Month: September 2008

Give ‘Em Hell

by digby

…Harry

“On the morning of October 30, 1929, President Herbert Hoover awoke the day after the biggest one-day stock market crash in American history, surveyed the state of the U.S. economy and declared, ‘The fundamental business of the country, that is production and distribution of commodities, is on a sound and prosperous basis.’

“In the coming weeks and months, President Hoover remained in an economic bubble, unaware of the extreme suffering of ordinary Americans – even declaring that anyone who questioned the state of the economy was a ‘fool.’ For Herbert Hoover, ignorance was bliss. And it wasn’t until the American people replaced this out of touch Republican president with a Democrat, Franklin Roosevelt, that our nation’s economic recovery began.

“Yesterday, nearly 80 years after the Hoover Administration took America with blissful ignorance into depression, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 500 points – the biggest one-day decline since trading opened after the attacks of 9/11. With one major investment bank headed for bankruptcy, another sold at a bargain-basement price, and one of the world’s largest insurance companies teetering, investors rushed to sell their shares.

“With our financial markets reeling, the American people are wondering whether they will lose their jobs, whether they will be able to pay their child’s next tuition bill, whether their pension and retirement savings will be safe.

“There is no reason to think we are headed into an economic depression. There is no reason to panic. Yet one Senator – John McCain – woke up yesterday morning, surveyed the state of the U.S. economy, summoned the ghost of his fellow Republican, Herbert Hoover, and declared, ‘The fundamentals of our economy are strong.’

“For whom are the fundamentals of our economy strong? Not for the 606,000 Americans who have lost their jobs this year alone. Not for the commuters and truckers who are sending more and more of their hard-earned dollars to pay for fuel. Not for all those struggling to make one pay check last until the next, with record hme heating prices looming in the coming winter months. Not for cities and towns that have been forced to cut back on police, schools and firefighters because their tax base is shrinking. And certainly not for the millions of families who have or may soon lose their homes, or for the tens of millions who are seeing their home equity plummet.

“No matter what George Bush, John McCain or the ghost of Herbert Hoover may think, this economy is not strong, and the American people deserve better.

“This is not a time for panic. But it is a time to look back on the past eight years of Bush-Hoover-McCain economics and figure out what brought us to this point so that we don’t repeat the same mistakes. And the tragic truth is that this disaster was avoidable. In its palpable disdain for all things relating to government, the Bush/Cheney Administration willfully neglected the government’s most important function: to safeguard the American people from harm.

“In their simplistic philosophy of ‘big business equals good, government equals bad,’ the Administration and the Republican Congress failed to conduct oversight and let the financial sector go wild. Without anyone regulating their actions, market excess destroyed the financial prudence that allowed a firm like Lehman Brothers to prosper for 158 years. Vast fortunes were made virtually over night, and now vast fortunes have been lost literally over night.

“The unfortunate irony is that the Bush Administration’s zeal to favor big business has now crippled it – and left the American people to pay the price. President Bush did nothing to stop this disaster, and now it’s clear he’ll leave the mess to the next president.

“Now our nation must decide who is better suited to end Bush-Hoover economics and return sanity and security to our economy. Senator McCain says the economy is not his strong suit, so he went searching for an economic advisor who could bolster his weakness. Who did he choose? Former Senator Phil Gramm. The same Phil Gramm who, as a Senator, was responsible for deregulation in the financial services industries that paved the way for much of this crisis to occur.

“A respected economist at the University of Texas, James K. Galbraith, said that Gramm was ‘the most aggressive advocate of every predatory and rapacious element that the financial sector has’ and that ‘he’s a sorcerer’s apprentice of instability and disaster in the financial system.’

“It was Phil Gramm who pushed legislation through a Republican Senate that allowed firms like Enron to avoid regulation and destroy the life savings of its employees, and it was Phil Gramm’s legislation that now allows Wall Street traders to bid up the price of oil, leaving us to pay the bill. Warren Buffet called the result of Gramm’s legislation ‘financial weapons of mass destruction.’ And now, the architect and leading cheerleader for every mistake and neglect that created the Bush/Cheney financial nightmare is whispering into the ear of John McCain – who says he doesn’t know much about the economy.

