Advice for McFlighty

What's a candidate to do? As John McCain watches his favorables plummet while Barack Obama's rise, McFlighty is in desperate need of some steadying advice. The Washington Post asks five experienced politicos "What Could Change the Election."

John Podesta, Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff, thinks McCain's only hope is to give the electorate less McCain, to.... "change the dynamics of this race, but his erratic responses to the economic crisis aren't the way to do it. He could consider announcing that, if elected, he would pledge to serve only one term." But, wouldn't that position Bush's-dimmer-twin Palin as the GOP candidate in 2012?..... (hair-on-fire alert) aaaaaagh!

Newt Gingrich, former GOP speaker of the House and OK-for-me-but-impeach-Clinton womanizer and legislative bomb-thrower, true to form thinks head-on attack is McCain's best bet... "McCain has to focus on the Reid-Pelosi-Obama machine and the threats they pose to most Americans." Get a grip, Newt, no one wants more "Axis of Evil" scare-tactics.

Mary Beth Cahill, John Kerry's outmaneuvered and Swiftboated 2004 presidential campaign manager, advises McCain to "regain his footing as an independent-minded leader capable of appealing to independents".... but she can't help adding that's "unlikely to happen." Well, she should know all about grabbing defeat from the jaws of.... oh, never mind.

Peter J. Wallison, (who?) counsel to Ronald Reagan (oh), just can't fast-forward to the 21st century with his advice to McCain... "Republicans have been discouraged and frustrated" by McCain's "apparent refusal to challenge Obama on two obvious points." Those points? What else but "deregulation" and that moth-eaten GOP mantra "tax cuts." Wallison.... how gigantic is that trickle-down mortgage on Reagan's "shining city on a hill"?

Stuart Eizenstat, chief domestic policy advisor in the Carter White House, and senior positions in the Clinton administration, thinks a winning strategy would be a memorable debate line like... "Are you better off today than you were two years ago?"... or eight years ago? This helps McCain how?

Tonight's debate is important, but a game changer? Only if McCain flashes his old grin and announces he was only kidding.... Mitt Romney is really his VP pick.

McNasty: Not This Time!

We have all heard John McCain and Sarah Palin's personal, scurrilous attacks against Barack Obama.... trying to tie him to terrorists, accusing him of being somehow not like us. You know, the usual GOP Swiftboat Rovian tactics of personal destruction that have scarred the presidential-campaign landscape the last eight years.

Obama asserts in his campaign speeches that those tactics will no longer work with American voters.... "Not this time." Seems as though he is right. "Poll Says McCain Hurts Bid By Using Attacks." (NYTimes)

"The McCain campaign’s recent angry tone and sharply personal attacks on Senator Barack Obama appear to have backfired and tarnished Senator John McCain more than their intended target, the latest New York Times/CBS News poll has found.... Over all, the poll found that if the election were held today, 53 percent of those determined to be probable voters said they would vote for Mr. Obama and 39 percent said they would vote for Mr. McCain."

And, something else those sharp personal attacks of McCain's have done, they have sobered the former fawning soft-ball journalists who rode the Straight Talk Express who hadn't really vetted McNasty and caused them to look more deeply into McCain's own relationships.

For example, today the Huffington Post reports that "McCain Transition Chief Aided Saddam in Lobbying Effort." Now this goes way beyond an Obama acquaintanceship with someone who has no input or influence on his campaign. THIS IS McCAIN'S CHOSEN TRANSITION CHIEF!

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

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

Yes, McCain is pointing fingers when in reality he should be questioning his own judgment when it comes to those with whom he surrounds himself.

But then McCain evidently is staying true to his real nature.... at his campaign stop in Virginia a couple of days ago before he started his stump speech he recognized a couple of people in the crowd, including, to quote: "My dear friend George Allen is here today."

That's right. His dear friend George "Macaca" Allen who was caught on tape a couple of years ago ridiculing someone in his audience who looked different, to him, than a real American. Allen lost that campaign.

Evidently McCain didn't learn a thing from what happened to his dear, dear, friend.

November 4.

The Meaning of "Refundable" Is...

Not all tax credit "refundables" are created equal.

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal took after Barack Obama's tax plan as a handout, regardless of taxes paid, to lower-income taxpayers. They say in "Obama's 95% Illusion"...

"Here's the political catch. All but the clean car credit would be 'refundable,' which is Washington-speak for the fact that you can receive these checks even if you have no income-tax liability. In other words, they are an income transfer -- a federal check -- from taxpayers to nontaxpayers. Once upon a time we called this 'welfare' ..."

Well now, wouldn't it be a crying shame if it were "welfare" in view of the fact that investment banks, mortgage companies and banks have just been granted $1 trillion+ in corporate welfare, on top of the already obscene corporate tax breaks for everything imaginable including shipping jobs offshore.

However, this WSJ analysis is very misleading. Obama's plan isn't welfare. Here's why, as shown in one of Obama "refundable" plans taken from his official website:

"A $1,000 "Making Work Pay" Tax Credit. For 95 percent of workers and their families-150 million workers overall-the "Making Work Pay" credit will provide a refundable tax cut of $500 for workers or $1,000 for working couples. This credit will benefit over 15 million self employed workers and for 10 million low-income Americans, will completely eliminate their federal income taxes."

