Rogue Columnist

To bail or not to bail?

Let's set aside the demands of the extremists on the right, calling for more deregulation and tax cuts to address the financial crisis. It's like trying to discuss the finer points of Plato with a small, yapping dog. Otherwise, I can understand the desire on the left and right to "punish Wall Street" by defeating the bailout plan. Unfortunately, the markets are so intertwined and inherently fragile, the first casualties are going to be on "Main Street" (a bittersweet anachronism for a nation that has mostly abandoned its main streets).

Wall Street -- and increasingly overseas investors -- owns Main Street.

The plan voted down yesterday was flawed but better than the original Czar Paulson contraption, which would have given the former head of Goldman Sachs unlimited access to use American treasure trying to extinguish the wildfire he and his greedy buddies started. Well, not quite -- and here we get back to the unworkability of "punish Wall Street" argument. Deregulation, a casino-like attitude on Wall Street and a bubble-blowing Fed were the biggest culprits in the mess. But, so, too were the American people.

We voted in the deregulators and stood cow-like as it happened, the jobs disappearing, wages stagnating. Worse, too many of us thought we could get rich quick off real estate, like day trading before it. We bought overside houses and ran up credit-card debt we couldn't afford. We bought SUVs to drive ever-longer distances as oil was peaking. We wanted tax cuts that gutted our schools and infrastructure. We wanted all that stuff at Wal-Mart. The casino became our ruling totem. It's quite a remove from the generation of the Boomers' parents that saved and waited to make purchases until it could afford them. It's their passed-along wealth that is helping cloak the "banana republic with nukes" that we're becoming.

So here we are. Were it not for the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt, we would already be seeing bread lines. And how many better ways could we use $700 billion...

A fear blankets the land

For the past two years, I've heard people say something new. Something new and troubling and chilling. They say in conversations, "For the first time in my life, I'm afraid for our country."

For the most part these aren't partisans or even particularly political people. They are intelligent, engaged, worldly, successful in their own fields and, usually, of a certain age. Old enough to remember the nation that America once was, not so long ago. They read. They're not talking about government terror alerts or that taxes might go up on the richest 1 percent of Americans. The statement comes up without prompting or coaching, and the words are almost always the same: "For the first time in my life, I'm afraid for our country."

In Republican John Sidney McCain III's "home town" of Phoenix last week, I talked to people who are so upset about this election, they can hardly do their work. So upset that enough Americans will be misled by the Fox News echo chamber, passively being fed propaganda -- won't vote, under any circumstances, for a black man. Again, I hear this not from Obama campaign ops, but just intelligent people who have been paying attention.

'Arizona Dreams' -- the rest of the story

At my signing last week at The Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale, my editor Barbara Peters told the story about how she had stripped the last paragraph out of my 2006 book, Arizona Dreams. It was too much, she argued, and I went along. She knows much more about mysteries, having edited some 600. Such is the give-and-take in book publishing. But some readers have asked to see the "real" ending. If you haven't read Arizona Dreams, stop reading the post now.

Weekend reading

I call your attention to the "In-depth reports" headline to the left, and particularly the link on Republican John Sidney McCain III. This is a continuously updated news page with reports on the candidate, his background and his policies. Never has so much been at stake in an election. Stay informed.

Elsewhere...

Barbara Ehrenreich, writing in the New York Times, offers a fascinating take on the mindset that helped lead us into this financial collapse: the mania for "positive thinking," no matter the facts.

In the Nation, Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz lays out the financial bailout that ought to happen. The right bailout needn't add to the national debt.

A reader takes me down memory lane, with a February article by Eliot Spitzer -- yes, he of the high-cost hooker -- in the Washington Post, about how the Bush administration actually stopped states from prosecuting predatory lenders. Now tell me who was getting screwed.

And be sure to check out everything by Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine, the economic "medicine" conservatives now want to apply to our banana republic. Here's a good introduction.

What we won't hear tonight on national security

Tonight's presidential debate was supposed to be about national security. If that happens, we can predict what will happen. Obama will probably appear presidential, although he's had uneven debate performances. McCain will be all about scaring the bejesus out of the American public, painting Obama as a sissy and, by the way, did you know McCain was a POW?

Here are some issues that will really affect American national security that I'd bet won't come up tonight. And so much the worse for us, because they have the potential to be far more dangerous to America than some terrorists living in caves, or Putin's face, as Gov. Palin would have it, flying over Alaska.

