THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

These were the reckless clowns who led us into the foolish multitrillion-dollar debacle in Iraq and who crafted tax policies that enormously benefited millionaires and billionaires while at the same time ran up staggering amounts of government debt. This is the crowd that contributed mightily to the greatest disparities in wealth in the U.S. since the gilded age.

This was the crowd that cut the cords of corporate and financial regulations and in myriad other ways gleefully hacked away at the best interests of the United States.

// posted by montag @ 6:50 AM 0 Comments

The wacky events of the week went unmentioned, and McCain made a strong case for himself as the candidate of adult leadership. Which, if you've been paying attention to his campaign, is probably true if your idea of an adult is Terrell Owens, although Terrell Owens is at least capable of running in a straight line.

// posted by montag @ 7:30 PM 0 Comments

The bailout plan released yesterday is a lot better than the proposal Henry Paulson first put out — sufficiently so to be worth passing. But it’s not what you’d actually call a good plan, and it won’t end the crisis. The odds are that the next president will have to deal with some major financial emergencies.

So what do we know about the readiness of the two men most likely to end up taking that call? Well, Barack Obama seems well informed and sensible about matters economic and financial. John McCain, on the other hand, scares me.

// posted by montag @ 7:07 AM 0 Comments

Fort Mill Mayor Danny Funderburk says he was “just curious” when he forwarded a chain e-mail suggesting Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama is the biblical antichrist. “I was just curious if there was any validity to it,” Funderburk said in a telephone interview. “I was trying to get documentation if there was any scripture to back it up.”

When asked if he believed Obama was the antichrist, Funderburk replied, “I’ve got absolutely no way of knowing that.”

Funderburk said it “probably does give that impression” that he believed the e-mail was true “but that was not my intent.”

// posted by montag @ 6:49 AM 0 Comments

For months, the confrontation mounted, a face-off that arguably held in the balance the fates of two of Alaska's biggest industries. On one side were companies hoping to open Pebble Mine at a huge gold and copper reserve adjacent to one of the world's largest salmon runs, Bristol Bay. On the other side were fishermen and environmentalists pushing a referendum that would make it harder for the mine to open.

The two sides spent more than $10 million -- unprecedented for such efforts in Alaska -- and throughout it all, the state's highly popular first-term governor, Sarah Palin, held back. Alaska law forbids state officials from using state resources to advocate on ballot initiatives.

Then, six days before the Aug. 26 vote, with the race looking close, Palin broke her silence. Asked about the initiative at a news conference, she invoked "personal privilege" to give an opinion. "Let me take my governor's hat off for just a minute here and tell you, personally, Prop. 4 -- I vote no on that," she said. "I have all the confidence in the world that [the Department of Environmental Conservation] and our [Department of Natural Resources] have great, very stringent regulations and policies already in place. We're going to make sure that mines operate only safely, soundly."

Palin's comments rocked the contest. Within a day, the pro-mining coalition fighting the referendum had placed full-page ads with a picture of the governor and the word "NO." The initiative went down to defeat, with 57 percent of voters rejecting it.

Three days later, Palin was named Republican Sen. John McCain's running mate, throwing Alaska into a media frenzy. But the fallout has lingered from an episode that may stand as one of the most consequential in Palin's 21-month tenure. The state ethics panel is examining whether her comments violated the law against state advocacy on ballot measures; it had already ruled that a state Web site was improperly slanted toward mining interests.

// posted by montag @ 1:31 PM 0 Comments

The titular owner is Fannie Mae, which the U.S. government effectively subsumed this month, though the legal machinations are still ongoing. With the Treasury backing Fannie Mae, taxpayers have a huge interest in the fate of the mortgage giant's assets. They include the 1,296-square-foot, two-level, three-bedroom, 1 1/2 -bath house on Barksdale.

The most recent owner, Phyllis High Jones, refinanced the house through Countrywide Home Loans in 2006, taking out a $208,000 mortgage that would gradually inflate to $226,000. That same year, Fannie Mae bought the loan from Countrywide. Then the housing market collapsed in Prince William County. Jones defaulted this year. The townhouse went up for auction, but there were no takers. Fannie Mae had no choice but to become the buyer of record -- sale price $226,000.

This summer, Fannie Mae tried to sell the townhouse for $149,000. Still no reasonable offers.

