Because of Technical problems, I moved the site to a new Blog.

The Real Plumbers of Ohio, an editorial by Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman in today’s New York Times, gives an excellent review of the current state of the US economy and the effect on real income by the majority of Americans. Among other things, he notes that McCain is using the classic Republican winning strategy of silent majority -- appealing to white males who don’t want social change.

McCain has made Joe the Plumber “the centerpiece of his attack on Mr. Obama’s economic proposals.” By the way, it turns out that Joe Wurzelbacher is not really a plumber and makes far less that $250K per year. He would get a big tax break under Obama’s plan, but will vote for McCain. I am totally baffled by his thinking.

Turns out that Ohio’s plumbers have done terribly under the Bush administration. Their real incomes have fallen in the last eight years. Equally problematic, they have had increasing problems getting health insurance. Lately, things have gone even further downhill for them.

McCain says that the middle class under Obama’s plans would reap economic disaster. Joe the Plumber obviously believed it. Krugman sums it up, “I don’t want to suggest that everyone would be better off under the Obama tax plan. Joe the plumber would almost certainly be better off, but Richie the hedge fund manager would take a serious hit.”

The GOP has cynically gotten many to believe the lie that they are the party of the working class when it could not be further from the truth. I could not believe it in 2004 when Ohio, which had suffered badly under the Bush administration, managed to vote for him and thereby sending us into four more years of disaster. I fear they may do it again. Can they really be that stupid? Or is it the water?

The Republicans are now accusing Obama of being a socialist. (Oh my God, not one of those!) "It's kind of hard to figure out why. Warren Buffet endorsed me. Colin Powell endorsed me", the Raleigh News Observer reported. He also noted that, "John McCain thinks giving folks a tax break is socialism. I call it opportunity."

The Kansas City Star reported that Obama takes on taxes, tough times in KC speech. They reported that he has edged out McCain in local polls lately. (While that may be true in Missouri, it is not in my old home state of Kansas.)

Obama’s message was that his and not McCain’s was the campaign of values. “Obama’s message Saturday was all taxes and economy. Casting the tax debate as a ‘values’ issue, Obama said his Republican opponent is ‘out of touch’ for equating welfare with the Illinois senator’s plan to cut taxes for middle-class families. ... ‘That’s right, Missouri — John McCain is so out of touch with the struggles you are facing that he must be the first politician in history to call a tax cut for working people ‘welfare.’”

If you thought 2000 election was turbulent, I am beginning to think this one will be worse. Both parties have already gone to court.

Bloomberg reports that both parties have litigation plans to protest the election. Obama Assembles U.S.'s `Largest Law Firm' to Monitor Election notes that both are assembling large number of lawyers to protest the election a la 2000 if it is close. One Ohio case has gotten to the Supreme Court already where a Republican challenge on voter registration was dismissed. The article points out a number of similar court cases and the potential for far more.

The McCain campaign has made exaggerated claims of “voter fraud” and inferred that Obama was involved. FactCheck has done a good job sorting the issue out.

The bottom line according to FactCheck is that some number of the well over one million records submitted by ACORN, the organization that is being blamed for fraud, were manufactured by the canvassers, but this was fraud against ACORN; not voter fraud. On the other hand, FactCheck notes that Obama has had more involvement with the organization than he noted in his public comments.

Anyone watching Meet the Press yesterday saw Colin Powell break with his party and endorse Obama. Many thought Powell would be the first African American to run for president. His long military career and service to the US make his endorsement important; far more so than the large group of military leaders that already endorse Obama. To borrow the popular phrase, this is huge.

At this point in 2004, it looked like John Kerry would win. Ohio and Florida were close, but it looked like the electoral college votes were there. It is the same situation this year as well. A friend sent me this.

What if the circumstances were flipped?

What if John McCain was a former president of the Harvard Law Review?

What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?

What if McCain was still married to his first wife? What if Obama cheated on his first wife while they were married and then left her because she was disfigured in a car accident?

What if Michelle Obama not only became addicted to pain killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization? What if Cindy McCain graduated from Princeton?

What if Obama were a member of the Keating-5?

What if McCain were a charismatic, inspiring and eloquent speaker?

What if Obama were angry, humorless and patronizing?

What if Obama had five children? What if one of them was an unwed teenager with a boyfriend that had an expletive-filled MySpace page?

If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are? Would Obama even be running?

This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another.

Here's the problem statement:

Global financial meltdown, historic national debt, unemployment going through the roof, costly wars on two fronts with unknown futures, loose nukes in Pakistan, stumbling health care, Medicare and social security insolvency, global energy crisis, global climate change and the accompanying natural disasters, and a catastrophic loss of credibility and trust in the eyes of the world.

Here are your choices:

Educational Background:

Obama: Columbia University - B.A. Political Science with a Specialization in International Relations. Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude

Biden: University of Delaware - B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science. Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)

vs.

McCain: United States Naval Academy - Class rank: 894 of 899

Palin: Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in Journalism (and a minor in Wicca)*

Which team would you hire?

Not much to say today except the ugly head of racism still is there. As it gets clearer than McCain’s chances are dimming, it get even uglier and it seems to be emanating from the GOP. I urge everybody to real The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama by Frank Rich. These are ugly time made far uglier by bigots, racists, neo-fascists, and those who have either forgotten or never knew what this country was all about.

I suspect most of us watched the second debate. Tom Brokaw and I are the same age and I thought he was probably to old to be the moderator. The tweets about him were less than flattering. John McCain is three years older than Brokaw and I. He should not be president and to my mind proved it once again.

A friend of mine who hails from Texas told me recently that Bush had ruined Texas when he was governor and now has ruined the US as president. Well, I think he may have been conservative. Bush may have ruined the world, at least for now. As Bob Herbert points out in The Mask Slips, the gang that cannot shoot straight has been terrible at governing and great at persuading folks to vote against their own self interest. We won’t know until probably November 5th whether they have done it once again.

In an earlier entry, I said that McCain wanted to be president so badly that he compromised his personal honor, which I think showed both a lack of integrity and bad judgment on his part. It is matched by his bad judgment in selecting Palin as his running mate. He has allowed the slime machine to run full tilt. Obama has remained somewhat cool under fire, which in the end may serve him well.

The slime machine has tried to paint Obama as a radical, a moslem, and who knows what else. The press has picked up on it so it gets some amplification. This plays into covert racism and lets people use an alternative explanation for their willingness to vote for McCain even when doing so is against their own self interest. An excellent article by George Packer in the New Yorker, THE HARDEST VOTE, does an excellent job of reporting on this phenomenon and how both parties have failed to consider or convince the white, lower middle class.

Obama has always been careful to be respectful in his tone towards McCain even when the same has not been true in return. (McCain’s belittling comment about “that one” in the last debate is a good example.)

The recent personal attacks on Obama seem even to have affected McCain who has admonished some of his supporters for their attacks. Obama has always paid tribute to McCain’s military service, but there have been lingering questions about it just below the surface from his days at the Naval Academy where he finished near the bottom of his class to his service in Vietnam. The Republican’s have not been so respectful of military service from their questions about McGovern to Bob Kerrey to John Kerry have shown.

John Kerry was Swift Boated with doubts about his service record in Vietnam. It possibly lead to his defeat. Bob Kerrey, Congressional Medal of Honor winner, probably did not run for president because of his own fears of such unscrupulous attacks. The democrats have traditionally refrained from attacks on their opponent’s military service. But should they when there may be real questions?

McCain was somehow involved in the terrible fire onboard the USS Forestal, but the Obama campaign and most of the press have not brought it up. An article in the CQ Politics, McCain Camp Ignores Questions About Candidate’s Military Record, points out that there may be an issue here that has more substance than the articles in 2004 on Kerry’s service. One has to wonder if this is the reason for McCain’s call for more civility lest the media really picks up on this episode in his military career?

Sarah Palin continues to hit the road while a report indicates that she abused her power as governor when she pressured officials to fire a state trooper who was her ex brother-in-law. I suspect this will continue to fester in the remaining days of the campaign.

I will post some thoughts about the electoral college on the Polling Information site soon. Obama is now close in the polls, at least, to a win.

Still, it could have been worse. The Dow for example was only down 363.35 points (after counting final trades) having recovered from a loss of around 800 points at one point. A Canadian trader said it best, “Today is watching the sky fall.”

It was not just the US and Canada that were way off, other countries were hit still \worse. Bloomberg reported that the CAC 40, consisting of 40 companies on the Paris Bourse, was off 9% as was one Dutch index (AEX).

I have seen no reports of someone jumping from a high window as happen in the great depression; however, I would not stand for long on the sidewalks. We may be lucky if we don't refer to that in the future as the near great depression.

The Fed has opened the doors to the major banks to expand the money available because banks are increasingly unwilling to lend each other funds. Some European banks did the same. Countries around the world are being affected as the "American Diseases" spreads. The real fear is asset deflation and there are signs that it is happening as corporations scurry for infusion of capital to prop themselves up.

On the bank front, the news is that the Bank of America announced a dividend cut and plans to sell $10 billion in stock to raise capital. Citigroup and Wells Fargo agreed to try to sort things out. It is not just banks that are in trouble. GE was given a line by Warren Buffet recently.

How is the related to politics? Well, I just told two fund raisers on the phone to forget it. In the meanwhile, John McCain has asked, "Who Is the Real Barack Obama?" Having no issues left, slime is all that he has to through into the political dialog. Sen McCain has proven adept at slime, lies, and distortion.

Somehow the economic news today, which is the result of over seven years of mismanagement by the Republicans and which McCain has indicated would be is economic approach as well, make me worry for my country even more. To my Republican friends few of whom will still speak to me, your party is dangerous to you own pocket books too. If you are not scared, you should be.

Tomorrow is going to be an interesting day. It will almost be fun to watch the two candidates debate. That said, this is not a sporting event. This is how you and I eat.

Rescue the Rescue, the title of Paul Friedman's editorial today, does a nice job of laying out the issues. To him, this is the scariest time in his life for the simple reason that it is "own failure to regulate our own financial system and to legislate the proper remedy that is doing us in." As I do, I think we have a lot of people who are clueless about economics pushing the representatives who don't know any more about economics to make unsound decisions so they will be reelected in November. Friedman says:

I’ve always believed that America’s government was a unique political system — one designed by geniuses so that it could be run by idiots. I was wrong. No system can be smart enough to survive this level of incompetence and recklessness by the people charged to run it.

He goes on to note that even if you do not own equities and bonds directly, you do depend on the financial markets for everything from your pension to loan on your car to your town's airport and sewers.

I totally understand the resentment against Wall Street titans bringing home $60 million bonuses. But when the credit system is imperiled, as it is now, you have to focus on saving the system, even if it means bailing out people who don’t deserve it. Otherwise, you’re saying: I’m going to hold my breath until that Wall Street fat cat turns blue. But he’s not going to turn blue; you are, or we all are. We have to get this right.

