FROM THINGPROGRESS.ORG - Redistributing To The Rich

Seizing on comments Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) made to "Joe the Plumber," Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) campaign has argued that Obama's economic policies would redistribute the wealth of hard working Americans and provide "just another government giveaway to others." "The redistribution of wealth is the last thing America needs right now. The goal is not to redistribute wealth, but to create it," McCain said during an event in Manchester, NH. But as the Tax Policy Center points out, "today's tax code is riddled with examples of government 'taking' money from one taxpayer and giving it to another." "[F]or decades, government has used the tax code for much more than raising money. These days, redistributing tax revenues are the principal way government encourages people to do what it wants and discourages them from doing what it doesn't," TPC wrote. In fact, during the last eight years, President Bush's regressive economic policies  have effectively redistributed the nation's wealth to the richest Americans. According to a recent report released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), "the United States has the highest inequality and poverty in the OECD after Mexico and Turkey, and the gap has increased rapidly since 2000." Unfortunately, McCain's proposed economic policies would give even more wealth to the richest Americans, exacerbate the nation's income inequality, and further erode opportunities for social mobility. 

BUSH REDISTRIBUTED TO THE WEALTHY: An analysis by the Center for American Progress Action Fund shows that President Bush's economic policies have "redistributed wealth to the richest Americans and left the majority with stagnating wages and declining household incomes." Looking at the effects of the first three Bush tax cuts, the Congressional Budget Office concluded that "the percentage by which the effective tax rate was cut for high-income families was nearly twice the rate cut for those in the middle of the income spectrum." Meanwhile, the administration's failure to raise the minimum wage coupled with its poor enforcement of federal wage and hour laws, trade agreements, and union rights further undermined the economic security of middle and lower-income Americans. Data prepared by the IRS from tax returns filed during the post-9/11 recovery (2002 to 2006) reveals that household income grew by $863 billion during the period. "The 15,000 families at the top of the income scale saw their annual incomes go from about $15 million a year to nearly $30 million," accounting for more than 25 percent of all of the growth in income for the entire country. The remaining 1.7 million families in the top 1 percent of households accounted for nearly another 50 percent. But while the "top 10 percent of families accounted for 95.3 percent of the nation's income growth between 2002 and 2006," the average real income for families in the bottom 90 percent of households increased by about $300 to a little less than $30,700."

MCCAIN WOULD DOUBLE DOWN: McCain claims that "in this country, we believe in spreading opportunity." But his Bush-like economic policies would only further America's income inequality. In fact, by extending Bush's tax cuts to the wealthy and proposing $175 billion in tax breaks to America's largest corporations, McCain's regressive economic agenda would redistribute wealth to the richest Americans during a period of stagnating wages and growing economic anxiety. The bottom 60 percent of taxpayers would see only 12 percent of the benefit from McCain's plan to extend Bush's tax cuts, while over 100 million middle class households would receive nothing from McCain's proposal. Moreover, even though corporate profits increased by an estimated 66 percent between 2000 and 2006, McCain's plan to slash the corporate tax rate to 25 percent from 35 percent would give even more benefits to America's richest corporations. According to a Center for American Progress Action Fund analysis of McCain's plan, the 200 largest companies stand to gain $45 billion a year from McCain's proposal. Highly profitable industries like energy companies and merchandising and retailing companies would receive billions from additional tax breaks.

MOBILITY THREATENED: America's income concentration is at its highest level since 1928. According to the OECD report, "the richest 10 percent earn an average of US$93,000 -- the highest level in the OECD. The poorest 10 percent earn an average of US$5,800 -- about 20 percent lower than the OECD average." But income inequality is cause for even more concern than the simple numbers suggest, since it also has an effect on mobility. In fact, just "7 percent of children born to parents in the bottom wealth quintile make it to the top quintile in adulthood," and "36 percent of children born to parents in the bottom wealth quintile remain in the bottom as adults." As OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria has pointed out, "greater income inequality stifles upward mobility between generations, making it harder for talented and hard-working people to get the rewards they deserve."

CIVIL LIBERTIES -- 'PUBLIC' WARRANTLESS WIRETAPPING REPORT MARKED 'CLASSIFIED': When Congress updated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) last summer, lawmakers largely caved to the Bush administration's demands. One of the few areas where Congress actually demanded accountability on the part of the Bush administration was the inclusion of a "key-provision" requiring "the inspectors general of U.S. intelligence agencies to produce the first-ever public report" on the administration's wiretapping program. But as Newsweek reports, "[W]hen the inspectors general recently submitted their first 'interim' report to Congress under the measure, it wasn't made public." In fact, "the brief document, written by CIA inspector general John Helgerson, was marked classified." House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), responded to Helgerson with a letter asking him to "please explain why you're not following the law." Further, Reyes asked that Helgerson issue a "preservation order" to ensure that the Bush administration doesn't destroy records pertaining to the wiretapping program "before they walk out the door" in January 2009. It is not clear why the report was deemed secret. According to Newsweek, "Sources familiar with the [secret] interim report said there is nothing all that sensitive about it" because the document simply "outlines the 'scope' of the review that the inspectors general plan to conduct in preparation for the final report." HUMAN RIGHTS -- U.S. RANKS 36TH ON PRESS FREEDOM LIST: Reporters Without Borders (RWB) released its annual Press Freedom Index yesterday. According to the new report, "press freedom in many places is particularly damning for one country that purports to be a beacon for the rest of the world as far as human-rights protections and freedom of thought and of expression are concerned. That country is the United States." RWB ranked America 36 out of 173 countries, a spot also shared by Bosnia and Herzegovina. Iceland ranked first, with Ghana, Slovenia, Trinidad and Tobago, Surinam, and Jamaica also ranking higher than the United States. In one of the main conclusions from the report, RWB found that "[i]t is not economic prosperity but peace that guarantees press freedom." The report also singled out "wars carried out in the name of the fight against terrorism" as a cause for the steep decline in press freedoms around the world. ECONOMY -- COX, GREENSPAN, SNOW AGREE: FREDDIE MAC AND FANNIE MAE DID NOT CAUSE THE FINANCIAL CRISIS: According to many conservatives, the current financial crisis was caused by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae making loans to low-income Americans. Yesterday, during a House Oversight Committee hearing, Rep. John Mica (R-FL) revived this argument. However, when Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) asked the witnesses at the hearing - former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, SEC chairman Christopher Cox, and former Treasury secretary John Snow -- "do any of you believe that [Fannie and Freddie] were the cause of this financial crisis," all three said no. Federal housing data backs up this conclusion -- it was "the private sector, not the government or government-backed companies," that was behind the soaring subprime lending crisis. Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, noted that while Fannie and Freddie "certainly contributed to the bubble, it is absurd to point to them as principle culprits," as "their market share actually fell as the [subprime] bubble grew," dropping from 50.1 percent in 2002 to just 34.8 percent in 2006.

35 percent: The share of Americans who are "now 'very concerned' that they or someone else in their household will be out of work and looking for a job within the next twelve months," according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll. The percentage is a 12-point increase from last week.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) said President Bush should consider nominating his successor's Treasury secretary to facilitate a "seamless transition" during the financial crisis. Dodd said Bush should send the nomination to the Senate in time for a "lame-duck" session in mid-November.

"After the White House intervened, the Environmental Protection Agency last week weakened a rule on airborne lead standards at the last minute so that fewer polluters would have their emissions monitored," McClatchy reports today. The White House Office of Management and Budget forced the EPA to slash they number of sites it would regulate by 60 percent.

In its final weeks, the Bush administration will try to "revive a stalled crackdown on U.S. companies that hire illegal immigrants." If a federal court agrees, the government "could begin mailing notices to 140,000 employers regarding suspect Social Security numbers used by an estimated 8.7 million workers, pressuring businesses to either resolve discrepancies or fire workers within 90 days."

"The U.S. is the only industrialized country where youths are less likely than their parents to earn a [high school] diploma," a new report from the Education Trust finds. Nationally, one in four children drop out of school before graduating, according to the report.

And finally: Will Ferrell reprised his role as President Bush and joined Tina Fey as Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) for a "Saturday Night Live" election special yesterday. In the segment, Bush offered an unwanted endorsement of the McCain-Palin ticket and declared the White House a "bummer-free zone." Todd Palin was also dispatched to find Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who was hiding in the Adirondacks to avoid being photographed with Bush. Watch it here.

"Colorado Democrats accused a Republican county clerk Wednesday of falsely informing Colorado College that students from outside the state could not register to vote if their parents claimed them as a dependent on their tax returns."

www.kansascity.com | 10/23/2008 | Election officials telling college students they can't vote

WASHINGTON — Colorado Democrats accused a Republican county clerk Wednesday of falsely informing Colorado College that students from outside the state could not register to vote if their parents claimed them as a dependent on their tax returns.

At a news conference in Colorado Springs, Democrats also criticized Robert Balink, the El Paso County clerk and recorder, who was a delegate to the Republican National Convention, for taking other steps they said would dampen voting by college students, who are expected to heavily favor Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

"When election officials spread false information about who is eligible to vote and remove, not add, polling places, we need to be concerned that eligible voters will be denied their right to vote," said Pat Waak, chairwoman of the Colorado Democratic Party.

Balink issued a statement saying his office had misinterpreted state law and "mistakenly published information that was incorrect."

Balink's actions are the latest of several instances in which local election officials, including some in Virginia and South Carolina, have discouraged college students from voting in a year in which legions of students have thrown their energy behind Obama.

Discovery of these restrictions comes as Democrats have increasingly accused Republicans of using an array of tactics to suppress the Democratic voter turnout in the November election.

Liz Olson, the elections manager in Colorado's El Paso County, said that the office "takes full responsibility for what's in that document. Nobody told us to put anything in there."

Martha Tierney, an attorney for the Colorado Democratic Party, said she obtained emails showing that Balink's office sent a misleading flier to the Colorado College president's office to provide students with voter-registration information and urged its circulation on campus.

The flier stated: "What this means is that if your parents still claim you on their income tax returns, and they file that return in a state other than Colorado, you are not eligible to register to vote or vote in Colorado."

Voter residency requirements vary from state to state, but must meet the guarantees of the U.S. Constitution, said Jon Greenbaum, a voting rights expert with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Greenbaum said that what states and counties can't do is adopt rules that treat one group of voters differently than others.

Greenbaum noted that Virginia's elections board recently revised language on its Internet site that discouraged students from registering after reports of a similar episode at Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg, Va. The New York Times reported Sept. 8 that a local registrar had issued two releases that incorrectly suggested dire consequences for the university's students who registered to vote there, including the possibility they no longer could be claimed as dependents on their parents' tax returns.

Sujatha Jahagirdar, program director of the Student Public Interest Research Group's New Voters Project in Washington, said she encountered similar problems when she posed as a college freshman last week and called registrar's offices in Greenville County, S.C., home to Furman University, and York County, S.C., where Winthrop University is located.

Jahagirdar said a Greenville official asked if her parents listed her as a dependent, and when she replied in the affirmative, told her: "You should vote where your parents live." She said a York County representative asked if she was in town for school, and when she said yes, stated flatly: "You can't vote here."

A caller on Wednesday got similar responses.

Told of the information imparted by his staff, Conway Belangia, Greenville County's director of registration and elections, said that "if a staff person made a statement like that, it was an error."

A York County official didn't respond to calls for comment.

Belangia said, however, that if a student lives in a dormitory, he must respond to a series of questions laid out in a 1974 federal court order covering voting registration in the county. He said students must demonstrate their "intent to claim this locale as their home when they finish school."

Jahagirdar called the counties' policies "intimidating" and said they "send a message that young voters are not welcome in our democracy" just when they're first enjoying the right to vote.

The flap over students' voting rights comes after Democrats last week filed a lawsuit in Michigan, seeking a court order barring Republicans from using lists of people facing mortgage foreclosure proceedings as a basis for challenging their voting eligibility. Michigan Republicans denied using foreclosure lists to cast doubt about voters' qualifications.

And in Ohio, a pivotal state that was mired in allegations of voting irregularities in the 2004 presidential election, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner on Wednesday advised county election boards that foreclosure lists should not be considered proof that voters have changed residences.

"Ohioans faced with the pain and turmoil of a home foreclosure should not be targeted by the forces of disenfranchisement on Election Day," Brunner said.

GOOD STUFF: "Thanks to these redistributive policies - policies McCain championed in Congress - the richest 1 percent today owns a larger share of America's wealth than at any time since before the Great Depression."

Does McCain think America is too ignorant to know theft?: "The GOP campaign, in short, is a brew of red-baiting and free-market zealotry, a concoction with a poisonous purpose: resurrecting the everyone-for-themselves pathologies that perpetuate the status quo. And if we revert to selfish form during this economic crisis, then McCain's cynical calculation is correct: America is a confederacy of dunces."

Is John McCain stupid, or does he believe we are? That's the question as he criticizes Barack Obama for allegedly trying to "redistribute the wealth" with a plan to lower taxes on the middle class and raise them on the super-rich.

Of course, the Democratic presidential candidate's proposal would merely slow down (not fully halt) the less-talked-about redistribution whereby Washington sends middle-class money up the income ladder. Either Republican candidate McCain doesn't know about this kleptocracy and is the dumbest presidential candidate in history, or he thinks America is too ignorant to recognize theft. Which is it?

I'm guessing the latter, because the evidence is so overwhelming.

In the last eight years, we the little people have been forced to provide more and more of the taxes fueling America's redistribution machine. As the Congressional Budget Office reports, the $715 billion in tax breaks that President Bush gave to those making more than $342,000 a year began dramatically shifting the overall tax burden from the rich onto the rest of us. Meanwhile, because of lobbyist-crafted loopholes, most corporations pay zero federal income taxes, according to the Government Accountability Office. The result is what Warren Buffett admits: When counting all taxes (income, payroll, property, etc.), billionaires and Big Business often pay lower effective tax rates than their employees.

The output of the redistribution machine is becoming just as regressive. In the age of Halliburton fraud and ExxonMobil subsidies, our government spends $93 billion a year on corporate welfare. (For comparison, that's roughly three times what it spends on a traditional welfare program such as food stamps.) That doesn't include the recent bailout giving $700 billion to the same banks doling out $70 billion in executive pay and bonuses - a scheme the Financial Times says "amounts to a large transfer of resources from lower to higher income earners."

Thanks to these redistributive policies - policies McCain championed in Congress - the richest 1 percent today owns a larger share of America's wealth than at any time since before the Great Depression.

The Republican standard-bearer likely knows all this, but his fetish is fact-free fairy tales - the kind presenting seven houses, a beer-industry fortune and lockstep conservatism as mavericky Joe-the-Plumber populism. When it comes to economics, McCain is banking on Americans believing similarly inane myths - specifically, those portraying obscene affluence as the commonplace achievement under royalist rule.

During the indigence and socioeconomic immobility of the 19th century's Gilded Age, this meme flourished through Horatio Alger stories. Today, 1 in 5 American children live in poverty, and authorities from the Economist magazine to the Wall Street Journal note that our country exhibits the least amount of upward economic mobility in the industrialized world - less than even Europe's supposedly sclerotic socialisms. In light of that, sustaining the American dream narrative requires updated rags-to-riches fantasies like "MTV Cribs," HBO's "Entourage" - and now McCain '08.

The Arizona senator's pulp fiction packs an extra-nationalistic punch, however. We are not only expected to support regressive redistribution, but also to believe that stopping such robbery is subversive. McCain implies Obama is backing Soviet conquest by proposing to finance tax cuts for 95 percent of American workers with tax increases on the richest 5 percent. When Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden said it is "patriotic" for millionaires to pay their fair share of taxes, Republicans waved the bloody shirt of Reaganism and attacked him - as if Al Capone-style tax evasion is how aristocrats display their true love of country.

The GOP campaign, in short, is a brew of red-baiting and free-market zealotry, a concoction with a poisonous purpose: resurrecting the everyone-for-themselves pathologies that perpetuate the status quo. And if we revert to selfish form during this economic crisis, then McCain's cynical calculation is correct: America is a confederacy of dunces.

David Sirota is a bestselling author whose newest book, "The Uprising," was released in June 2008. He is a fellow at the Campaign for America's Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network - both nonpartisan organizations. His blog is at www.credoaction.com/sirota.

McCain Urged Reagan Admin To Meet Terror Groups Without Pre-Conditions

Jacob Alperin-Sheriff: McCain Urged Reagan Admin To Meet Terror Groups Without Pre-Conditions: "In 1987, John McCain cast several votes in an attempt to force the Reagan administration to meet with RENAMO1, a guerrilla organization in Mozambique that State Department officials at the time described as a 'terrorist group,' 2 without requiring that the group meet any preconditions."

The Religious Right’s Apocalyptic Visions of an Obama Presidency

The Religious Right's Apocalyptic Visions of an Obama Presidency | Election 2008 | ReligionDispatches: "Dr. James Dobson's Focus on the Family Action circulates a 'Letter from 2012 in Obama's America,' depicting a doomsday scenario of Bible-banning, a disbanded Boy Scouts, taxpayer-funded abortion, gay marriage from coast to coast, talk radio outlawed, God expunged from the public sphere and, gulp, no guns."

As the election nears its final days, the fevered imaginations at Focus on the Family Action—the political action arm of Dr. James Dobson's multi-million dollar media ministry—are working overtime to demonize Sen. Barack Obama. Posted on October 22nd, a "Letter from 2012 in Obama's America" plumbs the depths of the Religious Right's worst collective nightmare.

"Reporting" back after four years of an Obama presidency which has allowed "Liberals [to] … dominate the government in a way they haven't in decades," this portrait of liberal bogeymen gone Lord of the Flies is, for conservative Christian evangelicals, a bleak one:

"Far-left liberals could hold a 6-3 majority on the U.S. Supreme Court.

"The nation's highest court could rule same-sex "marriage" is a constitutional right—in all 50 states.

"Preaching from the Bible could be banned from radio and television.

"States may not be able to restrict abortion, and taxpayers could be forced to fund abortions.

"In several states, it could be illegal to own a gun."

"Proof" that these events could happen is contained in the 15-page letter from an anonymous author known only as: "A Christian from 2012."    

In its introductory note to the "Letter," Focus on the Family Action points out that "the most reliable way of predicting people's future actions is by looking at their past actions," concluding: "So here is a picture of the changes that are likely or at least very possible if Senator Barack Obama is elected and the far-left segments of the Democratic Party gain control of the White House, the Congress, and perhaps then the Supreme Court."  

While FFA is savvy enough to call it a "'What if?' exercise," the organization does warn that the "Letter" is not merely "empty speculation," noting that "every future 'event' described here is based on established legal and political trends that can already be abundantly documented and that only need a 'tipping point' such as the election of Senator Obama and a Democratic House and Senate to begin to put them into place." This caveat doesn't appear to account for the letter's ruminations about the situation in Iraq, terrorist bombings in the homeland, or Russia's renewed militancy.

"Letter from 2012 in Obama's America" builds, to a great extent, on the author's own predictions as to whom President Obama will appoint to the Supreme Court. Here is the abridged version:

One month after he spoke "eloquently" at his inauguration, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens "announced they would step down" and President Obama replaced them with "two far-left, American Civil Liberties Union-oriented judges," who were confirmed quickly by the Democratic Senate. In June, Justice Kennedy, having "grown weary of the unrelenting responsibility" of being the swing vote on the Court, resigned. Obama replaced him with another "young liberal."

Two months later, a "tipping point"; Justice Antonin Scalia "unexpectedly announced his resignation due to health reasons, and by October 2009 another Obama left-wing appointment took his oath and joined the Court."

Now, with complete control of the Supreme Court, all heck broke loose for conservative Christians: In early 2010, the Court rules "that homosexual marriage was a 'constitutional' right"; the Boy Scouts "no longer exist as an organization," choosing to disband rather "than be forced to obey the …  Court's decision that they would have to hire homosexual scoutmasters and allow them to sleep in tents with young boys"; elementary schools "now include compulsory training in varieties of gender identity in Grade 1, including the goodness of homosexuality as one possible personal choice"; Roman Catholic and evangelical Protestant adoption agencies in the United States close down rather than adhere to a Court ruling forcing "these agencies … to place children with homosexual couples or lose their licenses."

Companies doing business on the local, state or national level "now have to provide documentation of equal benefits for same sex couples"; "The Bible can no longer be freely preached over radio or television stations when the subject matter includes such 'offensive' doctrines as homosexual conduct or the claim that people will go to hell if they do not believe in Jesus Christ."

Doctors "who refuse to provide artificial insemination for lesbian couples now face significant fines or loss of license to practice medicine …" and lawyers that "refuse to handle adoption cases for same-sex couples similarly now lose their licenses to practice law"; any professionals, including social workers and counselors working for church organizations, that are "licensed by individual states are now also prohibited from discrimination against homosexuals"; Churches are forced at allow their building to be used for same-sex weddings and they "no longer are free to reject homosexual applicants for staff positions."

An executive order signed by Obama does away with "don't ask, don't tell," and supports "actively recruiting homosexuals," going so far as offering "bonuses [to homosexuals] for enlisting in military service."

Students are no longer free to attend "'see you at the pole' meetings where students pray together, or [participate in] any student Bible studies even before or after school"; public schools are no longer allowed to rent meeting space for small churches; Christian organizations on campuses "have shrunk to mere skeleton organizations, and in many states they have ceased to exist"; the reciting of the "Pledge of Allegiance" is no longer led by public school teachers, and the phrase "under god" is ruled unconstitutional.

After President Obama signs The Freedom of Choice Act, abortions abound: "hundreds of state laws that had created even the slightest barrier to abortion" are nullified; with the Hyde Amendment reversed, "the government now funds Medicaid abortions for any reason"; the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 is "reversed"; nurses are forced to participate in providing abortions under threat of losing their jobs; doctors "who refuse to perform abortions can no longer be licensed to deliver babies at hospitals in any state"; overall, "the number of abortions have increased dramatically."

Everywhere in America, men, women and children are likely to be confronted by, or exposed to, pornography. When the Federal Communications Commission lifted all "restrictions on obscene speech or visual content in radio and television broadcasts," it freed television programmers to show "explicit portrayals of sexual acts" anytime during the day.

Gun ownership is outlawed in eight states and "the number is growing with increasing Democratic control of state legislatures and governorships."

Home schooling has been "severely restricted" thanks to the lobbying efforts of the National Education Association.  

Anonymous points out that although President Obama "expressed strong personal disapproval" of many of the Supreme Court decisions that have brought about these changes, he said that "he had no choice but to uphold the law, for these decisions were now law of the land."

The aftermath of the U.S.'s withdrawal of all troops from Iraq by 2010, saw a flooding of that country by Al Qaida operatives from Syria and Iran: "A Taliban-like oppression has now taken over" the country, and "hundreds of thousands of 'American sympathizers' have been labeled traitors, imprisoned, tortured, and killed."

At home, Obama directed U.S. intelligence services "to cease all wiretapping of alleged terrorist phone calls unless they first obtained a specific court warrant for each case." Captured overseas terrorists are no longer given military tribunals but are "now given full trials in the U.S. court system."

The relaxing of the Bush Administration's rules of engagement with terrorists has led to the explosion of "terrorist bombs in two large and two small U.S. cities, killing hundreds, and the entire country is fearful, for no place seems safe."

Testing President Obama, "as Vice President Joe Biden had predicted." Came in the form of Russia "occupy[ing] and retak[ing] several Eastern European countries," staring with Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania." Lack of action by the United Nations subsequently led to Russia's occupation of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria.

President Obama "deepen[ed] U.S. ties and U.S. trade with Communist regimes in Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia.

In the Middle East, "in mid-2010 Iran launched a nuclear bomb which exploded in the middle of Tel Aviv, destroying much of that city." Israel was forced to "cede huge amounts of territory to the Palestinians," and now "its future remains uncertain."