The price has now been lowered to $69,900.

// posted by montag @ 1:20 PM 0 Comments

The most deadly attack came in Baghdad, where police said at least 11 people were killed and 26 wounded by two car bombs that struck shoppers making last-minute purchases before breaking their Ramadan fast. The blasts occurred in the western neighborhoods of Shurta Rabaa and Amil, formerly mixed districts that now have Shiite majorities after years of sectarian attacks.

Earlier in the capital, snipers fired on an army checkpoint, killing two Iraqi soldiers and a civilian in the eastern Zayona neighborhood. A roadside bomb also killed an Iraqi soldier on a patrol in Mansour, a mostly Sunni area in western Baghdad, police officials said.

Two civilians were killed in an armed attack in the town of Khan Bani Saad by a group believed tied to al-Qaida, a police official in Diyala province said. The town is near the provincial capital of Baqouba.

The same official said two Iraqi soldiers were killed and 10 wounded when a bomb targeted them in Balad Ruz, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad late Saturday. A medic at the Balad Ruz hospital said the wounded suffered burns and shrapnel wounds and were later taken by U.S. soldiers to a military base.

// posted by montag @ 1:03 PM 4 Comments

Senator John McCain was on a roll. In a room reserved for high-stakes gamblers at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, he tossed $100 chips around a hot craps table. When the marathon session ended around 2:30 a.m., the Arizona senator and his entourage emerged with thousands of dollars in winnings.

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

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

// posted by montag @ 12:53 PM 0 Comments

A popular resistance movement is emerging in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province to challenge Islamic extremists, who now exercise control over whole districts and maintain a stranglehold over the local population.

The movement in both the province and the lawless tribal territory bordering Afghanistan relies on fierce tribal customs and widespread ownership of guns in the north west of the country, to raise traditional private armies, known as a lashkar, each with the strength of hundreds or several thousand volunteers.

The movement arose after local tribal leaders ... decided that the state can't or won't come to their aid as a radical, alien, form of Islam seeks to impose itself on them down the barrel of an AK-47.

// posted by montag @ 6:55 PM 0 Comments

The chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a longtime proponent of deregulation, acknowledged on Friday that failures in a voluntary supervision program for Wall Street’s largest investment banks had contributed to the global financial crisis, and he abruptly shut the program down.

// posted by montag @ 1:26 PM 0 Comments

To be fair, it had been a very long week for McCain, what with ruling out the debate, ruling in the debate and returning to a Senate from which he has been AWOL so long that it’s believed his desk is now being used to store janitorial supplies.

// posted by montag @ 1:23 PM 0 Comments

Once upon a time, a politician took campaign contributions and favors from a friendly constituent who happened to run a savings and loan association. The contributions were generous: They came to about $200,000 in today's dollars, and on top of that there were several free vacations for the politician and his family, along with private jet trips and other perks. The politician voted repeatedly against congressional efforts to tighten regulation of S&Ls, and in 1987, when he learned that his constituent's S&L was the target of a federal investigation, he met with regulators in an effort to get them to back off.

That politician was John McCain, and his generous friend was Charles Keating, head of Lincoln Savings & Loan. While he was courting McCain and other senators and urging them to oppose tougher regulation of S&Ls, Keating was also investing his depositors' federally insured savings in risky ventures. When those lost money, Keating tried to hide the losses from regulators by inducing his customers to switch from insured accounts to uninsured (and worthless) bonds issued by Lincoln's near-bankrupt parent company. In 1989, it went belly up -- and more than 20,000 Lincoln customers saw their savings vanish.

The McCain campaign has done its bizarre best to shield Ms. Palin from any sustained media examination of her readiness for the highest offices in the land, and no wonder. She has been an embarrassment in interviews.

But the idea that the voters of the United States might install someone in the vice president’s office who is too unprepared or too intellectually insecure to appear on, say, “Meet the Press” or “Face the Nation” is mind-boggling.

The alarm bells should be clanging and warning lights flashing. You wouldn’t put an unqualified pilot in the cockpit of a jetliner. The potential for catastrophe is far, far greater with an unqualified president.

// posted by montag @ 12:55 PM 0 Comments

Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.

