Call your representative! Let them know how opposed you are to this bailout. Remind them that it's an election year.

Democracy Now! had an excellent program discussing the bailout. A few snippets:

ROBERT JOHNSON: [former chief economist of the Senate Banking Committee] You say, too big to fail. Well, if you’re too big to fail, you’re too big to be let loose to do whatever you want to do, because, in essence, you’re awarded the state. You’re like a public utility that we all depend on. And what they’ve tried to do is be too big to fail, but, on the upside, play whatever gambling games they want to do. That’s got to change.

BRUCE MARKS: [founder and CEO of NACA, the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America] It is a real problem out there that these are so big they can’t even move to readdress what’s going on in the market. But again, the last words are: please, to all your viewers, call your congressmen, call your congresswomen. Tell them, don’t do the bailout. It’s working; we’re winning. The left and the right are coming together to stop this theft of the American taxpayer dollar. It’s a theft. Let’s stop it. We’re winning. We can kill this thing.

Is it possible that some representatives actually listened to their constituients, and that's the reason the bailout bill failed? Dave Lindorff thinks it is (The Power of No) and he says to keep the pressure on them.

People see clearly that this proposal is a trillion-dollar giveaway to the very people who have been hollowing out and destroying the US economy for over a decade or more by convincing both parties to let them do whatever they want to get rich, free of any kind of significant oversight or regulation.

As Nobelist economist Joseph Stiglitz has written [3] of this outrageous rip-off, there are four problems facing the financial system, and the bailout proposal only addresses one--getting the toxic mortgages off the banks' books and onto taxpayers' backs. Left unsolved is the gaping hole in banks' balance sheets in the form of loans made to people and companies which cannot be repaid, which will mean they still won't start lending money again. Left unaddressed too is the continuing collapse of housing prices, which will inevitably lead to more bank collapses even after the bailout. Finally, Stiglitz says there is the general loss of faith in the financial system--a major crisis which the bailout will also not solve.

Also, this article by Dean Baker make sense to me. He wrote:
<...>
There has been a mountain of scare stories and misinformation circulated to push the bailout. Yes, banks have tightened credit. Yes, we are in a recession. But the problem is not a freeze up of the banking system. The problem is the collapse of an $8 trillion housing bubble. (It was remarkable how many so-called experts somehow could not see the housing bubble as it grew to ever more dangerous levels. It is even more remarkable that many of these experts still don't recognize the bubble even as its collapse sinks the economy and the financial system.) The decline in housing prices to date has already cost the economy $4 trillion to $5 trillion in housing equity. This would be expected to lead to a decline in annual consumption on the order of $160 billion to $300 billion.
<...>

Finally, the bailout absolutely can make things worse. We are going to be in a serious recession because of the collapse of the housing bubble. We will need effective stimulus measures to boost the economy and keep the recession from getting worse.

However, the $700 billion outlay on the bailout is likely to be used as an argument against effective stimulus. We have already seen voices like the Washington Post and the Wall Street funded Peterson Foundation arguing that the government will have to make serious cutbacks because of the bailout.

While their argument is wrong, these are powerful voices in national debates. If the bailout proves to be an obstacle to effective stimulus in future months and years, then the bailout could lead to exactly the sort of prolonged economic downturn that its proponents claim it is intended to prevent.

In short, the bailout rewards some of the richest people in the country for their incompetence. It provides little obvious economic benefit and could lead to long-term harm. That looks like a pretty bad deal.
(emphasis mine)

The bailout bill went to a vote Monday morning after a historic night of politicking. It was all set to pass, supposedly, when Nancy Pelosi gave what some are calling a partisan speech. (It merely sounded like truth to me.) As a consequence, 12 Republicans who'd pledged to support the bill got their feelings hurt and reneged.

I can't say I'm sorry the bill failed - and it didn't seem to me that any House members looked all that distressed either - but as Barney Franks pointed out, it is absurd to put hurt feelings before the "good of the country." Spin it how they may, the Republicans failed to support an emergency bill set forth by their president to save the world, or at least Wall Street.

As some in the media have mentioned, a no vote on the bill was the safest vote, considering the mood of the electorate. Republicans are not confident of their seats anywhere in the country this election year, so they may have been putting their re-election before the good of the country. Talk about hurt feelings! Nothing hurts more than job-hunting during a recession.

Congress is still considering a bail out plan despite having received a letter of opposition signed by 200 economists.

We see three fatal pitfalls in the currently proposed plan:

1) Its fairness. The plan is a subsidy to investors at taxpayers’ expense. Investors who took risks to earn profits must also bear the losses. Not every business failure carries systemic risk. The government can ensure a well-functioning financial industry, able to make new loans to creditworthy borrowers, without bailing out particular investors and institutions whose choices proved unwise.

2) Its ambiguity. Neither the mission of the new agency nor its oversight are clear. If taxpayers are to buy illiquid and opaque assets from troubled sellers, the terms, occasions, and methods of such purchases must be crystal clear ahead of time and carefully monitored afterwards.

3) Its long-term effects. If the plan is enacted, its effects will be with us for a generation. For all their recent troubles, America's dynamic and innovative private capital markets have brought the nation unparalleled prosperity. Fundamentally weakening those markets in order to calm short-run disruptions is desperately short-sighted.

