McCain accepted his party’s nomination in St. Paul. The selection of Ms. Palin became the defining event of Mr. McCain’s convention, revving up the conservative base and drawing the spotlight away from Mr. Obama.

Mr. McCain’s increasingly aggressive campaign has sought to put Mr. Obama on the defensive in each news cycle, using any development at hand, like Mr. Obama’s colloquial comment this week about putting “lipstick on a pig,” to keep attention away from Democratic messages about the economy and the similarities between Mr. McCain and Mr. Bush.

And a series of quick polls taken after the Republican convention have suggested that Mr. Obama has lost support among white women and independent voters. Polls taken so close to major political events are notoriously unreliable, but Democrats remember what happened in 2004, when Republicans used the period right after Senator John Kerry’s nomination to undercut him with a series of attacks.

By every indication, Mr. Obama’s aides underestimated the impact that Mr. McCain’s choice of Ms. Palin would have on the race. Mr. Obama and his campaign have seemed flummoxed in trying to figure out how to deal with her. His aides said they were looking to the news media (!!!) to debunk the image of her as a blue-collar reformer, even as they argued that her power to help Mr. McCain was overstated.

“Everyone was astonished that she drew 9,000 people to Lancaster the other night,” said Mr. Obama’s senior strategist, David Axelrod. “But we drew 10,000 people there last week.”

“They got a transient boost from the sort of imagery surrounding her selection,” Mr. Axelrod said. “But I think things will settle in. She will be a candidate and not just a symbol.” (GOOD LUCK. IT'S ALWAYS GOOD TO EXPECT THE WORST.)

Beyond that, Mr. Obama’s aides said they had been taken aback (!!) by the newfound aggressiveness of the McCain campaign under Steve Schmidt, who has played an increasingly powerful role since last summer. Even as the aides have denounced the tactics as unsavory, they acknowledge that Mr. McCain is running a more effective campaign than he was a month ago.

“They had big problems in their campaign, and they made adjustments,” Mr. Axelrod said.

To a large extent, the perception that Mr. Obama is struggling is based on national polls taken in the days after the convention. But Mr. Obama’s campaign views such measures as irrelevant (!!!) and focuses on what is going on in the 18 or so swing states.

Mr. Plouffe argued that the attention being paid by national news media outlets to events like Mr. Obama’s lipstick comment was not mirrored in local news coverage. (IT WAS IN MINE.) What is more, the Obama campaign has filled the airwaves in some states with advertisements that link Mr. McCain and Mr. Bush. (HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SAY SO WHAT?)

And for all the concern voiced by Democrats to Mr. Obama’s aides that the candidate has not hit Mr. McCain hard enough, he has increasingly assailed Mr. McCain in recent days, mocking his attempt to present himself as an agent of change and denouncing his campaign style as a break from the promise he had made to practice a new kind of politics. Yet, at least on television, Mr. Obama’s critique did not break through the lipstick debate. (BECAUSE HE'S A PUSSY. HE NEEDS TO GIVE THE MEDIA THE SAME SHIT MCCAIN GIVES THEM.)

Inside the campaign headquarters in Chicago, aides said, there have been no emergency conference calls or special strategy sessions to deal with the new dynamic in the race. (GREAT NEWS!)

Still, interviews with advisers and supporters suggested a concern not seen in the Obama campaign since its most competitive days in the long primary fight with Mrs. Clinton.

“You can’t be so stubborn that you don’t react or adjust to events,” Mr. Plouffe said. “We have been given up for dead any number of times in this process, so it does stiffen your spine a little bit.” (THE SAME KIND OF UNDERSTATEMENT OBAMA IS DELIVERING)

One adjustment for the Obama campaign comes as Mr. McCain is seeking to claim the Democrats’ theme of change by pointing to Ms. Palin. For months, advisers to Mr. Obama had assumed that Mr. McCain would play up his experience; Mr. Plouffe said he welcomed what he argued would be a campaign fought out on the issue of change.

“This is a very major development,” Mr. Plouffe said. “John McCain jettisoned his message and his strategy. It is now about change. We’re going to lean into that very, very hard.”

In the midst of all this, Mr. Obama had a private lunch on Thursday with someone he battled with for much of the year but who knows how to put the Republicans on the defensive: former President Bill Clinton. Discussion topics, aides said, included how Mr. Obama might handle Ms. Palin in the days ahead. (HE HAD TO ASK CLINTON? OY VAY.)