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

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

// posted by montag @ 6:25 PM 0 Comments

Sen. Ted Stevens, his career and his freedom in jeopardy, did the honorable thing as he went on trial yesterday on corruption-related charges. He blamed his wife.

Yes, Stevens, the first sitting senator to be indicted in a generation, failed to report a home renovation and other pricey gifts from a pipeline company. But, his lawyer told the jury yesterday, it was his wife who reviewed the bills and took care of the finances.

// posted by montag @ 7:23 AM 0 Comments

When you're Commander in Chief, I don't think there'd be a worse signal to send to our troops in harm's way than to say, "Hey, hold on guys. I know you're getting killed over there, but I have to get a time-out here to deal with Wall Street."

If troops need to multi-task without a break, is it so wrong that we demand that a potential President-in-waiting prove that he can manage a financial crisis, and still address crises around the world for 90 minutes? And, if a potential President-to-be can't manage that, is it wrong to think that maybe he ought not just suspend a debate and the campaign, but move aside and get out of the race?

// posted by montag @ 7:26 PM 0 Comments

The 72-year-old was recently made TV-ready by makeup artist Tifanie White who's worked on So You Think You Can Dance and American Idol.

McCain paid the 2002 beauty-school grad $5,583.43 for her services, according to the Federal Election Commission.

// posted by montag @ 7:08 PM 0 Comments

We’re trying to rescue the economy, not the McCain campaign,

// posted by montag @ 7:02 PM 0 Comments

If you're ready to buy this deal from a used war salesman like George W. Bush and his cronies on Wall Street, then I have a real deal for you on a bridge to nowhere.

Trust us, they say. In a pig's ass, I say.

// posted by montag @ 7:41 PM 0 Comments

Asked by CNN's Zain Verjee if she thought Palin's resume included sufficient foreign policy experience, Bush said, "Of course she doesn't have that."

promoting global literacy. She also met with political dissidents from around the world Tuesday, including a Burmese monk.

// posted by montag @ 6:08 PM 0 Comments

Berkshire will buy $5 billion of Goldman perpetual preferred stock that carries a 10 percent dividend.

It also will receive warrants to buy $5 billion of common stock, or 43.5 million shares, at $115 per share, within five years, which could give it a roughly 9 percent stake in Goldman. Last week, Goldman said it averaged 448.3 million common shares in the quarter ended Aug 29.

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Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.

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Lobbyists, bankers and Wall Street types are already hopping up and down like over-excited children, ready to burst into the government’s $700 billion piñata. This widespread eagerness is itself an indication that there is something too sweet about the Paulson plan.

This is not supposed to be a good deal for business. “The idea is that you’re coming here because you would be going bankrupt otherwise,” said Mr. Baker. “You’re coming here because you have no alternative. You’re getting a bad deal, but it’s better than going out of business. That’s how it should be structured.”

// posted by montag @ 6:50 AM 0 Comments

Mr. McCain, the Republican candidate for president, has recently begun campaigning as a critic of the two companies [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] and the lobbying army that helped them evade greater regulation as they began buying riskier mortgages with implicit federal backing.

But last week the McCain campaign stepped up a running battle of guilt by association when it began broadcasting commercials trying to link Mr. Obama directly to the government bailout of the mortgage giants this month by charging that he takes advice from Fannie Mae’s former chief executive, Franklin Raines, an assertion both Mr. Raines and the Obama campaign dispute.

Incensed by the advertisements, several current and former executives of the companies came forward to discuss the role that Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager and longtime adviser, played in helping Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac beat back regulatory challenges when he served as president of their advocacy group, the Homeownership Alliance, formed in the summer of 2000. Some who came forward were Democrats, but Republicans, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed their descriptions.

“The value that he brought to the relationship was the closeness to Senator McCain and the possibility that Senator McCain was going to run for president again,” said Robert McCarson, a former spokesman for Fannie Mae, who said that while he worked there from 2000 to 2002, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac together paid Mr. Davis’s firm $35,000 a month. Mr. Davis “didn’t really do anything,” Mr. McCarson, a Democrat, said.

// posted by montag @ 6:30 PM 0 Comments

And a government official with knowledge of the talks said the administration had agreed to create a plan to help prevent foreclosures on mortgages it acquires as part of the bailout - a key demand of Democratic lawmakers.

