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Saul Landau
$13.46
By Mark Heisler
$2.79
$40
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Katie Couric asked Sarah Palin about a number of controversial topics during the latest installment of her interview—evolution, abortion, homosexuality—but the VP nominee appeared to have the hardest time when pressed to say what newspapers and magazines she has read: “Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years.”
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npr.org
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The nation’s most powerful labor unions are ratcheting up their efforts to elect Barack Obama with massive voter outreach campaigns. Both SEIU and the AFL-CIO have said this year’s efforts will be their largest voter mobilization campaigns ever.
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Flickr / IowaPolitics.com
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A campaign source tells the political rag that Joe Biden will avoid roughing up Sarah Palin during the debate Thursday, focusing his energies instead on John McCain. That might have something to do with a new poll, which suggests that most people think Biden will prove to be much more knowledgeable, but much less likeable.
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CBS continues to ration out the Sarah Palin morsels to a nation eager to know and see more. In this clip, the Alaska governor defends her joke about Joe Biden’s age by saying, “You know, I’m the new energy, the new face, the new ideas and he’s got the experience based on many, many years in the Senate. ...”
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And if that’s not enough for you, you just have to see John McCain compare Sarah Barracuda to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
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By Eugene Robinson — A new internal report confirms our fears about the politicization of the Justice Department. That same contempt for government can be found in the current financial crisis as well as the meteoric rise of the former mayor of Wasilla.
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By Marie Cocco — Americans are reluctant to make John McCain pay for George W. Bush’s sins, but with so many crises on so many fronts, the country can’t afford to cut him any slack.
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Antônio Milena / ABr
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Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert isn’t exactly popular these days. Forced to resign in disgrace, it may have been with the weight of politics leaving his shoulders that he let loose during an interview with an Israeli newspaper. Among other revelations, Olmert said his country was stuck in a 1948 mind-set and must now give up virtually all contested territory—including Jerusalem and the West Bank.
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montage: White House / Wikimedia Commons
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The Dow dropped more than 777 points on the news that the House had voted down the $700-billion bailout proposal, so why does our editor think it’s “a great moment for American democracy”?
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White House / Eric Draper
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When it came to a showdown in the House, the $700-billion bailout scheme was considered to be as toxic as the securities it was supposed to save us from. Democrats and Republicans broke ranks Monday to vote down the measure, 228-205, against the wishes of both parties’ leaders.
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cbsnews.com
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There was so much excitement last week between the bailout showdown and the debate that many people didn’t get a chance to see Sarah Palin’s tailspin interview with Katie Couric. CBS, it turns out, has even more in store. The network will air at least two more embarrassing clips before Thursday’s VP debate.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — September began as John McCain’s month and ended as Barack Obama’s. McCain’s high-risk wagers aimed at shaking up the campaign turned into very bad investments. And Friday’s debate eliminated McCain’s best chance to deliver a knockout blow.
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Comedian Sarah Silverman has released a video urging young Jews to schlep to Florida to get their grandparents to vote for Barack Obama. Seriously. We’ll let her explain.
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AP photo / Chip Somodevilla, pool
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By Bill Boyarsky — Was he too calm? Did he pull his punches in an effort to look presidential? Not really. The viewers got a clear choice: a reasoned and reasonable Obama versus an old-fashioned Cold Warrior who would keep us in Iraq endlessly and extend the boundaries we must defend to Georgia and Ukraine.
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Flickr / bobster1985
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So much for Sarah Palin the reformer: The Alaska governor took home more than $25,000 in gifts during her less than two years in office, including “honorific tributes, expensive artwork and free travel for a family member.” Bombshells like that are rocking the right wing, along with Palin’s embarrassing interviews, which have prompted conservative columnist Kathleen Parker to declare, “My cringe reflex is exhausted.”
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Is Obama looking at a landslide? Did McCain’s campaign suspension shake up the odds? Who’s to blame for our economic woes? Answers to these questions and more on this week’s show.
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house.gov
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Just a day after negotiations seemed to break down, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi struck a confident tone. So did Rep. Barney Frank, who threw in some of his patented sass: “Now that Sen. McCain is safely in Mississippi, we can get to serious work.”
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John McCain has taken a lot of heat for his dishonest campaign ads, but it seems Barack Obama has gotten in on the game. The New York Times scolds the Democratic nominee for running commercials “that have matched the dubious nature of Mr. McCain’s more questionable spots.”
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washingtonpost.com
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John McCain has caved as expected and will debate Barack Obama in Mississippi. But rather than give his opponent a chance to win, McCain is already claiming victory. The whole saga has left a bad taste in Mike Huckabee’s mouth.
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AP photo / John Moore
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The acclaimed journalist stopped by our offices this week, where he told Truthdig Editor Robert Scheer that the Middle East is a lot less puzzling than it’s made out to be: “It’s we who are there, not the other way round. ... It’s not our land. It’s not our religion. Our soldiers are in the Muslim world and they should not be there.” Updated with parts 3 and 4
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With a performance like this one now on tape and on YouTube, it is understandable (though inexcusable) that the McCain campaign has been so determined to keep Sarah Palin away from the media.
