It's become fashionable in right-wing circles to pooh-pooh the social activism of left-leaing actors. "They should just shut up," we hear. Of course when Chuck Norris claims to have done two tours in Iraq, or Charlton Heston advocates for guns, the right says nary a word. But if Brad Pitt decides to hold a contest for building green homes in New Orleans for those displaced by Hurricane Katrina, his motives must somehow be suspect.

Oddly absent from the right's vitriol was Paul Newman. Perhaps it was because he was Hud and Cool Hand Luke and Rocky Graziano and Butch Cassidy and Fast Eddie Felson -- "manly men" that didn't threaten Republicans. Or maybe it was his late-life fascination with race cars, which gave him manly-man cred among the NASCAR set. Or perhaps it was just that aside for his support for Eugene McCarthy, which landed him on Richard Nixon's enemies list, his was a quiet activism, one that later in life manifested quietly, almost stealthily, on supermarket shelves all over America, where even people who watched American Idol and NASCAR might buy a jar of Newman's Own brand salsa to have with their chips on Super Bowl Sunday. It was an activism that manifested in the concept of the Hole-In-The-Wall Camps, named for one of his most beloved films, for kids with serious illnesses.

Not for Newman the self-promotion of Don Imus, who seems to think he can make up for his horrific misogyny, hostility, and racism by using the kids from his own ranches as human shields. Newman just very quietly went about becoming a philanthropist with little fuss, while continuing an astonishing body of celluloid masterpieces well into his Social Security years.

It's hard to believe that someone like Paul Newman could exist. Here was this Jewish guy, one of the most drop-dead gorgeous men ever to occupy this planet, who played men that men admired and over whom women swooned. Here was a guy who could have womanized his way through Hollywood for five decades, but instead married actress Joanne Woodward and created one of the longest-lasting love stories in the industry's history. He was an actor who could easily have been typecast into beefcake roles but instead proved he could do anything, including showing a deft hand at comedy. When he decided he wanted to race cars, he became an adept racer instead of just a dilettante. And when his little business bottling his own vinaigrette salad dressing took off like a shot, he decided that the business model of his burgeoning business should be to pour his own profits into charity. None of this ten percent horsepuckey for Paul Newman. Instead, over $250 million in proceeds from the sale of the Newman's Own products have been plowed into charitable work.

Because Newman was so involved in the world around him, it was easy to believe that he would just go on forever. Because how could the world possibly go on spinning without Paul Newman in it? And yet today, here we are, and he is gone -- and yet not gone. Because we have five decades of brilliant film work to enjoy, and Sockarooni spaghetti sauce to eat, and the example he set to follow, and just hope that we can make even a small fraction of the difference in the world that he did.

I wanted to find a clip of the scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in which Butch and Sundance blow up the train, but alas I couldn't find one. But you could do worse than to remember Newman by this riveting scene from Road to Perdition -- the kind of performance that can only come from seven decades of living.

Labels: activism, movies, Paul Newman, philanthropy

What a long, strange guilt trip it's been. And most of us are unaware that we're even on it.

Right wingers for better than a year have been conscientiously reminding us time and time again what Sen. Obama's middle name is.

However, given their dismal outreach program toward African American voters (with all due respect to Ken Mehlman), one deeply suspects that, in reality, the name they really want to pounce on is not his middle name but his surname.

President Barack Obama. Think about what shudders through the collective nervous system of white Appalachia, Deep South crackers and Caucasian Middle America when they repeat that name and conjunctive title.

President Obama.

The brand name we've been hearing repeatedly in the news since the 2004 Democratic convention is suddenly stripped of its faux mainstream familiarity. It's an unmistakably African, not African American name, one not buried under the unthreatening slave names Washington and Jefferson or comfortingly bleached through Anglicization.

It is unmistakably, unequivocally, unapologetically, even proudly African, specifically Kenyan. And those who insist on judging their fellow humans because of their X or Y chromosome, their skin pigmentation or lack thereof or what geographical borders within which we were hurtled into this world, all without our consent, will feel the need to come to grips with Obama's African roots.

Obama. It will make people think of spear chuckers, women with bare breasts sagging down to their navels and all the misleading pictures in the pages of National Geographic that we were raised to believe as gospel.

What will go through their minds on Election Day, when they're standing in the booth, committed and needing to vote for somebody? I'm thinking not of dependably racist Republicans but so-called Democratic voters, the "Undecideds", the independents who find McCain loathsome and laughable.

President Obama. Hm...

This is where guilt will tiptoe into the 11th hour of the race, the guilt that reminds us what we did to West Africans, we meaning white people collectively. We Dutch, we English, we Irish... We Americans. And sometimes guilt can drive us away from doing the right thing as often as driving us away from committing ancient sins.

We may think of slave ships carrying blacks from the Dark Continent, packed in the cargo hold like sardines. We'll atavistically remember chains, whips, thumbscrews, families torn apart on the auction block.

And, to paraphrase Robert Lowell in his landmark poem "For the Union Dead", it will stick like a fishbone in the nation's throat.

Another preview of Maron v. Seder, premiering October 1 at 3:00 PM Eastern time here.



You just can't argue with this kind of cogent, straightforward analysis.

Labels: comedy, economic death watch, Sam Seder

First it was Neal Cavuto blaming the credit crisis on minorities buying houses they couldn't afford. Now that disgusting, racist meme is infecting the entire right wing like a virus.

As Glenn Greenwald notes, Mark Krikorian in the National Review reprints a Washington Mutual press release pointing out its awards for diversity and titles his post, "Cause and Effect?" -- the assumption being that because WaMu was diverse, that's the reason it failed.

It says something deeply sick about our country that this is regarded in ANY circles as acceptable discourse in the year 2008.

I just finished watching the debate, and it seemed to me that the room was lit to make Barack Obama look darker than he is.

Watching the mean, cranky, psychotic, puny little man that is John McCain, who even with his wife's $100 million won't get himself a decent set of teeth, playing the POW card, telling outright lies, clenching his jaw as if he were wishing it was still legal to string up black men, and finishing up with a rant about experience, as if his running mate wasn't the biggest embarrassment in American political history, I was once again reminded that this election is a referendum on all of us. It's a referendum on whether we are still such a racist country that we are willing to elect such a vile, corroded, soulless excuse for a human being, and his willfully ignorant, religiously insane running mate, simply because their skin is white.

And I fear terribly that we are.

Labels: racism

Your host for tonight will be PJ, head rabbi of the I Sedionisti. Expect snark, sarcasm, and fun. Check in any time; the door's open, but the fun starts at 9 PM Eastern Time.

Labels: 2008 election, Barack Obama, John McCain

Jon Stewart, on why the current crisis sounds so familiar.

Labels: Jon Stewart, parsing, utter horseshit

Yes, billion. Not million, BILLION.

Of course, Maurice "Hank" Greenberg's ill-gotten gains were worth $20 billion when he left the firm in 2005, but what's a few billion among friends?

CEO Maurice "Hank" Greenberg intends to sell his AIG stock, according to a regulatory filing on Thursday.

Greenberg, who ran AIG for nearly four decades, said he will sell stock in the open market, and that the sales may "materially" decrease the holdings that he controls, according to the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Greenberg, through a personal stake, family trust and companies that he controls, owns roughly 11 percent of AIG's stock, making him its largest shareholder before AIG agreed to a federal bailout that will give government 80 percent ownership.

Labels: economic death watch, greed

Wanda Sykes on The Tonight Show:


Marc Maron, with Conan O'Brien last week:

Labels: Comedians

Does the fun ever start? Now it's Washington Mutual:

Regulators simultaneously brokered an emergency sale of virtually all of Washington Mutual, the nation’s largest savings and loan, to JPMorgan Chase for $1.9 billion, averting another potentially huge taxpayer bill for the rescue of a failing institution.

