Long View: Deer Hunting With Jesus

American News Project: Goes to rural Virginia to visit Joe Bageant, author of “Deer Hunting With Jesus”

Much has been said about white working-class voters. But those who’ve been doing all the talking are pollsters and political operatives. As part of the Long View series, ANP traveled to rural Virginia to talk to someone who’s lived the life and knows from personal experience what those voters are thinking — author Joe Bageant. His highly-acclaimed recent book, Deer Hunting With Jesus, was lauded by one reviewer as a “raging, hilarious, and profane love song to the great American redneck.” In addition to being that, it’s also one of the most prescient pieces of analysis about American politics and culture in this election year.

Video interview

Anne Pressly

Fox 11 News in LA, and several white supremacy groups, are carrying racially-incendiary stories attributing Anne Pressly’s unsolved murder to, “two black males,” charging that stabbing, rape and mutilation have been concealed by the police and media.

Web Extra! Walsh Says Murdered Anchor Was Raped

“America’s Most Wanted” host John Walsh sat down with Lisa Breckenridge after “Good Day LA” to talk more about his upcoming show. He revealed that according to his sources, 26-year-old news anchor, Anne Pressly, was beaten and raped in her home. So far authorities have refused to say whether she was sexually assaulted. “America’s Most Wanted” will highlight the case this Saturday’s episode.

Update: America’s Most Wanted aired at 9:00 PM EST this evening, with only a brief mention of the Pressly case, and a request that anyone with information step forward.

Police and Media Coverup in Anne Pressly Murder?

White Revolution has just been informed, from a source indirectly connected to the medical examiner who completed the autopsy, that Anne Pressly was sexually assaulted by two black males, based on DNA found at the scene and on her body. Furthermore, rather than having been simply beaten as the controlled media reports, WR has been told that she was cut on her face and private areas with a knife in a gruesome mutilation.

The autopsy report is most likely not going to be made available to the public, even through the Freedom Of Information Act, until the investigation is officially closed. Or, like Martin Luther King, Jr.’s F.B.I. file, never, if they so choose.

Implausible deniability.

Update: CNN reports that police have arrested one man, Curtis Lavell Vance, based on DNA evidence. DNA also tied Vance to a rape last April, in Marianna AK. Her parents claim she was raped, but the police refuse to comment.

Nicholas von Hoffman reviews Bad Money

At this juncture the dimensions of the disaster are not clear. An honest count would show 10 or 11 percent of the labor force is out of work. If the numbers continue to climb at the present rate, by this time next year they will begin to match those of the gray days of the New Deal era.

By then we may begin to tell each other that none of this misery had to happen. There was no end of warnings and no one was more prescient or more persistent in foretelling what lay in store for us than Kevin Phillips. In the long run up to the vortex, Phillips was one of those who repeatedly warned of what was coming. No one did it more cogently, more learnedly and more forcefully than he.

How these gibbering numbskulls came to dominate Washington

How was it allowed to happen? How did politics in the US come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance? Was it charity that has permitted mankind's closest living relative to spend two terms as president? How did Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle and other such gibbering numbskulls get to where they are? How could Republican rallies in 2008 be drowned out by screaming ignoramuses insisting that Barack Obama was a Muslim and a terrorist?

Like most people on my side of the Atlantic, I have for many years been mystified by American politics. The US has the world's best universities and attracts the world's finest minds. It dominates discoveries in science and medicine. Its wealth and power depend on the application of knowledge. Yet, uniquely among the developed nations (with the possible exception of Australia), learning is a grave political disadvantage.

Interesting look at religion vs education.

AIG Already Running Through Government Loans

The American International Group is rapidly running through $123 billion in emergency lending provided by the Federal Reserve, raising questions about how a company claiming to be solvent in September could have developed such a big hole by October. Some analysts say at least part of the shortfall must have been there all along, hidden by irregular accounting.

"You don't just suddenly lose $120 billion overnight," said Donn Vickrey of Gradient Analytics, an independent securities research firm in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Mr. Vickrey says he believes AIG must have already accumulated tens of billions of dollars worth of losses by mid-September, when it came close to collapse and received an $85 billion emergency line of credit by the Fed. That loan was later supplemented by a $38 billion lending facility.

But losses on that scale do not show up in the company's financial filings. Instead, AIG replenished its capital by issuing $20 billion in stock and debt in May and reassured investors that it had an ample cushion. It also said that it was making its accounting more precise.

