McCain Tossing Away His Chances In Iowa

The latest Rasmussen tracking poll shows Obama ahead of McCain in Iowa by 8%-- 51-43. One Iowan, though, who seems to be buying in to every bit of embarrassing nonsense that McCain has been spouting is ring wing extremist Steve King. King, of course, voted against the Paulson legislation this week and is likely to vote against any compromise that comes up later this week regardless of what McCain says he wants Republicans to do. But King, on a right-wing talk show today, said he agrees with McCain that the "fundamentals of the economy are sound" and that "our unemployment is fairly low... People out there have jobs, they’re working, the economy’s flowing."

It's good that King and McCain see eye to eye. Neither of them has any understanding of economics. Earlier today McCain met with the editorial board of the Des Moines Register. What a nasty, mean old man! I suspect he's not going to get their endorsement again:



Obama's campaign had a tone-perfect response to McCain's haughty, nasty responses. "When confronted with his discredited lies about Barack Obama's record and his own willingness to continue the same failed policies of the last eight years, John McCain offered nothing more than snide, frustrated responses. Senator McCain's sarcastic diatribe is just more evidence that he will continue the same failed tone we've seen in Washington for too long and that Americans are looking to change."

Meet Bill Durston (D-CA), A Democrat Who Wants To Rescue The Real Victims Of The Bush Economic Miracle, Not A Bunch Of Wall Street Predators

The Bush Regime's plan to stave off what Bush insists is systemic economic catastrophe hasn't been sufficiently explained to Congress or the American people. Instead they tried shock and awe. That's why it failed yesterday. We've attacked right wing goons like John Shadegg (R-AZ), Darrell Issa (R-CA), Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Mean Jean Schmidt (R-OH), Charlie Dent (R-PA), Dave Reichert (R-WA), Robin Hayes (R-NC), Scott Garrett (R-NJ), Ric Keller (R-FL), Michael McCaul (R-TX), Joe Knollenberg (R-MI), Tim Walberg (R-MI) for irresponsibility when they voted NO, at the same time we were praising solid progressives like Donna Edwards (D-MD), Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH), Hilda Solis (D-CA) and Pete DeFazio (D-CA) for having the foresight and courage to vote NO. They are introducing legislation today to improve the bill and make it a bill to rescue the real victims of the Bush Economic Miracle. (Of all these suggestions from progressive economists, Brad DeLong's is the best.)

Bill Durston is a decorated Marine combat Vietnam Veteran who volunteered to serve his country at the height of the Vietnam War. His opponent Dan Lungren, now a far right extremist and Bush rubber stamp, tried everything to avoid serving in the military and his daddy (who was Nixon's personal doctor) got a 4-F medical deferment for him so he could avoid going to war (even though Lungren was all gung-ho about it). Lungren is still a true "chickenhawk" today as he continues to oppose any timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. Bill's position on Iraq: "As a U.S. congressman, I will not vote for any further funding for military operations in Iraq that is not tied to a prompt, orderly, and complete withdrawal of U.S. forces."
 
Bill's an Emergency Room Physician in Sacramento and has lived in the 3rd Congressional District for over 25 years. Bill is the past President of the Sacramento Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility. 
 
Bill ran for Congress against Dan Lungren in 2006 and lost to Lungren by nearly the same percentage as McNerney lost to Pombo in McNerney's first run for Congress (2004). The congressional districts also had nearly the same voter registration percentages. In 2006, the Republicans had a nearly 7% voter registration advantage in the 3rd CD. Today it has been cut nearly in half at about 3.5% with 18% Declined-to-state. This is definitely a winnable district if we are able to get the word out about Bill.
 
The Democratic presidential candidates received over 7,000 more votes in the Feb. primary than the Republican candidates did in CD3. The voters of the 3rd CD have voted for candidates with "Democratic" after their name before (Feinstein won this district in 2006) and we believe they will do it again for both Obama and Durston in November!
 
Yesterday, Lungren voted to give $700 Billion dollars of taxpayer money to the financial industry with almost no oversight or accountability.  It just happens that Lungren has taken over $475,000 from the Banking/Finance/Insurance/Real Estate industry over the last 3 campaign cycles. Do you wonder why he wants to give them free money?  Bill opposes the free giveaway to Wall Street.. This is the OpEd Bill wrote about the bailout plan last week. Last night we asked Bill to explain his position on the Bush Regime's proposal and tell us why solid progressives are opposing it.


Solving the Financial Crisis-- First Do No Harm
 
By Bill Durston, M.D.


Representative Dan Lungren, a career politician in virtual lock step with the Bush-Cheney Administration, voted as expected on HR 3997, the $700 billion bailout for Wall Street-- against the interests of his constituents in California’s 3rd Congressional District, and in the interests of his wealthy corporate donors. Having taken $25,000 in contributions from the American Banker’s Association Political Action Committee since 2004, Lungren’s “Yes” vote on the Wall Street bail out came as no surprise.
 
Lungren had previously voted against the Shareholder Vote on Executive Compensation Act, to give shareholders a vote on multi-million dollar “golden parachutes” for corporate CEO’s, and against the Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights Act, to require credit card companies to give cardholders fair notice before increasing interest rates.

I have publicly opposed the Wall Street bailout. As an Emergency Physician I can see an analogy between the practice of medicine and the practice of government. The $700 billion bailout plan violates the principle of “First, do no harm.” Increasing the national debt by another $700 billion will further reduce the value of the dollar, worsen inflation, and put the federal government itself at greater risk of bankruptcy.
 
Another principle in the practice of medicine which should also apply to government is that of informed consent. Before undergoing a major operation, a patient has the right to an objective discussion of the risks, benefits, and alternatives of the proposed surgery. In the case of the bailout for the financial industry, we’ve heard very little from economic experts about the risks, a very vague discussion of the benefits, and virtually nothing about reasonable alternatives.
 
I certainly don't advocate that Congress sit idly by during the financial crisis. Instead of bailing out financial institutions that engaged in corporate greed and unsound business practices, the government should provide more help to honest people who were victimized by predatory lending practices, reinstitute sensible regulations on the financial industry, and look at other ways to rebuild the American economy, including redirecting the massive human and financial resources that are being wasted on war toward more constructive uses.

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

Bill was just added to the DownWithTyranny ActBlue page today, only the third candidate this cycle. The first 20 contributors this week of at least $20 will get a thank you note from DWT with Quixotic, the two-disc new CD release by Matt Keating.

Shadegg And Bachmann Step In Boehner's Shit Sandwich

Now no one can accuse radical right extremists Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and John Shadegg (yeah, the shady two-timer from Arizona) of not being lockstep rubber stamps. They are widely considered two of the most brain-dead Bush puppets into the entire House and both eagerly voted against the bill and have been crowing about it ever since. But both have also denounced Eric Cantor's and the Republican leadership's extremely lame excuse of blaming their inability to live up to their end of the bargain on Nancy Pelosi's speech that they claim blamed the Republican philosophy of greed and selfishness, deregulation and bottom-line predatory, unfettered capitalism for the meltdown. Of course, neither is saying Pelosi was correct in her analysis-- which she was-- but... well, today Shadegg said it was "a stupid claim."

Shadegg said that he doesn't know of a single GOP vote that shifted because of the speech.

On Monday evening, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), a lead opponent of the bailout, told the Crypt that the notion was "nonsense" and mocked the possibility that a Republican would be shocked or offended by the partisan nature of a Democratic speech.

Watch Barney exposing their perfidy:

McCain's Erratic Stands On The Economy Jeopardizing A Recovery

I'm not voting for either former Vietnam captive

OK, OK, everyone knows that McCain doesn't know anything about economics-- he's admitted it over and over-- and most people have figured out that he also isn't interested and just wants to get into the White House so he can start some wars and make up for whatever psychological problem is still haunting him from his failures in Vietnam. And Sarah Palin isn't exactly an economist either. But McCain doesn't need failed corporate plutocrats like Carly Fiorina and sleazy, crooked lobbyists like Phil Gramm to tell him what he has to say about the economy. All he has to do-- which is what he has been doing lately-- is go back to his old voting record and do the old McCain flip-flop.

Every single position he has supported-- from massive and irresponsible deregulation to more tax cuts for the wealthy-- has turned out to be wrong, dead wrong. So now all he has to do is talk about how he opposes everything he's ever stood for. And this morning he tried a new one. Many of McCain's supporters have a great deal of money in their checking accounts that federal insurance doesn't insure. The FDIC only insures bank deposits up to $100,000. What about all McCain's millionaire supporters? Well, following Senator Obama, McCain quickly came out for upping the federal insurance on deposits from $100,000 to $250,000. This is especially interesting since McCain has always opposed this-- loudly. In fact, in 1991 McCain introduced an amendment that limited insurance on Individual Retirement Accounts.

That same year, just two years McCain was caught in a massive bribery scandal, the Keating Five, which he was able to wriggle out of, he blamed the failure of Savings & Loan banks-- which he was an active participant in defrauding and robbing-- on "the perversity of Federal Deposit Insurance." Here's what he said then-- very different from what he's saying today: "The perversity of Federal deposit insurance is exemplified by the taxpayer bailout of the savings and loan industry. Mr. President, I think it is generally acknowledged that the failure of the savings and loan industry, to a
large degree, can be directly attributed to the unwarranted expansion of deposit insurance by the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980. Basic coverage was increased from $40,000 to $100,000. No longer was deposit insurance for the small depositor. It became the safety blanket for large, sophisticated depositors and freewheeling bankers."

More recently (last February), the Boston Globe reminded voters of McCain's key role in the Keating Five scandal that was a test run for today's Wall Street meltdown, trying crooked political hacks to avaricious bank executives.

"The story of how the 'Keating Five' senators allegedly pressured regulators to lay off a failing Arizona S&L became a major scandal, and marked a turning point in McCain's life-- the near-death of his political career… The events of 1987, when McCain met with regulators, and 1991, when the Senate Ethics Committee concluded that he used 'poor judgment' in the matter, are only dimly remembered by many. … McCain met Keating in 1982, during McCain's successful run for
Congress, and soon began accepting offers from Keating to fly McCain's family on a corporate plane to Keating's house in the Bahamas. McCain did not pay for most of the trips until years later, when the matter became public. Keating, meanwhile, complained regularly to McCain that a proposed regulation would hurt his business. … He cosponsored a resolution sought by Keating, but it failed to postpone the regulation."

McCain's spectacular flip flops are normally on issues like the FDIC which he was against years ago and now supports, But today he was flip flopping in a matter of minutes from one position to another. While the Republican Party was releasing an ad blaming Obama for supporting the unpopular bill to infuse liquidity into the credit system-- which Republicans, not understanding it, killed yesterday-- McCain was urging Americans to support the exact same bill!

While McCain and his surrogates have been running around like a bunch of chickens without heads sending mixed messages, sowing discord, politicizing the issues and telling every audience what they think it wants to here-- even though they contradict each other, Obama has been calm, clear and consistent. This crisis has shown, once again-- as if people still needed more proof, that McCain is erratic, ineffective and untrustworthy. Listen to Obama this morning and compared that to McCain's crazy-quilt of hysterical, always changing pronouncements:

Mooselini Brings Quite A Lot To The McCain Campaign

Courtesy of Guzzi Studios

So what if Palin doesn't know that the Supreme Court was founded in 1789 and that John Jay, a revolutionary who she and her fellow conservatives would have been very much against, was the first Chief Justice? And so what if she doesn't know Marbury v Madison or the Dred Scott Decision from Brown vs Board of Eduction or Bush vs Gore. She knows Roe v Wade and that's all any contemporary "conservative" needs to know about the Supreme Court anyway.

And, in any case, McCain didn't pick her to vet Supreme Court judges (or lead troops through the Khyber Pass into Pakistan). Obviously McCain's only real interest whenever he imagines himself in the Oval Office is fighting wars. So where does Palin fit in? One thing all Americans can agree on is that we need a vice president who has less to do with public policy. If Bush's approval rating is now 19%, can you even try to guess how low Cheney's is! Palin is the perfect antidote to a VP who stood behind the curtain and ran the show for 8 years. There is nothing she knows about and nothing she is capable of doing. Nothing. As long as McCain defies the actuarial odds and survives for 4 years, who cares? And if something happens to him... well, in that case he won't be around to explain what he meant by "country first" anyway. Fareed Zakaria:

Will someone please put Sarah Palin out of her agony? Is it too much to ask that she come to realize that she wants, in that wonderful phrase in American politics, "to spend more time with her family"?

...Palin has been given a set of talking points by campaign advisers, simple ideological mantras that she repeats and repeats as long as she can. ("We mustn't blink.") But if forced off those rehearsed lines, what she has to say is often, quite frankly, gibberish.

Couric asked her a smart question about the proposed $700 billion bailout of the American financial sector. It was designed to see if Palin understood that the problem in this crisis is that credit and liquidity in the financial system has dried up, and that that's why, in the estimation of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, the government needs to step in to buy up Wall Street's most toxic liabilities. Here's the entire exchange:

COURIC: Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the—it's got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.

This is nonsense—a vapid emptying out of every catchphrase about economics that came into her head. Some commentators, like CNN's Campbell Brown, have argued that it's sexist to keep Sarah Palin under wraps, as if she were a delicate flower who might wilt under the bright lights of the modern media. But the more Palin talks, the more we see that it may not be sexism but common sense that's causing the McCain campaign to treat her like a time bomb.

Can we now admit the obvious? Sarah Palin is utterly unqualified to be vice president. She is a feisty, charismatic politician who has done some good things in Alaska. But she has never spent a day thinking about any important national or international issue, and this is a hell of a time to start. The next administration is going to face a set of challenges unlike any in recent memory. There is an ongoing military operation in Iraq that still costs $10 billion a month, a war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan that is not going well and is not easily fixed. Iran, Russia and Venezuela present tough strategic challenges.

Zakaria must hate McCain, as according to McCain's lobbyist brigade, the entire media does. He points out that McCain's claim to always put the country first has been utterly shredded" "it is simply not true."

As for Palin, they may not like her any longer in the battle ground states, especially ones that are traditionally safe Republican havens like Colorado and North Carolina, but McCain is certain she'll razzle and dazzle 'em once they get to know the real her.

Hard to tell which is the Tina Fey spoof and which is the cynical joke on America:

GOP Victimology

-by Mags

My husband and I watch Lions football. Yeah, we know we are gluttons for punishment, but we live in Michigan and we are loyal to our team. We are optimists. In the 90’s I watched while the Republicans turned language around on activists who were working for women whose lives were at stake due to domestic violence. Not just women, but on minorities who were finally able to move forward with educational goals. Clinton also put more cops on the beat in bad neighborhoods to lower the crime rates there, helping kids who would otherwise grow up in an environment of fear. The rights of the handicapped to access the public sphere became a matter of public concern. The Republicans decided, as they always do, that people in need, need not apply for government funding. They termed this as “victimology” and coined the term “Politically Correct” to mock the genuine concern for the needs of people… populism. They named programs to help those who paid for them, entitlements. Thus making it look like those less fortunate had some sort of terrible and awesome power over legislators and everyone else. Fantasy.

Now, let me get back to my football reference. In case you do not know this, the Lions as a team are not very good. But, to add insult to injury the refs often miss calls that would help the Lions. They miss holding calls and fail to call interference when the opposition is all over our receivers. I complain about this on a regular basis with a vocabulary that one cannot print here. This is what my husband says to me about all my griping. He tells me that you must earn the respect of the refs. That if you want to complain that you lost because of the refs that that does not fly. He says you should be a good enough team to overcome bad calls. He has a point.

John McCain and Sarah Palin daily come out with some whine against the media or Democrats. Honestly, they talk tough and they call names, tell lies, and insult others, but they whine even when others tell the truth about them or show them in a realistic light using their own words.  Sarah Palin as we learned earlier must be not only respected, but deferred to. I am sure Katie Couric could not have been nicer while allowing Sarah to show she has no grasp of policy, foreign or domestic. Today I learned that Sarah disagreeing with McCain policies on Pakistan is now the fault of media, no not the media, but the “Gotcha Journalism.”

John McCain is now on the “No talk Express.” So it has been said. He is now blaming the media for everything negative that happens to his campaign. He and Sarah Palin blame the media for every word that comes out of their own mouths. These are people who want to make the rules of the game, but still cannot win by their own rules. Time and time again, they are left looking foolish.

Sarah Palin blames the media for her problems in Alaska, even though she had plenty of problems in store her before she was picked as McCain’s running mate. Knowing all the situations of her own family she chose to run, one would hope, knowing that she would be under scrutiny. But, no we are not allowed to scrutinize Sarah and her doings in a state that appears to be increasingly vocal about their disdain for her and her governing “style.”

Recently we learn that Sarah is quite the debater if only she were not hamstringed by having to overwork herself in cramming policy and talking points. Yes, she is quite delightful and intelligent if only someone would just let her talk on her own. Sure, ya, you betcha.

Throughout his campaign McCain has turned more and more negative to the point where he is losing even those once loyal to him. He blames that on Barack Obama. Obama would not meet with him in Town Halls across America. Yep, John was miffed that Barack would not let McCain set his campaign schedule. Then, he challenged Obama to suspend his campaign to go with him to DC to work out the bail out on the fundamentally strong economy, again attempting to set the agenda for Barack Obama. So far it all sounds silly and I am not sure his blaming of everyone else for his ineffectualness is sinking in for anyone except his target audience.
 

And Boehner didn't like his lunch yesterday

John McCain and the Republicans now blame the failure of the “Bailout Bill” on the Nancy Pelosi. What? They blame the financial meltdown on the Democrats, even though they have been busy deregulating since I can remember. In the past they blamed the war on the Dems for not fighting against Bush hard enough and then they continue by saying the Dems never failed to fund the war so must believe in it.

It has come down to this, I am sick of the Republicans and John McCain and the likes of Sarah Palin whining about how everything that is bad now is not their fault. It is your fault or my fault or the fault of some Democrat somewhere. No one loves the media. But, the media has been overwhelmingly conservative and neoconservative for a long time. Finally, they continue to screw up so badly that no one can avoid noticing. That these guys are playing the victim card is hilarious. It is sad. It is pathetic and someone needs to call them on it. Seriously. They need to show they are competent. If the media are the refs, then they need to show they are a good enough to team to overcome that from time to time. We all know that the media is not to blame for the silliness that is John McCain and Sarah Palin. They are to blame for their own actions.

Nancy Pelosi is not to blame for telling the terrible truth about her colleagues leadership in the last decade of so in congress. Poor Republicans? Huh? Sorry guys. There is no foul, only you making ridiculous excuses for your own foolish excesses and your own failures. We are the victims! We are the ones who have stood by knowing full well what all your actions would bring, even though many pretend all of this is some surprise out of left field. If escaping accountability for your own actions is your goal, then I throw the flag. You deserve it. The people have been fighting the refs for a long time. We are finally standing up and we are winning against the likes of you. We are overcoming the fouls against us that went without notice, without penalty.

Buck up and suck it up! It might be time to change your playbook.

Democrats And Republicans Unite To Aid Small Businesses-- Except Lunatic Fringe Virginia Congressman Virgil Goode

Tom Perriello, supporter of small business

After Congress rejected the Bush Regime's bailout/giveaway for Wall Street, they moved on to something far less controversial, HR 7175, the Small Business Financing Improvements Act of 2008. Unless McConnell and McCain and the rest of the McCreeps in the Senate McObstruct it-- and if Bush signs it (and he wouldn't dare to not), the bill reauthorizes small business assistance programs through the Small Business Administration. Even the craziest right wing fringe maniacs joined the Democrats in supporting this... well, let me re-phrase that. All the craziest right wing fringe maniacs but six joined the Democrats in supporting small business, the real engine of whatever is left of American prospertity.

No one should be surprised-- least of all the residents of Virginia's economically hard-hit 5th CD-- that their corrupt member of Congress, Virgil Goode, was one of the half dozen irresponsible Republicans to vote no. We asked Tom Perrielllo, the Blue America-endorsed Democrat running to give the district some serious representation, if Goode had had some kind of breakdown to make him take such a destructive stand against small business.

"It's nothing short of unbelievable that in the middle of an economic meltdown, Congressman Goode would oppose assistance programs for small businesses, who are the most vulnerable to the current credit crisis. His vote is amazingly out of touch. Congressman Goode talks a good game about standing up for the middle class, but where is he when it matters? He has sided time and time again with the special interests and even today-- of all days-- he votes against Main Street. It's unbelievable and unacceptable."

If you want to see a corrupt delinquent like Goode retired from Congress so he will no longer be causing problems for Virginians-- and Americans-- Tom Perriello is one of our priority candidates this year and even $5 and $10 donations are gratefully accepted.

Yes, There's Other News-- Take Kyle Dusty Foggo and Alberto Gonzales, For Example

Gonzales and Foggo: two Republicrooks facing the bar of Justice

The Bush Regime appointed a corrupt political hack as Executive Director of the CIA-- then professed shock-- I mean shock-- when he behaved like... a corrupt political hack. We've been covering his case here at DWT since early March, 2006 when Newsweek first floated the facts about his sleazy relationship to corrupt members of Congress. The Bush Regime has skipped away from this disaster without so much as a "huh?" from the American people. The police swept into his home and office, indicted, and... well, today he pleaded guilty to extremely reduced charges. In fact, one charge "of defrauding the United States in a corruption case that stemmed from the bribery scandal that brought down former U.S. Congressman Randall 'Duke' Cunningham."

Bush appointed him to be the #3 ranking official at the CIA to make sure all the kickbacks and bribes went to the right (right-wing) people. He was in cahoots with GOP lobbyist and contractor Brent Wilkes who currently in prison after being convicted of bribing Cunningham. He was sentenced to 12 years but, like all the Republican crooks found guilty of corruption, is expected to be pardoned by Bush before he leaves the White House he has disgraced so badly.

And Foggo isn't the only Republicrook coming home to roost who Bush will be pardoning in January. Today Attorney General Mukasey appointed a federal prosecutor to look into whether or not his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales, should spend the rest of his miserable life-- or some part of it-- behind bars for turning the Department of Justice into a politicized whore house-- and for the cover-up that followed. So far, "the investigation uncovered 'significant evidence' that partisan political factors played a role in some of the 2006 dismissals. Particularly 'troubling,' according to the report, was the sacking of New Mexico U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias after several Republican elected officials complained about voter fraud and public corruption cases he pursued. That episode raises the possibility that obstruction of justice and wire fraud laws were violated."

In the 390-page report, issued this morning, they said Gonzales "bears primary responsibility" for the debacle and asserted that he was "remarkably disengaged" from the process, which stretched on for months. Investigators said that after the mass firings came to light, Gonzales made "misleading" public statements about his involvement, failing to recall his attendance at a critical meeting and documents that landed on his desk.

...The internal watchdogs asked that the investigation continue under the authority of a prosecutor with the power to compel testimony and production of documents. They said their probe was thwarted in part because they could not interview key witnesses, including former White House officials Karl Rove, Harriet E. Miers and William Kelley. Investigators also pointed out that the White House refused to turn over internal documents related to the dismissal of the prosecutors by citing the "sensitivity" of the issues, saying the move had "hindered" their inquiry.

Mukasey selected Connecticut Acting U.S. Attorney Nora R. Dannehy, a federal prosecutor for 17 years, to answer the lingering questions. Dannehy will report to the department's second in command. Her investigation likely will extend for months, ensuring that the politically charged issue will extend into the next administration.

UPDATE: Poker, Hookers, and Black Contracts: Or How To Make a CIA Trial Go Away

The above is the title of Laura Rozen's Mother Jones piece on the latest Dusty Foggo developments. I recommend you click the link and read it in its entirety.

...it wasn't the hookers, the card games, the water contract, or even the staff mistress that concerned the Agency's executives when Foggo spared them by entering a guilty plea on a single count of wire fraud Monday. In exchange for the plea, prosecutors agreed to drop the 27 other charges and requested only three years prison time out of the 20 Foggo could have faced. ("Your lawyers did a good job for you," US District judge James C. Cacheris told Foggo after he accepted his guilty plea, with evident understatement.)

No, what truly worried Agency brass were the darker secrets their former top logistics officer was threatening to spill had his case gone to trial as scheduled on November 3. They included the massive contracts Foggo was discussing with Wilkes, estimated by one source at over $300 million dollars. "Wilkes was working on several other huge deals when the hammer fell," a source familiar with Foggo's discussions with Wilkes told me. What kinds of deals? According to the source, they included creating and running a secret plane network, for whatever needs the CIA has for secret planes now that the network it used for extraordinary rendition flights has been outed. "In or about December 2004," the Foggo indictment says, "Foggo discussed with Wilkes and J.C. the idea that Foggo might be able to get Wilkes a classified government contract to supply air support services to the CIA…. In or about January 2005, Wilkes directed various ADCS employees to begin developing an air support proposal that would be designed to answer the CIA's classified needs as outlined by Foggo."

The Solution: Better Democrats-- Lots Of Them

Better Democrats: Darcy Burner and Annette Taddeo

Earlier today we highlighted Rep. Hilda Solis' reasons for voting against Paulson's bailout/giveaway. We've heard from many of our Blue America candidates explaining why they also opposed the bill. Annette Taddeo (D-FL), for example, explained to voters in Miami-Dade why she was against the bill:

“We must protect homeowners and taxpayers. This bill fails to address the collapsing housing market, the root cause of the crisis. I do not support spending $700 billion in taxpayer money on a flawed bill. I call on Democrats in Congress and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen to draft legislation that protects the people and families of South Florida."
 
"While the proposed bill is a start, it is not complete until homeowners and taxpayers are protected, and there are mechanisms in place to assure proper oversight so this does not happen again."
 
“As a small-businesswoman and Past-Chair of the Coalition of Greater Miami-Dade Chambers of Commerce, I know what our economy needs to right itself. Congress should send President Bush a bill that includes real protections for homeowners and taxpayers.”

Now what's important is that Congress makes the bill better-- much better-- so progressives can support it. My fear is that there will be tremendous pressure to make the bill even worse so as to capture votes from the 133 reactionary Republicans who voted no. Andrew Rice, the Blue America-endorsed candidate for the Oklahoma Senate seat held by the most extreme right-wing fringe lunatic in Congress, James Inhofe, has some suggestions for how Congress should re-address the failed bill. Basically, what Andrew said is that he would only support a plan that includes: meaningful oversight; a stake for taxpayers; and hard limits on executive compensation. He looks at it as a bill that didn't do nearly to fix the broken system that allowed abusive and reckless loans, an explosion of risky investments and poorly understood financial instruments, and other excesses. Andrew:

"This bill gives too much away to the people who created these problems without guaranteeing that it won't happen again. Any bill would need to require much tougher consequences for Wall Street in order to earn my support."

"Taxpayer dollars should not be used to line the pockets of the corporate executives who helped create these problems. A message must be sent to Wall Street that reckless speculation and greed will no longer be rewarded."

I'd like to urge you to consider donating to the Blue America PAC to allow us to help elect progressive Democrats to Congress in November. This is the BETTER DEMOCRATS strategy, not the More Democrats strategy. We need Democrats like Hilda Solis, Donna Edwards and Carol Shea-Porter, who voted against Bush's bailout today-- Democratic challengers like Darcy Burner, Gary Peters, Mark Schauer, Larry Joe Doherty, and Annette Taddeo who are demanding a much better bill.

Most of our candidates echo what Mark Schauer had to say today:

"For years, Michigan has been struggling-- and there's been no bailout for us. No bailout for the Michigan homeowners who were losing their homes to foreclosure, no bailout for the Michigan workers whose jobs were being shipped overseas, no bailout for the middle class that kept getting hurt by George Bush and Tim Walberg's failed economic policies. More than that, Tim Walberg and his cronies in Washington have turned their back on us. This plan did not provide enough accountability, nor did it do enough to keep people in their homes, help small business, or bring jobs and economic development to our communities."

By all means, keep donating to the candidates on our list, but also please consider donating to our PAC so we can focus some last minute energy on the races that need them most-- and for the candidates who will be the real progressive leaders.

Meanwhile, join us over at Crooks & Liars at 3pm, PT for a chat with Texas Senate candidate Rick Noriega about this bill.

The Bailout Vote

This morning Michael Moore sent a letter out claiming the bailout vote this morning would be a coup by the rich; nevertheless, many of the rich's pet legislators have to put on a pained fake front that it disgusts and horrifies them to have to vote for it. And that's a very bipartisan thing.

After stealing a half trillion dollars to line the pockets of their war-profiteering backers for the past five years, after lining the pockets of their fellow oilmen to the tune of over a hundred billion dollars in just the last two years, Bush and his cronies-- who must soon vacate the White House-- are looting the U.S. Treasury of every dollar they can grab. They are swiping as much of the silverware as they can on their way out the door.

No matter what they say, no matter how many scare words they use, they are up to their old tricks of creating fear and confusion in order to make and keep themselves and the upper one percent filthy rich. Just read the first four paragraphs of the lead story in last Monday's New York Times and you can see what the real deal is:

"Even as policy makers worked on details of a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, Wall Street began looking for ways to profit from it.

"Financial firms were lobbying to have all manner of troubled investments covered, not just those related to mortgages.

"At the same time, investment firms were jockeying to oversee all the assets that Treasury plans to take off the books of financial institutions, a role that could earn them hundreds of millions of dollars a year in fees.

"Nobody wants to be left out of Treasury's proposal to buy up bad assets of financial institutions."

