Calling these ads lies is important. California voters must understand that the same old lies are being presented to us. This is just another bunch of lies to divide us one from another. Only this time, they will take away rights unless Prop 8 is defeated.

Please support the No On Prop 8 campaign! Help stop the lies.

Donate here to keep this ad on the air.

It would hardly be a problematic issue if there were no American citizens out there who feel that it's acceptable to settle a grievance at the barrel of a gun, or with fisticuffs or perhaps the more subtle rock thrown through a window belonging to an opponent.

The McCain campaign seems to somehow be suffering from a distorted "50 first dates" syndrome... they wake up every day and seem to have forgotten what they did the day before in either words or deeds. Their surrogates deny that they have said anything that might be construed as inflaming the emotions of their "base" with respect to Barack Obama, while these same surrogates have begun to seize on anything that might be leveraged into making a case that they are being "persecuted" by the "liberal" media (how about a new tune, y'all?) and congressmen like Congressman John Lewis who had the temerity to suggest that perhaps the Republican campaign was not behaving in either a civilized or ethical manner.

"During another period, in the not too distant past, there was a governor of the state of Alabama named George Wallace who also became a presidential candidate. George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama," wrote the Democrat.

Sarah Palin and her somewhat limited supply of talking points and incomplete sentences has been asking "Who is Barack Obama?" in speeches before audiences who would vote for her either because they would compete with Rich Lowry to "catch little starbursts" themselves, or admire her ability to be the Mistress of Republican Word Salad:

We have trade missions back and forth, we do. It's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia. As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there, they are right next to our state.

Or for her moderately inflammatory rhetoric,

"This is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America"

See it exactly how, Governor? White and 100% bible-thumping X-Tian? From the composition of her audiences, that might be a good guess. It's been several decades since Tricky Dick introduced the "southern strategy" against the Democrats, and it's been refined over successive years by men like Lee Atwater and his disciple Karl Rove, among others, to scalpel-like precision. Interestingly, the McFailin' campaign is having a hard time even executing the automatic and idiot-proof template left to them by Rove & Co. because the vast majority of Americans who might viscerally respond to "dog-whistles" and negative ads are worried about even being able to retire before age 90 now, or losing their homes or being pushed into bankruptcy under the new, bank-oriented and draconian bankruptcy laws passed and signed by the Republicans ostensibly for "personal responsibility". (Yes, there are plenty of Democrats including Biden who need to own up to that piece of shit legislation and repeal it).

This year's voters, who are mostly decent, middle class men and women are not worried about Obama's middle name, and are not worried because he's an African-American, they get that he's just an American who seems to understand America's present difficulties and challenges, and wants to work on a solution for them and every American. They're worried that all their money might soon be gone, and that they might soon be living, first hand, their grandparents' stories of life in the Great Depression . I have to wonder if those same voters wonder about the ability of a candidate to govern effectively if they can't even effectively run a campaign of lies, smears and innuendo in the grandest tradition of Karl Rove and Lee Atwater.

It seems that John McCain and Sarah Palin have rediscovered an anecdote about George Wallace, and see it as their path to success on their road to the election...

A black lawyer recalls, "Judge George Wallace was the most liberal judge that I had ever practiced law in front of. He was the first judge in Alabama to call me 'Mister' in a courtroom." Later, when a supporter asked why he started using racist messages, Wallace replied, "You know, I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about n*****s, and they stomped the floor."

Just substitute "terrorist" or "Ayers" for that other word, and you've got the Palin speech generation algorithm seeded and ready to rock the house. Or hand them metaphorical rocks, which seems to be more like the case 24 days out.

Barack Obama's last name was misspelled as Osama on about 300 absentee ballots in New York's Rensselaer County

According to the Albany Times Union, the ballot went through levels of proofreading. But the B/S typo still raised suspicions in this upstate New York county.

Locals had these responses:

*It seems typical. Because after all, it's government.

*I don't trust any of them anyway. I think it'll feed into people's fears about Obama. That you know, it ties into the whole thing with his middle name being Hussein and this fear that he's secretly a terrorist.

