Alex, first thanks for joining us here this week to discuss the series. I have a number of questions. But the first one comes out of my own reporting on Saddam from the earlier part of this decade. I started reporting on Iraq in earnest in early 2002 in Washington, DC. And that was of course quite a hot house atmosphere, hitting think tank meetings about Iraq, listening to emigres tell their stories, hearing the various advocates of regime change, etc.

What became very obvious was that the terribleness and brutality of Saddam's regime had become overlaid with a coating of clearly fantastic, sometimes bizarre or even campish tales meant to appeal to the lurid fascination of Westerners, particularly Americans. To some degree, virtually everything we heard about Weapons of Mass Destruction in the lead up to the war fell into this category. But I also remember various stories about people being fed to Zoo animals, various kinds of torture (some of which I'm sure happened), etc.

You hint at this at a couple points in your post. But I'm wondering if my impression strikes a chord with you in what you found researching the series and how you went about chiseling away some of this accretion of lurid tales to get to as real a picture as we can ever get of what really happened, who this man and his circle was?

This thought just occures to me:

that "government of the people, by the people, for the people..."

has become

"government of the people, by the corporations, for the corporations..."

 

It didn't take long for the mean to come out. No sooner did the Republican National Convention end, then did the broad brush lies about how Obama would raise taxes on "you" came out. Never mind that only one percent of the people would feel the pinch, McCain had buttons to push. At the time, he was twenty points ahead of Obama. There was no earth - shattering economic crisis then. McCain's insecurity was showing. And of course, that meant that the showmanship had to start. It started with the stunt casting of Sarah Palin as his running mate. My what a feminist our Johnny is! Of course, it pleased McCain's adopted by necessity base that she was against taxes, pro-drilling and pro-life! Well, I'm sure the base enjoys Sarah's endless verbatim repetition of the same stale talking points.

It didn't take long for the mean to come out. No sooner did the Republican National Convention end, then did the broad brush lies about how Obama would raise taxes on "you" came out. Never mind that only one percent of the people would feel the pinch, McCain had buttons to push. At the time, he was twenty points ahead of Obama. There was no earth - shattering economic crisis then. McCain's insecurity was showing. And of course, that meant that the showmanship had to start. It started with the stunt casting of Sarah Palin as his running mate. My what a feminist our Johnny is! Of course, it pleased McCain's adopted by necessity base that she was against taxes, pro-drilling and pro-life! Well, I'm sure the base enjoys Sarah's endless verbatim repetition of the same stale talking points.

Out came Sarah Palin with all the beauty and superficiality of a Miss Alaska runner-up. As she cheerleaders her way around the lower 48, with her Stupid Smile and her script of tired catchphrases, has stoked up the base, some of whom wish that she'd run for the top of the ticket, instead of that tired old man hiding behind her! That brings me to the worm in this apple. The real inner insecurity of John McCain. McCain is competing against a younger, more energetic opponent called Barack Obama, not old Kankles Clinton. He is afraid that when people compare him to Obama, they will see a decrepit old man, devoid of possibities, trying to beat a younger man - who is out to change the world. This makes him desperate. And in an election that's favoring the Democrats, a desperate Republican feels rotten and mean.

I grew up in a southern upper middle-class part of town, and was hauled to church by my parents to a large church filled with other white, upper middle-class people. My parents, at least to the best of my knowledge, have no friends who belong to an ethnic minority. Think of this church as a country club for religious fanatics.

If you think I'm exaggerating, I'm not. It's large enough that its main building can seat over 2,500 people. And yet my parents, when asked how they were doing, remarked, "Oh, we had the black people from church over for lunch today." Now, the very fact that they can make a statement like that and uniquely identify a family is rather disturbing. And after I picked my jaw up off of the floor, I had to inquire, "Do these people have names?"

Now if you asked them directly if they were racists, they would explicitly deny it. But ask questions like, "What do you think about interracial dating?" You'll get answers like, "We don't think that it's a very good idea in most cases, but we think that white-asian marriages are better than white-black marriages." I'm not making this up. They'll deny any racial bias of any kind, but I think that from their statements it's pretty clear that some racial bias exists. You can make arguments for or against my interpretation of this in the comments!

