New roads could bring pollution to Yellowstone

SOME of the US's pristine forests could soon be criss-crossed with roads for logging and mining as the federal government once again relaxes conservation rules - this time in Idaho.

US national parks are still protected, but at threat are so-called "roadless" areas of national forests. These cover more than 230,000 square kilometres - an area nearly as large as the UK. Bill Clinton banned virtually all development in these areas just before leaving office in January 2001. The Bush administration scrapped this policy in 2005, working out rules on a state-by-state basis instead.

Mortgage Threat From Hedge Funds Irks Democrats

By BARRY MEIER

Several Democratic lawmakers lashed out Friday at hedge funds that have threatened to block attempts to renegotiate mortgages for struggling homeowners.

At least two funds, Greenwich Financial Services and Braddock Financial, have told banks that they may take legal action if loans are renegotiated in a way that hurts the funds’ financial interests.

Many hedge funds have purchased securities backed by mortgages. The New York Times reported Friday that Greenwich Financial and Braddock Financial, and possibly other funds, were resisting attempts to renegotiate the loans.

The ACORN Storm

From John McCain, hyperbole about potential voter fraud

Saturday, October 25, 2008; A14

THE VERY "fabric of democracy," or so Sen. John McCain warned at the final presidential debate, is at stake. "We need to know the full extent of Senator Obama's relationship with ACORN, [which] is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country," Mr. McCain said, referring to the liberal group the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Mr. McCain's hyperbole about ACORN, which has endorsed Mr. Obama, is unwarranted.

Commentary: Republicans summon ugly old ghosts

By Joseph L. Galloway | McClatchy Newspapers

This is an autumn of great discontent as not just the United States, but the entire world trembles on the brink of an economic recession that may bring the kind of pain that's known only to the oldest among us.

With days to go before Election Day, the nation watches as a presidential candidate and his political party unravel, frantically dragging every ugly ghost out of the closet in an attempt not only to fool everyone, but also to scare everyone.

Crises on Many Fronts

By BOB HERBERT

The closer you look at the current economic crisis, the more harrowing it becomes.

The focus in the presidential campaign has been almost entirely on the struggles faced by the middle class — on families worried about their jobs, their mortgages, their retirement accounts and how to pay for college for their kids.

Each nauseating plunge in the Dow heightens their anxiety. Each company that goes under and each government report showing joblessness on the rise intensifies their fear.

Guantanamo tribunals overseer under investigation

Thomas Hartmann, an Air Force brigadier general, is accused of improperly influencing prosecutions.

By Josh Meyer
October 25, 2008

Reporting from Washington -- A Pentagon official overseeing the Guantanamo war crimes tribunals is the subject of two investigations into his conduct, including one wide-ranging ethics examination into whether he abused his power and improperly influenced the prosecutions of enemy combatants.

An internal Air Force investigation into the activities of Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann appears to be the more significant of the two probes because it was launched only after a preliminary inquiry found sufficient grounds to move forward, military officials said.

Leaders urge world finance reform

Asian and European leaders have called for comprehensive reform of the global financial system.

Ending a summit in Beijing, they also urged the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to play a greater role in helping countries hit by the market turmoil.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon called for action to help affected developing nations.

Early Voting Sees Reports of Voter Intimidation, Machine Malfunctions

Early voting has begun, and problems are already emerging at the polls. In West Virginia, voters using touchscreen machines have claimed their votes were switched from Democrat to Republican. In North Carolina, a group of McCain supporters heckled a group of mostly black supporters of Barack Obama. In Ohio, Republicans are being accused of trying to scare newly registered voters by filing lawsuits that question their eligibility. We speak to NYU professor Mark Crispin Miller, author of Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy. [includes rush transcript]

Greenspan Concedes to `Flaw' in His Market Ideology

By Scott Lanman and Steve Matthews

Oct. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said a ``once-in-a-century credit tsunami'' has engulfed financial markets and conceded that his free-market ideology shunning regulation was flawed.

``Yes, I found a flaw,'' Greenspan said in response to grilling from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. ``That is precisely the reason I was shocked because I'd been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.''

Cox, Greenspan, Snow Agree: Freddie Mac And Fannie Mae Did Not Cause The Financial Crisis

According to conservatives, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae’s audacity to loan to low-income Americans is to blame for the current financial crisis. During the final presidential debate, for example, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) called the lending giants “the catalyst for this housing crisis.”

Job losses accelerating, and the worst is ahead

Christopher S. Rugaber, Ap Economics Writer
Thu Oct 23, 5:21 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Unemployment claims, already well into recession territory, are rising even faster than expected, leading economists to warn Thursday that the worst is yet to come.

