it's hard to say, given the poor quality of the studies so far - studies which are in the control of the private tax collectors. Not that they'd try to skew them, consciously or unconsciously.

The Fox Philadelphia affiliate, Channel 29, just aired an interview with Michael Rovito. He's the graduate student at Temple University who on Saturday, at a Philly cheesesteakeria, had asked Sarah Palin whether she supports cross-border raids into Pakistan from Afghanistan. Palin replied that she does endorse such raids when necessary, thus siding with Obama in a dispute with John McCain. Since then McCain has trotted out various and ridiculous excuses to explain away Palin's comment.

So Fox's Terry Lee Halkett interviewed Rovito on air to ask him his impression of his discussion with Palin. Rovito said he was stunned when Palin adopted Obama's position rather than McCain's. Was it possible, Halkett asked, that Palin was just distracted or didn't hear his question correctly? Rovito didn't think so. He said he didn't want to seem partisan, but...

"I had the impression she was clueless."

Update: In an interview with The Hill on Wednesday, Rovito repeated his denial that he'd asked a 'gotcha' question or that Palin had not heard him clearly.

Update Two: Here's the video of the Fox 29 interview.

Greatly defying the odds, the McCain-Palin ticket becomes a bigger laughingstock by the day.

You know how it is. The one who cheated on you, not once, but over and over. And you just kept giving and forgiving, hoping they'd see the error of their ways. Your friends kept warning you, pointing out that that rat was bilking you of your hard earned money. But, you always love the one that hurt you. You know it's stupid, but you keep crawling back.

That's exactly how it is with the DOD and contractors. GAO tells DOD to stop letting the contractor abuse keep doing on, and DOD says, "Yes, you're so right." And then DOD just goes out and does it again.

On Sunday and early Monday, John McCain and his campaign took credit repeatedly for building a coalition in Congress to back the bailout bill. For example, this morning his Communications Director, Jill Hazelbaker, said that there would have been no bipartisan consensus behind the bill without John McCain.

“It’s really Sen. McCain who got all parties around a table to hammer out a deal that hopefully is in the best interests of the American taxpayer.”

However as soon as the House of Representatives voted down the bill this afternoon, on a bipartisan basis, his campaign issued a statement blaming Barack Obama and the Democrats for its defeat.

"This bill failed because Barack Obama and the Democrats put politics ahead of country."

Over the weekend Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times produced an important report on the internal rot that destroyed the giant corporation AIG. It was essentially the story of Wall Street since the Reagan era - free-wheeling recklessness void of accountability. One fact in particular stood out. When Henry Paulson convened a meeting two weeks ago at the Federal Reserve Bank to discuss the impending collapse of Lehman Brothers and AIG, the only Wall St. CEO invited was Lloyd Blankfein, the head of Goldman Sachs. That was the firm Paulson headed until his appointment as Treasury Secretary.

Paulson's role in shaping and directing the government bail outs is more than just a gross conflict of interest. It's a monument to Washington's indifference to the appearance of impropriety. Washington insiders are tone-deaf to the anger with which the public greeted their plan to bail out financial titans. Their failure to challenge Paulson shows why none of them should be trusted with the $700 billion blank check they're drafting for the Treasury Secretary to spend.

It seems that nobody ever speaks officially for the McCain-Palin ticket. In July, trying to distance himself from statements by Phil Gramm, his campaign co-chair and surrogate ("mental recession", "nation of whiners"), John McCain declared that Gramm ""does not speak for me — I speak for me." But only two weeks later, McCain's top economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin stated that John McCain does not necessarily speak for John McCain either.

[Holtz-Eakin] also disputes the way the [Tax Policy Center] study takes suggestions McCain has made on the stump out of context. "This is parsing words out of campaign appearances to an unreasonable degree," Holtz-Eakin said. "He has certainly I’m sure said things in town halls" that don’t jibe perfectly with his written plan. But that doesn’t mean it’s official.

Today McCain announced that Sarah Palin does not necessarily speak for Sarah Palin. It seems to me the only plausible conclusion is that nobody at all speaks for the Republican ticket – unless it's just a question of nobody ever being held accountable for anything they say.

Many commentators have noted the difference in demeanor last night between the two presidential candidates. Barack Obama was affable, direct, and respectful in exchanges with his rival, while John McCain by contrast was surly, evasive, and condescending. Obama limited his criticisms to McCain's record of policies and decisions, whereas McCain frequently belittled Obama's personal qualities. McCain clearly intended to paint him as naive, ignorant, and inexperienced.

One phrase stood out by its repetition: "Senator Obama doesn't understand..." McCain repeatedly stated that Obama "doesn't understand" really basic things. It was a conscious decision to adopt this insulting rhetorical device.