It is time for our representatives to to what they are paid to do. What is that since most of them seem to think it is to get reelected so they can go to fancy restaurants with lobbyist? It is to do the right thing for our country even if it is the wrong them for them politically. Where did all the true patriots go?

Slow Rise for a New Era, an editorial in today's Washington Post by Harold Meyerson, goes on from where Friedman left off. He surmises that this is the death nell of what is in my view an insane recapitulation of the tragedy of the commons: "that the market can do no wrong and the government no right ... ."

He is less blunt about it than Friedman, but he too believes that the Republican's solutions to this problem "were so wide of the mark that they can be understood only as faith-based solutions to empirical problems. " Lowering capital gains taxes isn't going to fix it.

Just what was proposed in the bill defeated on Monday? Well, it did the following:

• Created a possible equity stake in some banks in return for the public saving them.
• Restricted Wall Street CEO pay.
• Allowed for a stock-transaction tax to cover any government losses after five years

Alas, we will end up no matter what happens with only three really big banks: Citigroup (1), Bank of America (2), and JP Morgan Chase (3). (This begs the question of ING, UBS, Royal Bank of Scotland (Citizens) and HBSC which have a large presence in the US and could be positioned to increase their market share given the crisis.). He believes that this will mean tighter controls over the remaining banks because of the potential for a monopoly.

The Senate will vote later today if all goes according to plan.

"Where Will the Money Come From?" by Paul Krugman explains how a well designed rescue plan could work and not require outside funds or even tax revenue in the beginning. This is an elaboration on a post he made ten days ago that explains how the "Paulson plan would actually move money in a circle. No outside financing would be needed."It is effectively a debt for equity swap of the kind the Swedish used to rescue their system in 1992. It is too bad congress hasn't stopped talking long enough to listen to someone who understood economics thereby proving what I have long suspected about many of them.

Obama has far more cash on hand than McCain does. This chart from the Center for Responsive Politics (used with permission) shows that as of 21 Sept, Obama had more than twice as much cash.

I hate to say it, but the election season has turned into financial disaster season. This is not surprising given the gross mismanagement of the economy during the Bush administration, which may well have produced the biggest financial problems in 80 years. ultra conservative Republicans and radical left Democrats have managed, for now, to turn the US economy into a lab to see if economic theory and models are right. Wish they had resisted the temptation.

David Brooks in his editorial today, Revolt of the Nihilists, does a nice job of pointing out how different this generation of politicians has differed from those in the 1930 when faced with a similar situation. They worked hard to restore confidence. It is worth reading what Roosevelt had to say in his first inaugural address.

I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impel. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

Let us hope it doesn't get as bad this time. As Brooks notes, this time we do not seem to have the great leaders.

This generation of political leaders is confronting a similar situation, and, so far, they have failed utterly and catastrophically to project any sense of authority, to give the world any reason to believe that this country is being governed. Instead, by rejecting the rescue package on Monday, they have made the psychological climate much worse.

I certainly agree with him that Bush and McCain have failed the test. Not sure about Obama. He has urged calm and caution, which is a good first step. Roosevelt was vague about what he would do about the economy if elected and Obama has tended to do the same. Roosevelt came from the most elite families of his day. Obama comes from immigrant and middle western stock. Still, Obama has, like Roosevelt did, a keen intelligence and a first rate mind. He also can be quite eloquent. In the meanwhile, let us hope Congress does get their act together and stop acting like idiots.

Bob Herbert says, "I’m not holding my breath, but I would like to see the self-proclaimed conservative, small government, anti-regulation, free-market zealots step up and take responsibility for wrecking the American economy and bringing about the worst financial crisis since the Depression." I think that sums it up well. His editorial is worth a read by any sober person. Will the politicians on both sides see the light in time?

John Cole in his BLOG makes an interesting observation that McCain did an incredible flip flop yesterday. First he he took credit for the bailout and blasted Obama for "staying on the sidelines". Then after the bailout failed, he blasted Obama for infusing "unnecessary partisanship" into the issue. What a crock of you know what! For a humorous view of this, see Tom Toles cartoon for today.

FactCheck notes that both campaigns have stretched the truth (or simply lied) in this campaign. They also have an article on the erroneous claims in the debate last Friday. Both sides get hit.

While most polls show Obama up, I am going to wait awhile to look at polls again and the election maps, which have not changed. The consensus is things are too fluid.

We went to Washington, DC, last Friday and just got home a short time ago. Maybe we should have done more there to persuade Congress to pass the rescue plan. Paul Krugman posted a note to his blog a short time ago, OK, we are a banana republic. The markets went down 777 points, the largest drop since October, 1987.

l live on retirement funds, some of which are in equities. No more travel for us for some time, I am sure. If you are working, don't feel you are better off. If there is a real credit crunch, which many predict, you may well be in for an extended hard time as well. For example, my old friends in higher education may see a big drop in enrollment when parents can no longer afford tuition, as happened to my mother in 1929.

I was born in 1939 and my parents lived through the depression. Sometimes the choice was food or take a bus. They never forgot that experience. I guess we need to relearn it every 80 years.

On the way home, we heard that now Wachovia, the 4th or 5th largest bank in the US, is in trouble and it appears that Citigroup has now bought the core business. On 18 Sept, Wachovia was trying to buy Morgan Stanley. Citigroup is the largest US bank. Hope we don't read about them going belly up in the next eleven days.

Asset deflation is the big worry for sane economists. I leave out those remaining supply side economists whose ideas seem to need to be debunked every 20 years as the market tanks. It may well be underway and that spells serious trouble.

I don't care whether it was Republicans, as many now indicate, or liberal Democrats that messed up here, I want them fired. No more idiots at the helm.

Bush has so messed up our country that he should be held accountable as well. How about docking his retirement pay the $7 trillion that he and his henchmen will likely run up in debt over their eight years in office. I want to start a pool on how many people he will pardon the last week as president? Any takers?

I am going to go have a drink while I can still afford good gin.

There are lots of things that should not happen in an election year and having a major crisis is one of them. If he is elected, I hope that David Brooks is right about McCain because if he is not the US will decline further than it has under the incompetent President Bush.

McCain's errors of judgement have continued to multiply. His behavior in this crisis is inexcusable. He has only made things far worse by his grand standing. Obama has acted presidential and constructively while McCain has behaved like Chicken Little. The Democrats in the House and Senate have worked effectively with the administration to try to overcome the impasse while the House Republicans have revolted.

There is so much uncertainty as I write this that I simply am at a loss to know where things are going. Will they debate tonight? If McCain is a no show, will Obama be willing or able to go on stage as planned? Will they find some workable solution to an impasse that was caused by the president's own party in the House? Will another major financial institution fail while the Republican's in the House work against their own party?

Meanwhile, Washington Mutual, the largest thrift in the country, was taken over by the Feds and sold to JPMorgan. When you have seven years of totally incompetent presidential management of the country, you get this kind of disaster. I wish I could believe that McCain would, as Brooks implies, be a better president than he has been a candidate. His choice of Palin as his running mate tells me that Brooks is wrong and, if anything, McCain would be worse.

Looks like the financial mess that eclipsed the election campaign, well sort of eclipsed, is now nearing a bipartisan agreement. Cross your fingers (and toes.) Time will tell what this is all about. As the article in the New York Times notes, "After the overnight drafting efforts on both sides of Capitol Hill — with pizza on the House side, and Thai food in the Senate — Democratic officials said they had completed a unified draft of a bill. (Negotiations between the House and the Senate can be nearly as complicated as negotiations between Democrats and Republicans.)" At a minimum, we know something about how the two houses differ in terms of diet.

The Status of debate remains uncertain. The difference between the two candidates was startling, to say the least. After Obama called McCain suggesting that they issue a joint statement and thinking they had an agreement, McCain dropped a bomb shell with a press conference by suggesting that the debate be postponed.

Obama came right back saying no, it was important for the American people to hear the difference between the two candidates on this critical issue. Obama noted, “It is my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who, in approximately 40 days, will be responsible for dealing with this mess, It is going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once.”

Majority Leader Reid summed it up best when he urged the candidates to stay away and said, “We need leadership, not a photo op,” Do I smell grand standing? Is there a walking and chewing gum issue here? The voting public needs to know.

I have decided that I am totally out of touch with the American voter. To me, Obama has performed better than McCain throughout this mess. I am not alone, even normally conservative commentators seem to share my view. What has the voting public concluded? Well, Obama is down and McCain is up in the daily tracking poll.

Want to see how out of touch Gov Palin is, watch this video of an interview with Katie Couric. Given McCain's age and health history, f you are not worried you should be.

Of course if you watch a lot of TV, Fact Check reports you may have seen the McCain ad that says "'McCain and his congressional allies led' on the financial crisis while Obama was 'mum.'" Fact Check goes on to say that is simply not true.

McCain/Palin fail to note that Obama has made several statements including one last spring that detailed his approach. "The 'mum' quote is from a Sept. 20 Washington Times story, which went on to say Obama did 'not to divulge details of his recovery plan ... fearing it would stir Wall Street jitters.' The ad falsely says that Obama stayed quiet because 'no one knows what to do.'" Finally, they repeat the higher taxes claim. You tell a lie often enough and people will believe it.

If you do nothing else, read George Will's Sept 23 editorial in the Washington Post. McCain's response to the financial crisis convinced me that he is not of presidential caliber. When a conservative like Will comes to the same conclusion, it is something worth noting. Personally, I think Obama's response was better than Will gives him credit for, but he concludes:

Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

McCain has made a number of serious errors in judgment that in my mind make him unsuitable for the presidency. His agreeing to personal attacks of the most vicious kind with no relation to the truth are the worst and it was seen once again in his attack on Cox, the Chairman of the SEC. His ludicrous choice of Palin, who has no qualifications for high national office, was certainly another. His repeated errors in judgment in foreign affairs are still another. This was the final straw for anyone with a willingness to look at the issues.

This post is about prejudice -- pure simple prejudice.The worst sort of prejudice and how a candidate can use it to his advantage. I keep wondering how McCain can be so close to Obama in the election when everything says it should be a landslide for the Democrats. Here, in all its sordid puffery, is the the monster that makes it so.

A good friend sent me a wonderful post, This is Your Nation on White Privilege by Tim Wise. (Alas, this is not a public document. You have to get free access to it by registering on the site.) In a semi-satirical way, he pokes at what I was trying to say yesterday about racism's ugly head in this election. Sen Obama is clearly being held to a much higher standard than either Republican opponent. Some examples:

• White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you. White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was "Alaska first," and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she's being disrespectful.
• White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you're being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--you're somehow being mean, or even sexist.
• White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God's punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you're just a good church-going Christian, but if you're black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you're an extremist who probably hates America.

This is racism -- pure simple racism. And the country may well suffer the cruel consequences of that racism. Nations fail for such reasons.