Unbelievable. Wall Street and its backers created this mess and now they are going to clean up like bandits. Even Rudy Giuliani is lobbying for his firm to be hired (and paid) to "consult" in the bailout.

House Republicans didn't elect John Boehner their leader after DeLay was indicted and fell from power in a series of sordid corruption scandals because of his tactical brilliance or his ideological purity. They picked him because of his powerful connections to K Street and his ability and willingness to access a great deal of lobbyist and corporate money and share it with his colleagues. Normal Americans may have been sickened at the sight of John Boehner handing out checks from the tobacco industry in the middle of a debate on smoking legislation on the floor of the House, but Republicans got woodies.

Now Boehner, who is viewed as lazy and spends an inordinate amount of time on the golf course and in his favorite tanning booth, is fighting for his leadership role. Tasked by the White House with rounding up enough votes to pass the hated Paulson bailout bill, Boehner is coming under increasing pressure from the lunatic fringe of his own party, Jeb Hensarling's neo-fascist Republican Study Committee. Far right show-boats from that the furthest reaches of the ideological right, like Mike Pence, have already declared that they are breaking their policy of reflexive rubber stamp posture towards the Bush Regime and will vote with progressive Democrats against the corrupt bill.

His life was complicated by McCain, who demanded that whatever happened he get all the credit.. Boehner tends to go along with anyone who talks to him long enough so that he misses time on the links. He's easily buffeted from one extreme to another and is the classic compromise candidate for leadership. But he still brings in the big bucks so even many of the conservatives who detest him ideologically, accept him as their leader. Ideologues like Eric Cantor and Mike Pence may have a fascist-leaning agenda, but they are easily bought off when enough money is waved under their snouts. Boehner has managed to co-opt both over and over.

Once Boehner gave the appearance he was open to the Treasury’s bailout plan, he faced an open revolt from his caucus’ right flank. And on Sept. 26, the minority leader was forced to replace his chief negotiator, Spencer Bachus of Alabama [the biggest single Republican recipient of bribes from the industries that caused the Wall Street meltdown], with Minority Whip Roy Blunt.

Democrats and the administration complained that Bachus had no authority to negotiate, but the final blow came when RSC members accused Bachus of “drinking the Kool-Aid,” as one angry lawmaker put it, and demanded his removal for standing by mutely during a Sept. 25 press conference where negotiators proclaimed that a deal was nearly done.

House GOP leadership changes appear certain no matter how the elections affect the balance of power in the House. Blunt has been deflecting rumors for months that he is considering retirement after winning a new term. Should that happen, his successor would almost certainly be his chief deputy whip, Cantor, an RSC member with broad support in the caucus.

Some Republicans predict Cantor would elevate Hensarling to be his top lieutenant. A prominent photo on Cantor’s Web site shows the two men alone, with Hensarling just over his ally’s right shoulder.

If Blunt stays on, Cantor and his allies might challenge Boehner, or perhaps try to replace [his personal fluffer] Republican Conference Chairman Adam H. Putnam of Florida.

As for Bush's bailout bill, Republicans don't have the balls to kill it, the way their constituents want them to, so instead rail against it while assuring Bush they will vote for it. Fake lions like Cantor and Paul Ryan-- who said it "sucks"-- have promised to go along with Bush, as they always do. Boehner called it a "crap sandwich," but has been twisting arms-- or offering bribes-- behind the scenes to get GOP members to vote for it. All smoke and no fire. In fact, according to today's CongressDaily Boehner turned to his buddies on K Street to beat up Republicans on the bill. Huge GOP donors like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and the Financial Services Roundtable all sent letters of support for the bill, implying that if they wanted continued donations they'd have to vote for the bailout.

Senate Budget ranking member Judd Gregg made a pitch for the plan Sunday afternoon, saying that if Congress didn't act, the consequences would something "we don't even want to think about."

"If we don't pass this, we shouldn't be here in Congress," said Gregg, who contends the federal government could make money on the program as the assets increase in value once the real estate market rebounds.

The early procedural voting this morning showed which Democrats would be voting with the right-wingers: mostly the regular suspects-- Don Cazayoux (LA), Nick Lampson (TX), Gene Taylor (MS), Baron Hill (IN), Chris Carney (PA), Travis Childers (MS), Harry Mitchell (AZ), Mike McIntyre (NC)... and a handful of principled liberals (Bob Filner (D-CA), Pete DeFazio, Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Jesse Jackson (IL). DeFazio explained his opposition: "I have seen this game before; NAFTA, Bill Clinton, it was going down until he came up with phony side agreements on labor and the environment. A whole bunch of members hid behind that, even though they knew it was phony. They've come up with a phony 'pay-for' here. That's meaningless, but they're going to try and get a bunch of Blue Dogs to hide behind that, and get the New Dems to go along ... They're just trying to get a slightly over a majority of the Caucus..."

So far they haven't. The bailout lost and Boehner and Emanuel are twisting arms to get stitches. I hope it Robin hayes changes his vote we get to watch him weeping on the floor of the House like we did when he bent to DeLay's threats and switched his vote to pass CAFTA. So do the leadership teams resign now? How about Paulson? Will he resign? Commit hari kari?


UPDATES

They need 10 members to change their votes.
Nope; someone changed from Yes to No and now they need 11 votes again.
But they've moved on to other business and will bring this up again.
How hated and mistrusted is George Bush-- both by Congress and the public?
And what about all that bragging all weekend by McCain about how he whipped the House Republicans into shape and saved the day? He better suspend his campaign again or get on the phone with some of his supporters.

The final vote was 228 No and 205 Yes. 140 Democrats voted Yes and 95 Democrats voted No. Boehner only delivered 65 Republicans. 133 Republicans voted No. Boehner and his team, making the most viciously partisan speeches I've ever heard in Congress, are blaming Pelosi... for giving a "partisan speech." What an ass clown. I guess they were mad that she hurt their feelings. Did he eat another shit sandwich? As my friend Pach said, this was another clear example of Republicans putting their country club first.

Among the Blue America candidates:

Tom Allen- yes
Steve Cohen- yes
John Hall- yes
Jerrold Nadler- yes

Donna Edwards- no
Carol Shea-Porter- no
Hilda Solis- no

Republicans being opposed by Blue America candidates

Mean Jean Schmidt- no
Mike Pence- no
Charlie Dent- no
Scott Garrett- no
Virgil Goode- no
Ric Keller- no
Robin Hayes- no
Randy Kuhl- no
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen- no
Mario Diaz-Balart- no
Michael McCaul- no
Dave Reichert- no (He had no choice with Darcy Burner breathing down his neck)
Dana Rohrabacher- no
Tim Walberg- no
Joe Knollenberg- no

David Dreier- yes
Frank Wolf- yes
Chris Shays- yes

Hilda Solis, one of the few incumbents Blue America raises money for explained why she voted no today:

“Today, I voted against H.R. 3997, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA), compromise legislation to bailout financial institutions saddled with large debts. I am very concerned about the credit crisis created by the housing market meltdown and while I appreciate efforts of the Democratic leadership to work in a bipartisan fashion to improve the Bush Administration’s proposal, this legislation lacks needed taxpayer protections and assistance for Main Street families like those in the Congressional District I represent.

“I cannot in good conscience, vote for legislation that gives $700 billion to the same firms that helped cause the current financial crisis through irresponsible lending without providing meaningful help for homeowners who are in danger of foreclosure. In the 32nd Congressional District, housing foreclosures have nearly tripled in the past few months, with over 2,300 homeowners currently going through the foreclosure process. The impact of such widespread foreclosures on our local economy and community is devastating.

“Unfortunately, this legislation will not help the families who are stretching paychecks and trying to hold onto jobs without additional steps to stabilize our housing market. It lacks needed reform of bankruptcy laws to allow consumers to renegotiate the terms of their mortgage in bankruptcy courts to help keep their homes. Homeowners on Main Streets should have the same rights to renegotiate their loans, especially those for their primary residence, as Wall Street.

“Without addressing bankruptcy, provisions in the bill aimed at stemming foreclosures are not enough to provide real relief to struggling homeowners. While the Bush Administration is working with congressional leaders to fast-track this legislation, they are indifferent to the Main Street economic stimulus bill passed last week by the House which I strongly supported.

“I was proud to vote for the Main Street economic stimulus bill, which would have extended unemployment benefits for the growing number of Americans looking for work. In the 32nd Congressional District, unemployment has risen above 10 percent in many communities. The bill also would have helped to sustain the safety net of services for our country’s neediest families by providing additional Food Stamp and Medicaid assistance. It is incredibly disappointing that in the face of skyrocketing unemployment and increased need for food and healthcare assistance, the Bush Administration is instead prioritizing a huge cash infusion for Wall Street instead of needed investments for our country’s working families.

“In these difficult economic times, we must come together as a community and help each other. I have already hosted foreclosure seminars in my district and my constituents were able to take advantage of important information about the impacts of the current mortgage crisis and the importance of financial literacy in foreclosure prevention. I plan to hold additional housing seminars so that our community has access to the resources they need to save their homes. As this economic crisis continues to unfold, please be assured that I will continue working in Congress to obtain the real relief that our community greatly needs.

“Congress and the Administration need to focus on real regulatory reform on Wall Street and real help for homeowners who face foreclosure. We must enact bankruptcy court protections for foreclosures on primary residences. We must pass comprehensive financial sector reform to restore integrity and stability to our financial system. We must address the root of this financial crisis in order to prevent future problems. And we must grow jobs by investing in our nation’s infrastructure and funding green collar jobs training.

“These are the actions that Congress must take to produce widespread and meaningful reform in our financial sector, provide a lifeboat for the thousands of families facing foreclosure, and provide economic security for families across our nation.”

We Ask Again-- Bail Or Bailout For Wall Street

When I heard some CNBC spokesperson of the Forces of Greed and Selfishness talking about how the Democrats' efforts to change the Paulson bailout/give away proposal-- now dubbed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008-- have been "scaled back," I knew the bill would be even worse than I feared and that it would do little to help keep homeowners from being foreclosed on. And it won't be just holders of bad mortgages who get screwed by this. The Bush Regime seems to have come close to ensuring that President Obama will be forced to explain why he can't live up to his promises regarding health care, education, benefits for veterans, disaster relief, or anything remotely discretionary because we just can't afford it.

I just watched Lil' Adam Putnam fluffing John Boehner on TV-- and announcing they would be voting for the Paulson bill. Putnam has been a 98.7% rubber stamp for Bush's agenda, including all the heinous, reactionary initiatives that have led directly to the financial meltdown, and he's sticking with Bush on this as well. His Democratic opponent, Doug Tudor, who does not support this horrible bill calls it a symptom of our representatives being asleep at the controls. Tudor:

“Adam, of course, will vote for this bill because Roy Blount told him to. Adam will then try to tell our district that he had to hold his nose to do so, because he hates spending taxpayer money. The real question for Adam should always be, 'Why in Hell didn’t you do your job in the first place? Why has it taken you seven years and nine months to finally decide to care?' No matter Adam’s personal vote, we have seen the total death of Reaganomics in the past 10 days. Never again can the uber-wealthy like Polk’s Prince Putnam claim that deregulation and self-correcting markets are the way to go. As a friend explained to me, ‘When millions of Americans lose their homes, it's free market forces at work. But when the millionaires get into trouble, it's a financial crisis.’”

Dennis Kucinich claimed last night that the Democrats don't have enough votes to pass the bill, at least not yet. If Pelosi, Emanuel-- who has been the beneficiary of more bribes from the culprits in this mess than any other member of the House-- and Hoyer think that all the safe seats are in the bag, they probably haven't had a talk with moderate southern California Rep. Brad Sherman lately. An organizer of the "Skeptics Caucus," Sherman organized a meeting yesterday so Democrats could meet with respected economics like James Galbraith, economics professor at the University of Texas, and William Isaac, former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission."

Speaking before the meeting, Sherman equated the Treasury Department proposal to a power-grab by the Bush administration as well as a gift to failing financial services firms.

“This is greatest shift of power to the imperial presidency and the greatest shift of wealth to a still wealthy Wall Street that anyone could imagine,” said Sherman. In addition, the California Democrat also began distributing Sunday a “Dear Colleague” letter highly critical of the relief package.

Kucinich called for more hearings on the bailout despite Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke speaking about the proposal before lawmakers last week.

“None of this has been subject to a critical analysis. We haven’t had access to the books to the people who are claiming they are going broke,” said Kucinich. He also drew the parallel between the administration’s intense urgency on the Wall Street relief package and its drive towards the conflict in Iraq.

“They rushed this Congress into the Iraq resolution and look what happened. Catastrophe for this nation as well as for the people of Iraq,” said Kucinich.

Another Florida Democrat, Alan Grayson, has the clearest arm's length analysis I've seen anywhere. Like Tudor, Grayson is running against a useless rubber stamp bribe-taking crook, Republican Ric Keller. Grayson:

The story so far . . . .
 
President George W. Bush, grandson of an investment banker, appoints the Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, Henry Paulson, to head the Treasury Department. Goldman Sachs is the largest investment bank in America. Paulson has a personal net worth of $700 million, probably consisting largely of Goldman Sachs stock. He sees the market cap of his company drop from $100 billion to merely $60 billion. He also sees Lehman Brothers file for bankruptcy, and Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns come close to bankruptcy before being bought at fire-sale prices by Bank of America. He knows what that means for Goldman Sachs. As Bob Dylan said, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
 
Paulson bails out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and puts it in the fine print of the bailout that the Government will get out of the mortgage business, starting next year. That's great for Wall Street, and horrible for Main Street.
 
Paulson then waits until the very last week that Congress is in session before the election to replace Bush, and then he announces that the Government needs to buy $700 billion of "toxic" assets, or confidence in the capital markets will be endangered. And it has to happen immediately. No time for hearings, no time for amendments, right now. No explanation of who is responsible for this mess, or even who will get the money. Normally, an announcement like this would itself causes a considerable loss of confidence in the capital markets. On this occasion, however, the U.S. stock market rallies by... just over $700 billion. Paulson is so desperate to get this through Congress that he literally gets down on bended knee to Nancy Pelosi. Is he begging for our sake, or for his?
 
As someone said about Paulson in Washington this week (not for attribution, of course), "I wouldn't trust that guy to tell me the time of day." Why are we letting someone with a hopeless conflict of interest dole out, to his golf buddies, an amount greater than $2000 for every man, woman and child in America?
 
We "elect" a Texas oil man as President, and then the price of gas triples. We "elect" the head of Halliburton as Vice President, and then we are mired in a war longer than World War II, with no end in sight. We see the head of the largest investment bank appointed Treasury Secretary, and suddenly there is a "need" to fork over $700 billion in taxpayer funds to Wall Street. I'm beginning to see a pattern here.

David Sirota gets down into the weeds and tells members of Congress the top 5 reasons to vote against Paulson's bailout, mostly focussing on the widespread belief that the bill's approach is irresponsible and will make the nation's fiscal problems worse, that there are much better and safer alternative, that this approach is as fraught with sleaze and corruption as was all the trillions Congress has handed over to Bush for the Iraq war, and that the public hates the bill and will defeat otherwise safe incumbents who vote for it.

Republicans, of course, are trying to shift the blame away from predatory capitalists and vultures on Wall Street and blaming working people who sought better lives for their families through the Community Reinvestment Act, a bill that unregulated capitalists were able to use to create massive amounts of wealth... for themselves and their political servants. This slanderous, racist YouTube is spreading like a virus and distinguished historian and author Rick Perlstein compares it to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Fact of the matter is-- regardless of the virulent racism of people like Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Jim DeMint (R-SC), who are spreading this garbage-- this crisis was caused by greed and avarice and the ideological prediction of right-wing politicians (and easily bribed politicians who, like Rahm Emanuel and Melissa Bean aren't right-wing per se) to deregulate industries that have proven time and time again that they need regulation-- to prevent exactly these kinds of excesses. Some facts that the Bachmann-DeMint Overdrive seems to have missed in their juggernaut to inject racism into the issue:

• CRA does not require banks or thrifts to make loans that are unsafe or unprofitable. Infact, the law stipulates that CRA lending activities must be done consistent with safe and sound banking practices. In fact, most high-cost loans were originated by lenders that did NOT have a CRA obligation and lacked federal regulatory oversight. 
 
• According to an analysis of HMDA data in the 15 most populous U.S. metropolitan areas, non-CRA lenders made a disproportionate number of high-cost loans. In 2006, 84.3% of high-cost loans were originated by non-CRA covered entities (overall, non-CRA covered entities originated 69.6% of all mortgages) and nearly 83% of high-cost loans to low- and moderate-income individuals were originated by non-CRA covered entities (overall, non-CRA covered entities originated 67.5% of all loans to LMI individuals).
 
• In 2006, only one of the top 25 subprime lenders was an insured depository institution with a CRA obligation. Although a few others were mortgage/finance company affiliates of CRA covered lenders, these entities do not have a CRA obligation (i.e. Countrywide, CitiMortgage, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage). Similarly, the vast majority of the top 20 producers of risky interest-only and option ARM loans were not CRA covered lenders.

• The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA) encourages federally insured banks and thrifts to meet the credit needs of the entire communities they serve, including low- and moderate-income areas, consistent with safe and sound banking practices.  The law was enacted in response to concerns about disinvestment and evidence that some lenders were systematically denying credit to certain communities, particularly lower-income and minority neighborhoods, under a practice known as “redlining.”
 
• The benefits of CRA have been substantial:  CRA has been credited with increasing home ownership, decent affordable rental housing, small business ownership, community development investments; and critically needed affordable financial services and products (such as remittances, low-cost banks accounts, and bank branches) in distressed communities across the nation.

• In March 2007, Federal Board Chairman Bernanke noted that CRA has helped institutions discover and enter new markets that may have been previously under-served and ignored by insured depositories. 
 
• CRA covered institutions, for the most part, did not engage in lending practices that fueled the foreclosure epidemic and subsequent economic crisis. 

But you don't have to look far to find to find Republican members of Congress who want to blame the wntire mess on poor people, particularly on poor people of color. As if on cue, arch-racist Virgil Goode, one of the most corrupt bribe-takers in Congress, was ranting and railing and blaming the Wall Street meltdown on immigrants. Tom Perriello is the progressive young Democrat, more a problem solver than any ideologue, who is running against Goode. He isn't shy about assigning blame to a corrupted Establishment that crosses party lines. "Is there any integrity left in Washington? Rep. Goode has taken over $200,000 from the lobbyists that helped caused this meltdown; he voted for the deregulation that got us here, and then yesterday had the audacity to try blaming illegal immigrants for the problem. All of a sudden, the gang up in Washington is calling for more accountability, when they had years to see this coming and didn't lift a finger. It's too late for them to get off the hook or play the reformer card-- regardless of how they end up voting on the bailout, Goode and the gang in Washington should be fired for letting corruption put our entire economy at risk."

Everyone has been buzzing about how the Republican leadership, such that it is, might not have the requisite votes to hold up their end of the deal. Well... neither do the Democrats. Paul Krugman seems to feel that Barney Frank and Chris Dodd have forced enough improvements onto it so that it's worth passing-- although he thinks it still sucks "and it won't end the crisis." That sounds ominous; maybe it will wind up in the hands of Sarah and First Dude. Matt Taibbi:

Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she's a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power.

Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she's the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV -and this country is going to eat her up, cheering her every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation.

...The great insight of the Palin VP choice is that huge chunks of American voters no longer even demand that their candidates actually have policy positions; they simply consume them as media entertainment, rooting for or against them according to the reflexive prejudices of their demographic, as they would for reality-show contestants or sitcom characters. Hicks root for hicks, moms for moms, born-agains for born-agains. Sure, there was politics in the Palin speech, but it was all either silly lies or merely incidental fluffery buttressing the theatrical performance. A classic example of what was at work here came when Palin proudly introduced her Down syndrome baby, Trig, then stared into the camera and somberly promised parents of special-needs kids that they would "have a friend and advocate in the White House." This was about a half-hour before she raised her hands in triumph with McCain, a man who voted against increasing funding for special-needs education.

Palin's charge that "government is too big" and that Obama "wants to grow it" was similarly preposterous. Not only did her party just preside over the largest government expansion since LBJ, but Palin herself has been a typical Bush-era Republican, borrowing and spending beyond her means. Her great legacy as mayor of Wasilla was the construction of a $14.7 million hockey arena in a city with an annual budget of $20 million; Palin OK'd a bond issue for the project before the land had been secured, leading to a protracted legal mess that ultimately forced taxpayers to pay more than six times the original market price for property the city ended up having to seize from a private citizen using eminent domain. Better yet, Palin ended up paying for the fucking thing with a 25 percent increase in the city sales tax. But in her speech, of course, Palin presented herself as the enemy of tax increases, righteously bemoaning that "taxes are too high," and Obama "wants to raise them."

Yeah, why don't we all march to the polls, vote for McCain, watch him die and leave Sarah to solve the financial crisis! I actually lived through soon to be 8 years old stolen Bush Regime without moving back to Amsterdam. But I can barely stomach seeing this one on my TV screen.

Joe Klein Claims McCain Is Not A Crook, Not Breaking Any Laws, But...

In commenting on today's shocking story in the NY Times about McCain's ties to the gambling industry, Time Magazine's Joe Klein writes that McCain isn't actually breaking any laws. What he leaves out is that McCain and the rest of the crooked members of Congress write the laws to make their own patterns of behavior "legal." Keep in mind, for example, that so far this year Big Oil has "donated" $22,543,340 to members of Congress, almost all of it to Republicans and to nominal Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party (DNC and Blue Dog garbage like Dan Boren and Mary Landrieu). McCain, who is Big Oil's great white hope for a continuation of the policies that have enslaved American workers and consumers to their whims (and high prices), has accepted $1,663,590 from them. Even though these gargantuan sums-- more than the combined contributions Big Oil has made to their half dozen most devoted Republican shills who always push their agenda, John Cornyn (R-TX- $535,200), Steve Peace (R-NM- $283,034), James Inhofe (R-OK- $270,050), Miss McConnell (R-KY- $238,000), Pat Roberts (R-KS- $148,700), and Joe Barton (R- $146,441)-- are clearly bribes, the way Congress has written the bribery statutes, there is nothing illegal about McCain being financed by Big Oil, by lobbyists ($843,216 this year alone), by the booze industry ($466,036, their favorite member of Congress by far), by the crooks who brought us the mortgage crisis and Wall Street Meltdown (over $30,000,000) ... or by the gambling industry ($260,025). But...

A lifelong gambler, Mr. McCain takes risks, both on and off the craps table. He was throwing dice that night not long after his failed 2000 presidential bid, in which he was skewered by the Republican Party’s evangelical base, opponents of gambling. Mr. McCain was betting at a casino he oversaw as a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, and he was doing so with the lobbyist who represents that casino, according to three associates of Mr. McCain.

The visit had been arranged by the lobbyist, Scott Reed, who works for the Mashantucket Pequot, a tribe that has contributed heavily to Mr. McCain’s campaigns and built Foxwoods into the world’s second-largest casino. Joining them was Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s current campaign manager. Their night of good fortune epitomized not just Mr. McCain’s affection for gambling, but also the close relationship he has built with the gambling industry and its lobbyists during his 25-year career in Congress.

As a two-time chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, Mr. McCain has done more than any other member of Congress to shape the laws governing America’s casinos, helping to transform the once-sleepy Indian gambling business into a $26-billion-a-year behemoth with 423 casinos across the country. He has won praise as a champion of economic development and self-governance on reservations.

...Mr. McCain portrays himself as a Washington maverick unswayed by special interests, referring recently to lobbyists as “birds of prey.” Yet in his current campaign, more than 40 fund-raisers and top advisers have lobbied or worked for an array of gambling interests-- including tribal and Las Vegas casinos, lottery companies and online poker purveyors.

When rules being considered by Congress threatened a California tribe’s planned casino in 2005, Mr. McCain helped spare the tribe. Its lobbyist, who had no prior experience in the gambling industry, had a nearly 20-year friendship with Mr. McCain.

By attacking the Times, which endorsed McCain in the primary and has given him years of unwarranted heroic coverage, as being biased against him, McCain has been able to bully them into pulling their punches against him over and over. For example, they refer to his disgraceful role in whitewashing his Senate colleagues in the Abramoff scandal as burnishing his image as a reformer. McCain's committee would have us believe that Abramoff was a horrible briber-- which is true-- but that he bribed... no one in the Senate. McCain is a crook and has been from the very beginning of his career. He's taken and continues to take, immense sums of money from special interests to vote for their initiatives at the expense of the taxpayers. The media, including the Times thinks nothing of regurgitating his hype machine's epic deceptions. Finally, the Times has started doing its job in exposing some of McCain's hypocrisy:

... interviews and records show that lobbyists and political operatives in Mr. McCain’s inner circle played a behind-the-scenes role in bringing Mr. Abramoff’s misdeeds to Mr. McCain’s attention-- and then cashed in on the resulting investigation. The senator’s longtime chief political strategist, for example, was paid $100,000 over four months as a consultant to one tribe caught up in the inquiry, records show.

McCain, of course, claims he stands up selflessly for Indians at grave risk to his career, exactly what he claims, blinking furiously, whenever he's caught with his greasy fingers in the cookie jar. But as public support for tribal casinos has diminished, Senator Selflessness has backed away. "But he has rarely wavered in his loyalty to Las Vegas, where he counts casino executives among his close friends and most prolific fund-raisers," some of whom have raised millions of dollars for McCain's efforts to capture the White House. No one expects McCain to turn the White House into a casino but "in May 2007, as Mr. McCain’s presidential bid was floundering, he spent a weekend at the MGM Grand on the Las Vegas strip. A fund-raiser hosted by J. Terrence Lanni, the casino’s top executive and a longtime friend of the senator, raised $400,000 for his campaign. Afterward, Mr. McCain attended a boxing match and hit the craps tables."

DWT has covered McCain's serious gambling addiction before. The Times had steered clear until today, although they soft-peddle the seriousness of his behavior.

For much of his adult life, Mr. McCain has gambled as often as once a month, friends and associates said, traveling to Las Vegas for weekend betting marathons. Former senior campaign officials said they worried about Mr. McCain’s patronage of casinos, given the power he wields over the industry. The officials, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity.

“We were always concerned about appearances,” one former official said. “If you go around saying that appearances matter, then they matter.”

The former official said he would tell Mr. McCain: “Do we really have to go to a casino? I don’t think it’s a good idea. The base doesn’t like it. It doesn’t look good. And good things don’t happen in casinos at midnight.”

“You worry too much,” Mr. McCain would respond, the official said.

Now, back to Joe Klein. "We've known for months," he writes, "that McCain was a high-rolling craps player. What we didn't know about was his extensive ties to the lobbyists who work the Indian gambling issue, his willingness to do their bidding, take their money and advice. There is nothing illegal here. McCain even bucks the gaming interests at time-- opposing betting on college football games in Vegas, for example. But there is much that is unseemly." Much more-- and "unseemly" certainly doesn't come close to defining McCain's life of corruption.

Some of the most amazing stuff is the etymology of the Jack Abramoff investigations--which was apparently dumped in McCain's lap by a lobbyist who was one of Abramoff's competitors.

... Finally, the notion that McCain loves craps-- as opposed to skill games like blackjack or poker-- is just too perfect. As a sometime novelist, I can assure you that you couldn't create a character whose public behavior is marked by wild, peremptory gambles and whose private avocation was shooting craps. It would be too obvious. The question is, will McCain's weird public risk-taking-- the nomination of Palin, the bizarre "suspension" of his campaign last week-- come to be seen as a problem for him as a prospective President. But his behavior as Chairman of the Indian Affairs Subcommittee is certainly disappointing-- and about as far from being a maverick, or a reformer, as you can get.

Can The Power Of Love Change The World? Can Music? Can Obama? Or Can Sarah Palin Successfully Harness The Forces Of Reaction?

-by Decay



We were hippies, idealists, thinking the world could be better, more fair, less racist, better income distribution, less violent. More insightful, more intelligent. But the mindset of what we saw as our parent's generation is still intact, and at times seems stronger than it ever was. There were good reasons for our parents' way of living and thinking.  WWI & II, the Great Depression, the ascendent America cast as a hero on a quest for democracy. I'm not belittling that thinking. But the circumstances changed, and we were trying to figure it out.
 
And now, even after what appears to many of us to be a disastrous 8 years of Republican Bush mismanagement and constitutional destruction, we often feel we are losing.  We can't create enough momentum to overcome the insidiousness of what we felt in the 60's needed to be overcome.  Even with a brilliant candidate, studied and fair, openly egalitarian, inclusive -- we often feel we are losing again. 
 
When we had our candidate in Clinton, and had momentum, we were stopped by his sexual stupidity, sold down the river by a blowjob.  (When they get caught blowing or being blown, they are seldom punished. They are the moralizing parents who say "don't do as I do, do as I say" and they mean it, for real.)
 
Until recently, much of the MSM has been silent. The outrage about the lying, the manipulation, the criminality, is corralled within the nets. The map looks too red, the numbers eroding the hope. The same hope we had 40 years ago. Our parents are still scolding us, in the aged sagging voice of John McCain and the demonic grasping fantasy of Sarah Palin.
   
Were we wrong? Are we naive to believe? Is it really that Exxon guy with the fat neck who got 100's of millions of dollars for his bonus that is the reality? Obama is told in blogs to get nasty, hardcore, vicious, to strike back violently as the Republicans are striking out at him.

