Red Thread

thread, originally uploaded by lovelypetal.

Red...

As in, "McCain's eternal devotion to Bush policy makes me see Red!"

What Dear John just doesn't understand is that Bush's policies have brought about one catastrophic failure after then next, bringing US WHERE WE ARE NOW.

Thread. This one is Red. And OPEN...

TAGS: OPEN THREAD

Why McCain Ditched Letterman Show

"The Campaign is in Suspense"

I was watching this Countdown segment last night about Yawn McCain's defection from Friday's presidential debate when Olbermann mentioned that the Caveman had also cancelled an appearance on Late Night with David Letterman at the last minute. Olbermann knew this because Letterman had called him as an emergency replacement when Letterman received the call from McCain's peeps after he had actually begun taping the show. A McCain spokesperson had just told Letterman he was flying to Washington immediately to 'deal with the financial crisis.' One must assume that the studios of MSNBC and CBS's Ed Sullivan Theater are adjacent or very close to one another.

Here's the Olbermann clip:

The clip from the Letterman show (which was uploaded to YouTube even before Letterman's broadcast at 11:30 EDT) can be seen in this post at Ice Station Tango. As Olbermann notes, Letterman was PISSED about being slagged like that. Did I mention he'd already begun taping when McCain informed him that he would be a no-show? I should also mention that Letterman is not someone who readily puts up with right-wing bullshit, as his famous confrontation with Bill O'Reilly proves.

It wasn't too far into Olbermann's appearance on Letterman that Dave was informed about where McCain was - in another CBS studio doing an interview with Katy Couric. It's safe to say that Letterman went from PISSED! to PISSED!!! at that point, yelling at the on-set screen that he and Keith were watching Couric on, "I've got a question for you John - You want a ride to the airport?"

As Letterman repeated through his show with increasing vehemence, something about this scenario stunk to high heaven, and this EXCELLENT post from The Anonymous Liberal nails the true motives of the Senior Citizen Senior Senator from Arizona. It was a desperate attempt at damage control, as McCain ran the unscheduled interview with Couric in an attempt to push another earlier interview of Sarah Palin off the primetime airwaves.

In that interview, Palin did two things that hurt the McCain campaign and, but for McCain's late afternoon shenanigans, would have garnered much more attention. First, buying into the premise of one of Couric's questions, she all but stated that if no bailout legislation is passed, we'll be headed into the next Great Depression. Even if true, that's not a very smart thing for a politician to say and, importantly, it all but foreclosed any possibility of McCain voting against the bailout.
[...]
I think the McCain campaign knew the Couric interview would be a disaster as soon as it was done taping and spent much of the day frantically trying to think of a way to push it out of the headlines. The clincher for me is the fact that McCain cancelled his Letterman appearance at the last second and instead sat down for an impromptu interview with, of all people, Katie Couric. The hope was to bump the Palin interview even on the CBS Evening News, which otherwise would have hyped and teased the Palin interview all afternoon and used it to lead the broadcast. Instead, CBS devoted most of its coverage to McCain and played segments of the Palin interview almost as an afterthought. Mission accomplished.

Palin looked like a moose in the headlights in the interview. The entire clip is available on YouTube, you can see it in the aforementioned post from The Anonymous Liberal. She really falls flat on her face. This video HAD TO be kept out of the public eye as much as it was in McCain's power to do so.

The Palin bounce has fallen flat, especially now that it has become obvious to even the Lamestream Media that she has been trying to shut them out. She is forced by the reality of her inexperience, her extremism, her lying, her bizarre religious affiliations, to hide from any meaningful scrutiny of her policy positions. In the absence of any input from the candidate it's only natural that the media fill the vacuum by examining her brief political history of the Governor of Alaska and before that the Mayor of Wasilla, even her family life. She is trying very hard to be judged solely on her looks and her self-description as an agent of change. It isn't working. She is simply incapable of opening her mouth without jumping in with both feet. On the other hand the more she hides from the public the more people wonder what she has to hide. In mining terms, the preliminary dig has produced enough paydirt to finance further exploration.

