That is the only possible meaning that can be attached to his statement that limits on CEO compensation would be a "poison pill" if included in a bailout bill. After all, if the banking system is really on the edge of collapse, what sane person would consider mild (what Frank proposed) restrictions on CEO pay a big deal?

Let's see, on the one hand we have the collapse of the financial system if we do nothing, on the other hand some multi-millionaire CEOs may not get their golden parachutes after driving their companies into bankruptcy. Paulson tells us that he considers the loss of golden parachutes the bigger problem? This means that he must not really believe that we are facing a financial collapse.

This is like WMDs and Iraq. Don't let Congress buy it!!!!!!!!!

It seems clear that most Democrats (and at least for a few weeks John McCain) believe that the federal government should regulate the financial sector. But to what end?

Everyone should know that setting the goals of regulation is not only the first step, it is the hardest step. So what would be the goals of regulating banks, or insurance companies, or investment banks, or mortgage lenders?

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Nothing personal, but Secretary Paulson has demonstrated his incompetence by completely missing the housing bubble and underestimating the seriousness of the crisis every step along the way. Now he is demanding a total blank check from Congress for a $700 billion revolving fund to give to the financial industry under whatever conditions he chooses.

This is the domestic equivalent of the Iraq war authorization. The threat of financial collapse is analogous to the weapons of mass destruction. The markets will wait. Congress can give a proposal with real conditions and then it will be Bush's call if he wants to be responsible for collapsing the U.S. economy.

Congress can't be taken yet again.

[sorry, my alternative is just down the list.]

As Yglesias wrote Thursday morning: "Who knew the "Washington Consensus" would die in Washington, DC under a Republican President in a mad fit of bailouts and nationalizations?"

What's your take on the bailout frenzy?

The events of the last week showed the urgency of dealing with the financial crisis. There is a real risk that the banking system will freeze up, preventing ordinary business transactions, like meeting payrolls. This would quickly lead to an economic disaster with mass layoffs and plunging output.

The Fed and Treasury are right to take steps to avert this disaster. While there is an urgency to put a bailout program in place, there are several important issues that Congress should address in the context of bailout.

While there is not time to prepare all the details of the financial restructuring that will follow after the bailout, there can be an agreement on the outlines that this restructuring should take. This list of suggestions is presented in that context:

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This from a well-known Harvard Business School professor:

"Wall Street is the symbol of an industry which for years has described itself as being controlled by a balance between fear and greed. Indeed, the people who talk this way seem to take pride in it.

Any industry that can cause such trouble and which takes into account only fear and greed in its operation is begging for someone to speak up for the public interest. They have dared the government to regulate them. It is a dare that they must lose.

One might also add that any business that markets itself as "too big to fail" is also too big to be unregulated.

Free Marketeers forever quote Adam Smith's famed "invisible hand" metaphor. They interpret Smith to be saying that the sum of everyone acting selfishly will be the public good. If we have learned anything from the mess in which we find ourselves now, it is the untruth of that belief. To achieve a thriving economy - to build a society of which we can be proud - we have to use the brains God gave us. That means positive, active, assertive, informed governmental action. For decades, one political party has told us that government is the problem, not the solution. They certainly aren't acting that way now."

Richard S. Tedlow

Class of 1949 Professor of Business Administration

Harvard Business School

Mr. Worldy Wise Man and Ms. Smooth-it-Away are all over the airwaves, internet, and op ed pages, cautioning us against panicking and reminding us that there are no easy solutions. Pardon me, but I'd like a little something... harsher than that.

Or course, we shouldn't panic. When did anyone on PBS or CNN or even Fox ever say we should? And, sure, there are no easy solutions. But doesn't saying so again and again, and leaving it at that, beg the question of which of the several hard, complex solutions we ought to choose; which lines we ought to draw in the sand; and who we - I mean we, the American republic -- ought to be willing to make really, really angry by choosing?

