Grasping Reality with Both Hands: The Semi-Daily Journal Economist Brad DeLong

Open Left:: A 2.2% McCain lead is greater than a 13.8% Obama Lead: The Washington Post maintains a webpage titled "Political Landscape 2008." This webpage has been updated recently enough to reflect Obama's 13.8% polling lead in Pennsylvania, a trend that uses polls released as recently as Wednesday. On this webpage, the Washington Post collects recent polling data, and then declares a state to either be a "battleground," or leaning toward one party or the other. Here are some of their polling averages and diagnoses:

Obama +13.8%: Battleground state (PA)
Obama +10.4%: Battleground state (NH)
Obama +10.0%: Battleground state (NJ)
Obama +9.5%: Battleground state (IA)
Obama +9.0%: Battleground state (OR)
Obama +8.2%: Battleground state (MN)
Obama +8.2%: Battleground state (MI)
Obama +8.8%: Battleground state (WI)
Obama +7.3%: Battleground state (NM)
McCain +6.8%: Leaning Republican (GA)
Obama +5.1%: Battleground state (VA)
Obama +4.0%: Battleground state (CO)
McCain +3.8%: Leaning Republican (IN)
Obama +3.5%: Battleground state (OH)
Obama +3.1%: Battleground state (FL)
Obama +3.0%: Battleground state (NV)
McCain +2.2%: Leaning Republican (WV)

Notice anything wrong with this list? Could it perhaps be that any state where McCain leads, no matter his margin, is defined as "Leaning Republican?" Could it be that states where Obama leads by 7.3%-13.8% are defined as "battleground states," while states where McCain leads by 2.2%-6.8% are defined as "leaning Republican." Does the uneven math in this strike anyone as problematic?

Exclusive: McCain to unveil more economic policies - Mike Allen and Jonathan Martin: As part of a plan to reinvigorate his flagging campaign, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is considering additional economic measures aimed directly at the middle class that are likely to be rolled out this week, campaign officials said. Among the measures being considered are tax cuts – perhaps temporary – for capital gains and dividends, the officials said...

Clive Crook: The economy and the campaigns: When I read this piece of a few days ago by Michael Barone, arguing that "the old rule that economic distress moves voters toward Democrats doesn't seem to be operating," I found it somewhat persuasive. He argued that blame for the crisis cannot easily be pinned on Republicans alone, and that voters may fear that taxes will rise faster under Obama than they would under McCain (regardless of the fact that Obama is promising more tax relief for most Americans than McCain), which in turn would be more bad news for the economy...

Talking Points Memo | They've Still Got the Sludge: As every day brings new instances of McCain-Palin crowds denouncing the Democratic nominee as a "terrorist" or "traitor" and in some cases even calling for his blood, Michael Barone bemoans the "Coming Obama Thugocracy." If the American right has lost its electoral edge and standing with the public at large, it has not lost its telltale imperviousness to irony. In many ways it seems Barone is settling in to be one of the spokesman of the high-brow version of the revanchist paranoid right we're seeing on display in many of those McCain rallies.

John McCain Had the Advantage Several Times This Election, and Fate Took It Away: [T]hree developments changed the shape of the race, to the benefit of Republicans. First, John McCain clinched the Republican nomination early.... Second, the success of the surge strategy in Iraq managed to penetrate through a media blackout to the voting public.... Third, $4-a-gallon gasoline converted voters from opposing offshore oil drilling to supporting it. McCain nimbly switched.... The credit crisis in the last two weeks of September raised an issue that has, so far at least, helped Obama.... McCain's "suspension" of his campaign and return to Washington [did not] help him. Democrats said he broke up a deal, though none had been made...

McCain and Palin Have an Opportunity in the Frozen North: Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Washington seem to be in play now.... Net advantage to McCain: 40 electoral votes.... The obvious explanation, and not just for Alaska, is Sarah Palin. My working hypothesis is that Palin has boosted McCain in rural/small town areas of the Frozen North up toward the levels of support that George W. Bush won there.... The Frozen North, as I've defined it, is also largely coincident with Germano-Scandinavian America, the northwestern quadrant of the nation heavily settled by German and Scandinavian immigrants in the second half of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, about which I've written before.... Before the two conventions this year, John McCain was running far behind George W. Bush's levels in the Frozen North.... Palin's rural/small town background, her hockey mom status, even her Fargo-like accent make her a figure rural/small town voters in the Frozen North can identify with. McCain's selection of her made him seem more their kind of American. The numbers seem pretty clear on this...