I'm going to call Obama Dukakis until things change.

ALL IN THE GAME

Yep. They shook hands and hugged. Love ya, John.

Candidates have to understand then when their constituents are driven to hatred by the opposition's campaign, it doesn't help to show them that it's all in the game.

CORRUPT

Yesterday they played Hendrix' "Star Spangled Banner" on a Mountain Dew commercial.

The Woodstock generation is so corrupt.

1933

It's obvious from the raft of posts I've put up lately that I am extremely perturbed about the political situation.

I actually feel like a Jew in Germany in 1933. I'm quite sure I'm watching something quite similar to what they watched in that year.With one difference - power was handed to Hitler by the industrialists, not through election. But the next election validated the handover.

It's not just the outcome - it's the process that terrifies me. The utter triumph of the vindictively ridiculous, aimed by smart men for purposes that I can't tolerate.

I can't get past this feeling. But I won't mention it again.

YOU LIKE?

Let's face it - Sarsh Palin's experience or lack of it is irrelevant. What matters is her character - which I define as her mindset, not her alleged adherence to a particular set of moral principles - and the tools she would bring to the presidency. As to all that, we already know everything we need to know.

Palin has the nasty mouth and closed mind that goes with certain evangelicals; an unawareness of her own hypocrisy (I assume - if she is aware of it, like Rick Davis is, then she's perfectly capable of governing. I just wouldn't like the result.) She has a rigidly narrowed moral code, and in fact needs religion and a dictated moral code because without it she wouldn't have a clue what's right and what's wrong. Her religion tells her what's right, which is victory at any cost. She will do whatever it takes, and fuck the rest of you.

She has no concept of her own limitations (how many of us do?) In her interview with Charlie Gibson, when asked whether she ever questioned whether she was ready for the presidency, she answered: "I -- I answered him yes because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can't blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we're on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can't blink." That's the evangelical talking.

Tools? She knows next to nothing, but neither did George Bush. That didn't stop him from being a very effective president (within his definition of the term - he accomplished nearly everything he wanted to.) I think Bush are Palin are the same - she maybe even more so, since she carries women's resentments on top of everything else. She can learn what she needs to govern - a self-limiting thing, because she'll decide what she needs, not anyone else.

That's all you need to now. You like it, you vote for her.

Now let's look at some of her other answers to Gibson.
GIBSON: You said recently, in your old church, "Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God." Are we fighting a holy war?

PALIN: You know, I don't know if that was my exact quote.

GIBSON: Exact words.

PALIN: But the reference there is a repeat of Abraham Lincoln's words when he said -- first, he suggested never presume to know what God's will is, and I would never presume to know God's will or to speak God's words. But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that's a repeat in my comments, was let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God's side. That's what that comment was all about, Charlie.

No it wasn't. But it is now. It always amazes me how willing evangelicals are to act like Maranos and hide their beliefs. I suspect it's because they think of themselves as a persecuted sect, which they have to be in order to be Raptured up.

It goes on.

GIBSON: I take your point about Lincoln's words, but you went on and said, "There is a plan and it is God's plan."

PALIN: I believe that there is a plan for this world and that plan for this world is for good. I believe that there is great hope and great potential for every country to be able to live and be protected with inalienable rights that I believe are God-given, Charlie, and I believe that those are the rights to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That, in my world view, is a grand -- the grand plan.

GIBSON: But then are you sending your son on a task that is from God?

PALIN: I don't know if the task is from God, Charlie. What I know is that my son has made a decision.

See? Denial on top of certainty.

Next:

GIBSON: Let's start, because we are near Russia (CUTE, the media!), let's start with Russia and Georgia. The administration has said we've got to maintain the territorial integrity of Georgia. Do you believe the United States should try to restore Georgian sovereignty over South Ossetia and Abkhazia?

Now, before I let her answer, let's review the facts. According to Wikipedia, South Ossetia is a de facto independent partially recognized republic in the South Caucasus, formerly the South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast within the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. Most of the territory of the oblast was de facto independent from Georgia since it declared independence as the Republic of South Ossetia in 1991, during the Georgian-Ossetian conflict. The de facto independent republics of Abkhazia, Transnistria, and South Ossetia recognized each other's independence on 17 November 2006. The desire for independence was determined in a referendum in which 99% of South Ossetian voters supported independence and the turnout for the vote was 95%. The referendum was monitored by a team of 34 international observers from Germany, Austria, Poland, Sweden and other countries at 78 polling stations.[15] However, it was not recognized internationally. The European Union, OSCE, NATO, and most other countries recognize South Ossetia as an integral part of the territory of the state of Georgia.