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By David Sirota — In the late 1990s, Washington was in the throes of a deregulatory orgy. Many lampooned Rep. Bernie Sanders’ opposition to the grotesquerie, and his notoriety as the only self-described socialist in Congress. Nobody guessed that in a few years our country would become the United States’ Socialist Republic.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — John McCain’s sudden intervention in Washington’s deliberations over the Wall Street bailout could not have been more out of sync with what was actually happening.
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By Eugene Robinson — John McCain is rapidly making his temperament an inescapable issue in the presidential campaign. Does the nation really want so much drama in the White House?
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Collage: commons.wikimedia.org / senate.gov
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“This meeting is an attempt to move the process forward,” President Bush declared Thursday, but it seems the White House gathering of congressional leaders and presidential candidates might have achieved the opposite effect. Lawmakers had agreed to a bailout outline earlier in the day, but the afternoon’s “political theater,” as Christopher Dodd put it, has raised doubts about the deal.
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The CNN anchor has had enough of the McCain campaign “treating Sarah Palin like she is a delicate flower that will wilt at any moment.”
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AP photo / Manuel Balce Ceneta
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By Stanley Kutler — Wall Street will not trouble its collective consciousness with worry over the Constitution. But this bailout bill is virtually unprecedented in its assumptions and its reach for unchecked power.
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By Ellen Goodman — Why is a welfare mother to blame for her poverty while Wall Street fat cats can count on the federal government for $700 billion?
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By Marie Cocco — The candidates heading into Friday’s scheduled debate should heed the politician who first conquered the format, John F. Kennedy, who believed that the images portrayed via TV were “likely to be uncannily correct.”
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Was this the plan all along? CNN reports that Team McCain wants the first presidential debate to “take the place of the VP debate, currently scheduled for next Thursday” if there’s no bailout deal by Friday.
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The former president gets a little hot under the collar in giving Jon Stewart his take on the financial collapse (without any mention of the deregulatory zeal of his own administration). He also explains why he thinks Obama will win, and why it’s not about whether people love Barack Obama but whether people think Barack Obama loves them.
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cbsnews.com
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The “CBS Evening News” host brought a little heat to her sit-down with the Alaska governor: “I’m just going to ask you one more time, not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation?” Update: Full video
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Flickr / soggydan
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Citing the financial crisis, John McCain announced Wednesday that he’d like to skip Friday’s debate so he can put on his senator hat and get back to work in Washington. Unimpressed, Rep. Barney Frank called the idea “the longest Hail Mary pass in the history of either football or Marys.” Update
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By Sam Harris — When it comes to politics, there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country. “They think they’re better than you!” is the refrain that (highly competent and cynical) Republican strategists have set loose among the crowd, and the crowd has grown drunk on it once again. “Sarah Palin is an ordinary person!” Yes, all too ordinary.
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Scan of the "Obsession" mailer obtained by Truthdig
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The blogosphere is alive with the sound of buzz—all about an inflammatory DVD on radical Islam being distributed to millions of households at the peak of election season. Critics are calling the DVD, “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West,” anti-Muslim hate, or politicking, or both. The obvious question: Who is behind it?
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In his third consecutive presidential campaign, Ralph Nader still believes the similarities between the major-party candidates outweigh the differences, a sentiment captured in this Nader campaign Web ad.
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White House / Joyce N. Boghosian
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How’s this for not mincing words? “I believe if the credit markets are not functioning, that jobs will be lost, that our credit rate will rise, more houses will be foreclosed upon, GDP will contract, that the economy will just not be able to recover in a normal, healthy way.” So sayeth Ben Bernanke on Tuesday, in a dire warning to Congress.
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Collage: Flickr / transplanted mountaineer / buddhakiwi
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Barack Obama is depending more and more on a Rocky Mountain victory and, according to a new poll, Sarah Palin may have just given him a boost there. It seems the Alaska governor’s growing unpopularity among independent voters has helped Obama to a seven-point lead in the Centennial State.
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composite: latimes.com and Flickr / Robert Scoble
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Steve Schmidt is widely credited with re-energizing the McCain campaign with his tough and often deceptive style, but his latest is a bit much, even for a Karl Rove protégé. During a conference call with reporters, Schmidt accused The New York Times of being “a pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day impugns the McCain campaign.”
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Unless something very strange happens, Congress will pass a massive bailout of the financial system by the end of this week simply because every other option is worse. But the content of the bailout package matters enormously.
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By Marie Cocco — So this is how the “ownership society” works. We own all the bad stuff.
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A new advocacy organization with strong ties to the oil industry is funding pro-drilling radio ads, including one criticizing the energy votes of Rep. Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat running for the U.S. Senate.
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Flickr / buddhakiwi
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Andrew Sullivan is miffed that John McCain’s No. 2 is still snubbing the media (and, by extension, the public): “It is now 24 days since she was announced as a potential president of the United States next January and she still hasn’t given a news conference or has any plans to hold one. This black-out of all serious press access has never happened in modern American political history before.”
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AP photo / Susan Walsh
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By Chris Hedges — The lobbyists and corporate lawyers, the heads of financial firms and the crooks who control Wall Street, all those who spent the last three decades assuring us that government was part of the problem and should get out of the way, are now busy looting the U.S. treasury.
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Does Anything Change in Los Angeles With Election of New Mayor?
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