Editorial in tomorrow's Wall Street Journal. Heart of the subject doesn't really show up until the last 2 paragraphs.

A tale of money, intrigue, & espionage from Sunday's London Times & Simon Henderson.

With all the hoopla surrounding Moumar Qaddafi and his search for lodging, there may be a relatively unseen reason as to why he has been welcomed back into the "world community".

I read a lot of books, but I'm not going to go back and cite the specific information. So correct me if I'm wrong on any of this. But I very distinctly remember reading the following information from a reliable source. Here goes:

After the neighboring kingdom of Morocco was hit with bombings by radical Islamists (May, 2003), Qaddafi got scared that the same kind of thing would happen in Libya. Years of economic and social isolation had taken their toll, but this new threat within his own country was considered to be far more dangerous to his hold on the country.

To that end, he decided to "give up the goods". He approached British Intelligence and eventually turned over reams and reams of nuclear blueprints & correspondence directly tied to Pakistani nuclear scientist, A.Q. Khan. U.S. intelligence was quickly brough into the picture. It was theorized that this stuff was "out there" and being distributed to Muslim nations, but Qaddafi provided absolute proof of the existence of the Khan network. In short order, the secret, Islamist web of nuclear proliferation was neutralized...and A.Q. Khan was under house arrest. Additionally, a Swiss family-operated supplier of nuclear parts was brought to trial.

Sanctions were lifted...and Qaddafi's masses were placated.

So while this guy is certainly despicable, his entry into the world community has been well-earned. The information provided was absolutely invaluable.

As to why he ended up at Donald Trump's estate? I betcha' that somebody very high up asked for a very discreet favor.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/42448313@N03/sets/72157622224474669/

Just anecdotal, but it seems that McCain is flooding the airwaves here. Obama has been here for rallies twice in the past 3 days...the second one Thursday during the early news hour, so it was carried live for a good bit of time on all 3 local stations. But ad time itself seems to be running about 3 McCain ads for every 1 Obama ad.

Then I received the following e-mail tonight:

I'm the Chief Financial Officer for Barack Obama's campaign. I track the donations coming in and the expenses going out.

I asked for the opportunity to write to you directly so that I could try to explain what's happening right now.

This organization has thousands of employees and spends millions of dollars a day -- and at the moment we're doing it without a safety net.

Our spending plans have been stretched by John McCain's negative attacks and the overwhelming resources of the Republican National Committee.

As of October 15th, John McCain and the RNC together had nearly $20 million more in cash than the combined total of Obama for America and the DNC. And just this week, we're facing new and unexpected spending against us in Montana and West Virginia.

Your incredible generosity has gotten us this far. But right now we need your help more than ever to get this campaign across the finish line.

Please donate $100 or whatever you can afford right now:

https://donate.barackobama.com/RNCadvantage

My team and I are working to stretch every dollar in order to keep as many paths to victory open as possible. But we need whatever help you can provide for this crucial final stretch.

Thank you,

MM

Marianne Markowitz
Chief Financial Officer
Obama for America


Hmmmm. October donations have supposedly dropped off sharply (after $150 bn September). And the Obama campaign has been run with honesty. This gives me pause. It might be that the Republicans are "laying in the weeds"...throwing big money into the final few days while they may have caught the Obama campaign off guard.

Anyway, I sent them some money (again!). You might do the same.

Before launching attacks on Obama, he did offer something I'd not heard before.

It seems that when retirees hit 70.5 years old, they MUST cash in their IRA, etc. funds. Obviously, cashing in any stock funds this week amounts to a serious loss for that senior citizen. McCain proposed a suspension of this rule.

Good idea on the face of it. Any discussion? Should Obama applaud and adopt the idea?

This kinda' stuff scares me.

Man arrested after registration snafu...shouting, "Keep the n*gger out!"

Palin plane press reports in that Ms. Palin just took her motorcade, reporters and all, to a pizzeria in Greenville, N.C., to mingle with locals and tune into the debate. She signed autographs and posed for pictures with people who were very surprised to see her walk in — having changed out of her three-inch heels and white suit jacket, she’s blending in with the crowd in a purple Nike track jacket and jeans.

As the debate began, Ms. Palin sat down at a table with Senator Elizabeth Dole, Senator Richard Burr and his wife, Brooke, and Patrick McGrory, the mayor of Charlotte, N.C. (For the record, Ms. Dole eats pizza with a knife and fork.)

Ms. Palin is intermittently watching a television screen overhead, working her BlackBerry with her left hand and taking notes with the right hand.

It's from July 1st, 2008.

Call me maudlin, but it brought a tear to my eye. Judge for yourself.

AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Richard Trumka blasts racism and underlines why workers should vote Obama in 2008. Excerpt of speech at Steelworkers convention.

and this music video was prominently featured just before the feature.

I thought that it was very oddly jingoistic...especially in light of the great unlikelihood that Kid Rock or Dale Earnhart, Jr. have ever served in uniform.

The part with the soccer ball was a "roll your eyes, oh brother" moment for me anyway.

