Third, and Final Presidential Debate 2008

Early on in tonight's debate I felt as though Obama wasn't responding well to McCain's lies. He seemed to be holding back. Too measured, too cautious. However as McCain continued to interrupt, go long, and generally display a disheveled and cantankerous demeanor it only served to make Obama look more Presidential.

At every turn Obama took the high road, but he did it with spine. He eschewed the soft Palin underbelly target, but he deftly handled the Ayers/ACORN/Lewis charges, AND, he did it without slinging mud. He truly showed my inner Hater how to defend without giving offense. You could tell: this is a man who knows a. what he is talking about, b. where he is going, and c. how to get us to go there together. He defused every single "OMG! did Schiffer just ask that?!" moment. Finally, we have a candidate worthy of respect, and the highest office!

McCain looked like a tired, frustrated, soul-less shell of a man. The grimmace. The snorts. The shame. He leads the tattered, embarrassing remains of his party to doom.

The best thing we can do when Barack Hussein Obama is elected is to show love. Sure we have vitriol over the last 8 years of bad sport, lies, and the mess they've left us in as a nation. It will be extremely tempting to return some of the snark, gloating and dividing. We AS A PEOPLE must avoid this trap of hate, show some compassion for the misled, work together as one, and let the world see what kind of citizenry a PRESIDENT Obama inspires.

The transformation will be historic. Epic even.

I'm Sorry, I Cannot Resist

Behold the terror that is: ZOMBIE McCain!!


This was the Senator's reaction to shaking Obama's hand (not really, he tried to walk off the stage the wrong way and caught it at the last moment).

P.S. Gene Simmons wants his tongue back.

Busted Bigot

"Don't be ashamed, dude. You went to a Sarah Palin rally and thought it would be cute to put an Obama bumper sticker on a monkey. And then you saw the camera and tried to be slick.

But you're not slick. I'll give you this much--you saw the camera and knew, even though in your heart you might have a racist feeling or two, that to be openly exposed as a racist is not good in today's society, and that means you're improving. Some of your fellow Republicans could learn a lesson or two from that." (via Incertus)



More video from outside (when he thought it was only repuglicans filming him, not CBS)

Four Days in Denver: Behind the Scenes at the 2008 DNC

Somehow, everything about the Obama campaign projects calm, when actually a million things are going on at once, from the grassroots level on up. The dude is not just playing chess, he's playing crazy three-dimensional Star Trek chess. On several boards at once. While simultaneously reciting Emerson from memory and whipping a tasty creme brulee.

In the midst of all the nastiness going on in the media, the campaign quietly releases this 15-minute video, a sweet, incredibly well-made, behind-the-scenes look at the Denver convention. It the last three days, it's gotten over a quarter of a million views on YouTube.

It's worth watching, not just for its feel-good-ism, but for how politically skilled it is. I can't even count how many sweet spots it hits, how many implicit attacks it counters.

Follow Barack, Michelle, Joe, and their families behind-the-scenes at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado. (Music composed by Greg Kuehn for Peligro Music & Sound Design)

(Via neroli @ MetaFilter.com)

FOX 'News' Edits Out Palin Hockey Boos

Hockey Mom Sarah Palin was welcomed in the city of brotherly love Saturday night with a resounding chorus of boos when she took center ice for the ceremonial puck drop. Gotta love the clearly visible Obama/Biden signs in the background.

Lynn Zinser of the Times reports that Palin was greeted with "resounding (almost defeaning) boos." FOX News, on the other hand, reports that the reaction "mixed." Who's right? Jed put together this clip comparing the real footage with the footage FOX uses to make its case. See for yourself.

Looks like Sarah brought her daughters along as a human shields:

The GOP Vice-Presidential nominee said at an earlier fundraiser that she would stop some of the booing from the rowdy Philadelphia fans by putting her seven year old daughter, Piper in a Flyers jersey. She said, "How dare they boo Piper!"

Stay classy, Wasilla.

By the way, Rangers won 4-3 and improved their record to 4-0, making this their best start in 25 years. Only 78 wins away from a perfect season.

(Via CrooksandLiars.com)

The Subprime Primer

Having trouble parsing the details surrounding the current financial crisis? Try this: The Subprime Primer.

Ever wish songs just sang what was happening in the music video?

Well now they do.

The Giant Pool of Money

Interesting and relevant = check out NPR's This American Life episode #355

Synopsis
A special program about the housing crisis produced in a special collaboration with NPR News. We explain it all to you. What does the housing crisis have to do with the turmoil on Wall Street? Why did banks make half-million dollar loans to people without jobs or income? And why is everyone talking so much about the 1930s? It all comes back to the Giant Pool of Money.


