Political Spots We Should See – But Probably Won’t

Denver ad agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners teamed up with MJZ director Craig Gillespie for a series of "behind the scenes" spoofs aimed to question Republican campaign strategy with a smirk. For now the spots are primarily available on YouTube but let’s hopes that's just the beginning

Maverick Maverick Maverick


Clear It First With Karl


Gas Drilling


Gag Palin

McCain, Palin, Tacitly Approve Assassination

Earlier today, I wrote that the McCain campaign plans to turn ugly, pock-marked and nasty. "We're going to 'Willie Horton' Obama," I was told by a campaign insider.

But this is more than nasty: The campaign is becoming dangerous.

Twice yesterday and again today, when McCain was giving a speech and asked the rhetorical question, "Who is Obama?" someone in the crowd shouted back "terrorist" followed by someone else yelling "kill him," to hearty and approving applause. The same threats echoed during Palin speeches since Sunday, as well. The videos are all over YouTube.

Neither McCain nor Palin stopped their speech to lecture the audience about offensive, inappropriate and illegal comments. Why not?

Threatening the life of a presidential candidate is a federal offense and with so many police and Secret Service agents present, why wasn't anyone arrested? When a crazy woman like Ann Coulter recommended that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should be shot, people rose in outrage but right wingnuts laughed it off, saying Democrats don't have a sense of humour. Some joke!

When McCain and Palin use silence to give tacit approval to suggestions from supporters that their opponent should be shot, then they are tacitly signalling that it'd be alright for someone to take a pot shot.

Are we supposed to laugh it all off? I've lived through enough political assassinations, and attempted assassinations, for one lifetime, thank you.

This is starting to remind me of Hitler's rallies during the last days of the Weimer Republic in Germany during the 1930s. There, politicians and ordinary people alike were killed after supporters took up their leader's call to action.

God help us all.

Chimes of Freedom Flashing

If you read my previous piece, We’re Going To ‘Willie Horton’ Obama, you know why this song written by The Byrds and sung by Bruce Springsteen is so appropriate today. A hat tip to www.euddoggwyn.blogspot.com for posting the video and bringing it to my attention.

“We’re Going To ‘Willie Horton’ Obama”

I couldn’t believe my ears.

First, on Sunday, a McCain campaign spokesman told reporters that if they didn’t “turn the page on the economy, we lose.” Now, my source at McCain headquarters is laying out Straight Talkin’ John’s hideous strategy for the last 28 days of the campaign.

“We’re going to ‘Willie Horton’ Obama,” he told me early this morning by phone. “It could work.”

For those too young or too old to remember the Michael Dukakis-George H. W. Bush campaign in 1988, the Democrat emerged from his convention with a 17% Gallup Poll lead. Perhaps the main reason his lead dissipated was an outrageous TV ad linking Governor Dukakis to a prisoner who committed rape during a weekend furlough. The commercial included an threatening photo of an ominous looking Willie Horton, an African-American convict.

“Wait,” I reply. “What happened to all of those statements by McCain preserved on YouTube of McCain (www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbcuqfaroe4) insisting he would only run a clean campaign? No negative ads. No ‘Willie Horton’ smears?” Even his wife Cindy is captured telling a TV interviewer their side won’t engage in negative attacks.

There is a long pause on the line.

“John said that before (Steve) Schmidt grabbed running the campaign away from Rick Davis,” comes what I realize is a self-evident answer. Schmidt, a Karl Rove protégé and veteran of Bush 43’s 2004 campaign, took over as McCain’s campaign director in July at the insistence of GOP bigwigs.

“Schmidt had Palin test drive the line this weekend and overnight internals showed it went over big with the base,” is the explanation. “The question is will it have the same impact on independents and undecideds?”

Palin’s attack line tries linking Obama to William Ayers, a 1960s-era member of the radical group Weather Underground. Ayers, now a respected education teacher, denounced his own involvement in the organization decades ago and, in the 1990s, served briefly on a charity board with Obama.

She used the “Obama’s palin’ around with terrorists” line again on Monday, nearly causing Keith Olbermann’s head to explode (www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#27057346) as he tore her a new one in a Special Comment segment Monday night.

That the hate-and-smear campaign might work seems to be the only criteria used by the McCain campaign.

“No one knew that Dukakis had nothing to do with Willie Horton,” my contact inside the McCain campaign tells me, “or that the state’s policy of granting weekend passes to prisoners nearing the end of their term was established by the parole board, not the governor’s office,” my source tells me. “But it cost him the election.”

In an article this morning at Truthout.org, political columnist Norman Solomon cautions Democrats that it might just work.

Young trial lawyers are taught that if the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the facts and the law are against you, pound the table.

“All we have left is pounding the table,” the McCain staffer, a lawyer by trade, confesses.

On the Brink of Country Divorce

– guest post by Denis Campbell, editor-in-chief of VadimusPost.com

In the middle of our worst economic crisis since the Depression, the McCain campaign wants to change the subject from issues to nonsense because his policies of the past 26-years cannot be defended. From the Keating 5 to the current guilt by association attack gambit, this silliness has snarky Sarah going gutter, no… make that cesspit, bringing up a shared directorship by Barack Obama with former radical Weather Underground member, William Ayers.

GOP talking point network FOX News’ attack dog Sean Hannity then went after Obama for his association with Acorn, a group bringing transparency and fairness to help inner city and low income people onto the property ladder as… the cause of the Fannie/Freddie and broader financial meltdown.

Senator McCain, I once met Patty Hearst and shared a speaker’s dais with Xaviera Hollander. Does that make me a Symbionese Liberation army sympathiser or hooker patron, happy or otherwise?

Yes, I considered the source, and it is all part of this last straw. I’ve reached the point of no return and will file divorce papers with my country if we make yet another (s)election error.

If, after 30-days of slimy, Swift-Boat attacks by the angry old man and his increasingly negative campaign aimed at dividing and destroying the country, voters are stupid enough to place another radical far-right team in the White House and bring the same global conflict, unchecked deregulation, special interests, economic disaster, ideologue Supreme Court appointees whilst perpetuating the mantra of fear, chanting U.S.A.!, placing flags on every stationary surface, declaring “Homeland security” the answer to any question and further eroding my ability to even question or write this…

I have no choice but to divorce my country.

From 27 December I can, if I choose, begin the process of becoming one of Her Majesty’s subjects, a citizen of the United Kingdom and the European Union that, despite its many flaws, cares more for her people and their rights than my own. Living abroad for 10-years, paying US taxes and voting in every election, even municipal ones, this is a step I never believed I would consider taking, especially as the son of a US immigrant.

My late-father came to his new country with a 1-way ticket, the clothes on his back, $100 in his pocket and a pregnant wife. This is a step pondered deeply and with regret for I feel I’m letting him down even though he died six years ago. He loved his adopted country with a passion and instilled in me the need to do both good and well.

In my teen years he became a citizen and I was inspired by him and US politics. A 1973 trip to Washington DC with the Close-Up program was equal parts education and inspiration. It would make politics a part of my life forever. We’d just re-elected President Nixon with a landslide victory. There was a cloud of suspicion growing around his role in a failed burglary at the Democratic National Committee HQ in the Watergate Office complex. And it would lead to his resignation in disgrace a year later.

This was before PC’s, Internet and CNN. News cycles were truly 24-hours long and you watched Uncle Walter Cronkite deliver news. During that week in Washington, we read about and met the men and women serving our country with honour. That 1973-74, 93rd Congress contained some of the most memorable people serving ‘Country First’ as more than a slogan and… a group of scoundrels who would be forced from office where today they would just lie, hide and obfuscate. The Paris Peace talks were underway to end the war in Vietnam, Roe v. Wade had just been decided, and our leaders led.

The Senate and House roll call included: Mike Mansfield, Gerald Ford, Robert Byrd, Tip O’Neill, John Anderson, Nelson Rockefeller, Edward Brooke, Ted Kennedy, Carl Albert and Phil Hart, the ‘Conscience of the Senate’ for whom a Senate office building would be named. They reached across the aisle to broker compromises and governed, even while Watergate was blowing up, from the middle ground.

Barack Obama and John McCain have been campaigning for 21- and 19-months respectively.

The fatigue of the seeming endless 3-minute campaign newscycle is exhausting. One cannot imagine the toll 24/7/366 travel takes on those in or covering the race. Party ideology though rather than forward vision guides too many decisions. While I never thought former Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan and I would agree, her new book examines the polarisation and how dangerously small-minded, rude and petty our nation has become.

When I first moved abroad, there was a broader investigative and questioning foreign press (AWOL in the USA since Watergate). Watching 9-11 live on CNN.com left an indelible impression, yet the world rallied around and supported the US. If you told me we would squander that goodwill through two unilateral wars, give the UN ‘the finger,’ shred or be a non-signatory to treaties, play the game our way or ‘take our ball and go home,’ that we’d build a prison camp on Cuba, participate in torture by sending people to jails in Syria and other less strict countries and shred rights to habeas corpus and free speech via far right executive ideologue vs. the rule of law… I would say you were crazy.

Living abroad, I saw how indoctrinated by the propaganda machine we all were. The blinders we Americans wear and how fully into the myth of country/party we fell was shocking.

After the 2000 (s)Election I became angry. Before we invaded Iraq, I was so incensed, I marched in Amsterdam for the 1st time in my life. Standing there next to grandmothers, parents and students who’d also never marched before; we were stupid enough to think 21-million people in 665 cities around the globe could make a difference. When the White House dismissed us all as “a focus group” (120,000 people in Amsterdam, more than protested the placement of US Trident missiles aimed at the then Soviet Union), that was when my life changed forever and awakening those in my own country became the only goal.