*I think that was intentional. It's obvious. Besides I support McCain. But you don't need dirty tricks.

Realizing some people might cross out the misspelling and write in the correct spelling, officials decided to issue new ballots to all 300 voters. Explained Edward McDonough, the county's Democratic elections commissioner:

Election law is quite clear that any corrections done on a ballot will nullify the vote, so to be safe, we re-issued the.

Bipartisanship prevailed, with County Democratic Chairman Tom Wade telling the Times Union:

Unfortunately it is a mistake which negatively impacts our Democratic candidate for president,

and Republican Commissioner Larry Bugbee saying:

We have three different staff members who proof these things and somehow the typo got by us. We really apologize.

B/S? Given the position of keys in the standardized, used-all-the-time-in-all-English-speaking countries QWERTY keybord, Onama or Ovama seem a much more likely typo.

Thomas and Sheriff Joke

Hello from the state that has brought you John McCain. Sorry about that. You would think that would be enough shame for the Arizona Republican Party. Sadly, they have much more to offer. Reprehensible does not start to describe the efforts of the Arizona GOP and their poster boy of hate, Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas. You may remember Thomas, he was behind the blatantly unconstitutional arrest and attempted prosecution of the two publishers of the local independent investigative weekly newspaper, The New Times.

Andrew Thomas is a young, extreme right wing, fundamentalist nightmare, and he, along with his best friend Joe Arpaio, are the law in Maricopa County, the home of Phoenix and the fourth most populated county in the United States. Here is the latest morally repugnant bile out of Andrew Thomas and the Arizona GOP:

An official with the Arizona Republican Party says he pulled an innuendo-heavy ad linking Tim Nelson, the Democratic candidate for county attorney, to defense lawyers in child- pornography and child-murder cases.
...
The ad refers to suggestions made in news releases, news conferences and interviews generated by Rose's agency.

In mid-September, one of Rose's associates issued a news release saying that a lawyer who defends pornographers contributed to Nelson's campaign. Nelson donated the $390 in question to a charity for parents of murdered children.

"It's sickening that they have sunk to a new low," Nelson said.

Nelson characterized Thomas' attacks as "personal, mean and with false innuendo."
...
The Nelson ad opens with images of children riding tricycles and eating dinner at a family table.

"They deserve a safe neighborhood, a secure home," a woman's voice says. "They deserve the innocence of childhood and all of its wonder. And they deserve to be protected."

Then there's a drum roll and a frowning photo of Tim Nelson flashes on screen.

"But can they count on liberal ACLU lawyer Tim Nelson?" the woman continues. "He took money from a child pornographer and from lawyers who defend child murderers. Liberal Tim Nelson isn't just wrong. He's dangerous."

What are Tim Nelson's crimes? That fully upstanding citizens, that happen to be employed as criminal defense attorneys, contributed to his campaign. Oh, yes, and that over ten years ago, the firm that Nelson worked at was appointed by the court to assist an indigent defendant with a death penalty appeal. Not Nelson personally understand you, just his firm. Wonderful. The United States Constitution guarantees criminal defendants the right to counsel. But when big civil law firms, like the one Nelson worked at, donate their time in the interest of upholding the Constitution and the rule of law, everybody affiliated with them are tarred by Andrew Thomas and the Arizona GOP as dangerous criminal aider and abetters themselves. This is beyond despicable.

And what does Andrew Thomas himself have to say about this? Is he apologetic and embarrassed? Of course not. While admitting that the ad was slightly exaggerated, Thomas dives right back into the cesspool.

"The fact is: My opponent has prostituted himself to lawyers for Valley criminals," Thomas said. "I would hope the party, if they choose to help my campaign, will rework the ad to stick to the facts as laid out in our campaign material."

We talk so much about the national elections here, and with good reason, the Presidential and Congressional elections are of critical significance with our nation teetering on the brink of self immolation. But the simple fact of the matter is that the vast majority of real governance occurs at the state and local level. We must not forget that; those elections count every bit as much as the national ones in a lot of ways. More and better Democrats are direly needed all the way across the board.

