“Nobody being in charge is the thing you’re going for in your neighborhood anarchist collective. But if you’re a conservative major political party confronting a massive financial crisis, two wars, and a fast approaching presidential election, that’s not supposed to be what you’re going for.”

Muahaha.

Dear NFL Network,

Are these really the (approximate, ganked from the web) lyrics you want to use to promote your sport?

Trudging slowly over wet sand
Back to the bench where your clothes were stolen
This is the coastal town
That they forgot to close down
Armageddon - come Armageddon!
Come, Armageddon! Come!

Everyday is like Sunday
Everyday is silent and grey

Hide on the promenade
Etch a postcard :
“How I Dearly Wish I Was Not Here”
In the seaside town
…that they forgot to bomb
Come, Come, Come - nuclear bomb

Everyday is like Sunday
Everyday is silent and grey

Trudging back over pebbles and sand
And a strange dust lands on your hands
(And on your face…)
(On your face …)
(On your face …)
(On your face …)

Everyday is like Sunday
“Win Yourself A Cheap Tray”
Share some greased tea with me
Everyday is silent and grey

There’s a beautiful irony to it, sure. Though I am quite a football fan, I would have to say that irony is not your strong suit, NFL Network, nor is it the strong suit of most of your fans.

Love,

Policywank

I was on a plane last night during the debate. My wife taped it for me. I watched it first thing this morning so that I could see it before hearing or reading any coverage of it. I think the media largely has it wrong. If we were going to judge it like a high school debate, then the media consensus that it was a draw or slight advantage for Obama would be right. But stop and think about this for a minute. This was the foreign policy debate. This was supposed to be McCain’s turf. Obama looked comfortable and confident. He had a clear, easy command of the issues. He stood up to McCain’s attempts to distort his record, his statements, or even to tell outright lies. This is likely the best debate performance we’ll see from McCain. McCain looked hostile and seemed to view Obama with contempt for much of the night. Nothing in Obama’s performance warranted that. I think it makes McCain look small. Obama looked like a guy who can talk about this stuff based on his own knowledge. McCain often looked like he had been programmed to repeat key words and phrases over and over.

The one thing I saw in Obama’s performance last night that bothered me is something I’ve seen in the guy and been bothered by for months. He’s not a finisher. He isn’t willing to really go for the throat to win. I think there were times last night when Obama really could have put McCain away. He didn’t. If we face a close, contested election on November 4th, then I think McCain and his people have the desperation to win that will carry them through. Obama doesn’t. I think we should just hope that Obama can ride out the clock with McCain the way he was able to do with Clinton.

In the next two debates, it should become quite clear that Obama is the better choice. From a political consultant’s point of view, McCain is a nightmare in a town hall format. He’s good with adoring crowds. He’s not good when faced with tough questions by average people. Sometimes he’s not good because he’s snappy and dismissive. Usually, though, he’s not good precisely because of that “straight talking” side of himself. He’ll say what he’s feeling at the moment, what he thinks will make him look good with the crowd regardless of whether it conflicts with his campaign’s message or his own record. Tom Brokaw is capable of and not unlikely to call McCain out on that.

WaMu collapsed tonight. It was seized by regulators and its deposits were purchased by JP Morgan Chase. Biggest bank failure in US history.

I think there’s a chance that Bush’s “fool me once…won’t get fooled again” misquote may have some relevance in the collapse of our financial system. I think, that having seen how they pushed through the Iraq War and the Patriot Act, congress just might not get fooled again. We need a bailout of some sort. It’s looking more and more like that bailout may not come in the form of just buying out all of the bad debt at ridiculously high prices. Tonight, even a few Republican senators and congressmen are starting to come out and say this is a bad deal for taxpayers. If we’re going to do a bailout, it has to be more like what we did with Fannie & Freddie than what Paulson is talking about.