Mr. McCain’s campaign argued that Mr. Obama had failed to allay voters concerns about his qualifications, expressing pride in the frequency with which Mr. McCain told Mr. Obama he did not “understand” various international matters.

The consensus of pundits is that Friday's presidential debate had no defining moment and that none of the questions exposed either of the candidates at considerable disadvantage. The consensus is wrong. Worse than wrong, the most devastating moment of the debate has rated virtually no mention so far either in broadcast coverage or in print.

It's understandable why this exchange has been overlooked. Many of us have grown so used to hearing obtuse and jingoistic comments about Iraq from politicians, especially John McCain, that they barely register any longer. But for voters paying close attention to the debate, those who are trying to choose one candidate to back, the perversity of McCain's insight into the war was glaring. There was in fact a perfectly phrased question from Jim Lehrer, the most incisive of the evening, which got right to the heart of this basic question, "Can we trust these candidates' foreign policy judgments?"

Here's the first question that ought to be asked at tonight's presidential debate:

"Senator McCain, what are you doing here?"

McCain has used the Wall Street crisis to justify a series of perverse stunts since Wednesday in which he "suspended" his campaign and tried to postpone tonight's debate as well as next week's vice-presidential debate. As recently as last night he said he would take part in today's debate only if Congress had reached an agreement about legislation to bail out the offending companies. No agreement has been reached, but this morning after a quick trip to Capitol Hill McCain announced that he was leaving for the debate in Mississippi anyhow.

So what was all of this grandstanding about?

The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) has announced the end of an era of an error. At long last the IRS has thrown in the towel on its project to have IAP Worldwide Services - the private company that screwed up Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the private company that is the spawn of KBR and retired military contracting officers - why the IRS has decided not to have this company handle our tax returns. Though when I say "handle" - "mishandle" might be a better word choice.

By the way, this is also a story about a union that has fought hard to save the jobs of its members.

(Cross-posted from Daily Kos)

Look carefully at these people. Each did something extraordinary. Something rare. Something wonderful.

And our government is never going to let them forget it.

by A Siegel

This Saturday, there is a nation-wide showdown between, quite literally, forces for light and forces for darkness.

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

continued

by gjohnsit crossposted from Daily Kos with permission

All discussion about the proposed taxpayer-funded bailout of Wall Street banks is centered around the idea of, "If we don't bail them out, they will fail."

It seems no one is asking a much more important question of, "Will this bailout do any good?"

Or to take this one step further, "Will this bailout do more harm than good?"

We badly need to consider what history teaches us before we repeat the same mistakes all over again.

The House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support held a hearing September 11 on The Challenges Facing American Workers.

The hearing record on how regular Americans are handling is still open for anyone to submit your own story. But the deadline to submit your story is Thursday, September 25, 2008. Details below.

What is going on with NY Times Pundits?

I have been wondering what it must feel like to be and intelligent, informed, thoughtful Republican during this presidential campaign. There are certainly Republicans who are in the Party out of traditional conservative values and whose views are useful foils in a discussion that can lead to better outcomes. That is how Democracy is supposed to work.

Living on Earth this week has a segment that may speak to those of us who wondered about the run up in gas prices in recent months and then the huge drop for no apparent reason. Here is an excerpt, but I recommend reading or listening to the whole piece.

"They have common hopes and modest Dreams - too long out of the reach of too many Americans."

by gjohnsit - crossposted from Daily Kos with permission

It's the usual question that someone asks after getting hit over the head and mugged, or if they were in the immediate vicinity of an explosion.

For the American taxpayer, both of those things happened during these past two weeks.

So many unprecedented events took place in such a short period of time that it was hard to keep up. Lots of people said lots of scary things, but few stopped to break down the most important issues, which are: a) how did we get here, b) what exactly is being done, and c) what does it all mean.

by A Siegel, Get Energy Smart! NOW!! and Energize America (www.ea2020.org)

Every day, it seems, brings fresh news and fresh images of Global Warming's mounting impact on humanity (and human activities), local ecosystems, and the global ecosystem. Just coming across my desk are images of Global Warming refugees appearing in the nation's capital.

These refugees provide dramatic images underlining "how global warming is making polar bears homeless by causing the sea ice they rely on to melt, threatening many polar bear populations with extinction."

On Monday when John McCain said that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong," I remarked that it's the role of an incumbent president to offer false reassurances during financial turmoil. But George Bush hasn't being doing that, or much of anything, this week. Bush remained virtually silent on the biggest financial crisis since 1929 until yesterday, when without taking questions from reporters he made an extremely brief public statement. It mentioned (without describing) a few steps the government had taken, all well known by that stage, and added "my administration is focused on meeting these challenges".

