Methews: Republicans Look Backwards

Countdown: McCain's Desperation Disgrace


Mike Talks Katrina and McCain's VP Pick on Keith Olbermann


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Countdown: McCain's Guilt By Association

Countdown - Keith Olbermann with a Special Comment on John Mccain's Childish Behavior


Rachel Maddow: McCain Vs Obama on economics 09/19/08


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What About Politics?

McCain is Lying Again

Obama Supporter? No Parking! ;-)

Lehman's Fuld: 'I was wrong' and it made me hyper-rich.

Rescued Pinguins Back to Sea

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Palin Fans

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Campbell Brown: No Bias, Nu Bull.

In her "No Bias, No Bull" segment Wednesday night, Campbell Brown pleaded with the McCain campaign to stop what she referred to as "race baiting."
"It is getting very, very ugly," Brown said. "Tonight, we are cutting through the bull on the issue of race and this campaign."

Brown blasted McCain surrogates for injecting race Obama's race into the campaign narrative by invoking his middle name or referring to him as a terrorist, and she called on McCain to deliver a "much stronger denunciation than a campaign-generated paper statement":

Look, everybody, we all know that we are in unchartered territory here. Never before has there been an African-American presidential nominee. So without question, race is going to be part of the conversation. Race baiting doesn't have to be. And yet, it is happening in this campaign.
Twice this week, surrogates for Senator McCain had made a point of calling Senator Obama "Barack Hussein Obama." The implication here is clear. It's foreign sounding. It's Muslim sounding. It's un-American sounding. It's dangerous sounding.
What it is, is race baiting. And that is what is dangerous. Inciting crowds, encouraging their angry outbursts. McCain supporters shouting "treason" and "terrorist" about Obama at these rallies — that is dangerous.
Earlier in the campaign, McCain denounced this stuff. He strongly denounced it. And today, it requires a stronger response, a much stronger denunciation than a campaign-generated paper statement.

Brown also cautioned Obama supporters not to accuse McCain of racism over his "that one" remark from Tuesday's Presidential debate, as she reported some have done. "Give me a break," she said. "I can hear my grandfather talking about one of his kids or grandkids as 'that one.' He used it a lot. Maybe it's a generational thing. Maybe it wasn't a term of endearment
the way it was when my grandfather used it. Maybe McCain did mean to be disrespectful, but racist? I don't think so."

She ended the segment with a plea for candidates, supporters, and the media:

You know, we should be holding these candidates accountable for what they say during the campaign, and hope that in these final days, they do try to maintain a little dignity. But we have also got to check ourselves. We have a responsibility, too, to not get overheated. What we say matters, too.
Whoever wins this election, we are all going to have to rally around that person. Given what is happening to our economy, all that is going on in this country right now, none of us wants the next president to be a failure, whoever he may be, do we?

Over the weekend, Brown's shift towards the role of nonpartisan commentator was highlighted in a New York Times article. A collection of recent links in which she has kept politicians' feet to the fire appears below:

Campbell Brown Pleads: 'Don't Let This Devolve Into A Campaign That...We Are Sickened By'

Campbell Brown Holds Paulson, Bush Accountable For Crisis: "Seriously, What Were You Thinking?"

Campbell Brown Rips McCain Camp's "Sexist" Treatment Of Palin

McCain Spokesman Stumped Trying To Explain Why Palin Is Ready To Be Commander-In-Chief

David Brooks: She represents a fatal cancer to the Republican Party

The New York Times columnist also said that the "great virtue" of Palin's counterpart, Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden, is that he is anything but a "yes man."

"[Biden] can't not say what he thinks," Brooks remarked. "There's no internal monitor, and for Barack Obama, that's tremendously important to have a vice president who will be that way. Our current president doesn't have anybody like that."
Brooks also spent time praising Obama's intellect and skills in social perception, telling two stories of his interactions with Obama that left him "dazzled":

Obama has the great intellect. I was interviewing Obama a couple years ago, and I'm getting nowhere with the interview, it's late in the night, he's on the phone, walking off the Senate floor, he's cranky. Out of the blue I say, 'Ever read a guy named Reinhold Niebuhr?' And he says, 'Yeah.' So i say, 'What did Niebuhr mean to you?' For the next 20 minutes, he gave me a perfect description of Reinhold Niebuhr's thought, which is a very subtle thought process based on the idea that you have to use power while it corrupts you. And I was dazzled, I felt the tingle up my knee as Chris Matthews would say.
And the other thing that does separate Obama from just a pure intellectual: he has tremendous powers of social perception. And this is why he's a politician, not an academic. A couple of years ago, I was writing columns attacking the Republican congress for spending too much money. And I throw in a few sentences attacking the Democrats to make myself feel better. And one morning I get an email from Obama saying, 'David, if you wanna attack us, fine, but you're only throwing in those sentences to make yourself feel better.' And it was a perfect description of what was going through my mind. And everybody who knows Obama all have these stories to tell about his capacity for social perception.

