Best Day Ever on Wall Street

Wall Street had a very, very good day for a change yesterday as the Dow soared 936 points, the biggest single-day point gain ever. The Dow roared back from worst week ever. The last week had seen about $2.4 trillion in shareholder wealth wiped out. The eight-day losing streak drained 2,400 points from the Dow, or 22 percent, roughly equal to the 1987 crash and enough to establish a bear market all on its own.

As a percentage, the Dow closed 11.1% higher, the fourth best in market history. This was a huge relief from eight consecutive days of stock market carnage.

Now I caution against thinking we are through the woods yet. No one should be saying that the worst is over for our staggering financial system or troubled economy. Wall Street is not a great barometer of the economy, and I believe it has become too much of the focus of our economic health. It is good to have a day like yesterday to help with the malaise, to improve people's confidence, and to get money moving again, but we are not through the crisis yet.

The dow will continue to move up and down, and it will continue to look like a roller coaster. Wall Street still has a lot to worry about, including a housing market that is still groping for a low point in prices and shoppers who are spooked by job losses and other ominous economic signs and are cutting back on their spending.

It is too soon to say for sure whether lending will finally loosen up with the new government intervention announced this morning at the White House. The sell-off on Wall Street last week was driven by fear that mistrustful banks were choking off the everyday loans that businesses use to buy supplies and pay their workers. If the credit market does not open up soon, yesterday's gains will be lost again.

David Frum Compares Rachel Maddow To Racist Hecklers

Last night on the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, Rachel hosted former speechwriter to President Bush, David Frum, to discuss the increasingly nasty — and sometimes racist — tone among some of the attendees at McCain-Palin rallies.

David Frum has been openly critical of the McCain campaign, and Maddow intended to discuss his concerns about the campaign’s turn toward negativity.

However it was clear from the beginning that David Frum had a very different agenda: to attack Rachel Maddow.

Discussing the “ugliness of tone” in American politics, he said that Maddow’s show, “unfortunately, is itself an example of that problem.” He then compared her tone to the hateful outbursts of some McCain-Palin supporters:

MADDOW: Do you think that my tone on this show is equivalent to people calling Barack Obama somebody who pals around with terrorists, people yelling from the
audience at McCain-Palin rallies, Bomb Obama. Kill him. Off with his head. Traitor. Are you accusing me of an equivalence in tone?

FRUM: I don’t think that’s an important question. I think the question is, given the small plate of responsibility that you personally have, how do you manage that responsibility? The fact that other people fail in other ways is not an excuse for you failing in your way.

MADDOW: But you did just say it’s the same thing, that you’re seeing the same thing on this show in a lot -

(CROSS TALK)

FRUM: I worry about that.

I'm a fan of Rachel Maddow, so I am biased, but I have no idea what Frum is talking about. I have seen just about every show since it's start a few weeks ago. What I have seen is that Rachel Maddow has consistently welcomed guests who disagree with her — including Frum himself — and has interviewed conservatives and progressives alike with dignity and poise. In contrast over the past few weeks, McCain supporters have called Senator Obama “an Arab,” “Little Hussein,” and a “terrorist.” They have declared themselves to be “scared” of an Obama presidency, have called for him to be killed, and have likened him to a monkey.

Personally I believe we saw yesterday why Rachel Maddow’s ratings continue to skyrocket.
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Bush reveals new steps to steady banking industry

President Bush this morning announced a $250 billion plan by the government to directly buy shares in the nation's leading banks, saying the drastic steps were "not intended to take over the free market but to preserve it." This following steps by the British goverment who stepped in for banks in Britain and received equity shares.

Under the new multifaceted stabilization program described today, the government will initially buy stocks in nine major U.S. banks. When financial markets stabilize and recover, the banks are expected to buy the stock back from the government

This latest move in a long series of moves taken by the US government over the past several weeks to prop up a weakening financial industry, has seemed to staunch the bleeding, and has helped the markets stabilize. More importantly the credit markets have begun to open up.

Krugman Pushes Back Against False Equivalencies

Now Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman pushed back against the media's need to create false equivalencies on This Week yesterday. Paul Krugman was trying to make a cogent point about how there are those in the Republican Party who simply cannot accept a Democrat governing:

KRUGMAN: This is also…this is not just about McCain, what he did. The fact of the matter is, for a long time, we’ve had a substantial fraction of the Republican base that just does not regard the Democrats governing as legitimate. Remember, the Clinton years, craziness, right? That they were murderers, drug smugglers, and the imminent prospect of what looks like a Democratic victory would drive a lot of these people crazy even if Sarah Palin wasn’t saying these inflammatory things. It’s going to be very ugly after the election.

Of course Cokie Roberts, who may be the Queen of False Equivalency, try to draw the false enalogy of Democrats not accepting the results of the 2000 and 2004 elections:

ROBERTS: On both sides, that’s true. I also think you’ve had a huge number of
Democrats who think the Republicans are illegitimate and that was particularly true after the 2000 election and to some degree, after 2004. And so, you really do have, at the core of each party, people who are not ready to accept the verdict of the election.

This is a rediculous anology though. Bill Clinton won his elections without contraversy. There was no election shenanigans. There was no Supreme Court stepping in to stop a recount. Republicans did not like the Clintons and so they just threw as much mud and gabage at them as they could to see if something would stick, regardless of truth--Vince Foster, Travelgate, Filegate, Whitewater, Gennifer Flowers/Paula Jones/Monica Lewinsky. Republican operatives accused the Clintons of being murders and drug dealers.

Watch the Video here:

LibertyAir Blog

U.K. to inject $63 billion into British banks

The British government is making a major cash infusion into three of the nation’s largest banks that will leave the British taxpayers as their largest shareholders. The British government is spending about 37 billion Pounds ($63 billion) in a bid to sshore up the ailing British banking system from collapse amid the global financial crisis.

The British government is requiring the banks being helped to lend more money to small- and medium-sized businesses and homeowners in addition to banning bonuses for board members. British Treasury chief Alistair Darling, speaking with Brown Monday, said it would be "nonsense” for board members to be taking their bonuses. The British government is also insisting that the bulk of future bonuses be paid in shares to ensure that bonuses encourage management to take a more long-term approach to profit making.

BREAKING NEWS: Paul Krugman wins economics Nobel

I have long been a fan of Paul Krugman, and was so very happy to read this morning that he had been awarded a Nobel Prize for Economics.

If you don't know Paul Krugman, he is a Princeton Professor of Economics and is a New York Times columnist. Professor Krugman won the Nobel economics prize on Monday for his analysis of how economies of scale can affect trade patterns and the location of economic activity.
Professor Krugman was the lone of winner of the 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) award and the latest in a string of American researchers to be honored. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences praised Krugman for formulating a new theory to answer questions about free trade.

Barack Obama on the Economy

With the stock market crashing, and the world economy under enormous strain, Barak Obama spoke about the economic crisis in Chillicothe, Ohio, calling on all Americans to appreciate the severity of the situation and come together to solve it. At the same time John McCain is running around accusing Senator Obama of being a terrorist friend.

This is the choice America has Obama is talking about the issues people actually care about, and doing it in the form of a true leader.


LibertyAir Blog

Joe Biden Tells It Like It Is

Joe Biden, giving a great speech.


LibertyAir Blog

Obama Knew It Was Coming All Along

In late July, Barack Obama predicted John McCain's attack strategy, and John McCain's campaign howled in protest. I guess it turns out that Obama was right about McCain's attacks. As it turns out, he knew McCain better than McCain knew McCain.

The Jed Report has found this great video of Obama making his prediction>


LibertyAir Blog

Breaking News: Troopergate Report: Palin "Unlawfully Abused Her Authority"

I am watching MSNBC and they are reporting that an Alaska panel has found that Sarah Palin abused her power in contraversial firing. The investigative report concludes that a family grudge wasn't the sole reason for firing Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan but says it likely was a contributing factor.

The Republican vice presidential nominee has been accused of firing a commissioner to settle a family dispute. Monegan says he was dismissed as retribution for resisting pressure to fire a state trooper involved in a bitter divorce with the governor's sister. Palin says Monegan was fired as part of a legitimate budget dispute.