1. Global warming. The Pentagon is already worried about its destabilizing consequences as poor, tropical countries go to war over resources -- conflicts that will affect American interests -- and try mass migrations to the rich north. Didn't like illegal immigration over the past ten years? Just wait.

2. American debt. The huge current account deficit and shaky dollar mean that foreigners own us to an unprecedented degree, and the money we've borrowed has not been invested in anything useful, such as infrastructure. This situation is already constraining our foreign policy, and it will get worse. Many of our debtors don't wish us well.

3. Peak oil, water and food. Shortages and competition for resources will be a source of conflict that will even overshadow Islamic extremism in the decades to come. The homeland is very insecure, from our lack of alternative transportation systems and the coming water disaster in the Southwest to the farmland lost to sprawl, leaving us to import food as well as oil.

4. The military-industrial complex, from the hundreds of billions spent on unaccountable private contractors to destabilizing overseas arms sales, and its growing and secretive power over the American government. It is subverting our Constitution and pushing us into conflicts, just as President Eisenhower warned it would. Meanwhile, our armed forces are both over-extended, and yet funded exponentially beyond our potential adversaries. Time to rethink our imperial ambitions?

5. A growing educational underclass. This cohort goes far beyond the conventional definition of an underclass, and includes tens of millions without the skills or education to compete in the 21st century economy. Our schools are too often poor, even if the rich school districts do fine. We lag our rivals in science and math education, not to mention foreign languages. And we are flagging in our historic leadership in science and research. This is a prescription for a poorer, less competitive America, especially when the money from the Boomer's parents runs out.

Economics 101: Watch me fail to explain the crisis to the duhs and ignos

Commentators keep trying to explain the financial meltdown and subsequent bailout debate by using analogies that "average Americans" can understand. We hear such things as "imagine Wall Street was your kid that ate a big bag of candy and got sick, then wanted more candy," etc.

The problem is that the calamity is so bad partly because it is not simple. The venality behind it is something everyone should understand (and many "average Americans," with their get-rich-through-liar-loan-financed-rent-houses schemes participated in). But the essential mechanics and details of how we got here, and how the situation might be improved, are highly complex. This is a stark reminder of a danger facing us: America is saddled with one of the least informed electorates of an advanced nation, and one hardly as intelligent or engaged as their forebears who actually built the wealth in money, institutions and ideas that we are now rapidly throwing away. It shows the risk of the continued governance by "conservatism," which by its very nature can't handle complexity.

Here's an analogy for the bailout: triage, longer-term care and rehab. The paramedics and ER personnel need to identify those that can't be saved and set them aside, while focusing on the most life-threatening cases where the patient can still be saved, leaving the less injured for later. But I can dumb it down no further. I can only add complicating factors. As in, the paramedics have tools that will have unpredictable effects not only on the patients but also on everyone in the world. The patients' bodies are wired into everyone else in the world. And the medics are working on injuries they never trained for.

Simple enough? Of course not.

Why is the press letting Palin play them for fools?

After eight years of lethal and constitutionally dangerous outrages, the cloistering of Sarah Palin from the press might seem like a small thing. It's not. Gov. Palin aspires to be the vice president for an old man with a body broken by Vietnamese torture and recurrent cancer (and for those of you who aren't from Arizona, melanoma is extremely serious).

Palin has been all over "the media" -- but this is a channel largely for entertainment and distraction. Unlike any vice-presidential candidate in the modern era, she has been kept from the normal press conferences and give-and-take with professional journalists that come with seeking this position. Similarly, the McCain handlers would only agree to a highly scripted vice-presidential debate, with very limited time for answers. Today, she apparently answered a few reporter questions, finally, but this entire affair is extremely unsettling.

What is the McCain camp hiding, besides her inexperience and callowness, both of which are considerable? She makes Dan Quayle look like Pericles by comparison. Or that McCain didn't choose her -- she was forced on him by the real powers behind his would-be throne? Or her own extreme views...? The secrecy and censorship recall the past eight years of Bush and Cheney.

But shame on the enablers in the press. Even the New York Times ran a front-page photo of Palin, leggy in a suit, sitting with Henry Kissinger in her first meeting with "wise men" and foreign dignitaries. This when reporters were excluded and no questions allowed. Why is the press playing along? My credo as an editor would be: no access, no coverage. We're not your publicists and we're not your propaganda organ.