Finally, there is a "single provider" health care system built along the lines of those in the United Kingdom and Canada; taxes have skyrocketed for most Americans (only those not paying income taxes have received relief); unions are once again "intimidat[ing] anyone that stands in [the] … way" of their organizing; gas costs $7.00 a gallon and no nuclear plants have been built and off-shore drilling has been stymied; conservative talk radio hosts have been "silenced";

Christian publishers have been censored; and dozens of former Bush Administration officials have been prosecuted and are now in jail or bankrupt.

The Christian from 2012 writes that "Christians share a lot of the blame" for these events, by not realizing that voting for Obama in 2008 would result in a "far-left agenda [that] would take away many of our freedoms as a nation, perhaps permanently."  

Nevertheless, Christian from 2012 maintains his faith that "we are going to get through tomorrow."

One final note: The Christian from 2012 neglects to mention the upcoming 2012 presidential election. Despite the far-left Supreme Court appointments, rampant abortions, same-sex marriages, terrorist bombs, Al Qaida in Iraq and renewed Russian militancy, will Obama be re-elected? Stay tuned; perhaps there's a post-election letter being composed as we speak! 

AIG Has Used Much of Its $123 Billion Bailout Loan

AIG Has Used Much of Its $123 Billion Bailout Loan - washingtonpost.com: "The troubled insurance giant American International Group already has consumed three-quarters of a federal $123 billion rescue loan, a little more than a month after the government stepped in to save the company from bankruptcy."

"The Hartford Courant will endorse Sen. Obama this weekend, making it the newspaper’s second endorsement of a Democratic presidential candidate in its 244-year history."

'Hartford Courant' To Endorse Obama, Only 2nd Democrat Ever -- 'St. Pete Times' Joins In: "NEW YORK The Hartford Courant will endorse Sen. Obama this weekend, making it the newspaper's second endorsement of a Democratic presidential candidate in its 244-year history. The pro-Obama editorial will appear on the newspaper's Web site late Saturday afternoon and in the print edition on Sunday, E&P has learned."

"A campaign worker who claimed she was the victim of a politically-motivated attack in which she was beaten, kicked and cut, now admits that she made the whole story up. "

kdka.com - McCain Campaign Volunteer: Attack Story Snowballed Out Of Control

Ashley Todd told investigators today she "just wanted to tell the truth" -- and was neither robbed, nor attacked

Todd, 20, is now facing charges for filing a false report to police

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) � A campaign worker who claimed she was the victim of a politically-motivated attack in which she was beaten, kicked and cut, now admits that she made the whole story up.

According to Pittsburgh police spokeswoman Diane Richard, Ashley Todd, 20, told investigators today that she "was not robbed and there was no 6'4" black male attacker."

Todd initially told police that she was robbed at an ATM in Bloomfield Wednesday night and that the suspect began beating her after seeing a John McCain bumper sticker on her car.

Todd claimed that the mugger even cut a backwards letter "B" in her check.

But today investigators say Todd confessed that the attack never happened.

At a news conference this afternoon, officials said they believe that Todd's injuries were self-inflicted.

Police investigating the report said Todd's story began to unravel early on and they administered a polygraph test.

Investigators asked Todd to return to the police station today for more questioning and to help them release a composite sketch of the suspect.

When she did, police say she admitted that she made the whole thing up and that it snowballed out of control.

Todd told investigators today that she "just wanted to tell the truth" � adding that she was neither robbed, nor attacked.

"She indicated that she has prior mental problems and that she does not remember how the backward letter B got on her face," Richard told reporters today.

Todd told police that while she did not remember how the backward "B" got on her face, she may have done it herself since she was the only one in the car.

According to police, Todd said she thought of Barack Obama when she saw the "B" in her rearview mirror.

Officials say they do not believe any other people were involved; and Todd's friends believed the story about the attack � encouraging her to call police.

Todd is now facing charge for filing a false police report. 

As of late this afternoon, Todd was still in custody under observation.

ASHLEY TODD ASSULT: "If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting."

Think Progress » Fox VP: Hate crime hoax means McCain's campaign is 'over, forever linked to race-baiting.'
Following the Drudge Report's lead yesterday, news organizations picked up the story of a McCain campaign volunteer in Pittsburgh named Ashley Todd, who said that a black man mugged her, sexually assaulted her, and scratched a "B" into her cheek because she had a McCain bumper sticker on her car. The police quickly pointed out "inconsistencies" in her story. Todd has now confessed that she made up the story. On his blog yesterday, Fox News Executive VP John Moody, who is a Pittsburgh native, wrote that the incident's credibility was inextricably tied to McCain's campaign:

This incident could become a watershed event in the 11 days before the election.

If Ms. Todd's allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee.

If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain's quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting.

For Pittsburgh, a city that has done so much to shape American history over the centuries, another moment of truth is at hand.

Yesterday, before Todd had confessed, the McCain campaign put out a statement about the incident, saying, "We're shaken up by this. It's sick and disgusting."

Charles Fried, McCain's own advisor has just endorsed Obama, and VOTED for him via absentee ballot!

Daily Kos: BREAKING! McCain Advisor endorses OBAMA... UPDATED X 4!

Charles Fried, McCain's own advisor has just endorsed Obama, and VOTED for him via absentee ballot!

• batchelorjc's diary :: ::
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Via Huffington Post and TPM

Huffington Post:

The Wall Street Journal today rounds up the horde of prominent Republicans jumping ship to Barack Obama. Now one of McCain's actual advisers has switched sides:

Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School, has long been one of the most important conservative thinkers in the United States. Under President Reagan, he served, with great distinction, as Solicitor General of the United States. Since then, he has been prominently associated with several Republican leaders and candidates, most recently John McCain, for whom he expressed his enthusiastic support in January.

This week, Fried announced that he has voted for Obama-Biden by absentee ballot. In his letter to Trevor Potter, the General Counsel to the McCain-Palin campaign, he asked that his name be removed from the several campaign-related committees on which he serves. In that letter, he said that chief among the reasons for his decision "is the choice of Sarah Palin at a time of deep national crisis."

TPM has the press releases touting Fried's presence on the McCain campaign.

That's gotta hurt McCain... or Sting as TPM puts it:

Ouch ... That Stings
10.24.08 -- 1:15PM By Josh Marshall
Conservative legal scholar and Reagan Solicitor General Charles Fried, who just endorsed Obama, isn't just a Republican. He's actually one of McCain's campaign advisors.

Before they cycle down the memory hole, here's Fried on McCain's Honest and Open Election Committee and Justice Advisory Committee.

Key to his decision was McCain's "choice of Sarah Palin at a time of deep national crisis."

***UPDATE 1***
Here is the Wall Street Journal Post of Current Obamacans

Obamacans: Prominent Republicans Line-Up Behind Obama
Susan Davis reports on the presidential race.

Since Colin Powell crossed party lines to endorse Barack Obama last Sunday, a steady stream of prominent Republicans have endorsed the Illinois senator over rival John McCain.

Former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld is endorsing Obama today at a press conference in Salem, N.H. Weld was a public supporter of Mitt Romney in the Republican primaries. In a statement, Weld called Obama a "once-in-a-lifetime candidate who will transform our politics and restore America's standing in the world."

On Thursday, former Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson endorsed Obama at the state capitol. "I think we have in Barack Obama the clear possibility of a truly great president," he said. "I would contend that it's the most important election of my lifetime."

Scott McClellan, a former spokesman for President George W. Bush, also endorsed Obama Thursday. USA Today reported that McClellan told CNN in a taping to be aired this weekend that Obama has "the best chance of changing the way Washington works."

Ken Adelman, a prominent conservative on foreign policy matters announced his support for Obama on Tuesday, telling the New Yorker that his decision was based on temperament and judgment.

Adelman called McCain "impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird" in his handling of the U.S. economic crisis. He also was unsettled by McCain's choice of running mate. "Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office—I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency," Adelman wrote.

UPDATE 2:
Here is the The New Republic Fried Endorsement and VOTE:

Reagan Appointee and (Recent) McCain Adviser Charles Fried Supports Obama

Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School, has long been one of the most important conservative thinkers in the United States. Under President Reagan, he served, with great distinction, as Solicitor General of the United States. Since then, he has been prominently associated with several Republican leaders and candidates, most recently John McCain, for whom he expressed his enthusiastic support in January.

This week, Fried announced that he has voted for Obama-Biden by absentee ballot. In his letter to Trevor Potter, the General Counsel to the McCain-Palin campaign, he asked that his name be removed from the several campaign-related committees on which he serves. In that letter, he said that chief among the reasons for his decision "is the choice of Sarah Palin at a time of deep national crisis."

Fried is exceptionally thoughtful and principled; his vote for Obama is especially noteworthy.

UPDATE 3:

Digg Link thanks to Fantanel

UPDATE 4:
Fried Further Clarified his selection to TNR:

UPDATE: Fried writes to TNR: I admire Senator McCain and was glad to help in his campaign, and to be listed as doing so; but when I concluded that I must vote for Obama for the reason stated in my letter, I felt it wrong to appear to be recommending to others a vote that I was not prepared to cast myself. So it was more of an erasure than a public affirmation--although obviously my vote meant that I thought that Obama was preferable to McCain-Palin. I do not consider abstention a proper option.

about "elitism", John McCain pinpoints D.C. and New York City as the bastions, or, as Politico puts it, "fake America."

McCain: Washington D.C. and NYC = Fake America

from Crooks and Liars by SilentPatriot

Download | Play    Download | Play

In response to a question from Brian Williams about "elitism", John McCain pinpoints D.C. and New York City as the bastions, or, as Politico puts it, "fake America." I suppose that's why bin Laden targeted lower Manhattan?

WILLIAMS: Who is a member of the elite?

MCCAIN: I -- I know where a lot of 'em live. (LAUGH)

WILLIAMS: Where's that?

MCCAIN: Well, in our nation's capital and New York City. I've seen it. I've lived there. I know the town. I know -- I know what a lot of these elitists are. The ones that she never went to a cocktail party with in Georgetown. I'll be very frank with you. Who think that they can dictate what they believe to America rather than let Americans decide for themselves.

The Associated Press reports Sen. John McCain might skip his own watch party on election night:

McCain May Skip His Election Night Party

from The Washington Independent by Matthew DeLong

The Associated Press reports Sen. John McCain might skip his own watch party on election night:

Instead of appearing before a throng of supporters at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix on the evening of Nov. 4, the Republican presidential nominee plans to deliver post-election remarks to a small group of reporters and guests on the hotel's lawn.

Aides said Thursday that the arrangement was due to space limitations, and that McCain might drop by the election watch party at some other point.

McCain's remarks will be piped electronically into the party and media filing center, aides said. Only a small press "pool" — mostly those who have traveled regularly with the candidate on his campaign plane, plus a few local Arizona reporters and others — will be physically present when he speaks.

The news calls into question whether the $695 price tag for a workspace in the media filing center at the Biltmore will be worthwhile for news organizations.

Yet it seems a fitting finale for a campaign in which many reporters following McCain saw more of him on television than they did in person.

In contrast, Sen. Barack Obama is planning a massive event in Chicago's Grant Park — the site of the Lollapalooza music festival. He is expected to put in an appearance at his party.

Here is a review from consumerist.com of a Robert Allen Get Rich Quick in Real Estate Seminar....

Consumerist Attends Robert Allen's Get Rich Quick In Real Estate Seminar [Investigations]

from Consumerist by Ben Popken

I wanted to find out what Robert Allen's "get-rich-quick in real estate with no money down" promise was all about, so when I saw a full page ad in the Daily Post advertising one of his free seminars today, I went and checked it out. I'll give you a full run-down later, but here's the quick and dirty, and what I can tell about how the darn thing seems to function.

The way they're able to set up people who have no job or money down or credit score or clue what they're doing is to avoid the banking system entirely. Instead, they have a book of private lenders who will invest in your deal. These lenders are themselves "graduates" of the Robert Allen institute. According to the presenter, these graduates just have made so much money in real estate that they don't need to deals anymore, they just need places to invest their money.

The whole thing hinges around you finding properties in preforeclosure and then negotiating with the desperate owner and the lender to get a short sale. Then you're supposed to clean up the curb appeal and turn around and sell it for a little bit more. Basically the good ol' fix n' flip scenario. But wait, you ask, how do I find houses in preforeclosure?

Luckily the Robert Allen institute has a database they give you access to that shows you all the houses across the country in preforeclosure status. They charge $240 a year for this database, but you can get it for a year free if you sign up for a 3-day workshop class. The 3-day workshop costs $3995. Except today you can get a one-time discount of $1000. And if you get a friend or companion to sign up with you, they get 50% off. The presenter encouraged us to put it on Mastercard and only pay $40 a month. Within 4 months, he promised we would close a deal with a net profit of tens of thousands of dollars, and we could just pay off the Mastercard then. He had this overworked manner of emphasizing the syllables in polysyllabic words. Mastercard became Master-Card. He said things like "that strat-e-gy was very at-trac-tive."

The presenter talked about how important it was to put together the perfect short-sale package with all the right forms in the right order. He clasped that blue plastic binder and believed in it like it was the newly discovered epistles of Jesus. But I felt pretty confident that whatever was in that binder, or in his special CDs packed with legal documents, for free online.

So what was in the seminar? Very basic information that teased to the prospect of learning more basic information at an inflated price tag, along with a pitch to join the Robert Allen multi-level-marketing real-estate pyramid, just like I figured. I'll give a more thorough analysis in a future post.

Greater access to voting information

Greater access to voting information

from The Official Google Blog by A Googler

At Google, we pride ourselves on helping people find things on the Internet. And every four years in America, Google Trends shows that people are searching to find voting information, like how to register and where to vote.

It's hard to believe that in 2008, information so important to U.S. citizens and the democratic process isn't well organized on the web. To solve this problem, we've released our US Voter Info site, an effort to simplify and centralize voting locations and registration information.


We developed the site in the hope that it will increase voter participation. We were helped by a number of partners, including many state and local election officials, the League of Women Voters, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and others involved in the Voting Information Project.

Are you registered to vote? What's the best way to obtain an absentee ballot? When people visit the site, answers to these questions appear. And anyone with a website can provide the same information. The US Voter Info gadget places a simple search box that expands to show a full set of voter information when someone enters an address.


We are also offering a simpler way to find out where to vote. By entering a home address, citizens across the country will be able to find their polling place for election day.

To encourage political participation, we've opened up this data to third-party sites and developers through an API developed by Dan Berlin, one of our open-source engineers. We're excited to share this data, and hope that others will find it useful in encouraging citizens to vote.

Organizing information is our mission. We do that every day with web content, and we want to do the same thing with information to inform and empower voters and to help them get to the polls this election season.

Posted by JL Needham, Public Sector Content Partnerships, and Abe Murray, Product Manager

"answer favors Obama's point of view: The Supreme Court's ruling in Ledbetter, and Congress' failure to correct that decision, deprives Americans of the right to go to court to seek justice when they are harmed by the artfully concealed illegal acts

t r u t h o u t | Obama, McCain Views on Unequal-Pay Case Are Revealing
Roe v. Wade wasn't the only important Supreme Court case mentioned during the final presidential debate at Hofstra University last week. The candidates also had a tense exchange over a less-famous case, Ledbetter v. Goodyear, which involved a woman named Lilly Ledbetter, who received unequal pay at her job for years without realizing it.

    The discussion of Ledbetter's battle against discrimination reveals a great deal about each candidate's commitment to protecting the legal rights of ordinary Americans.

    Sen. Barack Obama mentioned the Ledbetter case as an example of how an out-of-touch judiciary can erode important civil rights and legal protections, like those that make pay discrimination illegal. Ledbetter broke down barriers by becoming the first female supervisor in her section at Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. in Gadsden, Ala. She served in that position for many years before making the startling discovery that she was being paid far less than her male counterparts simply because she was a woman. After an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigation ruled in her favor, Ledbetter filed a pay discrimination lawsuit, which she won at the trial level.

    But what should have been a significant victory for Ledbetter soon turned into a miscarriage of justice when the Supreme Court reversed this decision, finding that because Goodyear had successfully hidden its first act of unequal pay for 180 days - in her case, it was actually many years - Ledbetter had lost the right to sue.

    Ledbetter received an anonymous note about the discrimination shortly before she filed suit in March 1998. She had been working at Goodyear since 1979, so almost 20 years went by before she had any idea she had suffered discrimination.

    Because many employers forbid employees from comparing salaries, and employees are unlikely to discover pay discrimination very quickly, this new interpretation of the 180-day statute of limitations - that it starts from the first act of discrimination, not when a victim first becomes aware of the discrepancy - essentially protects the ability of corporations to discriminate.

    The Supreme Court's ruling strayed from years of precedent. And it now guarantees corporations the freedom to discriminate with impunity, while restricting access to the civil court system for many ordinary Americans who often have no other legal recourse.

    As Obama noted, Congress attempted to correct the ruling with the Fair Pay Act. This pay equity legislation was designed to clarify that the statute of limitations runs for 180 days from the time when a person first becomes aware of the discriminatory act. It passed the House but failed in the Senate, demonstrating that it's not just the judiciary that's out of touch with the needs of ordinary Americans, many of our legislators are, too.

    Sen. John McCain argued that Ledbetter was decided properly and dismissed the pay equity bill, on which he did not vote, as a "trial lawyers' dream." But is it a trial lawyer's dream, or is it a nightmare for ordinary people who find themselves on the wrong end of corporate abuse?

    The critical question is: Which result would have best promoted the interests of average Americans? The answer favors Obama's point of view: The Supreme Court's ruling in Ledbetter, and Congress' failure to correct that decision, deprives Americans of the right to go to court to seek justice when they are harmed by the artfully concealed illegal acts of others. Under no reasonable interpretation does that constitute justice.

    Lilly Ledbetter's story resonates for a reason. It is a poignant reminder that we need a national conversation about what all American citizens, whose taxes pay for the courts, should be able to expect from the civil justice system. The question for Obama and McCain to answer now is: How will you make justice attainable for ordinary Americans? As Ledbetter herself put it recently, "It isn't a Democrat or Republican issue, it's a fairness issue."

    Voters should think about this before Nov. 4. Since the next president will undoubtedly make Supreme Court appointments, he needs to embrace the judicial values that will benefit a majority of ordinary Americans, not corporate interests.

    --------

    Kia Franklin, a senior fellow in civil justice at the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, a nonpartisan think tank, is the author of "Election '08: A Pro-Civil Justice Presidential Platform."

"This means that, in most high-inequality countries, dishwashers' sons are more likely to be dishwashers and millionaires' kids can assume that they too will be rich,"

American Dream Moved to Sweden; Nothing Trickled Down | AfterDowningStreet.org

Rich-Poor Divide Worst Among Rich Countries
By Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service

WASHINGTON - The "American Dream" of upward social mobility appears to have emigrated from its birthplace in the United States to northern Europe, according to a major new report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on the growth of economic equality over the past 20 years.

Of its 30 member states, most of which are also members of the European Union, the United States has the largest gap between its wealthiest and poorest households after Mexico and Turkey, according to the report, "Growing Unequal?", which was released at OECD headquarters in Paris Tuesday.

That gap has grown particularly large in the U.S. since 2000 -- that is, under the administration of President George W. Bush -- according to the report, which found that the gap between the U.S. middle class and the wealthiest 10 percent has also increased.

The growth in the divide has major implications for social mobility, according to OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria, who said the report's data had demonstrated that the notion that inequality encourages the poor to do better is false.

"Social mobility is low in countries with high inequality like Italy, the UK (United Kingdom), and the United States. And it is much higher in the Nordic countries, where income is distributed more evenly," he told reporters.

"This means that, in most high-inequality countries, dishwashers' sons are more likely to be dishwashers and millionaires' kids can assume that they too will be rich," he said, adding that governments could do much to promote mobility, particularly through progressive tax policies, greater social spending, job creation, and increasing investment in education.

The new report, which found that inequality in most OECD countries -- not just the U.S. -- has grown markedly over the last two decades, comes at a critical moment given the ongoing global financial crisis and its impact on the presidential election here.

The crisis has sparked unprecedented worldwide criticism of the "free-market" economic model that the U.S. and Washington-based international agencies like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have vigorously promoted since the administration of President Ronald Reagan.

That model, sometimes called the "Washington Consensus", promised that greater reliance on markets and less government intervention would result in stronger economic growth that would also produce higher incomes for the middle class and the poor.

The current crisis, however, has called that model into question, not just overseas but in the U.S., where Democrats are urging major changes in economic and fiscal policies designed precisely to begin closing the gap between the rich, on the one hand, and the middle class and the poor, on the other.

Those changes -- including increased taxes on the wealthy, greater investments in education, public services and creating jobs, and tackling child poverty, in particular -- are precisely those cited by the OECD report as among the most effective in narrowing the rich-poor gap and reducing the poverty rate.

"This report does fit a certain Democratic narrative in recognizing that inequalities are a serious problem and that they're generated in the labor market," said John Schmitt, a senior analyst at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) here. "The OECD recognizes that the U.S. performs poorly on social mobility, and I think that surprises a lot of Americans."

The report found that the U.S. is not alone in suffering growing wealth inequalities among the world's richest countries over the past two decades. In three out of four of 24 OECD countries surveyed, inequalities between the richest 10 percent of the population and the poorest 10 percent grew.

France, where government has long taken a particularly aggressive role in the economy, saw the rich-poor gap decline over that period, while, after a steep rise in inequality under former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, the wealth gap and poverty rate have declined faster in Britain than in any other country.

The greatest inequality between rich and poor among OECD countries was found in Mexico, where the wealthiest 10 percent of households had more than 25 times greater income than the poorest ten percent. In Turkey, the ratio was 17 to one, while the U.S. was just below that, at 16 to one.

The average for all 30 OECD nations in 2005 was about nine to one, with the smallest gap -- less than five to one -- found in Sweden and Denmark.

After Mexico and Turkey, the U.S. also has the highest poverty rate of the 30 OECD nations, according to the report, which defined poor households as those whose income was less than half of the media income in each of the member-countries.

For all OECD countries, the average poverty rate was just under 10 percent in 2005. In Mexico, the rate was highest at more than 20 percent. Turkey and the U.S. were tied at 17 percent. Lowest poverty rates were found in Denmark, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Austria, and Norway.

In his remarks, Gurria repeatedly underlined the importance of reducing the wealth gap in order both to enhance overall economic performance and reduce social friction, stressing that the implications of current trends were "very serious".

"(G)rowing inequality raises political challenges because it breeds social resentment, it questions the ultimate role of democracy and generates political instability," he said. "It also fuels populist, protectionist and anti-globalization sentiments...Ignoring increasing inequality is not an option," he added.

Among OECD countries, social mobility as measured by the relative earnings of fathers and sons was highest in the Nordic countries where the rich-poor gap was narrow, and lowest in Italy, Britain and the U.S. -- all countries where the gap was significantly wider.

The report noted that while poverty among the elderly has fallen in OECD countries, poverty among young adults and families with children, particularly single-parent families, has increased over the same period. On average, one child out of every eight living in an OECD country in 2005 was living in poverty. For the U.S., the ratio is closer to one in five.

In a companion article published by the OECD 'Observer', Oxford University economist Anthony Atkinson argued that government will have to take a stronger role in reducing the wealth gap and creating jobs, particularly if the world economy goes into recession.

"If the government can take on the role of lender of last resort [for troubled financial institutions], then we should think about the government taking on the role of employer of last resort," he wrote. "Put bluntly, governments have to step up to the plate, as [U.S. President Franklin] Roosevelt did in the Great Depression."

© 2008 Inter Press Service

Why are there faces in our broccoli?

Oh My God, Why Are There Terrifying Little Faces In The Broccoli? [Unacceptable Food]

from Consumerist by Meg Marco

This picture is of a package of Cascadian Farms broccoli. Look carefully. Then try not to scream in horror.