Well, that sure sounds like God's plan for freedom, doesn't? They say they're independent, but we don't.

In April 2007, a "Provisional Administrative Entity of South Ossetia" (i.e., an alternative government to the one which declared Ossetian secession) was created by Georgia, which had retained control over part of South Ossetia's eastern and southern districts. On 8 August 2008, Georgian armed forces moved forward to South Ossetia to take control and "restore constitutional order in the entire region" Within hours, Russian troops also moved into South Ossetia as part of a "peace enforcement" operation, pushing the Georgian army out of South Ossetia and moving farther, occupying Gori, Kareli, Kaspi and Igoeti in Georgia proper. Parallel to these events Russian forces also entered Western Georgia from another breakaway region of Abkhazia occupying Zugdidi, Senaki and the major Georgian port of Poti. Following the end of hostilities, the Federation Council of Russia called an extraordinary session for 25 August 2008 to discuss recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.[ On 25 August the Federation Council unanimously voted to ask the Russian President to recognise independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The Russian parliament voted in favour of this motion the following day. This unilateral recognition by Russia was met by condemnation from Western countries and other members of United Nations (France, Germany, Great Britain, United States, etc), NATO, OSCE, European Council due to the violation of Georgia's territorial integrity, United Nations numerous resolutions and the international law. On 29 August, Georgia severed diplomatic relations with Russia over the conflict.

Now - On 30 August 2008, Tarzan Kokoity, the Deputy Speaker of South Ossetia's parliament, announced that the region would "soon" be absorbed into Russia. Russian and South Ossetian forces began giving residents in Akhalgori, the biggest town in the predominantly Georgian eastern part of South Ossetia, the choice of accepting Russian citizenship or leaving. Some South Ossetians want to unite with Russia, some do not.

Without assigning blame to either party, this is clearly a very complex situation requiring a practical and pragmatic approach. Here's what Palin had to say:

PALIN: First off, we're going to continue good relations with Saakashvili there. I was able to speak with him the other day(!!! And you thought she was going to screw up the debates?) and giving him my commitment, as John McCain's running mate, that we will be committed to Georgia. And we've got to keep an eye on Russia. For Russia to have exerted such pressure in terms of invading a smaller democratic country, unprovoked, is unacceptable (as opposed to our invasion of Iraq, of course) and we have to keep...

GIBSON: You believe unprovoked.

PALIN: I do believe unprovoked (remember the set of facts I gave you above) and we have got to keep our eyes on Russia, under the leadership there.

GIBSON: What insight into Russian actions, particularly in the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of the state give you? (The most patently absurd question ever asked.)

PALIN: They're our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska. (And the most patently absurd answer. If I live in Manhattan, I can see New Jersey. That makes me an expert on the Garden State? And did Gibson point this out? Do I have to ask?)

PALIN: We cannot repeat the Cold War. We are thankful that, under Reagan, we won the Cold War, without a shot fired, also. We've learned lessons from that in our relationship with Russia, previously the Soviet Union. We will not repeat a Cold War. We must have good relationship with our allies (but not with Russia?), pressuring, also, helping us to remind Russia that it's in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us all to be getting along. (I.e., Russia has now joined the Axis of Evil.)

GIBSON: Would you favor putting Georgia and Ukraine in NATO?

PALIN: Ukraine, definitely, yes. Yes, and Georgia.

GIBSON: Because Putin has said he would not tolerate NATO incursion into the Caucasus.

PALIN: Well, you know, the Rose Revolution, the Orange Revolution, those actions have showed us that those democratic nations, I believe, deserve to be in NATO. (Am I supposed to believe she knew any of this before a few days ago?) Putin thinks otherwise. Obviously, he thinks otherwise, but...

GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn't we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia.

PALIN: PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help.

Absolutely. So, if you want a new Cold War, and perhaps a hot war, you will take Georgia into NATO and dare the Russians to do something about it. They used to call this "brinksmanship." Now they call it "fighting for democracy."

GIBSON: And you think it would be worth it to the United States, Georgia is worth it to the United States to go to war if Russia were to invade.

