Is E. Rahm Tough Enough?

You Tell Me.

Emanuel once mailed a pollster a big dead fish. Enraged by disloyal Democrats during Bill Clinton’s first presidential run, he blew away dinner guest by calling out the names of the offenders, punctuating each name by shouting, “Dead.” and stabbing the restaurant table with a dinner knife.

Once he summoned a reporter to his office, shut the door and yelled at him like he was the Chief of Police in a bad Cop Movie. Each sentence was filled with profanity that would make a drunken sailor proud. His face was beet-red. At one point, he suddenly stopped, jumped out of his chair and whipped the door open. He then delivered the coup de grâce, declaring “And, dear sir, the horse you road in on.” , loud enough for people in the Outer office to hear.

As far as getting things done. There’s not much doubt about that. Some people may not like how, but by golly it gets done. Here’s what some Washington people have to say:

“He is competitive, hardworking, hard-charging and street smart, … At the end of the day, you send him to get a mission done, he’ll get it done.” -Rep. Thomas Reynolds (NY), who ran the Republicans’ House election committee in 2006 while Emanuel ran the Democratic counterpart.

“He is the perfect choice. He knows the Hill, he knows substance, he knows politics, and most importantly, he can get the job done.” - Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y

“Rahm knows Capitol Hill and has great political skills … He can be a tough partisan but also understands the need to work together.” - Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

“No one I know is better at getting things done than Rahm Emanuel” President-Elect Obama

That common theme of getting things done is going to be vital during the upcoming presidency. We are facing so many problems right now that taking immediate action about some of them is imperative. Rahm seems to understand this.

“We often disagree, but I respect their motives,” Emanuel said. “Now is a time for unity, and, Mr. President-elect, I will do everything in my power to help you stitch together the frayed fabric of our politics, and help summon Americans of both parties to unite in common purpose.”

For the last two years, Emanuel and Rep. Ray LaHood, (R-IL), have put on dinners for small groups of lawmakers from both parties.

“These intimate, yet no-holds-barred dinners have underscored something that I believe is very important for a functional Congress: To get things done on Capitol Hill, one must work in a bipartisan manner,” LaHood said. “Rahm Emanuel shares that belief.”

That’s what Washington needs right now…One Big Dinner Party

Some of the Rumored Guests at the Party:

James Jones was being discussed as secretary of state
former Secretary of State Colin Powell interested in becoming education secretary.
Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel(R)
Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar(R)
and I definately wouldn’t count out Warren Buffet.

Here’s my personal favorite part. Ari from “Entourage” is based on his Brother Ari, an agent in Hollywood. Gotta love that!

~Casper

By: Kirsten Jackson

This is definately an historic moment….someone that was left out of the picture from the previous article is Martin Luther King.

Obama is going to be a historical figure and I have felt since the beginning that he is our Martin Luther King. That doesn’t have anything to do with the color of his skin. Personally, I am really tired of hearing that he is black….what about the other part of him that is white? Why is that always forgotten?
This election has brought out the best and the worst in people. I am reminded of the ignorant Americans in this country that refuse to educate themselves and embrace every American the same. It is 2008….why are we still worried about what color someone’s skin is? I wonder if we will ever get past that but on the other hand realize that there will always be people out there that truly believe that they are superior than other’s. There will always be people that don’t educate themselves and open their eyes to the changing world around them. Where have you all been the last 8 years? Obviously not watching the news or picking up a newspaper. Have you not been affected in some way the past 8 years? I have, countless times, and not in a positive way.
I didn’t vote for Barack Obama because of the color of his skin or his ability to ignite a crowd and speak so eloquently. I voted for him because he is the beacon of hope that this country needs, our light at the end of a very long, dark tunnel. He wants this country to heal, not divided into red and blue states, but actually be the United States! Who cannot be moved when listening to what this man has to say? He represents what our country was supposed to be when the constitution of the United States was written.
While online today I finally got the Republican viewpoint. Two comments made by people that consider themself Republican. The first was “now all of our guns are going to be taken away” and “now all of our money is going to be taken away.” OK WHAT??? Are you serious? That’s what I thought, these people have not been listening! Someone else said that they voted on their morals, that they didn’t need to listen to what they have to say. WOW! First and foremost, Obama does not want your guns! In fact he wants you to keep your right to bear arms! He would like to keep, for example, an AK-47 out of the hands of a gang member. And money….he wants to give you money, that is, if you don’t make over $250,000/year. Obama makes over that amount and he doesn’t mind paying higher taxes because he has the money! Wow…that is quite a concept! Personally, I don’t know anyone who makes over $250,000/year. In fact I would feel rich if I made $100,000/year. I know plenty of people that live paycheck to paycheck, don’t have a dime in savings, and don’t have health insurance. Do I feel these people need tax breaks over the rich? Definately! I want my kids to grow up in a different world than we have now. I believe in Barack Obama and I believe he is going to show everyone what an amazing person he really is.