So what do they think of Barack Obama? Well, fortunately, religious extremists aren't prone to the use of four letter words. But if there ever was a time when their use might be considered appropriate, it would be now, and with respect to this candidate, who is, "The most liberal person in the Senate." (How you win such a prize is still a mystery to me, since I don't think one actually exists; but I think that we actually should have a prize, complete with a large plaque, and Josh Marshall's signature of approval.) Their number one reason for voting against him, by their own words, is that he's pro-choice. They value human life, or something like that.

Now when you ask about human lives lost in Iraq -- in the hundreds of thousands by anyone's estimate -- because of a pointless invasion, they admit, yeah, that didn't work out so well. We regret that those people died. But those were actual living people about which there's no ambiguity. You don't need to decide if life begins at conception or at birth or half way between, or when morning sickness finally goes away, because we're talking about killing people who are already out and walking around and attempting to live normal lives.

McCain and Palin seem even more hawkish than Bush these days, as even Bush has reailzed that a lot of his foreign policy ideas have us in a position where, according to one of our top generals, we will never be able to apply the word, "victory." So I look at these two candidates as more than likely causing even more loss of life than the Bush administration. Palin basically said she thought war with Russia would, "possibly," be a good idea; and no one stopped her and said, "You know this would be nuclear, right?" Well, maybe they couldn't, because as a rule now, Republican candidates are prohibited from pronouncing the word "nuclear" correctly. She probably wouldn't have understood.

Yesterday on the phone, I made a rare foray into politics with my mother. She said, and I quote, "The most dangerous place to be in the world is the human womb." Technically, I think your unconditional probability of being aborted, if you're a fetus right now, is around 0.22, which isn't that high. I mean, there are plenty of countries in Africa with HIV/AIDS infection rates higher than that, where you also stand a pretty good chance of getting killed by someone's grab for natural resources. So I think it's inaccurate to say that the womb is the most dangerous place in the world to be, even if you think of a developing fetus as a full human life.

And then there's the issue of torture. The Abu Ghraib pictures came out and Sy Hersh brought out his A+ game to tell us that this was an official interrogation program sanctioned by the Pentagon. So because this is so outrageous and disturbing, I think that, regardless of your political views, you must find the pictures and stories of torture at Abu Ghraib disturbing. I telephone my father and ask what he thinks. His response? "Well, I think it depends on what you mean by torture." Okay, fine, but if people are being put through so much pain and suffering that they end up dead (oops), could we call that torture? Could we agree about that being torture? My family won't. "It depends," is the escape clause always used. 

So the conservative right values life. That's why you should vote for McCain-Palin. Palin values life so much she won't even abort a severely mentally and physically handicapped child who won't have much of a life. (But who knows? Maybe he'll grow up to be President of the United States: The Decider, the most powerful man on our little blue planet. Special needs is by no means an impediment to being President anymore.) But then while claiming to value life, they also think that there's basically no place on this earth that we shouldn't invade and blow up. Well, except Israel. But everywhere else is fair game. And when we invade countries, people die. Lots of them die. This isn't a game. Do you call that value for human life?

So if your primary objective is to support someone who values human life, it seems to me that you should vote for Barack Obama, a man who views violence as a last resort and who genuinely believes in multilateral diplomacy, a guy who actually values people who are out there walking around and trying to do stuff right now.

Two candidates: one group values fetuses, the other values people's right to value fetuses (or not). One group thinks that military action is the solution to everything. (It's like Football has gotten too boring. We need to do something really manly like go out there and kill a bunch of people for no reason at all.) The other views military action as a last resort. In addition to viewing military action as a last resort, Barack Obama also values human life in the sense that he values its quality. Being alive is nice, but being in poverty sucks, especially when you remember that the guy sitting next to you in traffic got a huge tax writeoff for buying his Hummer. And the other candidate thinks that you wouldn't pick lettuce for $50 an hour (a six figure salary).

So from my perspective, Barack Obama values human life a lot more than John McCain. But is that what conservatives are really voting for? Probably not.

