Does this world wide economic down turn tell us something? Is everyone cooking the books? Sheesh, all of a sudden markets all over the world are diving taking an economic hit. Bill O’reilly said he did not see this coming. Or all these first line Journalist appear to sound the same. Very funny, these experts in covering new and current events spend all day full time jobs to look at America and how it functions with a basic mission in over sight to inform and report back to the electorate. Their public business license is fundamentally made with that mission. Our media is failing.

Ladies and Gentleman talk about selective news casting and deliberate suppression, the economy looks like a duck walks like a Duck sounds like a duck it must be a duck. But yet they are all expert political analyst here in America, they can tell all of us even what that candidate is thinking or what these candidates really mean, but none of them could understand what happened to the economy. Do you believe that? I don’t. Ladies and Gentlemen of America this very first line Journalist have insider knowledge and know certain who are selling off stocks and who are buying stocks. Worse they know what is being done legal or not. ABC, MSNBC, FOX, CNN, CBS, and others are scamming America with the same fear tactics of terrorism.

Gee, all of a sudden this is horrible, instantaneously this past two weeks chaos, uncertainty, desperate actions are needed, we did not see this coming, it is real terrible, all of a sudden markets are in decline not just America, our major banks are collapsing, our major corporations are collapsing. America Bush says we need a trillion dollars immediately. Sort of sounds like 911.

The American media is at it again, theater…and politics special editions of corruption. Now, new debates, where are the “risk� managers? The uncertainty theories not even talked about? Were they considered? They were to some extent; roll the dice with home ownership as a fundemental. In Barney Frank’s defense it is a reasonable path. Please don’t give the crap about unintended consequences or fraudulent applications. It all tells us that money managers are deficient in credit management, then to just blame the electorate. Typical Republican action is to explain government is for the people, the turn one hundred and eighty degrees to blame the electorate.

I'm beginning to think that the reason McCain picked Palin, was not only to appeal to the religious base, but to Ron Paul supporters - isolationism, xenophobia, simplism and cynicism. I wouldn't be too surprised if in the next week, McCain suggests we should go back to the gold standard.

That's it! McCain's campaign has gone too far, even by the usual disgusting standard for Republicans. It's time for people on the left to start mentioning the U.S.S. Forrestal:

http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?read=119707

Yep, real Mavericky to adopt Karl Rove's abhorrent wink/slander campaign. real maverick-y of him. John's out of gas and he's flailing about.

Notice how the issues fade and sleaze comes to the forefront?

Black and White. That's all the election has become.

"Revivalesque." One way to describe McCain/Palin events and rallies.

The war? Economy? Healthcare? Energy? Nope...just pure 100% sleaze, brought to you by rich white folk and their screaming minions.

Watch the DOW today. Obama's association with Ayers has nothing to do with this global meltdown.

God help us.

I disagree that McAce's campaign is running out of gas. To me it has more gas than a herd of bloated bovines pressng methine into the atmosphere in record volumes, with McAce's and the witch doctor's rally downwind to the pasture...those two neo-nazis are nauseating...

Drug use? Drug use you say?

Let's talk about Cindy McCain's percodan pals and how she involved her very own charity to obtain pain pills and members of her own staff to cover it up. Let's talk about how she claimed "recovery" while never attending a mandatory diversion program, and thus escaped any prosecution.

And while we're at it, let's talk also of John McCain's relationship and eventual advocacy of James Bonard Fowler, the man who shot and killed Jimmie Lee Jackson in 1965 which was the stimulus for the March From Selma.

Meglomania said:
But yet they are all expert political analyst here in America, they can tell all of us even what that candidate is thinking or what these candidates really mean, but none of them could understand what happened to the economy.

You are giving reporters too much credit. Most of them are idiots (I know, I used to be one). They go to journalism school and they get one semester of First Amendment law and a class or two in political science. Everything else they take are classes in how to write, while learning nothing about what they're supposed to write about.

History? Maybe one or two classes such as "Hollywood Stars in the 40s: the American Aristocracy". Science? "Rocks for Jocks". Math? "Consumer math."

