Posted November 17, 2008 by The Nation.

It's hard to imagine that at a time when an unprecedented amount of wealth is held by the top 1% of the US population--24% in as of 2006, a level not seen since just before the depression--that a lot of cuff-snapping over-educated David Brooks types would commence a crusade against working people.

"Let Detroit Go Bankrupt," says Andrew Sullivan. With spittle-flecked rage, Charles Krauthammer writes, "hourly cost of a Big Three worker: $73; of an American worker for Toyota: $48."

In fact, in their last contract the UAW made deep concessions that put GM wages at a par with their non-union counterparts in the US. But this isn't about facts, this is a religious crusade where "free-marketeers" want to impose Shock Doctrine tactics for philosophical reasons with little regard for the consequences.

Bloomberg reports that a General Motors failure would cost the federal government $200 billion. And the Center for Automotive Research concludes that if the Big Three fail, it will mean the loss of 3 million jobs in the first year of collapse.

As Naomi Klein has written, proponents of unfettered capitalism are always looking for these "clean slates" where other people pay the price in misery for their philosophical experiments. But as Paul Krugman noted on This Week when he ate George Will for a mid-morning snack, expecting the economy to absorb that kind of impact right now would be extraordinarily risky.

But let's explore things from another angle. The same people salivating to put the UAW out of business once and for all are often the ones preaching about how green fuel technology will save our economy. Labor may be unseemly, but green?

http://pdamerica.org/articles/news/2008-11-19-15-52-31-news.php

 It's a huge mistake to allow GM to go under.

Katie Couric discussed her infamous interview with Sarah Palin Wednesday night on the "Late Show with David Letterman." Couric took Letterman inside the process of scheduling Palin's interviews — the campaign actually rushed an interview because "they didn't want a week to go by without hearing anything from Governor Palin," as Couric put it — and said the campaign was "very generous" and gave her "tremendous access" to Palin.

Couric said that Palin may have gotten tripped up because she was not prepared to answer more general questions during their interview following her visit to the UN.

"I started by asking her who most impressed her as Vice President and why, what was the best and worst things Dick Cheney had done as Vice President, why was Roe v. Wade an ill-conceived or a bad Supreme Court decision," Couric told Letterman. "And I think she really hadn't anticipated those kinds of questions, so I think it might've thrown her off a bit. And then we got into foreign policy — because, after all, she was at the UN meeting with world leaders — and clearly she was struggling with some of those answers."

While Couric did note that, in Palin's defense, they were not easy questions to answer, Letterman reminded her that the "What newspapers and magazines do you read?" question was an easy one that Palin blew. Couric explained how it came about and said that she disagrees with the way Palin is characterizing the question in post-election interviews.

"We we doing one of these walk-and-talks, it was a casual part of the interview, and I just said, 'I'm curious, what do you read? What has helped you shape your worldview? What do you read to stay informed?'" Couric explained.

"A good question but an easy question," Letterman said.

"It was just really something I was curious about," Couric said, "and I'm not sure whether she was afraid to offend certain people, if she would offend conservatives by saying she read the New York Times....Even in the post-election interviews, Dave, that she's done, nobody's really asked her, 'Why didn't you answer that question?' She claims that I said, 'What do you read up there in Alaska?' as if people in Alaska don't read or don't have access to reading materials. I never said that. I'm aware people in Alaska have access."

Couric also shared one question she asked both Palin and Biden that didn't air — what they missed most on the campaign trail. Palin missed running every day, while Biden missed being Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/20/katie-couric-talks-palin_n_145115.html

If you can't handle an interview with Couric then you are not ready.  It's back to the tundra with Palin. You betcha!

What's up with all these leaks?  No objections to Janet Napolitano for that job if true.

 CNN is reporting Wednesday night that Obama has chosen Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano to become secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

President-elect Barack Obama's top choice for secretary of homeland security is Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, multiple Democratic sources close to the transition told CNN on condition of anonymity.

One source said he believed the final decision depends on the vetting of the Democratic governor, much like the selection of Eric Holder for attorney general.

Politico has more details on the Napolitano pick:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/19/janet-napolitano-homeland_n_145093.html

The Daily Beast founder and editor-in-chief Tina Brown appeared on "The Rachel Maddow Show" (guest-hosted by Alison Stewart, wife of executive producer Bill Wolff) Tuesday night. Brown's segment was focused on the 62 days remaining in the Bush presidency, and she did not mince words in dissecting the lame duck.

"One of the things that I'm told at the moment is that Bush is entirely focused right now on his legacy, on his library," she said. "That's all he really wants to talk about is his library. Because he's trying to build a legacy. But quite honestly, one can only think that that library is a Halloween House of Horrors. From the Guantanamo room to the Abu Ghraib room to the Hurricane Katrina room, this is going to be a very interesting library when it is built."

Brown also said that Bush's presidency has had "so many disasters" that, unlike previous lame duck Presidents, he is not "looking back in a mellow fashion on his Presidency, or even feeling that he has busy things to do so much as a President who is kind of punch-drunk with a series of debacles which even he — in his great denial and refusal to accept his own failures — has to accept at this point has been a chapter of hideous accidents, if you want to be charitable about it."

