If You Like The Banking Crisis...

You'll love McCain's health care plan:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

Yeah, he's gonna regret writing that. This is from a new article McCain published in an actuarial magazine this month.

Today in Florida, Obama was more than happy to exploit the issue:

"There’s only one candidate who’s called himself “fundamentally a deregulator” when deregulation is part of the problem. My opponent actually wrote in the current issue of a health care magazine — the current issue, quote, “Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.” So let me get this straight — he wants to run health care like they’ve been running Wall Street. Well, senator, I know some folks on Main Street who aren’t going to think that’s a good idea. "

"There’s only one candidate whose campaign is being run by seven of Washington’s most powerful lobbyists. And folks, it isn’t me. I don’t take a dime from Washington lobbyists and special interests. They do not run my campaign. They will not run my White House. And they will not drown out the voices of the American people when I’m president of the United States. So when John McCain says that lobbyists 'won’t even get past the front gate' at his White House, my question is — who’s going to stop them? Those seven lobbyists? His campaign manager? The economic adviser, who got a $40 million golden parachute when she was fired as a CEO? Or maybe the 26 advisers and fundraisers who lobbied for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? I mean, give me a break.

The same day my opponent attacked me for being associated with a Fannie Mae guy I’ve talked to for maybe five minutes in my entire life — the same day he did that — the head of the lobbying shop at Fannie Mae turned around and said wait a minute — 'when I see photographs of Senator McCain’s staff, it looks to me like the team of lobbyists who used to report to me.' Folks, you can’t make this stuff up."

$1,000,000,000,000

One trillion dollars.

I don't want to hear any Republicans talk about the beauty of free market capitalism ever again. I don't want to hear another word about how government is the problem, not the solution. I don't want to hear another word about deregulation. I never want to hear another word about how we can't afford universal health care, high speed trains, or renewable energy.

And I sure as hell don't want to hear Republicans talk about how they are the party of small government and fiscal responsibility.

This whole thing reminds me of the Enron fiasco, only much more expensive and painful. Republicans led by Phil Gramm and John McCain deregulate a part of the economy, their corporate buddies rob us in broad daylight, and it is up to government to pay the tab and pick up the pieces. Enron cost California over $10 billion in fraudulent energy costs in 2001, despite no energy shortages at the time. And how the deregulation of the financial industry has cost the country trillions. Trillions.

Since rising real estate values were the main engine of the economy during the Bush years (combined with deficit spending), it's no surprise that the bill would be massive when the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. And if you follow any housing bubble blogs, you know that prices still have a ways to go. Here in California, home prices are still at least 25% too high, even after falling 30% since 2006. So any "bailout" now would only be the first, not the last, and it wouldn't solve the problem.

Here's my opinion. No bailout, period. If the government really has one trillion dollars to spend, why use it to buy shitty mortgage investments from banks that should have known better? Send that one trillion dollars to the states for infrastructure projects, get people working, and let the banks fail until only the strong are left standing. If Bank of America, CitiBank, Wells Fargo, and local credit unions are all we have left, so be it. The stockholders and bondholders who made bad investments should lose everything. Period.

Second, I think it is time for the government to start going after private individuals who made bad housing decisions. Sorry, but you can't just mail the keys into the bank and walk away clean. Millions of young people are paying off student loans right now because they borrowed money to get an education. They don't get to walk away scott free. You bought a house for $500,000 and now it is only worth $300,000. Guess what, you owe $200,000 if you walk away. Perhaps the banks or the government will negotiate a lower walk-away cost for you, maybe $50,000 or $100,000, but you have to pay something. If you thought you could afford a $500,000 house, then you damn sure can afford $100,000 in debt. And your credit should remain shit for at least five years. Enjoy renting, buster, it's what the rest of us were doing while housing prices became ridiculous.

I'd rather destroy the finances of 2,000,000 reckless home buyers and speculators than destroy the government's balance sheet. We need that trillion dollars for other things, we need it for health care and infrastructure. Now perhaps I'm wrong, and we'll go into a Great Depression next month if Congress doesn't act soon, but I'll believe it when I see it. There is no rush on this, there is no reason to act rashly. This is a lot of fucking money.

I hope clearer heads in Congress consult with real economic experts this week and figure out what the best solution should be. Bailing out investment bankers, who have been living the high life for twenty years should not be their top priority. Those people should lose everything.