You wouldn't have guessed that from Bush's very visible absence this week. The White House website this week likewise gives no indication there's a financial crisis. Thursday's address is posted there with the anodyne title "President Bush Discusses Economy". Before that you have to go back to September 5th to find any mention at the WH website of the economy or finances.

Oh, this is rich.

John McCain evidently thinks he can score points with the public by criticizing Congress, specifically Democrats, for adjourning in late September as scheduled. He thinks members of Congress, specifically Democrats, ought to stay on in Washington until they've cured Wall Street of its afflictions. How selfish of them to leave DC one month before the election in order to campaign! John McCain wants them to put their country first for a change.

John McCain left Washington nearly six months ago to campaign and he hasn't been back.

Palin's interview tonight on Fox strengthened the impression that she's staggeringly ignorant about things economic and financial. I have to wonder whether she understands anything at all concerning the subjects she was blathering about. In fact Palin even gave the impression that she doesn't know what a stock market is. That's the only way I can make sense of her comment regarding who bears responsibility for the collapse of financial institutions on Wall Street.

(cross-posted on Daily Kos)

With U.S. banks failing and the economy tanking, it's more important than ever for our government to recover all of the money owed it. But, as the Miami Herald (McClatchy Newspapers) reports, the Justice Department has been blocking efforts by U.S. attorneys to support whistleblower cases that could recover many millions of dollars owed the government by oil companies and other firms. Additional millions are lost when employees on the federal payroll, including many in positions with oversight of industry and contractors, remain silent or fail to prevail regarding waste, fraud and theft.

There IS something taxpayers can to about this, to protect our pockets from being picked by unscrupulous companies and wasteful public officials. But, we must act fast. Otherwise, we will lose an opportunity that may not come again for another two years. That is approximately how long it took two pending whistleblower protection bills, S.274 and H.R. 985 ,to reach the point where they are now ready for a final vote of the full Congress, but stalled as Congress cups its ear, waiting to hear a public outcry for passage of the legislation.

Sloppy vetting of vice presidential choices almost always leads to disaster. With regard to the patently inadequate vetting of Sarah Palin by John McCain, many have pointed to some other embarrassments in recent decades - Spiro Agnew, Dan Quayle, and Thomas Eagleton. But we learn from Scott Horton's interview with Bart Gellman, author of a newly released book on Dick Cheney's vice presidency, Angler, that the vetting of Cheney was astoundingly lax - because Cheney was in charge and didn't scruple to manipulate it. And inadequate vetting led of course to the selection of Cheney himself, arguably the most unpopular, rancid, unscrupulous, and destructive vice presidents of the last century. There are good reasons to be on guard when a presidential candidate vets a running mate poorly.

Some interesting priorities are on display in Alaska these days. Quite a few high-powered Republican lawyers have shown up in order to quash the legislature's investigation of Troopergate and take charge of answering reporters' questions in Alaska about Sarah Palin's political career...in other words, to quash journalistic investigations as well.

Among the praetorians to show up suddenly is one Edward O'Callaghan. Until at least Sept. 3, he was an Assistant US Attorney in New York's southern district, the coordinator for the Anti-Terrorism Advisory Council (ATAC). He has prosecuted a number of terrorist suspects in the last several years. But now he's set aside those modest duties in order to measure his abilities against a greater challenge - burnishing the image of a troubled Alaskan governor. And how quickly he turned about, trying to block rather than promote an investigation into wrongdoing. Interesting priorities held by Republican leaders, for whom the threat of terrorism pales in importance compared to their desire to hold onto the White House.

by A Siegel, Get Energy Smart! NOW!! and Energize America (www.ea2020.org) - crossposted with permission

In my neck of the woods, the local Republicans are showing a real green thumb (actually, perhaps green hammer) as there is green sprouting all over. Green signs with a gas pump are appearing with the words "Drill Now! Pay Less! Vote GOP!"

Now, other than the direct linkage of a gas pump and the Republican Party (the Grand Oil Party), it is hard to see any honesty in this poster. It is a continuation of the concerted Republican efforts to mislead and lie to the American people about critical energy issues. It is, in fact, impressive that this sign can be deceptive and simply dishonest on so many levels at the same time.

Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is having a hissy fit over S. 3001 – National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009 and has threatened a veto if Congress proceeds with its plans to clean up the scandal, corruption, and other problems created by using contractors to conduct out military defense.

Of course, that's not quite the way they put it.