OBAMA: THE MARKETS PLUNGE AND ALL MCCAIN CAN DO IS STOKE "ANGER AND DIVISION"

Politico Reports:
Barack Obama attacked John McCain Friday for launching a "barrage of nasty insinuations and attacks" as the stock market drops tumbles.

"Even as we face the most serious economic crisis of our time, even as you are worried about keeping your jobs or paying your bills or staying in your homes, my opponent's campaign announced last week that they plan to 'turn the page' on the discussion about our economy so they can spend the final weeks of this election attacking me instead," Obama said during a speech in Chillicothe, Ohio.

From the prepared remarks:

It's easy to rile up a crowd by stoking anger and division. But that's not what we need right now in the United States. The times are too serious. The challenges are too great. The American people aren't looking for someone who can divide this country -- they're looking for someone who will lead it. We're in a serious crisis -- now, more than ever, it is time to put country ahead of politics. Now, more than ever, it is time to bring change to Washington so that it works for the people of this country that we love.

I know my opponent is worried about his campaign. But that's not what I'm concerned about. I'm thinking about the Americans losing their jobs, and their homes, and their life savings. We can't afford four more years of the economic theory that says we should give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity
trickles down to everyone else.

Dow is down 500 points to 8,000

And the economy continues to fall.

Of course John McCain will continue to ignore this and focus only on Bill Ayers.

Asian markets take a dive in early trading

Tokyo down 10%
Seoul down 7%
Hong Kong down 7%
Australia down 6%

General Petraeus agrees with Barack Obama

The Washington Independent is reporting that McCain's greatest living hero General Petraeus agrees with Barack Obama about the question of whether the United States should meet with hostile enemies. This week General Petraeus gave a talk at the ultra conservative Heritage Foundation in which he basically echoed Barack Obama's views on negotiating with hostile foreign leaders -- views that McCain has repeatedly subjected to criticism and ridicule.

Asked by a questioner specifically about the disagreement on this topic that McCain and Obama had at Tuesday night's debate, Petraeus demurred a bit, but said:

"I do think you have to talk to enemies."

"I'm not trying to get into the middle of domestic politics," Petraeus also said, "but I mean what we did do in Iraq ultimately was sit down with some of those that were shooting at us. What we tried to do was identify those who might be reconcilable."

Petraeus' comments were reported on by Spencer Ackerman and were noted elsewhere, but really deserve way more attention. TPM went to the video on Heritage's site to get a longer transcript, and sure enough, they showed that the context shows that Petraeus was more or less backing up Obama's point of view.

As TPM points out:

What Petraeus said isn't a perfect endorsement of Obama's views -- he didn't specifically discuss Iran, and the question of "no preconditions" didn't come up -- but it's pretty darn close. That's because it's as clear as day that the context specifically was the debate between Obama and McCain on this topic on Tuesday night. During that exchange, the candidates clashed on whether to meet with the leaders of Iran, and the questioner at Heritage posed the subject about talking to enemies specifically in that light.

In an interview that aired on CBS, John McCain, when asked which three living people he'd like to have dinner with most, promptly chose General Petraeus. McCain frequently hails Petraeus as an "American hero." Do you think John McCain might change his view?

Me neither...

Latest Iraq NIE Warns Of New Wave Of Violence

The best newspaper in the country, McClatchy is reporting that the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq is almost complete and the news is not good. It " warns that unresolved ethnic and sectarian tensions in Iraq could unleash a new wave of violence, potentially reversing the major security and political gains achieved over the last year," directly contradicting John McCain's claims in Tuesday's debate that the Surge has been a success and victory has been attained.

While the mainstream media seem shocked by this finding, this should not be a major surprise to anyone who has actually been following events in Iraq without neocon rose-tinted glasses (obviously not John McCain). Deep conflicts between the central government and Kurdish region, Awakening groups and Sadrists have all been put on a knife-edge by expectations for the upcoming provincial elections, which have been gerrymandered to keep the existing incumbents in the Green Zone in power. The Turks are looking down a gunbarrel at the Kurds and the Awakening is looking at losing its source of income - being paid not to be insurgents - while even the Green Zone elites are falling out among themselves over Maliki's newfound Napoleon complex. The chances of Iraq lasting another year without another significant outbreak of violence are small to none.

All of those sources of conflict are outlined in the draft NIE, according to more than "a half-dozen officials" who spoke to McClatchy on condition of anonymity because NIE's are very restricted circulation documents.

All of those sources of conflict are outlined in the draft NIE, according to more than "a half-dozen officials" who spoke to McClatchy on condition of anonymity because NIE's are very restricted circulation documents.

The NIE findings parallel a Defense Department assessment last month that warned that despite "promising developments, security gains in Iraq remain fragile. A number of issues have the potential to upset progress.",

Trouble spots include whether the former Sunni insurgents, also known as the Sons of Iraq, find permanent employment; provincial elections scheduled for January; Kirkuk's status; the fate of internally displaced people and returning refugees; and "malign Iranian influence," the unclassified Pentagon report said.

The intelligence agencies' estimate also raises worries about what would happen if Sadr, the anti-U.S. cleric, attempts to reassert himself, according to senior intelligence officials familiar with its contents.

General Petraeus, who is the focus of an unholy amount of revered hype by John McCain, says the the situation is "fragile" and "reversible" and says he will never declare victory there. Not that even his Saint's words of caution have stopped Mccain doing so loudly and often, however. But Petraeus, in a talk to the neocon Heritage Foundation today, ruffled feathers by repeatedly seeming to back Obama's foreign policy prescriptions over McCain's.

Unbidden, Petraeus discussed whether his strategy in Iraq — protecting the population while cleaving apart the insurgency through reconciliation efforts to crush the remaining hard-core enemies — could also work in Afghanistan. The question has particular salience as Petraeus takes over U.S. Central Command, which will put him at the helm of all U.S. troops in the Middle East and South Asia, thereby giving him a large role in the Afghanistan war.

“Some of the concepts used in Iraq are transplantable [to Afghanistan] while others perhaps are not,” he said. “Every situation is unique.”

Petraeus pointed to efforts by Hamid Karzai’s government to negotiate a deal with the Taliban that would potentially bring some Taliban members back to power, saying that if they are “willing to reconcile,” it would be “a positive step.”

In saying that, Petraeus implicitly allied with U.S. Army Gen. David McKiernan, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan. Last week, McKiernan rejected the idea of replicating the blend of counterinsurgency strategy employed in Iraq. “The word that I don’t use in Afghanistan is the word ’surge,’” McKiernan said, opting against
recruiting Pashtun tribal fighters to supplement Afghan security forces against
Al Qaeda and the Taliban. “There are countless other differences between Iraq
and Afghanistan,” he added.

... Petraeus also came out unambiguously in his talk at Heritage for opening communications with America’s adversaries, a position McCain is attacking Obama for endorsing. Citing his Iraq experience, Petraeus said, “You have to talk to enemies.” He added that it was necessary to have a particular goal for discussion and to perform advance work to understand the motivations of his interlocutors.

And, as McClatchy notes, whether the news is good or bad and no matter what the commanders might have to say about it, Republicans will always find an excuse to stay just a little bit longer.

The findings seem to cast doubts on McCain's frequent assertions that the United States is "on a path to victory" in Iraq by underscoring the deep uncertainties of the situation despite the 30,000-strong U.S. troop surge for which he was the leading congressional advocate.

But McCain could also use the findings to try to strengthen his argument for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq until conditions stabilize.

It's always a reason to stay. We've had countless variations on "the surge is working; we should stay until we've done the job," or "even if we can't maintain the surge, we're making progress, so we should stay" or "the Surge hasn't done what we thought it would but we can't leave - there will be a bloodbath when we leave" already. How about this instead? The Surge didn't do what it was supposed to, it never will because the irreconcilable faction fights behind the violence are beyond U.S. control, but it's the Iraqis country and they get to break it if they want to or fix it if they wish - their choice.