By the way, it is also very clear now that George W. Bush is the worst president ever. Not even close. His foreign policy has cost us at least $1 trillion dollars, he has added another $3 trillion to the national debt, and now these bailouts are going to cost at least $2 trillion more. Now pretend for a minute that you became president in January of 2001. The government had a $300 billion surplus, and you knew that you could spend $6 trillion in free money over the next eight years. What would you have done with the money?

We know what George W. Bush did. He blew that money up in Iraq, he gambled half of it away in the so-called "casino" of Wall Street, he propped up a fake real estate boom, and he enriched his corporate buddies. The American people paid the bill, we paid the price, and we got shit to show for it. Thanks asshole.

This Ad Is Freakin' Awesome

This is one of the best anti-McCain ads I've seen yet. It lays out the case against him like a prosecutor would. Reminds me of Cartwrightdale's great ad, which compared Bush's falling approval ratings with McCain's increased affinity for Bush's positions.

Watch it:

Obama In New Mexico

He seems to have fun going on the attack. I like it.



If he goes into the debates with this kind of energy, and these kinds of lines, McCain won't have a chance. My worry is that he'll be far too polite, professor-like, nuanced. I guess we'll see.

Obama Ad Hits McCain On His Advisors

This one has to to hurt:



I doubt it will get much play, it's more for the benefit of TV news programs. Most folks don't know Fiorina or Gramm. But it's still a pretty strong attack ad.

Imperfect Analogies

CBS/NY Times Poll:

But the Times/CBS News poll suggested that Ms. Palin’s selection has, to date, helped Mr. McCain only among Republican base voters; there was no evidence of significantly increased support for him among women in general. White women were evenly divided between Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama; before the conventions, Mr. McCain led Mr. Obama among white women, 44 percent to 37 percent.

By contrast, at this point in the 2004 campaign, President Bush was leading Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic challenger, by 56 percent to 37 percent among white women.

Imagine for a minute that you are a male Democrat in an alternate universe where every President of the United States, all 43 of them, have been women. In fact, every major ticket nominee in our history was a woman, and all vice-presidents were women, and most U.S. Senators and U.S. Representatives are women.

Furthermore, imagine that in this world, Republicans want to appoint Supreme Court judges who will badly curtail your rights. There is no biological analogy to forced pregnancy, but let's assume that a major goal of the right wing is to overturn a Supreme Court ruling that legalized all forms of birth control, and gave those rights specifically to men. In other words, if the Republicans have their way, they will pack the court with promoters of the "Birth Promotion Act," which prevents men from buying condoms and gives wives the say-so on whether her husband can have a vasectomy. While plenty of men are either indifferent or supportive of the Birth Promotion Act, the majority of men would prefer to choose when they will have unprotected and possible baby-producing sex. As a result, most men (60%) are Democrats, since the Democrats support the men's right to choose. Most women (60%) are Republicans.

In the primary season, the first truly viable male candidate (let's call him Joe Biden) ran a strong campaign against Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. He lost, men were crushed, and big supporters of Biden were further upset when Hillary chose Sen. Diane Feinstein as her running mate instead of Biden. Clinton and Feinstein are strong supporters of a man's right to choose contraception, but it would have been nice to finally see a man in power. That said, most men continue to support Hillary and the Democrats.

Meanwhile, the Republican candidate is a horrible anti-male female senator named Jane McCain. She is 72 years old, she dumped her first husband after he got into a car accident and married a rich younger guy, and she has a zero percent rating from Planned Parenthood and the various contraception groups. Jane has a history of being anti-male, fighting to prevent men from becoming combat pilots, making various cruel jokes at the expense of men, and she doesn't even support equal pay in a country where men earn 77 cents on the dollar compared to women.

Clinton and Feinstein are barely ahead in the national vote, and the trends favor them since we've had eight disastrous years of Republican rule. Jane McCain knows this, and she also knows that plenty of Democratic men are upset that Biden wasn't picked as VP. So what does she do? Recklessly, and after meeting him just once, she picks Bobby Jindall to be the VP candidate. He quickly becomes a media sensation, a game-changed, since nobody has heard of him before this.

Jindall is very young (37), he is a first term governor with "executive" experience, and he is reasonably well-spoken. A real up-and-comer in the Republican party. He energizes the Christian base with his hard core evangelical beliefs, in particular his stark opposition to birth control of any kind. He believes that when a man has sex, he has given up his right to determine whether that sex will produce offspring -- it is the woman's choice. Jindall himself has seven kids in just 10 years of marriage, affirming that he lives by this credo. He is the first male to be on the Republican party ticket, and the first male on any major party ticket since 1984.