We stood side-by-side with Iraqi brothers and sisters whom the media made faceless, the government called ‘enemy’ and we asked for time to allow the UN inspectors to do their work and find WMD’s, which we all now know were a lie.

I was struck by how ridiculous it all was and how deep the takeover of America had become. So I became a voice for change that angered friend and foe alike by bringing foreign press articles and asking hard questions the herd of lemming-like sheep unable to turn these into real issues because the MSM were more interested in celebrity gossip that helped entertainment divisions make money. When ‘American Idol’ attracts more voters than a Presidential election, the idiots are indeed running the asylum.

No longer willing to support fluff over substance, if my country rewards malfeasance, lies, liars and votes or otherwise places a hothead 72-year old cancer survivor and his thoroughly unprepared trophy wife VP candidate a heartbeat from the highest office in the land, I’ll have no choice but to leave it metaphorically as well as physically.

I’m hoping my country has more sense and, sadly, can no longer hesitate to act. I also worry most about those with no other option.

Here Comes The Smear

My deep, sincere apologies to The Beatles for turning the title of their wonderfully hopeful song Here Comes The Sun on its head, especially to use it in describing the only tactics left to save the sinking Republican ship SS McCain with Cap’n Palin on the bridge.

But make no mistake: The last 30 days of the campaign will see McCain, Palin and their surrogates turn into an army of Dark Knights of Evil. In fact, the Republican campaign machine admits it.

"We're looking at a very aggressive last 30 days of turning the page on this financial crisis and getting back to discussing Mr. Obama's aggressively liberal record and how he will be too risky for Americans," senior adviser Greg Strimple told reporters on Thursday.

“Very aggressive” and “too risky” is politicode for lies, half-truths, innuendo and surrogate-mounted smears, racial and other.

Freddie And Bill

It’s started already.

A few days ago I received an e-mail from a Deep South conservative Republican raising again the thoroughly discredited claim that the former heads of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are now working for the Obama campaign. Apparently, it’s not enough that both Fox News and The Washington Times – hardly liberal apologists – debunked the smear weeks ago; die-hards will keep spreading the phoney news anyway.

And get this: The AP is reporting this morning that Sarah Palin accuses Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists" for his association with a former 1960s radical.

Palin is referring to Bill Ayers, one of the founders of the group the Weather Underground. The group took credit for several bombings, including non-fatal explosions at the Pentagon and the Capitol four decades ago – when Obama was about eight years old.

In remarks Saturday to GOP donors in Englewood, Colorado, Palin said Obama seems to see the US as being so imperfect that, in her words, "he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

Her idiotic statements were triggered by a disjointed New York Times story on Saturday that traced Obama’s sporadic interactions with Ayers, now a respected education professor in Chicago where he worked on an education project with Obama when the candidate was a community organizer and then state senator. Palin never mentioned that Ayers denounced his past activities decades ago.

Stephen Fox, contributing editor of the New Mexico Sun News, puts it in perspective:

“I remember meeting Mark Rudd, who either blew up a building or tried to, I don't remember which. I met Angela Davis, and golly, very early one Sunday morning after one of the famous San Francisco Peace Marches to end the Vietnam War in 1967, I even saw Janis Joplin driving a yellow Porsche Convertible about 60 miles an hour through Haight-Ashbury.

"Just because 20 years ago, you befriend someone and talk intelligently with them, what does that mean, anyway? That you are learning. Does that mean you are sitting at the feet of the 9/11 bombers? Of course not, but the Republicans will use this ludicrous and deranged line of reasoning to scare the elderly as they have already done in South Florida, the undecided, the apathetic … who don't read (a newspaper) everyday.”

Shifting Undecided’s

Meanwhile, undecided voters – how can there actually be any of these still around? – are starting to trend Obama, along with the rest of the country.

Undecided voters who watched Thursday's vice presidential debate like Palin but they're not certain she's ready to lead the country, according to the findings of a new Ipsos/McClatchy poll published Sunday morning.

If they had to vote immediately after watching the debate between Palin and Biden, 52% of the 456 undecided voters who were surveyed would vote the Obama/Biden ticket, the poll found.

It also found that Palin's performance in the debate did nothing to clinch undecided votes for her running mate. Before the debate, those same undecided voters were leaning 56% to 44% for McCain. The day after the debate, the numbers tilted 52% to 48% for Obama.

No wonder the McCain-Palin campaign is starting to throw mud. It’s all they have left.

300-Plus Electoral Votes is Possible for Obama

A guest post from Denis Campbell, editor-in-chief of VadimusPost.com.

My EU media colleagues have a hard time understanding that daily national tracking polls mean little. On November 4th, voters will enter and cast ballots in 50-statewide winner-takes-all contests. There are 538 electoral votes up for grabs, this is how the race is decided and the first person to 270 votes wins. California is the biggest prize with 55, several small states including Alaska and the District of Columbia have 3 votes each and the map shows how they break down and voted in 2004.

George Bush beat John Kerry 286-252 with Ohio’s questionable 20 votes the margin of victory. The map’s mid-section was solid red in the 2004 presidential election but Barack Obama’s organisation has targeted several “red” states this year and in the map below is doing surprisingly well in a number of them. New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and Montana are four that he would love to have and could win them all. The ‘New West’ independent states have chosen Democratic state governments and popular governors who are helping Obama. The South, a GOP stronghold since Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, also has a number of interesting contests in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Arkansas and Georgia. That leaves Ohio and Florida, two controversial states from 2000 and 2004 as key battlegrounds where Obama is leading in both.

Using my prognosticator cap and barring another violent swing in what has become the 3-minure media cycle, Obama could be headed to a landslide victory in a number of those states which could put his election in the bag before polls close on the West Coast of the USA.

With 1-month left, the usually cool, calm and collected Barack Obama is clearly winning out over mad-dog John McCain. Pointed, deliberate and powerful jabs and combinations to the mid-section of McCain by Obama are softening him up and trumping the kitchen sink, frenetic, Hail Mary pass downfield, gambling approach of John McCain. McCain is looking more and more like an angry, desperate old man and neither of his ‘trophy’ partners can dig him out of the hole he now finds himself in.

And it’s only going to get worse for McCain.

McCain operatives conceded Michigan, pulling advertising and staff out and now see that attacking Obama’s inexperience is not working, their candidate is running out of money and so now expect the 527 group ‘Swift Boat squads’ to throw every sleazy advert they can to attack the character of Obama and force him off his issues-based solid ground game of repeatedly tying McCain to Bush.

Here is why I am so bullish:
• A Wall Street Journal poll of “new” voters shows they support Obama over McCain by 61% - 30%.

• Add this to the hustling, organising ground game of Senator Obama using his 57-state and territory organisations, targeted add buys outspending Senator McCain 3:1, buckets full of cash on hand (and still coming in) and the Chicago kid is doing much better than either of his City’s baseball teams facing 0-2 playoff holes from which to rebound.

• Obama’s got a ground game. In July and August his funds went to building the field organisation. As a community organiser he understands and knows that nothing trumps SPIN better than face-to-face answering of questions.

• The McCain/Republican SPIN doctors that worked so smoothly in the 2000 and 2004 are stranded on a sandbar of ridiculousness. Now they just sound pathetic as they believe green is purple and will convince you they know it is and you’re an idiot for not seeing it.

• Sarah Palin is an unmitigated disaster as VP choice. The base loves her, everyone else is terrified.

I invite you to close your eyes and go back to 11 September 2001. The President is in the air unable to land because we don’t know what is going on. VP Cheney is in the secure bunker underneath the White House coordinating events. Now keep your eyes closed… and picture Sarah Palin sitting in Cheney’s chair…

Did you wake up in a cold flop sweat?

Run from the room screaming?

As the old telly advert said, “this drugs (you see a hot frying pan as an egg cracks and then begins sizzling). This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?”

The Obama team has done a good job of anticipating attacks and swatting them aside. They’ve played a solid, if not altogether boring game of moving the ball steadily downfield and, after having the gruelling Hillary Clinton primary experience, know exactly what to do to punch the ball into the end-zone.

They have attacked when needed and played a mostly patient game whereas McCain has lost his cool and looked anything but Presidential in his choices since the week before the convention. His gravy train lobbyist staff will parachute to safety, earn their 7-figure salaries peddling influence and point fingers as the Clinton team did. This failure will then have only one author, John McCain.

My final EV prediction: 325-213 to Obama.

Any questions?

McCain: The War Hero Has No Clothes

For decades, John McCain actively cultivated the image of a “warrior” and “war hero,” the genuine article, toting that carefully crafted impression around like a Louis Vittuon carry-all. The problem is that the supposedly genuine Vittuon is actually a cheap Bangkok knock-off, a counterfeit that has no more in common with the genuine article than I have with McCain himself.

After years of McCain perpetuating the myth, it’s time someone publicly calls McCain what he is: An exaggerator of his military experience and fabricator of his status as war hero.

To bastardize a distasteful campaign line he unwrapped not long ago, McCain would rather win a campaign than be honest about his wartime experience.