Barack Obama is black.

I'd like to call your attention to Frank Rich's op ed column in yesterday's NYT.  It is a must read.  The title is "The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama" and it is a critique of the turn to the ugly in McCain and especially Palin's stump speeches and rallies.  Rich gets to the heart of the matter and the raw and frightening malice that their campaign is releasing.  Here is an excerpt:

........what has pumped up the Weimar-like rage at McCain-Palin rallies, is the violent escalation in rhetoric, especially (though not exclusively) by Palin. Obama “launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist.” He is “palling around with terrorists” (note the plural noun). Obama is “not a man who sees America the way you and I see America.” Wielding a wildly out-of-context Obama quote, Palin slurs him as an enemy of American troops.

By the time McCain asks the crowd “Who is the real Barack Obama?” it’s no surprise that someone cries out “Terrorist!” The rhetorical conflation of Obama with terrorism is complete. It is stoked further by the repeated invocation of Obama’s middle name by surrogates introducing McCain and Palin at these rallies. This sleight of hand at once synchronizes with the poisonous Obama-is-a-Muslim e-mail blasts and shifts the brand of terrorism from Ayers’s Vietnam-era variety to the radical Islamic threats of today.

That’s a far cry from simply accusing Obama of being a guilty-by-association radical leftist. Obama is being branded as a potential killer and an accessory to past attempts at murder. “Barack Obama’s friend tried to kill my family” was how a McCain press release last week packaged the remembrance of a Weather Underground incident from 1970 — when Obama was 8.

We all know what punishment fits the crime of murder, or even potential murder, if the security of post-9/11 America is at stake. We all know how self-appointed “patriotic” martyrs always justify taking the law into their own hands.

Rich's eloquent description of precisely what sentiments Palin and McCain are fostering and encouraging should be heard by as wide an audience as possible.

Just for comparison, a big mac meal costs somewhere just under $5.50 after taxes.

For about $5 you can buy a share of GM
For $4 you can buy wachovia
for $2.50 you can buy National City
For $2 you can but a share of Ford.
On the dollar menu we have fannie mae and freddie mac.

Maybe to revitalize the stockmarket, we can have drivethrough brokerages.  Or 2 for one wednesday deals on US automaker stocks.  Let's get creative.

Does anyone else see an eerie parallel between John McCain’s campaign and Frank Capra’s movie, "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"?

In the movie, Senator Joseph Paine is forced to choose between power and integrity, truth and lies. Rather than lose the support of the corrupt political machine that keeps him in the Senate, Paine chooses power and lies, participating in a smear campaign against Jefferson Smith, the son of his oldest friend.

That decision forces Paine to behave in a way that’s agonizingly discordant with who he truly is. He doesn’t have what it takes to be ruthless; he isn’t a cruel man by nature, he’s just spent so many years settling for Washington’s reasonable compromises that he no longer sees a difference between right and wrong.

But even when he can no longer see what’s right, he can still feel it. His smear campaign fills Paine with such self-loathing that he tries to commit suicide, fails, and then confesses his guilt on the floor of the Senate.

In the same way, I think John McCain isn’t cruel by nature --  he’s just been horse-trading so long in Washington that he’s lost his own internal compass. That’s why he veers wildly from one position to another, and why former supporters say they don’t know him anymore.

I also think that McCain loathes himself for choosing power and lies over integrity and truth.  Like Senator Paine, he's accepted the help of a corrupt political machine -- the very same advisors who smeared him in the last presidential campaign.  McCain allowed them to talk him into a totally unqualified vice-presidential candidate; he let them talk him into a smear campaign against Obama; and he knows full well those actions were dishonorable.  That's why he's sabotaging himself now, making what he unconsciously knows are huge blunders. 

I predict more self-destructive behavior to come...but I also think we’ll see a day when John McCain, like Senator Paine, returns to his principles.  The damage will have been done by then; his career, reputation, and self-respect will be in tatters -- but before the end credits roll, I think John McCain will retrieve his honor.

Reuters reports the leadership has coordinated on vague plans.