As the Labor Department released bleak new numbers on the job market, Goldman Sachs, Chrysler and Xerox all announced they were cutting workers by the thousands, adding to the woes of an economy beset by tighter credit and wobbly banks.

The government said new applications for unemployment insurance rose 15,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 478,000, above analysts' estimates of 470,000. Jobless claims above 400,000 are considered a sign of recession.

Wrecked Iraq

By Michael Schwartz

Even before the spectacular presidential election campaign became a national obsession, and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression crowded out other news, coverage of the Iraq War had dwindled to next to nothing. National newspapers had long since discontinued their daily feasts of multiple - usually front page - reports on the country, replacing them with meager meals of mostly summary stories buried inside the paper. On broadcast and cable TV channels, where violence in Iraq had once been the nightly lead, whole news cycles went by without a mention of the war.

The tone of the coverage also changed. The powerful reports of desperate battles and miserable Iraqis disappeared. There are still occasional stories about high-profile bombings or military campaigns in obscure places, but the bulk of the news is about quiescence in old hot spots, political maneuvering by Iraqi factions, and the newly emerging routines of ordinary life.

Glenn Greenwald: Bipartisanship and threats of war toward Iran

Two former Senators -- conservative Democrat Chuck Robb and conservative Republican Dan Coats (that's what "bipartisan" means) -- have a jointly authored Op-Ed in The Washington Post today decreeing what the U.S. must do towards Iran. The essence: Iran must be prevented, using any means necessary, from not only obtaining nuclear weapons, but also denied even "the ability to quickly assemble a nuclear weapon," which means "the complete cessation of enrichment activities inside Iran," even for civilian purposes.

To achieve that, the Patriot Act should be used to block all Iranian banks from any involvement in the U.S. economy and "our European allies [must] sever commercial relations with Tehran."

Greenspan's Revisionist History

By Isaiah J. Poole

Created 10/23/2008 - 11:06am

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan today engaged in an attempt to rewrite history that was so egregious that even CNBC anchor Mark Haines, a free-market cheerleader, was aghast.

The offense was on the first page of Greenspan's written testimony [1] before the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee. "In 2005, I raised concerns that the protracted period of underpricing of risk, if history was any guide, would have dire consequences," he said.

He may be technically correct, but that warning was at best a footnote to his main message, which was that Congress and the White House should more or less leave markets alone, and that the masters of Wall Street will always do what's best.

Creationists declare war over the brain

"YOU cannot overestimate," thundered psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz, "how threatened the scientific establishment is by the fact that it now looks like the materialist paradigm is genuinely breaking down. You're gonna hear a lot in the next calendar year about... how Darwin's explanation of how human intelligence arose is the only scientific way of doing it... I'm asking us as a world community to go out there and tell the scientific establishment, enough is enough! Materialism needs to start fading away and non-materialist causation needs to be understood as part of natural reality."

Greenhouse Gas Auction Revenues Can Help Cut Md. Electric Use Significantly, Says Study

COLLEGE PARK, Md. - Maryland officials can reduce electricity use in the state significantly by investing revenues from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) cap-and-trade auctions in energy efficiency programs, says a new study from a University of Maryland-led research team. It adds that neighboring states might benefit as well.

Investments might range from direct subsidies helping consumers or businesses buy more energy-efficient appliances to technical assistance retrofitting buildings to public awareness campaigns, though the study does not recommend any specific approach.

Potent greenhouse gas more prevalent in atmosphere than previously assumed

Compound used in manufacture of flat panel televisions, computer displays, microcircuits, solar panels is 17,000 times more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide

A powerful greenhouse gas is at least four times more prevalent in the atmosphere than previously estimated, according to a team of researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

Using new analytical techniques, a team led by Scripps geochemistry professor Ray Weiss made the first atmospheric measurements of nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), which is thousands of times more effective at warming the atmosphere than an equal mass of carbon dioxide.

A Perverted Idea of Fairness

by Joe Conason | October 21, 2008

Wherever John McCain appears on the stump in these waning days of the presidential campaign, he is always accompanied by his imaginary friend “Joe the Plumber,” but it is the specter of Karl Marx that lurks just offstage. Reverting back to the Republicanism of eons ago, when he was just a child, he inveighs against the “socialist” design of Barack Obama’s tax platform. This delusional ranting, like so much of Mr. McCain’s behavior this year, tell us nothing about Mr. Obama (or socialism!) but much about him.

Let’s begin with the dishonesty of the McCain rant. What Mr. Obama proposes is to restore the tax rates on the wealthy to the same level as during the Clinton administration – that is, to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire without renewing them for individuals and families reporting more than $250,000 in annual income. There is nothing radical in this idea, let alone socialistic, (especially compared with the bank nationalizations and other violations of capitalist orthodoxy that Mr. McCain has supported recently as emergency measures).