PALIN: What I think is that smaller democratic countries that are invaded by a larger power is something for us to be vigilant against. We have got to be cognizant of what the consequences are if a larger power is able to take over smaller democratic countries. (Oh, yuk. I gag on this American exceptionalism. What does the rest of the world think of it?)

Realizing she's just gotten us into a war with Russia, Palin backs off:

PALIN: It doesn't have to lead to war and it doesn't have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries. (Holy shit, are they going to control France?) His mission, if it is to control energy supplies, also, coming from and through Russia, that's a dangerous position for our world to be in, if we were to allow that to happen.

You see here the limits of a couple days of coaching. If things get complicated, she gets a little lost.

On Iran and Israel:

GIBSON: Do you consider a nuclear Iran to be an existential threat to Israel?

PALIN: I believe that under the leadership of Ahmadinejad, nuclear weapons in the hands of his government are extremely dangerous to everyone on this globe, yes.

GIBSON: So what should we do about a nuclear Iran?

PALIN: We have got to make sure that these weapons of mass destruction, that nuclear weapons are not given to those hands of Ahmadinejad, not that he would use them, but that he would allow terrorists to be able to use them. So we have got to put the pressure on Iran. (An interesting answer: Ahmadinejad would not use nukes. Is there a shred of evidence that Iran would give them to terrorists?)

GIBSON: What if Israel decided it felt threatened and needed to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities?

PALIN: Well, first, we are friends with Israel and I don't think that we should second guess the measures that Israel has to take to defend themselves and for their security.

GIBSON: So if we wouldn't second guess it and they decided they needed to do it because Iran was an existential threat, we would cooperative or agree with that.

PALIN: I don't think we can second guess what Israel has to do to secure its nation.

GIBSON: So if it felt necessary, if it felt the need to defend itself by taking out Iranian nuclear facilities, that would be all right.

PALIN: We cannot second guess the steps that Israel has to take to defend itself.

Why can't we second guess Israel? Obviously Palin's coaching on this consisted of one sentence. But she could have answered the question: Because Jews vote. This is standard Republican stuff, nothing new. But Gibson's next question should have been: Are you a Christian Zionist? That would have provided an explanation for everything.

Okay, so far she's gotten us into two wars (Gibson might have asked her how we were going to afford them, and where we were going to get the troops. But he didn't.) Now on the Bush doctrine:

GIBSON: We talk on the anniversary of 9/11. Why do you think those hijackers attacked? Why did they want to hurt us?

PALIN: You know, there is a very small percentage of Islamic believers who are extreme and they are violent and they do not believe in American ideals (and what about things we've done to them? But nobody talks about that. This is actually a fairly moderate view), and they attacked us and now we are at a point here seven years later, on the anniversary, in this post-9/11 world, where we're able to commit to never again. They see that the only option for them is to become a suicide bomber, to get caught up in this evil, in this terror. They need to be provided the hope that all Americans have instilled in us, because we're a democratic, we are a free, and we are a free-thinking society. (How do we do that? Charlie didn't ask.)

GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?

PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?

GIBSON: The Bush -- well, what do you -- what do you interpret it to be?

PALIN: His world view.

GIBSON: No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war. (Apparently she has no idea what he's talking about. Whoops. Coaching error.)

PALIN: I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell bent on destroying our nation. (Iraqis? And who gave Bush the mission of ridding the world of Islamic extremists? (God?) And how many Islamic extremists has he rid the world of? And how many more are there to go? But this is all standard stuff.) There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made. And with new leadership, and that's the beauty of American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better.

GIBSON: The Bush doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with that?

PALIN: I agree that a president's job, when they swear in their oath to uphold our Constitution, their top priority is to defend the United States of America. I know that John McCain will do that and I, as his vice president, families we are blessed with that vote of the American people and are elected to serve and are sworn in on January 20, that will be our top priority is to defend the American people. (Good for you. Obama would never do that.)

GIBSON: Do we have a right to anticipatory self-defense? Do we have a right to make a preemptive strike again another country if we feel that country might strike us?

PALIN: Charlie, if there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have every right to defend our country. In fact, the president has the obligation, the duty to defend. (We're not talking about defending. We're talking about attacking.)

GIBSON: Do we have the right to be making cross-border attacks into Pakistan from Afghanistan, with or without the approval of the Pakistani government?

PALIN: Now, as for our right to invade, we're going to work with these countries, building new relationships, working with existing allies, but forging new, also, in order to, Charlie, get to a point in this world where war is not going to be a first option. In fact, war has got to be, a military strike, a last option.