AIG had come under fire for accounting irregularities some years back and had brought in a former accounting expert from the Securities and Exchange Commission. He began to focus on the company's accounting for its credit-default swaps and collided with Joseph Cassano, the head of the company's financial products division, according to a letter read by Mr. Waxman at the recent Congressional hearing.

When the expert tried to revise AIG's method for measuring its swaps, he said that Mr. Cassano told him, "I have deliberately excluded you from the valuation because I was concerned that you would pollute the process." 

Depression-Era Diary Think times are tough? How one man survived the last Great Depression.

Part One

Part Two

As a commentary on the current financial trends, Newsweek has begun running short segments of a diary kept by a man in Yougstown Ohio, during the Great Depression:

Aug. 5, 1931. I went to the fruit market house this evening. It was almost deserted. The farmers cannot sell their produce because men are not working and it has become fashionable for each family to have its own vegetable garden.

Aug. 6, 1931. At a public sale by the sheriff today on foreclosure by the bank the C—— home at 1— Elm Street was offered for the third time but no buyer found. It could be bought for $4400, and is really worth conservatively $7500. In 1929 the owner thought it was worth $11,000.

Aug. 7, 1931. Business is at an absolute standstill and the big stores are deserted even tho’ they are all running sales and almost giving the merchandise away. Since the local savings and loan companies stopped paying out, nobody has any money and everybody seems scared and blue. We seem to have touched bottom in Youngstown and it hardly seems possible that things could get worse.

Aug. 8, 1931. My brother Morris has been out of work now for almost two years and can’t find a thing to do. He is an engineer and a craftsman. [One of his close friends] was laid off by the Truscan Steel Co. two months ago and is not very optimistic. [My brother] Joe is [an accountant and is] still at Truscan but is afraid for his job. He says the air is tense and men are being discharged every day.

Aug. 9, 1931. Professional men have been hard hit by the depression. This is particularly true of doctors and dentists. Their overhead is high and collections are impossible. One doctor smoothed a dollar bill out on his desk the other day and said that this was all the money he had taken in for a week. Lawyers are almost as badly off and most of them are not taking in enough to pay. We have been helped a little by foreclosure work which followed in the wake of the depression but most of it does not pay because the assets are worthless. Most professional men for past two years have been living on money borrowed on insurance policies etc. The only work that comes in now are impossible collections on a contingent fee basis. Everybody is digging up old claims and trying to realize on them. Tempers are short and people are distrustful and suspicious. There is nothing to do but work hard for less money and to cut expenses to the bone.

The Diary of Samuel Pepys Daily entries from the 17th century London diary

I used to read this intricately thorough diary every day, but fell out of the habit:

Read more »

Pre-emptive ejection: Audience members removed at McCain rally in Cedar Falls

Lara Elborno, a student at the University of Iowa, said she was approached by a police officer and a McCain staffer and was told she had to leave or she would be arrested for trespassing.

“It was a very confusing, very frustrating situation,” Elborno said. “I said that I had a right to be there, I wasn’t doing anything disruptive — I was sitting, waiting for the rally to start.”

She said McCain staffers wouldn’t tell her why she was being asked to leave and when she got outside, she saw “a group of about 20 people” who had all been asked to leave.

…

“I saw a couple that had been escorted out and they were confused as well, and the girl was crying, so I said ‘Why are you crying? and she said ‘I already voted for McCain, I’m a Republican, and they said we had to leave because we didn’t look right,’” Elborno said. “They were handpicking these people and they had nothing to go off of, besides the way the people looked.”

Update 3: From the comments section of the Iowa State Daily:

Video interview of three UNI students asked to leave

Same students talk about another attendee that wasn’t made to leave

Margo Ralston 1 day 2 hrs ago

I am a UNI student and I was also one of the many that was asked to leave for no reason…they just told me that McCain staffers ask for me and the other two UNI students I was with to leave…no explanation. I have never protested at any McCain events and I was not doing anything but setting and watching the event peacefully. I also saw the republican girl crying as she was being kicked out…I feel as a student of UNI that was not being disruptive or has no past of being disruptive that I had a right to be there….the hole event was very disheartening.

Anne Johnson 12 hr 34 min ago

FYI, all.