What if I suggested, from my position of almost breathtaking financial ignorance and vulnerability, that any hard, complex, effective, just, economy-boosting solution will have to make a lot of newly wealthy people really, really angry?

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In his last post Paul posted a question for me asking what the current point of divide is among Democrats. It's a good question, but in asking Paul also reminds us that the real point of this discussion is to call attention to his great book, so let me do that again: It's a really good book that you should read regardless of where you come down in these various debates.

Paul interpreted my previous post to be somewhat dismissive of the interventions that the "Bigger Bolder" calls for because I was vague in my wording. That was just a style issue of writing for a blog and not my intent. The "Bigger Bolder" crowd does offer specific interventions, which overall I strongly support (although less because there is overwhelming evidence, something that is debatable, but rather because it's a compelling logic model for how to approach some of these problems).

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Drill, baby, drill!

Among the many catchphrases, this one really makes my ears bleed. Lucky for us, reader Gary Cohen provides us with this nugget of information, which clarifies the issue of drilling in the Arctic Refuge, and demonstrates--for the one guzillionth time--Gov. Palin's slippery verbiage.

(If you're looking for one, here's a source to back up Cohen's point.)

I also want to call attention to this small post by reader, Aatos, for fear that it get lost in the archives too soon. It asks a very pressing question-- one that everyone should be considering, not simply with respect to the McCain/Palin ticket, but Obama/Biden as well.

Whatever yet may happen on Wall Street, to the economy, or in the election, something has profoundly changed in the United States when a senior editor for the Weekly Standard writes this:

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I have made it clear that I think the notion of this Toxic Trust Company Of America is a flawed idea. However, many of my friends on Wall Street think its necessary and it is clear that the panic that has gripped the markets since Monday morning must be calmed. So if we are going to bail out all the bad actors of the last 8 years, we need to get something in return. All of the Wall Street types and neoconservative economists who have resisted regulation will have to surrender in return for the rescue of the capitalist system. Here are some thoughts.

The New RTC-Assuming the government commits $750 Billion to buy the bad loans from many financial institutions, the New RTC must extract warrants to purchase stock in each one of those institutions based on the face amount of the loans they are taking from the companies. Paulson is at heart a trader, and I'm sure he knows that the taxpayers need an upside for taking on all the risk. We did this with the Chrysler bailout in 1979, so there is a precedent.

Hedge Fund Transparency-Hedge funds will have to register with the SEC and be just as transparent as Mutual Funds. These pirates have escaped regulation for too long. They will need to disclose long and short positions in the same way mutual funds do.

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My friend Naomi Chazan has put the case brilliantly in the new Forward. If Tzipi Livni thinks she can place the peace process on a back-burner or, to put things more cruelly, that an Israeli majority will choose her to lead the country into a fight-to-the-finish with Palestinians, she is mistaken. As Michael Corleone told Tom Hagen, "You are not a war-time Consigliori."

Much like Mahmud Abbas, Livni's only hope to form a stable government, or to gain popularity in advance of new elections, is to prove that she can renew the promise of an agreement under American-European auspices, that is, advance the interests of Israelis over Judeans. She must show that diplomacy is the problem and she is the solution. Her side is the majority and creates most of the wealth. She must choose to inspire. The fact that Haim Oron, the head of the Meretz peace party, is claiming that Livni has offered him a place in a new government is a sign that Livni gets it. One hopes the next American president will get it, too.

Joe Biden with Katie Couric:

Katie: "Your vice presidential rival, Governor Palin, said, 'To the rest of America, that's not patriotism. Raising taxes is about killing jobs and hurting small businesses and making things worse.'"

Biden: "How many small businessmen are making one million, four hundred thousand--average in the top 1 percent. Give me a break. I remind my friend, John McCain, what he said--when Bush called for war and tax cuts--he said, it was immoral, immoral, to take a nation to war and not have anybody pay for it. I am so sick and tired of this phoniness. The truth of the matter is that we are in trouble. And the people who do not need a new tax cut should be willing, as patriotic Americans, to understand the way to get this economy back up on their feet is to give middle class taxpayers a break. We take the tax cut they're getting and we give it to the middle class."