There are some people working out there who still deserve to be called "journalists", but they're being squeezed out of the business by "downsized" newsrooms and an emphasis on news as entertainment.

"He ought to admit,"

WTF? Where does this guy think this information comes from? Obama's own freaking book (the one McC/P keep trying to call attention to).

Lemme guess: Miller didn't call him on it.

BTW, I think McC/P oughta keep anybody named "Keating" as far away from the news as possible, even if they have no relation.

The right has nothing else but being apoplectic 24/7. I'd expect nothing else from them. They are on a train wreck to nowhere. Unfortunately they want to take us with them. I vote no on that idea.

What is really terrible about McCain's campaign, in my opinion, is that if Obama is fortunate enough to win (and we are fortunate enough to elect him), McCain will have stirred up a bunch of racial animosity that will force certain parts of this country back to where they were in the 1950s and 60s. I just don't understand how one who claims to be honorable can stand idly by while people speaking on his behalf do this sort of thing. It scares me to think that this type of politics still has a place in this country.

What in the world ever happened to Dennis Miller? I remember his HBO show from 8-10 years back. What turned him into a wingnut?

the importance of that is that it gives permission to the right wing machine to do anything and everything to destroy him

The only permission the right wing noise machine needs is the (D) after Obama's name.

"[W]hat we are really seeing is the beginning of a story line about the next president of the United States --- he is an alcoholic, AWOL from the military, a (future economic)terrorist and a traitor."

Changed just a tad for circa 2001

Wayne,

Money.

The McCain campaign has succeeded in their quest to frighten voters, at least with this one. I'm very frightened--of them, and of harm to Senator Obama.

"What turned him into a wingnut?"

The need to find an industry niche.The left already had Bill Maher. Miller's career was going no where. Miller adapted.

It is all showbiz.

What turned him (Dennis Miller) into a wingnut?

And how many wingnuts even understand him? Do they just laugh when he makes an obscure reference they don't understand?

Miller has been moving to the right for several years now. The story I heard is that he married a high-maintenance supermodel and got pissed off about his taxes.

I never thought he was any good anyway, but I guess there's no accounting for taste. Some people actually find Howard Stern entertaining.

Those Exxon John supporters at yesterday's rally need to turn their anger at Bush, not Obama! Bush and his incompetent minions have been in charge for EIGHT YEARS! Congress has only been (slight) majority Democratic for two years. What's wrong with those people? Oh, I forgot...basically, they racists to the core!

When people are in the bread lines is the right wing story line going to have as much catch (or in a scary sense, more catch)?

What Digby says is true, I'm sure. But just because the right wing decides to destroy someone does not mean they can. Once Obama is elected president, I'm just dumb enough to believe that most people--far more than voted for him, though less than the 70% that disapprove of Bush-- want him to succeed, and that the right wing will pay a HUGE political price if they try to destroy him from day one.
I expect that there will be some brief honeymoon, but that the right will drum up some fake justifications--ala gays in the military--to abort the honeymoon.
Imagine that, still believing in the basic decency of the American people..what a dope I must be, huh?

I used to have a vague respect for Frank Keating, from the way he handled himself in the Oklahoma City bombing back in the '90's.

No more.

By the way, if Obama's drug use is fair game, so is Cindy McCain's. This election can't get here soon enough.

Obama:
the East coast liberal from Chicago???
the uppity intellectual???
the elitist of the street???
the cocaine-user and arugula-eater???

Does anyone else find it strange that the GOP is trying to paint Obama as both a cosmopolitan elitist intellectual AND and urban ghetto-dwelling thug?

Does anyone else find it strange that the GOP is trying to paint Obama as both a cosmopolitan elitist intellectual AND and urban ghetto-dwelling thug?

Authoritarian personality types can hold conflicting ideas simultaneously. They also have no sense of empathy and no understanding of irony.

Apparently they have nos sense of shame either. They are truly damaged people and they are about 25-27% of the U.S. population.

"Anything and everything" includes violence. Seriously, if you love your country, truly believe it has been taken over by a TERRORIST, have a gun, and generally believe violence is useful (as authoritarians do), what would you do? Right wingers either don't know or don't care about just how dangerous their rhetoric is.