In fact, the record shows that the Man Who Would Be President was a not-very-bright Naval Academy student who preferred parties to studying and graduated fourth from the bottom of his Annapolis class; a mediocre pilot who crashed three jet fighters during training before being shipped out to ‘Nam where he crashed a fourth; an insubordinate junior officer who got shot down over Hanoi because he disobeyed direct orders to abandon his 23rd mission and return the A-4 Skyhawk he flew to the USS Forrestal; and, as a POW, willingly provided so much intelligence – admittedly, bits of it false – and co-operated so extensively with the North Vietnamese in exchange for favorable treatment over a three year period that his fellow prisoners at the Hanoi Hilton gave him the derisive nickname “Songbird.” In propaganda aimed at the US, the North Vietnamese even used his nickname in a news release about McCain, not understanding it was an insult given him by prisoners who were disgusted by his behavior.

Two former POWs, Air Force Colonels Ted Guy and Gordon "Swede" Larson, told the Phoenix New Times in 1999 that they doubted McCain was tortured or harmed while a prisoner. Both Guy and Larson were senior ranking officers in McCain's POW camp at a time he claims he was in solitary confinement and being tortured.

"Between the two of us, it's our belief that no prisoner was beaten or harmed physically in (the Plantation),” Larson stated.

"My only contention with McCain is that he was not physically abused in any way. No one was in that camp.”

Grandpa’s Lap

Put bluntly, the closest John McCain has ever come to a war hero was when he sat on his grandfather’s lap as a child. The first John McCain commanded naval aviation at the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. The candidate’s father, also an Admiral named John, commanded American forces in Vietnam for a time.

In other words, John S. McCain III (or “Johnny Three Sticks” as a Republican Senate aid called him when being interviewed for this article) not only changes his positions on substantive issues in the campaign, he totally changes the reality of his “service to my country.” No wonder he seems to have so much trouble staying on message as a candidate; he can’t keep the story of his life straight.

In the process of repeatedly violating the Military Code of Conduct during his time as a POW, he placed other naval airmen in jeopardy.

Declassified North Vietnamese and Pentagon records confirm that he provided Hanoi with detailed information about the number of airplanes on the Forrestal, flight paths into and out of North Viet Nam, how targets were selected, the positioning of rescue ships and the success rate of attacks from fighter-bombers based on his carrier. As far as can be discovered, the only thing he deceived the North Vietnamese about was the names of the pilots with whom he flew, for which he substituted the names of the Green Bay Packer’s offensive linemen. McCain has dined out on the Green Bay Packer story for decades, omitting the other, less noble, portions of his captivity.

Medals Unearned And Undeserved

If the fact that his father and grandfather were Annapolis grads kept him from being booted out of the Navy, then his forefathers also contributed to McCain being awarded 28 medals including a Silver Star, a Legion of Merit for Valor, a Distinguished Flying Cross, three Bronze stars, two commendation medals and a dozen other service medals. But he only flew 23 missions – which amounts to a medal-and-a-half for every hour he flew in combat.

“There were infantry guys, grunts on the ground, who had more than 7,000 hours in combat without winning a medal other than maybe a purple heart,” explains Bill Bell, a veteran of Vietnam and former chief of the U.S. Office for POW/MIA Affairs – the first official US representative in Vietnam since the 1973 fall of Saigon.

“I can tell you that there were times and situations where I’m sure a prison cell would have looked pretty good to them by comparison,” Bell states. “But the question really is how many guys got that number of medals for not being shot down."

Eventually, even the Navy was on to McCain. He left the service after being told twice that he would not be made an Admiral like his father and grandfather.

For years, McCain has been an unchecked master at manipulating an overly friendly and oft-times biased news media. The former POW turned Congressman, turned U.S. Senator, turned Presidential candidate, has managed to gloss over his failures as a pilot and his collaboration with the enemy to become America’s POW-hero presidential candidate.

After Bush and Cheney’s 935 lies to get us into Iraq, isn’t it time for a President who doesn’t lie about everything, including his own life story? Isn't it time for someone to point out McCain The Hero Has No Clothes?

Viet Nam Veterans Against McCain provided some research information for this article.

Sarah's Secret Debate Coaching Tape Exposed

Now we have proof of the pre-debate Sarah Palin coaching received, as shown in this purloined video.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Sarah Lives To Gaffe Another Day

As usual, post-debate bloviating wandered aimlessly through the night with assessments ranging from “she did better than we thought she would,” which is what parents say when their kid doesn’t strike out at a Little League game, to the thoroughly puzzling “America must be surprised.”

As usual, debate viewers are much more decisive, the first round of snap polls giving the debate to Joe Biden by sizable margins.

CNN's sampling said Biden took the clash by 51% to 36%, basically a trouncing.

And here’s the revealing number from CNN. While 84% said Palin did better than expected – well, the bar was set awfully low – she still doesn’t clear a basic hurdle: Watching the would-be vice president for 90 minutes left only 46% saying she’s qualified to be president, up a mere four points from before the debate. And a clear majority, 53%, continue to say she is not qualified for the job.

Meanwhile, CBS’ polling of 473 uncommitted debate-watchers found that 46% gave the evening to Biden, 21% say Palin won, and 33% say it was a tie. Splitting the tie votes between the two, 62.5% said Biden came out on top while fewer than half thought Palin took the night.

While both candidates saw their images improve, 98% ended up declaring Biden as “knowledgeable” after the debate, while only 66% saw Palin as knowledgeable. Admittedly, that’s a higher number than what folks thought of her before the debate but the McCain camp can take small comfort from the figure because Biden essentially ran the table of undecideds.

At Campaign Headquarters …

In the Virginia headquarters of the McCain campaign, the post-debate relief is palpable.

“We could have been blown out of the water,” one of my two sources inside the camp tells me this morning. “She didn’t make any horrid mistakes and she did what she had to do: Keep the base support firm.”

What about reaching the undecideds, the independents, the Reagan Democrats? I ask, citing the snap poll tallies from right after the broadcast.

“That’s John’s job,” comes the reply. “All we wanted Sarah to do was keep us close enough to fight another day.”

So, essentially, Palin’s only task last night was to not screw up, not give the base a reason to flee in horror.

I ask about the moment when Palin actually suffers her much-anticipated Couric-like moment that escaped most commentators. Looking square in the camera, Palin actually proclaims the financial crisis “a toxic mess, really, on Main Street that’s affecting Wall Street.” The gaffe comes at about 53-seconds:



“I saw that, too,” he says, adding with relief, “I’m glad not too many people caught it. I’m glad Biden didn’t pounce all over that.”

Some eight hundred miles away in Chicago, one of my sources on Obama’s staff says everyone is happy with Biden’s job, especially after the first half-hour.

“Once Joe decided he had to swat at the gnat, he really came into his own,” is the assessment. “He kept his answers short, he stayed on point, he spoke to the audience in words they understood, and that moment when he choked up mentioning how he felt as his son lay dying in a hospital (after the car accident killed Biden’s wife and daughter and gravely injured his sons) we saw Joe being Joe. America saw it, as well.

“I wonder why she didn’t react act all,” I’m asked. “Didn’t it seem odd that the world’s greatest hockey mom had no reaction to someone fighting back tears when he talks about losing a child? Where were her ‘family values’”?

Explaining The Obvious

People tuning in to the debate were already expressing deep concerns about Palin's understanding of issues and solutions. As a result, Palin's folksiness was far less effective than when she strode the stage in St. Paul six weeks ago to unveil her “ya’ know” and “ya’ betcha” lines. People aren't worried that she "isn't one of us," so her aw-shucks shuffling didn't help last night. On the other hand, people are concerned that she doesn't understand the issues of the day, and she did nothing to reassure them.

Biden jumped on her disjointed mish-mash of foreign policy non-sequiturs and talking points to spell out a clear difference between what the audience was hearing from Palin, and the real world in which Biden and Obama live:



On one front, Palin did not disappoint: She remains a habitual liar, a flip-flopper and someone who has no idea what she’s saying.

In the debate, she espoused strong support for equal benefits for same sex couples. But Palin told the Anchorage Daily News, “I believe spousal benefits are reserved for married citizens on (sic) our Constitution,”

Palin sidestepped Biden’s claim that McCain argued against greater regulation on Wall Street, contributing to the debt crisis. Palin’s claim is that McCain supported the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, which would have created a new government agency to oversee Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other federal housing programs. In fact, the bill would have done nothing to stop the rash of predatory subprime lending that preceded the housing bubble. It only provided oversight for Fannie and Freddie – but it said nothing at all about the companies that issued subprime mortgages. So while Palin brought it up as an example of how McCain is the “re-regulator,” she avoided Biden’s straight rebuttal.

Oh. And Palin called the commander of the NATO force in Afghanistan "McClellan" instead of using his name, General David McKiernan. Maybe she confused McKiernan with George McClellan, an awful Civil War general who was so reluctant to fight the Confederate Army Pres. Lincoln finally fired him. The only thing reassuring about this possibility is it shows Palin remembers something from her time at, what?, five universities in six years.

“McCain Can’t Afford To Drop Sarah. They Won’t Let Him Anyway”

Despite numerous calls from serious conservative columnists over the last week for John McCain to drop Sarah Palin from the Republican ticket, she’s not going anywhere regardless of her debate performance.

“She’s our lifeline to the money coming in from evangelicals and the far right,” says my contact at McCain headquarters in Virginia. “Without their cash, the campaign would be struggling to raise money. McCain can’t afford to drop Sarah.

“Don’t take this the wrong way but Palin is, well, she’s our cash cow,” he tells me, somewhat embarrassed at his awkward metaphor.

As I reported here on September 26 and again on September 27, two sources inside the McCain campaign, and three inside Barack Obama’s, are providing me with information for a book I want to write after the election.

