Congress Must Demand Bush and Cheney Resign

By- Suzie-Q @ 6:00 PM MST

From: Democrats.Com Unity

George Bush wants taxpayers to pay $700 billion – $2,333 for every many [man], woman, and child – to bail out Wall Street for its reckless investments in mortgage-backed securities. That’s on top of $800 billion for other recent bailouts, including A.I.G., Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Bear Stearns.

The current financial disaster is the direct result of the Bush-Cheney Administration’s 8-year policy of deregulation, corruption, and greed.

President Clinton inherited huge deficits from George H.W. Bush but balanced the budget and even created surpluses. When George Bush stole the White House in 2001, the projected 10-year surplus was $5 trillion. But Bush immediately gave $2 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, then wasted $1-3 trillion invading Iraq on the basis of lies. Now Bush wants to increase the national debt to $11 trillion.

The $700 billion plan has no transparency or accountability. Worse, the plan does nothing to fix the underlying problem of foreclosures resulting from unaffordable mortgages that were sold through mortgage broker fraud while the Bush Administration turned a blind eye.

The Bush-Cheney Administration cannot be trusted to solve the massive problems they created. Before Congress gives the Bush Administration one dime of taxpayer money for financial bailouts, Congress must demand the immediate resignation of George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Henry Paulson and the appointment of Speaker Nancy Pelosi as President until our next President is sworn in on January 20, 2009.

Email your Senators and Representative and spread the word:
http://www.democrats.com/resign

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ADN: McCain Confused National Guard And Army

By- Suzie-Q @ 5:05 PM MST

Anchorage Paper: McCain Confused Guard and Army

The E & P Pub- September 20, 2008
From David Hulen at the always-valuable Alaska Politics blog at the Anchorage Daily News tonight:

Candidates spend a lot of time talking, and they all misspeak sometimes. But did anyone else notice this, from Wednesday’s much-covered McCain-Palin Town Hall event in Grand Rapids, Mich., where Palin answered questions from people in the audience? McCain said this near the end of the clip below, as he’s talking up Palin’s foreign policy/national security credentials:
“I also know, if I might remind you, that she is commander of the Alaska National Guard. In fact, you may know that on Sept. 11 a large contingent of the Alaska Guard deployed to Iraq and her son happened to be one of them. So I think she understands our national security challenges…”

The ceremony Palin attended at Fort Wainwright last week didn’t involve the Alaska National Guard. Palin’s son is in the Army, and his unit – 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division – deployed to Iraq.

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Evening Jukebox… Paralyzer

By- Suzie-Q @ 5:00 PM MST

Finger Eleven – Paralyzer

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One Man’s Protest In Alaska

By- Suzie-Q @ 2:00 PM MST

Palin Lies: One Man’s Protest on the Juneau Cruise Ship Docks

Huffington Post- AKMuckraker
Posted September 20, 2008 04:28 AM (EST)

The huge Anti-Palin rally in Anchorage last weekend saw more than 1500 people gathered in front of the Loussac Library. It’s gotten lots of attention and support from around the nation. People needed to know that not all Alaskans support Palin as the VP nominee, or share her values. Some may even like Palin as a governor, but find her completely unsuitable and inappropriate on the national (nevermind international) stage. It was the largest rally in Alaska history. And huge rallies are great, but sometimes a powerful statement can be made by just one person stepping out and holding a simple two-word message painted on a piece of cardboard. Enjoy this wonderful story from Doug, a Mudflats reader in Juneau, Alaska.

——

For starters, I can see the Governor’s Mansion from my front deck. By the McCain/Palin campaign’s standards this would make me an expert on Governor Palin and her family. The problem is that the Palins don’t live in the mansion, unlike the Russians who actually live in Russia.

Last weekend my wife spoke with her Dad who lives in New York. He was concerned that his neighbors had just returned from an Alaskan cruise and had confidently reported that “everyone in Alaska loves Governor Palin.”