GIBSON: But, Governor, I'm asking you: We have the right, in your mind, to go across the border with or without the approval of the Pakistani government.

PALIN: In order to stop Islamic extremists, those terrorists who would seek to destroy America and our allies, we must do whatever it takes and we must not blink, Charlie, in making those tough decisions of where we go and even who we target.

GIBSON: And let me finish with this. I got lost in a blizzard of words there. Is that a yes? That you think we have the right to go across the border with or without the approval of the Pakistani government, to go after terrorists who are in the Waziristan area?

PALIN: I believe that America has to exercise all options in order to stop the terrorists who are hell bent on destroying America and our allies. We have got to have all options out there on the table. (Very politic answer. She's a quick study.)

That's all I have of Gibson so far. And, so far, Palin proves she knows just about as much as most politicians. I hope somewhere along the line he asks her who she would rely on. And I hope she leaves out God.

WHAT THEY WANT

Here's a fundamental political truth, arrived at through self-analysis:

People want a president who's just like them.

Let's start with the basics. Woman want a woman. Men want a man.

What will turn a woman away from a particular female candidate? (This is just an example. The same is true for men.) Ways in which the candidate is not like her.

A woman with a ninth grade education does not want a candidate with a doctorate. She doesn't think education is a pre-requisite, and absolutely will not believe that an educated woman is smarter than she is. In fact, she's likely to think the education has ruined the candidate, depriving her of unadulterated common sense. She trusts herself and her friends on this, even though she may not trust either herself or her friends on a single other thing. Hillary Clinton is not for her - unless the basic rule is everything to her. There are women for whom it is just that simple.

A woman with a doctorate does not want a high school dropout. She's convinced her education is a prerequisite, and further that she's smarter, and further that we need a smart woman with a degree from a good school for president, considering the issues she'll have to deal with. She also requires a candidate with similar tastes. She'll go for a Jackie Kennedy type, even a Nancy Reagan. Sarah Palin, however, is too outre.

A black woman would love to have a black woman president. Hispanics will want Hispanics, once they get farther along.

A woman will support someone not like her - even a man - if that person is her best choice and shares enough commonalities or their equivalent. Or if the candidates' policies benefit her more than the competition's. This is where it gets tricky and the balancing act begins. An educated candidate with abhorrent financial policies vs. a redneck with the right ideas. Which way is the doctor likely to go? Wants a woman, hates Hillary. Wants a woman, can't stand Palin. Wants an evangelical, or a Catholic, just like her. Won't vote for a female atheist. (I would.)

I've applied this thesis to myself, and although I absolutely would prefer someone like me (in nature, not degree, because I could handle someone better than I am), I would sacrifice my sense of good taste and my conviction that sophistication is an asset to vote for someone whose heart was in the right place - that is, where my heart is. That is, believes in every aspect of the Golden Rule, in the civil rights aspects of the Constitution, in a pragmatic approach to problems, outside of ideology or a self-limited mindset (like some military thinkers), in governing, insofar as possible, in behalf of all the people. I voted for Lyndon Johnson, after all. Before he sank himself in the quagmire of Vietnam.

Aah, who am I kidding? What I want is a Democrat.

But we could make the whole thing very simple. Have a redneck nation, with a redneck president. Have a Starbucks nation, with a Starbucks president. There could be a right-wing redneck running against one from the left, and the same with Starbucks nation. With all the other considerations out of the way, you'd have a chance at getting a decision on the issues. Just a chance, however - because the electorate might split on whether it is preferable to shoot moose or ducks, or on whether a latte is better than a macchiato.

I'm afraid there can't be a woman nation, until we give up marriage. (Sex and procreation could alwsys be contracted for.) There won't be a black nation; that's just the way it is. If Hispanics want a nation, they've got plenty of places to go.

None of this would be necessary, however, if everyone - including me - came to the realization that having a president just like them is not a prerequisite, and maybe isn't even a very good idea. But who's going to admit it? Not me.

See more Gina Gershon videos at Funny or Die

HOLY SHIT! A WOMAN LAUGHING AT A WOMAN! OUTRAGEOUS!

WHERE IS IT?

Republican presidential candidate John McCain criticized two his future running mate’s hometown projects in broadsides in 2001 against congressional “pork-barrel” spending, records from the Arizona senator’s office show.

