Shock Doctrine Hits Home

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
--Section 8, Paulson Proposal

"After reading this proposal, I can only conclude it is not just our economy that is at risk but our Constitution as well."
Sen. Christoper Dodd
Does Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson think that Congress and the American people are stupid? Apparently.

If you haven't read Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism," go get a copy, because what has played out before in Chile, Argentina and Indonesia is now happening here.

Klein writes:
I wrote The Shock Doctrine in the hopes that it would make us all better prepared for the next big shock. Well, that 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. 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."

We have seen this many times before, in this country and around the world. But here's the thing: these opportunistic tactics can only work if we let them. They work when we respond to crisis by regressing, wanting to believe in "strong leaders" - even if they are the same strong leaders who used the September 11 attacks to push through the Patriot Act and launch the illegal war in Iraq.

So let's be absolutely clear: there are no saviors who are going to look out for us in this crisis. Certainly not Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, one of the companies that will benefit most from his proposed bailout (which is actually a stick up). The only hope of preventing another dose of shock politics is loud, organized grassroots pressure on all political parties: they have to know right now that after seven years of Bush, Americans are becoming shock resistant.
I suspect that most readers of this site are shock resistant, but what about our leaders? What about the American people?

Letterman Reacts to McCain Suspending Campaign

"You don't suspend your campaign. This doesn't smell right. This isn't the way a tested hero behaves."

"I think someone's putting something in his Metamucil."

"He can't run the campaign because the economy is cratering? Fine, put in your second string quarterback, Sarah Palin. Where is she?"


Oliver Stone's "W" Trailer

Enjoy.

"The Push to 'Otherize' Obama"

Nicholas Kristof writes in The New York Times:
Here’s a sad monument to the sleaziness of this presidential campaign: Almost one-third of voters “know” that Barack Obama is a Muslim or believe that he could be.

In short, 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...

"Truthiness Stages a Comeback"

Frank Rich writes in The New York Times:
Not until 2004 could the 9/11 commission at last reveal the title of the intelligence briefing President Bush ignored on Aug. 6, 2001, in Crawford: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” No wonder John McCain called for a new “9/11 commission” to “get to the bottom” of 9/14, when the collapse of Lehman Brothers set off another kind of blood bath in Lower Manhattan. Put a slo-mo Beltway panel in charge, and Election Day will be ancient history before we get to the bottom of just how little he and the president did to defend America against a devastating new threat on their watch.

For better or worse, the candidacy of Barack Obama, a senator-come-lately, must be evaluated on his judgment, ideas and potential to lead. McCain, by contrast, has been chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, where he claims to have overseen “every part of our economy.” He didn’t, thank heavens, but he does have a long and relevant economic record that begins with the Keating Five scandal of 1989 and extends to this campaign, where his fiscal policies bear the fingerprints of Phil Gramm and Carly Fiorina. It’s not the résumé that a presidential candidate wants to advertise as America faces its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. That’s why the main thrust of the McCain campaign has been to cover up his history of economic malpractice.

McCain has largely pulled it off so far...

"Aaron Sorkin Conjures a Meeting of Obama and Bartlet"

Maureen Dowd writes in The New York Times:
Now that he’s finally fired up on the soup-line economy, Barack Obama knows he can’t fade out again. He was eager to talk privately to a Democratic ex-president who could offer more fatherly wisdom — not to mention a surreptitious smoke — and less fraternal rivalry. I called the “West Wing” creator Aaron Sorkin (yes, truly) to get a read-out of the meeting. This is what he wrote:

BARACK OBAMA knocks on the front door of a 300-year-old New Hampshire farmhouse while his Secret Service detail waits in the driveway. The door opens and OBAMA is standing face to face with former President JED BARTLET.

BARTLET Senator.

OBAMA Mr. President.

BARTLET You seem startled.

OBAMA I didn’t expect you to answer the door yourself.

BARTLET I didn’t expect you to be getting beat by John McCain and a Lancôme rep who thinks “The Flintstones” was based on a true story, so let’s ...

