Money in the Bank

So my roommate asked me if he should take all of his money out of Washington Mutual when it was bought by JP Morgan Chase last Friday. I hesitantly said up to $100,000 of his money is safe, repeating the goverment's promises that I don't even believe.

I then stopped by my branch of 'formally known as Washington Mutual' at 5:30am on Monday on my way to work and all three of the ATMs told me they were not able to give me money. Good thing I had my 'emergency' $20 bill in my bag or I would have had trouble making it to my job.

These are crazy times and it scares the excrement out of me that I have to trust the Bush Administration to make it right. If Obama wins in a month and a half, he is going to be handed a worse situation than George senior left Bill Clinton. At least we saw Clinton steer that mess back into health, which gives me hope.

Hope Someone is Tallying the Lies, I've Lost Track

Sept. 24, 2008 | Salon.com |By Joseph Romm

If this election is about judgment, then John McCain should lose in a landslide. He said of his V.P. pick, "She knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America."

We can judge knowledge by both breadth and depth. Palin lacks both. She said in the ABC interview with Charlie Gibson:

Let me speak specifically about a credential that I do bring to this table, Charlie, and that's with the energy independence that I've been working on for these years as the governor of this state that produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy.

FactCheck.org notes that this is "simply untrue." Instead of "nearly 20 percent," try "under 3 percent." On Sept. 14, Palin corrected that to: "My job has been to oversee nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of oil and gas." In fact, as the Washington Post notes, "according to authoritative EIA [Energy Information Administration] data, Alaska accounted for just 7.4 percent of total U.S. oil and gas production in 2005." The Post gives her its highest (which is to say lowest) rating of "Four Pinocchios" for "continuing to peddle bogus statistics three days after the original error was pointed out by independent fact-checkers."

Just for the record, the statement is not true even if you replace the word "energy" with "oil." Alaska accounts for only about 13 percent of U.S. oil production. But the point is, you can't replace all energy with oil, as much as the "Drill, Baby, Drill" Republicans would like to. Palin made the same exact same overgeneralization in her convention speech, when she said, "To confront the threat that Iran might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of the world's energy supplies ..." Oil, maybe; energy, definitely not.

From Salon.com

What Do You Think of Our War in Pakistan

Sounds too much like Nixon going into Cambodia from our 'police actions' in Vietnam to me.

Officials: US Spy Drone Crashes in Pakistan

In Pakistan, the Pakistani military is claiming it’s recovered the wreckage of an American spy plane near the Afghan border. Pakistani officials say the drone crashed due to a malfunction, but villagers in the area say it was shot down. It’s believed to be the first time a US spy plane has crashed inside Pakistan. The news comes amidst ongoing US-Pakistani tensions over several US-led attacks inside Pakistan.

From Democracy Now!, Sept 24

US, Pakistan Trade Fire Near Afghan Border

In Pakistan, US and Pakistani troops have exchanged fire near the Afghan border. Pakistan says it opened fire after a US-Afghan force crossed the border. The US says its troops were behind the Afghan side. A series of cross-border attacks by US troops have heightened tensions between the US and Pakistan.

From Democracy Now! Sept 26

Afraid of Saddam Hussein? No, Police in the USA

North Korea? Burma? China? Iran? Sudan? Venezuela? Russia? Palestine?

No, the Republican National Convention, USA.

from Fear and Loathing: 2008 National Conventions

Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists

John McCain (right) with his former financial guru Phil Gramm,
who is credited with masterminding our present financial mess

Today's water cooler conversation, "My bank was taken-over, was yours?"

We are in the largest bank failure in US history.

My bank, Washington Mutual, the nations largest savings and loan, was seized by the federal government last night! I couldn't have said it better than Bill Moyers:

The big, bad government so despised in Wall Street boardrooms and Beltway think tanks has stepped in hoping to save Capitalism from the Capitalists.

I'm reading some hilarious emails from my right wing relatives trying to blame this on our 2 year old Democratically lead congress. I would give them more of my ear if they blamed Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. Grabbing at straws. Funny they never mention John McCain's former financial guru Phil Gramm who is credited as the main player in this mess, by people who know more about our economy than the garbage coming from Fox News.

from the New York Times:

Thursday, in the Roosevelt Room after the session, the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., literally bent down on one knee as he pleaded with Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, not to “blow it up” by withdrawing her party’s support for the package over what Ms. Pelosi derided as a Republican betrayal.

“I didn’t know you were Catholic,” Ms. Pelosi said, a wry reference to Mr. Paulson’s kneeling, according to someone who observed the exchange. She went on: “It’s not me blowing this up, it’s the Republicans.”

Mr. Paulson sighed. “I know. I know."

Professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University and columnist for the New York Times Paul Krugman had this to say:

The general co-chairman of John McCain’s presidential campaign, former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), led the charge in 1999 to repeal a Depression-era banking regulation law that Democrat Barack Obama claimed on Thursday contributed significantly to today’s economic turmoil.

….

According to federal lobbying disclosure records, Gramm lobbied Congress, the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department about banking and mortgage issues in 2005 and 2006.

During those years, the mortgage industry pressed Congress to roll back strong state rules that sought to stem the rise of predatory tactics used by lenders and brokers to place homeowners in high-cost mortgages

Floyd Norris, the chief financial correspondent of The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, said this on Bill Moyers Journal on September 19th (you can video pod cast this by the way on iTunes):

I can only envision what the right wing would be saying if a Liberal Democrat had decided to nationalize the biggest insurance company in America. I don't think you would be hearing a lot of praise for it.

He went on to say:

It was only a few months ago that I had Wall Street CEOs complaining to me that their stock prices were so low because the press was mean to them, we didn't appreciate what wonderful business strategies they had...

Assistant business and financial editor and a columnist at the New York Times Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times said on Bill Moyers Journal:

The Ugly thing about this is, this is privatizing gains and socializing loses. So when things are going well, the managements make out, the share holders make out, the counter parties are fine, all the "private sector people" do well. But when something goes wrong, when decisions are made that turn out to be bad decisions, the US tax payer has to take on the problem. And there is something very wrong about that. Because all of those people that made all of that money are running off here into the distance, with the money, carrying it in their bags, and the United States tax payer is on the hook.

She went on to say:

I think that the free market idea, the free market constant mantra, that it would bail everybody out, or that it would operate in such a smooth fashion that you don't need the government, was absolutely behind, you know, the last ten to fifteen years of what we've seen. And I think now we very seriously need to question that.

I'm not partisan about this. I know Bill Clinton had his hand in the deregulation of our financial systems during his presidency. And I don't fully trust Obama can straighten this out (though I trust him and the team he will put together a whole lot more than I trust McCain/Palin. Kucinich, where are you?)

If you have trusted your home or retirement to our Republican lead government and our 'free market,' my prayers are with you.

Four More Years of Lies

I spent a morning in John McCain's Virginia campaign headquarters ghost-writing letters to the editor for McCain supporters to sign. I even pretended to have a son in Iraq.

"You can be whoever you want to be," says an inviting Phil Tuchman. "You can be a beggar or a millionaire. A mom or a husband. Whatever. You decide!"

The assignment is simple: We are going to write letters to the editor and we are allowed to make up whatever we want -- as long as it adds to the campaign. After today we are supposed to use our free moments at home to create a flow of fictional fan mail for McCain. "Your letters," says Phil Tuchman [ McCain campaign worker], "will be sent to our campaign offices in battle states. Ohio. Pennsylvania. Virginia. New Hampshire. There we'll place them in local newspapers."

Place them? I may be wrong, but I thought that in the USA only a newspaper's editors decided that.

From Salon.com

Writing is on the Wall