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At the horse races

by — ,

From WaPo:

Now it is less than a month later. Obama appears to be cruising and McCain stumbling. Every shift in campaign tactics by McCain is seen through the prism of an operation in distress. That’s why McCain is on the hot seat for Tuesday’s debate.

Well, okay. It’s seen that way by Beltway reporters and the politically obsessed (guilty as charged, your honor.) But that’s “horse race” campaign coverage, focusing on the tactics and strategy. Nothing against it, actually, but it’s becoming more beside the point right now.

What strikes me is how much interest there is in this election amongst normal people. A lot of folks may be leaning one way or the other, but they’re watching the debates and are genuinely concerned about the economic crisis and who will lead this country. I’ve certainly been a little surprised by some friends and neighbors (both Republican and Democratic) who approached the first two debates with the anticipation usually reserved for football games. (We now live in a country where people make decent snacks for political debates! Yeah!)

When you’ve observed politics closely for a long time, though, debates can be pretty tough to stomach. Platitudes abound, and transparent efforts to score the next “Where’s the beef?” line grow tiresome. So the earnestness with which many voters are viewing this election is refreshing.

Broadly speaking, I think there is an expectation by the public that the candidates will actually say something meaningful tonight about the meltdown. People want to know what these guys are going to do about it, and I’m certain platitudes and evasiveness are not going to be met with much acceptance. Nobody wants to bore the audience to tears with technical discussions, but laying out a long-term, sensible plan for the economy would seem to be within the abilities of at least one of these candidates. You would think.

I suppose it’s likely we may hear the names “Ayers” and “Keating,” but if it gets out of hand people are going to be royally pissed.

Just my $.02.

Comments

  1. 1

    Gee, maybe we’ll here about the Palin’s Un-American activities:

    “My government is my worst enemy. I’m going to fight them with any means at hand.”

    This was former revolutionary terrorist Bill Ayers back in his old Weather Underground days, right? Imagine what Sarah Palin is going to do with this incendiary quote as she tears into Barack Obama this week.

    Only one problem. The quote is from Joe Vogler, the raging anti-American who founded the Alaska Independence Party. Inconveniently for Palin, that’s the very same secessionist party that her husband, Todd, belonged to for seven years and that she sent a shout-out to as Alaska governor earlier this year. (“Keep up the good work,” Palin told AIP members. “And God bless you.”)

    AIP chairwoman Lynette Clark told me recently that Sarah Palin is her kind of gal. “She’s Alaskan to the bone … she sounds just like Joe Vogler.”

    (snip)

    Before his strange murder in 1993, party founder Vogler preached armed insurrection against the United States of America. Vogler, who always carried a Magnum with him, was fond of saying, “When the [federal] bureaucrats come after me, I suggest they wear red coats. They make better targets. In the federal government are the biggest liars in the United States, and I hate them with a passion. They think they own [Alaska]. There comes a time when people will choose to die with honor rather than live with dishonor. That time may be coming here. Our goal is ultimate independence by peaceful means under a minimal government fully responsive to the people. I hope we don’t have to take human life, but if they go on tramping on our property rights, look out, we’re ready to die.”

    This quote is from “Coming Into the Country,” by John McPhee, who traipsed around Alaska’s remote gold mining country with Vogler for his 1991 book. The violent-tempered secessionist vowed to McPhee that if any federal official tried to stop him from polluting Alaska’s rivers with his earth-moving equipment, he would “run over him with a Cat and turn mosquitoes loose on him while he dies.”

    Vogler wasn’t just a blowhard either. He put his secessionist ideas into action, working to build AIP membership to 20,000 — an impressive figure by Alaska standards — and to elect party member Walter Hickel as governor in 1990.

    Vogler’s greatest moment of glory was to be his 1993 appearance before the United Nations to denounce United States “tyranny” before the entire world and to demand Alaska’s freedom. The Alaska secessionist had persuaded the government of Iran to sponsor his anti-American harangue.

    That’s right … Iran. The Islamic dictatorship. The taker of American hostages. The rogue nation that McCain and Palin have excoriated Obama for suggesting we diplomatically engage. That Iran.