Brooks predicted an Obama victory by nine points, and said that although he found Obama to be "a very mediocre senator," he was is surrounded by what Brooks called "by far the most impressive people in the Democratic party."
"He's phenomenally good at surrounding himself with a team," Brooks said. "I disagree with them on most issues, but I am given a lot of comfort by the fact that the people he's chosen are exactly the people I think most of us would want to choose if we were in his shoes. So again, I have doubts about him just because he was such a mediocre senator, but his capacity to pick staff is impressive."


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Obama’s New Deal for America

Kudos to Sen. Obama for hard-wiring an empathetic connection to the beleaguered American middle class at last night's debate. His winning performance inspired me to go outside my normal national security box to consider how he could construct a greater economic recovery program to meet dead on the fear and apprehension that is undermining confidence in our future.
I believe now is the time for Obama to consider a bolder and more historic approach to the financial crisis by presenting to middle income Americans a step-by-step "big think" FDR-style New Deal program to add greatness and urgency to his economic recovery plan. Tough times call for urgent and big-think measures. Surely, we are in this era, once again.
In 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt unveiled a landmark economic recovery plan that created a "New Deal" for America's middle class and restored confidence to a hard-pressed nation. It was imaginative, bold and daring and lifted America up by its bootstraps and restored confidence and stability. It took several years, but it worked.
A similar type of "new deal" program aimed principally at the crux of our financial crisis -- the falling U.S. housing market -- is now urgently needed by our Democratic standard-bearer to create an indelibly understandable and comprehensive framework in the minds of voters that he has the most coherent and bold recovery program that gets at the very heart of what plunged our financial markets into chaos (aside from greedy Wall Street executives peddling credit default swaps, etc.) . Another financial infusion of funds to average Americans modeled after the last economic stimulus proposal may just be too insufficient to meet the emergency that will surely follow us well into 2009.
Accordingly, coupled with his affordable health care program, necessary tax reductions and renewable energy incentives the components of the Obama "New Deal" for middle-income America could include the following options:
-- Setting the table, so to speak: take one day out of the campaign to convene an emergency economic summit of key financial advisors, business leaders and economists to discuss and assess the credit and liquidity crisis with the objective of legitimating this "New Deal" style-emergency recovery program for the middle class, and present it in a easily comprehensible speech to the American people (fireplaces always a good backdrop).
Program elements would include a new across-the-board housing-focused economic stimulus package. It would be be designed to ensure that the plan is directed at incentivizing prospective and existing home buyers to re-enter/remain in the housing ownership market. Such a stimulus would include the following components:
1. A tax credit on 2009 taxes in the amount of $10,000 used to purchase a principal residence for qualifying buyers whose FICO scores are deemed above the sub-prime lending qualifications and who can meet reasonable credit worthiness and income qualifications to manage the special mortgage requirements noted below.
2. A government-guaranty fixed rate mortgage program offered through banks that would set a federally-mandated interest rate ceiling of 5.5% on 30 year fixed rate conforming mortgages. The fixed-rate mortgage would provide an adequate return to banks that would be compelled to hold these mortgages in to assure the government-backed guaranty (thus avoiding the securitization shenanigans that got us into the fix in the first place).
3. A tax credit in the amount of $3,000 on 2009 and 2010 taxes to cover moving and out-of-pocket costs (excluding points) for qualifying purchasers of principal residences.
-- Propose to offer banks that are holding delinquent but not defaulted mortgages a federally financed .875% discount off the then federal rate on short term borrowings in exchange for converting conforming adjustable rate mortgages to fixed rate mortgages plus a "payment holiday" of 90 days to enable borrowers to regain their financial footing. This is significantly different than McCain's plan for the federal government to purchase mortgages.
-- Create a new series of 3-5 year U.S. Treasury bonds targeted to be purchased by Americans participating in 401K plans through licensed asset managers who would be incentivized to promote the purchase of such bonds by receiving a personal tax credit in 2009 and 2010 for the amount of such bonds sold. Pre-redeemed bonds would be used to finance the housing stimulus package components and interest earned would be tax deductible if/if purchasers use bonds as collateral toward housing purchases or qualified renewable energy improvements in existing or newly purchased houses.
-- Given the escalating unemployment rate and the lack of financial incentive to maintain current employment levels, propose an new Unemployment Recovery Program that would extend existing unemployment benefits for unemployed whose benefits have lapsed, AND provide a two year tax credit to employers who maintain their 2008 full and part-time time employee roster at levels not less than two-thirds existing salary and benefits equal up to 33% of any salary reduction for each employee retained; provided that any former full time employee that was laid off due to the economic crisis is rehired at comparable levels.
-- For Americans aged 55 or older who have lost at least 20% of the value in any annuity, retirement or 401K plan in 2008 due to losses directly attributable to passive equity portfolio losses, establish a one-time 2009 and 2010 tax deduction equal to 50% of the loss up to a maximum of $50,000.

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