The Republicans’ biggest advantage over the Democrats is money. Not because they have more of it, although they usually do. No, it’s because their base is almost completely aligned with their corporate and wealthy big-money donors, while the Democratic base is the complete opposite.

Adam Goldman has another in his series of articles fleshing out the details of the torture that John Durham is investigating. Today’s story describes the former FBI-turned CIA guy, “Albert” threatened Rahim al-Nashiri with a drill–with the approval of Albert’s boss, “Mike.”

While you’re there, note this emerging pattern in Goldman’s reporting on torture: the return of torturers as CIA contractors.

A fictional gay rights speech I’d like to see the President give.

At some point, the US needs to take a step back and consider the way all types of extra-legal multinational organizations–terrorist organizations, criminal syndicates/drug cartels, even some multinational companies–serve to destabilize nation-states and communities and thereby to exacerbate our vulnerability to all of them.

But right now, DOD seems to be doubling down on the more western-friendly version of extra-legal entity as a key to trying to defeat another extra-legal entity.

Today’s announcement of a $200 billion dollar program to allow businesses to write off their capital expenditures up front in 2010 and 2011 at full cost (which would only cost $30 billion in the long run) hasn’t received the widest reception from the economic profession.

I’m fairly amused by this story, presented by the NYT as “reporting.” It claims the Obama Administration has tried “just about every program it could think of to prop up the ailing housing market,” and faced with the failure of “just about every program,” economists and analysts are contemplating just letting the housing market crash. However there’s a false assertion — the Administration hasn’t tried everyting, including cramdown.

Krugman and Wells puzzle at the fact that the books and policy papers written about the financial meltdown and Great Recession all look backward, as if that crisis has been averted, and not forward, toward the problem we still face. They are dumbfounded at the lack of a sense of urgency, with 15 million Americans out of work.

Seriously? This is the person Zuckerman thinks should be representing New York as a member of Congress?

I’m sure someone at the Daily News must know that fifteen of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, two were from the United Arab Emirates, one was from Lebanon and one was from Egypt. That leaves exactly “zero” from Afghanistan who “attacked us.”

The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll (PDF) is really, really bad news for Democrats less than two months out from the election. While Democrats trail Republicans by only two percentage points among registered voters, 45-47, they are losing by 13 points among likely voters.

From the President’s Labor Day speech yesterday in Wisconsin. “If I said the sky is blue, they’d say no,” Obama said. “If I said fish live in the sea, they’d say no.”