Truthiness Stages a Comeback, an editorial by Frank Rick in today's NY Times, lays out with references just how McCain has twisted facts over the years. Rick notes:

For better or worse, the candidacy of Barack Obama, a senator-come-lately, must be evaluated on his judgment, ideas and potential to lead. McCain, by contrast, has been chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, where he claims to have overseen “every part of our economy.” He didn’t, thank heavens, but he does have a long and relevant economic record that begins with the Keating Five scandal of 1989 and extends to this campaign, where his fiscal policies bear the fingerprints of Phil Gramm and Carly Fiorina. It’s not the résumé that a presidential candidate wants to advertise as America faces its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. That’s why the main thrust of the McCain campaign has been to cover up his history of economic malpractice.

McCain, using Rovian tactics, has managed to largely pull it off. The NY TImes/CBS poll that I have discussed several timtes recently shows that he has managed to retain the public trust. Wise is right; if you are black, you are held to a higher standard.

RIch notes that a McCain spokesman told poliitco that they were not concerned about what the media tries to say because they were going over the heads of the media. Rephrased, if you tell a lie often enough and you don't get sharply held to the truth, you can make people believe it. Palin does it with her bridge to nowhere and McCain does it with Obama will raise your taxes. Each are lies. Still, they keep repeating it and some people believe it.

I was wondering when someone in the press would point out the sordid history of "McCain’s chief financial surrogate", Carla Florina. Those who followed her mismanagement at HP closely would know that she probably wasn't qualified to run either a large company or hold high office. She used many of the same tactics there that Palin has used to spin her misadventures in public office. She sure does sound good on TV when she tells us what a wonderful pair McCain and Palin are and why we should avoid those miscreants Obama and Biden.

Rich closes with the following:

The twin-pronged strategy of truculence and propaganda that sold Bush and his war could yet work for McCain. Even now his campaign has kept the “filter” from learning the very basics about his fitness to serve as president — his finances and his health. The McCain multihousehold’s multimillion-dollar mother lode is buried in Cindy McCain’s still-unreleased complete tax returns. John McCain’s full medical records, our sole index to the odds of an imminent Palin presidency, also remain locked away. The McCain campaign instead invited 20 chosen reporters to speed-read through 1,173 pages of medical history for a mere three hours on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. No photocopying was permitted.

I hope not.

Nicholas Kristof writes that the campaign to pain Obama as a Muslim is working. About 1/3 of voters have believe it. "In short, the political campaign to transform Mr. Obama into a Muslim is succeeding. The real loser as that happens isn’t just Mr. Obama, but our entire political process."

The odd thing is that Obama is more active in church than McCain is. Obama excelled in school whereas McCain did not. Obama never dumped his wife after an affair whereas McCain did. Obama has shown coolness and quiet competence whereas McCain has been profane and has an explosive temper. These are all Christian Values. By a fair standard not tarnished by racial prejudice, Obama should walk away with the white, Christian vote that he is now so far behind in.

Kristof believes that "religious prejudice is becoming a proxy for racial prejudice. In public at least, it’s not acceptable to express reservations about a candidate’s skin color, so discomfort about race is sublimated into concerns about whether Mr. Obama is sufficiently Christian. ... Journalists need to do more than call the play-by-play this election cycle. We also need to blow the whistle on such egregious fouls calculated to undermine the political process and magnify the ugliest prejudices that our nation has done so much to overcome."

We have seen these tactics work in 2004. Bush, whose military record is spotty at best, and Cheney, who received five draft deferments, managed to paint John Kerry, who was awarded the silver star -- one of the highest military awards, as the less patriotic American. They managed to do the same in 2002 when Saxby Chambliss manage to convince the voters of Georgia that Max Cleland, a triple amputee veteran, was not as good on national defense as he was. Even John McCain noted, "[I]t's worse than disgraceful, it's reprehensible."

In the 1960 election, John Kennedy managed to overcome the Nixon attempt to use Kennedy's religion against him. History showed just how right the nation was a decade later when Nixon became the only president to resign. Let us hope that Obama can overcome the racial prejudice festered by his opponent's campaign.

McCain is an ally of a very unpopular president and has age running against him. This race should not be close at all given the issues. One obvious reason for the closeness of the contest is race.

From a poll conducted by Stanford for AP and Yahoo, it appears that race is a factor even among Democrats. While the US has made great progress in the last 40 years, it may not be enough for the first black candidate to win. There are still a lot of bigots out there.

More than a third of all white Democrats and independents -- voters Obama can't win the White House without -- agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks, according to the survey, and they are significantly less likely to vote for Obama than those who don't have such views.

...

Just 59 percent of her white Democratic supporters said they wanted Obama to be president. Nearly 17 percent of Clinton's white backers plan to vote for McCain.

Among white Democrats, Clinton supporters were nearly twice as likely as Obama backers to say at least one negative adjective described blacks well, a finding that suggests many of her supporters in the primaries -- particularly whites with high school education or less -- were motivated in part by racial attitudes.

Race, at its core, is no more than a few difference on a few alleles that is reflected in phenotypical difference such as hair, skeleton, and skin color. It says nothing about the individual difference between people and certainly should not be the basis for stereotypes. Sadly, it often is.

In Obama's case, this is even more true as he is the son of a African father and a mother of European descent. As he himself as often noted, he is neither black nor white. He was raised largely by his white grandparents. He attended world class schools where he excelled. Why would people infer things about his character and intelligence from his phenotype? I think this is a sad comment on America that so many do.

Lipstick Bungle, an editorial by Charles Blow in today's NY Times, delves further into the NY Times/CBS poll. It examines in more detail the responses concerning Gov Palin.

McCain has said and certainly demonstrated this week that he is weak on economics. There is amble evidence that Palin shares this trait. Blow notes her "financial credentials include running Wasilla into debt, listing (but not selling) a plane on EBay and flip-flopping on a bridge to wherever. In fact, when it comes to real issues in general, she may prove to be a liability."

He thinks that even Republican support for Palin may be superficial and he should have picked Romney, who has sound credentials. As for Palin, 77% of Republicans had favorable opinions of Palin, but "when asked what specifically they liked about her, their top five reasons were that she was honest, tough, caring, outspoken and fresh-faced. Sounds like a talk-show host, not a vice president. (By the way, her intelligence was in a three-way tie for eighth place, right behind 'I just like her.')" As to what they like least, they chose "her lack of experience, her record as governor and her lack of foreign-policy experience." He notes that 1/3 said they would be concerned if she should actually become president. He close with the following.

Many of your supporters will no doubt cry sexism. Fine with me. But that defense rings hollow. I find many of them to be sexist. Fresh-faced? Delegates on the floor of the Republican National Convention wearing buttons like “Hoosiers for the hot chick”?

The Washington Post notes that "Obama met in Coral Gables, Fla., with his economic advisers and then strongly endorsed the work of Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Obama said he supported giving the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve the broad authority they need to shore up the system."

Understandably, McCain did not react directly to the emerging plans on how to avoid further economic damage. "But while he, too, said both parties must work together to solve the crisis, he mostly spent the day going after Obama in highly personal terms, saying the senator from Illinois had been 'gaming' the system rather than trying to reform it."

"We've heard a lot of words from Senator Obama over the course of this campaign," McCain said. "But maybe just this once he could spare us the lectures, and admit to his own poor judgment in contributing to these problems. The crisis on Wall Street started in the Washington culture of lobbying and influence peddling, and he was right square in the middle of it." He added: "That's not country first. That's Obama first."

Huh? Sen McCain knows a lot about lobbing. Remember the Keating affair? McCain was lucky to have survived it and Keating ended up a convicted felon.

While McCain worked hard to somehow blame his opponent for the crisis, Obama was supporting what had been done so far to solve it and looking forward to how to prevent a repeat.

Obama said the potential cost of the financial rescue would not prevent him from pushing for a middle-class tax cut if he becomes president, arguing that broad-based tax cuts are part of a long-term solution to the economy's ills.

He deflected a questioner who wondered whether, by deferring his own financial rescue plan until Washington has acted, he was standing on the sidelines at a time of economic crisis.

"You don't do it in a day," he said. "We'd better do it in an intelligent, systematic, thoughtful fashion. I'm much less interested at this point in scoring political points than I am in making sure that we have a structure in place that is sound and is actually going to work."

McCain tried to somehow convince people that others were to blame including his opponent. He really did nothing to help resolved the crisis. In stead he tried to leverage fear and doubt to his own advantage.

Obama noted that the administration was doing a good job stemming the crisis, but that more needed to be done. He sought the advice of knowledgeable people. He tried to calm people's fears. As Roosevelt said in similar circumstances, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." There is no doubt in my mind who was more presidential.

Johathan Capehart reacted much as i did to Palin's comment in Michigan about a Palin and McCain administration. She has a long career of getting people to support her while she is trying to obtain a new office and then turning on them savagely. She reminds me of a black widow spider then eats its mate.

Fact Check notes that "an Obama-Biden ad says McCain supports "cutting benefits in half" for Social Security recipients. False!" It is far more complex than that. and would amount to far less that half and apply only to individuals born after a new law went into efffect. It does note that McCain does support letting individuals invest some of the their retirement funds in stocks and bonds. That is true. Wonder how that would have effected folks living on the margin during the current crisis? Go think.

Fact Check has an article that both candidates have misrepresented the others positions on issues important to Hispanic Americans. The Obama ad tries to link Rush Limbaugh and McCain to slurs of Mexicans by Limbaugh. It is not clear what Limbaugh actually said, but it is clear that they do not represent McCain's views. Limbaugh has been no friend of McCains and only recently began to support him.

McCain's ad "blames 'Obama and his Congressional allies' for blocking an immigration bill that McCain co-sponsored. But it was a Republican-led filibuster that sunk the bill in the Senate, and McCain said afterward that 'A lot of the Republican base was passionate about the issue, and they made their influence felt.'”

The Just the Facts video on FactChec.org is worth a watch as it summarizes the weeks misinformation by both campaigns.

I wondered when they would start and what form it wold take. Didn't have to wait long. Here is a twist on swift boating in email I received.




My Response.

The economy has pushed the election off the news. E. J. Dionne does write that the election comes down to Michigan. He believes that this year Michigan will play the role that Ohio did in 2004 and Florida did in 2000 -- the closer.

Michigan has the highest unemployment in the country, the most foreclosures, the highest one-way U-Haul rentals, and Dionne describes it as being in economic meltdown. To make matters worse for Obama, the Democrats, unwisely I believe, penalized Michigan for holding an early primary. While that decision may have been ethically correct, it was a potential loser for them in November.

Dionne writes in the Washington Post, "'What's challenging about Michigan is that they've suffered this economy in its worst form,' said Stan Greenberg, a Democratic pollster who has studied the state for years. 'They blame the Democratic governor and the Democratic Party, and the Republican president and the Republican Party, and an elite they believe sold out their state.'"

He thinks that Palin helps in western Michigan, which has a large group of conservative Christians and a penchant for snowmobiling. Obama counts on a huge African American vote in Detroit. On the other hand, the controversy over the black mayor of Detroit has hurt Obama with some whites. Racism could play an ugly role here. The economy in the end could be what turns the tide for Obama.