“Whether you call it Hoover economics, Bush economics, or McCain economics, it is not a recipe for change – it’s a recipe for more of the same.

“For all of the college students worried about finding a job, the working families who don’t know how they’ll pay the bills, and the fixed-income senior citizens trying to figure out how to pay for medicine, we must do better.

“We can’t afford another Republican president who will follow his party’s ghosts down the path of recession, depression and more suffering. We desperately need a president who understands that working people, not industry titans, are the backbone of our economy. We need a president who will cut taxes for working people and senior citizens; end the windfall profits of oil companies and put that money back into the pockets of those who are paying record prices at the pump; and put millions of Americans back to work by investing in jobs on Main Street, not Wall Street.

“In November, we can elect that President who will break from the past and invest in the future.”

We can’t afford another Republican president who will follow his party’s ghosts down the path of recession, depression and more suffering

Can I hear a big old Howard Dean “Yeeeeargh!” for that one?

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Election Protection

by digby

With the election looking like it’s going to be fairly close, keeping track of Republican vote suppression efforts is going to be more important then ever.

Election Protection has a great web site devoted to doing just that. All of us should familiarize ourselves with these processes and issues, but especially those of us who live in swing states or any place where a close race is possible.

This could be important. I saw today that in one poll, Florida(!)is tied. Chads, chads, chads …

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Building Their Own Left

by digby

Fred Clarkson (of Talk To Action, among many other blogs and publications) is an expert on religion and politics and has written a new book Dispatches from the Religious Left: The Future of Faith and Politics in America. He recently gave an interesting interview about the current state of religion in politics.

Here he talks about Rick Warren:

Bill Berkowitz: Rick Warren, the much celebrated and talked about pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, interviewed Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain on Saturday, August 16. Before and after the event, Warren’s Civic Forum received a lot of media attention. Many in the media have anointed Warren as representing the new face of Christian evangelicals; creating a new movement that not only distances itself from the old timers of the Religious Right, but one that is setting a new agenda for evangelicals. How do you view Warren’s work and where does he fit within the broad constellation of religious leaders?

Frederick Clarkson: Four years ago, Rick Warren wrote an inflammatory letter about the presidential contest to thousands of evangelical pastors. This letter revealed him to be a fierce partisan, who epitomized the worst aspects of the Religious Right. He declared five issues to be “non-negotiable” and those they “are not even debatable because God’s word is clear on these issues.'” These included abortion, same sex marriage, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning and euthanasia. He later said he regretted the letter but that he had not changed his views.

While he is a skilled showman, he is unable to sustain moderation in style or in substance even before a national television audience. His real self leaks out. At the Civic Forum, Warren highlighted the top two litmus tests of the Religious Right — abortion and same sex marriage, and described abortion as a “holocaust.” Following this he called on his audience not to “demonize” people with whom they may disagree — having just compared people who have a different view on abortion to the Nazis. In my view, Warren is an emerging leader of the Religious Right in transition, not of evangelical moderation.

Being different than Falwell and others of the Falwell generation, does not necessarily a moderate make. Warren acknowledges climate change, for example, but he is a fierce proponent of free markets — and so ideologically rigid that it is difficult to imagine him getting behind the kinds of solutions that could address what needs to be done. Similarly, he is so fiercely antigay, and supports African political and religious leaders who advocate criminalization of homosexuality, that it is difficult to imagine that the HIV/AIDS work for which he receives such plaudits can ever be successful as gay people are driven underground due to an atmosphere of persecution and fear — and out of reach of programs that might help.

As for how he fits in the wider constellation of religious leaders, as a disciple of the late guru of modern corporate management Peter Drucker (who taught at Fuller Theological Seminary) he is more about building a religio-corporate empire than preceding leaders of the Religious Right. Drucker was the theorist of the megachurch, applying business principles to the creation of religious empires. Meanwhile, Warren’s books read more like self-help books than dire warnings of Satanic or Muslim hordes that drive the work of say, John Hagee, and his ideology is about free market fundamentalism more than it is about overt religious and political triumphalism. This, along with an avuncular personality gives him an image of moderation that will fit more comfortably with the corporate wings of both major parties. Only a few years ago John McCain denounced Falwell and Robertson as “agents of intolerance” while Warren claims both McCain and Obama as “friends” and both immediately agreed to participate in Warren’s event. I think that they so willingly allowed Warren to function as a broker epitomizes the mainstreaming of the Religious Right in American public life.