Palin's attempt to look presidential by visiting several world leaders at the UN the other day was the last straw for the media. She set unprecedented rules that simply stated said, 'pictures, but no sound.' Reporters were expected to provide a photo opportunity with no questions as to the content or depth of her talks. This rubbed everyone the wrong way, bringing negative comments from everybody in the news media. And I mean everybody. (Countdown video: Palin vs. the Press) "You know when FOX "news" complains it's bad."

I can hardly wait for Letterman tonight. I'm sure by taping time today someone at CBS has told Dave about this post at Anonymous Liberal. It should make for some interesting late night TV. And as a parting note, I don't believe that the McCain campaign is in suspense at all. It's circling the bowl.

UPDATE: In this post from Glenn Greenwald, Glenn describes Palin's performance in the Couric interview as being so bad that he felt sorry for her. That's not good. And as John Aravosis points out, the Republican party is in such disarray that even their seasoned operatives are finding it hard to advance the agenda anymore.

TAGS: John McCain, Desperate Measures, Spin Control
Sarah Palin is dangerous, and now America is finding out.

The Palin Predicament

And I couldn't be happier for surely this paves the way for the ordination of women in evangelical and conservative churches across the nation. After all, didn't the GOP evangelical base spontaneously break into the Hallelujah Chorus at the news of her nomination as John McCain's running mate? If a woman could serve a heart beat away from the presidency, couldn't a woman be ordained to serve - at the very least - as an associate pastor? David P. Gushee asks some very procative question of the evangelical leadership:

Is it now your view that God can call a woman to serve as president of the United States? Are you prepared to renounce publicly any further claim that God's plan is for men rather than women to exercise leadership in society, the workplace and public life? Do you acknowledge having become full-fledged egalitarians in this sphere at least?

Would Palin be acceptable as vice president because she would still be under the ultimate authority of McCain as president, like the structure of authority that occurs in some of your churches? Have you fully come to grips with the fact that if after his election McCain were to die, Palin would be in authority over every male in the USA as president?

If you agree that God can call a woman to serve as president, does this have any implications for your views on women's leadership in church life? Would you be willing to vote for a qualified woman to serve as pastor of your church? If not, why not?

Do you believe that Palin is under the authority of her husband as head of the family? If so, would this authority spill over into her role as vice president?

Do you believe that women carry primary responsibility for the care of children in the home? If so, does this affect your support for Palin? If not, are you willing to change your position and instead argue for flexibility in the distribution of child care responsibilities according to the needs of the family?

As Gushee concludes, the nomination of Palin offers conservative Christian leaders the chance to rethink an archaic theological vision that wounds millions of devout Christian women and restricts the full exercise of their gifts. Truly this is an unexpected gift from presidential candidate John McCain to evangelical Christianity.

Well a girl can have her fantasies can't she? Too bad even a picture of a woman pastor makes those manly men pastors go limp. Or maybe not. You can purchase this obscene magazine depicting a group of women pastors on its cover at your local Lifeway bookstore, but you won't find it displayed on the rack. Nope, it's been hidden behind the counter like it was some kind of porn.

On a serious note, I am very concerned for Ms. Palin. Earlier this summer, Super Manly Man Pastor Dennis Ware preached the Good Word at the Denton Bible Church in Texas, proclaiming that men have only two options when confronted with a wife who rebels against her husband's God-given authority:

(1) to roll over like a wimp, or
(2) beat some sense into their rebellious woman.

Since Governor Palin apparently consults her husband before conducting state business, she is safe for now and the First Dude's manhood remains intact.

TAGS: Sarah Palin, GOP Evangelical Base, Religious Right Hypocrisy

One Simple God-damned Thing: The Lifetime Ban

The bailout's coming for ya baby. Despite overwhelming disapproval from the American people, Congress is set to roll over for Bush like a tired old dog seeking its owner's approval. So if we have to swallow this bullsh*t, I want one thing, one simple god-damned thing:

Any firm that receives a cash injection from the bailout fund (regardless of what that money purchases, be it distressed assets or whatever-the-f*ck Paulson decides he needs to acquire) must fire all officers of the company, and all those former employees must accept a lifetime ban from working in the financial industry. It works for sports (well sort of). Why not here?

NO BAN - NO FUNDS! Suck on that, Wall Street!