Soaring, cryptography and nuclear weapons

By Martin Hellman

Let's face it, nuclear weapons are the elephant in the room that no one likes to talk about. So let's approach the issue from the less threatening perspective of the awesome picture of the glider.

The glider looks like it's suspended above the runway, but in reality it's screaming toward the photographer at over 200 kilometers an hour in a maneuver known as a high-speed low pass. The pilot starts about 2,000 feet (609 meters) high and over a kilometer from the runway. He then dives to convert altitude into speed and skims the runway. Next, he does a steep climb to reconvert some of that speed into altitude so he can turn and land.
Given that the glider has no engine, you might wonder how the pilot can be sure he'll gain enough altitude in the climb to safely turn and land. The laws of physics tell us exactly how altitude is traded for speed and vice versa. While there is a loss due to the air resistance of the glider, that is a known quantity which the pilot takes it into account by starting from a higher altitude than needed for the landing phase.

Big Oil, the big survivor

By Antonia Juhasz

This year began with three landmark events. Oil reached US$100 per barrel for only the second time in history as gasoline prices began an ascent toward the highest prices in a generation. And on January 3, Democratic Senator Barack Obama became the first African American to win the Iowa caucus.

In his historic victory speech, Obama chose to highlight just a handful of policy issues in the 15-minute address, making his focus on oil all the more significant. Obama forcefully declared that he would free the United States once and for all from "the tyranny of oil" and then pledged to be the president "who ends the war in Iraq and finally brings our troops home". An already raucous crowd met these pronouncements with thunderous applause and waves of cheers.

Tomgram: The Global War on Terror Report Card

F is for Failure

The Bush Doctrine in Ruins

By Tom Engelhardt

On the brief occasions when the President now appears in the Rose Garden to "comfort" or "reassure" a shock-and-awed nation, you can almost hear those legions of ducks quacking lamely in the background. Once upon a time, George W. Bush, along with his top officials and advisors, hoped to preside over a global Pax Americana and a domestic Pax Republicana -- a legacy for the generations. More recently, their highest hope seems to have been to slip out of town in January before the you-know-what hits the fan. No such luck.

Of course, what they feared most was that the you-know-what would hit in Iraq, and so put their efforts into sweeping that disaster out of sight. Once again, however, as in September 2001 and August 2005, they were caught predictably flatfooted by a domestic disaster. In this case, they were ambushed by an insurgent stock market heading into chaos, killer squads of credit default swaps, and a hurricane of financial collapse.

Details of Iraq pact reveal US debacle

By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - The final draft of the United States-Iraq Status of Forces agreement on the US military presence represents an even more crushing defeat for the policy of the George W Bush administration than previously thought, the final text reveals.

The final draft, dated October 13, not only imposes unambiguous deadlines for withdrawal of US combat troops by 2011, but makes it extremely unlikely that a US non-combat presence will be allowed to remain in Iraq for training and support purposes beyond the 2011 deadline for withdrawal of all US combat forces.

Memo to Fox News & the GOP: America Has the Second-Lowest Business Taxes In the World

By David Sirota

Created 10/21/2008 - 9:35am

Last week, I appeared on Fox News to discuss Barack Obama's tax proposals. You can watch the clip here [1] - and make sure to watch the end where Fox News tries to drown me out with music.

Not surprisingly, the "debate" centered around the false premise that Obama's tax cuts are actually welfare. I say that's false because - as I pointed out on the show - everyone pays some form of taxes, whether it's income, property, sales or payroll taxes. When you take all those taxes together, most working- and middle-class Americans pay a higher effective tax rate than the Warren Buffetts of the world (as Warren Buffett, by the way, readily acknowledges). So Obama's plan to pass refundable income tax credits is only a handout if you look exclusively at one slice of taxes - in this case, income taxes. But in the overall tax scheme, those tax credits are aimed at better equalizing the tax structure so as to diminish the gap between Warren Buffett's very low effective tax rate and Joe Sixpack's high effective tax rate. Only in the asylums of Fox News and Republican Party politics is reducing that effective tax rate gap billed as theft from the rich to finance "welfare."

Brad Blog: Breaking: Death Threats, Hack Attempts 'Barrage' OH Sec. of State's Office

Threatening Packages, Messages Received Following Brunner's Legal Tussles With State Republicans

Website Set to 'Static Mode' Due to 'Security Breaches'; Investigation Launched by State Police...

The website of the Ohio Secretary of State is being set to "static mode" following a recent series of "security breach" attempts, as well as suspicious packages and a number of death threats sent to the office, according to a press release issued late this afternoon. (Posted in full at end of this article.)