Looks like Mark Begich will be setting up a new office in DC after all.....MSNBC is reporting the race in Alaska has been called for Mark Begich.

WASHINGTON - Convicted Sen. Ted Stevens lost his re-election bid to Democrat Mark Begich after the last large batch of votes was counted Tuesday.

The longest-serving Republican in the history of the Senate trailed Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich by 3,724 votes after Tuesday's count.

That's an insurmountable lead with only about 2,500 overseas ballots left to be counted.

Per Lawrence O'Donnell and Dan Abrams on MSNBC, the vote difference is great enough Stevens would have to pay for a recount if he wanted one. And with a 3,724 vote lead, a recount is unlikely.

Welcome, Senator Begich!

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/11/18/205534/84/874/663237

Another door slams shut in Moosebrains Palin's face.  There will be no easy Senate seat for you Moosebrains.

By Rahm Emanuel

I serve in the House with decent, patriotic Republicans, and as a congressman I have the honor of representing thousands of Republicans. They love their country and respect their neighbors. And yet these recent comments by three of my Republican colleagues must be challenged. Partisan passions always rise two weeks before an election, but calling the other party 'anti-American,' saying members of one party 'hate real Americans' and 'want the American public to suffer' crosses the line.

No wonder Colin Powell is so concerned about the direction of the Republican Party. It is at risk of being taken over by the voices of fear and division. A party so intent on dividing America is unfit to lead all of America. And so I call on my Republican colleagues to disavow these statements. These statements are not worthy of a great nation and a great institution like the United States Congress.

=====================================================================

If you can, consider contributing to:

El Tinklenberg for Congress (running against Bachmann):

http://www.tinklenberg08.com/

Eric Massa for Congress (running against Kuhl):

http://www.massaforcongress.com/index.asp

Larry Kissell for Congress (running against Hayes):

http://www.larrykissell.com/

Can this turkey McCain even tell the truth anymore?

Leaked copies of Robert Draper's forthcoming New York Times Magazine exposé on the McCain campaign's many messages are already being picked apart by eager-beaver political journalists. But, interestingly, the piece's very first anecdote is one of the juiciest, as it contradicts the McCain campaign's own account of its first response to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's economic crisis proposal.

On Wednesday, September 24, Obama spokesman Bill Burton announced that his candidate had placed a call to McCain, encouraging a joint response to the Paulson plan:

At 8:30 this morning, Senator Obama called Senator McCain to ask him if he would join in issuing a joint statement outlining their shared principles and conditions for the Treasury proposal and urging Congress and the White House to act in a bipartisan manner to pass such a proposal. At 2:30 this afternoon, Senator McCain returned Senator Obama's call and agreed to join him in issuing such a statement. The two campaigns are currently working together on the details.

Shortly thereafter, the McCain campaign made its own clarification. "Senator Obama phoned Senator McCain at 8:30 am this morning but did not reach him. The topic of Senator Obama's call to Senator McCain was never discussed. Senator McCain was meeting with economic advisers and talking to leaders in Congress throughout the day prior to calling Senator Obama."

As MSNBC's First Read reported that same day, McCain also had time to meet with a prominent fundraiser who had supported Hillary Clinton.

But Draper's New York Times piece appears to refute the idea that McCain's meetings with advisers were economic in nature. Rather, they appear to have been explicitly political and tactical. In describing the "handful of advisers" attending that meeting, Draper includes "McCain's chief campaign strategist, Steve Schmidt, and his other two top advisers: Rick Davis, the campaign manager; and Mark Salter, McCain's longtime speechwriter." Chief economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin is not placed in the room.

Of course, according to Draper, economic matters took top billing on the agenda, but not in explicit policy terms. Rather, Draper reports, the proper political reaction to the news was the subject of the meeting: "The meeting was to focus on how McCain should respond to the crisis -- but also, as one participant later told me, 'to try to see this as a big-picture, leadership thing.''"

Then Draper reports:

"Discussion carried on into the afternoon at the Morgan Library and Museum as McCain prepared for the first presidential debate. Schmidt pushed for going all in: suspending the campaign, recommending that the first debate be postponed, parachuting into Washington and forging a legislative solution to the financial crisis for which McCain could then claim credit. Exactly how McCain could convincingly play a sober bipartisan problem-solver after spending the previous few weeks garbed as a populist truth teller was anything but clear. But Schmidt and others convinced McCain that it was worth the gamble."

As is well known by now, Schmidt won out, if only for a day or so. McCain did suspend his campaign (sort of) in an attempt to ride herd in Washington, only to relent and accept the original terms of the first debate before any bipartisan compromise was struck. But if Draper's account of the Wednesday morning sessions is accurate, it would appear that McCain's meetings were less about getting sound economic advice -- as claimed by the campaign -- and more about looking for the most politically advantageous angle on the crisis.