The attack dog goes after the right flank. No apology, no defensiveness, but righteous indignation. Fine with me if Obama wants to run a 2-minute ad laying out the bones of an economic program--it plays stodgy to me and some friends, but never mind--but this tone from Biden is more than welcome, especially in Ohio.

The hot shot billionaire financial wizards of Wall Street went running to the government to protect them from the market yet again. Today they got the SEC to ban all short selling on financial stocks. Apparently they are worried that traders think that their companies are worthless and therefore will depress the value of the stock they hold. Markets can be so cruel to rich investment bankers.

This ban shows clearly that the whines about "naked" shorts were nonsense. There is nothing sinister about a naked short. It is just a convenience, like buying stock on the margin.

So where does the SEC get off banning shorts?

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Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard professor and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, says the U.S.A. needs a $1 trillion bailout.

Today the Bush Administration announced that a deal has been made. In return for a liquidity injection from the Peoples Republic of China and the Japanese Central Bank, the U.S. would change its name to the United Socialist States of America (USSA). Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea would be annexed by the PRC, while the Philippines, Indonesia, Hawaii, Malibu, and the Los Angeles Angels would merge with the Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere. Australia would be given over to the two nations as a dumping ground for waste disposal and malcontents. Mexico is reportedly interested in taking a minority share of the package in return for Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado.

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I think it's fair to say that I've been as strong an advocate of tougher "class war" attacks by Obama as anyone, but I actually thought Obama's two minute, sober demand for fixing the rot of the regulatory system and helping working families was exactly right at this crisis point. There was plenty of time to hit at the complete greed of the corporate execs before the immediate crisis -- which I wish Obama had done a bit more of -- and there will be time during the cleanup aftermath where we should sharpen the class warfare language. But right now, we needed a steady voice in a crisis.

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The bottom line for the Bush Administration is that it has not fulfilled its primary purposes: it did not improve the standard of living for most Americans; it was hardly a prudent steward of the taxpayers' money; it did not carefully regulate financially institutions that are important to the well-being of our economy; and it did not suppress foreign terrorism or catch bin Laden.

John McCain would be not just more of the same, but much worse. Of the many concerns about his candidacy, perhaps the most damning is that he does not realize that at a fundamental level the critical trends that underlie the future of our economy and society need to be changed. We are heading in the wrong direction, and yet John McCain thinks it is the right direction, and would have us move faster down the declining path.

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Paul,

At the end of one of your entries, you ask why aren't more cities trying something akin to Canada's Baby College. More broadly, I'd ask why - given all that we know - isn't there a greater public commitment to early childhood education? (To say nothing of a greater commitment to education in general, but more on that later.)

I think parenting classes are a tough public sell, mostly because we get jittery when trying in any way to intervene in the lives of families. A number of years ago, early in the Bush administration, before 9/11, before the disastrous foreign policy, there was conversation about the importance of marriage. The proponents of some kind of marriage program were roundly jeered at, especially by liberals, in large part because it smacked of paternalism, and of sticking our noses in places government didn't belong.

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We recall with delight the G.O.P. claim that Sarah Palin is qualified in foreign policy because Alaska is somewhere near Russia. We have an equivalent, brain-dead assertion from John McCain. (By the way, have you heard he was a P.O.W.?) I must have blocked out the remark as a painful memory, but in one of the debates Gabby Hayes was asked whether the Fed had reduced interest rates sufficiently. Of course everyone realizes this is like asking Lassie to opine on Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind, but in the actual event the response was more stupid than anyone could have imagined. His response was:

"I would like the interest rate to be zero."

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I feel pretty lucky to be involved in a conversation with sharp thinkers like Andy Rotherham, Alex Kotlowitz, and Amy Wilkins - let alone a conversation in which I get to refer (and link) to my book.