The McCain headquarters source is someone I’ve known for roughly 30 years and has been my interpreter of the conservative movement ever since. Along with a woman I dated centuries ago who works in a key swing state campaign office, I’ve had a unique, insider’s look at the McCain operation since the primaries.

“Besides, they won’t let him anyway. (Grover) Norquist, (James) Dobson, Roger Ayles and Karl (Rove) would strangle McCain if he dumped her,” he confides. “Quiet word around here is they’re the ones who told McCain he couldn’t have Lieberman and pushed Palin on us.”

Say That Again?

Wait. This is news! John McCain did not choose his own vice presidential candidate?

Until now, the campaign’s public insistence is that McCain selected her based on a short meeting he had with her a year or two ago at a National Governor’s Assn. meeting and then summoned her to Arizona for the now-famous four hour chat. I beg my contact to let me use this piece of information now. Our ground rules are that nothing I am told can be published until after Nov. 4, a rule that three of my contacts allowed me to bend slightly for last week’s two articles.

“Yeah, why not,” he agrees after a somewhat lengthy pause. “It can’t hurt us now anymore than everything else that’s happening.”

The four evil names rattle around in my head: Rove, Ayles, Dobson and Norquist.

Finally, the choice of Palin makes some sense; not much, but some. Yet it was clear right from the start that McCain was doing somebody’s bidding in choosing an unknown lightweight governor to be his running mater. It turns out that the esteemed doyens of the right wingnut fringe of the Republican Party – Norquist and his once all-powerful “Americans For Tax Reform,” James Dobson’s hate-mongering “Focus On The Family,” Roger Ayles and his Republican talking point network Fox News, and Karl “Bush’s Brain” Rove – did the choosing. Talk about king makers or, in this case, queen makers. McCain managed to go through the motions of “interviewing” Palin but, apparently, he had as much say in the process as I did.

I ask my friend if this is rumor, an open secret or confirmed fact.

“It’s an open secret about a rumor that’s been rumbling around here for weeks,” he tells me somewhat vaguely. Then he adds an even more cryptic comment, “Would I go to Atlantic City with McCain and place a bet on it? Probably, but I’m not sure.”

The half-hearted joke referred to McCain’s fondness for high stakes casino gambling and his deep connections to casino lobbyists was revealed in several articles this week in The New York Times.

Gruesome Implications

I don’t put much stock in conspiracy theories but, if this one is true, it has truly gruesome implications for the country.

Assuming that McCain won’t live out his term, then Sarah Palin and her own, living, breathing handmaiden’s tale would become president. A Tabula Rosa on which the known and unknown manipulators of far right policies and politics would be able to write large their own vision of America – a vision that does not include anything close to mainstream political thought on either side of the political spectrum.

Compared to a Pres. Palin, George Bush would seem like a Renaissance man, a 21st century Thomas Jefferson.

Suddenly, Naomi Wolf’s draconian vision in Huffington Post and mirrored here a few days ago, of the United States under another Republican president seems much more frighteningly real than it did yesterday.

True, there’ve always been insiders working the strings in American politics, starting with Mark Hannah in Ohio during the McKinley administration to New York City’s Tammany Hall and Harold Ickes to Arthur Goldberg. But they’ve always been mainstream people who generally had the country’s best interests at heart. Not in the history of the United States have a cabal of extremists gathered so much power inside a seemingly mainstream political party that they literally dictated to a party’s presidential nominee who would be his running mate simply because it suited their own, perverse end.

Merriam-Webster.com defines a maverick “an independent individual who does not go along with a group or party.” So much for McCain’s self-professed image of being a “maverick.” Nowhere in American history can I find a reference to a politician so craven that he allows his desire for the presidency to be bastardized – swallowed whole – by powerful fringe elements of his party.

The news about how Sarah Palin came to be the Republican Party’s vice presidential candidate is not just disturbing, it is terrifying. How did this happen in America? Hopefully, as the remaining days of the campaign slide past, enough Americans will shake their heads in disbelief at both McCain and Palin – each person having their own reason – and shout “Enough!” as they pull the Obama-Biden lever in the voting booth.

Abraham Lincoln helped found The Grand Old Party. Somewhere, the nation’s greatest president is weeping.

In The Microcosm Of America, Everything Is Required Reading

Journalist’s sense of self-worth should be just a little bit higher today, even with the damning piece I wrote about them yesterday: Sarah Palin doesn't hate you! Or resent you or fear you or think she's better than you or whatever! She actually kinda’ likes you!

In fact, she likes you so much she reads all your work. Literally all of it.

Yeah. Per the latest cringe-inducing instalment of Two's a Crowd with Katie Couric, in which Couric asks Palin, "what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?" we learn that Palin is an equal-opportunity news consumer. As in, she reads whatever is put in front of her. Specifically, it seems, Palin is an avid reader of:

• Most of 'Em monthly
• Um, All of 'Em Weekly
• The A Great Appreciation for the Press, for the Media pamphlet (an alt-weekly owned by Creative Loafing, most likely doomed to fail)
• The Any of 'Em That Have, Uh, Been in Front of Me Over All These Years Digest
• The Vast Variety of Sources Examiner
• The We Get Our News Too Tribune
• The Alaska is Like a Microcosm of America Quarterly



I'd write more but I have to get back to reading the This Is All Becoming a Baffling Parody of Itself Daily someone just put in front of me.

The GOP Learned Lowering Expectations From A Pro

No, it’s not Karl Rove. I’m speaking of Murray Warmath.

And who is Murray Warmath when he’s home? He was the world’s greatest expert on lowering expectations.

From 1954 through the 1971 season, Warmath was head football coach at the University of Minnesota. Although he won two Big Ten titles, mostly he spent his time compiling a mediocre 65-57-4 record. But the alumni association never clamoured for his head and he held his job considerably longer than did most large college coaches who never won a Bowl Game or a national championship.

It was all because Murray Warmath was the master of lowering expectations.

As happens at many major universities, during his tenure Minnesota held an annual alumni dinner, a gathering of donors, potential donors and illustrious grads. Warmath always was a speaker. Every year, he stood up and talked about how next season was going to be tough: He’d lost X-number of graduating seniors, there would be a lot of freshmen on the team, everyone else in the Big Ten had a more experienced line or a proven quarterback or something that spelled doom for the Golden Gophers every time they hit the gridiron.

Well, by the time ol’ Murray finished badmouthing himself, the school’s bad luck and his team’s wilting chances, the gathered poobah’s of the alumni association figured Warmath would be a miracle worker if he managed to pull off a win or two and not end up in the conference cellar.

The fact is Warmath’s teams were never as bad as he predicted – and he knew it standing before the alums every spring. But he kept his job year-after-so-so-year by being the master of lowering expectations. How else can you explain his 18 year tenure as head coach during an era where “win here today or go elsewhere tomorrow” was college football’s mantra?

From Warmath to Palin

Enter Sarah Palin, currently hiding away at John McCain’s palatial Arizona estate getting ready for Thursday’s debate with Joe Biden.

Yesterday, Politico reported news of disenchanted grumblings coming from inside the camp about her performance during two rehearsals with senior McCain advisors. She’s doing miserably, came the reports; even hubby Todd was said to be “worried.” On MSNBC’s Countdown, Keith Olbermann and Bloomberg’s Margaret Carlson discussed the gruesome predictions with some glee.

But where people on the left see pending disaster, I see the ghost of Murray Warmath striding through the Arizona desert.

McCain’s people are running a straight replay of Murray’s unchanging playbook from alumni association dinners that stretched across three decades. By the time Palin’s handler’s get finished lowering expectations, if she doesn’t belch on camera the country may be loudly applauding her ability to stand toe to toe with Joe Biden. That’s their goal, at least, because it’s the only thing that can change their candidate from a Tina Fey skit into being seen as “vice presidential.”

It certainly won’t happen on its own, not from a woman who couldn’t remember the name of one newspaper she reads every day other than to say “I read whatever they put in front of me.”

An Old Opponent's Caution

I think debate moderator Gwen Ifill of The NewsHour on PBS will have her hands full.

On one side of the stage will be a policy wonk whose head is filled with facts and figures who talks too much. On the other side will be a woman of superficial knowledge, an ability to not answer questions and who everyone in the country will be watching to see if she utters something totally stupid.

“In what sense, Charley?” and “Oh! And it’s about job creation!” are the “I’m way over my head here” lines of the campaign.

But former Alaska gubernatorial candidate Andrew Halcro, writing in today’s Christian Science Monitor, warns that Palin can be slippery in a debate.

“Palin is a master of the non-answer,” Halcro cautions. “She can turn a 60-second response to a query about her specific solutions to healthcare challenges into a folksy story about how she's met people on the campaign trail who face healthcare challenges. All without uttering a word about her public-policy solutions to healthcare challenges.”

My hope is that Gwen Ifill will be more adept and forceful at trying to get an actual answer from Palin than, say, the anchor of a local Anchorage newscast or a Juneau state house reporter.

Halcro remembers Palin pulling the same stunt in their debates as she did with CBS’s Katie Couric when she couldn't name a Supreme Court decision.

"In one debate,” he says, “a moderator asked the candidates to name a bill the legislature had recently passed that we didn't like. I named one. Democratic candidate Tony Knowles named one. But Sarah Palin instead used her allotted time to criticize the incumbent governor, Frank Murkowski. Asked to name a bill we did like, the same pattern emerged: Palin didn't name a bill.”

I think we’ll see her trying to pull the same nonsense Thursday night in St. Louis. Here’s hoping that Ms. Ifill is ready to step in and challenge Palin’s artful dodging.