Another report:

"Ben Bernanke likes to say there are no atheists in fox holes, well General Bernanke just called in from the fox hole and said we want a nuclear strike. It's that radical and we're going 'is it really that bad?'" said John Cochrane, finance professor, University of Chicago.

Prof. Cochrane says despite what you hear from Wall Street and Washington financial armageddon is not upon us.

"Before you go nuclear I think we need to know if there's something really bad out there they're not telling us about," said Cochrane.

Both Sapienza and Cochrane say the Bush administration is hyping the urgency with which Congress needs to act. They believe the markets can hold their own for a week or two or three and give congress time to determine whether such a big bailout is essential.

Jim Rogers, of Rogers Holding, has come out vehemently against the bailout plan. He is outspoken in his criticism of Bernanke and has been for months. There are numerous clips available on YouTube that document his views.

"It's welfare for the rich, but not for you or me....The more bandaids you put on [Wall Street], the worse it's going to be down the line. "

His numerous assertions that this is just a bail out for Bernanke's friends causes me to wonder: how many members of Congress also stand to benefit? We need to know the answer to that. It should be made public right alongside their decision on how to handle this emergency. There should be no conflict of interest in protecting taxpayers.

What Congress needs to say to Bush is, prove to us that your very expensive bailout plan will actually accomplish something. Congress needs to tell him we citizens are tired of being left holding the bag after he's used his dirty tactics to get his way. He lied about the Iraq war and look what that brought us. Not flowers and a paid-for war, as promised. Not a democracy in Iraq that looks favorably on the great gift we gave them. No, all it got us was close to 4500 dead Americans, an unending occupation of another country, and an increase in anti-American sentiment worldwide by which al Queda fills its ranks.

Please tell us, Congress, that you have learned something from that war, from the Patriot Act, from the Social Security "emergency," from the Terri Schiavo farce, from the worst president this country has ever had the misfortune to have steal an election. When Bush screams "Emergency!" we should all head for the exits. Not to escape. Oh, no! But to lock the doors to keep him and his lunacy at bay.

Bush - or has advisors anyway - seem to know a little bit about two things: money and dirty politics. His tactics are so outrageous, we tend to accept his proclamations instead of recognizing exactly to what brazenly-corrupt lengths he will go to achieve his ends. Paulson and Bernanke sit up there with earnest expressions, and you don't want to believe that they are acting in a partisan manner, that they are playing games with the principles on which our country was founded. It's too scary to confront the possibility that people in the upper echelons of our government are running amuck with our freedom at stake. But that's where we are, people.

Interestingly, the stock market doesn't seem to give a damn about the bailout. Pundits are making much of minor fluctuations in the market today, but it's all part and parcel of the panic-the-people ploy: sound and fury... Not every depression begins with a major market purge. Anybody whose ever taken a course in economics could have seen this coming.

So we may be facing a severe recession - even a depression - but this giveaway of taxpayer money to Wall Street is not the solution. (I don't think anybody has been quite brazen enough to state unequivocally that it would.) And if we are facing the dire economic circumstances predicted by the Bushies, why would we give them more money? They caused this situation in the first place with their irresponsible tax policies and unpaid-for wars, their housing bubbles, their mergers and monopolies.

Just look how they are grandstanding now, blaming Democrats for not passing the bailout bill while refusing to participate themselves. They plan to capitalize on the situation either way. If the Democrats go it alone and pass a bill, then all the bottomless pit of (justified) taxpayer anger will fall directly on their shoulders and then the Republicans can claim to have been opposed. If the Democrats refuse to pass it without the Republicans, then they are charged with delaying this emergency bill and with putting politics before country. Bah!

Nope, it's time to call the chief bluffer's bluff. Let's not forget that we are days away from an election the Republicans will surely lose unless they cheat. Bet there's nothing to him but hot air and crooked politics.

Dave Lindorff always has a clear eye on Bush's convoluted maneuvering. Here's his take on the bailout: Iraq All Over Again: Bush, Paulson and Bernanke are Just Crying Wolf

A few tidbits:

...now they’re doing it again, this time claiming that economic Armageddon faces the US and even the global economy if Congress doesn’t hand over all power over the economy to the Secretary of the Treasury in absolute contravention of the most fundamental principle of the Constitution, which establishes that the budget be in the control of Congress. These guys are saying if Congress doesn’t vote to hand over $700 billion or more of taxpayer money to the Treasury to dole out to fat cat bankers, the resulting economic collapse will be on their heads.
But here’s the thing. Just as nobody else in the world was freaking out about Saddam Hussein’s alleged nuclear threat, nobody is particularly panicked about the US or the global economy. If investors, who are supposed to be all wise about things economic, were worried that the roof was about to cave in, they’d be selling stocks as fast as they could dial their brokers. And the institutional investors—those with the real inside information—not to mention the managements of companies, who really know the true state of affairs of their own firms—would be unloading shares at fire sale prices. The stock market would be falling like it fell in 1987, or, if what these administration con artists are claiming were really the case, even farther. That is to say, we’d be seeing a 3000-4000 point drop in the Dow.
<...>
Let’s be honest: this is an artificial panic, or worse, an effort to create one. It’s not a real panic. When you have the president and the treasury secretary and the Fed chairman going around warning of a steep recession or a depression, you have to ask yourself why these guys are yelling “Fire!” in the theater. In a real crisis, President Franklin Roosevelt preached calm (“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”). This president says, “Be afraid. Real afraid!”