Quotes of the Day

"The danger is already significant, and it only grows worse with time. If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today -- and we do -- does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?" --George Bush speaking on the need to invade Iraq, 2002

"Wolf!" --Shepherd Boy, 1673

“When there’s a fire in your kitchen threatening to burn down your home, you don’t want someone stopping the firefighters on the way and demanding they hand out smoke detectors first or lecturing you about the hazards of keeping paint in the basement, You want them to put out the fire before it burns down your home and everything you’ve saved for your whole life.” --Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky speaking on the need for a $700 billion mortgage bailout, 2008

"We don't need no water let the motherfucker burn. Burn motherfucker, burn." --Rock Master Scott & the Dynamic Three, 1984

Is McCain More Goldwater or Kucinich?

Did you catch Obama's recent one-liner about McCain's flip-flop on the current financial crisis?
"John McCain can't decide whether he's Barry Goldwater or Dennis Kucinich," Obama said, referring to the libertarian free-market conservative Republican and the left-wing Democrat who opposes free trade. "He's not clear about what he thinks or what he believes."
My wife believes, rightly so, that most voters won't get the reference to Goldwater, but the press did. Obama continues:
"Well, I have a message for Senator McCain," Obama continued. "You can't just run away from your long-held views or your life-long record. You can’t erase twenty-six years of support for the very policies and people who helped bring in this disaster with one week of rants. You can't just erase all that with one week worth of rants. What we need is honest talk and real solutions."

Obama made mention of McCain’s pledge today to fire Securities and Exchange Commissioner Chris Cox, which a president does not have the legal ability to do in a literal sense, though certainly political pressures can be brought to bear to force a commissioner to resign.

"He's calling for the firing of the Securities and Exchange Commission(er)," Obama said, "Well, I think that's all fine and good, but here's what I say: In the next 47 days, you can fire the whole Trickle-Down, On-Your-Own, Look-the-Other-Way crowd in Washington who has led us down this disastrous path. Don't just get rid of one guy, get rid of this administration, get rid of this philosophy, get rid of the do nothing approach and put somebody in there who is going to fight for you."
Amen to that, brother.

McCain's Strong Dollar Stupidity

If this presidential election is to be decided on the question of which candidate will be a better steward of the economy, it is increasingly Barack Obama's race to lose.

John McCain continues to demonstrate his ignorance on economic issues and willingness to parrot free-market dogma. He had this to say to the Green Bay Chamber of Commerce today:
"A strong dollar will reduce energy and food prices. It will stimulate sustainable economic growth and get this economy moving again."
The strong dollar nonsense is the same argument that the Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore made earlier this week on Larry King Live. You may recall, Stephen Moore is former president of the Club for Growth, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and contributing editor of National Review, so there is no question about where his loyalties and (free-market, supply-side) philosophical underpinnings lie.

Good thing Paul Krugman was also there with Moore to inject some wisdom into the discussion. Here is what Krugman had to say about Moore's strong dollar argument after the show:
Moore offered an argument I hadn’t heard before. The reason I hadn’t heard it that it’s really, really stupid. Our financial problems, he said, are caused by the falling dollar, which has reduced the value of American assets. It’s hard even to know where to start on that. But, um, we’re talking about balance sheets here; by and large the United States has liabilities in dollars (e.g., Chinese holdings of agency debt), while we have many assets that are, effectively, in foreign currency (Ford Germany is worth more when the euro rises against the dollar). So America’s balance sheet improves when the dollar falls, which is actually a major issue in international macro modeling.

Plus, the weak dollar is good for exports, which are about the only source of strength our economy has.

But the WSJ crowd is deeply attached to the idea that a strong dollar = a strong country (and if you believe in America, you believe that asset prices only go up, too). So reason has no impact.

But Serwer’s comments were what bothered me the most. He was saying that Obama and McCain are equally off on the financial crisis. I said that’s not true: Obama has called for expanded regulation, while McCain takes his advice from people like Phil Gramm, who helped create this mess. Plus McCain’s new line denouncing excessive executive bonuses makes no sense: Washington doesn’t set executive compensation! Unless McCain is willing to say what he’d actually do, it’s empty posturing.

And Serwer’s response? “That’s awfully partisan.”

