Over the years, we hear that Democrats have ‘lost’ the middle class and ‘lost’ the labor vote. But, we’re seeing evidence in what we read about the shameful disgust people feel with the way things are going, both in Washington and Austin. Over the last few years, the emphasis in government has been about a strong defense, moral values, and low taxes A lot of people might say we have none of the three. And, maybe that means it’s time for an honest discussion about what government is supposed to do, what the church is supposed to do, and what corporations do. And, we can talk about what government is doing.

People are willing to talk about that now. I’m a Democrat and proud to be one, but I am excited about appealing to a great, vast group of persuadables who are disappointed in the GOP leadership.

"John McCain is energy illiterate," Simmons is saying. "He's just witless about this stuff. As a lifelong Republican, I'm supporting Obama." A dozen oil and gas men sitting around a conference table in Lafayette, La., chuckle nervously as he continues. "McCain says, 'Oh, we're going to wean ourselves off foreign oil in four years and build 45 nuclear plants by 2030.' He doesn't have a clue."

. . . McCain's midsummer move to begin campaigning on a platform of more offshore drilling has only hardened Simmons's position. "What a hypocrite," says Simmons, who supported McCain's rival Mitt Romney in the primary - no surprise given Simmons's history with the Romney family. "Here's a man who for at least the past 15 years has strenuously, I mean strenuously, opposed offshore drilling. And now it's 'drill, drill, drill.' And he doesn't have any idea that we don't have any drilling rigs. Or that we don't have any idea of exactly where to drill." (As for McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, Simmons says: "She's a very colorful person, but I don't think there's a scrap of evidence that she knows anything about energy.")

The relentless slide in home prices has left nearly one in six U.S. homeowners owing more on a mortgage than the home is worth, raising the possibility of a rise in defaults -- the very misfortune that touched off the credit crisis last year.

The result of homeowners being "under water" is more pressure on an economy that is already in a downturn. No longer having equity in their homes makes people feel less rich and thus less inclined to shop at the mall.

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And having more homeowners under water is likely to mean more eventual foreclosures, because it is hard for borrowers in financial trouble to refinance or sell their homes and pay off their mortgage if their debt exceeds the home's value. A foreclosed home, in turn, tends to lower the value of other homes in its neighborhood.

The point of posting the video was to remind people why the McCain-Palin campaign allows speakers at its rallies to describe their opponent as Barack Hussein Obama. Of course, these people are not typical of all white people, or Obama would be at 15 percent in the polls. But the cultural resonance of the name matters. And McCain is certainly not above deploying it. That's the point.

_Authorize $700 billion for the government to purchase troubled assets and buy equity in distressed financial firms.

_Require the Treasury Department to make rules to prevent excessive compensation for executives whose companies benefit from the rescue, and cap deductibility of executives' pay packages at $500,000 for firms that get $300 million or more from the program.

_Establish an oversight board for the program, a special investigator general to monitor it and regular government audits.

_Require that the president establish a plan to recoup the cost from the financial industry if, after five years, there are any losses.

_Phase in the money for buying troubled assets, with $250 billion available immediately, $100 billion to be released if the president certifies it is needed, and the last $350 billion available with another certification, but subject to a congressional vote.

Among the sweeteners added are those that would:

_Provide business tax breaks, including for production of, investment in, and use of renewable fuels.

_Require group health plans that include mental health or addiction treatment to provide coverage for those conditions that is equitable to other medical coverage.

_Increase personal credits against the AMT, shielding more than 20 million taxpayers from the tax.

_Grant tax relief to victims of natural disasters in the Midwest and elsewhere.

_Extend through 2011 a program that funds rural schools and local governments that have low property-tax bases because they lie within or are adjacent to federal lands.

_Extend until end of 2009 the deduction for state and local general sales taxes.

_Extend until end of 2009 individual tax breaks, including deductions for higher education costs and teachers' personal expenses.

_Increase, from $100,000 to $250,000, the limit on federal bank deposit insurance.

