Does it strike anyone else how strange it is that at the end of every day this site and every other progressive site is grousing about the same thing.

"Can you believe that with all we have to deal with that the media is obsessed with Obama's race and birthers". The subtext is "We don't buy that crap but some stupid people might."

Obama would not be President if most people bought that crap. In fact most people haven't been buying that crap since they tried to railroad Clinton. In between elections it is too easy to forget that and that is what that media is counting on.

That hierarchical media is the message. That media will always protect "the villagers" of Washington and the Masters of Wall Street from outsiders and any threat to the status quo. That media is dying. It is a feeble old lion, striking out and lying with every last breath to deny its inevitable demise. Journalism will survive on the web but it is our job to make sure it doesn't survive in its present corrupt form.

This interactive media is the message. This media is the people. The people are the message.

When will this media stop obsessing with that media and focus on putting pressure directly on our representatives?

When will this media, TPM, Huffpo, Salon etc, produce its own evening interactive summation of the days news instead of letting that media set the narratives and the priorities for us.

Everywhere you look this morning in the MSM the headlines are the same; the time for final negotiations is now and reform is stalling.

Do I wish Democrats would have started with single payer as their default negotiating position? Yes, and I would bet that if that ABC/Post poll that says that Obama has lost support for reform is accurate, and I doubt it is, it is because Obama hasn't gone far enough to push for real reform.

But remember, the stories we are seeing this morning are just like HUNDREDS of other stories in all forms of media written in the last couple of months that all say the same thing; Obama is losing momentum in the push for health care reform. Meanwhile the ball has been pushed down the field closer to the goal.

For the last ten years media narratives have had very little effect or relation to actual public opinion. You can make the case that the corporate media chorus was able to stop reform in '92 because without interactive web pushback they were able to create the perception that reform was dead in the water. They are trying to do the same thing now, story after story for months on end says that reform is stalling.

But ever since the media tried to railroad Clinton when Republicans were impeaching him for a blow job, the public has been using the web to push back and find the real story of what has been going on. If the corporate media really had much effect on public opinion now then Obama would never had been nominated much less elected. Those days are over but they still try to convince us that media blowback is equivalent to public blowback.

Don't buy the hype. Turn off the cable blather and help move the ball down the court. Fax your Senator and remind them who is the real boss.

I live in Iowa City, a university town that is supposed to be the most liberal community in the state of Iowa. The comment boards in the local paper are dominated by hard right Palin-loving Republicans that live in town and surrounding communities. They manage to have considerable sway in county and city politics far beyond their numbers. They are representative of Palin's support, they are not going away and they are getting more radical and angry by the day. I don't think national politicians or pundits have a real understanding of where this base is coming from but if you look at your local community closely, for example at the building trades, you may get a clue.

When I dig into the background of those folks I find that they either own established small businesses or they aspire to owning a business like Joe the Plumber. What they have in common is a single minded focus on self-enrichment and a tendency to scapegoat anyone else for keeping them from achieving some imagined level of wealth.

As someone who built a small business from scratch I can understand to some extent how they get to that point. When you spend 10-12 hours a day building a business and everything city hall does seems to slow you down it is too easy to get into the frame of mind that everyone else is trying to leach off your hard work and initiative. I had enough perspective to understand that my success depended to a large degree on the greater success of the community.

But if your ONLY priority is self-interest then that attitude becomes viscous and usually racist.

Understand that percentage-wise, rural communities depend upon self-employment more than urban communities. And understand that established small businesses in rural communities are often de-facto monopolies and that is accelerating with the recession and the increase in energy prices.

These folks have alot of resources to push their priorities in local and regional politics and also as consumers for media advertisers. They are not used to actual competition in the marketplace, they are used to getting their way.  And whether they own a business or imagine themselves to be a business like Joe, they identify with raw corporate power. It is called corporatism.

I am a financial layman with no comprehension of the particularities of the derivative markets but I have maintained attention to the global context of this financial meltdown. So tell me where I have this wrong. The conversations we are having now about AIG, bailouts, Cramer vrs Stewart and the G-20 summit are all circling around one subject; who is going to be taking the final big losses when we hit bottom? Bondholders? Stockholders? Taxpayers? In which country? In what proportion? Are the recent global market rallies in anticipation of a verdict for bondholders and stockholders and against taxpayers? Is this all coming to a head at the G-20?

To that possibly volitile mix I will add one other point of context.

We are in a transition from an era of cheap energy to an era of expensive energy. One way to understand current market volatility is the revaluation of all global assets in light of the changing variables of energy inputs. Our infrastructure is based on cheap energy and the length of the recession may depend on the effective use of stimulus globally to build new infrastructure based on expensive energy.

The changing costs of energy and the internalizing of formerly external costs of energy usage also changes the calculation of possible future economic growth. Or, to put it another way, we need the market to redefine growth as efficiency. We need real competitive functioning markets in order to squeeze every possible efficiency out of all the energy we can produce. Not to produce economic growth but to survive.

I will give him credit for cooling the rhetoric but at the same rally he repeated the BS about Fannie and Freddie being the reason for the financial crisis and the BS about ACORN being a means for Democratic vote fraud.