Here's a close-up. They look so happy. And green. And decapitated.

WTF, BROCCOLI? [Bread & Honey] (Thanks, Ryan!)

Wal-Mart sees shifts in shoppers' buying habits

Walmart: 6 "Disturbing Behaviors" Exhibited By Consumers [Recession Watch]

from Consumerist by Meg Marco

9 of 10 American families shop at Walmart at least once a year, says USAToday, which puts the retailer in an excellent position to tell us something about consumer behavior. So, what has Walmart been observing? "Disturbing behavior."

6 "Disturbing Behaviors" Walmart has noticed:

1. Cash-strapped consumers are buying baby formula at the beginning of the month, when they have more money.
2. A double digit decline in the use of credit cards in the second quarter.
3. 80% of consumers surveyed by Walmart say "personal financial security" is their top concern. Formerly, it was the price of gasoline.
4. Purchases of generics have doubled.
5. Shoppers are changing how often they visit the store. Some come more often because they have less money and can only afford small purchases. Some come less often to save gas.
6. Walmart now sees a 2.5% sales increase in the middle of the month, when paychecks are handed out.

Wal-Mart sees shifts in shoppers' buying habits [USAToday]

Gov. Sarah Palin charged the state for her children to travel with her, including to events where they were not invited, and later amended expense reports to specify that they were on official business.

Palin Charged State of Alaska For Children's Travel Expenses

from Crooks and Liars by Nicole Belle

AP via KMOV.com:

Gov. Sarah Palin charged the state for her children to travel with her, including to events where they were not invited, and later amended expense reports to specify that they were on official business.

The charges included costs for hotel and commercial flights for three daughters to join Palin to watch their father in a snowmobile race, and a trip to New York, where the governor attended a five-hour conference and stayed with 17-year-old Bristol for five days and four nights in a luxury hotel.

In all, Palin has charged the state $21,012 for her three daughters' 64 one-way and 12 round-trip commercial flights since she took office in December 2006. In some other cases, she has charged the state for hotel rooms for the girls.

Alaska law does not specifically address expenses for a governor's children. The law allows for payment of expenses for anyone conducting official state business.[..]

State Finance Director Kim Garnero told The Associated Press she has not reviewed the Palins' travel expense forms, so she could not say whether the daughters' travel with their mother would meet the definition of official business.[..]

When Palin released her family's tax records as part of her vice presidential campaign, some tax experts questioned why she did not report the children's state travel reimbursements as income.

The Palins released a review by a Washington attorney who said state law allows the children's travel expenses to be reimbursed and not taxed when they conduct official state business.[..]

In addition to the commercial flights, the children have traveled dozens of times with Palin on a state plane. For these flights, the total cost of operating the plane, at $971 an hour, was about $55,000, according to state flight logs. The cost of operating the state plane does not increase when the children join their mother. [..]

The state is already reviewing nearly $17,000 in per diem payments to Palin for more than 300 nights she slept at her own home, 40 miles from her satellite office in Anchorage.

The Palins are already in some trouble for owing back taxes and there are those who say that this is definitely taxable income that the Palins would need to declare. Marcy Wheeler recounts that even the McCain campaign is uncomfortable with Palin's insistence on having her kids accompany her everywhere, even campaign meetings.

Palins to Testify Friday in State Ethics Probe

Palins to Testify Friday in State Ethics Probe

from TPR: The Public Record | In-Depth, Incisive, Independent Reporting

An attorney hired by Alaska's personnel board to investigate whether Gov. Sarah Palin violated state ethics laws when she fired her public safety commissioner will depose the governor and her husband this week at an undisclosed location in another state.

Timothy Petumenos, the attorney hired by the personnel board, will spend about six hours interviewing Palin and her husband, Todd, said Thomas Van Flein, an attorney representing the Palins.

It's unknown whether Petunmenos will release a report prior to the Nov. 4 election. 

Last week, the Alaska Legislative Council voted unanimously to share with Petumenos more than 1,000 pages of documents collected by Steve Branchflower, the independent counsel who spent six weeks investigating Palin. The documents collected by Branchflower have not been released publicly because of confidentiality concerns.

Petumenos's investigation is said to include at least two other ethics complaints filed against Palin, one of which is believed to be a complaint filed by The Public Safety Employees Union alleging Palin and her aides illegally accessed her ex brother-in-law's personnel files and improperly and illegally tried to get him fired from his job as a state trooper. Watchdog Andree McLeod filed the only other publicly known ethics complaint against Palin. McLeod alleges the governor secured a state job for one of her fundraisers.

On Oct. 10, an investigative report written by Branchflower and released by a bipartisan group of state lawmakers concluded that Palin abused her authority and broke state ethics laws by sanctioning a campaign to pressure subordinates to fire her former brother-in-law, state trooper Mike Wooten.

Although Palin, Sen. John McCain's vice presidential running mate, welcomed the probe in July, she turned against it after John McCain picked her in late August to be his running mate. The McCain-Palin campaign dispatched a team of operatives to Alaska in an effort to block or discredit the investigation.

On Sept. 2, just a day before she accepted the GOP nomination, Palin took the unusual step of filing an ethics complaint against herself. Her attorney, Thomas Van Flein, said the probe sanctioned by the Legislative Council was a partisan witch-hunt led by Obama supporters, despite the fact that it was approved by a majority of Republican lawmakers. The state personnel board, Palin and her attorneys said is the appropriate governing body to conduct a fair and nonpartisan investigation into Palin for possible ethics violations.

Palin and her campaign advisers are betting that the personnel board, two of whose members were appointed by former Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski, will clear her of wrongdoing in the firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan.

However, according to a report in Newsweek, the personnel board's probe may lead to "more land mines."

"McCain aides were chagrined to discover that Petumenos was a Democrat who had contributed to Palin's 2006 opponent for governor, Tony Knowles," Newsweek reported.

Since the 263-page Branchflower report has been released, Palin has misrepresented the report's findings.

"Well, I'm very, very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing," Palin said, "any hint of any kind of unethical activity there. Very pleased to be cleared of any of that."

The report found that Palin violated a statute of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act, which says "each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust."

Sarah and Todd Palin, and their handlers, have defended their actions and denied Monegan, the public safety commissioner, was pressured to fire trooper Wooten.

In his findings, Branchflower said Monegan's resistance to the pressure to fire Wooten played a part in Palin's decision to terminate him as the state's top police official, but that her firing decision was nonetheless lawful.

"I find that, although Walt Monegan's refusal to fire Trooper Michael Wooten was not the sole reason he was fired by Gov. Sarah Palin, it was likely a contributing factor to his termination as Commissioner of Public Safety," Branchflower said. "In spite of that, Gov. Palin's firing of Commissioner Monegan was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority to hire and fire executive branch department heads."

Branchflower's report concluded that the effort to oust Wooten was spearheaded by Todd Palin, who calls himself "First Dude" and received support in his anti-Wooten campaign from the governor. The Palins refused to be interviewed by Branchflower.

"Gov. Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda, to wit: To get Trooper Michael Wooten fired," the report said. "The evidence supports the conclusion that Gov. Palin, at the least, engaged in 'official action' by her inaction, if not her active participation or assistance to her husband, to get trooper Wooten fired."

According to the report, "She knowingly, as that term is defined in the above statutes, permitted Todd Palin to use the Governor's office and the resources of the Governor's office, including access to state employees, to continue to contact subordinate state employees, in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired."

Todd Palin admitted he was obsessed with getting his wife's estranged brother-in-law fired from the state troopers, so much so that Gov. Palin once told him to "stop talking about it with her," according to a 25-page sworn affidavit given to a state investigator.

In the affidavit, Todd Palin takes much of the responsibility for pestering state officials about firing Trooper Mike Wooten, apparently to deflect some of the blame for the "Troopergate" affair from his wife, now the Republican vice presidential nominee.

"I had hundreds of conversations with my family, with friends, with colleagues, and with just about everyone I could -- including government officials," Todd Palin wrote. "In fact, I talked about Wooten so much over the years that my wife told me to stop talking about it with her."

The affidavit shows that Todd Palin spent much of Gov. Palin's nearly two years in office trying to get Wooten kicked off the police force for alleged misconduct. Wooten was involved in a bitter divorce and child-custody battle with Gov. Palin's sister, Molly McCann.

But Todd Palin's claim in his affidavit that Sarah Palin was disinterested in the efforts to get her former brother-in-law fired stands in stark contrast to documents that are already public.

Before becoming governor, Sarah Palin was deeply involved in the dispute with Wooten, the record shows. She filed several formal complaints against her ex-brother-in-law over the course of three years alleging he engaged in illegal behavior while on duty and had threatened her family.

In the affidavit, Todd Palin said he had many conversations about Wooten with Mike Tibbles, Gov. Palin's chief of staff, "gave him a packet of information" on Wooten, and "spoke to him a couple of times about my questions whether Wooten was following the law on his workers' comp claim."
 
Todd Palin said he "makes no apologies for wanting to protect my family and wanting to publicize the injustice of a violent trooper keeping his badge and abusing the workers' compensation system."

Todd Palin denied pressuring Monegan to fire Wooten and traced Monegan's dismissal to other disputes, such as budgetary disagreements and Monegan's failure to defend Gov. Palin from false statements about her record on public safety and funding levels for troopers.

"I never told [Monegan] to fire Wooten," Todd Palin said. "My understanding was that he was in charge of receiving any kind of complaint about a trooper. That was his job. At no time did Monegan tell me he felt 'pressure' nor would I expect the top law enforcement officer in our state to feel 'pressure' to do anything he did not think was right."

In addition to the personnel board probe, Palin faces new legal difficulties as a result of the "Ttroopergate" report released by Branchflower.

Last week, Monegan submitted a complaint to the personnel board seeking a hearing to "address reputational harm" caused by Palin.

In the complaint, which appears to set the stage for a lawsuit, Monegan's attorney Jeffrey Feldman said Palin's "inconsistent and changing explanations" for firing Monegan – including claims that he was fired for insubordination – have damaged his reputation.

"Mr. Monegan does not challenge the Governor's right to discharge him as the Commissioner of the Department of Public Safety," the complaint said. "But the Governor is not entitled to make untrue and defamatory statements about her reasons for discharging a cabinet officer.

"Gov. Palin's public statements accusing Mr. Monegan of serious misconduct were untrue and they have stigmatized his good name, severely damaged — and continue to damage — his reputation and impaired his ability to pursue future professional employment in law enforcement and related fields. This damage thus implicates his constitutionally protected liberty interests."

For his part, Wooten, the state trooper, is prepared to sue Palin, her husband, and the state for spending the past three years trying to get him fired from his job, according to John Cyr, the executive director of the Public Safety Employees Association, the union that represents state troopers.

Also, a top Alaska State Trooper official who works with Wooten said Wooten has told several close associates that he will soon file a multimillion lawsuit against Palin. The official requested anonymity because Wooten, who has declined interview requests, did not clear him to speak about the plans.

"Trooper Wooten intends to sue Gov. Palin, her husband, and some people in her administration for slander defamation of character, and civil rights violations," the official said. "His attorneys are considering filing in state and federal court."

The lawsuits could cause additional problems for Palin if Alaska's taxpayers are forced to foot the bill for any settlements.

In the complaint she filed against herself with the personnel board, Palin waived her right to confidentiality. The McCain-Palin campaign said shortly thereafter that the investigation would remain secret at the request of Petumenos.

However, Anchorage attorney Meg Simonian threatened to sue to make the findings public as it relates to other officials in Palin's administration.

In a response to Simonian, Petumenos said "the Governor does not have the right, under such circumstances, to waive the right of confidentiality for others," Petumenos wrote, adding that it's likely his report will eventually be released publicly.

"The Board is … mindful of the public interest and the interest in the credibility to its processes that public disclosure would provide," Petumenos said.

"As I read about the level of deception the Bush administration used to initiate and process this war, I was shocked. I became ashamed of wearing the uniform,"

Judge Rules Army Cannot Retry Iraq War Critic Lt. Ehren Watada

from TPR: The Public Record | In-Depth, Incisive, Independent Reporting

Iraq war objector Lt. Ehren Watada cannot be retried by the Army on charges of missing his unit's deployment and criticizing President George W. Bush and the war, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Benjamin H. Settle said retrying Watada would violate the soldier's constitutional protection against double jeopardy.

"He dismissed the heart of [the Army's] case," said Watada's lawyer Jim Lobsenz said of the judge's ruling. "We're very pleased. It's taken a long time."

Watada faced a court-martial last year on charges of "missing movement" to Iraq and two counts of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. The latter two charges stemmed from public statements critical of the war Watada made at a Veterans for Peace rally at the University of Washington in August 2006.

Watada was also charged with two separate counts of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman based on interviews he gave to the media in which he was critical of the war and Bush. Those charges were dropped in exchange for Watada signing a stipulation agreement acknowledging that he gave the interviews.

The court-martial ended in a mistrial in February 2007.

However, Judge Settle said Tuesday that the military trial court can still pursue conduct unbecoming an officer charges against Watada in which Watada was interviewed by reporters when he denounced Bush and the Iraq war.

In a statement late Tuesday, a Fort Lewis spokesman said the base's commanding general, Lt. Gen. Charles H. Jacoby Jr., had not yet had a chance to review the ruling in depth.

"Once that review is complete, he will be able to make a decision on the way forward with this case," the spokesman said.

Watada was a member of the Army's First Stryker Brigade Combat Team at Fort Lewis when, on June 22, he became the first commissioned officer to refuse assignment with the unit to Iraq.

Redacted documents outlining the charges against Watada quoted him as saying that President Bush lied about the reasons the US went to war in Iraq and that the occupation was illegal.

"As I read about the level of deception the Bush administration used to initiate and process this war, I was shocked. I became ashamed of wearing the uniform," Watada said in an interview with published by Truthout.org on June 7, 2005.

Lt. Col. John Head, the military judge who presided over Watada's court-martial last year, declared a mistrial because military prosecutors and Watada's defense attorney could not reach an agreement regarding the characterization of a stipulation agreement Watada signed before the start of his court-martial. The judge characterized the stipulation agreement as an admission of guilt by Watada for "missing movement" and making statements against the Iraq war.

Head said he wanted to question Watada regarding the agreement to gain a better understanding of what Watada's state of mind was when he signed the agreement, but Watada's attorney Eric Seitz would not allow the judge to question his client unless he knew the questions in advance. Head said if he could not question Watada to ensure the accuracy of the document he signed prior to the start of the court-martial, he would have to throw out the agreement, meaning the charges against Watada would become null and void. 

Seitz said the stipulation Watada signed was by no means an admission of guilt. Rather, it was a statement of fact that his client believed the Iraq war was illegal, and that he refused to deploy to the region with his unit because of his beliefs.

Seitz said his client's comments were protected free speech, and he was shocked that Watada was charged with anything other than missing a troop movement.

The charges filed against Watada marked the first time in 41 years that the military has used the charge of conduct unbecoming an officer to prosecute an officer's public statements. Usually, a conduct-unbecoming case involves more-serious crimes, such as rape, sexual harassment, or manslaughter. The last time a military officer was charged with public dissent was in 1965, when Lieutenant Henry Howe criticized US foreign policy during the Vietnam War.

Last year, Watada discussed his decision to publicly oppose the war during a speech at the Church of the Crossroads in Moiliili, Hawaii. Speaking to a crowd of about 350, Watada said he struggled with leaving his fellow soldiers behind, but ultimately he needed to take a stand because, as an officer, he could not consciously order soldiers under his command to die for a war he believes is wrong and illegal.

"I hated to leave my troops, but something had to be done to stop this insanity," he said. "How could I order men to die for something I believe is wrong? Wearing the uniform is not, and is never, an excuse."

Right wing D-Bag Sean Hannity gets some of the shit he hurls thrown back at him regarding his association with neo-Nazi Hal Turner - see the video

I tried to clip Hannity last night, but he's a friend with an unrepentant Neo Nazi named Hal Turner

from Crooks and Liars by John Amato

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoLFSSyKyPg

I was going to make a video from Hannity and Colmes last night about Biden's remark, but it was so disgusting that I couldn't do it. Hey Sean, how's the white supremacist Hal Turner doing? He's your pal and has his own radio show because of you...Say hi for me will you?
The Nation did a feature on it.

This year a man named Hal Turner sat before his computer at his suburban home in North Bergen, New Jersey, posting bomb-making tips on his website, hailing the firebombing of an apartment containing "Savage Negroes" and calling for the murder of immigrants. "When enough illegal aliens get killed they will stop coming to the country!" Turner wrote.

Turner was once a prominent activist in New Jersey's Republican Party. To area conservatives, he was best known by his moniker for call-ins to the Sean Hannity Show, "Hal from North Bergen." For years, Hannity offered his top-rated radio show as a regular forum for Turner's occasionally racist, always over-the-top rants. Hannity also chatted with him off-air, allegedly offering encouragement to Turner as he struggled to overcome a cocaine habit and homosexual leanings. Turner has boasted that Hannity once invited Turner and his son on to the set of Fox News's Hannity and Colmes. Today, Turner lurks on the fringes of the far right, spouting hate-laced tirades on his webcast radio show. Hannity, meanwhile, remains mum about his former alliance with the neo-Nazi, homing in instead on the supposed racism of black and Latino Democrats...read on

After you read the rest of the article there's still more. Jason Linkins has a little something extra. And Dave first reported on the Hannity-Turner connection back in 2005.

no, no, has z

no, no, has z. "cheezburger."

“I went in like a cropduster with my nose flying first and snorted the cocaine off the dog.”

Gary Busey Snorted Cocaine Off His Dog

from Best Week Ever by Sara Schaefer

Gary Busey has once again solidified his place in my heart as my FAVORITE. In a recent interview, Mr. Busey said that while he was a drug addict, he snorted cocaine off his dog, who had rolled around in the white stuff: "I went in like a cropduster with my nose flying first and snorted the cocaine off the dog." Now, I know you're all wondering what goes through the mind of an addict in these types of situations. Well, I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure I know exactly how it went down:

(via ONTD)

"Someone should be punched for this"

Data Mining And Easy Credit Will Save America! [Marketing]

from Gawker by Hamilton Nolan

How did all those shady mortgage companies get America's finances all fucked up in the first place? By using the freakish amount of publicly available data about all of our lives to target those people who were the most needy, vulnerable, and ignorant, and reel them into unsustainable debt. Now that everything is screwed up, how are financial companies going to pull us out of this mess? The exact same way!

Data mining is going just as strong as ever, and all these credit card and loan companies are really trying to bring in new customers now that their last round of customers have all gone bankrupt. Even the big credit rating firms like Equifax and Experian make huge money slicing up all of the information they have on everyone, classifying us into little demographic groups, and selling it to third parties who can then send disturbingly well-targeted (or just disturbing, period) pitches. One woman got dozens of credit card offers congratulating her on recently emerging from bankruptcy. Other people get letters from random companies that show how much the balance is left on their own home mortgage.

Someone should be punched for this. Possibly these people:

At Visions Marketing Services, a company in Lancaster, Pa., that conducts telemarketing campaigns for banks, mortgage trigger leads [of people who just applied for home loans] were marketing gold during the housing boom.

"We called people who were astounded," said Alan E. Geller, chief executive of the firm. "They said, 'I can't believe you just called me. How did you know we were just getting ready to do that?' "

"We were just sitting back laughing," he said.

The evolution of marketing is wonderful! [NYT]

"generalization about Latinos: ''All they do is work and make love.''"

White People Confound GOP By Only Hating Mexicans [Racism]

from Gawker by Pareene

Everyone is always babbling about the "Bradley Effect"—the supposed tendency of white people to tell pollsters they'll vote for a black guy even though they're racist and won't—and how it might hurt Barack Obama in two weeks. But honestly the Bradley Effect doesn't seem to be applicable this year. Not because white people are less racist, but because they have no good reason to lie about supporting McCain. John McCain's current Election Exit Strategy seems to hinge on Western Pennsylvania and Virginia, and he's going to get those states back in his corner by scaring the shit out of white people. Will it work? McCain might want to look at the dire position modern white supremacist organizations are in; they can barely rile up the neo-Nazis to care that a black guy might be the next president!

American National Socialist Workers Party head Bill White may be a neo-Nazi, but he's not voting for John McCain.

"Right now," said White, head of the American National Socialist Workers Party, "we're facing the potential of a half-black candidate financed by Jewish money going up against a white candidate financed by Jewish money, who are both advocating the same policy. So you've got two terrible choices."

The hate groups are demoralized! On the eve of what should be the best election for them in years! Former KKK member and convicted lyncher James Knowles doesn't even hate Obama! The hate group experts at the Southern Poverty Law Center say the white supremacists "are in a more or less stunned position right now. They haven't been able to figure out how to proceed just yet."

The problem is that the embittered poor rural white dudes who might align with these groups in bad times (and these are bad times) aren't threatened by Barack Obama. No, they are worried about more important things:

There have been only sporadic reports of racist mailings, though Democrats say they are on the lookout for more. And there has been scant evidence that Obama's candidacy has helped hate-group recruitment, unlike the recent debates over immigration policy, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

White supremacist leaders, while threatening some political action before Nov. 4, similarly attribute their relative lack of activity this year to demographic and societal changes they cannot stop. But they also point to a Republican candidate, Senator John McCain, whose liberal immigration views and staunch support for Israel are against everything they stand for.

See? McCain is precisely the wrong man to win over the neo-Nazis, because he's totally in favor of the Mexicans coming in and stealing all our jobs, and our women! Across the shittier parts of Real America, the immigration debate stirs up way more bile than the threat of a black man being president.

So while McCain and Palin stir up some dark, dark behavior from their supporters, they're still not connecting with the enraged hate groups who might help turn out some of those racists to the polls. If he'd picked, say, Lou Dobbs instead of Sarah Palin, he might be getting somewhere. Hating the blacks is passe among redneck idiots. Just ask North Carolina Sheriff Steve Bizzell, who helped his state "team with federal authorities to train local officers to identify and track jailed illegal immigrants, speeding up the deportation process." He just recently said this:

Then Bizzell, in an interview for a newspaper report on immigration reform published last month, complained that ''Mexicans are trashy.''

He pointed to several children playing in one community as if they proved his next generalization about Latinos: ''All they do is work and make love.''

He said Latinos spread a culture of drunkenness and violence through his mostly rural county, a short drive from Raleigh.

And poor John McCain, who favors amnesty and daily "siestas", cannot capitalize on this at all. What a sad state of affairs.

No Thor for Daniel Craig

Daniel Craig Turns Down Thor

from /Film by orfilms@gmail.com (slashfilm.com)

When it was revealed that Kenneth Branagh was in talks to direct a big screen adaptation of Thor, many people wondered what a Branagh superhero movie would be like. Now we have some idea. IESB is reporting that Marvel actually offered the lead role to Daniel Craig, but the Quantum of Solace star confirmed that he actually turned down the role.

I know this is a bit of "non-news", but I think it shows the direction that Marvel wants to take their mythical superhero franchise. I don't know about you guys but I can't even imagine Craig with long hair and a big hammer, lightning streaking across the sky in the background.

"Dr. Strange is on the short list of comic properties that they will explore after The Avengers hits the big screen."

Marvel is Considering a Dr. Strange Movie

from /Film by orfilms@gmail.com (slashfilm.com)

Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige told MTV News that Dr. Strange is on the short list of comic properties that they will explore after The Avengers hits the big screen.

"Very much so," Feige said. "I'd say in the next year, year and a half, as we start putting together our film slate for 2012 and 2013, I would not be shocked if we saw Dr. Strange on those lists. I love the idea of taping into the magical realm of the Marvel Universe, which is fairly significant and hasn't yet seen life on screen. It's something I'm very, very interested in."