Cross-posted from Daily Kos

In early news coverage of McCain's vice presidential pick, Sarah Palin was routinely called a "whistleblower," perhaps because the McCain campaign is promoting the image of her as a maverick and reformer. But, is Ms. Palin a genuine whistleblower, in the mold of Daniel Ellsberg, Coleen Rowley and Bunnatine Greenhouse, who risked their careers to protect citizens from harm and abuses of federal authority? Has she shown the kind of commitment demonstrated by Sen. Charles Grassley in protecting the free speech rights of government workers?

Photo: Whistleblower Bunnatine Greenhouse (center) and whistleblower law expert Stephen Kohn present an award to Sen. Charles Grassley (right) for his support of whistleblowers

On August 29, John McCain introduced Sarah Palin as his running mate. Almost immediately, she was drawn back into virtual seclusion. That speaks volumes about Palin's readiness for the job, and about McCain's confidence in her readiness. Fully 19 days have elapsed, or nearly a third of the time remaining before Election Day, and Palin continues to be under wraps. Finally, the McCain campaign announced, for the first time ever Palin will answer some questions from voters (but not reporters) at a townhall meeting with McCain.

Zounds! What a democracy we've got in America, where even a vice presidential candidate eventually has to field a few softball questions from the public.

John McCain appears to have believed every bit of nonsense that Iraqi exiles in Washington circulated during their campaign to involve the US in an invasion of Iraq. One of the chief people involved in selling those deceptions in DC was Randy Scheunemann, McCain's top foreign policy adviser. Yesterday both of them were involved in promoting another deception, this time fabricated by an Iranian exile – showing once again that McCain never outgrows his poor judgment, any more than he wises up and casts off the discredited advisers he relies upon.

John McCain's top economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, today credited him with helping to create the BlackBerry personal digital assistant. This grandiose claim invites ridicule and unfavorable comparisons to Al Gore's (accurate) statement that he had a hand in the internet's creation – and it will get both.

But before the chorus of laughter drowns out everything else, one point should be emphasized. Holtz-Eakin bases his absurd claim upon McCain's service on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. Though McCain was chairman of the committee in 1997-2001, it's far from clear what McCain achieved that helped to create the (Canadian) Blackberry (released in 2002). What we can say with certainty is that McCain is doing absolutely nothing now on the Senate Commerce Committee. That's not an exaggeration. Back in July when I was investigating McCain's absenteeism in the Senate, I discovered that McCain has attended no hearings this year of the Commerce Committee or any of its subcommittees. Not a single one. That continues to be the case, evidently. He simply walked away from his Senate duties in order to run for president –McCain hasn't shown up in the Senate since April – in order to bring reform to Washington, he now says.

In other words, the preposterous BlackBerry claim raises a host of questions about McCain's campaign and his Senate career. What precisely are his achievements during the long Senate career he boasts of? He talks endlessly about his 'experience' but is vague about what he's used it for. Since when was McCain an economic reformer? And why should voters give him a new job when he can't be bothered to do his current one?

We're more than five years into a disastrously failed occupation of Iraq and yet how rarely do we see any serious attempt to analyze the underlying problems. The best commentary on Iraq generally provides little actual analysis, preferring instead to pass along observations about facts and events, past or present. The worse discussions of Iraq, often from Bush administration officials and apologists, provide most of what passes for analysis of the situation in Iraq. Unfortunately nearly all the latter comes larded with sweeping generalizations, unsupportable assumptions, egregious misrepresentations, faulty interpretations, cultural misunderstandings, or selective omissions - all in the rosiest of hues.

This past week there appeared, however, an excellent, original, and thought-provoking analysis of Iraq after the "surge". The three co-authors bring insight and expertise as well as another quality too often lacking in discussions of Iraq: They don't have axes to grind or excuses to make for US policy to date. Their report is a must read for anybody seriously interested in what the future holds for American involvement in Iraq.

This morning in Florida, as the American financial market implodes, John McCain did his Herbert Hoover imitation once again - something that the Obama campaign frequently ridicules him for:

"I think still - the fundamentals of our economy are strong."

It makes a certain kind of sense for a sitting president to make this kind of assertion. George Bush has been saying the very same thing for several years as the economy stagnated and financial disaster loomed. But the fact that McCain feels impelled at this stage to embrace the economic-fundamentals-are-strong line reveals as clearly as anything the extent to which he is running as a quasi-incumbent, the extension of the Bush presidency.

The Government Accountability Project has just released a new report, Running the Gauntlet: The Campaign for Credible Corporate Whistleblower Rights. (opens pdf)

McClatchy notes that a new Spanish-language ad from John McCain is grossly misleading in blaming Barack Obama for blocking immigration reform legislation in the Senate. The truth is that the legislation was torpedoed by Republicans in the Senate, not Democrats. What's more, beginning in 2005 Obama had worked with a group of Senators – including McCain – to craft legislation for comprehensive immigration reform. Thus, as the Senate was considering the resulting immigration bill in May of 2006, McCain spoke in the chamber thanking several of his colleagues by name for their support during the process. Among those McCain praised was Barack Obama.