The threats against Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner's office come in the wake of a rash of recent burglaries and vandalism at ACORN offices in Massachusetts and Seattle, as well as death threats delivered to a number of their workers following much-hyped media reports of "voter fraud" by the community organization.

The grand illusion of American power

By H.D.S. Greenway | October 21, 2008

THE OTHER DAY I went to hear my favorite soldier-scholar, Andrew Bacevich, give a talk at Boston University, where he teaches. A retired colonel and Vietnam veteran, Bacevich's new book is called "The Limits of Power, The end of American Exceptionalism."

Bacevich has migrated from a conservative outlook to what might be called a neo-Niebuhrean position - his thinking being influenced by the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, whom Bacevich calls "the most clear-eyed of American prophets."

Niebuhr warned against "dreams of managing history," a combination of arrogance and narcissism that posed a moral threat. That's why Niebuhr is often held in contempt by neo-conservatives for whom power is everything. Bacevich's concern is that the dream has become a physical threat that could lead to America's inevitable decline.

Lawmakers Blame Execs for Meltdown

Congress Grilled Credit Rating Executives on Capitol Hill Today

By JUSTIN ROOD and TOM SHINE
October 22, 2008

Angry lawmakers from both parties assailed the top dogs of the big three credit rating companies Wednesday morning, assigning severe blame for the financial crisis on their firms' failure to assess the risk of trillions in subprime-mortgage related investments.

"You're the gatekeepers, you're the guys," chided a visibly frustrated Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md. "You're the ones who make all the money. That's why you're there. Now we face a situation where we've got a house of cards that has fallen, and here we are trying to resurrect it."

GOP Rep.: ‘Liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God’

Warming up a crowd in North Carolina on Saturday, Republican Rep. Robin Hayes offered the diagnosis that “liberals hate real Americans that work and achieve and believe in God.”

His remarks came shortly after he had said he would “make sure we don’t say something stupid, make sure we don’t say something we don’t mean.”

Hayes had followed Rep. Patrick McHenry, also a North Carolina Republican, who laid out the choice between McCain and Obama.

US government throws oil on fire

By Henry C K Liu

Free-market fundamentalists have been operating in denial mode for more than a year, since the US financial sector imploded in a credit crisis from excessive debt in August 2007, claiming that the economic fundamentals were still basically sound, even within the debt-infested financial sector.

As denial was rendered increasingly untenable by unfolding events, champions of market fundamentalism began clamoring for increasingly larger doses of government intervention in failed free markets around the world to restore sound market fundamentals. For the market fundamentalist faithful, this amounts to asking the devil to save god.

Candidates' Social Security Plans Lack Details

by David Espo
Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Social Security's future: Obama would tax higher incomes more, McCain favors private accounts

Barack Obama wants to raise taxes on high-income workers to ease Social Security's looming cash crunch. John McCain favors voluntary private accounts for younger workers, saying they can't count on the same government benefits as today's retirees.

Beyond those generalities -- and a shared opposition to an increase in the retirement age -- the two presidential rivals are long on commitment and short on specifics when it comes to the government's huge retirement income program.

Thomas Frank: Joe the Plumber and GOP 'Authenticity'

It's hard to reach out to workers while cracking down on unions.

By THOMAS FRANK

The conservative movement made its name battling moral relativists on campus, bellowing for a "strict construction" of our nation's founding documents, and pandering to people who believe that the Book of Genesis literally records the origins of human existence.

And yet here are the words of Ronald Reagan's pollster, Richard Wirthlin, as recorded in one of the main Reagan strategy documents from 1980: "People act on the basis of their perception of reality; there is, in fact, no political reality beyond what is perceived by the voters."

The man who knows too much

He exposed the My Lai massacre, revealed Nixon's secret bombing of Cambodia and has hounded Bush and Cheney over the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib... No wonder the Republicans describe Seymour Hersh as 'the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist'. Rachel Cooke meets the most-feared investigative reporter in Washington

Rachel Cooke
The Observer
Sunday October 19 2008

Every so often, a famous actor or producer will contact Seymour Hersh, wanting to make a movie about his most famous story: his single-handed uncovering, in 1969, of the My Lai massacre, in which an American platoon stormed a village in South Vietnam and, finding only its elderly, women and children, launched into a frenzy of shooting, stabbing and gang-raping. It won him a Pulitzer prize and hastened the end of the Vietnam war. Mostly, they come to see him in his office in downtown Washington, a two-room suite that he has occupied for the past 17 years. Do they like what they see? You bet they do, even if the movie has yet to be made. 'Brad Pitt loved this place,' says Hersh with a wolfish grin. 'It totally fits the cliché of the grungy reporter's den!' When last he renewed the lease, he tells me, he made it a condition of signing that the office would not be redecorated - the idea of moving all his stuff was too much. It's not hard to see why. Slowly, I move my head through 180 degrees, trying not to panic at the sight of so much paper piled so precipitously. Before me are 8,000 legal notepads, or so it seems, each one filled with a Biro Cuneiform of scribbled telephone numbers. By the time I look at Hersh again - the full panorama takes a moment or two - he is silently examining the wall behind his desk, which is grey with grime, and striated as if a billy goat had sharpened its horns on it.