So what do men do? Because Jindall happens to have a penis, do they blindly support him? Do they ignore that Jindall is highly unqualified for the presidency, that he opposes equal pay for men, that he is an opponent of choice, that his religious views are a bit extreme? In other words, do you throw away everything you liked about Joe Biden in order to support another man with opposite policy positions and none of the experience?

The answer, for most Democratic-leaning men, would be HELL NO. Just because he is a man doesn't mean we have to like him, and it sure doesn't mean we have to vote for him. In fact, it would be an insult to men for Jane McCain to assume this snotty unqualified extremist would satisfy our desire to see a man break the glass ceiling. Would we like to see a man in power someday? Sure. But not this man, no way, no how. Jindall is an empty suit next to Biden, as an SNL skit the next week makes clear.

And in fact, counter to Jane McCain's devious plan to pull Biden voters away from Clinton, the polling quickly shows that Jindall is actually less popular among men than he is among women. And as men get to know more about his views and lack of knowledge, the less they like him. Jindall has almost no shot in the debate against Feinstein, he has abuse of power scandals brewing in his home state, and he quickly develops a reputation for lying about his accomplishments. The possibility that Jane McCain will win the election starts to look dimmer by the day.

Jane McCain starts to look like a real idiot, especially when the economy goes into crisis and foreign affairs become paramount in the weeks before the election. Instead of selecting a running mate who could wisely discuss these matters, she picked someone who can't even do a press conference for fear of making a huge gaffe. Jindall's electrifying RNC speech fades from voters' minds, and instead they see a bumbling candidate who is clearly out of his element. It reflects badly on McCain's judgment, it continues to piss off men who deplore the tokenism of the pick and it even starts to upset serious conservatives who think of Jindall as a neophyte.

And as McCain's poll numbers start to fade, as Jindall's liabilities start to mount, the question soon becomes: will McCain replace Jindall on the ticket? Or will she ride him to certain doom in the election?

We live in interesting times, my friends.

State Of The Race

I have to say, things are not going well for McCain right now. He's been ripped apart by many of his former friends in the media, none of whom can stomach the ridiculous Palin pick or the lies that have infested his dishonorable campaign. Read Richard Cohen for a prime example. Cohen had a longstanding love affair with McCain as recently as a few weeks ago, and now he's completely jumped off the bus.

After the (s)election and re-election of George W. Bush, it was easy to get cynical about politics. Republicans have demonstrated the ability to nominate morons who run campaigns based on lies and smears, yet still come out victorious in the end. It makes Democrats feel hopeless, it breeds cynicism and even panic, it leads you to believe (as the media so often does) that EVERYTHING is GOOD for Republicans, and EVERYTHING is BAD for Democrats.

Sarah Palin is an unqualified idiot? That's good for McCain, because most Americans hate smarty-pants types and will connect with her.

John McCain doesn't have any new ideas? That's good for McCain, because it allows him to run a character-based campaign that plays to his mavericky strengths.

John McCain's ads are full of lies? That's bad for Obama, because he's on the defensive.

Obama is able to attract huge crowds whereever he goes? That's bad for Obama, because it allows McCain to make fun of his popularity.

You see the pattern here. And yes, it can be dispiriting when McCain rose in the polls after a negative, substance-free convention where the highlight was a snotty former sportscaster reading a speech she didn't write herself. WTF is wrong with America to be attracted to THAT?

But you know what, reality still exists. You can only pretend up is down for so long, and we've all been through this game before. McCain is re-running the Bush campaigns of 2000 and 2004, and we all know what the result of those elections has been. After this week on Wall Street, it is pretty clear that Bush has a firm grip on the title of Worst President Ever. McCain may try to run and hide from Bush, but they are both Republicans and they share the same policies and sooner or later (in this case sooner) it will dawn on the American people that electing McCain will not make anything better.

For a short period, Sarah Palin gave McCain a shot of adrenalin. Even I was surprised that he went up in the polls after her speech. But she was so fresh, so new, so different from McCain that for about two weeks people forgot that McCain was a hard core Bush Republican. Only now, as Wall Street crashes and McCain's lies come back to bite him and Palin bombs in her first TV interview does reality reassert itself.