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/22/inyti-catches-mccain-camp_n_136833.html?view=print

Simply disgraceful! Does McCain have no honor left?

======================================================================

According to Time, McCain campaign staffers in Virginia are teaching volunteers to see Barack Obama as having terrorist 'friends,' and then providing these volunteers with arguments for persuading voters that Sen. Obama, like Osama Bin Laden, shares responsibility for bombings of the Pentagon.

The report from inside the McCain campaign brings to light an alarming fact: while McCain tells his supporters publicly to refrain from violent rhetoric,  he continues to teach his volunteers rhetoric designed to elicit violent responses.

In the article, Time's Karen Tumulty recounts her visit to a campaign training session in Gainesville, VA, a strategic center for the McCain ground game in Prince William County.   What Tumulty describes is a training session hosted by by Virginia's state GOP Chairman Jeffrey M. Frederick in which volunteers were being trained to see Barack Obama as a terrorist.  Tumulty writes:

The McCain campaign invited me to visit Frederick and the Gainesville operation on Saturday morning, to get a first-hand glimpse of its ground game in Prince William County, Virginia, a fast-growing area about 30 miles from Washington, D.C.

With so much at stake, and time running short, Frederick did not feel he had the luxury of subtlety. He climbed atop a folding chair to give 30 campaign volunteers who were about to go canvassing door to door their talking points -- for instance, the connection between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden: "Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon," he said. "That is scary." It is also not exactly true -- though that distorted reference to Obama's controversial association with William Ayers, a former 60s radical, was enough to get the volunteers stoked. "And he won't salute the flag," one woman added, repeating another myth about Obama. She was quickly topped by a man who called out, "We don't even know where Senator Obama was really born." Actually, we do; it's Hawaii. (link)

The report from inside the McCain campaign is disturbing on several levels.   While McCain has begun chiding his supporters at public rallies for using violent rhetoric, his campaign has taken the opposite tack behind closed doors.   Despite the public image of a campaign not responsible for the violent outbursts of a few followers, the Time report reveals a ground operation actually training its volunteers to elicit violent responses in voters--specifically by making false claims about Barack Obama's connection to terrorist attacks on U.S. military buildings.

The report confirms that the McCain campaign has staked its chances of winning the Presidency on convincing the public that Barack Obama is on the wrong side of the 'War on Terror' and, therefore, his victory in the Presidential election would put the power of the White House in the hands of terrorists.

Tumulty's report raises serious questions about whether or not John McCain is using campaign rhetoric that not only depart from recognized moral boundaries, but risk igniting actual violence.

In particular, by teaching his volunteers to see Barack Obama as similar to Osama Bin Laden--and by training his volunteers to convince voters of the same--McCain is using his presidential campaign to tie Sen. Obama to the mass murders of September 11, 2001.  In this way, McCain is effectively teaching his supporters to believe that Sen. Obama is not only connected to terrorists, but that Sen. Obama deserves the same punishment as terrorists.  

In other words, by bringing to light the rhetoric being taught to his campaign volunteers, Time Magazine has provided the explanation for why attendees at McCain and Palin rallies have called for the death of Sen. Obama rather than just his defeat, which would be the norm in such events.  When supporters of a Presidential candidate view the opposing candidate as merely an election threat, they call for his defeat. But when they view the opposing candidate as a national security threat--as they are being taught by the McCain campaign--they call for that threat to be eradicated.

Early last week, as the country was coping with a massive financial crisis, the presidential campaign witnessed the second of its three debates. With the nation's economic woes firmly on their minds, John McCain and Barack Obama engaged on topics ranging from job creation, tax relief, and the utility of the market bailout.

Not mentioned once was the word poverty.

Indeed, as economic observers fret that the ripple effects of the market meltdown could result in greater numbers of underemployed and unemployed, the focus of the campaign remains firmly on businesses and the middle class. During the first debate, when the financial crisis was first coming into focus, "poverty" went similarly unmentioned.

It is, in many ways, regrettable. Not simply because the number of those living in poverty - 37.3 million in 2007, according to the U.S. Census Bureau - demands more attention. But because those who have studied poverty-eradication programs say that Barack Obama has a plan that could be historic in its reach and innovation.

"There is, in Obama's policy, a lot that go directly to the governance side of the notion 'yes we can,'" said Harry Boyte, founder and co-director of the Institute's Center for Democracy and Citizenship at the University of Minnesota. "When people talk about the lack of specifics it's that his message hasn't fully developed. But his actual policies would be really innovative. And he would really represent a break with the liberal tradition."

As Boyte defines it, there are certain historical threads that have marked prior efforts to combat poverty. The iconic liberal framework is to see poverty as an individual problem "in which the poor need resources and services." The government, in this instance, pursues social policy meant to meet those needs.

In contrast, there is the traditionally Republican approach which points to enterprise and tax incentives in poor communities as the best way to create jobs and lift those neighborhoods out of economic duress. Government involvement, in this case, is seen as an intrusion more than a buoy.