I’m hoping for some wonderful combination of the above. One things for sure he will be remembered. No Franklin Pierce presidency in store here. His name will never be lost in our nations history. Will he be able to bring together our country and guide us through Our Generations Great Depression. I certainly hope so. No matter what your feeling were/are about Obama everybody better get on board cause this country is in for some very very rough times.

The Choices that he makes in the next few weeks will really tell us what kind of policy changes are coming.

It will also tell us a great deal about how much bipartisanship the next term(s) will have.

The social election of Obama are amazing. I guess I really hadn’t thought alot about how much this will change the way future generations will view race. Or more importantly how they WON’T be thinking about it. Exciting times.

The Phantom will be making it easier to submit stories, comments, and improved Member options in the near future. Keep your eyes on the Phantom Story ticker for details.

Barack Obama along with the help of his Democrat majority run Senate and Congress will easily pass the policies and laws needed to advance his oppressive socialist agenda and this will cause so much damage to our socioeconomic system…..

along with the dismantling of our Constitution that it will be catastrophic and within two years from the time he steps into the Oval Office he will have turned our whole county into a steaming pile of feces and from what I’m about to tell you this will seem like the good part because from this point on only gets worse.

The citizens of this country that so wholeheartedly voted Mr Obama into office will become so disillusioned and disenchanted by the havoc he and his cohorts will have caused in such a short time to this country that a large portion of his constituents will reject the Democrat Party and will flee in droves like a Democrat refugee tsunami to the Republican Party flooding it with people that will still hold on to their liberal ideology that they for so long believed in and is so ingrained in their souls. Their overwhelming numbers will make it impossible for the Republican Party already severely weakened by the Republican R.I.N.O.’s and other liberal forces within it’s body and without a strong conservative base it so desperately needs to ward off the effects of this onslaught will not be able to assimilate such a vast number of liberal ideologues into its fold and will morph into a party no longer recognizable as the strong Republican party of the past but now will now become a party crippled and disfigured by liberalism. So weakened and in disarray it will not be able to fight off the nightmare to come.

Obama will see this rejection by his former supporters as desertion and betrayal of the highest degree. Senators and Congressmen in his own party after witnessing the desertion and along with the dismal state of the nation and with the American people at the boiling point they will recognize the large cracks starting to appear in the foundation of Obama’s house of cards and being the narcissistic but smart lowlifes that they are will begin to think there might be a better future in the Republican Party. The word will get back to Obama that his opportunistic rats are getting ready to jump ship. Obama and his advisors know this would create a vacuum in his party and would hand the power of the Senate and Congress back to the Republicans virtually bringing his rein of power to an abrupt end and this I guarantee you he will not let happen.

Mr Obama being the radical socialist that he truly is, will be in a state of panic at the thought of losing his power and authority that is more important to him than life itself and will unleash every weapon of power from the government arsenal afforded to him as president. He will tell the Senate and Congress that any individual that does not go along and help implement what he is about to do will face harsh retaliation like never imagined. Each member putting his own self interest first will succumb to this threat forcing the Democrat majority run Houses to do his bidding. Mr Obama at this point will have free rein to implement a plan so diabolical that in the end will utterly destroy our nation and in the end put every man, woman and child in this country into bondage.

Mr.Obama in his quest for total power with the help of his Polit Bureau(the Senate and Congress) will nationalize all the private business sectors making the people of this country dependant on the government for all it’s wants and needs. He will nationalize the media virtually eliminating the 1st amendment. He will also eliminate the 2nd amendment and confiscate all the guns from the people in the attempt to eliminate any uprisings or opposition from the masses. The Senators and Congressmen of the Republican Party stripped of all their power will for self preservation ally themselves with the new socialist regime or find themselves eliminated. Mr Obama will now have successfully put into place his own tyrannical government and will make himself king.

The people of this country already at the boiling point will in masses explode like an atomic bomb. Civil violence like never seen in this country before will spread from one end of our nation to the other in such ferocity King Obama will not be able to quell it.. The American Military will not be able to turn their weapons on their own people and will also experience massive desertions and attempted coups by it’s own officers. King Obama faced with his own survival will in desperation need to look elsewhere to save himself and he will find it in the most unlikely allies that are already laying in wait like crouched predators hungry for the kill.