A deal on the $700bn giveaway is imminent. I can't wait to read the details. Then I'll know if we still have a chance to restore our democracy.

Meanwhile, McCain has suspended his campaign, pleading urgency of action on the bailout proposal. Fun has been poked at him by late night comedians and the press. Nobody knows for sure why he's suspended his campaign, but we know it wasn't to cast a vote in Congress. Guesses range from his falling poll numbers to a lack of preparedness for tomorrow night's debate. Whatever his reason, his posturing doesn't make him appear presidental. What a surprise.

What if Congress gives all that money to Wall Street and we still have a depression? What guarantees do we have that this hasty solution will do what it's touted to do? I mean, the Iraqis were going to greet us with flowers and the Iraq war was going to pay for itself, remember? Somehow there's a disconnect for this Administration between the idea and the act.

Why can't we just bail out the borrowers? Wall Street would get their money, homeowners could keep their houses, problem solved. Right? Because aren't they telling us it's all these bad loans for mortgages? Their solution is to pay off the banks, let them foreclose on homeowners and...what? I don't get it. They seem to want to punish over-extended borrowers, saying they were irresponsible to take on more debt than they could repay. Sure, that was foolish. But was it more foolish than lenders urging them to fudge their figures? There's fault on both sides, but on one side children will be made homeless while on the other side, banks may not get the windfall they seem to think is their due.

We seem poised on the precipice of a worldwide depression. Is it only the actions of the USA that will prevent it? Can we prevent it at this late date, after years of negligent, greedy economic policy? I don't think anybody knows.

How gratifying to read that Congress, good Democrats and Republicans alike, are not being swept away by the wave of dire threats issued by Paulson and Bernanke. What's that old saying? The first time the dog bites you, it's the dog's fault; the second time, it's your fault. This dog bit us twice already - the Iraq war and the Patriot Act. It would be inexcusable to let it bite us again.

So kudos to Congress, if they stick to their guns, and kudos even if there are some repercussions, because they can't be expected to take seriously the warnings issued to them by the men who cry wolf whenever their self-interests are at stake, even if the risks may, this time, be real. Too often the medicine dished out by this administration of malfeasance has been worse than the disease it claimed to  treat.

There's just something so rotten about this whole thing, the timing of it, the scope of it, the attempt to make it so pure, it can't be overseen or altered. What kind of fools do they take us for? Let's hope the FBI can turn up some solutions to the many puzzles of this situation.

The longer I think about it - $700+bn! - , the more outraged I feel. If we could not trust welfare moms - whose infrequent and paltry frauds were committed to make bleak lives a little bit less biting for their families - if we could not trust them with a pittance to pay rent and buy food, how can we even think of giving massive welfare to Wall Street, known for its blunders, greed and fraud? We aren't talking about enough to barely live on here; we're talking about enough to buy a country. And to dream that we would do it without oversight! Ludicrous. Nope. We need to check under the beds, in the medicine cabinets, the closets - wherever a golden parachute or an unauthorized war might be hiding. We need to have strings attached. It's our money. We have a right to make conditions on how it is used. If adequate safeguards are not instituted, we need to get active. You wouldn't hesitate to assault a burglar in your home. 

"Now as through this world I ramble
I see lots of funny men
Some will rob you with a Six gun
And some with a fountain pen.
But as through your life you travel
As through your life you roam
You won't never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home." 

   -Woody Guthrie 

We can't let them do it. Their threats don't scare us. The middle class is already in recession. Wall Street wasn't worried about us until their own boat was imperiled. I say, let us all sink in the same boat, then, if saving them means putting ourselves, for generations, in jeopardy.  

Bernanke is telling Congress that a recession is likely if they don't give Paulson his blank check. Right. And what he's not telling them is that a recession is likely is they do give Paulson his blank check. Please! Let Congress use their common sense, for a change. Let them not be stampeded into another disaster.

If Congress gives Paulson the bailout money the Bush Administration is trying to extort from the American people - the $700+bn - without punitive conditions attached to its use, we may as well just line up to claim our status as serfs and turn over our country to the overlords. Listen to (or read) what

Dean Baker
BAKER: Well, essentially, what the President has asked for is a $700 billion blank check. He wants Congress to hand over $700 billion to Henry Paulson to use to buy, you know, bad originally mortgage-backed securities. <...>

And let me just make one point that everyone should be very, very clear on. This was not an accident, in the sense that this is like a hurricane. This was a totally predictable event. So when President Bush or Henry Paulson say, you know, we have to come to the rescue, it is because of their incompetence, because people who understood the economy—and putting myself among those, but there are others—we were warning about this a long, long time ago. This was a totally predictable event that brought us here.