Not that we'll get a chance for that debate based upon this NIE, like the Afghanistan NIE which was comparably "grim" it will be buried, with not even the summary conclusions released to the public.

Crossposted from Crooks & Liars

Nouriel Roubini: The world is at severe risk of a global systemic financial meltdown

On Thursday, October 09, 2008, Nouriel Roubini – Chairman of RGE Monitor and Professor of Economics at the NYU Stern School of Business – lays out his latest views on the global economic and financial crisis and the urgent necessary actions that need to be undertaken globally.

Nouriel Roubini: The world is at severe risk of a global systemic financial meltdown and a severe global depression

The U.S. and advanced economies’ financial systems are now headed towards a near-term systemic financial meltdown as day after day stock markets are in free fall, money markets have shut down while their spreads are skyrocketing, and credit spreads are surging through the roof. There is now the beginning of a generalized run on the banking system of these economies; a collapse of the shadow banking system, i.e. those non-banks (broker dealers, non-bank mortgage lenders, SIV and conduits, hedge funds, money market funds, private equity firms) that, like banks, borrow short and liquid, are highly leveraged and lend and invest long and illiquid, and are thus at risk of a run on their short-term liabilities; and now a roll-off of the short term liabilities of the corporate sectors that may lead to widespread bankruptcies of solvent but illiquid financial and non-financial firms.

On the real economic side, all the advanced economies representing 55% of global GDP (U.S., Eurozone, UK, other smaller European countries, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Japan) entered a recession even before the massive financial shocks that started in the late summer made the liquidity and credit crunch even more virulent and will thus cause an even more severe recession than the one that started in the spring. So we have a severe recession, a severe financial crisis and a severe banking crisis in advanced economies.

There was no decoupling among advanced economies and there is no decoupling but rather recoupling of the emerging market economies with the severe crisis of the advanced economies. By the third quarter of this year global economic growth will be in negative territory signaling a global recession. The recoupling of emerging markets was initially limited to stock markets that fell even more than those of advanced economies as foreign investors pulled out of these markets; but then it spread to credit markets and money markets and currency markets bringing to the surface the vulnerabilities of many financial systems and corporate sectors that had experienced credit booms and that had borrowed short and in foreign currencies. Countries with large current account deficits and/or large fiscal deficits and with large short-term foreign currency liabilities and borrowings have been the most fragile. But even the better performing ones – like the BRICs club of Brazil, Russia, India and China – are now at risk of a hard landing. Trade and financial and currency and confidence channels are now leading to a massive slowdown of growth in emerging markets with many of them now at risk not only of a recession but also of a severe financial crisis.

The crisis was caused by the largest leveraged asset bubble and credit bubble in the history of humanity where excessive leveraging and bubbles were not limited to housing in the U.S. but also to housing in many other countries and excessive borrowing by financial institutions and some segments of the corporate sector and of the public sector in many and different economies: an housing bubble, a mortgage bubble, an equity bubble, a bond bubble, a credit bubble, a commodity bubble, a private equity bubble, a hedge funds bubble are all now bursting at once in the biggest real sector and financial sector deleveraging since the Great Depression. At this point the recession train has left the station; the financial and banking crisis train has left the station. The delusion that the U.S. and advanced economies contraction would be short and shallow – a V-shaped six month recession – has been replaced by the certainty that this will be a long and protracted U-shaped recession that may last at least two years in the U.S. and close to two years in most of the rest of the world. And given the rising risk of a global systemic financial meltdown, the probability that the outcome could become a decade long L-shaped recession – like the one experienced by Japan after the bursting of its real estate and equity bubble – cannot be ruled out.

And in a world where there is a glut and excess capacity of goods while aggregate demand is falling, soon enough we will start to worry about deflation, debt deflation, liquidity traps and what monetary policy makers should do to fight deflation when policy rates get dangerously close to zero.

At this point the risk of an imminent stock market crash – like the one-day collapse of 20% plus in U.S. stock prices in 1987 – cannot be ruled out as the financial system is breaking down, panic and lack of confidence in any counterparty is sharply rising and the investors have totally lost faith in the ability of policy authorities to control this meltdown.

This disconnect between more and more aggressive policy actions and easings, and greater and greater strains in the financial market is scary. When Bear Stearns’ creditors were bailed out to the tune of $30 bn in March, the rally in equity, money and credit markets lasted eight weeks; when in July the U.S. Treasury announced legislation to bail out the mortgage giants Fannie and Freddie, the rally lasted four weeks; when the actual $200 billion rescue of these firms was undertaken and their $6 trillion liabilities taken over by the U.S. government, the rally lasted one day, and by the next day the panic had moved to Lehman’s collapse; when AIG was bailed out to the tune of $85 billion, the market did not even rally for a day and instead fell 5%. Next when the $700 billion U.S. rescue package was passed by the U.S. Senate and House, markets fell another 7% in two days as there was no confidence in this flawed plan and the authorities. Next, as authorities in the U.S. and abroad took even more radical policy actions between October 6th and October 9th (payment of interest on reserves, doubling of the liquidity support of banks, extension of credit to the seized corporate sector, guarantees of bank deposits, plans to recapitalize banks, coordinated monetary policy easing, etc.), the stock markets and the credit markets and the money markets fell further and further and at accelerated rates day after day all week, including another 7% fall in U.S. equities today.

When in markets that are clearly way oversold, even the most radical policy actions don’t provide rallies or relief to market participants. You know that you are one step away from a market crash and a systemic financial sector and corporate sector collapse. A vicious circle of deleveraging, asset collapses, margin calls, and cascading falls in asset prices well below falling fundamentals, and panic is now underway.

At this point severe damage is done and one cannot rule out a systemic collapse and a global depression. It will take a significant change in leadership of economic policy and very radical, coordinated policy actions among all advanced and emerging market economies to avoid this economic and financial disaster. Urgent and immediate necessary actions that need to be done globally (with some variants across countries depending on the severity of the problem and the overall resources available to the sovereigns) include:

• another rapid round of policy rate cuts of the order of at least 150 basis points on average globally;
• a temporary blanket guarantee of all deposits while a triage between insolvent financial institutions that need to be shut down and distressed but solvent institutions that need to be partially nationalized with injections of public capital is made;
• a rapid reduction of the debt burden of insolvent households preceded by a temporary freeze on all foreclosures;
• massive and unlimited provision of liquidity to solvent financial institutions;
• public provision of credit to the solvent parts of the corporate sector to avoid a short-term debt refinancing crisis for solvent but illiquid corporations and small businesses;
• a massive direct government fiscal stimulus packages that includes public works, infrastructure spending, unemployment benefits, tax rebates to lower income households and provision of grants to strapped and crunched state and local government;
• a rapid resolution of the banking problems via triage, public recapitalization of financial institutions and reduction of the debt burden of distressed households and borrowers;
• an agreement between lender and creditor countries running current account surpluses and borrowing, and debtor countries running current account deficits to maintain an orderly financing of deficits and a recycling of the surpluses of creditors to avoid a disorderly adjustment of such imbalances.

At this point anything short of these radical and coordinated actions may lead to a market crash, a global systemic financial meltdown and to a global depression. The time to act is now as all the policy officials of the world are meeting this weekend in Washington at the IMF and World Bank annual meetings.

***

Read more of Nouriel’s views on the current economic situation on Nouriel Roubini’s Global EconoMonitor at http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini.

For RGE Monitor's Complete Coverage of the Global Financial Crisis click here.

The Second Presidential Debate

Instant Polls Find Obama Won Debate

CNN poll of debate viewers: Obama 54%, McCain 30%
CBS poll of uncommitted voters: Obama 39%, McCain 27%

Taegan Goddard's Political Wire

Tonight's debate wasn't even close. Sen. Barack Obama ran away with it -- particularly when speaking about the economy and health care. Talking about his mother's death from cancer was very powerful. On nearly every issue, Obama was more substantive, showed more compassion and was more presidential.

In contrast, Sen. John McCain was extremely erratic. Sometimes he was too aggressive (referring to Obama as "that one.") Other times, he just couldn't answer the question (on how he would ask Americans to sacrifice.) And his random attempts at jokes (hair transplants?) were just bad.