Russia and China will both step in and offer to King Obama their services in the form of their militaries. After all he is a fellow Marxist. In return they will expect a reward for the sacrifice of their fellow soldiers and comrades in the form of one third of the United States for each of them. King Obama will have no other choice but to accept this offer if he wants to remain in power and save his head.

With King Obama as commander and chief of the American Military, the Russian and Chinese Military will be free from any threat of reprisal and will proceed with a scorched earth policy so barbaric that our country will be decimated and left a wasteland and this will leave our people on the verge of extinction. Those of us who are unlucky and survive face a life of slavery and misery. The Russians and Chinese and King Obama will now divide the country into three different sectors much like Germany after world war two and our once great country will have vanished for all of eternity.

If what I have written scares the hell out of you this is good because fear is a wonderful source of inspiration and motivation and hopefully it will inspire and motivate you to take a more hands on, pro active approach in helping shape and defend this great land of ours by getting more involved in the political process. I believe it is part of our patriotic duty to keep ourselves informed of what is going on in our country. Do not sit idly by while some politician that a majority of us don’t even know the name of represents us in the Congress or the Senate and where by some kind of blind faith we expect them be the caretaker of our rights and freedoms. That’s crazy! This “inactivisim” we practice in this nation is why we have a socialist knocking at the door of the White House and for some strange reason close to half of us I’m sad to say are happy to see him there. This is a tragedy! Get out there and do your duty. Become a “Radical” Conservative Republican and by all means VOTE. Last but not least DON’T GIVE UP YOUR GUNS!

For all you cynics who are laughing and saying this could never happen here I’d like to save this argument with you for another place and time, like the Indoctrination Camp when the guards aren’t listening…. jagloss

Kent Conrad’s Bad Decision

An ongoing federal investigation is raising some concerns over Countrywide mortgage practices. While I am very concerned about Countrywide’s involvement in this potential scandal, I believe Sen. Conrad when he says he wasn’t aware of the special treatment. I think it is very reasonable to assume that he thought he was getting the rate that he deserved. Even assuming he was told he was a VIP, would this give him any reason to think that Countrwide was trying to buy some influence? I don’t know his credit score but I can assume it’s pretty high. People with High Credit scores get VIP treatment, should he always question whether he’s getting the VIP treatment he deserves for his credit score or his Senatorial standing. If he leases a car should he question his rate, how about not having to put a deposit down on a Cell phone, his credit limit, credit card rates etc.? It seams plausible that he had no knowledge of any impropriety.

“They said they frequently made exceptions, especially for good customers, and I was a very good customer,” Conrad said.

I think that the fact that he gave the proceeds to habitat for humanity as soon as he was made aware of them let’s us know a little about his character. Sure it was done mainly for political reasons, but he made an attempt at amends. Not to mention he picked a very appropriate charity. Sen. Conrad has a history of being a pretty honest senator and I find it hard to believe that he would knowingly abuse his position.

On the flip side…I do think that more investigation is required. Since both of the Senators involved (Dodd & Conrad) both hold key positions in relation to the Mortgage industry (Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), head of the Senate Banking Committee, and Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who chairs the Senate Budget Committee) this could be very serious. I’m a firm believer in giving people the benefit of doubt, but there should definately be more investigations conducted.

In the current political climate it is hard to tell what is really going on. I think until investigations are over people should consider current politicians innocent until proven guilty. Or at least as innocent as a politician can be.

Here’s NBC’s Story http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/27452151#27452151

Any Excuse to throw up Some AC/DC

That act and the music that goes with it — more than a dozen studio albums of strict blues-riff grammar, lewd vocal snarl and bull-elephant charge — have made AC/DC one of the biggest bands in the world. Their 1980 album, Back in Black, has sold 22 million copies in the U.S. alone. Over the past two years, AC/DC are second only to the Beatles in U.S. catalog sales, and they’ve sold a combined 23 million albums and DVDs worldwide since 2003, when the band moved from its longtime label, Atlantic, to Sony Music. And AC/DC’s new Columbia album, Black Ice, their first studio release in eight years, is poised to be the bestselling rock album of 2008. Advance shipments by Wal-Mart, the album’s exclusive retail outlet, to its stores reportedly totaled 2.5 million copies.

Jan 17, 2009, Fargodome…Sold Out

The Phantom will see you there

More details about the suspected plot to assassinate Obama come trickling in

Apparently the skinheads are afraid again. *Two white supremacists allegedly plotted to go on a national killing spree, shooting and decapitating black people and ultimately targeting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, federal authorities said Monday.

2 Men were planning on killing 88 people, 14 of which were to be beheaded. Apparently the numbers 88 and 14 have some kind of special meaning in this group of wacko’s.

