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By James Andrew Miller, Tom Shales
$14.91
By Jon Wiener
$14.94
$22
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By David Sirota — Bush reportedly suggested to Obama he might support an economic stimulus package and aid to struggling automakers if Democrats drop their opposition to a free-trade agreement with Colombia. Strange behavior? Yes and no.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Obama’s most urgent task is to repair an ailing economy. But one of his most important promises was to end the cultural and religious wars that have disfigured politics for four decades.
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Mike Keefe, The Denver Post —
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AP photo / Hasan Sarbakhshian
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By Scott Ritter — Now that the presidential election has liberated Barack Obama from the need to play to the fickle whim of domestic politics, he should put away the saber and take a more enlightened approach to Iran.
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Collage: Meutia Chaerani / Indradi Soemardjan and Shealah Craighead / White House
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“I will never apologize for changing a strategy or an approach if the facts change,” explained Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who has retreated from his original plan of buying up near-worthless mortgage securities with taxpayer funds. Instead, Paulson will continue to pump money into troubled banks in exchange for equity, a scheme that has proved more expeditious and popular.
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By William Pfaff — “What am I going to tell the public,” one French official asked, “when there are 3 million people marching in the streets of Paris? That ‘we all made mistakes’? That no one was really responsible?”
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — If Reagan had the voters’ permission to move away from strategies associated with liberalism, Obama has sanction to move away from conservative policies. And Reagan offers another lesson: His first moves were bold, and Obama should not fear following his example.
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Tab, The Calgary Sun —
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Flickr / Rain Rannu
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Instead of buying lots of new cheap things, people are busy stuffing what’s left of their money in mattresses. That has China, where the goodies come from, worried. The Chinese government has decided a stimulus is in order, to the tune of 4 trillion yuan (more than $550 billion).
Posted on Nov 9, 2008
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Flickr / World Economic Forum
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Former Vice President and presidential hopeful Al Gore seized upon the “change” theme that Barack Obama so successfully rode to victory in this year’s election to remind readers of Sunday’s New York Times that there’s one kind of change we don’t need: climate change.
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Composite: Wikimedia Commons
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Oh, to have been a fly on the wall during Barack Obama’s apology call to Nancy Reagan on Friday. Obama called Mrs. Reagan after making a jokey comment, during his first press conference since he was elected president, in which he referred obliquely to her reported esoteric interests during her time in the White House.
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During his first press conference as president-elect, Sen. Barack Obama stressed that he’s not in the Oval Office yet but offered a few specifics about how he plans to handle the economic crisis once he moves in.
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wfxl.com
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As if to prevent surplus national exuberance over the electoral defeat of John McCain on Tuesday, the Labor Department announced that the country’s unemployment rate has hit a 14-year high of 6.5 percent, with 240,000 jobs lost in October as joblessness continues to increase in the face of economic turmoil.
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By William Pfaff — The president-elect is a foreign policy novice and will find himself under great pressure to follow Middle Eastern and China and Russia policies inherited from George Bush, even though these are what Barack Obama was elected to change or terminate.
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Flickr / World Economic Forum
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Barack Obama is rumored to favor Lawrence Summers as his treasury secretary. That’s a terrible choice, says Robert Scheer, if the president-elect is at all concerned about the financial meltdown.
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Flickr/Américo Nunes
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All the magic in the Magic Kingdom couldn’t keep the Walt Disney Co. from taking a hit as a result of the global economic downturn, as evidenced by Disney’s latest quarterly report.
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By Ellen Goodman — There was symbolism as well as sadness in the passing of Barack Obama’s grandmother. When we’re young, we think change is a 100-yard dash. As we get older we think it’s a marathon. Eventually we see a relay race.
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By Marie Cocco — Republicans will try to tie memories of Jimmy Carter to the new Democratic president by conjuring up disturbing visions of policy failure and “malaise.”
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World Economic Forum
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While many of us are still celebrating Barack Obama’s historic victory, rumors of a major buzzkill are flying: Lawrence Summers, a Clinton-era treasury secretary and deregulation enthusiast, is said to be the front-runner to take over the Treasury Department.
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AP photo / Morry Gash
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By Robert Scheer — It’s time to gush! Later for the analysis of all the hard choices faced by our next president, Barack Obama, but for now, let’s just thrill, unabashedly, to the sound of those words.
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AP photo / LM Otero
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — A good politician triumphs by adapting to the times and taking advantage of opportunities as they come. A great politician anticipates openings others don’t see and creates possibilities that were not there before.
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This weekend brought yet another startling installment from the Sarah Palin School of International Relations, in which she talks about “needing to really shore up the strategies that we need over in Iraq and Iran to win these wars” during the first 100 days of her time in the White House with John McCain.
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AP photo / Evan Vucci
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During a campaign stop in Pueblo, Colo., on Saturday, Barack Obama used the news that Vice President Dick Cheney had endorsed John McCain for president to further link McCain and the Bush administration. In retaliation, McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds attempted to link Obama with Cheney. Hot potato!
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Arianna Huffington was back on “Left, Right & Center” to have her say, along with Tony Blankley, Matt Miller and Truthdig’s own Robert Scheer, about the economy and the presidential and vice presidential candidates on the show’s last episode before the election.
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us.penguingroup.com
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An insightful book discloses how a confidence game combined pride and cunning and stupidity to bring America to the brink of catastrophe.
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Composite: wikimedia/grangercollegeadvising.com
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Polling mania continues! So, Thursday brought word of two newly hatched polls—one by The New York Times/CBS News and the other by Fox News—and their results are strikingly different. What whimsy!