Under other additions the Democrats are asking to the administration package, according to a draft of the plan obtained by The Associated Press:

- Judges could rewrite mortgages to lower bankrupt homeowners' monthly payments.

- Companies that unloaded their bad assets on the government in the massive rescue would have to limit their executives' pay packages and agree to revoke any bonuses awarded based on bogus claims.

The plan also would require that the government get shares in the troubled companies helped by the rescue.

// posted by montag @ 6:10 PM 0 Comments

Can you trust a Wall Street veteran with a Wall Street bailout?

// posted by montag @ 7:29 AM 0 Comments

The $2.5 billion had been accrued as part of the contribution to Lehman’s group profits for the first nine months of the year. Barclays said there is no obligation to pay it out but analysts say the competitive pressure to keep key staff

// posted by montag @ 4:59 PM 0 Comments

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.

// posted by montag @ 4:43 PM 0 Comments

Black, a senior adviser to the McCain campaign, has represented at least 120 clients from more than two dozen countries within the past decade. He has used his clout to help kill tax reforms that could have hurt foreign clients, and he once even pressed a judge to go easy an associate convicted of fraud.

Earlier this year, amid criticism that McCain's reformist message was being undercut by a campaign top-heavy with lobbyists, Black, 60, retired from his lobbying company.

But that hardly marked Black's departure from the Washington influence business, nor from private business dealings directly dependent on the decisions of the federal government.

Black remains a director of Civitas Group LLC, a low-profile consulting firm he set up months after the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security to invest in security companies and give them advice. National security is both the firm's business and the signature issue of the McCain campaign. Neither Black nor the McCain campaign would discuss Black's role with Civitas.

Federal law requires lobbyists to disclose who their clients while consulting firms, like Civitas, are not. But to some, that is a distinction without a difference; a consultant who devises the strategy lobbyists use, for example, is not considered a lobbyist.

// posted by montag @ 1:04 PM 0 Comments

In my view, we need to go forward in addressing this financial crisis by insisting on four basic principles:

(1) The people who can best afford to pay and the people who have benefited most from Bush’s economic policies are the people who should provide the funds for the bailout. It would be immoral to ask the middle class, the people whose standard of living has declined under Bush, to pay for this bailout while the rich, once again, avoid their responsibilities. Further, if the government is going to save companies from bankruptcy, the taxpayers of this country should be rewarded for assuming the risk by sharing in the gains that result from this government bailout.

Specifically, to pay for the bailout, which is estimated to cost up to $1 trillion, the government should:

a) Impose a five-year, 10 percent surtax on income over $1 million a year for couples and over $500,000 for single taxpayers. That would raise more than $300 billion in revenue;

b) Ensure that assets purchased from banks are realistically discounted so companies are not rewarded for their risky behavior and taxpayers can recover the amount they paid for them; and

c) Require that taxpayers receive equity stakes in the bailed-out companies so that the assumption of risk is rewarded when companies’ stock goes up.

(2) There must be a major economic recovery package which puts Americans to work at decent wages. Among many other areas, we can create millions of jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and moving our country from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. Further, we must protect working families from the difficult times they are experiencing. We must ensure that every child has health insurance and that every American has access to quality health and dental care, that families can send their children to college, that seniors are not allowed to go without heat in the winter, and that no American goes to bed hungry.

(3) Legislation must be passed which undoes the damage caused by excessive de-regulation. That means reinstalling the regulatory firewalls that were ripped down in 1999. That means re-regulating the energy markets so that we never again see the rampant speculation in oil that helped drive up prices. That means regulating or abolishing various financial instruments that have created the enormous shadow banking system that is at the heart of the collapse of AIG and the financial services meltdown.

(4) We must end the danger posed by companies that are “too big too fail,” that is, companies whose failure would cause systemic harm to the U.S. economy. If a company is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. We need to determine which companies fall in this category and then break them up. Right now, for example, the Bank of America, the nation’s largest depository institution, has absorbed Countrywide, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, and Merrill Lynch, the nation’s largest brokerage house. We should not be trying to solve the current financial crisis by creating even larger, more powerful institutions. Their failure could cause even more harm to the entire economy.

// posted by montag @ 12:53 PM 0 Comments

Kenney, 58, had a gauzy vision of what his retirement would look like. A creative type, he didn't want to decamp to Florida or play golf all day. He wanted freedom. That meant having enough money to do only the work that he loved, to compose music, finally get to those two books he's been meaning to write, perhaps buy a farm in Iceland.

