The McCain Campaign hires paid employees (through temp agencies) to push absentee ballots on voters. These paid employees are called "volunteers."

And these paid 'volunteers' sign 'confidentiality agreements' with the McCain campaign. Wow. The clip begins with some complete bullshit slander about the Democratic "ACORN connection" that everybody knows is a lie. Can you say "hypocrite"?

You have to see this to believe this. But it's real. From something called theuptake.org. Absolutely brilliant stuff. The McCain campaign looks sleazy, distrustful, mendacious and pathetic in this footage. No surprise on any of these counts. But it's entertaining as hell. Pass this on:

Transcript of Colin Powell's Oct. 19 Obama endorsement.

I'm tardy in getting to this, but behold -- if you've not yet done -- Four-Star General Colin Powell, in a moment of eloquence. Appearing on NBC's Meet The Press on October 19, Powell endorsed Barack Obama for the Presidency of the United States. Powell, recall, was and is a steadfast Republican, having served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under George H.W. Bush and as Secretary of State under George W. Bush.

Powell's most recent act of significance had been making the Bush Administration's case for the invasion of Iraq before an assembly of the United Nations on February 5, 2003. His case had, of course, been based upon the notion that Iraq presented an imminent threat to world peace, in that it was close to obtaining 'weapons of mass destruction'. That this notion was based upon faulty, patchy and forged evidence was clear for all to see in a matter of weeks.

Anyway, Powell's done much to redeem himself, I think, with this Obama endorsement. Not simply because it was he who made the endorsement (although that's not to be sneezed at), but because he stated his case so eloquently. Excerpt:

In the case of Mr. McCain, I found that he was a little unsure as to deal with the economic problems that we were having and almost every day there was a different approach to the problem. And that concerned me, sensing that he didn't have a complete grasp of the economic problems that we had. And I was also concerned at the selection of Governor Palin. She's a very distinguished woman, and she's to be admired; but at the same time, now that we have had a chance to watch her for some seven weeks, I don't believe she's ready to be president of the United States, which is the job of the vice president. And so that raised some question in my mind as to the judgment that Senator McCain made.

On the Obama side, I watched Mr. Obama and I watched him during this seven-week period. And he displayed a steadiness, an intellectual curiosity, a depth of knowledge and an approach to looking at problems like this and picking a vice president that, I think, is ready to be president on day one. And also, in not just jumping in and changing every day, but showing intellectual vigor. I think that he has a, a definitive way of doing business that would serve us well. I also believe that on the Republican side over the last seven weeks, the approach of the Republican Party and Mr. McCain has become narrower and narrower. Mr. Obama, at the same time, has given us a more inclusive, broader reach into the needs and aspirations of our people. He's crossing lines--ethnic lines, racial lines, generational lines. He's thinking about all villages have values, all towns have values, not just small towns have values.

And I've also been disappointed, frankly, by some of the approaches that Senator McCain has taken recently, or his campaign ads, on issues that are not really central to the problems that the American people are worried about. This Bill Ayers situation that's been going on for weeks became something of a central point of the campaign. But Mr. McCain says that he's a washed-out terrorist. Well, then, why do we keep talking about him? And why do we have these robocalls going on around the country trying to suggest that, because of this very, very limited relationship that Senator Obama has had with Mr. Ayers, somehow, Mr. Obama is tainted. What they're trying to connect him to is some kind of terrorist feelings. And I think that's inappropriate.

Now, I understand what politics is all about. I know how you can go after one another, and that's good. But I think this goes too far. And I think it has made the McCain campaign look a little narrow. It's not what the American people are looking for. And I look at these kinds of approaches to the campaign and they trouble me. And the party has moved even further to the right, and Governor Palin has indicated a further rightward shift. I would have difficulty with two more conservative appointments to the Supreme Court, but that's what we'd be looking at in a McCain administration. I'm also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, "He's a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists." This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery, and she had her head on the headstone of her son's grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards--Purple Heart, Bronze Star--showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old. And then, at the very top of the headstone, it didn't have a Christian cross, it didn't have the Star of David, it had crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, and he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he can go serve his country, and he gave his life. Now, we have got to stop polarizing ourself in this way. And John McCain is as nondiscriminatory as anyone I know. But I'm troubled about the fact that, within the party, we have these kinds of expressions.

So, when I look at all of this and I think back to my Army career, we've got two individuals, either one of them could be a good president. But which is the president that we need now? Which is the individual that serves the needs of the nation for the next period of time? And I come to the conclusion that because of his ability to inspire, because of the inclusive nature of his campaign, because he is reaching out all across America, because of who he is and his rhetorical abilities--and we have to take that into account--as well as his substance--he has both style and substance--he has met the standard of being a successful president, being an exceptional president. I think he is a transformational figure. He is a new generation coming into the world--onto the world stage, onto the American stage, and for that reason I'll be voting for Senator Barack Obama.

Read or watch the entire endorsement on MSNBC's Web site.

Trouble The Water: go see it.

I kept forgetting to mention this. If you've not seen it, I recommend highly this feature-length documentary, which currently enjoys some form of limited theatrical release.

Trouble The Water gives us a glimpse into the experience of residents of New Orleans' poorest neighborhoods, ignored by the city's meager evacuation efforts -- an 'evacuation' that provided no transportation for the benefit of residents who lacked access to an automobile. These residents were abandoned to endure Hurricane Katrina from the confines of their homes, located in the neighborhoods that were most vulnerable to the flooding that occurred as a consequence of the breach of the infamous nearby levies.

The protagonist of this film is the New Orleans rap artist Kimberly Roberts whose home-video footage comprises some of the most candid and shocking sequences of the film. She and her friends and family sit huddled in their attic for hour upon hour. Footage captured by Roberts from her attic window reveals common street-signs that are almost entirely submerged by the flood waters. She and the other residents of her neighborhood watch as the water-line continues to rise; many fellow residents -- including elderly people -- are trapped in the crevices of their attics, with no way of freeing themselves. Others are left to perish of starvation.

Even after the rain ceases, no government agency, no rescue operation is anywhere to be found. Those confined to the Roberts home are lucky to spot a stray row-boat passing by -- two and a half stories above where the street would normally be. Using this boat, Roberts's husband Scott, along with others, mounts a couple of heroic rescues of nearby residents. Still: no police, no coast guard, no national guard, no FEMA. And yet, "Brownie" -- we are reminded -- is said to have done "a heck of a job."

The extraordinary story continues, following Kimberly and Scott Roberts as they escape to some semblance of safety, only to contend with racism, bureaucracy, long-lines, paperwork and contempt. Through it all, Kimberly Roberts remains at once unflinching in her willingness to speak truth to power, and unyielding in her optimism. She's an absolutely amazing woman.

If you're not one for righteous indignation, this might not be the movie you'll most enjoy seeing, but you should see it anyway. A human being cannot help but get mad at what he sees, as the Roberts and their friends are forced to confront hypocrisy and injustice at every turn, in the fight for their very survival. There are really only a couple of moments at which the film becomes a little preachy. But I think it more than earns the right to be that way a couple of times. Apart from these miniscule, arguable exceptions, Trouble The Water allows its subjects and their circumstances to speak for themselves.

In conclusion (sorry...I've always wanted to write a final paragraph that begins "In conclusion..."), go see Trouble The Water if and when it appears at a cinema near you, and tell your friends to do the same.

Newish interview with Jim O'Rourke.