Somewhere in the middle lies Obama, who as a former community organizer brings more experience to the topic than any recent presidential nominee. The Illinois Democrat, as Boyte sees it, wants to move "urban policy and poverty policy" beyond "dependency creating programs." He sees a need for "catalytic government that enables citizen action rather than displacing citizen initiative."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/13/barack-obamas-innovative_n_134162.html

Posted October 13, 2008 | 08:51 AM

Alaska Governor and Republican Vice Presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, while out on the hustings likes to ask her audiences: "Who is the real Barack Obama?" But it took a bipartisan commission of the Alaska State Legislature to give us a more accurate glimpse at the real Sarah Palin. The commission concluded that Governor Palin abused her powers in pressing subordinates to terminate a state trooper, Michael Wooten, who three years earlier had gone through a bitter divorce and child custody battle with Palin's sister, Molly McCann. As a result, Trooper Wooten ended up on the wrong side of a family feud.

Governor Palin first claimed that she never did anything to try to get Wooten fired, but later changed her story admitting that she did try to terminate him but only because she and her relatives lived in fear of him. The independent investigation for the State Legislature, however, concluded otherwise: "Such claims of fear were not bona fide and were offered to provide cover for the Palins' real motivation: to get Trooper Wooten fired for personal family reasons." The 263-page report also points out that Palin had reduced the size of her security staff, which didn't make sense if she and her family were "living in fear" of Wooten. A member of Governor Palin's security detail stated: "I never really felt they were in fear of Mr. Wooten doing anything to them."

The panel concluded that Governor Palin violated Alaska's Executive Branch Ethics Act. According to the report, Palin "knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda."

On July 11, 2008, Palin fired Alaska's public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, because he resisted dismissing the trooper who was under his command. Monegan also testified that Palin was slashing the budget for his department because he resisted her efforts to can Wooten. Palin has changed her story several times on why she fired Monegan, who had a long and impressive record as an Alaskan public official. She first claimed she wanted to move Monegan to another position in the government, and then she insisted Monegan's firing was performance related.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/who-is-the-emrealem-sarah_b_134090.html

Then there is the Palins close association with the secessionist and militia groups ...

It gives us every reason to ask:

Who is the real Sarah Palin and why did John McCain pick an unethical extremist?

McCain is sinking and you know what we are going to do:

Throw him an anvil!

The Politico reports:

Three weeks before Election Day, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Monday is unveiling what his aides call a more forceful new stump speech in which he portrays himself as a scrappy fighter on the comeback trail against an opponent who's already "measuring the drapes" in the Oval Office.

"The national media has written us off.," McCain says in excerpts released by the campaign. "Senator Obama is measuring the drapes, and planning with Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid to raise taxes, increase spending, take away your right to vote by secret ballot in labor elections, and concede defeat in Iraq. But they forgot to let you decide. My friends, we've got them just where we want them."

Allies are calling this "hitting the 'reset' button" on the campaign, with McCain reemerging after a long Sunday strategy session with a feisty tack that uses candor and humor, at a time when his rallies have become known for raucous rage and clumsy attacks.

But it's more like hitting the panic button. McCain is appearing Monday in Virginia and North Carolina - two states that are usually safe for Republicans in presidential races, and that he should have put away long ago. But Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is pouring visits and staff into the former Confederacy, and he has caught McCain in many Southern polls.

McCain had planned to unveil a new economic policy this week, but the plan fell apart amid internal campaign confusion. Insiders won't talk about what happened. "We're locked down," one official told the Politico. "I have no comment on anything, to anybody," policy adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin said to the New York Times.

Now this is what Americans really should worry about. Meet Sarah Palin's domestic terrorism friends (the militia types who want to secede from the United States such as Timothy McVeigh):

Extremists Mark Chryson and Steve Stoll helped launch Palin's political career in Alaska, and in return had influence over policy. "Her door was open," says Chryson -- and still is.

By Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert

Editor's note: Research support provided by the Nation Institute Investigative Fund. For Salon's complete coverage of Sarah Palin, click here.

Oct. 10, 2008 |

On the afternoon of Sept. 24 in downtown Palmer, Alaska, as the sun began to sink behind the snowcapped mountains that flank the picturesque Mat-Su Valley, 51-year-old Mark Chryson sat for an hour on a park bench, reveling in tales of his days as chairman of the Alaska Independence Party. The stocky, gray-haired computer technician waxed nostalgic about quixotic battles to eliminate taxes, support the "traditional family" and secede from the United States.

So long as Alaska remained under the boot of the federal government, said Chryson, the AIP had to stand on guard to stymie a New World Order. He invited a Salon reporter to see a few items inside his pickup truck that were intended for his personal protection. "This here is my attack dog," he said with a chuckle, handing the reporter an exuberant 8-pound papillon from his passenger seat. "Her name is Suzy." Then he pulled a 9-millimeter Makarov PM pistol -- once the standard-issue sidearm for Soviet cops -- out of his glove compartment. "I've got enough weaponry to raise a small army in my basement," he said, clutching the gun in his palm. "Then again, so do most Alaskans." But Chryson added a message of reassurance to residents of that faraway place some Alaskans call "the 48." "We want to go our separate ways," he said, "but we are not going to kill you."