Robert Sheer,
ROBERT SCHEER: Yeah, well, the point is, when Bush and McCain and Paulson, who was head of Goldman Sachs before he was head of the Treasury, say they don’t know how this happened, they designed this system. We had a regulatory regime in place ever since the Great Depression to prevent this kind of meltdown...<...>
And then, in 2000, hours before the Christmas break, Gramm introduced
legislation. I’m holding it in my hand. This smoking gun is available on the internet; you can read it. <...>

JUAN GONZALEZ: Bob Scheer, the issue also of this rush to pass this legislation—I’m reminded somewhat of the PATRIOT Act after 9/11: an immense tragedy occurs, and immediately they try to rush through legislation without many of the members of Congress even having a handle as to what it really contains.

ROBERT SCHEER: Oh, it’s absolutely outrageous, and we can’t let them get away with it. I mean, consider that Paulson was the head of Goldman Sachs, OK? He knew about credit swaps. He knew about hybrid instruments. He knew all of this stuff. And now he’s the guy that says Congress has to give him a blank check, it has to be a pure bill? Nonsense!
This is our money. <...>
... but, I mean, the idea that they didn’t know what was going on,well, this is a Ponzi scheme of their creation, and they thought they would bail before it hit the fan. That’s what they thought. They’d be gone, and someone else would be blamed. They’d have their golden parachutes. I don’t know why we’re not considering criminal charges against these people. They have done more to hurt this nation than bin Laden could ever dream of.

and Bernie Sanders
AMY GOODMAN: And the climate in your House and the Senate right now, Senator Sanders? What do you think is going to happen? You have this enormous rush.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: <...>I have not been, to tell you the truth, overly happy by some of the responses that I’m hearing. <...>

So I think the Democrats have got to stand very tall on—I think on everything that I have told you about, who should pay out—pay for this bailout. I think you’re going to have overwhelming support from the American people. The American people understand that, under Bush, they have been ripped off. Their standard of living is declining, while the people of top have made out like bandits. And now is the time to say, “Sorry, we’re not going to pick up—we’re not going to pick up the damage done by these folks.”

AMY GOODMAN: <...>How is this political?
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Well, there’s going to be—believe me, they’re going to be spinning every other minute. Right now, as you know, John McCain, who is, as I hope all listeners know, is very close to Phil Gramm, and one can argue that Phil Gramm was the leading exponent—he was the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, the leading exponent of deregulation. He is the guy who got the so-called Enron loophole through. He is the guy who certainly led the effort for deregulation in financial services. He was McCain’s key economic adviser, and there was some talk that he’d be Secretary of the Treasury under a McCain administration. Now—of course, that was yesterday. And now we find McCain, the great trust-buster, the great fighter for regulation, the guy who’s going to take on Wall Street.
And that’s what Karl Rove and the Republicans do very well. They assume that the American people don’t remember yesterday, and you just start off, you know, with today. I hope that the Democrats do a good job in exposing that. I think Obama is getting that word out.

I think the message for this campaign is that we have had eight years of right-wing extremist ideology. We have given incredible tax breaks to the very wealthiest people who don’t need it. We have worked aggressively, and Bush and McCain are working on it today, for unfettered free trade, which has meant the loss of millions of good paying jobs. We have done an enormous amount of deregulation, so that you can end up in the situation we’re in today. And that’s obviously McCain’s philosophy. And if the American people understand that and they understand what a disaster Bush’s policies have been, it would seem to me that Obama should win with a very comfortable vote.

had to say.

It's time to Tax the Speculators, according to Chuck Collins, in The Nation:

<...>
...what happens when a whole sector of the economy has been cooked and billions of dollars have...been stashed in offshore bank accounts? How are the crooks held accountable for robbing our entire economy?

Here are six actions that will fairly generate over $400 billion a year to pay for a broad-based economic recovery and reduce the extreme inequalities that fueled speculation at the outset.

Institute a Financial Transactions Tax. Congress should levy a tax on financial transactions such as sale and purchase of stock and more exotic transactions such as credit default swaps, options, and futures. The UK has a modest financial transaction tax of 0.25 percent, a penny on every $4 invested. This is negligible for a long-term investor, but imposes a cost on the fast-buck flippers. Estimated annual revenue: $100 billion.

Impose an Income Tax Surcharge Rate on Incomes Over $5 Million. The 50,000 households with annual incomes over $5 million are the bigger winners from twenty-five years of Wall Street deregulation. They've also seen their effective tax rates decline under President George W. Bush. Instituting a 50percent tax rate surcharge on incomes over $5 million and a 70 percent rate on incomes over $10 million would generate $105 billion a year.

Eliminate the Tax Preference for Capital Gains. Wealth extracted from Wall Street windfalls will pay out income for years to come. There's no economic reason for taxing income from corporate dividends and capital gains at 15 percent while taxing income from actual work at 35 percent. Taxing wealth and work at the same rates would generate $95 billion a year in revenue.

Progressive Inheritance Taxes. When great a amount of wealth passes to the next generation, a portion of it should be taxed. A progressive estate tax could generate $50 billion a year in the short term, but much more in outlying decades.

Eliminate Taxpayer Subsidies for Excessive CEO Pay. Five loopholes that benefit top executives should be abolished. These include eliminating offshore deferred compensation, capping the tax deductibility of excessive pay and eliminating double standards for stock option accounting. Closing these tax loopholes would generate $20 billion a year. (Read more about this in this recent report from the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy.)