But... but.. Cindy McCain says Obama's campaign is the dirtiest ever in history.

Now I'm so confused. The whole topic of dirty camapaigning has been muddled and obscured.

With Keating's remarks, the McCain campaign has officially joined such celebrated race-baiters as George Wallace, Strom Thurmond, and Stephan Douglas.

Strap yourself in, folks. It's going to be three weeks of "black black black blackety black black". Maybe someone will finally notice that Obama isn't all white.

And has anyone read Charles Krauthammer's column (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10)/09/AR2008100902328.html?hpid=opinionsbox1 in today's WaPo? Verges on racism....and Chuckie should know better, since he has been the subject of such attacks himself! What a blowhard!

Here's what the GOP doesn't understand because all they care about is winning: by continuously slandering Obama with all of these lies, when he does finally become president, some of the world is going to actually believe that garbage and not look favorably on us. After all, if you have other Americans calling him a terrorist, a communist, a socialist, etc., then some people are going to put stock in that. If they were truly good Americans, they would stop this slander and only debate the issues. Their problem, fortunately, is that the issues actually seem to override this garbage that is out there. People, at least based on the polls, seem to have rejected the lies in favor of a different approach to the policies that have gotten us into this economic and foreign policy disaster.

I find the last line from Digby's quote very important. If Obama should win in November (which seems very likely, barring a video release from bin Laden), the right wing machine will start its campaign to impeach him before he even becomes inaugurated. Be prepared everyone: the endless harping about Ayers, etc won't stop with the election.

I'm beginning to think that the reason McCain picked Palin, was not only to appeal to the religious base, but to Ron Paul supporters - isolationism, xenophobia, simplism and cynicism.

Ron Paul has publicly stated that he thinks Obama is better on foreign policy than McCain (see link below), so on behalf of myself and all other Ron Paul supporters who are planning on voting for Obama, please go jump in a lake.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/05/02/paul-not-ready-to-endorse-mccain-likes-obamas-foreign-policy/

What's frightening is that kind of rhetoric has echoes of other countries that fell into fascism, especially since we're in an economic crisis.

The wind has changed.

We're pulling ourselves out of the conservative tar pit. In 2004 John Kerry was vilified and slandered by the right wing. The media AND much of the general public ate it up. He became a joke. We should have learned from George Bush's first term, but it took a second, even more disastrous, term for it to finally sink in. People are understanding where this rabid conservatism has gotten us. In years past, every utterance of Rush Limbaugh was treated like a profound pearl of wisdom. He was discussed and quoted on front pages. Now he gets attention only for being bizarrely outregeous.

The McCain/Palin rallies we're seeing are being looked at by the general public and treated by the media as national disgraces. People are tired of the hate, the negativity, the rancor and the bitterness. Its taken us to a very dark place, and I think the country is exhausted.

I don't mind the attention McCain, Palin and their "fans" are getting. They're being looked at as shamefull, an embarassment to the country. It almost as though the right wing crowds they're riling up are being looked at as "those people" rather than "the people" which had been the case in before.

The cretins shouting filth at those rallies and raging at McCain's town halls are being marginalized. They're not "us." That's the message this election will be sending.

That raging you hear is a death rattle.

Digby wrote: "What we are really seeing is the beginning of a right wing story line about the next president of the United States --- he is a drug user, a foreigner, a terrorist and a traitor. And the importance of that is that it gives permission to the right wing machine to do anything and everything to destroy him."

Don't forget another major thread of the right-wing story line: that Obama only became president as a result of massive nationwide "voter fraud" by ACORN.

The current high-profile investigations of allegedly fraudulent voter registrations by ACORN are a pre-emptive strike to delegitimize the election if Obama wins -- in spite of the actual massive voter disenfranchisement and fraud efforts of the Republicans that have been ongoing since 2000 and are being ramped up to unprecedented levels, with millions of eligible voters already disenfranchised by illegal voter purges, including in six "swing states".