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AP photo / Carolyn Kaster
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By Elliot D. Cohen — Sen. John McCain’s ideological ties to the Bush-Cheney administration have mostly passed beneath the radar of the mainstream media, but if McCain loses the presidential race to Barack Obama, his neoconservative legacy could erupt into the open with a force that should not be underestimated.
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Collage: Flickr (Joe Crimmings Photography) / Economist
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The acclaimed right-leaning rag has come out for Mr. O: “The Economist does not have a vote, but if it did, it would cast it for Mr Obama. We do so wholeheartedly: the Democratic candidate has clearly shown that he offers the better chance of restoring America’s self-confidence.” Socialists.
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nafcu.org
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Joining in the unhappy trend of mass layoffs, American Express announced Thursday that 10 percent of the credit card company’s work force will soon be cut due to the current economic crisis.
Posted on Oct 30, 2008
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By William Pfaff — The real issues of the American presidential election are the future of the economy and the future of American foreign policy. The one seems already settled. The second seems to unite John McCain and Barack Obama in support of a program doomed to fail.
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What’s that? An Obama infomercial? Network TV? Wednesday night? Oh, right—here it is, in case you missed it.
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Collage: AP photo / Chip Somodevilla, pool / Wikimedia Commons
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James G. Blight and janet M. Lang —
The leading issue in the current face-off between Barack Obama and John McCain is the economy. Once elected and inaugurated, however, a U.S. president’s politics become global literally overnight.
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Team Obama has avoided campaigning against Sarah Palin ever since a few botched attempts when she first burst onto the national stage. Since then, the governor’s numbers have nosedived and she now serves as the punch line in a new Obama campaign commercial called “His choice.”
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AP photo / Gene J. Puskar
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By Robert Scheer — Let me now defend white males. We can’t possibly be as dumb as the polls showing we are John McCain’s most reliable voting base would indicate.
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By Mike Farrell — “You really do hate America!” This was the parting shot from a man I had just debated on a television show shortly before the invasion of Iraq. Because he’s a notorious right-wing blowhard, I laughed it off as the raving of a crackpot in extremis.
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tickertapedigest.com
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The Dow shot up 889.35 points on Tuesday, a welcome respite from Wall Street’s month of plunges. Things could still get a lot worse: While some buyers snapped up what looked like bargain stocks, others said they expected a major drop before things get better.
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Wikimedia Commons / edited for effect
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By Chris Hedges — The old assumptions and paradigms about capitalism and free markets are dead. A new, virulent populism, still inchoate, is slowly and painfully rising to take their place. This populism will determine the future of the country. It is as likely to be right-wing as left-wing.
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In a move that might suggest that Sarah Palin’s performance on the campaign trail has not been universally well received in her home state, the Anchorage Daily News, Alaska’s largest newspaper, came out in favor of Barack Obama on Sunday.
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So Alan Greenspan isn’t clairvoyant, as it turns out. Whoops! Neither, apparently, are Sarah Palin’s handlers, or else they might have done some bargain shopping instead of landing their leading lady in a heap of trouble over her pricey threads.
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Flickr / BohPhoto
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This news isn’t going to make certain members of the Republican Party like the Gray Lady any more than they already do, which is not at all: The New York Times’ editorial board has officially endorsed Barack Obama for president.
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White House / Shealah Craighead
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The former Fed chair told angry lawmakers on Thursday that after 40 years of buying into free-market ideology he had “found a flaw.” Rep. Henry Waxman told Greenspan “our whole economy is paying the price” because he ignored advice and resisted regulation.
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By Joe Conason — Wherever John McCain appears on the stump in these waning days of the presidential campaign, he is always accompanied by his imaginary friend “Joe the Plumber,” but it is the specter of Karl Marx that lurks just offstage.
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AP photo / Chris Carlson
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By Robert Scheer — Instead of running with the “European socialist” crowd, as John McCain has claimed, Barack Obama has turned to the same American “free market” elite that views government as merely a corporate subsidiary. Even within that group, however, there are serious splits, and the more enlightened side seems to be winning.
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AP photo / Seth Perlman
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Truthdig asked Demitrious C. Sinor, an inspirational educator, to sound off on the state of our schools. He warns that unless the No Child Left Behind regime ends soon, America’s classrooms could unravel. It’s a reality that neither presidential candidate seems to fully understand, but one he sees every day, from where he sits.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Catholics, who are quintessential swing voters and gave narrow but crucial support to President Bush in 2004, are drifting toward Barack Obama. And this time, some church leaders are suggesting that single-issue voting—such as on abortion—is by no means a Catholic commandment.
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Federal Reserve
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Ben Bernanke doesn’t really care if you call it a recession or, in his words, “a very serious slowdown in the economy.” Whatever it is, the chairman of the Federal Reserve thinks a new stimulus package is needed to get those terrified Americans dipping into their mattresses and buying things again.
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AP photo / Henny Ray Abrams
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By Chris Hedges — Our oligarchic class is incompetent at governing, managing the economy, coping with natural disasters, educating our young, handling foreign affairs, providing basic services like health care and safeguarding individual rights. They have no concept, thanks to the educations they have received, of the common good.
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Flickr / soggydan / emrank
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John McCain’s robocalls, which are bombarding swing-state voters with the message that Barack Obama “worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers,” are reportedly scaring children who make the mistake of answering their phones. Sarah Palin, who may or may not realize she’s on a sinking ship, says she disapproves of the robocalls.
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Truthdigger of the Week: Medea Benjamin
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