One key problem with the goverment-led bailout is the failure to issue bonds, and for the governments to propose 100% bailouts.

We're asked to believe this approach would work.

However, the error is for the governments to offer only a small portion of the bailout -- say 20% -- and then offer the 80% through bonds.

Wall Street should be forced to provide the 80%. A failure of the governments to get other backers suggests the 100% bailout plan focuses on speed, not in generating support.

There are some users that are making TPM not a very productive place for me.

After reading a not particularly interesting New York Times article about the Bradley Effect I decided to take another look at an older FiveThirtyEight article covering the same subject and using democratic primary data to come to the conclusion that the Bradley Effect may now actually be the Yeldarb Effect. The FiveThirtyEight article uses data from "31 states in which at least three separate polls were released within 14 days of that state's primary or caucus" comparing the final Pollster.com trend line to the actual voting data. They conclude (well, the numbers conclude) that Obama outperformed the trend line by an average of 3.3 points.

Since it's a beautiful windy day outside I decided to sit at my computer and further manipulate the data and I found a couple things that probably don't mean much, but I think are interesting nonetheless. PPB = percent of state's population (or average of percentages for that a specific category) that is black from 2006 Census. All variance numbers are the number by which Obama outperformed the Pollster.com trend line.

PPB         Variance

19.9 +              11.2

10 - 19.8           1.19

0 - 9.9                 0.5

Now the confounding issue with the above little table is that out of the 7 states with a PPB of 19.9% or more, 4 have open primaries (i.e., any party affiliation can vote at any primary). And if we look at this little table:

Primary Type     Variance     PPB

open                         8.27             17.8

closed                       2.01             10.6

closed/semi              0.68             10.6

We see that the open primaries (10 states) in general had a much higher favorable Obama variance than the closed (10 states) or closed/semi (semi-open/semi-closed - 30 states) primaries. But at the same time, we have the confounding issue of the states with open primaries, on average, having a much larger PPB.

I like just looking at the number best: numbers are nice and clean and simple. But if you want to try and actually interpret the numbers things can get a bit hairy:

Why is the +Obama variance so high in states with high PPB?

    Pollsters are not reaching enough black voters...

    The open primary effect is skewing the results...

    Black-voters are turning out in unexpectedly high numbers...

    Black voters in these states lie to pollsters about voting for the black candidate...

    White voters in these states lie to pollsters about voting for the white candidate...

Why is the +Obama variance so high in states with open primaries?

    Same reasons as above...

    Republican meddling...

    Unsure republicans having a preference for Obama...

    Unsure republicans having a dislike for Clinton...

What effect did having a female running mate have on the Bradley/Yeldarb Effect?

And finally, what does any of this mean for 11/4? Will we actually see a Bradley Effect in the general once more republicans are thrown into the fray? Or will we simply see a continuation of the democratic primary patterns? What effect will voter intimidation/suppression/confusion have on the effects that may already be effecting things? So many questions. So many permutations. And really, who the hell knows.

Misc notes: I used 19.9 to start the highest PPB category because Virginia was at the cusp with 19.9 as of 2006 and I decided to drawing the line at 19.9 is about as meaningful as drawing it at 20. I did not use Iowa in any "Primary Type" data because I'm not really sure were it belongs. I did use the other 30 states that FiveThirtyEight had data for.

"America will rise from the ashes of the Bushes."
Hilary today in Scranton.

Amazing. I've never liked her as much as I have since the DNC. She is so much better than Bill right now, her tone is dead on, she has completely come into her own and I am so glad that she is my Senator. That always felt weird before, sort of out of place, but not anymore.

Further, I now believe she will truly come into her own as a Senate leader during an Obama Biden Administration. She will be able to be a most effective leader in her own right for the first time. She has proven her integrity, and interestingly, has finally left her husband in the shadows behind HER.

Words I thought I'd never say, but now I feel with my whole heart:
God Bless Hilary Clinton.
Thank you, Hilary.
Thank you.