The move came as lawmakers reached a stalemate over the passage of a $700 billion bailout fund designed to help ailing banks, and removed one of America’s most troubled banks from the financial landscape.

Customers of WaMu, based in Seattle, are unlikely to be affected, although shareholders and some bondholders will be wiped out. WaMu account holders are guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation up to $100,000, and additional deposits will be backed by JPMorgan Chase.

By taking on all of WaMu’s troubled mortgages and credit card loans, JPMorgan Chase will absorb at least $31 billion in losses that would normally have fallen to the F.D.I.C.

JPMorgan Chase, which acquired Bear Stearns only six months ago in another shotgun deal brokered by the government, is to take control Friday of all of WaMu’s deposits and bank branches, creating a nationwide retail franchise that rivals only Bank of America. But JPMorgan will also take on Washington Mutual’s big portfolio of troubled assets, and plans to shut down at least 10 percent of the combined company’s 5,400 branches in markets like New York and Chicago, where they compete. The bank also plans to raise an additional $8 billion by issuing common stock on Friday to pay for the deal.

At some point, we have to wonder just how much water JPMorgan Chase can take on before it too starts going down at the head, and how long it's going to take before JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America will be the only two banks in the country. You think your credit card interest is high now? Wait until these companies have a duopoly.

Labels: economic death watch

October 1st, baby! 3:00 PM Eastern Time. Be there or be gainfully employed and catch it later.

Labels: Air America, comedy, Marc Maron, Sam Seder

Excerpt:

The second area whereby God wants us, wants to penetrate in our society is in the economic area. The Bible says that the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous. It's high time that we have top Christian businessmen, businesswomen, bankers, you know, who are men and women of integrity running the economics of our nations. That's what we are waiting for. That's part and parcel of transformation. If you look at the -- you know -- if you look at the Israelites, that's how they work. And that's how they are, even today.

Yeah, right. And we eat Christian babies with fava beans and a nice Manischewitz Cream White Concord on Shabbos, too.

This is the pastor from whom Sarah Palin has received blessing. So let's hear no more of Jeremiah Wright, shall we? Because two can play this game. And if the Republicans want to keep this up, we'll bring up THIS little tidbit for good measure as well. Americans have a right to see the kind of vile, hypocritical, mean-spirited bigot that John McCain has decided to put one melanoma away from the presidency.

Are you listening, Century Village Boca Raton?

(h/t)

Labels: bigotry, hypocrisy, racism, Sarah Palin

As Congress gets ready to roll over and play dead again, this looks less like comedy and more like prophesy.



Why are the comedians getting this right and the MSM so wrong?

Labels: bank failures, pukeworthy

...and better-looking, too:

Labels: comedy, Craig Ferguson, John McCain

In the meantime, check here for the past vods that led to the messy birth of this thing. Technical glitches and growing pains aside, its a fantastic show and they guys have great chemistry. Add that to the fantastic and funny commentary therein on the state of things and you have a huge slice of what made early Air America great...and what alot of us have been fighting to get back for too long now!
Be sure to check back www.samsedershow.com daily before 3 PM to catch the warm-up shows live. I'm not sure of the schedule, but its well worth it to see this thing unfold in real time. Congratulations, guys! We love you!

( hey, wait a minute...wasn't that Seder v. Maron for a minute there?...)

Want more?


Go here for the rest!

c/p RIPCoco

Labels: Air America, Marc Maron, Sam Seder, Seder V Maron

Let's hear no more talk of how racism is a thing of the past. Hot on the heels of the news of racist flyers in Roxbury, NJ comes more racial hatred directed at Barack Obama:

Officials at a US Christian college have launched an investigation after a cardboard effigy of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was hung from a tree, a statement said Wednesday.

George Fox University, in Newberg, Oregon, said in a statement on its website that the cutout of Obama was found hanging from a tree on campus early Tuesday morning before being removed by staff.

A sign reading "Act Six reject" was taped to the cutout. Act Six is a scholarship program run by the college granted to 10 student leaders from urban Portland. Most of the students currently benefiting from the program are ethnic minorities, the statement said.

To its credit, George Fox University has issued a variety of statements from the university's president, board of trustees, and student government, as well as an apology to Barack Obama.

But if we're going to talk about Islamic terrorism and how religion drives people to commit crimes against humanity, it's high time in this country that we started looking at terrorism committed by so-called Christians. Whether it's hanging black presidential candidates in effigy or bombing abortion clinics, discussion of Christian terrorism is taboo in this country. This country's religiosity, given its secular roots, is a bafflement, but no religion that regards itself as the One True Way is immune from being used as an excuse for terrorism. It's time Christianity stopped getting a free pass.

Labels: racism

Yesterday Barack Obama refused to walk into a trap that the Republicans set for him, but Congressional Democrats are going full speed ahead right into one.

John McCain, in an interception of the statesman football from the Obama camp, decided to go one-up on Obama's proposal to issue a bipartisan statement together and suspend his campaign, including a proposal to postpone Friday night's debate. Of course the early reports were full of Republicans, including Orrin Hatch, extolling the virtues of "the John McCain I know," and lauding McCain's "statesmanship" -- until Camp Grumpy Grampy decided that the date of the Palin/Biden debate would be a dandy time in which to reschedule it.

Of course, who could blame Camp Grampy, when, having gone for the quick, cheap bounce by putting a preposterously unqualified and uninformed person on the ticket under the assumption that women would vote for her for just that reason, for trying to quash the obligation for Governor Talking Points to actually defend the nonsense that comes out of her mouth, especially when their prize pony shows up at an interview with Cupcake Katie Couric and comes out with stuff like this:

PALIN: My understanding is that Rick Davis recused himself from the dealings of the firm. I don't know how long ago, a year or two ago that he's not benefiting from that. And you know, I was--I would hope that's not the case.

COURIC: But he still has a stake in the company so isn't that a conflict of interest.

PALIN: Again, my understanding is that he recused himself from the dealings with Freddie and Fannie, any lobbying efforts on his part there. And I would hope that's the case because, as John McCain has been saying, and as I've been on a more local level been on a much more local level been also rallying against is the undue influence of lobbyists in public policy decisions being made.

and:

I'm ill about the position that America is in and that we have to look at a $700 billion bailout. At the same time we know that inaction is not an option and as Senator McCain has said unless this nearly trillion dollar bailout is what it may end up to be, unless there are amendments in Paulson's proposal, really I don't believe that Americans are going to support this and we will not support this. The interesting thing in the last couple of days that I have seen is that Americans are waiting to see what John McCain will do on this proposal. They're not waiting to see what Barack Obama is going to do. Is he going to do this and see what way the political wind's blowing. They're waiting to see if John McCain will be able to see these amendments implemented in Paulson's proposal.

COURIC: Why do you say that? Why are they waiting for John McCain and not Barack Obama?

PALIN: He's got the track record of the leadership qualities and the pragmatism that's needed at a crisis time like this.

COURIC: But polls have shown that Senator Obama has actually gotten a boost as a result of this latest crisis with more people feeling that he can handle the situation better than John McCain?

PALIN: 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?

COURIC: If this doesn't pass, do you think there's a risk of another Great Depression?

PALIN: Unfortunately, that is the road that America may find itself on. Not necessarily this as it's been proposed has to pass or we're going to find ourselves in another Great Depression. There has got to be action--bipartisan effort--Congress not pointing fingers at one another but finding the solution to this, taking action, and being serious about the reforms on Wall Street that are needed.

COURIC: Would you support a moratorium on foreclosures to help average Americans keep their homes?