So there you have it: if the facts have a liberal bias, pointing them out is excessively partisan.

"Moo"

Timothy Egan writes for the New York Times:
People should stop picking on vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin because she hired a high school classmate to oversee the state agriculture division, a woman who said she was qualified for the job because she liked cows when she was a kid. And they should lay off the governor for choosing another childhood friend to oversee a failing state-run dairy, allowing the Soviet-style business to ding taxpayers for $800,000 in additional losses.

What these critics don’t understand is that crony capitalism is how things are done in Alaska. They reward failure in the Last Frontier state. In that sense, it’s not unlike like Wall Street’s treatment of C.E.O.’s who run companies into the ground.

Look at Carly Fiorina, John McCain’s top economic surrogate — if you can find her this week, after the news and her narrative fused in a negative way. Dismissed as head of Hewlett-Packard after the company’s stock plunged and nearly 20,000 workers were let go, she was rewarded with $44 million in compensation. Sweet!

Thank God McCain wants to appoint a commission to study the practice that enriched his chief economic adviser. On the campaign trail this week, McCain and Palin pledged to “stop multimillion dollar payouts to C.E.O.’s” of failed companies. Good. Go talk to Fiorina at your next strategy session.

Palin’s Alaska is a cultural cousin to this kind of capitalism. The state may seem like a rugged arena for risky free-marketers. In truth, it’s a strange mix of socialized projects and who-you-know hiring practices.

Republican Reacts to Palin's Email Hacking

One of the differences between my postings on this blog and those that I make on Facebook is that friends sometimes read my posts on Facebook.

Yesterday I posted a story about hackers breaking into Sarah Palin's Yahoo! e-mail account and commented:
Sorry about the hackers, Governor, but why are you using a Yahoo! e-mail account for official state business?
It was only the ninth post I had made since joining Facebook, and only once before had a post of mine received comments. (It was about one German's view on recycling in San Francisco.)

An old co-worker of mine, someone whom I was friendly with 15 years ago, left an interesting comment.
So does this mean that you're also OK with warrantless wiretaps? Or is it only illegal spying on conservatives that meets with your approval?
Wow, that's strange, I thought. If I was reading her correctly, my Facebook friend thought that I was happy about the attack on Palin's privacy -- "spying on conservatives... meets with your approval" -- and suggested I might also approve of warrantless wiretapping, when I made no mention at all of that subject.

I thought I was pretty clear. I expressed my regrets about what the hackers did and then asked what I thought was the relevant question about this story: why would a Governor use a Yahoo! email account for official business? My response to her:
Warrantless wiretapping is illegal - I'm not OK with it. I'm not sure if hacking into Gov Palin's email constitutes espionage, but no, I don't approve of that either. The relevant issue is that Palin used Yahoo e-mail as a way to subvert Alaska's Open Records Act.
At least that seems to be the only plausible explanation. And it appears to be taken right out of Karl Rove's playbook.

Remember the story about "nearly two dozen presidential aides" using Republican Party-sponsored e-mail accounts to plot the firing of federal prosecutors on political grounds?
The Republican National Committee set up the accounts for about 20 Bush aides, such as Karl Rove and his deputies, who get involved in politics, spokesman Scott Stanzel said. Having the GOP create non-White House addresses and provide separate BlackBerries, laptops and other communications gear was designed to avoid running afoul of Hatch Act rules barring federal employees from engaging in political activities with government resources or on government time, he said.
I get it. It's all about secrecy. Cheney invoked executive privilege to keep his energy meetings secret. Bush aides wanted emails that wouldn't be subject to laws against political work on government time. Palin wanted email that wouldn't be subjected to government transparency requirements. Its enough to make any critical observer want to know what these Republicans are trying to hide.

Glenn Greenwalk writes for Salon ("What does Sarah Palin have to hide in her Yahoo e-mails?"):
If Sarah Palin isn't committing crimes or consorting with The Terrorists, then why would she care if we can monitor her emails? And if private companies such as Yahoo can access her emails -- as they can -- then she doesn't really have any "privacy" anyway, so what's the big deal if others read through her communications, too? Isn't that the authoritarian idiocy that has been spewed since The Day That 9/11 Changed Everything -- beginning with the Constitution -- to justify vesting secret and unchecked surveillance powers in our Great and Good Leaders?