Tom Brokaw was terrible as moderator. His fixation with the rules -- particularly when the candidates were not complaining -- was distracting and a disservice to everyone. The format didn't work very well, but Brokaw made it worse.

Other reactions:

Andrew Sullivan: "This was, I think, a mauling: a devastating and possibly electorally fatal debate for McCain... I've watched a lot of debates and participated in many. I love debate and was trained as a boy in the British system to be a debater. I debated dozens of times at Oxofrd. All I can say is that, simply on terms of substance, clarity, empathy, style and authority, this has not just been an Obama victory. It has been a wipe-out. It has been about as big a wipe-out as I can remember in a presidential debate. It reminds me of the 1992 Clinton-Perot-Bush debate. I don't really see how the McCain campaign survives this."

Ezra Klein: "Tonight was supposed to be John McCain's night, but it was the first clear debate win Obama has scored over the course of this campaign -- including the primary. McCain, as it turned out, was badly disadvantaged by the format. This debate was more physical than previous encounters. And McCain, for reasons of age and injuries and height, has a less commanding physical presence than Obama."

Mark Halperin: "McCain spent much of the evening trying to define Obama on his terms, but never broke all the way through."

Marc Ambinder: "CW says that John McCain had a 90 minute window to turn his campaign around - to put into play the McCain Resurgence Strategy, if you will, and if that's the CW threshold, I don't think McCain met it."

Paul Krugman found this Thought for the day

“Stock markets are the best barometer of the health, wealth and security of a nation”
Larry Kudlow

Barak Obama Is Wrong About Russia

Granted John McCain is worse, but man neither Barak Obama or John McCain really understand what is happening between Russia and the former nations of the Soviet Union.

Quick Take On the Debate

The debate has been pretty firework free. Which is a win for Obama, there has been no game changer.

Stocks Continue to Tumble

Wall Street continued its downward slide, with stocks piling on losses late in the session, it lost more than 500 points and all the major indexes slid more than 5 percent. This brought the two-day decline in the Dow Jones industrials to more than 875 points amid escalating worries about credit markets and the financial sector. The Standard & Poor's 500 index saw its first close below 1,000 in five years.

The magnitude of the stock market's plunge is reflected in the Dow's grim stats:

• Tuesday's close was its lowest close in five years, since Sept. 30, 2003.
• In just five trading days this month, and in the fourth quarter, it is down about 1,400 points, or 13 percent.
• It has fallen 33.3 percent since its record close of 14,164.53, a year ago Thursday.

Obama Add: The Subject

The New Obama add hits John McCain for trying to change the subject from the economy with smears and lies.


LibertyAir Blog

Run John Run

John McCain's strategy "Run Away" From the Issues that matter to the American people. All he wants to do is "turn the page on the economy" and ignore the issues of the day.

LibertyAir Blog

John McCain is Just a Liar

That is all he has left in this campaign; he has no vision of the future, no plan for this crisis. The New York Times documents all the falsehoods in McCain's most recent attack speech. The Times shows that many of McCain's charges relating to the economic meltdown, taxation and health care contained inaccuracies or exaggerations of his own position or Mr. Obama’s.

Keith Olbermann,'s Special Comment On Palin-McCain Terror Campaign

Keith Olbermann gave a great mocking special comment today about Sarah Palin, John McCain and their new terror political campaign, and the hypocrisy they are peddling.


LibertyAir blog

McCain is STILL Taking Weekends Off

I had read a story this last summer about how light McCain's campaign schedule was, but I figured that was the summer and in the final stretch John McCain would be pushing hard. Guess that is not the case.

Just a month out from election day John McCain has undertaken an especially lax campaign schedule. Now to be fair, Barak Obama has not been campaigning like Bill Clinton did, and I do wish he would push it a little more, because his already strong advantage might be insurmountable by then. Yet since their respective conventions ended, both candidates have often done only one event a day, leaving the stump by early evening, and McCain has spent most of his weekend time off of the trail and out of the public eye.

Maybe McCain is just tired.

Desperate Empty Embarrassment

Joe Klein used to be in the tank for John McCain. He was one of those reporters who was taken in by John McCain's charm, who really believed that John McCain was a "Maverick". He has been truly disappointed by the campaign that McCain has run, and has really gone off about it. Today in a column for Time, Klein writes that the McCain campaign is a "desperate empty embarrassment."

Klein writes:

I'm of two minds about how to deal with the McCain campaign's further descent into ugliness. Their strategy is simple: you throw crap against a wall and then giggle as the media try to analyze the putresence in a way that conveys a sense of balance: "Well, it is bull-pucky, but the splatter pattern is interesting..." which, of course, only serves to get your perverse message out. I really don't want to be a part of that. But...every so often, we journalists have a duty to remind readers just how dingy the McCain campaign, and its right-wing acolytes in the media (I'm looking at you, Sean Hannity) have become--especially in their efforts to divert public attention from the economic
crisis we're facing. And so inept at it: other campaigns have decided that their only shot is going negative, but usually they don't announce it, as several McCain aides have in recent days--there's no way we can win on the economy, so we're going to go sludge-diving.

But since we are dealing with manure here, I'll put the rest of this post below the fold.

It is appropriate that the prime vessel for this assault is Sarah Palin, whose very presence on a national ticket is an insult to your intelligence. She now has "credibility," we are told, because she managed to read talking points off notecards in the debate last week with unwitting enthusiasm.

I am glad that Joe Klein woke up and realized that John McCain in 2008 is not the man who ran in 2000.

Tough day for stocks

Stocks dropped dramatically today, with the Dow down as much as 800 points during the session before clawing back some of the day's losses. By the end of the day the Dow Jones industrial average was down more than 300 points. This roller coaster ride was the result of unease as the $700 billion bank bailout plan and attempts by European governments to prop up their faltering banks failed to comfort panicky investors.

John McCain's Plan For Paying For Healthcare

It turns out John McCain's plans for paying for his health care plan with major reductions to Medicare and Medicaid. This was confirmed by a top aide. Independent analysts from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank, estimate McCain's plan could result in cuts of $1.3 trillion over 10 years to the government programs. John McCain “has said little about the proposed cuts, but they are needed to keep his health-care plan ‘budget neutral,’ as he has promised.

Breaking News: Dow plummets Below 10,000

The Dow plummeted more than 300 points this morning, falling below 10,000 for the first time in nearly 4 years, as anxiety over global slowdown grows.

Asian markets fall hard, Europe drops 4% at opening

Asian Markets fell due to fears in the banking sector and of the overall global economy after the US experienced it's worst week in seven years. Asian investors said they are skeptical of the $850-billion bailout plan passed by Washington on Friday and are concerned about a U.S. jobs report that suggested the U.S. could be headed for a recession. They said they wonder about the impact of the package and how long it will take to thaw credit markets, restore bank lending and provide stability to the U.S. economy.

In Europe the German financial corporation Hypo Real Estate still requires urgent financial assistance. The international property lender Hypo Real Estate is fighting for its life after German banks and insurers pulled out of a multi-billion pound state-led rescue plan after fresh financing shortfalls emerged this weekend.

A number of governments across Europe have started to guarantee all savings and not just the limited portions as they have done in the past. Ireland started the trend of 100% guarantee and that has since been copied by Greece, Germany and late last night, Denmark. In an effort to prevent runs on the bank and money shifting from an unprotected to a fully protected banking country, other countries will surely follow soon.

Europen heads of state have come together as more financial problems appear in their banking system. They have attempted to build a US-like rescue package but so far have been unable to agree on a coordinated plan. The individual bank guarantees by specific countries only highlights the banking problems and at its opening, European Markets have fallen over 4%.

This is going to be the first real test of both the euro and the European Central Bank (ECB, which is the equivilent to the US Fed) as the Eurozone economies head into recession.

Barak Obama: You can't turn the page on the economy

Barak Obama is bound and determined to not be "Swift Boated" this election cycle. He went after John McCain during a campaign speech in Ashville North Carolina. Barak Obama declared that, "We are in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and John McCain wants to 'turn the page' and ignore the economy."