One of the Republican talking points goes that, "Well, this really has its beginnings in the Clinton Administration." Of course, it's weak on the face of it since it happened on Bush's watch and because of idealogues opposed to any form of regulation.

I remembered an article that I read some time ago...that a number of states had recognized the potential problem and acted early, only to have the Treasury Dept. nullify the state regulations.

Here's an article from the Sacramento Bee on January 28th, 2008.

Nicholas Bagley: The federal role in subprime mortgage mess
 
By Nicholas Bagley 
 January 28, 2008
As the federal government scurries to prevent the subprime mortgage crisis from sending the economy into a deep recession, people are asking why it waited so long to intervene. But, in fact, a few years ago an obscure federal agency torpedoed legislation from a handful of states that would have made institutional investors far more chary of buying mortgages that were likely to fail. If the legislation had been permitted to take effect, the crisis we now face would probably look a lot less grim.
Historically, few lenders would give mortgages to borrowers with poor credit. The risk of default was simply too great. During the 1990s, however, major institutional players became more
willing to purchase subprime loans as investments. Those loans would be pooled with similar loans, and slices of that pool were bought and sold as mortgage-backed securities.
The ready flow of capital from the secondary mortgage market led to an explosion in subprime lending. Unscrupulous lenders could reap the greatest profits by issuing subprime loans packed with unfavorable terms and then selling them for cash. A rash of borrowers found themselves saddled with predatory loans they had no hope of paying off.
To combat this surge in predatory lending, some state legislatures decided to stanch the flow of easy credit to subprime lenders. In 2002, Georgia became the first state to tell players in the secondary mortgage market that they might be on the hook if they purchased loans deemed "predatory" under state law. Before, downstream owners of mortgage-backed securities might
see the value of their investments drop, but that was generally the worst that could happen.
Under the Georgia Fair Lending Act, however, players in the secondary mortgage market could face serious liability if they so much as touched a predatory loan.
The secondary market has an extraordinarily difficult time distinguishing predatory loans (bad) from appropriately priced subprime loans (good). Even if the line could be drawn with confidence, the market lacked the resources to gather the necessary information. As the then- General Accounting Office noted in its comprehensive review of predatory lending legislation in January 2004, "even the most stringent efforts cannot uncover some predatory loans."
Inevitably, the secondary mortgage market in Georgia's subprime loans ground to a halt. And that was the point: If buyers couldn't satisfy themselves that the loans weren't predatory, they should take their money elsewhere. Georgia legislators understood that impeding the capital flow to subprime loans might raise the cost of borrowing for some with poor credit but judged that
this was more than balanced by protecting the most vulnerable from the scourge of predatory lending.
New York, New Jersey and New Mexico made the same call and within two years had enacted their own versions of laws exposing downstream owners of loans to fines if they bought predatory loans.
Enter the feds. Some of the biggest players in the secondary mortgage market are national banks, and the states' efforts to curb predatory lending clashed with banks' fervent desire to keep the market rolling. So the banks turned to the Treasury Department's Office of the Comptroller of
the Currency. The primary regulatory responsibility of the OCC is ensuring the safety and soundness of the national bank system, but almost its entire budget comes from fees it imposes on banks, which have the option of incorporating under state law. Put another way, the agency's funding depends on keeping the banks happy. Little surprise, then, that the OCC acted when the
national banks asked it to preempt subprime-mortgage laws such as Georgia's, arguing that they conflicted with federal banking law.
Despite the banks' thin legal arguments, the OCC issued regulations in early 2004 nullifying the state laws as they applied to national banks. The agency reasoned in part that the states just got it wrong. As the then-comptroller explained in a 2003 speech: "We know that it's possible to deal
effectively with predatory lending without putting impediments in the way of those who provide access to legitimate subprime credit."
With the state laws nullified, national banks and their subsidiaries were free to engage in the practices the states were hoping to stamp out. (Indeed, Georgia scuttled its law because it didn't want to give national banks a competitive advantage over its state institutions.)
Facing pressure from subprime lenders and Wall Street, and left without a real chance of holding investors responsible for purchasing ill-advised loans, state legislatures gave up on trying to meaningfully expose downstream buyers to liability for facilitating predatory lending.
In retrospect, the OCC's decision looks wrongheaded. What the agency took to be shortsighted consumer protection laws laden with hidden costs turned out to be prescient market-corrective reforms.
It's impossible to know for sure, but had the state laws been permitted to go into effect, investors would probably be sitting on fewer subprime loans that will never be repaid.
The feds ignored the basic principle that no level of government has a monopoly on good policy.
As federal officials move to clean up the subprime mess, it's worth remembering that they helped to create it.

 While I've taken the article from the Sacramento Bee, I'm sure that the info is available elsewhere. BTW, John Snow was Treasury Sec'y at the time. John D. Hawke, Jr. was Comptroller of the Currency in 2003.
 

Probably a typo, but jeeze...this is The Atlantic.

Short video here, if you can bear to watch his smugness for 3 minutes.

Not a smoking gun on the issue, but certainly indicative.