PALIN: That's something that John McCain and I have both been discussing whether that is part of the solution or not...you know, it's going to be a multi-faceted that has to be found here.

COURIC: So you haven't decided whether you'll support it or not?

PALIN: I have not.

COURIC: What are the pros and cons of it do you think?

PALIN: Well, some decisions that have been made poorly should not be rewarded of course.

COURIC: By consumers, you're saying?

PALIN: Consumers and those who were predator lenders also. That's, you know, that has to be considered also. But again, it's got to be a comprehensive long term solution found for this problem that America is facing today. As I say, we are getting into crisis mode here.

Having a tough time blaming it all on the black people, eh, Governor? Don't you know that's your party's talking point these days?

Sarah Palin may be a very shrewd politician, but if she isn't just a nitwit with good political instincts, that means she's willfully and deliberately ignorant. And that disqualifies her from seeking the second-highest office in the country. Every time they put this woman in front of a camera without a script and without a wire feeding answers into her ear, she looks and sounds increasingly like this:


It's understandable that Camp Grampy would want to keep her away from a debate situation, particularly one with someone as ferociously smart as Joe Biden. But the efforts to keep her sequestered from the American people smack of the same arrogance that characterizes the Bush Administration.

Obama, to his credit, didn't take the bait. Joe Scarborough may be saying this morning that Obama should have said "Yes, John, that's a good idea, let's do it", but of course Joe Scarborough is one of the last bastions among the non-knee-jerk of McCain manlove. But even better than just Obama's refusal to take the bait was his framing of McCain's effort as not cowardice, but an inability to handle two tasks at once. Americans may be ill-informed, but they do know that a President must be able to juggle multiple crises, and perhaps the next president will be required to juggle more of them than some have been. So if John McCain, with 26 years of experience in Washington and a self-claimed specialization in foreign policy, can't handle a vote on the bailout and debate prep, perhaps he ought to rethink his ambitions. After all, most of us don't get everything we want in life.

Less intelligent, however, are Congressional Democrats, who are once again falling hook, line, and sinker for Republican fearmongering. Looking at the dynamic that's playing out in Washington, we now have conservative Republicans free to speak out against the plan to transfer $700 billion of American taxpayers' money into the pockets of Wall Street executives (including, presumably, Henry Paulson if he returns to Goldman Sachs after leaving Washington, given that Goldman stands to be a primary beneficiary of Washington's beneficence), while Democrats, once again too terrified of the consequences of "voting wrong", are taking the bait and planning to make a few compromises so they can vote for this monstrosity.

The potential damage to downticket races from the Democrats' capitulation is incalculable. Americans oppose this bailout 55%-31%, and the way it's playing out, Republicans in these downticket races will be able to make hay over the DEMOCRATS giving your tax dollars to wealthy Wall Street executives. I'm thinking in particularly about races like the Minnesota Senate race, in which Al Franken has pulled even with Norm Coleman. This is the sort of contest in which a perception of Democratic capitulation to an unpopular president could be devastating, even as said capitulation gives cover to conservative Republican incumbents.

The Democrats in Congress should look to their party's standard-bearer's comments yesterday to see how it's done:

Labels: Barack Obama, Democratic sellouts, John McCain

It's so messy to clean up.

But this is the most cranium-combusting load of horsepuckey I've heard since Ron Suskind wrote about the Bush aide who said that when you're an empire, you create your own reality:

Aside from the ABC interview, Palin herself has not continued to tout Alaska's proximity to Russia as an example of her foreign policy knowledge. Instead, she often mentions on the campaign trail her work in striking a deal to construct a nearly $40 billion natural gas pipeline from Alaska, which would lead through Canada into the continental United States, as evidence that she has been at the forefront of making the U.S. energy independent.

“In general, the main way governors get involved in foreign countries is economic - they try to get countries to invest and go on trade missions, but very rarely do they get involved in issues of national security, in part because the Constitution prevents them from doing so,” Kupchan said.

“I think its fair to say [Palin's] exposure to most foreign policy issues is minimal. Had she been a governor for a long time and gotten involved in politics on the broader national stage, that would be different.”

Asked what foreign policy credentials Palin might bring with her to Washington, Dr. Gerald McBeath, the political science department chair at the University of Alaska - Fairbanks, pointed to Alaska's military bases and said that Palin would certainly be aware of security operations surrounding them.

“It used to be more critical in the Cold War than it is now,” McBeath added.

McBeath also noted that Alaska is within striking range of missiles that could be launched from North Korea.

A senior campaign aide who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity admitted that Palin's knowledge of Russia may be limited to the way someone from Miami might obtain a general feel for Latin America.

“It is very much being able to look off the tip of Alaska,” the aide said. “Metaphorically, I'm talking about.”

And I guess someone who goes to the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas gets a "general feel" for Egypt. And someone who has a burger at Margaritaville gets a "general feel" for Jamaica. And someone who spends a day at the Jersey Shore gets a "general feel" for oceanography.

I could go on all day, but you get the point.

It's a shandeh for this country that the McCain campaign can even think it could get away with this.

(h/t)

Labels: Sarah Palin, utter horseshit

Someone had to point out that treating Sarah Palin like a fragile, delicate flower who needs to be treated gently; demanding that reporters treat her with "deference" as if she were a princess, is sexism of the worst order.

But I never in my wildest dreams thought it would be Campbell Brown who'd do it:

I guess this is an "Only Nixon could go to China" moment.

Labels: media, Sarah Palin

I don't think Americans were this scared even after the 9/11 attacks. Yes, people were frightened, but the fear was based on something tangible, something they could put their fingers on. Today, the fear is deeper. It's at the very core of our being. We may not all understand the arcana of derivatives and the way Wall Street finance works, but most of us have at some point in our lives accumulated more debt than was good for us, and we have at least a dim understanding of what a bailout of up to a trillion dollars means.

And even if we don't, we understand that our 401(k) balances are dwindling. We understand that the value of our homes has dropped by twenty percent. We know how much more difficult it is to find a job -- and to keep one. We know how much more we're paying at the pump and at the grocery store. We know the sticker shock when the fuel oil company comes to fill the tank. We know how the electric bill was forty dollars higher in August than it was the same month last year, even though we used the air conditioning less.

If you have children, you're wondering how you're going to feed your fifteen-year-old who can seemingly inhale a refrigerator full of food and calls it an after-school snack. You're wondering how you're going to send your kids to college -- and what on earth they're going to do for a living when they get out. If you're like me, and you're on the north end of fifty, you're realizing that you're going to have to work until they put you in a box -- provided you can even hold onto a job. You're going to have to do this because even if you've done everything right and saved as much as you can towards retirement, a good chunk of that money is gone -- gone into the pockets of the people Henry Paulson is trying to use YOUR tax dollars to protect and prop up in his effort to become Economic King of America.

In a normal world, this would mean that someone who offered a change of direction would be embraced to the point of a ten to fifteen point lead. But this election year is different. Because this year the candidate who isn't an entrenched Washington hack with a history of taking bribes from lobbyists happens to be dark of skin. And in bad times, Americans get scared. And when they get scared, they tend to look for scapegoats, and those who are dark of skin are first in line.

Here's what's happening in the Morris County, NJ hamburg of Roxbury:

Some neighborhoods in Roxbury were blanketed over the weekend with campaign literature from a white supremacist, anti-immigration group that bluntly raised the issue of race regarding presidential candidate Barack Obama, offending some recipients and angering Democratic leaders.

A flier left on driveways in a neatly packaged plastic envelope and distributed by a group named the League of American Patriots, with a Butler mailing address, questioned, "Do You Want A Black President?" and stated "Black Ruled Nations most unstable and violent in the world."