This is the message that Barak Obama has to keep pounding. Make every attack by McCain and Palin look childish, foolish, and senseless. Make sure the narrative is that McCain is desperate, and has no message of hope, or plan for the future.


LibertyAir Blog

VP Debate - SNL Style

Tina Fey nails Sarah Palin again in a very funny reprisal of the Vice Presidential debate.

LibertyAir Blog

DNC Campaign Add: Negative Adds

The DNC are also hitting John McCain for the new strategy he is rolling out. The best part is they use his own words decrying slime politics, and how only those with no real ideas for America slump to that type of politics.

LibertyAir Blog

Frank Rich: Pitbull Palin Mauls McCain

Frank Rich is one of the most eloquent commentators in America. He again takes on Sarah Palin and John McCain, and brings up a number of topics the mainstream media just don't seem ready to take on.

Pitbull Palin Mauls McCain
By FRANK RICH

SARAH PALIN’S post-Couric/Fey comeback at last week’s vice presidential debate as a turning point in the campaign. But if she “won,” as her indulgent partisans and press claque would have it, the loser was not Joe Biden. It was her running mate. With a month to go, the 2008 election is now an Obama-Palin race — about “the future,” as Palin kept saying Thursday night — and the only person who doesn’t seem to know it is Mr. Past, poor old John McCain.

To understand the meaning of Palin’s “victory,” it must be seen in the context of two ominous developments that directly preceded it. Just hours before the debate began, the McCain campaign pulled out of Michigan. That state is ground zero for the collapsed Main Street economy and for so-called Reagan Democrats, those white working-class voters who keep being told by the right that Barack Obama is a Muslim who hung with bomb-throwing radicals during his childhood in the late 1960s.

McCain surrendered Michigan despite having outspent his opponent on television advertising and despite Obama’s twin local handicaps, an unpopular Democratic governor and a felonious, now former, black Democratic Detroit mayor. If McCain can’t make it there, can he make it anywhere in the Rust Belt?

Not without an economic message. McCain’s most persistent attempt, his self-righteous crusade against earmarks, collapsed with his poll numbers. Next to a $700 billion bailout package, his incessant promise to eliminate all Washington pork — by comparison, a puny grand total of $16.5 billion in the 2008 federal budget — doesn’t bring home the bacon. Nor can McCain reconcile his I-will-veto-government-waste mantra with his support, however tardy, of the bailout bill. That bill’s $150 billion in fresh pork includes a boondoggle inserted by the Congressman Don Young, an Alaskan Republican no less.

The second bit of predebate news, percolating under the radar, involved the still-unanswered questions about McCain’s health. Back in May, you will recall, the McCain campaign allowed a select group of 20 reporters to spend a mere three hours examining (but not photocopying) 1,173 pages of the candidate’s health records on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. Conspicuously uninvited was Lawrence Altman, a doctor who covers medicine for The New York Times. Altman instead canvassed melanoma experts to evaluate the sketchy data that did emerge. They found the information too “unclear” to determine McCain’s cancer prognosis.

There was, however, at least one doctor-journalist among those 20 reporters in May, the CNN correspondent Sanjay Gupta. At the time, Gupta told Katie Couric on CBS that the medical records were “pretty comprehensive” and wrote on his CNN blog that he was “pretty convinced there was no ‘smoking gun’ about the senator’s health.” (Physical health, that is; Gupta wrote there was hardly any information on McCain’s mental health.)

That was then. Now McCain is looking increasingly shaky, whether he’s repeating his “Miss Congeniality” joke twice in the same debate or speaking from notecards even when reciting a line for (literally) the 17th time (“The fundamentals of our economy are strong”) or repeatedly confusing proper nouns that begin with S (Sunni, Shia, Sudan, Somalia, Spain). McCain’s “dismaying temperament,” as George Will labeled it, only thickens the concerns. His kamikaze mission into Washington during the bailout crisis seemed crazed. His seething, hostile debate countenance — a replay of Al Gore’s sarcastic sighing in 2000 — didn’t make the deferential Obama look weak (as many Democrats feared) but elevated him into looking like the sole presidential grown-up.

Though CNN and MSNBC wouldn’t run a political ad with doctors questioning McCain’s medical status, Gupta revisited the issue in an interview published last Tuesday by The Huffington Post. While maintaining a pretty upbeat take on the candidate’s health, the doctor-journalist told the reporter Sam Stein that he couldn’t vouch “by any means” for the completeness of the records the campaign showed him four months ago. “The pages weren’t numbered,” Gupta said, “so I had no way of knowing what was missing.” At least in Watergate we knew that the gap on Rose Mary Woods’s tape ran 18 and a half minutes.

It’s against this backdrop that Palin’s public pronouncements, culminating with her debate performance, have been so striking. The standard take has it that she’s either speaking utter ignorant gibberish (as to Couric) or reciting highly polished, campaign-written sound bites that she’s memorized (as at the convention and the debate). But there’s a steady unnerving undertone to Palin’s utterances, a consistent message of hubristic self-confidence and hyper-ambition. She wants to be president, she thinks she can be president, she thinks she will be president. And perhaps soon. She often sounds like someone who sees herself as half-a-heartbeat away from the presidency. Or who is seen that way by her own camp, the hard-right G.O.P. base that never liked McCain anyway and views him as, at best, a White House place holder.

This was first apparent when Palin extolled a “small town” vice president as a hero in her convention speech — and cited not one of the many Republican vice presidents who fit that bill but, bizarrely, Harry Truman, a Democrat who succeeded a president who died in office. A few weeks later came Charlie Gibson’s question about whether she thought she was “experienced enough” and “ready” when McCain invited her to join his ticket. Palin replied that she didn’t “hesitate” and didn’t “even blink” — a response that seemed jarring for its lack of any human modesty, even false modesty.

In the last of her Couric interview installments on Thursday, Palin was asked which vice president had most impressed her, and after paying tribute to Geraldine Ferraro, she chose “George Bush Sr.” Her criterion: she most admires vice presidents “who have gone on to the presidency.” Hours later, at the debate, she offered a discordant contrast to Biden when asked by Gwen Ifill how they would each govern “if the worst happened” and the president died in office. After Biden spoke of somber continuity, Palin was weirdly flip and chipper, eager to say that as a “maverick” she’d go her own way.

But the debate’s most telling passage arrived when Biden welled up in recounting his days as a single father after his first wife and one of his children were killed in a car crash. Palin’s perky response — she immediately started selling McCain as a “consummate maverick” again — was as emotionally disconnected as Michael Dukakis’s notoriously cerebral answer to the hypothetical 1988 debate question about his wife being “raped and murdered.” If, as some feel, Obama is cool, Palin is ice cold. She didn’t even acknowledge Biden’s devastating personal history.

After the debate, Republicans who had been bailing on Palin rushed back to the fold. They know her relentless ambition is the only hope for saving a ticket headed by a warrior who is out of juice and out of ideas. So what if she is preposterously unprepared to run the country in the midst of its greatest economic crisis in 70 years? She looks and sounds like a winner.

You can understand why they believe that. She has more testosterone than anyone else at the top of her party. McCain and his surrogates are forever blaming their travails on others, wailing about supposed sexist and journalistic biases around the clock. McCain even canceled an interview with Larry King, for heaven’s sake, in a fit of pique at a CNN anchor, Campbell Brown.

We are not a nation of whiners, as Phil Gramm would have it, but the G.O.P. is now the party of whiners. That rebranding became official when Republican House leaders moaned that a routine partisan speech by Nancy Pelosi had turned their members against the bailout bill. As the stock market fell nearly 778 points, Barney Frank taunted his G.O.P. peers with pitch-perfect mockery: “Somebody hurt my feelings, so I will punish the country!”

Talk about the world coming full circle. This is the same Democrat who had been slurred as “Barney Fag” in the mid-1990s by Dick Armey, a House leader of the government-bashing Gingrich revolution that helped lower us into this debacle. Now Frank was ridiculing the House G.O.P. as a bunch of sulking teenage girls. His wisecrack stung — and stuck.

