The Broad View

Uh-oh!

Well, the only poll that matters has been taken, the only vote that counts has been cast.

The Alien has endorsed McCain. Obama should just concede the election right now and save us all time and money.

WASHINGTON, DC - In a shocking reversal, the Alien has switched his endorsement from Barack Obama to John McCain.

With major implications for the U.S. presidential election, political kingmaker the Alien has changed his endorsement amid furor. Both political camps are buzzing about the implications, as the Alien has correctly predicted the winning president in every election for the past 28 years.

Ongoing investigation points to Cindy McCain as being the cause for this historic shift in allegiances.

Yes, it's true. The Alien has been mesmerized by Cindy McCain's eerily transparent eyeballs and was last seen cavorting with Mrs. McCain in a hot-tub.

Also abuzz are the Village Elders who have been rendered incoherent by the revelations. While they are properly scandalized by Cindy's dalliance with the Alien -- Sally Quinn has vowed to strike the hussy from her guest list -- they are simultaneously overjoyed that Favorite Son and former Maverick John McCain will be their next club president. The Washington Post reports that David Broder, Dean of the Undead, will postpone his embalming to attend the Inaugural Balls.

Weekly World News editors remain cautious in their predictions:

What impact this news will have on the election has yet to be determined. Swing state voters, who will decide this election, have the highest rate of alien abductions and UFO sightings and are known to vote in accordance with supernatural forces.

Do we have a "Plan B"?

Chart: NYTimes

I'm starting to hum "Remember My Forgotten Man" and "Blue Skies" and screen all those Depression-era films in my head.

I guess the big bailout package wasn't the be-all and end-all, after all. But wait! There may be some hope...

Here's Krugman and he's pretty shrill:

The response to this downward spiral on the part of the world’s two great monetary powers — the United States, on one side, and the 15 nations that use the euro, on the other — has been woefully inadequate. [...]

The United States should have been in a much stronger position. And when Mr. Paulson announced his plan for a huge bailout, there was a temporary surge of optimism. But it soon became clear that the plan suffered from a fatal lack of intellectual clarity. Mr. Paulson proposed buying $700 billion worth of “troubled assets” — toxic mortgage-related securities — from banks, but he was never able to explain why this would resolve the crisis.

What he should have proposed instead, many economists agree, was direct injection of capital into financial firms: The U.S. government would provide financial institutions with the capital they need to do business, thereby halting the downward spiral, in return for partial ownership. When Congress modified the Paulson plan, it introduced provisions that made such a capital injection possible, but not mandatory. And until two days ago, Mr. Paulson remained resolutely opposed to doing the right thing.

The British, Krugman explains, are taking the lead and doing just that: injecting ₤50 billion with interbank transaction guarantees. Hopefully, Europe and the U.S. will get on board with similar and coordinated plans.

They will have the opportunity this weekend with two important meetings scheduled of top international financial officials on Friday and the annual IMF/World Bank meeting the following two days. Krugman warns that they must seize this chance to forge a global rescue plan that they agree upon in principle, at least.

What should be done? The United States and Europe should just say “Yes, prime minister.” The British plan isn’t perfect, but there’s widespread agreement among economists that it offers by far the best available template for a broader rescue effort.

And the time to act is now. You may think that things can’t get any worse — but they can, and if nothing is done in the next few days, they will.

It really is the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

No one can remain immersed 24/7 in politics and economic Armageddon. I want to think about something happy today and one of the happiest thoughts in October is of Pumpkins.

The very word "pumpkin" is delightful. "Pump-" is so close to "plump" and "dumpling." The "-kin" is a cosy, endearing suffix, like Squirrel Nutkin. Pumpkin is from the Greek, "pepon", for large melon.

In my neighborhood, pumpkins lined up on porch steps are the first harbinger of Halloween. I love the ritual of carving the jack-o'-lanterns on Halloween morning and being impatient for dark and finally lighting them. These days I use battery-powered lights for safety, but I miss the smell of scorched pumpkin with real candles.

Baking a pumpkin pie can be easy as pie if you use canned puree or labor intensive if you start with a whole cheese pumpkin, one of the recommended varieties for pie-making. Google "pumpkin pie recipe" and choose from thousands. Every pumpkin recipe I've tried has been good, with the exception of a dreadful pumpkin cheesecake one Thanksgiving.