Both Alex and Andy wrote explicitly about the divide between the two camps in the Democratic Party on education today - a subject I've also written about on Slate recently. It's a fascinating and compelling question, for me. Sometimes this divide can seem fairly artificial, as Alex suggested, and sometimes it can seem pretty real, as Andy wrote. I'm hoping Andy can say a bit more about what he thinks is behind the schism.

Personally, I'm certainly sympathetic to the principles of the Education Equality Project. And it's not that I want to talk any of that manifesto's signers out of their focus on schools and accountability.

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In his September 12th column in the New York Times, David Brooks put the communitarian thesis into better chosen, fewer words than any of his predecessors. His excellent overview follows very closely on the key points and even the text of the Communitarian Platform (link) and The Spirit of Community.

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In Alex Kotlowitz's post on Monday, he gave what I thought was a particularly insightful summary of Geoffrey Canada's approach to Harlem's parents:

I often cringe at the notion of parenting classes - which are often paternalistic and diminishing. But Canada talks about it in a way that makes sense, and more importantly does it in the context of rearranging the dynamics of the local schools. It's as if he's saying to the parents, Come on now, we need you. Your kids need you. And in return for their engagement he promises schools that teach, that won't let kids fall through the cracks, that will begin teaching kids at an early age and not be constrained by the traditional limitations of school procedures and schedules. That seems a rather fair bargain.

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Paul and TPM, Thank you for inviting me to participate in this week's discussion. I'll echo the previous posts by saying that Paul's book is compelling and terrific in so many ways, and I am sure that it will push the education debate in some important directions.

There's no question that the Harlem Children's Zone is an exciting, innovative model that's producing results. But refining and replicating it and other projects like it takes time. Right now, our kids and our nation don't have a moment to spare.

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The RAND Corporation dug into its own funds to produce an unusual report. It seeks to determine how terrorists groups end. It found that in the best cases, they turn into political parties (like the Resistencia Nacional Mozambicana in Mozambique did). When force must be used to end terrorism, a combination of policing and use of intelligence is much more effective than committing conventional armies. The RAND report provides more ammunition to those who reject the metaphor of a "war" against terrorism and all that it evokes. At the same time the report points out that Al Qaeda is especially unlikely to agree to a political settlement, given its ambitions, goals, and religious fundamentalism. To learn more, go here.

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First let me thank TPM for hosting this discussion and Paul for inviting me to participate. Paul has a lot of fans in the education policy community because his work at the Times Magazine has elevated the discourse around education a great deal, and everyone who cares about education is in his debt for that. Our corner of the policy world doesn't often get lights like this shined on it.

That's why Whatever It Takes is a wonderful book. It's a great story; Geoffrey Canada is just one of those magnetic people in life. It's an outstanding and accessible look at the complicated intersection of social policy, education policy, race, and class. And it couldn't be better timed. Although education is a second tier issue in a presidential campaign where the economy, foreign policy, and energy are understandably taking center stage, the school reform debate is quietly coming to a head.

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John McCain's business advisor, Carly Fiorina, asserts that Sarah Palin is not qualified to run a major company. This is by way of discounting Barack Obama's experience.

But what about Ms Fiorina? Is she qualified to run a major company? She took over Hewlett Packard when its stock was 45.36. When she left it was 20.14, a performance of -56%. There was also that unpleasant business with corporate snooping. And laying off 7,000 employees. Sounds like the very model of a Republican titan of industry.

On the strength of these accomplishments, she arranged received $21 million in severance pay.

After she left the company apparently did relatively well. Another chapter in the annals of U.S. meritocracy.

While we've been preoccupied with Wasilla, Trig, Track, Todd, Bristol and Levi, the Bridge and the Road to Nowhere, the deep critique of celebrity politics, the bucolic life of small-town Alaska and its proximity to Russia, the virtues of drilling, and lately, the meltdown of global financial markets, Jeffrey Goldberg has published an important piece on "The Wars of John McCain," referring not only to the actual war John S. McCain III fought but to his mentality--and also the wars of his father, the Vietnam admiral, and tangentially, his admiral grandfather, and by implication, the whole chain of American wars to which he is evidently devoted, wars that McCains have fought in, as the current McCain is proud to repeat.