Palin is an antidote to the whiny Republican image that Frank nailed. Alaska’s self-styled embodiment of Joe Sixpack is not a sulker, but a pistol-packing fighter. That’s why she draws the crowds and (as she puts it) “energy” that otherwise elude the angry McCain. But she is still the candidate for vice president, not president. Americans do not vote for vice president.

So how can a desperate G.O.P. save itself? As McCain continues to fade into incoherence and irrelevance, the last hope is that he’ll come up with some new game-changing stunt to match his initial pick of Palin or his ill-fated campaign “suspension.” Until Thursday night, more than a few Republicans were fantasizing that his final Hail Mary pass would be to ditch Palin so she can “spend more time” with her ever-growing family. But the debate reminded Republicans once again that it’s Palin, not McCain, who is their last hope for victory.

You have to wonder how long it will be before they plead with him to think of his health, get out of the way and pull the ultimate stunt of flipping the ticket. Palin, we can be certain, wouldn’t even blink.

Obama Add: John McCain voted to RAISE TAXES 477 Times

A great counter to the McCain campaign's tired accusation that Obama will raise your taxes.

Going McNasty All the Time

News came out this weekend that McCain campaign officials are saying that they plan to begin a new hard hitting slime campaign after Tuesday’s debate that will tie Obama to convicted money launderer Tony Rezko and former Weathermen radical William Ayers. McCain's television ads were already pretty negative and attacking, as TPM Election Central reported, "Nearly 100 Percent Devoted To Attack Ads", but now they are going just dirty.

The Washington Post reports:

Senator John McCain and his Republican allies are readying a newly aggressive assault on Sen. Barack Obama's character, believing that to win in November they
must shift the conversation back to questions about the Democrat's judgment, honesty and personal associations, several top Republicans said.With just a month to go until Election Day, McCain's team has decided that its emphasis on the senator's biography as a war hero, experienced lawmaker and straight-talking maverick is insufficient to close a growing gap with Obama. The Arizonan's campaign is also eager to move the conversation away from the economy, an issue that strongly favors Obama and has helped him to a lead in many recent polls.

"We're going to get a little tougher," a senior Republican operative said, indicating that a fresh batch of television ads is coming. "We've got to question this guy's associations. Very soon. There's no question that we have to change the subject here," said the operative, who was not authorized to discuss strategy and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Obama's response to this news is a preemptive strike with a television ad hitting John McCain for being "erratic" and "out of touch", and calls him on the smear campaign the McCain campaign is planning.

LibertyAir Blog

We Can No Longer Afford Stupid

George W. Bush and John McCain both brag about being stupid. This new video for Barak Obama points out that our country and economy really can't afford John McCain. Is "Stupid is the new Smart"? "Vote Stupid - 2008" Stupidity really is the real root cause of the Bush Bailout mess.


LibertyAir Blog

Bush = Palin, Palin = Bush

Countdown with Keith Olbermann aired a video compilation on Friday night showing just how similar the rhetoric and statements are between George W. Bush in 2000 and Sarah Palin in 2008. It's both funny and scary.

In the lead up to the video Keith Olbermann noted that “the people around [Sarah Palin] — the top-level campaign staffers crafting her message of change and reform — are almost all from the inner-circle of the same Bush campaigns and administration from which she offers that change.”

Olbermann concluded, “Small surprise then that even in the very act of claiming her background, her experience qualify her to offer us that change from Bush, she does so sounding almost exactly like Bush.”

Think Progress captured this video:


Progressive Accountability put together its own Bush-Palin video compilation:

Where Does John McCain Stand On the Issues?

Find out here: www.johnmccainrecord.com/

Obama Add: McCain's Health Tax

The Obama campaign has another television Ad going after John McCain's health tax.


LibertyAir Blog

Obama Add: Job Loss

New Obama Add hits McCain on the economy.


LibertyAir Blog

McCain/Palin = 4 More Years of Bush Foreign Policy

This nation can no longer afford tough talking ignorant foreign policy.


LibertyAir Blog

The credit crunch is getting worse

LIBOR jumped again, the TED spread is at a new record.

French PM says World "On Edge of Abyss"

Reuters Reports

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said the world stood on the "edge of the abyss," gripped by a global financial crisis now threatening industry, trade and jobs worldwide.

The latest upheaval in the U.S. banking industry came just four days after Citigroup Inc said it would buy Wachovia, and Wells Fargo said it would complete the transaction without government help. U.S. stock index futures rose after the announcement.

Around the world, calls came for the House to pass the bailout bill, which would allow the Treasury to buy illiquid debt from U.S. banks to stem a spreading crisis.

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon, whose country is hosting an emergency summit with Italian, British and German leaders on Saturday, said only collective action could solve the financial crisis. He said he would not rule out any solution to stop any bank failing.

"The world is on the edge of the abyss because of an irresponsible system," Fillon said, alluding to widespread anger over past lax regulation of financial markets and excessive lending.

Fillon said President Nicolas Sarkozy would propose at the emergency meeting measures to unfreeze credit and coordinate economic and monetary strategies.

Sarah Palin's 18 lies Last Night

John Aravosis of Americablog has posted the 18 lies of Sarah Palin from the debate.

SARAH PALIN’S 18 LIES

1. FANNIE MAE/FREDDIE MAC: Palin said “it was John McCain who pushed so hard with the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reform measures,” but fact checkers say that’s “Quite A Stretch” And “Barely True,” and that McCain was a “latecomer” to the discussion.

2. FUNDAMENTALS ARE STRONG: Palin tried to say “John McCain saying our economy was strong” but McCain has used the phrase “The Fundamentals Of The Economy Are Strong” At Least 16 Times This Year.

3. PARTISAN POLITICS: Palin said McCain is “known for putting partisan politics aside to just get the job done,” but he has voted with Bush 90% of the time in the Senate and bragged about his support for Bush on important issues.

4. TAXES ATTACK: Palin repeated the attack that Obama voted for higher taxes 94 times, which the New York Times says is “false,” CNN says is “Misleading,” and FactCheck.org says is “inflated.”

5. TOBACCO REGULATION: Palin said to “look at the tobacco industry” as an example of McCain pushing for even harder and tougher regulations. But McCain opposed expanding the SCHIP children’s health insurance program for 5.8 million
children because it would increase tobacco taxes.

6. SPENDING INCREASES: Palin said Obama is is proposing “nearly a trillion dollars on new spending,” but didn’t mention that he has also proposed cuts to balance it out, an attack CNN has already debunked as “misleading” and that ignores the far larger cost of McCain’s tax cuts and spending hikes.

7. HEALTH CARE: Palin claimed Obama’s health plan is “government run” which has been widely debunked as a “canard.”

8. HEALTH CARE. Palin says taxes wouldn’t go up under the McCain health care plan, a fact even his own campaign has acknowledged isn’t true.

9. TROOPS: Palin repeated what the AP called the “highly misleading” attack that Obama opposed funding for the troops, and Factcheck.org notes that the same
methodology would lead to the same conclusion for McCain.

10. GLOBAL WARMING: Palin said “I don’t want to argue about the causes” for global warming, when she has clearly taken the position that she doesn’t not believe it is man-made.

11. MCCAIN IS CONSISTENT: Palin said McCain” doesn't tell one thing to one group and then turns around and tells something else to another group,” when that is exactly what he has done on immigration, telling Hispanic leaders he was
for comprehensive reform instead of the enforcement focused approach he has taken with conservatives.

12. MCCLELLAN NOT MCKIERNAN: Palin referred to the US commander in Afghanistan, David McKiernan as “McClellan.”

13. MCKIERNAN ON “SURGE:” Palin said that [McKiernan] did not say a surge wouldn’t work in Afghanistan, when just yesterday he said “The word I don’t use for Afghanistan is ’surge,’ ” McKiernan stressed, saying that what is required is a “sustained commitment” to a counterinsurgency effort that could last many years and would ultimately require a political, not military, solution

14. KILLING CIVILIANS. Palin said “Obama had said that all we're doing in Afghanistan is air raiding villages and killing civilians and such a reckless, reckless comment and untrue comment again hurts our cause. That's not what we are doing there.” Unfortunately, the Associated Press says that Obama was right in discussing a critically important point about avoiding civilian casualties.