A letter to the editors of The New York Times:

Re “Politics of Attack� (editorial, Oct. 8) and “Obama and ’60s Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths� (front page, Oct. 4):

As the lead federal prosecutor of the Weathermen in the 1970s (I was then chief of the criminal division in the Eastern District of Michigan and took over the Weathermen prosecution in 1972), I am amazed and outraged that Senator Barack Obama is being linked to William Ayers’s terrorist activities 40 years ago when Mr. Obama was, as he has noted, just a child.

Although I dearly wanted to obtain convictions against all the Weathermen, including Bill Ayers, I am very pleased to learn that he has become a responsible citizen.

Because Senator Obama recently served on a board of a charitable organization with Mr. Ayers cannot possibly link the senator to acts perpetrated by Mr. Ayers so many years ago.

I do take issue with the statement in your news article that the Weathermen indictment was dismissed because of “prosecutorial misconduct.� It was dismissed because of illegal activities, including wiretaps, break-ins and mail interceptions, initiated by John N. Mitchell, attorney general at that time, and W. Mark Felt, an F.B.I. assistant director.

William C. Ibershof
Mill Valley, California
Oct. 8, 2008

"The wind has changed.
We're pulling ourselves out of the conservative tar pit."

Please know this. The conservative base will not go quietly into the night. While the peons of the group cry about the possibility of a democratic government, the leaders of the group are looking at this as an unprecedented opportunity. A blessing and a gift from God. At this point the wingnut leaders are praying for an Obama victory, because when this market crashes, and crash it will, they will have a DEMOCRATIC scapegoat. I promise you this. The next several years are going to be very painful for this country, and the wingnuts will be back with a vengeance proclaiming we are being punished by God for voting Obama into office.

The right's fascist movement is gaining ground not losing it. These are perilous times indeed.

Is it wise to have a man named Keating as a McAce surrogate?

After the Republican convention does any of this surprise people? I was aghast at the rhetoric employed there and figured it was just the first step.

It's part and parcel to the right wing and this idea that there are sane heads amongst establishment conservatives is utter bullshit. There maybe a few Rockefeller dead enders like Hagel et al. but among the Republicans center of power they are off the wall lunatics. You think they care about stoking religious and racial intolerance? You think they care about inciting violence? You think they care that they are destroying government infrastructure and the fabric of the country? Republican ideology is medieval. They have no use for science unless it is building better bombs or metrics that they can they cook to rob anyone and everyone.

It's a non sustainable ideology so it will eventually flame out but how much will it burn along the way? My guess is that they'd be content to burn the whole thing down that has after all been their goal since the late 70s. Destroy the government by any means necessary.

Making it impossible for Obama to govern is exactly what they want. That way they can return to power and start robbing, pillaging, and plundering again.

A scenario of ethnic cleansing in America born out of class warfare because of a depression or deep deep recession is not hard to imagine at this point. People laugh that one off just like they laugh off attempts at peace and understanding.

For me, cynicism is not the lens to look at these dangerous times through.

It would serve to reason that when and if Obama wins the election the months until the inauguration will be critical and his infrastructure and ground game will have to continue as if the election was on January 20th 2009. People have to stay engaged.

Dennis Miller still has a radio show????

I concur with Digby. We may be appalled by the Republican Mobs, and the threats of violence. What is more insidious, and more likely, are the legions of Republican devotees who will be convinced that it's okay to engage in less serious criminal activity in order to 'save the republic.' It happens already with purging voter records.

We've already seen the mentality of ends justifying the means in the Bush administration. I suspect it will be amped up against an Obama administration.

Amazing. I would have never pegged John McCain as racist inclined as he now apparently is. Insofar as cocaine; NOW it bothers them and not when the GOP's current President Bush illustrious history of cocaine use came up.
If one intends to throw rocks, make sure it's not a boomerang on your hand. These attacks keep falling on deaf ears, because each and every one of them don't ring true or an equal charge can be leveled at their party; demonstrating their hypocritical tactics. They only appear to care when it benefits them. Bush used cocaine, their tacit approval did not go unnoticed. This campaign staff is either the worse in history or indeed they are out of presidential ideas. Carry on, you appear like screeching demons, scratching and grappling on the way down.