Though Chryson belongs to a fringe political party, one that advocates the secession of Alaska from the Union, and that organizes with other like-minded secessionist movements from Canada to the Deep South, he is not without peculiar influence in state politics, especially the rise of Sarah Palin. An obscure figure outside of Alaska, Chryson has been a political fixture in the hometown of the Republican vice-presidential nominee for over a decade. During the 1990s, when Chryson directed the AIP, he and another radical right-winger, Steve Stoll, played a quiet but pivotal role in electing Palin as mayor of Wasilla and shaping her political agenda afterward. Both Stoll and Chryson not only contributed to Palin's campaign financially, they played major behind-the-scenes roles in the Palin camp before, during and after her victory.

Palin backed Chryson as he successfully advanced a host of anti-tax, pro-gun initiatives, including one that altered the state Constitution's language to better facilitate the formation of anti-government militias. She joined in their vendetta against several local officials they disliked, and listened to their advice about hiring. She attempted to name Stoll, a John Birch Society activist known in the Mat-Su Valley as "Black Helicopter Steve," to an empty Wasilla City Council seat. "Every time I showed up her door was open," said Chryson. "And that policy continued when she became governor."

When Chryson first met Sarah Palin, however, he didn't really trust her politically. It was the early 1990s, when he was a member of a local libertarian pressure group called SAGE, or Standing Against Government Excess. (SAGE's founder, Tammy McGraw, was Palin's birth coach.) Palin was a leader in a pro-sales-tax citizens group called WOW, or Watch Over Wasilla, earning a political credential before her 1992 campaign for City Council. Though he was impressed by her interpersonal skills, Chryson greeted Palin's election warily, thinking she was too close to the Democrats on the council and too pro-tax.

But soon, Palin and Chryson discovered they could be useful to each other. Palin would be running for mayor, while Chryson was about to take over the chairmanship of the Alaska Independence Party, which at its peak in 1990 had managed to elect a governor.

The AIP was born of the vision of "Old Joe" Vogler, a hard-bitten former gold miner who hated the government of the United States almost as much as he hated wolves and environmentalists. His resentment peaked during the early 1970s when the federal government began installing Alaska's oil and gas pipeline. Fueled by raw rage -- "The United States has made a colony of Alaska," he told author John McPhee in 1977 -- Vogler declared a maverick candidacy for the governorship in 1982. Though he lost, Old Joe became a force to be reckoned with, as well as a constant source of amusement for Alaska's political class. During a gubernatorial debate in 1982, Vogler proposed using nuclear weapons to obliterate the glaciers blocking roadways to Juneau. "There's gold under there!" he exclaimed.

Vogler made another failed run for the governor's mansion in 1986. But the AIP's fortunes shifted suddenly four years later when Vogler convinced Richard Nixon's former interior secretary, Wally Hickel, to run for governor under his party's banner. Hickel coasted to victory, outflanking a moderate Republican and a centrist Democrat. An archconservative Republican running under the AIP candidate, Jack Coghill, was elected lieutenant governor.

Hickel's subsequent failure as governor to press for a vote on Alaskan independence rankled Old Joe. With sponsorship from the Islamic Republic of Iran, Vogler was scheduled to present his case for Alaskan secession before the United Nations General Assembly in the late spring of 1993. But before he could, Old Joe's long, strange political career ended tragically that May when he was murdered by a fellow secessionist.

Hickel rejoined the Republican Party the year after Vogler's death and didn't run for reelection. Lt. Gov. Coghill's campaign to succeed him as the AIP candidate for governor ended in disaster; he peeled away just enough votes from the Republican, Jim Campbell, to throw the gubernatorial election to Democrat Tony Knowles.

Despite the disaster, Coghill hung on as AIP chairman for three more years. When he was asked to resign in 1997, Mark Chryson replaced him. Chryson pursued a dual policy of cozying up to secessionist and right-wing groups in Alaska and elsewhere while also attempting to replicate the AIP's success with Hickel in infiltrating the mainstream.

Unlike some radical right-wingers, Chryson doesn't put forward his ideas  freighted with anger or paranoia. And in a state where defense of gun and property rights often takes on a real religious fervor, Chryson was able to present himself  as a typical Alaskan.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/10/10/palin_chryson/print.html

Where was John McCain's judgement when he picked a person who openly associates with a separist party?  That is downright un-American!  I call on John McCain to save his honor as a man who served his country and remove this person from the ticket.

last updated: October 11, 2008 04:56:24 PM

WASHINGTON — As the economy worsens and Election Day approaches, a conservative campaign that blames the global financial crisis on a government push to make housing more affordable to lower-class Americans has taken off on talk radio and e-mail.

Commentators say that's what triggered the stock market meltdown and the freeze on credit. They've specifically targeted the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the federal government seized on Sept. 6, contending that lending to poor and minority Americans caused Fannie's and Freddie's financial problems.