As you can see, it doesn't say anything about giving taxpayers back more than they paid in taxes.... "will completely eliminate their federal income taxes".... it is meant to be a "tax cut" refundable directly against the amount of taxes to be paid.

Many times a "tax credit" is a formula that doesn't go directly to the bottom line but, for example, is applied to earned income subject to tax. What Obama means by "refundable" in this context is that it isn't a formula tax credit, but a credit to be applied directly to help "eliminate federal income taxes."

Now, let's take an example of John McCain's "refundable" tax credit from his official website....

"John McCain Will Reform The Tax Code To Offer More Choices Beyond Employer-Based Health Insurance Coverage. While still having the option of employer-based coverage, every family will receive a direct refundable tax credit - effectively cash - of $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families to offset the cost of insurance. Families will be able to choose the insurance provider that suits them best and the money would be sent directly to the insurance provider. Those obtaining innovative insurance that costs less than the credit can deposit the remainder in expanded Health Savings Accounts."

McCain's tax credit is "refundable" yet goes directly to the insurer. As the wording says.... "effectively cash".... or cash out in the ether somewhere, with the credit going directly to insurance coffers.

And, image finding "innovative" insurance for a family that costs less than $5000 a year. Even if you could, the difference still isn't given to the insured, but is deposited in accounts. McCain's "direct refundable tax credit" never directly touches taxpayers hands.

On top of the never-to-be-directly-seen McCain tax credit boondoggle for insurance companies, McCain's proposal calls for employer insurance benefits to be taxed as income.

So, it's McCain who has the "Washington-speak" direct refundable tax credit, and Obama who is offering the actual tax cut... as a credit against taxes due.

It all depends on what the meaning of "refundable" is.

November 4.

Gordon is "Nobel" Krugman's Man

Congratulations to American economist Paul Krugman whose credentials were already formidable.... professor at Princeton University, columnist for The New York Times... who today was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics.

And today Krugman has also written an op-ed, "Gordon Does Good" (NYTimes) in which he asks, "Has Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, saved the world financial system?"

Not George Bush. Not Henry Paulson. Not Ben Bernanke. But our long-suffering staunch ally, Britain's Gordon in concert with his chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling, by thinking clearly and acting quickly.

Krugman explains, "On Wednesday, Mr. Brown’s officials announced a plan for major equity injections into British banks, backed up by guarantees on bank debt that should get lending among banks, a crucial part of the financial mechanism, running again. And the first major commitment of funds will come on Monday — five days after the plan’s announcement."

"And," Krugman continues, "whaddya know, Mr. Paulson — after arguably wasting several precious weeks — has also reversed course, and now plans to buy equity stakes rather than bad mortgage securities (although he still seems to be moving with painful slowness)."

For anyone who has watched the painful politicalization of our government by The Decider, even of the office of Attorney General, it'll come as no surprise that Krugman believes that... "It’s hard to avoid the sense that Mr. Paulson’s initial response was distorted by ideology. Remember, he works for an administration whose philosophy of government can be summed up as 'private good, public bad,' which must have made it hard to face up to the need for partial government ownership of the financial sector."

Hopefully Krugman is on Barack Obama's short list for Treasury secretary. In the meantime, on a day when Krugman is receiving bouquets for his prestigious Nobel prize, he is also throwing bouquets of his own.... "Luckily for the world economy, however, Gordon Brown and his officials are making sense. And they may have shown us the way through this crisis.

If we can all just keep a stiff upper lip.

Who IS McNasty?

John McCain has enlisted The Decider's Rovian operatives to run his campaign.... the very ones who slimed McCain and his family in the 2000 GOP primaries. The very ones who Swiftboated another war hero, John Kerry, in the 2004 campaign. Now in McCain's name, these very same operatives savagely and deceptively attack Barack Obama's character in this one.

George W. Bush's toxic influence has finally managed to destroy not just the economy and our moral standing in the world.... it has now infected the tone and substance of McCain's 2008 campaign.

McCain has repeatedly retooled his message and campaign staff in his effort to corner his fatal-obsession need to be president and commander-in-chief. But, as Fred Hiatt suggests today in "What McCain Hasn't Tried".... (WaPo) "imagine if McCain had selected for his running mate not a partisan attack dog but someone with deep knowledge of the economy and a record of reaching across the aisle.

Imagine if McCain had taken the campaign high-road. "Imagine if McCain himself had decided to respond to this crisis as an American first, a candidate second." But the reality is far different. As McCain was speaking at a campaign rally in Minnesota, after having to correct a supporter's assertion that Obama is an "Arab," McCain's "campaign ads were calling Obama a liar."

Even William Kristol in his op-ed today pleads with McCain, "Fire the Campaign." (NYTimes) He counsels that McCain "has nothing to lose. His campaign is totally overmatched by Obama’s. The Obama team is well organized, flush with resources, and the candidate and the campaign are in sync. The McCain campaign, once merely problematic, is now close to being out-and-out dysfunctional. Its combination of strategic incoherence and operational incompetence has become toxic. If the race continues over the next three weeks to be a conventional one, McCain is doomed."