The composer, musician and producer Jim O'Rourke has given his first interview in at least a couple of years. It's on the Web site of something called monk mink pink punk, as a feature of its July 2008 edition.

In the 80s and throughout the 90s, O'Rourke's presence in Chicago coincided with that of a cadre of other talented musicians. I'm not going to go through his C.V., which you can do elsewhere without much trouble. It shall suffice to say that he produced a staggering amount of work during this period and that much of it -- with and without collaborators -- is inspiring. (In my opinion.)

O'Rourke then moved to New York City for a couple of years, collaborating with Sonic Youth on a string of great records, before moving to Tokyo and sort of disappearing. Apparently, O'Rourke has not, as rumors had indicated, been making films or studying film. The interviewer Josh Ronsen receives an unambiguous response when he asks O'Rourke to clarify this matter of film and O'Rourke's involvement with film:

Q: Is film work more important than music right now, or are you looking into the relationship between film and music?

well all of that is some internet creation. i think lee [renaldo] or somebody said something, and it’s sort of blown up from there. i didn’t move here to make movies, study movies or whatever. but that seems to be what people think, so, that’s fine i guess. i spent the last 2 years studying japanese and working towards getting my visa, that was really 90% of my time. but back to the question, the relation between music and film has rarely, if ever interested me. i’ve always preferred film over music, and i still do.

O'Rourke goes on to offer a comment about new structural challenges with which musicians and composers are faced when creating a recorded work. I take solace in the knowledge that he's still thinking and stuff, even if he's not releasing new records at the moment:

Q: Another technology question: when you release a limited edition CDr like the Old News series (and where is volume 3?) in an edition of 30 or 40, are you upset when they become available for download on SoulSeek or other file sharing site?

hahaha, oh boy, that's a can of worms. i am happy people even know about them, and want to hear them. so, that aspect, no i have no problems. but the overall aesthetic problem i have is the inability to actually use the context as part of what you are trying to do. it's a big subject, the whole aesthetic of the internet, which i, haha of course, have a lot of opinions about. the “download vs not” discussion isn't so interesting to me, if at all, as the whole way the use of context has become vaguer and vaguer.

Both this and the previous quotation remind me of something I've thought about before: one thing that has always seemed to distinguish O'Rourke's music is that it isn't about music; it's about context and expectations and stuff like that. We should talk more about this. Maybe after the presidential election? Thoughts?....

Full interview.

CAN THE AMERICAN PEOPLE TRUST JOHN McCAIN??? *

* Yeah, well....I mean, the answer's no, the American People can't.

All right, Hitch, you did the right thing in the end.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that Christopher Hitchens endorsed Obama a few days ago, despite having previously -- inanely -- acted as cheerleader for the Palin/McCain freak show. For a number of years now, it has ceased to matter what Hitchens has had to say. I say that and yet, I had expressed -- in less than gentlemanly terms -- my dismay when Hitchens sleep-walked his way through a preposterous hatchet-job against Obama in a recent installment of his column in Slate. So I guess it must matter, at least a little bit.

So, I'll give credit where credit is due. Hitchens concludes his article with three paragraphs that I believe articulate the moral necessity of voting for Obama in this election, irrespective of which section of the political spectrum you occupy in normal times. Because McCain is really that unhinged, Palin is really that vapid and idiotic, and the times are not normal.

Moreover, given the interventionist economic measures pursued by our Republican White House, the huge deficits for which Bush is responsible (like his father and Reagan before him), anyone who espouses a "free market" ideology will have to look elsewhere than the Republican Party this year for their candidate. so these laissez faire types may as well line up behind such conservatives as Hitchens, David Brooks, George Will, and, satisfyingly, Christopher Buckley (son, of course, of William F., and who has, as a consequence, parted ways with the National Review, the publication his father founded), and make the only morally tenable decision available to them when they're inside the voting booth.

Anyway, here are Hitchens's concluding paragraphs, in which he doesn't mince words:

The most insulting thing that a politician can do is to compel you to ask yourself: "What does he take me for?" Precisely this question is provoked by the selection of Gov. Sarah Palin. I wrote not long ago that it was not right to condescend to her just because of her provincial roots or her piety, let alone her slight flirtatiousness, but really her conduct since then has been a national disgrace. It turns out that none of her early claims to political courage was founded in fact, and it further turns out that some of the untested rumors about her—her vindictiveness in local quarrels, her bizarre religious and political affiliations—were very well-founded, indeed. Moreover, given the nasty and lowly task of stirring up the whack-job fringe of the party's right wing and of recycling patent falsehoods about Obama's position on Afghanistan, she has drawn upon the only talent that she apparently possesses.

It therefore seems to me that the Republican Party has invited not just defeat but discredit this year, and that both its nominees for the highest offices in the land should be decisively repudiated, along with any senators, congressmen, and governors who endorse them.

I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that "issue" I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity. Obama is greatly overrated in my opinion, but the Obama-Biden ticket is not a capitulationist one, even if it does accept the support of the surrender faction, and it does show some signs of being able and willing to profit from experience. With McCain, the "experience" is subject to sharply diminishing returns, as is the rest of him, and with Palin the very word itself is a sick joke. One only wishes that the election could be over now and a proper and dignified verdict rendered, so as to spare democracy and civility the degradation to which they look like being subjected in the remaining days of a low, dishonest campaign.

Read the rest of Hitchens's endorsement, in Slate.

Washington Post: The White House endorsed CIA waterboarding policy in classified memos in 2003-2004

Condoleezza Rice:
Authorize torture?

No problem! Where do I sign?

Richard "Dick" Cheney: The Constitution
exists solely to make it easier for me to
lie. Disagree? Let's see if you disagree
under torture, muthafucka!

According to the Washington Post, the George W. Bush White House gave the explicit thumbs-up to the secret CIA torture of terrorism suspects:

The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency's use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against al-Qaeda suspects -- documents prompted by worries among intelligence officials about a possible backlash if details of the program became public.

The classified memos, which have not been previously disclosed, were requested by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet more than a year after the start of the secret interrogations, according to four administration and intelligence officials familiar with the documents. Although Justice Department lawyers, beginning in 2002, had signed off on the agency's interrogation methods, senior CIA officials were troubled that White House policymakers had never endorsed the program in writing.

The memos were the first -- and, for years, the only -- tangible expressions of the administration's consent for the CIA's use of harsh measures to extract information from captured al-Qaeda leaders, the sources said. As early as the spring of 2002, several White House officials, including then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Cheney, were given individual briefings by Tenet and his deputies, the officials said. Rice, in a statement to congressional investigators last month, confirmed the briefings and acknowledged that the CIA director had pressed the White House for "policy approval."

The rest of the article documenting this charming matter can be found here.

Our United States President: Never seen a torture I didn't approve of -- in writing!

Stop the creeping fascism of the GOP! Seriously. Let's stop these cynical, racist, authoritarian, totalitarian motherfuckers before it's too late. Who else is going to stop them? Antonin Scalia?

Libertarian-conservative Andrew Sullivan speaks eloquently about the phenomenon that Barack Obama represents, denounces Sarah Palin resoundingly.

In conventional circumstances, I have disagreed with lots of stuff that Andrew Sullivan has had to say. For instance, he was in favor of invading Iraq, and he's got some 80-style libertarian economic views that could be described as fairly loony.