Obama's Acceptance Speech Hit Some High Notes, but His Themes Won't Hold Up: First, a trivial point. The temple stage set at Invesco Field was obviously a knockoff of the Pergamon Altar in the quite wonderful Pergamon Museum in Berlin, put together by Middle East history academicians (when Germany had the best of them) in the early 20th century. Did Barack Obama have time in his visit to Berlin (when he didn't have time to fly to see the wounded American soldiers in Ramstein) to visit the Pergamon Museum? Just asking.... [T]he major themes of Obama's speech... may not be sustainable. McCain = Bush: There are too many instances... to the contrary. Economic distress: But would raising taxes on high earners and raising protectionist walls alleviate it? Obama's campaign tried to insert more "granular" descriptions of what an Obama government (and Democratic Congress) would do. But are they credible? And finally, Obama's attempt to rule out of bounds any suggestions that he is not "patriotic." Why should we ignore his 20-year association with his preacher (and inspiration for the title of his 2005 book), who proclaims, "God damn America!"? Why should we ignore his association with the unrepentant Weather Underground bomber terrorist William Ayers?...

Are Democrats Destined to Lose After an Eight-Year Republican Presidency? - Michael Barone (usnews.com): The rule that a party has a hard time winning a third presidential term is one of those political science rules that seem less ironclad after close inspection. Hubert Humphrey nearly won the popular vote in 1968 despite the debacle of the Democratic Party that year (although, noting the Democrats' decline from 61 percent in 1964 to 43 percent in 1968, Humphrey's intraparty opponent Eugene McCarthy said he would take credit for the last drop of 1 percent if Humphrey and Johnson had taken credit for the other 17 percent). Gerald Ford would have been elected (without winning the popular vote) if he had gotten about 12,000 more votes in Ohio in 1976. Al Gore did win the popular vote nationally in 2000, even if you believe as I do that Florida did indeed vote for George W. Bush; 1,000 or so votes the other way there, and Gore would have been president...

In Defense of Lobbyists - Michael Barone (usnews.com): Lobbying is as American as apple pie, going back to colonial times. The Rev. Increase Mather lobbied in London for a new charter for Massachusetts. Benjamin Franklin was the colonial agent—lobbyist—for Pennsylvania and other colonies.... [W]hen Congress writes laws and the executive branch writes regulations that channel vast flows of money—and laws and regulations that have vast moral implications—citizens affected by those words are going to try to make sure they're written the way they want. They're going to hire the best people they can find to... help lawmakers understand how the words they write will affect "real Americans."... Yes, K Street is not perfect. Old, entrenched interests tend to be well represented. New and growing industries and morally motivated constituencies that are unorganized tend to be underrepresented.... Not much of this will change in a McCain or Obama administration. The campaigns are embarrassing themselves now by stigmatizing lobbyists...

Palin Will Be Welcomed by Social and Economic Conservatives: John McCain has chosen Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential candidate. This obviously undercuts his theme of experience, just as Barack Obama's choice of Joe Biden undercut, at least marginally, his theme of change. Palin is just in her second year as governor.... Foreign policy experience? Well, Alaska is the only state with a border with Russia. And it is the only state with territory, in the Aleutian Islands, occupied by the enemy in World War II. On the other hand, my recollection is that Geraldine Ferraro, who had far less experience especially in foreign policy than George H. W. Bush, held her own in the 1984 vice presidential debate...

Strickland Is Not Qualified to Be Obama’s Vice President, and He Knows It: Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland... has simply not had the experience needed to be president or to be one heartbeat away from being president.

The Economy Isn’t as Bad as We Think: Things are a lot better in America than most Americans think. Or so argues Gregg Easterbrook in today's Wall Street Journal. I've written along similar lines myself. By any historic standards, the American economy is in pretty good shape and living standards are at an all-time high. So how to explain the sour mood? Over the last quarter-century, we've had low-inflation economic growth more than 90 percent of the time. That period covers the entire adult lifetime of the median-age voter. We've gotten so used to good times that we've forgotten what bad times are really like. The one thing I'd disagree with Easterbrook on is his comments, obligatory in some quarters, that the war in Iraq is going badly. He ought to take a look at Charles Krauthammer's column today. I suspect that Easterbrook, like many who have opposed the Iraq war, has simply not been taking in the good news that has been widely presented by now by mainstream media...