We shouldn't be surprised. Wrecked by greed and bad leadership, most of the press has been devastated. Those left are terrified of being portrayed as sexist if they demand the same accountability of a female candidate as a male one. Or if they mention Palin's appearance, even though she plays it to the hilt, indeed, just above the knee. (Maureen Dowd is an exception). But the sins of the press are more grievous: failing to play every torture story on Page 1; falling for jargon such as "enhanced interrogation" and "surge"; failing to push for full disclosure on McCain's medical records and Cindy's tax records; pretending there's a legitimate debate left on global warming.

Yes, Palin was intended by McCain handler Steve Schmidt as a distraction. But she's a very serious issue. She can't be ignored.

Today's must read: Maverick's man who helped bring on the financial meltdown

...comes from the New York Times, which reports on how McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis not only was a lobbyist for Freddie Mac, trying to stop regulation of the mortgage giant, but the firm he owns continued to lobby for Freddie through last month. This came after the outraged denials of the McCain camp after the Times reported on Davis making $2 million defending Freddie and Fannie from regulation would have avoided the current unpleasantness.

Meanwhile, McCain's people shamelessly put up ads claiming Obama sought advice from former Fannie CEO Franklin Raines (psst, he's black, too). Never happened. Not true. But that won't stop the duhs and ignos from believing it. George Orwell, call your office.

Travels: Ohio and Arizona

A vague sadness hangs over the Ohio countryside, even though the trees hang on to their last vestiges of summer green. I flew into Cleveland's airport last week. This was once one of America's largest cities, and even though the airport remains a hub for Continental Airlines, the place has the feel of a small, regional terminal. The nice part is that people are nicer in a less crazed and crowded setting, but I keep asking myself, "this is Cleveland?"

Yes. I can see the changes as we drive out of town, on the way to my conference at Kent State University. Buildings that held large businesses a decade ago sit empty. The big Ford plant sits looking vulnerable. While I was there, Eaton, the city's largest Fortune 500 headquarters, announced it was leaving downtown for the suburbs. This is a downtown that has revived itself well and is a transit hub. Yet the Eaton bigs seem oblivious to the future of higher gas prices, as well as shameful as stewards of their hometown. Everybody talks about how bad the economy is, with high unemployment and job insecurity. The change in the vibe of this state from a decade ago is so real and raw you can't miss it. No wonder Ohioans threw out the Republicans -- the party that wrecked America -- in 2006. And yet, McCain has an edge if the polls are to be believed, and one wonders.

Still, Ohio is a state synonymous with white flight and de facto segregation. Apart from some successful downtowns and a few still-lovely upper-class neighborhoods, the big cities are heavily black, while their numerous suburbs are white. It's a class thing, but it's also a race thing. And it may well be that Ohioans won't vote for a black man. How they think Republican John Sidney McCain III, continuing the policies of 25 years of "conservatism," will help them is beyond me. But these are emptional responses beyond the reach of rational persuasion.

Lock and load: Homie's coming for a visit

I'll be back home in Phoenix this week for the West Valley Arts Council's Big Read. Come out to an event and I'll be honored to sign your Mapstone books. We'll be talking about Hammett's Maltese Falcon and its influence on writers. You'll get the scoop on my next books. I'm sure Arizona politics and issues will come up. And, of course, the search for the perfect cheese-and-onion enchilada.

Weekend reading

Joe Nocera in the New York Times looks at the worst market crisis since 1929. But will Bernanke and Paulson's "hail Mary" pass connect? The Economist examines ways the torn global financial market can be put back together.

The Palin effect may be fading fast, but Sarahcudda could still be a heartbeat away from a 72-year-old man with a body broken by the North Vietnamese and repeatedly ravaged by cancer. The New Yorker checks out the peculiar political landscape that shaped the potential president. Can't get enough about the leggy governor? Rolling Stone shows, in a devastating investigation, how her reformer claim is crap.

In The Atlantic, check out "The Petraeus Doctrine." Will an Army built around counterinsurgency be ready for the next war?

Republican John Sidney McCain III quote of the week, from an article in Contingencies: "Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation."

And if you needed further proof, Salon looks at McCain's terrible record on environmental issues.

Meanwhile, back in Phoenix, Google is leaving, as I warned two years ago. As the usual cheerleaders said this was further evidence of "the Valley's" great economy, I wrote that Google was placing bets all over the country, and emphasized that Phoenix and Arizona would have to show their committment to science, research and the quality of life that attracts smart, young talent -- not just retirees from the Midwest and bottomfeeder "businessmen" from California. Of course, I was merely derided for being "negative." So how's that dependence on real estate and "business friendly" low taxes (meaning inadequate to the investments needed to compete in the 21st century) working out for you?