Also in the Washington Post, Eugene Robinson notes that McCain is Flunking Economics. "John McCain was telling the truth when he said that economics wasn't his strong suit. In response to what many economists have called the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the Republican nominee has sounded -- and let's be honest here -- totally, embarrassingly and dangerously clueless."

While Obama has not found a good solution, McCain is running against his own record this time. His economic ideas are so similar to the discredited one of the Bush administration that they scare me and should scare you. Robinson notes:

Here's something that really ought to grab everyone's attention: McCain supports George W. Bush's idea of channeling at least some Social Security funds into "personal accounts" that individuals would invest on Wall Street. Some of that money would have been entrusted to firms such as Bear Stearns (failed), Lehman Brothers (failed) and Merrill Lynch (sold at a fire sale). Imagine what this crisis would be like if Americans' Social Security benefits were evaporating along with their housing values and their 401(k) accounts.

Fact Check notes that McCain/Palin have once again misrepresented Obama's tax plan. If you tell a lie often enough, even a bold face one that gets called out, some people will believe you. McCain's campaign say they stand behind their claims. Well, they don't give all the facts and the ads are terribly misleading. Fact Check says that:

• Obama will raise taxes on electricity. He has made no such proposal. They note that "Obama does support a cap-and-trade policy that would raise the costs of electricity, but so does McCain."
• They claim Obama would tax home heating oil when he in fact proposed a rebate of up to $1,000 per family funded by a windfall tax on oil company excess profits. (Ah, I guess he he would tax the companies and give it to the consumer.)
• "The ad claims that Obama will tax "life savings." In fact, he would increase capital gains and dividends taxes only for couples earning more than $250,000 per year, or singles making $200,000. For the rest, taxes on investments would remain unchanged." This is only true if you are rich.

The Dow fall 440 points (-4.06%) and Morgan Stanley Considers Merger with Wachovia. With Lehman being acquired by Bank of America -- the world's third largest bank and largest in the US, a merger of Morgan Stanley with Wacovia, the fifth largest US bank, would mean that both these Wall Street giants would be owned by banks headquartered in Charlotte, NC. (There is some confusion whether it is the 4th or 5th largest US bank. I used as a source Forbes lists of banks.) Charlotte doesn't have the Yankees, but I am sure those from Wall Street will find many things including the BBQ to like in North Carolina. I suggest they start working on their southern accents.

Well, Seattle based Washington Mutual,the largest US savings and loan, continues to teeter. Will she fall? A check as I wrote this indicated that they were still working on how to avoid bankruptcy or liquidation. The CEO has recently been replaced. The new CEO is trying to save the company, which has seen a the price drop from a high of $38.30/sh to $2.29 as I write this.

Once again, greed and monumental arrogance are at the heart of yet another potential collapse. Perhaps stock holders need to spend a little more time when the vote for boards of companies they own. What scares me now is that the merger with banks could begin to bring the banks down as happened in 1929. You either have to be Alfred E. Neuman or be concerned about all of this.

While I have generally covered polls in a separate section that has been updated today, there is a Times/CBS poll that shows about 80% of Americans are worried about the economy. Looks like 20% of those polled said, "What me worry?" Sixty percent indicated that they preferred Obama on this issue, which has become the major concern in the election.

As I noted earlier, Obama has, in my opinion, a much sounder approach to economic policy than does McCain. It appears that much of the general public shares my belief. It will be interesting to see how this effects the electoral college numbers. I have decided that trying to figure that out this election is almost impossible. Remember, never underestimate the willingness of the American people to vote against their own self interest.

The New York Times/CBS poll finds that McCain is still tied to Bush despite his attempts to distance himself from the failed presidency. He is widely seen as a typical republican who would continue or even expand on Bush's policies. Will Palin help?

The Palin effect appears to be limited from the data. Stalwart Republicans are more enthused about the ticket than they were before the convention. Interestingly, women voters in general have not moved much as McCain's strategists had hoped. People are concerned about Palin's qualification compared to Biden. Based on the issues, NOW has announced its support for Obama/Biden. Perhaps the linkage to Bush and Palin's radical views will take their toll yet.

Bush has the highest disapproval rating, 68%, of any sitting president and 81% disapprove of the direction the country is going. Thirty-seven percent thought McCain would bring change while 65% thought Obama would. "Sixty percent of voters said they were confident in his ability to make the right decisions on the economy, compared with 53 percent who felt that way about Mr. McCain. Sixty percent also said Mr. Obama understood the needs and problems 'of people like yourself,' compared with 48 percent who said that of Mr. McCain." More than twice as many people thought Obama would improve the world image as compared to McCain doing so. My conversations with Europeans in particular would indicate this is an underestimate.

People seem to have concluded, falsely I believe, that their taxes would go up with Obama in the White House. The Republican slogan, I think that the "Tax and Spend Democrats" mantra appears to have had its effect. Obama and Co have their work cut out for them on this issue. I think the debates will be key here.

As politico.com notes, Obama should be leading McCain by double digits in all the polls given the economy, Iraq, Bush, and a historic tendency not to vote the same party in three times in a row. Instead, it is a squeakier that is too close to call. There are lots of reasons. They interviewed for prominent Democratic strategists and the bottom line is it is a nail biter.

Obama has his work cut out for him and it is even in his vaunted back office. I got another request for a donation in my email today. When I tried to donate, I was rejected because, drum roll, I would not give another name to them so they could contact another person for a further contribution. Result? They didn't get any more money from me this time. I can now eat at Burger King.

Gail Collins is always entertaining and often on the mark. Today's editorial, The McCain of the Week, is no exception. She reports on a McCain rally that she attended in Ohio. Palin and her husband were there too so the Republican faithful were "wildly enthusiastic." Still, it didn't go well.

"Nobody had warned them that he had just morphed into a new persona — a raging populist demanding more regulation of the nation’s financial system. And since McCain’s willingness to make speeches that have nothing to do with his actual beliefs is not matched by an ability to give them, he wound up sounding like Bob Dole impersonating Huey Long." It is hard for some Republicans to shift gears this fast and they began to leave before he was finished.

McCain's transformation is not sitting well with many dedicated conservatives who believe, despite ample evidence to the contrary, that government intervention is the problem. Of course, he had shifted in a flash from taking similar view so it is understandable why they are confused. Collins goes on to say,

Now in an election like this, you expect a certain amount of tactical reimagining. McCain used to like reporters, and now he treats them as if they were carrying the Ebola virus. Fair enough, although given the fact that he’s terrible at speeches, and the famous town halls have now become Republican-only lovefests, the campaign really should invent some new method of communication. (And remember, the man doesn’t text.)

It is also disconcerting, of course, to hear the Republicans rail against Washington as if the Socialist Workers Party had been running things there for the last eight years. But really, what would you do if you were McCain? There aren’t a lot of options, and he never did like George W. anyway.

Now to focus more closely on the question on whether Palin's political views will help elect McCain? It boils down to will women who supported Clinton now move to support McCain because of Palin? The answer probably won't be known for sure until November 5th. There are clues.

The LA Times reports that there are signs that even some thoughtful conservatives like David Brooks (see my quotes from his recent editorial) and George Will are concerned about her lack of significant experience appropriate to the presidency. The radical right like Laura Ingraham pass this off as conservative elites attacks saying that these concerns are nonsense. She goes on to say,

The truth is that it is no longer possible to govern this country through a conservative elite. We have a radical elite, an elite that believes in climate change, gay marriage, unrestricted abortions, and the United Nations. We have an elite that intends to make massive, liberal changes to every aspect of American life. This elite ruins almost everything it touches -- from the schools, to the media, to the universities. Giving more power to the elites means watching the United States become more and more like Europe.

...

Does Sarah Palin have the political skills to successfully govern this country from a populist perspective? It's far too early to say. She is certainly the most promising such figure to come along since the elites were denouncing Ronald Reagan. And therefore we should all wish her well. It is silly to criticize her at this early stage until we know a lot more about her abilities as a leader. I am glad to say that her instincts appear to be sound.

Last time I checked, Europe seemed to be doing better than the US. The EU has surpassed the US as the world's largest economy and the euro has appreciated significantly against the dollar since Bush took office. As for Reagan, he had far more experience when he took office than Palin has. It also ignores the fact that the unprepared George Bush ignored the elite and the results are the catastrophic failures of everything from the financial markets to job creation to unwanted pregnancies because birth control is not taught in schools. Haven't we had enough of nonsense like this?

McCain's confusion about world order has revealed itself again. His famous gaff in Iraq where his friend Sen Lieberman had to correct him after he got terribly confused about who Iran was supporting in Iraq. Well now he doesn't seem to know where Spain is (or possibly what it is.) As with the earlier incident, he rebuffed a reporters attempts to let him correct an obviously confused answer. This blog entry sent to me by one of you shows that he possibly confused a country in Europe with a movement in Latin America.

Given his age and confusion coupled with Paiin's unpreparedness, I fear a McCain/Palin administration would make Bush/Chaney look good.

Republicans always say they are the ones who bring prosperity to Americans and those "tax and spend" Democrats are not good for you. Somehow, I never really bought that as I always seemed to do better financially when a Democrat was President.

Well, Michael Kinsley's Politicians Lie, Numbers Don't: And the numbers show that Democrats are better for the economy than Republicans shows that my casual observation was correct. On nearly every possible economic indicator, even when lagged by one year, people have done better when a Democrat was president than when a Republican was in office. The economy grows faster. Inflation is lower. Unemployment is lower. Federal spending is lower. Even lagged a year, the Democrats do better.

How about spending? Well it is a mixed message. Spending is higher when a Democrat is in office but not for reasons the Republicans would like you to know. It is higher because Democrats spend more on defense than Republicans do. Take defense out of the budget, and they spend less. So the next time one of your Republican friends tells you that only Republicans can keep the country safe and make it more prosperous, pull a copy of this article out of your pocket. They have it backwards.

Still working? I am retired, but if you are not will you like you health plan if John McCain gets his way? My bet is you won''t. As Bob Herbert notes, his plan is a radical one that pushes people into the private insurance market or no insurance at all.

As governor of Massachusetts, Romney was behind a plan that moved uninsured onto the insured roles. Like Obama's plan, Romney's plan reduced the load on emergency rooms and provides most people with coverage.

For those with access to the Wall Street Journal, there is an excellent article about why Obama's plan is better. In summary since many cannot access this paid source, health care is the big issue threatening growth. Sustained growth mandates reform in this area. They note that "Sen. Obama's proposal will modernize our current system of employer- and government-provided health care, keeping what works well, and making the investments now that will lead to a more efficient medical system. He does this in five ways:"

1. Better information because his plan provides funds for a system to identify the best providers, treatments and patient management strategies."
2. Rewards providers for positive outcomes and not services so that there is a focus on care rather than procedures. (As a personal aside, the flaw here is that major academic health centers often take patients too sick to be treated with any chance of success elsewhere. This drives up the failure rate even while they have far better success saving very sick people's lives than other providers have.)
3. Allow individuals and small firms to join together to provide pooled insurance that will let insurance companies provide plans similar to what they do for large firms now. This would reduce cost by lowering administrative costs and spreading risk.
4. "Guaranteeing access to preventive services will improve health and in many cases save money." It has never made much sense to me why insurers would prefer to let you really get sick before they paid for service. Preventive services are among the most cost effective medical service available.
5. Reducing cost by an estimated $2,500 for the typical family thereby making it available to far more people.