Michael Barone: Now comes Belmont Club blogger Richard Fernandez with a Pajamas Media blog post suggesting, though not quite charging, that Obama's changes in position were prompted by concern for his longtime patron and friend Tony Rezko, who sought a contract to build a $150 million power plant in Iraqi Kurdistan with some help from a couple of Chicago-based Iraqi-Americans. It's a story that is, I think, worth the attention of investigative journalists...

Michael Barone: [F]acts are undermining the Democratic narrative that has dominated our politics since about the time Hurricane Katrina rolled into the Gulf coast.... Anbar and Basra and Sadr City have been pacified, Prime Minister Maliki has led successful attempts to pacify Shiites as well as Sunnis, and the Iraqi parliament has passed almost all of the "benchmark" legislation.... I can remember how opponents of the Vietnam War simply tuned out news of American success when at Richard Nixon's orders Gen. Creighton Abrams pursued a new strategy.... [T]he rejection of the Republicans in the 2006 elections was a verdict on competence more than ideology.... But in the 19 months since November 2006, some important facts have changed...

Housing, the Subprime Mortgage Crisis and the Enduring Resilience of the U.S. Economy - Michael Barone (usnews.com): For guidance in my thinking, I have come to look to my American Enterprise Institute colleague Peter Wallison, whose latest long paper is titled, "For Financial Regulation, the Era of Big Government Really Is Over." Wallison notes that for all the financial roilings, the "real economy" keeps rolling along. "The picture this suggests is of a globalized economy that is far more flexible, diverse, nimble and robust than most observers would have imagined."... Wallison's third point is that "financial innovations are making private risk management more effective than government regulation." He points especially to credit default swaps that enable private parties to slough off risk onto other private parties. Trying to set up a regulatory mechanism to achieve the same goals, he argues, would be impossible and would almost certainly have unfortunate side effects.... If the smart and highly compensated people in financial institutions can't always [make good bets], despite the strongest incentives to try, why do we think that even the smartest government regulators... can do so?...

: Obama does not take a position on whether McCain and Palin are inciting hatred...

Senator Obama does not believe that John McCain or his policy criticism is in any way comparable to George Wallace or his segregationist policies.  But John Lewis was right to condemn some of the hateful rhetoric that John McCain himself personally rebuked just last night, as well as the baseless and profoundly irresponsible charges from his own running mate that the Democratic nominee for President of the United States 'pals around with terrorists.'  As Barack Obama has said himself, the last thing we need from either party is the kind of angry, divisive rhetoric that tears us apart...

Obama Campaign: Sen. Obama does not believe that John McCain or his policy criticism is in any way comparable to George Wallace or his segregationist policies.

But John Lewis was right to condemn some of the hateful rhetoric that John McCain himself personally rebuked just last night, as well as the baseless and profoundly irresponsible charges from his own running mate that the Democratic nominee for president of the United States ‘pals around with terrorists.’

As Barack Obama has said himself, the last thing we need from either party is the kind of angry, divisive rhetoric that tears us apart at a time of crisis when we desperately need to come together. That is the kind of campaign Sen. Obama will continue to run in the weeks ahead.

sgwhiteinfla: I don't think I have ever been ANY prouder of Barack Obama than the moment on MSNBC when they read his statement and he said that John Lewis was "absolutely right". I admit I was a little nervous that John McCain with his rhetoric might push Obama in a direction of trying to keep his nose clean and distancing himself from John Lewis. But I would have lost TONS of respect for Obama if he had done that and I don't think he would have ever looked the same to other black men either. As a black man I recognize and realize EXACTLY what John McCain is trying to do. I wrote an amaturish post about it on daily kos but the tone of it was real.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/10/75721/137/415/626075

It's evident to me that its not really the muslim or terrorist angle John McCain is shooting for. Those goals are too high. He simply wants to muddy the waters enough so that you see him as a typical N word. Its a disgrace and its dangerous and personally I am glad somebody called him on it.

In closing let me point out that on Rick Warren's Saddleback forum John McCain said John Lewis woudl be one of the three wisest people he would get advice from if elected president. Now I wasnt buying that and a subsequent interview that Motherjones.com did with Representative Lewis confirmed that even though they have been in Congress together for over 20 years, John McCain has NEVER sought John Lewis out for advice on any matter. I am sure he never asked him about whether Arizona should recognize MLK jr.s birthday. (yes I am still heated about that). But I say all of that to say that in the first instance that John McCain had to receive some advice from John Lewis, instead of heeding it he instead tried to throw the man under the bus. If anybody needed anymore proof that John McCain is a liar and a hypocrite I think this should be all you need!