To me, Dr. Strange has always been a C-level Marvel property. He's like a DC character stuck in the Marvel universe. Whenever he shows up in one of the stories I'm reading, I'm immediately turned off. Dr. Strange's magical powers are endless, and I usually like my superhero stories to be grounded in a realistic world (which probably explains my addition to Vertigo imprint books). For example, Strange's appearance in Kevin Smith's Daredevil, which is a flawless story arc aside from the Strange appearance. That said, I've never given a stand along Dr. Strange book a fair read, but I somehow doubt my opinion would change about the character.

Phil Saunders concept art of War Machine

Iron Man: Official War Machine Concept Art

from /Film by orfilms@gmail.com (slashfilm.com)

A while back, Yahoo posted a boat load of concept art from Jon Favreau's Iron Man. Hidden in the piles of artwork is Phil Saunders concept art of War Machine. Forgive me if you've already seen this, but my initial google search shows that not many people noticed.

"These three images I did at the very end of production as alternate suit designs that would have been in a Hall of Armor coda at the end of the film," writes Saunders. "I spent a lot of time on developing this [War Machine] suit, which was of course cut from the script about half way through pre-production. Originally it was going to be called the MK IV armor and would have been weaponized swap-out parts that would be worn over the original MK III armor. Earlier versions were red and gold, and would have been worn by Tony Stark in the final battle sequence."

But before you get too excited, Saunders warns that "if there is a War Machine in [Iron Man 2], it's unlikely to be this one."

You can also check out the other two concepts Saunders created above. One is an attempt at "suggesting 'stealth' technology in the surface treatment of the suit" and was "ultimately abandoned as not being classic enough." The other is an underwater suit which Avi Arad asked for, but was never featured in the film. Saunders explains that "Toy licensing is such a large part of the revenue from these films, there was a lot of pressure to use as many variations on the suit as possible in the film, all budgetary considerations notwithstanding. Needless to say, the underwater suit never saw the light of day, but in homage to Avi, I drew this one up as a possible addition to the hall of armor."

Thanks to /Film reader Gusmer M for the tip.

“If she wins, I’m done . . . And by ‘I’m done,’ I mean I’m leaving Earth.”

Quote Of The Day

from dailystab.com by Kelly

 

"If she wins, I'm done . . . And by 'I'm done,' I mean I'm leaving Earth."

~ Tina Fey telling TV Guide what she'll do if Sarah Palin is elected Vice President.

Welfare? Socialism? Redistribution Of Wealth?

Welfare? Socialism? Redistribution Of Wealth?

from The Jed Report

I don't think I hear Sarah Palin complaining about the Alaska Permanent Fund, a government program that distributes oil revenues to non-felon Alaska residents. Here's the income she received frm the fund as reported on her 2006 and 2007 tax returns:

Update: John Cole has more.

"Due to the ongoing hatred and vile nature of the McCarthy McCain/Palin campaign and Republican politicians and pundits, Keith Olbermann is moved yet again to another Special Comment"

Special Comment: What is "pro-America", Senator?

from Crooks and Liars by Logan Murphy

Download | Play    Download | Play

Due to the ongoing hatred and vile nature of the McCarthy McCain/Palin campaign and Republican politicians and pundits, Keith Olbermann is moved yet again to another Special Comment. This time, Olbermann castigates the entire notion 'Us vs. Them' notion that the Republican Party mouthpieces have been perpetuating in their support for John McCain's candidacy. And worse, for someone who has made his ability to reach across the aisle in a bipartisan manner a mainstay of his campaign, John McCain's allowing his proxies to divide Americans into "good" and "bad" camps shows how far he has slid from his "maverick" days.

(Senator McCain,) I disagree with you on virtually every major point of policy and practice.

And yet I do not think you "anti-America." I would not hesitate to join you in time of crisis in defense of this country.

Fortunately you did not echo this chorus of base hatred.

But neither have you repudiated it.

What is "pro-America", Senator?

Transcripts below the fold:

I have frequently insisted I would never turn the platform of the Special Comment into a regular feature.

But as these last two weeks of this extraordinary, and extraordinarily disturbing, presidential campaign project out in front of us, I fear I may have to temporarily amend that presumption.

I hope it will be otherwise, but I suspect this will be the first of nightly pieces, most shorter than this... until further notice. And thus a Special Comment tonight about the last five days of the divisive, ugly, paranoid bleatings of this Presidential race, culminating in the sliming of Colin Powell for his endorsement of Senator Obama.

There was once a very prominent sportswriter named Dick Young whose work, with ever-increasing frequency, became peppered with references to "my America."

"I can't believe this is happening in My America"... -- "we do not tolerate these people in My America" -- "this man does not belong in my America".

His America gradually revealed itself.

Insular. Isolationist. Backwards-looking. Mindlessly flag-waving. Racist. No second chances. A million rules, but only for the other guy.

Dick Young died in 1987, but he has been re-born in the presidential campaign as it has unfolded since last Thursday night.

In that time, Governor Sarah Palin, Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, McCain spokesperson Nancy Pfotenhauer, and Rush Limbaugh, have revealed that there is a measurable portion of this country that is not interested in that which the vast majority view as democracy or equality or opportunity.

They want only... control -- and they want the rest of us, symbolically, perhaps physically... out. Governor Palin:

"We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington D.C.," you told a fund-raiser in North Carolina last Thursday, to kick off this orgy of condescending elitism. "We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation." Governor, your prejudice is overwhelming.

It is not just "pockets" of this country that are "pro-America" Governor.

America... is "pro-America."

And the "Real America" of yours, Governor, is where people at your rallies shout threats of violence, against other Americans, and you say nothing about them or to them.

What you are seeing is not patriotism, Governor.

What has surrounded you since your nomination, has been the echoing shout of mob rule. Indeed, that shout has echoed to Minnesota, where the next day an unstable Congresswoman named Michele Bachmann added to the ugly cry.

"I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America, or anti-America. I think people would love to see an expose' like that."

For nearly two years, Ms. Bachmann, who made her first political bones by keeping the movie "Aladdin" from being shown at a Minnesota Charter School because she thought it promoted paganism and witchcraft, has had a seat in the government of this nation, a seat from which she has spewed the most implausible, hateful, narrow-minded garbage imaginable.

Well, Congresswoman, you have gotten that "expose'" you wanted, have you not?

Though not perhaps in the way you imagined.

Since giving voice to your remarkable delusion that there are members of Congress who are "anti-America," and the extraordinary tap-dance of sleaze and innuendo about Senator Obama which followed...

...the challenger for your house Seat, Elwyn Tinklenberg, has been inundated by donations -- 700 thousand dollars in the three days after you spoke.

Because the America you perceive, Congresswoman -- with its goblins and ghosts and vast unseen hordes of traitors and fellow travelers and Senators who won't ban "Aladdin" -- exists only in your head, and in the heads of the others who must rationalize the failures in their own lives and of their own policies as somebody else's fault -- as a conspiracy to deny them an America of exclusionism and religious orthodoxy and prejudice, about which they must accuse, and murmur, and shout threats, and cleave the nation into pro-America and anti-America."

And back it comes to the McCain campaign.

And Senator McCain's talking head, Ms. Pfotenhauer, who on this very network Saturday, and seemingly without the slightest idea that dismissive prejudice dripped from every word, analyzed the race in Virginia.

"I can tell you that the Democrats have just come in from the District of Columbia and moved into northern Virginia," she said. "But the rest of the state, 'real Virginia,' if you will, I think will be very responsive to Senator McCain's message."

Again, a toxic message...

The parts of the country that agree with Nancy Pfotenhauer... are real -- the others, not.

Ms. Pfotenhauer, why not go the distance on this one?

It was Senator McCain's own brother who called that part of Virginia nearest Washington "communist country."

Cut to the chase, Madam.

No matter the intended comic hyperbole of Joe McCain...

This is the point -- isn't it?

Leave out the real meaning of "Communism," Madam -- Joe McCain reduced it to a buzz-word; it has no more true definition right now than does "Socialism," or the phrase "a man who sees America like you and I see America."

It's about us... and them.

The pro-... and the anti.

Never mind, Madam, that the bi-secting of this country you would happily inspire, means taking a tiny crack in a dam and not repairing it but burrowing into it.

It is not enough that Senator McCain and Senator Obama might differ.

One must be real and the other false.

One must be pro-America and the other anti.

Go back and -- as your boss Rick Davis said today -- "re-think," Mr. McCain's insistence not to drag the sorry bones of Jeremiah Wright into this campaign.

And whatever you do, Ms. Pfotenhauer, allow no one enough time to think... about the widening crack in the dam.

And now all of this comes together to attack Colin Powell.

"Secretary Powell says his endorsement is not about race," writes Rush Limbaugh... the grand wizard of this school of reactionary non-thought.

"OK, fine. I am now researching his past endorsements to see if I can find all the inexperienced, very liberal, white candidates he has endorsed. I'll let you know what I come up with."

It is not conceivable that Powell might reject McCain for the politics of hate and character assassination, or just for policy.

In the closed, sweaty world of the blind allegiances of Limbaugh -- one of "us" who endorses one of "them," must be doing so for some other blind allegiance, like the color of skin.

The answer to this primordial muck, must be addressed to one man only.

Senator McCain -- where are you?

I disagree with you on virtually every major point of policy and practice.

And yet I do not think you "anti-America." I would not hesitate to join you in time of crisis in defense of this country.

Fortunately you did not echo this chorus of base hatred.

But neither have you repudiated it.

What is "pro-America", Senator?

Is it pro-America to call a man a racist because he endorses a different candidate?

Senator, you have based your campaign on many premises, but the foremost (and the most nearly admirable) of all of them, have been the pitches about "reaching across the aisle," and putting, as your ubiquitous banners reed, "country first."

So when Colin Powell endorses your opponent, you say nothing as your supporters and proxies paint him in this "Anti-America" frame and place him in Governor Palin's un-real America.

Senator McCain -- did not General Powell just "reach across the aisle?" Did he not, in his own mind at least, "put country first?"

Is it not your responsibility, Senator, to, if not applaud, then at least quiet those in your half of our fractured political equation?

Is it not your responsibility, Senator, to say "enough" to Republican smears without end?

Is it not your responsibility, Senator, to insist that, win or lose, you will not be party to a campaign that devolves into hatred and prejudice and divisiveness?

And Senator McCain, if it is not your responsibility... whose is it?

"Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion"

The Eighth Characteristic of Fascism

from AfterDowningStreet.org - Impeach Bush and Cheney Now! by Chip

Click through to website to read text

The eighth characteristic of fascism:

8.) Religion and Government are Intertwined: Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

"John McCain's campaign has directed $175,000 to the firm of a Republican operative accused of massive voter registration fraud"

McCain Employing GOP Operative Accused of Voter Registration Fraud

from Truthout - All Articles

    John McCain's campaign has directed $175,000 to the firm of a Republican operative accused of massive voter registration fraud in several states.

    According to campaign finance records, a joint committee of the McCain-Palin campaign, the RNC and the California Republican Party, made a $175,000 payment to the group Lincoln Strategy in June for purposes of "registering voters." The managing partner of that firm is Nathan Sproul, a renowned GOP operative who has been investigated on multiple occasions for suppressing Democratic voter turnout, throwing away registration forms and even, once, spearheading efforts to get Ralph Nader on ballots so as to hinder the Democratic ticket.

read more

"unless the No Child Left Behind regime ends soon, America’s classrooms could unravel."

No Child Left Behind Fails Us All

from Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines

By Demitrious C. Sinor

Truthdig asked Demitrious C. Sinor, an inspirational educator, to sound off on the state of our schools. He warns that unless the No Child Left Behind regime ends soon, America's classrooms could unravel. It's a reality that neither presidential candidate seems to fully understand, but one he sees every day, from where he sits.

READ THE WHOLE ITEM

"the full blown descent into McCarthyism within the Republican Party continues."

Another McCarthyite Republican: Rep. Robin Hayes says "liberals hate real Americans that work and achieve and believe in God"

from Crooks and Liars by Nicole Belle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtJpHIwpimA

As Think Progress reported yesterday, the full blown descent into McCarthyism within the Republican Party continues. This time, it's Rep. Robin Hayes of North Carolina. At a McCain event, trying to energize the crowd, Hayes dug deep into his blackened soul and said the following:

Representative Robin Hayes, who prefaced his comments by saying it was important to "make sure we don't say something stupid, make sure we don't say something we don't mean." Republicans, he reminded the crowd, were kind people. Plus, he added, the liberal media had shown itself eager to distort such remarks. With the crowd duly chastened and put on best behavior, he accused Obama of "inciting class warfare" and said that "liberals hate real Americans that work and achieve and believe in God."

Good to know he was trying to keep from saying something stupid. Of course, when confronted, Hayes denied it.

Gosh, I guess that makes having the audio a little troublesome for such a bald-faced liar. By the way, this isn't the first time Robin Hayes has said some monumentally stupid things. He's the representative that was still insisting as late as 2005 that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11 and that the best thing we could do in Iraq to ensure "victory" is to convert them all Muslims to Christianity.

Blue America candidate Larry Kissell is running against Robin Hayes. You can help his campaign here. The Southern Dem at DailyKos has more...

"You can't help but suspect that the dead bear found decorated with Obama signs in North Carolina is part of this picture, too."

The racism comes bubbling up from McCain's dogwhistle campaign

from Crooks and Liars by David Neiwert

The video from that Sarah Palin rally in Ohio last week probably said it all -- that not only are racists herding in John McCain's direction, but that previously obscured racism among mainstream conservatives is now bubbling up at an increasing rate.

A New York Observer report from Florida tells a similar kind of story:

???I don???t believe these polls,??? said America Blanca, a 44-year-old small business owner from Miami who wore a red dress and was visibly pumped up by the rally. ???Not one of them. Because it???s the kids answering the polls on the computers. Their parents are not home and they are answering and they will not be voting. I think if he is losing, it is only by a little spread. Very little.??? She held the tip of her pointer finger about two inches from the tip of her thumb.

Asked if her business made more than $250,000 a year, the cap under which Obama has proposed cutting taxes, she said it did. Told about Obama???s proposal, she answered, ???I don???t give a shit. I will never vote for a black man.???

I half-expected to hear the same thing from "Joe the Plumber" last week when it was pointed out to him that he would actually get a tax cut under Obama's plan.

It's clear that the campaign to defeat Barack Obama -- which is what the McCain campaign has rapidly devolved into, ever since it became self-evident that McCain himself couldn't give us a single good reason to vote for him, beyond his moose-in-the-headlights running mate -- is in fact creating an environment in which these kinds of sentiments not only are encouraged, but are now considered normal.

Sure enough, the neo-Nazis and white supremacists are reporting that they're making big inroads these days:

Jeff Schoep, head of the National Socialist Movement, says the government classifies his group as a domestic group of interest, not domestic terrorists. The FBI would not comment.

Interest in the group "has really spiked up," says Schoep, who would not say by how much.

"Historically, when times get tough in our nation, that's how movements like ours gain a foothold," he says. "When the economy suffers, people are looking for answers. ??? We are the answer for white people.

"And now this immigrant thing in the past couple of years has been the biggest boon to us," Schoep says. "The immigration issue is the biggest problem we're facing because it's changing the face of our country. We see stuff in English and Spanish. ??? They are turning our country into a Third World ghetto."

... "A lot of these small working-class towns are being invaded by different types of people," says Douglas Myers, one of Keystone United's founders. He says the group speaks out for the rights of whites being pushed aside by newcomers.

"It appears they are tapping into and fanning the flames of mainstream America's fear of immigrants," says Ann Van Dyke of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. "They are increasingly using the language of Main Street, things like, 'We want safe communities to raise our children.' "

Myers says the group is organizing family-friendly activities, rejecting the violence that made skinheads notorious. For example, they plan gatherings in public libraries.

"It's not the footage from the '80s with people burning crosses. It's a very healthy environment," Myers, 26, says.

The renewed activity includes a boom on the Internet, says Don Black, creator of the Stormfront website. The site has 144,000 registered members.

"Many people in this country, even if they were upset with the country's immigration policies, never felt that threatened until now," Black, 55, says. "White people were the majority. That's rapidly changing."

Black says the candidacy of Barack Obama has raised his site's profile.

In the past year, members have posted 337 entries on Stormfront related to Obama, ranging from whether an Obama victory will start a revolution among whites to whether the candidate will take away gun rights.

You can't help but suspect that the dead bear found decorated with Obama signs in North Carolina is part of this picture, too.

All this courtesy of our friends, the increasingly desperate Republican Party.

"massive books of crap with empty costly paid promises"

Despite Subprime Implosion, Robert Allen's Troops Still Pitch "Get Rich Quick In Real Estate With No Money Down" [Scams]

from Consumerist by Ben Popken

Robert Allen promises to make you millions teaching you how to buy real estate with no money down. Unsurprisingly, Ripoffreport is littered with complaints about his company and those that use his name. Here's the story they tell:

There's an ad for a free seminar. The crowd gets hyped with tales of fabulous wealth. High-pressure sales staff are on hand to sign you up for more courses for thousands of dollars. Each successive "course" has little information, just fluff and hype and a push to get to the next level where the real secrets will be revealed. There's a few thousand for the 3-day course. Some more thousands for the mentor hot-line and one-on-one coaching. More thousands for the at-home study course. Many more thousands for the weekend retreat where Robert Allen himself might appear. Then, if you really want the big juicy secret that will make you millions instantly, it'll just be $29,999 for the mastery class. Don't worry, you'll make that all back, they say

What actual info is in the materials? Little, it seems, but lots of promises about all the wealth you can generate. One person complained the books he paid over $5,000 for were:

"Thin on substance, but very thick on all the other classes and courses that I could enroll in to help further my dream of becoming a Certified Real Estate Specialist"

Another:

"massive books of crap with empty costly paid promises"

There's supposed to be a 100% money-back guarantee, but people complain about getting the runaround when they try to get refunds. Only chargebacks and complaints to the state's attorneys general work.

According to the complaints, once your email and phone number is in the database, the constant stream of calls to enroll in more classes and services begins. Probably the list gets sold around to the various sub-companies and they all take their crack at shaking your wallet.

I worked with a trainer for approximately 15 weeks, then was given a number for a coaching hotline after the 15 weeks. During that time, I made over 30 offers in 3 states, all with my coach's instruction. None of the offers ever came to fruition, mostly because you can't (legally) get something for nothing. In other words, many of the techniques for acquiring real estate were ethically questionable, particularly when trying to finance real estate deals with little or no money down.

When consumers get mad, the common tactic they write about is for the people they're talking to to say, oh yes, the parent organization is sleazy, we're trying to break away, we don't like them, now, THIS is the class that you need to sign up for.

From how it all smells cruising online, Robert Allen has little to do with the system anymore. Somewhere along the way, the rights to his name and aura were purchased and they slapped his likeness on top of a seminar/education scam and a multi-level-marketing scam. There seem to be an endless parade of "companies" which have bought the rights to use the Robert Allen name and resell his information. Places with names like: Enlightened Millionaire Institute, Business Skills Corporation, Emerald Capital Group, Inc, Go2Trade Corporation, International Acceptance Corporation, Life Skills Corporation, MyMediaWorks.com Corporation, Saris TEchnologies, Inc, Securities Trading Corporation, Timeshare and Vacation Properties Online, Inc., Life Skills Corp., Market Place Pro, The Institute of Commercial Real Estate and so forth.

They talked us into spending our severance pay to pay for mastery classes. They promised 'are you dumb enough to be rich?' and how easy it would be. We spent over $19,000 for classes and had to fly to other states to get some of the training. Two classes were cancelled and we had to choose different classes. Our field training was constantly postponed. They never teach you enough to be successful. We have not met anyone at these classes who has made money the 'Robert Allen' way. Everyone says they just are pressured into buying more classes. When you try to talk to customer service, they tell you to listen to more calls and make more offers. The calls are very vague and they try to sell you something else. No one is just going to 'give' you their house.

How does it work? MSNMoney wrote when they looked into Robert Allen, "They operate according to a tried-and-true principle of behavioral psychology called the variable ratio reinforcement schedule. Basically, people (and rats) will persist in doing something, even with little or no return, if they are given the tiniest bit of hope of a coming reward," In that same article, they also spoke with Mark Wilson, who said he had made lots of money using the Robert Allen system. He paid just $5,000 for a one-year course, and already had lots of experience in real estate.

I'm not sure what the final secret is. Robert Allen crows in his book "Multiple Streams of Income" about how he flew to LA, hooked up with a LA Times Reporter, handed over his wallet, and in 57 hours bought 7 seven properties worth $722,215 without putting any money of his own down at all. The title of the article supposedly was "Buying Home without Cash: Boastful Investor Accepts Time Challenge-and Wins." I Googled and looked on Lexis/Nexis but the only references I could find to it were reams of get-rich-quick webpages reselling the Robert Allen system, some of which, in oh irony of ironies, you'll likely find being advertised in the Google Ad Words block on the left side of the very page you're reading right now.

If I had to guess, it sounds like the big reveal is get a 0% down loan and then flip the house. Hmm, where have we heard this before? Oh yes, it was the lifeblood of the sub-prime meltdown. Right. Got it. There's also all this talk of "using other people's money," which I guess involves convincing other people to give you money to buy the house and then everyone gets their money back plus a bit of profit when turn around and sell it.

Even though banks are only loaning to people with stellar credit who can put solid money down, I still saw a full-page ad in the Daily Post last weekend for more of Robert Allen's seminars. Though, from what I hear, he doesn't actually do them anymore. No, they're now run by various coaches who are part of the Robert Allen institute and figured out the real money is in selling the schlock to the next sucker who believes you can get something for nothing. Hm, maybe we should go to one of these, just to find out how they operate and what the people who show up look like...

reporter asked McCain whether he was proud of a smear-laden mailer sent out by the RNC on his campaign's behalf. McCain's reply: "Absolutely."

McCain Proud Of Brochure Linking Obama To Islamic Terrorism

from The Jed Report

On Monday, a Missouri-based television reporter asked McCain whether he was proud of a smear-laden mailer sent out by the RNC on his campaign's behalf. McCain's reply: "Absolutely."

It all comes down to the economy. Despite his attempted "reboot", John McCain is still as determined as ever to smear Barack Obama with the most scurrilous garbage imaginable -- all because he has no clue what to do about creating new jobs.

Bullwinkle on Palin

Bullwinkle on Palin

from Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines

READ THE WHOLE ITEM

"at least one RNC staff member have e-mailed me tonight to share their utter (and not-for-attribution) disgust at the expenditures. "

GOPers Digusted By RNC Spending On Palin Wardrobe

from The Jed Report

Even Republicans are upset at the recent revelation that the RNC has spent over $150,000 on clothing in just one month for Sarah Palin.  Marc Ambinder explains:

Republicans, RNC donors and at least one RNC staff member have e-mailed me tonight to share their utter  (and not-for-attribution) disgust at the expenditures.

This sort of spending is without precedent -- the closest approximation for any campaign I've ever covered is make-up expenses for television interviews and commercial shoots -- , and Schmitt's weakly defensive response tonight indicates that the campaign is deeply embarrassed by it and has nothing to say in their defense. Spokespeople have clammed up, a sure sign that they're trying to figure out who authorized the expenses and who knew about them.  Did Palin wear all of the clothing? Where is it kept?

"it turns out the McCain campaign has its own fraud charges to respond to"

McCain Campaign Has Own Voter-Registration Scandal

from The Washington Independent by Daphne Eviatar

After weeks of escalating Republican attacks on the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, for alleged voter registration fraud, it turns out the McCain campaign has its own fraud charges to respond to.

The Huffington Post reports that McCain has paid $175,000 to Lincoln Strategy Group, a political consulting group based in Arizona and run by Republican operative Nathan Sproul, who's been accused of voter registration fraud in several states — in the form of throwing away Democratic registration forms and suppressing Democratic voter turnout.