McCain's plan does the opposite. Because it taxes coverage (e.g., roughly $12,000 per family with only a $5,000 tax credit per household) that current is not taxed, he pushes more people off insurance rolls or into less effective plans. Worse, those who are already sick would often be completely cut off from coverage when their employers dropped coverage. Unlike Obama's plan, he does nothing to stem the rising cost of care.

What is McCain thinking? Maybe like Bush, he has some rich friends who plan to profit by a plan that only helps the wealthy, like him. People are not paying attention to real issues like this. Too bad. Never forget that while the Obamas only recently paid off their college debt, McCain and his wife are so wealth he has no clue as to how many homes they own.

The US spends far more per capita than countries with comprehensive medical coverage. We must move on this issue that has been festering for about 20 years.

Talking about wealth, the market didn't tank yesterday as I feared. It recovered some. (The Dow was up 20.91 at closing.) Barclays, a British Bank, agreed to buy some of the healthy assets of Lehman Bros. I guess the new Republican motto must be, "Let's sell America and all go to the RIviera."

AIG, the big insurer, will be rescued by the Fed. AIG's collapse would have meant that investors world-wide would have been required to have reduced their own capital and restated their debt. Even may people with money market funds would have been hurt.

What will the next shoe to fall be? Some say it will be Washington Mutual, which has been rumored to be in trouble for some time. The rest of us won't go to the Riviera because we will be paying off the debt built up by the current maladmimistration whose plans are similar to McCain's.

Sarah Palin draws crowds. John McCain does not. John should remember how she has dealt with supporters in the past. She fired them when they were no longer useful to her ambition of the moment. The Republicans are worried about it too because there are some snakes in her past. Looks like the "troopergate" hearing may get put off. Five state republican lawmakers have sued to stop the hearing on the matter and McCain's people are trying to stop hearings on it. I suspect there are more smoking guns.

Poor Tucker Bounds. First he got beaten up on MSNBC by a woman. Now, he was beaten up on Fox, no less, by a woman. Sounds like John McCain at a Palin rally. Another point in this article is that McCain continues to say that Obama will "raise you taxes." As the story points out, "Perhaps technically McCain was correct -- if all of his listeners earn more than $250,000 a year."

Even some of the more conservative columnist have come to understand that Palin is not right for high office at this time. David Brooks, who is usually a thoughtful but conservative observer, writes in the NY TImes today about "Why Experience Matters". He contrasts elitist conservatives focused on rigorous standards, classical education, hard-earned knowledge, experience, and prudence. He contrasts this with the populous streak in America where "book knowledge is suspect but practical knowledge is respected. The city is corrupting and the universities are kindergartens for overeducated fools." He goes on to say, "The elitists favor sophistication, but the common-sense folk favor simplicity. The elitists favor deliberation, but the populists favor instinct."

Palin is the ultimate small-town renegade rising from the frontier to do battle with the corrupt establishment. Her followers take pride in the way she has aroused fear, hatred and panic in the minds of the liberal elite. The feminists declare that she’s not a real woman because she doesn’t hew to their rigid categories. People who’ve never been in a Wal-Mart think she is parochial because she has never summered in Tuscany.

He goes on to say, he would be more sympathetic to this view if we had not just lived through over seven years of it. Prudence is acquired through experience and "repertoire of events, through personal involvement or the study of history, and can apply those models to current circumstances to judge what is important and what is not, who can be persuaded and who can’t, what has worked and what hasn’t. ... but the records of leaders without long experience and prudence is not good."

Sarah Palin has many virtues. If you wanted someone to destroy a corrupt establishment, she’d be your woman. But the constructive act of governance is another matter. She has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness.

The idea that “the people” will take on and destroy “the establishment” is a utopian fantasy that corrupted the left before it corrupted the right. Surely the response to the current crisis of authority is not to throw away standards of experience and prudence, but to select leaders who have those qualities but not the smug condescension that has so marked the reaction to the Palin nomination in the first place.

One can only hope that American voters come to understand this and vote for Obama and Biden in November. I fear the wreckage from the Bush years has done permanent damage to our country. Another four years of even less competence to govern who turn this nation into one whose glory was in the past.

The financial news is grim. The jury has come back in. The Bush economic policies, which seemed so mad 7 years ago to some, have proven to be quite mad in fact. The financial wreckage will continue to mount. Yesterday, I noted the parallels between 2008 and 1929. The news is not good. Lehman Brothers, one of the pillars of Wall Street, is now bankrupt and most likely will be liquidated. Nobody wants to assume the risk. Merrill Lynch will be sold to Bank of America. AIG is in trouble. The Dow dropped 504 points yesterday and the signs as I write this at 7:35 are for further loses today.

According to the Wall Street Journal, "One of the most tumultuous weekends in Wall Street's history began Friday, when federal officials decided to deliver a sobering message to the captains of finance: There would be no government bailout of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc." (The Wall Street Journal is a fee service.) This saga, which resulted largely from monumental incompetence both by the Bush maladministration and by greed has not ended. I hope we avoid the horrible nightmare of another depression, but every day the chances of a total meltdown of the 1929 type become more real.

Of course, McCain and Obama see this differently. McCain would continue the policies of the current administration. With minor involvement, let the markets work. (Hoover thought that too.) "He has often taken his lead on financial issues from two outspoken advocates of free market approaches, former Senator Phil Gramm and Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman. Individuals associated with Merrill Lynch, which sold itself to Bank of America in the market upheaval of the past weekend, have given his presidential campaign nearly $300,000, making them Mr. McCain’s largest contributor, collectively."

Obama has spelled out his general approach "calling for regulating investment banks, mortgage brokers and hedge funds much as commercial banks are. And he would streamline the overlapping regulatory agencies and create a commission to monitor threats to the financial system and report to the White House and Congress." There are signs that Wall Street, which is normally Republican territory, sees merit in Obama's approach. He has received $3 million more than McCain from Wall Street sources.

Obama may be short on direct experience, but his willingness to listen to those who do has been noted.

Time is short this morning. I may post a second note this evening.

The Great Depression was not a sudden total collapse. The stock market turned upward in early 1930, returning to early 1929 levels by April, though still almost 30 percent below the peak of September 1929. ... But consumers, many of whom had suffered severe losses in the stock market the previous year, cut back their expenditures by ten percent, and a severe drought ravaged the agricultural heartland of the USA beginning in the northern summer of 1930.In early 1930, credit was ample and available at low rates, but people were reluctant to add new debt by borrowing. By May 1930, auto sales had declined to below the levels of 1928. Prices in general began to decline, but wages held steady in 1930, then began to drop in 1931. ... The decline in the American economy was the motor that pulled down most other countries at first, then internal weaknesses or strengths in each country made conditions worse or better. Frantic attempts to shore up the economies of individual nations through protectionist policies, like the 1930 U.S. Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and retaliatory tariffs in other countries, exacerbated the collapse in global trade. By late in 1930, a steady decline set in which reached bottom by March 1933.

Herbert Hoover was a Republican president who had some similar views about laissez-faire capitalism as George Bush and John McCain, who said today, as the market went into a tailspin after new catastrophic failures in the financial sector, “'People are frightened by these events. Our economy, I think still, the fundamentals of our economy are strong,' Mr. McCain told a rally in Jacksonville. 'But these are very, very difficult times.'" McCain later clarified his comments, but it is apparent that he doesn't understand economics.

Unlike Bush and McCain, Obama does seem to share with Clinton an understanding of what it means to get the advice of world class economists and act on that advice. It was not an accident that the prosperity of the 90's when our national debt was manageable and shrinking was not a roll of the dice. It was the result of good advisers who made sound judgements about the role of government in encouraging innovation and sound fiscal policy that made it happen. What worries me is that we are in what could be one of the worst economic crises in 80 years. The Europeans know and are worried about this in ways that many in the US do not.

FactCheck says that "Jerome Corsi's 'The Obama Nation' is a mishmash of unsupported conjecture, half-truths, logical fallacies and outright falsehoods." Three points the give are:

• Obama may not qualify as a citizen because he could claim Kenyan citizenship, but he is strictly barred from being a dual citizen by the Kenyan constitution. (John McCain was born in the Canal Zone so his citizenship also has been questioned.)
• Corsi infers that Obama has never said that he stopped using drugs, when he has several times said that.
• Corsi falsely says that one of Obama's closes friends said he once was a practicing muslim, when it is pretty clear he was not.
• Corsi says Obama is a great speaker, but he has never detailed a single specific plan. Not true at all as a check of Obama's web site will show.

People are buying this book and believing it. When will the American people wake up?

John McCain is 72 and has had bouts with a serious form of cancer so it is important to know if his running mate would be a competent president? In fact, as Frank Rich notes in his editorial today, "It’s an urgent matter, because if we’ve learned anything from the G.O.P. convention and its aftermath, it’s that the 2008 edition of John McCain is too weak to serve as America’s chief executive. This unmentionable truth, more than race, is now the real elephant in the room of this election." So does Rich think she is competent to be president?

He thinks not. Palin even dissembles about her own record and shows ignorance about many things of fundamental importance to a modern president. She is the darling of what has become an increasingly radical right wing party that will use racism and xenophobia to achieve its ends. It is all marketing. She is not competent to become president. (David Ignatius makes some similar points in his editorial in the Washington Post.)

Rich notes that "(t)he cunning of the Palin choice as a political strategy is that a candidate who embodies fear of change can be sold as a “maverick” simply because she looks the part." The flip side is that because McCain is weak he is inexorably linked to Palin. He simply cannot even appear often now without her. Perhaps, Maureen Dowd's prophecy noted in my 9/9 post is coming true even sooner than even Dowd thought it would. Rich concludes that:

This election is still about the fierce urgency of change before it’s too late. But in framing this debate, it isn’t enough for Obama to keep presenting McCain as simply a third Bush term. Any invocation of the despised president — like Iraq — invites voters to stop listening. Meanwhile, before our eyes, McCain is turning over the keys to his administration to ideologues and a running mate to Bush’s right.

A haunting thought for me over the last several years as I watch deficits grow seemingly exponentially was is this a cunning strategy to so saddle the US with debt that the government can do little more than pay it off? Eh gads! I may have been onto something as Broder points out in Washington Post today. The answer to Rich's question is that it may be too late already.

While both of them may know this, Broder points out that you "will not hear them admit that, before they do any of those things (new programs), they will have to pay a gigantic annual interest bill on the rapidly expanding national debt -- or else our foreign creditors will stop lending us the money to pay our bills." Even if the Bushies didn't plan it, their monumental incompetence has had that effect.