Kristol, an early diehard McCain supporter, continues, "What McCain needs to do is junk the whole thing and start over. Shut down the rapid responses, end the frantic e-mails, bench the spinning surrogates, stop putting up new TV and Internet ads every minute. In fact, pull all the ads — they’re doing no good anyway. Use that money for televised town halls and half-hour addresses in prime time."

All of McCain's frantic low-road tactics and Kristol's suggested "junk the whole thing" Hail-Marying raise worrying questions. If McCain can't run a successful presidential campaign, how can he run a country in financial peril bordering on insolvency, embroiled in two wars with rising unemployment and international relationships on the ropes?

And most worrying.... if McCain can dump his moral code and morph into Bush to further his political ambitions, just who is John McCain?

November 4.

Humpty Dumpty World Economy

And all the king's horses, and all the king's men, couldn't put the international economy back together again....

As Richard Dooling points out in today's op-ed "The Rise of the Machines," (NYTimes) " 'Beware of geeks bearing formulas.' So saith Warren Buffett, the Wizard of Omaha. Words to bear in mind as we bail out banks and buy up mortgages and tweak interest rates and nothing, nothing seems to make any difference on Wall Street or Main Street. Years ago, Mr. Buffett called derivatives 'weapons of financial mass destruction' " —

Dooling ties together the philosophies of the financial wizard Buffett, a physicist, and a serial killer who all warned us of this financial crisis.

The physicist.... Freeman Dyson, an eminent math and theoretical physicist, in a 1981 documentary described the seductive power that brought us to create atomic energy out of nothing... "To perform these miracles, to lift a million tons of rock into the sky. It is something that gives people an illusion of illimitable power, and it is, in some ways, responsible for all our troubles — this, what you might call technical arrogance, that overcomes people when they see what they can do with their minds.”

So, how does this bear on the current financial meltdown? Dooling explains: "The Wall Street geeks, the quantitative analysts ('quants') and masters of 'algo trading' probably felt the same irresistible lure of 'illimitable power' when they discovered 'evolutionary algorithms' that allowed them to create vast empires of wealth by deriving the dependence structures of portfolio credit derivatives.

"What does that mean? You’ll never know. Over and over again, financial experts and wonkish talking heads endeavor to explain these mysterious, 'toxic' financial instruments to us lay folk. Over and over, they ignobly fail, because we all know that no one understands credit default obligations and derivatives, except perhaps Mr. Buffett and the computers who created them.

"Somehow the genius quants — the best and brightest geeks Wall Street firms could buy — fed $1 trillion in subprime mortgage debt into their supercomputers, added some derivatives, massaged the arrangements with computer algorithms and — poof! — created $62 trillion in imaginary wealth. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine that all of that imaginary wealth is locked up somewhere inside the computers, and that we humans, led by the silverback males of the financial world, Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson, are frantically beseeching the monolith for answers. Or maybe we are lost in space, with Dave the astronaut pleading, 'Open the bank vault doors, Hal.' "

The king's men aren't in charge.... the machines are.

Enabled by computers, the greedy, deregulated Wall Streeters made money by moving it around like a shell game from shell to shell with such velocity that it could exist in Asia one moment and Wall Street a split second later.

George Dyson, Freeman's son and a historian of technology who wrote "Darwin Among the Machines“ warns that technical arrogance could lead to technology out-evolving us and taking over. He predicted: The unlimited replication of information is generally a public good. The problem starts, as the current crisis demonstrates, when unregulated replication is applied to money itself. Highly complex computer-generated financial instruments (known as derivatives) are being produced, not from natural factors of production or other goods, but purely from other financial instruments.”

As Dooling points out, a serial killer also warned us. He asks if we know who said: "But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines’ decisions. ... Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won’t be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide."

This statement was in the Unabomber's manifesto. Theodore Kaczinski, who created horrors of his own as a homicidal psychopath and paranoid kook, who nevertheless presciently warned of the horrors of technology.

Wall Street geeks put computers in charge and our financial system had a great fall.

As all the king's men struggle to reassemble the financial world's broken egg.... whose pieces float scattered by inscrutable technology in the ether.. the result will undoubtedly be a world far different than were our illusions of our world.

The Choice of Our Lifetime

In it's October 13 issue, The New Yorker endorsed a presidential candidate in a well-reasoned, in-depth editorial.... "The Choice."

Two of their observations are worth quoting in full. The first is about John McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin: "Perhaps nothing revealed McCain’s cynicism more than his choice of Sarah Palin, the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, who had been governor of that state for twenty-one months, as the Republican nominee for Vice-President. In the interviews she has given since her nomination, she has had difficulty uttering coherent unscripted responses about the most basic issues of the day. We are watching a candidate for Vice-President cram for her ongoing exam in elementary domestic and foreign policy. This is funny as a Tina Fey routine on “Saturday Night Live,” but as a vision of the political future it’s deeply unsettling. Palin has no business being the backup to a President of any age, much less to one who is seventy-two and in imperfect health. In choosing her, McCain committed an act of breathtaking heedlessness and irresponsibility."