HuffPost also reports that the Republican National Committee separately paid Lincoln Strategy another $37,000 to register voters for this election. Sproul, meanwhile, has donated nearly $30,000 to the McCain campaign. He's also a former leader of the Arizona Republican Party and of the state's Christian Coalition.

"Al-Qaida supporters suggested in a Web site message this week they would welcome a pre-election terror attack on the U.S. as a way to usher in a McCain presidency"

Al-Qaida-linked Web site backs McCain as president

from AfterDowningStreet.org - Impeach Bush and Cheney Now! by davidswanson

By Pamela Hess, AP

WASHINGTON (AP) - Al-Qaida supporters suggested in a Web site message this week they would welcome a pre-election terror attack on the U.S. as a way to usher in a McCain presidency.

The message, posted Monday on the password-protected al-Hesbah Web site, said if al-Qaida wants to exhaust the United States militarily and economically, "impetuous" Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain is the better choice because he is more likely to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"This requires presence of an impetuous American leader such as McCain, who pledged to continue the war till the last American soldier," the message said. "Then, al-Qaida will have to support McCain in the coming elections so that he continues the failing march of his predecessor, Bush."

SITE Intelligence Group, based in Bethesda, Md., monitors the Web site and translated the message.

read more

"the Republican was giving up on Colorado"

McCain Giving Up on Colorado, Reports Say

from Truthout - All Articles

    Washington - John McCain's path to the presidency narrowed further today with reports that the Republican was giving up on Colorado, a day after a campaign swing through the battleground state by his running mate, Sarah Palin.

    The signs of retrenchment for McCain came as a new poll showed Barack Obama steadily increasing his lead since mid-September.

read more

"the RNC spent more on clothes in two months for Palin than the average American household spends in 80 years"

Politico: RNC spent $150k on Palin's clothes

from Crooks and Liars by SilentPatriot

Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue? What an elitist!

According to financial disclosure records, the accessorizing began in early September and included bills from Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York for a combined $49,425.74.

The records also document a couple of big-time shopping trips to Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, including one $75,062.63 spree in early September.

The RNC also spent $4,716.49 on hair and makeup through September after reporting no such costs in August.

And the McCain camp response?

"The campaign does not comment on strategic decisions regarding how financial resources available to the campaign are spent."

Kinda blows John Edwards' $400 haircut out of the water, no? At least Cindy still has her beat.

Our good friend John Aravosis over at AmericaBlog did some research and found that the RNC spent more on clothes in two months for Palin than the average American household spends in 80 years. Out of touch much?

"she will become proof positive that making a poor choice for vice president can ruin a candidate’s chances in November."

Poll: Palin Is Bigger Drag on McCain Than Bush

from Pensito Review by Jon Ponder

The new NBC/Wall St. Journal poll shows Barack Obama opening up a 10 point lead — 52 to 42 — over John McCain. The Democrat's lead was six points in the same poll two weeks ago.

Interestingly, the biggest factor driving voters away from McCain is not his close ties to George Bush, it's his choice of Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential nominee:

Palin's qualifications to be president rank as voters' top concern about McCain's candidacy - ahead of continuing President Bush's policies, enacting economic policies that only benefit the rich and keeping too high of a troop presence in Iraq.

Among voters' concerns about McCain, "V.P. candidate not qualified" ranked at 34 percent, while "will continue Bush policies" ranked at 23 percent. Dissatisfaction with McCain's economic policies ranked third with 20 percent.

The poll's responses about Palin reveal deep concerns among voters:

Fifty-five percent of respondents say she's not qualified to serve as president if the need arises, up five points from the previous poll.

In addition, for the first time, more voters have a negative opinion of her than a positive one. In the survey, 47 percent view her negatively, versus 38 percent who see her in a positive light.

That's a striking shift since McCain chose Palin as his running mate in early September, when she held a 47 to 27 percent positive rating.

One of the most often-repeated truisms in presidential politics is that a candidate's vice presidential choice has little effect on the outcome of the election. Until now, there has been one notable exception to this rule: John F. Kennedy's choice of Lyndon Johnson helped him win in 1960. Conversely, George Bush's pick of meagerly gifted Dan Quayle in 1992 did not prevent Bush from beating former Michael Dukakis in 1992.

But if the numbers in this poll remain consistent, and McCain loses on Nov. 4, Sarah Palin will achieve a second place in president political history. In addition to being the GOP's first female vice presidential candidate, she will become proof positive that making a poor choice for vice president can ruin a candidate's chances in November.

"Taking $150,000 of money from public financing for a presidential election to buy an over-priced new wardrobe for the vice presidential nominee."

Sax Fifth Socialism

from Emptywheel by emptywheel

Democratic "socialism:"

Tweaking the tax code to shift the enormous tax break President Bush gave to his "base"--earners in the top 2% of the country--to those struggling to put food on the table and send their kids to college.

Republican socialism:

Taking $150,000 of money from public financing for a presidential election to buy an over-priced new wardrobe for the vice presidential nominee.

“Most consumers are worried about: ‘Will I have enough to put food on the table so my family can eat?’”

The Wal-Mart Index

from The Washington Independent by Mary Kane

The Starbucks Latte Index often gets cited as an indicator of whether consumers are cutting back on discretionary spending - if they give up expensive coffee drinks, the thinking goes, they're serious about saving money.

But if you really want to know what's going on with consumer spending on everyday necessities, the best place to find out is Wal-Mart.

By that standard, things are pretty bad and getting worse, according to Eduardo Castro-Wright, Wal-Mart's president of U.S. retail operations, as quoted by Reuters. People are increasingly clustering their purchases around paydays, meaning they're particularly stretched. In the saddest indicator, they're even waiting for that paycheck to cover very basic food needs — like baby formula.

The use of credit cards to pay for purchases at Wal-Mart stores is also declining, because people are maxed out and can't access any more credit, he said.

From Castro-Wright:

In a "disturbing" trend, Castro-Wright said Wal-Mart for the first time is seeing a paycheck-related spike in sales of baby formula, suggesting consumers are rushing to buy such necessities as soon as they have the cash.

"Most consumers are worried about: 'Will I have enough to put food on the table so my family can eat?'" he told attendees of a luncheon sponsored by Town Hall Los Angeles.

I can't help contrasting the cash-strapped customers of Wal-Mart, holding off on buying food for an baby, with the AIG executives reaping eight-figure bonuses in the midst of their government bailout.

Sarah Palin Inspires Artistic Expression

A Truly Frightening Prospect

"The problem for Palin isn't ambition, it's hubris. A more grounded politician would have put in the work to match their aspirations. That Palin hasn't done that bespeaks a tremendous, even scary, overconfidence."

— Ezra Klein

Sarah Palin Inspires Artistic Expression [USA]

from Gawker by Hamilton Nolan

Future President of the United States of America Sarah Palin is already proving to be a valuable inspiration to our nation's patriotic art community! Or at least to raggedy, drug-ridden "street art" types in elitist coastal cities. It's not just the happy-go-lucky "Frightening Prospect" posters you see here—we've found three more examples as well, making it an official trend, with room to spare! Click through to view the collected opinions of America's great artistic minds:

[via Shana Marie, squarerootoftwo, Outsider Mag, Animal NY]

Memo to Fox News & the GOP: America Has the Second-Lowest Business Taxes In the World

Memo to Fox News & the GOP: America Has the Second-Lowest Business Taxes In the World | OurFuture.org

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdOJJgPSti4

Last week, I appeared on Fox News to discuss Barack Obama's tax proposals. You can watch the clip here [1] - and make sure to watch the end where Fox News tries to drown me out with music.

Not surprisingly, the "debate" centered around the false premise that Obama's tax cuts are actually welfare. I say that's false because - as I pointed out on the show - everyone pays some form of taxes, whether it's income, property, sales or payroll taxes. When you take all those taxes together, most working- and middle-class Americans pay a higher effective tax rate than the Warren Buffetts of the world (as Warren Buffett, by the way, readily acknowledges). So Obama's plan to pass refundable income tax credits is only a handout if you look exclusively at one slice of taxes - in this case, income taxes. But in the overall tax scheme, those tax credits are aimed at better equalizing the tax structure so as to diminish the gap between Warren Buffett's very low effective tax rate and Joe Sixpack's high effective tax rate. Only in the asylums of Fox News and Republican Party politics is reducing that effective tax rate gap billed as theft from the rich to finance "welfare."

This concept of effective tax rates (ie. the tax rate actually paid and enforced) is key to understanding the most telling part of this Fox News discussion - the part at the end where former Bush-Cheney spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise Dyck parrots McCain campaign talking points about America supposedly having a very high corporate tax rate in relation to the rest of the world. This, says Dyck and fellow Republicans, is driving businesses to move offshore.

It sounds like a credible storyline, especially considering that officially, our corporate tax rate is somewhere between 35 and 39 percent. But, as always, the devil is in the details.

To know how high - or low - the effective tax rate is, you have to go beneath the top-line rate and account for all the loopholes, subsidies and write-offs - and the way to do that is by looking at corporate tax revenues as a percentage of a country's GDP. That way, you know how much corporations are actually paying as a share of your overall economy - in other words, you know the real corporate tax rate, not the fake one advertised by top-line numbers. And when you look at America's tax structure through this lens, you see that even the Bush Treasury Department admits we have the second lowest effective corporate tax rate in the industrialized world (see page 42 of this report [2]).

Indeed, this explains the dissonance between Republican claims of "highest corporate income tax rate in the world" and the recent Government Accountability report [3] showing that most corporations pay no corporate income taxes at all. The latter is the truth - most corporations don't pay any taxes because of loopholes, writeoffs and subsidies that allow them to effectively reduce that 35 percent corporate tax rate to zero. In fact, many profitable corporations actually collect tax rebates [4]. But as I told Fox News, we don't hear criticism of that kind of "corporate welfare" from the Republican mouthpieces deriding Obama's middle-class tax cuts as welfare.

As you can see from the video clip, when the GOP parrot I'm debating throws out the standard "high corporate tax" canard, I revert to the actual facts over and over and over again, to the point where Fox News feels the need to drown me out with music at the end. And I was, of course, rewarded with the usual river of hate email from Fox News viewers, most of which reaffirmed the dittohead nature of the modern conservative audience in that almost every email included exactly two links purportedly "proving" the GOP talking point - one a link [5]to U.S. News and World Report's right-wing business columnist, the other to the fringe Tax Foundation [6], a group funded by Scaife, Koch and the usual constellation of Wingnuttia's trust-fund babies [7]. You'll notice that both of these sources focus only on the official tax rate, not the effective tax rate - deliberately misleading their readers about the facts.

The good news is that polling [8] shows most Americans do not think the big problem facing our country is that wealthy corporations are oppressed by high taxes. That is, most Americans live in the "reality-based" world and understand that if anyone is winning big from the Bush-McCain tax policies, it is Corporate America and the super-rich. So if the GOP wants to attack Obama for trying to cut 95 percent of America's taxes - if they want to lash their electoral hopes to a promise to give Big Business another tax handout - then I say that's great. They are helping progressives build a landslide and an election mandate.

Palin Pushed Exporting U.S. Oil Reserves To Japan

Palin Pushed Exporting U.S. Oil Reserves To Japan

In this file photo, Jim Bowles, president of ConocoPhillips Alaska Inc. center, answers questions during a news conference in Anchorage, Alaska, Thursday Dec. 3, 2008 where Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin announced an agreement between the state of Alaska and the oil industry to extend the federal export license for the LNG plant on the Kenai Peninsula. Steven Hinchmann, senior VP of worldwide production for Marathon Oil Corp., back, left, Tom Irwin Department of Natural Resources commissioner, and Gov. Sarah Palin, right, listen in the back. On the campaign trail, Palin says repeatedly that America must tap its own natural gas and oil reserves to become energy independent. But she has pushed the federal government to allow a liquefied natural gas plant to continue exporting to Asia, the only such plant in the United States that sends the product overseas. (AP Photo/Al Grillo)

On the campaign trail, Sarah Palin says repeatedly that America must tap its own natural gas and oil reserves to become energy-independent.

But the Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential candidate has pushed the federal government to allow a liquefied natural gas plant to continue exporting to Asia _ the only such plant in the United States that sends the product overseas.

"When we talk about energy, we have to consider the need to do all that we can to allow this nation to become energy-independent," Palin said earlier this month during the vice presidential debate. "It's a nonsensical position that we are in when we have domestic supplies of energy all over this great land. And East Coast politicians who don't allow energy-producing states like Alaska to produce these, to tap into them, and instead we're relying on foreign countries to produce for us."

This summer, Palin cheered the Energy Department for extending an export license for the Kenai Liquefied Natural Gas facility. The license allowed the Alaska plant to continue shipping its products to Asia through 2011.

The plant began shipping its product exclusively to Japan in 1969, renewing federal export permits every few years. As energy prices have soared in recent years, and with supplies dwindling, there has been increased opposition to allowing the plant to export.

The current license extends a permit that otherwise would have expired in 2009.

"In these times of economic uncertainty, this is great news for the state and its residents," Palin said when the license was approved in June.

During negotiations, which began last year, Palin had pressed for enough natural gas to serve Alaska to remain in-state. She added, however, that the rest should be shipped primarily to Japan.

The license was granted despite opposition from some federal officials who argued that domestic liquefied natural gas should be sold within the U.S.

"If America is really so short of energy that we need to drill in national wildlife refuges and other sensitive areas, why should energy supplies, sitting in U.S. terminals, be sent back out of the country simply because these energy companies can get a higher price from a foreign buyer?" Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said.

The plant's owners, Marathon Oil Corp. and ConocoPhillips, had argued that U.S. terminals equipped to handle shipments of liquefied natural gas were too far away, on the East Coast, in the South or in Puerto Rico.

San Diego-based Sempra Energy opened a new $975 million terminal in Baja, Mexico, in May. Its pipelines connect to California, Texas and Arizona.

Volatile oil and gas prices and limited energy supplies have prompted a steady increase in U.S. use of liquefied natural gas.

But aside from Alaska, there is no domestic production.

So while the United States imported 771 billion cubic feet of natural gas last year from Trinidad and Tobago, Algeria, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria and Qatar, Alaska is expected to export 100 billion cubic feet to Asia over the next two years.

Obama Appeal Rises in Poll; No Gains for McCain Ticket

Obama Appeal Rises in Poll; No Gains for McCain Ticket - NYTimes.com: "As voters have gotten to know Senator Barack Obama, they have warmed up to him, with more than half, 53 percent, now saying they have a favorable impression of him and 33 percent saying they have an unfavorable view. But as voters have gotten to know Senator John McCain, they have not warmed, with only 36 percent of voters saying they view him favorably while 45 percent view him unfavorably."

McCain is fighting Obama's momentum in Missouri

McCain is fighting Obama's momentum in Missouri - Los Angeles Times: "Reported from St. Charles, Mo. -- Two days after Barack Obama drew 100,000 supporters to a rally in St. Louis, John McCain attracted about 2,500 people to a field in this nearby suburb Monday, a visible symbol of the challenge the Republican nominee faces in this crucial state."

Majority of States Now in Recession

ABC News: Majority of States Now in Recession

In March, 5 States Were in Recession; Now There are 27 With 14 More at Risk

By SCOTT MAYEROWITZ
ABC NEWS Business Unit

Oct. 21, 2008—

What started out as a housing problem in a few states has now exploded into a full-fledged recession with a majority of states now in or dangerously close to recession.

Just this weekend, President Bush's top economic advisor used the much-avoided word "recession" to describe the economies in some states.

"We are seeing what I think anyone would characterize as a recession in certain parts of the country," Edward P. Lazear, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said on CNN's "Late Edition."

How Is the Economy Treating You? Tell ABC News

Back in March, Mark Zandi, chief economist and co-founder of Moody's Economy.com, said that only five states were in recession: Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan and Nevada.

Now, he said that 27 states are in recession and another 14 are near recession.

"There's no way around the map. It says the nation is in recession. The recession is coast to coast," Zandi said. "Just a handful of states are expanding at this point. One of the unique features of this downturn is how broad-based it is, regionally."

What happened between March and today?

"The job market has eroded measurably and industrial production has weakened sharply in the last couple of months. Those are the two key things. The other thing is that retail sales have also sharply weakened," Zandi said.

The one bright side is part of the middle of the country. Agriculture and energy are still strong and providing jobs.

Maryland, Massachusetts and New Hampshire are still growing and that is because of health care and educational services.

"In the past, in recessions, you saw people moving from areas that were hard hit, to areas that were holding up better, looking for jobs and better incomes," he said. "Now, there is nowhere to go."

High Unemployment

David Wyss, managing director and chief economist at Standard & Poor's, said the worst problems are in the old rust belt, Michigan being the worst hit. The state now has the highest unemployment in the country.

"The recession began, really, with the housing sector and then also very quickly with automobiles," Wyss said. "The states that have been hardest hit have been the manufacturing states, in large part because of what happened with cars."

Click Here to Learn More About the Economy in Your Home State

Now the recession is spreading to other states where the housing bubble never burst. For instance, Wyss said, the Boeing strike is starting to drag down Washington state's economy and spread over into Oregon.

"The exception is the part of the country between the Mississippi River and the Rockies, which is still doing pretty well," he said. "High farm prices are good if you are in Iowa. High oil prices are good if you are in Houston."

Peter Morici, an economics professor at the University of Maryland, said a decline in manufacturing is really hurting the rust belt. That said, the economy still is very regional and industry-specific.

"It always varies. Even during the Great Depression, there were people that hardly felt it," Morici said. "Recessions and depressions always have varying effects on people and locations."

Agriculture is doing well because of ethanol development and a growing demand for grains by people in Asia.

Budget Shortfalls

Several state governments already face major budget shortfalls.

"The state governments are an exercise in irresponsibility. Through the property boom, they enjoyed the increase in people's assessments," Morici said. "They are just not structured to handle the cynical movements in their revenue the way they should be.

"Just like companies, municipalities can behave irresponsibly in good times, not shore up any money for bad times and then go crying to the federal government when they need cash," he added.

Casey Mulligan, an economics professor at the University of Chicago, said a lot of regions have a few industries. When those industries suffer, the whole area tends to. Take New York City, which is now hurting because of troubles in the financial sector based there.

One bright spot on the economy: consumer goods. Brands like Coca-Cola and General Mills are doing well, Mulligan said, in particular, thanks to strong international growth. The large high-tech companies also appear to be doing well.

"It's true in all recessions and booms," he added, "that there are some places that don't participate."

Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures

"in Sarah Palin's world, Chicago isn't pro-American. But don't worry we are in great company."

Sarah Palin should spend more time in the non "Pro-America" areas | BuzzFlash.org
Greetings from the non pro-American part of the United States. That's right: in Sarah Palin's world, Chicago isn't pro-American. But don't worry we are in great company.

"We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation. This is where we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans. Those who are running our factories and teaching our kids and growing our food and are fighting our wars for us. Those who are protecting us in uniform. Those who are protecting the virtues of freedom."

I was born in what could be pro-America, though Cincinnati is probably too big for Gov. Palin. But it is plenty conservative as a city. But I grew up in what Palin would consider pro-America: a small town where lots of food was grown. But we didn't have that many factories since we were in a poor area.

We were only 100 miles from Chicago and about 160 miles from Detroit, so we knew of the big city. And because we were across Lake Michigan from Chicago, we could get Chicago TV and radio, and read Chicago and Detroit newspapers.

Now in small towns, there are usually two approaches to the big city. Either you can't wait until you can leave and go to the big city, or you are afraid of it. I wasn't afraid of the big city, though I knew a lot of people who were.

We would often go to Wrigley Field on Chicago's North Side, but were unofficially discouraged from going to Comiskey Park on the city's South Side. Part of this was Wrigley Field only offered day baseball, so we didn't have to worry about the city at night, and Comiskey Park was near -- where the black people lived. The anecdotal narrow-mindedness examples I could give only get worse so I will stop there.  

This is not to say all small town people are narrow-minded; I absolutely know there are enlightened people in small towns. But they exist not because of small towns, but despite their environment.

Living in the big city does have drawbacks. Stress and extra commuting time do add up. But this is an area of tolerance. We welcome people of all different backgrounds. We mix in with different cultures simply by strolling along or a quick bus or train ride.

In small towns, we are told that people are friendly, and they are. But sometimes there is distrust. In big cities, we have to be friendly just to get along. We run into more strangers each day; we don't have a choice.

But do people in big cities matter to presidential and vice-presidential candidates? If you look at the top cities by population, and see how many campaign stops are made, you would come to the conclusion that big cities don't matter.

These cities see very little exposure to a candidate unless there are fundraisers, so our money is good enough but we're not worth the campaigning time:

New York City (1), Los Angeles (2), Chicago (3), Houston (4), Phoenix (5), San Antonio (7), San Diego (8), Dallas (9), San Jose (10), Indianapolis (13), San Francisco (14), Austin (16), Fort Worth (17), Memphis (18), Charlotte (19), and Baltimore (20).

Now Indianapolis wouldn't be on that list this year, but folks who live in Indianapolis haven't had this level of attention in two generations.

The exceptions are Philadelphia (6), Detroit (11), Jacksonville (12), and Columbus, Ohio (15). And let's be honest, candidates rarely if ever go to the Detroit city limits.

You could argue this is true because big cities tend to be in states that are already decided on the Electoral College map. But the truth is that big cities get ignored in policy as well.

When Republicans were in control of Congress, they did everything they could to cut subsidies to Amtrak, public transportation, and PBS, much more popular in big cities than small towns. Our infrastructure is in horrid shape (e.g., Minneapolis (46) bridge collapse).

Yes, there are clueless people who live in big cities who might wonder how people can live in small towns. But usually, when they go there and find out for themselves, they come away with respect. That same potential love doesn't always flow from small towns to big cities. And Gov. Palin's words are proof of this: the big city is to be mocked for its "crazy" values.

Our "crazy" values include tolerance and understanding, enjoying the awareness of different cultures. Seeing a billboard in Spanish or Mandarin and smiling instead of screaming "English first."

America is a melting pot, even if some pockets are more vanilla than others. Americans understand that it takes all of us to make this country great. People in big cities live by those values every day, true American values.

Perhaps Gov. Palin will spend more time in big cities, not just whisking off to the UN or doing a segment on "Saturday Night Live." Palin might want to go to a big city, buy a hot dog off a street vendor, and sit in a park or by the water, watching the diversity of America right in front of her. Because if are running for president or vice president, you are running to serve all the people in the United States, even the ones you think aren't "pro-American."

Concerns about deployment of military on U.S. soil growing -- while mainstream media buries its head in the sand

Concerns about deployment of military on U.S. soil growing -- while mainstream media buries its head in the sand: Naomi Wolf | BuzzFlash.org

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Naomi Wolf

The following is the spin of military spokespeople in response to questions about the deployment of the First Brigade on US soil for the first time in over 200 years.  

The Army Times initially reported that the First Brigade would handle domestic crowd control and subduing 'unruly individuals' and that they had 'lethal and nonlethal technologies' to do so. Then it issued a correction declaring that the 'nonlethal' package was not for domestic crowd control. Then after a hue and cry was raised by many citizens, Northern Command (NorthCom) offered a wholesale revision of their mission – and the mainstream media is eating it up. Here is an excerpt from the articled linked to in the previous sentence: 

Despite conspiracy theories that this could be a first step toward martial law in the U.S., there won't be tanks on Main Street or active-duty troops putting down demonstrations. That is barred by federal law banning the military from being used on U.S. soil for domestic law enforcement. 

Instead, the soldiers of the 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Ga., have been training to back up civilian authorities in providing medical care and dealing with chemical, biological, high explosive or nuclear attack. 

Not only does this entirely contradict the first Army Times reports, it also egregiously misrepresents to readers the status of US law in regards to this deployment. Yes, there are laws against military policing on US streets -- they are part of both the 1807 Insurrection Act and 1879's Posse Comitatus Act -- but the Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gutted them. 