The Battle Plan: Sarah “Evita” Palin, The Muse of the Coming Police State

– by Naomi Wolf, from Huffington Post (at www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/the-battle-plan-ii-sarah_b_128393.html)

Please see my note following the article about how my own experience parallels hers and those of her fellow staff members.

You have to understand how things work in a closing society in order to understand "Palin Power." A gang or cabal seizes power, usually with an affable, weak figurehead at the fore. Then they will hold elections -- but they will make sure that the election will be corrupted and that the next affable, weak figurehead is entirely in their control. Remember, Russia has Presidents; Russia holds elections. Dictators and gangs of thugs all over the world hold elections. It means nothing. When a cabal has seized power you can have elections and even presidents, but you don't have freedom.

I realized early on with horror what I was seeing in Governor Palin: the continuation of the Rove-Cheney cabal, but this time without restraints. I heard her echo Bush 2000 soundbites ("the heart of America is on display") and realized Bush's speechwriters were writing her -- not McCain's -- speeches. I heard her tell George Bush's lies -- not McCain's -- to the American people, linking 9/11 to Iraq. I heard her make fun of Barack Obama for wanting to prevent the torture of prisoners -- this is Rove-Cheney's enthusiastic S and M, not McCain's, who, though he shamefully colluded in the 2006 Military Tribunals Act, is also a former prisoner of war and wrote an eloquent Newsweek piece in 2005 opposing torture. I saw that she was even styled by the same skillful stylist (neutral lipstick, matte makeup, dark colors) who turned Katharine Harris from a mall rat into a stateswoman and who styles all the women in the Bush orbit --but who does not bother to style Cindy McCain.

Then I saw and heard more. Palin is embracing lawlessness in defying Alaskan Legislature subpoenas --this is what Rove-Cheney, and not McCain, believe in doing. She uses mafia tactics against critics, like the police commissioner who was railroaded for opposing handguns in Alaskan battered women's shelters -- Rove's style, not McCain's. I realized what I was seeing.

Reports confirmed my suspicions: Palin, not McCain, is the FrankenBarbie of the Rove-Cheney cabal. The strategy became clear. Time magazine reported that Rove is "dialed in" to the McCain campaign. Rove's protégé Steve Schmidt is now campaign manager. And Politico reported that Rove was heavily involved in McCain's vice presidential selection. Finally a new report shows that there are dozens of Bush and Rove operatives surrounding Sarah Palin and orchestrating her every move.

What's the plan? It is this. McCain doesn't matter. Reputable dermatologists are discussing the fact that in simply actuarial terms, John McCain has a virulent and life-threatening form of skin cancer. It is the elephant in the room, but we must discuss the health of the candidates: doctors put survival rates for someone his age at two to four years. I believe the Rove-Cheney cabal is using Sarah Palin as a stalking horse, an Evita figure, to put a popular, populist face on the coming police state and be the talk show hostess for the end of elections as we know them. If McCain-Palin get in, this will be the last true American election. She will be working for Halliburton, KBR, Rove and Cheney into the foreseeable future -- for a decade perhaps -- a puppet "president" for the same people who have plundered our treasure, are now holding the US economy hostage and who murdered four thousand brave young men and women in a way of choice and lies.

How, you may ask, can I assert this? How can I argue, as I now do, that there is actually a war being ramped up against US citizens and our democracy and that Sarah Palin is the figurehead and muse for that war?

Look at the RNC. This is supposed to be McCain's America. But you see the unmistakable theatre of Rove's S and M imagery -- and you see stages eight, nine and ten of the steps to a dictatorship as I outlined them in The End of America. Preemptive arrest? Abusive arrest? "Newly released footage, which was buried to avoid confiscation, shows riot cops arresting and abusing a giant group of people for nothing."

Journalists were arrested – for reporting. Amy Goodman and ABC producers were arrested. Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake and others were forced to lie face down as armed agents tied their hands behind their backs. The riot police wore the black S&M gear of the Rovian fantasy life and carried the four foot batons cops carry in North Korea. All this is not John McCain's imagery or strategy: it is Karl Rove's.

In McCain-Palin's America, citizens who are protesting are being charged as terrorists. This means that a violent war had been declared on American citizens. A well known reporter leaked to me on background that St Paul police had dressed as protesters and, dressed in Black -- shades of the Blackshirts of 1920 -- infiltrated protest groups. There were also phalanxes of men in black wearing balaclavas, linking arms and behaving menacingly -- alleged "anarchists." Let me tell you, I have been on the left for thirty years and you can't get three lefties to wear the same t-shirt to a rally, let alone link arms and wear identical face masks: these are not our guys. Agent Provocateurs framing protesters and calling protest "terrorism" constitutes step ten of a police state:

"In what appears to be the first use of criminal charges under the 2002 Minnesota version of the Federal Patriot Act, Ramsey County Prosecutors have formally charged eigth alleged leaders of the RNC Welcoming Committee with Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism... [they] 7 1/2 years in prison under the terrorism enhancement charge which allows for a 50% increase in the maximum penalty."

"Paid, confidential informants... infiltrated the RNCWC on behalf of law enforcement. They allege that members of the group sought to kidnap delegates to the RNC, assault police officers with firebombs and explosives, and sabotage airports in St. Paul. Evidence released to date does not corroborate these allegations with physical evidence or provide any other evidence for these allegations than the claims of the informants. Based on past abuses of such informants by law enforcement, the National Lawyers Guild is concerned that such police informants have incentives to lie and exaggerate threats of violence and to also act as provocateurs in raising and urging support for acts of violence."

Under the Palin-Rove police state, you will see escalating infringements on your access to a free internet:

"Sarah Palin was baptized at Wasilla Assembly of God...Last Sunday our research team released a video, a ten-minute mini-documentary, focusing on the Wasilla Assemblies of God and the video seemed on the verge of a massive "viral" breakthrough when YouTube pulled it down, citing 'inappropriate content'. At the point the video was censored by YouTube it had been viewed by almost 160,000 people. The short of it is that YouTube has censored a video documentary that appeared to be close to having an effect on a hard fought and contentious American presidential election..."

Under the coming Palin-Rove police state, you will witness the plans now underway to bring Iraqi troops to patrol the streets of our nation. This is not McCain's fantasy: it is Rove's and Cheney's.

Under the Palin-Rove police state, there will be no further true elections. Mark Crispin Miller has done sensational and under-reported investigating t o establish that – as I warned – indeed the GOP staffers on the US Senate Judiciary Committee have been.

The evidence is also buried on the Website of the Majority House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

WASHINGTON -- Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media, Senate officials told The Globe. >From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications witho ut a password. Trolling through hundreds of memos, they were able to read talking points and accounts of private meetings discussing which judicial nominees Democrats would fight -- and with what tactics.

– "Senate panel's GOP staff spied on Democrats" By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | January 22, 2004

Do you think that spying like this will ever end under a Palin-Rove regime? Dream on. If she and McCain are elected, then every single strategy memo and speech and debate prep note from every opposition candidate from now and on into forever will be read by the regime in power while it is still in the computers of the challengers.

Under the Palin-Rove police state, citizens will be targeted with state cyberterrorism. Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda, a former Reagan official, warned me three years ago that the Bush team went after a Republican who had crossed them through cyberstalking: they messed with his email, messed with his phones and I believe messed with his bank account -- he became a cyber-pariah, unemployable and haunted. With modern technology, there really is less place to hide from the state than there was in East Germany in the Cold War era. I remember feeling a chill: of course. That is the wave of the future once we breach the protections around citizens of FISA and the fourth amendment. That way lies the abyss for us all.

Am I trying to scare you? I am. I am trying to scare you to death and ask you to scare your Republican and independent friends most of all. How do you know when it is war on citizens? When there are mass arrests, journalists are jailed, the opposition is infiltrated, rights are stripped and leaders start to ignore the rule of law.

Almost everyone I work with on projects related to this campaign for liberty has been experiencing computer harassment: emails are stripped, messages disappear. That's not all: people's bank accounts are being tampered with: wire transfers to banks vanish in midair. I personally keep opening bank accounts that are quickly corrupted by fraud. Money vanishes. Coworkers of mine have to keep opening new email accounts as old ones become infected. And most disturbingly to me personally is the mail tampering I have both heard of and experienced firsthand. My tax returns vanished from my mailbox. All my larger envelopes arrive ripped straight open apparently by hand. When I show the postman, he says "That's impossible." Horrifyingly to me is the impact on my family. My childrens' report cards are returned again and again though perfectly addressed; their invitations are turned back; and my daughters many letters from camp? Vanished. All of them. Not one arrived. Try explaining that to a smart thirteen year old. Try explaining it in a way that still makes her feel secure and comfortable.

I am not telling you this because it's about my life. I am telling you this because it is about your life -- whoever you are, Conservative or Liberal, independent or evangelical. Your politics will not protect you in a police state. History shows that nothing portects you in a police state. This is not about my fear and anxiety: it is about what awaits you and everyone you love unless you see this for what it is:

Scharansky divided nations into "fear societies" and "free societies." Make no mistake: Sarah "Evita" Palin is Rove and Cheney's cosmetic re-branding of their fascist push: she will help to establish a true and irreversible "fear society" in this once free once proud nation. For God's sake, do not let her; do not let them.
__________

My Note To Ms. Wolf’s Article

What Ms. Wolf and her fellow staff members have encountered directly parallels my own.

In April, 2005, I published an article, Washington’s Darkest Secret, which revealed that George Bush was told by George Tenet in early August, 2001, of hard intelligence that al Qaeda planned to attack the United States using airplanes as guided missiles. All Tenet did not know was the exact date, the specific targets or the names of the highjackers – which, it turns out, the FBI had in its files.