Barely avoiding economic judgment day, maybe

I've been traveling this week as the American financial markets came as close to collapse as at anytime since 1929. And make no mistake: this disaster is real, it will unfold in unexpected ways, and it won't be an event that is over quickly such as in 1987 -- or even the S&L scandal. Some early takes:

--It would be ironic if Republican John Sidney McCain III were elected and George W. Bush left one positive legacy by stabilizing the meltdown -- the "let the markets rule" so-called conservatives, who saved the day thanks to mechanisms put in place by Woodrow Wilson, FDR and successive liberals. If we didn't have tools such as the Fed, FDIC, SEC, etc. -- this could have been a calamity on the order of the "panics" of the 19th century, with worldwide contagion.

--This event should totally discredit the deregulation, market-religion ideas pursued over the past 25 years -- it is the direct result of these policies. But maybe not. The administration may use unprecedented intervention to save capitalism, and then go back to their Milton Friedman sock-puppet talking points. And the duhs and ignos won't care -- Obama's black, remember?

--Gee, remember when W intended to "spend his political capital" privatizing Social  Security into the toxic investment bank dumps that are now failing? Republican John Sidney McCain III still wants to do this.

A suburban power grab for Phoenix's biomed future

The Republic reports that downtown Phoenix's struggling biomedical campus is in danger of losing the UA cancer center to the suburbs of Chandler or Surprise. The potential theft is being driven, of course, by an influential developer. He argues patients want a "resort setting."

It's amazing how metro Phoenix has totally reverted to a 19th century economy, where the only thing that seems to be valued is open land owned by pushy promoters. The 21st century economy is being driven by centers of innovation, which was the intention of the biomedical campus. There, researchers, educators, health-care professionals and students would work in close proximity, bringing bench-to-bedside cures, and the competitive leapfrog the region so needs. Sprawl kills that collaboration and opportunity, as has happened so often in Phoenix. More sprawl and decentralization will only deepen metro Phoenix's other challenges, from transportation to rising energy costs to global warming.

The grab shows the region's stark power imbalance. The city, especially downtown, lacks powerful private sector leaders who can write checks and knock heads -- the kind of steward-leaders behind every successful and competitive city. The stakes are high. Phoenix is struggling to avoid decline. The biomedical hub, done right, on the model of Houston's Texas Medical Center, is its best chance to do this. Much more than Phil Gordon's legacy is on the line.

Palin's 'small-town' scam

Sarah Palin is trying to play the small-town card. Her handlers even had her quoting the infamous hater and anti-semite columnist Westbrook Pegler: "We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity." The point, of course, is that she was a "small-town mayor," an "average folks" product of a "small town." Just like you folks hurting in Ohio and other battleground states.

Trouble is, Wasilla, Alaska, is not really a small town in the Disneyland Main Street USA way she's trying to conjure. This railroad camp turned into an exurb of Anchorage with all the attendant flotsam: big boxes, no downtown, car dependent, sprawling. It's also in a state that is America's welfare queen of federal handouts. So we're not talking Harry Truman's Independence here.

She's trying to conjure the town that has been largely destroyed by sprawl, Interstate highways, economic and cultural shifts, and the predatory, monopolistic practices of Wal-Mart. As Thomas Frank pointed out in his new Wall Street Journal column, policies that kill small towns have been an intregal part of the Republican Party of John Sidney McCain III.

Yet the exurb vs. small town issue doesn't stop there.

Let's look at the fundamentals of the American economy

Republican John Sidney McCain III is trying desperately to back away from his "fundamentals of the economy are strong" line, even going so far as to say he meant American workers. But not so fast. In fact, it is the fundamentals of the American economy that are in dangerous trouble. Let us count the ways. I'm going to have to give you some straight talk, my friends:

1. Debt. The nation is deeply in hock to creditors worldwide. We used this line of credit to finance the housing bubble, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, tax cuts to the richest Americans, rebate checks that went into the ether and the privatization of hundreds of billions of dollars in government services. It's paying for the bailout of Bear, Sterns and it stands to take a devastating shock from Freddie and Fannie. From government to business to consumers, Americans are debtors, and most of the debt has been pissed away on war, sprawl, speculation and corruption, as opposed to building something for the future.