   Should Obama make a Depends box with a picture of McCain on it, as the Values Voters made a box of waffle mix with an overtly racist caricature of Obama on it? Obama's trying to be decent, to not be drawn into the glop where the Republicans like to play. It seems obvious to us that it is in his nature to be fair, to weigh alternatives and try to make decisions for the greater good. In other words, he's weak. Rove and Davis et al see Obama as a sucker.
   
Music in the 60's was a driving force of the idea of change. The World War was over, the Swing Era was crashing, and a new era had started. America's interests had become paramount, and 50,000 soldiers were dying in Viet Nam. It was a fight for democracy. There really was a cold war going on, all in the shadow of nuclear holocaust and world-wide destruction. The main ideas of change were expressed through songs. 
 
Alot of people thought a song could change the world. A song was a hope that once played would work like a fuse, burn down to and ignite the major charge, blow things open and start the chain reaction of change to the new. The new order of things would be an open society free of racism, injustice, poverty, and the ideas that cause and support them. It would be a new majority, in charge, beneficent, enlightened. All would be included, all religions, all points of view, all cultures. In a word, Love.
 
Howie and I started out together in thinking this way. He had his independent label, and was releasing new bands no one had heard of, punk bands, rebels, more new ideas. I had been writing songs and putting out albums of my own, trying to come up with a song that would be another fuse to the future, and having failed at that, I started over, answering phones in a studio so I could learn the gear, get control over the means of production, and make albums with artists who were also looking to make a fuse.
 
Plus, I just loved music. Independent of the participation in culturally revolutionary activities, I loved the art of sound, the mechanics of it, the resonances and what I learned about the nature of Nature. The 5th, air moving in powerful ways, the human voice and it's connection to what is hidden in the human soul. So there was a meta level to the whole thing that was and still is much deeper than the cultural aspect. There are the ideas behind it all, but behind those ideas is the physics of music, the beauty of a sound well made. More than a metaphor, music at it's deepest level is an actuality, briefly existing and disappearing when the air quits moving. Arising and dissolving...
 
Then a record I made that Howie put out did well in the marketplace, and then another, not good enough to make a lot of money, but to put the label on the map as a potential source of new gold, a new vein to be mined by the big music corporations. Howie made a deal with CBS, and started putting out records through their distribution systems. The idea was to reach an even bigger audience with this new music, and spread the change.
   
I was noticed too, and made my deal with the corporation. I was intensely idealistic about it all, wondering if my soul would be absorbed by the big machine in the push to grow profits.  Would the music be co-opted, the message changed to suit the market, and thereby miss the market the artists were aiming for? Would the emerging new be shaved down and compromised? When I shopped the music that I was working on to the major labels, before Howie and I made our deals (I'd shopped music to majors and didn't get anywhere with it before Howie decided he'd give it a shot) I was told the music wasn't mainstream or marketable. But when the labels saw it selling on Howie's label, they all came back to get in on the action.
 
Howie's label grew, and he eventually became general manager of a very successful major label, one that was very much on the cutting edge of new music. And then later he would become president of an even larger label. And I eventually became head of the A&R department of a major label. It felt like there would be an even greater opportunity to spread the change. 

We both kept working towards this change through music. Trying to find artists who would move the dialog forward, make the dream more real, change the culture through their artistry, bit by bit. Howie would do it by promoting and marketing the new music, and I would do it by making the music with the artists. Oddly enough, Howie and I never spoke about any of this. The push for change, for a new culture revealed through music, was always implied but never explicit. It was, and is, always taken for granted.
 
And the major corporations allowed us to move forward with our ideas in our own ways. And prosper, too. As the business grew, so did we. We were in league with big companies, but trying to change them from within.

One thing about the metaphor business that's fascinating is that the product, when it's good, is intensely ephemeral. Artists who are seeking to make a strong personal statement, and who have the power to do so, are unique and often in delicate balance within themselves. And constantly in danger of losing that balance. And these artists are the people whom the corporation relies upon for its future viability. If the music isn't forward thinking, then eventually the business will atrophy.
   
When music follows the needs of the mass market, growth stops. In the artistic direction, music grows and changes and the markets follow. This is not to say that music can't be produced that targets a market and succeeds; that it can is proven every day. But the life of the music company is based on moving the culture forward; the vitality of the corporation is based on the new markets that open up when new music catches on.  Before Prince, there was no Prince market. His creativity sparked a whole new set of businesses, and infused his label with a new vitality that lasted for years. You could feel the pride.
 
Another change that disrupted the business is that a generation of listeners began to feel two things simultaneously-- music is not the main driving force for new ideas, and, music is free. Gaming, film, internet, all became as important in the New as music had been. This is not to say that music doesn't mean as much in individual lives, because it can still spark change for people. 
 
But the idea that a song can change the world doesn't seem viable anymore. Music releases are dwarfed by Halo releases and Batman releases. And those massive releases seem like ancient history 5 weeks after they take place. Listeners still love their favorite new music, but there hasn't been a Sgt Pepper queue for many many years. 

What is the larger view I'm trying to get at here? It's that, just like the weight seems to have gone out of music's ability to be a catalyst for big change, it feels at times like big change through a catalyst like Barack Obama is impossible.

 There was an initial hope and expansion which carried Obama forward into the place where his success was the driving force to finally-- or once again (as in Kennedy)-- make real headway against the culture of Christianists, racists, posturing hypocrites, corporate greed, and now, creeping fascism in the form of governmental suppression and intrusion and gross mismanagement. With the lethal injection of Sarah Palin into McCain's life, we see in her the reflection of a part of the electorate that-- once demoralized by the possibility of Obama-- is suddenly reanimated. The energy around her, that she drew as a strange attractor, is the hope of everything that new music and new culture fought against initially in the 60's. Hippie love is attacked by God's love, and it feels like the pendulum is swinging breathlessly between the two.
 
Music was the way of expressing the change we felt might to come. We made these metaphors of revolution and change, thinking they had the power of armies. And the music did inject the ideas into the culture, seeds & memes taking root. But Obama is an actual embodiment of the change. He's not a metaphor. I can barely imagine what he feels like, knowing the forces that are at play and at war through him. But I'll stand in the queue for him, waiting for the store to open, to see what a possible new way might look like, to see whether the fuse burns down and reaches its explosive goal.

The Most Shocking Endorsement So Far This Year

The last time the Stockton Record, an arch-conservative Republican mouthpiece in northern California, endorsed a Democrat for president was at the height of the Depression, in 1936, when they came out for the re-election of the most popular and beloved president in history, Franklin Roosevelt. By 1940 they had reverted to form and were pushing for GOP hack Wendell Willkie over Roosevelt. They went on to pick Nixon over Kennedy, Goldwater over Johnson, Nixon both times, Dole over Clinton, Bush both times... until yesterday they hadn't endorsed a Democrat since 1936.

In yesterday's editorial they unanimously picked Obama over McCain as the more prudent and inspirational choice.

He has demonstrated time and again he can think on his feet. More importantly, he has demonstrated he will think things through, seek advice and actually listen to it.

Obama is a gifted speaker. But in addition to his smarts and energy, possibly his greatest gift is his ability to inspire.

For eight years, American politics has been marked by smears, fears and greed. For too long, we've practiced partisanship in Washington, not politics. The result is a cynicism every bit as deep as that which infected the nation when Richard Nixon was shamed from office and when Bill Clinton brought shame to the office.

This must end, but John McCain can't do it. He can't inspire, nor can he really break from a past that is breaking this nation.

They point out that, as much as McCain's deceptive campaign denies it and tries to rewrite history, he has "voted consistently for deregulation" and is now trying to paint himself as a populist. They're not buying-- and they, like anyone who loves this country, take the Palin Threat very seriously-- and they understand the real issue in that horrible selection: "If elected, at 72, he would be the oldest incoming president in U.S. history. He's in good health now, we're told, although he has withheld most of his medical records. That means Gov. Sarah Palin could very well become president. And that brings us to McCain's most troubling trait: his judgment."

Republicans have tried repeatedly to paint Obama as an elitist. Hardly. He grew up in a single-parent home and, by the sheer force of his desire and cerebral horsepower, ended up at Harvard Law School, where he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review.

He could have gone for the money. He didn't. He went to Chicago, where he worked to give a voice to those who didn't have one.

That's hardly the mark of an elitist.

He hasn't lost touch with regular people, whereas McCain doesn't even know how many homes he owns.

Obama rose quickly through the Illinois Legislature and propelled himself into the U.S. Senate.

After winning the Democratic nomination against a large and highly experienced field of candidates, Obama picked one of them, Joe Biden, as his running mate. Biden brings to the ticket the vast foreign affairs experience and knowledge that Obama lacks.'

Obama has been accused of being an empty suit, all talk and no action. There's no "there" there, his detractors say.

The charge is no more credible than that of him being an elitist.

Obama can inspire, and our nation desperately needs an inspirational leader. And he does not carry the deep scars of Vietnam, as do many of McCain's generation.

He offers hope. A new way of doing business. And a belief that our system of government can be made to work.

He's the clear choice.

Republican presidential victories are built on endorsements from local papers like the Stockton Record. If newspapers like it in Colorado, Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Indiana and other battleground states start flipping to Obama, McCain could drag the GOP down to the historic defeat they have earned.

Electoral Ramifications Of The Bailout Bill

McCain strutted out of the debate thinking he had won. Giuliani and the other lobbyists in his entourage assured him he was the champ. Today's Gallup poll confirmed what every single focus group and every snap poll had found: that despite the on-the-payroll media-for-McCain contingent at Fox, etc, people were viscerally turned off by McCain's nastiness and condescending behavior and by his loser body language. It wasn't close. 46% of viewers though Obama bested McCain. Only 34% thought McCain did better. "Obama scored even better-- 52%- 35%-- when debate-watchers were asked which candidate offered the best proposals for change to solve the country's problems."

McCain may be praying the next episode of Palin Livin', Bristol Palin's shotgun wedding just before the election, will save his rapidly sinking campaign, but the sleazy lobbyists driving the Double Talk Express are by no means putting all their eggs into that unpredictable basket. Although Newt Gingrich is urging vulnerable Republicans in Congress-- and is there one more vulnerable than McCain?-- to vote NO on the bailout and ride that vote to victory in November, McCain has decided, incongruously but predictably, to claim credit for the bailout. Is he crazy? Is Gingrich wrong?

Yesterday's Gallup poll showed that "Americans overwhelmingly favor Congress' passing a plan that would help fix the current Wall Street economic crisis." They don't like Paulson's plan, of course, but McCain and the congressional leadership and the establishment media will now work hard to prove that the garbage plan they agreed on is not Paulson's plan.

Previewing a McCain campaign message for the days ahead, top strategist Steve Schmidt claimed Sunday that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is partly responsible for the tentative agreement on a mortgage bailout that congressional leaders announced shortly after midnight.

Schmidt was appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” with David Axelrod, the Obama campaign’s chief strategist, who ridiculed the McCain claim as “a little bit of fiction.”

...Schmidt argued: “Earlier in the week, when Senator McCain came back to Washington, there had been no deal reached. … What Senator McCain was able to do was to help bring all the parties to the table, including the House Republicans.”

Axelrod responded: “When this crisis emerged, Senator McCain's first reaction was to say the economy is fundamentally strong. The next day, he suggested a commission to study this. And by eight days later, he said it was such a crisis that he was going to suspend his campaign. He showed up a day later in Washington.

“It isn't clear what his role was. So it’s a little bit of fiction to now claim credit for it. That's not the important thing, though. The important thing is that the principles that Senator Obama outlined originally are now embraced and taxpayers will be protected.”

This morning's Times delineates some of what is emerging from the Inside the Beltway negotiations.

The bill includes pay limits for some executives whose firms seek help, aides said. And it requires the government to use its new role as owner of distressed mortgage-backed securities to make more aggressive efforts to prevent home foreclosures.

In some cases, the government would receive an equity stake in companies that seek aid, allowing taxpayers to profit should the rescue plan work and the private firms flourish in the months and years ahead.

The White House also agreed to strict oversight of the program by a Congressional panel and conflict-of-interest rules for firms hired by the Treasury to help run the program.

Democratic candidates for Congress are watching carefully. Annette Taddeo in Miami is not alone when she says she's waiting to see the kind of homeowner protections Dick Durbin is able to force Paulson and Bush to put into the bill before she can weigh whether the bill is worth supporting or not. Half a dozen candidates for Congress told me almost exactly the same thing. Like the voters, they know this bill stinks and like the voters they know something has to be done-- but they want to make sure taxpeyers and homeowners get as fair a shake as possible. Mark Schauer, who's running against Republican extremist Tim Walberg in economically hard-hit southern Michigan took a similar tact: "Let's be clear, we're in this mess because of George Bush and Tim Walberg's failed economic policies. While I am encouraged by the bipartisan negotiations taking place in Washington this weekend, any rescue plan must first prevent people from losing their homes, help small business, and bring jobs and economic development to our communities. We must also protect the interests of taxpayers with adequate oversight and no blank checks for Wall Street. It remains to be seen whether or not this package meets those standards."

What concerns me is that while the Democratic leadership is busy rounding up votes to give Bush what he wants, Republicans are carefully plotting campaign strategy. Radical right incumbents like Mike Pence (R-IN), John Shadegg (R-AZ), Michele Bachmann (R-MN), John Culberson (R-TX) will all attempt to use their no votes on this one issue as proof that they are not Bush rubber stamps and that they stand with the middle class-- regardless of their years of voting records. My advice to progressive challengers: come out loud and clear against the bailout and talk about the inherent rigging of the financial system to help the rich and powerful at the expense of the rest of us. Jerome a Paris has a brilliant explanation is today's European Tribune. He writes, for example, that "the financial world cannot behave responsibly, if left to its own devices and thus should not be left to its own devices" and that "the main argument to give financial markets a free hand-- that they have created so much growth and prosperity-- needs to be called for what it is: a lie."

We contacted someone who has been talking with us about this mess for years and advocating real reform, Larry Kissell, the Democratic opponent to Republican rubber stamp Robin Hayes. There's no telling if Hayes will vote with Bush as he normally does, or go along with Gingrich's siren call that he'll have a chance to win re-election by breaking with Bush. In the past when Hayes wanted to break with the GOP leadership-- like when CAFTA was threatening thousands of jobs in North Carolina-- the Republican leadership yelled at him, made him weep and he always went along with them. With Bush's approval rating hovering below 20%, even Hayes may have the courage to oppose him on something. But that doesn't matter one way or the other to Larry. Here's what he told us this morning:

"I have been saying for nearly 3 years now that my district was the canary in the coal mine. We have seen the devastation of the failed Bush policies firsthand for years now that have just hit Wall Street and Middle America. Had my opponent and the Bush Administration taken notice when record numbers of people were losing their jobs, when homes were going into foreclosure, and small businesses were facing the credit crunch we wouldn't be here today debating a bailout for Wall Street and trying to avoid not just a recession but another Great Depression. The time for politics has passed and we must have leadership."

This is entirely consistent with what Larry was saying about the bailout on Friday: "Republicans and Democrats alike-- including my opponent, Robin Hayes-- helped create this crisis by voting for the massive deregulation contained in the 1999 Financial Services Act. I call on Congressman Hayes to urge his fellow Republicans to come back to the table and stay there until a solution is negotiated.  American taxpayers are about to be put on the hook for a bailout of upwards of three-quarters of a trillion dollars. The least politicians in Washington can do is to set aside their partisan differences for a day or two and work together to make sure that money is spent responsibly. If I were in Washington today I'd agree to sit down with anyone, at anytime to get a solution. NC can't afford anymore economic devastation. After years of job losses, plant closings and rising gas prices, we need all the relief we can get and we need it now."

As for McCain's role in all this... John Kerry summed it up best: "He said he was going to interrupt his campaign to come down and save the negotiations. Most people believe is that what he did was interrupt the negotiations to come down and save his campaign." Watch:

No Bailouts For Billionaires -- And No Bail For These Bums Either

Let's make a deal before the markets open in Asia

My financial advisor is pretty conservative with her suggestions. I just got off the phone with her and she was talking about getting in on a deal with another guy named Paulson (not related) and some "vulture capitalists" who are buying up bad mortgages for thirty cents on the dollar. She talked for 30 minutes but I was dumbfounded and couldn't help picturing Mitt Romney and wondering when Americans are going to get pissed off enough at predtors and vultures to start shooting them-- instead of electing their servants to government office.

Wall Street's five biggest firms paid more than $3 billion in the last five years to their top executives, while they presided over the packaging and sale of loans that helped bring down the investment-banking system.

Merrill Lynch & Co. paid its chief executives the most, with Stanley O'Neal taking in $172 million from 2003 to 2007 and John Thain getting $86 million, including a signing bonus, after beginning work in December. The company agreed to be acquired by Bank of America Corp. for about $50 billion on Sept. 15. Bear Stearns Cos.'s James "Jimmy" Cayne made $161 million before the company collapsed and was sold to JPMorgan Chase & Co. in June.

...The $3.1 billion paid to the top five executives at the firms between 2003 and 2007 was about three times what JPMorgan spent to buy Bear Stearns. Goldman Sachs had the highest total, with $859 million, followed by Bear Stearns at $609 million. CEO pay at the five firms increased each year, doubling to $253 million in 2007, according to data compiled from company filings.

This morning's NY Times is reporting that Congress is close-- despite McCain's craven opportunism-- to a consensus on a bailout plan. It will, no doubt include some fine window dressing, like the Blue Dog's demands, presented by Pelosi and Hoyer, that Wall Street repay the government if taxpayers lose money through the program, as well as a fig leaf restraining-- slightly-- obscene executive pay and golden parachutes, as well as a provision for congressional oversight once the money starts being doled out. Whoopie? I don't think so.

I wonder where Pelosi and Hoyer and their Blue Dogs were when this got decided on:

AIG also said in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission that it is paying about 130 executives cash awards as part of a retention program for the giant insurer, which got the right to borrow up to $85 billion from the government last week in a deal to avert possible bankruptcy. AIG said in the filing that one executive, Jay Wintrob, AIG's executive vice president of retirement services, would receive an award of $3 million. The awards are payable 60% in December, and 40% next December.

The retention program suggests that AIG's current management, including CEO Edward Liddy who was appointed in connection with the government deal, is trying to hold on to top employees and protect the value of the company's insurance subsidiaries. Mr. Liddy is exploring selling off various units to repay the loan, but he also has said he wants to retain as much of its main insurance operations as possible in the company that remains. Holding on to executives could help in both efforts.

Nevertheless, according to the Times "lawmakers said they hoped to reach an agreement by Sunday night, in time for the opening of the markets in Asia." I would think David Herszenhorn and Carl Hulse have been playing the role of "reporters" or "journalists"-- or whatever they style themselves-- to understand what a special interest group is and figure out the vultures and predators and their bribed elected servants and special interests and that labor unions and advocates of affordable housing are American heroes whose feet scumbags like David Herszenhorn and Carl Hulse should be forced to clean with their tongues each evening when they come home from work. In an effort at the pseudo-balance that has defined mass media's role and culpability in the economic meltdown-- not to mention Iraq and the theft of the 2000 election-- David Herszenhorn and Carl Hulse blabbled on (with McCain pounding his chest like a monkey and Gingrich tossing stink bombs from the sidelines):

Still, the partisan brinkmanship continued with all of the acrimony that usually accompanies the final throes of a major legislative bargaining session. Republicans accused Democrats of trying to add benefits for special interest groups, including labor unions and advocates of affordable housing, while Democrats accused Republicans of trying to undermine the efforts to limit executive pay at firms that seek government help and trying to change accounting rules to benefit big business.

The two sides were also fighting over a proposed fee on financial firms to offset some of the cost of the rescue effort.

...Officials said there were still more than a dozen points of disagreement, though the centerpiece of the rescue effort remained intact: a plan for the government to purchase up to $700 billion in troubled assets from financial firms as a way to free their balance sheets of bad debts and to help restore a healthy flow of credit through the economy. It could become the largest government bailout in the nation’s history.

...But with conservative Republicans denouncing the plan as an affront to free market capitalism and some liberal Democrats criticizing it as a giveaway to Wall Street, both parties were anxiously starting to court votes, particularly in the House, where angry Republicans nearly scotched a deal that had been in the works for days.

Republicans, under pressure from Democrats to deliver 70 to 100 votes from their side, were scouring the ranks and focusing on the two dozen Republicans who were retiring this year.

“It is a good number,” said Representative Ray LaHood of Illinois, one of the Republicans leaving Congress this year. Mr. LaHood said he had suggested to the leadership that they convene the departing members to get them to make the case to wavering Republicans.

Both parties were also scouring the political map to identify lawmakers who face little or no opposition for re-election in November, knowing they would be more willing to vote yes.

Democratic officials said that despite having control of both chambers in Congress, they were far from having a majority sufficient to pass the measure just from their ranks. And they also warned that Democrats in potentially tough races could not be counted on to provide the votes to put the package over the top when, and if, it reaches the floor.

Republicans countered that if Democrats were truly in need of generating more support, they would have to jettison some provisions in the bill that were most objectionable to their members, particularly a provision that would direct 20 percent of any profits from the rescue plan to help create affordable housing. The Republicans want all profits returned to the Treasury.

Don't vomit on your Times-- or your computer. Instead watch John Amato's interview with Naomi Klein, who seems to have a far better understanding of the scope and depth of this situation than our own political leaders. I sure hope Obama and Reid and Pelosi have people around them who are sharp enough to be paying attention to Klein:

They all knew it and they were making money as fast as they could based on their belief that they would get bailed out. Because it is entirely consistent with the Bush administration over the past 7 years. One of the other big lies floating around is this is somehow a departure from the way the Bush administration usually does business. It’s not a departure; it’s just a change in the direction of the flow. This is what they have been doing for 7 years: transferring public money, public wealth, into the hands of private crony contractors. And now as their final act they are taking the bad debts of the corporate sector and transferring them to the taxpayer. There is no aberration here; there is no big surprise. This is entirely consistent with everything they’ve done.

...What Bush was saying when he went on television last night was that we have to bail out the people at the very top because it’s going to trickle down back to you. There are many more ways of helping Americans who are in foreclosure on their homes and even helping companies that are not able to access credit. You can actually do it directly, you can do it from the bottom up instead of saving the people at the top and hoping it trickles down. And I think that the anger of Americans directed at Wall Street in this bailout is a very fair comeuppance for Wall Street because there has been a total severing between what is good for Wall Street and what is good for Americans. In the ’90s this was the line “What’s good for Wall Street is good for Main Street.” Americans do not believe that; they know it’s not true. It’s been Wall Street’s predatory practices - not just subprime - bedding up companies that laid off workers, rewarding companies for moving jobs overseas, just acting in predatory ways in myriad ways and exacerbating the climate crisis and acting in completely irresponsible ways. They have severed themselves from regular people and now when they’re going down regular people don’t believe that things are bad for them too. And that was Bush’s job was - to try to scare people to say what’s bad them is bad for you. But after so many years of what’s good for the elite not being good for regular people, it’s a much harder sell.

...I think that it’s important to stress that this is money that could be used for actively preventing foreclosures. They could be using this money - a fraction of it - to keep people in their homes. They could be stimulating and rebuilding the fundamentals of the economy by investing in infrastructure, public works projects, a green-style New Deal - all of the investments that are so desperately needed. New technology, investing in the real economy and getting away from this casino economy. And because they want to throw all this money at Wall Street, that is money that will not be available for those real investments.

Why Does The DCCC Allow Adam Putnam To Waltz To Re-election Without Lifting A Finger?

Sometimes it gets very frustrating that even in the best of political environments, like this year's, the DCCC can't really muster a truly national campaign and compete in hundreds of districts instead of just a few dozen. Chris Van Hollen is a tremendous improvement over last cycle's DCCC chair, Rahm Emanuel, who worked very hard to hold down the battlefields and was personally responsible for countless losses, especially close races for progressives where he refused to get involved (Larry Kissell, Victoria Wulsin, Charlie Brown, Eric Massa come instantly to mind-- all of whom have become major priorities for Van Hollen this year.)

Democrats will never get back to the 1936 situation where they held all but 88 seats in the House (and all but 17 in the Senate) if they don't take on more Republicans who have earned, by their records, stiff challenges. Emanuel is a crabbed, nasty, corrupt little man with a small uptight vision. Van Hollen is a step in the right direction. But just a step. One race the Florida Democratic Party and the DCCC should be hammering is in a district just east of Tampa Bay, the twelfth's Hillsborough and Polk Counties, currently occupied by pompous, buffoon Adam Putnam, the #3 rubber stamp in the GOP House hierarchy. He is the walking incarnation of everything Americans have come to hate about the Republican Party. Aside from his shallow ideological outlook on politics and his predisposition to always support corporate special interests over the well-being of the middle class, Putnam has taken a great deal of money from shady corporate operators and has voted exactly how they have asked him to in return. In my book, that spells corruption. In yesterday's L.A. Times Rosa Brooks explains how McCain's ability to escape punishment for his role in the Keating Five Savings and Loan scandals led directly to the current Wall Street meltdown. Florida voters should end Adam Putnam's career now that he's shown himself to be even more corrupt than McCain.

Putnam, who early on was dubbed "that Howdy Doody looking nimrod" by his colleagues, sits on the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance and Government Sponsored Enterprises. His activities on that subcommittee paint a gruesome picture of corruption. Instead of living up to the stated objectives of the committee-- to "review laws and programs related to the U.S. capital markets, the securities industry, the insurance industry generally (except for health care), and government-sponsored enterprises, such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac," he used his position as a fundraising tool with the very people he was supposed to be keeping an eye on! Putnam's subcommittee also "oversees the Securities and Exchange Commission and self-regulatory organizations, such as the New York Stock Exchange and the NASD, that police the securities markets." What did he do? He became the subcommittee's #1 advocate for the irresponsible deregulation that has brought the country to the brink of financial collapse. Putnam led the charge to wreck the federal regulatory agencies that have been carefully put in place to protect the middle class and society at large from the kinds of powerful financial predators who he has been taking bribes "donations" from. This year alone Putnam has taken a whopping $298,340 from the industry that finances insurance and real estate, $40,000 from the securities and investment industry, $35,150 from commercial banks, $30,940 from sleazy lobbyists, $24,050 from shady "miscellaneous" finance operations, $18,000 from finance and credit companies, and another $12,500 from mortgage bankers and brokers. Just this year alone he's taken in close to half a million dollars from the very industries he's supposed to be providing with oversight. That is the definition of corruption. And that alone is why the DCCC should be pounding him.

But on top of that, Putnam has an ideal Democratic challenger, a 22 year Navy vet who understands two things Putnam is clueless about, our nation's security and the struggles of middle class working families. That man is Doug Tudor, an exceptional candidate and independent-minded progressive. I don't know this for certain but I would be willing to bet that Doug hasn't been given even one dime of help from the DCCC or the Florida Democratic Party. As far as they're concerned, Adam Putnam can just skate to re-election.

Putnam, on the other hand, senses the craving in Florida for change and he realizes he could easily become a target of that sentiment. When most members of Congress were trying to deal with the financial catastrophe his subcommittee should have headed off at the pass, Putnam was partying in Nantucket with his wealthy campaign contributors from the Big Banks and Wall Street investment firms-- literally. He was vacationing or hobnobbing in one of America’s most wealthy enclaves, while every news source was reporting that House and Senate leadership was meeting with the President’s people to try to figure out how to keep the country from depression-era misery. And it wasn't just for fun and games; it never is with people in that world. While our country’s economy is sinking further and further into the crapper, Adam was hosting a $2,500 per person “Weekend with Adam” for his fat cat lobbyist buddies. Even though he leads Doug by nearly $1.6 million in fundraising, he felt it was more important to get more cash for himself and his running-scared Republican buddies in the House than take part in bailout discussions. Even though he personally is worth nearly $15 million and could well fund any and all aspects of his campaign, he absolutely couldn’t be bothered to remain in DC and work on the many, many challenges facing his constituents, the actual Florida voters who employ him.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz is the Democratic political boss of Florida, at least when it comes to Congress. When she insulted Doug at the Denver convention she was showing her contempt for military vets, for regular Americans and for anyone not from her "class" making a populist case. Doug and candidates like him will never get any help from elitist insiders like Wasserman Schultz unless it is forced by the grassroots. This year we forced her to give up on her support for reactionary Republicans Mario and Lincoln Diaz-Balart and for her close friend Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and she ha snow given her OK for Democrats to help Joe Garcia and Annette Taddeo. Please join me in donating to Doug Tudor today-- even $5 or $10 helps-- so that we send a message to Wasserman Schultz and the DCCC that we expect the Democratic Party to fight bad characters like Adam Putnam. DWT has set up a special page for the best candidates being ignored by the DCCC. Please click on that link and give what you can to Doug Tudor.


UPDATE: WANT TO TAKE SOME ACTION?

Well, the DCCC is sitting on a 40 million dollar advantage over the NRCC. If they were willing to invest just a quarter of 1% of that money in FL-12, Doug would win this race-- absolutely, positively. Next year they'll come crying to use about how they screwed up the way they just did about Larry Kissell, who came within 320 votes of beating reactionary goon Robin Hayes in 2006 but missed out because the DCCC refused to help. If you want to do something, aside from donating to Doug's campaign, please contact Brett Wask at the DCCC and tell him (politely) you'd like to see some action: wask@dccc.org or (202)607-1595. Let's restore representative democracy to central Florida!