Pumpkins naturally signify the harvest's bounty. The large, heavy fruit are so richly colored, so substantial that they inspire Giant Pumpkin Contests at country fairs everywhere. Imagine spending an entire growing season coddling one mutant plant that grows more gargantuan by the hour until you need a forklift and a semi to transport the monster. A gallery of giant pumpkins is what inspired this post. Here is the contender for this year's record-breaker. At the time it was photographed, it weighed 1,878 lbs. with a circumference of 198 inches. It's growing at the rate of 11 lbs. per day. Now that's a Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

The Blame Game

The Blame Game. Sarah Palin dragged out that motheaten phrase again tonight, when rebutting Biden on a question of Middle East policy:

No, in fact, when we talk about the Bush administration, there's a time, too, when Americans are going to say, "Enough is enough with your ticket," on constantly looking backwards, and pointing fingers, and doing the blame game.

We first started hearing that phrase from Republicans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. They were frantic to rush past any scrutiny of the administration's complete failure to act while an American city was drowning. It's a cynical attempt to evoke indulgence for heroic bureaucrats struggling with a difficult situation. Once the magnitude of the administration's criminal negligence became apparent, the choruses of "We don't want to play the blame game," were yodeled at every press conference by everyone from Bush down to the lowliest party hack.

Yeah, I'll bet they didn't want to play the blame game. Why? Because they were to blame! Bush and his incompetent flunkies deserved to be blamed. And if they managed to avoid blame, nothing would be learned. Nothing would be done. When bodies are floating in the brackish water of a flooded American city for days -- in a horror show that was totally avoidable -- you bet someone should be blamed and someone should pay a price.

The point is, when Palin tried to accuse Biden of "pointing fingers and doing the Blame Game," his -- and every Democrat's -- response to the accusation should be unequivocal: This isn't a game. It's deadly serious and when a disaster occurs because of an administration's negligence or incompetence, someone must take responsibility and the blame.

The Blame Game is trying to stage a comeback these past few weeks, while the Republicans and the administration are again refusing to play. After all, we have to save the global economy and we can't afford to stop and play blame games, now can we?

If we don't have the courage to affix blame for these monumental disasters where it belongs, and make those responsible pay a price, we shouldn't be surprised if we're bailing out another city and another economy before too long.

So next time a self-serving Repug tries to make a Democrat sound like a cavilling kill-joy for "playing the Blame Game," you know who to blame.

Palin-drone

I can't pin down all my reactions to Palin, though I know for sure that I find her repellent.

She's a phony baloney populist who starts to droppin' the g's and floggin' the folksiness in order to drop a scrim of wholesome American archetypes over her flashes of High School Mean Girl.

Then there are the times she resembles nothing so much as a Disney animatronic candidate, grinning through a mechanical recitation of stock phrases, talking points, jibes and suckups.

There are occasional glitches in her programming that pop up when the questions do not compute. Then she whirs and spins and garbles her Magic 8-Ball answers into a completely incoherent vomitus of gosh-darn-it's, mavericks, you-betcha's, rears-its-head's, greed-and-corruption-on-Wall-Street's, taxes-taxes-taxes, and Main-Streeters-like-me's.

Finally there are the glimpses of a shrewd, calculating and nasty woman who has no doubts about herself, her ambitions or her rightful place at the pinnacle of American political power.

It wasn't all that surprising that she would exceed the lowest debate performance expectations in recent memory. Her slightly bobble-headed grin of faux cheer wooed  the Repug base anew and might have won her a few new fans among the easily impressed. For those who are looking for something more than a drinking buddy in their candidates for high office, her hockey-mom/joe-six-pack persona is an embarrassment.

Her gaffes were the kind that would rally the Repug base and the hell with logic or truth. One was Palin's novel reading of the Constitution to include a vague expansiveness of vice presidential power over the Senate. That might thrill Cheney fans watching from their coffins of native soil, but several cable-news commentators, particularly Chris Matthews, were agape. He was also horror-struck at her suggestion to move the capital of Israel to Jerusalem.

More serious were, I think, her snide jibes. I watched the debate on CNN and the focus group meters were consistent in recording audience disapproval of negativity or attacks. I think I also detected deflating scores every time she wandered in the thickets of repetitive Repug bromides rather than answer a simple question.

The best reaction of the night came from Howard Fineman, on with Olbermann after the debate:

"My dominent impression stylistically was of a wolverine attacking the pant-leg of a passerby. I mean, she got ahold of Joe Biden and hung on for dear life, using every attack line she conceivably could ... It was attack, attack, attack, resort to Alaska when necessary, not listen to the questions or answer them when necessary, all to get through the ninety minutes by attacking...."

Hee! Fineman starts at about 5:15 into the video: 

"Because he's black"

H/T to Andrew Sullivan for this extraordinary video of the AFL-CIO's Richard Trumka speaking on racism and Obama. As Sully says, "Something truly profound could happen in this election, if we want it to."