*”Both individuals stated they would dress in all white tuxedos and wear top hats during the assassination attempt,” the court complaint states. “Both individuals further stated they knew they would and were willing to die during this attempt.”

Top hats and tuxes? Once again showing that there was some quality planning here. I mean really, did they think that by the second heinous action that a description of skinhead in tuxes wouldn’t have made them a little hard not to stop?

*Sheriffs’ deputies in Crockett County, Tenn., arrested the two suspects — Daniel Cowart, 20, of Bells, Tenn., and Paul Schlesselman 18, of Helena-West Helena, Ark. — Oct. 22 on unspecified charges. “Once we arrested the defendants and suspected they had violated federal law, we immediately contacted federal authorities,” said Crockett County Sheriff Troy Klyce.

Will this be the first of many stories that haunt this future president, or is he doomed to suffer the same fate as Benazir Bhutto. Are we really living in a country as unsafe for our Leader’s as Pakistan?

We are currently in what is my least favorite time of every olympiad: the presidential and other other major election times.

Time for attack ads, mostly untrue, unkeepable promises, and out and out lies. Little actual information.

Recently we in the Red River Valley had a supposed treat: a visit from Sarah Pahlin’s husband, who, of course wasn’t really doing any campaigning, but he did want us all to know how much of a “Constitutionalists” he is. He’s referring, of course, to the supposed second amendment right to bear arms, which many would have us believe the constitution guarantees each and every one of us. The only problem with Mr. Pahlin and the like is that they never tell us what the second amendment actually says. They speak of something like “right to bear arms,” likely never saying the same thing twice and let it go at that.

For the record: “A well organized and disciplined militia being essential for the national defense, the right of The People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Now, I am not arguing for gun control, I’m just examining some people’s political position. Note a few items of interest in the above: 1) The second amendment is about a militia. Does Mr. Pahlin have trouble joining the Alaska National Guard? 2) The amendment mentions the People, as in “We the People” or the “right of the People to peacably assemble(in the first amendment)”; 3) there is no mention of firearms.

Now, I am not taking a position on individuals owning firearms: it is unlikely that any jurisdiction in North Dakota would pass a law outlawing such. It is true that according to several statistical studies the moment we obtain a gun for our own protection, the chances of our being killed or injured in a violent incident is increased. The reason is simple: people that commit such acts, according to the TV show “Evil” have brains that work differently than normal people, and the don’t view us as people, but rather objects. But I digress.

Recently, the US Supreme court(a body which almost eight years ago I lost all respect for) struck down a Washington DC law that forbade the owning of sidearms. They specifically did not strike down all such laws as unconstitutional. But, for the sake of argument. lets assume they had. Then I want to know if the second amendment guarantees me the the right to keep nuclear hand grenades in my house.

Obviously this last would be absurd, but how to we make such determinations? Well, maybe we should look at the writings of the people who wrote the constitution. I’ve done that, but it was a long time ago. Seems to me that the reason for the second amendment is to keep the government from hiring a private army, which they started doing in the late 60’s during the Viet Nam era.

The point of all this: don’t believe politicians: I have two letters in my files from then Senator Mark Andrews, one saying the second amendment guarantees me the right to own a gun. and another saying it doesn’t.

Fear the Letefisk

No one can complain of a shortage of information about the Great Financial Meltdown. The biggest growth industry today is words: A whole new vocabulary has spread from board tables to kitchen tables. Superannuated whiz kids planting cabbages to offset their newly straitened means can blame their troubles on collateralized debt obligations, special investment vehicles, credit default swaps. Subprime mortgage holders find themselves censured for a new and virulent disease called toxic debt.

But what is in even shorter supply than credit is an economic theory to explain why this financial tsunami occurred, and what its consequences might be. Over the past 30 years, economists have devoted great intellectual energy to proving that such disasters cannot happen. The market system accurately prices all trades at each moment in time. Greed, ignorance, euphoria, panic, herd behavior, predation, financial skulduggery and politics — the forces that drive boom-bust cycles — only exist offstage in their models.
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The Great Financial Meltdown would not have surprised the British economist John Maynard Keynes, who died in 1946, for he thought that this was exactly how unregulated markets would behave. The New Economics, as Keynesian economics was known in the United States until it became the Obsolete Economics, was designed to prevent such turbulence. It held that governments should vary taxes and spending to offset any tendency for inflation to rise or output to fall.

The New Economics generated its own problems, causing it to collapse into stagflation in the 1970s. But for most Americans and Europeans, the years from 1950 to 1975 were a golden age. The developed world grew at an average annual rate of 3.2 percent with very moderate inflation, and without the benefit of the huge rewards now deemed necessary to keep executives properly incentivized. Above all, growth was stable. The business cycle was severely dampened.

