32-year-old Michele Allen received a one-month sentence for disorderly conduct after police received complaints that she was dressed in a cow costume and chasing children, blocking traffic, and urinating on a neighbor's porch.
She wore the costume again when she appeared for sentencing. One Month in Corral for Disorderly Woman
The TED Prize, an initiative of the TED Conference granting recipients one world changing wish – is asking bloggers around the world to help in making photojournalist and 2007 Prize winner James Nachtwey's wish come true this Friday, October 3.
Nachtwey wished for help in breaking a news story in a way that demonstrates the power of news photography in the digital age. Nachtwey's work will be simultaneously revealed online, disseminated through numerous media channels, and projected on public buildings throughout the world. The TED Prize organizers have created a blogger page where bloggers can download a badge for their blogs in advance of Oct. 3, find event live event locations, or embed Nachtwey's wish video. On October 3, the site will redirect to reveal the story.
TED Prize for photojournalist James Nachtwey
Is her last name really Paling, and Todd doesn't have the heart to
tell her?
Also, when asked to speculate on the next day's game, she bobbled and
said "They'll play..." causing the anchor to add "don't go overboard
there, Sarah."
http://cityweekly.blogspot.com/2008/09/sarah-palin-80s-sports-babe.html
Ginny
I can has iPhone?
[The Coming Police State] Oct. 1 will mark the first deployment of a military combat division on U.S. soil since post-Civil War restoration. This news comes to us from the tin-foil-hat bloggers and conspiracy nuts at ... oh, oops. It comes to us from ArmyTimes.com.
ah did not sampl ur lasanya an u haz no proofz
i dont noe nuffing abowt da milk either.
picture: Anthony R. lol caption: jaffeh
If you are spelunking the murky depths of the McCain campaign for instances of moral depravity, you're likely to find plenty to go around. There has been no shortage of lies, distortions, and sleaze coming from the man the press once adored as a Maverick and Straight Talker.
But, any hardened political cynic would likely be surprised by the shenanigans that have permeated to the top of national press coverage. Much of what we've seen can be found in the annals of political operations; it's just that much of it is particularly dirty. And then there are the ghost writers.
I recognize that my participation in and observances of politics doesn't go back that far, but I have yet to hear of anything like this at all. My friend Cernig posted on it last night.
A Dutch journalist had went to work separately for both the Obama and the McCain campaigns under cover. Not a bad way to get a little inside information of the inner workings of a campaign, I suppose. Having done a little volunteer work myself in the past, the lower level of volunteer work just isn't that interesting. You fold fliers, you make phone calls. If you don't have people-fear like I do, you knock on doors and try to register new voters. It's an important part of the political process, just not a very exciting part.
But then the journalist stumbled upon a job I had never heard of:
Place them? I may be wrong, but I thought that in the USA only a newspaper's editors decided that.
The breach of public trust here is profound. When I read a letter to the editor from a mother of a soldier serving in Iraq and showing her support, I expect to think her pol...
McCain's suspension of his campaign apparently doesn't apply to his own advisers.
Despite McCain's claim that he's put his campaign on hold, two of them directly attacked Barack Obama in political terms on television this morning.
On Fox about an hour ago, McCain adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer was asked about Obama's suggestion that the bailout deal appeared to be adopting some of his suggestions.
"We don't want to focus too much on that right now because we want there to be a resolution," Pfotenhauer said, a bit later adding:
"But this is maybe perhaps part of the pattern that we've seen before where Senator Obama would claim that the housing bill came out of his committe--and he didn't even sit on the committee. or that the stimulus package was his package and even his democratic leader said that it wasn't."
So McCain's adviser accuses Obama of falsely taking credit for stuff. Does that count as running a campaign?
Meanwhile, a few minutes ago on Fox, McCain spokesperson Tucker Bounds was asked whether there would be a debate on Friday.
"Certainly, John McCain is eager to debate Barack Obama on these important issues, because he has a record of actually performing on the issues that are going to be debated," Bounds said. "And additionally he's called on Barack Obama time after time to meet him anytime, anywhere, in joint town hall meetings. So the idea that there's a debate about the debates, I just think, is absurd."
