nation and world

How desperate is the McCain campaign getting? They're getting silly with attacks on Obama because of tenuous ties to a former 1960s radical once accused of being involved in anti-Vietnam bomb attacks.

Palin made the chargers today.

(CNN) -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on Saturday slammed Sen. Barack Obama's political relationship with a former anti-war radical, accusing him of associating "with terrorists who targeted their own country."

Palin's attack delivered on the McCain campaign's announcement that it would step up attacks on the Democratic presidential candidate with just a month left before the November general election.

"This is not a man who sees America as you and I do: as the greatest force for good in the world," Palin said at a fundraising event in Colorado, according to a statement released by the McCain-Palin campaign. "This is someone who sees American as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country."

The Washington Post fact checked these chargers when Hillary Clinton raised them during the primary (so not only is McCain/Palin sliming, they're sliming with old news).

The only hard facts that have come out so far are the $200 contribution by Ayers to the Obama re-election fund, and their joint membership of the eight-person Woods Fund Board. Ayers did not respond to e-mails and telephone calls requesting clarification of the relationship. Obama spokesman Bill Burton noted in a statement that Ayers was a professor of education at the University of Illinois and a former aide to Mayor Richard M. Daley, and continued:

Senator Obama strongly condemns the violent actions of the Weathermen group, as he does all acts of violence. But he was an eight-year-old child when Ayers and the Weathermen were active, and any attempt to connect Obama with events of almost forty years ago is ridiculous.

...

But the Obama-Ayers link is a tenuous one. As Newsday pointed out,

Obama's ties to Ayers are no more meaningful than McCain's ties to Ho Chi Minh. They are the kind of ties that two people who share some overlap in political belief and live in the same neighborhood, caring about the same local issues, are likely to form. The only thing you can fault Obama for is planting the early stages of is political career in Chicago.

The politics of attack and destruction are bad for America. Clearly, Palin was hired to be the attack dog. That decision does not reflect well on McCain.

Here's a web site that gives an easy to follow guide to the financial crisis and the bailout proposals.

Financial assets as works of art, or how accounting rules put Wall Street in a bind and give Paulson's plan a chance to make a lot of money for taxpayers.

Well worth the time to read.

Congress is set today to vote on a plan to commit $700 billion of U.S. taxpayer money on a Wall Street bailout plan that editorialists (such as the D&C), politicians and pundits across the country cry as one, "painful, but necessary."

But is it?

Some economist and other observers disagree.

From the McClatchy News Service:

"It's more hype than real risk," said James K. Galbraith, a University of Texas economist and son of the late economic historian John Kenneth Galbraith. "A nasty recession is possible, but the bailout will not cure that. So it's mainly relevant to the financial industry."

This Washington Post story questions not so much the necessity of the bailout, but the wisdom of the rush to get it passed.

David Sirota offers up five reasons why the bailout is insane, and concludes, "If this bill passes, it will be a profound referendum on the dominance of money over democracy in America."

Caroline Baum offers up a variety of view points, including:

Paulson has said repeatedly that the "root cause'' of the problem is "the housing correction, which has resulted in illiquid mortgage-related assets that are choking off the flow of credit."

"The root cause of the problem is that we don't have any homebuyers," Edward Leamer, an economist at the University of California, Los Angeles, told the Associated Press.

The "root cause of this crisis" is "the lack of capital in the banking system," said Paul Ashworth of London's Capital Economics. "The only way the Treasury's plan would have any meaningful impact on banks' capital ratio is if it vastly overpaid for the securities it is buying."

...

If you don't diagnose the problem correctly, the odds are you won't prescribe the right medicine. The troubled assets are the result, not the cause, of loose lending practices, a housing bubble that burst, a glut of unsold homes and home prices that are still too high relative to incomes and rental costs, according to many economists.

...

"If you need money, sell assets,'' Rosner said. "Excess inventory is liquidated at 99-Cent Stores every day, and it doesn't require the government to get involved.''

The Wall Street Journal, in an article that speculates that the bailout further erodes Bush's so-called "conservative legacy," notes:

Meanwhile, conservative legal scholars question whether the rescue plan is constitutional, and predict court battles in the years to come, similar to those set off by President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal programs.

Grover Norquist, a leading conservative organizer and president of Americans for Tax Reform, says the financial crisis stems from Mr. Bush's abandonment of conservative principles. He cites the president's failure to undo policies of the past that led banks to make unwise loans, as well as expanding the roles of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Dean Baker say there is no way a no-bailout leads to another Great Depression.

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

Pulitzer Prize winner and Rochester-area resident David Cay Johnston points to an IMF study that suggests bank bailouts rarely work as intended and transfer wealth from taxpayers to bankers.

Anybody of any ambition has probably found themselves in an awkward moment, dealing with something he or she isn't simply prepared to handle.