The second quote reveals "The Choice".... "We cannot expect one man to heal every wound, to solve every major crisis of policy. So much of the Presidency, as they say, is a matter of waking up in the morning and trying to drink from a fire hydrant. In the quiet of the Oval Office, the noise of immediate demands can be deafening. And yet Obama has precisely the temperament to shut out the noise when necessary and concentrate on the essential. The election of Obama—a man of mixed ethnicity, at once comfortable in the world and utterly representative of twenty-first-century America—would, at a stroke, reverse our country’s image abroad and refresh its spirit at home. His ascendance to the Presidency would be a symbolic culmination of the civil- and voting-rights acts of the nineteen-sixties and the century-long struggles for equality that preceded them. It could not help but say something encouraging, even exhilarating, about the country, about its dedication to tolerance and inclusiveness, about its fidelity, after all, to the values it proclaims in its textbooks. At a moment of economic calamity, international perplexity, political failure, and battered morale, America needs both uplift and realism, both change and steadiness. It needs a leader temperamentally, intellectually, and emotionally attuned to the complexities of our troubled globe. That leader’s name is Barack Obama."

Juxtaposed against Obama's "heal the country" hopefulness, at this critical moment in history it is an erratic and angry-sounding McCain and his ditto-head trophy vice who have taken the Smarmy Talk Express to the low road of a personal, by-association Swiftboat attack against Obama, deceptively and divisively whipping up audiences to a fever-pitch of "Kill him" and racial obscenity shout-outs.

We've seen and heard enough.

November 4.

AIG'S $85 Billion... Party Time!

What an outrage.... "U.S. Extends $38 Billion In New Loans to AIG." (WaPo)

That's after the $85 billion government rescue in mid-September.

They needed the money because their financial products division had made some risky and complex investments that had gone bad.... thus rewarding bad behavior not just once, but twice.

But, don't try this risky behavior at home, it can only be pulled off by professional corporate criminals with lobbyists in D.C.

And the second infusion came just a day after a House hearing found, among other things, that "AIG is paying one of the executives who led the company into some of its most costly mistakes $1 million a month as a consulting fee to help it unwind his bad investments.

"And just a week after the first bailout, the company treated some of its executives and some high-performing life insurance agents to a weeklong stay at the pricey St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, Calif. Total cost for the spree: $440,000."

In Tuesday night's debate, Barack Obama called for AIG to repay the taxpayers the $440,000 and fire the executives who authorized this despicable boondoggle. But he didn't go far enough.

There seems to be an elephant in the room everyone is missing.... we got into this financial mess due to a lack of oversight. Now we're bailing out those who plunged the country into this financial disaster through their greed with an EQUAL LACK OF OVERSIGHT, still lacking PENALTIES WITH TEETH.

Why should white-collar crimes only amount to a justification for unaccountable corporate welfare? Who is watching the billions being sloshed into the maw of corporate coffers in the wake of their maleficence?

As a start, how about a few perp-walks, and then outfitting the AIG criminal CEO's in suits that aren't the pin-stripe variety.

November 4.

McCain Stiffs His "Friends"

John McCain finally got the town hall format he's been whining about for months. He wanted many more. The message.... "I'm better than Obama at connecting with the voters.... let me at them."

He should thank his lucky stars that Barack Obama didn't take him up on that tactic. As Harold Meyerson said in his op-ed today about the debate, "In the town halls staged by his campaign, where the crowds are composed almost entirely of his supporters, McCain has been relaxed, and has been on the stage by himself. In Nashville tonight, neither of those particulars applied. Instead, as he and Barack Obama wandered around the stage, McCain overwhelmingly conveyed the impression -- not to put too fine a point on it -- that he’s old." (WaPo)

And has trouble expressing himself. At time speaking in loud whispers intended to convey..... danger, urgency.... he nevertheless appeared stiff and uncomfortable, explaining himself in incomplete sentences and thoughts with jokes that fell flat like his "hair transplant" jab obviously aimed at Joe Biden, Obama's VP choice.

In contrast, Obama looked and sounded presidential, in command of the subjects, speaking in complete sentences while precisely explaining his policies, and when allowed to, correcting the numerous McCain misstatements about his policies and record that are the stuff of McCain talking points.

As the New York Times lamented today in "Politics of Attack".... "It is a sorry fact of American political life that campaigns get ugly, often in their final weeks. But Senator John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin have been running one of the most appalling campaigns we can remember.

"They have gone far beyond the usual fare of quotes taken out of context and distortions of an opponent’s record — into the dark territory of race-baiting and xenophobia....

"Despite the occasional slip (referring to Mr. Obama’s 'cronies' and calling him 'that one'), Mr. McCain tried to take a higher road in Tuesday night’s presidential debate. It was hard to keep track of the number of times he referred to his audience as 'my friends.' ”

Therein.... in the "my friends" context.... lies the fatal flaw at the heart of McCain's campaign. We aren't his friends. That's just a lame senatorial-speak device used to gain time to think, and to make the listener feel he cares and connects with their problems. Talking the talk.

But McCain doesn't walk the walk..... he associates with, and employs in pivotal campaign and staff positions, the very lobbyists who crusaded for less government regulation, and tax cuts for big oil and big business.... his real friends are corporate CEOs.