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What happens to the kids after No Child Left Behind leaves them behind?

This, and more in Paul's comment threads. Check them out.

In the best "kick em, when they're down" spirit of American politics, now is a great time to be pushing a financial transactions tax. The greed and incompetence of the Wall Street crowd has thrown the economy into a recession in which hundreds of thousands have already lost their job, millions are losing their homes, and tens of millions of losing their life's savings as their home equity vanishes before their eyes.

In the fallout, some of the big Wall Street firms are going down too, Lehman and Merrill Lynch yesterday, maybe AIG today. Of course Freddie and Fannie sank last week. But even with the collapse of these financial giants we still have a badly bloated financial sector that preys on the rest of the economy.

We should seize on this moment in which the public is rightly outraged by the greed and stupidity of these financial wizards to drive a stake into the heart of Wall Street. With a financial transactions tax we can bring this financial behemoth down to size once and for all.

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You may have noticed the Capitalism, it doesn't work too good. This should not be good news for John McCain. But it isn't very good news for Barack Obama either, since the secret watchword for his economic policy is "nudge," whereas what capitalism needs is more like an ass-whippin. Obama has good and smart economists, but they are so square you could jab yourself on one of their sharp corners.

McClueless is entertaining. By the way, did you hear he was a P.O.W.? He is going to clean up Wall Street, and he wants to free the economy of burdensome regulation. At least, that is the ideology to which he apparently adheres. Free enterprise, individualism, small government, "laissez-faire."

Except the model towards which the U.S. system and its politicians incline, like flesh-eating zombies to a ripe Rotarian, is not laissez-faire at all. It is the unified machinations of big corporations, high finance, and big, bad government, also known as corporativismo. (Sounds better in the original Italian.)

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Barack Obama is still leading among Jews 2 to 1, and pundits are still telling us that this is a sign of weakness: that historic levels of support among Jews, 3 (or even 4) to 1, are needed to win Florida and Pennsylvania; and that Obama's not going to get there unless he's willing to be as "Zionist" as McCain.

There are too many misconceptions in this analysis to be dealt with here. (I try to lay them out more fully in the current Harper's.) But it is meanwhile worth having another look at this penetrating Gerstein-Agne poll, conducted for the rising J Street Lobby. It suggests that Jews are seriously divided: that the vast majority, around 70%, are more or less liberal, opposed the Iraq war, and want to see the US pressure Israelis and Palestinians into a peace deal; while our most prominent Jewish leaders, in AIPAC, the Council of Presidents, and the World Jewish Congress, tend to promote the agenda of the 20-25% who identify with conservative politics, and would never vote for Obama no matter what he does.

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Paul,

Thanks for the invitation to be a part of the book club - and for writing Whatever It Takes, a profoundly important antidote to what too often prevails in conversations about education, which could be titled simply, Whatever.

I've been intrigued by a debate taking place, which you addressed in a recent Slate piece. The scholars and social scientists who refer to themselves (in somewhat unwieldly terms) as the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education VS the Education Equality Project. As I understand it, the former believe we need to focus on early education, on family, on neighborhood, on health care and the latter believes we need to focus on reforms in the schools and more pointedly on reforms in the classroom. To be honest, I'm not quite sure why the divide. How can you talk about one without addressing the other? It's in part what's so intriguing about what Canada's attempting. He seems to viscerally understand that one of the central institutions in this whole conversation is family, and yet also the most difficult institution to tinker with. But he's figured out ways to involve families, not only in the schools but more importantly in the education of their children. I often cringe at the notion of parenting classes - which are often paternalistic and diminishing. But Canada talks about it in a way that makes sense, and more importantly does it in the context of rearranging the dynamics of the local schools. It's as if he's saying to the parents, Come on now, we need you. Your kids need you. And in return for their engagement he promises schools that teach, that won't let kids fall through the cracks, that will begin teaching kids at an early age and not be constrained by the traditional limitations of school procedures and schedules. That seems a rather fair bargain.

