Both Senators Obama and McCain, like most Americans, were surprised by the intensity and scope of the financial crisis bursting beneath Wall Street and beyond this past week. Variations of petty politicking had distracted them.

By contrast, Ron Paul's campaign had honed in on some dire issues of the American economy well before its recent quakes. He emphasized the unsustainability of borrowing from abroad to buy at home that which is largely manufactured or sourced abroad.

A nation-centered candidate, Paul argued for a government focused on constitutional priorities and guided more strictly by the document's powers and limits. The US Constitution is also clear about who each branch of government serves, and is not only a charter but a fundamental ethics source. By focusing on the US Constitution, Ron Paul enriched the entire campaign.
 
That richness seems to have waned as the problems it would have prevented waved in the wind as Treasury ploughed a 1.5 trillion dollar wake through fragmented US financial firms that lacked the wisdom of Glass-Steagall firewalls while packing the white hot fuel of short selling tactics.

Apparently, without the firewalls and fueled with rumors, the US political economy is now like Sarah Palin's email account.

Paul, although quite different in many ways from H. Ross Perot, seemed to heed his economic warnings of sixteen years ago. In the 1992 election Perot bought time for long TV infomercials in which he taught the public the meaning of the economic and financial data and the premises of the workaday financial system.

What is so strange is that the partisan powerhouses then and now have portrayed these men as eccentric at best. Perot was "crazy" or "imbalanced" and Paul's campaign was "quixotic" (WaPo). It is pretty clear that the MSM marginalized these men and their ideas with help from the party-monopolies that wished them gone. It is why Mr. Perot's billions and Mr. Paul's internet presence helped them make traction around the 'usual MSM suspects'.

Interestingly enough, Obama adopted "Yes we can," rhyming with Perot's "United We Stand," and echoing some of Perot's can-do, 'solutions are already here but unity isn't' messaging. And he also matched and perhaps improved on Ron Paul's powerful internet reach.

Dare we say Perot and Paul were portrayed as eccentrics because Perot used data to educate the voter and Paul did that plus preached the value of the US Constitution as a guide to law, ethics, checks, balances, government size and its requirements?

In the present campaign, however, inpenetrable vagaries are the norm, which reminds me of an intelligent investor's observation: Warren Buffett once said that if he could not understand a company's financial reports, it meant the firm didn't want him to understand. That does not bode well for what our system of government is meant to be.

Blazing red in the news is the possibility that communist China (PRC) may be the go-to baron in the tectonic financial crisis swallowing the U.S. market and beyond. At one time in U.S. history, JP Morgan himself bailed out the U.S. government. Now, the PRC stands at the threshhold of Morgan-Stanley, JP Morgan's descendant firm.

If a bid from a foreign firm to control operations at a U.S. port requires Committee on Foreign Investment US approval, so should the bid to purchase major interests in U.S. financial firms.

It is a no-brainer. Considering that China's wealth is state owned to a great degree, given the choice between temporary national trusteeship over major U.S. finance firms and heavy ownership by foreign entities, the former is foregone.

We cannot forfeit the U.S. financial system to foreign entities because of a correctible matter of regulation. To do so would unnecessarily cede coercive control to a state which does not abide by anything close the United States Constitution.

We need a national firewall against foreign control of U.S. financial sectors, just was we need Glass-Steagal firewalls revisited and updated to fit today's markets and economy.

A powerful excerpt from this summer's Dissent Magazine tells the story of Clinton Administration role in today's Wall Street meltdown. How President Clinton signed off on Phil Graham's abrogation of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. It happened in 1999, a year when optimism was like syphilis to the brain, killing a law from 1933, a year when tumult made men sober and rational:

The Mother of All Deregulation

THE CLINTON administration’s free-market program culminated in two momentous deregulatory acts. Near the end of his eight years in office, Clinton signed into law the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, one of the most far-reaching banking reforms since the Great Depression. It swept aside parts of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 that had provided significant regulatory firewalls between commercial banks, insurance companies, securities firms, and investment banks.

It also discusses a warning from Henry B. Gonzalez, Jr.:

It is easy to forget that Clinton had other alternatives. In 1993, Democrats in Congress were attempting to rein in the Federal Reserve by making it more accountable and transparent. Those efforts were led by the chair of the House Banking Committee, the late Henry B. Gonzalez, who warned that the Fed was creating a giant casino economy, a house of cards, a “monstrous bubble.” But such calls for regulation and transparency fell on deaf ears in the Clinton White House and Treasury.

No matter which way you slice these cow chips, these are cow chips from both sides of the aisle.

The partisans have highly educated, well spoken leaders. They include Rhodes Scholars whose intellectual facility helps them paint recklessness as rational.

If you have all the right arguments to convince yourself, that may be all that is needed to wreak destruction on the economy.

The US State Department recently took the Nepalese Maoists off of its list of terrorist organizations even though they had not forsworn the resumption of armed insurrection in Nepal should they lose the election. They promised it.

Some may call this the realist turn in US foreign policy under GWB that they were looking for. Striking deals contrary to the spread of democracy to attain security goals. Realism versus Neocon idealism, some would argue.

At the very least, Nepal's dear-leader owes a return favor for that hypocritical State Department decision which could have the effect of encouraging other terrorists groups to blackmail their way into power around the world.

The favors should include getting Prachandra to spill all he knows about the activities of terrorist networks throughout China, India and Pakistan, since his organization spent over a decade in their bloody fellowship.

Since Prachandra's Maoists were also sworn enemies of Indian influences in Hindu-run Nepal, it has been alleged that they struck deals with Pakistani intelligence in the past. It's ISI and IB have been suspected of supporting some of India's Maoist rebel groups. Maybe Prachandra could shed some light on ISI's involvement with militant Islamic groups camping in Pakistan and elswhere.

Considering also that the Bush Administration essentially looked the other way while the PRC re-subjugated the Tibetan "Autonomous" Region, the PRC owes the US a favor in pressuring Prachandra to be forthcoming about the region's Islamic militants, their relations with the ISI and IB, and whether there are any held up in Nepal.

After all, isn't Nepal now run by a "legit" party? A partner among responsible nations?

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/09/official_at_center_of_trooper.php#comment-3106773

He askes, arguendo, if John McCain had been caught lying while he was still in the Navy, what would the consequences be?

Well, his Vietnamese captors, enraged over his refusal to give into communist indoctrination and rat on his compatriots, would beat him for lying about their activities geared toward escaping the propagandandistic brainwashing machine they were in. And the Hanoi Hilton staff would trumpet his supposed lies (being the objective source of calling lies that they were) as proof that his fellows couldn't depend on him.

In an earlier post, I said Josh was all one-sided with regard to Palin, not mentioning circumstantial evidence about the voilent threats alleged about Trooper Wooten.

One instance was brought to my attention in a thread where he referred to the alleged threat in once sentence in one post.

That is one instance, and I think it's important to mention it here in a primary post rather than bury it in a thread.