The new Democratic Secretary of State in Ohio, Jennifer Brunner, last week acted to prevent the state GOP from institutionalizing their beloved tactic of vote caging (via a poorly crafted law that Republicans had hoped would regularize caging). Republicans in many swing states have employed caging to "update" voter rolls by expunging the names of (mainly poor) voters who've moved residence recently. Republican operatives in OH are as outraged now that Brunner won't permit voters' names to be struck merely because their mail is returned as undeliverable, as they are that same-day registration will be allowed. It seems that once again they'll do anything to minimize the votes of the poor, the elderly, and the young. No great surprise, really.

But what struck me most about this report on Brunner's decision to rein in the vote caging mania is the argument by GOP operative William Todd that Brunner is politicizing the office of Ohio Secretary of State as badly as her predecessor, the infamous Ken Blackwell. That's quite a stretch, especially coming from a member of the Ohio Republican establishment that backed Blackwell to the hilt as he manipulated election processes – most notoriously, the 2004 presidential election.

So I suspected, dare I say it, a touch of hypocrisy in Mr. Todd. It took only a few moments of digging to turn up the truth: William Todd was a strong and unequivocal backer of Ken Blackwell in 2004. Even after that fiasco, in 2006 when Blackwell ran for governor while continuing to manipulate the election process, Todd backed him. It's only now, apparently, that Todd has discovered anything objectionable about Blackwell's flagrant abuse of power.

Contact between union organizers and workers is critical during union organizing drives. However, these days, making that contact is tough. Many workers drive to work and park in a company parking lot. Thanks to the US Supreme Court’s 1991 decision in Lechmere union organizers may be committing a trespass when they try to organize on a parking lot, even one like that in Lechmere that was open to the public.

Lechmere was Justice Thomas’ first opinion, by the way, and in it the majority overrruled the NLRB’s decision allowing union access.

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals just made organizing even tougher in a new case handed down Tuesday, September 9. So what's new there? Business as usual.

The Sunday New York Times brings further light to the already gaudy picture we've gained of Sarah Palin's corrupt, abusive, and paranoid style of leadership in Alaska. There are some additional details regarding Palin's tumultuous tenure as mayor of Wasilla, especially the vendettas she indulged in. For example, we learn of a city attorney whose firing she engineered after he'd put a hold on a development that was being built by one of Palin's supporters.

Most of the new information, however, concerns the abuse of power by Palin and her band of loyalists in the 20 months since she became governor. In an especially strange episode, for instance, an employee in the governor's office phoned one of Palin's conservative home town critics to tell her to pipe down.

And four months ago, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor’s career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to hear an assistant to the governor on the line, she said.

“You should be ashamed!” Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. “Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!”

by gjohnsit cross-posted with permission

America's addiction

“A moderate addiction to money may not always be hurtful; but when taken in excess it is nearly always bad for the health.”
- Clarence Day

America needs an intervention.

In an interview with ABC Sarah Palin flatly denied reports that she wanted to ban books from the Wasilla town library when she was mayor, in 1996. Yet another flagrant lie from the vice presidential candidate about her controversial past.

Sarah Palin's regular lies about her "opposition" to the Bridge to Nowhere have become a thing a legend during the past two weeks. Today in her ABC interview she added a new layer to this weird confection. I defy anybody to make sense of this jarring stupidity.

You knew there had to be a clip somewhere of John McCain belittling the qualifications of other Republican candidates who've never held national elective office. Now Sam Stein has found it, and what a duesy it is. This should settle once and for all the question of whether John McCain himself truly believes that Sarah Palin is experienced enough to step in as president, if needed.

Sarah Palin's ABC interviews last night were a national embarrassment. From the opening moments it had the feel of a cringe comedy except the joke is on America. I had a sense of deja vu from Dan Quayle's elevation in 1988. Just as with Quayle's first infamous interviews, Palin came across as ignorant and full of conviction and vacuous and earnest and equivocating and bellicose and naive and talking-pointed and unreflective and determined and shallow and self-righteous and hapless. It was immediately clear why the McCain campaign had to keep Palin away from reporters for the last two weeks.

Although the train-wreck is attracting plenty of attention already, what has gone unremarked is that the questions were straightforward, predictable, and fairly general. Charles Gibson did ask Palin about a couple of her controversial statements, though given how many false, contradictory, and bizarre comments she has made, he went exceedingly easy on her. He also pressed Palin a few times when she was especially evasive. But that was the extent to which the interview could be considered 'tough'. None of his questions were specific in the way that reporters generally test the extent of an unknown candidate's understanding of governance, policy issues, legislation, foreign relations, or history. Anybody who was remotely competent should have been able to respond to every one of those questions with ease. So the train-wreck was self-induced.