Keynes first became convinced of the instability of unregulated economies in the boom years of the “Roaring ’20s.” In many ways, the 1920s were like the last 15 years in their technological dynamism, the extravagant lifestyles of the very rich and in their “irrational exuberance.” But they were especially like the recent past in their belief that prosperity would continue without interruption.

The magical formula for success was supposed to be the new “science” of monetary management. From the fact that depressions were associated with falling prices and booms with rising prices, the economist Irving Fisher concluded that economic cycles could be eliminated by keeping prices stable. Under his influence, the Federal Reserve Board set itself the goal of price stability. And the price level did stay remarkably stable for most of the 1920s.

Fisher’s views were discredited by the stock market crash of 1929, but his doctrines were revived by Milton Friedman in the 1970s. Plagued by inflation, governments around the world took up Friedman’s monetarism, which maintained that inflation was due to governments’ printing too much money. Central banks were made independent (the Fed already was) and were given the single task of keeping prices stable. Moreover, financial innovation in increasingly deregulated markets was said to make investment less and less risky. The formula seemed to work. Not only did inflation stay low — not once did it exceed 4 percent between 1991 and 2006 — with very little price volatility from the 1990s onward, but the U.S. economy showed strong, though not particularly steady, growth of 3.22 percent on average. Once again, perpetual prosperity beckoned.

So what went wrong?

What was wrong was the theory. The price level is not a leading, but a lagging, indicator. Asset bubbles can coexist with a stable price level, even while the rest of the economy is starting to slide into depression. And this, in essence, is what Keynes believed was happening in the late 1920s. Money, he argued, was being switched from production to speculation. The rich were getting very much richer, while the incomes of the rest were stagnating. “Profit inflation,” fueled by collateralized debt, went together with an “income deflation.” Share prices were being driven up to dizzying heights even as farmers were finding it harder to service agricultural mortgages. Every financial crash is different in detail — today’s started in the banking system, not the stock market — but the anatomy of all is surprisingly similar: A speculative frenzy, triggered by some technical innovation such as mortgage-backed securities, that collapses when reality — in the form of more sober valuations — kicks in.

No one has bettered Keynes in his understanding of the psychology of financial markets. “Most . . . of our decisions to do something positive . . . can only be taken as a result of animal spirits . . . If animal spirits are dimmed . . . enterprise will fade and die” is one famous remark. “Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done” is another. Professional investment, he wrote, is like “a game of Snap, of Old Maid, of Musical Chairs,” whose object is to pass on the Old Maid — the toxic debt — to one’s neighbor before the music stops. What makes the game toxic is not greed, which is universal, but uncertainty masquerading as certainty.

“The outstanding fact is the extreme precariousness of the basis of knowledge on which our estimates of prospective yield have to be made,” Keynes wrote in his great book “The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money” in 1936. We disguise this uncertainty from ourselves by assuming that the future will be like the past, that existing opinion correctly sums up future prospects, and by copying what everyone else is doing. But any view of the future based on “so flimsy a foundation” is liable to “sudden and violent changes. The practice of calmness and immobility, of certainty and security suddenly breaks down. New fears and hopes will, without warning, take charge of human conduct . . . the market will be subject to waves of optimistic and pessimistic sentiment, which are unreasoning yet in a sense legitimate where no solid basis exists for a reasonable calculation.” Keynes accused economics of being itself “one of these pretty, polite techniques which tries to deal with the present by abstracting from the fact that we know very little about the future.”

One must bear in mind that Keynes’s aphorisms, which seem so apposite today, were for years dismissed with a pitying smile as the product of a primitive state of economic thinking that had been rendered obsolete by powerful desktop computers and Ph.D. math unavailable to economists of Keynes’s generation.

The second strand of Keynes’s economics was formed by the depressed 1930s, rather than the booming ’20s. His main insight was that a wounded economy would not simply bounce back but might take years to recover. In his language, it might remain a long time in a state of “underemployment equilibrium,” from which it could be rescued only by a massive external shock. As we know, this proved to be the case. It was not the New Deal that brought the U.S. economy back to full employment, but the huge increase in government spending caused by World War II.

The long Japanese stagnation of the 1990s is another example of how long it can take for toxic debt to work itself off the balance sheet of banks, and how relatively powerless governments are to produce recovery in the face of flight into cash. This may or may not be our fate today. We all hope that the new Nobel laureate Paul Krugman is right that the rescue operations taken in the past couple of weeks may be enough to stem the financial crisis. But the wreckage may be with us for a long time to come.