Roxbury resident Elizabeth Corsetto said she and her husband came home from doing errands Saturday and found the flier at the end of their driveway. She picked it up, expecting a mailer from a retailer but instead found a one-page, black and white sheet featuring unflattering photos of Obama, including a doctored one portraying him with a long beard and turban.

"Why should we seal our fate by allowing a black ruler to destroy us?" asked the flier, which also detailed what it contended to be a series of facts on black unemployment, poverty, HIV and crime rates, while pointing out the woes of a couple of predominantly black-populated countries.

Attempts to reach the League of American Patriots, by telephone and e-mail, were unsuccessful yesterday. There were no names of group leaders or organizers on the flier or the group's website.

Corsetto, a former school board president in Dover, said she was shocked to get the flier.

"I'm not against free speech, but I was shocked to find stuff like this in my neighborhood," Corsetto said. "I know racism is out there in this world, but I'm particularly disturbed to believe this is happening in Morris County."

The League of American Patriots was formed March 29 at a meeting attended by more than 20 people at an undisclosed site in northern New Jersey, followed by a July meeting at an undisclosed Morris County park, according to the organization's website.

The group is "committed to restoring America to the principles upon which it was founded. First and foremost is halting the rapid demographic decline of the European peoples in our homeland," according to the website. League members attended an immigration reform rally in Lakewood in May and what was billed as an anti-Mexican rally in Shenandoah, Pa., in August, according to the site.

In short, white supremacy.

This group is perhaps a more extreme version of the kind of racism that has permeated this campaign. Whether it's the McCain campaign running ads linking Barack Obama to Franklin Raines (another black man), or ads chiding him for being "disrespectful" towards "Governor Palin", as if he were Emmett Till and they're just telling that black boy to watch his back, it's clear that "Can't you see that man is a ni-?" is the undercurrent of this, well, race. And that is bringing all the lunatics out of the woodwork.

Today a Washington Post/ABC News poll has Obama up 52%-43% over John McCain, which is getting close to the double-digit lead I believe Obama will need to prevail against a 5-7% racism factor and Republican vote suppression. If Obama continues to surge, watch for more groups like this to form.

Labels: racism, wingnuttia

Ask them to, when they tuck their kids into bed tonight, if they really want a hothead with anger management problems and an ignoramus who thinks she's a Russia expert because you can see Russia from Alasa running the show with stuff like this going on:

Russia flexed its muscles in America’s backyard yesterday as it sent one of its largest warships to join military exercises in the Caribbean. The nuclear-powered flagship Peter the Great set off for Venezuela with the submarine destroyer Admiral Chabanenko and two support vessels in the first Russian naval mission in Latin America since the end of the Cold War.

“The St Andrew flag, the flag of the Russian Navy, is confidently returning to the world oceans,” Igor Dygalo, a spokesman for the Russian Navy, said. He declined to comment on Russian newspaper reports that nuclear submarines were also part of the expedition.

The voyage to join the Venezuelan Navy for manoeuvres came only days after Russian strategic nuclear bombers made their first visit to the country. Hugo Chávez, the President, said then that the arrival of the strike force was a warning to the US. The vehemently antiAmerican Venezuelan leader is due to visit Dmitri Medvedev, the Russian President, in Moscow this week as part of a tour that includes visits to Cuba and China.

Peter the Great is armed with 20 nuclear cruise missiles and up to 500 surface-to-air missiles, making it one of the most formidable warships in the world. The Kremlin has courted Venezuela and Cuba as tensions with the West soared over the proposed US missile shield in Eastern Europe and the Russian invasion of Georgia last month. Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister, said recently that Russia should “restore its position in Cuba” – the nation where deployment of Soviet nuclear missiles in 1962 brought Russia and the United States to the brink of nuclear war.

Labels: Armageddon, FUBAR, Rissia

Something more like this:

Labels: economic death watch

You know, the one with the CD changer that no longer works and the dual tape deck that doesn't work? It's served Mr. Brilliant well lo these twelve years since we moved into Casa la Brilliant, but it was replaced on Saturday as a 22nd anniversary president from Your Humble Blogger by a nice, new, thundering 500-watt Sony.

I was planning to put it out the night before the next pickup day and letting the pickers come and peruse and see if someone could salvage it, but maybe I'll list it on Buy MY Shitpile, Henry!. Maybe I'll put out that old 486 computer that's been sitting in the basement for a decade, too.

What's in YOUR shitpile?

Labels: economic death watch, humor

Or are they going to allow another terrorist attack to play out? It's one or the other:

The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.

Now they’re training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.

Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.

It is not the first time an active-duty unit has been tapped to help at home. In August 2005, for example, when Hurricane Katrina unleashed hell in Mississippi and Louisiana, several active-duty units were pulled from various posts and mobilized to those areas.

But this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.

After 1st BCT finishes its dwell-time mission, expectations are that another, as yet unnamed, active-duty brigade will take over and that the mission will be a permanent one.

[snip]

The 1st of the 3rd is still scheduled to deploy to either Iraq or Afghanistan in early 2010, which means the soldiers will have been home a minimum of 20 months by the time they ship out.

In the meantime, they’ll learn new skills, use some of the ones they acquired in the war zone and more than likely will not be shot at while doing any of it.

They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.

Training for homeland scenarios has already begun at Fort Stewart and includes specialty tasks such as knowing how to use the “jaws of life” to extract a person from a mangled vehicle; extra medical training for a CBRNE incident; and working with U.S. Forestry Service experts on how to go in with chainsaws and cut and clear trees to clear a road or area.

The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

“It’s a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they’re fielding. They’ve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it.”

The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.

“I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered,” said Cloutier, describing the experience as “your worst muscle cramp ever — times 10 throughout your whole body.

“I’m not a small guy, I weigh 230 pounds ... it put me on my knees in seconds.”

The brigade will not change its name, but the force will be known for the next year as a CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force, or CCMRF (pronounced “sea-smurf”).

“I can’t think of a more noble mission than this,” said Cloutier, who took command in July.

Yikes.

Labels: martial law

Foodies for Obama:

Labels: bara', food

The feces are starting to hit the fan already, as towns in the south who receive much of their gasoline from the refineries battered by Hurricanes Gustav and Ike find themselves with no fuel:

A gas shortage that closed many stations Monday and left motorists in lines of up to an hour or more at others promises more of the same today.

And worse yet, there will no quick fix in the next several days, officials said.

“People are panicked,” said Marsha Messer, manager of the Roadrunner Shell station on Merrimon Avenue. Messer stood in the station’s parking lot Monday afternoon directing lines of cars.

“We’ve already had three fights today. That’s why we have the cops here, “ she said, pointing to Asheville police patrol cars parked to the side.

The shortages have spread across much of the Southeast as most the 15 Gulf Coast refineries shut down by Hurricanes Gustav and Ike have yet to come back on line, cutting the nation’s petroleum supply by 22 percent.

Some experts said Asheville’s relative remoteness from the Colonial Pipeline, the main artery for East Coast gasoline supplies, and sparse population compared with major metropolitan areas could be adding to the problem.

The pipeline reopened a week ago Sunday, albeit at a greatly reduced carrying rate, and some supplies are reaching the gasoline terminals in Spartanburg and Belton, S.C., that supply the mountains.

But some industry officials had as many questions as answers in trying to explain the problems Monday.

The article goes on to state that once you get out of the mountains, the supply problem is far less, and cites the higher cost of getting tanker trucks out there. But does it cost any more now than it did, say, a month ago?

Is it an accident, that the people who live in these regions are precisely the "white, working class voters" the McCain campaign desperately needs?

Drill Baby Drill indeed.