I’m a 53-year-old library assistant and I was with Lara and the rest of the group that was coming to see McCain, and she didn’t make that up about the young Republican couple who were thrown out.

Update2: One DeusExMalcontent commenter thinks they were trying to avoid another Palin impersonation.

But another blogger thinks they went too far.

Update1: After posting the above, it was ironic to see the MSNBC headline, Do Republicans Have a Youth Problem?

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Well I’m not uptight, Not unattracted, Turn me on tonight, Cause I’m radioactive, Radioactive.

Radioactive - The Firm

This recent article covers the pros and cons of nuclear power, and summarizes the Obama and McCain positions:

Nuclear electricity: Alternating between hope and fear

Prospects of irreducible excess demand in long-term hydrocarbon markets; climate change, which threatens carbon-fired facilities with increasingly harsh financial penalties; and slow expansion in the use of renewable energy are turning fission-based electricity into the default choice — big time. According to the International Energy Agency, the world may need 1,300 new atomic power-generating units by 2050 (over four times more than currently planned and proposed) to avoid severe energy shortfalls, to keep the ever-faster growing number of light bulbs burning.

Intentions are grandiose but you cannot take the “renaissance of nuclear energy” to the bank just yet. OECD countries, which account for nearly four-fifths of globally operating reactors, are mired in an apparent schizophrenia over the issue. While France, Canada, Japan, and the U.S. are working on reactor modernization and indulge in daring plans about cross-border fuel cycles, Chancellor Angela Merkel (an accomplished physicist) wants to end nuclear power in Germany, once and for all. Belgium also sees its energy future in wind farms and solar panels. Some countries (e.g., Finland, France, and Slovakia) are actually building reactors; others plan or intend to do so, and some (e.g., Australia and New Zealand) neither plan nor intend to go down the nuclear path. Italy recognizes the need for and is willing to invest in reactors as long as they are somewhere else (e.g. Slovakia).

So where does Obama stand?

Read more »

When I heard about Obama’s half-hour special, the first thing I thought about was Linus van Pelt blowing his election lead by preaching to the student body about the Great Pumpkin. Bleaahhh! At least that’s how I remembered it. In the video above, they rearranged the story so Linus manages to win the election by one vote.

But I can’t think of a Great Pumpkin moment to rival McCain’s introduction of Sarah Palin as his running mate. Joe the Plumber came close to the humorous aspect, but Palin was the surprise choice that just kept making headlines.

The Palin-McCain Conflict

I think it’s now fair to say it’s a war.

Rift Cracks ‘Demoralized’ McCain Campaign

There is no question that there is a rift between Sarah Palin’s camp and that of John McCain inside the Republican campaign, sources tell ABC News.

And you are seeing people within the McCain campaign starting to look to the future.

Not only Palin, but many of the McCain staffers, as well, are circulating their resumes and pointing the finger.

Sullivan has doubted Palin all along, but now the MSM is running the story, too.

Ethanol stance taints Barack Obama’s green credentials

As senator for the corn-growing state of Illinois, Obama has been a firm advocate of corn-based ethanol, 34 billion litres of which is now added to US petrol every year to reduce imports of foreign oil.

…

Obama has softened his stance on ethanol slightly in recent weeks after his controversial support for it came under media scrutiny. He says he may now rethink the policy, although he has not yet withdrawn his backing.

That puts environmentalists in a quandary in terms of their overall affinity for the Democratic candidate. Carl Pope, the national director of the Sierra Club, told the Guardian: “I don’t agree with his position on ethanol. But I think that once elected president he will do the learning that is required. He has some catching up to do.”

Obama may be spared an awkward confrontation over ethanol in any case. Federal requirements for the quantity of ethanol produced in 2008 have already been met, leading to a decline in demand.

Rapidly falling oil prices in the wake of the Wall Street crash have further damaged demand for alternative fuels. Ethanol plants are struggling under reduced orders, and some have closed; with it the price of corn has also begun to decline. The ethanol bubble may be about to burst.

At some point we’re all going to want Obama to become our ideal president, and to me his support for clean coal and ethanol are as big problems as his vote for FISA. At the same time, I recognize that there are no easy answers to our energy situation.

Ethanol Today describes each candidate’s platform on ethanol.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned the book, House, by Tracy Kidder.  Andrew Sullivan just linked to an online version in the Atlantic. It seems to be quite a bit shorter, but explains the story.