Wrap Up Of The Blue America Senate Contest

We had an exciting Blue America week since last Saturday. Our Senate competition has gone exceptionally well, thanks in great part to the extraordinary efforts of the campaign staffs of the 5 Blue America candidates we've endorsed this year, Rick Noriega (D-TX), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Andrew Rice (D-OK), Tom Allen (D-ME) and Mark Begich (D-AK). These guys have assembled great teams and it bodes well for effective office staffs when they're in Washington.

So far nearly 1,700 people voted by donating over $46,000. It's probably no coincidence that the numbers of votes exactly corresponded to the population of each state. Rick Noriega is ahead with more than 900 votes (and nearly $20,000) and Jeff Merkley is coming in second with over 600 votes (and nearly $10,000), followed by Andrew Rice, with over 500 votes and more than $8,000, Tom Allen 300 votes/$5,000, and Mark Begich 250 votes/$2,000. The populations of each state:

Texas- 23,904,380
Oregon- 3,747,455
Oklahoma- 3,617,316
Maine- 1,317,207
Alaska- 683,478

At first I was worried that Rick was going into the contest with both hands tied behind his back. Although he had made a great first impression with our community when he visited with us last August, I was concerned because he suspended his campaign two weeks ago. No, no, not like McCain's cynical, partisan spin pseudo "suspension." A Lt Colonel in the Texas National Guard, Rick was on duty all week helping Texans recover from the devastation of Hurricane Ike. But when your opponent is John Cornyn...

Cornyn has taken the same tact we have in fundraising. We're asking our community to donate to Rick and the other Blue America Senate candidates to stop Republican obstructionism with a filibuster-proof majority so McConnell, McCain and the rest of the McGoons can't keep Obama from enacting real change legislation. Cornyn has been trying-- without much success-- to convince Texans to react to that differently than were asking them too.

"We need to keep the gas on for the next 40 days to make sure our opponents' dreams of a filibuster-proof Senate don't become a reality," Cornyn finance director Dolly Gonzalez wrote in an email today to donors.

She attached a memo from Cornyn campaign communications director Kevin McLaughlin with some quotes from Joe Biden about how nice it'd be to have 60 or more Dems in the Senate -- "to overcome Republican obstruction and bring fiercely needed change."

McLaughlin's kicker: "It would be bad enough if Barack and Biden get elected, but imagine if they had 'rubber-stamp Rick' there too; there will be no stopping them from shoving their liberal agenda down our throats."

Noriega spokesman Martine Apodaca replied, "Rubber stamp Rick? That's like getting called unethical by Ted Stevens. Cornyn knows that his rubber stamp voting record for the President's disastrous policies are the reason the country is in a ditch."

Voting ends at noon (PT) and we'll figure out the winner by 1pm. If you haven't voted yet, please do. Remember, first prize is $5,000 and second prize is a thousand dollars. Last time I was in Texas I met Mark Strama, an outstanding young state legislator from the Austin suburbs, once the head of Rock the Vote, now helping turn the state Capitol blue. He's a major supporter of Rick Noriega and I found this clip of him explaining why Rick can beat Cornyn in November.




UPDATE

The winner of our competition is Rick Noriega with 917 votes (and $19,871.47) and runner-up is Jeff Merkley with 639 votes (and $9,392.71). We'll be sending Blue America checks for $5,000 to Rick and $1,000 for Jeff. In the end we collected $47,130 for our candidates. Thanks everyone who participated.

Nice Debate Guys-- Now Back To Palin, The Real Issue

The Republican vice presidential candidate is the real issue? Absolutely, though only tangentially. She is more widely viewed as incapable of being president every time she pops her head up and utters something banal or even bizarre. And as all the craziness leaks out about her strange personal life... well, voters are starting to wonder about John McCain's judgment. And that's the issue-- his judgment, his cynicism, his patriotism, his willing to do anything he thinks will catapult him into the Oval Office, even saddle the country with someone that he knows as well as the rest of us, shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the White House unless it's on the other side of a velvet rope... with a security guard watching closely.

And it isn't only Democrats and independents who have taken note. Yesterday we mentioned that a columnist for the Republican Party magazine National Review had asked Palin to resign from the ticket for the good of the country. That was followed by troubling stories in the Politico and NY Times. Politico: "A growing number of Republicans are expressing concern about Sarah Palin’s uneven-- and sometimes downright awkward-- performances in her limited media appearances. 

Tony Fabrizio, a GOP strategist, says Palin’s recent CBS appearance isn’t disqualifying but is certainly alarming. “You can’t continue to have interviews like that and not take on water.” 

“I have not been blown away by the interviews from her, but at the same time, I haven’t come away from them thinking she doesn’t know shit,” said Chris Lacivita, a GOP strategist. “But she ain’t Dick Cheney, nor Joe Biden and definitely not Hillary Clinton.” 

The Times was similar: "The drip, drip, drip of bad reviews keeps falling this week against Gov. Sarah Palin, whose two-day segments of interviews with CBS’ Katie Couric have weakened conservatives’ initial embrace of and enthusiasm for the vice-presidential nominee. As if Senator John McCain already hadn’t faced a rough week, which started with conservative columnist George Will bemoaning the Republican candidate’s positions on the economic bailout and suggesting Mr. McCain may be unfit to be president."

In a column on Thursday, conservative Rich Lowry compared Senator McCain to the “proverbial cartoon character over the edge of the cliff, in midair, desperately flapping his arms and somehow maintaining altitude.” Mr. McCain, he continues, has been “making moves that mark him as different, but can be seen as risky or gimmicky.” One of those moves, according to Mr. Lowry, was adding Governor Palin to the Republican ticket:

Does Palin know enough to be a national candidate right now? No, but she can be mostly walled off from the press. Will attacking Obama on Fannie and Freddie open McCain to attack because one of his top aides lobbied for the organizations? Yes, but he can bulldog through it. Is going to Washington going to help much of anything? Probably not, but the symbolism matters. All the unconventional moves risk eroding McCain’s reputation as a steady hand, but the alternative is simply being overwhelmed by the gravitational pull of the public’s desire for change.

And at the American Spectator, Philip Klein twice reviewed Governor Palin’s interviews this week. At first, he said: “Her answer that not supporting a bailout could mean a Great Depression was off message and irresponsible. For the rest of the interview, it was just lots of tired cliches, and random jargon that made it seem as if she was reading off of mental index cards. I know a lot of conservatives like Sarah Palin and always rush to her defense. But it’s absolutely not meant as an insult to say that she simply is not ready to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.”

If you visualize Mooselini as president and then go out and vote for her and McCain, who in the end views himself as a low ranking monkey compared to the clearly superior Obama, you and your children deserve what comes next:

Former Congressman John Buchanan (R-AL) Wonders What happened To The John McCain He Knew And Supported

I serve on the board of directors of a large, esteemed, nonpartisan public affairs organization in Washington-- my one official connection to the world Inside the Beltway. A few years ago I sat next to a Board member I was just getting to know, former Congressman John Buchanan of Alabama, a Republican. He represented a part of northern Alabama that takes its Republicanism seriously. He told me a fascinating piece of history I had never heard, about how one county, Winston, even seceded from Alabama when Alabama seceded from the Union. Congressman Buchanan was still an Abe Lincoln type Republican when he became the first victim of the Christian Coalition a century later. The fledgling Coalition ran a far right extremist in a primary against him, a successful primary (which eventually resulted in the district falling to Democrats). Anyway, my fellow-board member sent me a requiem for an old friend of his today: John McCain, someone who had had voted for in the Republican Party primary just a few months ago. Congressman Buchanan's letter:

I write to mourn the passing of a true American hero, Senator John McCain of Arizona. Like millions of other Americans, I have thanked God for his courage, enduring years of hardship and even torture as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, being a source of strength to his fellow prisoners and becoming a role model for us all. I have celebrated his integrity and straight talk through later years as a long-term United State Senator.
 
As a Republican, I voted for him in his run for the Presidency eight years ago, and marveled at how well he handled the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, conceived in Hell and brought to earth through the merciless, evil forces of Karlrovian politics, which cost him the race, but not, in the words of our founding fathers, his sacred honor...

I voted for that same man of character again in 2008. And now he is no more, leaving our country less than it would be if he remained among us, and leaving people like me only fond memories of the man he used to be. 

The Republican candidate this year for the Presidency of the United States is proving himself to be a very unfunny caricature of the John McCain we knew and loved and now have lost, and we have reason to grieve. He is using the same oft repeated big lie strategy of bearing  false witness against Obama that was used against him in 2000. The real John McCain was above such nefarious tactics. He would instead be running an honest and honorable campaign on the real and important issues our country faces in this election.
 
Even worse, the pseudo John McCain has put within a heartbeat of the Presidency, should he win, someone totally unprepared to lead our country, much less the free world, in these perilous times. There are people of both genders in both parties with the knowledge, experience, judgment and character to assume the helm if necessary. His nominee is not one of them. He recklessly chose someone with no such knowledge or experience, who is on the far right extreme of the political spectrum, and who is joining him in setting truth on its head in this campaign.  

Those who choose to poison the well of American politics can win elections that way, while truth and justice weep. Those who call forth the best that is in us can also win, and truth, justice and our country win with them. I mourn the passing of John McCain. The best way we can honor him and serve the American people is to roundly defeat the Republican ticket in this election.
 
John H. Buchanan

Former Member of Congress

(R) Alabama

In a postscript he added that "for our country's sake, I hope... Barack Obama, becomes our next president." One hears more and more Republicans saying that nearly every day. I know it's very difficult for some of them. Veteran journalist Carl Bernstein, who seems to have become a family friend of the McCains over the years, expressed much the same sentiment, writing about McCain at HuffPo today.

"I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war," he has said throughout this campaign. Yet, in choosing Palin, he has demonstrated-- whatever his words-- it may be permissible to imperil the country, conceivably even to "lose" it, in order to win the presidency. That would seem the deeper meaning of his choice of Palin.

Indeed, no presidential nominee of either party in the last century has seemed so willing to endanger the country's security as McCain in his reckless choice of a running mate. He is 72 years old; has had four melanomas, a particularly voracious form of cancer; refuses to release his complete medical records. Three of our last eleven presidents (and nine of all 43) have come to office unexpectedly in mid-term from the vice presidency: Truman, who within days of FDR's death was confronted with the decision of whether to drop the atom bomb on Japan; Lyndon Johnson, who took the oath in Dallas after JFK's assassination; Gerald Ford, sworn in following the resignation of Richard Nixon. A fourth vice president, George H.W. Bush, briefly exercised the powers of the presidency after the near-assassination of Ronald Reagan.

Given that history, what does John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin-- the cavalier, last-minute process of her selection and careless vetting; and her over-briefed, fact-lite performance since-- reveal about this military man who has attested to us for years that he is guided by his personal code of honor? "Two things I will never do," McCain told me, "are [to] lie to the American people, or put my electoral interests before the national interest"-- an obvious precursor of "I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war."

Debate Prep 101-- And Debate Analysis 102

This morning Paul Krugman gave us a peek into a closed session among bailout negotiators in which Paulson agrees with Nancy Pelosi that bad faith by extremist Republicans-- stoked by a self-serving, opportunistic national disease called John McCain-- is what caused the bailout negotiations to break down. The Mike Pence-led extremists, he reminds us, were first and foremost nihilists with what Krugman termed a "complete nonsense proposal"-- "a holiday on capital gains taxes."

How is that possible? Well, if a party runs on economic nonsense for 25 years, eventually many of its foot soldiers will be people who actually believe the nonsense.

...And after the way the Bushies and their allies double-crossed the Democrats again and again in the aftermath of 9/11-- demand national unity, then accuse you of being soft on terrorists anyway-- there’s no way Pelosi and Reed will do the responsible but unpopular thing unless the Republicans agree to share ownership.

So what we now have is non-functional government in the face of a major crisis, because Congress includes a quorum of crazies and nobody trusts the White House an inch.

As a friend said last night, we’ve become a banana republic with nukes.

Not all economists thinks this crisis is as life threatening as the Washington Post's Steven Pearlstein does. We're all angry with Wall Street manipulators-- some of us think they should meet the same fate as the Indian CEO who recently stepped out of line. Some of us can think abstractly enough to take that one step further and be equally angry with the political operators-- from Rahm Emanuel (D-IL- $729,200) and Spencer Bauchus (R-AL- $483,350) to Chris Shays (R-CT- $362,720), John Boehner (R-OH- $357,000) and Eric Cantor (R-VA- $318,650)-- who have enabled these Wall Street crooks and wish them the same fate. Pearlstein, less bloodthirsty than myself, says even if we confiscated all the ill-gotten wealth from all the Wall Street crooks, "it would come to several billions of dollars. That's a rounding error compared with the size of the financial problem we're facing here." That sounds ominous. It's just the beginning.

The financial situation is now downright scary. Don't look at the stock market-- that's not where the problem is. The problem is in the credit markets, which are quickly freezing. I won't bore you with technical indicators like Libor and Treasury swap spreads, but if you talk to people who work these markets every day, as I have, they report that the money markets are in worse shape than they were last August, or even during the currency crises of 1998.

Banks and big corporations and even money-market funds are hoarding cash, refusing to lend it out for a day or a week or a month. Even the best companies are having trouble floating bonds at reasonable rates. And the shadow banking system-- the market in asset-backed securities that ultimately supplies the capital for most home loans, car loans, college loans-- is almost completely shut down.

People are so nervous, and there is so much distrust, that all it would take is one more hit to trigger the modern-day equivalent of a nationwide bank run. Financial institutions would fail, part of your savings would be wiped out, jobs would be lost and a lot of economic activity would grind to a halt. Such a debacle would cost us a lot more than $700 billion.

...[T]his isn't primarily a bailout for Wall Street-- it's an attempt to jump-start certain credit markets that have broken to the point that nobody is buying, driving down prices to the point where they are well below any reasonable estimate of their long-term economic value.

The basic idea is to use special auctions to recreate a market for these securities with many competing sellers and one buyer (the Treasury), so that a credible "market" price can be established. If that price turns out to be below what those securities are now valued at on the banks' balance sheets, then banks will have to take the loss. If the price turns out to be higher, then banks may be able to record gains. The point isn't to bail out institutions that have made bad bets and suffered credit losses, but to provide a buyer of last resort so the market can begin pricing again.

Are there other ways to structure this market rescue? Sure. You could try to deal with the underlying problem by taking additional measures to prevent foreclosures. Or you could create a mechanism for the government to invest fresh capital in troubled banks, in exchange for stock. In fact, both approaches are possible and envisioned under the administration proposal now under discussion. But neither, by itself, is likely to quickly restore confidence in the financial system and relieve the current crisis.

... [I]t is important to give the Treasury secretary and the people he hires a good deal of flexibility in designing and experimenting with the mechanics of this rescue. The reality is that these guys will be operating in uncharted territory, making things up as they go along. That means there are no assurances that any particular approach will work and no assurances that this will be the final solution. It also means that, just as we entrust generals to fight a war, we are going to have to trust the Treasury to find a way out of this crisis.

Now that notion-- "trust us," coming from the least trustworthy admin- istration in the entire history of the United States, really is as scary as anything else. And, like I said earlier, there are other economists who paint a less dire picture. In fact, "many of the nation's brightest economic minds are warning that the Wall Street bailout's a dangerous rush job" and that the end of the world is not nigh. "It's more hype than real risk," said James K. Galbraith, a University of Texas economist and son of the late economic historian John Kenneth Galbraith. "A nasty recession is possible, but the bailout will not cure that. So it's mainly relevant to the financial industry."

Ian Welsh over at FDL takes a hard line against the Greed and Selfishness Republican ideology that caused the problem and urges responsible leadership not to look for compromise with these antisocial misfits but to get going with the task of repairing what their shameless greed and corruption has broken.

The Republicans have offered two solutions-- the Paulson plan, which was a complete power and money grab, and now the House Republican plan which is that the solution is to do more of what caused the problem-- deregulate Wall Street and hey, presto, deregulation will fix what's wrong!

So, is the correct solution to compromise the Frank or Dodd bills with more deregulation and more power and money for Paulson and Bush to use however they see fit with no real oversight?

But wait, you say. The Dodd bill and the Frank bill are pretty sucky themselves. That's true, still both are better than Paulson's plan or the absurd House plan of "deregulation will fix the problems caused by deregulation!"

And why are they sucky? Because they started with the Paulson bill and because Frank and Dodd compromised with Paulson all through negotiations.

When put that way it's, I hope, self evident, that the more partisan the solution-- the more things like bankruptcy protection and help for people to keep their houses, and serious taking pieces of companies which are helped out-- all things not in the original Paulson plan and as far as I can tell not in the House Republican plan, are better.

They are partisan ideas. They are democratic ideas. They are in fact progressive ideas.

They are not bipartisan ideas. Republicans don't want people to get bankruptcy protection. They don't want judges to be able to let them keep their houses. They don't want the government to get 10% preferred shares like Buffett got when he bailed out Goldman, whenever the government bails out a company.

Bipartisanship means compromise and compromise with the Republicans on this means a lousy bill. In fact, starting with the Paulson bill is what made the Frank bill so awful, and the Dodd bill is better than the Frank bill because it departs further from Paulson. But because it's still based on Paulson, it still isn't actually a good bill, just a better bill than Frank's or Paulson's.

Newt Gingrich also has partisan ideas-- all proven losers-- and he's inspired some of the weakest minds in Congress, the Michele Bachmanns, Eric Cantors (living proof that not all Jews are financial whizzes) and the Paul Ryans, all crazed ideologues with predictable approaches celebrating... Greed and Selfishness, what else?

Gingrich brings a clarity of mind and simplicity of action that is a tonic to a Republican Party that seems uncertain of its core principles and ambivalent about its presidential standard bearer. Even before John McCain announced he was suspending his campaign and riding to the rescue in Washington to find a bipartisan solution to the financial crisis, Gingrich saw the impasse on Capitol Hill as an opportunity to recast the Republican Party on the side of Main Street. "It's very clear that their bias is entirely in favor of the big banks and Wall Street," he says of the Bush administration's $700 billion bailout plan presented by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. "This is the decisive moment of defining McCain. If he comes out on the side of the taxpayer, then there will be a McCain wing of the Republican Party that will be dramatically different than the Bush wing."

Gingrich's not-so-subtle message: Bush is irrelevant. It's in McCain's hands as the leader of his party to drastically reconfigure the Paulson bailout or he will suffer the same ignominious political fate as George H.W. Bush. Gingrich put out a statement hailing McCain's eleventh-hour intervention. "This is the greatest single act of responsibility ever taken by a presidential candidate and rivals President Eisenhower saying, 'I will go to Korea'." Eisenhower's pledge was enough to reassure voters that if elected he would find a way to resolve the Korean conflict. McCain's high-octane involvement in the bailout is meant to convey the same sense of stature and leadership, and to provide cover to reluctant Republicans to support a deal that runs counter to everything they thought they stood for.

McCain alone can bring along enough Republicans to make a deal stick. "The Democrats are not going to go out on a limb for an unpopular position and give Bush money five weeks before an election unless Republicans deliver the votes," says Gingrich. "And the Republicans I believe cannot deliver the votes. So they'd better be designing Plan Two because I think Plan One is dead."

Never one to hold back, Gingrich unleashed his views about the original bailout plan in a torrent of words, calling the authority Paulson wants over the financial industry "a bureaucratic dictatorship" that is "outside the law" and will lead to a "20-year bureaucracy of corruption and cronyism." He's sounding the cry of what he calls the Reagan-Thatcher wing of the party, newly energized by a familiar fight against the corporate country-club wing he says is "boxed in by a Goldman Sachs chief of staff and a Goldman Sachs Treasury Secretary," so they're not receptive to alternatives (Paulson and top White House aide Josh Bolton are alumni of the investment house). "If they don't have any better ideas, they should resign, and the president should get a new team."

OK, all that said, what should we be looking out for tonight? What greasy oily notions have Phil Gramm and the rest of the lobbyists drummed into poor old McCain's cob-webbed brain? McCain, who has rubber stamped every single deregulation since he got into Congress after World War I or II, will claim he warned about a brewing financial crisis. His continued support for freewheeling creditors-- who continued giving him freewheeling campaign "contributions" in return for that support-- belies his bogus claims that his misapprehensions about Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were significant in any way.

Now that economic catastrophe is making populism popular. McCain is trying to jump on the bandwagon, a bandwagon he has spent a couple dozen years in Washington sabotaging. Suddenly he's all about controls on Executive Pay and opposing golden parachutes. He's just spent an entire career on the other side of the barricades. When Obama sponsored a "say-on-pay" bill that would have required public companies to hold a nonbinding shareholders vote on CEO pay early in 2007 McCain opposed it-- loudly. He's always been for the bosses. He's always been against regular working families; always.

Along the same lines, expect him to claim he's been a "leader" on the housing crisis. Unless he explains that he's been part of the crew that has led us into the housing crisis, he'll be doing what has become the hallmark of his campaign: lying... and parroting much of what Obama says.

And then there'll be the lies we hear every day on Fox: he's never taken any earmarks (false); he has a "perfect"-- or even halfway good-- record on veterans issues (even more false); he has an energy plan that will create jobs through energy independence (yes, it sounds like what Obama and Democrats are offering but McCain's version is a total sham, which goes a long way towards explaining why he's been given more money by Big Oil than anyone else running for any office anywhere in America); he'll balance the budget in 4 years (even the Fox propagandists can barely keep a straight face when they repeat this bullshit). Oh, and there are 100 other lies in his bag... so enjoy the debate and see how many you can catch.


UPDATE: McCAIN CAN'T STOP LYING

He just repeated a debunked Republican talking point that Obama has "the most liberal voting record is the Senate." In reality, Obama's voting record is the 46th most liberal. McCain is the 20th most reactionary. Where's McCain's flag pin? Does he hate America? That tie seems to say he hates the world. Is he bitter about having lost a Miss Congeniality contest?

Anyway, Miss Congeniality bristled and got his bloomers all tied in knots when Obama mentioned that Henry Kissinger has said repeatedly that he favors negotiating with Iran without preconditions. I thought Miss Congeniality would explode; maybe if he sees this video he will. Fingers crossed!

Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic has the stats on a CBS/Knowledge Network poll of undecided voters:

40% of uncommitted voters who watched the debate tonight thought Barack Obama was the winner. 22% thought John McCain won. 38% saw it as a draw.

68% of these voters think Obama would make the right decision
about the economy. 41% think McCain would.

49% of these voters think Obama would make the right decisions about Iraq. 55% think McCain would.

In fact, all the instapolls and focus groups seem to be giving the win to Obama. I thought he was pretty weak so it must have been because McCain came off so nasty, grumpy, condescending, muddled, and... potty-mouthed-- and so defensive of the status quo which he still doesn't realize people hate and identify with his decades of crappy voting and catering to special interests. Final verdict: Obama kicked McCain's saggy, mean, old white ass

Up in the sky, is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's Young Johnny "Impulseman" McCranky about to swoop down and spread more lies and confusion

(Thanks to Patriotboy and his superhero, Jesus' General)

by Ken

Logic says that after the insanity and inanity of the last couple of weeks, coupled with the vengeful turn that reality has taken against God's own POW, the McCranky presidential campaign -- the sleaziest, stupidest, vilest, most dishonest and incompetent national political campaign I can recall -- should be D-E-A-D, dead, with no support from anyone except the 30 percent or so of the American electorate that has chosen to live its life as screeching lunatics, beyond the reach of even the tiniest shred of decency or sense.

But a voice inside me keeps saying, "The lying sack of dung is going to get away with it and come out the crusading hero of the common man -- and his wholly owned chattel, the common woman."

Just look at this week. This man who has spent his entire political career fellating the rich and powerful, helping them turn the U.S. into a country of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich, crusading against all governmental interference with their right to do whatever they damned please, has the gall to try to pass himself off -- the very moment some of the generation's worth of accumulating fecal matter starts attacking the fan -- as an "outsider" who's going to clean up these decades' worth of D.C. and Wall Street filth.

When even the lickspittle Infotainment News Media decide that this is more lying than they can put up with and poke tentatively at his more preposterous claims, he puts on yet another mask, dons a cape, and transforms himself into a cartoon superhero, supposedly suspending his campaign (a total crock -- it was just a stunt to deflect some of the harsh glare of reality from that shellshocked campaign) so that he can swoop down on Washington, where he hasn't participated in any substantive business in a good year and a half, with the stated goal of hammering out a "solution."

Of course he not only has no clue as to what the problem is, he doesn't deign to trouble his precious head even with the effort to read the three pages that constitute the "plan" -- a plan that really isn't a plan, just an appropriation of absolute power -- being forced on the country by the Bush regime by means of its favorite strategy, mongering terror.

As an unintentional happy result, the Masked McCranky appears to have at least delayed if not actually prevented the ramming through of some lightly embellished version of this Paulson "plan." (Lipstick on a pig, anyone?) Of course he did it at the price of empowering a coterie of House loons under the care of Pack Leader John "I'm Tanning As Fast As I Can" Boehner, people who are even nuttier and farther out of touch with reality than the Wall Street stooges of the Bush regime.

As we're so often reminded, Young Johnny McCranky has admitted, in fleeting moments of the candor for which he is undeservedly famous, that he doesn't understand economics or the workings of the economy or our financial institutions. Which doesn't seem to faze him as he tries to ram himself down the country's throat as our next president.

The closer we look at the McCranky career, without even factoring in what are looking like ravaging diminutions in his capacities owing to age and health, the clearer it is that he really has no political beliefs beyond some kind of knee-jerk cowboy anti-Communism. I know we've just about run out of Communists. Well, tough! That just means we have to press any available supervillains into service -- bad guys on whom the Crankyman is prepared to unleash whatever weapons people are foolish enough to put at his demented disposal.

Beyond that, he appears to have no interests beyond his own personal aggrandizement, which in his deep-rooted mental confusion -- and again, I'm talking about a mental deformation that precedes by decades any effects of aging -- he appears to identify with his own loony impulses. This is, as our friend Cliff Schecter put it so aptly,The Real McCain, and I consider it shockingly irresponsible for any news reporter or commentator to speak publicly about Young Johnny without having digested Cliff's book.

Wild impulses erupt in Impulseman's brain, and he appears powerless to control them. Instead, he flaunts them. And tragically, there is a segment of the American electorate who seem to identify certain types of sociopaths as "one of us." These would be the people who fell in love at first demented rant with Sarah Palin, who announced herself in no uncertain terms as a bullying, vitriolilc, thuggish nincompoop, and as soon as there was time to check even superficially was revealed to be an ideologically deranged religious extremist and a compulsive liar. Just as with her partner in slime McCranky, it's hard to find a word she has said or a deed she has done that isn't based on outright fabrication or delusion.

And still that nagging voice inside me says, "With voters who demand to be lied to and abused, never bet against an abusive, lying scumbag."

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McCain's Campaign In Complete Disarray

Everything's falling apart for crazy old McCain this week: Palin has been an unmitigated catastrophe and now this whole "let's make believe we're suspending the campaign for the good of the country" schtik fell flat on it's face. Like we reported earlier, in the end he was forced to get his saggy old ass on a plane and head down to Mississippi to face the music. Craig Shirley, a Republican strategist who consulted for McCain during the primaries summed it up nicely:

"It just proves his campaign is governed by tactics and not ideology. In the end, he blinked and Obama did not. The 'steady hand in a storm' argument looks now to more favor Obama, not McCain.... My guess is that plasma units are rushing to the McCain campaign as we speak to replace the blood flowing there from the fights among the staff."

Hillary Clinton staffer Howard Wolfson was even less forgiving: "It means that people think he went back on his word. John McCain's presidential campaign has been in a death spiral since the Wall Street collapse and this summit gambit was an attempt to pull out of it. But it hasn't succeeded because McCain hasn't done anything to move the ball forward."

If there is one bright side to the suspension/cancellation debacle, it was that it got Sarah Palin off the front pages. Her dismal interview with Katie Couric has persuaded more and more independents and even Republicans not only that she is unfit for high office, but that McCain's judgment has been so impaired by uncontrollable ambition that he can't be trusted at the country's helm. His willingness to put America last has stunned many voters who were keeping an open mind to him. John Judis:

McCain boasts of his prescience on the surge, but the surge took place four years after a needless war that McCain helped start--a war that devastated a country, destabilized a region, undermined America's standing in the world (and I am not merely speaking of our moral standing), and killed and maimed thousands and thousands of people. It is the kind of an action for which your average politician or general (I am thinking of the Argentinean generals who masterminded the Falklands war) would be banished from public life. It should have been the end of McCain and Bush and all those people.

I never doubted, however, that McCain's motives in pushing America into war were honorable. Nor do I question his motives in pushing Georgia into NATO or in rattling the sabers against Iran. I question his judgment and wouldn't want him as president. But I do question his motives in inserting himself into the attempt by the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, and the Congressional leadership (excluding the usual suspects from the Republican House delegation) to fashion a plan for preventing a Wall Street crash. He has shown a willingness to put the success of his campaign ahead of the country's welfare. And it's not over a relatively minor matter-- like offshore drilling or creationism in schools.