So this McCain adviser said Obama doesn't have any record of performing on the issues and is too chicken to face McCain in town hall meetings. Does that count as running a campaign?
Calling out the campaign-suspension fib is kind of useless at a certain point, of course, since the original claim is inherently so ridiculous and borderline meaningless anyway. The suspension itself is a political act, after all.
McCain's eventual position on the bailout will be political, too -- and there's nothing wrong with that. Politics is all about arguing about stuff and deciding what to do about it. The idea that there's some kind of clear line between politics and policy or leadership is a bit of a silly construct to begin with, McCain's phony piety notwithstanding.
Late Update: Here's the video of Pfotenhauer on Fox:
He may not know how to text message, but John McCain sure can see the writing on the wall.
This morning's ABC News/The Washington Post poll gave Barack Obama a nine-point lead nationally. It was both statistically significant and the largest since both men have been made nominees. In addition, a host of state surveys came out too. Obama is looking good in electoral rich Pennsylvania, Michigan and Colorado. And perhaps most importantly, he is breaking the all-important 50% barrier.
Not only were the polls bracing for the McCain campaign, the trend lines read even worse. By a wide margin the voters consider Obama better able to handle the economy. The last time the McCain campaign played offense was "lipstick on a pig." A lot has happened since them -- none of it good for McCain. They wanted to 'get the ball back;' and when Obama made his conciliatory phone call this morning, an already vexed McCain campaign saw a chance to steal the ball.
The problems arising from this strategy are formidable. Obama made the first phone call. And when Obama did respond to McCain's suspension, he eviscerated McCain, saying he can, "deal with more than one thing at once." That could be one of the change lines in the campaign. It reinforces every negative stereotype about McCain and the Obama campaign can't be charged with, "playing the age card" since the opportunity was handed to them by McCain's own offer.
Obama gets a chance to talk about his multi-tasking abilities; calm, cool mind; and steady hand on the rudder. And because of McCain's "the fundamentals of the economy are good" line last week he looks incoherent, opportunistic and alarmist.
This suspension of this campaign for McCain holds other real risks -- most importantly, what if Obama goes to Oxford and holds an impromptu town hall meeting Friday night? It would get outrageous coverage all weekend on the 24-hour news shows, be the Sunday headlines in the paper and the buzz of the Sunday morning political shows.
The news channel debate about the suspension is whether or not it is a political stunt (see Sarah Palin). That is not what the McCain campaign wanted the debate to be. They wanted to put Obama on the defensive and it's just not working. The late night comedians are trashing him, the snap polls show the public ain't buying it, and right after saying it he did an interview with Katie Couric.
Over the next 72 hours we will see whether this risky strategy worked. But work or not, McCain knew he had to take a risk or he was headed for a double digit defeat.
The issue of the economy is not going away between now and Election Day. And if the election is about the economy, McCain loses. Clinton 2000 taught us, "It's the economy stupid." McCain should have been listening -- Barack Obama was. Americans at every level are hurting with this crappy economy and some are just plain scared to death -- in many cases rightfully so. (Ironically, George W. Bush has finally brought us together.)
When the history of this campaign is written it will go down as one of the key turning points in the campaign. This "Rose Garden Strategy" didn't work for Jimmy Carter and he was the incumbent. I don't see how it can succeed in these infinitely more cynical times. For McCain it will be seen as the beginning of the end.
This image is making the rounds. Click on it for full-image (this is a crop, and shrunk down a bit):
Which candidate is the elitist one again?
It's a fascinating behavioral portrait of the co-conspirators who pulled the plug on the McCain campaign this morning.
Is this what a senior campaign staff would look like having, as alleged, just been forced to take earth-stopping measures in response to a national crisis they likened to 9/11?
In using the financial crisis to upend the election process, co-opt the delicate Wall Street negotiations in Congress, and unilaterally force the Obama campaign off the road, Charlie Black, Matt McDonald, Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter can barely restrain themselves from laughing in our faces.
