Come back here for, if I can stand it, livebloggy coverage of tonight’s debate live from Long Island.
And on a completely unrelated note, assuming that the Phillies finish the job against the Dodgers, I’ll be in the building for Game 4 of the World Series. I’ve been to two ALDS games before, back in Cleveland (1996, when the Orioles* knocked the Tribe out, and 2007′s famous “bug game”), but this ought to be a whole other level of insanity.
* = For my younger readers, this was a professional baseball team that once played in Baltimore.
Anyway, on with the show! Coverage starts at 9pm.
9:00: It’s time for the 49th (!) debate of the presidential campaign, stretching back to early last year. It’s almost over, America. You’ve nearly made it.
9:03: So which of you has a better economic plan? McCain: Fuck those greedy bastards! Obama: Democratic talking points will save us all!
9:09: McCain says tax hikes will rain down on us like poisoned candy, then channels his own “read my lips” moment as he stares into the camera creepily. Obama … spouts more talking points. McCain plays the “class warfare” card … and it’s on! Or something.
9:15: Schieffer: Show some vague sign of fiscal responsibility. Obama: Cutting dumb subsidies will singlehandedly save us. McCain: Let’s talk about the Great Depression and renewable energy. Um … wait, what? He then pivots to his ever-popular “earmarks are teh EVIL!” trope.
9:22: Johnny breaks out the legal pad! Obama is all “I’m not a liberal!” McCain is all “I’m not Bush!” Well that accomplished something.
9:25: Here we go. Schieffer plays the Ayers card! OOOOOOOOOOH! McCain repudiates … his own campaign? Well, kind of, but more so the John Lewis “McCain’s like George Wallace” shpiel and Obama’s choice to opt out of public financing. Obama says McCain is running a cynical negative campaign (shocker!). From there, it devolves into charges and counter-charges and blah blah blah …
9:33: Barack Obama will end cynicism in politics. Riiiiight. Check please.
From the department of “The pieces of my skull have been violently dispersed across the Tri-State Area”:
Oct. 10 (Bloomberg) — The global financial crisis is turning into a bigger drain on the U.S. federal budget than experts estimated two weeks ago, ballooning the deficit toward $2 trillion.
Bailouts of American International Group, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac likely will be more expensive than expected. States are turning to Washington for fiscal help. The Federal Reserve said this week it will begin buying commercial paper, the short-term loans companies used to conduct day-to-day business, further increasing costs. And analysts now say the $700 billion bank-rescue plan passed by Congress last week may have to be significantly larger.
“I always assumed they would be asking for more money along the way if it was necessary, and it looks like it’s going to be necessary,” said Stan Collender, a former analyst for the House and Senate budget committees, now at Qorvis Communications in Washington. “At the moment, there’s nothing happening here that’s positive for the budget. Nothing.”
The 2009 budget deficit could be close to $2 trillion, or 12.5 percent of gross domestic product, more than twice the record of 6 percent set in 1983, according to David Greenlaw, Morgan Stanley’s chief economist. Two weeks ago, budget analysts said the measures might push deficit to as much as $1.5 trillion.
That … wow. Congratulations, taxpayers: You’ve bought yourselves moderate recession relief by bringing the federal government several years closer to crippling insolvency. Be sure to thank Dubya for that on his way out.
Bloody hell. One day of trading after I tell you to buy and this happens: The Dow spikes nearly a full thousand points, with similar jumps on all the other indices. There’s no way this holds the week. I don’t care how much panic selling there was last week; we still have a dire recession on our hands and this is a rash overreaction. This was a rally on light volume (lots of bankers were off for Columbus Day and, in fact, the credit markets that were the source of the crash were closed) that has no particular justification. The market will come back, but not like this. Expect a 500-point drop at the open tomorrow; people will be taking profits from a dramatic surge today that screams “bear market rally.”
In other news, The Onion strikes election-related gold here and here.