Labels: America After Oil, tinfoil

Forget all this niceness and "John McCain is a good man who served his country honorably" namby-pamby horsepuckey. This is no less than war, and THIS is the ad that should be shown all over the country:


No lies there; it's John McCain in his own words. Want to put this ad where people who don't spend time on the Web can see it? Donate here.

Labels: 2008 election, John McCain

Does anyone honestly believe that the McCain campaign won't challenge 50,000 new registrations collected by the Hip-Hop Caucus?

Washington, D.C (September 19th)- Radio One, Inc. (www.radio-one.com) along with the Hip Hop Caucus - Respect My Vote Campaign (www.hiphopcaucus.org) is planning to set a World Record by registering more than 50,000 eligible persons in one day during the “One Vote” National Registration Drive Tuesday, September 30th from 6:00am to 9:00pm.

Working with Radio One in 15 cities across the country that include Atlanta, Indianapolis, Baltimore, Detroit, St. Louis, Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Philadelphia, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston, Richmond and Washington DC, the Hip Hop Caucus will attempt the first ever one-day 50,000 person voter registration drive through live call-ins, online and on-site registration, in anticipation of November’s presidential election.

““Radio One has been committed for more than 25 years to the community and nothing is more important than being able to exercise your right to vote. Voting is the most fundamental of all of our rights as American citizens,” explains Barry Macon, Corporate Director of Marketing.

52 Radio One Inc stations across 15 cities will each broadcast live from one central location allowing registrars to register eligible voters on site. This nationwide voter drive is a joint effort between Radio One, Inc and Respect My Vote creator, Reverend Lennox Yearwood, also co-creator of the 2004 campaign "Vote or Die" with Sean "P Diddy" Combs. The initiative looks to bring the large number of African Americans, ages 18-29, who did not attend college out to the polls to participate in this year’s presidential election.

“We are committed to building awareness to the “Respect My Vote” Campaign,” explains Hip Hop Caucus CEO, Rev. Yearwood. “Our partnership with Radio One will help push the importance of registering to vote in this year’s presidential election to the more than 8 million unregistered African-Americans eligible to vote nationwide.”

About

Radio One, Inc. (www.radio-one.com) is one of the nation's largest radio broadcasting companies and the largest radio broadcasting company that primarily targets African-American and urban listeners. Radio One owns and/or operates 53 radio stations located in 16 urban markets in the United States. Additionally, Radio One owns Magazine One, Inc. (d/b/a Giant Magazine) (www.giantmag.com), interests in TV One, LLC (www.tvoneonline.com), a cable/satellite network programming primarily to African-Americans and Reach Media, Inc.

About

The Hip Hop Caucus (www.hiphopcaucus.org), a Washington, D.C. based bi-partisan community organization has created the “Respect My Vote Campaign” and is being endorsed by Hip Hop star T.I. The brainchild of Rev. Yearwood, co-creator of the 2004 campaign "Vote or Die" with Sean "P Diddy" Combs, The Respect My Vote campaign targets African Americans ages 18-29 who did not attend college. Statistics show only 7% of African Americans 18-29 who did not attend college, voted this past Super Tuesday and this is a target audience that is not being pursued by either campaign. Rev. Yearwood was also the Political and Grassroots Director for Russell Simmons' Hip Hop Summit Action Network, and a Senior Consultant to Jay Z's “Voice Your Choice” initiative. Through the use of the celebrity spokespeople and grassroots voter registration initiative, the Hip Hop Caucus looks to urge young African Americans to register and vote in November.

Just make sure that there isn't so much as a missing dot on an "i", there, folks. Because the Republicans are going to try to find something on every last one of these registrations.

Labels: GOTV, vote suppression

When we look back upon the George W. Bush years in this country, the notion of "keeping Americans safe" has been the mantra used by this Administration to justify any number of policies and practices that make a mockery of that for which this country is supposed to stand. Whether it's using lies about weapons of mass destruction to justify an unnecessary war that's about family grudges and oil greed, or mass surveillance of Americans, or creating "free speech zones" far away from where our leaders can see them, or bellicose fist-waving at Iran, the justification for every crime, every travesty committed by this bunch of criminals has been "Our job is to keep you safe from the terrorists."

But there are many kinds of terrorists, as we now see.

On December 9, 1994, the United Nations adopted resolution 49/60 ("Measures to Eliminate International Terrorism"), which defined terrorism as:

Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or any other nature that may be invoked to justify them.

I'd say that under this definition, the entire mortgage/lending scam that has put the global economy on the brink of collapse qualifies as international terrorism, wouldn't you?

We've been conditioned to think of "feeling safe" as a function of how close swarthy Middle Eastern men are to us on a day-to-day basis. But sometimes terrorists wear starched white shirts and pinstriped suits and appear on CNBC every day.

Do you "feel safe" these days? Do you feel safe in your job? Do you feel safe that your invested money is going to not even necessarily grow, but even be there when you retire? Do you feel safe that you're going to be able to keep your house, no matter when you bought or how much equity you have? Do you feel safe about your future?

I know I don't.

Part of the national psyche of the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks was this constant, gnawing sense of dread, that It Might Happen Again. Of course these fears were fed by the Bush Administration, with its color-coded alerts and its press conferences to reveal dire threats that had no basis in truth, and its talk of drone planes and killer cows and crop dusters and poisoned pens. But while the Bush Administration and their Congressional lackeys were scaring the bejeezus out of Americans, they were silently picking our pockets to stuff even more into their own, which were already bulging with cash from the Bush tax cuts. And when Americans started to realize that their wallets had a few less George Washingtons in them, the Republicans created the Immigrant Boogeyman; as if the guy who climbs on your roof to clean your gutters is the reason you don't have a middle management job anymore. The Bush years have been characterized by fear -- fear and loathing.

And now here we are. Millions of Americans are going to lose their homes. Millions more are losing their jobs and millions more will continue to. Those who managed to put some money away for retirement because God knows we can't rely on Social Security to be there are finding that 30% or more of the value of their accounts has disappeared.

There are many ways to be terrorized. Islamic radicals may have terrorized us seven years ago. But our own government, and the titans of the financial community, took over where they left off.

Labels: domestic terrorism

Funny, that.

Funny how Camp Grandpa isn't questioning any voter registrations in states that John McCain is likely to win, only those in which disenfranchisement might tip the balance in their favor:

Two advisers to John McCain's presidential campaign today said a flood of questionable voter registration applications in swing states threatens to undermine the accuracy of the November election and could prevent legitimate voters from registering for a ballot.

The warning came less than a week after the Democratic party filed a lawsuit in Michigan seeking to end what its lawyers said were Republican efforts to suppress votes of poor people and African Americans, two historically Democratic constituencies. The move indicates the Democratic and Republican parties are set to battle over voter registration in the remaining weeks of the campaign.

On a conference call with reporters this afternoon, former Republican senators John Danforth and Warren Rudman said a coalition of community organisations called Acorn had in several states submitted voter registration applications for people who were already registered.

The senators did not accuse the group of fraud, but suggested the group's registration drive was "diluting" legitimate votes and causing havoc in the nation's voter registration process.

[snip]

Today, Danforth sought to link Acorn to the Obama camp, noting that a political action committee affiliated with Acorn endorsed Obama.

He also said the McCain campaign was concerned that some ballot stations in heavily Democratic areas would be allowed to remain open on election night after their scheduled closing.

State laws typically allow that anyone on line to vote when the polls are scheduled to close may cast a ballot, but Danforth said he was concerned polling sites would be kept open to accommodate Democrats' late voter turnout efforts.

Yes, that's John Danforth, the former Missouri Senator who used to be what passes for an honest broker in the Republican Party.