Stay updated! Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson (the guys who did this program) have a new daily, free podcast and blog applying that same explanatory power to each day's breaking news on the financial crisis: Planet Money.

Keating Economics: John McCain and the Making of a Financial Crisis

The current economic crisis demands that we understand John McCain's attitudes about economic oversight and corporate influence in federal regulation. Nothing illustrates the danger of his approach more clearly than his central role in the savings and loan scandal of the late '80s and early '90s.

John McCain was accused of improperly aiding his political patron, Charles Keating, chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. The bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee launched investigations and formally reprimanded Senator McCain for his role in the scandal -- the first such Senator to receive a major party nomination for president.

At the heart of the scandal was Keating's Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which took advantage of deregulation in the 1980s to make risky investments with its depositors' money. McCain intervened on behalf of Charles Keating with federal regulators tasked with preventing banking fraud, and championed legislation to delay regulation of the savings and loan industry -- actions that allowed Keating to continue his fraud at an incredible cost to taxpayers.

When the savings and loan industry collapsed, Keating's failed company put taxpayers on the hook for $3.4 billion and more than 20,000 Americans lost their savings. John McCain was reprimanded by the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee, but the ultimate cost of the crisis to American taxpayers reached more than $120 billion.

The Keating scandal is eerily similar to today's credit crisis, where a lack of regulation and cozy relationships between the financial industry and Congress has allowed banks to make risky loans and profit by bending the rules. And in both cases, John McCain's judgment and values have placed him on the wrong side of history.

Via keatingeconomics.com

Foreclosure Alley

Video LINK

For the past few years, the Inland Empire in Riverside County has been one of the fastest growing counties in the state - home to a major housing boom. But now the Inland Empire is pretty much the poster child for the foreclosure crisis. In the newer developments, house after house sits vacant - either up for auction, for sale by a bank or going for what’s called a “short sale” which is when the owner owes more than the house is worth.

SoCal Connected tracked down some surreal sights associated with the crisis - a company that specializes in removing whatever people leave behind in their foreclosed homes. The process is called a “trashout” - a term the company came up with because it perfectly describes what happens. Everything that’s left is dumped in a trailer and taken to the landfill.
Then there’s the guy who started a business to spray-paint dead lawns. That’s right. He paints brown lawns green. We also tag along with a couple of code enforcement officers who are spending more and more of their time having to drain slimy, abandoned pools.

Finally, we meet a typical couple who bought their first home, thinking it was a great investment and tax write-off. Now the place is worth only half of what they paid for it and their neighborhood has almost as many vacant homes as occupied ones.

One of the code enforcement guys sums up the problem in a single sentence - “You know you’re in trouble when the lawns are brown and the pools are green!”

John McCain: Economic Disaster

John McCain's chart-topping single

This Year

Is Bin Laden's Strategy Working?

A while back, on Real Time w/Bill Maher, the comedian Gary Shandling, of all people, synthesized the connection between our current economic crisis and 9/11 and the Iraq War in a way I have not heard:

On 9/11, Al Qaeda had no expectation of a traditional military victory against the United States. The point of the attack was economic -- to draw the U.S. into expensive and protracted foreign wars that would deplete our resources and destabilize our government. By invading Iraq, George Bush became the happy idiot to assist Al Qaeda in this goal. Now, Sarah Palin and John McCain take the leaders of Al Qaeda at their word when they say Iraq is the major front in the war on terror.

Neither consider the possibility that Al Qaeda wants Iraq to be the major front because it furthers their goal of weakening the U.S. while inflicting minimal damage on their operations.

Seven years after 9/11, we are seeing Al Qaeda's long-term goal being realized: the destabilization and economic collapse of the United States. Even as it's happening, the people who supported it all along want to continue facilitating our own long-term disintegration by clinging to simplistic concepts of traditional military victory and defeat. In this sense, they are possibly the most myopic, least strategic thinkers in the history of this nation.

As Gary Shandling said, with this approach, our only hope of killing Osama Bin Laden is that he'll laugh himself to death.

Comparative Election Turnouts Among Countries

The Wikipedia has a long article on voter turnout discussing the various factors that affect turnout. While Americans like to think of the U.S. as the world's best example of a democracy, if one uses voter turnout as the metric, the data show a different picture. Here are the voter turnout numbers for elections in a number of democracies from 1960 to 1995.