In Maricopa County, a very critical spot in the rapidly growing and significant Southwest, arguably the most significant spot, there is a chance to make a dent. While Sheriff Joe Arpaio probably cannot be defeated, Andrew Thomas sure can. It is a neck and neck race, and Tim Nelson is a very solid candidate. Nelson is very close to Janet Napolitano, who is remarkably popular in Arizona for a Democrat, and he has run an honorable race so far. But Thomas is far better financed, and is benefitting from outside GOP money and groups that are active here because of McCain.

It is a miracle that Nelson is dead even with Thomas. Thomas won the office in 2004 by a huge margin. Tim Nelson needs help to finish off the deal. I will be discussing this race again in the coming days. In the meantime, however, if you live in Arizona, or have an interest in seeing an extremely critical race won by the good guy for once, help Tim Nelson out by donating some time or money. We always strive to make a difference, we have a chance here.

How's Your Retirement Plan?

The title to this devastating front page Times article is "White House Overhauling Rescue Plan," but it could more accurately be named, "Five Reasons Why Secretary Paulsen Should Be Fired and a Conservator Appointed for the US Treasury."

In an earlier post economist Dean Baker points out that Bush Administration's Treasury Secretary has been wrong on just about everything. The Times article documents this judgment, detailing Paulson's most egregious mistakes.

In each case Paulson's errors can be traced either to an ideological rigidity -- a blind faith in the market miraculously fixing itself long after facts on the ground and the Government's own interventions had shattered that myth -- and a corrupt predeliction to favor only those solutions acceptable to Paulson's financial CEO pals, leaving them unaccountable for their gross mismanagement.

Thus we find that Paulson wasted nearly a month -- when the crisis was gathering steam and becoming more difficult to fix -- clinging to an overly expensive, unworkable plan to purchase toxic assets, while resisting for ideological reasons a more workable solution of direct capitalization he now reluctantly embraces.

But even now he resists imposing conditions on the banking industry -- voting shares, assurances on inter-bank lending -- that more sensible nations and economists deem essential. The simple logic, urged here and and here by Ian Welsh, that if a bank is not lending it is not functioning as a bank and needs that function taken over still eludes the Bush ideologues.

And we still find Paulson resisting the very conditions Congress extracted from Paulson in the bailout bill: (1) restraints on CEO/executive compensation and (2) taxpayer protections ensured via heavy oversight of key activities by Treasury:

But as the financial markets spiraled further downward during the last 10 days, a growing number of top-tier institutions, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, became worried about their survival.

“The crisis in confidence goes way beyond the actual losses that will be incurred from debt securities,” Mickey Levy, chief economist for Bank of America, said in an interview on Friday. “It’s truly incumbent on policy makers to address that crisis.”

Treasury officials began canvassing banks and investment firms about the possibility of having the government buy stakes in them. The new bailout law gave the Treasury the authority to buy up almost any kind of asset it wanted, including stock or preferred shares in banks.

Industry executives quickly told Mr. Paulson that they liked the idea, though they warned that the Treasury should not try to squeeze out existing shareholders. They also begged Mr. Paulson not to impose tough restrictions on executive pay and golden-parachute deals for executives who are fired.

Mr. Paulson heeded those pleas. In his remarks on Friday, he carefully noted that the government would acquire only “nonvoting” shares in companies. And officials said the law lets the Treasury write most of its own restrictions on executive pay, and those restrictions can be lenient if they are applied to a set of fairly healthy companies.

The only reasons Henry Paulsen still has a job is that no one except George Bush has any confidence in George Bush's judgment in naming a successor and there is no precedent for creating a conservatorship for the US Treasury.

Congress needs to demand that taxpayer protection, oversight and executive accountability be reestablished immediately, because critical decisions vital to our economy are still being made by corrupt and incompetent men. But whom do we trust?

This morning on "Faux News Sunday," Chris Wallace asked Rick Davis about the rabid wingnut crazies, also known as the GOP base, screaming "kill him!" and "terrorist!" and "bomb Obama!" at unaffiliated right wing protests official McPalin campaign events.

His explanation? McSame was a POW. Really.