Federal housing data reveal that the charges aren't true, and that the private sector, not the government or government-backed companies, was behind the soaring subprime lending at the core of the crisis.

Subprime lending offered high-cost loans to the weakest borrowers during the housing boom that lasted from 2001 to 2007. Subprime lending was at its height vrom 2004 to 2006.

Federal Reserve Board data show that:

_ More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions.

_ Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year.

_ Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics.

The "turmoil in financial markets clearly was triggered by a dramatic weakening of underwriting standards for U.S. subprime mortgages, beginning in late 2004 and extending into 2007," the President's Working Group on Financial Markets reported Friday.

Conservative critics claim that the Clinton administration pushed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make home ownership more available to riskier borrowers with little concern for their ability to pay the mortgages.

"I don't remember a clarion call that said Fannie and Freddie are a disaster. Loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster," said Neil Cavuto of Fox News.

Fannie, the Federal National Mortgage Association, and Freddie, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., don't lend money, to minorities or anyone else, however. They purchase loans from the private lenders who actually underwrite the loans.

It's a process called securitization, and by passing on the loans, banks have more capital on hand so they can lend even more.

This much is true. In an effort to promote affordable home ownership for minorities and rural whites, the Department of Housing and Urban Development set targets for Fannie and Freddie in 1992 to purchase low-income loans for sale into the secondary market that eventually reached this number: 52 percent of loans given to low-to moderate-income families.

To be sure, encouraging lower-income Americans to become homeowners gave unsophisticated borrowers and unscrupulous lenders and mortgage brokers more chances to turn dreams of homeownership in nightmares.

But these loans, and those to low- and moderate-income families represent a small portion of overall lending. And at the height of the housing boom in 2005 and 2006, Republicans and their party's standard bearer, President Bush, didn't criticize any sort of lending, frequently boasting that they were presiding over the highest-ever rates of U.S. homeownership.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/53802.html

From Robert F Kennedy Jr.:

In 2004, America's malleable mainstream media allowed itself to be manipulated by artful Republican operatives into devoting weeks of broadcast attention and drums of ink to unfairly desecrating John Kerry's genuine Vietnam heroics while obligingly muzzling serious discussion of George W. Bush's shameful wartime record of evasion and cowardice.

Last week found the American media once again boarding Republican swift boats against this season's Democratic candidate armed with unfair and hypocritical attacks artfully designed by GOP strategists to distract attention from the cataclysmic outcomes of Republican governance. Vice Presidential hopeful Sarah Palin has taken to faulting Senator Barack Obama for his casual acquaintance with a respected Illinois educator Bill Ayers, who forty years ago was a member of the Weathermen, a movement active when Obama was eight and which he has denounced as "detestable." Palin argues that the relationship proves that Obama sees "America as being so imperfect that he is palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

The Times dedicated a page one article to Obama's relations with Ayers and CNN's Anderson Cooper obliged Palin by rewarding her reckless accusations about Obama's patriotism with a major investigative report. Fox, meanwhile, is still riveting its audience with wall to wall coverage of this pressing irrelevancy.

But if McCarthy-era guilt-by-association is once again a valid political consideration, Palin, it would seem, has more to lose than Obama. Palin, it could be argued, following her own logic, thinks so little of America's perfection that she continues to "pal around" with a man--her husband, actually--who only recently terminated his seven-year membership in the Alaskan Independence Party. Putting plunder above patriotism, the members of this treasonous cabal aim to break our country into pieces and walk away with Alaska's rich federal oil fields and one-fifth of America's land base--an area three-fourths the size of the Civil War Confederacy.

AIP's charter commits the party "to the ultimate independence of Alaska," from the United States which it refers to as "the colonial bureaucracy in Washington." It proclaims Alaska's 1959 induction as a state "as illegal and in violation of the United Nations charter and international law."

AIP's creation was inspired by the rabidly violent anti-Americanism of its founding father Joe Vogler, "I'm an Alaskan, not an American," reads a favorite Vogler quote on AIP's current website, "I've got no use for America or her damned institutions." According to Vogler AIP's central purpose was to drive Alaska's secession from the United States. Alaska, says current Chairwoman Lynette Clark, "should be an independent nation."

Vogler was murdered in 1993 during an illegal sale of plastic explosives that went bad. The prior year, he had renounced his allegiance to the United States explaining that, "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government." He cursed the stars and stripes, promising, "I won't be buried under their damned flag...when Alaska is an independent nation they can bring my bones home." Palin has never denounced Vogler or his detestable anti-Americanism.

Palin's husband Todd remained an AIP party member from 1995 to 2002. Sarah can be described in McCarthy-era palaver as a "fellow traveler." While retaining her Republican registration, she attended the AIP's 1994 convention where the party called for a draft constitution to secede from the United States and create an independent nation of Alaska. The McCain Campaign has reluctantly acknowledged that she also attended AIP's 2000 Convention. She apparently found the experience so inspiring that she agreed to give a keynote address at the AIP's 2006 convention and she recorded a video greeting for this year's 2008 convention. In other words, this is not something that happened when she was eight!