I know there are economists, some of whom I respect, that think this financial crisis will blow over, that it's a crisis in the financial superstructure that won't ultimately affect the country's industrial base. I have never understood the post-1980 stock market very well, but I know something about economic history, and I know that at a certain point, a financial crisis can get out of hand and lead to a credit crunch that will depress the industrial base and set off a vicious cycle of unemployment. I also know a little bit about international economic history--enough at least to appreciate what would happen if nations began to abandon the dollar the way they abandoned the British pound eighty years ago. As Paul Krugman--who has been writing about the mortgage mess for years--has argued, it is not worth taking the chance that this crisis will blow over.
That's a long way of saying that it is simply unpatriotic-- it's an insult to flag, country, and all the things that McCain claims to hold dear-- for McCain to hold this financial crisis hostage to his political ambitions. McCain doesn't know a thing about finance and is no position to help work out an agreement. If we do suffer a serious bank run, or a run on the dollar, it can be laid directly at his feet. As I said to friends last night, if McCain had been president at this point, I would have wanted to impeach him.  

That brings me back to David Brooks' column. David thinks that beneath the surface of McCain the craven campaigner, that the man who nominated an ill-prepared  Sarah Palin as his possible successor and has lent his energies to blocking a financial bailout, there still sits a "real McCain" who could govern fairly and effectively as president. I doubt it. I really doubt it. Whether because of age or overreaching ambition, McCain has become the kind of man he earlier railed against. He has become the Bush of 2000 against whom he campaigned or the Senate and House Republicans whom he despised. His defeat is now imperative.

Still even McCain running around like a chicken without a head making an ass of himself couldn't completely bury the gravity of the Palin situation. I'm sure you know that the National Review is one of the most lockstep Republican propaganda sheets anywhere. Today Kathleen Parker looked at Palin and concluded what normal Americans have as well: She's out of her league. Parker urges her to resign from the ticket-- for the good of the country.

No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I’ve been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I’ve also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted.

Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there’s not much content there. Here’s but one example of many from her interview with Hannity: “Well, there is a danger in allowing some obsessive partisanship to get into the issue that we’re talking about today. And that’s something that John McCain, too, his track record, proving that he can work both sides of the aisle, he can surpass the partisanship that must be surpassed to deal with an issue like this.”

When Couric pointed to polls showing that the financial crisis had boosted Obama’s numbers, Palin blustered wordily: “I’m not looking at poll numbers. What I think Americans at the end of the day are going to be able to go back and look at track records and see who’s more apt to be talking about solutions and wishing for and hoping for solutions for some opportunity to change, and who’s actually done it?”

If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.

If Palin were a man, we’d all be guffawing, just as we do every time Joe Biden tickles the back of his throat with his toes. But because she’s a woman — and the first ever on a Republican presidential ticket — we are reluctant to say what is painfully true.

What to do?

McCain can’t repudiate his choice for running mate. He not only risks the wrath of the GOP’s unforgiving base, but he invites others to second-guess his executive decision-making ability. Barack Obama faces the same problem with Biden.

Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.

Do it for your country.

For the past week I've been hearing that the emergency tutors McCain has hired to teach Palin about international and domestic policy have said it is hopeless and that she's not capable of even faking it convincingly-- as we saw for the past two nights during the Katie Couric interview. A well-connected Republican friend in Washington told me that one of the lobbyists giving her a crash course in foreign policy said she makes George Bush look like a serious scholar and that even when she says she "gets" something, she's as likely to repeat it wrong within 5 minutes than repeat it correctly. At the same time, friend in Alaska tell me she did well in her gubernatorial debate against Tony Knowles two years ago. Folksy goes a long way. This morning Ed Schultz, who is working with different sources than I am, came to a similar conclusion about her inability to learn.

McCain Camp insiders say Palin "clueless"

Capitol Hill sources are telling me that senior McCain people are more than concerned about Palin. The campaign has held a mock debate and a mock press conference; both are being described as "disastrous." One senior McCain aide was quoted as saying, "What are we going to do?" The McCain people want to move this first debate to some later, undetermined date, possibly never. People on the inside are saying the Alaska Governor is "clueless."

Fortunately, for people who do put America first, there's this:

McCain Campaign: Much Ado About Nothing-- Manufactured Hysteria & Confusion Leads To McCain Backing Down And Agreeing To Debate

Yesterday was a confusing day for Americans. (Everyday is a confusing day for John McCain.) There was a bailout plan-- a version of the one the Bush Regime was asking for but with safeguards for working families inserted by Democrats-- and then there wasn't a bailout plan. McCain suspended his campaign-- but nothing changed except that he completely politicized the bailout process and wrecked any chance of coming up with a plan in the time frame Bush and Paulson said was essential. And as for "suspending" his campaign... no attack ads against Barack Obama have been pulled, none of the grisly array of lobbyists and special interests political hacks who serve as his surrogates have been pulled from the cable TV shows, none of his headquarters have stopped campaigning-- or were even aware that there's a "suspension"...

Although the irresponsible extremists on the far right ideological fringes of the Republican Party decided to let the whole system collapse rather than rescue it, McCain didn't make common ground with these people; he scurried to the head of their parade for maneuverability in making the entire process about himself-- or rather about his campaign. His is the most cynical manipulation of the political process ever witnessed. Although McCain is sure to sell the extremists and their misplaced ideals out at the first opportunity he has to make himself look like a hero, crazed fanatics like Eric Cantor (R-VA), Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who blamed Clinton for trying to help minorities for the problems, Mike Pence (R-IN) and Paul Ryan (R-WI) are willing to make themselves into props in his drama.

McCain's latest desperate ploy to turn around his cascading poll numbers has confirmed his status as a political cancer on the body politic. His cynical plan to dissassociate himself from Bush-- after 8 years of unabated rubber stamping of every single policy initiative that has caused the catastrophe-- is nothing short of breathtaking. His contempt for the intelligence of the American voter is unprecedented.

President Bush scrambled Friday to bring rebellious members of his own party behind a multibillion-dollar government bailout of the financial system amid bitter political recriminations from both Democrats and Republicans over collapsed negotiations.

Bush delivered a terse statement from outside the Oval Office of the White House, acknowledging that lawmakers have a right to express their doubts and work through disagreements, but declaring they must "rise to the occasion" and approve a plan to avert an economic meltdown.

...Earlier Friday, House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank declared that an agreement depends on House Republicans "dropping this revolt" against the Bush-requested plan.

The Massachusetts Democrat said leading Democrats on Capitol Hill were shocked by the level of divisiveness that surfaced at Thursday's extraordinary White House meeting, leaving six days of intensive efforts to agree on a bailout plan in tatters only hours after key congressional players of both parties had declared they were in accord on the outlines of a $700 billion bill.

Sounding very much like a Democrat-- which he used to be before he jumped the fence-- Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) said that "Basically, I believe the Paulson proposal is badly structured. It does nothing basically for the stressed mortgage payer. It does a lot for three or four or five banks." The Republicans in Congress seem to have decided to hold their own leadership's plan-- and perhaps the entire economy-- hostage to McCain's Gallup poll ratings-- and more tax cuts for the wealthy!

Even for a party whose president suffers dismal approval ratings, whose legislative wing lost control of Congress and whose presidential nominee trails in the polls, Thursday was a remarkably bad day for Republicans.

The White House summit meeting had been called for the purpose of sealing the deal that Bush has argued is indispensable to stabilizing frenzied markets and reassuring the nervous American public. But it quickly revealed that Bush's proposal had been suddenly sidetracked by fellow Republicans in the House, who refused to embrace a plan that appeared close to acceptance by the Senate and most House Democrats.

Paulson begged Democratic participants not to disclose how badly the meeting had gone, dropping to one knee in a teasing way to make his point according to witnesses.

And when Paulson hastily tried to revive talks in a nighttime meeting near the Senate chamber, the House's top Republican refused to send a negotiator.

"This is the president's own party," Frank said at the time. "I don't think a president has been repudiated so strongly by the congressional wing of his own party in a long time."

This morning Mike Huckabee seemed appalled by McCain's cynical ploys and he called his strategy of avoiding the debate a huge mistake. "Huckabee said Thursday in Mobile that the people need to hear both candidates. He said that's 'far better than heading to Washington' to huddle with senators. He said the candidates should level with the people about the financial crisis and say the 'heart of this is greed.' [Maybe he should discus that with Bachmann.] Huckabee said he still backs McCain's candidacy, but said the Arizona senator should not have put his campaign on hold to deal with the financial crisis on Wall Street. He said a president must be prepared to 'deal with the unexpected... You can't just say, "World stop for a moment. I'm going to cancel everything."'"

Nor is Huckabee the only person dismayed at how erratic, partisan and reckless McCain has been behaving. Scores of newspapers across the ideological spectrum-- and across the battleground states-- have echoed his sentiments and demanded that McCain stop politicizing the bailout and get his old white ass down to Mississippi today for the debate.

The Miami Herald, in an editorial entitled Let Debate Happen says that "McCain wants to postpone the presidential debate scheduled for Friday evening in Oxford, Miss., because, he says, the economic crisis facing the country must take precedence over politics. That's a bad call... This is no time for political stunts. By calling a halt to his campaign and flying to Washington, Sen. McCain hopes to project himself as an involved leader. President Bush invited both candidates to Thursday's White House meeting on the financial crisis. If this helps to come up with a solution, fine, but the best way for Sens. McCain and Obama to tell America how they would lead the country out of this mess is for them to engage in a nationally televised debate." The Roanoke Times has a similar perspective:

More than John McCain's poll numbers are slipping. So is his grip on leadership qualities Americans expect in their next president.

McCain must have thought he'd look maverickishly presidential when he announced he would suspend his campaign in order to rescue the economy. This, from the same man who last week was so detached from Wall Street's meltdown that he claimed "the fundamentals of the economy are sound." His actions this week confirm he remains out of touch.

McCain claims finally to get it. He said Wednesday he would cancel his ads and appearances, wriggle out of tonight's presidential debate, put his personal ambitions behind duty to country and rush to Washington, D.C. to ... what? ... save the economy?
On the way, though, he dropped by CBS to do damage control after his running mate bombed an interview with Katie Couric on his economic record, of all things, and to meet with a deep-pocket campaign supporter.

As events unfolded, McCain's arrival in D.C. was too late for him to emerge the savior. Hours before he and Barack Obama were to have a sit-down Thursday afternoon with the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., congressional leaders appeared to have struck a deal on the $700 billion bailout.
They did this by pulling an all-nighter that eclipsed a week of grueling hearings with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

McCain missed that boat. Americans need to know if he's capable of boarding any on time.

The debate that matters most today is the presidential debate scheduled for tonight. McCain can ill afford to snub Americans' interest in weighing the candidates.

The Raleigh News & Observer places the blame for the confusion directly on McCain's doorstep. "The Democratic nominee makes convincing points when he notes that presidents often must deal with multiple crises at the same time, and that the American people would benefit from hearing the next president-- either him or Republican John McCain-- discuss the nation's serious financial troubles. Thus, he says, let's proceed with the first of three scheduled debates, this one slated for 9 p.m. tonight at the University of Mississippi.

McCain, in seeking to postpone the debate, was not so convincing. It's more important, he said, for members of Congress to be in Washington working to craft a solution to the economic meltdown.

Both McCain and Obama indeed were in the capital yesterday, even attending a White House meeting at President Bush's invitation. The upshot of the day's negotiations seemed to be significant progress toward agreement on a bill bailing out financial institutions that hold bad debt, thus helping to free the economy from a potentially disastrous credit crunch. McCain may believe that he'd be at a disadvantage if he must face Obama in debate without more time to prepare, but his stated reason for a delay-- even if it might have made a certain amount of sense at first-- no longer holds up.

I was going to transcribe a dozen... from Ohio, Colorado, Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire... from every battleground state. But then the "suspended campaign" started placing ads (like the one above) claiming that McCain won the debate. Chris Cillizza and Michael Shear at the Washington Post broke the story about McCain backing down. "The news that John McCain will debate Barack Obama tonight in Mississippi is a concession by the Arizona Senator that his attempt to score a quick political victory on legislation to bail out the financial sector did not pan out as he had hoped." Cillizza calls McCain's decision to buckle under public pressure, as his gimmicky ploy went down in flames, an "attempt to make lemonade out of lemons."

And while the extremist ideologues in safe Republican seats are demanding lower taxes for the rich as the solution to... well to everything, garden variety Bush rubber stamps are mostly hiding under rocks and hoping this all blows over and no one notices them. Electorally vulnerable fake moderates in swing districts, like Charlie Dent (R-PA), Dave Reichert (R-WA), Chris Shays (R-CT), Randy Kuhl (R-NY), and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) are laying low, keeping quiet... and trembling-- passive and confused victims of a developing situation that has engulfed their political careers. Progressive Democratic candidate and small businesswoman Annette Taddeo blasted Ros-Lehtinen today for her "silence" and glaring lack of leadership, pointing out that she has received more than $800,000 in contributions from the financial services industry during her 19 years in Congress and that she "votes consistently with President Bush to reward Wall Street and remove accountability." Ros-Lehtinen is starting to run to radio stations in her district and read Taddeo's press releases about how to handle the crisis, claiming them as her own! It will be hilarious if Annette ever gets her to agree to debate-- which is very unlikely.

Harry Reid and John McCain came to Washington at the same time-- 1982. Reid's assessment of McCain is absolutely devastating. "I know John McCain. John McCain does not have the temperament to be president of the United States and he has proven that in the last week. He’s wrong on the war, wrong on the economy, he’s wrong on many issues that are so important to the American people. And he is erratic." And that isn't even the worst of it. He called his interference in the bailout process worse than a distraction. It was a photo-op and it derailed the process for the sake of his floundering campaign:

Palin Backs McCain-- Expect More Wars If They're Elected...Even When He Croaks

It's clear from Sarah Palin's answers that her remedial tutors have told her to pretty much ignore the questions and just spit out easily memorized, simple-minded, talking points-- and throw Ronald Reagan's name in whenever possible.

Katie Couric: I know the McCain campaign has called by a "surge" in Afghanistan. But that country is, as you know, dramatically different than Iraq. Why do you believe additional U.S. troops will solve the problems there?

Sarah Palin: Because we can't afford to lose in Afghanistan as we cannot afford to lose in Iraq either...

She had never met a foreign leader-- and perhaps never a foreigner-- until a few days ago when the Bush Regime rounded up a motley gaggle of puppets like Hamid Karzai, Saakashvilli (that Scheunemann crony from Georgia), and Benazir Bhutto's husband to make believe they were taking her seriously. Her claim to foreign policy expertise-- "our next door neighbors are foreign countries; they're in the state that I am the executive of" and then lied about trade missions and Russians violating Alaskan airspace-- may be recent but she now feels that she needs to spread democracy around the world. Yes, she feels like she has a mission: "to usher in democratic values and ideals around the world." I suppose she's just trying to be a team player regarding McCain's promise of more wars if he's elected in November.



The obvious followup that Katie missed asking when Palin claimed how her perspective on the rest of the world has been formed by books is "What books?" Inquiring minds need to know.

Someone should probably tell her, in case there's a next time, that Republicans don't consider Henry Kissinger naive. Even reliable GOP propaganda sites are embarrassed. "Couric's questions are straightforward and responsible. Palin is mediocre, again, regurgitating talking points mechanically, not thinking. Palin's just babbling. She makes George W. Bush sound like Cicero... I am well and truly embarrassed for her. I think she's a good woman who might well be a great governor of Alaska. But good grief, just watch this train wreck."

Conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan feels he has to reassure his readers that they're not dreaming: "She is the vice-presidential candidate of a national political party. Seriously."

What does all this say about John McCain's judgment? His cynicism? His patriotism? He's a scary and rotten little man. Even Republicans feel like they need to take a bath when he gets close these days.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said that "nobody mentioned McCain" during the several-hour-long meeting on the $700 billion market rescue plan, other than Frank and that his Republican colleagues "winced" when he did.

"He’s been irrelevant to the process. He remains to be," said Frank. "I was afraid that his dropping in here, like Andy Kaufman’s Mighty Mouse-- 'here I am to save the day'-- I thought that would slow things down. I didn’t see any sign of our Republican colleagues paying any attention to him whatsoever."

Franks went on. "Nobody mentioned him. The man’s irrelevant to the whole process. No Republican mentioned his name. I’m the only one who raised his name. They winced when I did," he said.

Does Your Member Of Congress Work For You?

... or for them?



We can't examine every single district for you and see which members of Congress have been taking inordinately large contributions from commercial banks and Wall Street and then voting against their constituents' interests and for the special interests of those who are financing their comfortable career trajectories. But you can look up your own congresscritter here at Open Secrets. As a courtesy, we decided to look at the members of the House with the most outrageously corrupt records-- the worst of the worst.

Keep in mind that the Securities and Investments Industry ($51,518,351), commercial banks ($18,193,119), mortgage bankers ($5,113,510), and other-- mostly crooked-- finance related industries ($21,806,405) have donated over $95 million dollars to federal politicians this year alone. Do you think they are just being generous or do you think they are buying influence? And do you think that influence is meant to benefit consumers and workers and regular families... or something else?

When you examine which members of Congress they have showered the most money on-- and combined that with which members of Congress have been the most willing to enable their corporate agendas you come up with the same names again and again and again-- a bipartisan array of this year's worst crooks in Congress, although each careful to stay within the bounds of the corrupt laws they helped design.

These numbers only include bribes "donations" from commercial banks, mortgage banks, the securities and investment industry, and finance and credit companies. The figures would be much higher if we included lobbyists ($24,960,004 so far this year) working for these industries and other related sectors. Each of these crooks could be Olbermann's Worst Person Of The Day just based on what they suck up from these industries and the favors they do for them in return. Here's a real Dirty Dozen of the worst villains in the House, 8 Republicans and 4 nominal Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party:

Rahm Emanuel (D-IL)- $729,200
Spencer Bauchus (R-AL)- $483,350
Melissa Bean (D-IL)- $383,278
Chris Shays (R-CT)- $362,720
John Boehner (R-OH)- $357,000
Eric Cantor (R-VA)- $318,650
Steny Hoyer (D-MD)- $286,099
Tim Mahoney (D-FL)- $270,590
Roy Blunt (R-MO)- $227,025
Dennis Moore (D-KS)- $170,751
Tom Feeney (R-FL)- $126,200
Patrick McHenry (R-NC) $61,550

There are also members of Congress who don't take bribes from these characters and who don't do their bidding but who, instead, stand up for working families. In fact, there is one, who is being targeted by right-wing front groups-- like Freedom's Watched-- because she is incorruptible and unwavering in her consistent stands for ordinary Americans who don't have the resources to buy influence. Her name... Carol Shea-Porter, the freshman representative from New Hampshire. We need dozens of members like Carol-- and we're workin' on it-- but meanwhile, please think about giving her a hand so we don't lose one of the new good and dependable members that we do have.

The Other Sarah: Florida Jews Shouldn't Screw Up America... Again

I'm on the last few pages of Rep. Robert Wexler's book, Fire-Breathing Liberal and towards the end he explains how the Bush campaign stole the 2000 election-- in his south Florida district. There were a lot of confused, elderly Jewish people who, accidentally saddled the country with eight years of George Bush. Perversely some of them seem to be determined to give us four more years of the same-- mostly in Wexler's district, although he himself was an early and committed Obama supporter. So is Sarah Silverman, who explains how you-- in New York, L.A., Chicago, Philly, Houston, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas-- can make sure it doesn't happen again: Please watch:


The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

In a time of crisis, aren't we lucky to have a president who makes his "rescue" plan "sound less important than a Liquid-Plumr commerical"?

“Following Sept. 11, our national leaders came together at a time of crisis. We must show that kind of patriotism now,” he said.

In deference to the current emergency, we will refrain from pointing out that when our national leaders came together following Sept. 11, the results were, all and all, worse than if they had stayed home.

-- Gail Collins, in her NYT column today, "Bring On the Rubber Chicken"

by Ken

Now that the handling of the financial mess has devolved into one of our periodic Federal Dog-and-Pony Shows, with a cast of the sorriest-ass dogs and ponies you'll see anywhere, I've been happy to leave the task of keeping up with it to Howie. It's been quite a spectacle, not least thanks to the Bush regime commandos threatening to drive us into disaster if we don't deliver the ransom money in exactly the way Commandant Paulson called for it)

As the dust settles, even though the Democratic congressional leadership, especially in the House, doesn't seem to get it (and this, I'm afraid, means you, Barney Frank), a consensus is forming among the smart people that the Paulson plan, which at three pages (with almost no detail except that famous Section 8 grant of uncheckable authority to the Hankster) is apparently too long for Young Johnny McCranky to have read before launching his one-geezer crusade to solve the problem) is pretty clear that this plan not only is unnecessary but in all likelihood isn't going to achieve its stated goals.

By "smart people," by the way, I mean the ones who saw this mess coming, not to be confused with the ones who didn't, and in their various ways helped ensure that it would happen, and yet are by some curious miracle the people designated to lead us out of it. At the same time, it seems clear that we're going to get some version of this monstrous boondoggle, a parting crony-to-cronies gift from the dying Bush regime.

At a moment like this, the special voice of Gail Collins can be the sweetest call to sanity -- of some queasy sort. If you haven't read her column today, you owe it to yourself. It's the closest you're going to get to comic relief.

Let me get you started:

How do you think the besieged financial community felt when the White House announced that George W. Bush was going to address the nation on television Wednesday night?

Hopeful? Terrified?

“We are in the midst of a serious financial crisis,” the president said, reading his lines flatly and stolidly, like an announcer delivering a long public-service message about new parking regulations for the holiday season. The whole event had a kind of unreality to it, since Bush has arrived at that unhappy point in American public life when a famous person begins to look like a celebrity impersonator.

There is, in a way, a kind of talent required to tell the nation that it’s teetering on the brink of disaster in a way that makes the viewers’ attention wander. Bush’s explanation about how the rescue bill would unclog the lines of credit made the whole thing sound less important than a Liquid-Plumr commercial.

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How Do You Fix A Problem If You Don't Recognize It Is A Problem? Ask James Inhofe

Courtesy of PhotoTune

Do you remember when someone asked Bush about the price of gas being up around $4 a gallon-- where it had been, at least in Los Angeles, for a couple months-- and he looked and sounded absolutely stunned? Many people understood at that moment that if Bush didn't even know that the price of gasoline, largely due to his own policies, was spiraling out of control, there was absolutely no chance he would be working on a solution. Many people just gave up on the Republicans at that moment and Bush's approval rating started their own downward spiral. Yes, overall, his approval rate is still 19% but notice that on his handling of the economy, only 17% of Americans approve of Bush-- and zero % of Americans think the economy is getting better. (I never saw a zero percent on any poll on anything anywhere... not even in a snakehandling "church" in Lynchburg.

Anyway, I hope you've already heard about James Inhofe, the single most reactionary extremist in the U.S. Senate. If you have heard of him it's probably because he has refused to recognize that Global Warming has anything to do with human activity and has used every ounce of strength he could muster to defeat alternative energy proposals in Congress-- at the same time taking more money from Big Oil, along with John Cornyn, than any non-presidential candidate in either house of Congress (over one million dollars; you think they've been buying influence?). But Global Warming isn't the only thing the stubborn Inhofe refuses to recognize-- that the economy is "not really a problem."

No one is that thick? Ahhh... so you don't really know James Inhofe. Listen to him on KTOK today:



Ironically, Inhofe's November opponent, state Senator Andrew Rice, is as excellent a candidate as Inhofe is abysmal. His campaign issued an instant rebuttal to Inhofe's bizarre denial of economic problems-- even Bush realizes there's a problem- this morning:

While other members of Oklahoma's congressional delegation are working to find solutions to our current economic crisis, Jim Inhofe has decided to pretend this problem he helped create doesn't exist. Inhofe said the following on KTOK talk radio Wednesday night: "I happened to be talking to the Oklahoma Community Bankers last Friday… and they agreed with me that this is not really a problem."

Inhofe's comments are startling and in stark contrast to what other prominent officials in his own party are saying. 
 
Senator Jim Inhofe: "This is not really a problem".
 
President George Bush: "Our entire economy is in danger".
 
Senator John McCain: "America this week faces an historic crisis in our financial system."
 
Senator Tom Coburn: "We've got to do what's right … and we should not leave here until this is solved."
 
Senator Andrew Rice, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, has called for a bipartisan solution to the economic crisis and said he would support a bailout plan that included the following three provisions to protect Oklahomans: meaningful oversight, protection for taxpayers and limits on executive compensation.
 
"I am outraged that Jim Inhofe, who helped get us in this mess in the first place, is now sitting on his hands," Rice said. 
 
"Unfortunately, Oklahomans will be sharing the cost of other people's mistakes on Wall Street because Jim Inhofe was asleep at the wheel while investment bankers operated without fear of oversight to put billions of dollars in assets at risk.
 
"Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress on Tuesday that no sector of the American economy will escape the effects of this financial crisis," Rice said. "Jim Inhofe has placed Oklahoma's economic good fortune at risk." 
 
Oklahomans wanting to understand how the current crisis began should start by looking at the record of Jim Inhofe, who has repeatedly fought oversight of Wall Street during his 22 years in Washington. 
 
Last week, the Washington Post reported that by eroding government oversight of Wall Street, the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 "helped pave the way for companies such as AIG and Lehman Brothers to become behemoths laden with bad loans and investments."  Those who have followed Jim Inhofe's 22 years in Washington will not be surprised that Inhofe voted for the bill, which eliminated regulations and controls on the financial industry that had been established after the Great Depression.
 
The 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. The Glass-Steagall Act had been crafted in response to over-speculation from banks in the 1920s that contributed to 1929's stock market crash.

The entire Republican Party-- with not one single exception-- supported the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the handiwork of John McCain's chief economic advisor, Phil Gramm, and the single most important factor in the current Wall Street meltdown. Would Andrew Rice have voted to have repealed Glass-Steagall? Not a chance. As a member of the state Senate, Andrew has helped the state of Oklahoma weather these tough economic times better than almost any other state, but the forecast is by no means rosy and by no means does it merit representation in Washington that doesn't even see there's a problem.

Andrew is participating in this week's Blue America competition. A vote for him-- or for any of the candidates-- will result in a $5,000 check to their campaign from Blue America. Please vote at the link; you can leverage $1 or $20 into $5,000 for your favorite candidate. (Maybe Andrew supporters can slip in there while Texas and Oregon are slugging it out!)


UPDATE: MAY I RECOMMEND THAT SENATOR INHOFE READ THIS QUOTE FROM THOMAS JEFFERSON?

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency [think mortgages], first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."

-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin

McCain's Cynicism Poisoning The National Soul

-by DeCay

I've always been afraid of cynicism creeping into my soul and poisoning my life. And I look for clues every day in my thoughts and actions and try to overcome the creep. When I saw John McCain's 
latest move, my heart dropped in the face of the level of cynicism he injected into our national experience. Does he truly have no idea of the importance of the debates to our process, no sense of how important-- whether he does well or not-- it is for us to see the candidates together, face to face?

No matter what our preferences or the dire conditions we are facing, we base our continuity as a nation on the process continuing unabated through the confusion; that process is where the possibility of real change lies. And as one of our two candidates for President, Mr McCain owes us the debates, Presidential and Vice-Presidential. It seems to me to be the most important democratic process outside of actually voting and serving.

No matter what the economic situation, or esp because of the economic situation, I want to see and hear the dialog that my future president engages in-- how he sounds, what his demeanor is under fire, what his ideas are in real-time, face-to-face, and not from Washington. In the open, unprotected, in a word-- leading.

Mr. McCain has decided to take that moment from me, my family, and from the public he would lead. He wants the power, but doesn't want the responsibility that goes with it. And, he wants to hide that fact under the cloak of stepping up to assume another "greater" responsibility. The irony of course is that he'd be stepping up to be responsible for solving a crisis he was instrumental in creating, and for which he will take no responsibility.

I'm trying to imagine what Barack Obama must be feeling. If I were Mr Obama, I'd be staring into a vacuum of Mr. Bush's irresponsibility and Mr. McCain's complicity in it all, and feeling the momentum of events rushing at me, and gathering my courage to slow it down and try to turn it around should I be given the responsibility to manage it.

Mr. McCain is not only trying to pull the rug out from under Mr. Obama, he's now trying to upend us all, in the cause of his and his handlers' winning. Mr McCain is not leading us. He is misleading us, and endangering our most fundamental process.


UPDATE: PUT MITT ROMNEY IN CHARGE????

Just before McCain ambled off to Washington-- and then finds and gets reacquainted with his office-- so he can parachute in on the ongoing negotiations and mark the bailout with his scent, he rushed over to NBC, presumably not part of his "suspended" campaign. We were appalled to hear him suggest that predatory capitalist, Mitt Romney-- one of the nation's worst outsourcers and a veritable one man machine of Americans job destruction-- be given some role in overseeing the $700 billion. But even worse, was McCain's admission that he hadn't even read the three page bill he's jumping up and down over! Watch:

Oregon Political Heroes Want You To Vote For Jeff Merkley In The Blue America Contest

Two of the most beloved political figures in Oregon, former Governor Barbara Roberts and progressive icon Earl Blumenauer each wrote to Blue America this week asking us to pass along their messages of support for Jeff Merkley in our Blue America Pick-A-Senator Competition, in which you vote and we donate $5,000 to the winner. Jeff had been leading all week until yesterday when an incredible number of Texans came flooding onto the contest page and donated over $10,000 to Rick Noriega's campaign. Jeff had some great news today from Survey USA which shows him beating Gordon Smith by 2 points and he is still in the #2 slot in our competition. He can use all the help he can get and Rep. Blumenauer wants to make sure he gets some:

"I'm Congressman Earl Blumenauer from Oregon and I wanted to take a moment to tell you about our race for U.S. Senate. Jeff Merkley might not be as funny as Al Franken or a member of the Udall family, but he's been a real progressive leader in Oregon and has the record to show he will be in the U.S. Senate. I've known Jeff for over two decades and watching him in the subsequent years, I know what kind of leader he will be. As Oregon's Speaker of the House, Jeff led one of the most effective, efficient and progressive legislative sessions in Oregon's history. He will continue the fight to end the war, pass universal health care and combat climate change in the U.S. Senate. Even more pressing is that Jeff has a real chance to defeat a Senator who supports the same people and policies that have gotten our country so far off course. Gordon Smith has done everything he can to hide and confuse the public about his record and recently has taken part in one of the most despicable attack ads I have ever seen in my 35 years in public service. Please help us put an end to failed policies and the politics of obfuscation and help send Jeff Merkley, a real progressive, to the U.S. Senate by casting your vote today!”