Gorbachev is reported to have said the Soviet Union lost the cold war because they went broke first. Is it America's turn to go broke first?

Has Obama done what he must do to win, toughen his message in ways the electorate will understand? He was in Concord, NH, yesterday and as the Concord Monitor reported in its story today (Obama's velvet attack - He says enough Rove-style politics from McCain camp) he has to a certain extent without getting down in pig trough with his opponents. He is hitting hard on economic issues pointing out the misinformation about his plan that the McCain team has tried to sell. Some thought he could have been tougher on his opponents, but it just isn't in him to get down in the gutter with them. Hope it works.

He was also in Dover, NH. The Boston Herald reported that Barack Obama hits John McCain in New Hampshire where he said:

The McCain-Sarah Palin ticket, they don’t want to debate the Obama-Biden ticket on issues because they are running on eight more years of what we’ve just seen,” Obama said. “As a consequence, what they’re going to spend the next seven, eight weeks doing is trying to distract you. They’re going to talk about pigs, and they’re going to talk about lipstick; they’re going to talk about Paris Hilton, they’re going to talk about Britney Spears. They will try to distort my record, and they will try to undermine your trust in what the Democrats intend to do.

He also seems to be talking in a more direct way as he must to communicate with voters in terms they can understand. "“'John McCain doesn’t get it. He doesn’t know what’s going on in your lives. He is out-of-touch with the American people. Why else would he say the economy’s made great progress?' Obama asked."

Harvard and Columbia gave him great educations for sure, but they also made it easy to label him an elitist who was out of touch with real people. He has to continue to drive home that he, not McCain, is the one who has lived in the economic trenches and knows what that means. He may be making his message more understandable as this quote points out. "Obama won over at least one voter in the audience. June Whitcomb, 80, a lifelong Republican from Kingston, N.H., proudly displayed a picture of the candidate on her straw hat. 'I just felt he was so charismatic,' she said. 'I felt like he was going to help us.'”

It is by no means enough that an officer of the Navy should be a capable mariner. He must be that, of course, but also a great deal more. He should be as well a gentleman of liberal education, refined manners, punctilious courtesy, and the nicest sense of personal honor. He should be the soul of tact, patience, justice, firmness, kindness, and charity. Reef Points

Like John McCain, I learned that as plebe (freshman) at the Naval Academy. It has stuck with me as a worthy guiding principle long after I gave up any connection to the Navy. I am sad that it appears not to have stuck to him as well. His campaign, as has been pointed out many times, seems to hit new lows in slimy politics. I thought he had more integrity than that. He has no shame.

Like many liberals, I have been perplexed by the willingness of people to vote in ways that are totally counter to their own self-interest. It made no sense to me that Ohio, which had been badly hurt economically, voted for Bush in 2004. In the last four years, they have been further damaged economically and seen scandal after scandal hit Republican state office holders, yet the presidential election is up for grabs there once again. This is repeated elsewhere and it has confused me. Why does it happen so often?

Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has looked at this phenomenon very closely and I think he understands the phenomenon. He poses the question more formally than I have in a rather lengthy note entitled What Makes People Vote Republican?.

What makes people vote Republican? Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies? ... People vote Republican because Republicans offer "moral clarity"—a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world.

I first read about concepts similar to this in Arthur Koestler's Age of Longing and Darkness at Noon, which I read as a young man. Some humans need an absolute that they can have unquestioned belief in. This can be religion or a political philosophy. It can even, as Koestler pointed out and Haidt points out, be self destructive. Haidt and others have provided a better understanding of the causes of this phenomenon. It is both social and biological.

How can Democrats counter the perception that they are elitist and on the side of immorality? Clinton, for all his flaws, seems to understand better than any other recent Democrat, this need by many to have moral clarity. He won both elections despite questions about his own moral character not only because of the real force of ideas, but also because he appealed in a way that John Kerry and Al Gore did not. This can clearly be seen by exploring ABC's presidential election map that lets you see how the states voted since 1992.

Haidt notes that America is often in a "divisive struggle among the parts" because "America lacks the long history, small size, ethnic homogeneity, and soccer mania that holds many other nations together, so our flag, our founding fathers, our military, and our common language take on a moral importance that many liberals find hard to fathom." Simply put, we must always careful as a nation lest we become balkanized like Iraq or the former Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia.

May Obama listen carefully to Clinton's messages on how to be elected. I think he must, like Clinton did, not only provide thoughtful policy, but he must present a vision of moral clarity that many need to find in a president. He has not clearly done so at this point.

Bob Herbert states the obvious when he says, "For those who haven’t noticed, we’re electing a president and vice president, not selecting a winner on 'American Idol.'” He believes, as do I, that Palin is not qualified in any sense of the imagination to be president and that the full interview between Palin and ABC's Charles Gibson clearly demonstrates that she may be intelligent, but lacks the breadth of understanding of the troubling issues facing the US.

He concludes with:

John McCain, who is shameless about promoting himself as America’s ultimate patriot, put the best interests of the nation aside in making his incredibly reckless choice of a running mate. But there is a profound double standard in this country. The likes of John McCain and George W. Bush can do the craziest, most irresponsible things imaginable, and it only seems to help them politically.

Amen. It is most likely that the answer to this riddle is found in Haidt research noted above.

Palin (and others in Alaska) have often claimed that Alaska produces 20% of the US energy. FactCheck points out that it misses the mark by a wide margin. Depending on how you look at it, the number is less than 4%.

The Republicans have used the sale on eBay of private jet a purchased by Palin's Republican predecessor, Frank Murkowski, as evidence of her frugality and good management. McCain went so far as to say, "You know what I enjoyed the most? She took the luxury jet that was acquired by her predecessor and sold it on eBay — and made a profit!" FactCheck points out that the jet was not sold on eBay and was in fact sold at a loss. Eh gads! They are once again running against their own party!

E.J. Dionne writes in the Washinton Post today that Obama is Tiptoeing Through the Mud and that to win he must change his strategy. Like a growing number of others, including myself, he feels that the campaign run by the McCain camp "suggest an unedifying scuffle over a city council seat. ... The media bear a heavy responsibility because 'balance' does not require giving equal time to truth and lies. So does McCain, who is running a disgraceful, dishonorable campaign of distraction and diversion."

Obama bears responsibility for this mess as well because he simply has not been forceful in rebutting the nonsense and making sure that his own ideas on the presidency are forcefully and clearly stated in terms the electorate can understand. He goes on to say,

Here's the problem: Few voters know that Obama would cut the taxes of the vast majority of Americans by far more than McCain would. Few know Obama would guarantee everyone access to health care or that McCain's health plan might endanger coverage many already have. Few know that Obama has a coherent program to create new jobs through public investment in roads, bridges, transit, and green technologies.

.....

McCain has shown he wants the presidency so badly that he's willing to say anything, true or false, to win power. Obama can win by fighting for what he believes. What he can't do is wait for the media to call McCain out -- although they should -- or expect voters to know he'll fight for them when they are not yet sure that he's willing to stand up for himself.

No more Sen Nice Guy. Obama plans to begin a more aggressive campaign notes an article in the New York TImes today. According to the article, back to back attack ads, one of which falsely accused Obama of supporting sex education for five year olds, caused the nearly unflappable and disciplined Obama to decide he had to be more aggressive.

It is clear that the personal attacks, many of them without merit, were having an effect. The article notes that "Mr. McCain’s increasingly aggressive campaign has sought to put Mr. Obama on the defensive in each news cycle, using any development at hand, like Mr. Obama’s colloquial comment this week about putting “lipstick on a pig,” to keep attention away from Democratic messages about the economy and the similarities between Mr. McCain and Mr. Bush." Aides point out that they had planned how to counter a McCain strategy of pointing to his experience and that he had abandoned it for a strategy focused on change. They note that is a contest they can win,

Krugman's editorial, Blizzard of Lies, comments on the number of false and misleading claims made by the McCain campaign about Mr. Obama. They have lied both about their own record -- Gov Palin's in particular -- and the record and experience of Sen Obama. As I have noted several times in the last week, this has been shameless.

Krugman has come to the same conclusion that I have. "I can’t think of any precedent, at least in America, for the blizzard of lies since the Republican convention. The Bush campaign’s lies in 2000 were artful — you needed some grasp of arithmetic to realize that you were being conned. This year, however, the McCain campaign keeps making assertions that anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute, and repeating these assertions over and over again." I agree that they are both incompetent (or they would know they would get caught) and dishones. I have lost all respect for McCain as a result.

Gene Robinson, in the Washington Post, writes a similar editorial in today's Washington Post that concludes with:

And there will be at least four key moments when the McCain-Palin campaign will be unable to avoid the issues. Obama and McCain will hold three debates; Palin and Joe Biden will hold one. The television audience for these encounters is expected to be enormous, perhaps the biggest ever. Americans will be presented with a straightforward question. Do they want a Republican in the White House for four more years, continuing to take the country in the same direction? Or not?

Why do they think he can get away with this? Well, Krugman posits, as do others, that they are taking advantage of the press's tradition of neutrality in reporting. The press rarely says that a candidate lied. They say the opposing campaign said it isn't true. It then becomes in the minds of many people a "he said, she said" event rather than what it is, a bold face lie.

Krugman points out the same thing that worries me. It says all too much about about how McCain and Palin would govern. We have had enough mendacity and incompetence in the last nearly eight years and it has despoiled the American political climate almost irreparably. He asserts, and I agree, that McCain/Palin would be worse than Bush/Chaney.

David Brooks, who is one of the more conservative New York Times editorial writers, has some sharp words for the Republican party, which he often supports. Using ideas taken from the social and biological sciences, he posits that humans are "autonomous creatures deeply interconnected with one another." He finds the approach to issues by the Republican ignores what he sees as this essential core of humanity.

Brooks goes on to say that people are concerned about what is happening in their lives from economic distress to a broken health care system that may not be there for them to a lack of focus on academics and family values. "And yet locked in the old framework, the Republican Party’s knee-jerk response to many problems is: 'Throw a voucher at it.' Schools are bad. Throw a voucher. Health care system’s a mess. Replace it with federally funded individual choice. Economic anxiety? Lower some tax rate. ... That language of community, institutions and social fabric has been lost, and now we hear only distant echoes — when social conservatives talk about family bonds or when John McCain talks at a forum about national service."

He believes that the Republicans must change along the lines that the British conservatives already have -- towards a balance between focus on the individual and focus on the society as a whole. If you want to read what the current Republican approach leads to, read about the Interior Department's Inspector General found.

FactCheck takes a close look at three instances where the McCain campaign has twisted the fact to make it look like Obama has personally belittled Palin.

• They claim Obama campaign accused Palin of meekly following orders whereas what an aide did say was that she made false claims about Obama's legislative record because perhaps that is what she was told.
• The Republicans claim that the Obama campaign dismissed her as merely good looking whereas Biden actually was complimenting her when he said she was far better looking than he was to point out an obvious difference between them.
• They claim Obama was disrespectful towards Palin and accused her of lying. What he did say was that Palin's claims on her opposition to the "bridge to nowhere" are dubious, which is supported by the record.