Country	# of elections	Turnout	Notes
Australia	14	95%	Voting is compulsory
Malta	6	94%
Austria	9	92%
Belgium	12	91%	Voting is compulsory
Italy	9	90%
Luxembourg	7	90%	Voting is compulsory
Iceland	10	89%
New Zealand	12	88%
Denmark	14	87%
Germany	9	86%
Sweden	14	86%
Greece*	10	86%
Venezuela	7	85%	Voting was compulsory until 1988
Czech Republic	2	85%
Brazil	3	83%	Voting is compulsory
Netherlands	7	83%	Excludes compulsory elections (before 1968)
Costa Rica	8	81%
Norway	9	81%
Romania	2	81%
Bulgaria	2	80%
Israel	9	80%
Portugal	9	79%
Finland	10	78%
Canada	11	76%
France	9	76%
United Kingdom	9	76%
South Korea	11	75%
Ireland	11	74%
Spain	6	73%
Japan	12	71%
Estonia	2	69%
Hungary	2	66%
Russia	2	61%
India	6	58%
United States	9	54%	Includes only Presidential election years
Switzerland	8	54%
Poland	2	51%

As you can see, voter turnout in the U.S. is far less than such beacons of democracy as Malta, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria. It is kind of embarrassing having to explain this to your Maltese, Czech, and Bulgarian friends. What the table doesn't show, but is absolutely the case, is that in other countries elections are about the issues and what the parties and candidates will do if elected. Who is the most friendly and likeable person doesn't play much of a role elsewhere. What the U.S. needs is an elected King or Queen who would be chosen for his or her user friendliness so the presidential election could focus on the candidates' respective plans for governing.

VIA electoral-vote.com

Cafferty on Palin: “How can anyone, including John McCain, take this woman seriously?”

Jack has been, umm, less than charitable towards Sarah Palin, and Tuesday night was no exception.

Last Friday, we ran a piece of tape from an interview Governor Sarah Palin did with “CBS Evening News” anchor Katie Couric. She was asked about the bailout package. Palin rambled on incoherently for nearly a minute about trade, jobs, health care… Everything but the bailout package. […]

How can anyone, including John McCain, take this woman seriously?

Does McCain Know He Voted For This Bill?

Jon Stewart Mocks Couric/Palin Interview

Jon Stewart recaps Sarah Palin’s excruciating interview with Katie Couric.

Download | Play Download | Play

Couric: But [Rick Davis] still has a stake in [his lobbying company] so isn’t that a conflict of interest?

Palin: [Blank look on face]

Stewart: If you look closely in the reflection of her glasses, I think it says buffering…buffering…buffering… I love this show — it’s like the first season of Lost, only it makes less sense.

Via Crooksandliars.com

Bill Shot Down!: Bailout REDUX

I trust no one. I say pass anything that allows the government to profit from the buyout and mandates some congressional oversight. There's no time to do the bill right, it's too complex and too massive to slap together even in a week.

So we need to elect Obama. After watching the debates, I'm convinced that McCain is arrogant and incompetent enough to mess this up catastrophically. If you don't want to vote for Obama because he's black or muslim, here's a deal. Vote for him anyway, and you can just direct all your racist hate at me by proxy.

The day after the inauguration, convene a panel to completely rewrite the whole dadgum thing from start to finish, with gruesome limits on CEO bonuses, mandating market transparency, new accounting rules, etc. This will take months. Get the people who disagree the most, get them in a room, and set them arguing. Publish the arguments in Congressional reporter or federal register so we can get everyone who's anyone on the record. Addd to the bill a provision that if the govt loses money on these assets, a tax on banks and their CEO's will be levied until the govt is made whole.

Simultaneously with convening this panel, launch SEC, IRS, and FBI investigations of every single trader or lawyer who ever touched a CDO, credit default swap, or mortgage derivative. Investigate them as if they were al qaeda. Prohibit any travel outside of the U.S. for all of these people. Audit the current and former CEO, CFO and board member of every one of the thirty largest banks from 2002 to the present, including an audit of their family members. I'm convinced that most of these people had no stinking idea what they were trading, or whether the thing they were trading was real or fraudulent.

All trials should be broadcast on television, and all documents posted to the internet.

Financial Meltdown: Compromises and Analysis

Following the recent preciptious downturn in the US banking sector, a compromise draft bill is going to a vote in Congress today. The text of the bill [110-page pdf]; The Wall Street Journal's summary of the bill; an open-for-comments public analysis of the bill at publicmarkup.org. Some questions answered and unhappy acceptance from economist and NYT columnist Paul Krugman; a strenuous rejection from Nouriel Roubini; via same, an IMF study of 42 banking crises from 1970 through 2007; further criticism from Nomi Prins for Mother Jones. (Via cortex @ MetaFilter.com)