    AIP leaders allege that Vogler, who was murdered that year by a fellow secessionist, was taken out by powerful forces in the U.S. before he could reach his U.N. platform. “The United States government would have been deeply embarrassed,” by Vogler’s U.N. speech, darkly suggests Clark. “And we can’t have that, can we?”

    http://www.salon.com/opinion/f.....namerican/

  2. 2

    I know the term horse race is a figure of speech but you need to keep Steve, proprietor of Steve’s Stupid Solution from any location behind a horse.

    The view is too inviting… and… Steve may “capitalize” on it.

  6. 6

    Here’s a WaPo story Puddy:

    “A federal judge today ordered that 17 Chinese Muslims held at the Guantanamo Bay military prison be released into the United States by Friday, agreeing with the detainees’ attorneys that the Constitution bars holding the men indefinitely without cause.

    It was the first time that a U.S. court has ordered the release of a Guantanamo detainee, and the first time that a foreign national held there has been ordered brought to the United States.

    U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina issued the landmark ruling in the case of a small band of captives, known as Uighurs, who have been held at Guantanamo for nearly seven years and are no longer considered enemy combatants by the U.S. government.

    At a hearing packed with Uighurs who live in the Washington area, Urbina rejected government arguments that he had no authority to order the men’s release. He said he had such authority because the men were being held indefinitely and it was the only remedy available. He cited a June decision by an appellate court that found evidence against the Uighurs to be unreliable.

    Urbina said in court that he ordered the release “because the Constitution prohibits indefinite detention without cause.” He added, “The separation of powers do not trump” the prohibition against holding people indefinitely without trial.

    A government appeal of the decision is likely.”

    (snip)

    “In Camp 6, the Uighurs are alone in metal cells throughout the day, are prohibited for the most part from conversing with others, and take all their meals through a metal slot in the door, lawyer P. Sabin Willett said in his affidavit, which was based on what he was told during his visit Jan. 15-18. They have little or no access to sunlight or fresh air, have had nothing new to read in their native language for the past several years, and are sometimes told to undertake solitary recreation at night, he said.

    “They pass days of infinite tedium and loneliness,” according to Willett’s court filing. One Uighur’s “neighbor is constantly hearing voices, shouting out, and being punished. All describe a feeling of despair . . . and abandonment by the world.” Another Uighur, named Abdusumet, spoke of hearing voices himself and appeared extremely anxious during Willett’s visit, tapping the floor uncontrollably, he said.”

    Last June, the government tried to defend its continued detention of some of the Uighurs. However:

    “The government suffered a major setback in June when a federal appeals court found the evidence against one Uighur to be so weak that it compared the government’s legal theories to a nonsensical 19th-century poem, Lewis Carroll’s “The Hunting of the Snark.” The court ordered the man, Huzaifa Parhat, released, transferred or offered a new military hearing.

    The government chose not to retry Parhat and announced it would no longer treat him as an enemy combatant. It subsequently did the same for four others and added the final 12 late last month.”

    “Religious and community leaders from both Tallahassee, Florida and the Washington D.C. area offered to the court detailed plans for the support of the men, from housing and counseling to employment and car insurance. In this stunning show of goodwill and solidarity, 20 leaders from faith-based communities in Tallahassee, Florida, and a network of refugee resettlement agencies and other religious groups, have pledged to help settle the men in local communities. Many members of the Uighur community came to court today to lend support.”

    Good for them. Good for the judicial system. Shame on our government, which preferred compounding a deep injustice to making things right. And may the appeals process on this and all similar cases be as brief as they can possibly be.

    http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/

  7. 7

    Maybe WaPo should focus on this part of the Richard Fuld Story – Lehman Brothers to Barack Obama’s Campaign $393,324

  8. 8

    Maybe WaPo should focus on this part of the Richard Fuld Story – Lehman Brothers to Chucky Schumer’s campaign $53,750

  9. 9

    LMAO!! Poor Stupes.

    The first African American Prez is going to be a Dem.

    Heh. Bear Stearns was a McSame contributor as was Merril Lynch as is Bank of America who took care of the Merrill Lynch problem. They get the royal treatment while Lehman goes under.

    Hmmm. I wonder why?

  10. 10

    A West Virginia Republican was recently charged with 73 counts of possession of child pornography, 45 counts of sexual
    assault in the first degree for allegedly having sex with a child under age 11, nine counts
    of use of obscene matter with intent to seduce a minor, seven counts of display of
    obscene matter to a minor and two counts of employing a minor to do sexually explicit
    conduct. He was sentenced to 80 years.

    http://www.times-news.com/loca.....00823.html

    This has been another edition of “Puddy’s Heroes”.