Wasn't the hacker well-intentioned, acting as a good patriotic citizen, concerned about credible and obviously newsworthy reports from McClatchy that Sarah Palin -- just like the GOP administration she wants to succeed -- has been illegally using her personal email accounts to conduct business in order to evade subpoenas? What's a little lawbreaking among friends when the criminals can justify it afterwards with some good purpose?

Sarah Palin's wasteful ways

David Talbot writes for Salon ("Sarah Palin's wasteful ways"):
Sarah Palin has been touting herself as fiscal watchdog throughout her political career. But Palin's tenure as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, was characterized by waste, cronyism and incompetence, according to government officials in the Matanuska Valley, where she began her fairy-tale political rise.

"Executive abilities? She doesn't have any," said former Wasilla City Council member Nick Carney, who selected and groomed Palin for her first political race in 1992 and served with her after her election to the City Council.

Four years later, the ambitious Palin won the Wasilla mayor's office -- after scorching the "tax and spend mentality" of her incumbent opponent. But Carney, Palin's estranged former mentor, and others in city hall were astounded when they found out about a lavish expenditure of Palin's own after her 1996 election. According to Carney, the newly elected mayor spent more than $50,000 in city funds to redecorate her office, without the council's authorization.

"I thought it was an outrageous expense, especially for someone who had run as a budget cutter," said Carney. "It was also illegal, because Sarah had not received the council's approval."

According to Carney, Palin's office makeover included flocked, red wallpaper. "It looked like a bordello."

Although Carney says he no longer has documentation of the expenditures, in his recollection Palin paid for the office face-lift with money from a city highway fund that was used to plow snow, grade roads and fill potholes -- essential municipal services, particularly in weather-battered Alaska.
Carney confronted Mayor Palin at a City Council hearing, and was shocked by her response.

"I braced her about it," he said. "I told her it was against the law to make such a large expenditure without the council taking a vote. She said, 'I'm the mayor, I can do whatever I want until the courts tell me I can't.'"

"I'll never forget it -- it's one of the few times in my life I've been speechless," Carney added. "It would have been easier for her to finesse it. She had the votes on the council by then, she controlled it. But she just pushed forward. That's Sarah. She just has no respect for rules and regulations."

Salon's Quote of the day

AWESOMEY!

Alex Koppelman writes for Salon.com's WAR ROOM:
I don't normally like to give the candidates the quote of the day distinction, but Barack Obama got in a pretty good line at John McCain's expense today, so I'll make an exception:
Yesterday, John McCain actually said that if he's president, he'll take on, and I quote -- 'the old boys network in Washington.' I'm not making this up. This is somebody who's been in Congress for twenty-six years -- who put seven of the most powerful Washington lobbyists in charge of his campaign -- and now he tells us that he's the one who's gonna take on the old boys network. The old boys network? In the McCain campaign, that's called a staff meeting.

"Making America Stupid"

Thomas Friedman writes for the New York Times ("Making American Stupid"):
Imagine for a minute that attending the Republican convention in St. Paul, sitting in a skybox overlooking the convention floor, were observers from Russia, Iran and Venezuela. And imagine for a minute what these observers would have been doing when Rudy Giuliani led the delegates in a chant of “drill, baby, drill!”

I’ll tell you what they would have been doing: the Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan observers would have been up out of their seats, exchanging high-fives and joining in the chant louder than anyone in the hall — “Yes! Yes! Drill, America, drill!” — because an America that is focused first and foremost on drilling for oil is an America more focused on feeding its oil habit than kicking it.

Why would Republicans, the party of business, want to focus our country on breathing life into a 19th-century technology — fossil fuels — rather than giving birth to a 21st-century technology — renewable energy? As I have argued before, it reminds me of someone who, on the eve of the I.T. revolution — on the eve of PCs and the Internet — is pounding the table for America to make more I.B.M. typewriters and carbon paper. “Typewrite! rs, baby, typewriters.”