Davis also hilariously demanded an Obama apology for John Lewis' comments.

So to recap: the POW is not responsible for things his running mate says or his supporters say -- or anyone who introduces him -- at his campaign events. But Obama's responsible for everyone everywhere who says mean things about McSame. And did we mention that McSame was a POW?

As their campaign swirls down the electoral toilet, the McPalin people have moved well beyond chutzpah and into delusional self-parody. 

It's a beautiful thing to watch.

(video via hidnusr)

Why is this?

Republican's are brazen. They conduct their voter suppression campaigns in the open. Voter roll purges. Phone calls into minority neighborhoods on election day giving inaccurate polling locations. Armed thugs hired to play police or border patrol agents at the polls. Black people harassed by the cops on their way to vote.

Paul Weyrich, one of the acknowledged architects of the right wing ascendancy, said bluntly (in the video above), "I don't want everybody to vote...our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down." Well, that's about as undemocratic a sentiment as can be heard in a democracy.

So-called registration fraud has yet to lead to charges of any fraudulent voting. So, with voter suppression there are visible crimes. On the other side, there are vague suspicions leveled at the usual suspects in America: the poor and people of color.

The latter makes the headlines, even when there's plenty of reason to suspect the suspicious. ACORN, it should be remembered, is the group New Mexico prosecutor David Iglesias refused to investigate on orders from Karl Rove and President Bush. He was fired by them for following the law.

Again, why? Because it is, by political and cultural tradition, far, far easier to demonize and accuse than it is to champion the humanity, dignity and rights of others. We had witch hunts before we had a revolution on behalf of dignity and rights. And we've had a lot more witch hunts since the Revolution.

Americans walking down an unfamiliar city street are more likely to be on the lookout for dangerous criminals than they are to be scanning the sidewalk for unrecognized saints. Sadly, our brains are wired like this. We look for and remember the bad more readily than we see or remember the good. This is why negative campaign ads work so well.

When combined with our history of bigotry and hatred, this human tendency leads to habits of exclusion that become overwhelmingly powerful. They dominate our narratives, our politics, our news.

It took 140-plus years for women to earn the right to vote. It took about an hour for the John McCain campaign to get nationwide headlines about ACORN.

Still, something's missing in the analysis. We're ready to jail the pickpocket. But if we're wired to be on the lookout for the bad, in a democracy the vote suppressor ought to be the baddest of the bad. But he escapes without even a metaphorical slap on the wrist.

Americans are proud of our experiment in democracy, proud to the point of investing its heroes, great moments and, as Sarah Palin says, its "exceptionalism," with a religiosity usually reserved for saints and holy places.

So it seems quite heretical that we would invent speed bumps, leashes for children and talking toasters before we've come close to achieving a voting system that safeguards everyone's right to vote and makes sure every vote is counted.

But right from the beginning, American democracy excluded many. The franchise was denied slaves, freed slaves, women, the property-less. The unworthy (at least those not kept outside in chains) are treated like Protestants who've stumbled into a Catholic mass. They can, sometimes, stay and sit quietly, but they can't participate in the sacraments.

This is the ugly truth. Many Americans believe, consciously or unconsciously, that there are others who should be denied the vote. They might quibble over who they are, but the practice of exclusion and suppression is not looked upon as something innately bad.

The denial of the right to vote is an accepted ritual practice in our democracy, which means we really haven't achieved democracy at all. If there is any single act that is central to the health of democracy, it is the vote.

Without that, elections are little more than weight-lifting contests. Those with the muscle to keep their political enemies from the polls will win. Sometimes, of course, a vote suppressor will lose because he just has too many political enemies to excommunicate. But even this can lead to a dangerous apathy. The press will justify its shrugging acceptance of voter suppression campaigns by pointing out that they don't always succeed.

But the press is the willing handmaiden of anti-democratic forces when it plays up "voter fraud" stories knowing in advance that the stories themselves carry an intimidation factor. Citizens whose communities have long been targets of law enforcement excesses have learned to steer clear of the suspected fraud of others. Voting, they fear after reading the stories, will lead them into the long arms of the law, even if they are legally registered, informed and caring citizens.