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When I set out to write Whatever It Takes, I wanted to accomplish two things. The first was, simply, to tell a story. I wanted to describe the life and work of Geoffrey Canada and chronicle his attempt to build the Harlem Children's Zone, an ambitious and well-funded nonprofit that stretches across 97 blocks of central Harlem. And I wanted to tell the stories of the children and parents in Harlem who are using the organization's resources to try to improve their lives.

But as well as offering what I hoped would be an engaging story, I also wanted to use the book to investigate a few questions that I found intriguing and hard to answer.

The main question was one that is disarmingly straightforward and yet infuriatingly complex: Why are poor people poor?

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Happy Monday, Café-ers,

For this week's book club, New York Times Magazine's Paul Tough joins us to talk about his new book Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest To Change Harlem And America.

The book pivots around Geoffrey Canada, a poverty-fighting Harlem visionary-- Obama described his work once as "an all-hands-on-deck anti-poverty effort that is literally saving a generation of children."-- and his work on The Harlem Children's Zone, a $58 million organization reaching out to 7,000 children.

Sort of an interesting counter-example to Sarah Palin's grassroots snark.

Discussing along with Paul: Kira Orange-Jones of Teach For America, Amy Wilkins of the Education Trust, Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America and Andy Rotherham, co-director and co-founder of the Education Sector.

Join us!

Mr. McCain's opponent, Senator Barack Obama, termed the situation on Wall Street "the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression," blaming the upheaval on the policies employed during the last eight years of a Republican-controlled White House.

"I certainly don't fault Senator McCain for these problems, but I do fault the economic philosophy he subscribes to," Mr. Obama said in a statement. "It's a philosophy we've had for the last eight years - one that says we should give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else."

He added: "This country can't afford another four years of this failed philosophy."

"The challenges facing our financial system today are more evidence that too many folks in Washington and on Wall Street weren't minding the store," Mr. Obama said. "Eight years of policies that have shredded consumer protections, loosened oversight and regulation, and encouraged outsized bonuses to CEOs while ignoring middle-class Americans have brought us to the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression."

Personalize it! John McCain's economic adviser, Phil Gramm, Mr. Deregulation-and-Stop-Your-Whining, can certainly be faulted. If he, John McCain, and George W. Bush had had their way, private Social Security accounts would have shriveled overnight. McCain said it was a "disgrace" that the young subsidize the retirement of their elders. (Hat tip to Harold Pollack on this.)

This is precisely the content and tone we need.

I think the campaign really gets it!

The financial firms keep tumbling. Add Lehman Brothers to the dead and Merrill Lynch to the zombie takeover list. Still, the Wall Street crew are relying ever more on the generosity of taxpayers to save their hides.

This is coming from the Fed, which is extending ever larger loans at below market interest rates, and accepting ever worse collateral in exchange. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Fed will now be accepting shares of stock as collateral.

We don't want the financial system to collapse, but can we get something out of the Wall Street boys in exchange for the government handouts?

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This seemingly innocuous power point slide from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was used in June of 2004 to explain to market participants a new ruling on how broker dealers could compute their "net capital". Instead of the previous fixed limits on leverage of 10:1, broker dealers like Lehman Brothers could use their own "internal models" to determine how much leverage they could put on their capital. As we saw with the crash of Bear Stearns and now Lehman Bros., both firms were leveraged more than 30:1.

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Without doubt, through all the noise of the polls, the weekly daily hourly gotchas and stomach-turning whirls of the wheel, in the end a lot of people who ought to be voting for Barack Obama will hesitate, will stop, because he is a black man. He's an actual African-American, a man of mixed race who, because of the way race is coded in America, counts as black.