Of course the problem of what a government can or should do to prevent or mitigate these financial storms is not disposed of by pointing out that economies don’t behave in the way economists claim that they do. Keynesians want to create financial corridors to limit “the flight of the butterfly,” in Paul Davidson’s graphic phrase. Free-marketers argue that the cost of periodic crashes and massive rescue operations is worth paying to preserve freedom of capital movements and technological dynamism. Today, as the costs of the bailout mount up, this argument is heard much less.

We know now that we know very little. But Keynes’s insights should not be tossed away as old garbage. At the very least we can say that we have no warrant for basing economics on assumptions that are so often discredited by events. Suitable perhaps for professors and students, such economics are likely to be especially toxic for policymakers.

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Who Said The 1990s Didn’t Rock?

Democrats also are lining

up behind House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s plan to bring lawmakers back to Capitol Hill after the Nov. 4 election to work on a second economic relief plan. The idea is “give the middle-class and the average citizen the same kind of relief that we try to give the financial sector,” said Democratic Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

Top Democrats are suggesting a $150 billion measure that would extend jobless benefits, provide more money for food stamps and finance and some construction projects such as rebuilding bridges and roads. Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, the second-ranking House Republican, said he would help on a plan “that makes sense” but is not laden with huge public works projects or bailouts for states that overspent on social programs. Read More Here

Who was the big loser? In an historic fortnight that had already underscored his erratic nature, John McCain.

The fact that Palin was able to string her sentences together last night - which she couldn’t manage to do in her unscripted interviews with Katie Couric — shows only how low McCain has strapped his presidential quest.

Sarah Palin’s task was an impossible one: to demonstrate that she is ready to be president of the United States. McCain put her in that impossible position; and her performance — all prep and no depth — demonstrated the bind he has put himself in.

Yes, he “energized the base” with his Hail Mary pick of Palin as a running mate. But he also demonstrated cynical disregard for the requirement of stable governance were he to be elected president, and then — through his incapacitation or death — Palin be called upon to exercise the powers of the presidency.

Just how scary a notion that is went on full display last night: She appeared to lack any semblance of the requisite depth, knowledge, or sense of history we should expect in a president or vice president; then she sought to excuse it by saying, “I’ve only been at this for five weeks.”

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Yes, she could wink, she could tell Biden, “Say it ain’t so, Joe, there you go again,” and she could remind us again and again that she is a hockey Mom from the land of Joe-Six-pack (as if Western Republicans don’t swill Pinot Grigio with the rest of the country at their fund-raisers). She seemed incapable of thinking through the American condition and responding to it except by scripted answers, theatrical gestures, and tested buzzwords — and by announcing at the outset that she would decide which questions from the moderator to answer and which to ignore.

Yet Biden’s performance (deeply knowledgeable, sensible, and generally responsive to the questions) was perhaps the best evidence that — considered non-ideologically, but rather on judgment and temperament — Obama may be ready to be president, and McCain — who ought to be ready — is not.

Time after time, Biden had to tell Palin what John McCain’s real record is — as instance after instance — she misrepresented it (or misunderstood the legislative process), repeated easy slogans and bromides and, for the most part perhaps, offended the intelligence of voters who are not already die-hard, ideological proponents of right-wing Republicanism, creationism, or simplistic solutions to tough problems.

“Maverick,” “Maverick,” “Maverick,” she kept repeating about John McCain and herself. Perhaps Biden’s best moment in the best night of his career as a candidate (and I have heard him at his awful worst — i.e., being his own worst enemy) came when he challenged McCain’s constant claim to the Maverick title.

The tactical and intellectual deficiencies of the McCain campaign have been best analyzed by conservative and Republican commentators, and even politicians. George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Peggy Noonan, Chuck Hagel, come quickly to mind. (Hence, Krauthammer, following last night’s debate: “You can’t blame McCain. In an election in which all the fundamentals are working for the opposition, he feels he has to keep throwing long in order to keep hope alive. Nonetheless, his frenetic improvisation has perversely [for him] framed the rookie challenger favorably as calm, steady and cool.”)

As a former White House (Republican) chief of staff said to me, “Palin is evidence of desperation; she is an embarrassment.” That is the bottom line. (I generally check in with Republicans — not Democrats — to assess how the McCain campaign is doing.) He noted, “She wasn’t vetted, really; it’s an open secret in Washington, but the details of the negligence are better known to Republicans than Democrats.” That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a future in the Republican galaxy, lacks star power, or couldn’t be a fine Secretary of the Interior in a McCain administration.