Governor Roberts:

Hello Blue America! My name is Barbara Roberts and I’m the former Governor of the great state of Oregon. I’m here today to ask you to join me and show your support for Oregon Senate candidate Jeff Merkley. House Speaker Jeff Merkley has always fought for Oregon families and has never backed down to the powerful special interests. I’ve seen him take on the drug companies and the insurance companies and win. That’s the kind of leader he’s been in Oregon and that’s the kind of leader he’ll be in Washington. Here in Oregon, we’ve been lucky to have a great Senator in Ron Wyden, but we have a problem. That problem is Republican Gordon Smith! Gordon Smith has supported every failed, disastrous policy of the Bush Administration. Smith supports the Iraq War, tax breaks for big oil, warrantless wiretapping, and voted to confirm extreme rightwing judges. It’s time for Bush rubberstamp Republican Gordon Smith to be sent packing and you can help make that happen by casting your vote for Jeff Merkley today!

Here's Jeff explaining the Bush Regime's bailout/corporate giveaway to Oregon voters:



UPDATE FROM OREGON REP. CHIP SHIELDS

Rep. Chip Shields is one of the most tech-savvy legislators anywhere in America. He happens to be the Assistant Majority Leader of the Oregon House, representing northern Portland. We asked Chip to give us his assessment of Jeff Merkley since they've worked together in Salem and because we knew that Chip was excited about the Blue America Senate contest. He starts with some advice for Gordon Smith. Here's his guest post:

Sen. Smith, if you want to know how to get Oregon and the U.S. back on solid ground, listen to people like Bill Black, not to the financial lobbyists. Good legislators find a pool of honest brokers well outside the world of lobbyists to advise them on complex legislative issues critical to the public interest like banking and finance.

One of those on my experts list was William K. Black who fought for the public interest as Director of Litigation for the Federal Home Loan Bank Board during the S & L crisis and Keating Five scandals of the 1980s.

So what does Bill say about the shape we're intoday? Here’s a clip from what he wrote in December of last year for Dollars and Sense.

"Over two decades of intense merger and acquisition activity has left a far smaller number of banks, with assets far more concentrated in the largest ones… At the same time, nonbank businesses that lend, save, and invest money have proliferated, as have the products they sell: a vast array of new kinds of loans and exotic savings and investment vehicles. And the lines have blurred between all of the different players in the industry-- between banks and thrifts (e.g., savings and loans), between commercial banks and investment banks.
 
These changes were made possible by the deregulation of the industry. Bit by bit, beginning in the 1970s, the banking regulations put into place in the wake of the Great Depression were repealed, culminating in the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, which removed the remaining legal barriers to combining commercial banking, investment banking, and insurance under one corporate roof."

It’s no surprise that Sen. Smith voted for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. He voted for it when it passed through the Senate when every senate Democrat voted against it. He voted for it a second time after it went to conference committee.

Sen. Smith justifies his vote by saying that others too thought it was a good idea, which sounds a lot like his justification for voting for war in Iraq. Sen. Smith wants to play the blame game and won’t even take responsibility for his own mistakes. Sen. Smith’s support for Gramm-Leach-Bliley showed poor judgment and his inability to take responsibility for his bad votes show a serious lack of leadership. 

Smith owes voters a real explanation, but whatever his reasons, the fact is we need to elect Jeff Merkley to get us out of the mess that Sen. Smith helped create.

Would Merkley have voted for Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. No way.

I served as one of Merkley’s lieutenants when he took the Oregon House in a fundamentally new direction when we regained a Democratic majority in 2006-- a direction based on the public interest. In previous jobs, Jeff was a Director of Habitat for Humanity and a housing manager for the nonprofit Human Solutions. As the new House Speaker, I saw that he understood housing finance and he knew how hard-working people were being conned by bad actors in the mortgage industry, bad actors in the banking industry and bad actors in the various shadow banking systems that made up the rest of the United Financial Lobby (they actually call themselves that-- the United Financial Lobby-- and they have a solidarity about them that those of us in the labor movement could only hope for).

It's not that the people that work at these places are bad people. The institutional framework provided by Sen. Smith and others was just all wrong and provided some incredibly perverse and potentially criminal incentives.

And Jeff knows bullshit when he sees it. Can smell it a mile away.

And I can tell you this: the United Financial Lobby hates Merkley. Hates him. Merkley drove predatory pay-day lenders out of Oregon. He beat the odds to pass a mortgage-lending reform bill through the House in the 2008 supplemental session that unfortunately died in the senate. But Merkley clearly has a history for standing up for everyday people. I've seen it firsthand.

There is no better time than NOW to get rid of Republican Gordon Smith and elect a true progressive to the U.S. Senate. That’s why I’m here today asking the Blue America community to give to just one dollar and cast your vote for Jeff Merkley.

Letterman: Someone's Putting Something Into McCain's Metamucil

Last night never very trustworthy Insider Democrats were buying into Bush's trap for them, that either they go along with his hideous and unsupportable bailout package-- panned by scores of economists from every part of the country (not to mention Peter Orszag, head of the Congressional Budget Office who agrees that the "bailout" could well acerbate the economic problems of the country) or just let the country fall into a Depression. First the letter economists sent to Speaker Pelosi yesterday:

As economists, we want to express to Congress our great concern for the plan proposed by Treasury Secretary Paulson to deal with the financial crisis. We are well aware of the difficulty of the current financial situation and we agree with the need for bold action to ensure that the financial system continues to function. We see three fatal pitfalls in the currently proposed plan:
 
1) Its fairness. The plan is a subsidy to investors at taxpayers’ expense. Investors who took risks to earn profits must also bear the losses. Not every business failure carries systemic risk. The government can ensure a well-functioning financial industry, able to make new loans to creditworthy borrowers, without bailing out particular investors and institutions whose choices proved unwise.
 
2) Its ambiguity. Neither the mission of the new agency nor its oversight are clear. If  taxpayers are to buy illiquid and opaque assets from troubled sellers, the terms, occasions, and methods of such purchases must be crystal clear ahead of time and carefully monitored afterwards.
 
3) Its long-term effects.  If the plan is enacted, its effects will be with us for a generation. For all their recent troubles, America's dynamic and innovative private capital markets have brought the nation unparalleled prosperity. Fundamentally weakening those markets in order to calm short-run disruptions is desperately short-sighted.
 
For these reasons we ask Congress not to rush, to hold appropriate hearings, and to carefully consider the right course of action, and to wisely determine the future of the financial industry and the U.S. economy for years to come.

So why can't Democratic leaders see this clearly? What the hell is wrong with Barney Frank? (We already know what's wrong with Steny Hoyer and Rahm Emanuel and it's called corruption.) They seem determined to keep the Democrats from sweeping the November congressional elections-- and they will succeed at doing just that. Yesterday's CongressDaily pointed out that Hoyer was playing down the damage he is doing to grassroots Democrats by playing hi corrupt Insider game, absolutely wrecking the Democratic brand that paints them as the party of working families. "He argued that while voters and members are angered by the bailout concept, voters will understand that Democrats are responding to the bad policies of the Bush administration, and that the government put the bailout in play. 'I think it is a problem for Republicans,' said Hoyer. 'I don't think it is a problem for us. To allow this to go down for political purposes would be irresponsible.' Hoyer's Big Business and K Street allies have "ramped up lobbying efforts for quick passage of a plan, concerned that failure to act is affecting all sectors of the economy and preventing businesses from having enough liquidity to get loans. The Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce [two far right bastions which donate millions of dollars to defeating Democrats but who have no problem with Blue Dogs and Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party like Hoyer and Emanuel] both weighed in for immediate passage. 'Make no mistake: Americans will not be tolerant of inaction that leads to calamity,' wrote Bruce Josten, executive vice president for government affairs at the Chamber. The primary K Street focus is to kill a provision that would have banks that take federal aid accept a major change in bankruptcy law by allowing judges to reduce the principal of the mortgage to a home's current market value. The language is currently in the working draft, but it faces strong GOP opposition and some resistance from Blue Dogs."

What the Democratic leaders are accepting is Bush's hysteria about "my way or the highway" and that if they don't vote for his plan-- even a version of his plan with a few meaningless sops to Democrats-- there is no other way to combat the problem created by Big Business and the political hacks who have enabled them. While Hoyer and his posse are kissing up to the mortal enemies of working families, wily Republicans are making it clear that the don't support this bill which is so reviled by most Americans. Below is a letter that Mike Huckabee sent out to the Republican base yesterday. Notice how he takes a very different approach from the craven Hoyer. The Republicans want to ride this issue to congressional victories. Hoyer will cause the defeat of dozens of Democratic candidates in November. He starts (and ends) with a request for contributions, of course. And then goes to the heart of the matter in a tone that sounds more like what Democrats should be saying-- and what all the Blue America candidates are saying-- than the kind of stance taken by Hoyer and Frank:

Frankly, I’m disappointed and disgusted with my own Republican party as I watch them attempt to strong-arm a bailout of some of America’s biggest corporations by asking the taxpayers to suck up the staggering results of the hubris, greed, and arrogance of those who sought to make a quick buck by throwing the dice. They lost, but want the rest of us to cover their bets so they won’t be effected in their lavish lifestyles as they figure out how to spend their tens of millions and in some cases, hundreds of millions in bonuses and compensation which was their reward for not only sinking their companies, but basically doing the same to the entire American economy.

It’s especially disconcerting to see the very people who pilloried me during the Presidential campaign for being a “populist” and not “understanding Wall Street” to now line up like thirsty dogs at the Washington, D. C. water dish, otherwise known as Congress, and plead for help. I thought these guys were the smartest people in America! I thought that taxpayers like you and I were similar to the people at the U. N. who have no translator speaking into their headset-- that we just needed to trust those that I called the power bunch in the “Wall Street to Washington axis of power.”

The idea of a government bailout in which we’d entrust $700 billion to one man without Congressional oversight or accountability is absurd. My party or not, that is insanity and I believe unconstitutional.

Will there be far-reaching consequences without some intervention? Probably, but we honestly don’t know since we’ve really never seen this level of greed and stupidity all rolled into one massive move. But may I suggest that letting “Uncle Sugar” step in and bail out the billionaires who made the mess will be far worse and will start a long line of companies and individuals who will demand the same of the government-- which last time I checked means that they will be demanding it out of YOU and ME. This is not money that Congress is risking from THEIR pockets or future, but ours. Many if not most of us have already experienced lost value on our homes, retirement accounts, and pensions. Now they’d like for us to assume some further risks so they won’t have to.

What happened to the “free market” idea? Is that only our view when we WIN and when we LOSE, we ask the government to come in and take away the pain? 

If you are a small business owner, is this the way it works at your place? When you have a bad month, a bad year, or face having to close, can you go up to Congress and get them to write YOU a fat check to take away your risk?

Some of what contributed to this disaster is too much government in the form of Sarbanes/Oxley. Some is due to the tax structure that created the hunger for companies to “game” the system. Some is the common sense that was ignored like loaning money to people who can’t pay it back.

Wall Street has become Las Vegas east, but at least in Vegas, people KNOW they are gambling and they don’t expect the government to cover their losses at the tables. In Wall Street, they do. And the American taxpayer burdens the responsibility.

He then offers the exact kind of right-wing ideological nostrums that got us into trouble to begin with although he shrewdly couches it in populist terms and throws in some genuinely popular ideas like "Demand that the executives who steered their ships into the ground be forced to pay back the losses of their companies. Of course, they can’t, so let them work and give back to the government and they can live like the people they put on the streets or kept there. It makes no sense to put them in jail-- that’s just more they will cost you and me. I’d rather them go out and earn money-- just not get to keep so much of it this time. I’m not talking about limiting CEO salaries-- just those of the people who now are up in Washington begging for help because they ruined their companies.

"Attempts by Democrats and Republicans to blame each other is nonsense. They are both guilty and ought to own up and admit it. They all lived off big campaign contributions and the swill of the lobbyists who strong armed them into permission to steal. Enough of blame. Fix it! This would be a start. If we don’t hold these guys responsible, we are all finished."

Harsh words from the Huckster. But he is far from the only Republican fed up with the Republican Establishment. Matt Simmons, a big Bush booster and oil multimillionaire and energy guru not only endorsed Obama, he absolutely trashed McCain in no uncertain terms.

"John McCain is energy illiterate. He's just witless about this stuff. As a lifelong Republican, I'm supporting Obama. McCain says, 'Oh, we're going to wean ourselves off foreign oil in four years and build 45 nuclear plants by 2030.' He doesn't have a clue."

He's gone from being a huge Republican donor-- contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars to reactionaries like John Thune, David Diapers Vitter, John Ensign, George Macacawitz Allen, Pete Sessions, Susan Collins, John Cornyn, John Sununu, Charlie Dent, Anne Northup, Norm Coleman, Don Young, Mike McCaul, Dave Reichert... the whole rogues gallery that engineered the energy crisis-- to doling out money this year to progressives like Obama, Mike Skelly and Chellie Pingree.


UPDATE: FOR THE SAKE OF THE NATION, SENATORS URGE McCAIN TO KEEP PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS OUT OF THE NEGOTIATIONS

Dodd and Schumer have been hammering out a proposal with the Bush Regime and with senators from both parties who understand economics. The last thing they need is some grandstanding dummy jumping into the negotiations and making them all about himself. They issued a joint statement this morning:

"We are pleased to report we are making bipartisan progress on a rescue proposal for our financial markets. During these discussions, we have received significant cooperation and constructive feedback from the other side of the aisle-- with one notable exception. Apart from his unproductive criticisms made from afar, we have heard nothing from Senator McCain on these critical issues. Now is certainly not the time for him to inject presidential politics into these delicate discussions."

Is McCain capable of torpedoing the whole process for his own ambitions? If you doubt it, you haven't been following the career of John "Let's Put America Last" McCain. Instead of having McCain come huffing and puffing into the negotiations trying to put his acrid scent on whatever it turns out to be, senators should consider inviting an actual financial expert like ex-candidate Jim Neal (D-NC) to help them get a grasp on the alternatives to what Bush is offering (my way or Depression).

McCain's Latest Stunt Backfires... Badly

I recall McCain reaping a harvest of media coverage when he wormed out of having to appear on that first deadly day of the GOP Hate Fest in St. Paul and instead claimed to be saving New Orleans from Hurricane Gustav. His entirely passive attitude towards the far more deadly and destructive Hurricane Ike showed, once again what a shameless manipulator of the media he is. But today's stunt beats everything.

Not having shown up at the Senate since early April-- and having none virtually no Senate work for over a year-- McCain, viewed his cascading poll numbers this morning and started running around screeching that the sky is falling. The Palin stunt had run its course and he needed some new shiny object. And that was... canceling the presidential debate scheduled for Friday. Clearly facing Barack Obama, someone capable of thinking on his feet and not talking in memorized soundbytes was something he was looking forward to as much as he was looking forward to appearing with George Bush (approval rating 19%) in St, Paul. His sudden concern for New Orleans weather saved him from Bush and he hoped that his just as sudden concern for Senate business would save him from a debate he never wanted to have and, with good cause, fears greatly.

Voters were stunned-- and sickened by another cheap McCain campaign ploy. When asked in an MSNBC poll whether they agreed with McCain that the debate should be postponed, 70.7% strongly disagreed (with another 9.2% agreeing). The number who agreed with McCain was identical to George Bush's current approval rating (exactly 19%).


As you can see on the CNN.com Quick Vote, 71% of voters think McCain's announcement is "a political gimmick" and 24% see it as an actual effort to help the economy. Newt Gingrich sees it as an opportunity for Republican incumbents to worm out of debates and is urging congressional candidates to follow McCain's lead, something many have been doing anyway, trying their best to avoid answering embarrassing questions about rubber stamp voting records and huge "donations" from Big Oil and Big Banks followed by votes that clearly helped Big Oil and Big Banks and hurt average Americans-- and average American voters.

Virginia wingnut Virgil Goode was, predictably, the first to jump in, already announcing he'd be ducking a debate at Hampden-Sydney College with a far sharper and more knowledgeable opponent, Tom Perriello. Tom's campaign spokesperson pointed out this evening that "Goode has participated in the Hampden-Sydney debate in every past election cycle. Why is he afraid to debate all of a sudden? He said yesterday that he's letting the lobbyists work on the bailout bill, so he certainly can't be 'suspending' his campaign to confront that issue. He has no credible excuse for ducking this debate. His constituents-- especially those in Farmville who do not have access to the Roanoke-Lynchburg and Charlottesville news markets-- deserve the opportunity to see both candidates debate the issues so they can make an informed choice in November. Mr. Goode does not own this seat; he has to earn it."

Illinois Senator Dick Durbin saw right through the cynical move by McCain and the Republican hacks who are following his lead-- watch Randy Kuhl (R-NY) be the next to announce no debates. "Last week," pointed out Durbin, "Senator John McCain declared the fundamentals of our economy 'strong.' Today he says the situation is so dire he needs to suspend his campaign and delay a scheduled Presidential debate so he can devote his full attention to the problem. With polls showing his campaign is at its weakest, Senator McCain's decision may have less to do with the drop in the Dow Jones average and more to do with a decline in the Gallup poll. It's not economic leadership that Senator McCain would bring to these negotiations; it's presidential politics-- which is the last thing we need if we really want to solve the serious problems our nation faces."
 
Even conservative Republican commentator George Will noted what a phony McCain is on the economic crisis. "Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either. It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?"

Will has a good point. Americans want someone with a steady hand, who keeps his cool in a crisis, not someone who runs around screaming "the sky is falling" when it suits his own narrow interest. Obama is looking at McCain as though he were insane and rebuffed his efforts to duck the debate. "This ," he said, "is exactly the time when people need to hear from the candidates... Part of the president’s job is to deal with more than one thing at once. In my mind it’s more important than ever.” Instant polling shows that only 10% of Americans agree with McCain. Even Fox News shows McCain's polling numbers back in the 30's, where he was before the Palin stunt. (On a related note, the only newspaper to still take Sarah Palin seriously, the National Enquirer dared McCain to follow through with his threat to sue them by revealing the name of her secret lover (Brad Hanson, unfortunately, not of The Hansons).

Did McCain's Keating Five Corruption And Savings And Loan Bailout Lead Directly To His Involvement In The Current Wall Street Meltdown?

With McCain's voting record and his relentless activities on behalf of ideology-driven deregulation, as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, coming into focus because of the Wall Street meltdown and his confused and confusing answers about his culpability, it is probably a good time to go back into McCain's sordid history of corruption and pull back the carefully tacked up curtains of the Keating Five Scandal.

As we mentioned yesterday, the only lessons McCain seems to have learned from a near-death experience with that first scandal, was covering his tracks more carefully and using a media hype machine to paint himself as a "reformer" instead of as the crooked operator he's always been.
He might be able to hide his severe illness-- illness that is likely to make an unprepared and supremely unqualified lunatic fringe kook from Alaska president if McCain wins in November-- under thousands and thousands of dollars in makeup sessions, but he can't hide his voting record and he can't hide the record of lobbyist payments his crooked campaign manager, Rick Davis, has sucked up from every bad actor in the Wall Street meltdown.

Back to the Keating Five Scandal that McCain learned so little from. He was the only real crook in the whole scandal and although the Senate Ethics Committee let him off with an "admonition," the federal regulators, have testified that McCain was the worst crook of the whole lot and the only senator whose actions should have landed him in prison. Had McCain been tried, convicted and imprisoned back then, there's a good chance that admirers and followers of his, like Bob Ney, Duke Cunningham, Tom DeLay, Rick Renzi, John Doolittle, Virgil Goode, and dozens of other crooked Republicans might now have gone down that same road. Please take a look at the video that exposes McCain's involvement:

How Many Seats Do The Democrats Stand To Pick Up In November?

We've written before about the 1936 congressional election. The Depression was raging, Democrats had been steadily building a majority since 1932, and Roosevelt was re-elected in a landslide. The Democrats only gained 5 seats (net) in the Senate (although Nebraska Republican George Norris quit the GOP and became an independent). But that left the Republicans with only 16 Senate seats. Over in the House the Democrats had a net gain of 12 seats, upping their total to 334 (76.7%), while the Party of Greed and Selfishness, rightly blamed for the Great Depressed, lost another 15 seats-- aside from the 12 that went to Dems, one to a Progressive Party candidate in California and two to the Farmer-Labor Party-- leaving them with a total of 88 members of the House (20.2%).

2008 isn't 1936... at least not yet. But today CNN reports that congressional polling numbers are showing strong Democratic gains in the offing. "Generic Democrats" are stomping "generic Republicans" again. The fact that all Republicans are generic and that the Democratic cause is furthered by incredible candidates who are anything but generic-- progressive leaders like Darcy Burner, Vic Wulsin, Alan Grayson and Dennis Shulman on the House side and Jeff Merkley, Tom Udall, and Andrew Rice on the Senate side-- greatly strengthens the Democrats' chances to make significant gains.

So which party has the upper hand in the fight for Capitol Hill?

The answer, according to a new national poll, appears to be the Democrats. In a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Tuesday, 56 percent of those questioned are backing the Democratic candidate for Congress, while 42 percent support the Republicans.

That's a change from immediately after the GOP convention, when the Democrats had only a 3-point lead over the Republicans, 49 percent to 46 percent.

According to this morning's Diageo/Hotline poll, Obama's numbers have continued to climb as voters focus on the economy. Can the Democrats, generically speaking, blow this? Of course they can; they're Democrats. They could get behind the Bush Regime bailout/giveaway for example. They would do them in.

Fortunately, many non-generic Democrats and Democratic candidates will not be following Hoyer down that particular corporate pathway to Hell. Democratic challengers have gas prices, health care, the mortgage crisis, Iraq, unemployment, inflation, the Wall Street meltdown, and corruption all breaking in their favor. Watch Steny Hoyer and Rahm Emanuel try to balance that out with boneheaded, self-serving fealty to corporate donors.

Reactions from Blue America candidates to the bailout have been strong and uniformly mindful of the best interests of working families, not of Wall Street executives. Today Vic Wulsin, the progressive Democrat running against clueless corporate shill Mean Jean Schmidt in southern Ohio, added her voice to the rising chorus of skeptics and reformers. She's not supporting the $700 billion boondoggle that way it currently stands. Her line in the sand is that it must contain adequate congressional oversight of the Treasury Department and that it must place restrictions executive compensation for companies who will benefit from the plan. She wants Congress to make sure that everyday Americans facing home foreclosure are given assistance long before anyone starts talking about golden parachutes.

“The politicians in Washington don’t seem to play the same rules we live by and now they are asking American taxpayers to pay for the mistakes of corporate executives on Wall Street. Making a smart investment to keep our nation’s financial sector up and running is the right thing to do, but it is not our responsibility to cover for the excesses and mismanagement of CEO’s... While Congress and the current administration have been asleep at the switch, Southern Ohio is facing record home foreclosure rates. Politicians in Washington put themselves first, put money first and put special interests first, but I will not support writing a $700 billion check to Wall Street without making sure government is accountable to the people in my district first.”

Darcy Burner is running against Washington state's most consistent corporate shill, Dave Reichert, who has taken money from every corporate interest-- from Big Oil to Big Banks-- and then voted for their interests instead of for the interests of his own constituents. He's infamous as one of Bush's worst rubber stamps in Congress. Today, Darcy explained, in great detail, to voters in suburban Seattle why she doesn't support the Wall Street bailout the way it stands now and what she would do instead.

Darcy and supporters (non-fat cats)

“Over the past decade, with the removal of protections that had been in place since the Great Depression, we abandoned all checks on bad behavior by banks. As a result, we face a financial crisis of historic magnitude. It should never have come to this.

“The Bush administration and its Republican allies enabled, encouraged and ignored the bad behavior on Wall Street that created this mess. Now they say that that without the largest taxpayer-funded bailout in human history -- at a cost of more than $2,000 for every man, woman, and child in the United States -- our economy is at risk of collapse.

“If we are going to bail out Wall Street to the tune of $700 billion or more, then taxpayers must get significant reforms and real protections in return. Congress needs to take the time to get this right. They should move forward in a calm and orderly way, and not be stampeded into endorsing a bad deal. First and foremost, we must not just hand over a blank check to an administration and a financial sector that has failed us. Again: no blank check.

“Instead, let's put in place reforms with real teeth. Any bailout plan must include provisions that address the following points:

1) We must protect taxpayers.

a. The financial institutions that made the poor decisions that created this mess should bear as much of the cost of their mistakes as possible, and taxpayers should be given a stake in the bailed out firms in proportion to the size of the bailout they receive. When these companies return to profitability, taxpayers must be able to recoup some or all of their investment.

b. The financial institutions must be held accountable for accurately representing the quality of the assets they’re unloading so that they cannot game the system. Mechanisms could easily be put into place to ensure that companies and their executives who misrepresent the quality of the assets they sell to the government are held accountable if those assets turn out to be of significantly inferior quality.

c. People who chose irresponsible risk should have prime responsibility for paying for the consequences of that risk. That means, for instance, that creditors of the financial institutions who made loans bearing especially high rates of return in the days leading up to the crisis should not necessarily recover all of their money at taxpayer expense.

2) We must not reward bad behavior. Any firm that takes advantage of the bailout must accept restrictions on out of control CEO pay. The taxpayers should not be on the hook for golden parachutes for failed executives – they have a right to know that the money they are handing over will not disappear into the pockets of the same people who created this mess in the first place.

3) We must help communities, and work to protect the value of the assets taxpayers are acquiring. If Wall Street deserves generous government assistance, then Main Street deserves a little help too. If we are acquiring sub-prime mortgages, the homes that provide the collateral for those loans retain more value if they are occupied than if they are abandoned. In addition, the blight of homes abandoned because of unrealistic mortgages drags down not only the homeowners in question, but whole neighborhoods and communities. Homeowners with delinquent mortgages should be offered renegotiated mortgages that will give them greater opportunity to stay in their homes.

4) We need accountability. Congress must have explicit oversight of bailout efforts. No unelected member of the administration should have sole authority over so much of the taxpayer’s money.

“If Congress implements these sorts of taxpayer protections, this bailout could end up having a positive effect on our economy in the longer term as transparency and accountability are restored and sensible regulation puts our economy back on a sustainable track. But let’s be clear: this is a sad moment for America. Our economy is likely to sink sharply lower now for a time. As a result, thousands of Americans will lose their jobs through no fault of their own. Trillions in wealth held by ordinary people in the form of home value and investment value will be erased. Let's make sure we take the appropriate actions now so this never happens again.

“And finally, while this crisis is not a time for excessive partisanship, I would point out that Congressman Reichert and I have a basic philosophical difference on these issues. Time and again, Congressman Reichert has supported the economic policies of the Bush administration that have put us in this mess. For instance, he voted for the misconceived 2005 Bush Bankruptcy Bill that, as BusinessWeek pointed out last year, is a major factor in driving up the foreclosure rate and has made the housing slump worse, thus contributing to our current difficulties.

"We need change, not more of the same. We need a government that stops focusing on showering favors on the wealthy and powerful corporations, and instead does its job by protecting the interests of the people of this country. I will be that sort of representative.”

Like I said, neither Vic Wulsin nor Darcy Burner is a generic Democrat. None of the candidates endorsed by Blue America are, and if you'd like to help make sure Vic, Darcy, and other Democrats like them get into Congress in November, our Blue America ActBlue page makes it very easy to do that.

Democrats Pass Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights Act-- While Every Single Republican Joins In Boehner's Efforts To Kill It With Parliamentarty Tricks

Republicans Want You To Grab For The Cheese

Even in the middle of what is turning out to be the worst financial crisis since anyone younger than John McCain was born, Republicans are still hell-bent on screwing over working families and serving their corporate masters. Yesterday the House overwhelmingly passed H R 5244, the Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights Act of 2008, 312 to 112. Only one reactionary Democrat, a Blue Dog of course, Herseth Sandlin, voted with the Republican leadership. Meanwhile 84 Republicans fled in the other direction, joining the Democrats to pass a bill meant to protect consumers from predatory credit card companies.