I read a blog post today by a Washington reporter that referenced the original publication date of George W. Bush’s A Charge to Keep: My Journey to the White House as being 1999. All I could find online at a couple of booksellers were the paperback copy of the book, which came out in 2001. I’m assuming the 1999 date has to be a typo or other mistake. Because it’s just too presumptuous, even for a guy whose father was head of the CIA and president of the U.S. and whose brother was governor of Florida at the time.

I’m watching an episode of The Daily Show from earlier this week. Charlize Theron is the guest. She is promoting her movie about the WTO protests in Seattle a few years ago. Disturbing thing #1: they showed a clip from the movie with riot gear wearing cops, tear gas, etc. Stewart jokes that this is what his walk to work looked like every day during the Repubican convention. Then goes on to kind of casually toss out that there were all kinds of protesters and cops in riot gear, but you didn’t see it in the coverage. WTF? Why not. Disturbing thing #2: In discussing the film, Theron says that she didn’t really know anything about the WTO before doing the film, but knows now how it effects every aspect of our lives from what you eat for breakfast in the morning onward. I’ve long thought of Charlize Theron as someone on the smarter end of the so-called Hollywood elite. Hearing that she knew nothing about the WTO until doing the movie was discouraging enough on its own, but I was more upset by the implication of just how few people probably know or understand about about the WTO, GATT, etc. How do you even debate what we’re doing as a nation when most people don’t even understand what it is that we’re doing. Half the people who are somewhat familiar with these things just think they equal “free trade” and are, therefore, good.

Keith Olbermann did a five minute segment on the economy in tonight’s show where he specifically pinned our current woes on the GOP’s 30 year assault on the regulations put in place by FDR as part of the New Deal. He was explicit on that, mentioning both FDR and the New Deal by name a couple of times each and quite simply explaining the link. Hi, Connor.

The right wing has an effort in place to vote “yes” that Sarah Palin is qualified to be vice president in poll. You can vote no. The “yes” vote is winning pretty handily right now. Thanks, Autumn, for the link.

I haven’t really seen this highlighted yet, but it’s been a busy week for me where I haven’t had time to read other political blogs. In a lot of right wing analysis of the current financial meltdown, they seem to be trying to shift the blame to “1930s era regulation” or “depression era regulation”. I’ve seen several McCain surrogates, including Sarah Palin use this formulation this week. It’s impressive, at times, how focused the GOP is on its long term missions. One of those is to completely discredit anything from the New Deal era. That gets easier as fewer and fewer people who were alive during that era are around now to give first hand dispute to that shit. The Republican Party is currently laying the groundwork, rhetorically, to blame this crisis on regulation and set the stage for more deregulation as soon as it is politically palatable. They, of course, have it exactly wrong. It has been the repeal of New Deal era regulation that has led to this. It has been an intentional failure to extend the existing New Deal era regulation to the new financial services that have grown up in my lifetime that has led to this crisis.

New Deal era regulation would have prevented this stuff if it had been left in place.

I am not a big fan of what Chris Matthews has become in the last dozen years. He went down a crazy path during the Clinton administration, particularly during their second term that never went away. I got a great reminder of what brought Matthews to prominence, though, today. He gave a grilling to the GOP spinmeister today about this “lipstick on a pig” crap that would have done any fictional TV prosecutor proud. It was focused, it was relentless. It was completely on point. He’s used clips and quotes of other politicians (and used more Republicans than Democrats) using the same phrase. McCain’s former press secretary wrote a book by that title and McCain himself used the phrase to attack Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign proposal on healthcare. He’s played the commercial three times to refute claims that the ad isn’t trying to say that Obama called Palin a pig.

Let me say this about the ad itself. If you think that Barack Obama was in any way calling Palin a pig, or in any way being sexist in this remark then YOU ARE A MORON. You are too stupid to vote. You’re probably too stupid to tie your own shoes. If you don’t believe that he’s calling her a pig, but are willing to put forth this story as part of a campaign to win the whitehouse, then you are what is wrong with American politics. You are the reason that most people don’t vote. You suck.