When asked by ABC interviewer Charlie Gibson her opinion of the "Bush Doctrine" — the central tenet of U.S. foreign policy lo these last eight long years — Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin couldn't muster a credible answer.

Instead of cavalierly threatening a resurgence of the Cold War perhaps Sen. John McCain's running mate could spend a bit of time on The Google.

September 10 was a banner day for fraud and corruption. Big in the news, of course, was the sexy Department of the Interior scandal involving sex, drugs, kickbacks, the whole nine yards. DOI-IG Report here.

Less sexy was the GAO report on crooked audits of DOD contractors, reported here yesterday.

And, then, of course, there is the DHS, Katrina, and no-bid contractors scandal.

by A Siegel crossposted with permission from Daily Kos

My blogging beat is Global Warming and Energy. And, the choice come November could not be starker in these arenas (that is, at least in fact not media framing). The contrast could not be starker ... across a wide range of issues.
Among these, John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin has added a searing issue to the table:

Do we want a separatist with easy access to the centers of power in the nation?

What would it mean to have a Vice President (likely President) sleeping with a separatist?

This question is essentially absent from the pages of traditional media.

Imagine if Michelle Obama were a registered member of the Black Panthers until 2002? Imagine the drumbeat of outrage that all Americans would hear. About Todd "My Guy" Palin's separatist credentials? Crickets chirping in the night ...

For your political viewing pleasure, three videos on rightwing fellow travelers - two calling out and challenging McCain's claims and one praising Indiana Governor Mitch - not exactly a friend to labor - Daniels.

Today GAO issued more reports than it does in some weeks. Many deserving serious individual attention, but in the interests of what can be done to get them more exposure, here are two of my picks - reports on the "successes" of border security and efforts to promote pay equity.

Today GAO issued a jaw-dropping investigation into crooked audits of DOD contractors. Two reports on Republican scandals in two different agencies on one day. Nice to have this DOD one to go along with the Interior IG report on an even sexier scandal, because, well, it involved sex as well as major corruption. This GAO report is the first of two reports on this issue, the first being a preliminary and limited audit and the second, yet to be issued report, will include the broader audit.

And, by the way, this sort of corruption creates a serious national security issue. We are not getting what we are paying for. So that leaves less money to pay for what we need.

I love the way GAO begins its conclusions of how well the laboratories that test our voting systems are performing, but, as always with GAO reports, it's what comes later that packs a big punch.

In the Washington Post today Bob Woodward reports that the reduction in violence in Iraq during the past year isn't entirely due to the increase in troops, as the Bush administration and its apologists would have it. Who would have figured that out were it not for Woodward's ballyhooed access to the White House? I mean, apart from all the bloggers who've been saying this for the past year.

USA Today is hyping its post convention Gallup poll with what seems to be a straight face. It finds a sudden and massive 8% swing toward John McCain, putting him in the lead 50-46%. That ought to have been the first clue that the poll can't be trusted; all year McCain's ceiling in national polling has been around 45%.

On Friday August 29 Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao got an early start on her style of Labor Day celebration by issuing as final regulations, the controversial stealth regulations that will make it more - not less - difficult for OSHA to do the job Congress gave it under the Nixon administration.

by permission of gjohnsit - crossposted from Daily Kos

On Friday we saw some pretty awful economic news. Unemployment spiked to over 6%, and the word is out that the taxpayers will be bailing out the massive mortgage giants of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

With news like that it would be pretty easy to miss a much smaller item with huge political implications for the presidential race.

The news I speak of is that regulators have seized Silver State Bank.

The short answer is: "Yes, you do!" In fact, you cannot get the earth friendly, farm friendly seal of approval unless you use Monsanto's - soon to be Elanco's - Posilac / rBST / rBGH / recombinant bovine somatatrophin / recombinant bovine growth hormone.

This from a group that was so against labeling what goes into producing the food we know as milk.

The longest border the US shares is with Canada - 4000 miles, with 70 million travelers and 35 million vehicles crossing the border each year. It is thus an important part of security US borders, an increasingly important issue since 9/11.

Recently, negotiations to enter into an important cooperative agreement fell apart after nearly four years of negotiation efforts - the United States and Canada "land preclearance pilot project" at Buffalo, New York-Fort Erie, Ontario. A major impediment was that the scarcity of land on the US side led to discussions for essentially borrowing land on the Canadian side to be used by the US immigration officers. Those negotiations have now broken off over fundamental disagreements on both sides, some of which are caused by US practices in place to fight terrorism but unacceptable under Canadian law. And once unacceptable under the US Constitution.