I don't mean to say that race is the only reason why anyone but raging warmongers would hesitate to vote for Obama. You can argue that McCain has the more relevant foreign policy experience--though to do so, you have to overlook his ill temper; his evident joy while singing "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran"; his unregenerate belief that the Vietnam war could, and should, have been won; his reliance on neoconservative advisers; and of course, his gung-ho support of the Iraq catastrophe. You can feel that opposition to abortion trumps everything else. You can argue, against the evidence, that lowering taxes on the rich is good for everybody. You can believe that the man is deep down a maverick, overlooking the fact that he was a straight-out right-wing Republican before he was a (partial) maverick, a phase which took place, in turn, before he decided that he was a right-winger--and because of this history, you deserve a medal if you can tell me who the authentic John McCain is. You can decide to overlook the bad character that's manifest in McCain's current campaign of lies. And so on.

But a bit of straight talk here: If Barack Obama loses, it will substantially be because of his color.

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Television broadcasters do not have to run advertisements that are plainly false. No law or regulation requires that they do so, as far as I know. Perhaps the FCC general counsel, or some academic, can double-check this question.

In any case, why don't members of Congress with oversight responsibilities ask broadcasters not to run plainly false ads? Or to set off the deception by giving equal time to the candidate lied about?

Senator Leiberman asked Google to cause YouTube not to run certain clips that the Senator deemed to incite violence. They agreed. That was a good step on both sides.

So why doesn't anyone ask broadcasters to agree not to permit this all-important election to sink to a level of deceit unworthy of the democracy generations have sought to save, and that our brave men and women are fighting for even now?

Here is the message that needs to get across in TV ads, Obama's speeches, and Biden's and many surrogates' comments: America cannot afford ANOTHER President and VP who lie to us (just as Bush and Cheney have often done). Turn McCain's transgressions into an act of perfidy against the country, rather than just "playing unfair." Tie McC and Palin to Bush and Cheney and, at the same time, present them as a threat now and for the future.

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Once the Treasury bailed out Bear Stearns with government guarantees, the next buyer of a major US financial institution might expect similar help. Barclay's was the last likely buyer of Lehman Brothers. Earlier today, it announced that without the US taxpayers putting their money on the line, Barclay's isn't interested in buying.

We can debate whether the government should have bailed out Bear Stearns, but surely the current mess tells us one thing we should not have done: Bail out Bear Stearns and then return to business-as-usual. So long as the only tool the government seems to have to halt this crisis is a bailout, then we are in trouble. More bailouts will be needed, and, at some point, even the American taxpayer can't handle it.

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Very few people repeat untruths and misstatements over and over. When they do, they have to be held to intend to mislead, conceal, or deceive. So then we can call their untruths by the word "lies."

Why should Americans not choose liars as their leaders? Everyone in any walk of life will from time to time say something that isn't perfectly true. On minor matters, or when there's an innocent explanation, we overlook such behavior.

But when those who seek leadership positions lie about (1) important matters, like their own attitudes toward government waste or national security or the economy or global warming or education or the First Amendment, and (2) their only possible motive is a desire to deceive their countrymen (since they've been informed that their statements are inaccurate), then we know they are not qualified to lead.

A democracy cannot survive with inveterate liars in high office. Nor can our culture: as Americans we want truth-telling to be the standard set on high for all to observe and emulate.

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Could the administration have changed its mind about letting Israel attack Iran. Sure looks like it.

Just what we need. The Arab and Muslim world will, of course, not distinguish an Israeli attack with US weapons from an American attack (why would they?).

I guess the Palin Doctrine is already in effect i.e. "we cannot second guess anything Israel does" no matter what its effects would be on Americans.

The neocons live!

A word of thanks to Rick Hertzberg, Alvaro de Soto, Bruce Lawrence, and to the many outstanding commentators who contributed to making the Book Club debate so much more original than what one can normally expect from reviews. Thanks also to Lila Shapiro for bird-dogging the process. There will be a new prime minister in Israel in a week or so, and, no doubt, renewed interest in the process once the US election is concluded.