EPIC FAIL!

So the Bailout Bill has failed to pass the House. I can't actually say I'm sorry. What happens from here on will tell everyone whether or not to be sad or glad. What happened first, unhappily, was a drop in the Dow of 700 points until it rose to a mere 540 point loss as of 3:00 pm Eastern. Whee-e-e-e-e!

IMO, the administration and Congressional leaders badly miscalculated the public's mood. Despite Bush and Paulson doing their best to scare the crap out of everyone with doomsday scenarios, voters would rather take their risks and see the fat cats in Hell than bail them out. The weak punitive measures written into the bill sounded like slaps on the wrist when people want bankers' blood to run down the center of Wall Street.

With the unprecedented and ferocious response from constituents, Republican (and many Democratic) House members decided that Wall Street and financial industry lobbyists may have the money, but the people have the votes. It's not surprising.

Another problem with the bill is that professional and academic economists didn't like it. Nouriel Roubini hates it:

Thus, the Treasury plan is a disgrace: a bailout of reckless bankers, lenders and investors that provides little direct debt relief to borrowers and financially stressed households and that will come at a very high cost to the US taxpayer. And the plan does nothing to resolve the severe stress in money markets and interbank markets that are now close to a systemic meltdown. It is pathetic that Congress did not consult any of the many professional economists that have presented - many on the RGE Monitor Finance blog forum - alternative plans that were more fair and efficient and less costly ways to resolve this crisis. This is again a case of privatizing the gains and socializing the losses; a bailout and socialism for the rich, the well-connected and Wall Street. And it is a scandal that even Congressional Democrats have fallen for this Treasury scam that does little to resolve the debt burden of millions of distressed home owners.

I don't doubt we're in for a world of economic hurt, no matter what's ultimately done about the crisis. Yet still, I can't say I'm sorry if the Masters-of-the-Universe get their teeth kicked in.

Update: Bravo, Stirling! I'm convinced. No runes here, he's on fire with righteous wrath.

Update 2: Dow down 777. Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

Sherman, set the Wayback Machine to 1960...

As I listened to McCain and Obama duke it out last night over what to do about Georgia, I had a queasy sense of déja vu. Is it already 48 years ago that one of the rallying cries in the second debate between Nixon and Kennedy was "Quemoy and Matsu"? I was still a kid at the time, but somehow I remember thinking that Quemoy and Matsu must have been terribly important if the Vice President and this new guy got so excited over it.

The issue of the PRC's perennial mischief in the Strait of Taiwan, where the ROC-claimed islands of Matsu and the Quemoy group are located, lives on today but is hardly the Rubicon of Asia-Pacific geopolitics. In the 1960 presidential debate, Nixon pressed Kennedy to commit to using nuclear weapons to defend Quemoy and Matsu against the PRC. Get that? Nuclear war over a couple of islands that most Americans probably couldn't locate on a map.

Russell Baker, the incomparable Times columnist, recalled the demagoguery over Quemoy and Matsu in discussing its similarities to the issue of Nicaragua in 1985:

There hasn't been so much posturing and braying about so little since 1960. That was the year John F. Kennedy and Vice President Nixon managed to spend a big part of an entire Presidential campaign flailing at each other about Quemoy and Matsu.

Everybody remembers Quemoy and Matsu, I hope, because there isn't enough space in this column - or in this entire newspaper, for that matter - to explain why the future of humanity hung on the outcome of the Quemoy-and-Matsu situation. You had to be there.

And if you were there, of course, you probably can't believe - now that you think about it - that grown Presidential candidates really thought Quemoy and Matsu were important.

More... "Sherman, set the Wayback Machine to 1960..."

Paul Newman, 1925-2008

Paul Newman died yesterday, at his home in Connecticut, kept company by family and close friends. He was 83.

I can't think about the Paul Newman of recent years, except for his magnificent commitment to charity and good works financed through his "Newman's Own" product sales. One hundred percent of Newman's Own profits went to charity, over $175 million.

When I think of Newman, I see the vibrant, wry, wickedly handsome guy born to set female hearts aflutter. And as he got older, he only got sexier. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Update: MsLibrarian's diary at DKos has a sampling of reaction to the sad news, including this statement from Newman's Own:

"Paul took advantage of what life offered him, and while personally reluctant to acknowledge that he was doing anything special, he forever changed the lives of many with his generosity, humor, and humanness. His legacy lives on in the charities he supported and the Hole in the Wall Camps, for which he cared so much.

"We will miss our friend Paul Newman, but are lucky ourselves to have known such a remarkable person."

She also includes this quote from a 2007 DSCC fundraising letter signed by Newman:

More than the films, more than the awards — finding out that I was on Nixon's Enemies List meant that I was doing something right.