As the economist Nouriel Roubini has pointed out, the current account deficit in the '90s came back as investment in private innovation, but for the past eight years it has been used to finance deficit spending and debt. Moreover, now much of this debt is held by nations that do not necessarily wish us well, including China and the petro-states such as Saudi Arabia.

This situation dangerously limits our options in foreign policy. It makes it a near certainty that living standards will take a big hit as we have to pay it back. Remember, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the first people in the door were the bankers, wanting to be repaid for the debt the Bolsheviks defaulted on after the 1917 revolution.

Watch the Palin church video that YouTube banned...

...just as it was about to go viral and affect the polls. Here it is. As HuffPost's Bruce Wilson notes:

If Sarah Palin may hold apocalyptic end-time beliefs or believes that she has a divine mandate to initiate an end-time conflict, American voters have the right to know about the doctrines taught in Palin's Alaska churches.

Can candidate Hoover fool us again?

John Sidney McCain III said today "the fundamentals of our economy are strong," sounding exactly like Herbert Hoover after the crash of 1929. The parallels are interesting. Republican policies largely caused the Great Depression. Hoover had done honorable and even miraculous work before the presidency (feeding World War I refugees). He was a progressive Republican but became a reactionary. The biggest similarity, besides "the fundamentals" lines, is that the world had passed both men by. The world had become too complex for their remedies or policies. They were/are overwhelmed. Except Hoover didn't have Karl Rove, "the base" (which interestingly translates in Arabic as al Queda) and so many ignorant, easily led voters.

On the other hand, maybe the key word in McCain's statement is "our" economy. As in the economy represented by his rich friends and supporters, the nationless corporate oligarchy and his Treasury secretary-to-be, former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm (also prime architect of banking and Wall Street deregulation). He of the "nation of whiners" and "mental recession." For them, the winners at a time when income inequality is worse than anytime since before the crash of '29, the economy is strong. So maybe unlike his campaign of late, McCain actually spoke the truth.

The recession that's all in our heads claimed two of the most powerful and influential investment banks in the world over the weekend. Anybody who claims to tell you what will happen next -- much less that the worst has passed -- is about as reliable as all those telephone mortgage chislers during the housing bubble. What is more clear is how it happened, and, perhaps, some of the ramifications.

Must read: Palin's record as mayor and governor

It's a story of cronyism, personal vendettas, secrecy, censorship and lies. Talk about Four More Years of the Same. Thanks to the New York Times for committing real journalism.

And here's the Washington Post on Palin's tenure. In addition to the sharp elbows and social conservative nastiness, we have her experience:

The universe of the mayor of Wasilla is sharply circumscribed even by the standards of small towns, which limited Palin's exposure to issues such as health care, social services, the environment and education.

Firefighting and schools, two of the main elements of local governance, are handled by the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, the regional government for a huge swath of central Alaska. The state has jurisdiction over social services and environmental regulations such as stormwater management for building projects.

Services in Alaska are heavily subsidized by oil revenues and federal dollars. Palin's main accomplishment was an ice rink. Meanwhile,

Further constraining City Hall's role is the frontier philosophy that has prevailed in Wasilla, a town that was founded in 1917 as a stop along the new railroad from Anchorage to the gold mines further north. The light hand of government is evident in the town's commercial core, essentially a haphazard succession of big-box stores, fast-food restaurants and shopping plazas.

Maybe the mayor of Prescott Valley wasn't willing to serve as McCain's running mate. Seriously, this person who would be president not only has little knowledge of complex issues, complicated government -- or any interest in them -- she would be hostile to urban issues, infrastructure, etc.

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Weekend reading

The New York Times editorial does a fine job of encapsulating the obvious weaknesses displayed by Vice President-elect Palin, in her ABC interview:

One of the many bizarre moments in the questioning by ABC News’s Charles Gibson was when Ms. Palin, the governor of Alaska, excused her lack of international experience by sneering that Americans don’t want “somebody’s big fat résumé maybe that shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment where, yes, they’ve had opportunities to meet heads of state.”

And this is a scripted interview with a sympathetic "journalist." Meanwhile, the real journalists are kept off limits, as happens in bastions of freedom like China. Will the duhs and ignos care -- and do they outnumber us? A fascinating article in New York discusses "the bloody new political realities" of the McCain choice. And be sure to read Bob Herbert's excellent column in the NYT, where he poses what may be the pivotal issue of the campaign:

While watching the Sarah Palin interview with Charlie Gibson Thursday night, and the coverage of the Palin phenomenon in general, I’ve gotten the scary feeling, for the first time in my life, that dimwittedness is not just on the march in the U.S., but that it might actually prevail.