TAGS: Wall Street, Bailout, Paulson

Overdue Open Thread

Talk amongst yourselves.
Here, I'll give you a topic, from a C&L post:

Obama’s Press Conference: “This plan cannot be a welfare program for Wall St. executives”
(With video and transcript.)

TAGS: Open Thread, Crime and (hopefully) Punishment, Wall Street Bailout

What's Really Going On Here?

Wall Street Is Using the "New Sheriff Strategy!"

(Inspired by EdNSted asking the question in comments,
"OK, now explain to me what happens if the government does not bail out these institutions?")

TAGS: Economic Crisis, Blazing Saddles, America Held Hostage
"We Will Not Negotiate With Terrorists"

The Biggest Story in Living Memory

"A Crime of the Highest Order"

Glennzilla's post on the 'rescue' of AIG (and by extension Wall Street) is enough to curl your hair, straighten it out again, then make it fall out altogether. He's also posted what 'details' of the plan anyone is likely to see before it's implemented, and probably ratified without even a reading by the feckless Congress.

Here is the current draft for the latest plan. It's elegantly simple. The three key provisions:

(1) The Treasury Secretary is authorized to buy up to $700 billion of any mortgage-related assets (so he can just transfer that amount to any corporations in exchange for their worthless or severely crippled "assets") [Sec. 6];
(2) The ceiling on the national debt is raised to $11.3 trillion to accommodate this scheme [Sec. 10]; and
(3) best of all: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." [Sec. 8].

Put another way, this authorizes Hank Paulson to transfer $700 billion of taxpayer money to private industry in his sole discretion, and nobody has the right or ability to review or challenge any decision he makes.

In one respect this has all the makings of the USA PATRIOT Act - something rushed through because of a 'crisis' (and like the USA PATRIOT Act these 'emergency' measures seem suspiciously well developed, as if this plan had been sitting ready in a man-sized safe somewhere all along.)

It also bears comparison to the Military Commissions Act in its provisions for making secret decisions that fundamentally change the way society operates, then taking steps to put those decisions beyond any scrutiny. I say that's a bunch of bullshit.

Nor does this escape the sharp eyes of Mr. Greenwald. Some gleanings from the aforementioned post:

As Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, put it Friday morning on the ABC program "Good Morning America," the congressional leaders were told "that we’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications here at home and globally."

At least they didn't recycle the 'smoking gun' or 'mushroom cloud' language, although 'complete meltdown' is a suitable substitute I suppose. Why am I calling this the Biggest Story in Living Memory? How could it be bigger for instance than 9/11, the invasion of Iraq, or the devastation of New Orleans when Katrina hit?

...whatever else is true, the events of the last week are the most momentous events of the Bush era in terms of defining what kind of country we are and how we function -- and before this week, the last eight years have been quite momentous, so that is saying a lot. Again, regardless of whether this nationalization/bailout scheme is "necessary" or makes utilitarian sense, it is a crime of the highest order -- not a "crime" in the legal sense but in a more meaningful sense.
[...]
..what's probably most amazing of all is the contrast between how gargantuan all of this is and the complete absence of debate or disagreement over what's taking place. It's not just that, as usual, Democrats and Republicans are embracing the same core premises ("this is regrettable but necessary"). It's that there's almost no real discussion of what happened, who is responsible, and what the consequences are.

Glenn laments at length the fact that no-one in the beltway elite, either on the political or the media side of the trough, is questioning this government bailout of America's wealthiest on the back of everyone else. But he makes it plain that that is exactly what is taking place.

We've retroactively created a win-only system where the wealthiest corporations and their shareholders are free to gamble for as long as they win and then force others who have no upside to pay for their losses.
[...]
More amazingly, they're free to walk away without having to disgorge their gains; at worst, they're just "forced" to walk away without any further stake in the gamble..
..This is "redistribution of wealth" and "government takeover of industry" on the grandest scale imaginable -- the buzzphrases that have been thrown around for decades to represent all that is evil and bad in the world. That's all this is; it's not an "investment" by the Government in any real sense but just a magical transfer of losses away from those who are responsible for these losses to those who aren't.