McCain and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin have put attacks on what they call excessive spending at the heart of this year’s Republican presidential campaign. But when Palin served as mayor of her hometown of Wasilla, outside Anchorage, she obtained about $27 million in federal “earmarks” during her last four years in office, according to the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense.

And McCain, who has made pork-busting a centerpiece of his maverick pitch for years, singled out for criticism about $3 million worth of those projects in a 2001 statement opposing a transportation spending bill. McCain’s list of “objectionable” spending included a $2.5 million road project for the town that then had a population of 5,500, as well as a $450,000 appropriation for an agricultural processing plant there.

Where's the ad on this?

CAN'T AFFORD IT

Last time I put up a post on Daily Kos begging Obama to get tough, somebody commented that people don't like negativity.

That must explain why McCain is surging in the polls.

We can't afford to have even one idiot who doesn't get it. We certainly can't afford a candidate who thinks like that.

Why do we have to scream at Obama to get him to move? If he attacks as hard as possible, and we lose, at least we can say we fought the good fight. If he doesn't, he's going to find himself with Dukakis, Kerry and Gore, voices in the wilderness (yes, that includes Gore) calling out like the ghosts in A Christmas Carol: Don't do what I did. You'll destroy yourself.

LET'S SEE

Let's see if at the 9/11 festivities Obama shakes McCain's hand and grins at him.

START NOW!

Why is it that when McCain wants to smear Obama he splashes ads all over the country, and when Obama wants to counter he makes a speech? Or puts out an ad with a pussy voiceover?

Speeches don't get coverage. Pussies don't get elected.

Ads ads ads! Call McCain a liar liar liar! Use the word, for God's sake.

Start now!

Or is Obama out of cash?

I wouldn't give him a nickel until he starts to do it right. Why throw money at a losing cause? On September 4th I wrote: "It's going to get as dirty or dirtier than Bush v. McCain in 2000." They didn't know that? If they did, why aren't they ready?

The Republicans were not reticent in advance about this. They said they were going to swiftboat Obama hard. We already knew they were good at it. What's the excuse for letting them get a leg up? All Obama's crew had to do was keep in mind that Obama is black to know that this time it would be more vicious than it's ever been. So now it's the uppity black man insulting a white woman (not so long ago they were lynching blacks for that), the black man wanting to teach sex to kindergarteners (an old stereotype), the black man who'll raise taxes and spend it on black people who won't work (because it's only black people who don't have health insurance). And Obama keeps smiling and giving them the visuals they can turn into a leer without much photoshopping. It's like the old joke, adding "in bed" to the message in fortune cookies - except they're adding "black man." It changes everything.

What is McCain's campaign really about? Change is good - but let's let a white man do it.

In case you have any doubts, note Republican push-polling in Ohio, where the caller asked "if I would be more or less likely to vote for Obama if I knew that he voted to let convicted child sex offenders out early, voted to allow convicted child sex offenders to live near schools, is for sex education in Kindergarten, voted for some offensive and incredibly graphic abortion procedure, voted against requiring schools to install monitoring software for pornography, and his spiritual advisor stated that US created HIV to kill people of color.

If I can figure this stuff out, why can't they? Or are they afraid of the image of the angry black man? I hope not, because King wasn't afraid of it, and look what he accomplished even as they hated him.

What really amazes me is the large number of Americans who are willing or eager to do this scummy stuff. If a politician says he has faith in Americans, he's either pandering or ignorant. If he says he has faith in SOME Americans, he's getting closer to the truth. The dirtier this campaign gets, the more it reinforces my previously expressed opinion that there is no common ground. See my previous post on the Civil War and its effects on current politics.

LIMITS

The surge is working, right?

The Bush administration announced that it will limit withdrawals from Iraq to 8,000 troops because of a persistent concern among top commanders that the improvements in security could be temporary and that renewed violence could erupt. Officials fear that Iran might reactivate the Shiite Muslim militias it's armed and trained and that the Sunni group al Qaida in Iraq is trying to reestablish itself in Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city.

Here's the thing: this is bullshit propaganda. They have identified Iran and al Qaeda as the potential threats in Iraq because they want to justify keeping troops there. Truth is the potential renewed violence will come from Iraqis, who are waiting for the US to leave to finish the Sunni-Shi'a struggle for power in Iraq. Why do you think the Iraqis have resolved none of their internal politics? They don't want to compromise. They want to fight it out.

Since Iraqis have plenty of patience, we can assume that in order to avoid that violence we're going to have to stay there forever.