It’s too bad. Earlier in his career, until the presidency finally seemed within his grasp, McCain had demonstrated a real willingness to seriously and thoughtfully take on both his party and the Washington establishment when he thought they were wrong — albeit mostly on one issue: pork, an issue he has been heroic on.

But his real opportunity to show independence of his party’s reigning dogma and cultural-warrior-infantry was in his choice of a vice presidential running mate. Instead, McCain, who has lectured us about duty, honor, country first, has left many independent-minded voters who might want to vote for him at an impossible, dangerous impasse: an unprepared vice presidential candidate running on a ticket with the oldest presidential nominee in history — a 72-year-old with four cancer surgeries and medical records he has ordered sealed.

Conventional wisdom has almost always held (JFK-LBJ being a notable exception) that a presidential nominee’s choice of vice president makes no difference in the outcome of the election.

This time it is likely to be determinate, because it tells us so much not only about Sarah Palin, but also John McCain’s state of mind today, and the promise that his political career once held and now appears to have been left behind.

The old rancher said, ‘Well, ya know, Palin is a post turtle.’

Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a post turtle was.

The old rancher said, ‘When you’re driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that’s a post turtle.’

The old rancher saw a puzzled look on the doctor’s face, so he continued to explain.

‘You know she didn’t get up there by herself, she doesn’t belong up there, she doesn’t know what to do while she’s up there, and you just wonder what kind of dumb ass put her up there in the first place.’

Fargo ND, “Biden needs to be ready for two Sarah Palins: the smiling one and the attacking one. Actually, she is pretty good at doing both at the same time. Joe should not go after her at all, but only after McCain. And while he is doing it, Joe cannot adopt a posture of being aggressive toward her or, worse, condescending. He attacks McCain only on the economy — the GOP ticket’s weakest spot. As he does so, Biden talks about his blue-collar background.”

Stuart Stevens on Palin: “She should be very aggressive, but primarily toward Obama. She should try to drive a wedge into the Democratic ticket by playing back Biden’s own critical, dismissive words about Obama from the primary season. She would not be well served going after snarky debating points. Voters know she can tweak Obama with her gleeful combativeness. That kind of thing plays better to Republican audiences than to a national one. She shouldn’t be delivering lines to the faithful.”

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Per NBC/NJ’s Mike Memoli, Obama strategist David Axelrod talked about the upcoming Biden-Palin debate. On the preparations: “You prepare like you would for any debate.” Says VP debates are “the most difficult” though because “in a vice-presidential debate you gotta think about your own record, the candidate’s record, and your opponent’s record… This is primarily gonna be a debate about where the principals, the presidential candidates, want to take the country, but there’s more to keep track of.”

On the fact that Biden seems to have the edge heading into Thursday: “Boy I sure don’t — you know, I don’t see it that way. I think that if you go back and look at the debates that Governor Palin’s had as a candidate, she’s very skilled and she’ll be well-prepared.”

It did not appear that the measure would come up for a second vote on Monday.

The bailout plan would have empowered the Treasury Department to take over bad mortgage debt from banks’ balance sheets in order to spur them into lending again. The legislation was the result of days of intense talks between the White House and congressional leaders, who agreed Sunday to a public bailout of the ailing financial industry after lawmakers insisted on sharing spending controls with the Bush administration.

The House held open its vote on the bailout plan well after the allotted time had expired; 228 lawmakers voted against the bill and 205 voted in favor.

In the final analysis, lawmakers on both sides of the political spectrum appeared to have reservations against the plan: Ninety-four Democrats and 132 Republicans voted “nay.”

In a press conference shortly after the measure failed, House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio said that House Republicans had no choice but to continue to work with Democrats to find a way to save the economy.
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But Boehner and other House Republican leaders blamed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for derailing the vote with a speech near the close of the debate in which she blamed “the Bush administration’s failed economic policies” for the current economic mess. Boehner accused Pelosi of speaking with a “partisan voice that poisoned” the proceedings. Added Republican Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, “There’s a reason that this vote failed — and that is Speaker Pelosi’s speech.”

However, Democratic Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts said Republicans had revolted against the Bush administration, which called for the dramatic rescue plan.

“The Republicans don’t trust the administration,” he said. “It’s a Republican revolt against George Bush and John McCain.”

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said President Bush was “very disappointed” in the outcome of the vote.

“There’s no question that the country is facing a difficult crisis that needs to be addressed,” Fratto said.

Rep. Gary Miller, a Republican from California, said he understands why many of his colleagues may be reluctant to vote for the bailout legislation:

“Now, we can roll dice. Today, we can say, ‘Let’s not vote and let’s hope everything goes OK.’ For members, it’s a very difficult situation. They say, ‘If I vote for this bill and the bill passes, and the marketplace does not crash, it continues and improves, people are going to be mad at me because I voted to continue the process they think is bad.’ ”

Miller said he supported the bill. Texas Republican Jeb Hensarling said he opposed it. “As important as it is to act quickly, it is more important to act rightly,” Hensarling said.