Nothing could have highlighted that shallow "my friends" debating-device more clearly than watching what happened after the debate. Did McCain stay around to spend time with his "friends." No. After a couple of cursory handshakes with the town hall participants, he and glacial Cindy departed to rejoin his adoring coterie.

In contrast, Obama and Michelle stayed to talk with, and listen to, the participants. To answer questions, sign autographs and hang out.... treating them as friends.

This is one reason why a long campaign season has it's useful, even redeeming, aspects. It's hard for a candidate to keep up a false front with so much exposure in so many formats. So how is McCain holding up?.... bomb, bomb, bomb.

November 4.

Media Misses Mark on Silly Sarah

Richard Cohen says it so well today in "Debate's Biggest Loser" (WaPo) ....

"Reading William Kristol's column in yesterday's New York Times, I discover that Sarah Palin and I have something in common. Kristol, who was once Dan Quayle's chief of staff and therefore, shall we say, has a Mister Rogers approach to certain politicians, got Palin on the phone and reported that 'she doesn't have a very high opinion of the mainstream media.' This is where we are in agreement. On account of Palin, neither do I."

The far-right's swooning at Palin's peppy presentation in her vice presidential debate with Sen. Joe Biden last week left them ecstatic and declaring her up to the job a heartbeat away THE job.

Never mind she didn't answer the questions, misrepresented her opponents records and overall acted as if she was a pageant contestant trying for Miss Congeniality.... a crown her surly sidekick McGrumpy McCain says he'll never receive from his fellow legislators just before he declares he's the one to reach across the aisle to get things done.

Embracing Sarah's antics is to be expected from a party that has lost its way and is desperate for someone who's so upbeat she suspends reality.... infusing the anything-goes faithful with the hope that winks and high jinks are the same to voters, especially in this toxic economic environment, as well-thought-out public policy.

What is unforgivable is that same breathless, fawning attitude from the media.

Cohen opines... "Can you imagine the reaction of the press corps if Hillary Clinton had given the audience a 'hiya, sailor' wink? Can you imagine the feverish blogging across the political spectrum if Clinton had claimed credit for stopping a bridge that, in fact, had set her heart aflutter? What if she had shown that she didn't know squat about the Constitution, if she could not tell Katie Couric what newspapers or magazines she read or if she had claimed an intimacy with foreign affairs based on sighting Russia through binoculars?"

There is more than a double standard here, there seems to be no standard at all. The media takes whatever the McCain campaign spews whole cloth and too many times addresses only the style of delivery.... the cuteness factor, the "Joe six-pack" condescending that voters already saw through with Hillary's desperate and futile "shots and beer" waning-campaign gasp.

Hopefully in tonight's debate between McCain and Barack Obama, McCain will bring his grown-up game, not the surly, smearing campaign tactics of the past week.

McKeating's Pal Gramm

John McCain lives in a big, bright glass house.... so it's surprising his campaign is mounting an attack against Barack Obama regarding his association with Bill Ayers, who held a fund-raiser for Obama in 1995 and who already sat on a school reform board funded by the Annenberg Foundation when Obama was recruited as chair.

Ayers, a onetime Weatherman has been a University of Illinois education professor for nearly two decades, and does not advise or participate in Obama's presidential campaign.

Yet, mindless of all of the glass in his political house, McCain enlisted Silly Sarah Palin to be in the vanguard of lobbing Swiftboat-style bombs at Obama in an attack designed to change the subject away from the economy.... undoubtedly hoping no one remembers that McKeating McCain has already been through one such serious financial market bailout that had his fingerprints all over it.

Silly Sarah even accuses Obama of "palling around" with Ayers, even though their acquaintance is more of the nodding kind.

It's strange that in the face of the meltdown of the markets and Wall Street investment banks that the McCain campaign would try a "palling around" tactic since McKeating has a real toxic pal, someone with whom he not only has a close association, but who formulated his D.O.A. economic policy.

As Harold Meyerson points out in "A Pal Around McCain," (WaPo) ...."if McCain's people want to rummage through presidential candidates' associations, real or imagined, to turn up figures who threaten to pull down this proud republic, they should begin in-house. Chief among those to whom responsibility attaches for the financial crisis that is plunging the nation into recession is former Texas senator Phil Gramm, McCain's own economic guru."

You remember Gramm.... he's the one who recently accused us of being a "nation of whiners" as people lost jobs, homes, and savings.

Meyerson went on to explain.... "Gramm was always Wall Street's man in the Senate..... Gramm's piece de resistance came on Dec. 15, 2000, when he slipped into an omnibus spending bill a provision called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA), which prohibited any governmental regulation of credit default swaps, those insurance policies covering losses on securities in the event they went belly up.

"As the housing bubble ballooned, the face value of those swaps rose to a tidy $62 trillion".... let's say that again, $62 TRILLION.... "And as the housing bubble burst, those swaps became a massive pile of worthless paper, because no government agency had required the banks to set aside money to back them up."