But after last week, Kenney, like tens of thousands of people reaching retirement age, is being forced to reconsider his future. Glued to his chair in front of two Mac computer screens, chain-smoking Camel Lights, Kenney watched, wide-eyed, as over the course five business days one-third of the value of his retirement savings simply vanished.

He hasn't slept well since.

// posted by montag @ 12:23 AM 0 Comments

A private group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, is suing Cheney and the Executive Office of the President in an effort to ensure that no presidential records are destroyed or handled in a way that makes them unavailable to the public.

In a 22-page opinion, the judge revealed that in recent days, lawyers for the Bush administration balked at a proposed agreement between the two sides on how to proceed with the case.

Cheney and the other defendants in the case ''were only willing to agree to a preservation order that tracked their narrowed interpretation'' of the Presidential Records Act, wrote Kollar-Kotelly.

The administration, said the judge, wanted any court order on what records are at issue in the suit to cover only the office of the vice president, not Cheney or the other defendants in the lawsuit. The other defendants include the National Archives and the archivist of the United States.

// posted by montag @ 10:57 PM 0 Comments

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.

// posted by montag @ 10:20 PM 0 Comments

A huge truck bomb exploded at the gateway of the five-star Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on Saturday evening, just a few hundred yards from the prime minister’s house, where all the leaders of government were dining after the president’s address to Parliament.

At least 40 people were killed and 100 were wounded, according to The Associated Press. The toll was expected to grow because of reports that many people were still trapped inside the six-story hotel, which was engulfed in flames.

// posted by montag @ 12:48 PM 0 Comments

the 26% of Americans that describe themselves as evangelical Christians have strong hypocritical tendencies, politically at least. Evangelicals first became a political force in the 1980 presidential election, when they abandoned small town Sunday school teacher and born-again Christian Jimmy Carter for divorced, Hollywood actor and infrequent churchgoer Ronald Reagan.

A Pew Research survey released early this year found that evangelicals are nearly as likely to be living together out of wedlock as the public at large and more likely to be divorced. Perhaps more telling, the Barna Group found that only about one in five self-proclaimed evangelicals actually hold the tradition's key core beliefs. Underscoring that point, evangelicals have loudly applauded Bristol Palin, the 17-year-old pregnant daughter of the Republican vice presidential candidate, as a goddess of life rather than condemn her as a sinner. One suspects they wouldn't be quite so forgiving if it was an Obama offspring was the mother-to-be – or the shotgun groom.

But hypocrisy cuts across religious as well as party lines. Tens of millions of Americans talk the talk but don't walk the walk or think things through. They drive their SUVs to Earth Day rallies. They watch Fox News and parrot complaints about the media's liberal bias. They believe America needs to keep good, high wage jobs at home yet shop at Wal-Mart, Chinese exporters' best customer. They don't see a contradiction or even a connection between abstinence-only sex education and pregnancy crisis centres.

For them, McCain offers not just a hypocritical campaign, but a hypocritical agenda for the White House. After 26 years on Capitol Hill, President McCain will reform Washington and put the lobbyists who run his campaign out of business. He'll cut taxes, yet balance the budget. He'll reduce regulation yet bring order to Wall Street. He'll continue the American war in Iraq to victory, even though there's little sign of political progress among Iraqi factions despite the decrease in violence. He'll stop global warming while providing bigger fixes to satisfy America's addiction to oil.

// posted by montag @ 12:30 PM 0 Comments

A study of the Pentagon's satellite imagery concludes that ethnic cleansing -- not last year's surge of U.S. military forces -- is the main factor in the reduction of violence in Iraq.

The report's conclusion about the surge's ineffectiveness are supported by many Iraq experts and international organizations who credit a population shift with the decline of sectarian violence, especially in Baghdad, Reuters reported.

Conducted by the University of California, the study analyzed the use of nighttime light across Baghdad and how it changed before, during and after the surge. It's findings show only some neighborhoods have higher levels of output, suggesting the others had been ethnically cleansed before the surge.