How to Bail Out Wall St. at No Cost to the Taxpayers

Thom Hartmann wrote an interesting piece on how to bail out Wall St. without costing the taxpayers a dime. The idea is to create a new government agency to manage the bailout. The treasury would then loan it money to bail out Wall St. firms that are in trouble. The government would then institute a Securities Turnover Excise Tax of 0.25% on stock trades with revenues going to the new agency. For long-term investors who buy stock in companies they believe in and keep it for years adding a quarter of 1% to the cost hardly matters, and even to speculators it is not huge. It is estimated that such a tax would generate at least $150 billion a year, so the $700 billion load would be paid off in 5 years. The US has had such a tax in the past and used it to finance the Civil War, Spanish-American War, WWI and WWII. Many other countries have a similar tax. This proposal is clearly a viable alternative to either giving Wall St. $700 billion as a freebie or even getting stock in return for the money. Wall St. managers might even prefer it to a plan that limited their future compensation. Mother Jones lists yet five more alternative bailout plans.

Kucinich was about to enter a Capitol building meeting room with fellow House Democrats who have been critical of the $700 billion relief measure for the Wall Street crisis.

The meeting was organized by Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) and has been termed the “Skeptics Caucus.†Lawmakers were meeting with well-known economists, such as James Galbraith, economics professor at the University of Texas, and William Isaac, former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission.

Speaking before the meeting, Sherman equated the Treasury Department proposal to a power-grab by the Bush administration as well as a gift to failing financial services firms.

“This is greatest shift of power to the imperial presidency and the greatest shift of wealth to a still wealthy Wall Street that anyone could imagine,†said Sherman. In addition, the California Democrat also began distributing Sunday a “Dear Colleague†letter highly critical of the relief package.

Kucinich called for more hearings on the bailout despite Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke speaking about the proposal before lawmakers last week.

Martin Weiss: This is the first stage of the dangerous bear market we've been warning you about. And just as we've warned, the market is being driven down by the single most important sector: Financial companies, the heartbeat of our economy.

Nearly every major bank, brokerage and lender you can name is up to its eyeballs in leveraged investments whose value is going up in smoke. They're borrowing hundreds of billions from the Fed. They're raising billions more from investors, diluting their shares. They're selling massive amounts of assets — scrambling any way they can to raise cash to survive.

Merrill Lynch, America's largest brokerage firm, has lost more than two thirds of its stock value. Citigroup, once America's largest bank by market cap, has lost even more. Washington Mutual has given up nine tenths of its value. On average, even including the strongest of the banks, half of the wealth of bank shareholders has been wiped out.

This is the first stage of the deep recession we've been warning you about. Banks have no choice but to deny loans to all but the most highly qualified borrowers; and as a result, corporations and consumers have no choice but to cut back on their spending.

Consumer confidence is the worst since 1980. Mortgage default rates are the worst since the 1970s. Even the government's highly suspect official numbers show that the growth of the U.S. economy is grinding to a halt.

This is also bringing the runaway inflation we've been warning you about, with oil and energy leading the way. This time, unlike the 1970s when we had artificial energy shortages created by OPEC or by Iran, the planet is confronting chronic, long-term energy shortages.

But at each step of the way, what truly angers me is that our government leaders — the very people we elect to protect our interests — continually minimize, downplay and sugarcoat this crisis.

First Week Monday – Friday Oct. 20 – 24 8am – 4:30pm
Weekend Saturday Oct. 25 7am – 7pm
Sunday Oct. 26 1pm – 6pm
Second Week Monday – Friday Oct. 27 – 31 7am – 7pm

I am now even more firmly convinced that there really is a predator class. The people responsible for creating and bingeing on the mortgage junk bonds, derivatives and financial insurance scams that are now being bailed out are our society's most educated, highly trained and wealthiest professionals. The Meltdown of '08 was not caused by con men, crazed moguls and panicked masses. It was caused by financial bureaucrats of the baby boom generation who were paid megabucks for office jobs, who wear Patagonia fleece, $12,000 Brioni suits and read books about "reinventing the Self."