The polls are moving in Obama's favor, big time. And it is simply hard to see McCain taking back the momentum. Sarah Palin is going to be a net negative from here on out, barring the highly unlikely possibility that she wipes the floor with Joe Biden in the upcoming debate. Troopergate is getting ugly, and it's hard to call yourself a reformer when you shortcircuit an investigation into your own ethics violations. If she shuts the investigation down or delays it past the election, it will continue to be an albatross. The only way to clear the air is to exonerate herself, but apparently she doesn't think she can do that. In other words, guilty as charged. Bush and Cheney can get away with obstruction because they are term-limited at this point, they don't care if their approval ratings are in the toilet. But Palin is actually running for office! It's a pretty big deal.

McCain is completely lost at this point. He doesn't know how to respond to the Wall Street crisis, he has recently demonstrated ignorance on who the prime minister of Spain is, and he has become such a believer in his fantasy world of smears that it is hard to see him pull it together for the debate next week.

Reality still matters. I'm positive that McCain and his allies will mount further distractions, further smears in October. We'll probably see ads calling Obama a terrorist, or showing more footage of Rev. Wright, or more ads accusing him of infanticide, but I really don't see it working this time around. The charges are so outrageous, so insane, that normal folks just stop believing them at some point. Think of it as the Blair Witch Project. Folks thought it was real when it was merely a viral video being passed around through back channels. But once it went mainstream it became a joke. The same goes for these Obama smears. Unless the Republicans have something new, these upcoming attacks will not make a huge dent.

The debates, meanwhile, particularly if Obama and Biden do their homework, WILL make a dent. Should be fun to see what happens next...

Lots Of Fun Video Footage Today

Obama smacks down McCain for claiming that he will take on the "old boys' network". Hilarious:



Here is Chris Matthews on Hardball, tearing apart Rep. Eric Kantor of Virginia by asking him to own Bush's miserable record:



Here is a new 2-minute ad where Obama discusses the economy. It's a visually boring ad for ADD types like me, but I still like it. He seems calm, reassuring, presidential, knowledgable. And of course, he has a plan:



An Obama ad that hits McCain on shipping jobs overseas:



An Obama ad on Social Security and McCain's plan to risk it in the stock market:

Obama Ad Hits McCain On Equal Pay For Women

McCain: I Created WiFi

McCain:

Under my guiding hand, Congress developed a wireless spectrum policy that spurred the rapid rise of mobile phones and Wi-Fi technology that enables Americans to surf the web while sitting at a coffee shop, airport lounge, or public park.

I seem to remember Al Gore getting in trouble for making supposed claims about the internet. I'm sure the media will mock McCain in the same fashion. What do you think?

But seriously, this is laughable. John McCain, who doesn't even know how to use a computer, guided us into the age of WiFi? Give me a break.

Palin Forced Wasilla To Buy Her A $24,000 SUV

Buried within last weekend's explosive NY Times story on Sarah Palin was a much-overlooked tidbit:

Ms. Palin ordered city employees not to talk to the press. And she used city money to buy a white Suburban for the mayor’s use — employees sarcastically called it the mayor-mobile.

The MSRP for a 1997 Chevy Suburban was about $24,000. For a town with only 6,000 residents, that's a LOT of money. It comes out to $4/person, which is the equivalent of Rudy Giuliani purchasing a $24,000,000 private jet while mayor of NYC. And that's not including insurance, registration, maintenance and gas money.

I've heard of big city mayors driving city-owned vehicles (though some, like Buffalo NY, are cutting back), but in a very small town like Wasilla this is a ridiculous abuse of taxpayer money.

We are starting to see a pattern here. We know that as governor, Sarah Palin has exploited an Alaska state loophole to bilk taxpayers $16,951 in "per diem" for nights she spent at home. A former governor of Alaska has called this a "scam".

We also know that she has charged taxpayers $43,490 for travel expenses for her husband and daughters, mostly because she refuses to live at the taxpayer-provided mansion in Juneau (which, of course, Alaskan taxpayers are still paying for).

And thanks to Al Giordano and Bill Conroy, we know that she has forced Alaskan taxpayers to upgrade her governor's mansion with a tanning bed.



On earmarks, she has become a symbol of greed and excess. As mayor of Wasilla, she hired an Abramoff-linked lobbyist to secure $27 million in taxpayer funds for her town. Yet despite this influx of cash, she left Wasilla with a $20 million debt. Where did the money go? Well, we know much of it went to a scandal-plagued ice-skating rink. And yes, some of it went to Palin's white Chevy Suburban, the "mayor-mobile".

