The House approves the Senate bailout bill, 263-171. Rehberg voted against the bill. I have to say, I'm proud that the majority of our Congressional delegation voted against this thing. And I'm partly relieved it passed, too. Weird mix of emotions, eh?
Baucus explains his support for the Senate bailout bill. Again, the effects of the banking crisis was beginning to be felt in our community. Hopefully this bill will mitigate the effects...
Rehberg's Democratic opponent -- John Driscoll -- apparently will now vote for Rehberg -- and urges everybody else to do so. Yeah, because Rehberg's stances against alternative energy, a fair tax code, regulation of business, and his opposition to universal health care are all great ideas, too. And, remember, Rehberg belongs to the cabal of free-market righties that got us into this mess in the first place. Still, right now I'm thinking I might just vote for him, because Driscoll is a joke. He didn't want to win the primary, he didn't want to campaign once he was nominated, and now he doesn't want our votes. Fine. Done.
Driscoll wasn't the only one to praise Rehberg for his vote on the bailout bill -- so did Dennis McDonald, the chair of the state Democratic party. That's not to say I don't agree that Rehberg voted the right way; I'm happy he did so. But let's not kid ourselves: he was talking opposing the bill for futher deregulation and corporate tax cuts.
Dan Savage noted that Palin seemed to endorse Barack Obama's stance on civil rights for gay couples. My guess is that she was forced into a corner and tried to be as vague as possible. Expect a "clarification" for the fundy crowd away from the klieg lights.
George Packer drills the Republican party and its shill, William Kristol in a withering essay on the bailout bill: "But the bill sank under the phony populism and long-discarded principles of legislators who have spent their entire careers leaving taxpayers and workers exposed to the ruthlessness of the deregulated market, and who would now rather see the market drag the country under than display the political courage to clean up their mess."
On the presidential candidates' health-care plans: "An analysis of the two starkly different approaches to reforming the U.S. health care system offered by John McCain and Barack Obama suggests Obama's plan has the best chance of making health care more affordable, accessible, efficient and higher in quality.
"The report, released on Thursday by the Commonwealth Fund, sized up the presidential candidates' plans for dealing with a health care system which has left nearly 46 million people uninsured and many more underinsured."
Maybe McCain should have been in Michigan instead of Iowa, where he trails by double-digits and where he made a recent trip. Why? Let's ask someone: "Asked why McCain was in Iowa, one veteran Republican there replied: 'Because he's running a senseless, non-strategic campaign. Why else would he come here?'"
Apparently, McCain recently snubbed Obama on the floor of the Senate. People noticed. Classy!
And apparently Freddie Mac hired a McCain staffer with the specific intention of influencing the Republican presidential candidate. Add that to the fact that McCain's CoS is a former lobbyist for Freddie Mac, and you've got yourself some serious questions about the mortgage lender's influence with the Arizona Senator.
Rolling Stones' Tim Dickinson: "In its broad strokes, McCain's life story is oddly similar to that of the current occupant of the White House. John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers' powerful friends, both failed upward. And both shed their skins as Episcopalian members of the Washington elite to build political careers as self-styled, ranch-inhabiting Westerners who pray to Jesus in their wives' evangelical churches.
"In one vital respect, however, the comparison is deeply unfair to the current president: George W. Bush was a much better pilot."
After Palin's miserable performance in the Couric interview, many liberals expressed sympathy or pity for the Republican vice-presidential candidate. Sara Anderson notes that it was Palin's ambition that drove her to put herself into the position; we shouldn't feel sorry for her: "When Palin was first picked, I thought to myself that if I were her, I wouldn't have accepted the invitation, because I would fail my own ambitions, but also my ideological allies througout the country. And not just them - a bad President can make life miserable for everyone, not just his supporters. God knows George Bush has shown us this.
"Ambition is a good quality in the capable. Ambition is reckless in the incompetent."
Naomi Wolf doesn't like what she sees in Palin's selection as McCain's VP: "Palin, not McCain, is the FrankenBarbie of the Rove-Cheney cabal. The strategy became clear. Time magazine reported that Rove is 'dialed in' to the McCain campaign. Rove's protégé Steve Schmidt is now campaign manager. And Politico reported that Rove was heavily involved in McCain's vice presidential selection. Finally a new report shows that there are dozens of Bush and Rove operatives surrounding Sarah Palin and orchestrating her every move.