Nixon didn't like my campaigning for Democratic presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy. But then again, he didn't much care for debate, dissent, or the Constitution either.

I was proud to stand with Democrats against an imperial president back then.  And I am proud now to stand with a new generation of Democrats against a president who poses what I believe to be the biggest internal threat  to American democracy in my lifetime.

.

Here she comes, Miss Moosejaw of 1984

Oy. That's all, just -- oy.

[h/t Hubris Sonic]

"Sen. Obama just doesn't seem to understand..."

"Yes, I think Sen. McCain is right..."

That, my friends, is the sum and substance of tonight's horrible, miserable, no-good, bad debate between Obama and McCain. McCain worked that "Obama doesn't understand" line over and over again, I'd say at least 15 times if not more.

It was frustrating. Infuriating. Why, oh why couldn't Obama stomp that old fraud but good? He passed up innumerable opportunities to put him away while McCain took every shot and then some.

I could have done better. I mean it. Obama didn't score one body blow. Not one. He even let McCain dominate on economic issues and fiscal responsibility. Why no mention of the McCain campaign's affirmative action hiring program for lobbyists? Why no effective hammering on McCain's voting history? Why no mention of the flip-flops that give the lie to the title of "Maverick"? Why no effort to get under McCain's skin and get him to show some of the famous McCain temperament?

McCain repeatedly appealed to the emotions, while Obama recited dry facts. And then, miraculously, McCain gave Obama the perfect opening at the end of his emotional appeal to never accept defeat in Iraq. McCain then said that he knew what it was like to have fought in a war that ended in defeat, through no fault of the brave troops, blah, blah, blah.

And there it was -- the chance to frame McCain as an old war-horse whose time has long passed. Obama could have said, "John, the problem all along is that you're still fighting the Vietnam War, trying to find that lost victory of thirty-five years ago in Iraq. We can't keep fighting yesterday's wars and hope they turn out differently. It's not fair to today's troops or right for today's America."

But Obama didn't say that or anything else that would have scored the points he needed. What a waste.

I will now await the seesawing polls to tilt back toward McCain. Way to go there, Barack.

Update: I'm reading some other reactions and they're way more positive than mine. I'd be glad to be guilty of dire pessimism. We'll see.

Update 2: Steve Clemons is not among the cheering throngs:

McCain won the debate in my view -- but I don't think it was a definitive slaughter. Obama held his own on a number of fronts, but he wasn't in control.

McCain set the pace, cadence. He provoked Obama and kept saying Obama didn't understand what was going on. Obama hardly attacked McCain with anything memorable at all.

Others will spin as they will -- but this was a really surprising encounter as far as I'm concerned. I thought Obama would trounce McCain, and it didn't come near to that.

Clemons live-blogged the debate and all I can say is I agree with most of his observations.

Final Update (and then I'm going to bed): Happily, most voters' minds don't work like mine and Obama is decisively ahead in the snap polls. This is good news mainly because it will drive tomorrow's coverage and have an amplifying effect in the days ahead. Soon it will be received wisdom that Obama bested McCain on the Maverick's own turf.

It also seems that one of the things many talking heads and focus groupers noticed was the marked differences in McCain's and Obama's demeanors. Which goes to show that I'd never make a good candidate because I couldn't maintain such coolth; my instinct would be to match McCain's pugnacity. It wasn't pugnacity alone, however, that did McCain in. All accounts describe him as surly, angry, contemptuous and strangely unwilling or unable to look Obama in the eye.

That refusal to address Obama directly really hurt McCain. I was thinking that he felt he couldn't afford to engage Obama face-to-face and risk getting really nasty and combative -- an idea advanced by one of Josh Marshall's readers, a psychotherapist. A second TPM reader, an expert in primate behavior, suggests another reason based on his research:

I think people really are missing the point about McCain's failure to look at Obama. McCain was afraid of Obama. It was really clear--look at how much McCain blinked in the first half hour. I study monkey behavior--low ranking monkeys don't look at high ranking monkeys. In a physical, instinctive sense, Obama owned McCain tonight and I think the instant polling reflects that.

I like that. A lot. All in all, I'm very happy to be so wrong.

Comply, or else

I've been meaning to write something about this post from Glenn Greenwald on the surreal news that Army troops will be deployed here in the U.S. for, among other things, crowd control in what seems to be a direct violation of Posse Comitatus. An Army Times article has some of the details. This is when the water gets hot enough to truly boil us frogs.

However, I couldn't do better than to direct you to Digby's extraordinary addition to the discussion:

More... "Comply, or else"