But why avoid that violence? The only relevance to us is disruption of oil supplies. Otherwise, who cares if they blow each other up?

So where else will we station troops to keep the oil flowing? Georgia could be next on the list. Venezuela?

Somebody in this country had better recognize the limits to American power. Everyone else has.

THE SOVIET-CUBAN GAME

The HuffPo reports that two Russian strategic bombers landed in Venezuela on Wednesday as part of military maneuvers, the first time Russian strategic bombers have landed in the Western Hemisphere since the Cold War. Hugo Chavez called the deployment part of a move toward a "pluri-polar world" _ a reference to moving away from U.S. dominance. "The Yankee hegemony is finished," Chavez said in a televised speech.The Russian Defense Ministry said the bombers flew to Venezuela on a training mission and would conduct training flights over neutral waters in the next few days before returning to Russia. The Russian deployment appeared to be a tit-for-tat response to the U.S. move to send warships to deliver aid to U.S.-allied Georgia after its war last month with Russia. Earlier this week, Russia said it will send a naval squadron and long-range patrol planes to Venezuela in November for a joint military exercise in the Caribbean.

Boy, I guess these guys really want the Republicans to win. Or they made a secret deal, because the Republicans would like to have a Cold War in their pocket in case the war on terrorism gets disappointing.

This is what we used to call "pulling your chain." It's a stupid move, but one we've sort of been asking for since we put the missiles in Poland and yelled at Russia for Georgia. I guess Putin looked deep into Bush's eyes and said: "I can fuck with him."

Like I said, it's pretty stupid on their part, but on ours, too, considering the percentage of non-Islamic oil they control. It does amaze me that, when we import 70% of our oil, we have been in the process of pissing off just about everybody who's got it, which makes it pretty clear why we felt we had to conquer Iraq. The whole Georgian thing, on our end, was about oil. All of our foreign policy seems to be about oil.

Let's face it, though: they don't need us (even as a market, with the Chinese and Indians coming up), but, unless we change our habits, we sure need them. The Bush - and probably McCain - plan would be to attack. But we're going to need a draft for that - something I'd be thrilled to hear them propose if it weren't for my disgust with the reason for it.

I think it's kind of cute that two non-Communist countries are playing the 1960's Soviet-Cuban game. I guess they just don't like us. But nothing will come of it, I think, unless we start it.

MORE ADS

Two more ads:

1) John McCain says he's a man of honor. Yet he's hired the man responsible for the lie McCain despised - that he had fathered an illegitimate black child - that George Bush used against him in 2000 in South Carolina. Here's what McCain had to say about that then. (Use video) A man of honor? Doesn't look like it. But then who is really running McCain's campaign? We'll answer that in the next ad we run.

2) Who's really running John McCain's campaign? (Go through the list and tie them to Bush). Change? Ridiculous. McCain calling for change would be funny if it wasn't such a lie.

UPDATE: They did the second, thank God.

ALL ABOUT US?

It took me a half hour to find a way to do it, but I emailed my ad idea to Obama's website. This is the email I got back.

Dear Friend,

Thank you for contacting Senator Barack Obama and Obama for America.

Barack is gratified by the overwhelming response to his candidacy, and we appreciate hearing from you. Please note, though, that we are now replying only to emails sent through our webform. You may resend your message through the webform here:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/contact/

We also encourage you to submit your policy ideas through the My Policy feature of our website, here:

www.BarackObama.com/issues

We have also created the Answer Center, an easy-to-search database of questions and answers that lets you find information on a wide range of subjects from volunteering to policy positions. Try it out here:

http://answercenter.barackobama.com

The webform and other technologies help improve our ability to communicate with you and efficiently read and respond to the thousands of messages we receive every week. Please note that you can use it to cut and paste large messages and links to other websites.

Thank you for using the webform, it helps us improve the process of communicating with you.

Sincerely,

Obama for America

There is nowhere at the locations specified to email a message or otherwise submit anything to the campaign other than the form I had actually used. So much for the Obama campaign being all about us.

ESKEW ME

Matthew Duss notes on HuffPo that the McCain campaign has hired Tucker Eskew, the man who designed the vicious Bush attacks on McCain in South Carolina in 2000. He takes this as an indication that McCain wants to win that badly.

I take it as further evidence that McCain is not running his campaign. They hired Eskew - and if McCain thinks he did it, he's delusional.

UPDATE: Biden actually mentioned this in a speech.