Debate thoughts.

It's started.

Obama isn't going for the kill!

McCain, so far, is doing all the work of battering himself!

Obama, so far, will not tag McCain for his actual votes!

Dear Lord! What is wrong with this man!

He's missing chances to tag McCain with his own record time after time.

The opening five minutes were Obama's best chance to gut him.

Now it's the damn earmarks "issue."

OK, I see the problem. Obama just doesn't realize yet that he's not debating in the Senate.

Finally! One tag! He tagged McCain with his voting record one time on . . . what was that. Darn! It's gone, and will have to wait for the replay's.

At least McCain is sounding like a broken record of Hoover.

Ah, well, now McCain is just lying and rambling!

He mentioned Palin! That's wonderful.

Obama doesn't tag McCain with the fact that Iraq's Prime Minister and Bush agreed on a Timetable for us to leave.

McCain's doing a long warm and fuzzy, "Grampa's was in the War you know, political commercial. That's his stock answer.

Once it got going, there were some good shots from Obama and he scored some points. He was also very "Presidential" while McCain looked like a surly grump looking to start fights everywhere.

It's over!

No knock outs. Thus, McCain loses.

Now the media will gently take McCain apart.

Chris Matthews is an idiot! He focus's only on the atmospherics. So does Andrea (Greenspan) Mitchell.

Pat Buchanan is just totally useless. McCain could have expired on the stage and Buchanan would say "McCain decisively won over the Reagan Democrats" by the impact and noise of his fall-especially in Pennsylvania."

Everybody is saying that McCain won! This is totally on the atmospherics! The barroom brawl aspects.

(You can guess by now which cable channel I'm watching.)

They credit McCain's repetition, lying, rudeness and rambling as effective!

Even Harold Ford Jr. is saying McCain won! Arrgh!

Now, let's see if the media is completely wrong and will cover themselves.

Me? It's clear to me. I think Obama wins on the trickle down and after a while, it will be remembered as a big win for Obama.

Now the media is completely changing it's tune! Of course Obama won.

Chris Matthews has totally changed his "mind" within a couple of minutes.

Now that the first polls are in, he's seemingly "always" said Obama won. Mirabile dictu, now that's what they all seem to be saying they said. Except Buchanan, but he was for Stephen Douglas in those debates.

(And, then again, there's always the rematch.)

And, tomorrow, the heavy polls continue. . .but for right before bed . . . it's Olbermann to the rescue!

Debate Night: John McCain decides he can come out and play with the big kids.

Howdy Folks:

Well, well, John McCain single handedly sunk the recovery plan that the Democrats had wrested from Bush and his cronies.

Of course, it's utterly awful that we have to do this at all. However, Progressives warned about the consequences of lax regulation before regulations became lax. Sorry, that's the "I told you so."

Under the Democratic plan, at least, we-the taxpayers-would actually own the things we had to buy from the idiots, crooks and weasels who played in the deregulated cesspool free market fundamentalist GOP policies fostered.

But now, the wonderful GOP congressfolks have come up with the idea that instead of buying them-with the possibility of selling them later at a profit-we, the same taxpayers, should insure them, so that if they sell for more, we don't get more and if they sell for less we lose and if they don't sell at all we lose! Brilliant, no?

Not only that, but the very same idiots, crooks and weasles would be the very same ones we'd have to deal with again! Thus they'd have made billions on the upside and would be able to make billions more on the downside!

Included with the GOP "plan" were even more tax breaks for Corporate America and even more deregulation. Deregulation!

You gotta love these people.

I don't think the American people are going to fall for it this time. They know that insuring the risk of bad assets is what got us into this and that actually owning the assetts is better as housing and other solid assetts eventually will always rise in value.

Republicans have gotten used to fooling Americans with gimmics and false issues like Sarah Palin and Gay marriage.

This should not be called a "bailout" but a "buyout" of these things. Provisions should be put in so that no fat cats benefit from this to the greatest degree possible.

Also, an steel clad commitment to a return to a real strong regulatory system with reinactment of some of the New Deal regulations that kept the system safe for sixty years must be put into the heart of any deal.

However, when even George F. Will says John McCain isn't fit to be President, you know that the Fat Lady is warming up in the wings.