'Digby' Speaks! Progressive Media's Most Mysterious Blogger Sits for Her First Interview

Stop anyone on the street, and they'll know of Arianna Huffington --- and she's glad they do. But the Left's second most influential blogger prefers anonymity.

"Digby" prolifically pumps out her dispatches from the People's Republic of Santa Monica, a few miles from Huffington's West Coast office. Her writing gives no gender clues, she comes off like a vengeful prosecutor --- and the logo on her otherwise bare-bones site, which she calls Hullabaloo, shows a screaming Howard Beale in a classic scene from Network.

Attacks on Obama have many roots

David Lightman | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: October 21, 2008 10:17:26 AM

WASHINGTON — An ugly line has been crossed in this presidential campaign, one in which some people don't mind calling Barack Obama a dangerous Muslim, a terrorist and worse.

"To me, this all feels much worse than we've seen in some time," said Kathryn Kolbert, the president of People for the American Way, which monitors political speech.

Experts agree on the reasons: Obama, the Democratic nominee, is different from any other major presidential candidate in history in many ways, and people often don't accept such change gracefully.

Although mom, dad have health insurance through work, kids may go without

New research to be published in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds parents often can’t afford to pay extra to cover their kids

PORTLAND, Ore. – New research at Oregon Health & Science University reveals millions of children from low- to middle-income families are going without health insurance, even when at least one parent has private health insurance through his or her employer.

"They just can't afford to insure their kids. And this scenario is not just for low-income families. We found that many middle-income families, households earning between $24,000 and $75,000 annually couldn't afford the cost to insure their child," said principal investigator Jennifer DeVoe, M.D., D.Phil., an assistant professor of family medicine, OHSU School of Medicine

Concerns about deployment of military on U.S. soil growing -- while mainstream media buries its head in the sand: Naomi Wolf

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Naomi Wolf [0]

The following is the spin of military spokespeople in response to questions about the deployment of the First Brigade on US soil for the first time in over 200 years.

The Army Times initially reported [1] that the First Brigade would handle domestic crowd control and subduing 'unruly individuals' and that they had 'lethal and nonlethal technologies' to do so. Then it issued a correction declaring that the 'nonlethal' package was not for domestic crowd control. Then after a hue and cry was raised by many citizens, Northern Command (NorthCom) offered a wholesale revision [2] of their mission – and the mainstream media is eating it up. Here is an excerpt from the articled linked to in the previous sentence:

Despite conspiracy theories that this could be a first step toward martial law in the U.S., there won't be tanks on Main Street or active-duty troops putting down demonstrations. That is barred by federal law banning the military from being used on U.S. soil for domestic law enforcement.

Instead, the soldiers of the 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Ga., have been training to back up civilian authorities in providing medical care and dealing with chemical, biological, high explosive or nuclear attack.

How the Banksters Made a Complete Killing off the Bailout

By Pam Martens, CounterPunch
Posted on October 21, 2008, Printed on October 21, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/103836/

In 1897, when 8-year old Virginia O'Hanlon posed her Santa Claus query to the New York Sun, she received a heart-warming editorial response reassuring her that "He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist."

Today, we hand our 8 year olds a $13 trillion national debt while our Congress hands Wall Street banksters the national purse without so much as a hearing to determine the cause of the debt collapse. Worse still, the money is doled out to the very same individuals who leveraged their institutions to casino status.

Hit and miss with Afghan air strikes

By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - The present United States policy in Afghanistan of using air strikes to target local Taliban leaders was rejected by the top US commander in Afghanistan in early 2004 as certain to turn the broader population against the US presence.

Lieutenant General David Barno, the three-star general who commanded the Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan, the overall US and coalition command for Afghanistan from October 2003 to mid-2005, recalled in an interview that he had ordered that such air strikes be halted in Afghanistan in early 2004. He said the decision did not prohibit air strikes for close support of US troops in contact with the Taliban.

A Big-Picture View of the Iraq Basing Deal

By Spencer Ackerman 10/20/08 12:10 PM

Prediction time. When the definitive history of the Bush administration’s prosecution of the Iraq war is written, its attempt to force the Iraqi government to sign a bilateral agreement authorizing an indefinite occupation will stand as its final massive blunder.