As McCain tries to distract with Swiftboat tactics, and his earmarking crusade.... a fix amounting to a few millions in chump change.... he is hoping that no one notices his politically-incestuous relationship with Gramm. "McCain chaired Gramm's short-lived presidential campaign in 1996; Gramm is co-chair of McCain's current effort."

Maybe scariest of all, "McCain has not repudiated reports that Gramm is on the shortlist to become Treasury secretary if McCain is elected,".... then truly the pirates will be in change of the $700 billion+ mother lode.

November 4.

Baring Russia's Bear

This is insightful on many levels, "Russian troops start dismantling Georgia posts." (WaPo)

"The moves come as Russia faced a Friday deadline for pulling back its troops under the terms of a deal brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy on behalf of the European Union."

That's right, the United States played no active role in brokering a resolution to this potential time bomb.... Sarkozy and the EU did the heavy lifting while the Bush administration issued largely ignored pronouncements of no usefulness. And the EU is monitoring what so far is Russia's compliance.

This EU-brokered agreement obliges Russia to pull it's military out of what it calls a security zone roughly four-miles deep inside Georgia south of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, although it allows Russia to set up checkpoints in the zones.

"Russia recognized the independence of both regions after the fighting, a move denounced by Georgia and the West; so far, only Nicaragua and the Hamas government in Gaza have followed suit with recognition."

So where are Russia's friends.... China, Venezuela, Iran? Hmmmm. Could it be because a moth-eaten bear.... as evidenced by it's outdated military equipment deployed in it's conflict with Georgia.... isn't yet a Big Bad Bear despite strongman Vladimir Putin's huffing and growling?

Today Murray Feshback explains in "Behind the Bluster, Russia is Collapsing." (WaPo)

"Predictions that Russia will again become powerful, rich and influential ignore some simply devastating problems at home that block any march to power. Sure, Russia's army could take tiny Georgia. But Putin's military is still in tatters, armed with rusting weaponry and staffed with indifferent recruits. Meanwhile, a declining population is robbing the military of a new generation of soldiers. Russia's economy is almost totally dependent on the price of oil. And, worst of all, it's facing a public health crisis that verges on the catastrophic"

As Putin continues to focus the revenues of Russia's oil industry cash-cow on boosting defense spending, (with a plan to fully re-arm it's military to state-of-the-art at a cost of $200 billion) it comes at the expense of Russia's most basic resource.... the health and well-being of it's people.

Three times as many Russians die from heart-related illnesses as do Americans or Europeans per 100,000 people; TB deaths are triple the World Health Organization's definition of an epidemic... about 24,000 in 2007 for 142 million people as compared to 650 in the U.S. with a population of 303 million; diagnosed HIV/AIDS infections are skyrocketing to about 1 million people with an estimated increase of 25 percent more new cases in 2008. The birth rate has been declining for more than a decade and the health of Russia's newborns is quite poor with 70 percent experiencing complications at birth.

Is Russia addressing these tragic and nationally debilitating health issues? No.

For example, "according to Gennady Onishchenko, the country's chief public health physician, only 9 percent of Russian TB hospitals meet current hygienic standards, 21 percent lack either hot or cold running water, 11 percent lack a sewer system, and 20 percent have a shortage of TB drugs."

So do these devastating national weaknesses defang Russia? As Putin tries to claw his way back to superpower status it would be prudent to remember, there is nothing more dangerous than a wounded, cornered bear.

McRove Stoops to Character Assassination

The word is out "McCain Plans Fiercer Strategy Against Obama" (WaPo).... John McCain thinks he can win by attacking Barack Obama's "judgment, honesty and personal associations."

This is the Rovian Swiftboating tactic utilized with great success against John Kerry in 2004.... and, by The Decider in the GOP 2000 presidential primaries against McCain himself. At the time, McCain was enraged by such tactics. Now, power-grasping ambition has so blunted his moral compass that McCain is willing to cast aside the one thing that drew people to him, his code of honor.

But, as his interview with The Des Moines Register editorial staff last Tuesday showed, McCain justifies such tactics, at least in public, as truth telling on his part, when in fact it is anything but.

With McSame's 90 percent support of the Bush administration's disastrously failed domestic and foreign policies and promises of more of the same..... and, in the face of a dangerously floundering economy on The Decider's watch.... about the only thing left is to change the subject with a Swiftboating attack on Obama's character. Sad.

November 4.

Words to Give By....

Presidents Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43 all ran our economy into the red, especially the reckless 43. And, waiting in the wings to continue the plunder.... McBush 44.

Please.... no more shining-city-on-a -hill rewriting of history. That shine was actually the mountain of $$ being shipped offshore, bulging from CEO's pockets and overflowing from Wall Street investment banks' coffers.

November 4.

McBush's Fundamentals Weren't Strong

Listening to the debate going on in the House right now on the $700+ bailout bill, the refrain (excuse) repeated over and over is.... it would be a better bill if only we had more time.

It's true, time has run out on dithering. Credit, the grease that keeps the economy moving, has dried up.

But, no one is acknowledging the elephant in the room.... there would have been more time to keep our economy off of the shoals if The Decider and John McCain hadn't kept assuring the country that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong."

Even though the country was drowning in debt, the middle-class was losing jobs, wages were declining, and housing bankruptcies reached historic proportions.