Then again, I'm disappointed in Obama's performance so far. He needs to go for the kill.

We are just minutes before the first debate, and there's, let's be real, there's just so much there to kill with.

Never having run for chess club council, I alone can come up with several fatal hammering series of questions on any number of topics. Delivered with gusto, Obama should be able to cook him and serve him up.

I saw the Witch Doctor, he told me what to do!

Sarah Palin getting blessed by Witch Hunting "Pastor" to rule over us and overturn separation of church and state, crush other religions and the rest of the whack job agenda.

Emergency? White House admits to planning bailout for MONTHS. (MONTHS!!!!)

by lgcap
Tue Sep 23, 2008 at 09:54:15 AM PDT

"The administration admits they are railroading congress, again. . . "

. . ."[White House Deputy Press Secretary Tony] Fratto said it would be "unthinkable" for Congress not to pass legislation this week, asserting the result would be a "very, very serious situation" for the U.S. economy.

. . . Fratto insisted that the plan was not slapped together and had been drawn up as a contingency over previous months and weeks by administration officials. He acknowledged lawmakers were getting only days to peruse it, but he said this should be enough."

They knew for MONTHS!

Paulson Bailout Plan a Historic Swindle

By William Greider

September 19, 2008

"If Wall Street gets away with this, it will represent an historic swindle of the American public--all sugar for the villains, lasting pain and damage for the victims."

Link to full article:

The Middle Class Must Not Be Forced to Bail Out Wall Street Greed

By Senator Bernie Sanders:

"For years, as a member of the House Banking Committee and now as a member of the Senate Budget Committee, I have heard the Bush administration tell us how "robust" our economy was and how strong the "fundamentals" were. That was until a few days ago. Now, we are being told that if Congress does not act immediately and approve the $700 billion Wall Street bailout proposal these "free marketers" have just written up, there will be an unprecedented economic meltdown in the United States and an unraveling of the global economy."

More here:

Socialism for the guys who caused the problem.

Howdy Folks,

First, thank you for all your patience while my family mourned the death of our Mother. My intermittent visits to this blog will now re-commence.
--------------------

Here's some random clips as we see the GOP's vaunted philosophy of "hands off" when it comes to poor people, drowning cities and even war's they start, evaporate-as usual-as they rush in to bail out rich people.

(I'm not so good at this blogging yet so if I didn't credit you correctly, let me know and I'll fix or remove it. If the pictures are yours and you want them down or credit, let me know about that too.)

---------

Opportunities

Yglesias meekly suggests that maybe in the course of spending hundreds of billions of dollars to clean up after the Masters of the Universe, we could spend a nickel or two to help poor people.

I'm not optimistic. I know how Democrats react when GOP Daddies in nice suits sit them down and explain What Needs To Be Done. See FISA bullshit, Iraq war, etc...

------

Feldstein

I hadn't realized Martin Feldstein was on the AIG Board of Directors. It seems he no longer teaches the Harvard intro economics course, which is a shame because it would be an excellent platform to explain his new love of socialism.

----------
"Former Palin colleague says VP candidate is only interested in helping herself, cronies" The Salt Lake Tribune. (That's in deep RED Utah.)

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_10503452

------------------
From Bartcop

McCain Advisor Helped cause Crash
Gramm de-regulated what they now say needs regulating

Link

Excerpt:
As the news broke of the Lehman Brothers meltdown and the rest of the latest financial crisis,
John McCain, speaking at a campaign rally in Florida on Monday, angrily declared, "We will never
put America in this position again. We will clean up Wall Street. This is a failure."
And in a statement, McCain called for greater "transparency and accountability" on Wall Street.

If McCain wants to hold someone accountable for the failure in transparency and accountability
that led to the current calamity, he should turn to his good friend and adviser, Phil Gramm.

As Mother Jones reported in June, eight years ago, Gramm, then a Republican senator chairing
the Senate banking committee, slipped a 262-page bill into a gargantuan, must-pass spending measure.

Gramm's legislation, written with the help of financial industry lobbyists, essentially removed
newfangled financial products called swaps from any regulation.

----------------

Ain't Socialism for the rich and corporations grand? Just ask Mussolini!

Palin (Michael) for President!

How can you resist something like this?