15. TEACHING: Palin said we need to make sure “that education in either one of our agendas, I think, absolute top of the line,” when McCain has repeatedly favored tax cuts for the wealthy over funds for more teachers and class size reduction.

16. PARTISAN APPOINTMENTS: Palin said “You do what I did as governor. And you appoint people regardless of party affiliation. Democrats, independents, Republicans, you walk the walk, don't just talk the talk” when she repeatedly
appointed friends and supporters to positions for which they weren’t qualified.

17. FOCUS ON CLIMATE CHANGE: Palin falsely claimed that she was the first governor to form a climate change subcabinet, when at least 28 states had already taken action.

18. DARFUR DIVESTMENT: Palin claimed that “when I and others” found out that the state had money invested in Sudan that “we called for divestment,” when the reality is that Palin’s appointees worked to kill a Darfur divestment plan.

Economy Watch

US Factory Orders Plunge More Than Expected

Government data show orders to U.S. factories plunged by the largest amount in nearly two years as the credit strains are hitting manufacturing with full force.

The Commerce Department reported Thursday that orders for manufactured goods dropped by 4 percent in August, compared to July. That's a much worse performance than the 2.5 percent decline that economists had expected. It was the biggest setback since a 4.8 percent plunge in October 2006.

The weakness was led by big declines in orders for aircraft, down 38.1 percent, and autos, which fell by 10.6 percent, the worst performance in nearly six years.

The report on manufactured goods showed that durable goods, items expected to last three years, dropped by 4.8 percent in August. Orders for nondurable goods, items such as petroleum products, food and clothing, fell by 3.3 percent.

The dismal report on orders for August followed a report Wednesday from the Institute for Supply Management showing that manufacturing activity fell to the lowest level since the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks.

U.S. Employers Cut 159,000 Jobs in September

Employers slashed payrolls by 159,000 in September, the most in more than five years, a worrisome sign that the economy is hurtling toward a deep recession.

The Labor Department’s fresh snapshot, released Friday, also showed that the nation’s unemployment rate held steady at 6.1 percent as hundreds of thousands of people streamed out of the work force for any number of reasons.

The reduction in payrolls was much sharper than the 100,000 cuts economists were forecasting. They expected the jobless rate to be unchanged.

Banks, Firms Borrow Record Amount from Fed

Banks and investment firms borrowed in record amounts from the Federal Reserve's emergency lending facility over the past week, providing fresh evidence of the credit stresses squeezing the country.

The Fed's report released Thursday said commercial banks averaged a record $44.5 billion in daily borrowing over the past week. That compared with a daily average of $39.36 billion in the previous week. On Wednesday alone, banks borrowed a record $49.5 billion, surpassing the previous high that came one day after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

For the week ending Wednesday, investment firms drew a record $147.7 billion. That was up significantly from $88.15 billion in the previous week. This category was broadened last week to include any loans that were made to the U.S. and London-based broker-dealer subsidiaries of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch. On Wednesday alone, investment firms borrowed a record $146.6 billion, breaking the previous record set on Sept. 24.

Rules for Vice-Presidential Debate

Here's an explanation of the rules for tonight's Vice-Presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sara Palin.

The rules will be a lot like the Presidential debate we saw last week: One of the candidates will be asked a question and be given 90 seconds to respond -- 30 seconds less than the two minutes from the Presidential debate -- followed by a 90-second rebuttal for the other candidate, and then a free-flowing discussion on this between the two candidates. But it won't be quite the same.
The big twist here is that the rules were modified -- at the insistence of the McCain campaign -- to limit those back-and-forth exchanges to a mere two minutes, and not the five-minute periods that we saw at the Presidential debate.

This was widely seen as an accommodation for Sarah Palin, allowing her to retreat to sound-bites that can fill the time up rather than having to spontaneously take on Joe Biden on the merits of this or that issue.

Palin on the Attack

It's time to roll the dice again for the McCain campaign. Therefor expect Sarah Palin to come out swinging. We will see the pitbull in lipstick tonight. She has nothing to lose, if she can look tough and nasty, she will make her base howl in delight and reenergize a following that is beginning to lag. If she crashes, so what, she already has crashed. There is literally nothing to lose for her.

Politico has this report on Palin's strategy tonight:

Sarah Palin plans to go on the attack in tonight’s debate, hitting Joe Biden for what she will call his foreign policy blunders and penchant for adopting liberal positions on taxes and other issues, according to campaign officials involved in prepping her for tonight’s showdown.

The Palin camp is projecting surprising self-confidence in the pre-debate hours, despite the vice presidential nominee’s uneven — and, at some points, peculiar — performances in recent television interviews, the officials say. Top advisers to John McCain privately say Palin’s recent CBS interview was a borderline disaster, especially since it played out in several segments over several days. Tonight will be different, they say.

“This is going to finally put her back into a position where we see her like we saw her the first couple weeks,” a McCain official said. “She was herself. She was authentic, and people related to that. ... Tonight, she’ll get into a rhythm. You’re going to see her in a way that you haven’t seen her yet.”

Looking Ahead To The VP Debate

At tonight's debate debate will be the only vice-presidential match-up before the election. Tonight's debate will be moderated by PBS anchor Gwen Ifill at Washington University in St. Louis.

Tonight Sarah Palin will present her conservative record and ideology to the American public in support of her running mate, John McCain. For the majority of America that do not follow politics or the news every day, this will be an introduction. For all the news Palin is still a relatively unknown figure to the American public.

Despite all the gaffs, miscues, and embarressing interviews that Sarah Palin has suffered over the past two weeks, John McCain recently said, "She's [Palin's] exactly who I need." And President Bush praised McCain's selection of Sarah Palin, calling her "a proven reformer who is a wise steward of taxpayer dollars and champion for accountability in government."

In September, Palin announced the responsibilities that John McCain will entrust to her: "Government reform, energy independence. And helping families and children, those with special needs."

John McCain has been falsely presenting Sarah Palin as a break from the disastrous policies and extreme ideology of the Bush administration. However Sarah Palin's true record in Alaska is less reformer and more opportunist, and John McCain's actual agenda actually represents more of the same failed conservativism that has given America two ongoing wars, a staggering deficit, obscene profits to Big Oil, croneyism gone amok, and a stark decline in the fortunes of the middle class.

FISCAL EXCESS AND CORRUPTION:
Sarah Palin claims that she is a "hard-core fiscal conservative" who said, "Thanks, but no thanks to the Bridge to Nowhere." She claimed this right from the beginning in her introduction speech in Dayton Ohio. We now know this is a lie, one she has been willing to repeat time after time. Appearing on The View, John McCain claimed Sarah Palin didn't request any earmarks as governor of Alaska. In fact, when Palin was mayor of Wasilla she was able to obtain $27 million in earmarks through the use of lobbyists, and yet still "racked up nearly $20 million in long-term debt" for the town of Wasilla. This amounts to $3,000 in debt per resident of this small town.

Calling Sarah Palin a reformer is laughable; she has demonstrated long and committed support for the Bridge to Nowhere. And Palin has requested earmarks of the very type that John McCain routinely mocks. "In her time inoffice, which is still lesss than two years, the state of Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation," according to the AP.

John McCain and Sarah Palin also misrepresent their economic plans. Senior economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin claims tax cuts for the wealthy "are not anywhere" in McCain's agenda. However, the Tax Policy Center writes that "McCain's tax cuts would primarily benefit those with very high incomes, almost all of whom would receive large tax cuts." They also claim they will balance the budget by the end of their first term and that no "real cuts would even be required." McCain and Palin spend so much on tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations that they could eliminate ten cabinet agencies and still not balance the budget.