Following its initial publication and as I was working on a follow-up piece, my home was broken into and office files disturbed, phones were tapped, my e-mails interrupted and accounts were corrupted, snail mail arrived opened and the bank that held the mortgage on my home – which happens to own a federally-regulated US bank – tried to foreclose on a technicality. Only fast and fancy footwork by my lawyers stopped the bank in its tracks.

Everything she describes is not only happening to her, it is happening to other Americans, as well.

My Comrades-in-Journalism Are At Fault, Too

Already, there is a massive amount of finger pointing about who is to blame for yesterday’s failure of the rescue package in the House. Democrats blame Republicans, Republicans blame Democrats, dogs blame cats and vice versa. Alas, my former brothers and sisters toiling in business journalism’s verdant field must shoulder their share of the blame, not for yesterday’s vote but for not really covering what led to the need for such a vote.

So, to help former colleagues still covering business news for a living, I offer a few observations about the current financial crisis that may improve their coverage in the future because there are some inconvenient truths they need to face squarely and fix successfully.

The business media claims to cover business, and its reporters cover nothing more closely than Wall St. Your knowledge is what separates you from other beat reporter; it is why there is a business media. But the beat covered by many publications, reporters and editors has collapsed.

For business reporters, editors and producers, there are only two options when considering what happened, neither particularly pleasant.

Two Reasons

If you provided appropriate, arms-length scrutiny of the financial-services industry, including investigative work, opinion, analysis and rigorous beat reporting that provided decision-makers and readers with fair warnings of the coming collapse, the coverage was ignored by people who could have stopped it in time. Or, you didn’t do the job in the first place.

The answer is a complicated mix of the two. But that means the best case for the business media is that what it writes doesn’t matter or get read, so why bother?

It pains me to say so, but there was a failure of journalism in the Wall St. crisis, as big and devastating as journalism’s failure during the run-up to the Iraq war. Had reporters been digging through the underlying documents of credit swaps and the other convoluted financial products being created, my hunch is that a lot of the current problems might have been avoided as few of them could have withstood the bright light of public scrutiny.

Sadly, you did not do your job.

Best And Brightest

The current generation of business reporters is probably the best-educated and most sophisticated ever. Everyone knows they are entirely capable of providing the needed scrutiny and requisite scepticism, if properly directed. This didn’t happen so there is a leadership deficit in newsrooms.

True, business journalism has been thinned of its most experienced ink-stained wretches, as has happened on nearly every other major beat, thanks to the media’s financial troubles. Investigative reporting is a thing of the past. We all paid a price paid for this and it is another issue for editors and publishers to work through.

Business media outlets that claim to provide authoritative coverage of Wall Street during good times should be first in line for scrutiny now. These would include any publication with the words “wall” and “street” in its name, as well as anything named “deal,” “New York,” “business,” “investors” and, for that matter, “times” and “day.” For some reason, Bloomberg boasts of its supremacy in covering the markets that just blew up; it missed the story entirely. Oh well. By the way, the good folks at Business Week, Forbes and Fortune are culpable, as well.

Coming Criticism

Criticism of business publications and networks is harsh already and will get more biting. Much of the criticism will be unfair, driven by ignorance, opportunism and an anti-business bias on the left along with a congenital anti-journalism bias on the right. Some of it will be very fair.

On the other hand, as the messy process of finger-pointing begins, it is worth remembering that the bailout is only part of the hardship ordinary people are bearing for the financial services industry’s excesses. The first part comes in the yet-to-be-measured equity loss, not to mention mental anguish, borne by most of the four million people who lost their homes. Basically, the massive foreclosure crisis is simply a wholesale transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top. British and European newspapers and networks have done a better job of covering this in the US than have our own, home grown, media.

The second part is the extended recession we are entering. Millions of people will lose their jobs, their health care and their hope for the future. There is a lot of talk about “Main Street” but too little coverage of what is occurring to the people who read or watch your coverage yet live off of Manhattan Island.

Third is the losses suffered by pension and mutual funds from Wall Street’s sale of billions of dollars worth of defective and possibly fraudulent products. It will be hard for the business media to explain this, but it will be much harder for their readers who are seeing the value of their mutual funds, 401(k) plans, IRA’s and other savings schemes disintegrate before their eyes.

Falling Resources, Rising Responsibility

The last decade has seen a dramatic decrease in journalism’s resources, unfortunately occurring just as journalism’s responsibilities have increased.

The disemboweling of the SEC, the Office of Thrift Supervision, the Comptroller of the Currency, bank examiners, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Justice Dept. and other key federal agencies, piled more and more responsibilities on the press – responsibilities it did not recognize in time that it had and was not prepared to shoulder in any event.

At least three times since the turn of the 21st century, the only business activity so unique, special and important that it is specifically protected by the US Constitution, failed the country miserably: Reporting on what was in the Patriot Act, the lies being fed to the nation to trumpet the unnecessary Iraq war, and now the collapse of the financial sector.

These aren’t trivial matters; indeed, providing tough, independent, in-depth reporting on them is the reason journalism exists. But when owners, publishers, reporters, editors and producers collectively fail to do their job, our nation is less free and, in the case of the current crisis, a lot poorer.

Welcome To The Next Great Depression

Buddy, can you spare a Prozac? Oh, wait. This kind of depression won’t be cured with a pill. And a dime doesn’t buy as much today as it did in 1930.

Watching the House vote on a package to rescue the economy fall apart this afternoon was as traumatic as seeing Wall St. brokers leaping from windows in October, 1929 on the day of the great crash. Alright, so that never really happened but the metaphor is valid. And the tense, drawn looks on the faces of long-time Congressional correspondents as they reported the unfolding debacle told much more than they were saying: We’re in trouble, folks, and plenty of it.

I opposed early versions of the economic rescue plan. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s first cut was the financial version of the Patriot Act or the Iraq War resolution granting absurd power with no oversight. Even the second and third drafts were mostly a fat cat handout with not much given back in return to protect the country.

Yet the fact is while the final version voted down by the US House is a bad law, because it had reasonable safeguards and limits it is seriously better than no law at all.

Now, if Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner cannot get a handful of members in their respective caucuses to change their vote when the bill comes up again after Rosh Hashanah, we are all toast.

Brokers may not be leaping from ledges but US stocks, most commodities except precious metals, and oil are falling out the allegorical window. As the Dow plummeted 700 points, the Standard & Poor’s 500 – a much more reliable barometer than the Dow – was plunging by more than 8%, with 490 of the 500 companies that make up the index declining.

Look out below!

Car Loans, Credit Lines

It may take a few weeks for the real impact to rear its devastating head but some businesses already are feeling the effects of what amounts to a credit lockdown.

For 15 years, until my sister died of cancer in 1999, Steve was my brother-in-law. For at least that long, he’s run a reasonably successful small business. I mean really small: He is the only employee. But the business is profitable, generates a decent cash flow, he pays his bills and his credit score is squeaky clean.

I spoke with him this morning to see how things are going. Mostly, I wondered if Hank Paulson was telling the truth – that credit is approaching lock-down – or exaggerating. Turns out he’s not, and it may be the first time in the history of the Bush administration that a cabinet secretary is being honest with the nation.

“Two weeks ago, I leased a new truck to replace the old one,” Steve says of the vehicle that literally drives his business. “I’ve always leased them through the same bank we used for 20 years, and I always got cars and trucks for prime-plus-one (percent). When I called the bank for a new lease, they told prime-plus-two and a half. I was stunned and asked why, because I’ve been a good customer.

“They told me it’s only because I’ve been a good customer for so many years that they’re able to give me a lease at all, and I’m getting it at their best rate.”

He ended up getting a better rate through the manufacturer’s finance company and took it. But the truck was only his first surprise.

Last week, he renewed his revolving line of business credit which finances his inventory purchases. Steve’s had a $25,000 line for ages yet, when he called his account manager, he was greeted with astounding news.

“I’m sorry but we’re going to have to reduce your line to $15,000,” my former brother-in-law was told.

Again, he asked why and, again, he heard the same rationale.

“That we’re keeping it (the credit line) open at all is because you’ve been such a good customer and have an excellent credit score,” Steve says the apologetic banker explained. “Otherwise, we would have closed your line entirely.”

The Beginning

Steve will not be the only business owner in the country to get the same gloomy news over the next 10 or 15 days. Without a turnaround in the re-vote – if and whenever it comes –owners of one employee companies to the chief financial officers of Fortune 100 companies will be hearing the same thing.

Indeed, rates for commercial paper – how larger businesses finance operations – are skyrocketing making borrowing money for everything from inventory to payrolls to receivables incredibly expensive. When September and October unemployment figures are reported, sadly well after the election, we are likely to see a huge jump in the number of jobless. Layoffs beget more layoffs and terrify everyone still hanging on to a job.

So retailers depending on the holiday season for the bulk of their annual sales and profits will be facing disappointing news: The unemployed don’t have cash for gifts and those still working will be pulling in their wings to wait out the storm.

Property tax revenue around the country has already dropped as home values plunge so state and local government – in many regions, often the state’s largest employer – will be forced to cut back and lay off. Next, the Treasury will see corporate and personal tax collections decline sharply, as well, which means either borrowing even more money from China – which is already nervous about its US dollar exposure – or reducing programs to help the swelling ranks of the needy.