I respected McCain’s willingness to support the troop surge in Iraq, even if it was going to cost him the Republican nomination. Now the same guy, who would not sell his soul to win his party’s nomination, is ready to sell every piece of his soul to win the presidency.

In order to disguise the fact that the core of his campaign is to continue the same Bush policies that have led 80 percent of the country to conclude we’re on the wrong track, McCain has decided to play the culture-war card. Obama may be a bit professorial, but at least he is trying to unite the country to face the real issues rather than divide us over cultural differences.

McCain-Palin Lie About Energy

Here's what John McCain and Sarah Palin said about Alaska's role in US energy supply in recent interviews with ABC's Charlie Gibson.
PALIN: Let me speak specifically about a credential that I do bring to this table, Charlie, and that’s with the energy independence that I’ve been working on for these years as the governor of this state that produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy.

MCCAIN: This is a very dynamic person. (Palin has) been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America’s energy supply.
Here is the truth:
For 2007, Alaska is credited with 14 percent of U.S. domestic oil production, or 263.6 million barrels, according to the federal Energy Information Administration. However, Alaska accounts for only 5 percent of U.S. oil supplies, which come from foreign and domestic sources. But, Palin failed to qualify the stats as oil-only production. Alaska was responsible for 3.5 percent of domestic energy production and only 2.4 percent of total energy consumed in the U.S.

“Either way, whether she meant total energy production or total energy consumption, she was off by a full order of magnitude,” Jackson said.
Are McCain and Palin lying about energy to intentionally mislead voters? Or are both candidates simply not up-to-speed on the facts?

Either way, are these the kinds of leaders that we need in the White House?

"The culture war: It's back!"

Gary Kamiya writes in Salon:
Observing the Sarah Palin phenomenon, does anyone feel like they're trapped in a singularly creepy remake of "Night of the Living Dead"? George W. Bush has been a political corpse for years. But Palin resembles a female version of Bush, brought back from the grave to win the election.

You wouldn't think that the Republicans would want to exhume Bush. After all, his presidency has been a historic disaster, and the American people know it. But Bush was successful at one thing: winning elections. With its policies and ideology in ruins, Bush's political game plan is all that the GOP has left. And so McCain, who sold his soul to win, is following Bush's script -- with Sarah Palin playing the leading role once played by Bush.

Palin represents the reappearance of the one part of Bush that never died -- the culture warrior. Democrats may have forgotten about the notorious red state-blue state divide, or hoped that the failures of the last eight years had made it go away. But it hasn't. It's been there all along. If Palin catapults McCain to victory, it will be revealed to be the most powerful and enduring force in American politics. And that fact will raise serious questions about the viability of American democracy itself.

"Why Experience Matters"

David Brooks writes in the New York Times:
Sarah Palin is the ultimate small-town renegade rising from the frontier to do battle with the corrupt establishment. Her followers take pride in the way she has aroused fear, hatred and panic in the minds of the liberal elite. The feminists declare that she’s not a real woman because she doesn’t hew to their rigid categories. People who’ve never been in a Wal-Mart think she is parochial because she has never summered in Tuscany.

Look at the condescension and snobbery oozing from elite quarters, her backers say. Look at the endless string of vicious, one-sided attacks in the news media. This is what elites produce. This is why regular people need to take control.

And there’s a serious argument here. In the current Weekly Standard, Steven Hayward argues that the nation’s founders wanted uncertified citizens to hold the highest offices in the land. They did not believe in a separate class of professional executives. They wanted rough and rooted people like Palin.

I would have more sympathy for this view if I hadn’t just lived through the last eight years. For if the Bush administration was anything, it was the anti-establishment attitude put into executive practice.

And the problem with this attitude is that, especially in his first term, it made Bush inept at governance. It turns out that governance, the creation and execution of policy, is hard. It requires acquired skills. Most of all, it requires prudence.

What is prudence? It is the ability to grasp the unique pattern of a specific situation. It is the ability to absorb the vast flow of information and still discern the essential current of events — the things that go together and the things that will never go together. It is the ability to engage in complex deliberations and feel which arguments have the most weight.