Conservative writer Rod Dreher reminds us what that is like, and why we might have sympathy for Sarah Palin, we're talking about somebody who would be Vice President of the United States.

I remember the morning I woke up in my college dorm room and went in to take my final exam in my Formal Logic class. I knew I was unready. Massively unready. And now I was going to be put to the ultimate test. I sat down in Dr. Sarkar's class and resolved to wing it. Of course I failed the exam and failed the class, because I had no idea what I was talking about. I wasn't a bad kid, or even a stupid kid. I was just badly unprepared, and in way over my head. Seeing the Palin interview on CBS, I thought of myself in Dr. Sarkar's exam. But see, I was a college undergraduate who had the chance to take the class again, which I did, and passed (barely). I wasn't running for vice president of the United States.

I came to this quote through Ta-Nehisi Coates, who writes:

In election season, there is a price for being turned into a symbol. When actual journalists, with a rep to protect, show up, they are going to do their job. Which brings me to the sexism of John McCain. He knew full well what Sarah Palin was going to face if he nominated her. He knew that reporters would go through her past, that they'd quizz her on the present, that she would need to be ready, and he shunted concern aside, and tossed her to the wolves. Think on that for a mement. For one last run at the White House, he risked a future star of the party he claims to call home. How do you do that? I don't meant to rob Palin of agency, certainly she is also a victim of her own calculations and ambitions. But where I am from the elders protect you, and pull you back when you've gone too far, when your head has gotten too big.

McCain has a temper. It's one of the most distinguishing marks of his career. The American people haven't really seen it yet, not on a big stage. McCain is most vulnerable when attacked for what he has some glimmer of recognition is his own personal failings. If Obama really wanted to show America the real McCain, in the next debate, he would repeatedly question McCain's judgment in selected Sarah Palin as the veep nominee.  McCain would come unhinged. He blew it. Surely, he's losing sleep over it.

UPDATE: And this from Fareed Zakaria:

Can we now admit the obvious? Sarah Palin is utterly unqualified to be vice president. She is a feisty, charismatic politician who has done some good things in Alaska. But she has never spent a day thinking about any important national or international issue, and this is a hell of a time to start. The next administration is going to face a set of challenges unlike any in recent memory. There is an ongoing military operation in Iraq that still costs $10 billion a month, a war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan that is not going well and is not easily fixed. Iran, Russia and Venezuela present tough strategic challenges.

A couple of worthwhile posts on John McCain.

First, E.J. Dionne on McCain's dishonest campaign messages.

McCain once campaigned on the idea that the war on terrorism is the “transcendent” issue of our time. Now, he’s stooping to cheap advertising that would be condemned as trivial and misleading in a state legislative race. Boy, do I miss the old John McCain and wonder what became of him. And I wonder if the media will really take on this onslaught of half-truths and outright deception.

So much for the "straight talk express."

And James Fallows points out that while McCain feels free to lecture Obama on tactics vs. strategy, he has very little grasp of the concepts himself.  And he's shown himself, time and again, and quite recently, at being a shot-from-the-hip tactician rather than a strategic leader.

Some examples are so familiar as to need no explanation: McCain choosing the ten-day tactical "bounce" from the surprise choice of Sarah Palin, in exchange for the enormous strategic risk in choosing an un-vetted and now obviously unqualified running mate. Or McCain rolling the dice with his threat to boycott the debate -- and then, once on stage, appearing to be only mildly interested in the financial-bailout deal that 72 hours earlier was the stated reason for overturning all agreements about the debates .

McCain is increasingly hard to stomach.

Times may be tough, but the makers and sellers of bycles say business has never been better, according to Wired Magazine, which is covering the industry's annual trade show in Las Vegas.

"You can feel the collective buzz," a smiling Tim Blumenthal, executive director of the bicycle advocacy group Bikes Belong, says from the middle of the bustling show floor.  "It's a really, really heady time for us. This show feels very optimistic and that bucks the general economic trends. There doesn't seem to be many businesses that are thriving, but the bike business is doing very well."

Anybody in Batavia biking to work now?

This is an interesting video that walks you through the "root causes" of the financial crisis.  I put "root causes" in quotes, because it doesn't really get to the tap root of the problem, which is centralized banking and too much government manipulation of markets (well, it covers that, but doesn't question the whole premise of government involvement in markets to begin with).

Also, it doesn't convince me to vote for McCain, who is scary power hungry, and Palin, who is scary stupid.  But it casts further doubt on Obama's place in all of this.

World Economy what do you think will happen?

Please post here to let me and  other know what you think will happen in say the next 5 years or so with the World Economy the way it is.

Tom

There are portions of Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric are just painful to watch. There is no way she is ready to be VP, let alone president.