Congress restored some limitations on the President's ability to deploy troops to engage in military policing in 2008 -- but President Bush issued a signing statement declaring he did not feel bound by those limitations. He also can direct these troops -- and the National Guard, and Blackwater -- to engage in military policing of civilian populations simply by verbally and unilaterally declaring a national emergency of whatever kind he wishes.  

Unfortunately, the US Army spokespeople are parsing their words and misleading us. And, whatever the stated mission is today, the fact remains that military up the chain of command report to the Commander in Chief -- not to Congress or to you and me, and not to the Governors as most of the National Guard do. 

Why do I insist on raising an alarm about this deployment in spite of a great deal of opposition and criticism? (Though I am grateful, too, for a great deal of support.) I insist on raising an alarm because I am aware of world events and not just blinded by American recent history.

In Zimbabwe, a nominal democracy, President Mugabe sent troops to harass, arrest and even kill voters during a closely contested election. Mugabe's challenger called off his own supporters, telling them they should not risk being killed just in order to vote.  

In Sierra Leone, a nation I visited shortly after elections, during a fragile democratic voting process troops and militias were both deployed by the contesting political parties to intimidate, beat and arrest voters. In Azerbaijan, troops were sent to intimidate the opposition during the elections -- and now there is no meaningful opposition. Don't trust me -- ask Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International. Troops are sent by leaders in power, even in weakening democracies, to intimidate voters, arrest and harass opposition leaders in tightly fought elections, all over the damn world.

And nothing, nothing, nothing prevents the First Brigade from being positioned around poll locations, intimidating or silencing or threatening or worse those who challenge their voting outcome or their having been purged from the rolls. This at a time when Prof. Mark Crispin Miller of NYU and Robert Kennedy and many others are documenting MILLIONS of voters being systematically purged from rolls -- overwhelmingly by Republican actions -- and early voting is already showing machines flipping selections from Democrat to Republican, and voters becoming upset.

I am having a surreal experience with the mainstream media, as well, as I try to raise questions. A source at The Philadelphia Inquirer says that nothing has appeared on the wires about the First Brigade -- so they can't cover it. A source at The New York Times says they are 'looking into it' -- but no coverage yet. "The Today Show" asked if I was a 'fear-monger' and 'paranoid' for raising alarms and reproduced NorthCom's soundbite intact about the First Brigade being here to help with communities affected by weapons of mass destruction -- but did no independent reporting of their own. I know from hearing from citizens across party lines that I am not the only American concerned about what information the Army may have about such threats to lead to this deployment now -- the first time since the Indian Wars that troops have been sent onto US soil.

If you would like to see how average Americans are responding to the news about the deployment of the First Brigade, check out some of the posts from readers on a military-oriented Web site that posted the recent Colorado Springs Gazette article on the subject: 

'Since 9/11 the Department of Homeland Security has spent billions to prepare civilian law enforcement, local fire departments and civilian agencies to deal with such [crises]. This smells of despicable mission creep for the Armed Forces. In the late 1980's, I participated in several exercises focused on "counter insurgency" operations that specifically dealt with demonstrators and civil unrest. Backing up law enforcement officials is a end run around Posse Comitatus and this should be exposed for what it is, unconstitutional.' 

'Just why is a combat brigade being tasked for these scenarios and not Chemical, Biological and Nuclear Warfare commands? Medical Commands? Construction Battalions? 

'This seems much too similar to the use of troops to put down the Bonus March of WW I veterans in which Army Troops fired on and killed veterans in DC protesting the government's failure to pay their promised [bonuses].' 

'This job can AND SHOULD be handled by National Guard troops (domestic issues).' 

'This smells...no, it stinks. Posse Comitatus is in place for very valid reasons. This looks like pre-positioning equipment in preparation for a fight.

      'The Defense Authorization Act of 2006 empowers the president to impose martial law in the event of a terrorist "incident," if he or other federal officials perceive a shortfall of "public order," or even in response to antiwar protests that get unruly as a result of government provocations.

      'The terms "incident" and "public order" are left wide open to interpretation under the Military Commissions Act...' 

"Just why is a combat brigade being tasked for these scenarios and not Chemical, Biological and Nuclear Warfare commands? Medical Commands?

Construction Battalions?"

     'Back in the late seventies I was apart of a force that had a similar responsibility, except we were trained to handle "civil disturbance", thank god we were never needed. This is not the first time something like this has happened, the only difference, we were Arty. Every Batt. had to train so many troops, from Inf. to Medical. I enjoyed it, we all did because for the time we were apart of it, we were exempt from all duty. To have the troops on stand-by is not a problem, to deploy the troops to take over civil responsibilities is...'

'This is quite disturbing. 4000 troops may not be enough to impose martial law on an entire country, but they could do it to a moderately sized city.' 

'There is already a group to do this its called the National Guard Civil Support team. They are all over the country and are more trained than these rotating people will ever be.' 

'As a former member of the 10th Civil Service Detachment/Weapons of Mass Destruction, I do feel a bit insulted. The unit is a full time National Guard unit that was in place for two years before the 9/11 attacks. We were trained to do exactly what this article says this combat brigade is being trained to do. Is this another example of the services not talking to each other, or are these commanders really that ignorant of the world around them?' 

'Reorganize FEMA and keep the Combat Military out of the picture. Our Combat troops are for Combat. SeaBees are Construction Battalions that have the expertise for disaster related occurrences. They understand support missions and are the best in the world when it comes to Can-Do.

If the Combat Military has to become involved, it means Martial Law is a scribble away with the pen. 

'If we actually need this Brigade, take it away from the Combat Army and assign it to the SeaBees.'

'Did anyone catch the articles in the Army Times in September about this. The first article on 8 Sept. mentioned the Oct 1 deployment was to be prepared for any civil unrest during the election. The Next article I read on line around 26 Sept Changed 3 times in one day. From explaining about the extensive training they have received in IRAQ, the new non lethal weapons for use against (American Citizens) for civil unrest to a final article of they just here to help for emergencies.' 

"Despite conspiracy theories that this could be a first step toward martial law in the U.S., there won't be tanks on Main Street or active-duty troops putting down demonstrations. That is barred by federal law banning the military from being used on U.S. soil for domestic law enforcement."

     'Did you read the Army Times article?

Have you read the Military Commissions Act 2006?

Have you read the Military Budget Act of 2007?

Have you read the Patriot act?...

     'What they are saying is that the local, state and federal police departments can't handle a crisis?' 

'If you're reading these posts, you've already read the words "mission creep," "end-run around Posse Comitatus" and "unconstitutional"'. 

'I joined the Navy to make sure NO GOVERNMENT WOULD NEVER DEPLOY TROOPS ON OUR SOIL. Why did you join? I believe every Governor should recall all National Guard troops to defend your states.... This detachment must stand down. This is an illegal order.' 

So don't take the warning from me. Take it from many these patriots in military circles.

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

Buy Naomi Wolfe's latest book, Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries (Paperback), from BuzzFlash.com.

We recommend watching the just-released free online documentary of Wolf's "End of America." It's alarming and persuasive.

U.S. suicide rate is up

U.S. suicide rate is up - Los Angeles Times
t's climbed steadily since 1999. The most alarming increase is among middle-age adults: nearly 16%. By Denise Gellene

October 21, 2008

After falling for more than a decade, the U.S. suicide rate has climbed steadily since 1999, driven by an alarming increase among middle-age adults, researchers said Monday.

A new six-year analysis in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that the U.S. suicide rate rose to 11 per 100,000 people in 2005, from 10.5 per 100,000 in 1999, an increase of just under 5%.

The report found that virtually all of the increase was attributable to a nearly 16% jump in suicides among people ages 40 to 64, a group not commonly seen as high-risk. The rate for that age group rose to 15.6 per 100,000 in 2005, from 13.5 per 100,000 in 1999.

Susan P. Baker, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and an author of the study, said she was baffled by the findings. Sociological studies have found that middle age is generally a time of relative security and emotional well-being, she said.

"We really don't know what is causing this," said Dr. Paula Clayton, research director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, who was not involved in the study. "All we have is speculation."

One possibility, she said, is that the increase in suicides might be tied to a concurrent increase in abuse of prescription pain pills, such as OxyContin. Studies have shown that people who abuse drugs are at greater risk for suicide, she noted.

Another possible explanation, she said, was the drop in hormone replacement therapy after it was linked to health risks in 2002. Women who gave up the drugs or decided not to take them might have been more susceptible to depression and potentially suicide, she said.

Dr. Ian Cook, an associate professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study, said stresses of modern life, particularly worries in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, might have a role.

Untreated depression is the leading cause of suicide, he said.

"The bottom line is while we can't infer a lot of things about what is causing the trend, I think it cries out for better depression screening and treatment," he said.

Suicide rates declined 18% from 1986 to 1999, helped in part by a focus on prevention among teenagers and the elderly.

In the current study, researchers found little or no change in the suicide rates for three other age groups: 10 to 19, 20 to 29, and over 65.

Suicides for whites ages 40 to 64 rose 17% from 1999 to 2005, researchers said. For middle-age white men, the rate rose 16% to 26.9 per 100,000 in 2005, from 23.1 per 100,000 in 1999. For white women in that age group, the rate rose 19% to 8.2 per 100,000 from 6.9 per 100,000.

The suicide rate among middle-age African Americans rose 7% from 1999 to 2005, but it was not enough to drive up the overall suicide rate among blacks.

For black men ages 40 to 64, the rate rose 5% to 10.4 per 100,000 from 9.9 per 100,000, and for black women in that age group, the rate rose 14% to 2.5 per 100,000 from 2.2 per 100,000.

Baker said she had no idea why the increases among whites were higher.

Gellene is a Times staff writer.

denise.gellene@latimes.com

Homeless numbers 'alarming'

Homeless numbers 'alarming' - USATODAY.com

By Wendy Koch, USA TODAY

More families with children are becoming homeless as they face mounting economic pressures, including mortgage foreclosures, according to a USA TODAY survey of a dozen of the largest cities in the nation.

Local authorities say the number of families seeking help has risen in Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Minneapolis, New York, Phoenix, Portland, Seattle and Washington.

"Everywhere I go, I hear there is an increase" in the need for housing aid, especially for families, says Philip Mangano, executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, which coordinates federal programs. He says the main causes are job losses and foreclosures.

Other factors have been higher food and fuel prices hitting families with "no cushion," says Nan Roman of the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

Many mayors have 10-year plans to end homelessness and had reported progress until this year. The most recent official count, in January 2007, found 671,888 people living on U.S. streets or in shelters, down 12% from January 2005.

"We saw family homelessness began to increase last winter," says Sally Erickson, Portland's homeless program manager. "There's definitely a spike in the last six months." The number of requests for emergency shelter doubled from fiscal year 2007 to fiscal 2008, which ended in June.

Darlene Newsom, who runs United Methodist Outreach Ministries' New Day Centers, which provide shelter programs for families in Phoenix, says the number of requests is "alarming." She says families who never sought help before are calling.

Los Angeles says it has no 2008 data. Miami reports no major change. Chicago has not had a surge in requests, but more come from renters evicted because of landlords' foreclosure, says Nancy Radner of the Chicago Alliance to End Homelessness.

USA TODAY found:

• In New York City, 2,747 families applied for shelter in September 2008, up from 2,087 in September 2007.

• In Hennepin County, including Minneapolis, 880 families were in shelters from January through August 2008, up from 698 in that period last year. At least 10% this year came from foreclosed properties where most had been renters, says Cathy ten Broeke, county coordinator to end homelessness.

Dennis Culhane, a University of Pennsylvania professor of social policy, expects foreclosures to cause a "big increase" in homeless families.

Mangano says a new federal law gives communities $3.9 billion to buy foreclosed properties or provide services to the homeless.

"On job and income growth, the record couldn't be clearer.'

t r u t h o u t | Why the Economy Fares Much Better Under Democrats
On job and income growth, the record couldn't be clearer.

    Princeton, New Jersey - John McCain is a maverick and Barack Obama is a postpartisan problem-solver. But you wouldn't know it by looking at their economic plans. Both candidates' proposals faithfully reflect the traditional economic priorities of their respective parties. That makes the track records of past Democratic and Republican administrations a very useful benchmark for assessing how the economy might perform under a President McCain or a President Obama. The bottom line: During the past 60 years, Democrats have presided over much less unemployment and much more robust income growth.

    The $52.5 billion plan Senator McCain announced last week includes $36 billion in tax breaks for senior citizens withdrawing funds from retirement accounts and $10 billion for a reduction in the capital gains tax. Those are perks for investors, most of whom are relatively affluent. (McCain is also proposing a two-year suspension of taxes on unemployment benefits, but that's a fraction of the plan's cost.) He also favors broader tax cuts for businesses and wants to extend President Bush's massive tax cuts indefinitely, even for people earning more than $250,000 per year.

    McCain's proposals reflect the traditional Republican emphasis on cutting taxes for businesses and wealthy people in hopes of stimulating investment - "trickle down" economics, as it came to be called during Ronald Reagan's administration. But will proposals of this sort really "stop and reverse the rise of unemployment" and "create millions of new jobs" as McCain has claimed? The historical record suggests not.

    President Bush's multitrillion-dollar tax cuts, which were strongly tilted toward the rich, could not prevent (and may even have contributed to) significant job losses. On the other hand, when Bill Clinton raised taxes on affluent people to balance the federal budget (while significantly expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit for working poor people), unemployment declined substantially. Under Clinton's watch, 22 million jobs were created.

    Prefer a broader historical comparison? In the past three decades, since the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries oil price shocks of the mid-1970s and the Republican turn toward "supply side" economics, the average unemployment rate under Republican presidents has been 6.7 percent - substantially higher than the 5.5 percent average under Democratic presidents. (The official unemployment rate takes no account of people who have given up looking for work or taken substantial pay cuts to stay in the labor force.) Over an even broader time period, since the late 1940s, unemployment has averaged 4.8 percent under Democratic presidents but 6.3 percent - almost one-third higher - under Republican presidents.

    Lower unemployment under Democratic presidents has contributed substantially to the real incomes of middle-class and working poor families. Job losses hurt everyone - not just those without work. In fact, every percentage point of unemployment has the effect of reducing middle-class income growth by about $300 per family per year. And the effects are long term, unlike the temporary boost in income from a stimulus check. Compounded over an eight-year period, a persistent one-point difference in unemployment is worth about $10,000 to a middle-class family. The dollar values are smaller for working poor families, but in relative terms their incomes are even more sensitive to unemployment. In contrast, income growth for affluent people is much more sensitive to inflation, which has been a perennial target of Republican economic policies.

    Although McCain portrays Senator Obama as a "job killing" tax-and-spend liberal, the new $60 billion plan Obama unveiled last week also has a tax break as its centerpiece - a tax break specifically tailored to create jobs by offering employers a $3,000 tax credit for each new hire over the next two years. Obama's proposal would also extend unemployment benefits by 13 weeks for those who remain jobless, as well as match McCain's in suspending taxes on unemployment benefits.

    Obama's new proposal complements $115 billion in economic stimulus measures he had already announced, including $65 billion in direct rebates to taxpayers and $50 billion to help states jump-start spending on infrastructure projects. All of this is squarely in the tradition of Democratic presidents since John F. Kennedy, who have relied on public spending and tax breaks for working people to stimulate consumption and employment during economic downturns.

    These and other policies have produced not only lower unemployment under Democratic presidents but also more economic output and income growth. In fact, over the past 60 years, the real incomes of middle-income families have grown about twice as fast under Democratic presidents as they have under Republican presidents. The partisan difference is even greater for working poor families, whose real incomes have grown six times as fast under Democratic presidents as they have under Republican presidents.

    Of course, past performance is no guarantee of what will happen when the next president takes office. However, given the striking fidelity of both presidential candidates to their parties' traditional economic priorities, the profound impact of partisan politics on the economic fortunes of American families over more than half a century ought to weigh heavily in the minds of voters.

    --------

    Larry M. Bartels directs the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics in Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He is the author of "Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age."

"Palin’s attempts to present herself as the mother of a typical working-class family doesn’t work when it comes to health care."

Palin Family Eligible for Free Federal Health-care

from The Washington Independent by Laura McGann

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Tom Kizzia of the Anchorage Daily News wrote an interesting profile of Todd Palin's 87-year-old grandmother this week that offers a glimpse at the ties between the Palins, whose story is like many white frontier families, and Native Alaskans.

Kizzia, who wrote a book on native rural village called "The Wake of the Unseen Object," describes Lena Andree's upbringing in rural Alaska. Her mother was a Yup'ik Alaskan and her father was a Dutch sled dog freighter, before the arrival of airplanes.

Andree's heritage makes the governor's children Native too — one-16th. Because of their heritage, Todd Palin and the Palin children are entitled to some government benefits, including comprehensive medical coverage, Kizzia reports.

After the vice presidential debate, we looked into Palin's claim that she knows what it's like for families "to sit around the kitchen table and try to figure out how are they going to pay out-of-pocket for health care."

At the time, we noted that it looks likely that the Palin family could have had a good chance of qualifying for federal health care as Native Alaskans. Though the Palins may have decided never to apply, they had a realistic fall-back plan, unlike most Americans.

Now it looks even more certain that the Palins had an alternative if they were ever in a difficult financial position. Kizzia, an expert on Alaska Natives, says the family is not just eligible to apply, but actually "eligible for Indian health benefits under federal law, as lineal descendants of Native enrollees under the 1970 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act."

Palin's attempts to present herself as the mother of a typical working-class family doesn't work when it comes to health care.

Nice Video on the White House Memo

Nice Video on the White House Memo

from AfterDowningStreet.org - Impeach Bush and Cheney Now! by davidswanson

This is about the White House Memo, which Vince Bugliosi calls the Manning Memo, and which Oliver Stone partially reenacts in Crawford instead of the White House in "W."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPcAMlurOU0

"Give us all a break, Rush. Let us think. Let us think. Let us decide."

Hardball: Matthews Chastises Limbaugh Over Powell's Endorsement - "Let us think. Let us decide"

from Crooks and Liars by Nicole Belle

Download | Play    Download | Play (h/t Heather)

Above all else, Chris Matthews loves the game of politics. As show after show prove, he makes no value judgments, applies no moral compass. Playing the game well is admirable, even if your character is not. But every once in a while, reality creeps into the discussion and Matthews reacts to the net result of treating life as a game of partisan one-upsmanship. Such as it was on Monday, as Matthews spoke to conservative talk show host Michael Smerconish -- who rather surprisingly endorsed Obama last week -- about Rush Limbaugh's racist reaction to Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama.

I don't know how you get into this tribalist talk. We could make all kinds of assumptions, but we have no knowledge of a person's inner beliefs. ... You know what drives me crazy? When somebody says 'well, I know you're Catholic, so you must believe this.' Or 'I know you're Jewish, you must believe this.' Or 'I know you're black, you must believe this.' Give us all a break, Rush. Let us think. Let us think. Let us decide.

I'd like to think that he is waking up to the nastiness of the right but sadly, as my buddies at MM's Country Fair point out, Chris Matthews has a history of "tribalist talk" himself.

"The Choice is a Frontline staple going back to 1988, taking a detailed look at both candidates, including extensive interviews with primary sources close to the candidates"

Frontline: The Choice 2008

from mental_floss Blog by Chris Higgins

With just two weeks left until election day in the U.S., the race is no longer heating up: it's at a steady boil. Early voting has begun, a full eight national tracking polls are cranking out numbers daily, and the campaigns are on the ground nationwide Getting Out the Vote. If you haven't voted yet (or if you just can't get enough political coverage), I urge you to check out Frontline's The Choice 2008 program online. You can watch the whole thing for free — and I think you'll find it worthwhile.

The Choice is a Frontline staple going back to 1988, taking a detailed look at both candidates, including extensive interviews with primary sources close to the candidates. The interviews are surprisingly revealing: these people aren't stage-managed politicos spouting talking points (presumably those bits have been edited out). Instead the interviewees offer honest, candid assessments of the candidates, their campaigns, and their personal biographies. It has been a long road to this election for both candidates, and The Choice is the definitive documentary about that journey. Here's part of the film's summary:

With the race narrowed to two men — one whose life was focused by his military service and his years as a POW in Hanoi, the other a black child raised by his white family who found identity in grassroots organizing and politics in the African American community of Chicago — America is truly at a crossroads: historic lows in the public's confidence in our country's future; a battered incumbent overseeing an unpopular war in Iraq; an economy in deep trouble as the world's financial crisis plays out.

"This is a moment where people are both terrified and also hopeful," says Kirk. "They have a choice between two extraordinary candidacies, two men who are trying to embody change in a time where many Americans seem to believe partisan dysfunction has curtailed the ability of our political parties to lead."

As journalist Matt Bai concludes, "Both of them, in what they convey to voters — one in a long career spanning decades, the other in a lightning flash of a career spanning what seems like minutes — [is] a sense of breaking with the status quo, a sense of change, a sense that things need to be done differently than they've been done before. And the question I think a lot of voters will have to ask themselves is, who's actually going to deliver?"

To watch the program, visit The Choice 2008 home page and click "Watch the Full Program" in the middle. Alternately, you can download the whole show from iTunes (also for free, through November) to watch it on the go. Finally, you can watch it on YouTube if you can stand the tiny little window.

"Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) is trying to dial back her accusations that at least some liberals are "anti-American" after the comments energized her opponent. "

The Raw Story | Embattled GOP lawmaker denies 'anti-American' accusations
After her latest rant about the potentially subversive motivations of Barack Obama and other Democrats became an instant online sensation, Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) is trying to dial back her accusations that at least some liberals are "anti-American" after the comments energized her opponent.

Writing in Politico, Bachmann makes clear that she never called "all liberals" anti-American, and she accuses the Democratic party and liberal bloggers of "spinning" her comments during an interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews last Friday.

The comments have invigorated the campaign of Bachmann's opponent Elwyn Tinklenberg, who raised more than a half-million dollars in the days after her interview aired. He's using the money to run a new campaign ad introducing himself to the district's voters. The ad doesn't mention Bachmann's interview. Local observers say the appearance hurt Bachmann's chances in a district where she had been strongly favored.

During the segment on Hardball last Friday, Bachmann reiterated GOP attacks on Obama's previous associations with William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright before accusing his wife of voicing "anti-American views."

MR. MATTHEWS: So you believe that Barack Obama may have anti- American views.

REP. BACHMANN: Absolutely. I'm very concerned that he may have anti-American views. That's what the American people are concerned about. That's why they want to know what his answers are.

In her Politico column, Bachmann took a how-dare-they posture toward progressive activists who are funding her opponent, and she said her comments are being taken out of context.

"Despite the way the blogs and the Democratic Party are spinning it, I never called all liberals anti-American, I never questioned Barack Obama's patriotism, and I never asked for some House Un-American Activities Committee witch hunt into my colleagues in Congress," Bachmann wrote.

The denial seems to rest primarily on semantic quibbling. Bachmann may not have said all liberals are anti-American nor explicitly proposed a return to the Cold War HUAC days, but those implications make themselves fairly clear from a cursory examination of the transcript of the interview.

MR. MATTHEWS: Well, you were putting them together. You put three words together -- liberal, leftist and anti-American. How do they all fit together, those three terms -- liberal, leftist and anti- American?

REP. BACHMANN: Well, that's a good descriptor for Jeremiah Wright. It's a perfect descriptor for Bill Ayers. And those are friends and people that Obama has pointed to as his mentors. In his book, Barack Obama had pointed to Jeremiah Wright as one of his mentors, and also Father Pfleger as one of his mentors. Two of the three mentors are Father Pfleger and Jeremiah Wright. Now, these are very strange, anti-American mentors. ... I think the people that Barack Obama has been associating with are anti-American, by and large, the people who are radical leftists.

[...]