McClatchy has an excellent article about Fannie, Freddie and the Community Reinvestment Act (“

Jack Kelly of the Post-gazette has just published this article regarding the relationship between Ayers and Obama. 
I believe it's misleading, void of facts, full of omissions.  But maybe I'm missing something.   If anyone has been following this issue, could you help set the record straight?
I'd like to email Jack the facts.  Here's his published email address if you'd like to email him.    
jkelly@post-gazette.com

Yes, John Lewis is black, George Wallace was a racist, and Obama is half Kenyan.  But I think there's a serious misreading of Lewis's point.  Lewis isn't playing any "race card" at all, despite how we tend to see Lewis and Wallace.  He's simply responding, at a gut level, as one who's been there while the flames have been fanned high and terrible violence and assassinations have taken place.  There's a lot of hate, anger, and basic misinformation that's permeating the Palin/McCain rallies right now (it was certainly present at the GOP convention, in my opinion as well), and Lewis is making pretty much the same observation that David Gergen (another Southerner) and others have been making:  anger is being stoked and something terrible might come of it.

While race plays some part in some people's fear, their sense that Obama's a terrorist, a Muslim, or, as that one very angry man said the other day at the rally, a "socialist." (God Forbid).  These guys have all sorts of wierd reasons why they're bent out of shape. 

So, I don't think anyone's playing the race card; compared to previous elections (1968, 1988) I think that race is pretty muted, and that's why McCain is laying off (to some extent) of the Wright controversy.   Lewis is flagging the vitriolic mood of the events as dangerous, and something that McCain/Palin should take some responsibility for.  Period.

I've been thinking about the current adminstration's response to the current financial crisis. I'm no economic or financial expert, but I'm hearing from the GOP side that we have a situation that was caused by giving high-risk loans to banks, institutions and/or people that had little or no collateral to back up those loans.

Is it just my misunderstanding of these complex issues, or did the Bush/Paulson plan basically center around giving high-risk taxpayer-funded loans, to banks, institutions and/or people that have little or no collateral to back them up?
Am I missing something here?

Wayne Barrett, in Wednesday's Village Voice, had a rather long article called The Book Of Sarah Palin.  While I found parts of it interesting, none of it really meade me sit up and pay attention.  Until I got to the last page, that is.

It would appear, should anyone want to do a little more digging, that Sarah could have a new scandal on her hands.  A scandal that would have repercussions far more serious than a slap on the wrist from the Alaskan legislature.

The speculation is that the Palin's may well have pulled a Ted Stevens. That contractors who worked on the Wasilla Sports Complex, may have also provided supplies, materials and labor to build the Palin's $550,000 home, which was completed about the same time as the sports complex.

Here is the relevant passage:

Todd Palin told Fox News that he built the two-story, 3,450-square-foot, four-bedroom, four-bath, wood house himself, with the help of contractors he described as "buddies." As mayor, Sarah Palin blocked an effort to require the filing of building permits in the wide-open city, and there is no public record of who the "buddies" were. The house was built very near the complex, on a site whose city purchase led to years of unsuccessful litigation and, now, $1.3 million in additional costs, with a law firm that's also donated to Palin collecting costly fees from the city.

Dorwin and Joanne Smith, the principals of complex subcontractor DJ Excavation & Development, have donated $7,100 to Palin and her allied candidate Charlie Fannon (Joanne is a Palin appointee on the state Board of Nursing). Sheldon Ewing, who owns another complex subcontractor, Weld Air, has donated $1,300, and PN&D, an engineering firm on the complex, has contributed $699.

Ewing was one of the few sports-complex contractors, aside from Spenard, willing to address the question of whether he worked on the house as well, but he had little to say: "I doubt that it occurred, but if it did indirectly, how would I know anyhow?" The odd timing of Palin's house construction—it was completed two months before she left City Hall and while she and Todd Palin were campaigning statewide for the first time—raises questions, especially considering its synergy with the complex.

http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-10-08/news/the-book-of-sarah/5

Now, I doubt that anything will come of this prior to the election, although it would be nice if some of the major outlets would pick it up. 

But even if we can get any traction before the election or not, we can only hope that Alaskans make something out of it.  At laest that way, it may disuade Palin from rearing her head in 2012 or 2016.