In my 2004 book, The Politics of Deceit, Saving Freedom and Democracy from Extinction, I called Republican voter suppression the most underreported political scandal of our time. It remains so. A resurgent and diligent progressive movement is forcing more press coverage of voter suppression. But it's not yet enough.

Until Americans believe participation trumps their desires to exclude others, the democracy we seek to achieve will forever remain beyond our reach.

Remember all those folks who said that it was absolutely essential that the bailout bill be passed immediately or the economy would collapse? How can these people explain the fact that 10 days after he has had the full legal authority to act, Secretary Paulson has still done nothing with the $700 billion that Congress handed him. Doesn’t Paulson realize the urgency?

Remember those who said that it was so urgent to pass a bailout package that even a badly designed bill had to be approved. Even if Secretary Paulson’s proposal for buying bad assets through a reverse auction mechanism was a complex and inefficient way to re-capitalize the banks, it was still essential that he be given the money to go this route. What does it mean that even Secretary Paulson has now abandoned this approach? (Give Paulson credit for good judgment and being willing to change his mind, but what a waste it would have been if he had followed the initial course.)

Finally, remember the political leaders who assured the public that the restrictions on executive compensation included in the bailout would ensure that the taxes paid by school teachers and fire fighters were not subsidizing the income of the multi-millionaire bankers who had wrecked their banks and the economy? It turns out that these restrictions are not likely to affect executive compensation at all. This is not just a question of trying to rub anyone’s face in the ground for being wrong. This is how Washington politics is played. Imagine that the bailout had gone down a second time. Suppose that the financial markets and credit markets had panicked in the same way that they actually have panicked since the bailout’s passage. The newspapers would be filled with news stories, columns, and editorials condemning the ignorant hordes who just can’t understand economics, and who forced their leaders in Congress to vote against the bill. However, when bad things happen after Congress follows the advice of the elite (who, by the way brought us to this crisis in the first place), no one is supposed to say anything. Well, the real story here is that the elites brought us this mess. They were too dumb to see an $8 trillion housing bubble and to recognize the damage it would cause when it burst. They didn’t know what they were doing then and they still don’t know what they are doing now.

Billionaire Sumner Redstone got caught in the credit crunch Friday.

The 85-year-old mogul, who has long bragged about his financial savvy and competitive drive, was forced to sell a fifth of his family's stake in his two media companies -- Viacom Inc. and CBS Corp. -- on a day when the companies' shares were trading at record lows... On the most volatile trading day in the stock market's 112-year history, Redstone's family's holding firm, National Amusements Inc., had to dump $400 million of nonvoting B shares in Viacom and CBS to raise cash to "pay down debt to comply with covenants under [the company's] credit agreements," according to a statement from National Amusements...

Regulations require companies to publicly provide financial guidance whenever insiders sell large blocks of stock shortly before earnings reports are released. CBS is scheduled to release third-quarter results Oct. 30, and Viacom on Nov. 3.

The revised guidance issued Friday was bleak. Both Viacom and CBS lowered earnings estimates, blaming the world financial crisis for weaker advertising sales. They said the situation could get worse.

Why, if this was a movie and there weren't jobs and pensions at stake, this would kind of satisfying to watch.

Yesterday, the chairman of CBS's parent company chose Hong Kong as a place to drop a little bomb. Sumner Redstone, who calls himself a "liberal Democrat," said he's supporting President Bush.

The chairman of the entertainment giant Viacom said the reason was simple: Republican values are what U.S. companies need. Speaking to some of America's and Asia's top executives gathered for Forbes magazine's annual Global CEO Conference, Mr. Redstone declared: "I look at the election from what's good for Viacom. I vote for what's good for Viacom. I vote, today, Viacom.

"I don't want to denigrate Kerry," he went on, "but from a Viacom standpoint, the election of a Republican administration is a better deal. Because the Republican administration has stood for many things we believe in, deregulation and so on... from a Viacom standpoint, we believe the election of a Republican administration is better for our company."

Well played, sir.