So last night I took a piece of cardboard from the garage, found some of my son’s tempera-paints and made a sign. It read “PALIN LIES”, in big green letters. It wasn’t clever, it wasn’t profound. It was just the way I felt.

I vowed to my family that I would go downtown the next morning and mount a one-man protest.

I would start my protest at the State Capitol, go to the Governor’s Mansion then end up at one of the Cruise Ship Docks near the center of town.

I somehow saw myself victoriously squatting on the Capitol steps flashing my sign to dignitaries and legislators (maybe even lawyer Ed O’Callaghan). But once I got downtown I realized that most people entering or leaving the building at this time of year are State administrative staff. I figured all of them already know the deal, and they would shun me anyway, in fear of losing their jobs.

On second thought, the Governor’s Mansion was a no-go as well. The Governor wasn’t at home. No one was at home. One lonely maintenance guy was raking the yard and all the houses in the neighborhood sported Obama signs either on their lawns or in their windows. I’d be preaching to the choir.

No, the cruise ship docks were the biggest bang for my protest buck. Thousands of people from all over the country, maybe world would see me. I had found my audience. I opted for the Holland America dock. It was close to the Red Dog Saloon, a local landmark, and near a series of steps that went from the dock to the street. People would be coming and going. Perfect.

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Daily Kos Tracking Poll: Obama 50- McCain 42 (9/20/08)

By- Suzie-Q @ 10:00 AM MST

9/20 Daily Kos R2K Tracking Poll: Obama 50, McCain 42

Daily Kos- by DemFromCT

Sat Sep 20, 2008 at 05:09:37 AM PDT

Today’s Daily Kos Research 2000 tracking poll has Obama up by over McCain 50-42 (LV, MoE +/- 3).

Notable is Sarah Palin’s – 7 fav/unfav, and McCain’s – 1, suggesting further erosion in that ticket’s standing (see trendlines.)

McCain made two mistakes; one was calling the economy “fundamentally sound” on Black Monday, the other was picking Sarah Palin to be his VP (this week highlighted her weak points. Being able to see Russia from her house isn’t going to help the markets any.)

Charles Blow of the NY Times has as good an explanation as any, based on the CBS/NY Times poll:

When those Republicans were asked what they liked least about [Palin], they started to sound more like everyone else. Aside from those who said that there was nothing they didn’t like, next on the list were: her lack of experience, her record as governor and her lack of foreign-policy experience.

Also, most Republicans think you only picked her to help with the election, not because she is qualified, and a third said that they would be “concerned” if for some reason she actually had to serve as president.

And Palin is proving to be just as vacant as people suspected.

It’s Charles Blow, so there’s a cool graphic to go with it. What’s important about the Blow opinion is that it is informed opinion, based on his paper’s polling data and supported by our own tracker’s 24 point fav/unfav drop in 9 days (which is also accompanied by a 12 point drop in McCain’s.) This isn’t just “Palin coming back to earth,” as alleged by her media supporters. She started out the same as Obama and Biden but now there are significant differences between what’s happened to Obama-Biden and McCain-Palin as one ticket stays steady and the other goes south.

If you check the pundit round-up, you’ll see plenty of other opinion recognizing that Palin is, in fact, a drag on the ticket.

Weekend polling often favors McCain, so it’ll be Tues or Wed before we see how this all shakes out. R2K is today, the other trackers are yesterday.

Obama  McCain  MoE +/-  RV/LV
Research 2000:  50    42    3        LV
Diageo/Hotline: 45    44    3.2      RV
Rasmussen:      48    48    2        LV
Gallup:         49    44    2        RV

Other points of interest are the three day individual R2K topline numbers (Obama was +8, +8, +7.) Gallup, who has Obama up 49-44 yesterday, noted

Obama enjoyed one of his widest advantages over McCain of recent weeks in Thursday night’s interviewing.