Close Offshore Corporate Tax Havens. Congress should prevent corporations from playing games by claiming expenses in the United States and profits in countries that don't collect taxes. According to the Government Accountability Office, two-thirds of US corporations paid no corporate income tax between 1998 and 2005. Closing this loophole would generate over $100 billion.

Government action should prioritize protecting ordinary people and the real productive economy, not further reward the super-rich and the speculative sectors of the economy. A fair plan to the pay for the recovery is a good start.

Something to contemplate:

Meltzer Calls Paulson Plan `Social Democracy at Its Worst'
By Bob Willis

Sept. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve historian Allan Meltzer said U.S. government efforts to cleanse financial institutions of troubled loans shouldn't be financed by taxpayers.

``I certainly don't think this is the taxpayers' problem,'' said Meltzer, a professor of political economy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. ``This is not a place exactly with a great big surplus that can afford to do these things. This is social democracy at its worst.''

The 80-year-old economist spoke in an interview after Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in Washington that proposed measures to rid banks of troubled assets and shore up financial institutions would cost ``hundreds of billions.''

``If they remove financial losses from the financial institution,'' the government should ensure that ``the financial company will still owe the money,'' he said. ``Civilized countries like Chile do that.''

Paulson told a press conference that economic policy makers would meet with congressional leaders over the weekend to prepare a program to remove ``illiquid assets'' from banks' books, while ``including features that protect the taxpayer to the maximum extent possible.''

The proposal is a recognition that earlier efforts failed to revive financial and housing markets. The government took over American International Group Inc., Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the past 12 days, a period when Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. filed for bankruptcy and Americans pulled a record $89 billion from money-market funds.

To contact the reporter on this story: Bob Willis in Washington at bwillis@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: September 19, 2008 12:03 EDT

Listen to Democracy Now: Hear how the bailout of Fannie May, Freddie Mac and AIG is just more class war. Increasingly, the next president will be hamstrung by decisions of the current administration: be handed a broken system and then be blamed for not fixing the unfixable.

<...>
AMY GOODMAN: Michael Hudson, we’re talking government bailout, which means
taxpayers stuck with the bill. Do you think this is the right move?

MICHAEL HUDSON: No, it’s the worst possible move, and it puts the class war back in business with a vengeance. Wall Street has been preparing for this for years, because every financial analyst knows that the debts can’t be paid. And the question that Wall Street has, if you’re going to take a gamble on bad debts that can’t be paid, how are you going to come out a winner? And there’s only one way of coming out a winner, and that’s to make the government bail you out. This has been known for years, because it’s inherent almost in the mathematics of compound interest. Every banker I know knew that the loans they were making were going to go bad. They were trying to sell them to somebody else, ultimately expecting them to end up with some sovereign wealth fund.

And now, you had at the beginning of the show, McCain saying that this is the result of fraud and incompetence. The government has now bailed them out. But by bailing them out—Wall Street was coming to terms with the bad debts. When Bear Stearns went under and when Lehman Brothers went under, this began to wipe away the bad debts. And when the debts exceed the ability to pay, there’s only onething any economy can do, and that’s wipe them out. Instead, the government is trying to keep the fiction alive. And what Paulson did yesterday, in bailing out AIG, was to try to lock in whoever is the next president not only to further bailouts of Wall Street, ostensibly to protect the public money, but to make it impossible to write down the debts of the four million homeowners that are expected to default this year, impossible to write down the debts of companies that have issued junk bonds, impossible for the country to get rid of this excess of debts that can’t be repaid. And you’re having really a war now of creditors against debtors. And this is what Wall Street has been preparing for. It needed an emergency to do it. It’s really not an emergency at all. This has been building up for many years. Everybody expected it. And breathlessly now, the Secretary of Treasury has done it.

<...>

MICHAEL HUDSON: That [inaudible] bailout. They’ve already spent $5 trillion in the last two weeks to double the size of the national debt by taking over Fannie Mae. How can they bail out the gamblers, how can they bail out Wall Street and not—and claim that the Social Security system doesn’t really exist? They’ve used the Social Security money basically for the bailout. There it goes. They’ve made a choice. The choice is to bail out Wall Street against the people.

The Treasury is supposed to represent the government and the economy, and the Fed is supposed to be the board of directors of commercial banks, but now Wall Street plays both sides of the game. It not only supplies the heads of the Fed; it supplies the Secretary of the Treasury. And that’s why I said the class war is back in business with a vengeance.
<...>

Visit Count the Lies for a review of lies McCain has told.

For over two years, Obama, in the face of scorn from Republicans and even some Democrats, has maintained that we should engage in talks not just with our friends but with our enemies, specifically, Iran. Now five former U.S foreign secretaries - Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, Warren Christopher, James Baker and Henry Kissinger - are saying we should talk to Iran. Once again, Obama proves to have better judgment than his opponent, McCain. Let's have wisdom in the White House, for a change: vote Obama/Biden '08.

Democrats have been handling McCain with kid gloves because he once was a prisoner of war, and because he served our country in war time. Well, friends, that was a long time ago, and the person who was John McCain then is not the person who is John McCain now. Why do I say that? The McCain we see now lies and cheats. He has no honor. He surrendered it when he jumped off the Straight Line Express to kiss Bush's cheek after Bush blindsided him in 2000.