"What's the plan? It is this. McCain doesn't matter. Reputable dermatologists are discussing the fact that in simply actuarial terms, John McCain has a virulent and life-threatening form of skin cancer. It is the elephant in the room, but we must discuss the health of the candidates: doctors put survival rates for someone his age at two to four years. I believe the Rove-Cheney cabal is using Sarah Palin as a stalking horse, an Evita figure, to put a popular, populist face on the coming police state and be the talk show hostess for the end of elections as we know them. If McCain-Palin get in, this will be the last true American election. She will be working for Halliburton, KBR, Rove and Cheney into the foreseeable future -- for a decade perhaps -- a puppet 'president' for the same people who have plundered our treasure, are now holding the US economy hostage and who murdered four thousand brave young men and women in a way of choice and lies."
And be sure to check out The New Yorker's endorsement of Barack Obama: "The exhaustingly, sometimes infuriatingly long campaign of 2008 (and 2007) has had at least one virtue: it has demonstrated that Obama's intelligence and steady temperament are not just figments of the writer's craft. He has made mistakes, to be sure. (His failure to accept McCain's imaginative proposal for a series of unmediated joint appearances was among them.) But, on the whole, his campaign has been marked by patience, planning, discipline, organization, technological proficiency, and strategic astuteness. Obama has often looked two or three moves ahead, relatively impervious to the permanent hysteria of the hourly news cycle and the cable-news shouters. And when crisis has struck, as it did when the divisive antics of his ex-pastor threatened to bring down his campaign, he has proved equal to the moment, rescuing himself with a speech that not only drew the poison but also demonstrated a profound respect for the electorate. Although his opponents have tried to attack him as a man of "mere" words, Obama has returned eloquence to its essential place in American politics. The choice between experience and eloquence is a false one--something that Lincoln, out of office after a single term in Congress, proved in his own campaign of political and national renewal. Obama's "mere" speeches on everything from the economy and foreign affairs to race have been at the center of his campaign and its success; if he wins, his eloquence will be central to his ability to govern.
"We cannot expect one man to heal every wound, to solve every major crisis of policy. So much of the Presidency, as they say, is a matter of waking up in the morning and trying to drink from a fire hydrant. In the quiet of the Oval Office, the noise of immediate demands can be deafening. And yet Obama has precisely the temperament to shut out the noise when necessary and concentrate on the essential. The election of Obama-a man of mixed ethnicity, at once comfortable in the world and utterly representative of twenty-first-century America-would, at a stroke, reverse our country's image abroad and refresh its spirit at home. His ascendance to the Presidency would be a symbolic culmination of the civil- and voting-rights acts of the nineteen-sixties and the century-long struggles for equality that preceded them. It could not help but say something encouraging, even exhilarating, about the country, about its dedication to tolerance and inclusiveness, about its fidelity, after all, to the values it proclaims in its textbooks. At a moment of economic calamity, international perplexity, political failure, and battered morale, America needs both uplift and realism, both change and steadiness. It needs a leader temperamentally, intellectually, and emotionally attuned to the complexities of our troubled globe. That leader's name is Barack Obama."
The video links...
"John McCain's Keating Five Problem in 97 Seconds"
I'm surprised McCain's involvement in the Keating Five scandal isn't getting more play, for a couple of reaons. First, it was pretty odious, and a lot of people either don't remember it or weren't around when it happened. Second, the S&L bailout was a precursor of the recent banking crisis...yet McCain was still a supporter of deregulation over the years.
"McCain is 72. He's had cancer 4 times."
This Democracy for America's spot highlighting McCain's health problems and age. You see a lot of pushback from Republicans on messaging like this: they consider it "ageist." My question is, why shouldn't McCain's health and age be an issue? According to insurance actuary tables, the odds are he wouldn't survive a full term in office. And look at Reagan's final years in office. Health dictates competency.
"Heartless"
Planned Parenthood goes after Sarah Palin's mayoral policy to force rape victims to pay for their own rape kits.
"Nearly unanimous vote for Obama = 'split' on Fox"
Hilarious. Good ol' Fox News...
"The Onion: Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 08 Election"
"If you planned on following the presidential election this November, you might want to plug your ears: a big election spoiler is coming up. A minor software glitch in the Diebold corporation today caused thousands of voting machines to accidentally release the results of the 2008 presidential election months ahead of schedule..."
Finally, Nate Silber gets his well-deserved 15 minutes of fame with Dan Rather and Keith Olbermann.