Just hours before Treasury Secretary Paulson crashed the corporate profiteering party with his emergency proposal, McSame was still mindlessly parroting the administration's talking point.... the "fundamentals of our economy are strong."

The reason this is a lousy bill is because the country has lousy, manipulating leadership who wouldn't acknowledge that their "trickle down" Reaganomics didn't work for anyone but bloated, and now bailed-out, corporations and what trickles down is pain to the middle class.

Never again.

November 4.

Wind-up "Chatty-Kathy" Sarah

The debate last night wasn't. A debate. It was theater although Joe Biden tried mightily to insert serious policy issues whenever Sarah Palin finally took a breath.

On the part of Sassy Sarah it was a regurgitation of talking points, many times purposefully without reference to the question posed.... delivered with eye-rolling, a wink, a nod and studied perkiness. At any moment it seemed she might break into a cheer.... YEA! RAH RAH TEAM!

Obviously channeling The Decider who was a cheerleader in Andover, Sassy Sarah dropped her g's and gave her version of aw-shucks Joe Sixpack-speak.... doggone, betcha', doin', darn right... and like Bush came off as incurious and power-grabbing, blantantly proposing to expand the powers of the Vice President's role in Congress. Yikes!

As Harold Meyerson said about her performance.... "a marvel of its kind -- dissociated, jumbled, at times completely contradictory ('you build up infrastructure and rein in government spending,' she prescribed at one point: Huh?), with soundbites appearing and reappearing almost at random, but fast, happy, almost joyous: Made it through that five-minute question that I know nothing about without even pausing: Phew!" (WaPo)

Eugene Robinson summed up Palin's Big Mistake, "Her error was that she hardly talked at all about policy solutions, except when the debate got onto the subject of energy and offshore drilling. There, she seemed on terra firma. But on everything else -- the financial crisis, the economy in general, health care, the war on terror -- she gave little more than promises of reform and 'maverick'-y governance." (WaPo)

Sarah Palin is the Vice Presidential selection of a 72-year-old-man who has had serious bouts with cancer. So, what she's about matters this election year more than most.

The country has had a belly-full of strutting shoot-from-the-hip maverick types. They are looking for change. Substance. Seriousness. A grasp of the issues.

Middle-America isn't better off than they were eight years ago.... far from it. No one is looking for someone with which to have a beer. It's grown-up time.

November 4!

Porkers Lard $700 Billion Bailout

Evidently our U.S. Senators and Representatives just can't help themselves.

Case in point.... "Senate Approves Bailout." (WaPo) "The proposal - which calls for spending up to $700 billion to buy bad assets from faltering financial institutions - was heavily revised to attract wider support. The bill passed last night would extend an array of tax breaks worth $108 billion to businesses and families next year."

$108 billion!

Our legislators obviously suffer from legislative-Tourette's syndrome.

They shout-out their pet-project add-ons to even emergency measures intended to save the country from financial disaster.

Examples of the pork rife in this bill. Some of the earmar.... eh.... tax break "extenders" are: $192 million for Puerto Rico and Virgin Island rum producers, $6 million for manufacturers of children's wooden arrows (kid you not).. and, $40 billion in tax breaks for businesses over the next 10 years... even wool research.

Pork barreling is most odious when the country is over the barrel because of blatant maladministration creating dire situations that require "emergency" measures to staunch the devastation.... at least for the moment. Then the porkers pile on.

What started as a $700 billion, 2-1/2 page bailout proposal from Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and turned into 100 pages in the House, was passed last night in the Senate.... all 451 pages of it.

There is a remedy at hand for those suffering from legislative-Tourette's pork barreling. Find out who are the worst sufferers, and when they come up for reelection send them home where they can do no further harm.

November 4!

Bush's "Hoovering" Legacy

One thing that can rouse The Decider to action.... his legacy.

He was trying for Compassionate Conservative. But, history may tag George as the Latter-Day Hoover.

The fate of our economy, and George's legacy, rests on the politically shifting shoulders of lawmakers and the fleet footwork of George's financial cavalry who arrived only after investment banks started to topple from their own excesses, taking credit pipelines down with them.

After a failure to launch the original $700 bailout plan in the House, "Lawmakers Revise Rescue Plan," (WaPo) as the Senate aims for its first vote on a plan tonight.

But, passage isn't certain, especially in the House, as the GOP have successfully inserted corporate welfar.... uhhh.... tax credits into the proposed legislation, without a corresponding tax increase or a way to recover the lost income.

Isn't this how we got here?

It may now be the "Blue Dog" bloc of 47 fiscally conservative House Democrats who oppose the new plan. They may dig in against extending tax credits unless there are other spending cuts or a way to pay for them.

There is one thing everyone seems to agree on.... there is a tremendous financial crisis that must be dealt with.... but, the devil is in the details.

The Decider should be grateful that Bush 41 and Babs didn't stick him with dad's middle name.... Herbert. But, George Herbert Hoover Bush does have a certain authentic ring, doesn't it.

The Decider is Denied

It turns out The Decider can't after all.... decide, that is.

The reason is glaringly clear, to everyone except those so blindly partisan they still think "trickle down" Reaganomics works.