// posted by montag @ 12:12 PM 0 Comments

How many times do we have to hear:

We don't have ENOUGH MONEY to fix Social Security.
We don't have ENOUGH MONEY to fix Medicare.
We don't have ENOUGH MONEY to provide health care to ALL Americans.
We don't have ENOUGH MONEY to help out Americans losing their homes.
We don't have ENOUGH MONEY to help all our veterans returning from war.
We don't have ENOUGH MONEY to rescue "no child left behind".

BUT...

We DO HAVE ENOUGH MONEY to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
We DO HAVE ENOUGH MONEY to bail out Bears Stearns.
We DO HAVE ENOUGH MONEY to bail out AIG.
We DO HAVE ENOUGH MONEY to pay for an unnecessary TRILLION DOLLAR war.

// posted by montag @ 6:06 PM 0 Comments

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 to our economic problem and put somebody in there who's going to fight for you.

// posted by montag @ 6:06 PM 0 Comments

But Edwards kept her focus Thursday on political matters, reciting one of the many personal stories from her husband's stump speech and even managing to rankle Republicans with her repeated commentary about McCain.

"Let's consider Sen. John McCain's approach (to health care) as the ideal conservative approach," Edwards began.

She went on to slam McCain's ideas on health care tax credits and the fact that his plan wouldn't cover all Americans, including some who may have pre-existing conditions such as cancer.

"Senator McCain and I have something in common, which is that neither of us would be covered under his health care plan," Edwards said. "If you're 55 with cancer... good luck to you."

Edwards occasionally deviated from her prepared testimony, submitted a day ahead to the committee, which never mentioned McCain. It is unusual to hear such political talk during a policy hearing.

Republicans on the committee appeared frustrated as Edwards went on eight minutes beyond her allotted five-minute slot.

// posted by montag @ 6:10 PM 0 Comments

Folks were wildly enthusiastic as the event began. That was partly because Sarah Palin was also on the bill. (With Todd!) And when McCain took the center stage, they were itching to cheer the war hero and boo all references to pork-barrel spenders.

Nobody had warned them that he had just morphed into a new persona — a raging populist demanding more regulation of the nation’s financial system. And since McCain’s willingness to make speeches that have nothing to do with his actual beliefs is not matched by an ability to give them, he wound up sounding like Bob Dole impersonating Huey Long.

// posted by montag @ 6:47 AM 0 Comments

Republican presidential nominee McCain was doing his best to sound, well, presidential, albeit Bush presidential, as he expressed confidence in the underlying strength of the American economy and the productivity of American workers, at least those who haven't lost their jobs yet.

He vowed that when he becomes president, he'd appoint a 9/11 Commission to get to the bottom of how the "social contract between capitalism and the American worker" was frayed and shredded by the greed and rapacity of Wall Street.

McCain neglected to mention that for most of the last eight years, a Republican president and a Republican Congress aided and abetted this shocking development. Bowing at the free market altar, Republican politicians caponized, neutered and rendered toothless the regulatory agencies that were established to protect the public from predatory capitalism — all while accepting fat campaign contributions from the predators.

Nor was there mention of the fact that nearly eight years of George W. Bush has made the very rich very much richer and put the bedrock of this nation, its broad middle class, very much at risk of falling through the cracks his administration has pried open in the floor beneath their feet.

// posted by montag @ 7:47 PM 0 Comments

R. D. Levno, a retired school principal, flew in from Fairbanks. “She’s a child, inexperienced and simplistic,” she said of Sarah. “It’s taking us back to junior high school. She’s one of the popular girls, but one of the mean girls. She is seductive, but she is invented.”

// posted by montag @ 7:16 AM 0 Comments

In a letter to state Sen. Hollis French, the Democrat overseeing the investigation, Republican Attorney General Talis Colberg asked that the subpoenas be withdrawn. He also said the employees would refuse to appear unless either the full state Senate or the entire Legislature votes to compel their testimony.

// posted by montag @ 6:50 AM 0 Comments

Flanked by Florida's three recent Republican governors, McCain spoke at Jacksonville's Veteran's Arena, promising to reform the financial regulatory system to ''protect the deposits of hard-working Americans.'' He said he will oppose any attempt to rely on taxpayers to bail out the troubled system.

The criticism was apparently aimed at the administration of President Bush but McCain never mentioned the president by name except to say that has has ''been a good president'' and has made America safer.