The Dow Jones industrial average plunged during the vote, as it became apparent that the plan was likely to fail.

On one of the worst days in memory on Wall Street, the Dow briefly fell more than 700 points before rebounding slightly. The Nasdaq fell about 6 percent, while the S&P 500 was down more than 7 percent.

Stocks were already lower on Monday after Wachovia Corp. became the latest major U.S. bank to succumb to the global credit crisis when it agreed to sell most of its assets to Citigroup.

In Europe, anxiety about the fallout from the U.S. financial meltdown grew on news that Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg pledged more than $16 billion to Dutch-Belgian bank Fortis NV to keep it from insolvency.

“Obama I think was closer to the top of his game.

He dispelled the idea that he couldn’t keep up with McCain on foreign policy issues. Earlier this year some Republicans said they thought McCain would clobber the Democrat in this debate; it didn’t happen.”

Couldn’t agree more. The fact that O-Man didn’t get badly beaten, which I don’t even think Fox Noise has been saying, is in reality a huge win for him. This mornings polls that I have seen are giving O the Victory 51% to 38%.

The unfortunate part is the quest of whether it matters. Kerry was given the win in 2 out of 3 debates last time and that didn’t get him a W over GW. Even more importantly I believe that there is a huge segment of people that don’t admit how prejudiced they are. Once they get in that booth they just won’t be able to pull the trigger and vote for “the black guy”. I really hope I’m wrong, but only time will tell.

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I still can’t believe the voters wouldn’t want the more intelligent candidate to win considering the multitude of crices (that appears to be the correct plural of crisis , though there is some debate over that) that the next president will be facing. And for the love of God what happens if McCain has a major health problem. I know many people that were healthy at 72 and had major major health crises by the time they were 76. Sure health problems can strike at any age, but it is certainly a much higher probability at such an advanced age. Not to mention the possibility of Alzheimer’s. That truly is scary because it is not easily detected right away. Also want kind of position would it put the country in to face a dilemma like that. Sarah Palin serves even for even 2 weeks I’d be scared. I have Zero confidence in her. I do not want the VP act like Sarah Palin does during an interview. She looks like she’s playing “Are you smarter than a fifth grader?” and losing.

Last night Bill Maher pointed out that if you gave Sarah Palin a map of the middle east without the names of the countries on them whether she could fill it out. Let me start by saying I’m not sure I could do this. That said, I’m not the VP candidate. I’d giver her about a 40% of getting it all correct, and what the heck maybe as high as 75% chance there’d only be a couple of mistakes. By contrast I’d say Obama, Biden & McCain would almost certainly get them all correct, and at worst a mistake. By the way I don’t really even give her a 40% chance that’s just the number I use because she hasn’t given enough interviews to PROVE she’s as dumb on geography as I am, just enough for me to INFER it.

But I digress. Let’s just look at the way they acted on the stage. John couldn’t even look at Obama, not once did I see him make eye contact with Obama. They are at Political war with each other right now. The next president will face more important political wars the day he receives the seal. His angry obtuse bullying won’t cut it. Winning political wars prevents conventional wars. If mcBush acts as disgracefully as he did in the debates with heads of foreign states I will be embarrassed, and we’ll end up in even more conflicts and continue to fall in the world’s view. The ability to have a civil discussion is pretty key to being the president.

McCain’s reactions to things he disagreed with were also painful to watch. He’d get all frumpy and worked up. Heck he looked like he was going to pop when Barack called him by the wrong name (the third time). Control. That’s what I’d like to see. The last 8 years we’ve been led by that personality. I’m right you’re wrong I won’t listen to anything you say. At least Barack has the stones to say John’s right when he’s right. If we’re going to survive the next 4 years there will be more of a need to co-operate “across the isle” than ever before. You have to be able to agree with people occasionally for that to happen. McCain is actually running ads criticizing Obama for saying “John’s right”, really great way to encourage co-operation.

And What’s with the Surge. Somehow according to McCain Barack first was criticized for saying the Surge succeeded “beyond our wildest dreams.” Later he Hammered on him repeatedly saying he (Barack) wouldn’t admit the Surge was a success. Which is it? Should he be condemned because he said it worked or because McCain (WRONGLY) says he doesn’t admit it’s a success now.

That’s all for now I gotta stop before my Blood Pressure reaches the Blood Boil status of McCain’s when he’s worked up.