The Anchorage Daily News looked further into the obscure story of Mayor Sarah Palin's confrontations with the popular librarian of Wasilla, Mary Ellen Emmons. Her behavior was, if anything, more disturbing than has been reported until now.

Both ABC and Rasmussen have new polls that gauge what Americans think of John McCain's choice of running mate. The writeups tend to emphasize that Sarah Palin's favorability rating is at or slightly above 50%, as if it's surprising that voters who barely know her yet are willing to give Palin the benefit of the doubt. The more important numbers, however, are those that show whether she's helping McCain to persuade those voters he wanted to win over: moderates, independents, and women. Here Palin's poll numbers are telling. They're buoyed by near lock-step support among Republicans. However most other voters are underwhelmed with Sarah Palin, at best.

I hardly know what to make of this. Associated Press reporters David Espo and Robert Furlow published a report around 8 PM EST on the speech John McCain gave Thursday evening at the Republican National Convention. That was before McCain actually spoke.

John McCain, a POW turned political rebel, vowed Thursday night to vanquish the "constant partisan rancor" plaguing the nation as he launched his fall campaign for the White House. "Change is coming" to Washington, he promised the Republican National Convention...

McCain's speech was the highlight of the final night of the party convention, but before he took the podium, delegates unanimously awarded the vice presidential nomination to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. She is the first female ticketmate in Republican history...

Outside the hall, protesters calling for an end to the Iraq war vowed to march as McCain spoke.

I'll certainly be glad to hear that McCain has decided to put aside partisan rancor, especially after all the partisan rancor that has been dished up at the Republican National Convention. But I think I'll believe it when I see it - or hear it directly from McCain, at least.

I wouldn't have thought it possible, but at the Republican National Convention Sen. Sam Brownback just informed us that his friend has broken history.

In this historic nation, John McCain is a history maker, and with selecting Sarah Palin, a history breaker.

So what did McCain need most to achieve from last night's speeches?

The content and tone of the speeches at the RNC last night gave the impression that John McCain has no coherent plan to win this election. The speeches by Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and Rudy Giuliani were packed with non-sequiturs and own-goals in addition to the standard lies, exaggeration, self-praise, and strawmen. Even worse, they established a sneering tone toward Democrats that Sarah Palin then embraced.

Rather than enhance her own public image, she damaged it. She also tossed away the best chance she had to introduce and define herself to voters, and to brush aside the growing impression that she has little substance. She offered nothing substantial in this boilerplate speech, most of which could have been delivered by any number of interchangeable GOP attack-dogs. The single issue she seemed to care about was drilling for oil in Alaska. Anyway, Palin told us next to nothing about herself, her political views, her record. More strangely, she didn't try to explain why she'd be qualified to serve as vice president or president. The most she achieved last night was to introduce herself to the nation as unfailingly sarcastic and dismissive of her rivals. Whereas a well-known figure such as Giuliani might conceivably suppose that he could pull off a speech dedicated to belittling a rival politician who's more experienced than himself, how is that remotely credible for somebody who emerged from obscurity just a week ago? She has virtually no achievements to leverage such attacks upon. She has the thinnest of profiles to draw upon for credibility. It was a misfire. And yet by her extreme harshness, Palin invited and legitimized the harsh judgments being made of her, which have been proving devastating so far.

In other words, the speakers (and delegates) appear to have given little thought to how they were coming across to voters who aren't hyper-partisan – the people they need to persuade. If the McCain campaign identified what the convention speakers needed to achieve, Sarah Palin in particular, there's little evidence they implemented a strategy to reach those goals.

Many voters will be casting ballots on state propositions this November. Colorado seems to be trying to out-prop California, which, at times, seems to govern more by proposition than legislation.

Of especial interest are interest are propositions on workplace issues, such as outlawing at-will employment, right up there in importance with those on when life begins a/k/a stealth outlawing birth control propositions.

The American Constitution Society has been very active in publishing issue briefs and other pieces related to workplace issue. These are short but serious analyses of important policy issues. Here is what is up in just the most recent days.

When John McCain introduced his running mate last Friday, he described her as a reformer like himself. McCain and Sarah Palin both stressed her opposition to earmarks, in particular Sen. Stevens' infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" for Ketchikan, Alaska. Said Palin on Friday:

"I've championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress thanks, but no thanks, on that "Bridge to Nowhere." If our state wanted a bridge, I said, we'd build it ourselves."

The picture of Palin was false, as we quickly learned.