Sitting behind McCain was former Gov. Jeb Bush, who was hired a year ago by Lehman Brothers as a financial consultant. As governor, Bush served on the three-member State Board of Administration that agreed to let the state's retirement fund buy a series of questionable mortgage-backed bonds from Lehman Brothers. The subsequent steep drop in value prompted a $9 billion run on the fund last December by local governments who had invested their money in the SBA managed fund.

// posted by montag @ 7:35 PM 0 Comments

The problems for McCain started with a pair of ads last week critical of Obama's position on early childhood sex education and his "disrespectful" words toward Sarah Palin. Both ads were roundly criticized for what one analyst called "a dubious disregard for the facts." Then the Boston Globe reported that Palin had never visited Iraq, as the McCain camp had claimed, and Bloomberg News reported that the campaign may have even fibbed about crowd estimates, attributing the numbers to sources that don't do crowd estimates.

Add to that, finally, Palin's insistence last week on claiming she said "thanks but no thanks to Congress" for the now infamous Bridge to Nowhere - a notion debunked by several media, including the conservative Wall Street Journal. It's enough fibbing that conservative media and Republican strategists have winced a bit - including Karl Rove, who told Fox News yesterday that McCain had "gone one step too far, attributing to Obama things that are, you know, beyond the 100 percent truth test."

// posted by montag @ 6:13 PM 0 Comments

The new system was supposed to do a better job of spreading and reducing risk. But in the aftermath of the housing bust and the resulting mortgage crisis, it seems apparent that risk wasn’t so much reduced as hidden: all too many investors had no idea how exposed they were.

And as the unknown unknowns have turned into known unknowns, the system has been experiencing postmodern bank runs. These don’t look like the old-fashioned version: with few exceptions, we’re not talking about mobs of distraught depositors pounding on closed bank doors. Instead, we’re talking about frantic phone calls and mouse clicks, as financial players pull credit lines and try to unwind counterparty risk. But the economic effects — a freezing up of credit, a downward spiral in asset values — are the same as those of the great bank runs of the 1930s.

And here’s the thing: The defenses set up to prevent a return of those bank runs, mainly deposit insurance and access to credit lines with the Federal Reserve, only protect the guys in the marble buildings, who aren’t at the heart of the current crisis. That creates the real possibility that 2008 could be 1931 revisited.

// posted by montag @ 6:51 AM 0 Comments

"McCain has gone in some of his ads -- similarly gone one step too far, and sort of attributing to Obama things that are, you know, beyond the '100 percent truth' test."

// posted by montag @ 6:21 PM 0 Comments

a safe guess would be they discussed which player got which juicy plum from Lehman and how the gov't would be stuck with Lehman's pile of shit.

// posted by montag @ 1:53 PM 0 Comments

The United States cannot afford Sen. John McCain's proposed plan for $3.3 trillion in tax cuts without cutting spending, Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said on Bloomberg Television on Saturday.

In an interview with host Al Hunt, Greenspan said he does not support tax cuts of the magnitude McCain proposes.

"I'm not in favor of financing tax cuts with borrowed money," Greenspan said.

// posted by montag @ 1:12 PM 0 Comments

Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy.

interviews make clear that the Palins draw few distinctions between the personal and the political.

Ms. Palin ordered city employees not to talk to the press. And she used city money to buy a white Suburban for the mayor’s use — employees sarcastically called it the mayor-mobile.

She surrounded herself with people she has known since grade school and members of her church.

An assistant told her it appeared that such e-mail messages sent to a private address on a “personal device” like a BlackBerry “would be confidential and not subject to subpoena.”

Ms. Palin and aides use their private e-mail addresses for state business.

Many politicians say they typically learn of her initiatives — and vetoes — from news releases.

Mayors across the state, from the larger cities to tiny municipalities along the southeastern fiords, are even more frustrated. Often, their letters go unanswered and their pleas ignored,

At an Alaska Municipal League gathering in Juneau in January, mayors across the political spectrum swapped stories of the governor’s remoteness. How many of you, someone asked, have tried to meet with her? Every hand went up, recalled Mayor Fred Shields of Haines Borough. And how many met with her? Just a few hands rose. Ms. Palin soon walked in, delivered a few remarks and left for an anti-abortion rally.

// posted by montag @ 12:39 PM 0 Comments