If, by some miracle, McConnell and McCain can be overcome when they seek to use the filibuster to kill the bill in the Senate, and if, by another miracle, Bush signs it, the new legislation will protect consumers from unsuspecting interest rate hikes on credit cards. The opposition was led on behalf of the banks and credit card crooks by their pet hack, David Dreier (R-CA). Dreier has taken massive legalized bribes disguised as "contributions" -- $385,850 from commercial banks, $115,733 from Savings and Loans, $135,543 from assorted crooked lobbyists and another $156,299 from other financial corporations. The bill was proposed by House Financial Services Financial Institutions Subcommittee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY). The bill calls for major new regulations on credit card issuers that the banking lobby, with Dreier's help, has been beating back for years. Under the new law banks will have 45 days to notify consumers of any interest rate hikes and would ban "universal default," a practice in which a consumer's interest rate on one card increases if he or she misses a payment on another card or the credit score drops. It also ends "double-cycle billing," in which consumers are charged interest for the entire amount charged during the billing cycle unless the bill was paid in full.

Without shame, even in the current economic situation, Republicans are howling on behalf of their corporate paymasters. Far right extremist and one of the pillars of the GOP's Greed and Selfishness wing, John Campbell (R-CA) who is a member of the Financial Services Committee, insisted that the credit crisis means the bill is "the opposite of what we need right now."

The House Republican leadership, well aware that many of it's members are facing defeat in November for serving corporate interests instead of their constituents' interests, decided to attempt to kill the bill with a parliamentary maneuver, a motion to recommit, which is easier for sleazy Republicans (and Blue Dogs) to vote for than a bill that could easily make it into a 30 second TV ad and be devastating. Although the bill itself passed 312-112, with 84 Republicans joined the Democrats, the attempt to kill the bill was much closer, 219-198, with not a single Republican voting against the maneuver. Nine nominal Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- regular suspects like Nick Lampson (D-TX), Heath Shuler (D-NC), Harry Mitchell (D-AZ), and Trent Childers (D-MS)-- joined with their ideological brothers to try to kill the bill.

Among the dishonest Republicans who voted to kill the bill and then, choking in fear of their November meeting with voters, actually went against their own anti-families instincts and against their bribers' wishers to vote with the Democrats were

Mary Bono Mack (R-CA)
Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV)
John Culberson (R-TX)
Charlie Dent (R-PA)
the notorious Diaz-Balart Brothers (R-FL)
Thelma Drake (D-VA)
Randy Forbes (R-VA)
Jim Gerlach (R-PA)
Virgil Goode (R-VA)
Sam Graves (R-MO)
Robin Hayes (R-NC)
Ric Keller (R-FL)
Joe Knollenberg (R-MI)
Michael McCaul (R-TX)
Dave Reichert (R-WA)
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL)
Chris Shays (R-CT)
Mike Turner (R-OH)
Fred Upton (R-MI)
Frank Wolf (R-VA)
Don Young (R-AK)

That list is basically the 22 Republicans most likely to lose in November and willing to sell out their own beliefs in fear. Below are another 13 Republicans in serious jeopardy of losing their seats but who are more afraid of their bankster campaign donors than of the voters.

Brian Bilbray (R-CA)
Steve Chabot (R-OH)
David Dreier (R-CA)
Scott Garrett (R-NJ)
Jon Kline (R-MN)
Randy Kuhl (R-NY)
Patrick McHenry (R-NC)
Steve Pearce (R-NM)
Mike Pence (R-IN)
Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA)
Mean Jean Schmidt (R-OH)
John Shadegg (R-AZ)
Tim Walberg (R-MI)

Watch Carolyn Maloney, the principal sponsor of the bill, explaining what it's all about on the floor of the House yesterday:

What Would You Think If You Opened Today's Paper And Read That A Dozen Corporate CEO Were Lynched By Their Mistreated Workers?

I was reading Robert Wexler's book, Fire-Breathing Liberal, at dinner tonight, specifically the chapter about how Bush stole the 2000 presidential election in Palm Beach County. For a few moments I relived in great sadness the ultimate un-American nature of the Republican operation down there. Wexler:

The Republican strategy was simple: Get George W. Bush into the White House at all costs. Do whatever was necessary and worry about how to rehabilitate later. Don't worry what you look like, don't worry about the consequences to the nation.

There was pillage and plunder at stake and they were determined to have it at any and all costs. A nation if sheep let them have it at practically no cost at all. Their proposed $700,000,000,000 bailout/fleecing is the ultimate payout for them and it looks like they'll get that at no cost either.

Not so in India-- and for not nearly as great a crime-- yesterday. There the Labor Minister, Oscar Fernandes, warned the same breed of corporate criminals that the lynching this week of Lalit Kumar Choudhary, the CEO of Graziano Transmissioni in Noida near New Delhi, should make them rethink their predatory employment practices.

“People are employed on contract basis. There is disparity in wages of permanent workers and contract workers. There is simmering discontent among workers and they should not be driven to such an extent as happened in Greater Noida...Managements have to see this as a warning and they should also respond adequately,” Fernandes said.

He said that companies tend to hire people on contracts even when they are in a position to make permanent appointments, leading to fewer jobs in the organised sector. “Workers react violently when they lose their jobs,” the Minister said, adding, “At the same time, managements have their problems also. But what I am saying is that the whole issue should be viewed with compassion. I appeal to companies to treat workers’ problems with compassion.”

Indian corporatists have taken a different view and are screaming how the murder will "sully the country’s image amongst overseas investors." God forbid.

The law of the jungle rarely works out well for working people. The rich had the money to hire all the mercenaries they need. But wouldn't you just love to see a few Bushies, McCain lobbyists and corporate scumbags hanging from lamp posts? Meanwhile, though, at least the polls have turned around strongly enough to make it more difficult for Republicans to steal the election again.

Turmoil in the financial industry and growing pessimism about the economy have altered the shape of the presidential race, giving Democratic nominee Barack Obama the first clear lead of the general-election campaign over Republican John McCain, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News national poll.

Just 9 percent of those surveyed rated the economy as good or excellent, the first time that number has been in single digits since the days just before the 1992 election. Just 14 percent said the country is heading in the right direction, equaling the record low on that question in polls dating back to 1973.

More voters trust Obama to deal with the economy, and he currently has a big edge as the candidate who is more in tune with the economic problems Americans now face. He also has a double-digit advantage on handling the current problems on Wall Street, and as a result, there has been a rise in his overall support. The poll found that, among likely voters, Obama now leads McCain by 52 percent to 43 percent. Two weeks ago, in the days immediately following the Republican National Convention, the race was essentially even, with McCain at 49 percent and Obama at 47 percent.

Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) is angry, but not enough to hang any CEOs or Bushies:

For McCain's Lobbyists-- Bailout... Or Bail?

Art by McCain's Lobbyists

Over the years I haven't agreed with Newt Gingrich on much but he was correct this morning when he warned Republican members of Congress that the Bush Regime's bailout/corporate giveaway is going to be a dead loser on Election Day Gingrich warned that bipartisan polling shows that Americans do not trust the Bush Regime to do the right thing and that they want Congress to stand up and take responsibility away from them. "[Elected officials] are going to go home and say, ‘I didn’t have any choice’ and people are going to say, ‘Ok, I need to get somebody new who has a choice.’ Because this is really a bad idea.”

The poll, conducted Sept. 16-21 with a 3% margin of error by Democratic pollster Doug Schoen and Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway suggests an overwhelming number of voters do not support the government’s bailout proposal, with 68% of respondents saying they’d rather see the companies go in to bankruptcy even if it harms investors and the stock market versus the 19% who said they preferred government action.

Gingrich said he believes lawmakers who vote for the bailout will face backlash at the ballot box in November and down the road. “I think that this bailout plan is going to break against anybody who votes for it, and I think it’s going to break against them more next time [2010] than this time [2008] and if it passes-- because I think it is going to be a nightmare to implement-- I think it is going to be filled with corruption, inefficiencies, and bureaucracies,” he said.

As Ken pointed out earlier, Bush has dispatched Darth Cheney to Capitol Hill in the role of enforcer. Is it working? After hearing two really extreme, lunatic fringe conservatives from Texas, Joe Barton and Jeb Hensarling, railing against the Bush Regime plan on the radio today, I rushed home to see how the Inside the Beltway media was playing it. (Barton was talking about how Gawd created the world in 7 days and that there was no need to rush into the plan in 5-- wackorama all the way.) Late this afternoon The Politico was describing Cheney's meeting with Republican members of Congress as "a bloodbath and "an unmitigated disaster." Boehner, tap-dancing as usual, said his caucus doesn't like the proposal but they had to support it because they can't do "nothing." Doing nothing is what crazies of the extreme right want-- that and lowering taxes on the wealthy some more-- and doing something constructive and fair-- where proposals from Dodd, Frank and Kucinich are headed-- is something Boehner and the Regime refuse to consider. "No golden parachutes, no deal," is what Paulson threatened.

There was a time when Dick Cheney could turn back a Republican revolt on Capitol Hill.

That time is gone.

The vice president traveled to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to silence a chorus of GOP complaints about Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s $700 billion plan. But House Republicans who walked into a closed-door meeting with Cheney steaming over the plan walked out just as angry, and they described what happened in between as both “a bloodbath” and “an unmitigated disaster.”

Texas Rep. Joe Barton took the unusual step of telling reporters gathered outside the Cannon Caucus Room that he had confronted Cheney “respectfully” about his concerns-- a level of dissent Republicans once considered heresy under the Bush administration.

Another lawmaker present-- who spoke on the condition of anonymity-- said that Cheney, White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten and economic policy adviser Keith Hennessey “were in worse shape when they left than when they came in.”

Cheney’s inability to turn around members of his own party said plenty about how congressional Republicans view the Bush White House these days-- but maybe even more about their discomfort with a bailout plan many of them see as an attack on their free market principles.

“It’s a sad fact, but Americans can no longer trust the economic information they are getting from this administration,” South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint said in a comment posted on Politico’s Arena forum.

“There is tremendous unease over the federal government assuming the assets that these financial institutions cannot price or manage,” said Alabama Rep. Spencer Bachus, the ranking Republican on the committee drafting the legislation.

It wasn’t clear Tuesday whether Republicans were willing to take responsibility for killing the Paulson plan-- but neither were they eager to take responsibility for passing it, either.

Republican leaders are now hoping Democrats load the legislation with unrelated measures that would give them the political cover to oppose it, members and aides said. At the same time, party leaders are using back channels in the business community to gauge member support for a “clean” bill.

This is playing out in the context of a presidential election that is looking worse and worse for the Republicans by the day. Most Americans, and rightfully so, blame them and their policies for the catastrophe. It didn't help McCain's cause today when the NY Times exposed his crooked lobbyist Rick Davis as being on the payroll of Freddie Mac until just a few days ago, thereby also exposing another flat out lie by McCain, this one that Davis hasn't gotten a cent from Freddie Mac in years. "Davis’s firm," according to the Times, "received the payments from the company, Freddie Mac, until it was taken over by the government this month."

But what makes this revelation even worse for McCain is that Freddie Mac employees are saying the payments were made to Davis primarily to placate McCain himself!

They said they did not recall Mr. Davis’s doing much substantive work for the company in return for the money, other than speak to a political action committee of high-ranking employees in October 2006 on the approaching midterm Congressional elections. They said Mr. Davis’s firm, Davis & Manafort, had been kept on the payroll because of Mr. Davis’s close ties to Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, who by 2006 was widely expected to run again for the White House.
Mr. Davis took a leave from Davis & Manafortfor the presidential campaign, but as a partner and equity-holder continues to benefit from its income. No one at Davis & Manafort other than Mr. Davis was involved in efforts on Freddie Mac’s behalf, the people familiar with the arrangement said.

A Freddie Mac spokeswoman said the company would not comment.

Jill Hazelbaker, a spokeswoman for the McCain campaign, did not dispute the payments to Mr. Davis’s firm. But she said that Mr. Davis had stopped taking a salary from his firm by the end of 2006 and that his work did not affect Mr. McCain.

“Senator McCain’s positions on policy matters are based upon what he believes to be in the public interest,” Ms. Hazelbaker said in a written statement.

Please name one time a crooked politician, caught in this kind of a scam said anything other than what McCain is saying, that everything he does-- even the bribes he and his henchmen take-- are always in the public interest. It's what Ney said when he was sentenced to prison. It's what Cunningham said when he was sentenced to prison. It's what indicted GOP criminals Tom DeLay, Rick Renzi, John Doolittle and Ted Stevens are still saying while they're negotiating to stay out of prison. Tonight Newsweek confirmed what the Times reported, reporting that since 2006 Freddie Mac has passed along at least $345,000 to Davis and that the arrangements were made because of an implied threat about McCain's power. The FBI is investigating Davis' role.

And what did McCain and the GOP deliver to what FDR used to call "banksters" for all these millions and millions of dollars in pay-offs? Let's watch McCain and his cronies explain exactly what they did for the money they were given:

Did McCain Learn Anything From His Keating Five Experience?

Early in his congressional career McCain was taking bribes-- to the tune of $112,000 in campaign contributions-- from Charles Keating, a family friend and crooked banker for whom he was caught strong-arming federal regulators. Eventually McCain's interference on behalf of his pal Keating-- who was also involved in very lucrative business deals with McCain's gangster (former jailbird) father-in-law and with his wife Cindy-- cost the taxpayers billions of dollars. You see, even if McCain didn't invent the Blackberry, he did invent the Savings and Loan scandal. At the time the McCains would regularly bundle off in one of Keating's private jets to his private retreat at Cat Cay in the Bahamas. Although right wing propagandists try to say McCain was "cleared," he wasn't. He was formally "admonished" by his colleagues on the very lax Senate Ethics Committee.

McCain calls his Keating Five experience "the worst mistake of my life," although God only knows how that stacks up to the torture in Vietnam he never stops talking about. But the real question is... what did he learn from being caught in the clutches of a crook like Keating and barely escaping with his political career intact? Apparently it wasn't to stop taking bribes in return for political favors and it wasn't to stop associating with unsavory characters who are eager to get at the taxpayers' money. What he learned was to stop going to the Bahamas... Instead he goes to Bermuda to colelct money from Republican fat cats who shelter their wealth so they don't have to pay their fair share of taxes the way the rest of us do. In fact, the head of the McCain economic brain trust-- his probable first choice to run the economy if McCain-Palin is victorious in November-- Phil Gramm is a senior vice president and lobbyist for a shady Swiss bank that is under investigation for helping rich folksshelter money in Bermuda. His clients may be whining about other things-- like the cost of yachts and cays-- but not about taxes.

Humane Society Makes It's First Presidential Endorsement Ever-- Vote No On Palin

This morning's Washington Post has an incisive look by Dan Froomkin on why the Bush years has been such a good era for fat cats.

Looking back on the wreckage of the Bush era, there is one undeniable bright spot: It's been a very good time to be a fat cat. A consistent result of virtually every major Bush policy, from tax cuts to war, has been to enrich the already wealthy.

The pinnacle of Bush's legacy may turn out to be a $700 billion bailout of the high-flying Wall Street firms that made enormous fortunes -- and rewarded themselves with billions in bonuses-- leveraging risky mortgage-backed assets. Now that those firms are in deep trouble, the Bush administration wants taxpayers-- many of whom are facing their own financial troubles-- to come to the rescue.

And, in case there's any doubt that it's fat-cats-first with this White House, the news today is that Bush aides are balking at moves that would require companies accepting bailouts to cap executive pay, or give taxpayers equity for their contributions.

Looking at McCain's career-long voting record-- and especially his voting record during Bush's second term-- and looking carefully at the proposals McCain has laid out as a basis for a McCain-Palin administration, it is impossible to doubt that we are being asked to give the basic philosophy behind the Bush era four more years. It is clear, however, that the only cats that will benefit from 4 more years are fat cats. Cats, dogs and other animals... not so much.

Now, the Humane Society of the U.S.A. was founded in 1877-- even before McCain was born-- and it's stated goal was to help develop a network of local organizations to prevent cruelty to children and animals. Today it's the nation's largest and most effective animal protection organization. It isn't liberal or conservative, Democratic or Republican. In fact, it has never in its entire history endorsed anyone running for president... until yesterday.

Yesterday, the Humane Society Legislative Fund unanimously endorsed Barack Obama and Joe Biden. In the past they have endorsed candidates from both parties based narrowly on issues pertaining to animal welfare. I remember being angry in 2006 that they endorsed reactionary Republicans like Sue Kelly (R-NY), John Sweeney (R-NY), Randy Kuhl (R-NY), Dave Reichert (R-WA), Dan Lungren (R-CA), Mary Bono (R-CA), Ken Calvert (R-CA), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), David Dreier (R-CA), Michael McCaul (R-TX), Lamar Smith (R-TX), the Diaz-Balart Brothers (R-FL), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Ric Keller (R-FL), Mean Jean Schmidt, who eats live puppies (R-OH), Steve Chabot (R-OH), Randy Forbes (R-VA), Virgil Goode (R-VA), Frank Wolf (R-VA)... even Rick Santorum (R-PA) and George Macacawitz Allen (R-VA). Yesterday I got a letter from Mike Markarian, president of the Humane Society Legislative Fund announcing that they had taken the very unusual step of endorsing Obama-Biden and asking that we at DWT help spread the word.

One of the guiding principles of the Humane Society Legislative Fund is that we evaluate candidates based on a single criterion: where they stand on animal protection policies. We don’t make decisions based on party affiliation, or any other social issue, or even how many pets they have. We care about their views and actions on the major policy debates relating to animal welfare.

It stirs controversy to get involved in candidate elections. But we believe that candidates for office and current lawmakers must be held accountable, or they will see the animal protection movement as a largely irrelevant political constituency. In order to have good laws, we need good lawmakers, and involvement in elections is an essential strategy for any serious social movement, including our cause.

While we’ve endorsed hundreds of congressional candidates for election, both Democrats and Republicans, we’ve never before endorsed a presidential candidate. We have members on the left, in the center, and on the right, and we knew it could be controversial to choose either party’s candidate for the top office in the nation. But in an era of sweeping presidential power, we must weigh in on this most important political race in the country. Standing on the sidelines is no longer an option for us.

I’m proud to announce today that the HSLF board of directors—which is comprised of both Democrats and Republicans—has voted unanimously to endorse Barack Obama for President. The Obama-Biden ticket is the better choice on animal protection, and we urge all voters who care about the humane treatment of animals, no matter what their party affiliation, to vote for them.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has been a solid supporter of animal protection at both the state and federal levels. As an Illinois state senator, he backed at least a dozen animal protection laws, including those to strengthen the penalties for animal cruelty, to help animal shelters, to promote spaying and neutering, and to ban the slaughter of horses for human consumption.  In the U.S. Senate, he has consistently co-sponsored multiple bills to combat animal fighting and horse slaughter, and has supported efforts to increase funding for adequate enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act, Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, and federal laws to combat animal fighting and puppy mills.

In his response to the HSLF questionnaire, he pledged support for nearly every animal protection bill currently pending in Congress, and said he will work with executive agencies such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of the Interior to make their policies more humane. He wrote of the important role animals play in our lives, as companions in our homes, as wildlife in their own environments, and as service animals working with law enforcement and assisting persons with disabilities. He also commented on the broader links between animal cruelty and violence in society.

Obama has even on occasion highlighted animal protection issues on the campaign trail, and has spoken publicly about his support for animal protection. In reaction to the investigation showing the abuse of sick and crippled cows which earlier this year led to the largest meat recall in U.S. history, he issued a statement saying “that the mistreatment of downed cows is unacceptable and poses a serious threat to public health.” He is featured in Jana Kohl’s book about puppy mills, A Rare Breed of Love, with a photo of Obama holding Baby (shown above), the three-legged poodle rescued from an abusive puppy mill operation, and his political mentor, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), is the author of the latest federal bill to crack down on puppy mills. 

Importantly, Obama’s running mate, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) has been a stalwart friend of animal welfare advocates in the Senate, and has received high marks year after year on the Humane Scorecard. Biden has not only supported animal protection legislation during his career, but has also led the fight on important issues. He was the co-author with Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) in the 108th Congress on legislation to ban the netting of dolphins by commercial tuna fishermen. He was the lead author of a bill in the 107th Congress to prohibit trophy hunting of captive exotic mammals in fenced enclosures, and he successfully passed the bill through the Senate Judiciary Committee.

On the Republican ticket, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has also supported some animal protection bills in Congress, but has been inattentive or opposed to others. He has voted for and co-sponsored legislation to stop horse slaughter, and voted to eliminate a $2 million subsidy for the luxury fur coat industry. But he has largely been absent on other issues, and has failed to co-sponsor a large number of priority bills or sign onto animal protection letters that have had broad support in the Senate.

The McCain campaign did not fill out the HSLF presidential questionnaire, and has also not issued any public statements on animal welfare issues. He was silent during the downed animal scandal and beef recall, which played out during a high-point in the primary fight. Yet he did speak at the NRA convention earlier this year, and is the keynote speaker this weekend in Columbus, Ohio, at the U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance rally-- an extremist organization that defends the trophy hunting of threatened polar bears and captive shooting of tame animals inside fenced pens.

While McCain’s positions on animal protection have been lukewarm, his choice of running mate cemented our decision to oppose his ticket. Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R-Alaska) retrograde policies on animal welfare and conservation have led to an all-out war on Alaska’s wolves and other creatures. Her record is so extreme that she has perhaps done more harm to animals than any other current governor in the United States.

Palin engineered a campaign of shooting predators from airplanes and helicopters, in order to artificially boost the populations of moose and caribou for trophy hunters. She offered a $150 bounty for the left foreleg of each dead wolf as an economic incentive for pilots and aerial gunners to kill more of the animals, even though Alaska voters had twice approved a ban on the practice. This year, the issue was up again for a vote of the people, and Palin led the fight against it-- in fact, she helped to spend $400,000 of public funds to defeat the initiative.

What’s more, when the Bush Administration announced its decision to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, Palin filed a lawsuit to reverse that decision. She said it’s the “wrong move” to protect polar bears, even though their habitat is shrinking and ice floes are vanishing due to global warming.

The choice for animals is especially clear now that Palin is in the mix. If Palin is put in a position to succeed McCain, it could mean rolling back decades of progress on animal issues.

Voters who care about protecting wildlife from inhumane and unsporting abuses, enforcing the laws that combat large-scale cruelties like dogfighting and puppy mills, providing humane treatment of animals in agriculture, and addressing other challenges that face animals in our nation, must become active over the next six weeks to elect a president and vice president who share our values. Please spread the word, and tell friends and family members that an honest assessment of the records of the two presidential tickets leads to the inescapable conclusion that Obama-Biden is the choice for humane-minded voters.

As for their endorsements of reactionary Republicans in Congress who vote alright on some animal-related issues... may I recommend you make your political donations for candidates who are good on animals AND working families, like the ones at Blue America. So forget the Dave Reicherts, Ileana Ros-Lehtinens, Mean Jean Schmidts, Dana Rohrabachers and Ric Kellers of the world-- members of the House whose extremist policies could soon be forcing people to eat their pets-- and support candidates like Darcy Burner, Annette Taddeo, Victoria Wulsin, Debbie Cook and Alan Grayson who will look out for the well being of pets and pet-loving American families.

As "Big Dick" Cheney marches up Capitol Hill with his squad of enforcers, Congress needs to resist pressure for rash action. Plus other bailout fun!

[Click on all cartoons to enlarge.]

"Now, despite promises otherwise, the U.S. Treasury and the taxpayers will be in the position of bailing out speculators in the event that their risky plays in the securities business threaten the solvency of the soon-to-be-formed mega-banks."

-- Nancy Watzman and Micah L. Sifry, in an October 1999 PublicCampaign.org post following effective repeal of Glass-Steagal Act, which "for six decades has kept the banking, securities and insurance businesses separate from each other"

by Ken

Whew! So much ground to cover!

In the wake of the financial crisis, as you know, everything has changed. I already commented in my plaintive post this morning on the newly minted hopelessness of any action on infrastructure investment, no matter how desperately needed. This morning, of course, Senator Obama warned on Today that with the bailout in place, he doesn't expect to be able to do "everything that I've called for in this campaign right away."

Also this morning came word that a Bush regime goon squad headed by the biggest goon of them all, "Big Dick" Cheney, was headed for Capitol Hill to strong-arm members of Congress into giving the regime the blank check it's demanding for distribution to its friends and cronies.




(1) CONFIDENTIAL TO ALL SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES:
WHEN BIG DICK COMES A-CALLING, GET THE S.O.B. ON TAPE!

That's right, make a show of setting up a tape recorder and asking him if he minds you recording the conversation.

Think of what happened to that poor old troll Dick Armey, who has just revealed in his book that back when Big Dick was lobbying for clearance to go to war in Iraq, which Armey -- then the House majority leader-- opposed, Big Dick just plain lied to him about "secret" information in his possession which he knew would force Little Dick to vote the "right" way.




(2) JUST SAY NO TO A BAILOUT?
"I have come to the conclusion that the bailout bill cannot be
fixed and thoughtful members of Congress should simply say no"

In a post on Credo Blog, I Don't Trust Henry Paulson, Michael Kieschnick writes in part:

I have come to the conclusion that the bailout bill cannot be fixed and thoughtful members of Congress should simply say no. This is closer to the Social Security privatization fight - where only saying no until privatization was off the table - than the minimum wage increase fight, where Republicans extracted billions in tax breaks for business as the price of paying poor people a little bit more. Liberal congressional leaders are treating the bailout like the minimum wage deal. It is not. This vote is the bookend signature act of the Bush Administration to be coupled with the first vote authorizing Bush to invade Iraq. The details are not particularly relevant. Reports out of Washington say that the Bush Administration is comfortable adding in the notion of taxpayers getting an equity stake in bailed out Wall Street firms, but only if it is option, and not a requirement. And just who do you think is going to take that option? Not Henry Paulson. . . .

[I]f you are not quite sure, and think we have to act right now, just remember that this is the same Administration that explicitly evoked the certainty of nuclear weapons in Iraq - "we know where they are" in order to stampede Congress into voting a blank check for Bush. Just this morning, the word came out that Vice President Cheney is on his way to Capitol Hill to lobby. Time to adjourn. No possibly acceptable deal will be available.

(3) HAVE YOU SEEN THIS HILARIOUS FAKE-SPAM E-MAIL?
"I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business
relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude"

This post, of unknown origin, has been circulating all over the place. The Nation Washington Editor Chris Hayes posted it yesterday with the note: "I almost missed this email because it was diverted to my spam folder. But apparently Paulson is sending this around," but later had to add an update noting explicitly: "I didn't write this. It was sent to me by a friend and is making the rounds."

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson

(4) TRUEMAJORITY TARGETS THURSDAY AS THE DAY WHEN --

"America Says NO Bush Bailout!"

Over at TrueMajority.org, they're trying to organize nationwide demonstrations Thursday against congressional capitulation to the Bush regime's steam-roller campaign for a bailout to benefit its friends and cronies.

Volunteers will host actions in cities and towns across the country with a simple message: "America says NO Bush Bailout!”

The events will be simple and easy to host -- we'll provide everything you need, then we'll alert hundreds of thousands of activists around the country to attend. And you can get personal assistance with a single e-mail to stopthebailout@truemajority.org. But someone has to take the first step...

Meet to say "No, No, HELL NO" to a $700 Billion giveaway to Wall Street criminals.

(5) FINALLY, IT'S NOT AS IF NOBODY FORESAW WHERE
"FREEING" OF THE "MONEY" INDUSTRIES WOULD LEAD

When it comes to early warnings of the storm that has descended on us, we don't know of any earlier than this remarkable post published on PublicCampaign.org by Nancy Watzman and Micah L. Sifry on October 27, 1999, five days after

The president at the time was of course Bill Clinton, a sobering reminder that Democrats have played a complicit role in the surrender of control of the U.S. regulatory apparatus to the surging forces of Big Money. But there's no question who's really driven the surge. The following year the Money People would rise in force to put their chosen stooge, George W. Bush, in the White House, ushering in an era of frontier lawlessness -- or worse than lawlessness. By the second term of the regime, all three branches of government would be serving as eager abettors of the reign of corporate greed and selfishness.

Here, then, is what Nancy and Micah wrote back in October 1999:

"Friday, October 22, 1999 should go down in history as the day that big money in politics won its biggest victory ever. That was the day that White House and Senate negotiators worked out a final, late-night deal engineering the repeal of a critical Depression-era law, the Glass- Steagal Act, that for six decades has kept the banking, securities and insurance businesses separate from each other.

The ramifications of this change are huge. First, insurance companies, brokerage houses, banks and credit card companies will be allowed to merge, a process that has been already taking place in dribs and drabs through regulatory waivers, but now will be vastly accelerated. Glass-Steagal had forced commercial banks out of the hyper-risky business of stock speculation and set up the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to protect individuals from bank failures. Now, despite promises otherwise, the U.S. Treasury and the taxpayers will be in the position of bailing out speculators in the event that their risky plays in the securities business threaten the solvency of the soon-to-be-formed mega-banks."

Today, by the way, Micah wrote: "I should note by the way, that neither Nancy nor I are trained economists. We just tried to pay attention to a few smart people, notably (in my life): Robert Sherrill, Tom Ferguson and Kevin Phillips. When I was a young(er) editor at the Nation, I worked a few special issues with Sherrill and believe me folks, his writing on the S&L Crisis more than stands the test of time. I've asked the Nation's editors to post some more of Sherrill's stuff on their website."

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How You Feelin' About Banks? And McCain?

Who's that scary little man behind the curtain?