Gawker’s blog network has a whole new-fangled post feed set up to compile all of their “Wall Street meltdown complete coverage.” Enjoy! Meanwhile, it’s Sunday night and the market opens on Wall Street in less than 12 hours. Do you feel lucky? Well, markets in the Pacific Rim are up in early morning trading, so perhaps the freefall ends here.
It’s a busy weekend of grading for me, but here’s a few things that caught my eye:
[1] Four NYT profiles: Dubai as an emerging hub of secularism and Islam co-existing, idiots who failed to understand that credit cards aren’t free money, the precious few math geeks that America has compared to every other nation on earth, and the centennial of the Long Island Motor Parkway, the world’s first car-only road.
[2] Proof that the Internet will mercilessly mock everything that deserves it: A review of the glossy magazine treatment for the New Testament. “Thomas Nelson has produced a frightening Frankenstein monster of a tome, crudely stitching the transcendent tale of Christ to the most vapid, mindless portions of pop culture. However, it will undoubtedly look good on a bookshelf next to The Rubaiyyat of Hannah Montana and BritneySpears’ Bhagavad Gita.” Well. Played.
[3] IMF chief says: “Intensifying solvency concerns about a number of the largest U.S.-based and European financial institutions have pushed the global financial system to the brink of systemic meltdown.” Yikes. So what are they going to do to fix it? Well, um, they don’t know how. In short, enjoy the depression!
[4] It’s on now: Civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) analogized John McCain … to George Wallace. Okay, that’s hyperbolic and you damn well know it. Thanks for derailing actual discussion of issues for another couple days.
From Politico, reporting on a McCain town hall in Minnesota:
“[A] man in the audience stood up and told McCain he’s ‘scared’ of an Obama presidency and who he’d select for the Supreme Court.
“‘I have to tell you. Sen. Obama is a decent person and a person that you don’t have to be scared of as president of the United States,’ McCain said as the crowd booed and shouted ‘Come on, John!’”
I guess this is what happens when he has pangs of conscience and says merely that his opponent is actually a DECENT PERSON: His own supporters turn on him. Later, a woman said Obama was an Arab and McCain had to take the mic from her. Let’s be honest here: Props to the Senator for deciding he won’t further slander an almost-certain future president in a desperate attempt to narrow his deficit.
Meanwhile, in other news, this one-liner just crossed the wires:
“ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Legislative panel finds Palin abused her power in firing of public safety commissioner.”
The Dow just dropped 690 points in the first six minutes of trading.
Let’s work this out for a minute. A year ago, the Dow was above 14,000. Now it’s below 8,000 and falling. Are you really going to tell me that American corporations are worth half of what they were last year? That’s where we’ll be if it drops another thousand.
See? There was just a 350-point bounce while I’ve been typing this.
If you have any spare money, plow it into stocks. They’re going up.
Unless, of course, we just killed the final capitulation with a rally.
UPDATE: And 30 minutes later, we’re in positive territory. Damn.
… It’s now 10:30 and Still-President Dubya, struggling to appear relevant, is delivering a remarkably bland speech at the White House … summarizing things that the government has already done, then going into standard “America: Fuck Yeah!” kind of economic cheerleading. Awesome. Well, that’s great and all, but you enacted those policies a couple thousand Dow points ago and the credit markets are frozen. Shouldn’t you have waited to speak until you had some new material?
The market is back down about 300 points (and falling), not because of the Prez but due to very ugly results of a credit default swap auction. The volatility index hit 72 this morning, an all-time high, and is still up near 70. The point at which you call markets shaky is 30. Yikes.
UPDATE (7:15 pm): Holy smokes. It’s over. And the magnitude of the damage for the week is mind-boggling. It can be summed up in three words, regarding the performance of the Dow Jones Industrials:
UPDATE 1: Not just a figurative punchline anymore – a literal one.
UPDATE 2: The BBC publishes a feature piece about the place.
UPDATE 3: Oh bloody hell. The NY Times made a video, too.