But recently, Sullivan's been an enthusiastic proponent of Barack Obama's candidacy, while he's trashed assiduously and resoundingly John McCain's dirty, racist campaign.

Observe him in the the clips of Real Time with Bill Maher posted below making his case for the importance of the historic Obama campaign, especially McCain's VP selection of Sarah Palin, which Sullivan decries as "a farce." Hallelujah.



Here's the juicy and true anti-Palin part:

Why Obama's campaign is justified -- morally & tactically -- in bringing up McCain & Keating Five.(That is...in my opinion.)

Despite the fact that by its very nature, it contradicts Obama's asserted platform that shuns 'negative' campaigning, here's why I believe Obama is justified, both morally and tactically, in presenting this documentary and information to the voting public:

The McCain campaign, particularly in the form of Sarah Palin's memorized talking points, has been unrelenting in the outright mendacity, slander and lies lies lies -- not to mention tons of coded racism -- of its outrageous and ridiculous attacks against Obama for his supposed connection to "terrorist" Bill Ayers: which is just downright disingenuous and everybody knows it. The McCain camp knows it's a lie too, but they have claimed time and again that they 'have no choice' but to continue spreading lies. You do too have a choice, Senator. You could save all of us a lot of headache and take a cue from your recent decision with respect to Michigan: withdraw your cranky-old-racist-asshole operation from other swing states. How 'bout it?

We've seen this kind of irresponsible and deeply dishonest activity from the McCain campaign so much over the last few months, that it has become difficult and tiring at times to bother to care. But we have to care and respond, just as Obama must care, and Obama must respond, even to the kinds of lies and tactics whose coarseness and spuriousness would -- in the company of civilized adults (that is, company in which the likes of McCain and especially Sarah Palin would be fish out of water, to be extra-generous) -- represent the kind of 'discourse' that one does not glorify with a response.

Think I'm exaggerating the level of desperation and dishonestly being perpetrated by Palin and McCain? (Of course you don't, unless you've been living under a rock...) Here's some objective proof for you, from Bloomberg News:

Over the weekend, McCain's running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, repeatedly linked the Democratic presidential candidate with a domestic terrorist group from the 1970s, telling supporters Obama used to ``pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country,'' a reference to his acquaintance with Bill Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground group that carried out a series of bombings in the early 1970s. Obama served on a charity board with Ayers and has denounced the bombings.

Obama ``is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country,'' Palin, 44, told donors at a fundraiser Oct. 4 in Costa Mesa, California. ``This, ladies and gentleman, is not the kind of change that I think we should be believing in.'' McCain adviser Greg Strimple said last week that they were "looking for a very aggressive last 30 days.''

"We're looking to turning the page on this financial crisis and getting back to discussing Mr. Obama's liberal, aggressively liberal, record and how he will be too risky for the Americans,'' Strimple told reporters on an Oct. 2 conference call.

So, as this McCain-minion Greg Strimple -- even his fucking name sounds shady -- points out: this is a strategy of out-and-out "aggression." Translation: McCain's filthy campaign wants now to play even filthier. And what that means is not an "aggressive last 30 days," but, rather: '30 days of LIES'. Even when it's stated in Strimple's simple-minded, Orwellian PR terminology, that's an awfully weird thing for a campaign to be admitting out loud, isn't it? Why not just say that McCain's going to endorse a liberalization of federal, state and local prohibitions on lynching.

This fucking Ayers bullshit just gets my goat, man. It is SO dishonest, I can barely believe that self-respecting journalists and politicos -- even those on the far, far Right, can sleep at night after spending a day repeating and spreading these lies and trying cast it as somehow credible. (Which is a difficult feat to pull off when you have zero credibility.) Whatever the details of his life as a young man, in the midst of the politically toxic and contentious political climate in the 60s and 70s, as a younger man -- during which time Obama was EIGHT YEARS OLD and nowhere near Chicago!! -- , William Ayers is a fucking Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. How Establishment can you get? Plus, he does good scholarship and, with his wife Bernadine Dohrn -- a law professor at Northwestern University -- is active in fighting poverty and working to combat racial and economic injustices.

The Ayers thing pisses me of for personal reasons, as well as the obvious moral, intellectual and political reasons. First, because I -- that's ME, y'all, along with my lovely wife and our two cats -- am a resident of the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. I don't live in the same section of town as Ayers, which is an area with nice houses -- some of them truly posh, but the majority of them just everyday nice houses -- in which lots and lots of professionals and academics live with their families.

A number of these professionals and academics are connected to, in some way or another, the University of Chicago and the University of Chicago Hospital, institutions which are, of course, located in Hyde Park. Many of the residents of the neighborhood are not connected to the University of Chicago, and simply live there because it's a nice neighborhood in which to live, or because it's got the kinds of houses that many people looking for houses are looking for. I shouldn't have to add that this place is NOT BY ANY STRETCH OF THE IMAGINATION some kind of hotbed of radicalism. I've met some of the people who live there, and I've read the books of others. It is as close to the ESTABLISHMENT as you're likely to find. Trust me.

And, as if that wasn't enough, have people forgotten that the University of Chicago is the home of the Chicago School of economics, whose figurehead and intellectual architect was none other than the most influential proponent of extreme laissez faire economics that this country has ever seen? The Milton Friedman in whose name a shiny new economics/business-school building is soon to be erected on the University of Chicago campus as an enduring and no-doubt-well-funded monument to the conservative movement that gave us the Reagan Revolution, the Bush Administration(s) and with them, the Iraq War, the privatization of public infrastructure, the mismanagement of Hurricane Katrina, and the recent crash of the stock- and credit markets, which might ultimately usher in a SECOND GREAT DEPRESSION?? Nobody's gonna tell me that my neighborhood is some kind of hotbed of crazy radicalism. If it is, then man, nobody's inviting me to the party, because I sure don't see it anywhere.

Here's Thomas Frank -- former longtime resident of Hyde Park --, back on August 20, 2008, in his column in The Wall Street Journal, describing the soon-to-be constructed Milton Friedman Society. And here's Frank in that same column, on August 16, talking about the cynical, mendacious Republican ploy of portraying Hyde Park as an 'elitist' neighborhood, which..... I mean that's just prima facie the most ridiculous notion. For one thing, as I mentioned previously, I live in fucking Hyde Park.

I am way way way too poor to be an elitist.

But beyond that, the idea of Hyde Park as an elitist neighborhood in preposterous if you compare it to the real elite neighborhoods of Chicago. You want ELITE? Try Chicago's exclusive northern suburbs: Evanston, Glenview, Wilmette, Kenilworth, Winnetka, Highland Park, Lake Forest, Hoffman Estates; try western suburbs like: Oak Park, Naperville, try old money urban districts like the Gold Coast, and continue by considering the skyrocketing cost of living in the recently gentrified and continually gentrifying neighborhoods of River West, parts of Wicker Park, Lincoln Park, Lincoln Square, Logan Square, Lakeview, Andersonville, the South Loop.....I could go on, but I think maybe my point is kinda clear, at least?

Hyde Park is to be distinguished from most of Chicago's opulent/posh/trendy neighborhoods not by reference to its supposed 'elitism', but precisely by its comparative diversity: economically, racially, generationally/agewise and according to whatever metric of class, background, or level of education you can throw at it. It includes, over on 53rd Street, a commercial center that has historically and continues to be associated with the black professional class. Oh, by the way, in and around Hyde Park reside members of the South Side's increasingly large black professional class.