Exactly. And it was enabled by a group of alleged liberals in the Religion Industrial Complex who snowed Democrats into believing that Warren was some kind of bridge, when he is actually a Trojan horse.

Clarkson makes a very interesting observation about what this is really all about, that I hadn’t thought of before:

BB: Organizers for the presidential campaign of Senator Barack Obama are putting a lot of time, energy and money into wooing evangelical voters. Obama has also met with a number of Christian evangelical leaders. Why such an accelerated focus on evangelicals?

FC: There is a theory based on some polling that the white evangelical vote is in flux and that it might be possible for Democrats to peel off some votes, especially among younger evangelicals. Other polls, however, suggest that this is wishful thinking. (There is evidence that the litmus test issues of abortion and marriage equality will keep few socially conservative voters from switching sides.)

I think for the Obama campaign, this flurry of activity is more about depolarizing the debate and reducing the demonization of the Democratic Party and its presidential candidate. Changing the tone of politics is good. On the other hand, I think this is also about marginalizing the role and voice of religious progressives, which is to say those who in past decades played decisive roles in stopping the war in Vietnam, pushing for African American and women’s rights, and much more. The Beltway Insiders would prefer not to have a resurgent Religious Left complicating things by making conservative evangelicals uncomfortable and perhaps more importantly, compelling significant changes in the way the politics and public policy industry does business. So I think a faux Religious Left is being manufactured as an official counterweight to the Religious Right in the media and as a sop to the actual stirrings among religious progressives.

The real religious left, you see, is quite unabashedly liberal. They care about thing like …. Peace. Equality. Justice. Things that don’t go down well with the parochial aristocracy of the Village.

The Religious Right is a creature of the village and now that the conservative movement is on the decline, they’ve decided to manufacture a “liberal” version for the same purposes. They can’t allow the real religious left to have any influence, but they have fetishized religion in politics to such an extent that it’s going to be hard to keep them out unless they create a useful substitute.

This battle isn’t just happening in politics. Clarkson and other have documented the assault on the religious left from the religious community itself. This is a full-on campaign to delegitimize any religious belief that isn’t socially conservative. And the consequences of thatare becoming clear.

Update: Here’s an interview with a member of the real religious left:

The Temple in Jerusalem was in a sense the national bank of Israel in Jesus’ time; it was a powerful national treasury that did not let its great wealth sit idle. The bank lent the money it collected at very high interest rates. These unjust lending practices drove many residents into extreme poverty and created the vast slum dwellers of Jerusalem. The Jewish historian Josephus wrote an account of the huge debts owed by the poor to the rich in the Jerusalem around the same period.

Yes, credit and debt are religious issues! Jesus plainly thought so, to the point where he physically disrupted the largest national bank in Israel during the height of its Passover practices of ripping off poor and even more affluent pilgrims. Temple practices that hooked the poor on high interest credit and drove them into debt were the target of Jesus’ anger.

The practice of exploiting the poor and the middle class is not new; what is new today, however, is that we have abandoned everything we learned in this country about how to control the worst of these banking abuses. In the mid-twentieth century in this country we had figured out that the markets needed to be regulated and had introduced practices to oversee lending practices and reign in at least the worst of the sinful human impulse to greed and exploitation. The Great Depression of the 1930’s was in part a result of Herbert Hoover’s over-confidence that business would regulate itself. After the Depression, regulations were put in place to restrain the most extreme and risky practices of financial markets.

That is, these regulations were in place until the “Reagan Revolution” and the tide of free market economics that is now drowning the American economy. James K. Galbraith, the Lloyd M. Bentsen, Jr. Professor of Government/Business Relations at the University of Texas in Austin, places the blame for today’s market meltdown squarely on deregulation. “Revolutions devour their children. Deregulation has been the public faith of the financial sector since Reagan. Under Bush II, waves of predatory finance in housing were aggressively promoted by Alan Greenspan, by McCain’s closest economic adviser Phil Gramm, and by so-called regulators who systematically subvert the public interest.” Paul Krugman of Princeton University today said that, as chairman of the Banking Committee, Phil Gramm bears responsibility for the current credit crisis. “We could have another Great Depression if we really work at it and Phil Gramm is the guy to do it.”