How is prudence acquired? Through experience. The prudent leader possesses a repertoire of events, through personal involvement or the study of history, and can apply those models to current circumstances to judge what is important and what is not, who can be persuaded and who can’t, what has worked and what hasn’t.

Experienced leaders can certainly blunder if their minds have rigidified (see: Rumsfeld, Donald), but the records of leaders without long experience and prudence is not good. As George Will pointed out, the founders used the word “experience” 91 times in the Federalist Papers. Democracy is not average people selecting average leaders. It is average people with the wisdom to select the best prepared.

Sarah Palin has many virtues. If you wanted someone to destroy a corrupt establishment, she’d be your woman. But the constructive act of governance is another matter. She has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness.

The idea that “the people” will take on and destroy “the establishment” is a utopian fantasy that corrupted the left before it corrupted the right. Surely the response to the current crisis of authority is not to throw away standards of experience and prudence, but to select leaders who have those qualities but not the smug condescension that has so marked the reaction to the Palin nomination in the first place.

dueling incompetence....

"A Failed Economic Theory"

Here is an excerpt from tonight's broadcast of "Countdown with Keith Olbermann." The complete transcript should be available in a day or two here. The video is available for streaming at the end of this post.
BARACK OBAMA: I think it's good that Sen. McCain is celebrating the American worker today. But it would have been nice if, over the last 26 years that he's been in Washington, that he actually stood up for them once in awhile. [cheers]

It would have been nice if he didn't vote against the minimum wage 19 times. [cheers] Or if he didn't vote to privatize Social Security and hand it over to Wall Street. Sen. McCain, you can't run away from your words, and you can't run away from your record. When it comes to this economy, you've stood firmly with George Bush and a failed economic theory and what you're offering the American people is more of the same.

KEITH OLBERMANN: So he [McCain] believes the economy is strong. And the Bush administration seems to be betting that the financial system can handle the collapse of Lehman Brothers and whatever is to follow without any intervention or any major intervention at this point. How...

PAUL KRUGMAN: That's not quite right, actually. What they're doing is throwing a lot of money at the financial system in general. There wasn't a specific, so actually, the taxpayers are being put on the hook. There's been a lot of moral hazard, as they say, being created. That's why the Dow fell only 500 points today, because there's a lot of money being pushed out that is ultimately taxpayer money.

OLBERMANN: So when Gov. Palin said today it was good to see that the government was not going to come in and spend any taxpayer money on Lehman Brothers, she was misinformed?

KRUGMAN: Yeah. I mean, it wasn't Lehman, it was sort of what the left hand took away, the right hand pushed onto the roulette table. So it was, unfortunately it's still not true. We're actually seeing a socialization of risk. I'm not sure there's an alternative, because the deregulation policies pushed us into this. But no, risk is still being socialized. It's just they decided that Lehman was not going to be the place where they made the stand.

OLBERMANN: Is McCain actually a difference from Bush?

KRUGMAN: You know, if he had said at any point, look, you know, we need some regulation, we need some policing. If there was, I've actually been trying to see if I can come up with any one on the Republican side who had said anything about the housing bubble, who warned about sub prime. You know, I can't see it. The fact of the matter is, what he says is, we're going to clean up Washington, clean up the markets I don't understand.

KRUGMAN: Whatever they may say officially, everybody knows that if McCain becomes President, Phil Gramm is the odds-on favorite to become Treasury Secretary.

OLBERMANN: What would that do to the American economy?

KRUGMAN: Ben Bernanke and I think Hank Paulson understand that we could manage to have another Great Depression if we work at it hard enough. I think Phil Gramm might be just the guy to do it.
What Obama refers to as "a failed economic theory" is actually a host of theories espoused by the likes of Phil Gramm, once (still?) McCain's closest economic advisor. Gramm believes in the Chicago school of economics, also known as "market fundamentalism." This ideology revolves around an irrational, dogmatic belief in the universal benefits of deregulation and privatization, despite empirical evidence which demonstrates the limitations of a market economy, especially in a democracy.