McCain and Palin held a rally last night in Strongsville, Ohio, where I lived for most of my life. It was actually McCain’s second trip there in three weeks, as it is a middle-class, Republican-leaning suburb of Cleveland. (Bush 41 held a rally there just before the 1992 election.) The big news, at least for true Clevelanders, was that Browns stars Brady Quinn and Joe Thomas made appearances to endorse McCain- Palin in front of a massive, raucous crowd.
Apparently an Ohio-based leftyblogger dropped by to interview members of the crowd as they were filing into the campaign event. Admittedly, it was gotcha journalism but … the horrifying results are as you see above. The clips were picked up by Politico and Wonkette, amongothers.
I did not grow up in the boondocks. This is a typical bedroom community in Ohio. And I am very afraid. These are otherwise civilized people that legitimately believe the vile nonsense that has been spread about a United States senator. As has been noted elsewhere, Obama is running on a platform that, while stylistically different, is not at great policy variance from that of the last two Democratic nominees, for example, yet there was never this sort of personal vilification surrounding either one of them.
I am deeply horrified and embarassed today. There is nothing wrong with making an informed, policy-based decision however you may like … but that’s not what this is. It’s clear to me that this is latent racism. All in all, I can’t say I’m surprised, considering that Strongsville is over 94% white and I can count the number of African-Americans that I shared a class with, K-12, on one hand — we’re dealing with a group of people that has willingly disconnected themselves from the outside world. (If Applebee’s is the center of your community and your idea of quality cuisine, you live in a godforsaken place.) Residents once called the police when a group of black men, on lunch break from a construction job, were seen walking down a city street — not in the fifties, mind you, but the nineties.
“STRONGSVILLE, OHIO: Exclusive: the ticket has already flipped. There was some loose talk recently about Palin McCain replacing McCain Palin but here in Strongsville, Ohio the (very large and very enthusiastic) crowds out to see the two of them were only really interested in one of them. They chant her name in the hall but more importantly outside – when asked what it is about the Republican case that gets them going this year – almost everyone mentions her.
“She is, it seems to me, doing the party great good and great harm at the same time. The Republicans could not hope to win without the backing of the people I watched lining up in British style weather behind the Target car park. And yet the Palin world-view – essentially ignorant, unable to name a single paper read – is not the view that a nation facing an economic catastrophe, complex and international and baffling to most minds, is likely to choose.
“But having lost – if that is what happens – what then? Does Palin become the future? This is what David Brooks is getting at in a warning that will come to haunt the Republicans, who have after all been the party of ideas for most of the last 30 years. To hear Palin screeching on about Reagan must be painful to many Republicans who knew him. Reagan knew what papers he read.”
That’s what Britain thinks of us. How do you like them apples?
It is becoming increasingly clear how dark things look. If Obama wins next month, there are two things that appear likely: First, Sarah Palin will be the nominee in 2012 — it’s the base that votes in the primaries, and Palin has captured their fervor like no one did this time around … and perhaps even beyond whatever Bush was able to muster. Second, I don’t think that a President Obama would survive his term. Someone, and probably many someones, would turn their ignorant hate into horrifying action.
WASHINGTON – The Senate Select Intelligence Committee is looking into allegations from two U.S. military linguists that the government routinely listened in on phone calls of American military and humanitarian aid workers serving overseas.
“These are extremely disturbing allegations,” said Committee Chairman Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., in a statement issued Thursday. “We have requested all relevant information from the Bush administration. Any time there is an allegation regarding abuse of the privacy and civil liberties of Americans it is a very serious matter.”
ABC News first reported the charges Thursday, citing one current and one former military linguist by name. They are contained in the book “The Shadow Factory,” to be published next week.
The linguists said National Security Agency interceptors routinely monitored and recorded the private calls of U.S. military personnel, Red Cross and other humanitarian workers; personal discussions that had entertainment value — pillow talk or phone sex — were shared among intercept operators, they said.
But it’s just a “terrorist surveillance program,” right guys? Fuckers.