Former Top McCain Strategist John Weaver: “As A Party, We Should Not And Must Not Stand By As The Small Amount Of Haters In Our Society Question Whether He Is As American As The Rest Of Us.” “John Weaver, McCain’s former top strategist, said top Republicans have a responsibility to temper this behavior…’We should take that agenda on in a robust manner. As a party we should not and must not stand by as the small amount of haters in our society question whether he is as American as the rest of us. Shame on them and shame on us if we allow this to take hold.’” [Politico.com, 10/10/08]

Former Republican Michigan Governor William Milliken Asked “Who Is John McCain?” And Said “He’s Not The McCain I Endorsed. … His Campaign Has Become Rather Disappointing To Me.” “But, now, who is John McCain? That's what William Milliken, former Republican governor of Michigan and a supporter of McCain in the party primaries this year, is asking about a candidate who, in Milliken's view, appears to have lost his way in this fight for the White House. ‘He is not the McCain I endorsed,’ Milliken, reached at his Traverse City home on Thursday, told the Grand Rapids Press for today's editions. ‘He keeps saying, 'Who is Barack Obama?' I would ask the question, 'Who is John McCain?' because his campaign has become rather disappointing to me.’ ‘I'm disappointed in the tenor and the personal attacks on the part of the McCain campaign, when he ought to be talking about the issues.’” [Chicago Tribune, 10/10/08]

Republican Rep. Ray LaHood Said Palin Should Cool Her Rhetoric Toward Obama. “Republican Rep. Ray LaHood of Illinois said Friday that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin should cool her rhetoric directed at Barack Obama. ‘This doesn't befit the office that she's running for. And frankly, people don't like it,’ LaHood said during an interview on WBBM, a Chicago radio station. Palin has accused Obama of ‘palling around with terrorists’ and of putting ‘political ambitions in front of doing what's right for our troops.’” [Politico, 10/10/08]

WSJ -- “Some McCain Campaign Officials Are Becoming Concerned About The Hostility That Attacks Against Sen. Obama Are Whipping Up Among Republican Supporters.” “Top McCain campaign officials are grappling with how far to go with negative attacks on Sen. Barack Obama in the final weeks of what is turning into a come-from-behind effort. Sen. John McCain has allowed a series of increasingly harsh broadsides in new campaign ads and in speeches by his wife, Cindy, and his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin. But the Arizona Republican has rejected pleas from some advisers to launch attacks focusing on Sen. Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Some McCain campaign officials are becoming concerned about the hostility that attacks against Sen. Obama are whipping up among Republican supporters. During an internal conference call Thursday, campaign officials discussed how the tenor of the crowds has turned on the media and on Sen. Obama.” [Wall Street Journal, 10/10/08]

Saddleback Forum: WARREN: This first set of questions deals with leadership and the personal life of leadership. The first question, who are the three wisest people that you know that you would rely on heavily in an administration?

MCCAIN: First one, I think, would be General David Petraeus, one of the great military leaders in American history, who took us from defeat to victory in Iraq, one of the great leaders (inaudible). Fourth of July a year ago, Senator Lindsay Graham and I were in Baghdad. Six hundred and eighty-eight brave young Americans, whose enlistment had expired, swore in reenlistment to stay and fight for freedom. Only someone like General David Petraeus could motivate someone like that.

I think John Lewis. John Lewis was at the Edmund Pettis Bridge, had his skull fractured, continued to serve, continues to have the most optimistic outlook about America. He can teach us all a lot about the meaning of courage and commitment to causes greater than our self- interest...

Jonathan Martin: "What I am seeing reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history," Lewis said in a statement issued today for Politico's Arena forum.  "Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse....

George Wallace never threw a bomb," Lewis noted.  "He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama..."

I am saddened that John Lewis, a man I've always admired, would make such a brazen and baseless attack on my character and the character of the thousands of hardworking Americans who come to our events to cheer for the kind of reform that will put America on the right track.... I call on Senator Obama to immediately and personally repudiate these outrageous and divisive comments that are so clearly designed to shut down debate 24 days before the election. Our country must return to the important debate about the path forward for America...

“This is typical New York Times nonsensical pseudo-analysis,” Tony Fratto, the deputy White House press secretary, said in an e-mail message.