When I was 16 years old, I won a citywide competition in Economics. At the time I was influenced greatly by Milton Friedman, the patriarch of the Chicago school. Later I went on to major in Economics and was just a few credit hours away from getting my degree when I had an epiphany during a lecture on price theory. I walked out of class that day and went straight to the Dean's office to change my major to something more honest.

Ever since I've struggled to understand why America's business and political leadership, and this includes John McCain and Phil Gramm, hasn't yet realized what I came to understand when I was barely an adult. Milton Friedman was wrong.

Then again, maybe they know it, too.

Sarah Palin Supports Aerial Hunting

About ten years ago, I spent a weekend in northern Mississippi observing the barbaric practice of road hunting with deer dogs.
In Mississippi, where almost everyone hunts, there are two main classes of hunters. Still-hunters hunt from fixed positions in the woods. Dog hunters use hounds like beagles and regional varieties called "running walkers" and "blue ticks" to flush out their prey. Dog hunters who hunt from the road, either while sitting in pickup trucks or standing by the roadside, are called road hunters.

Landowners and other hunters complain that the road hunters let their dogs run wild on other people's property, spray gunfire into populated areas, terrorize farm animals and engage in a practice that is more slaughter than sport.
It was an experience that I'll never forget... the mad dash of the buck pursued by the howling, emaciated dogs... the sound of (illegal) automatic gunfire in the distance... the elderly African-American gentleman who was paid a pittance to gut, skin and butcher the deer and clean-up around the camp. The whole thing was barbaric, more slaughter than sport.

The same can be said about the aerial hunting of bears and wolves in Alaska. It will come as a surprise to no one that Sarah Palin is an advocate of the practice.



Most Americans have never hunted, and will likely find aerial hunting to be as foreign and bizarre as hunting itself. But for the more than 20 million active hunters in the United States and more than 40 million Americans who have hunted at one time in their life, I think many will find aerial hunting unsportsmanlike, to say the least.

Neo Republicans Destroying US....thanks a lot Red States...

the unthinkable has happened in America over the last 8 years...shame on us all for allowing it to persist...




this year is our last chance...

Have conservatives learned anything during the last 8 years...?

It frustrates and bewilders me immensely that (some, many?) people who have experienced the last 8 years of the Bush administration do not see that a HurriMcCain/Palin would be more of the "McSame"... I made the following video for "therapeutic" reasons... please forward to your Red State friends.



Someone, please help me understand...

Cindy McCain Flip-Flops on Abortion

Pity beer heiress Cindy McCain. She wants so badly to be First Lady that she'll say anything, e.g. changing her position on an issue like abortion in a recent interview with Katie Couric.

Of course, Cindy McCain is not running for president, her husband is. I just think this says something important about Cindy and John's shared willingness to say and do anything to get to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Katie Couric: Some, even Republicans, seemed surprised that Sen. McCain picked a running mate who opposes abortion even in the cases of rape and incest, and believes creationism should be taught in schools. And I'm just curious, do you agree with that?

Cindy McCain: What I agree with is the fact that she is a social conservative. She is a reform-minded woman. She is someone that will … shake Washington up, which is exactly what we want to do. We differ on many issues; we differ across the board with people. We don't have to agree on every issue.

Couric: Where do you stand on abortion?

McCain: I'm pro-life. I'm on the record as being pro-life, like my husband.

Couric: So do you oppose it even in cases of rape and incest?

McCain: No.

Couric: So that's where you two differ in terms of your position on that.

McCain: Uh-huh

Couric: And do you believe Roe V. Wade should be overturned?

McCain: No. no.

Couric: No. Why not? Your husband does.

McCain: No. I don't think he does.

Couric: He believes it should be overturned. That's what he told me, and that it should go to the states.

McCain: Well, in that respect. Yes, yeah, I do. I understand what you're saying now. It's a states issue.

Couric: So, you believe it should be overturned or shouldn't be overturned.

McCain: I believe it's a states issue. That I do believe.

Couric: How do you feel about creationism? Do you think it should be taught in schools?

McCain: I think both sides should be taught in schools. I think the more children have a frame of reference and an opportunity to read and know and make better decisions and judgments when they are adults. So, I think you know I don't have any problem with education of any kind.