Let’s review. In November 2007, George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki agreed in principle to a late-2008 deal that would set the legal terms for a long-term U.S. presence in Iraq. The Maliki government reportedly didn’t like the legal basis for the U.S. occupation — a United Nations Security Council mandate — because it considered it an affront to Iraqi sovereignty. Bush used that dissatisfaction as an opportunity to make the occupation an enduring strategic feature of U.S. foreign policy. His critics, including myself, feared that he would get his way.

The Idiots Who Rule America

By Chris Hedges

Our oligarchic class is incompetent at governing, managing the economy, coping with natural disasters, educating our young, handling foreign affairs, providing basic services like health care and safeguarding individual rights. That it is still in power, and will remain in power after this election, is a testament to our inability to separate illusion from reality. We still believe in “the experts.” They still believe in themselves. They are clustered like flies swarming around John McCain and Barack Obama. It is only when these elites are exposed as incompetent parasites and dethroned that we will have any hope of restoring social, economic and political order.

Treasury Blacks Out Key Parts of Bailout's Private Contracts

By David Sirota

Created 10/19/2008 - 9:49pm

Remember how Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson promised full transparency in spending the $700 billion bailout money? And remember how bailout opponents predicted that the failure to mandate such transparency would allow all sorts of Halliburton-style shenanigans? From the looks of the first private contracts issued by the Treasury Department, it looks like the bailout opponents were correct.

U.S. Treasury official says situation "grim": report

BEIJING (Reuters) - The U.S. economy is facing several grim quarters and is unlikely to rebound before 2010, according to an interview with a senior U.S. Treasury official carried in a weekend Chinese newspaper.

Paul Krugman: The Real Plumbers of Ohio

Forty years ago, Richard Nixon made a remarkable marketing discovery. By exploiting America’s divisions — divisions over Vietnam, divisions over cultural change and, above all, racial divisions — he was able to reinvent the Republican brand. The party of plutocrats was repackaged as the party of the “silent majority,” the regular guys — white guys, it went without saying — who didn’t like the social changes taking place.

It was a winning formula. And the great thing was that the new packaging didn’t require any change in the product’s actual contents — in fact, the G.O.P. was able to keep winning elections even as its actual policies became more pro-plutocrat, and less favorable to working Americans, than ever.

The Republicans have lifted the lid off their rightwing id

Michael Tomasky
The Guardian
Monday October 20 2008

A year or two ago, if you'd told me that Barack Obama would be leading John McCain by a seemingly comfortable margin with two weeks to go and asked me what, in their desperation, the Republicans would be talking about to try and scare my fellow Americans into voting against him, I'd have said race. After all, Republicans have race-baited in one form or other in most of our presidential contests since Richard Nixon's time, so it would have seemed impossible to me that they'd miss the chance to do so at a time when Democrats had actually gone to the trouble of nominating an African-American candidate.

It's true that we're hearing racial-code talk here and there. But the main fear tactic being employed now is something else. It's that Obama and his associates - and for that matter his supporters and even the regions of the country that he's destined to carry - are anti-American.'

A Fateful Election

By Russell Baker, David Bromwich, Mark Danner, Andrew Delbanco, Joan Didion, Ronald Dworkin et al.

For an election in which so much is at stake, we asked some of our contributors for their views.
—The Editors

• Russell Baker
• David Bromwich
• Mark Danner
• Andrew Delbanco
• Joan Didion
• Ronald Dworkin
• Frances FitzGerald
• Timothy Garton Ash
• Paul Krugman
• Joseph Lelyveld
• Darryl Pinckney
• Thomas Powers
• Michael Tomasky
• Garry Wills

Russell Baker

The new century has opened with a pervasive sense of American decline, and for good reason. The history of the Bush years is anything but a tonic for the spirit: the nation deceived by official lies into endless Middle Eastern warfare, loss of America's good reputation around the world, erosion of the middle class, astounding budget deficits, growing financial dependence on China, that sinister power-grabbing operation in the vice-president's office, torture....

And now the collapse of Wall Street, home office of triumphant world capitalism, its famous masters of the universe forced to endure the humiliation of asking for government handouts. Serious people who understand these things speak of the worst calamity since the Great Depression.

Timeline: Global credit crunch

Most analysts link the current credit crisis to the sub-prime mortgage business, in which US banks give high-risk loans to people with poor credit histories.
These and other loans, bonds or assets are bundled into portfolios - or Collateralised Debt Obligations (CDOs) - and sold on to investors globally.

Financial crisis: World round-up

A look at the regions of the world most affected by the financial crisis, and what governments are doing to try to alleviate the financial turmoil.