Thus, today’s inaction by the House may well spell the beginning of the start of Great Depression II. Since John McCain is already displaying all of the characteristics of Herbert Hoover, all that may save us is if Barack Obama turns out to be Franklin Roosevelt’s reincarnation.

Blame Game

And thus begins the blame game: Democrats blaming Republicans who are, truthfully, mostly at fault; Republicans blaming Democrats who, truthfully, share some of the blame; Dennis Kucinich blaming everyone; Bob Barr – is he still a presidential candidate? – blaming “government.” Eventually, everyone will blame everybody else and I’m sure that, with enough time, my friend Susan’s Daschundt Maxie will blame her two cats, Sasha and Evita. And vice versa.

Actually, there is a definite start date to this afternoon’s collapse and a specific person to blame.

Genuine blame for the reason a deal was needed, and fell apart can be traced to a tense night in December, 2000. The Supreme Court had just elected George Bush president by one vote. Congress was locked in a budget showdown with the outgoing Clinton administration. And a balding, bespectacled Phil Gramm strode onto the floor of the United States Senate the chilly evening of the 15th.

As Congress and the White House were hurriedly hammering out a $384-billion spending bill, Gramm quietly slipped in a 262-page amendment called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. He boasted to the gathered solons that his measure ensures that neither the SEC nor the Commodity Futures Trading Commission – soon to be chaired by Gramm’s wife – would regulate an incredibly complicated new financial product called swaps, Gramm all but said he saved Wall Street by "protect(ing) financial institutions from overregulation" and "position our financial services industries to be world leaders into the new century."

Even Nazi Germany’s Third Reich lasted a few years a longer than it took Wall St. to collapse under the weight of its own greed, hauling the global economy down with it in the bargain.

So here we sit, teetering on the edge of the precipice, wondering if our futures will be just grim or totally bleak while Washington scratches its bewildered head, calculating what to do next with the election looming a mere 39 days away.

Those who voted against the bill – a lethal combination of hard right Republicans and far left Democrats – may be gleeful this evening at their success. But it’s a fool’s folly to be happy about what the United States House of Representatives did today. How will they explain their decision to what will surely be the largest swelling of unemployment, homelessness and despair seen in their various districts since the 1930s?

McCain’s Gambling Past Rolls Craps

Guest post by Denis Campbell, editor of The Vadimus Post (www.vadimuspost.com)

“Daddy needs a new pair of shoes!” and the dice cubes fly.

John McCain loves craps. It is routine for him to wager and lose $25,000 in a session as to play the “suspend the campaign and return to Washington to save the Bailout” gambit or petulantly select an unknown for Vice President as the table runs hot. The problem is it’s also routine for him to become petulant, moody, churlish, angry and flash that fiery, scary temper when his luck runs cold.

Dice are funny. There’s nothing here but pure, dumb luck. A compulsive gambler will tell you, a hot dice run creates a sugar high bigger than any ten year old can imagine and… dark, erratic, moody behaviour where one tries to quickly recoup losses digging the hole deeper when they run cold. You are completely at the mercy of two clear red silicon composite boxes with painted white numbers.

Barack Obama plays poker, very well. Poker requires cool under pressure, patience, skill, discipline and an ability to play the man as well as your card hand. Poker players know when to hold, fold or push their chips all-in for the highest percentage advantage. Do it successfully and increase your winning percentage dramatically. The house never beats you. You beat yourself. And luck is something to use and respect.

I’m an improving poker player as well as political contributor to WPT (World Poker Tour) Magazine. It’s where those who like to play the game go to learn strategy from top experts and pros. I was asked to handicap aspects of the Presidential race and predict the odds of online gaming again becoming legal in the USA . New York Times reporters Jo Becker and Don van Natta, Jr. did an excellent job of tying John McCain and his lobbying buddies to Indian casino gaming.

Not as deeply reported is a piece of legislation that helped his casino buddies more than locations on certain reservations. John McCain and his lobbying pals eliminated their online competition, by making it illegal for any company to use the Federal Banking payment processing system to process Internet gaming transactions. It was buried deep in a shipping port security bill passed at midnight when Congress adjourned September, 2006 to return home and contest mid-term elections.

The Security and Accountability For Every Port Act of 2006 (or SAFE Port Act) had language inserted as Title VIII of the Act. The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act prohibited the transfer of funds from a US financial institution to any Internet gambling site.

What, you might ask, do online poker and Internet gambling have to do with Port Security? Nothing, it was a brilliant legislative manoeuvre. They could rightfully defend it to colleagues by saying they did not make gambling online illegal, something they could never stop, so they focused on those trying to cash their winnings, so why bother?

“I’d call it the John McCain, Rick Davis, Jack Abramoff and Scott Reed Personal Enrichment Act” said a Republican Congressman defeated for re-election that year and who asked not to be named, “these guys were all in it up their eyeballs.” “It gave their Indian casino buddies free reign and made sure 95+% of all gaming occurred in their casinos,” he continued. Americans were thus forced to apply for foreign credit cards or work with international friends to transfer winnings.

All the act did was make the IRS’ job of tracing funds more difficult. Log on any evening to Party Poker, Full Tilt Poker or a dozen other sites and despite the language all use (except Party Poker) prohibiting US players or payments processed to US accounts, you will see major US city represented at 8-10% of the seats on their tables.

Congressman Barney Frank, (D-MA), Chairman of the House Banking Committee has been unable to move a bill deleting Title VIII language because of Republican filibuster threats. Professional poker players in the USA , people who make their living playing and representing the game testified before his committee on this unlawful restraint of their trade. The gaming lobby has kept this from coming to a vote, led by John McCain, Scott Reed and Rick Davis.

Last week I had a lengthy interview with Russell Means’, head of the Lakota Indian Nation that withdrew from all Treaties with the US Government in December of last year. He is running to become the Chief of the Sioux Tribe in Pine Ridge, an election where, he said, “two years ago, despite having only about 2,700 registered voters, more than 4,000 paper ballots were cast, counted and certified (despite the tribal court ruling it was indeed a fixed election), by the Tribal Council and Bureau of Indian Affairs.”

Until now, no one has cared. Indian gaming and the control of Reservations by the BIA has kept them dirt poor, dependent and under the control of John McCain’s friends. (More to come later this week in the full Means interview).

So the tiniest bit of the light has crept on to the Indian gaming scene. We will throw the door open and watch the cockroaches scatter into the woodwork shadows. This story about Indian gaming and election rigging is just the tip of the exploitation iceberg. What lies under the surface is very damaging indeed.

Senator McCain, you may have, as you said in the debate the other evening, fought earmarks. Unfortunately your inner lobbyist and gambling demons are much harder to slay than saying “thanks but no thanks to that bridge to nowhere.”

“It’s 7-out, line in, Senator” You just lost your money to the house.

Sarah Palin’s Feminine Wiles Fall Short

A guest post from Sharon Lyle, publisher of the LA Progressive e-newsmagazine at www.laprogressive.com

Shortly after the Katie Couric-Sarah Palin interview, a slew of reports hit the Internet assessing the VP candidate’s performance. Try as I might, I was hard pressed to find a single report that looked favorably on Palin’s delivery. Slate’s Christopher Beam said that Palin resembled, “a high-schooler trying to BS her way through a book report.” New York Times reporter Bob Herbert said “the idea that the voters of the United States might install someone in the vice president’s office who is too unprepared or too intellectually insecure to appear on, say, “Meet the Press” or “Face the Nation” is mind-boggling.” He then likened the election of Palin to “putting an unqualified pilot in the cockpit of a jetliner.

So when I watched the Palin-Couric interview, I wasn’t completely surprised to see Palin fumbling. I suspected this would surface sooner or later. Why else would the McCain campaign shield her from the media for so long? Just two days earlier when Palin was to meet with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, campaign aides told reporters they could not go into the meetings but the photographers and video camera crew were invited in. When a couple of major news outlets reportedly threatened to remove their camera crews altogether, campaign spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt was quoted as saying the reporter ban was a miscommunication.

Still, when watching the events of that day on CNN and MSNBC and reading about them in other media, it was impossible to get a grasp of the dialogue exchanged between Palin and Karzai or any of the other foreign leaders she met that day. The average citizen is still left wondering — who is Sarah Palin?

But as I sat through more of the interview with Couric, Palin’s ability to stay on point was even worse than I’d imagined. Couric seemed to rattle Palin, zooming in on hard-hitting questions while staring with a blank face — looking directly and unwaveringly at Palin as she stumbled and bumbled to find a coherent answer. Palin squirmed in her seat as an apparent uneasiness seemed to rise from within but Couric refused to offer up a smile or a nod. While watching this exchange, it occurred to me that maybe the problem was that one of Palin’s tools was rendered ineffective with Couric.

The Alaskan Governor is an attractive woman – perhaps she is adept at using her charm and beauty to distract from other possible shortcomings. Couric didn’t seem to be biting and Palin was clearly operating outside of her comfort zone.

To see if I was on to something with this theory, I went to YouTube and replayed the Palin interview with Charles Gibson of ABC, carefully observing the way she handled Gibson. Within the first 7 or so minutes into day 1 of the first interview, Sarah Palin addressed Charles Gibson as “Charlie” no less than five times. At one point, when they were on the grounds of her home in Alaska, she touched his arm. These are subtle gestures that can easily be dismissed as personal style but when compared to the way she interacted with Katie Couric, I’m not so sure. In replaying the Couric interview, I never heard Palin refer to Couric as “Katie”. Theirs was a strictly professional exchange and this did not seem to work in Palin’s favor.