Matthew Yglesias » Alaska Inquiry Concludes Palin Abused Powers: The very first time I ever heard Sarah Palin’s name floated as a potential VP was on Morning Joe. Andrea Mitchell immediately responded that Palin was the subject of an active abuse of power investigation, so she was out. Everyone seemed to agree with that, and the conversation moved on. Sounded sensible enough to me. But within days she was John McCain’s choice. And now we see: “Gov. Sarah Palin abused the powers of her office by pressuring subordinates to try to get her former brother-in-law, a state trooper, fired, an investigation by the Alaska Legislature has concluded.”

Justin Fox: Why Treasury won't explicitly insure all bank debts: This From the FT:

Great, another implicit guarantee! We know how well the last one of those worked out.

Update: And another thing: If you borrow short and lend long, you're effectively a bank. It's becoming ever less clear to me what justification there is for nonbank borrow-short-lend-long-institutions other than regulatory arbitrage.

Justin Fox: Peter Fisher says Hank Paulson needs to be quicker: Peter Fisher used to run the open market desk at the New York Fed. Then he was Under Secretary of the Treasury during the Paul O'Neill years. Now he's co-head of fixed income at BlackRock, the firm that's managing those $29 billion in Bear Stearns assets the Fed took on back in March. So you could say he's kinda plugged in. Here's what he said in a Business Week interview with Maria Bartiromo (it was posted a couple of days ago but I just noticed it):

This seems to now be a consensus view now among economists, Wall Streeters and a lot of policymakers in Washington. So why's it taking so long to happen? My first thought is that it's just hard to get everything lined up and figure out who lives and dies and the like. You can't do it in a day or two. But I can't shake the feeling that there's been at least a little bit of foot-dragging about this on Hank Paulson's part. Is it that he sees such triage as admitting failure? Or is he having trouble persuading bank executives that we've reached this point? Or has he had trouble persuading President Bush? Or does he just really really need a nap?

The Reality-Based Community: Obama was prepared: art of the reason the current wave of slime doesn't seem to be working is that it's just too gross. Part of the reason is that the situation is just too dire. But part of the reason is that Obama saw the flood coming and built some levees. Like a good Boy Scout, he was prepared.

Obama got a load of crap about the "dollar bills" remark at the time, even though McCain's video with Obama's face on the $100 had already come out. It cost him something in the polls. But that speech helped "poison the well." It's not an accident that the story this week has been less Ayers than McCain's over-the-top attacks about Ayers. That's the difference between a successful and an unsuccessful hit: if the press and the public choose to attend to the making of the charge rather than the charge itself, half its potency is lost, like a fairy-tale monster that disappears when you call it by its true name.

Maybe there's a more valuable characteristic in a President than the ability to take sensible precautions now against threats that will predictably arise but aren't yet visible. But I can't think of one.

[Y]ou could take poor flailing David Brooks as a model.  One day after this humble blog suggested that high-end conservative pundits will slurp down any old slop they’re fed by the party, Brooks was slopping out this review of Sarah Palin’s debate performance:

Only a week later, having realized to his horror that writing columns like this will soon deprive him of dinner-party conversation with sane people, Brooks has decided to call Palin a “fatal cancer to the Republican party.” Now that’s the way to throw someone under the couch, folks—if you want to maintain some sense of self-respect as a Serious Person.

David Brooks: [Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley.... He thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning. And his whole life was based on that, and that was also true for a lot of the other conservatives in the Reagan era. Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I'm afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices...

The Reality-Based Community: OK, I give up: Rick Davis is now bragging that John McCain "blew up" the bailout package that John McCain blamed Barack Obama for not supporting vehemently enough.

As Orwell once said, this doesn't even have the relationship to the truth that an ordinary lie has.

Explanations:

Josh Marshall: McCain Goes After Michelle ...: From TPM Election Central ...

Diamond and Kashyap on the Recent Financial Upheavals: Why did the Treasury and Fed let Lehman fail...?

In March, Bear Stearns lost its access to credit in almost the same fashion as Lehman; yet Bear was rescued and Lehman was not. Bear Stearns was bailed out... [because] the Fed had very imperfect information about what was going on at Bear... [and] Bear’s counterparties in many transactions were not prepared for the sudden demise of Bear. A Bear bankruptcy might have triggered a wave of forced selling of collateral.... Given the potential chaos that would have resulted from Bear Stearns filing for bankruptcy, the Fed had little choice but to engineer a rescue. In doing so, the Fed argued that the rescue was a rare, perhaps once-in-a-generation, event....