ENERGY 'LA-LA LAND':
According to John McCain, Sarah Palin "knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America." Yet Sarah Palin shows no real knowledge of alternative energy sources, and dismisses renewable energy as "far from imminent." She instead supports a conservative favorite of "drill, drill, drill." This energy platform is based on oil being plentiful, and a move towards "clean, green natural gas." Despite only proven reserves that equal just 3% of the world's reserves, Sarah Palin says that we as a nation can "drill our way" out of our energy problem. She also claims that drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would produce oil in "five years," and "should help reduce price volatility." Those who don't agree, she says, "are living in La-La Land."

In reality, the U.S. Energy Information Administration has found that opening drilling in protected areas "would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices."

Sarah Palin told Charlie Gibson of ABC News that her state "produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy," and told Katie Couric of CBS that "we're supplying 16, 17 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy." Neither of these claims were true. In fact, Alaska produces 3.5 percent of domestic energy and only 13 percent of U.S. oil.

It has becom apparent that Sarah Palin's definition of energy does not include anything that is not oil or natural gas -- and her ideas on an energy policy seems to ignores the role of energy efficiency. Just like George W. Bush did with Dick Cheney, John McCain seems intent on putting someone in charge of energy policy who disagrees that global warming is caused by man-made emissions, even as "worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide from fuel burning and cement production increased by 3.5 percent per year from 2000 to 2007, nearly four times the growth rate in the 1990s."

ENDANGERING HEALTH CARE:
John McCain and Sarah Palin's program of "quality and affordable health care for every American" calls for the elimination of "the current tax exclusion of the value of health insurance from employees' taxable compensation." A recent survey of benefits officers at large U.S. companies found that 74 percent of firms believe that a repeal of the exclusion "would have a strong negative impact on their workforce." Among those who would lose their health care are 56 million Americans with pre-existing chronic health conditions.

In particular, John McCain's health care policy will make it next to impossible for special needs children to get sufficient health care. The entire employer health insurance system could unravel, ending this as an option for Americans who prefer it. In place of employer-based health care, McCain-Palin would provide a "refundable credit amounting to $5,000 for all families and $2,500 for individuals purchasing health insurance." This credit comes up grossly short for all but the most insufficient plans -- and ignores the steady rise in health coverage costs. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, “the total cost for family coverage now averages $12,680 a year, up 5 percent from 2007,” and $4,704 for single coverage.

Did We Witness Something Huge Today?

Americablog so far seems to be the only place that caught this, but I wonder did we just see John McCain have some sort of medical problem today? Watching the video of John McCain I seriously wonder if he had some type of medical problem while up on the stage, and then he seemed genuinly confused.



Americablog has more here, here, and here.

Here is the video from today's speech, in slow motion, and something seems to be physically wrong with John McCain:


LibertyAir Blog

By large margin, Senate passes bailout bill

From Politico:

Treasury’s $700 billion rescue plan for the financial markets passed the Senate Wednesday night, giving the White House new confidence it has turned the corner and can win final approval from Congress by Friday.

The 74-25 roll call endorsing the package featured a rare joint-return appearance by the two major presidential candidates, Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain, both of whom supported the measure.

The Senate galleries, usually empty at night, were packed with visitors on the left and right, and senators voted from their desks as if to underscore the seriousness of the legislation. Shortly before the vote, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) tried to capture the moment for posterity, calling this breakthrough “one of the finest moments in the history of the Senate. This is the kind of vote we are sent by our people to cast.”

Majority Leader Harry Reid added that “each United States senator this evening is facing a critical test of leadership.”

A second vote was needed immediately after to complete final passage, but that is not in doubt. The first vote Wednesday night was the bigger test and the administration is betting that with this bipartisan showing, it can marginalize the remaining opposition in the House, due to vote Friday....

[T]he revised Senate package blends in more than $100 billion in popular tax breaks as well as aid to rural schools important to House Republicans. And to build support among small town community banks, the bill raises the cap on insured deposits from $100,000 to $250,000.

The American Promise

Highlights from the Obama/Biden Campaign, and the grassroots movement they have been building. This really is a movement for change. This video was put together by the campaign and includes never-before-seen Super 8 film shot at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. (Music composed by Greg Kuehn for Peligro Music & Sound Design)


LibertyAir Blog

Barack Obama's "Spending Spree" Ad

The Barak Obama campaign came out with a new television commercial today, and it is a hard hitting spot. "Spending Spree" highlights John McCain's big spending, including his tax plan bringing along three trillion in debt, his plan to privatize social security and his tax breaks for companies who ship jobs over seas.

LibertyAir Blog

Bill Clinton Gives a Barn Burner Speech Today

President Clinton had been ticking me off the last week or so, as he seemed to have all types of great things to say about McCain and Palin, yet today he came out and gave a great speech for Obama and Biden. Check out this great video from Talking Points Memo.


LibertyAir Blog

Update: Witness flips in Troopergate

On the Daily Kos there is a blog post reporting that a private contractor now admits under oath that she was pressured by Palin's office over Sarah Palin's attempt vindictively to fire her ex-brother-in-law.

Rice and Torture

Because of the economic news and the current campaign season, a very big story has fallen by the way side. It turns out that Condoleezza Rice led Bush administration discussions of torture techniques, this according to documents secured and released by Senator Carl Levin as part of a congressional inquiry.

I can't tell from this article how complicit Condoleezza Rice was in authorizing torture but that she was in the meetings and complicit in policy-making on the issue now seems very clear. And we all know what the outcome was of these meetings. A dark stain on the honor of this country.

Evidence of Credit Crisis

I have heard a number of people on the radio start saying there really is no credit crisis. While I agree that we are not at a Great Depression, there is a serious problem that is damaging our economy. Yet I sometimes get the feeling that if we are not in Great Depression territory than we are not in trouble.

Now reports are coming out that cities, states and other local governments have been effectively shut out of the bond markets for the last two weeks, raising the cost of day-to-day operations, threatening longer-term projects and dampening a broad source of jobs and stability at a time when other parts of the economy are weakening.

THIS does affect Main Street, and will be felt by everyone.

World News Round Up

Iraq Government takes over 'Sons of Iraq'

The Iraqi government of PM Nuri al-Maliki takes over responsibility for 50,000 Sunni Arab fighters, in what are called 'Awakening Councils', whom the US has been paying $300 a month. The Shiite government is suspicious of these fighters, many of whom had earlier been guerrillas in cells attacking US troops and Iraqi police. Al-Maliki has been reluctant to accept them into the the formal army or police. The Awakening Council members are suspicious that al-Maliki plans to disarm and demobilize them, and to arrest and try many of them for their earlier guerrilla operations.

Turkey's Top Foreign Policy Aide Worries about False Optimism in Iraq

Ahmet Davutoglu, the chief foreign policy aide to Turkey’s prime minister, warned that recent optimism on Iraq in the United States overlooks significant, dangerous problems which remain unresolved and set out a viewpoint that says Iraq should be seen as a Yugoslavia on the verge of breakdown.

Spanish report ties Pakistan spy agency to Taliban

A report marked confidential and bearing the official seal of Spain's Defense Ministry charges that Pakistan's spy service was helping arm Taliban insurgents in 2005 for assassination plots against the Afghan government.

US Envoy takes New Nuclear Proposal to North Korea

Washington's top nuclear negotiator took a new proposal to North Korea on Wednesday to try to salvage a derailed disarmament pact amid reported signs of activity around the communist country's nuclear test site.

Fatah politicos consider launching third intifada

There are concerns in Israel that Fatah's political faction may wish to reconcile with Hamas and redirect Palestinian anger at Israel. Anger is risng over continued incidents between extremist settlers and Palestinians coupled with lack of progress in the peace talks, and continued construction in the settlements.

Irannian Influence in Iraq

Suspected US missile strike kills 6 in Pakistan

A missile strike by a suspected U.S. drone killed at least six people in a Pakistani tribal region near the Afghan border, two Pakistani intelligence officials said Wednesday. American forces recently ramped up cross-border operations against Taliban and al-Qaida militants in Pakistan's wild border zone, a possible hiding place for Osama bin Laden.

Solar powered cars race in South Africa

Africa's first-ever solar-powered car race is underway in South Africa to raise awareness about alternative energy and promote science and technology, organisers said Wednesday.