Hotline’s numbers tightened while Rasmussen’s stayed flat. Meanwhile the markets (Intrade, Rasmussen) have flipped in Obama’s favor by ~51-48.

The tight race remains tight.

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McCain’s Health Care Plan: If We Marketize Health Care It Will Perform As Well As The Financial Industry!

By- Suzie-Q @ 9:00 AM MST

McCain on banking and health

The New York Times- Paul Krugman

September 19, 2008,  7:24 pm

OK, a correspondent directs me to John McCain’s article, Better Health Care at Lower Cost for Every American, in the Sept./Oct. issue of Contingencies, the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries. You might want to be seated before reading this.

Here’s what McCain has to say about the wonders of market-based health reform:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

So McCain, who now poses as the scourge of Wall Street, was praising financial deregulation like 10 seconds ago — and promising that if we marketize health care, it will perform as well as the financial industry!

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Dodd: US financial system near meltdown

posted @ 14:15 BST

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT), Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke (2nd L), Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox (2nd R) and Treasury Undersecretary for Domestic Finance Robert Steel (R) on Capitol Hill in Washington April 3, 2008. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst (UNITED STATES)

Press TV | Saturday, September 20, 2008

The US may be days away from a complete catastrophic meltdown of its financial system, says Senate Banking Committee chairman Chris Dodd.

“I’ve been here 28 years. To listen to the language of last evening, we maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system,” AFP quoted Dodd as saying while referring to the late Thursday meeting of the US Congressional leaders with the US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

Senator Dodd noted it was “one of the rare moments, certainly rare in my experience here, that Democrats and Republicans decided we needed to work together, quickly.”

“We’re talking hundreds of billions,” Paulson said ahead of talks with Congress on details of the massive rescue effort, unveiled initially late Thursday.

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Nobel Prize Winning Economist: Crisis As Bad As Great Depression Or Worse

posted @ 14:05 BST

Former chief economist for the world bank says “you have to be in fantasy land to say that everything is fine

Steve Watson | Infowars.net | Wednesday, Sept 17, 2008

Two time Nobel-prize winner and former chief economist of the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz has warned that the current financial crisis will continue for at least another eighteen months and in many ways represents a worse situation than the one faced by Americans during the great depression of the 1930s.

“You can paper things over for a while but eventually you have to face reality.” Stiglitz told the nationally syndicated Alex Jones show yesterday.

“This is clearly the most serious problem since the great depression and in some ways worse in terms of the financial institutions.” Stiglitz commented, referring to the fact that lenders are unwilling to take risks to finance each other because they no longer have complete access to their own undertakings let alone those of other institutions.

“The reason, in part, is that while some of the same problems that occurred during the great depression and have occurred since, such as excessive leverage, pyramid schemes, bubbles, have happened before, the so called innovation of Wall Street, the financial innovations, that were supposed to manage risk, created a kind of non transparency that is now so great that no one knows exactly the magnitude of the risk they face.”

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Apocalypse Now?: New world order could have devastating implications for Western nations

posted @ 13:55 BST

Here comes the apocalpse: Is the Western world entering a nightmare scenario, as depicted by Edvard Munch?

Peter Osbourne | UK Daily Mail | Saturday, September 20, 2008

Almost exactly seven years ago Al Qaeda terrorists targeted their hijacked planes into the Twin Towers at the heart of New York’s financial centre — and the world was transformed.

There were no deaths this week, but the effects of the carnage on the financial
markets will be far more profound and destabilising than the 9/11 atrocity.

For almost all of us, it will, I predict, be a change for the worse, and for a large
minority the consequences will be extremely distressing.

The Western world — Britain, Europe and the U.S. — has moved from excess to
austerity overnight. This week’s financial typhoon will savagely impact living
standards.

In due course, it will topple governments and lead to a permanent transfer of
economic and political power from Europe and America to the emergent and, in some
cases, such as China, semi-barbarous economies in the East.

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