[I]f the government had rescued Lehman, it would have repudiated the claim that the Bear rescue was extraordinary... the Fed and the Treasury would have been admitting that they had lied or were incompetent in stabilizing the financial system — or both. It was not surprising that they drew the line at helping Lehman. Based on all the publicly available information, this was clearly the right thing to do.

Congressional Republicans Have No Opinion On McCain Mortgage Plan: How seriously are Republican members of Congress treating John McCain's new $300 billion proposal for the government to buy up troubled mortgages?... Republican members of the Senate Banking and House Financial Services committees... not one of which was ready to talk about the GOP presidential candidate's proposal in even the broadest terms.

"I don't think he's worked his way through it at this point," said a spokesperson for Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling. It proved to be a common theme. Sen. Judd Gregg "hasn't weighed in on that yet," his spokeswoman acknowledged, offering to provide a response later. "I have not heard him say anything about it [McCain's plan]," said a press officer for New Jersey Rep. Scott Garrett, who sits on the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity.... [T]he editors of the National Review, who called the plan "a full bailout for lenders."... Several GOP offices said they would pass along their boss's view on McCain's plan later. We'll update this story with their their responses if we receive them.

Democratic Strategist: hroughout this long presidential campaign, there's been endless discussion of race as a factor.... Now, in the wake of the ongoing financial crisis, racism has entered the campaign conversation from an unexpected direction. In the fever swamps of conservatism, there's a growing drumbeat of claims that the entire housing mess, and its financial consequences, are the result of "socialist" schemes to give mortgages to shiftless black people whose irresponsibility is now being paid for by good, decent, white folks.

Some of this talk is in thinly-veiled code, via endless discussions on conservative web sites (though it spilled over into Congress during the bailout debate) attributing the subprime mortgage meltdown to the effects of the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977... aimed at fighting the common practice of mortgage "redlining" in low-income and/or minority areas.... [T]he CRA didn't require lending to unqualified applicants... CRA doesn't even apply to the non-bank lenders responsible for the vast majority of bad mortgages....

A closely associated and even more racially tinged element of the conservative narrative on the financial crisis focuses on lurid claims about the vast influence of ACORN, a national non-profit group active in advocacy work for low-income Americans. Among its many activities, ACORN has promoted low-income and minority homeownership, mainly through personal counseling. More to the point, though it's unrelated to any of the claims about ACORN's alleged role in the financial crisis, the group worked with Barack Obama back in his community organizing days on the South Side of Chicago.... Google "ACORN financial crisis" and you'll be treated to an amazingly huge number of articles and blog posts on the subject, virtually all of them from conservatives. None of them, so far as I can tell, establish that the group has had any significant involvement in mortgage decisions, mainly because most subprime loans were made in areas where ACORN activists would never set foot. ACORN is being singled out by conservatives for a leading role in the crisis simply because it's crucial to the whole CRA/Socialist/Minorities/Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac/Obama narrative about the financial crisis. And that narrative is not simply all over the internet: it's common on the airwaves as well, from Lou Dobbs to an assortment of "analysts" at Fox.

While some conservatives are careful not to get too explicit about the racial underpinnings of this argument, others aren't. As usual, we can rely on Ann Coulter.... [R]ich liberals in league with shiftless minority "welfare recipients" are sticking it to Joe Sixpack. Coulter's uninhibited take seems to be closer to what we are now seeing and hearing among grassroots conservatives, whose anger is now visibly spilling onto the campaign trail, than the more circumspect "analysis" of her more "responsible" colleagues....

Perhaps it's an ironic sign of social progress that today's emerging racist stereotypes involve minorities getting behind on their mortgage payments, rather than "welfare queens" using change from their food stamps to buy vodka (the famous Ronald Reagan anecdote) or black men impregnating their girlfriends to live off those bountiful welfare payments. But it's still disgusting. As Rick Perlstein has righteously argued, it's a blood libel on people who exert no real power in this country....

I'm less inclined to blame those fist-shaking angry Main Street conservatives at McCain's rallies than the conservative "thinkers" who promote racist stereotypes as part of a broader effort to deflect responsibility anywhere, everywhere, than towards the corruption and ideological manias of their own leaders...

I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a)... [which] provides....

I find that... Walt Monegan's refusal to fire Trooper Michael Wooten was... likely a contributing factor to his termination as Commissioner of Public Safety...