The McCain lobbyist brigade-- take AEI scumbag and senior McCain economic advisor Kevin Hassett for example-- is working overtime to try to blame the financial collapse on Democrats. It's absurd but... well, the severe deterioration of the education system, the super abundance of brain cell toxic fast food, a drastic shrinking of Americans' attention span and a near iron grip by the reactionary forces on the media all adds up to a people susceptible to exactly this kind of absurdity. Limbaugh was squawking and oinking yesterday about how Obama is an Arab. Today a pastor in a Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Tennessee is repeating it.

Or am I wrong? A CNN poll released late yesterday finds that twice as many Americans blame the Republicans as blame the Democrats for the Wall Street calamity. And Diageo's polling this morning is showing the same thing.

In the new survey, released Monday afternoon, 47 percent of registered voters questioned say Republicans are more responsible for the problems currently facing financial institutions and the stock market, with 24 percent saying Democrats are more responsible. One in five of those polled blame both parties equally, and 8 percent say neither party is to blame.

The poll also indicates that more Americans think Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, would do a better job handling an economic crisis than McCain, the Republican presidential nominee. Forty-nine percent of those questioned say Obama would display good judgment in an economic crisis, 6 points higher than the number who said the same about McCain. And Obama has a 10 point lead over McCain on the question of who would better handle the economy overall.

And the latest electoral projections show Obama with 312 electoral votes with Ohio, Nevada, Florida, Indiana, Missouri and North Carolina all teetering. I'll believe KKK Nation voting for an African-American when I see it. Meanwhile I'll just keep reading Naomi Klein (not a relative) and preparing myself for even greater shocks in the future. Last night she wrote that another "shock has certainly arrived, along with gloves-off attempts to use it to push through radical pro-corporate policies (which of course will further enrich the very players who created the market crisis in the first place...)."

The best summary of how the right plans to use the economic crisis to push through their policy wish list comes from Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich. On Sunday, Gingrich laid out 18 policy prescriptions for Congress to take in order to "return to a Reagan-Thatcher policy of economic growth through fundamental reforms." In the midst of this economic crisis, he is actually demanding the repeal of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which would lead to further deregulation of the financial industry. Gingrich is also calling for reforming the education system to allow "competition" (a.k.a. vouchers), strengthening border enforcement, cutting corporate taxes and his signature move: allowing offshore drilling.

It would be a grave mistake to underestimate the right's ability to use this crisis -- created by deregulation and privatization-- to demand more of the same.

Will Chris Dodd's intervention save us from the tender mercies of Bush and Paulson? It could be better-- and there's no reason on earth why it shouldn't be. Damn shame they don't just throw Bush, Paulson and the rest of the crooks in prison and put Bernie Sanders in charge, No? How about Mojo Nixon then?

It Really Is Up To Us To Deliver A 60 Vote Senate

A few weeks ago we did a Blue America contest to award $5,000 to a congressional candidate. Our winner, Annette Taddeo (D-FL) wound up with over $36,000 (including matching funds from Chris Van Hollen and some other DCCC leaders). This week we started a week-long contest to pick a Senate candidate to give the same $5,000 check too. A donation of $1-- or $1,000-- counts as a vote and you can vote here. Since we started on Saturday afternoon, there have been over 300 votes and more than $9,000. Right now Jeff Merkley (D-OR) is ahead although both Andrew Rice (D-OK) and Rick Noriega (D-TX) are starting to catch up.

Like we explained on Saturday, these are the tough races-- not the low hanging fruit-- but the races that will determine whether or not McConnell, McCain and the rest of McLunatic Fringe will be able to filibuster and obstruct Obama's program for change. But, believe me, we're not the only ones who have figured this out. yesterday's Roll Call is calling attention to the fact that right wing GOP front groups are dumping millions and millions of dollars into the Senate races now, panicked that the reactionaries could lose their ability to obstruct progressive legislation. And they are heavily outspending independent progressive groups-- $23 million to $3.3 million.

The misnamed neo-fascist billionaires club, Freedom's Watch, has been on the warpath as have other ring wing advocacy groups like the national. Chamber of Commerce, Associated Builders and Contractors Free Enterprise, America’s Future Fund, Employee Freedom Action Committee and the Club for Growth. Freedom's Watch is spending heavily to save rubber stamp Republican Gordon Smith in Oregon and the Club For Growth is pouring money into Alaska to save the most corrupt member of the Senate, Ted Stevens.

Of course the good news is that this right-wing cash isn't going to McCain's campaign. The bad news is that our Senate candidates need help. Andrew Rice for example, is being viciously attacked by a corporate sleazeball incumbent who has millions of dollars in corporate cash flooding into his campaign coffers for a ceaseless barrage of negative attack ads. You may feel good-- and you should-- that grassroots activists have helped raise nearly $1.5 million dollars for Andrew Rice's campaign. But Inhofe has already spent twice that total and has $2.5 million on hand. This year he's the second biggest recipient among non-presidentail candidates of legalized bribes from Big Oil ($351,750). He's taken over $150,000 from lobbyists, over $180,000 from the kinds of bankers and investment firms he's been voting to deregulate over the years, nearly $100,000 from the Real Estate Industry, over $50,000 from the Insurance Industry... all the folks who he's been serving instead of the citizens of Oklahoma. Almost every cent of the contributions Andrew has gotten has come from small individual donors looking not for special favors but for decent representation for Oklahoma and a fair shot for working families for a change. Donating to Andrew's campaign will help him keep ads like this one-- debunking Inhofe's lies and distortions-- on the air:



Don't forget to vote-- in a contest with all excellent choices.


UPDATE: ANDREW RICE TAKES IT TO THE VOTERS

Yesterday Andrew held a press conference in Oklahoma City aimed more at regular citizens than at members of the media. He explained that he had called people together because "it's apparent that American taxpayers are going to be saddled with $700 billion worth of irresponsible investments by Wall Street, I'm alarmed by our Senior Senator Jim Inhofe's reaction. He said he'll 'be keeping an eye on the fallout.'" 

I think he should be working for a solution, so that we taxpayers are not forced to bail out unregulated schemers and millionaires again. 

Our other senator, Tom Coburn, reacted strongly, saying, "Congress has known about these problems for years, but did nothing because [they] were so obsessed with short-term politics...to do the hard work of oversight and reform that was necessary to avert this mess."   

I couldn't agree more with Senator Coburn. And we should all be asking ourselves, what has Jim Inhofe, who's been in Washington 22 years, done to avert this crisis? Absolutely nothing.   

In fact, it's ironic that for all these years Jim Inhofe has tried to tell us that big government is the enemy. He wants to privatize everything. Social Security, Medicare, health care, education.  

Yet, while he was keeping his eye on the fallout of the recent crisis on Wall Street, it fell to the taxpayers and government to bail out Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and A.I.G., and pump tons of liquidity into the banking system. If government had not come to the rescue, our economic crisis would be catastrophic. 

Jim Inhofe helped give George Bush everything he asked for in terms of economic policy. Massive tax cuts for the wealthy. Deregulation. Limited Oversight. Look where it's gotten us today. 

Oklahomans are paying record prices for fuel and food. Credit markets are shrinking for consumer products like washing machines and other household items. U.S. banks are afraid to lend money to each other. America is now a more risky proposition for important foreign investors. 

I want to see Jim Inhofe take responsibility. He should be accountable for his misguided economic policies and pitch in this week with other bipartisan Congressional leaders to ensure that this $700 billion bailout is the last one.  

This is the largest price tag on any piece of legislation in our country's history; more even than we're paying for the Iraq War-- to bail out financial institutions that acted for the last several years without fear of government oversight .

I'm standing here not only as a nominee for Senate, but as a concerned taxpayer who is asking Jim Inhofe, for once, to put his ideology aside and ask the tough questions. Show some transparency, Jim Inhofe. Tell us what you've done, whom you've met with, which actions you've taken to challenge those corporations who will now benefit from this bailout. It's time to act and push for solutions. We don't have the luxury of waiting to see how things shake out.

I'm calling on Jim Inhofe to roll up his sleeves and get to work on solving this mess he's gotten us into. We need a plan that... 

• Ensures this $700 billion check is not a blank check. Taxpayers deserve accountability on the part of the Bush Administration in exercising this unprecedented authority;

• Ensures the investors and CEOs who put us in this mess don't get off scot-free;

• Includes help for everyday Oklahomans on Main Street;

• Includes more responsible regulators who will hold investment bankers accountable and not look the other way while the fox invades the hen house.

We sent Jim Inhofe to Washington 22 years ago to look out for Oklahoma. Unfortunately for us, he was asleep at the switch. And it's clear now that we can no longer afford Jim Inhofe's see no evil, hear no evil approach.

I want to remind you again, whether you decide to kick down even one dollar or more, to vote in the Blue America Senate contest. Andrew would make a great U.S. Senator-- as would Tom Allen, Jeff Berkley, Mark Begich and Rick Noriega. The one who gets the most "votes" in our poll (at the link) gets a $5,000 check from Blue America.

With the financial crisis monopolizing official attention, no attention -- or money -- will be available for our crumbling infrastructure

Aug. 1, 2007: the I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis

by Ken

I'm going to say a word that I'll bet will send you straight into a coma -- or make you wish you were comatose. You may pretend to be reading your newspaper, or trimming your sideburns, or having to feed your goldfish. But we'll all know you're just trying to escape that word.

And the word is:

infrastructure

"Oh no," I'll bet you're thinking, "he's going to start going on about crumbling roads and bridges and dams."

Um, yeah, I'm afraid so.

These are rare times of ferment in one of the most neglected fields of public policy—the nation’s infrastructure, or what used to be known as public works, including roads, mass transit, bridges, ports and airports, flood control systems, and much else. We have been confronted with spectacular and tragic evidence of the inadequacy of these facilities in the failure of the levees in New Orleans and in the collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis. More generally, a recent report by the American Society of Civil Engineers concludes that America’s infrastructure overall is close to “failing” and deserves a grade of “D.” It estimates that an investment of $1.6 trillion will be needed to bring it up to working order.

According to the report, nearly 30 percent of the nation’s 590,750 bridges are “structurally deficient or functionally obsolete” and it will take “$9.4 billion a year for 20 years to eliminate all bridge deficiencies.” “The number of unsafe dams has risen by 33 percent to more than 3,500.” Public transit facilities —including buses, subways, and commuter trains—are dangerously under-funded, even as demand for them has “increased faster than any other mode of transportation.” Current funding for safe drinking water amounts to “less than 10 percent of the total national requirement,” while “aging wastewater management systems discharge billions of gallons of untreated sewage into US surface waters each year.” Yet government investment in these vital facilities is generally held to be below the level needed simply to maintain them in their current poor state.

Obviously this is way too smart and informed to be me talking. It's Everett Ehrlich and Felix Rohatyn, in an article in the October 9 issue of the New York Review of Books titled "A New Bank to Save Our Infrastructure."

I don't mean to suggest that none of us care about infrastructure. I doubt that anyone reading Down With Tyranny is unaware, either of the crisis facing us with regard to our crumbling infrastructure or of the root cause -- the sad but inescapable fact that there's no political constituency for maintaining of roads, bridges, dams, and the like.

Oh, the average citizen bumps up against the subject when he/she drives through a pothole or is stuck waiting for a stuck drawbridge to get unstuck, and it even makes headlines when a bridge collapses or a dam fails or flood-control devices like levees fail to control floods. For a while there's a lot of anger and indignation, aimed at "them" -- "them" who failed to anticipate the problem, that is -- but of course there's never any public uprising to do something about the problem before it becomes a problem.

The fact is, the issues that are allowed into campaigns are the ones that poll as potential winners. If people were demanding road repairs and bridge maintenance, we would get it.

And meanwhile the infrastructure continues to crumble. And the less we do about it, the worse it gets, and the faster it gets worse.

I don't know Everett Ehrlich beyond the fact that he has been collaborating with Felix Rohatyn on this issue, but I have a long-standing regard for Rohatyn, a patrician -- and, yes, a longtime high-level investment banker! -- who seems forever to have been there working on the thorny issues of public policy, the nitty gritty on which our ongoing quality of life depends. And now, as you may have survived, Ehrlich and Rohatyn have a plan to suggest, one two which these clearly practical-minded thinkers have clearly devoted a lot of thought.

It's based on the report of a Commission on Public Infrastructure, "to outline a new and different approach to selecting, financing, and managing infrastructure," established in 2004 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and chaired jointly by former New Hampshire Republican Sen. Warren Rudman and Rohatyn himself.

The central idea of the CSIS commission proposal is to establish a National Infrastructure Bank, an institution that would be similar to the World Bank, a private investment bank, or any other entity that evaluates project proposals and assembles a portfolio of investments to pay for them. Traditionally, public financial institutions such as the one we propose are created to correct problems in capital markets, whether they be the failure of markets to fund projects that support development in the world’s poorest nations or their undue pessimism regarding the long-term solvency of a particular city or state government. This is not the case here.

State and local governments generally can borrow for infrastructure purposes in line with their ability to service debt and the strength of their credit ratings. The issue here is not the efficiency of capital markets but rather the efficiency with which federal programs work and spend funds. The purpose of the National Infrastructure Bank would be to use federal resources more effectively and to raise additional funding. We propose this bank because we believe that markets for capital do work and can be harnessed to solve the critical shortfall in funding infrastructure.

The authors note that, based on the commission report,

a bill to enact its approach, the National Infrastructure Bank Act of 2007, has been submitted by Senators Chris Dodd (D., Connecticut) and Chuck Hagel (R., Nebraska), both of whom served as members of the CSIS commission. A companion bill has been offered in the House of Representatives by Banking Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D., Massachusetts) and Representative Keith Ellison (D., Minnesota); while a similar approach has been proposed in a bill introduced by Representative Rosa DeLauro(D., Connecticut). Barack Obama has spoken of the need for “a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank that will invest $60 billion over ten years.... The repairs will be determined not by politics, but by what will maximize our safety and homeland security; what will keep our environment clean and economy strong.”

Naturally the authors have much more to say about the problem and their proffered solution. I don't understand it all that well, but it sounds to me like serious work on a serious problem, and I would like to think that under normal circumstances it would get at least some serious attention. Is there any possible question that something has to be done about our famously crumbling infrastructure?

Alas, these are not normal circumstances.

Let me confess that I'm no more turned on than anyone else by infrastructure chat. In fact, under my own normal circumstances, after starting the Ehrlich-Rohatyn piece Sunday on the subway, I might not have gotten all the way through it.

In this case, however, my circumstances took an odd turn. I was on my way Sunday to brunch with a cohort of fellow New York-area progressive bloggers. But I brutally botched my schedule, and instead wound up in Chinatown enjoying a heaping plate of shrimp-and-egg fried rice and a nice big pot of tea -- circumstances that got me back to the Ehrlich-Rohatyn article. Luckily or otherwise, the tea held out to the bitter end. At the very least, the article -- and the report backing it up, not to mention the efforts of the CSIS commission, of Senators Dodd and Hagel, and of Representatives Frank, Ellison, and DeLauro, should occasion some serious public attention to what we do plan to do about the infrastructure.

But even as I finished the article, I recognized the cruel irony. NYRB has a practice of dating articles on topical subjects. The published date, I assume, represents when the author(s) signed off on the text. The date on the Ehrlich-Rohatyn article is September 10. It was a mere 11 days later that I finished reading it over my pot of tea, but in those 11 days, too much had happened.

Thanks to those happenings, the chance of any serious attention -- let alone any serious money -- being available to devote to infrastructure issues has sunk from "not really great" to "approximately zero." This is in some measure understandable, because the immediate financial crisis obviously has to be dealt with.

But an event like this also hijacks the agenda. There is growing sentiment that the plan put forth by Treasury Secretary Paulson isn't even designed to cope with the crisis, but is simply constructed to give Secretary Paulson unchecked -- and uncheckable, according to the proposal's infamous Section 8 -- authority to distribute $700 billion, or maybe who knows how much more, among his old pals in the financial-services industry.

Of course it would be unworthy to suggest that either Secretary Paulson or the rest of the Bush regime is running a shell game here. A cynic could look at what's being proposed here as a parting shot, in the dying days of the Bush regime: (1) to continue their policy of enriching their rich cronies and (2) to ensure that no money will be available for the foreseeable future for any of the array of crucially important social needs that have been so cynically and tragically short-changed these past eight years.

That's what a cynic might say, but would any of us dare to stoop to such cynical depths? Where the Bush regime is concerned? For shame! It's just one of those cruel coincidences that, even as we continue to hemorrhage public funds in Iraq and Afghanistan, any possibility of socially more useful spending -- no matter how urgent the need -- is now officially "off the table," to coin a phrase.

My blogspheric colleagues working the environmental and energy beats were quick to notice how those agendas are going to be starved, possibly for a generation, and with likely catastrophic results, by the Paulson plan. Whatever the heck the "Paulson plan" is. Our Hank seems to feel no obligation to clue us in. The idea is that we the people write him his check and then get to mind our own beeswax while Czar Paulson goes about his business. His proposal, again, is crystal-clear about one thing: that it will be impossible for those of us ponying up the cash to challenge in any way anything that's done.

Meanwhile, I imagine that Mssrs Ehrlich and Rohatyn, wherever they are, must be all too aware that since they signed off on their NYRB article, their National Infrastructure Bank is DOA.

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Is John McCain A Hypocrite? Does The Pope... Well, You Know

Lindsey Graham is not dupontpig2008 and he was not outed today

Today my pal Mike at BlogActive gave out a Roy Cohn Award. I had advance word one was coming and I had my fingers crossed that he finally had the evidence he needed for notorious closet queens Lindsey Graham (R-SC) or Miss McConnell (R-KY) but Mike is such a stickler. He practically has to catch them with things inserted before he'll call them out. Anyway today's self-loathing Republican closet case is dupontpig2008, John McCain's chief of staff. Yes, that John McCain-- the confused, bloodthirsty old kook running for president and campaigning against gay families from coast to coast. Apparently he's accepted dupontpig2008 into the bosom of his family, the fact that he was an ExxonMobil lobbyist trumping the sling in his closet and the wild sex parties in his home. (I wonder if this had anything to do with George Will repeatedly calling McCain a queen in tomorrow's Washington Post.)

My favorite radio personality, Michelangelo Signorile was all over this today. Is wondering about dupontpig2008's relationship with McCain's psychotically homophobic running mate. See, even if DeCay was correct today when he wrote earlier that McCain is trapped in his own paradox, the betrayer betraying himself (the betrayed), and isn't as homophobic as he tells the right-wing base he is-- and his acceptance of dupontpig2008's lifestyle would confirm that-- we do know that Livin' Palin doesn't have any nuances or paradoxes in her life. She's a real live, down the line religionist hate-monger and bigot-- unlike the more cosmopolitan Miss Cindy, a sometimes fag-hag.

John McCain is opposed to every single gay rights measure of recent years –- from a hate crimes bill, to an anti-discrimination bill to an attempt to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays in the military –- and is publicly on record supporting a ballot measure in California this November to strip gays and lesbians there of their legally-won right to marry in that state. If that isn’t enough to make it relevant to report on his 20-year-relationship with a close aide and chief of staff who is gay, the fact that Sarah Palin is now on the ticket -- garnering support for McCain from previously reticent antigay leaders like James Dobson of Focus on the Family –- surely does.

Mark Buse, after all, is a public figure in his own right. His role as chief of staff to a man running for president has elevated him and certainly his controversial former role as a prominent lobbyist has brought media scrutiny to him. And he is running the Senate office of a 72-year-old presidential candidate who has had recurrent cancer and who might well usher into the White House as president a woman who, by what evidence we have, has melded her politics with her evangelical religious beliefs.

As the story leaks into the mainstream media, McCain's homophobic campaign is trying to figure out how to respond. The best comment I heard so far was from someone who questioned McCain's judgment not because of his chief of staff's gay lifestyle or hypocrisy but because he is another example of a low-down crooked lobbyist for Big Oil, running the doddering senator's life for him.

Is this our last chance to nail Karl Rove?

"If Congress adjourns at the end of September and nothing's been done, all of our effort goes down the drain."

-- former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman

by Ken

Yes, yes, there are other things on the minds of official Washington at the moment. Not surprisingly, the crisis of the moment will also be used to advanatage to divert attention from other business that Congress needs to deal with before adjourning Friday.

Now this is embarrassing. But sometimes you just get so carried away with . . . well, with the outrage of it all that you forget what set you off in the first place. So it was with my rant Saturday about the disastrous consequences of letting the Bush regimistas off scot-free. Oh, I meant everything I said, and I don't backtrack on my conviction about its importance, but I forgot why I was raging in the first place, and unfortunately I've wasted another couple of days, at a time when time is crucial.

This week may be our last week to nail the regime's number-two scumbag, Karl Rove. (Do you have to ask who number one is? Where Dick Cheney lurks, can even the scurviest malefactor aspire to better than top-runner-up status in any scumbag sweepstakes?) With Congress winding down, his most visible victim, former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, has been making a final push to get the bums to show a modicum of gumption and vote a contempt citation to force the sleazebag to testify before Congress.

Here is Governor Siegelman's message at www.ContemptForRove.com:

Urge Congress to Find Rove in Contempt

In July, the House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Karl Rove, demanding his testimony about his own role in the politicization of the Department of Justice and politically motivated prosecutions of Democratic leaders, including me. Karl Rove refused to even show up for the hearing, claiming that Congress has no power to compel senior White House officials to testify. That's outrageous.

Now that a U.S. District Judge has ruled that White House aides like Rove can't claim immunity in order to refuse to testify before Congress, there's no room for Karl Rove to hide any longer -- but our time is running out. If Congress adjourns at the end of September and nothing's been done, all of our effort goes down the drain. So now we must pull out the stops and turn up the heat.

Please urge the full House to vote Karl Rove in contempt, forcing him to show up and testify!

Don Siegelman

Onsite you can send an e-mail to your congressmember, with a basic message provided which you're encouraged to edit as you wish:

Subject: Vote to Hold Karl Rove in Contempt

Dear Member of Congress,

I urge you to work with your House colleagues and vote to hold Karl Rove in contempt of Congress quickly, before the House adjourns at the end of September.

Karl Rove has thumbed his nose in the face of Congress, refusing to heed a Congressional subpoena and appear before the House Judiciary Committee to testify about his role in launching politically motivated prosecutions -- including the malicious, unfounded prosecution of former Gov. Don Siegelman -- and politicizing the Department of Justice.

Recently, the House Judiciary Committee voted to cite Rove for contempt after he refused to honor a subpoena and testify. Then, just one day later, a U.S. District Judge ruled that senior White House aides could not claim blanket immunity in order to refuse to testify before Congress.

The message is clear: There's no room for Karl Rove to hide any longer. It is time for him to come clean and tell the truth about what he has done. If Karl Rove really has nothing to hide, then he should show up, testify, and prove it to Congress and the country.

With Congress slated to adjourn at the end of September, it's time for the House to act. I urge you to vote to hold Karl Rove in contempt of Congress now -- and to encourage your colleagues to do the same.

My lollygagging notwithstanding, time really is of the essence. A phone call to your representative wouldn't be out of place.

#

More On Alaska's Political Cesspool-- Athough Not About Any Palins This Time

Quick, someone get the lipstick!

Last night I did a quickie poll over at Kos asking who people who most like to lose their congressional seat. Alaska crook-- the original Bridge to Nowhere Man-- was the favorite. And as resistant as I've been to supporting candidates from the Rahm Emanuel wing of the Democratic Party, last night I actually added Young's Democratic opponent, Ethan Berkowitz-- who my friends in Alaska assure me isn't really in Rahm's pocket that much-- to a new ActBlue page. Last week, the last remaining votes from the most remote villages in Alaska were counted and corruption-tainted Don Young, who everyone expects to be facing prison time within the year, managed to win his primary against Sarah Palin's handpicked opponent, Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell.

This morning, Congressional Quarterly changed their rating on the race to Leans Democrat.

Alaska Republican Rep. Don Young ’s narrow 304-vote margin over a prominent primary challenger provides an exception to a political rule: that re-nominating an incumbent strengthens a party’s chances of holding a seat. Plagued by ethics allegations that cost him heavily in his primary contest with Republican Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, Young enters the brief general election contest trailing Democratic nominee Ethan Berkowitz by a double-digit percentage in the most recent independent poll.

The new Leans Democratic designation on this race means Berkowitz-- a former Democratic leader in the state House and the party’s 2006 nominee for lieutenant governor in the contest against Parnell-- has a tangible edge in his race with Young. But it also means the race remains highly competitive, with a comeback by Young certainly not out of the question.

Young has represented Alaska in the House as a statewide office-holder for 35 years. He dominated most of his elections in the Republican-leaning state, as his seniority helped him work in concert with Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens to steer billions of dollars in federal funds to their home state. But after decades of political security, both Stevens and Young find themselves this year at serious risk of losing their seats-- in large part because both have longstanding ties to executives with Veco, an Alaska-based oil services company that is at the center of a sweeping state political corruption scandal.

Stevens is actually in more legal jeopardy than Young. He was indicted in July on federal charges of failing to report substantial gifts, including a major renovation to his Alaska home, that allegedly were provided by Veco officials. He faces a trial in Washington, D.C., scheduled to begin on Sept. 24 that, depending on its outcome, could make or break his hopes of overcoming his strong Democratic opponent, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, in a contest CQ Politics also rates as Leans Democratic.

Young-- despite news reports that Veco executives assisted his campaign fundraising efforts and questions raised about his efforts to obtain federal funding for a road project in Florida that might have benefited another campaign contributor-- has not been charged with wrongdoing.

Yet many more Alaskans appear to maintain affection for Stevens, who after 40 years in office is the longest-serving Republican senator in the nation’s history, than for Young, who has a rough-hewn and often confrontational manner that has left a trail of hard feelings among some Alaskans.

“Young is a very, very considerable underdog at this point,” Anchorage pollster Ivan Moore told CQ Politics. Moore noted that polls throughout the year have shown Young becoming steadily more vulnerable for re-election.

If you'd like to donate to Ethan Berkowitz' campaign, please visit The Impeachers, an ActBlue page dedicated to raising campaign funds for Democrats challenging the most vulnerable Bill Clinton tormentors (like Don Young).


As for Rolling Stone dubbing Don Young "Mr. Pork," let's not lose sight of the fact that Young may be one of the worst, but he's far from the only corrupt Republican slime bucket. In fact, one Republican who denounces Young's Bridge To Nowhere earmarks almost every single day has some answering to do about earmarks himself:

A Prescription For Disaster: John McCain's Health Care Intentions

I never like suggesting what someone's intentions or motivations are. But in this case, McCain has laid everything out himself. Like we mentioned late Friday, McCain wrote a shocking article in Contingencies, although, to be fair, he wrote it before the extremist deregulation policies he has always backed, imploded and caused him to do another of the serial flip flops that have become the hallmark of his shiftless campaign. Where does McCain really stand on health care? That's easy! Wherever the lobbyists who have bought his soul tell him to stand on any given moment. This year the Insurance Industry has given McCain more than any other member of the House or Senate ($1,312,155) and in his entire shameful career in Congress, doing their bidding every step of the way, the pay-off has been immense-- close to $2 million. Money like that adds up. McCain learned one thing from getting caught taking money from Charles Keating-- to cover his tracks better. Funny about the bad timing on his Contingencies article:

Rick Noriega Speaks Out On Bush's Bailout/Corporate Giveaway Scheme

Over the weekend when we posted statements from the Senate candidates in our Blue America contest, Rick Noriega was on active National Guard duty trying to help Texas recover from the devastation of Hurricane Ike. This morning he was able to add his voice to the caution being expressed by all the Blue America candidates about Bush's dangerous giveaway and the tendency of Insiders to get stampeded into supporting it (the way they were stampeded into supporting attacking Iraq). Rick:

"I am outraged that taxpayers are having to foot the $700 billion bill to clean up the mess made by greedy Wall Street investors and mortgage lenders. This is what happens when John Cornyn takes nearly $1.5 million from the perpetrators of the crisis, spends six years championing an anything goes culture on Wall Street, and abdicates his duty to protect Texans from Wall Street greed. Cornyn's special interest record is something Texans have come to expect but can no longer afford.
I believe:

• Any new bailout must contain provisions to help middle class Americans keep their homes and their retirement security. Americans need to hold Wall Street accountable for its failures, just as Americans need to hold their elected representatives accountable for their failures to address this before it became a $700 billion problem.


• The need for oversight and accountability of any new bailout is more important than ever. These firms are should not get a blank check from the taxpayers.


• We need to rein in the out of control pay and golden parachutes of the CEOs who got us into this mess."

If you didn't vote in the contest yet, please do. The winner gets $5,000 from Blue America and the runner up gets $1,000. Here's where you can vote. And, remember, only 28% of Americans think Bush's corporate giveaway disguised as an economic plan is the right way to proceed. The other 72% either agree with our candidates or are unsure.

As Bernanke prints money to give Bush Regime corporate cronies, oil has started to skyrocket again-- as investors shift into commodities-- and even some of the middle of the road followers in the Democratic caucus are starting to get suspicious now that they're reading the bill-- and seeing the building public sentiment against it. Matt's got a letter from a skeptical Brad Sherman, someone who usually just goes along to get along. Going along to get along isn't something anyone who knows Albuquerque Democratic candidate Martin Heinrich will ever expect. Heinrich is a real voice for the underdog and for regular folks-- as well as being an innovative thinker with a sense of vision. I suspect the corporatists from both sides of the aisle aren't going to be that thrilled about someone with such an independent way of thinking in Congress.