In contradistinction to the many posh neighborhoods I cited above, gentrification in Hyde Park is fairly marginal, to the extent that it could really be said to exist at all. I mean, it's not an 'opulent' place: when Hyde Park's lone, solitary grocery store -- one of the oldest (and most mis-managed [although I feel like a jerk pointing it out!]) food co-ops in the country -- went out of business last year, the entire neighborhood was left high and dry (that is to say, we had no grocery store anywhere nearby) for a matter of months -- as many as four or five, if memory serves -- before a replacement owner moved in and set up shop.

It's tempting for some to say that if you've ever been to a typical college neighborhood, you've been to Hyde Park. But that isn't quite right. Hyde Park is a much more down-to-earth, more diverse and more FRIENDLY place than most college neighborhoods. There is a spirit of goodwill here, and almost none of the stuffy elitism that one notices immediately upon entering -- for instance, Evanston, Illionois -- which is the wealthy suburb far to the north along Chicago's endless lakefront, on the other side of town, where Northwestern University is located.

In closing, I leave you with the words of an acquaintance of both Obama and Ayers, and additionally a colleague of the latter, in his former capacity as a high-profile administrator at University of Illinois at Chicago: Stanley Fish. Fish, who served as Dean of UIC's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences from 1999 to 2004, is a man whose politics I would describe as conservative. He's really a bit of a contrarian, in that self-satisfied, Socratic-method, law-school-professor-way. In his scholarship on law, he is just a bit too close to Antonin Scalia for comfort.

These quirks notwithstanding, he is and has always been an intellectually honest man. And so, Stanley Fish's take on this whole Ayers thing -- as published in his column on The New York Times Web site on April 27, 2008, in reference to the use of these 'Ayers-connection' fabrications and innuendo by both Hillary Clinton and John McCain during the primaries --, is eloquent and convincing. In my opinion, Fish is absolutely correct in his characterization of this sleazy political tactic as a new form of "McCarthyism."

Or more specifically, Fish says: "'McCarthyism' and 'Swiftboating' have come together in a particularly lethal and despicable form. I refer to the startling revelation — proclaimed from the housetops by both the Clinton and McCain campaigns — that Barack Obama ate dinner at William Ayers’s house, served with him on a board and was the honored guest at a reception he organized." Fish's response to this 'shocking' revelation, particularly in light of his own professional and regional encounters with Obama and Ayers, should, in my view, be considered definitive. I quote at great length in the hope of demonstrating this beyond a shadow of a doubt (I'm particularly fond of Fish's reference to the fact that the ultraconservative Judge Richard Posner is also among Ayers's neighbors):

Confession time. I too have eaten dinner at Bill Ayers’s house (more than once), and have served with him on a committee, and he was one of those who recruited my wife and me at a reception when we were considering positions at the University of llinois, Chicago. Moreover, I have had Bill and his wife Bernardine Dohrn to my apartment, was a guest lecturer in a course he taught and joined in a (successful) effort to persuade him to stay at UIC and say no to an offer from Harvard. Of course, I’m not running for anything, but I do write for The New York Times and, who knows, this association with former fugitive members of the Weathermen might be enough in the eyes of some to get me canned.

Did I conspire with Bill Ayers? Did I help him build bombs? Did I aid and abet his evasion (for a time) of justice? Not likely, given that at the time of the events that brought Ayers and Dohrn to public attention, I was a supporter of the Vietnam War. I haven’t asked him to absolve me of that sin (of which I have since repented), and he hasn’t asked me to forgive him for his (if he has any).

Indeed in all the time I spent with Ayers and Dohrn, politics — present or past — never came up.

What did come up? To answer that question I have to introduce a word and concept that is somewhat out of fashion: the salon. A salon is a gathering in a private home where men and women from various walks of life engage in conversation about any number of things, including literature, business, fashion, films, education and philosophy. Ayers and Dohrn did not call their gatherings salons, but that’s what they were; large dinner parties (maybe 12-15), with guests coming and going, one conversation leading to another, no rules or obligations, except the obligation to be interesting and interested.

The only thing I don’t remember was ideology, although since this was all going on in Hyde Park, there was the general and diffused ideology, vaguely liberal, that usually hangs over a university town.

Many of those attending these occasions no doubt knew something about their hosts’ past, but the matter was never discussed and why should it have been? We were there not because of what Ayers and Dohrn had done 40 years ago, but because of what they were doing at the moment.

Ayers is a longtime professor of education at UIC, nationally known for his prominence in the “small school” movement. Dohrn teaches at Northwestern Law School, where she directs a center for child and family justice. Both lend their skills and energies to community causes; both advise various agencies; together they have raised exemplary children and they have been devoted caretakers to aged parents. “Respectable” is too mild a word to describe the couple; rock-solid establishment would be more like it. There was and is absolutely no reason for anyone who knows them to plead the fifth or declare, “I am not now nor have I ever been a friend of Bill’s and Bernardine’s.”

Least of all Barack Obama, who by his own account didn’t know them that well and is now being taken to task for having known them at all. Of course it would have required preternatural caution to avoid associating with anyone whose past deeds might prove embarrassing on the chance you decided to run for president someday. In an earlier column, I spoke of the illogic of holding a candidate accountable for things said or done by a supporter or an acquaintance. Now a candidate is being held accountable for things said and done four decades ago by people who happen to live in his upper middle class neighborhood. Hillary Clinton and John McCain should know better. In fact, they do know better. To date, Clinton has played hardball, but hasn’t really fouled. I never saw anything wrong or inaccurate about her saying that Martin Luther King’s vision required a president’s action before it could be implemented, or Bill Clinton’s saying that Jesse Jackson won the South Carolina primary twice. He did, and if the implication was that Obama’s base constituency is African-American, that too was accurate and continues to be so.

As for her saying that all Obama had ever done was give a speech, she was being generous: he gave that speech against invading Iraq at a small event featuring other speakers (including Jackson); the local press coverage did not even mention him; and if this was, as his campaign claims, an act of courage, it was a singularly private one, maybe even a fairy tale. Clinton’s exaggerating the danger of her visit to Bosnia (most likely unintentional because, as she said, “I’m not dumb”) came a little closer to crossing a line, but didn’t. Re-telling a story (about a hospital’s refusal to treat an uninsured patient) that turned out not to be true was evidence of faulty campaign organization, not of deliberate duplicity.

But the literature the Clinton campaign is passing around about Obama and Ayers cannot be explained away or rationalized. It features bold headlines proclaiming that Ayers doesn’t regret his Weathermen activities (what does that have to do with Obama? Are we required to repudiate things acquaintances of our have not said?), that Ayers contributed $200 to Obama’s senatorial campaign (do you take money only from people of whose every action you approve?), that Obama admired Ayers’s 1997 book on the juvenile justice system, that Ayers and Obama participated on a panel examining the role of intellectuals in public life. That subversive event was sponsored by The Center for Public Intellectuals, an organization that also sponsored an evening conversation (moderated by me) between those notorious radicals Richard Rorty and Judge Richard Posner (also a neighbor of Ayers’s; maybe the Federalist Society should expel him).

I don’t see any crimes or even misdemeanors in any of this. I do see civic activism and a concern for the welfare of children. The suggestion that something sinister was transpiring on those occasions is backed up by nothing except the four-alarm-bell typography that accompanies this list of entirely innocent, and even praiseworthy, actions.