On Monday John McCain's chief vetter, Arthur Culvahouse, gave an interview to the AP whose purpose was to reassure the public that the vetting of Sarah Palin had been "full and complete". He described a deliberate process and implied strongly that it had not been finished hastily. It turns out, however, that he omitted a crucial detail: one of the most essential parts of the vetting process was not undertaken until the day before McCain offered Palin the position – and after she'd already been invited to Arizona to meet with McCain about becoming his running mate. That was Culvahouse's three-hour face-to-face interview with Palin, which he'd highlighted in his AP interview as evidence of the deliberateness of the process.

The national media finally is focusing on Sarah Palin's tumultuous tenure as mayor of Wasilla, though it is well documented by local and regional newspapers (as I discussed on Saturday). Fortunately one aspect of her controversial early career is getting more attention – her attempt during her first year as mayor to ban books in the town library.

Are Republican strategists panicking yet? If not, they should be. The rapid unraveling of John McCain's campaign with his selection of a running mate has many of the hallmarks of a political tipping point.

For starters, McCain may decide he has to ask Palin to step aside. If he doesn't, the fallout will continue to dog his campaign. If he does, it's an admission that he blundered. For now, McCain is trying to deny there's a problem.

"I just want to repeat again how excited I am to have Sarah Palin, the great governor of Alaska, as my running mate."

I'm reminded strongly of the days just before George McGovern's first VP choice, Thomas Eagleton, had to withdraw in August 1972. He too was a last minute pick and poorly vetted. At the time, I believe the conventional wisdom was that the episode had doomed McGovern's faltering candidacy.

Even if McGovern decides to keep Eagleton after all, the net effect has been to make McGovern look either devious or weak or both, or at the most charitable, indecisive.

The problem of what to do about Palin can't be circumvented or softened. No matter what McCain does, he'll make matters worse. But that's only the most obvious damage his selection did to his chances this November.

The real Palin agenda?

The New York Times confirms pretty decisively what had already become almost indisputable: Sarah Palin was not "thoroughly vetted" by John McCain's campaign, despite their frequent assertions that she was.

On Sunday I mentioned that Celtic Diva was reporting that an anoymous source had told her something quite revealing about John McCain.

A very reliable source overheard Republican spokesperson McHugh Pierre state TODAY [i.e. Friday] that he had spoken to the McCain Campaign. They are coming to Alaska tomorrow to check out the "Troopergate" investigation.

McHugh Pierre later showed up in her comment thread denying that he had said any such thing. So Celtic Diva's source, Barbara Bachmeier, came forward and agreed to go on the record about what Pierre said directly to her.

Today is Labor Day. Today especially, we should celebrate the contributions of labor unions to improving the lives of workers.

Among these contributions are the 8-hour day, overtime pay, the weekend, better wages, and workplace health and safety standards.

These benefits didn't just happen all by themselves. They required struggle and sacrifice. They came about only because workers fought for them. And the workers won only because they fought together. Solidarity was the key.

Today Sarah Palin announced that her seventeen-year-old daughter Bristol is pregnant. But that's really just a personal, or family, matter. The purpose of the announcement was to squelch long-running rumors in Alaska that Sarah Palin's last pregnancy was faked in order to cover up a pregnancy of her daughter. Those rumors are backed up only by a string of curious coincidences involving mother and daughter. Thus although it would have been scandalous for the Governor to have lied in claiming parentage to a baby not her own, that charge is in no way proven.

One thing that is known, however, is pretty scandalous.

In an interview on Sunday, John McCain lied shamelessly about how carefully he'd vetted Sarah Palin. He claimed to have watched her career in implementing reform for "many, many years". Palin became Governor only 20 months ago, however, and before that she was little known even in Alaska. She served in 2003 and 2004 on the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, a low profile post. In 2002 she ran and lost in the Republican primary for the post of Lt. Governor. And before that, she'd been the mayor of a town of about 5,000. McCain met her for the first time only in February 2008. In other words, McCain lied about having followed her career for a long time.

The reason it matters is, as quickly became apparent, McCain's campaign vetted Palin hastily and sloppily.

In his acceptance speech Barack Obama said he could lower the taxes for 95% of middle income workers while also delivering more services and resources in education, health care, and the environment. If you wondered what magic would allow him to do this, one factor you should consider is just how unbelievably filthy rolling in the dough rich the richest 5% are. Or even 1%. Compared to the rest of us.

And you should consider just how much we the 95% subsidize the lifestyles of the rich and famous. More than $20 billion a year in tax subsidies comes out of the pockets of those of us at the bottom and flows into the pockets of the ultra rich, And that figure does not include all of the subsidies by any means.

Cut out those subsidies and not taxing them fairly, and you suddenly have found money. Piles of it.