Greenwald makes plain not only who benefits from this corporate welfare - the very ones whose greed created the crisis - but to whom the burden is passed:

If there is any "pitchfork moment" -- an episode that understandably would send people into the streets in mass outrage -- it would be this..
..Whatever else is true, generations of Americans are almost certainly going to be severely burdened in untold ways by the events of the last week -- ones that have been carried out largely without any debate and mostly in secret.

Having already loosed numerous hollow-point rounds into the body of the American economy, the thief of the ages now delivers the coup de grace, point blank, right between the eyes. He knows he's going to have to get out of Dodge soon, and is making a final effort to cop as much swag as he possibly can.

TAGS: Insufferable Greed, Government As Criminal Enterprise, Kleptocracy, Goppers Gone Wild

We're All Leningrad Cowboys Now

Let's just change out "loving" for "money" and we've got a FABOO Socialist Song For Today's Wall Street!

Товарищ, дайте мне все ваши деньги!
(Comrade, give me all your money!)

Discuss our newfound and proud ownership in this open thread.



TAGS: It's Great to Socialize Risk and Privatize Profits!, We're all Socialist Cowboys Now, Can haz sum bailout 2 plez?

Poll Reading for Dummies

Dang, I've been waiting a long time for this one....

In the New York Times/CBS News poll released today, Obama leads McCain by 48% - 43%, a margin they point out is within the poll's sampling error. Many journalists are quick to call this a "statistical dead heat". They're wrong. Here's why.

(If you're a mathophobe, stop reading. We're going to talk statistics here.) To begin with, what they're calling "sampling error" is what's called a confidence interval. A poll uses a technique called sampling - you can't very well ask the entire electorate what they think so you can use a randomly selected group to do the same thing, with a reasonable degree of certainty. The generally accepted certainty range is usually 95%, or about two sample statistical deviations either side of the mean (the published poll result - I warned you, there is math in here). I dug really deeply into the poll and found the sampling error to be 3%. So if you're Obama, there's a 95% chance that somewhere between 45% and 52% of the electorate will vote for you. If you're McCain with his result at 43%, the margin is between 40% and 46%

So, again a warning to Mathophobes, that's really a bell curve there. The Mean in this case is the result of the survey. The 95% line is at 1.9 standard deviations, or sigmas (σ ). To see what the poll is actually telling us, we draw two of these, one centered at 43% (McCain's results) and one centered at 48% (Obama's results)

The gap between Obama and McCain is 5%. The standard deviation of the poll is 1.5%. The midpoint between Obama and McCain is 2.5 points, or 1.667 standard deviations.

90% of Obama's winning outcomes lie within plus or minus 1.69 standard deviations of his mean, or 48%. Since we're not worried at all about the plus side, the right side of the curve (he still wins), 95% of all the outcomes of the election based on this poll make Obama the winner. Even if I give McCain the right side of his curve, Obama wins 90% of the time in this polling scenario.

Doesn't sound like a dead heat to me. So next time you hear "statistical dead heat," unless the race is tied, if you know the margin of error, you can call "bullshit." Not to mention the fact that a five-point gap in the popular vote is generally an electorial blowout.

Two in one night. Nosy's on a roll.

TAGS: Polls, Bell Curve, Statistics, Lamestream Media

Tax Plans Compared

Last I heard, 53% of all Americans still believe Obama will raise their taxes.

After yesterday's$85 billion "loan" to AIG to keep yet another failed business afloat, this chart may be a moot point. In the last couple weeks, we've added $5 trillion - yes, with a "t" to the national debt through the acquisition of Fannie and Freddie. We just added another $85 billion. There's a chance the AIG bailout may actually make us a couple billion. I just want to know if I can get an owner discount on my insurance through them.

So here's the part that may be useless. You've probably all seen this chart - it shows the tax plans supported by each of the candidates. It shows in pretty good detail how McCain would cut taxes for everyone but, in classic Republican style, the rich get richer. If you make $2.87 million per year, still middle class by McCain's estimate, you'd get an additional $269,364 off your tax bill. I don't know about you but that would pay off my house and leave enough for a pretty good additional investment. Obama's table cuts taxes for people making less than McCain would give back to the very "middle class" ($226,982 per year) and increase taxes above it. Dang, under Obama's plan, that guy I saw getting off the Gulfstream with his hunting rifle might have to pay $702,885 more to cover the Fannie and Freddie bailouts. Gist is there would be an overall tax cut of 0.3% under Obama's plan, a more reckless 2% under McCain's. Either way you slice it, Obama's plan cuts taxes.