(image: Reuters. New York. September 24, 2008)
Physicists, historians, and economists talk about "path dependence." Something that is far from ideal persists, only because we are stuck with a particular path. A favorite example is the QWERTY typewriter -- it is far less efficient than other arrangements of letters, but we all learned on it and are too lazy to change. Another is employer-provided health insurance. No reasonable person would design such a system for today's economy, but we're stuck with a whole infrastructure that resists reform.
Watching the Democrats and the Paulson hearings, I thought of path dependence. Paulson has defined the path. Democrats, many Republicans, and really angry constituents don't like this plan, but legislators haven't quite mustered the nerve and imagination to propose a wholly different approach. They have bought Paulson's argument that something has to be done very fast, and the most they can think to do is add embellishments. That's not good enough -- and there are whole other paths.
My worries are both substantive and political. If the plan doesn't work, we are out $700 billion and the crisis of confidence will deepen. And Democrats may well get enough of their demands met that the failure could seem their fault rather than that of the plan's core approach.
Congress should not be stampeded into acting. Lawmakers should take more time to think about alternatives. The need for urgent action was based on two faulty assumptions.
The first was that Congress had to act-now! -- or the whole system would collapse. But wait a minute. Some parts of the system are indeed clogged with bad mortgage paper. But businesses are getting loans. Citizens are cashing checks. Homebuyers are taking out mortgages. Investors are buying and selling stocks. If another big bank faces a crisis in the next three weeks, Paulson and Bernanke will just do another ad hoc rescue.
The second assumption is that Congress must adjourn this week or next. But the senior members of the key committees of both parties all have safe seats.
So consider the Kuttner Plan, as an alternative to the Paulson plan:
First: Congress creates a select committee made up of senior members of the House Financial Services Committee and Senate Banking Committee and a few other expert legislators. The rest of Congress adjourns. The special committee interviews experts, holds hearings, and reports back Tuesday October 14, the day after Columbus Day. Congress comes back into emergency session and acts by the end of the week.
Let's assume that Democrats get the other major provisions that the public interest requires. These include:
--Limits on executive compensation
--A companion economic stimulus package
--More help for distressed homeowners
--An option for government to get some stock in companies it helps.
--An oversight panel to approve Paulson's proposed deals.
But what about the core of the Paulson plan itself? Here, Congress needs to think further outside the box. Paulson's basic concept is that government buys $700 billion worth of dubious mortgaged-backed securities and holds them for a time until normal markets resume functioning. He contends that this approach is both necessary and sufficient.
The plan has three larger purposes: recapitalize banks; get bad paper out of the system; and restore confidence generally so that the downward spiral ceases and the frozen credit markets unlock.
However, Paulson's approach is not the only way of fixing what's broken. At the heart of the problem is that the many of the exotic mortgages that were the underlying basis for additional layers of derivative securities are not going to be paid back. These securities include bonds backed by the mortgages, insurance contracts guaranteeing the bonds against default, and other exotic kinds of "derivatives." They are valued at many times the mortgages themselves, thanks to the miracle of leverage. But as the leverage goes into reverse, the capital of many investors such as banks, insurance companies, and investment banks is being wiped out-far beyond the underlying value of the mortgages.
Paulson's approach is top-down-rescue the banks. But it's actually more efficient to rescue the homeowners by stopping the foreclosures. Refinancing the mortgages would allow the bondholders to recoup some percentage of their investments. For a lot less than $700 billion, we could refinance every mortgage in America that is at risk of foreclosure. Along the way, we could keep people in their homes and shore up the collapse in housing prices. Paulson's plan does neither. Markets would begin loosening up, as in Paulson's plan, but the route would be bottom-up rather than top-down. Homeowners would be the primary beneficiaries rather than the incidental ones. With Paulson's approach, the wave of foreclosures continues, reducing the likelihood that the government gets its money back.