In other words he told them to cool the hate speech but they could blame Democrats for the financial collapse because they gave blacks mortgages they couldn't afford. And he told them that Obama was fixing the election via vote fraud making him illigitimate in their eyes. Fox and CNN have been laying the foundation for this all day.

Only the real wingnuts buy it but it does insure that militias will thrive after the election and the Secret Service will have its hands full. 

If he can't win then he will be content to tear the country apart. When he says "Country First" you eventually learn that he is a country unto himself.

On one side of the ridge they see a bottomless chasm of low paying jobs, high energy costs and endless debt. On the other side they see a black man in the White House forever challenging their identity as the ruling white majority.

They could join the local militia and live out the survivalist fantasy; a subsistence rebellion, a civil war over land, food and water, rebels holed up in their exurban forts, armed to the teeth, guarding their ranchette against the urban hoards.

Or they could hole up after secretly voting for a less dramatic vision of the future where their kids would have a better chance of surviving. They need an excuse to betray their friends who may also be secretly looking for a way beyond the racist bluster and the bleak, bloody slog that waits for them after the movie ends.

I don’t think there is anyone who can predict how this bailout plan will affect the credit markets on Wall Street or on

I don’t think there is anyone who can predict how this bailout plan will affect the credit markets on Wall Street or on

In his speech announcing the suspension of his campaign McCain mentioned the lodestar of Republican Hegemony: 9-11.

Following September 11th our national leaders came together at a time of crisis. We must show that kind of patriotism now. Americans across our country lament the fact that partisan divisions in Washington have prevented us from addressing our national challenges. Now is our chance to come together to prove that Washington is once again capable of leading this country.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to gauge the difference between the true danger to our nation’s economy, the economic panic on Wall Street and the political panic in the Republican Party. But it has become clear that the real lesson that Americans learned from 9-11 was that Republicans are perfectly willing to ruthlessly exploit chaos of any variety to their own political benefit.

This is a preview of what we will see this Friday when McCain will try to make the debate all about the Surge.

I would argue that this is where McCain won the Republican nomination.  Up to this point Romney was the favorite of the base and he began to fade after this debate.  There was alot of commentary that Romney was right about the facts but that is not what the Republican base is interested in.  They identified with McCain's stubborn, snarling but strangly calm refusal to accept any other version of reality except his own.  That is exactly the political style that attracted the base to Bush.  And that is exactly what we will see from McCain when he brings up the surge.

In today's foreign policy speech Biden is trying to frame the debate and get under McCain's skin and piss him off.  That may work to an extent but when you watch him against Romney it becomes clear that he will not be thrown off track when it comes to the surge.  He will hammer Obama over and over again, badgering him to admit he was wrong, interupt him, talk over him and generally be an asshole about it.

The Republican base will love it, for them it is all style over substance, he could be talking in tougues for all they care as long as McCain is aggressive and stubborn.

I am sure that Obama is prepping for just this kind of grilling but it is not going to be a pretty sight.  The question is; will his reaction turn off those on the left that are marginal voters.  Will it turn off marginal women voters?  Will it turn off independants or Reagan democrats? 

This is the essense of Rovian politics; snarling sarcastic attacks unify the Republican base while dividing the Democratic coalition.  The anti-war left is turned of by an agressive response and the Reagan Democrats are turned off by a weak response.  How will Obama bridge that divide?

Remember what Palin is now implying in response to Biden; paying taxes is not a patriotic duty.  Somebody needs to ask her and the potential First Dude; is it your patriotic duty to NOT pay taxes? Where are your tax returns?  If Obama wins do you advocate a tax revolt?

Im jus sayin.

So how do you get them to vote the old man off the island when he is the one who could put the cool chick in charge? It’s not even about the old man anymore, Sarah Rawks!

In a reality of part-time jobs and community college classes and falling 300 bucks short every month you give them hope and a plan and a vision of a better life.

Do you want a better show or a better life?

McCain has supplied the country about 500 feet of lies in the past week but he will walk away from it if nobody calls him on it. It should be the concern of every citizen to understand that he has no credibility left to lead the country.  It should be the concern of the Democratic Party to make it obvious that McCain has no credibility left.

Do not depend on the media to do it for you. For every AP story that calls McCain out on his lies there is another HappyTalk version of the story by another AP reporter. Guess which version gets printed in the local (but Gannett owned) paper the next morning? Ditto local TV news. Don’t depend on the media to let McCain hang for his lies.

Acting on this now is also a metaphor for presidential leadership. When Obama has a summit with Medvedev can he effectively set the agenda and deflate hegemonic rhetoric from Russia with a few choice words that end up framing the meeting for the world media?

That is what is being asked now; can Obama set the agenda, can he step into the credibility vacuum that Bush and McCain have created and lead the nation from this point forward?

First 15 seconds of the ad/viral video; simple and brutal example of McCain lie verified by trusted 3rd party.  Second 15 seconds of ad/viral video; specific Obama proposal for change to improve the lives of struggling middle calss Americans.  Strength and Optimism demonstrated over and over again.