So when Palin accuses Barack of "not seeing the same America as you and me," maybe she is referring to an America without Alaska. In any case, isn't it time the media start giving equal time to Palin's buddy list of anti-American bombers and other radical associates?

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It's time to get this out into the media.

McCain has disgraced himself. Here's an excerpt from a column by NYT writer Gail Collins:

I miss the good old days. Remember when the presidential campaign was all about oil drilling? That sure was fun....

Remember how we used to joke about John McCain looking like an old guy yelling at kids to get off his lawn? It’s only in retrospect that we can see that the keep-off-the-grass period was the McCain campaign’s golden era. Now, he’s beginning to act like one of those movie characters who steals the wrong ring and turns into a troll.

During that last debate, while he was wandering around the stage, you almost expected to hear him start muttering: “We wants it. We needs it. Must have the precious.”

....The Republican campaign strategy now involves sending their candidates to areas where everybody is a die-hard McCain supporter already. Then they yell about Obama until the crowd is so frenzied people start making threats. The rest of the country is supposed to watch and conclude that this would be an enjoyable way to spend the next four years.

Maybe the Republicans should have picked somebody else. I miss Mitt Romney. Sure, he was sort of smarmy. But when Mitt was around, the banks had money and Iceland was solvent. And, of course, when we got bored, we could always talk about how he drove to Canada with his Irish setter strapped to the car roof...

Maybe Cindy is trying to hold her own against Sarah, who is with John almost as much as she is. I miss the old guy-guy McCain who had so many male pals around he looked like a walking fraternity reunion. Now, he’s starting to resemble an ambulatory patient accompanied by female attendants on an outing.

Palin has been pressing the line that people don’t really know “the real Barack Obama,” and who could make the argument better than a woman who we’ve already known for almost six weeks? Really, she’s like one of the family.

We’ve gotten so close we’ve already learned that she didn’t actually sell the plane on eBay, didn’t actually visit the troops in Iraq and didn’t really have a talk with the British ambassador. As soon as we get the Trooper thing and Alaska Independence Party thing and the tax thing figured out, she’ll be an open book....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/opinion/11collins.html?_r=2&ref=opinion&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

McCain-Palin are a disgrace! Kerry speaks out.

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Four years ago, John Kerry flirted with the idea of making John McCain his running mate. Today, he is denouncing the Arizona Senator for "a stunning failure of leadership," and running a nasty, hate-filled campaign.

In a letter to supporters, the Massachusetts Democrat -- no stranger to smears himself -- ramps up his criticisms of McCain to new heights. In addition to airing disgust with the tone of the McCain crowds, he rips Gov. Sarah Palin for making "outrageous charges that only a few years ago would have disqualified someone from serious consideration for national office."

The letter reads:

John McCain has shown a stunning failure of leadership. His campaign, in a time of economic crisis and foreign policy drift, has degenerated into a negative and nasty campaign of smears.

The reports are piling up of ugliness at the campaign rallies of John McCain and Sarah Palin. Audience members hurl insults and racial epithets, call out "Kill Him!" and "Off With His Head," and yell "treason" when Senator Obama's name is mentioned. I strongly condemn language like this which can only be described as hate-filled.

According to reports, every ad paid for by the John McCain campaign is now a negative ad -- every single one! McCain allows his running mate to make outrageous charges that only a few years ago would have disqualified someone from serious consideration for national office.

We cannot stand by and allow this to happen. We need to fight back, spread the word about what kind of low campaign he's running, and make sure people know the truth.

Kerry, like Obama, has set up a website to debunk smears in real time. And he directs supporters to the link: http://www.truthfightsback.com/page/content/smearpolitics

WASHINGTON — The economic upheaval is threatening to topple Republican Congressional candidates, putting more Senate and House seats within Democratic reach less than a month before the elections, lawmakers and campaign strategists say.

Top campaign officials for both parties, pollsters and independent experts say the intense focus on the economic turmoil and last week’s bailout vote have combined to rapidly expand a Democratic advantage in Congressional contests. Analysts now predict a Democratic surge on a scale that seemed unlikely just weeks ago, with even some Republicans in traditional strongholds fighting for their political careers, and Democratic leaders dreaming of ironclad majorities.

In North Carolina, Senator Elizabeth Dole, a former Republican presidential contender and cabinet member, is teetering. In Kentucky, the opponent of the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, has drawn even in some polls, though Republicans say they believe he will win.

Democrats say they feel confidently ahead in five Senate races where they hope to pick up Republican seats, and they believe their candidates are running competitively in seven more.

In the House, Democrats say they could capture a dozen of the 26 Republican seats left open by retirements, and challengers are closing in on Republican incumbents in Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Michigan, Nevada, New York and elsewhere.

“The last week has severely damaged Republican candidates,” said Stuart Rothenberg, a nonpartisan analyst who predicts that Democrats could gain as many as six to nine Senate seats and 25 to 30 House seats. “Everything points to warning signals for Republicans.”