You can see why the country’s owners want to keep the religious discussion limited to stem cells and blastocysts.

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The Gurus

by digby

Newsweek’s Michael Hirsh says that although there are many people responsible for out current economic meltdown, we should thank one very special guy in particular:

This mess is mostly a titanic failure of regulation. And the largest share of blame goes back to one man: Alan Greenspan. People mainly fault the former Fed chief, who once enjoyed a near-saintly reputation because of his reputed “feel” for market conditions, for ushering in an era of easy credit that accelerated the mortgage mania. But the much bigger problem was Greenspan’s Ayn Randian passion for regulatory minimalism. Under the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act enacted by Congress in 1994, the Fed was given the authority to oversee mortgage loans. But Greenspan kept putting off writing any rules. As late as April 2005, when things were seriously beginning to go wrong, he was saying that subprime lending would work out for the common good—without government interference. “Lenders are now able to quite efficiently judge the risk posed by individual applicants,” he declared at the time. So much for his feel. New regs didn’t get put into place until this past July—long after the crash had come, under Greenspan’s successor, Ben Bernanke. The new Fed chief’s “Regulation Z” finally created some common-sense rules, such as forbidding loans without sufficient documentation to show if a person has the ability to repay.

Greenspan has tried to defend himself repeatedly, though as bank after bank has failed he’s retreated to the shadows. But in a 2007 interview with CBS he admitted: “While I was aware a lot of these practices were going on, I had no notion of how significant they had become until very late.” This, from a man who once told me, in an interview, that he most enjoyed scanning economic reports for hours in his bathtub. Now, with Tuesday’s $85 billion bailout of AIG adding to the hundreds of billions the government has already put up to rescue Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, this apostle of free-market absolutism has realized his worst nightmare. He has given us the largest government intervention into the markets since FDR. Heckuva job, Greenie.

Reimagined as a pitchfork wielding populist reformer (while he tries to figure out how many houses he owns) John McCain is out on the stump this week railing about greed and avarice. But it was only yesterday he was saying this:

McCain’s solution to our economic woes:
“Get ol’ Alan Greenspan — whether he’s alive or dead. And um if he’s dead, we’ll put dark glasses on him and prop him up like they did at Weekend at Bernie’s.”
(Town Hall Meeting in Concord, NH 12/17/07)

And then we have Guru number 2, Phil “you’re all a bunch ‘o whiners” Gramm, the man McCain extols as an economic genius:

When Senator Phil Gramm and his wife Wendy danced, it was most often to Enron’s tune.

Mr. Gramm, a Texas Republican, is one of the top recipients of Enron largess in the Senate. And he is a demon for deregulation. In December 2000 Mr. Gramm was one of the ringleaders who engineered the stealthlike approval of a bill that exempted energy commodity trading from government regulation and public disclosure. It was a gift tied with a bright ribbon for Enron.

Wendy Gramm has been influential in her own right. She, too, is a demon for deregulation. She headed the presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief in the Reagan administration. And she was chairwoman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1988 until 1993.

In her final days with the commission she helped push through a ruling that exempted many energy futures contracts from regulation, a move that had been sought by Enron. Five weeks later, after resigning from the commission, Wendy Gramm was appointed to Enron’s board of directors.

According to a report by Public Citizen, a watchdog group in Washington, ”Enron paid her between $915,000 and $1.85 million in salary, attendance fees, stock options and dividends from 1993 to 2001.”

As a board member, Ms. Gramm has served on Enron’s audit committee, but her eyesight wasn’t any better than that of the folks at Arthur Andersen. The one thing Enron did not pay big bucks for was vigilance.

There’s a lot more you can say about the Gramms and Enron, and not much of it good. But Phil and Wendy Gramm are just convenient symptoms of the problem that has contributed so mightily to the Enron debacle and other major scandals of our time, from the savings and loan disaster to the Firestone tires fiasco. That problem is the obsession with deregulation that has had such a hold on the Republican Party and corporate America.