Note how the McCain campaign is going to zero in on polling stations that stay open late to accommodate people who, like we saw in Ohio in 2004, have to wait in line for up to ten hours because a partisan and corrupt Republican Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, held back voting machines in largely minority districts.

The Republican Party's voting-problem mantra is "voter fraud", which is code for "minority voters who show up at the polls to vote Democratic". This is a party that would disenfranchise entire swaths of people rather than have just one person perhaps slip through the cracks. They focus on "illegal immigrants showing up to vote", when the reality is that the LAST thing someone who is undocumented wants is to be exposed while trying to vote.

Let's not mince words here: The Republican Party is about disenfranchising Democratic voters. Just as this party has been all about "You're either with us or you're a traitor" since the 9/11 attacks, the Republican Party would return us to the days when only white men --their most reliable consituency -- are allowed to vote.

Labels: John McCain, Republicans, vote suppression

If you missed Naomi Klein on Real Time with Bill Maher last weekend and you don't have time to watch it chopped into segments on YouTube, go read this.

A snippet:

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. Don't forget that Newt Gingrich's 527 organization, American Solutions for Winning the Future, is still riding the wave of success from its offshore drilling campaign, "Drill Here, Drill Now!" Just four months ago, offshore drilling was not even on the political radar and now the U.S. House of Representatives has passed supportive legislation. Gingrich is holding an event this Saturday, September 27 that will be broadcast on satellite television to shore up public support for these controversial policies.


What Gingrich's wish list tells us is that the dumping of private debt into the public coffers is only stage one of the current shock. The second comes when the debt crisis currently being created by this bailout becomes the excuse to privatize social security, lower corporate taxes and cut spending on the poor. A President McCain would embrace these policies willingly. A President Obama would come under huge pressure from the think tanks and the corporate media to abandon his campaign promises and embrace austerity and "free-market stimulus."

Bill Moyers may think Kevin Phillips is ahead of the curve, but I don't think there's been a more important book written in the last decade than The Shock Doctrine.

Dear American:

I cordially correspond today to request 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 urgent need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion USD. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.



I am working with Mr. Phil Gramm, lobbyist for UBS, who (God willing) will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a former U.S. congressional leader and the architect of the PALIN / McCain Financial Doctrine, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. As such, you can be assured that this transaction 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. For this inconvenience you will be rewarded with grand fees of 1/1,000,000th of 1% of possible profits due to off shore laundering of skim funds due to reprinting of said funds.



Please reply with mother's maiden name, routing and account numbers of all of your bank account, IRA and college fund accounts 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

Folks, seriously, contact your representatives about the insane bailout: Skippy has the info and pertinent links here.

h/t Richard Blair

Labels: comedy, lies, wingnuttia

Just wondering why there are people in this country who can't get past Barack Obama's skin color enough to vote for him, but they're perfectly OK with a presidential candidate who is 72 and has had multiple bouts of malignant melanoma (including one with lymph node involvement) and a vice-presidential running mate who's profoundly ignorant of just about everything she'd need to know to lead this country -- and who thinks we are not entitled to know anything at all about her?

From who else? Lower Manhattanite. Go. Read. Enjoy. If you can.

As I enter the last week of my surprisingly short periof of unemployment, I'm starting to marvel at my good fortune in landing something else so quickly. In fact, of the five people in my department who were laid off, only three were actively looking, and now all three of us have found jobs -- two of us in the same company and the same building. And all three of us are over 50.

But that shouldn't blind anyone to what is actually going on out there, as LM explains as only he can:

These were the soon-to-be refugees from the hours-from-defunct Lehman Brothers.

They toted odd talismans of a finance industry gone sour like milk left out for a summer's fortnight. One woman carried a big, inflatable Wall St. Bull. Another carried huge, foam core-backed blow-ups of pictures of partying fellow Wall Streeters from more flush times. A haggard-looking fellow struggled with three laptop bags and a small box of papers—probably a stack of just-printed resumés.

Schadenfreude naturally prompts one to feel little for these people. We tend to see them all as Gordon Gekko-ish,“big, swinging dicks”. But the fact of the matter is that while a few of the people trudging dejectedly out of 745 Seventh Avenue may have been the contrast-collared bastards who led us into this abyss (most of the bigwigs stayed away lest they be the butt of catcalls—or worse from pissed off underlings), many more were just cube rats. Not rich. Not poor either. Just that nebulous in-between that puts in its hours and cashes a check for it. A shit load of 'em leveraged heavily against student loans for degrees that won't mean squat now as the industry gets a forced, financial “gastric bypass”, where there won't be the space anymore for that many jobs. The big guns are gonna be alright to a degree—much moreso than the Schmoes and Sues I saw carrying the trinkets of a better time down a midtown street.

I don't know what that guy was gonna do with all those extra mugs he was toting. Maybe fill 'em all with coffee all at once so he doesn't have to get up for refills as he stays up late re-doing his C.V.? Who knows?

What I do know is that people are hurting out here. Big time.

I feel no smugness nor sense of relief that next Monday I get to leave the house at 8 AM to get to work. Because anything can happen. Conventional wisdom used to be that large companies were "safer" and "more secure." If anyone actually still believed that, the last week should have blown that notion to smithereens. If it wasn't clear before, during the past twenty-eight years of Reaganomics and Democrats unable or unwilling to take credit for the many good things liberalism brought to this country, it is now clear that so-called free markets aren't unfettered; they're rigged in favor of thems that's got.


It is also now clear that for those who have black holes where the rest of us have hearts and souls, there is no amount of money that is enough; no amount that fills that hole. The secretaries and computer operators and help desk guys and network techs and phone techs and other operations people who were regarded as "cost centers" by Lehman Brothers executives will get nothing, but $2.5 billion has been set aside for golden parachutes for the people responsible for the company's fall. Guess what, America...these guys are never going to let you into their club. John McCain said he wants everyone to be rich, but the policies he advocates are designed to continue the Thems That Got Shall Get Them That's Not Shall Lose Club in perpetuity. A rising tide doesn't lift all boats, and the trickling down you feel upon your head isn't the wealth affect finally reaching you, it's the Great Dane of a Wall Street executive being walked by someone who used to have a good job -- and the dog is peeing on your head.

They got rid of pensions and told you that 401(k)s were better because you would control your own money and you could invest it. I don't know about you, but after a late start because I made barely enough to live on until I was in my mid-thirties, I've been socking money away into these plans ever since -- and not just a pittance, a fairly sizable amount of my income. I don't even want to look at my account balances anymore. A passbook savings account paying 0.25% is looking mighty good to me right about now.

They wanted to privatize Social Security and invest it in the stock market "for better returns" -- or so they said. Now we know why they wanted to privatize Social Security: so it too could be a casualty of Wall Street greed. "Sorry...we can't afford your old age pension anymore."

Nope. The system has been rigged against us from the beginning. It's just that they can no longer hide it.


(musical accompaniment by Billie Holiday and Leonard Cohen)

Today's honoree: Tristero, for pointing out just how deeply into the gutter John the Maverick War Hero MaCain is willing to go to get the presidency to which he's felt entitled since he got back from Vietnam.

Money quote:

Don't show me Obama's leading by two whole points in the polls. That is, for all intents and purposes, a tie. By any reality-based standard, this election should be a rout. The Republicans fielded a buffoon and a sociopath while Democrats chose genuine leaders. Racism explains a lot of it. Media bias explains a lot of it. But it is also the case that Democrats are hellbent on avoiding mentioning anything that could possibly be thought "unclean" when the Republicans have demonstrated that no sewer is so foul they won't stoop to disgorge its stinking mess into the public discourse.