If such projections by Mr. Rothenberg and others are realized, it would push Senate Democrats tantalizingly close to the filibuster-proof 60-vote majority that has eluded Senate leaders since the late 1970s. While the environment could change again in the remaining weeks, recent polling suggests a fundamental shift, with Republicans absorbing more of the blame for the economic uncertainty.

At the same time, the political arms of Congressional Republicans are being outspent — their House organization recently borrowed $8 million — and have fewer targets, with only a handful of Democrats in Florida, Louisiana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin and in potential trouble.

Republicans are understandably nervous.

“There is no question the economic crisis, the great stimulus debate and the aftermath changed a playing field that had been improving to one that has become considerably more challenging,” said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Senator John Ensign of Nevada, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said he was encouraging candidates to “stay positive” and “run like you are 10 points down,” which in some cases they are. “You don’t have to scare people this election cycle,” Mr. Ensign said. “As far as our candidates, they know to take this seriously.”

Strategists for both parties say Republican House and Senate candidates are being hurt by the dip in support for Senator John McCain at the top of the ticket, frustrating Republicans who had initially viewed Mr. McCain as a strong asset who could appeal to independents and even moderate Democrats and protect Republicans in a tough year.

But the market volatility and perceived Democratic edge on handling the economy has evidently turned voters to Democrats, a view supported by one top adviser to Republican candidates.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/us/politics/09cong.html?_r=2&ei=5070&emc=eta1&oref=login&oref=slogin

In her "No Bias, No Bull" segment Wednesday night, Campbell Brown pleaded with the McCain campaign to stop what she referred to as "race baiting."

"It is getting very, very ugly," Brown said. "Tonight, we are cutting through the bull on the issue of race and this campaign."

Brown blasted McCain surrogates for injecting race Obama's race into the campaign narrative by invoking his middle name or referring to him as a terrorist, and she called on McCain to deliver a "much stronger denunciation than a campaign-generated paper statement":

Look, everybody, we all know that we are in unchartered territory here. Never before has there been an African-American presidential nominee. So without question, race is going to be part of the conversation. Race baiting doesn't have to be. And yet, it is happening in this campaign.

Twice this week, surrogates for Senator McCain had made a point of calling Senator Obama "Barack Hussein Obama." The implication here is clear. It's foreign sounding. It's Muslim sounding. It's un-American sounding. It's dangerous sounding.

What it is, is race baiting. And that is what is dangerous. Inciting crowds, encouraging their angry outbursts. McCain supporters shouting "treason" and "terrorist" about Obama at these rallies — that is dangerous.

Earlier in the campaign, McCain denounced this stuff. He strongly denounced it. And today, it requires a stronger response, a much stronger denunciation than a campaign-generated paper statement.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/08/campbell-brown-blasts-mcc_n_133172.html

McCain is running a truly disgraceful campaign.  Word is that the secret service told him he must "tone it down"!  Let's see if that happens.

Not that there is anything to clear. But, this journal entry shows that both Democrats and Republicans worked with Ayers on the school reform issue in Chicago.

Hey McCreep, that dog of an attack on Obama just won't hunt:

Uh-oh...Ayers won't work anymore (There goes the kitchen sink, I guess here comes the table)...Some republicans from Chicago are saying what most of us knew all along. Bill Ayers was a commonly acceptable figure in Chicago by everyone--Democrats, Independents, and even Republicans. Are they all America hating, terrorist loving traitors to America?!

In fact, this NPR piece speaks to the Republican funded cause that Obama and Ayers worked on together. And that:

"It was never a concern by any of us in the Chicago school reform movement that he had led a fugitive life years earlier," said former Illinois state Republican Rep. Diana Nelson, who worked with both Obama and Ayers over the years. "It's ridiculous. There is no reason at all to smear Barack Obama with this association. It's nonsensical, and it just makes me crazy. It's so silly."

More Below The Fold!

Yesterday, in a rehash of the MSM acknowledged issues of the day, NPR did a short piece on Obama and Ayers. Fortunately for many, they made news.

First, Obama began working with Ayers and others (Republicans, Independents, and Democrats) at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Well, what is the Anneberg Challenge? Who is Annenberg? Well according to NPR,

The Obama campaign says he first met Ayers in 1995, when Obama became chair of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a $50 million fund that awarded grants to groups trying to implement new programs to improve inner city education in Chicago.

Walter Annenberg, a lifelong Republican and former ambassador who was appointed by Presidents Nixon and Reagan, funded an ambitious program to reform urban education in many cities in the mid 1990s. Ayers was an important member of the group that developed and wrote the grant proposal to the Annenberg Foundation.

Second, there were people of all political persuasions working on this effort with this "terrorist" Ayers and who saw him as acceptable and Obama was no closer than any of the others.

...no one on the board or on the Annenberg Challenge staff remembers Obama being any closer to Ayers than to any other member of the board. The Annenberg board also included several civic, business and education leaders, many of them Republicans...