AMERICAS

ARGENTINA:

Background: Rich in resources with a well-educated workforce and one of South America's largest economies, but it has also fallen prey to a boom and bust cycle.

Key data: Gross National Income per capita: $6,050 (World Bank, 2007)

Latest: The government is considering a host of measures to contain the impact of the global financial crisis, including a pact with businesses and unions to avoid job losses, higher tariffs on imports, trade barriers and a weaker peso, local media have reported.

Obama hits McCain's "say anything" politics

By Caren Bohan Caren Bohan
2 hrs 37 mins ago

TAMPA, Florida (Reuters) – Democrat Barack Obama criticized Republican White House rival John McCain for a "say anything, do anything" political style on Monday as he opened a two-day tour to kick off early voting in Florida.

McCain told supporters in Missouri that "nothing is inevitable" and he could still beat Obama, who leads in national opinion polls as the pair began a two-week sprint to the November 4 presidential election.

"In the final days of campaigns, the say-anything, do-anything politics too often takes over," Obama told about 8,000 supporters in Tampa, Florida. "We've seen it before and we're seeing it again today. The ugly phone calls. The misleading mail and TV ads. The careless, outrageous comments."

Mortgage firm arranged stealth campaign

By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer
Mon Oct 20, 1:28 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Freddie Mac secretly paid a Republican consulting firm $2 million to kill legislation that would have regulated and trimmed the mortgage finance giant and its sister company, Fannie Mae, three years before the government took control to prevent their collapse.

In the cross hairs of the campaign carried out by DCI of Washington were Republican senators and a regulatory overhaul bill sponsored by Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. DCI's chief executive is Doug Goodyear, whom John McCain's campaign later hired to manage the GOP convention in September.

Freddie Mac's payments to DCI began shortly after the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee sent Hagel's bill to the then GOP-run Senate on July 28, 2005. All GOP members of the committee supported it; all Democrats opposed it.

A Legacy of Resentment

Are McCain and Palin Wallace's heirs?

By Diane McWhorter
Posted Friday, Oct. 17, 2008, at 7:07 PM ET

I finally understand the switch of doom that tripped somewhere deep in my soul during Sarah Palin's speech at the Republican National Convention. Her rhetorical star turn—the exuberant snideness, the gut-level rapport with the audience, the frank pleasure at being a yokel on the big stage—reprised the great gifts of the politician who dominated my youth: George Corley Wallace, perpetual governor of Alabama and frequent candidate for president of the less-than-United States.

U.S. Rep John Lewis of Georgia also noticed the similarity. He issued a statement last week accusing Palin and John McCain of "sowing the seeds of hatred and division." He invoked "another period, in the not too distant past," when George Wallace "created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who only desired to exercise their constitutional rights."

A year with Obama

Alec MacGillis
Published 16 October 2008

The journey from college kid to presidential candidate was short. Yet it is the audacity of that choice, his faith in himself, that could see Barack Obama succeed. Alec MacGillis travelled with him on his year-long attempt to win over America

It was early October 2007 in Iowa, the drying stalks still stood in cornfields grown more precious in the age of ethanol, and far away, in the moneyed precincts of both coasts, Barack Obama's top donors were anxious. Despite having raised heaps of cash, he was trailing Hillary Clinton by more than 20 points in the national polls with only three months to go before Iowa's first-in-the-nation caucus. For the worriers, it was getting late. But for Iowa voters, it was early enough that many barely knew what to make of this biracial rookie senator and still muffed his exotic name. In Waterloo, it had been "Hi, Senator Barack." Now, here at the Buchanan County fairgrounds in Independence, it was "Hi, Obama," from a nervous Geri Punteney as she rose in the front row to ask her question.

But it wasn't a question, really. "I have a brother who's dying of cancer," she said, and as soon as it was out she had broken into sobs, and then apologies for her sobs, and more sobs. Obama stepped forward, as if knowing what was expected of him and yet slightly embarrassed by it. He took her hand with some consoling mumbles. Punteney, 50, collected herself enough to tell the rest: her 48-year-old brother was working as a truck driver despite having cancer, so as not to lose his insurance. She herself had stopped working at a riverboat casino to care for her mother, and so was forgoing needed dental surgery. "I don't think it's fair that my brother has to work when he's dying of cancer just to keep his insurance," she said.

Lethal build-up of ozone poses threat to UK

Scientists call for global measures amid warnings that the gas damages health and the environment

Robin McKie, science editor
The Observer
Sunday October 19 2008

Britain is ignoring the dangers posed by one of the world's worst air pollutants: ozone. Researchers say that levels of the gas - a powerful contributor to global warming and the cause of hundreds of deaths a year from respiratory illnesses - are rising at an alarming rate.