Ah, the old days, when we had Discussion Tables requiring votes to get on the board. We kind of ignored the blogs, since they often had spam and invective. All we have are unmoderated blog posts, and certain people have been getting nasty regarding certain others, and some continue to complain about the company here. (It's not clear to me what reward there is in being unpopular, except for the troll-like enjoyment of seeing any reaction.) Some of us are constant gadflies, always bringing a contrary viewpoint to our favorite topics, and that's a fine tradition. Some look for data to counter a point, and some look for data to confirm a point. Some raise an argument that needs more attention. Some raise an issue not getting any attention. But it doesn't help the site or our politics to attack others directly, in the blog list.

hey guys, i'm following your debate from austria, europe, and appreciate your site very much. but pls don't exaggerate on what that old lady said. there are always some people completely exaggerating in their fears. so don't do alike!!!
best wishes from good old europe
karl

Forget the predatory lenders, Wall Street sharks and their government enablers: It all started with George Bailey. Yes, that George Bailey -- the hero of Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life," (...) George Bailey was actually a pretty savvy businessman. And it's even easier to forget the precise nature of his business: putting the downscale families of Bedford Falls into homes they couldn't quite afford to buy. This is the substance of the great war between Bailey and Lionel Barrymore's Mr. Potter, the richest, meanest man in Bedford Falls.(...) "They had to wait and save their money before they even ought to think of a decent home. Wait? . . . Do you know how long it takes a working man to save five thousand dollars?" (...)"It's a Wonderful Life" debuted in 1946, more than a decade after Franklin D. Roosevelt's National Housing Act kicked off a half-century of federal policymaking aimed at making it dramatically easier for working-class Americans to buy and keep their homes.(...) It offered the average American something no country on Earth had ever offered its citizens before -- the promise of an equality rooted in ownership, a citizenship rooted in self-sufficiency and an entrepreneurial spirit rooted in security. Ross Douthat - Washington Post
Most important, in Roubini’s opinion, is to realize that the problem is deeper than the housing crisis. “Reckless people have deluded themselves that this was a subprime crisis,” he told me. “But we have problems with credit-card debt, student-loan debt, auto loans, commercial real estate loans, home-equity loans, corporate debt and loans that financed leveraged buyouts.” All of these forms of debt, he argues, suffer from some or all of the same traits that first surfaced in the housing market: shoddy underwriting, securitization, negligence on the part of the credit-rating agencies and lax government oversight. “We have a subprime financial system,” he said, “not a subprime mortgage market.” Nouriel Roubini - NYT
The nuclear physicist Leo Szilard once remarked that the fall of the Soviet system would eventually lead to the fall of the American system. He said that in a two-element structure the interrelationship and interdependence are such that the one cannot survive without the other.(...) Without the enemy, the machinery of power begins to race, with nothing to resist it; megalomania sets in. William Pfaff
Sen. Barack Obama has taken a commanding lead in the race for president not because of any dramatic gesture, but because of a signature political trait: his caution. The nation's economic crisis triggered Obama's sharp rise in what had been a tight race. But Obama hasn't tried to seize the kind of central, national leadership position for which Sen. John McCain grasped, and fell short. Nor has he been touting — Bill Clinton-style — a highly detailed plan for what he'll do the moment he takes office. The result is that while virtually all observers agree that he has benefited from the crisis, his allies and critics alike remain a bit hazy on what exactly he would do if he takes office Jan. 20, 2009. Ben Smith - Politico

The idea or thread that holds the above quotes together is that the legendary prosperity of the American middle class, their massive home ownership and dizzying consumption have long been based on easy credit, that with the end of the cold war, America's credit binge went out of control, that the days of easy credit have just ended with an enormous bang or thud and that if Barack Obama, probably the next president of USA, has any specific ideas about what to do about the whole thing, he is playing his cards very close to his chest, indeed.

The reference to the cold war is very relevant, in my opinion.