According to a recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, “ 62 percent of men questioned have a favorable opinion of the Alaska governor, nine points higher than women.” The poll also indicated that there is a gender gap when it comes to whether Palin is qualified to serve as president. Fifty-seven percent of male respondents said Palin was qualified, 14 points higher than women. I don’t doubt the McCain camp chose Palin for this very reason.

In a piece entitled, “Desperately Searching for Sarah,” NBC National Journal Reporter Carrie Dann asserts that web searches say something about what we really want to know. NBC News uses an online research company, Hitwise, to compile and analyze what people are searching for on the web. According to Dann, “Palin” searches caused web traffic to spike to almost 30 times that of any other candidate by the date of Palin’s convention speech.

Dann says volume fell almost as quickly as it rose but added that searches containing the keywords “Sarah Palin legs”, “Sarah Palin Vogue”, and “Sarah Palin sexy photos” have outranked searches for legitimate policy positions such as earmarks investigation since Palin entered the race. Dann claims that NBC believes that what people search for says a lot about how the campaigns are making their message stick. I don’t know what the Palin searches say about the message the McCain campaign is sending but it seems to say something about how a large percentage of men are thinking.

But, although the polls indicate that Palin is favored by men, it is not all men. Even conservatives such as George Will are saying enough is enough. Fareed Zakaria has asked that she step down and Jack Cafferty’s exasperation over the spector of a Palin presidency can only be given justice by providing you with the video to watch for yourself (see below).

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8__aXxXPVc)

So this takes us to the question of how Palin will handle next Thursday’s debate. Next Thursday, the debate will be moderated by veteran journalist Gwen Ifill. A couple of months ago, there were some who were disgruntled that Ifill had been relegated to moderate the VP debate and not one of the presidential debates considering her senior status and exemplary performances at moderating in the past. But now, I have to admit, it makes me smile just thinking of Gwen Ifill sitting in the moderator seat on Thursday.I predict, that unlike John McCain who avoided eye contact with Barack Obama, Sarah Palin won’t avoid making eye contact with Joe Biden. She knows where her strength lies and she’ll invite it. It gives her an edge over her opponent that all attractive women sense. Biden will be in a precarious position but I trust that he’s up to the task. This Thursday’s debate will be a dance of balance. Biden doesn’t need to sit and memorize talking points but he will have to be mindful that this is not the typical debate.

What’s important to Palin is that she feel comfortable enough to not make a complete fool of herself on this, one of the most watched debates in the history of television, debating a man who has more experience dealing in the matters of foreign policy than she has in every aspect of her life. She is going to need to draw strength from being able to use her charm.

She will likely not avoid looking into Biden’s eyes but looking at Ifill, now that is another thing altogether. We’ll all watch and see how that works for her.

I, like millions of other Americans, will be there watching taping and watching again as this monumental time in American history gets played out.

Note To Keith: Robert Rector Is Today’s Worst Person In The World

It never occurred to me that being on food stamps because you’re too poor to feed your family is unhealthy. But Robert Rector of The Heritage Foundation knows it is and thinks we should starve the wretches into submission.

Rector says food stamps are not helping the poor, claiming that, "The majority of them are overweight, and the idea of what we need to do is give them more food is just kind of silly.”

The ungrateful fat bastards don’t know how good they have it.

But, uhm, maybe if they are overweight as you say, it’s because about all that people on food stamps can afford are low cost, starchy-but-filling foods like Kraft mac-and-cheese dinners. Not much room for fresh fruits and vegetables on the lush $5.80 per person food stamp daily allotment. Anyway, he has other reasons for starving the poor.

"It’s a counterproductive program because it still rewards people for not working and these programs have an anti-marriage bias. (T)he family gets more from the program if a working father isn’t in the home,” Rector snorts with Victorian self-righteousness.

“Most poor children in America today are, in fact, super-nourished and grow up to be, on average, one inch taller and 10 pounds heavier than the GIs who stormed the beaches of Normandy in World War II,” he huffs disapprovingly, supporting his Worst Person nomination.

Of course, Rector neglects to mention that, on average, everybody is taller and heavier today than the generation that fought World War II 60+ years ago. We also live longer which, for Rector, is probably reason enough for not providing universal health care although I bet he has other arguments supporting illness for the poor. Maybe something along the lines of “when they’re in charity hospital beds, they’re not sleeping on the streets or in squalid tenements.”

So much for whatever is left of “compassionate conservativism.”

Hunger Crisis

There is a hunger crisis in America that mulyuks like Rector must believe is a good thing.

For months, the number of people on food stamps has been increasing steadily. In June, it hit 28.6-million, according to government figures, and rising. With any luck – unless people like Rector or John McCain put a stop to it – the US will enjoy the disgrace of seeing the same number of hungry citizens on food stamps as those with no health insurance.

The only other time so many Americans used food stamps was in late 2005, when huge numbers of people needed emergency help after hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Food stamp eligibility is based on income. Households with no income receive the most benefits. Households with incomes at 130% percent of the federal poverty line – a household of three making $22,900 a year – get the least benefits.

Changes making more households eligible for benefits come after new federal legislation takes effect Wednesday. For the first time, people will be able to deduct child care costs when calculating their income and they will not be penalized for having retirement accounts, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, D.C.

Additionally, the standard deduction on the food stamp application will be indexed for inflation. The minimum benefit increases to $14 from $10 per month, also indexed for inflation. As one expects from the government, there is a complicated formula for calculating benefit eligibility. As a result, experts and recipients said the increase many will see in benefits is needed because food stamps are not enough to get by on.

Dottie Rosenbaum, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told McClatchy newspapers the complicated formula that determines how much money people receive has a maximum benefit of $1.60 per meal per person. That lush sum might cover the cost of a bowl of cereal, more than enough for the poor, the wretched, the huddled masses according to folks like Rector.

"But that’s not what most people get," Rosenbaum calculates. "They get close to a dollar and a quarter a meal."

Ooops.

Hang The Cheatin’ Bastards!

Whew! And here I thought we were wasting taxpayer money. Still, I wonder why $1.25 per meal per person is a scandal but $700-billion for Wall St. will save the global economy. It’s the same logic banks use: Wealthy people who don’t need money get loans easily while those without resources are shooed away like buzzing flies in the sticky, August heat.

Many food stamp recipients say they get extra meals from food pantries and church dinners. Rector’s reaction is probably “hang the cheatin’ bastards, hang ‘em high!”

Making matters worse, food prices are spiking and there’s the nettlesome problem that wages have been sagging for decades.

The Agriculture Dept. reports food prices rose 6.1% this month over last September, the steepest increase in two decades. Meanwhile, from the early 1980s to now, the income of the nations richest grew 62% while wages of the poorest grew only 21% percent including the cash value of food stamps, giving the needy a lofty $143 annual bump in purchasing power over the same 20 years.

I’ll save you the math: This works out to 43-cents a day.

Only Rector and maybe Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, the millionaire former Clinton backer with countless homes on several continents who now supports McCain because Obama is “elitist,” would argue that an extra 43 pennies a day is too rich for the lumpen proletariat.

Paging Marie Antoinette!

Back To Reality

Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, the landmark CBS Reports did an extended series of documentaries on the problems of hunger in America, beginning with the award winning Harvest of Shame. In 1968, Robert Kennedy built much of his presidential campaign around the problems of the country’s countless poor, working poor and disadvantaged.

The reality is that, forty years later, we remain the hungriest rich nation on earth.

Every night, nearly 30-million people including close to 20-million children go to bed hungry. Parents are deciding between buying food for their children or paying for heat; between finding enough spare change around the house to buy milk for their kids and finding enough spare change for bus fare to get to work; between listening to the cries of their hungry youngsters and listening to the braying of donkeys like Robert Rector.

In Somalia, the UN flies in huge planes stuffed with bags of food, much of it provided by the US. Why can’t America airlift bags of food to its own hungry, downtrodden citizens?

How can one nation produce tens of millions of hungry Americans as well as the strident – dare I say “elitist?" – crapola of men like Robert Rector, today’s worst person in the world.

There Was Only One Paul Newman

Paul Newman was one of the last two greats of his generation. Now, only Clint Eastwood remains.

He trained in the method style with Lee Strasberg. In the beginning, he was criticised for being a mini-Marlon Brando. He was a bit younger than Brando, who was the big star. But Newman moved away from that, establishing his own style. In the end, he wasn't a second anybody: He was Paul Newman.

Undoubtedly, he is one of the Top 10 all-time great movie stars. I’m not quite sure where, but he was a great star. But unlike many great stars, though, Newman was a very good actor. He was also extraordinarily good-looking, with eyes a remarkable shade of bright blue, but his looks got in the way of people appreciating his acting ability until much later in his life.

They assumed he was just a pretty boy and didn't take him seriously. Maybe that's why he was nominated for so many Oscars without winning. In fact, he was a damn good actor.

True, in some of his early films he got by on his looks – but not in the ones that counted. If you watch Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), a very good actor is emerging.

The film everyone's going to remember him for is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, because it was one of the great Westerns. But I think his best performances were in Cool Hand Luke (1967) and The Hustler (1961). The great thing about Newman's acting was that he became the character he was playing. But, at the same time, there were always those Paul Newman qualities.

He appeared on the screen and you warmed to him at once. It didn't matter what kind of part he was playing. Even in Road to Perdition (2002) or Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), when he was playing louts, as soon as he appeared on the screen you warmed to him – and that was God-given.

There was something that exuded from him: Personality, charisma, whatever. That is an enormous asset for any actor and precious few of our “stars” today have what Newman brought to every role.