Enron is so 2001, right? Something out of the past. Except it really isn’t. It’s yet another example of the GOP’s deregulation fetish of the past quarter century, which seems to result every, single time in a bunch of people losing their savings and the taxpayers being on the hook for billions. Sure, the big boys have to take some heat — why some of them are down to their last 100 million or so. But seeing as they’ve been swalloowing a fire hose of money for the past seven years, I think they’ll pull pull through. The rest of us have to stay up nights wondering what the hell the next few years are going to bring us.

And John McCain has been out there selling this crap the whole time, vacationing with Keating, being best buds with Gramm and drooling over Alan Greenspan like a Hannah Montana fanboy. If anyone expects change from this guy they are living in a total dreamworld. He’s one of them.

If you like useless expensive wars, financial scandals, stock market crashes, foreclosures and economic instability as far as the eye can see, vote Republican. They’ve got everything you need.

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Gloomy Gusses

by digby

I’m sympathetic to the complaints referenced in tristero’s post below, but I think they are misplaced. This isn’t a blog about heroic first person stories of GOTV. It’s about macro observations about the political culture. It always has been. To that end, all of us have written a lot about the Obama field operation, the new technology and the unprecedented efforts to GOTV in this election.

If you are a Camp Obama canvasser I salute you. Nothing will be more important to Democrats this time than getting out the vote. But it isn’t magic. The essential job of any campaign is to persuade a majority of voters that they want to vote for their candidate. That’s what the polls measure and it’s what we’re talking about here. I hope that Obama’s GOTV is awesomely awesome and people get visited by their friends and neighbors who tell them all the good reasons why they should vote for Obama. But if people aren’t buying his overall message, then it won’t be enough. This morning, it appears that it’s 50/50.

I believe the tide is probably turning. This economic crisis is getting people’s attention and it’s very hard to see how Republicans can possibly benefit from that. So, while I can’t speak for tristero and dday on this, I’m not actually all that gloomy at the moment. It’s not good news for the economy, of course, but better to have this out in the open before the election so the failure of Republican rule can be right out on the table for the voters to see.

I’m sorry the polls are tied. I’m sorry the Republicans are assholes who like to steal close elections. I’m sorry the media are a bunch of dupes for the GOP. But I’m not going to blow smoke so that everyone can feel good. I still fully expect the Democrats to win this election but it’s clear that it isn’t going to be the cakewalk many of us thought it would be, myself included. That’s unpleasant. But “faith” has no place in politics — at least the kind which says you have to put your head down and “believe” in some plan or some party or some politician. This isn’t religion or love. Democracy demands that you use your own eyes and ears and mind to evaluate what’s going on around you.

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Awful

by tristero

U.S. Embassy in Yemen attacked, at least 16 dead. And the outrage stinks of bin Laden. The very same bin Laden that has not been brought to justice because Bush got distracted, turning the hell of living under Saddam into an unimaginably obscene Hobbesian nightmare. And did so with John McCain’s early, enthusiastic, and utterly demented support.

Speaking of Iraq, in Baghdad, ten also died. And that’s not all. Read and weep about the “success” of the “surge.” There’s a damn good reason why even a Republican tool like Petraeus refuses to pretend there’s a “victory:”

It was the second twin car bomb attack in Baghdad this week. On Monday, two car bombs detonated in central Baghdad, killing 12 people and wounding 37 others.

Five roadside bombings struck the Iraqi capital Wednesday, one of which targeted a New Baghdad council leader, the official said. The council leader’s driver was killed, and he and his security guard were wounded in the attack.

Another roadside bombing in eastern Baghdad killed an Iraqi policeman and wounded five others.

Two other roadside bombings in the capital wounded nine Iraqi soldiers and civilians.

Memo to John Bush McCain:

You said:

One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, ‘Stop the bullshit.”

I hate to pop your little bubble, pal, but trust me, It’s not going to work.