The Annenberg Center has a weekly video summary, Just the Facts. that for those who want to watch more than read may enjoy.

An article from outside the US first. The world's verdict will be harsh if the US rejects the man it yearns for is an editorial in the Manchester Guardian by Jonathan Freeland. Obama has stirred great excitement in many countries in the world. Palin even more than Bush, scares them for her views on many issues including religion, natural resources and foreign relations. They feel she is not being held to the same standards that other candidates would be. In a telling comment, he says,

If Americans choose McCain, they will be turning their back on the rest of the world, choosing to show us four more years of the Bush-Cheney finger. And I predict a deeply unpleasant shift.Until now, anti-Americanism has been exaggerated and much misunderstood: outside a leftist hardcore, it has mostly been anti-Bushism, opposition to this specific administration. But if McCain wins in November, that might well change. Suddenly Europeans and others will conclude that their dispute is with not only one ruling clique, but Americans themselves. For it will have been the American people, not the politicians, who will have passed up a once-in-a-generation chance for a fresh start - a fresh start the world is yearning for.

I fear he is right. The US cannot go it alone in the world. We live on the same planet.

Gail Collins writes humorous columns that get to the heart of the issue. Todays titled Misery Loves Democrats is no exception. It is a long way to November. As I have pointed out as well, the popular vote means far less than the electoral college vote. What happens in Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania are far more important. Obama has in some ways disappeared from the new to be replace by Palin. This is both good and bad for Obama. I remain convinced that many of the people, especially women, who support her now will, as they learn more about her, move back to Obama.

Like many, I have also been watching the startup of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. It appears that Collins has as well. She notes, "Calm down. Remember, that 17-mile-long Swiss particle collider that people were afraid would create a black hole that swallows the Earth? It started operation this week. And so far, no planet-eating black holes. So you see, things could be worse." Alas, they only ran the beam in one direction and at far less than full power. There is still a chance that the earth will get consumed by a black hole yet with the result that the election year politics is moot. Anyway, the LHC could defrost a pizza in 30 nanoseconds. How is that for news you can use?

More dirty tricks by Republicans seem to keep coming in every day. Now, there is one from Mississippi where the governor and secretary of state have hidden, in defiance of law, the senatorial election where a Democrat has a chance of winning a seat in the Senate now held by a Republican. This is not the only example by any means. They have distorted Obama's views on sex education with a shameless fiction. They have twisted a FactChek.org report about Obama and attacks on Palin. They have stated that Obama called Palin a pig when he clearly did not and even went so far as to demand an apology for it. (See yesterday's blog.) The list goes on, and on, and on, ....

I never dreamed that McCain would stoop so low. I thought he was a man of some integrity despite the Keating scandal of 1989. It may eventually be his undoing too. The Democrats are not taking it without comment as they did last time. While there have been some instances where the press has been lazy and let comments go unquestioned, there are many more where they have hit back to correct what are clearly lies and distortions.

I am reminded of the McCarthy hearings in 1950. Much like McCain, McCarthy stretched the truth about as far as he could in his search for communists. McCarthy attempted to smear a colleague of the Army's lawyer, Joseph Welch. Welch ended McCarthy's career with a brief comment as reported in the history of the US Senate. "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness." When McCarthy tried to continue his attack, Welch angrily interrupted, "Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?"

McCain and Palin seem bent on repeating McCarthy's cruelty and recklessness of that era and have lost all "sense of decency" as well. There goal is to politically assassinate Obama; not defeat him on issues. They have few, if any, issues on their side. They only have smears, lies, and racism on their side. Will the pubic wake up in time? For the sake of our nation, I hope it will.

While it is Obama's to lose, it is not impossible for him to do just that. People asked him to be more specific on policy and he was. In the process, he lost his connection to people. From the Gut, an editorial by Friedman in today's New York Times, says it well.

I don't agree with Friedman that he should go into office as a lame duck; that would be stupid I think. A president needs more leverage than that. But he does need to connect with people. He needs to define himself as a human that people can identify with because many people vote with their emotions; not their minds. That is hard for him given his clearly very cool and calm personality, but he must to win. It is his to lose.

Friedman sums it up well when he writes, "How, you ask, can two people running with the exact same policies as the party that has been in power for eight years, claim to be the agents of 'change?' That’s politics. There’s no shame. But what this has done is to make the word 'change' as a campaign slogan meaningless. Obama will need to find another way to connect his ideas — clearly, crisply and passionately." What is sad is that Obama did that when he started the race.

There are some signs he is figuring it out. He better as the polls are turning against him. He is getting tougher. The McCain camp would like to make you think he inferred Palin was a pig when he talked in Norfolk, VA. The Republicans demanded an appology. Did he call her a pig? Well, that is not what folks who were there heard. That did not stop the McCain campaign from trying to make political capital.

The rejoinder was swift. ""Enough is enough," said Dunn (Obama senior advisor.) She later continued: "This phony lecture on gender sensitivity is the height of cynicism and lays bare the increasingly dishonorable campaign John McCain has chosen to run." Unfortunately, the good Bishop Berkeley said it well, "Esse est percipi". This one is going to fester.

Sarah is way up in the polls. Good thing the election is not until November. With My Fair Veep, Maureen Dowd tells it like it is with humor. Worth a read. Will she, like Eliza Doolittle, pass herself off as worthy of being president if the old man makes the cut or will she flunk once the public finds out more about her? Stay tuned. Act 2 is coming up soon.

It has been a busy day for me. Try to post more tomorrow.

A friend sent me this article from The Washington Independent by Laura McGann about Sarah Palin titled The Reform Candidate. It reinforces some of the things I have read in other sources about her running rough shod over everyone who gets in her way. It not only reflects what appears to be popularity in the state, but also the singleminded ruthlessness. Maybe the popularity results from fear, but maybe not. (See Fact Check below.)

The New Yorker's article titled Naysayer further supports this image of Gov Palin, but fills in some other aspects of her political career in Alaska. One legislator opined that, "'She’s not prepared to be governor,' she said, in comments soon posted on the paper’s Web site (Anchorage Daily News). 'How can she be prepared to be vice president or president? Look at what she’s done to this state. What would she do to the nation?'”

Time Magazine's report on her term as mayor further supports this view. It notes that she was interested in injecting her own conservative Christian belief's into the every aspect of her home town's government. It appears that Bush may be a piker when it comes to blending church and state.

I discounted Maureen Dowd's Clash of Titans editorial on Saturday because I thought it was too shrill. Who would think a vice president would try to fire the president before a re-election campaign? Isn't it always the other way around?

Well both as mayor and as governor, Palin has fired subordinates for strictly personal reasons or to gain power in some way. Dowd's fictional dialog, "'How would you like this pit bull grandma to clean your grandfather clock?' she’ll tell President McCain in her flat 'Fargo' accent. He’ll confide in his pal Joe that being a P.O.W. was nothing compared with being trapped in the White House with 'that woman.'" Dowd is on to something.

Fact Check reports that some of this is not supported by other sources. In some cases, there are nuanced views that paint Palin in a less critical light. In other cases, the information was clearly wrong. Apparently, Palin was never a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, but her husband was. Nevertheless, she has had some association with the party in various roles she has played in Alaska. I think we are going to have to watch carefully to understand what did happen in the land of fire and ice.

The Detroit Free Press reports Obama has shown new aggressiveness by pushing hard against McCain and Palin noting that they are avoiding issues and most especially the state of the economy. Michigan, which is a battleground state, has suffered economically in recent years. In a report on the same campaign stops, The Washington Independent writes that John Ashcroft introduced Obama and is now supporting him because he wants to help the middle-class. I continue to be surprised.

David Brooks has an interesting column in the NY Times today entitled Surprise Me Most. He notes that Obama did best when he was running a weird campaign about how "he was going to cleanse the country of the baby-boom culture war mentality." He thinks he did less well when he began to talk specifics and failed to take McCain up on a series of joint town hall meetings. (I think in retrospect that was a mistake too. Obama can win head to head.)

He goes on to say that McCain does not have issues on his side, but he does have weirdness now. He notes that "It will still be hard for McCain to win in this environment, but his emphasis on broad systemic change may appeal to swing voters. ... Obama can hint at his values when he describes his tax cuts and health care plans, but he is indirect. Most voters, especially ones who decide late, vote on character over policies." Maybe he is right and this is why we make the wrong choice at times.

I have great respect for Bob Herbert. He is invariably a man of sober reason who hits the mark. Today's column, Hold Your Heads Up, He posits that liberals have lost their will to fight. It is liberals who over time have brought about the most profound changes in our country. Civil rights, women's rights, social security, unemployment insurance, medicare and medicaid are all programs created by liberal democrats over the staunch objections of the right. It perplexes me that each of these capture Christian values while the Democrats often resist such labels and the Republicans, who opposed each of these programs successfully have presented themselves as the party most in tune with them.

Herbert notes that "(h)umiliation imposed by custom and enforced by government had been the order of the day for blacks and women before men and women of good will and liberal persuasion stepped up their long (and not yet ended) campaign to change things. Liberals gave this country Head Start and legal services and the food stamp program. They fought for cleaner air (there was a time when you could barely see Los Angeles) and cleaner water (there were rivers in America that actually caught fire). ... Your food is safer because of them, and so are your children’s clothing and toys. Your workplace is safer. Your ability (or that of your children or grandchildren) to go to college is manifestly easier."

The closing words of the the editorial in the New Zealand Sentinel that I noted on 9/7 haunts me still. "... the American electorate invariably seems to opt for the worst possible choice." Can the Republicans pull it off again and get Americans to vote against their own self-interests? I hope not.

I am dumbfounded by how Palin has managed to get by with things nobody else could without a hoard of auditors, prosecutors, and the public taking her to task. It appears that she actually had the hutzpah to bill Alaska for per diem for 312 nights spent in her own home. She has also billed the state for travel expenses to take her children on official out-of-state missions and so has her husband. Not just a little either. These charges seem at odds with her self image of a paragon of fiscal restraint. Well, the Government Accountability Office would have a ball with expenses like these if she actually gets in office.

I know this has gotten longer than I wanted it to be, but there is one last editorial I would like to point out. Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post points out that McCain is running the most egocentric campaigns in memory. I agree. How do you manage to run against your own party's record of mismanagement and, as it appears he is, convince so many people that you are the best one to clean it up? McCain has even more hutzpah than Palin, and that is saying something. Also in the Washington Post today, E. J Dionne, Jr, points out the interesting fact that Palin is the only one of the four national candidates that did not appear on a national TV interview this last Sunday. Mostly likely she is not prepared to do that. Unless they manage to cower (and fool) everybody, she is going to play with the big boys soon and she better be ready.

Fact Check addresses the question, Does McCain want to ban "all" abortions? This is in response to an Obama radio ad on the topic. It would appear that he does except with exceptions for rape, incest and a threat to the mother's life.