If a worldwide banking meltdown, such as we are experiencing right now, had occurred in the 1960s or 70s, the large soviet backed, communist parties of France and Italy, and their trade unions, would have been out in the streets in force rapidly destabilizing those countries: the reaction in Asia, Africa and Latin America might have been even more explosive. Certainly the risk of strengthening such political movements would have been a conscious restraining factor for regulators all over the capitalist world. Those parties and those unions no longer exist. At the end of the cold war, as William Pfaff writes, "without the enemy, the machinery of power begins to race, with nothing to resist it; megalomania sets in."

With this crisis the era of easy private credit is surely drawing to a close and we will see a revival of traditional, conservative, lending practices. This means, for those too young to remember, that to get money you will have to already have money. Nouriel Roubini gives a short list of things that you will find yourself paying up front for besides a house: anything you usually pay for with a credit-card, or a college education, or an automobile, etc.

As you look at the list of things that you will have to save up to buy, James Stewart's, Charles Bailey voice may echo in your ear, "Do you know how long it takes a working man to save five thousand dollars?" In 1946 you could buy a house with five thousand dollars, nowadays you can't buy very much with that sum, but it is still hard for anyone on minimum wage, or not so minimum wage, to save five thousand dollars.

A great many people are going to discover for the first time in their lives that they are poor and they are going to resent it.

Many more people than today are going to feel bitter and in Barack Obama's prescient phrase, "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations”. As another major new voice in American politics might add, "you betcha".

With nothing to threaten it, the system has set out to destroy itself. Now the danger to our system is right wing populism not socialism. Socialism or at least some version of a Scandinavian social democracy is the only way to stabilize this situation and stability is the most truly conservative of values.

This ultra-right, Le Pen-like populist anger is going to sweep America and make an already horrible situation much worse, unless very proactive, openly social democratic, anti-poverty programs are put quickly into place: universal, free health care, grants, not loans, for higher education, government sponsored, high quality subsidized rental housing with option to buy, etc. And make no mistake, this means cutting back defense spending, closing tax havens and raising taxes on the very rich and moving the money into education, health and infrastructure... right away.

Nothing original here, the plans are already drawn up, all you have to do is translate them from Swedish.

The wing nuts are accusing Barack Obama of being a "socialist radical", oh, but were it true.

I think he should quickly announce his future cabinet choices and give a detailed outline of the legislation he aims to pass in his first hundred days.

If Obama doesn't move strongly with vigorous social democratic measures to stabilize the situation of America's seething masses of nouveaux pauvres, he will simply be fattening frogs for snakes... keeping the Oval Office chair warm for Sarah Palin or even worse in 2012.

http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/

The Obama campaign made a serious error with their negative campaign ads. There has been extensive blogging about the MSM creating a false sense of  "balance" by equating Obama's ad and video about the Keating 5 with McCain's ads about the "Ayers connection". This is because the blogs have been focusing on the content of the ads. The MSM, on the other hand, have been putting the focus on the style of the ads. Look at any report on CNN. Both ads are shown side by side or one after the other. But the commentator is usually talking over the ads, making the presentation of the ads purely visual. No content, no substance. So what we as viewers are left with is two ads, both dark, somber, and meant to be scary. Imagine now if the Obama ad was done by Jon Stewart's writers, or the guys at JibJab. Imagine putting an ad made of cut-out animation, singing and dancing about the Keating 5, next to one of McCain's "Oooooh, scaaaarrryy" ads. Now imagine trying to say that they were the same. Think anyone would buy it? Same content. Different package. We know that the electorate has a large percentage of "low information voters". People who gravitate to anything that makes them go "ooooh, shiiinnnyy". Let's start attracting those voters, instead of putting them off with gloom and doom.

A hard look at reality, and what you should do
October 10th, 2008, 10:43pm by Sam Wang

I’ve noticed a lot of continued speculation about the Presidential race. You ask about the Bradley effect, voter purges, and other detailed topics. It’s all over the comments section, both here and on other sites.

As immersed as I am in the analysis, I am only now noticing that many of you are taking a little time to adapt to current conditions. This post is directed at those of you who are rooting for one side - Democrats and Republicans alike. It is time for you to take a good, hard look at what is going on. Whatever your personal preference may be, a Democratic sweep is coming. The storm is about to make landfall, and we know where. The question is what you should do about it.