MR. MATTHEWS: Well, he's a United States senator from Illinois. He's one of the people you suspect as being anti-American. How many people in the Congress of the United States do you think are anti- American? You've already suspected Barack Obama. Is he alone, or are there others? How many do you suspect of your colleagues as being anti-American?

REP. BACHMANN: What I would say -- what I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think people would love to see an expose like that.

The furor over Bachmann's comments has focused attention on Bachmann's fairly conservative Minnesota district. President Bush carried her district with 57 percent of the vote in 2004, but CQ Politics shifted its rating of the district to "leans Republican" from "Republican favored."

Sarah Palin said she thinks the vice president’s job is to be “in charge of the U.S. Senate.”

Palin: Vice President Is in Charge of the Senate

from The Washington Independent by Laura McGann

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Think Progress has a great catch. At the end of an interview with a local TV station in Colorado, Gov. Sarah Palin said she thinks the vice president's job is to be "in charge of the U.S. Senate."

Third-grader Brandon Garcia asked what Palin thinks the vice president's job entails. Palin replied:

[T]hey're in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom.

Palin first propounded her expansive views of the vice president's office during the vice presidential debate with Sen. Joe Biden. When moderator Gwen Ifill asked her if she believes, as Dick Cheney does, that the vice president is not solely a member of the executive branch, Palin responded that there is "much flexibility" in the job.

Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president's agenda in that position. Yeah, so I do agree with him that we have a lot of flexibility in there, and we'll do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation.

The whole Colorado interview is worth watching. Palin talks taxes, energy and her views on funding programs for special-needs children. The comment about the role of the vice president is around the 7-minute mark.

Palin does not heart polar bears

Palin v. the Polar Bears

from Emptywheel by emptywheel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnLW57x8ZRM

Finally, the ad I've been waiting for since late August. Not as effective as their puppy-killer ad, but that's a tough act to follow.

Wisconsin: Longtime GOP State Senator Endorses Obama

Wisconsin: Longtime GOP State Senator Endorses Obama

from The Jed Report

Good for Barbara Lorman, who not only bailed on John McCain over his nasty campaign tactics, but also announced her support for Barack Obama.

"Running away from black family ties is not exactly a problem for Barack Obama. But it is for John McCain."

McCain's black family ties touch on the GOP's racial faultline

from Crooks and Liars by David Neiwert

Download | Play    Download | Play

Normally, the story of John McCain's black family -- the ones who are planning to vote for Barack Obama -- might elicit some modest interest in terms of what it says about the complexity of race relations in America.

But what's been even more interesting has been how John McCain has responded to the story ever since it surfaced.

Initially, back when he first was doing the "Maverick" schtick in the 2000 primaries, he actually denied that the aristocratic Southerners from whom he was descended were slaveholders. But it really became impossible for McCain to deny their existence after a 2000 report in Salon in the course of which reporters showed him photographs and birth records in person and he had to concede to their existence.

One account, In the South Florida Times, describes how McCain has handled the connection publicly and privately:

White and black members of the McCain family have met on the plantation several times over the last 15 years, but one invited guest has been conspicuously absent: Sen. John Sidney McCain.

"Why he hasn't come is anybody's guess," said Charles McCain Jr., 60, a distant cousin of John McCain who is black. "I think the best I can come up with, is that he doesn't have time, or he has just distanced himself, or it doesn't mean that much to him."

Other relatives are not as generous.

Lillie McCain, 56, another distant cousin of John McCain who is black, said the Republican presidential nominee is trying to hide his past, and refuses to accept the family's history.

"After hearing him in 2000 claim his family never owned slaves, I sent him an email," she recalled. "I told him no matter how much he denies it, it will not make it untrue, and he should accept this and embrace it."

She said the senator never responded to her email.

In her CNN interview with Kyra Phillips, Lillie McCain discusses this further:

PHILLIPS: Do you think it could make a difference with regard to diversity issues, issues of race, if John McCain did participate?

L. MCCAIN: I think it probably could. It would give him an opportunity to know us.

I e-mailed him back in 2000 to remind him of his ties to Tiak, Mississippi. I heard him say on I believe it was "Meet the Press," that his ancestors owned no slaves. Well, I certainly have carried the name McCain from the beginning of my whole life, and I've known of the ties to John McCain and tried to get him to communicate with me about that, but he has been unwilling, at least, to date.

PHILLIPS: Well he found out in 2000, to be fair to the senator there, and he did come forward and gave this quote -- "How the Tiak descendants have served their community and, by extension, to their country, is a testament to the power of family, love, compassion, and the human spirit." And then he added in the statement, "an example for all citizens."

That sure is a warm, fuzzy little sentimental quote from the senator, and the fact that it really says nothing in reality says everything we need to know about John McCain.

Since the advent of the Southern Strategy under Nixon, the Republican Party has embraced its role as the Party of White Privilege. John McCain has made a modest career out of making rumbling noises toward some of the uglier aspects of this legacy within the GOP, and he's hoping that those rumbles will be enough to persuade moderate voters to back him.

However, the cold realities of the history of race relations in America -- dating back to those dark eons when black women held in slavery were routinely raped and impregnated by their white owners -- still hover like a dark cloud over whites' vision of Golden Age America, the very vision that John McCain and Sarah Palin like to sell to their flocks like so much Coca-Cola.

So it's perhaps not a surprise that, given the chance to banish that cloud by doing the human thing, the right thing, and embracing the black side of the McCain family, the Straight Talking Senator From Arizona chose essentially to run from them and hide. Because acknowledging them not only was too painful, but might prove too harmful to his chances of success in a political party predicated on white privilege.

Moreover, this also fits what we know about his reflexive predisposition on civil-rights matters. This is, after all, the guy who voted against a Martin Luther King holiday back in 1984.

Yes, as the wingnuts already note, Obama's maternal ancestors likely owned slaves, too. But then, it seems doubtful that Obama would hesitate to embrace the ancestors of those slaveowners, either.

Running away from black family ties is not exactly a problem for Barack Obama. But it is for John McCain.

you are being taxed in effect to bail out the bankers.

The video below offers from food for thought as to why people should be pissed off if they are not pissed off already:

More than 1.5 trillion (with a t) dollars have been made available to wall street in the form of sweetheart deals by the federal reserve.

The term federal reserve is a misnomer because it is neither a federal entity nor  does it have massive reserves in its vaults. Its charter allows it to create money (ie paper) without any corresponding economic value; out of thin air - no actual cash reserves are loaned out. This increase in the money supply causes inflation to rise, eating away at your ability to buy things with your money because each dollar in circulation is worth less. Inflation in fact should be viewed as a tax because it leaves you with less, like when you pay tax on something. So, the reserve acts like a huge taxing entity, which Ben Bernankhe agrees with in the video.

So, you are being taxed in effect to bail out the bankers.

Also, on 9/10/01 it was announced that over 2 trillion was missing from the pentagon. On 9/11/01, the budget analyst office was destroyed on the Pentagon attack. The video states that that the department of defense and the federal reserve have plundered the American people for over 2 trillion dollars.

One quadrillion in derivatives are held globally vs the combined assets on earth being estimated to be 100 trillion; this conflagration will lead to an economic black hole

The corporate controlled media in trying to distract us by telling us we've already beaten the problem....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9-tBGxVU6o

"If this holds true, it sure as hell doesn't help Barack shake that "elitist" label."

Obama Goes Ticketmaster on Media

from Chicagoist by Marcus Gilmer

It doesn't matter that his campaign was able to wrangle a whopping $150 million in September; Barack Obama is going to make media members dig deep into their pockets to attend Obamapalooza on Election Night. While logistics as to whether or not attendees will need tickets is still being sorted out, one thing is for sure: the media will be paying high prices to attain their passes. Depending on what amenities are needed, media members will pay from $715 to $1,815 for access. In addition, the media will have to pony up another $935 just to get access to the press tent to talk to campaign officials. There will be a free access area, but the press release from the Obama campaign describes it as, "outdoors, unassigned and may have obstructed views...standing room only." So kind of like those shitty seats way up in the first level of Wrigley where you can't even see the scoreboard.

As one might imagine, this is not going over well. Lynn Sweet, for one, was quite unhappy with the arrangements.

This is an outrageous pay to play plan that caters to national elite outlets with deep pockets.

I am not asking for a free ride--but this is pricey and does not take into account some reporters won't need power, cable, internet or food but will crave the access more than the food. As I was talking to this unnamed spokesman about this enormously expensive set-up, he did say--that a news outlet could rotate people in and out of the tent on that one credential. Great. All in all, we agree with Sweet. Sure, they're paying a hefty price to take over Grant Park, but gouging the media won't be a good start to that relationship if Obama wins. And then there's this bit of info, also from Lynn the Perturbed:

Obama's top donors--not the masses who donated the $5, $10 and $25 the campaign brag about--will have VIP access throughout election night and received an early heads up a week ago to plan to spend Election Night in Chicago.

If this holds true, it sure as hell doesn't help Barack shake that "elitist" label. We wonder what Pearl Jam thinks...

A Huge Spending Bill You Haven’t Heard About

A Huge Spending Bill You Haven't Heard About

from The Washington Independent by Aaron Wiener

In case it's somehow flown under your radar (my puns are always intended), shift your glance leftward to Matthew Blake's thorough and enlightening piece on the $488-billion defense spending bill (beyond the Iraq/Afghanistan tab) passed by Congress without much scrutiny or fanfare.

While the $700-billion bailout made headlines for weeks, this bill, which increased funding for programs opposed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, including F-22 fighter planes, received little attention. But it's certainly worth a look.

And speaking of huge government expenditures you haven't noticed, skip on over to Charles Morris' piece on the Fed's $1.6-trillion gamble, which has received a lot of attention today after being inexplicably picked up by ESPN.com under a piece about the Tennessee Titans.

"Yep, these are our educators."

CPS Teachers, Staff Charged With Fraud

from Chicagoist by Marcus Gilmer

Six Chicago Public Schools employees, including two teachers, have been charged with fraud after officials discovered a scheme that paid the staff members for time not worked. They bilked the schools for more than $135,000. Two other employees who helped set-up the scheme have already been charged, bringing the scheme's total participants to eight. Of those, six have been fired or resigned while two more await discipline. Yep, these are our educators.

36 Jews who have shaped the 2008 U.S. election

36 Jews who have shaped the 2008 U.S. election - Haaretz - Israel News
Following is the list, in alphabetical order:

Sheldon Adelson: He is Republican, neoconservative and a mega-donor, however, a combination of financial reverses and internal disputes has muted his contribution to the McCain effort.

David Axelrod: Chief strategist and media advisor for the Obama campaign, he has harnessed grassroots support through "viral" media, new technology and emphasis on the theme of change.

Steven Bob and Sam Gordon: The two Reform rabbis from the Chicago area founded Rabbis for Obama, which has persuaded hundreds of rabbinical colleagues to go on record by name supporting the candidate. The group's influence on the Jewish electorate has been difficult to gauge.

Matt Brooks: The executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition is a frequent media "first responder" on Jewish issues.

Mark Broxmeyer: A businessman and chair of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs conservative think tank, Broxmeyer serves as national chairman of the McCain campaign's Jewish Advisory Coalition and as a member of the candidate's national finance committee.

Eric Cantor: This Virginia congressman, the sole Jewish Republican in the House, has emerged as a primary McCain surrogate in a bid to sway Florida and his home state.

Laurie David: The global-warming activist and producer of "An Inconvenient Truth," starring Al Gore, she is ex-wife of "Seinfeld" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" creator Larry David and one of Jewish Hollywood's most prodigious fundraisers.

Ira Forman: The executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, he is Matt Brooks' counterpart.

Barney Frank: The Massachusetts Democratic congressman is one of the most visible, outspoken liberals in the House. He is openly gay and a frequent target of pro-McCain commentators, particularly on Fox News, where, because of his role as chair of the House Financial Services Committee, he has been said to bear crucial responsibility for the sub-prime lending crisis. He played a key role in negotiating the Wall Street bailout package.

Malcolm Hoenlein: Formally nonpartisan as professional chief of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, he invited Sarah Palin to speak at an anti-Ahmadinejad rally at the UN, then bowed to pressure to rescind the invitation. He is seen to have aided the McCain campaign in terms of some Jewish undecideds.

Cheryl Jacobs: A McCain campaign co-chair in Broward County, Florida, the Conservative rabbi, a longtime Democrat, supported Hillary Clinton's primary race for president, but then switched to McCain.

Henry Kissinger: The New York Times calls the former secretary of state a "close outside adviser" to McCain's campaign. He is regularly called upon by the candidate for advice on foreign affairs, and held a high-profile briefing session with Palin prior to the vice-presidential debate.

Ed Koch: The former New York City mayor is still a gold standard for Jews of a certain age. He backed Bush in 2004 and Hillary Clinton during the primaries. Now he's for Obama.

William Kristol: As editor of Rupert Murdoch's Weekly Standard magazine, a New York Times columnist and a Fox News commentator, he is an extremely influential neoconservative voice.

Sherry Lansing: The first woman to head a major Hollywood studio (Paramount), she is a major Democratic donor and fundraiser.

Ed Lasky: Through the American Thinker Web site, his articles helped spawn the widespread Internet campaign alleging that Obama is anti-Israel.

Henry Lehman: A Bavarian immigrant who settled in Alabama in 1844 at age 23, and founded H. Lehman, a general store that, by accepting raw cotton in lieu of cash, would later lead to commodity trading in cotton. In 1850, he and his brothers Emanuel and Mayer formed Lehman Brothers, which became one of the first and most powerful investment houses on Wall Street. Lehman Brothers' spectacular collapse in mid-September, the largest bankruptcy in American history, triggered a worldwide financial panic that, more than any single factor, may determine the outcome of the 2008 presidential election.

Joe Lieberman: The Connecticut senator was Al Gore's 2000 Democratic running mate. He is now McCain's point man for undecided Jewish voters.

Mik Moore and Ari Wallach: Launched Jewsvote.org, utilizing high-tech methods to counteract Web-borne attacks on Obama. The group also sponsors The Great Schlep - a campaign to get grandchildren to visit grandparents in Florida, to persuade them to vote for Obama.

Eli Pariser: He heads MoveOn.org, a liberal on-line advocacy group that has raised large sums for Democratic candidates.

Martin Peretz: The editor of The New Republic, he wrote an influential article entitled "Can friends of Israel - and Jews - trust Obama? In a word, Yes."

Dennis Prager: He is an influential, outspoken and often strident nationally syndicated radio talk-show host. Despite reservations over McCain's campaign reform bill, he has thrown his weight behind the GOP ticket.

Penny Pritzker: She is the national finance chair of the Obama campaign. A billionaire executive, pioneer Obama supporter and scion of a well-known Jewish mega-donor family, she has taken flak over the degree of her involvement in a the failure of a bank driven by sub-prime mortgages.

Ed Rendell: The governor of the key swing state of Pennsylvania, he is former head of the Democratic National Committee and a top Democratic campaign spokesman.

Denise Rich: The socialite and ex-wife of disgraced billionaire Marc Rich is a Democratic megafundraiser.

Dennis Ross and Dan Kurtzer: They are the center-right and center-left anchors of Obama's Middle East advisory staff.

Robert Rubin: The top Obama economics advisor has unsurpassed knowledge of the workings of Wall Street and was treasury secretary in the Clinton administration.

Dan Shapiro: A former Clinton administration National Security Council official, he is a senior Mideast policy advisor and Jewish outreach coordinator for the Obama campaign. He is said to have co-written Obama's speech before AIPAC (the pro-Israel lobby), in which the candidate declared "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided" - a statement Obama later partially recanted.

Sarah Silverman: A "shock comedian," she served as video spokeswoman for The Great Schlep (see Mik Moore, above). Her monologue spawned a counter-clip from veteran comic Jackie Mason.

Alan Solow: The Chicago lawyer is active in the Jewish community and in the Conference of Presidents. He has been an Obama supporter for a dozen years.

Jon Stewart: As host of the satirical TV news program "The Daily Show," he has become perhaps the most listened-to liberal voice in the nation. The New York Times called Stewart's program "a genuine cultural and political force."

Barbra Streisand: The superstar singer is a Jewish-liberal icon and mega-fundraiser. She endorsed Hillary Clinton in the primary race and has backed Obama since the Democratic convention. She also headlined a Hollywood fundraiser in September, which included a $25,800-a-plate dinner.

Robert Wexler: A key Obama surrogate, the Florida congressman has campaigned extensively in the effort to shift the electoral vote-rich Sunshine State from the McCain column to the Democrats.

Fred Zeidman: McCain's lead Jewish strategist, he is chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, and a heavyweight among Jewish Republicans

New Bond movie reviews are coming in...

James Bond Curse Extends to Early 'Quantum of Solace' Reviews [Quantum Of Solace]

from Defamer by Seth

The first reviews of Quantum of Solace are in, a mixed lot providing a mostly underwhelmed response to a shorter (in running time, not baby-blue-mankini hemlines) Bond film. Bottom line: Solace is packed with brooding, Bournesian action, but lacking in all those touches that—you know—leave an audience more stirred than shaken. What all manage to agree upon is the effectiveness of Daniel Craig in the lead, as well as the excellent performance delivered by Gemma Arterton, an actress who sinks all dozen of her claws into a small but pivotal role. Here's a sampling of what critics are saying:

· "It's James Bond, licence to bore....Bond is a boorish oaf who simply rushes from country to country with the manic speed of Jason Bourne, including sequences shot in Panama, Chile, Italy, Mexico and Austria, in a plot about holding a country to ransom over its water supply...Quantum of Solace lacks any wit, ironic or otherwise, which has been a strength of so many 007 films...At around one hour 40 minutes, this Bond is shorter than most. Somehow it felt longer." [Times Online]
· "Quantum Of Solace doesn't seem like a major entry in the Bond canon. Well under two hours long, it's shorter and more frenetic than most of its predecessors, and an often-jolting experience to watch. Loose ends about. What it does have, though, above all, is vigour." [The Independent]
· "I was disappointed there was so little dialogue, flirtation and characterisation in this Bond: Forster and his writers Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade clearly thought this sort of sissy nonsense has to be cut out in favour of explosions." [The Guardian]
· "One wonders if director Marc Forster and screenwriters Paul Haggis and Neal Purvis haven't tried a little too hard to distance the film from traditional Bond plots. The expository dialogue scenes can be dull, and cram in so many machinations and double-crossings that it's easy to lose track of who's duping whom." [Telegraph]
· [SPOILERS] "Mostly it doesn't feel like a Bond film at all. Not once does Craig say: "The name's Bond. James Bond." There's no Q or his gadgets. Heck, we even see Bond in a cardigan. There are no risque quips or arched eyebrows. This Bond is a soul in torment having lost the love of his life when Vesper Lynd drowned...It doesn't disappoint - just don't expect the brilliance of Casino Royale. [Daily Mail]
· "The raw nature of the film may put off some who yearn for the days of gizmos, gadgets and Bond quips as he dispenses with faceless opponents...It's a film that feels like the second part of a trilogy, with this being the bleaker second act." [BBC]

Now on PBS: Religious Voter: I can't imagine a President being named Obama

Now on PBS: Religious Voter: I can't imagine a President being named Obama

from Crooks and Liars by John Amato

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4wQfQtpDAc

And Tracy Kerlee is supposed to be a Christian.

Tracy: I can't imagine a President of the United States being named President Obama. I really have a problem with that and I'm not the only one.
Q: Because that means what to you?

Tracy: His background. A mother that was atheist. Huh, that really gets to me. A father that was a Muslim. That should get to everyone.

The term values is so misused. Tracy, and she has every right to feel the way she does, should not be represented as being a values voter in my opinion. I'd call it something else. Being an atheist is a value just as much as an evangelical or what ever religion you practice.
(h/t Wayne. Info from Youtube link)

North Carolina Hecklers Target Obama — and Voters

North Carolina Hecklers Target Obama — and Voters

from The Washington Independent by Ari Melber

Sen. Barack Obama often drops by small diners and restaurants during his campaign trips, chatting with patrons and posing for pictures. But a Sunday pit-stop at Cape Fear BBQ in Fayetteville, N.C., broke with the usual routine.

Some people at the establishment heckled the Illinois senator, calling him a socialist and yelling at him to leave the restaurant. From the pool report:

[Obama] entered the barbecue joint where an older and majority-white clientele of dozens was eating lunch after church services. At the other end of the restaurant, Diane Fanning, 54, who works at a discount club, began yelling: "Socialist, socialist, socialist -– get out of here!" There was a lot of noise and excitement and positive reception as well… The gentleman next to Fanning, Lenox Bramble, 76, flashed an angry look at her. "Be civil, be courteous," he admonished her.  Another woman, Cecilia Hayslip, 61, yelled back at Fanning (per Reuters), "At least he's not a warmonger!"

Mr. Bramble told Reuters' pool reporter that he wasn't voting for Obama because he didn't think he had enough experience. Bramble's wife, Kit, 75, said after meeting Obama, "He was very nice" but added she'd been a conservative Republican since Barry Goldwater's era and she wouldn't vote for Obama….

Later, Obama came to the long table where Fanning and other members of the local First Presbyterian Church were gathered. He held out his hand to her to shake it and asked, "How are you, ma'am?" but she declined to shake.

He spoke at length with many of the other parishioners at the long banquet table, however, and got a much friendlier reception as he spoke about health care, taxes and Social Security. Fanning told the pool reporter, "Some of them are just nicer than I am. I know how some of them think." But several of her fellow churchgoers said their support was genuine. Betty Waylett, 76, told him, "You're doing a great job." She told the pool reporter she is a Republican but will vote for Obama because she likes the way he speaks and his manner.

Heckling in North Carolina is not limited to Obama. A new video today from the Washington Times shows Republican protesters heckling their fellow citizens in line at an early voting station in Fayetteville, just a few hours after Obama's trip there.

"At the polling site was a group of loud and angry protesters who shouted and mocked the voters as they walked in," explains the accompanying report.  "Nearly all were white….no one held anything back. People were shouting about Obama's acknowledged cocaine use as a young man, abortion and one man used the word 'terrorist.'"

These are troubling incidents in the homestretch of a tough campaign, especially when crowds gather to yell and potentially intimidate people as they exercise their voting rights.

Turdblossom's Insider's Guide to Swinging Elections

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=layFiC31fOc

Turdblossom Part. 2 Hacking the Machines

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndDZA_JKrAU

http://wakeupandsaveyourcountry.com/votersguide.htm

The Human Fallout From the Financial Crisis

The Rising Body Count on Main Street: The Human Fallout From the Financial Crisis

from Truthout - All Articles

    On October 4, 2008, in the Porter Ranch section of Los Angeles, Karthik Rajaram, beset by financial troubles, shot his wife, mother-in-law, and three sons before turning the gun on himself. In one of his two suicide notes, Rajaram wrote that he was "broke," having incurred massive financial losses in the economic meltdown.

read more

Tjis makes me insane with anger: "Wall Street bankers in line for $70bn payout"

Wall Street bankers in line for $70bn payout | Business | The Guardian

Financial workers at Wall Street's top banks are to receive pay deals worth more than $70bn (£40bn), a substantial proportion of which is expected to be paid in discretionary bonuses, for their work so far this year - despite plunging the global financial system into its worst crisis since the 1929 stock market crash, the Guardian has learned.

Staff at six banks including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are in line to pick up the payouts despite being the beneficiaries of a $700bn bail-out from the US government that has already prompted criticism. The government's cash has been poured in on the condition that excessive executive pay would be curbed.

Pay plans for bankers have been disclosed in recent corporate statements. Pressure on the US firms to review preparations for annual bonuses increased yesterday when Germany's Deutsche Bank said many of its leading traders would join Josef Ackermann, its chief executive, in waiving millions of euros in annual payouts.