Congress should spend three weeks taking testimony from dozens of experts, and comparing the two scenarios. Hold comprehensive hearings before you legislate. Imagine that.
A second issue is what form the recapitalizing should take. Instead of just taking bad paper out of the system, government could assume get some rights of ownership for its $700 billion. Consider, as a counter-example, the FDIC. Paulson has given every large and unregulated financial institution in America an implicit government guarantee. The FDIC, by contrast, gives explicit guarantees, but these guarantees are conditioned on regular examinations of their investment policies, their management, and the quality of their assets. When an FDIC-insured bank fails because of dumb policies, the government doesn't just buy its bad paper and give management another chance; the FDIC often takes it over and cleans it up. The government can't take over every failed financial institution, but it would be salutary if it took over a few, at least as a powerful minority shareholder.
For the long term, which means early in the next administration, Congress needs to re-regulate America's financial markets, so that this sort of needless crisis is never repeated. For now, it needs to get this emergency rescue done right. It cannot possibly do that rescue in a week.
If Paulson's arrogant tactic of demanding instant action because of impending catastrophe sounds vaguely familiar, it's because it evokes how the same Bush Administration rushed through the USA Patriot Act. But after 9/11, American citizens were terrified and willing to give the Bush administration whatever it wanted. And Congress totally caved. This time, citizens are frightened-but also outraged and less easily fooled, and they're holding Congress's feet to the fire to slow down, not to speed up.
The select committee should invite testimony from both presidential candidates and their running mates. That would be Barack Obama, John McCain, Joe Biden, and Sarah Palin. The responses should be unscripted, and aired in prime time. Especially Palin's.
Robert Kuttner, co-editor of The American Prospect and Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos, has just published Obama's Challenge: America's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency (Chelsea Green). He is blogging daily about the election and the economic crisis at www.obamaschallenge.com.
Where have we heard this before?
Palin: I can give you examples of things that John McCain has done, that has shown his foresight, his pragmatism, and his leadership abilities. And that is what America needs today.
Couric: I'm just going to ask you one more time - not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation.
Palin: I'll try to find you some and I'll bring them to you.
Oh yeah:
These two are beginning to sound like "the check's in the mail" ticket. No wonder they're trying to avoid debating.
Ginny Gibbs wants to stay in better touch using some of Google's coolest new
products.
If you already have Gmail or Google Talk, visit:
http://mail.google.com/mail/b-e6caea9705-db2d35c7b1-6b4b3074ce8a9e8a
You'll need to click this link to be able to chat with Ginny Gibbs.
To get Gmail - a free email account from Google with over 2,800 megabytes of
storage - and chat with Ginny Gibbs, visit:
http://mail.google.com/mail/a-e6caea9705-db2d35c7b1-978d71f370
Gmail offers:
- Instant messaging right inside Gmail
- Powerful spam protection
- Built-in search for finding your messages and a helpful way of organizing
emails into "conversations"
- No pop-up ads or untargeted banners - just text ads and related information
that are relevant to the content of your messages
All this, and its yours for free. But wait, there's more! By opening a Gmail
account, you also get access to Google Talk, Google's instant messaging
service:
Google Talk offers:
- Web-based chat that you can use anywhere, without a download
- A contact list that's synchronized with your Gmail account
- Free, high quality PC-to-PC voice calls when you download the Google Talk
client
Gmail and Google Talk are still in beta. We're working hard to add new features
and make improvements, so we might also ask for your comments and suggestions
periodically. We appreciate your help in making our products even better!
Thanks,
The Google Team
To learn more about Gmail and Google Talk, visit:
http://mail.google.com/mail/help/about.html
http://www.google.com/talk/about.html
(If clicking the URLs in this message does not work, copy and paste them into
the address bar of your browser).
On Sunday, 33 pastors across the country are expected to preach a sermon that endorses or opposes a political candidate by name. This would be a flagrant violation of a law that bans tax-exempt organizations from being involved in political campaigns.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/24/mccain-camp-to-propose-postponing-vp-debate/
Ginny
I can has iPhone?