As for Senator McCain, in 2004 he repudiated the Swiftboat attacks against fellow veteran John Kerry, but this time around he’s joining in, and if Obama gets the nomination, it seems that the Arizona senator will be playing the Ayers card. Of course, McCain knows a little about baseless accusations and innuendos, given his experience in South Carolina in 2000. And in case he has forgotten what it feels like, he may soon be reminded; for there’s a story abroad on the Internet that says that rather than being a heroic, tortured prisoner of war, McCain was a collaborator who traded information for a comfortable apartment serviced by maids who were really prostitutes. I don’t believe it for a second, just as I am sure that Senators McCain and Clinton don’t really believe that Obama condones setting bombs or supports a radical agenda that was pursued (as he has said) when he was eight years old.

The difference is that I feel a little dirty just for having repeated a scurrilous rumor even as I rejected it. Apparently Obama’s two opponents have no such qualms and are happily retailing, and wallowing in, the dirt. (Link to article.)

No need to add anything to Fish's comments. Case dismissed.

Well, let me add two things. First: whereas the Palin/McCain/Bush/GOP tactic is nothing but slander and innuendo, Obama's calling out of McCain on his role in the Keating Five scandal pertains directly to McCain's claims that he is somehow a pro-regulatory/pro-oversight force with respect to economic questions. I mean, everybody knows McCain's claims are bullshit anyway, but I think Obama does well to fight back against an attack that's wholly devoid of substance with a counterattack that couldn't be more relevant to our current economic/regulatory situation.

Second, and final (and I haven't seen anyone else put it this way): in a way, the Right's childish, bullshit attack against Obama is worse than McCarthyism and worse than Swiftboating.

Why?

Because in essence, McCain's shameless tactic, were it successful -- which there's ZERO possibility of it being, in anything more than maybe a fund-raising sense among LOONY right-wingers -- would ultimately discourage anyone who has lived an actual life, outside of the beach houses and summer houses and ranches and country-clubs of a tiny elite. I live in fucking Hyde Park, and unlike McCain, I don't really have the luxury of choosing not to live here, even if -- let's say -- I disliked so vigorously the ideas of the Chicago School of economics that it caused a strain on me psychlogically to be so near such rightist ideology. Let's say I just hated the idea of buying my fruit and mil in the same grocery store as a Friedman-acolyte, SO MUCH SO that I wanted to move up north to Andersonville, just to avoid association, and thereby, guilt by association.

Guess what? Unlike George W. Bush, who could just move back to the family compound, and unlike John McCain, who can nestle himself comfortably underneath an awning of his choice, in one of nine houses of his choice, and unlike millionaire Sarah Palin, who can move back either to one of her two summer houses or go flying in her expensive airplane or take a snowmobile through the snowiest and most beautiful snowbanks of the expansive Alaskan countryside.....

Unlike these GOP con-artists, I can't afford to move to some other part of the city. Good thing that, unlike McCain and his Rovian goons, I know that 'guilt by association' is a fundamentally dishonest concept. I love living in Hyde Park. It might not be the most exciting or trendy place; it might not be all that near to CTA train routes, but doggone it, it's A-OK by me; just an ordinary, normal, everyday Joe Sixpack, doing regular-old, outside-the-beltway stuff in my humble but happy Midwestern digs. Paying my taxes, and trying to do what's right by the Lord Above.

You -- Gentle Reader -- and I know what's right: voting for Barack Obama this November.

Documentary on John McCain's role in Keating Five scandal on 'keatingeconomics.com'

View this documentary about McCain's involvement in the Keating Five scandal at the Web site 'keatingeconomics.com'.

The documentary, which was released by Obama's campaign today at noon, is titled: KEATING ECONOMICS: JOHN MCCAIN AND THE MAKING OF A FINANCIAL CRISIS.

Below is reprinted the text that appears on keatingeconomics.com, accompanying the documentary.

The current economic crisis demands that we understand John McCain's attitudes about economic oversight and corporate influence in federal regulation. Nothing illustrates the danger of his approach more clearly than his central role in the savings and loan scandal of the late '80s and early '90s.

John McCain was accused of improperly aiding his political patron, Charles Keating, chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. The bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee launched investigations and formally reprimanded Senator McCain for his role in the scandal -- the first such Senator to receive a major party nomination for president.

At the heart of the scandal was Keating's Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which took advantage of deregulation in the 1980s to make risky investments with its depositors' money. McCain intervened on behalf of Charles Keating with federal regulators tasked with preventing banking fraud, and championed legislation to delay regulation of the savings and loan industry -- actions that allowed Keating to continue his fraud at an incredible cost to taxpayers.

When the savings and loan industry collapsed, Keating's failed company put taxpayers on the hook for $3.4 billion and more than 20,000 Americans lost their savings. John McCain was reprimanded by the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee, but the ultimate cost of the crisis to American taxpayers reached more than $120 billion.

The Keating scandal is eerily similar to today's credit crisis, where a lack of regulation and cozy relationships between the financial industry and Congress has allowed banks to make risky loans and profit by bending the rules. And in both cases, John McCain's judgment and values have placed him on the wrong side of history.

Questions......about Sarah Palin.

• Can you call yourself a 'maverick', and still be a maverick?
  
  
• To be a maverick, don't you have to do something maverick-like? Can your maverickness be planned out for you ahead of time, and like, devised by your advisers and even scripted? Is that still maverickness? Or is it maybe a new species of maverickness that isn't, maybe, all that maverick-like?
  
  
• Is saying stuff about "my connection to the heartland of America" the same thing as having a connection to the heartland of America?
  
  
• Is this

You mentioned education and I'm glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right?

really the wisest and/or most tasteful thing to say to a man whose first wife and one-year-old baby were killed in a car crash?

• Is saying things like: "Oh, yeah, it's so obvious I'm a Washington outsider. And someone just not used to the way you guys operate" the same thing as being a Washington outsider? Is it the same thing as convincing people that one is a Washington outsider? Is it the same thing as arguing coherently that all species of 'Washington outsiderdom' are created alike? Or that one's particular version of 'Washington outsiderdom' is an attribute favorable to one's suitedness to holding the office of the vice presidency?
  
  
• When 'ordinary people' say that they want someone who's going to fight on their behalf, do they mean that they want that person to talk and act exactly the same way as they do?
  
  
• Are people really happy to witness a VP candidate engaging in all manner of colloquial speech? Are people awaiting brain surgery put at ease when they discover that the brain surgeon who will conduct the operation talks, acts and thinks just like "Joe Sixpack" next door?
  
  
• Do people who truly live in the world of "Joe Sixpack" actually use the phrase "Joe Sixpack?" Isn't, after all, "Joe Sixpack" a derogatory, or at the very least, condescending term that originated in elite New York City advertising firms, or in the offices of elite Hollywood studio executives?
  

The transcript.

(Joe Biden did a very impressive job last night. Once again, the media declared the debate to have been a 'tie'. And this provided further confirmation of what J and I have long surmised: the media are at least two steps behind the Obama campaign. I've certainly never seen such an intelligently conducted campaign on behalf of a Democratic nominee. It's fucking astounding. Obama and his people know exactly what they're doing, and it's intoxicating to watch.)

The Colbert Report: 'Prescott Oil Loves the Earth'

Stephen Colbert introduces one of the most brilliant advertising parodies I've seen in a while. You know how oil companies are always lying shamelessly about themselves in their ads, by portraying themselves as performing a function that is directly antithetical to the function that they in point of fact perform? (Feel like I could maybe have put that more succinctly...)