They have also warned that measures to curtail the gas are failing. As a result, ozone-related deaths, of which there are about 1,500 a year in the UK, could rise by 50 per cent over the next decade. Stronger international treaties need to be set up to counter the threat, they insist.

Guided by an invisible hand

Make no mistake: we are witnessing the biggest crisis since the Great Depression. In some ways it is worse than the Great Depression, because the latter did not involve these very complicated instruments - the derivatives that Warren Buffett has referred to as financial weapons of mass destruction; and we did not have anything close to the magnitude of today's cross-border finance.

The events of these weeks will be to market fundamentalism what the fall of the Berlin Wall was to communism. Last month in the United States almost 160,000 jobs were shed - making more than three-quarters of a million this year. My guess is that things will get considerably worse. I have been predicting this for some time, and so far, unfortunately, I have been right.

There are several reasons for my pessimism. The extreme credit crunch is a result of the banks having lost a lot of capital. And there is still uncertainty about the value of the toxic mortgages and other complex products on their balance sheets. The US economy has been fuelled by a consumption binge. With average savings at zero, many people borrowed to live beyond their means. When you cut off that credit you reduce consumption. This, in turn, will dampen the US economy, which helps keep the global economy growing. The American consumer has not only sustained the US economy, he has sustained the global economy. The richest country in the world has been living beyond its means and telling the rest of the world it should be thankful because America fuelled global economic growth.

Going Down Fast

By Charles McMillion

Created 10/16/2008 - 10:54am

Summary:

Four important economic reports today show the real economic downturn is worsening very rapidly. This is why strong, informed leadership matters.

Four important economic reports today show the real economic downturn is worsening very rapidly.

The Federal Reserve reports [1] that industrial production plunged 2.8 percent in September following a plunge of 1.0 percent in August. The plunge in industrial output in September is the worst one-month loss since December 1974 as the first OPEC oil-price hike devastated U.S. industry. Part of the September shut-down was the result of Gulf Coast storms, but even with the far greater devastation of Katrina, output fell only for one month and that was a 1.8 percent decline in September 2005.

Indeed, industrial production (which includes mining and utilities as well as manufacturing) has now plunged in seven of the past eight months and by 4.5 percent yr/yr. Over just the past three months (July to September) U.S. output plunged by 3.8 percent; again the worst three month plunge since early 1975 and one of the worst in U.S. history. Manufacturing output plunged by 2.6 percent in September, the worst one-month plunge since May 1980, when the Federal Reserve slammed on the monetary policy brakes, sending interest rates skyrocketing. Manufacturing production has fallen in six of the past eight months and by 4.8 percent year over year.

Wall Street banks in $70bn staff payout

Pay and bonus deals equivalent to 10% of US government bail-out package

Simon Bowers
The Guardian
Saturday October 18 2008

Financial workers at Wall Street's top banks are to receive pay deals worth more than $70bn (£40bn), a substantial proportion of which is expected to be paid in discretionary bonuses, for their work so far this year - despite plunging the global financial system into its worst crisis since the 1929 stock market crash, the Guardian has learned.

Staff at six banks including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are in line to pick up the payouts despite being the beneficiaries of a $700bn bail-out from the US government that has already prompted criticism. The government's cash has been poured in on the condition that excessive executive pay would be curbed.

Bush staff says hiring by faith no bar to aid

Memo approves bypassing laws

Last updated October 17, 2008 11:30 p.m. PT

By CHARLIE SAVAGE
THE NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON -- In a newly disclosed legal memorandum, the Bush administration says it can bypass laws that forbid giving taxpayer money to religious groups that hire only staff members who share their faith.

The administration, which has sought to lower barriers between church and state through its religion-based initiative offices, made the claim in a 2007 Justice Department memorandum from the Office of Legal Counsel. It was quietly posted on the department's Web site this week.

Frank Rich: He Just Can’t Quit W

OLD Mr. Straight Talk has become so shaky a speaker that when he does talk straight, it’s startling. On Wednesday night, John McCain mustered exactly one such moment of clarity: “Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago.”

Thanks largely to this line, McCain’s remaining base in the political press graded his last debate performance his best. The public, not so much. As with the previous debates, every poll found Barack Obama the winner, this time by as much as two-to-one ratios. Obama even swept the focus group convened by the G.O.P. pollster Frank Luntz in the once-impregnable McCain bunker of Fox News.

US to host global finance summit

The presidents of the US, France and the European Commission have unveiled plans for a series of summits to discuss the global financial crisis.

Speaking before talks at Camp David with Nicolas Sarkozy and Jose Manuel Barroso, George W Bush said it was "essential that we work together".

The first summit will be held in the US after November's presidential election.