McCain is telling himself that it's vital for him to win because he's the only one who will protect America. That's the lie that allows him to feel justified in all the other lies and cheats he's committed in this campaign. I'm sure there are people on the sidelines reaffirming that delusion in him: The NeoCon crowd, Rove, Lieberman, the Israeli lobby...perhaps even al Queda, considering what a boon the invasion of Iraq has been to them.

Even before he sold out, he didn't have qualifications to be president. He's much too old, much too sick, much too angry, and much too damaged emotionally. He has never overcome his wartime experiences - they color his perceptions and tilt his ideas on foreign policy. The man with the hammer sees everything as a nail: John McCain with the Pentagon will see every international disagreement as a war. He's told us as much. I keep posting this link because it tells something absolutely essential about how McCain would function as president. Nobody should miss seeing it. Watch through to the end! It gathers steam slowly.

McCain is promising us 4 more years of the worst presidency is our history. He agrees with Bush and the NeoCons on virtually everything. Don't let him sell you his fabrication that his presidency would be one of change. He sees himself as the who will finish the job Bush started. He's a much a man of change as Bush is a man of compassion. Look at these people! Stop finding what you hope for and find what's real. We have a chance to salvage our democracy, if we have the courage to take it. Vote Obama/Biden '08.

Have you got a strong stomach, steel nerves, a dead conscience? Then this video may not bother you. Unquestionably, it's sick stuff. I couldn't watch it - I listened to it instead. But I wonder: on the basis of selling the lives of wolves to hunters, can Palin claim to be an expert on the economy? After all, money was involved, and she could see net profit. Does net profit make her a wizard even when it's blood money?

I only ask this because we are surely going to need a financial wizard to dig us out of Bush's economic mess. McCain made it clear he knows nothing - which is exactly what Bush knew! There are those who could overlook the Iraq fiasco, if only Bush had not trashed the economy, spending money as fast as he could borrow it from China. It stands to reason, if we want a change, we should find people who know how to manage money. With McCain we only get more of the same, folks. Vote Obama/Biden for change.

Blizzard of Lies
The Straight Talk Express may not realize, after being immersed in Bush culture for 8 years, that lying is a form of cheating. (Don't you love that word, immersed? I especially find apt the definition: Biol. embedded in another organ. Yep. That's where you'll find Mccain/Palin: embedded in Bush's...well, you can chose which organ for yourself.)

The Straight Talk Express takes a nose dive:
Don't miss this one!

John "Clean Campaign" McCain, approved these messages:
Integrity? Don't be absurd! Pure pandering of the worst sort. Ambition claims another one.

Palin billed Alaska for nights spent at home
Is dishonesty endemic to Republicans? They have such huge notions of entitlement, they don't even think they are stealing when they do stuff like this, but God forbid some poor clerk should walk out with a pencil. Oh, that's a different story, indeed.

Experience is Over-Rated
Sarah Palin stated again, most recently in her interview yesterday by ABC’s Charlie Gibson, that she has foreign policy experience because as governor of Alaska she has been in charge of that state’s National Guard, and because Alaska is, doggone it, “right next” to Russia. Most of Palin's "experience" happened here.
This made me feel pretty good, because it made me realize that I have a whole lot of skills and experience which I hadn’t really appreciated before and that I could perhaps use to get myself out of this freelance journalism profession, which is not all that great from a financial perspective.
I, for instance, live very close to the garage where my mechanic works (I mean, I drive past the place every day and even buy my gas there), so I’m ready to be a car mechanic (I can’t tell you how many cars I’ve seen being gone over there, and have even sometimes watched a bit as my own vehicles were up on the lift). I also live literally across the street from a large forest, which qualifies me to be a number of things—forest ranger, lumberjack, and perhaps naturalist.

Very amusing - and true! - take on Palin's specious comment. You'll want to read the whole thing. And while you are there, bookmark the site.

On the California Dems blog, Party Line, a talented writer, Kevin Smith, takes on the myth, In Depth: When a Maverick is Just an Elephant:

<...>
During McCain’s acceptance speech he said, “And let me offer an advance warning to the old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first, country-second Washington crowd: Change is coming.”

Excuse me Senator, that “old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first, country-second Washington crowd” is YOU. YOU have been in Congress for 25 YEARS, 17 of which were led by YOUR party. You’ve had ample time to quit your party in protest of its “old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first, country-second Washington crowd” ways. But you didn’t. You sought out its nomination for President not once, but twice. And your party selected you. How different can you be?
<...>

I encourage you to read the entire article.

Another kind of elitism: Sarah Palin's Alaskonomics

Sarah Palin thinks she is a better American than you because she comes from a small town, and a superior human being because she isn't a journalist and has never lived in Washington and likes to watch her kids play hockey. Although Palin praised John McCain in her acceptance speech as a man who puts the good of his country ahead of partisan politics, McCain pretty much proved the opposite with his selection of a running mate whose main asset is her ability to reignite the culture wars. So maybe Governor Palin does represent everything that is good and fine about America, as she herself maintains. But spare us, please, any talk about how she is a tough fiscal conservative.
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Read the entire article to learn why Alaskans are better than the rest of us.