Y’know, occasionally I catch some grief by saying I have come truly to despise Bush/McCain and their ideological cronies like Cheney, Addington, Rumsfeld, and so on. Here’s why:

Because the Bush/McCain gang is so ignorant violent, mentally disturbed and powerful, they get hundreds of thousands innocent people killed. Sheer moral hygiene makes it imperative that this country say no to four more years of the same.

Swing Staters: Got Good Campaign Stories?

by tristero

Longtime reader pseudonymous in nc objected to an earlier post I did which was highly critical of the campaign the Democrats are conducting (with the notable exception of Obama, who seems to grow with every appearance):

Every day, you sit in Manhattan and pointificate about how we’re all dooooooomed while people are actually trying to break through on the ground in tough states to crack. Work that doesn’t appear in the blogs you read or the news you watch.

That’s a fair point. For the most part, I don’t know, except to the extent it makes the national papers, what is going on down on the ground. (Oh, and thanks, you’re right: I really do need to exercise more!)

So, if you would be willing to help me learn about the work you are doing in the “tough states,” I would be very grateful and will post at least some of the stories. I need to ask you to please provide links to news articles or websites for documentation. For example, if you are in Virginia, say, and working in a western county to GOTV, please tell us the story in comments and also link to an article in a local paper that describes the work you or your group are/is doing.

Thanks!

Party A Hearts Party B

by tristero

My dear friends, here is the next lipsticked pig, maybe even the next War on Christmas!

As PZ explains, “The state of California now issues gender-neutral marriage licenses: they simply register the legal relationship of “Party A” and “Party B”, where the relevant individuals fill out their actual names.”

And to Bird and Codding, that is unacceptable. “We are traditionalists – we just want to be called bride and groom,” said Bird, 25, who works part time for her father’s church. “Those words have been used for generations and now they just changed them.”

…

Bird and Codding have refused to complete the new forms, a stand that has already cost them. Because their marriage is not registered with the state, Bird cannot sign up for Codding’s medical benefits or legally take his name. They are now exploring their options, she said.

And now they have gained the teeniest glimmer what it’s like to have your right to marry denied. But there’s one difference. Bird and Codding chose not to marry. In most states, if you wish to marry someone of your own gender, you do not have a choice. You are prevented from marrying.

Still, they do have a point. “Party A” and “Party B” is a tad clinical. Therefore I suggest the marriage license form require couples to use their pet names for each other.

I, THE UNDERSIGNED“SNOOKUMS-SWEETY” AND I, THE UNDERSIGNED “CUDDLY-PIE-HONEY-BUNCH-SCOOCHY-SCOOCHY-EEK!” DECLARE UNDER PENALTY OF PERJURY UNDER THE LAWS OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA THAT THE FOREGOING INFORMATION IS TRUE AND CORRECT TO THE BEST OF OUR KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF. WE FURTHER DECLARE THAT NO LEGAL OBJECTION TO THE MARRIAGE NOR TO THE ISSUANCE OF A LICENSE IS KNOWN TO US. WE ACKNOWLEDGE RECEIPT OF THE INFORMATION REQUIRED BY FAMILY CODE SECTION 358 AND HEREBY APPLY FOR A LICENSE AND CERTIFICATE OF MARRIAGE.

There now. That’s so much more romantic and personal, don’t you think?

The Message, Not The Snark

by tristero

Josh clearly means this movie to expose how utterly vapid, robotic, and contemptible McCain is as he repeats his vacuous talking points, all the while fearfully blinking like a two-bit hustler caught stealing from the mafia boss.

Pretty funny, huh? Or maybe you thought it was pathetic. Or pathetically funny. Or something similar, the point being that it turns McCain into a joke, an object of snark. Well, I saw something different in this film. What I saw and heard – and just about the only thing I saw and heard – was that McCain cares about workers.

Modern mass media is non-linear. That is why – duh – McCain or any other politician (or, for that matter anyone selling an idea or a product), must repeat, and repeat, and repeat the same message over and over again to the same media outlets in the same time frame. Sure, when strung together, it looks stupid and comical. That’s why The Daily Show and others do it all the time. And like jokes about all things flatulent, it’s a quick, effective snicker. Don’t get me wrong: these mashups can be hysterically funny.