As governor, Gov. Palin has requested $451 million in earmarks over two years, far more per capita than any other state. No wonder she has 80% popularity -- she sends yearly checks of $3200 to each and every Alaska resident.

Yet despite the generous influx of money from the lower 48, she's catered to an extremist Alaska Independence Party that wants to secede from the union. Her husband Todd was a member of the party until 2002, when she had to clean up her image to run for statewide office.



Finally, Gov. Palin has showered her friends and cronies with high paying jobs. She's hired at least five high school classmates with minimal managerial experience to run some of Alaska's top agencies.

It's become clear that Sarah Palin has complete disregard for U.S. taxpayers. She is a corrupt and unqualified Bush-McCain Republican, and has no business running on themes of "change" or "reform".

Dumb Question

Saw this dumb advertisement on one of the blogs I frequent:


Considering that John McCain did cheat on his first wife, I think we already know the answer.

Also, what's up with the pictures of Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain looking like characters in a horror movie? If the question is about the men cheating, shouldn't they be the ones who look shady and suspicious?

Biden Rips McCain On Economy

This is what he was hired for:



His whole speech today is worth reading, if you want to see some tough attacks on McCain. It is clear to me that the Obama campaign understands McCain's weaknesses just as much as any liberal blogger, and they are attacking McCain as tough as anyone when they are on the stump.

The media, unfortunately, doesn't cover the Obama/Biden attacks nearly as much as they cover the lies and smears of McCain/Palin. But perhaps the landscape is shifting, now that Obama and Biden are determined to put McCain on the defensive.

With more stump speeches like this, and more ads like the one we saw this morning, Obama has a real chance to knock McCain back on his heels and take control of the campaign again.

NY Times Exposes Palin

This article is a must-read. The NY Times investigated Palin's record in Alaska and learned that she is exactly what we thought she was: a Cheney-esque corrupt politician who crushes dissent and rewards loyalists. And it seems she always puts special interests over the public interest.

Some excerpts (but the whole article is great):

On appointing unqualified hacks to prime positions:

Gov. Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.

So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.

Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.

On stifling dissent and free speech:

And four months ago, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor’s career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to hear an assistant to the governor on the line, she said.

“You should be ashamed!” Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. “Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!”

Abusing power to destroy careers and reward supporters:

In 1997, Ms. Palin fired the longtime city attorney, Richard Deuser, after he issued the stop-work order on a home being built by Don Showers, another of her campaign supporters.

Stealing city funds for personal use:

Ms. Palin ordered city employees not to talk to the press. And she used city money to buy a white Suburban for the mayor’s use — employees sarcastically called it the mayor-mobile.

Banning books:

Witnesses and contemporary news accounts say Ms. Palin asked the librarian about removing books from the shelves. The McCain-Palin presidential campaign says Ms. Palin never advocated censorship.

But in 1995, Ms. Palin, then a city councilwoman, told colleagues that she had noticed the book “Daddy’s Roommate” on the shelves and that it did not belong there, according to Ms. Chase and Mr. Stein. Ms. Chase read the book, which helps children understand homosexuality, and said it was inoffensive; she suggested that Ms. Palin read it.

“Sarah said she didn’t need to read that stuff,” Ms. Chase said. “It was disturbing that someone would be willing to remove a book from the library and she didn’t even read it.”

“I’m still proud of Sarah,” she added, “but she scares the bejeebers out of me.”

Karl Rove-type hardball to get ahead:

Ms. Palin discovered that the state Republican leader, Randy Ruedrich, a commission member, was conducting party business on state time and favoring regulated companies. When Mr. Murkowski failed to act on her complaints, she quit and went public.

The Republican establishment shunned her. But her break with the gentlemen’s club of oil producers and political power catapulted her into the public eye.

“She was honest and forthright,” said Jay Kerttula, a former Democratic state senator from Palmer.

Ms. Palin entered the 2006 primary for governor as a formidable candidate.

In the middle of the primary, a conservative columnist in the state, Paul Jenkins, unearthed e-mail messages showing that Ms. Palin had conducted campaign business from the mayor’s office. Ms. Palin handled the crisis with a street fighter’s guile.

“I told her it looks like she did the same thing that Randy Ruedrich did,” Mr. Jenkins recalled. “And she said, ‘Yeah, what I did was wrong.’ ”

Mr. Jenkins hung up and decided to forgo writing about it. His phone rang soon after.