How can Obama turn it around? A panel of political pros offers advice in The New Republic. In the same issue, David Jamieson explains how Palin was a star of the extreme right long before she was sprung on the nation.

Identity will be central to many voters: white identity. An article in the New York Review of Books argues that Obama will lose many votes simply because he is black, and vote tampering, reinforced by the courts, may make it difficult to recoup the losses with new voters.

While the Republicans talk glibly of war with Russia, the Economist takes a sober view of nervousness in Ukraine. Another important read: Will Egypt be the next Middle East hotspot?

Why Palin can't be ignored

Many Democratic operatives are advising Obama and Biden to essentially ignore Palin. I don't think they can. President-elect McCain (I use the term to focus your mind on the stakes here) has made her one of the most important issues in this campaign.

In choosing -- or being forced to choose -- a person with no national or international experience, whose government background is a few years as mayor of a tiny exurb and 18 months as governor of a state with 670,000 people (less than half the population of Phoenix), McCain should be giving the nation pause. Pause to wonder about his judgment, for if he chose her it was the kind of impulsive, irresponsible action for which he's known. Pause to wonder who is really pulling his strings, considering she is the candidates of the hard-core evangelicals McCain once denounced, and the oil industry he claims to be willing to fight. Pause that he would make a shameless political move to energize his base even if it meant putting the country at risk. President Palin. Think about that.

One of the many outrageous things about the Palin affair is her refusal to hold news conferences or meet with reporters. Proper "deference" was demanded by the McCain campaign. Deference? Here, ma'am, the people rule -- unless you are willing to proclaim us an authoritarian empire where the press is treated as it is in, say, China. It should be a deal-breaker in itself that she has been shut off like a celebrity.

What is McCain hiding? What is he afraid of?

Don't get depressed -- Get mad

Here's my advice to Obama supporters: Turn off the television. Put away the depression. Get mad and get active. The race is far from over unless there has already been a stealth coup in this country -- a subject for a future column. The Republicans are the party that wrecked America -- and McCain and Palin are Republican to the core. They're counting on Americans to be stupid and easily manipulated. Obama is counting on us to be smarter than that, to be Americans, a people who once were never "easily led" by demagogues.

I don't trust the corporate media, especially the electronic kind. I don't trust the polls. They are trying to game the outcome. The "economic royalists," to use FDR's term, were never going to give up power easily -- nor was the military industrial complex. I never doubted that the conservative base would come "home" eventually, or that this would be a close election. And there's the elephant in the room: will enough white Americans vote for a black man?

It's interesting to recall that, unlike many other democratic countries, America once had two mass parties. Republicans and Democrats had liberal and conservative wings. In 1936, for example, Gov. Alf Landon was a liberal Republican challenging FDR, and might have made a race of it had not his campaign been co-opted by the reactionaries in the GOP.

Now only one mass party remains: the Democrats.

As McCain distracts, more evidence of dangerous issues facing us

While the corporate media try to distract us, the Washington Post slips in a story about an intelligence assessment on what the new president will face:

An intelligence forecast being prepared for the next president on future global risks envisions a steady decline in U.S. dominance in the coming decades, as the world is reshaped by globalization, battered by climate change, and destabilized by regional upheavals over shortages of food, water and energy.

The report is from the top U.S. intelligence analyst, and hardly should be news to readers of this blog. Yet these issues are not being covered widely and barely register with the duhs and ignos who may vote. It also concludes: "that the one key area of continued U.S. superiority -- military power -- will "be the least significant" asset in the increasingly competitive world of the future, because "nobody is going to attack us with massive conventional force."

So tell me how the Republicans, the party that wrecked America, the trigger-happy and half out-of-it McCain and the dangerously inexperienced and "faith based" Palin will address any of this? "Abstinence-only thinking"?

Meanwhile, the Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan finally comes to the conclusion about President-elect McCain that has evaded most of the coddled national press -- his "base" -- but that any journalist in Arizona already knew. Worth reading.

McCain mobilizes, and cows, his 'base'

"Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half." -- Gore Vidal

"The (Bush) aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.' " -- Ron Suskind

"This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates." -- Rick Davis, McCain campaign manager

Unfortunately Vidal is probably wrong, considering that most Americans get their tiny bits of information from television. Davis may well be right, despite the critical issues facing the country, and that his campaign is running to continue the very Bush-Cheney "faith-based" policies that created the disaster of the past eight years.