Labels: bloggers, dirty tricks, John McCain

I wish this woman had said specifically what the name of the organization was, but it's obvious that some organization supporting John McCain is pushing the "Obama is a Muslim" meme and variants thereof:


(h/t)

Labels: bigotry, John McCain, racism, shamelessness, wingnuttia

Gather children, for storytime -- a story of what happens when there is no regulation and no oversight, and when the corporations are trusted to police themselves. No, I'm not talking about an investment industry that stuffed its pockets by creating "securities" (sic) out of bad debt, figuring those who bought those securities would be left holding the bag. I'm not talking about an investment industry that lauds the free market but now wants US to pay so that the people who did this can keep their multimillion dollar compensation.

No, I'm talking about the Great Economic Miracle in China, where the "maximize profit at all costs" mentality has now sickened 53,000 babies in that country and hospitalized nearly 13,000 from dairy products "contaminated" with melamine. I put "contaminated" in quotes because the word implies something accidental, but the presence of melamine in these products is purely intentional, designed to artificially boost protein level readings for the adulterated products after they've been watered down.

While China pledged to tighten food safety standards after the melamine-tainted pet food scandal last year, exemptions were still given to the food industry. And the dairy industry is growing so fast that the growth is outpacing oversight.

Regulation works only as much as inspections are available and conducted, but when taken in combination with the banking scandal in the United States, it blows Adam Smith's invisible hand theory to smithereens.

Labels: corporatism, greed

Photo by Lynn

Labels: hope

Now we aren't just going to pay for mismanagement of American banks, we're going to pay for mismanagement of overseas banks as well:

The financial crisis that began in the United States spread to many corners of the globe. Now, the American bailout looks as if it is going global, too, a move that could raise its cost and intensify scrutiny by Congress and critics.

Foreign banks, which were initially excluded from the plan, lobbied successfully over the weekend to be able to sell the toxic American mortgage debt owned by their American units to the Treasury, getting the same treatment as United States banks.

On Sunday, the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., indicated in a series of appearances on morning talk shows that an original proposal introduced on Saturday had been widened. “It’s a distinction without a difference whether it’s a foreign or a U.S. one,” he said in an interview with Fox News.

I wonder who the representatives of the foreign banks were who successfully lobbied to have their bad debts offloaded to the American taxpayers. Josh Marshall does the math and comes up with the obvious answer.

Labels: economic death watch, FUBAR, greed

No accountability for Wall Street executives, who get to keep the millions they made creating this mess, and no soup for you:

Republican leaders in Congress are warning Democrats not to load up the Treasury Department’s emergency bailout bill with help for homeowners or others facing economic hardship — all while avoiding a direct endorsement of the bill themselves.

“Efforts to exploit this crisis for political leverage or partisan quid pro quo will only delay the economic stability that families, seniors and small businesses deserve,” House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a statement issued Saturday afternoon. “Going forward, I hope we all can agree that we should keep any legislation as straightforward as possible while doing everything we can to protect American taxpayers.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who is up for reelection in November, said the Treasury’s $700 billion bailout plan must not become a vehicle for "partisan plans and pet projects" if it is to receive congressional approval next week.

After looking at the stock holdings of the gang of thieves responsible for this, I'm going to make sure to get on the phone tomorrow and tell my representatives, "No deal." There is absolutely nothing in here for the American people other than leaving us with the bill after the dinner in the nice restaurant. Paul Krugman has looked over the bailout plan and says:

As I posted earlier today, it seems all too likely that a “fair price” for mortgage-related assets will still leave much of the financial sector in trouble. And there’s nothing at all in the draft that says what happens next; although I do notice that there’s nothing in the plan requiring Treasury to pay a fair market price. So is the plan to pay premium prices to the most troubled institutions? Or is the hope that restoring liquidity will magically make the problem go away?

Here’s the thing: historically, financial system rescues have involved seizing the troubled institutions and guaranteeing their debts; only after that did the government try to repackage and sell their assets. The feds took over S&Ls first, protecting their depositors, then transferred their bad assets to the RTC. The Swedes took over troubled banks, again protecting their depositors, before transferring their assets to their equivalent institutions.

The Treasury plan, by contrast, looks like an attempt to restore confidence in the financial system — that is, convince creditors of troubled institutions that everything’s OK — simply by buying assets off these institutions. This will only work if the prices Treasury pays are much higher than current market prices; that, in turn, can only be true either if this is mainly a liquidity problem — which seems doubtful — or if Treasury is going to be paying a huge premium, in effect throwing taxpayers’ money at the financial world.

And there’s no quid pro quo here — nothing that gives taxpayers a stake in the upside, nothing that ensures that the money is used to stabilize the system rather than reward the undeserving.

The draft plan is here. Go read it and then imagine having Phil Gramm be the Treasury Secretary gaining all this unaccountable, unquestioned, absolute power on January 20, 2009, as is likely under a "Palin and McCain Administration". Yes, that would be Phil Gramm of "nation of whiners" and Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act fame, which allowed commercial and investment banks to merge, repealed part of Glass-Steagall, and directly led to the mess we face today. But Gramm also profited personally (and handsomely) from this legislation, when the Swiss bank Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) acquired Paine-Webber, whereupon Gramm went to work for UBS' newly acquired investment banking arm and later lobbied Congress on behalf of UBS on mortgage issues. And this is the guy John McCain wants as his Treasury Secretary, who would inherit this power.

Every day (or "ivry dee", as Sarah Palin would say), the picture of what the United States would look like under John McCain's stewardship becomes clearer, and it's not a pretty one. This November is a referendum on Americans as a people. We are either going to salvage this country as best we can, or we are going to let ignorance and medievalism and racism and bigotry and fear rule -- and hand over what little we as middle class working people have left to those who already have more money than they can spend in two lifetimes.

The choice is ours.

Labels: economic death watch, FUBAR, greed

The first clue should have been when Wall Street sang "Happy Days are Here Again" on Friday. But if anyone thinks that using $700 billion of our money to bail out the very same people who got us into this financial mess while holding them unaccountable is going to get us through, forget about it.

Dave Johnson says you can kiss your pension, your 401(k) and Social Security goodbye. There's no more money because the Wall Street guys get it all.

This lovely graphic from today's New York Times shows what the stock holdings of these goniffs are worth even AFTER they ran their companies into the ground.

Brad DeLong explains succinctly what the possible consequences of Democratic capitulation on this particular piece of Republican blackmail could imply.

Nouriel Roubini argues for a return of the Home Owners Loan Corporation (signup required)

Digby remembers what happened the LAST time the Democrats allowed the Bush Administration to bully them into giving him a blank check.

Much as I hate to link to any of the pull-up-the-ladder-behind-them alpha dogs at Open Left, Matt Stoller has received an e-mail from one member of Congress who is not going along to get along.

Sam Seder says this is Obama's FDR moment.

AKMuckraker on how Sarah Palin, that strong, tough, independent woman has to be protected like a hothouse flower from her own ignorance at the Vice Presidential debate. (No, this isn't about the Wall Street mess, but Palin's very presence in this campaign is a symbol of how FUBAR we are.)

Pudentilla has a modest proposal as an alternative to Dictator-for-Life Paulson.

Your assignment for today: Read up on this $700 billion bailout. Then call your Senators and Congresscritter tomorrow and ask why you have to pay for all this while the guys who got us into this mess don't have to do so much as give up their bonuses.

Labels: bloggers, economic death watch, FUBAR

I'm all for busting our asses to get Barack Obama elected. We're going to have to put forth effort that no other candidate has ever required, because we have to get past the fact that the United States of America is a racist country. It may not be the unleash-the-hounds, string-em-up racist country that it was before the civil rights era, but it's racist. It's racism that most white Americans don't even know they have and to which they don't admit. It's the flicker of extra resentment when the black co-worker gets the promotion. It's the clutching of the handbag when the black messenger gets into the elevator. It's the surprise one feels when a black family moves into a previously all-white neighborhood. It isn't always the racism of hatred, but it's the racism of ignorance and of "otherness.