It just doesn't benefit the guy with the Gulfstream.

Here's the same data drawn a little differently. Now both axes of the graph are to-scale. So you can see the percentage of the population on the right side and the percentage tax cut on the bottom. A few other numbers are there for reference sake: The median household income (half the incomes are above, half below), median incomes for males, females, individuals (showing the income gap is alive and well). The benefit of this presentation is it shows in very graphical terms just how many more people would benefit under Obama's plan as opposed to McCains and by how much.

Okay, now I'm not in the bracket that would be hit by Obama's plan. Maybe you are and in that case, it would not be rational for you to vote for Obama. But if you aren't, I'd suggest you take a good long look at your own self-interest.

And if you still believe in supply-side economics, stay tuned. A bit of foreshadowing: It doesn't trickle down.

Charts from Chartjunk.

Cross-posted from A Colorado Progressive.

TAGS: Tax Plans, Republican Economy, Trickle-Down, McCain's Lies

221 Years Ago Today

221 years ago to the day, America’s founders gathered in Philadelphia to sign one of the most important documents in history. Our Constitution Of The United States.

It is Ours. It doesn't belong to Bush, Cheney, McCain or even Obama. It is unequivocally Ours.

It not only enumerates Our rights, it enshrines them. In my opinion, it is the most important document in my life, in your life in Our life.

My favorite part of the Constitution is the Bill of Rights, the first Ten Amendments to the Constitution. Interestingly, wikipedia says:

" It was thought by the Federalists during this time that there was no need for a bill of rights as they thought that the preamble spelled out the people's rights."

Those people were so used to the day-to-day struggle with the tyranny of kings that they all assumed everybody understood what was meant in the Preamble:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,
promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves
and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United
States of America."

Wisely, they decided to go ahead and spell out what Justice, Liberty and general Welfare meant.

There are far more astute and gifted observers regarding civil liberties than myself, so I'll let them do the talking from some of their current writings:

Sen. Russ Fengold:

On this day in 1787, our founding fathers signed the Constitution, making us a nation of laws, not of men. The basic concepts of justice, liberty, and inherent human rights outlined in that founding document, are at the very foundation of our strength as a nation.

But 221 years later, the United States is facing one of the darkest chapters in its Constitutional history. The Bush administration has treated the Constitution and rule of law with disrespect unparalleled in our nation’s history. The list of this administration’s assaults on the Constitution is breathtaking: it includes the warrantless wiretapping program, its interrogation policy and justifications for the use of torture, its extreme positions on the legal status of detainees that have been repeatedly rejected by the Supreme Court, and its refusal to recognize and cooperate with Congress’ constitutional responsibility to conduct oversight. This is a shameful legacy that must be undone in the years to come.

Glenn Greenwald:

During the last several nominating conventions, the areas outside the convention hall have become increasingly subject to the same degree of micro-control as events on the inside. With each convention, the physical area of extreme control expands to a larger and larger perimeter. Justified by resort to the same rationale used to suppress liberties in general — vague invocations of “security” — both political parties are now able to relegate dissent, protests and disruptions to unseen and highly controlled environments, far removed from the conventions themselves and far out of sight from delegates, political figures, and the establishment media outlets which televises the convention.

[...]

But while Denver was sterilized, St. Paul was overtly militarized. Beginning the weekend before the GOP convention began, many private homes in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area were raided by machine-gun-wielding, inter-agency SWAT teams, who forced everyone in the targeted houses to lay on the floor in handcuffs while the homes were searched, with the agents carting off laptops, journals and political pamphlets. Lawyers and journalists who were already on the scene or sent there were handcuffed. Advocacy groups having nothing to do with any planned protests were plainly targeted for these pre-convention raids — most notably I-Witness, a group of videographers who had videotaped police action during the 2004 GOP Convention in New York and helped to compel the dismissal of many criminal charges against arrested protesters and had traveled to Minneapolis to do the same.