Remember yesterday, I said that decent Republicans have left the Party? Here's one of them writing on the vital topic of McCain's Integrity.
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In the end, his final concern is not national security. No one who cares about national security would pick as vice-president someone who knows nothing about it as his replacement. No one who cares about this country's safety would gamble the security of the world on a total unknown because she polled well with the Christianist base. No person who truly believed that the surge was integral to this country's national security would pickas his veep candidate a woman who, so far as we can tell anything, opposed it at the time.

McCain has demonstrated in the last two months that he does not have the character to be president of the United States. And that is why it is more important than ever to ensure that Barack Obama is the next president. The alternative is now unthinkable. And McCain - no one else - has proved it.
--Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic

Here's a comment from DS, posted to a Reuters blog article. It gives you hope to see that some people are out there trying to combat the McSame lies by providing hard, cold facts. Thanks, DS, whoever you are! Listen up, folks! It's your wallet.

September 10th, 2008
4:46 pm GMT Today in America the wealthiest 1% owns more than everyone in the bottom 95% combined. Income inequality is at its greatest level since the 1920s - right before the great depression. Though the US has continued to make big gains in productivity over the last decade, nearly all of the benefit of those gains has gone to the wealthy, not the workers. American CEOs earned 411 times as much as average workers in 2005, up from 107 times in 1990. In the economic expansion of 2002-2006, the top 1% captured nearly three quarters of income growth.

http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-USto pincomes-2006prel.pdf

This condition is not an accident, but is instead the deliberate goal of Republican economic policy. The rich write the rules! McCain’s proposals will accelerate this trend further by using a tried and true method - fill the campaign dialogue with talk about social issues, personal stories, vague statements (”tax cuts”), and the trickle-down myth, and hope that middle and lower income voters do not read the details. It worked twice with Bush. While they talk about gay marriage to your face, they are literally picking your pocket from behind - systematically redistributing wealth from poor to rich. And here’s the kicker - they don’t think there is anything wrong with the situation! And if you vote for McCain, you are again telling them that you don’t think there is anything wrong with the situation either! The high unemployment level, housing crisis, credit crunch, lower value of the dollar, high gas prices, and increasing national debt are all related to these failed policies. Standards of living in the US have continued to rise only because in most families both people work, and people work longer hours and more days per year (all for lower benefits). Something has to give…

These are the proposed tax plans for the two candidates. You can see that McCain intends to further reduce the tax burden of the wealthiest Americans at the expense of the middle and lower income families. Obama’s plan increases taxes on the wealthy, especially that top 1%, to the benefit of working americans - a first step in reversing the rich-get-richer trend and toward re-building a real middle class. In fact, Obama has offered to actually raise his own taxes for the benefit of the country as a whole. Where are you in this table?

……………… MCCAIN …………. OBAMA
Income ……. Avg tax bill ……. Avg. tax bill
Over $2.9M …. -$269,364(-4.4%) … +$701,885 (+11.5%)
$603K and up….-$45,361 (-3.4%) … +$115,974 (+8.7%)
$227K-$603K…… -$7,871 (-3.1%) …….. +$12 (+0.0%)
$161K-$227K…… -$4,380 (-3.0%) ….. -$2,789 (-1.9%)
$112K-$161K…… -$2,614 (-2.5%) ….. -$2,204 (-2.1%)
$66K-$112K …… -$1,009 (-1.4%) ….. -$1,290 (-1.8%)
$38K-$66K ……..-$319 (-0.7% )….. -$1,042 (-2.4%)
$19K-$38K ……..-$113 (-0.5%) ……. -$892 (-3.6%)
Under $19K ………-$19 (-0.2%) ……. -$567 (-5.5%)

http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/11/news/eco nomy/candidates_taxproposals_tpc/?postve rsion=2008061113

- Posted by DS

Sure, I've been tough on the Repugs today, but before you launch your attack on me for lumping all Republicans together as greedy, dishonest, war-mongering profiteers, allow me to say that any decent Republicans left the Party long ago. Those still registered Republican haven't got souls, and nothing I say here is going to change that fact, plain and simple.

US now in the 'end game' in Iraq
Remember when we won the war in Afghanistan? It looks like we are about to win in Iraq, too. We just have to be there for the next 50 years or so.

Biden says McCain reprising 2000 attacks
Repuglicans never change. Why should they when the public keeps swallowing their line? It's been working for them for many elections now, and the only drawback is the damage to our democracy. But hey! When did they care about that? Wiretapping's just the beginning, folks. Stay tuned.

McCain and Palin castigate the earmarks she seeks
Repug candidates speak with forked tongues. Or is this a do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do administration in the making?

Obama accuses McCain of lying over lipstick 'smear'
Yeah, those Repuglicans will do anything to distract from the real issues facing Americans. The things they don't have or don't want to give answers for. Phony is the least of it.

McCain, Obama see different futures for Fannie, Freddie
And now for a break from all that exciting culture-wars news and onto the boring stuff of running a country: This is one of the differences that is really going to matter after the election. Who do you want deciding your economic future?

Obama accuses McCain camp of lies, phony outrage
Obama pleads, "So spare me the phony outrage, spare me the phony talk about change. We have real problems in this country right now. The American people are looking to us for answers, not distractions, not diversions, not manipulations."