This is the background you need to understand the successful McCain effort to cow the corporate media into submission in the final weeks before the election. Remember that McCain called the big-time media "his base" and there's been a long love-fest between them. But the old fighter jock will now slap around and intimidate his love -- and many Americans will approve. It will be the Rovian tactic that puts the race within stealing distance, if not produce an outright McCain victory.

Leggy blonde coed hooker foreign debt forces Frannie bailout

I'm late posting this morning on the takeover of Fannie and Freddie because I spent last night and part of today writing for the Seattle Times on the ouster of Washington Mutual's chief executive. It's not a far leap from one to the other, because both bags of trouble have their genesis in the collapse of the housing bubble. In the case of Fannie and Freddie, of course, the problem became so serious that it put the entire financial system at risk.

That's right. Don't be fooled by Hank Paulson's "what this means to you" comments about how the federal takeover will make it easier for Americans to buy homes. The Bush Treasury was forced into using taxpayer money to back these two giant corporations to avoid a financial China Syndrome. And India, Japan, Britain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, et al. Here's the chilling line buried in Gretchen Morgenson's Sunday New York Times story:

The proposal to place both mortgage giants, which own or back $5.3 trillion in mortgages, into a government-run conservatorship also grew out of deep concern among foreign investors that the companies’ debt might not be repaid. Falling home prices, which are expected to lead to more defaults among the mortgages held or guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie, contributed to the urgency, regulators said.

Toes curled yet? This is what it means to be the world's largest debtor nation. As the duhs and ignos rush to coronate McCain and Palin, there it little understanding of this predicament.

Sarah! Sarah! Sarah!

The Seattle Times, in  a copyrighted story, offers some insights into Sarah Palin's time as mayor of a tiny Anchorage exurb and a personality that can only be described as insecure and creepy.

In today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a University of Alaska professor, otherwise friendly to McCain, outlines details of Palin abysmal environmental record.

Meanwhile, Huffington Post's Sam Stein refutes Palin's claim that she "said no" to the "bridge to nowhere."

The New York Times' public editor fires back at claims by McCain's ruthless operative Steve Schmidt, playing tearful with the Washington Post, that the press was unfair to Palin.

And if you missed it, here's Gloria Steinem's op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, where she writes, "Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton. She is
Phyllis Schlafly, only younger."

UPDATE: Be sure to read Arianna Huffington's excellent Palin column:

Her critics like to say that Palin hasn't accomplished anything. I disagree: in the space of ten days she's succeeded in distracting the entire country from the horrific Bush record -- and McCain's complicity in it. My friends, that's accomplishment we can believe in.

As we ponder...

...what I consider the high likelihood of a McCain presidency, at least we can have a momentary laugh.

Phoenix diary: Golf, urban Chandler, 'green leader,' med-school disaster, the storm

Phoenix and Arizona sleepwalk on. Mesa is giddy about the promise of a big new resort out in the middle of nowhere. It's fascinating that the metropolitan area and state seem to have no substantial economic development strategy other than to hope that more clones of Scottsdale golf resorts can be birthed. Tourism, of course, brings notoriously low-paying jobs, many part time and lacking benefits. It may be facing structural challenges as American living standards fall and energy prices rise. And considering that golf is a stagnant pastime -- as many give it up as take it up every year -- well, do the math...

"Chandler shifts to urban focus," the headline proclaims. The story is about studies on what happens when the suburb runs out of greenfield development space. But they know they shoot studies in Arizona. Chandler has been deeply engineered as an automobile suburb, complete with wide highways ("streets"), walled off "communities" and ugly berms to separate land use from highways. It is completely car dependent, without commuter or light-rail links. I doubt there will be much interest by developers in doing anything remotely urban. But it's rich enough to survive awhile if the growth machine revives and moves elsewhere...

Meanwhile, a "marketing strategy" was launched to tout Phoenix as an "emerging leader" in green and solar technology. Hahahahahahaha. I hope this is better than the "marketing strategy" of Copper Square. I guess anything helps, if the region could lure at least a few California companies. Unfortunately, the Legislature and extreme political climate's refusal to fund meaningful economic development tools and research will keep metro Phoenix a backwater. A "city" based on endless driving in individual automobile trips while spreading out into the desert without enough water to sustain it can't be any kind of green leader, emerging or even flaccid...

Then there's the crackup of the medical school...