Anyway: here's the ad for Prescott Oil:

Randomized Palin response generator!Also: Alaska's Shrillest represents the Boomers' potential betrayal of my generation.

Have you seen this yet?

This brilliant Web site, called Interview Sarah Palin, produces randomized responses to various typical interview questions about the economy, foreign policy, the separation between church and state, etc., etc.

Here's an example of the kind of question and response the site generates:

Q: How will you fix the economy?

Our economy and putting it back on the table. I think if you really think that I have understood the world is and how important it is in this nation at this time. People are getting sick and tired of that self-dealing and kind of grab it all or capture it all and pretend like they have all the time, I'll tell you, I still can't answer that I am the executive of. And there in Russia Diplomacy is about reform of government and these regulatory agencies back on the right reasons and serving for the other day and giving him my commitment, as John McCain's running mate, that we work with our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia.

The Web site's creator(s) explains that its "...answers are computer generated based on probabilities calculated from Sarah Palin's actual speech," producing results that are "surprising [sic] close to her actual answers."

As proof of this similarity in outcome, the site provides an example of a typical real-life Palin interview response, taken from her recent hilarious (and frightening) interview with CBS's Katie Couric (for whom I have begun to have tremendous respect, based upon the panache and professionalism with which she interviewed this truly absurd human being who wants to be second in line to the White House):

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

PALIN: That's why I say, I like ever American I'm speaking with were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the tax payers looking to bailout. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up the economy - Helping the - Oh, it's got to be about job creation too. Shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americas. And trade we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive scary thing. But 1 in 5 jobs being created in the trade sector today. We've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.

Wow. No wonder arch-conservative publications like The National Review have called for Palin to step aside.

It really is quite shocking. Not only the extent to which Palin's responses tend to bear no discernible traces of a relation to the question posed; also that she clearly is reciting -- with varying degrees of success/accuracy -- talking points, words, phrases, etc. that she had been taught to memorize in intensive coaching sessions conducted by Bush's/Cheney's handlers. (I have heard that it is literally Bush's and Cheney's handlers that conduct these coaching sessions.)

What's scary is that she's not even cogitating. There is very little indication that Palin even bothers to try to comprehend the question itself. She's relying on muscle memory; certain words or phrases trigger one kind of response or another, much like the simple computer programs that I used to write back in the 1980's, using the BASIC programming language on my family's Apple IIc. The programs I would write would usually be a prank of one kind or another, tricking my credulous friends and family (in an era in which computer illiteracy was still the norm) into thinking they had wiped out all of the computer's memory, or something. Just simple stuff like: if keystroke x, then y; if keystroke v, then w; if keystroke z, then x; etc., etc.

Another way of saying this is that the level of intellectual competence that Palin demonstrates in her interviews is equivalent, roughly, to that of a Tickle-Me Elmo. (Remember those?) And, come to think of it, in a similar vocal register.

I guess that's the genius of the Interview Sarah Palin Web site. It spotlights the extent to which Sarah Palin is like a rusty old Apple IIc personal computer. This fits in unsurprisingly with the overall fact of Palin's existence: she's not a candidate; she's not even a human being. She's a cluster of images, projections, psychological associations, emotional triggers and mental short-cuts. She's a brand, like Pepsi. But without the cola. The (il)logic of the McCain/Palin ticket is that it is selling a bizarre kind of nostalgia for a time that never was and, in any case, could never again be.

My God Would We Be Fucked, were this ridiculous Palin gambit to actually work. It looks less and less likely that it will work, with each passing day. But it's still scary as hell. If McCain were to win, I believe that entire generations of Americans under the age of -- say -- 45 -- an already-disillusioned and cynical group of voters of which I am a part and which for the most part lacks a voice, lacks money and lacks representation -- will truly lose all faith in the idea of functioning, representative democracy in the United States of America. My god, that would be depressing.....

A McCain/Palin win would represent the ultimate betrayal of my future, at the hands of a myopic, ideologically tone-deaf and frivolous Baby Boom generation.

(Sorry to leave you on such a sour note....)

Obama kicked ass last night and everybody knows it.

I wrote the following paragraphs as a comment on a blog called Media Nation, in which I agreed with an article the blogger had written that the media -- particularly in Washington -- have given too much credit to McCain's performance in last night's presidential debate in Oxford, Mississippi, and it's not a surprise that polls are now showing that the public -- particularly undecided voters -- see it the same way I do. What was I doing, you ask, commenting on somebody's blog? My answer is that I've become a complete and utter dork, and it's this election business that done me in.

Those who credit McCain with continually "putting Obama on the defensive" miss the point.

The pundit caste has made a cliche of this notion of "putting the other guy on the defensive." The problem with cliches, of course, is that people forget what they mean. Some of the commentary on last night's debate exemplifies this tendency. This tactic means nothing by virtue of its deployment per se, but rather, as a means by which to gain certain advantages. If those advantages don't accrue to you, then putting the other guy on the defensive means nothing.

McCain's attacks/challenges to Obama's credibility were, one after another, disposed of quickly and tidily by Obama. Obama appeared calm the entire time, while McCain looked at all times to be straining to come up with novel forms of slander. Oftentimes, McCain's soliloquies would stray far off the topic, and he appeared to be hogging microphone time, while Obama patiently waited, exchanging polite glances with Lehrer.

Lastly: while Obama expressed, at appropriate times, his agreement with one or another premise of McCain's answers, while interjecting his differences, McCain appeared at all times to be nervously guarding his territory against ANY possibility that Obama could utter something credible. This had the effect of making Obama appear all the more 'presidential', calm and reasonable. Obama was careful to mitigate McCain's rhetorical excesses and over-the-top insinuations with fair-minded, calm rebuttals.

The overall effect, in other words, is that McCain's assiduousness in striving to "play offense" MADE HIM LOOK DEFENSIVE. Like an impetuous child, throwing a tantrum. The overly nasty and petty nature of many of McCain's attacks became in and of themselves REAFFIRMATIONS of Obama's credibility, savvy and strength of judgment and character.

Think of it this way: poor McCain, in patting himself on his back for his own 'maverickness' and even his own service to his country, his endless repetitions, his inability EVER to cede ground to his opponent, looked like someone who, nervously and twitchily, is scared to death that you're not going to believe him, and even that HE's worried about losing the ability to believe HIMSELF.

I think the media completely missed most of what matters about the debate; they are far too generous in their appraisal of McCain's performance.

In my view, the debate was nothing short of a triumph for Obama. He looked like a responsible adult. McCain looked like an inflexible old coot. I can't imagine a single swing-voter being swayed by McCain's performance. Obama, on the other hand, showed his stuff. He came across as competent, credible and--perhaps most importantly--honest.

Thomas Frank on how and why the Republican Party has spent the last 30 years dismantling the country's public infrastructure.

Author and journalist Thomas Frank, speaking recently in Portland, Oregon. He discusses his latest book The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule for about half an hour, after which he takes audience questions.

Frank really hits his stride in this video, by which I mean he delivers a healthy and satisfying dose of eloquent and morally indignant populism. Exactly what I needed to get me through another day of Bailout-talk, with all of the lying, insulting, hypocritical, patronizing cant from Bush, Paulson and Bernanke. Enjoy:

Citing McCain's "boiling moralism & bottomless reservoir of certitude," conservative George Will questions McCain's fitness to occupy Oval Office.