But that’s not how it looks in reality. By sneering at McCain’s technique here – and spare me the the lecture that McCain deserves to be sneered at, I was mocking McCain back when Josh Marshall thought he was a magnificent maverick, thank you very much – we miss the fundamental point. This is how voters are reached today and it works.

Proof? Look at the polls. Remember: This should be a rout. Objectively speaking, there are pieces of lint that are more qualified than McCain/Bush/Palin to run this country. But this Republican Ticket of the Damned is ahead (or statistically even) in the polls right now and there are reasons for that. Racism explains a lot. Conservative media bias explains a lot. The immaturity and timidity of the media explains a lot. But that’s not the whole story. So, please, tell me how lame McCain looks repeating his talking points when he, Bush, and Palin are down 10 points and I will gladly, gratefully agree.

Let’s can the meta-snark to study what the message is. And the message here is not “McCain is a robot.” The message is “McCain cares about workers.” Therefore, the message Democrats ought to be repeating again, and again, and again – just as clearly and montonously as the Republicans do – is this:

It’s real easy for McCain to say whatever he wants from the personal library of one of his many, many homes, but those of us who are workers know his record and we know McCain is lying through his teeth.

That it has the distinct virtue of being absolutely true is an added bonus.

But Democrats need to do more. They need to make news. What news? That is for Obama’s advisers to work out. But here’s a hint: Terry McAuliffe campaigning for Obama in Virginia is not news. It’s what all leading Democrats should be expected to do beginning the day after the convention. The campaign support Obama has received from the party poohbahs has been nothing short of disgraceful.

UPDATE: This, if it happens, is not news either. At best, it is news-ish. Of course, Rove deserves to be held in contempt; hell, he should be locked up with only the Unabomber for company. But the Dems should be thinking up something additional that isn’t so bloody easy for Republicans to swat away as mere politics.

UPDATE: Added this depressing link about the unspeakable childishness of the press.

Congratulations, You Just Purchased An Insurance Company

by dday

Johnny, tell them what they’ve bought 80% of:

Fearing a financial crisis worldwide, the Federal Reserve reversed course on Tuesday and agreed to an $85 billion bailout that would give the government control of the troubled insurance giant American International Group.

The decision, only two weeks after the Treasury took over the federally chartered mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is the most radical intervention in private business in the central bank’s history.

With time running out after A.I.G. failed to get a bank loan to avoid bankruptcy, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, convened a meeting with House and Senate leaders on Capitol Hill about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday to explain the rescue plan. They emerged just after 7:30 p.m. with Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke looking grim, but with top lawmakers initially expressing support for the plan. But the bailout is likely to prove controversial, because it effectively puts taxpayer money at risk while protecting bad investments made by A.I.G. and other institutions it does business with.

Yes, that’s right, you’ve got a troubled insurance giant with billions of dollars tied up in worthless pieces of paper masquerading as securities. Yours for the low low price of $85 billion dollars!

You know, if this was Bolivia, the State Department would put out a strong statement declaiming the nationalization of industry and the stifling of private enterprise. But of course, in this case, industry made horrible decisions, so that justifies the Communism. It’s unclear to me that it’s even legal for the government to structure this absent legislation, but we’re in a brave new world.

To be clear, AIG perhaps was too big to fail. And the hash that has been made of the financial markets cannot plausibly be worked out without government intervention. But can this be the end of the “drown government in the bathtub” rhetoric we’ve heard from conservatives since Goldwater? They eliminated regulation and oversight, ignored the maddening decisions made by the big banks who gambled with borrowed money and lost, and then obliged as the corporations came begging for a handout.

By the way, this could have been handled for $45 billion less three days ago. The shorts battered AIG’s stock so mercilessly that they put taxpayers on the hook for twice as much.

I’ve said it before, but given the circumstances I don’t know why anyone would want to be the President right now. But whoever gets the job is going to have to roll back all the deregulation initiatives that caused this mess. This has cost taxpayers and investors dearly, and the ones responsible are largely getting away with it; the CEO got a $47 million dollar severance package back in July.

Their debt, the result of their horrible choices, is now our debt. The risk has been socialized. And to top it off, this is an INSURANCE company who couldn’t manage their own risk.

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