In the face of a tanking dollar; monstrous and growing debt; historic loss of jobs; increase in poverty; trade deficits to the moon; obscene increases in entitlements and bureaucracy; corporate deregulation and tax benefits; and binge spending by a 6-year-GOP-majority Congress in the grip of corrupting lobbyists .... two men who both finished near the bottom of their class, The Decider and his sidekick McGoo McCain kept parroting their talking point. "The fundamentals of our economy are strong."

And, they kept saying it as bankruptcies and home foreclosures grew into the tsunami that finally engulfed Wall Street and threatened to drown the entire U.S. economy as credit dried up and large investment firms, banks and credit-reliant companies rolled over and sank.

Then, like the spoiled brat he is, Bush stamped his foot and demanded to be bailed out of his misjudgements.

He presented a 2-1/2 page bill to Congress, for 700 billion dollars. To be administered at the sole discretion, without oversight or accountability, by his appointed Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson.... a former CEO of investment firm Goldman Sachs who finally understood the financial danger when it hit his street. Wall Street.

What followed was a balky negotiating process brought to a halt by McCain who thought he saw a chance for taking rescue credit.... rushing to D.C. to interject presidential politics, and the process ran into a wall.

No one in Congress wanted their fingerprints on this legislation to bail out the greedy raiders and failed policies. But the problem was presented as a choice between financial Armageddon and the possibility of a lifeline back from the edge of the abyss. After long negotiation, arm-twisting and compromise, legislation was finally presented to the House.... and failed.

There is a lot of finger pointing from all sides on why it failed... but the buck stops with The Decider. The Vote Underscores Bush's Loss of Influence. (WaPo)

"The plan had gone down to a stinging defeat in the House, in large part the result of opposition from more than 100 members of Bush's Republican Party.

"The vote marked the biggest legislative defeat of Bush's tenure and underscored the vanishing influence of a president who could once bend a pliant Congress to his will on wars, taxes, surveillance and a host of other high-profile initiatives.

"The defeat also brought into focus some of the key characteristics of Bush's troubled second term, including his weakened hold on his party, his tendency to delegate major responsibilities to aides and his continued reliance on alarmist rhetoric in an effort to get his way. Bush left much of the sales job for the rescue plan to Treasury Secretary Paulson., and his last-minute warnings that 'our entire economy is in danger' appeared to have little impact on the debate."

This entire mess is nothing short of a massive failure of Reaganomics. By voting for this gigantic economic-socialization bailout package, GOP conservatives would be admitting this.

And, many Democrats feel the very perpetrators of the crisis, the greedy Wall Street financiers and Bush administration enablers, would benefit more than the victimized taxpayers and resist the bailout.

So we're in the financial doldrums, drifting on the currents of panic. The ship of state is in uncharted territory without a captain.... just The Decider, thrown into the hold by his mutinous crew.

McGoo and his Fatuous First Mate are on deck, campaigning to take the helm to continue The Decider's destructive course....

November 4!

McGrumpy vs. O"bam"a

In last night's first presidential candidates debate, John McCain wiped away any doubt that he is the Man of the Century.... the last century.

As Jacob Heilbrunn opines, "For someone who purports to represent change, McCain offered muddled arguments that are almost as old as he is himself. By focusing so narrowly on the unpopular Iraq War, McCain is almost surely speeding up his own inevitable decline in the polls. It was Barack Obama who came across as the insurgent seeking change, while McCain represented the Republican establishment.

Obama landed the crushing blows by pointing out the obvious: the Bush administration's, and by extension McCain's, obsession with Iraq for the past eight years has only succeeded in crippling American power and security. McCain, he noted, has been wrong, over and over again, in predicting that Iraq would be a cakewalk and that there would be no real ethnic enmities inside it. As Obama announced that he would target and kill Osama bin-Laden, McCain could only stare in mute stupefaction." (Huffington Post)

Unable to look Obama in the eye, the nasty-old-man routine, and warmed-over stump speech lines by McSame were the stuff of an unpresidential temperament and a third-rate mind.

Heilbrunn points out that McCain's "grandfatherly tone was supposed to provide reassurance that he would guide the American foreign policy tiller with a sure hand, while Obama would capsize. But whether it's Russia or the Middle East, McCain's unctuous tone tonight could not disguise the fact that he's even more bellicose than Bush himself. Obama, by contrast, wants to begin the overdue job of restoring America's image abroad. All McCain proved once more is that he knows full well how to continue the Bush legacy of losing friends abroad and alienating people."

Even, astoundingly, Spain. A NATO ally. Who McCain says he'll not promise meet with in the White House. But then, he can't back off of that position because he thought Spain was in "this hemisphere" and by placing it in South America he would then have to be careful about their politics. Pathetic. McCain's only a half-step ahead of, as he describes her, his "maverick" running mate Sarah Palin, who thinks Alaska's proximity to Russia, and you know Putin flying over and stuff, makes her a foreign policy expert.

After McCain's suspending-my-campaign-and-cancelling-debate stunts of the last several days, it wasn't surprising to have confirmed that he doesn't have the temperament to be president. Obama won.... by a presidential smile.

November.