A recent Crib From This post discussed the growing number of conservative journalists and Republican politicians who have expressed serious reservations about supporting McCain or have withdrawn their support outright. On last Sunday's This Week on ABC, longstanding conservative columnist/commentator George Will described McCain's recent behavior as "unpresidential," concluding that "John McCain showed his personality this week...and made some of us fearful."

Will reaffirms his criticisms of McCain's temperament and character in today's Washington Post:

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. ....

For McCain, politics is always operatic, pitting people who agree with him against those who are "corrupt" or "betray the public's trust," two categories that seem to be exhaustive -- there are no other people. McCain's Manichaean worldview drove him to his signature legislative achievement, the McCain-Feingold law's restrictions on campaigning. Today, his campaign is creatively finding interstices in laws intended to restrict campaign giving and spending. (For details, see The Post of Sept. 17; and the New York Times of Sept. 19.)....

By a Gresham's Law of political discourse, McCain's Queen of Hearts intervention in the opaque financial crisis overshadowed a solid conservative complaint from the Republican Study Committee, chaired by Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas. In a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, the RSC decried the improvised torrent of bailouts as a "dangerous and unmistakable precedent for the federal government both to be looked to and indeed relied upon to save private sector companies from the consequences of their poor economic decisions." This letter, listing just $650 billion of the perhaps more than $1 trillion in new federal exposures to risk, was sent while McCain's campaign, characteristically substituting vehemence for coherence, was airing an ad warning that Obama favors "massive government, billions in spending increases." ....

Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

This is not mild criticism. That it comes from perhaps the most stalwart, respected and intellectually honest figure in American conservatism is a significant development. I mean, seriously. If George Will is starting to lean toward supporting Obama, it means there's hope that pretty much any conservative -- even my parents -- could be convinced to support the Democratic candidate in November.

Hitchens, why don't you fly your bloated, jowly, neocon-dick-sucking face back to the parochial isle whence you came, you fucking limey twit turncoat?

I hate it when this formerly admirable journalist sounds off about something of which he has no right to step within 100 yards: namely, the kind of presidential campaign Barack Obama is conducting or should conduct or shouldn't conduct. And much of the reason for this is that Hitchens lacks a subtle, historically grounded, and socially conscious understanding of the peculiarities of American race relations.

He also suffers increasingly from a lack of subtlety more generally. That's right, Hitch has been painting with a broader and broader brush as he has aged. Which makes it seem likely that he's been thinking less precisely as his faculties continue to fail him in his drift toward the frailty of old age. Remind you of someone?

Chris "Twit" Hitchens is responsible for an incoherent mouthful of Republican propaganda in today's Slate, which is called: "Is Obama Another Dukakis? Why is Obama so vapid, hesitant, and gutless?"

Immediate questions that come to mind: Like Dukakis, how, exactly? "Vapid, hesitant, and gutless" in relation to what? According to what metric?

Hitchens's article provides nothing in the way of answers to these questions. That's because his article is a mere provocation. It's a mercenary job. One of his Masters called him up and said, "Hey, Hitch, d'ya mind assaulting Obama with one of those unspecific, insinuative, wishy-washy character assassination pieces you do so well? You know, the kind where you fail to provide a clear point of reference, or context of any kind, but instead engage in a kind of verbal jousting match with a fictitious opponent of your own devising? Just to help us with our numbers. Thanks a lot. Yours truly, Wolfy."

Obama should continue on exactly the track he's pursuing, which is not overstating his case, not pandering and promising lots of treats to interest groups like the BLOATED, FAT, LIMEY NEOCONS FOR BUSH CLUB, and not polemicizing and taking moral umbrage. In the manner, for example, of someone who comes to mind...HINT: he sold out his own democratic socialist values for greater fame, prestige and wealth, and he did so by supporting a war that is an act of colonialism and deceit, in the latter of which he is complicit.

Hitchens has become a Republican stooge, through and through. We haven't forgotten, Hitch. Shut up or go back to the land of tea and scones, where nostalgia for colonialism is still in the air, and where you can practice your polemical brand of atheism -- which everyone knows is really thinly veiled anti-Islam racism -- all day and night in your own private English garden. God save the Queen!

Talkin' Dirty Secrets Keepin', Executive Branch Authoritarianism Pushin', Disaster Capitalism Evincin', Patriot Act Recallin', Bailout Blues!

Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson
("Hank" to his friends. So let's stick with Henry).

Q. Should Congress pass into law the $700 billion Wall Street bailout -- otherwise known as The Bailout, otherwise known as the Temporary Asset Relief Plan -- proposed by Secretary of State Henry Paulson (and supported, obviously, by all of the Bushies and the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke), in its current form?

A. No, if estimates by Daniel Bruno Sanz, and numerous other experts, predict correctly what fate will befall the value of the not-so-Almighty US dollar. (i.e.: free fall) (Huffington Post).

A. No, because it's "an enormously expensive plan that doesn’t seem to address the real problem," according to Paul Krugman, in whose view Senator Chris Dodd's counterproposal is vastly superior, and which "has a real chance" of edging out Paulson's, due to the paternalism, arrogance and pushiness of Paulson's demand for full Executive Branch control, with zero oversight (more on this in a moment). (New York Times Web site)

You want full immunity from any & all future prosecution??
Say it ain't so, Henry. We thought you were different.

A. No, because, first and foremost, Paulson's proposal gives the Executive Branch FULL CONTROL over the allocation of the $700 billion, with ZERO OVERSIGHT and FULL IMMUNITY FROM OVERSIGHT AND EVEN PROSECUTION. Patriot Act, anyone? Just fucking read this sentence, for which some sneaky little fuck in the Bush Administration wins the Totalitarian Fascist of the Year Award (actually, let's just award it to Paulson; oh, and the boldface is mine):

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.

Yes. That day has really come, America, where your Executive Branch is actually saying: "Just hand over to us all of the control over everything, and just trust us, we'll fix everything behind closed doors. All we need is this $700 billion! Please just sign on the dotted line immediately."

If you're not angry, America, you should be. You respond: "But, I'm too busy to pay attention to this. I've got a job and a wife and a car and mouths to feed, and...." All the more reason you should be angry, America. All the more reason you should be angry....

Here's a taste of what Yves Smith, contributing to Naked Capitalism, which is a fantastic blog for those of us who are looking for straightforward explanations of the Bush Administration's economic shenanigans, has to say about it this sneaky little provision, in a post titled "Why You Should Hate the Treasury Bailout Proposal":

This puts the Treasury's actions beyond the rule of law. This is a financial coup d'etat, with the only limitation the $700 billion balance sheet figure. The measure already gives the Treasury the authority not simply to buy dud mortgage paper but other assets as it deems fit. There is no accountability beyond a report (contents undefined) to Congress three months into the program and semiannually thereafter. The Treasury could via incompetence or venality grossly overpay for assets and advisory services, and fail to exclude consultants with conflicts of interest, and there would be no recourse. Given the truly appalling track record of this Administration in its outsourcing, this is not an idle worry.

But far worse is the precedent it sets. This Administration has worked hard to escape any constraints on its actions, not to pursue noble causes, but to curtail civil liberties: Guantanamo, rendition, torture, warrantless wiretaps. It has used the threat of unseen terrorists and a seemingly perpetual war on radical Muslim to justify gutting the Constitution. The Supreme Court, which has been supine on many fronts, has finally started to push back, but would it challenge a bill that sweeps aside judicial review? Informed readers are encouraged to speak up.