There is a basic and indelicate question about the unfolding financial crisis that, to my mind, has not been asked loudly enough: Is the ethical and prudential rot so clearly on display in this historic episode confined to Wall Street and the world of high finance, or are other institutions, vocations, professions and commercial cultures similarly infected?

"What are you going to do if you're elected and things get tough? Suspend being president? We've got a guy like that now!"

"Hey Senator, can I give you a ride home?"

With respect to the debates, it’s my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who, in approximately 40 days, will be responsible for dealing with this mess. And I think that it is going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once.

First, there must be oversight. We should not hand over a blank check to the discretion of one man. We support an independent, bipartisan board to ensure accountability and complete transparency.

Second, we need to protect taxpayers. There should be a path for taxpayers to recover their money, and to turn a profit if Wall Street prospers.

Third, no Wall Street executive should profit from taxpayer dollars. This plan cannot be a welfare program for CEOs whose greed and irresponsibility has contributed to this crisis.

Fourth, we must help families who are struggling to stay in their homes. We cannot bail out Wall Street without helping millions of families facing foreclosure on Main Street.

Fifth, we both agree that this financial rescue package should move on its own without any earmarks or other measures. We have different views about the need for other action, but this must be a clean bill.

This is a time to rise above politics for the good of the country. We cannot risk an economic catastrophe. This is not a Democratic problem or a Republican problem - this is an American problem. Now, we must find an American solutions.

Beginning in October, the Army plans to station an active unit inside the United States for the first time to serve as an on-call federal response in times of emergency. The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent thirty-five of the last sixty months in Iraq, but now theunit is training for domestic operations. The unit will soon be under the day-to-day control of US Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command. The Army Times reports this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to Northern Command. The paper says the Army unit may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control. The soldiers are learning to use so-called nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals and crowds.

What possible rationale is there for permanently deploying the U.S. Army inside the United States -- under the command of the President -- for any purpose, let alone things such as "crowd control," other traditional law enforcement functions, and a seemingly unlimited array of other uses at the President's sole discretion? And where are all of the stalwart right-wing "small government conservatives" who spent the 1990s so vocally opposing every aspect of the growing federal police force? And would it be possible to get some explanation from the Government about what the rationale is for this unprecedented domestic military deployment (at least unprecedented since the Civil War), and why it is being undertaken now?

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...

"Your letters," says Phil Tuchman, "will be sent to our campaign offices in battle states. Ohio. Pennsylvania. Virginia. New Hampshire. There we'll place them in local newspapers."

Place them? I may be wrong, but I thought that in the USA only a newspaper's editors decided that.

"We will show your letters to our supporters in those states," explains Phil. "If they say: 'Yeah, he/she is right!' then we ask them to sign your letter. And then we send that letter to the local newspaper. That's how we send dozens of letters at once."

No newspaper can refuse a stream of articulate expressions of support, is the thought behind it. "This way, we will always get into some letters column."

Yeah uh huh
La da da da la da
Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry

Hey, baby my nose is getting big
I noticed it be growing when I been telling them fibs
Now you say your trust's getting weaker
Probably 'coz my lies just started getting deeper

Mayor Bill White of Houston described the potential range of costs to both the federal government and insurance companies in an interview with the Houston Chronicle. He then joined Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas and Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst on Capitol Hill to testify before a Senate Homeland Security subcommittee on disaster recovery.

FEMA — the Federal Emergency Management Agency — has not completed damage estimates that would be submitted to the federal government. "But," White said, "I would not be surprised if the total figures (for the federal government) weren't in the $20 billion to $40 billion range. We're going to be enormous."

Latest insurance industry estimates compiled by the Insurance Information Institute of New York foresee privately insured losses ranging from $7 billion to $12 billion. The tally of private insurance losses, coupled with White's, provides the range of all losses of $27 billion to $52 billion.

Some of the federal money is likely to come soon. Late Tuesday, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., unveiled details of a catch-all spending bill that includes between $23 billion and $24 billion for natural disaster relief.