On the Sunday evening before the convention began, downtown St. Paul resembled the Green Zone in Baghdad far more than an American city. Brigades of law enforcement officers were, by design, extremely visible in the entire area near the GOP Convention, and were flamboyantly displaying their array of weapons, marching in military formation, and chanting. The tension and intimidation levels even before the Convention began were palpable, and the results — truly extraordinary even judging by the metrics of how militarized our police forces
have become — were predictable.

Naomi Wolf:

What I had called a "fascist shift" in the United States, projections I had warned about as worst-case scenarios, was now surpassing my imagination: in 2008, thousands of terrified, shackled illegal immigrants were rounded up in the mass arrests which always characterize a closing society; news emerged that the 9/11 report had been based on evidence derived from the testimonies of prisoners
who had been tortured -- and the tapes that documented their torture were
missing -- leading the commissioners of the report publicly to disavow their own
findings; the Associated Press reported that the torture of prisoners in U.S.-held facilities had not been the work of "a few bad apples" but had been directed out of the White House; the TSA "watch list," which had contained 45,000 names when I wrote my last book, ballooned to 755,000 names and 20,000 were being added every month; Scott McClellan confirmed that the drive to war in Iraq had been based on administration lies; HR 1955, legislation that would criminalize certain kinds of political thought and speech, passed the House and made it to the Senate; Blackwater, a violent paramilitary force not answerable to the people, established presences in Illinois and North Carolina and sought to get into border patrol activity in San Diego.

The White House has established, no matter who leads the nation in the future, U.S. government spying on the emails and phone calls of Americans -- a permanent violation of the Constitution's Fourth Amendment. The last step of the ten steps to a closed society is the subversion of the rule of law. That is happening now. What critics have called a "paper coup" has already taken place.

So there you go. This is what's happened to Our Constitution in the last eight years. It's proof that We The People can have it, only as long as we keep it. The first step in reclaiming it, and healing it as far as I'm concerned is to deny John McCain the presidency of the United States.

TAGS: Constitution Day, Civil Liberties, Reclaim Our Rights

My First Time

Working for a political campaign.

So I went out last week-end canvassing for Obama in sunny Maineville. My first time to ever actually work for a campaign. We were given specific homes and persons to poll, though I'm not sure how the list was generated.

I was rather surprised at how mean some of the folks were. Just rude. A couple of our fine residents openly omitted they were prejudiced and would never vote for a black man. Seemed rather proud of their bigotry. I smiled and thanked them for their time.

Then we (they sent us out in twos) we pulled into what we thought was a public lot and some guy in a hummer pulls in, parks so that he is halfway blocking us in, then tromps through a flower bed to kindly let us know that this is not a public lot and to politely inform us that Obama is a socialist...a stammer, steam, boil, a black socialist. I probably shouldn't have actually laughed out loud at him because...

A few doors later one of Maineville's finest came by to see us. "Whatchoo girls doing out here today?" As he was informing us that it was illegal for us to canvas (it's not), I moved closer to get a look at his badge (he moved even quicker to cover it up). I asked him if he was afraid to identify himself. He told us to move on. I told him we would walk across the street which is no longer sunny Maineville, but rather Hamilton Township...which really pissed him off. He probably assumed we were from someplace else and not locals. Anyways, I figured the odds were good that he'd just call up a buddy at the township police, so I decided it wasn't worth jail and did move on...but next weekend is, well, another weekend.

To be sure, we met a lot of Obama supporters. We met a high school girl who had just gotten her voter registration card the day before. And now she was being canvassed. We made her day...she really felt like she was somebody. We asked her to spread the word about Obama around school and she enthusiastically replied that alll her friends were voting for him. Hopefully that will play out on elelction day. We also met a physically handicapped young man who lived with his parents. He couldn't believe we were asking to speak to him and not his folks before proudly declaring that the whole family would be voting Obama.

All in all, it was quite a rollercoaster ride for the maybe 45 min. our canvassing lasted. I knew we'd be meeting a lot of closed minded bigots that day, I just didn't think they'd be so darn proud of it. But the police harrassment, well that was icing on the cake. I guess it's no wonder they've elected mean Jean twice.

TAGS: Obama 2008, Republican Bigots