Mr. Jenkins said a reporter from Fairbanks, reading from a Palin news release, demanded to know why he was “smearing” her. “Now I look at her and think: ‘Man, you’re slick,’ ” he said.

Out of touch, lazy:

Many lawmakers contend that Ms. Palin is overly reliant on a small inner circle that leaves her isolated. Democrats and Republicans alike describe her as often missing in action. Since taking office in 2007, Ms. Palin has spent 312 nights at her Wasilla home, some 600 miles to the north of the governor’s mansion in Juneau, records show.

During the last legislative session, some lawmakers became so frustrated with her absences that they took to wearing “Where’s Sarah?” pins.

In case you have any doubt, it is clear that Sarah Palin mixes the worst aspects of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. It would simply be a nightmare for America, at this point in time, to have her anywhere near the presidency.

If He Can't Handle "The View"...

...how will he handle the upcoming debates?



The upside to running a campaign based on lies and smears is that you can say anything, make up whatever you want and create a narrative from it.

Obama has a good record on education and crime? Okay, we'll just pretend that he wants to teach sex to kindergarteners.

Obama wants to cut taxes for the middle class? We'll just flat-out lie and say that he'll raise taxes on everyone.

Obama has been proven right on foreign policy? We'll say he is an anti-American traitor who doesn't know anything.

But while this is all well and good when running TV ads, it's a whole other thing when you sit down for interviews and debates. The ladies of "The View" straight-up told McCain that his ads were lies, and made him own it. This is why McCain has mostly stopped doing TV interviews and press conferences, because there is no way to defend Palin's record or his slime ads. He just can't.

And I am positive that this will become a big problem for McCain in the upcoming debates. It's one thing to lie in a TV ad or in a stump speech before an adoring crowd. It is another thing to lie when your opponent is across the stage from you. And it is particularly difficult when that opponent is as quick-witted and brilliant as, say, Barack Obama or Joe Biden.

John McCain is too deep in the muck to deny his lies. He can't suddenly turn honest. What's he gonna do, admit that Palin isn't qualified to be VP? That Obama does want to cut taxes for the middle class? That Obama was right about the Iraq war?

So forget what the polls are saying right now. The bloom is coming off the McCain/Palin rose, and they will be exposed as lying frauds by the time this is all said and done.

McCain: Fundamentals Of Our Economy Are Strong

Today is one of the worst days ever for Wall Street, as two legendary banking firms Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers collapse. Yet to McCain, it's all good and we just need to shake it off and get over it. Remember, McCain's top economic advisor has said that we are in a "mental recession" and that we have just become a "nation of whiners". I guess those whiners include Wall Street, where stocks have tanked and uncertainty reigns supreme.

McCain's buddy Phil Gramm is perhaps one of the most culpable people in this whole fiasco. He pushed the deregulation of the energy markets, which led to the Enron scandal and collapse. He also deregulated the financial industry, which led to the real estate bubble and the current calamity. Yet Phil Gramm is considered McCain's top choice for Treasury Secretary.

Oh, and let's not forget that three years ago, George W. Bush and John McCain wanted to privatize Social Security, so that your retirement funds would be tied to the same stock market that is today in shambles. Maybe the free market isn't the answer to everything, huh?

Elections have consequences, folks.

Obama Ad Slams McCain For Lying

A very tough ad that slams McCain for his dishonest and dishonorable campaign:



This should be the beginning of a narrative against McCain. That he is a liar, that he is unfit for the presidency, that he is mean and reckless, that his VP candidate is a know-nothing right wing extremist.

I have a sense that the Obama campaign is well aware of the current landscape and where McCain's weak points are. Plenty of folks (including myself) have been calling for them to get tougher, and they are. The more Obama feels pressure, the more vicious he will get.

In other words, Obama is happy to run a positive, issues oriented campaign if he can get away with it. But if McCain continues to lead in some polls, and as the days tick away towards election day, Obama will not hesitate to get tough. We saw it in his convention speech, which ripped McCain a new asshole. I'm sure we'll see it in the debates. And you better believe that we'll see it in the ads in October.

There are plenty of soft spots for both McCain and Palin -- Troopergate, rape kits, Roe v. Wade, etc. But the way campaigns work, people only remember what they saw in the last week or two. So it's my sense that while Obama is happy to develop strong narratives right now (McCain = Bush, McCain is out of touch, McCain is a liar), he will try to save the toughest jabs for the final weeks of the campaign.