The sums that continue to be spent by Wall Street firms on payroll, payoffs and, most controversially, bonuses appear to bear no relation to the losses incurred by investors in the banks. Shares in Citigroup and Goldman Sachs have declined by more than 45% since the start of the year. Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley have fallen by more than 60%. JP MorganChase fell 6.4% and Lehman Brothers has collapsed.

At one point last week the Morgan Stanley $10.7bn pay pot for the year to date was greater than the entire stock market value of the business. In effect, staff, on receiving their remuneration, could club together and buy the bank.

In the first nine months of the year Citigroup, which employs thousands of staff in the UK, accrued $25.9bn for salaries and bonuses, an increase on the previous year of 4%. Earlier this week the bank accepted a $25bn investment by the US government as part of its bail-out plan.

At Goldman Sachs the figure was $11.4bn, Morgan Stanley $10.73bn, JP Morgan $6.53bn and Merrill Lynch $11.7bn. At Merrill, which was on the point of going bust last month before being taken over by Bank of America, the total accrued in the last quarter grew 76% to $3.49bn. At Morgan Stanley, the amount put aside for staff compensation also grew in the last quarter to the end of August by 3% to $3.7bn.

Days before it collapsed into bankruptcy protection a month ago Lehman Brothers revealed $6.12bn of staff pay plans in its corporate filings. These payouts, the bank insisted, were justified despite net revenue collapsing from $14.9bn to a net outgoing of $64m.

None of the banks the Guardian contacted wished to comment on the record about their pay plans. But behind the scenes, one source said: "For a normal person the salaries are very high and the bonuses seem even higher. But in this world you get a top bonus for top performance, a medium bonus for mediocre performance and a much smaller bonus if you don't do so well."

Many critics of investment banks have questioned why firms continue to siphon off billions of dollars of bank earnings into bonus pools rather than using the funds to shore up the capital position of the crisis-stricken institutions. One source said: "That's a fair question - and it may well be that by the end of the year the banks start review the situation."

Much of the anger about investment banking bonuses has focused on boardroom executives such as former Lehman boss Dick Fuld, who was paid $485m in salary, bonuses and options between 2000 and 2007.

Last year Merrill Lynch's chairman Stan O'Neal retired after announcing losses of $8bn, taking a final pay deal worth $161m. Citigroup boss Chuck Prince left last year with a $38m in bonuses, shares and options after multibillion-dollar write-downs. In Britain, Bob Diamond, Barclays president, is one of the few investment bankers whose pay is public. Last year he received a salary of £250,000, but his total pay, including bonuses, reached £36m.

Analyst: GOP voter fraud scandal 'really serious'

The Raw Story | Analyst: GOP voter fraud scandal 'really serious'

The Los Angeles Times reported on Saturday that dozens of voters have complained they were duped by a firm working for the GOP into switching their party registration to Republican while being told they were signing a petition for tougher penalties on child molesters.

The switches could impede Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts and could prevent those affected from voting in next year's Democratic primaries. Some of the voters were even switched to absentee status, meaning they could lose their vote entirely if they show up at the polls on Election Day without bringing an absentee ballot.

The story began last summer, when California Democrats noticed sudden, unexplained turnarounds in Republican registration in certain counties and obtained a list of the new registrations from the San Bernardino County registrar's office. They found that more than 75% of the phone numbers given were invalid, and of those voters who could be reached, over 80% said their registrations had been switched to Republican without their knowledge.

A single group turned out to be behind the "slamming" -- Young Political Majors, which was previously found to be using similar tactics in Florida in 2004. In that election, YPM was employed by another firm called JSM Inc., which was working for conservative powerhouse Arno Political Associates. Similar stories involving all three have surfaced in Arizona, Massachusetts, and Ohio.

MSNBC's Contessa Brewer asked legal analyst Susan Filan on Monday about the case. "This is really serious," Filan responded. "This is a very specific, deliberate intent to mislead." She contrasted it with the far more trivial accusations of voter fraud against the anti-poverty group ACORN, which has handed in occasional fake registrations under names such as "Mickey Mouse."

Late on Saturday, the owner of Young Political Majors, Mark Jacoby, was arrested on charges of having fraudulently registered himself to vote at a California address where he lived as a child so that he would meet California's legal requirement that signature gatherers be eligible to vote in that state.

Jacoby's attorney called the charges "baseless" and part of a "long pattern of harassment," saying that his client travels a lot and has continued to use his parents' home as his legal address.

The California GOP issued a statement claiming that "California Secretary of State Debra Bowen has decided to once again show her partisan colors and charge an individual for questions surrounding his own, personal voter registration. ... The charges we've seen today suggests that this is politically motivated. ... It is evident that Debra Bowen is using her office to play politics with the public's perception."

Filan's comment on this claim was, "To say this is politically motivated is just nonsense. To not prosecute something like this would be an extreme dereliction of a public official's duty." However, she did not address the question of whether there was any impropriety in arresting Jacoby for his personal actions rather than because of the accusations of fraud against his firm.

Bradblog has been following the Jacoby case and is posting regular updates.


This video is from MSNBC's News Live, broadcast October 20, 2008.

Analyst: GOP voter fraud scandal 'really serious'

David Edwards and Muriel Kane Published: Monday October 20, 2008
Print This  Email This

The Los Angeles Times reported on Saturday that dozens of voters have complained they were duped by a firm working for the GOP into switching their party registration to Republican while being told they were signing a petition for tougher penalties on child molesters.

The switches could impede Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts and could prevent those affected from voting in next year's Democratic primaries. Some of the voters were even switched to absentee status, meaning they could lose their vote entirely if they show up at the polls on Election Day without bringing an absentee ballot.

The story began last summer, when California Democrats noticed sudden, unexplained turnarounds in Republican registration in certain counties and obtained a list of the new registrations from the San Bernardino County registrar's office. They found that more than 75% of the phone numbers given were invalid, and of those voters who could be reached, over 80% said their registrations had been switched to Republican without their knowledge.

A single group turned out to be behind the "slamming" -- Young Political Majors, which was previously found to be using similar tactics in Florida in 2004. In that election, YPM was employed by another firm called JSM Inc., which was working for conservative powerhouse Arno Political Associates. Similar stories involving all three have surfaced in Arizona, Massachusetts, and Ohio.

MSNBC's Contessa Brewer asked legal analyst Susan Filan on Monday about the case. "This is really serious," Filan responded. "This is a very specific, deliberate intent to mislead." She contrasted it with the far more trivial accusations of voter fraud against the anti-poverty group ACORN, which has handed in occasional fake registrations under names such as "Mickey Mouse."

Late on Saturday, the owner of Young Political Majors, Mark Jacoby, was arrested on charges of having fraudulently registered himself to vote at a California address where he lived as a child so that he would meet California's legal requirement that signature gatherers be eligible to vote in that state.

Jacoby's attorney called the charges "baseless" and part of a "long pattern of harassment," saying that his client travels a lot and has continued to use his parents' home as his legal address.

The California GOP issued a statement claiming that "California Secretary of State Debra Bowen has decided to once again show her partisan colors and charge an individual for questions surrounding his own, personal voter registration. ... The charges we've seen today suggests that this is politically motivated. ... It is evident that Debra Bowen is using her office to play politics with the public's perception."

Filan's comment on this claim was, "To say this is politically motivated is just nonsense. To not prosecute something like this would be an extreme dereliction of a public official's duty." However, she did not address the question of whether there was any impropriety in arresting Jacoby for his personal actions rather than because of the accusations of fraud against his firm.

Bradblog has been following the Jacoby case and is posting regular updates.


This video is from MSNBC's News Live, broadcast October 20, 2008.

Download video via RawReplay.com

Download video via RawReplay.com

100,000 vs 2,000

The Crowd Gap

from The Jed Report

Jonathan Martin notes:

Actually, it's more of a canyon.

Obama had an estimated 100,000 people come out to see him at the St. Louis Arch on Saturday.

In suburban St. Louis today, McCain had a crowd of about 2,000.

IL Governor Blagojevich scored a big fat F in a CATO study on the fiscal policy of US Governors

Fiscal Policy Report Card on America's Governors: 2008: "Fiscal Policy Report Card on America's Governors: 2008"

"Three governors were awarded an "A" in this report card – Charlie Crist of Florida, Mark Sanford of South Carolina, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Eight governors were awarded an "F" – Martin O'Malley of Maryland, Ted Kulongoski of Oregon, Rod Blagojevich of Illinois, Chet Culver of Iowa, Jon Corzine of New Jersey, Bob Riley of Alabama, Jodi Rell of Connecticut, and C. L. "Butch" Otter of Idaho."

Full Text of Policy Analysis no. 624

(PDF, 628 KB | HTML)

Greene County, OH Young Republican Lays Out Plan to Commit Vote Fraud

Greene County, OH Young Republican Lays Out Plan to Commit Vote Fraud

from Emptywheel by emptywheel

After I noted that Greene County's Republican attorneys were chasing down voting information on those who recently registered and requested an absentee ballot in that county, klynn found evidence of a "Young Republican" in that county laying out a plan to encourage vote fraud (in case that post disappears, I took this screen shot at around 1:38PM). The post claims that,

I've called all my friends in Georgia and Alaska (states that are clearly leaning Republican) and had them register to vote (using the local YMCA's address) and to apply for an absentee ballot so the ballot will be sent to their homes in GA and AK.

In other words, this self-described Republican claims he (or she) was encouraging friends to commit vote fraud. Now, this post appeared just over a week before Greene County's Sheriff got Mike DeWine's buddy Stephen Haller to start digging up records on those who had registered early. So maybe this is why the Sheriff started investigating early voters. Or maybe this was just a plant to excuse such an investigation.

Sara explained why Greene County might have been a target for this kind of attention. 

Two major Historic Black Colleges are located in Green County, Central State University, which is Ohio's Black Land Grant Institution, and Wilberforce University and Seminary, which was founded by the AME — African Methodist Episcopal Church back about 1845 or so. A former congressman from NYC is the current President of Wilberforce.

I can well imagine that Xenia saw lots of youthful voters during the early voting window last week, that ended this Monday.

A few miles outside Xenia, but still in Greene Country is Cedarville College, an Evangelical (I think Baptist) school with whom the DeVines have a very close connection — I believe both the former Senator and his brother are graduates. Cedarville is much older, but has close links with Falwell's Liberty University and Robertson's college operations. Lots of Cedarville students go on to study law at Regent's. Lots of old connections with Blackwell's operations in Ohio. [my emphasis]

Now, frankly, I don't know what to make of this. Maybe this Young Republican is just talking out of his arse. Maybe the Republicans in Greene County are systematically trying to challenge the students at Central State and Wilberforce.

But given all the over-heated cries from the McCain campaign alleging voter fraud, you'd think they might spend some time checking into their own "Young Republicans" openly advocating vote fraud.

"On Oct. 17, 2004, John Kerry’s victory over George Bush appeared to be all but assured:"

Four Years ago This Week: Kerry Up By 10 in 13 Swing States

from Pensito Review by Jon Ponder

On Oct. 17, 2004, John Kerry's victory over George Bush appeared to be all but assured:

With just 16 days to go until the vote, the race couldn't be tighter.

Polls suggest a dead heat. Even Republican organizers concede the Democratic senator has benefited from his performance in the three presidential debates.

And a Washington Post poll shows Kerry with a significant lead in important states that could decide the outcome of the election. The poll found Kerry held a 53 per cent to 43 per cent lead among likely voters in 13 such states.

While Kerry was campaigning in two of those states on Sunday - Ohio and Florida - [George] Bush took the day off, choosing instead to concentrate on a major speech on terrorism he is scheduled to deliver in New Jersey on Monday.

Analysts say it is the handful of crucial swing states, like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida that will be most important on Nov. 2. Those states will be heavily targeted by both campaigns in the closing weeks of the race.

Back then, it was Swiftboating, along with a concerted effort by the GOP to suppress or steal votes, particularly in Ohio, that handed victory to Bush.

This year, it appears that the McCain campaign's Swiftboating tactics — lying about Obama's associations with William Ayers and ACORN and its hatefilled robocalls in which sub rosa messaging links Obama to terrorism — as well as concerted efforts to steal votes that are undoubtedly underway, that will likely hand the presidency to John McCain.

Isn't Sarah Palin a "Socialist" too?

Isn't Sarah Palin a "Socialist" too?

from Crooks and Liars by John Amato

Download | Play    Download | Play

(Updated with video) McCain's last ditch effort is to say that Obama is a socialist. Wallace called him out on it.

WALLACE: But, Senator, you voted for the $700 billion bailout that's being used partially to nationalize American banks. Isn't that socialism?

As we know, Conservatism has run up the largest debt this country has ever known, started two wars and destroyed Wall Street under the "Compassionate One," but be afraid of Obama. I saw Sarah Palin saying the same thing.

On Sunday, she went a step further.

"Barack Obama calls it spreading the wealth," she said. "Joe Biden calls higher taxes patriotic. But Joe the plumber and Ed the dairy man, I believe that they think that it sounds more like socialism. Friends, now is no time to experiment with socialism."

Didn't she redistribute the wealth in Alaska? You know, take the oil profits, impose a tax and kick it back to Alaskans?

As Eric Kleefield says:

Note: Sarah Palin is the governor of a state that practices collective ownership of oil and other natural resources, and equally distributes the state's cut of the revenues to every citizen.

The Nation has more...

Obama Wants Warmongering, Lying Colin Powell to Advise Him

Obama Wants Warmongering, Lying Colin Powell to Advise Him

from AfterDowningStreet.org - Impeach Bush and Cheney Now! by davidswanson

The Powell Endorsement
By David Sirota, Campaign for America's Future

I was on CNN's American Morning today to discuss Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama this weekend. You can watch the clip here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJtI4rCbK5U

I made the point that the endorsement is far more of a blow to John McCain than a big plus for Obama.

For McCain, Powell abandoning the GOP ship shows a significant portion of the Establishment believes he is going to lose, and that sense of inevitability is going to make it even harder for him to climb back into this race.

read more

McCain Supporters Call ACORN and Advocate Hanging All Niggers From Trees

McCain Supporters Call ACORN and Advocate Hanging All N------ From Trees | AfterDowningStreet.org
Go here to listen to the audio.

Crazy Tracy - This is Why America is Broken - From "Now on PBS"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4wQfQtpDAc

Minnesota Republican Backs Off Call for Probe of “Anti-American” Congressmen

Minnesota Republican Backs Off Call for Probe of "Anti-American" Congressmen

from The Washington Independent by Jonathan E. Kaplan

Minnesota Republican congresswoman Michelle Bachmann stirred up a media storm Friday when she told MSNBC's "Hardball With Chris Mathews" that "the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look — I wish they would — take a great look at the views of people in Congress and find out [if] they [are] pro-America or anti-America."

Today, a spokesman for Bachmann had no suggestions as to which questions reporters should ask lawmakers to determine if they are pro- or anti-American. "You guys know what kinds of questions to ask," Bachmann's spokeswoman, Michelle Marsten, said in a phone interview Monday. "It's not for us to decide."

Asked which members of Congress the media should interview, Marsten said her boss had "no one in mind."

Bachmann's call for an inquiry into the patriotism of members of Congress, which spread rapidly in the liberal blogosphere, helped her opponent, Elwyn Tinklenberg, to raise more than $650,000 over the weekend. A Democratic poll released last week showed Tinklenberg trailing Bachmann by just four percentage points, 42-38, in a race that until recently was considered safe for the incumbent.

Bachmann told a local TV station this morning that her remarks had been "misread." While she has enjoyed a high-profile run as Republican spokesman in the fall campaign, her remarks on "Hardball" is the latest gaffe in a series of controversial statements that have marked her tenure in Congress.

Food Critic Beaten Up Outside Restaurant

Breaking: Food Critic Beaten Up Outside Restaurant

from MenuPages Blog :: Chicago by Helen Rosner

Steve Barnes was beaten up on Friday night. Not because he's openly gay, not because he was a jerk to someone, not because he insulted someone's mom. It was an entirely random attack. Oh yeah, one more thing — Steve is a restaurant reviewer for the Albany, NY Times-Union, and some blogs are painting this to be a jilted restaurant-owner taking his revenge.

Steve is taking it very much like a man:

It seems inconceivable to me that anything I've written could have prompted the attack, as some have suggested. But if it did, the pissed-off person didn't send a very clear message — indeed, any message at all. So yo, attackers: If I'm supposed to be nicer to somebody in the future, drop me an e-mail. Otherwise you're just a coward. Black eyes fade, but cowardice and thuggery are permanent character flaws.

We couldn't have said it better ourselves. The restaurant is, and probably always will be, a battleground: chefs, servers, patrons, reviewers, bloggers, meta-bloggers, meta-reviewers, home cooks, and everyone else are always quick with a jab and quick to call foul. But kids, not violence. Beating someone up never did anyone — or anyone's restaurant — any good.

Not just another Friday night [Tablehopping]
A Restaurateur's Revenge? Food Critic Beaten Up [Gawker]

Palin says she would support a "Federal Marriage Amendment" effectively banning gay marriage

Palin and the Federal Marriage Amendment: Dobson First

from Crooks and Liars by David Neiwert

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6P2DQvd1d4

Sarah Palin breaks with John McCain, telling CBN's David Brody that she would support a "Federal Marriage Amendment" effectively banning gay marriage:

I am, in my own, state, I have voted along with the vast majority of Alaskans who had the opportunity to vote to amend our Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman. I wish on a federal level that that's where we would go because I don't support gay marriage. I'm not going to be out there judging individuals, sitting in a seat of judgment telling what they can and can't do, should and should not do, but I certainly can express my own opinion here and take actions that I believe would be best for traditional marriage and that's casting my votes and speaking up for traditional marriage that, that instrument that it's the foundation of our society is that strong family and that's based on that traditional definition of marriage, so I do support that.

This is how the McCain campaign is using Palin to keep the religious right on board even as he stages a supposedly "moderate" agenda in pursuit of suburban votes. Palin's sending a signal to the Dobson faction that was responsible for her ascension that their agenda is in play.

Obama campaign has 5,000 lawyers ready to monitor election

Obama campaign has 5,000 lawyers ready to monitor election

from Politics in the Zeros. Anti-war, global warming, peak oil, progressive politics by Bob Morris

The lawyer in charge of it says it will be the largest law firm in the country on election day.

Obama continues to run a brilliant, disciplined campaign that takes nothing for granted. Even Republicans have conceded that his GOTV ground campaign is light years ahead of McCain and that Obama is winning or making serious inroads in Red states.

The Blue Voice has more.

RNC On New Mexico "Voter Fraud": Never Mind

RNC On New Mexico "Voter Fraud": Never Mind

from TPMmuckraker by Zachary Roth

As if you needed any more evidence that the Republican effort to tout voter fraud is less about legitimate claims and more about a political agenda, consider this sequence of events:

Last week, as we noted at the time, the New Mexico GOP had publicly claimed that 28 people voted fraudulently in the Democratic primary, held in June, for a local race.

Then this morning, the RNC sent out a press release announcing a 3pm conference call with reporters "on the recent developments in New Mexico regarding ACORN."

But at 11am, ACORN -- the community organizing group that Republicans have been trying lately to turn into a voter fraud boogeyman -- held a conference call of its own, asserting that local election officials had confirmed that the 28 people in question, mostly low-income Latinos, were valid voters.

So here at TPMmuckraker, we wondered what the RNC's response to this would be. And on the 3pm call, we asked party spokesman Danny Diaz.

Diaz dodged the question. He talked about an incident with ACORN in Washington state, then referred us to an October 9th Wall Street Journal story, which did not address the allegation made last week by the state GOP about fraudulent voting in the Democratic primary. (Instead, it reported that the FBI had opened a preliminary investigation into thousands of fraudulent registration forms submitted in an area near an ACORN office.)

When we tried to follow up, Diaz cut us off and shifted the discussion toward a general attack on ACORN for submitting fraudulent registrations.

In other words, it looks like the RNC had scheduled a call to tout evidence of voter fraud -- not voter registration fraud, mind you, but actual voter fraud -- being perpetrated by ACORN in New Mexico. But when ACORN appeared to come up with compelling evidence that no such fraud had occurred, the RNC held the call anyway, simply shifting the focus to other vague allegations against ACORN -- then refused to address the New Mexico situation when asked.

Racist Ohioan Mike Lunsford Hangs Obama Effigy from Noose in Tree

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbbcVNOMqSk

Former Embassy Hostage - Obama's Right On Iran

Former Embassy Hostage - Obama's Right On Iran

from Crooks and Liars by Cernig

An understanding that Iran does not hold all the nuclear cards — and indeed that its hand in certain fundamental aspects is a weak one — underlies Obama's policy approach to the Iranian nuclear issue. He believes that the United States has not exhausted nonmilitary options, and in many respects has not even tried seriously to apply them. He proposes a comprehensive settlement with Iran: In exchange for abandoning dual-use nuclear technologies and support of terrorism, the United States will offer incentives such as support for Iran's entry into the World Trade Organization, economic investment and a process leading to normalization of diplomatic relations.

If, however, Iran continues its troubling behavior, the United States will instead step up efforts to isolate Iran economically and politically.

Experience shows that Obama's approach can work. Nearly 30 years ago, Iranian authorities first condoned and then facilitated the holding of more than 50 American hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. At that time, too, there was a war faction in the United States that called for bombing Iran back into the Stone Age.

President Jimmy Carter chose a different course, one of patiently negotiating a resolution using nonmilitary sticks and carrots. It took 444 days to drive home the point to Iranian leaders that there are real costs for international isolation, not the least of which was Iran's discovery that it had few friends when Saddam Hussein seized the hostage crisis as an opportunity to launch a military attack.

The hostage crisis contributed significantly to President Carter's 1980 loss to Ronald Reagan. But he succeeded in resolving the crisis without resort to war...

Remember, Tomseth was one of those hostages, held for 444 days. He was no casual observer.

Meanwhile, even Israel appears to be coming around to the idea that negotiating with Iran makes sense - leaving McCain and the neocons entirely isolated out on the belligerent fringe of world opinion. Trita Parsi, co-founder and current President of the National Iranian American Council, writes at Rootless Cosmopolitan:

On the eve of his departure from political life, outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Olmert...argued that Israel had lost its "sense of proportion" when stating that it would deal with Iran militarily. "What we can do with the Palestinians, the Syrians and the Lebanese, we cannot do with the Iranians," Olmert said, in stark contradiction to his own earlier warnings on Iran as well as the rhetoric of many of his hawkish cabinet members. "Let's be more modest, and act within the bounds of our realistic capabilities," he cautioned.

... A more nuanced rhetoric on Iran may have the down-side of reducing pressure on the U.S. to act - "If we don't talk about Iran, the world will forget about Iran," as Israeli Iran expert David Menashri put it – but has the up-side of enabling new options to emerge for the Jewish state.

Warning about being "boxed into the corner," a recent Haaretz editorial offered a clear break from Israel's Plan A: "The best chance of calming the atmosphere and reducing the threat lies in starting negotiations between the United States and Iran… [I]t is the only route not yet tried and is likely to help moderate Iranian policy. Israel must encourage an American rapprochement with Iran, with the understanding that this will serve the Israeli interest as well." And in a video by the Jewish Council for Education and Research, several high-ranking Israeli generals throw their weight behind U.S.-Iran diplomacy as a path towards advancing Israeli security.

... Unlike Olmert who recognized the unfeasibility of Plan A while leaving office, Israel's new Prime Minister, Tzipi Livni, may enter office with Plan B in sight. She rejects the idea that Israel "will not be able to live" with a nuclear Iran and says Israel must deal with the challenges it faces. Though Livni won't go as far as Barack Obama in promising direct diplomacy with Tehran, she may help Israel find a few more options on Iran.

There's always a possibility that a more moderate president in Iran in 2009 may help find a few of those options too. Sidelining the zealots, be they Iranian, Isreali or American, is the best chance for solving all of the issues in the region. Even Churchill, hero of the Right, preferred talk to war.

Crossposted from Newshoggers