I ran into this kind of bigotry at the small Pennsylvania college I attended, when someone actually asked me why, since I'm Jewish, I drive such an old car. The assumption, of course, was that all Jews are wealthy. It's like that Marc Maron bit where he talks about how we say to each other, "I can't believe we got it ALL!" -- and we go down to the basement to count it every day. It's the bigotry of ignorance rather than malice, but it's still bigotry.

Nicholas Kristof writes today in a "sit all day and read it cover-to-cover" New York Times about how the main Republican tactic against Obama is to paint him as "the Other" (emphasis mine):

...the political campaign to transform Mr. Obama into a Muslim is succeeding. The real loser as that happens isn’t just Mr. Obama, but our entire political process.

A Pew Research Center survey released a few days ago found that only half of Americans correctly know that Mr. Obama is a Christian. Meanwhile, 13 percent of registered voters say that he is a Muslim, compared with 12 percent in June and 10 percent in March.

More ominously, a rising share — now 16 percent — say they aren’t sure about his religion because they’ve heard “different things” about it.

When I’ve traveled around the country, particularly to my childhood home in rural Oregon, I’ve been struck by the number of people who ask something like: That Obama — is he really a Christian? Isn’t he a Muslim or something? Didn’t he take his oath of office on the Koran?

In conservative Christian circles and on Christian radio stations, there are even widespread theories that Mr. Obama just may be the Antichrist. Seriously.

John Green, of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, says that about 10 percent of Americans believe we may be in the Book of Revelation’s “end times” and are on the lookout for the Antichrist. A constant barrage of e-mail and broadcasts suggest that Mr. Obama just may be it.

[snip]

What is happening, I think, is this: religious prejudice is becoming a proxy for racial prejudice. In public at least, it’s not acceptable to express reservations about a candidate’s skin color, so discomfort about race is sublimated into concerns about whether Mr. Obama is sufficiently Christian.

The result is this campaign to “otherize” Mr. Obama. Nobody needs to point out that he is black, but there’s a persistent effort to exaggerate other differences, to de-Americanize him.

The 9/11 attacks and the conflict in the Middle East, combined with Barack Obama's family background, create the perfect environment for American racism to justify itself as "just not wanting a terrorist to be president."

Once this mindset takes hold, there's no getting away from it. I've written time and time again about the friend who's gotten the e-mails and her fear they may be true is stronger and more omnipresent than my intermittent debunkings. People who've adopted this mindset no longer WANT to be set straight. They don't WANT truth, and I think Kristof is right about this -- they're terrified at the very core of their being of a black president, and if they can think of Obama as a Muslim, then refusing to vote for him becomes not just acceptable, but indeed, a patriotic act.

What happens in this election determines what our future is going to be, and the choice is a stark one. On "Real Time" this week, the unusually hysterical (even for him) Andrew Sullivan, in between trying mightily to find something to cling to in conservative economic theory by filibustering Naomi Klein's compelling case that the Wall Street meltdown is Disaster Capitalism in action, made the point that Obama's candidacy is more than being about a black guy who thinks he can be president; that his presence is a sign that the old America, the America where a white majority decides policy and decides how much of the goodies everyone else is going to be allowed to have, is going away:

Transcript of his recmarks, about four minutes into the above video:

SULLIVAN: The truth, Bill, is that we're on the verge of becoming a minority majority country. And you see it more in California and other places, but that's what's happening. And Obama represents a paradigm shift in America's understanding of itself and the world's understanding of America. And there is inevitably going to be a lot of people who are just very scared of that kind of change. And it may be an amorphous fear, but I think it's a real fear. I don't think it's simply a kind of crude racism; I do think it's a kind of cultural insecurity; a terror of the nature of their country changing in their own minds. And it's mainly, of course, the older generation. The younger generation, the under-40s, they're fine with this. They know this is a great thing, this is a fantastic thing, this country is as diverse as it is. The older people are too scared.

WILL.I.AM.: The 19-to-40s...racism is something in history books. And it's up high...at the top, top levels of corporations and politics, when they get reminded that racism is...once was, an American problem. And they're trying to regurgitate something that was...that held Americans back yesterday. I don't feel that racism is an issue between 19 and 38. And when those people register to vote, the polls are going to shift dramatically.

SULLIVAN: Obama is the future. The question for this country is if he's going to be the future in a couple of months, or after a longer period of time.

Both of these points are very valid. I'd like to see more open discussion about this racism that is a function of the fear of change. My friend is 63, and there's probably no turning her around. But there ARE older people who, while they may wonder what "the blacks" are going to do with "their new-found power", recognize that John McCain and Sarah Palin are going to be even more disastrous for them than any black man could be. My parents are in their eighties and both are voting for Obama without question and with enthusiasm. They're not thinking about this paradigm shift, they're thinking about who has all his mental faculties and isn't running with an apocalyptic Dominionist nutball. I'm certain they aren't the only ones.

Yes, the generation that's in its teens and twenties now WILL see this change when they become the power brokers in this country. Whether they do it willfully or if it's just a function of their worldview remains to be seen. But kids today don't see race the way my parents' generation did and even the way we did.

We (and I only speak from my own experience) were arguably even more hyperaware of race than our parents were, because, like every generation coming of age since the early part of the 20th century, we knew that black culture was just cooler than white culture. It's what made jazz popular. It's what drew white New Yorkers to Harlem clubs in the 1920s and 1930s. It's what drew kids to R&B and rock 'n' roll in the 1950s and 1960s. And it's what draws white suburban kids to hip-hop today. When my parents' generation listened to big bands, they didn't think about swing's black roots. But rest assured, when we walked out of school on Martin Luther King's birthday because we thought it should be a national holiday, we were very much aware of how desperately we wanted to be connected with that struggle and how much we wanted to be part of the racial change for which the late 1960's were the excruciating labor pains.

Today, the fruit of that struggle is that kids no longer see race. When you see a group of kids today and some are white and some are black and some are Asian, you know they see each other as friends, not as "my black friend" and "my Asian friend." And that is perhaps the best possible legacy of the civil rights struggle of the 1960s. It's a quiet success, and it has no "gratitude" for the way earlier generations fought for this, but it's churlish and narcissistic to expect two kids on skateboards to say "Thank you for making it possible for us to hang out together." That they don't even think about it is where the success lies.

But older Americans do see race. To some, Obama's skin color is a disqualifier. For others, it doesn't matter. But we do see it where the kids don't. And as Kristof writes, choosing to believe that Obama is a Muslim, even if it isn't true, provides an acceptable way of acknowleding that his race does matter to you without having to admit that you're a racist.

And that's what we're up against. The media aren't going to help us here, because they are run by the same people who do see race and they are looking out for the interests of their corporate ownership. State election officials aren't going to help us because they are allowing Republicans to attempt to disenfranchise those likely to vote Democratic -- including those young first-time voters we need so desperately. And there are enough older voters who won't have their votes challenged and who just aren't ready for that kind of change who will pull the lever for John McCain, whether they like him or not.

This is why some of us are obsessed with polls rather than crowd numbers. Crowds are great, but will they all vote? Will they all be ALLOWED to vote?

Let's not kid ourselves. The poll numbers for Obama are improving, but if you factor in a 5-7 point fear factor and disenfranchisement, they aren't good enough. Just as black Americans are often told they have to be twice as good as everyone else to achieve the same level of success, Obama needs twice the lead going into Election Day as a white candidate would have.

Labels: Barack Obama, racism