But Republicans love distractions, diversions and manipulations! That's their stock in trade. Why throw in a winning hand? they reason. What did following the rules - or the Constitution, for that matter - ever do for them? They're in it for their cronies, not that old tired constituency, we, the People.


Poll Finds World Wants Obama for President
Oh, who cares what the world wants? The world wanted Saddam out of Iraq, too, and what did that get them? Oh, yeah. Invaded. Well, it can't happen here, even if our rulers eat the entire Consitution, jail all dissenters and torture tree-huggers. Why? Because we are the leader of the free world.

Washingon insider, 90% "there's gonna be more wars" McBush wants us to jump on the 100 years War of the Crusaders bandwagon. Just mark your X in the box next to McCain/Palin in November and you're on board for an interesting ride. Of course, you won't be around to see the conclusion of the war, and old McCain certainly won't be around. I mean, let's face it: he's probably not going to live out his term, but not to worry: his let-the-Lord VP pick knows just what God wants for this country - the Christian God anyway. If there are any others, well, they just don't count.

Take heart, even though you may miss the war's conclusion, rest assured, your grandchildren will live with it, and you'll surely get to experience some of the highlights before you die: the trashing of our economy, the end of the era of American allies, the reinstatement of the draft on a grand scale, the mass murder of entire civilian populations of various cities, perhaps entire counties. It should be exciting, all those bright lights and loud bangs. Better than the Fourth of July.

You won't have time to regret that your children and grandchildren can't go to college; you'll be so busy finding enough to eat and a place to sleep. It will be moot anyway, since they may not survive their tours of duty, and if perchance they should, well, come on, how much education does it really take to sew flags for coffins or to work in assembly lines building bombs? The only jobs will be munitions or armed services-related. This endless war won't bring any bounce for the economy and depending on how much we manage to annoy China, it may not even bring any borrowed funds.

But I wonder what the world will look like after McSame's 100 years war? Will it be pockmarked with nuclear-bombed cities? Surely it will, some of them right here in the USA. Will there still be individual countries or will there be a world government? Will the world's official language be Russian? Maybe English or Arabic? Chinese? And who will own the oil resources? Will it matter? Who will eat and who will go hungry? Will the medical community rally to treat radiation sickness or just join together to study the genetic repercussions? Will anybody care about the environment? Endangered species? What will the underclass look like? Will the polar ice caps have disappeared entirely, along with many seaside cities around the world? Will there be any water to drink? Water to bathe in? Water to farm? Or will it all be contaminated by nuclear fallout? Oh, it should be interesting times, indeed.

If you like this scenario, better vote for McSame/Palid: with Obama/Biden, you're just going to get endless arguments about education, the economy, social justice, the Constitution, global warming - you know, all that dull stuff that goes into running a country at peace. If you're addicted to the uplifting effects of high danger levels and conflicts with foreign armies, cast your vote for the guaranteed war amplifier: John McSame, our very own Cheney on steroids. One thing for sure, it will hclp curtail our overpopulation problems.

Here's the thing about Palin: she's likeable enough. You can see that she is sincere in her beliefs and tries to live up to her ideals. Those things were true of "heck of a job, Brownie," too. The question isn't how likeable or sincere a candidate might be unless she is also qualified. Last night, at the Republican convention, they made a monumental effort to deprecate Obama's qualifications to be president because that's really the meat of the difference between Palin and Obama.

Palin may scoff at Obama's "ivy league" education - let her insinuate all she likes about elitism, but education does matter. For purposes of governance, education in law is more appropriate than education in acting. Oh, I know the Republicans are going to short, "What about Reagan?" To which I say, yes, what about Reagan? It was his administration that set the tone for the disasters facing us today.

And while Palin's mayoral term of a small town in Alaska may have done a great deal for her confidence level, it doesn't translate to the complexities of dealing with a large and diverse constituency as Obama did as state senator in Illinois. Giuliani may try to dismiss that experience as Obama's training by the "corrupt political machine" of Chicago - and he's a man who knows corruption - but in fact Obama was elected by the people, not the machine, and he served them well.

In one especially jarring note, Palin attempted to devalue Obama's years as a community organizer as laughable, thereby deprecating all those dedicated souls who labor for small or for no pay, but for great reward, for the common good. If all the community organizers stopped performing their duties - their "actual responsibilities" - this great nation would grind to an immediate halt.

But we know how Republicans feel about community. They can't comprehend doing anything for the common good and especially doing it for little pay. Money trumps compassion every time. Just consider Palin's line item veto a few months ago of housing for pregnant teens. Yeah, ironic isn't it?

Being governor of Alaska - a state with fewer than 700,000 people - is a good beginning for Palin. She may eventually become a formidable political force, but she's not there yet, and attempting to equalize the field between herself and Obama by tearing him down to her level isn't going to change that. It's going to take more than likeability to dig us out of the morass of economic and political disaster which the Bush years have created. Frankly, we, the people, have had enough of the Brownies and the Gonzaleses, the Rumsfelds and the Roves whose political corpses litter the Republican landscape. We'd rather have competence than likeability if that's our only choice. Fortunately, with Obama/Biden, it's not: we can have both.