Nouriel Roubini does not think it passes the smell test:

`He's asking for a huge amount of power,'' said Nouriel Roubini, an economist at New York University. ``He's saying, `Trust me, I'm going to do it right if you give me absolute control.' This is not a monarchy.''

A. No, because the proposal is fundamentally dishonest, and furthermore, would not work. Smith goes on to articulate a significant (and in a couple of respects, shocking) substantive (again, the boldface is mine) problem:

...The Treasury has been using the formula that it will buy assets at "fair market prices". As we have noted, there is simply huge amounts of cash ready to bottom fish in housing-related assets (we saw an estimate of $400 billion a couple of months ago). The issue is not lack of willing buyers; it's that the prospective sellers are not willing to accept prices that reflect the weak and deteriorating prospects for housing.....

...[T]he plan makes no sense unless the Orwellian "fair market prices" means "above market prices.".....Confirmation of our view came from a reader by e-mail:

I worked at [Wall Street firm you've heard of], but now I handle financial services for [a Congressman], and I was on the conference call that Paulson, Bernanke and the House Democratic Leadership held for all the members yesterday afternoon. It's supposed to be members only, but there's no way to enforce that if it's a conference call, and you may have already heard from other staff who were listening in.

Anyway, I wanted to let you know that, behind closed doors, Paulson describes the plan differently. He explicitly says that it will buy assets at above market prices (although he still claims that they are undervalued) because the holders won't sell at market prices. Anna Eshoo pressed him on how the government can compel the holders to sell, and he basically dodged the question. I think that's because he didn't want to admit that the government would just keep offering more and more.

I don't think that our leadership has been very good during this negotiation (or really, during any showdowns with this administration) at forcing the administration to own their position. If Paulson wants this plan, then he needs to sell it to the public, and if he sells a different plan to the public (the nonsense buying-at-market-price plan) then we should pass that. I'd rather see the government act as a market maker for the assets to get them transferred over to private equity firms and sovereign wealth funds and other willing holders. And if we need to recapitalize these companies, it seems like the cheapest way for the taxpayer is to go in and buy up the distressed debt and then convert that to equity.

So unlike the Resolution Trust Corporation, which took on dodgy assets which had fallen into the FDIC's lap due to the failure of thrifts, and the Home Owners' Loan Corporation, which was established in 1934 after the housing market had bottomed, this program is going to swing into action with the clear but not honestly disclosed intent of buying assets at above market prices when future markets and the analysts with the best track records on forecasting this decline (you can add Robert Shiller, CR at Calculated Risk, and Nouriel Roubini to the list) believe it has considerably further to fall.

A. No. But also, Naomi Klein warns us to be equally wary of alternative far-Right proposals, particularly those of Newt Gingrich, that seek to use this moment's crisis as an opportunity to shotgun through legislation that would push agendas of privatization, reverse what few social justice safeguards we may still recognize in this country, and -- of course -- to deregulate the private sector even further, including the repeal of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. This is serious and twisted shit. Excerpt of Klein's piece, which draws upon her convincing theory of 'disaster capitalism' (Huffington Post):

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.

Drill, Baby Drill! God damn, am I sick of the Grand Old Party. I mean, although I have always found his politics to be barbaric, its underlying principles deeply racist in character, in a weird way I have always found Newt Gingrich to be essentially a principled and intellectually honest man. (Keep in mind, this is in comparison to the majority of the bullshit artists of the Far Right.) Having said that, this is one of those moments in which I'd like nothing more than to punch him right smack dab in the middle of that fat, smug, pink, greasy cracker face of his.*

Newt Gingrich: "What about the plantation-owners??"

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* What's gotten into me today?

Not the John McCain we used to know:Conservatives are beginning to dump him like milk that's gone sour.

With the unveiling of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate, there were a number of conservative journalists and commentators who expressed immediately everything from incredulity to shock to outright derision. And then there were those who gleefully whored themselves out to the cause of the GOP's latest desperation tactic, writing fawning, preposterous propaganda that pandered and condescended shamelessly to its readership. You know, par for the course when it comes to lying, fanatical GOP brown shirts...ahem..I meant brown-nosers with no shred of journalistic integrity to uphold in the first place.

With the passage of time, and particularly after the broadcast of her surreal interview with ABC's Charles Gibson -- during which she was revealed to be even more ignorant and dumb than we had feared previously* -- Sarah Palin's stock has continued to plummet, both among quote-ordinary voters-unquote and the more intellectually honestho members of the Republican pundit caste. One by one, each of these conservative journos -- the ones capable of speaking in complete sentences -- have thrown up their hands and admitted that the jig is up, this Palin thing is one pig that just won't fly. Among them:

• David Brooks, The New York Times, 9/15/08,
  
• David Cohen, The Washington Post, 9/17/08, and
  
• Through The Huffington Post, watch the ABC News This Week panel agree unanimously that, in light of his behavior since the financial crisis began, McCain's age is becoming an unavoidable problem, as are his judgment and character. Veteran ultraconservative George Will is the hardest of them all on McCain, saying, among other things: "John McCain showed his personality this week...and made some of us fearful," 9/21/08.
  

And now, they're joined by Republican politicians who tell the truth and recognize that it would be insanity to let that crazy woman continue to ruin our lives (I nicked that phrase from Gypsy Sun & Rainbows, [thanks, Gypsy Sun & Rainbows]), let alone sit within a heartbeat of the presidency. Among them:

• Senator Chuck Hagel, as reported by The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 9/19/08.
• Congressman Wayne Gilcrest, as reported by Politico, 9/18/08.
  

[Updated 9/21/08]

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* And throughout which Palin came across as phony, hollow, opportunistic and dishonest. Not to mention self-centered, but we already knew that in spades.

Crib From This unveils titular 'depression' reference #2.

I seriously wish I were exaggerating in using the 'D Word'. And I hope it turns out that I am.

I, doubtless like many others, have for the last couple of days been conducting a self-education in economics in order to better comprehend various of the enormous ongoing fiscal crises. I have been scurrying around, to and fro, hither and thither on the Web site of The Wall Street Journal, CNN Money, and also some instances of financial bloggery. It brings me no particular joy, but hey, even Karl Marx had go about the ugly business of teaching himself economics...

One Web site / blog that I have found to be exceedingly instructive not only for its candor -- the Federal Reserve, the Executive and Legislative Branches and the media have been drastically understating the severity of the situation in order not to cause panic, mass liquidations of accounts, etc. --, but for its lucidity. It's called Naked Capitalism, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's hype.

So, I would like to recommend a few of items that have been posted today on Naked Capitalism, items that are characteristically candid and lucid. Here's how I'll give it to you: I've got good news and bad news.

First the good news: there isn't any.

And the bad news is:

1) The Fed's bailout of AIG to the tune of $85,000 has done nothing to slow the downward spiral of the credit markets (the mysterious, opaque, unregulated markets I blathered about in my previous post).

2) On the basis of a strange article in The Chicago Tribune, Naked Capitalism contributor Yves Smith expresses concern that Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of The Federal Reserve, has no idea what he's doing.

3) Morgan Stanley appears poised to take a cue from Lehman Brothers. Which is to say, tank.

4) Or possibly a merger with Wachovia? And Washington Mutual (a.k.a. WaMu) is likely to tank any day now.