Today's must read

Columnist Amy Goodman writes about the police targeting journalists for arrest at the Republican National Convention. Never in my lifetime have I seen an era where our civil liberties been under more sustained attack. Appropriately this happened at the convention of the ruling party that has been behind this assault.

The Republican convention so far

Random observations:

The convention is very very white and relatively old. It's quite a contrast with last week's Democratic convention. Sarah Palin, who must dramatically drop the average age just by walking onstage, wants to cast her family as "typically American." Yet families with school-age children are a declining minority in America, a nation with many life paths unrepresented in the GOP. It may be that Denver represents what America looks like now and is becoming -- but will diversity vote? We know older white folks will, especially when they've had the crap scared out of them...

Which is happening in abundance in St. Paul. This convention is dominated by fear-mongering and rabid attacks on the opposite party in a way that the Democrats never could have gotten away with. It's worked in the past two elections. Has enough of the American electorate wised up?...

The change and reform mantra is absurd. The GOP is strikingly bereft of any new ideas, or even comprehension of the mess we're in. Republican policies have caused vast damage at home and abroad, yet the corporate media are not calling them on it in this convention. Nor is there any push to illuminate where the party and its candidates stand on critical issues. Indeed, it's hard to find Democratic voices on the networks, a sharp contrast to the ubiquitous Republicans on TV in Denver. Among the other things not being covered: mass arrests and claims of police overreaction...

I know Sarah Palin. Well, I know her kind. She's the type that took over the party of Lincoln, TR, Eisenhower, even of Goldwater and Reagan. They are driven by hard-core rightist ideology, hellfire evangelicalism, suburban intolerance and very savvy political training. They want to ban books, teach creationism and manage what happens in our bedrooms. They're anti-science, anti-intellectual -- "global warming is a myth." Jesus (a very bloodthirsty and intolerant version) is on their side. They are the masters of wedge issues. They're the ones who started at the school boards and took over Republican parties in state after state, notably Arizona, banishing old-school Republicans as RINOs (Republicans in Name Only). And, being "saved," they think the rules don't apply to them. So McCain, in choosing her, accepted the reality that he could only win with a rabidly energized base. Maverick? How about a gelding...

"Maverick" actually has a political provenance of sorts. Maury Maverick was a Texas congressman and ally of FDR, breaking with conservatives in his party. He coined the term "gobbledygook." But the word "maverick" as we know it came from his grandfather, who refused to brand his cattle. I'd say President-elect McCain has been branded by Big Oil, the corporate elite, the military-industrial complex and now the social conservatives...

Palin speaks; market drops more than 300 points.

Country first?

It's amazing that the Party of Lincoln will nominate a secessionist as vice presidential candidate. Palin was a member of a party calling for Alaska to secede from the union. Her husband was registered with the party, too. Even as governor, he addressed the party's convention, as seen on YouTube. The party's motto is "Alaska First, Alaska Always."

Meanwhile, unaware of an open mic, Peggy Noonan says what she really thinks about Palin.

Update: Read Time's exclusive about how Mayor Palin sought to ban books from the public library.

And if you need a laugh after considering she might indeed win, here's John Ridley's Guide to Palangauge, from HuffPost.

9/4 Update: Here's the latest secesh news from the New York Times. Considering how effectively the McCain camp has cowed the corporate media, it may be a long time before we get the truth. We already know that these "conservatives" hate the United States government as an article of faith.

Napolitano's mojo: You can't lose what you never had

The news story begins, "Has Janet Napolitano lost her mojo?" And I am thinking about how the older core readers, loyal but constantly abused by the newspaper, are wondering, "What the hell is a mojo?" In any event, it continues:

Unthinkable even a year ago, the question is circulating among some of the governor's watchers at the Capitol. They're struck by an administration seemingly put on its heels by a stumbling state economy, rash of key staff departures and, most recently, the disqualification from the November ballot of her two most favored initiatives.

What was unthinkable until Monday was that the Arizona Republic would ever print anything even mildly critical of the governor, aside from the dreary sameness of the protected Republican political op on the editorial page. Napolitano was close friends with former publisher Sue Clark-Johnson. This, along with the Republic's war against having experienced journalists consistently cover state government (or any beat), ensured that the governor would be treated with something like uninformed reverence.

The reality is that Napolitano never stood astride state government like a colossus. The faded "glory days" mentioned in the story were neither glorious nor had much to do with her. Nor did she have "absolute dominance" over the Legislature. The reality is more complex, and more interesting.