Well, it happened as predicted yesterday. The government took over Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac. Much of this and the other economic woes can be laid directly on the inept management of the Bush administration. As the New York Times says in an article, "'Today’s necessary but likely very expensive action for taxpayers is the consequence of regulatory neglect and of a broader political system’s reluctance to take on what should have been clearly seen as festering problems', said Lawrence H. Summers, who as Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton had warned of mounting problems at the companies." As he usually does, the economist/editorial writer, Paul Krugman, has written a very informative editorial on the crisis in today's New York TImes. For a retiree like me, it is a frightening prospect. I wonder sometimes if we could survive four more years of "voodoo economics" under John McCain? One more thing that makes this election so critical.

The New York Times has a good article comparing the economic plans. Obama notes that adjusted for inflation, the median income of workers has declined by $2,000 since Bush took office. To offset this, he proposes a $500 per worker tax credit, a mortgage interest credit for those who do not itemize, and a college tuition subsidy of $4,000/year for students willing to do community service. (I have long felt that we should treat higher education as an asset and let students (or in some cases their parents) amortize the cost over say 10 years thereby reducing taxes. He would also wipe out taxes for older individuals earning less that $50,000. Additionally, he would provide still unspecified subsidies for purchase of health insurance, the elimination of capital gains for small start up business and increase the existing dependent care tax credit. To pay for these programs, he would increase taxes on those making more than $250,000.

McCain proposes to double the existing child exemption that would benefit only individuals who have dependent children and pay taxes, which many really poor households do not. (They still pay Social Security and Medicare taxes if they are employed.) He would also give a tax holiday on gas taxes. He would also give a new $5,000 tax credit for workers to buy health insurance if they did not have a employee plan, but this would be offset with new taxes on workers who did have a health plan. He would also give some assistance to older workers forced into lower paying jobs. We will see if he amends his plan before November.

Clearly, Obama's plan is far better for those making less that $250,000. As I have said before, never underestimate the willingness of Americans to vote against their own self-interest.

Slow weekend. USA Today reports that McCain got a big bounce in the popular vote and now leads Obama by four points. Palin helped him with undecided voters, but as her views are more well known, I suspect much of the boost will fade. Both VP choices helped their tickets to about the same extent. This usually happens after a convention and is probably not as significant as it would be later in the election cycle.

Time Magazine has an article concerning the effect of Palin on evangelical Christian voters. Clearly many of them have in recent elections voted for the Republican candidate regardless of who it was. They note that the effect may be strongly influenced by the voter's age.

Not much else new to report other than the news about the take overs. I am sure folks like the Annenberg Center are busy at work as I write this. I will check later on in the day. Should be some new polls and other news and my update then.

Frank Rich of the New York Times has an excellent editorial about Palin and McCain’s Shotgun Marriage today. He notes that, "...In his 26 years in Washington, most of it with a Republican in the White House and roughly half of it with Republicans in charge of Congress, he was better at lecturing his party about reform than leading a reform movement. G.O.P. corruption and governmental dysfunction only grew. ..." He points out that we still don't know much about Palin herself, but what we do know now is that the image of the person who would be a heart beat away from the Oval Office is largely fictional.

Unlike the fictional Sara, the real Gov Palin was for the "Bridge to Nowhere" until it was clear it would not be funded. She was a master of "pork" during both her time as mayor and as governor. She did not issue a single order to the Alaska National Guard. Being mayor of her hometown really didn't entail all that much. And, drumroll please, she is now under investigation for her ethics as governor. Let us hope that Americans understand all of this when then vote.

The New York Times also has a good analysis of the how the Rival Tickets Are Redrawing Battlegrounds. It will be interesting to see if Obama/Biden can counter McCain's interesting gambit of using Palin to distract voters from real issues like the recession, the decline of America in the world, and the Iraq disaster.

Anne Kornblut has an interesting editorial in the Washington Post today entitled, So What Is Fair Game With Sarah Palin? Look at the Rules Hillary Clinton Had to Play By. It is clear that a sexist view of women in public office is unacceptable. On the other hand, she notes that "Palin's mantra, it seems, is that women no longer need to surpass men in their achievements and qualifications in order to win; they simply need to object when the question of their preparedness is raised." It is her view and mine as well that women and men should be treated the same when the run for public office.

David Ignatius has an interesting editorial in the Washington Post titled A Tapestry In Two Tickets. He notes that "We now have two presidential tickets that display the American rainbow in all its eccentric colors. It's as raw and real, and as unlikely, as the nation itself: On one side a suave, aloof African American, twinned with a loquacious Catholic whose manner evokes his blue-collar roots; on the other, a certified war hero paired with a young woman from Alaska who looks like the heroine of a country music song and earns her reputation both as a beauty-contest charmer and a political 'barracuda.'" Well it is isn't going to be a boring fall.

Obama and Co are probably making a big mistake not helping Clinton retire her campaign debt. In my view, it is a very short sighted decision on their part. I am not alone as this blog entry in the LA Times makes clear.

A friend sent me a nice clip from Jon Stewart's The Daily Show about McCain's acceptance speech. As usual, it is both on the money and hilarious.

What is the foreign press saying? The UK's Manchester Guardian provides a foreign view entitled America's Extraordinary Election. In the main, it does a good job of contrasting the two candidates and what they stand for. The Toronto Star has a decidedly anti-McCain editorial today. "The Republican message was, at root, incoherent and unpersuasive. ... Like much of the Republican message in St. Paul, it didn't quite add up." I have trouble disagreeing with this description. The New Zealand Herald has an interesting editorial that does a good job of contrasting the two slates. While they think New Zealand might benefit economically from a McCain Presidency, they favor Obama. They have a view, however, that is not far from my own. "That means, judging by previous US elections, McCain and Palin are sure to be elected because the American electorate invariably seems to opt for the worst possible choice." Sigh.

Watching the Republican convention, I saw a lot of whites in expensive clothes. You had to search hard for anybody not fitting that description. Not many folks in everyday street dress like there were the week before in Denver. Well, it was not my imagination as reported in a piece in The Root entitled Busted Brand. I think it is a busted view of America. We are a multicultural society, like it or not. The days of anglo saxon rule, and I am one, are coming to an end. Going out of your way to insult whole demographic groups is a dumb idea.

Bob Herbert, who often gets it right, is even more on the money. In an editorial titled, Running from Reality, he notes that the Republican convention turned reality upside down. It is beyond me why so many buy the argument that only the Republicans have the average American's interests at heart. "Phil Gramm was one of the lead architects of the breathtakingly irresponsible policies (No more restraints! No more regulation!) that led to the subprime mortgage meltdown and the current credit disaster." Well, it has gotten worse as reported today. Fannie May and Freddie Mac are most likely going to be baled out.

Friday was a busy day for me and I missed an excellent editorial by Paul Krugman in the NY Times. He notes that, "What the G.O.P. is selling, in other words, is the pure politics of resentment; you’re supposed to vote Republican to stick it to an elite that thinks it’s better than you. Or to put it another way, the G.O.P. is still the party of Nixon."

The ideas are consistent with those in the previous article in The Root. The Democrats must not become complacent. Slate has a similar article posted last Thursday by Jack Shafer, who notes that "Ever since Richard Nixon discovered that running against the press was better for stirring up the animals and getting them to vote than merely attacking your political opponent, politicians—usually Republican politicians—have saved their best shots for reporters."

How about pork politics? McCain really hates it and so does Palin, now. (She liked it until she didn't like it. You have to give something up to get elected.) As is often the case, Gail Collins uses humor to probe the facts about pork politics in her editorial today. Well, cutting pork isn't going to balance the budget again as it was in the latter years of the Clinton era when we were actually paying off rather than adding to the national debt.

Governor Palin know something about pork. Her state is the per capita US champion. Alaska gets almost $14,000 per person from the Federal spigot and gets back nearly $2 for every dollar that it pays to the Federal treasury. A good article in Slate describes "Palin as a hog who recommends diet books while feeding at the trough." She is a right wing ideologue best described by a native Alaskan.

Fact Check, which is produced by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, has examined McCain's acceptance speech and found a number of places don't support his statements. While the speech was mainly generalities without many specifics, there were a number and many of them at variance with reality. Some were the diametric opposite to Obama's positions. Seems to support the Democrats position that he is Bush III.

One final personal note. I am three years younger than Sen McCain. John McCain made a point about having been at Pear Harbor when the Japanese attacked and how he did not see his father again for several years. He remembers that day and so do I. It was surly a terrifying one for a little boy.

Like McCain, my father was a Naval Officer on a ship home ported at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese dropped a bomb a few blocks from where we lived. I remember the barb wire on the beach and being in a bomb shelter. I was two and a half at the time and did not see my father again until I was five. Like him, I flew off a carrier during the Vietnam War. I was not shot down and thank God not a POW. You don't have to vote for me either.

The Republican have the issues against them so they are try to stir up doubt about Obama and Biden. It is their only hope of winning the White House in November. The stratgegy is a simple and time tested one. Keep the Democrats so busy fighting misinformation that they have no chance to remind people of what a mess the Republican's have made in the last nearly eight years. It also keeps the Democrats from spending time talking about issues.

A friend has sent me a very interesting article from the Nation on the role Palin will play in this election. She is simply McCain's pit bull. It worked for Nixon with Agnew and may well work for McCain this time. Enough misinformation repeated often enough tends to sway people as we have already seen this year.

The New York Times has an excellent editorial today, The Real John McCain, that notes the dichotomy between the John McCain they had grown to respect and the one we have seen in this campaign. I guess that I am similar. At one time, I might have voted for him under some circumstances. Now, I could never do so. He forfeited my trust when he let Rove and Co take over.

The University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Center's Political Fact Check is an excellent non-partisan source. They posted a new article today titled GOP Convention Spin, Part II that notes that "Palin trips up on her facts, and Giuliani and Huckabee have their own stumbles on Night 3 of the Republican confab." It points out, for example, Palin had supported the bridge to nowhere until it was obvious that it would be killed by Congress. It also counters some of her belittling of Obama's record as a legislator. The biggest egg of all goes to Hucabee who said that Palin received more votes for mayor of a small town than Biden did for the nomination. He was only off about two orders of magnitude. What is an order of magnitude among friends anyway?

Truthout has a good article about how McCain and Palin are trying to run against their own party's record of the last nearly eight years. It is hard for McCain to do this given how he has compromised his maverick status. They note that the convention was a hate-fest aimed at Obama. I hate to see the repeat of the personal attacks based upon twisting and even manufacturing "fact" that have so prevailed in campaigns for so long. More on that some other time.

MediaMatters notes that Palin's claims that Obama has not "authored ... a single major law or reform" is patently false. His work even includes a bill that he co-authored with McCain. Possibly even worse than her false claims, the press did not question them in many cases. My wife and I watched most of the recent conventions on C-SPAN after concluding that the talking heads were so busy pontificating that they were clueless about what was going on.