    Puddy will follow with the usual Republican-style attack on the messenger. After I post a link to one of the hundreds of Republicans busted for sexual depravity of one kind or another, Puddy responds by exclaiming that I am the one with the problem. He’ll call me the usual names. He’ll toss out the usual accusations. What he won’t do, what he’ll never do, is condemn the Republican party for having become a Mecca (I like that!) for our nation’s despicable pedophiles and goatfuckers. His approval of Republican depravity may be silent, but it is approval all the same.

  11. 11

    Keep up the great work Steve. It’s so sweet to see Stupes treading water for his life in that smelly sea of right wing lies.

  12. 12

    Steve, purveyor of that worthless spirit, Steve’s Stupid Solution used regularly by HA lefties like ekim and rujax! is a broken record. HE also has 24 hour libtard mental spasm disease.

    The last time he posted some crap here and accused me of wanting to attack him I asked

    “Where have I ever supported child porn, sexual assults, pedophilia, etc”

    URL

    Citation

    Time and Date Stamp.

    I’m still waiting for Steve, purveyor of that worthless spirit, Steve’s Stupid Solution to fess up the links. So far he is batting 1.000, he is as ignorant as his posts demonstrate. Can’t hide that lunacy behind a monitor.

  13. 13

    Ohhhhh yeah yelling loser boy. You two are one hit wonders.

    Steve, purveyor of that worthless spirit, Steve’s Stupid Solution – on his goatfukkin

    yelling loser boy on his Republican sex drive.

  15. 15

    The DJIA surrendered the (partial) gains it made in the last hour of trading yesterday, finishing -508.39 at 9,447.11.

    This means that the DJIA has has a return of -10.77% for the eight years of Republican Economics under the Bush administration, not accounting for inflation, which would drop the number significantly further.

  16. 16

    Puddy …

    Damnit all man I KNOW you are a patriot!

    Don’t you think enough harm has been done by partisan bullshit?

    Leave McCain and Obama out of it, just foc us on the real issues of what needs to be done to rescue OUR country. That would be a,lot more useful role as a curmudgeon than adding to the mix of fecal matter.

    Getting to be President may just be a game to some, but it is a game that has HUGE effects on all but the wealthiest of us.

    As a starter, here are four HUGE issues no one is addressing:

    The effin Russian Navy in back in the Caribbean .. first time since the missile crisis!

    … shouldn’t we be doing something?

    Bush’s NASA plan … go to Mars for some fucking reason .. is breaking NASA’s gonads.

    …. has NASA become a pork roast?

    The only credible eladership of republican party appears to be the radical right.

    … we NEED two fucntional parties, How can the Reps be reformed?

    Ther media seems to ONLY report whatever the daily spin of both parties is.

    … what good are they of they do not independently report the news? Is anyone really interested in spin anmd counter spin? Are Ayers and Keating “news” or flying feces?

    ——————————-

    I have an idea for a challenge. You love tghe curmudgeon role and I would be wi

    Maybe we could have a contest, for one week we could switch nom de web and impersonate each other! You could play the pompous, self righteous professor and I could play the preening Randite feline?

    First one “discovered” wins a free Indian dinner.

  17. 17

    The Dow lost another 500 points today.

    How much longer is the right going to keep insisting that there’s a pony at the bottom of the manure pile?

  19. 19

    One of my favorites of the “Puddy’s Heroes” series is Bob Allen. We all remember Bob’s story. He’s the Florida Republican who was convicted for soliciting an undercover black cop in a park toilet. (Note to self, What’s with these Republicans and public toilets??) You see, Bob offered to pay the black cop $20 if he could blow him. (Note to self, What’s with these Republicans and their lust for black cock, and where does Puddy fit in this equation??)

    http://blogs.orlandosentinel.c.....convi.html

    This has been another edition of “Puddy’s Heroes”.

  20. 20

    McCain and Palin want American voters to believe that Barack Obama, a fine and honorable United States Senator and presidential candidate, hates Americans and wants to turn our country over to terrorists. This absurd argument from these two limp-minded fools reveals incredible contempt for, and cynicism toward, the American public. A landslide is necessary to teach these two a lesson

  21. 21

    @16 I’m sure you’ve followed the game plan, SJ. Once all NASA money is diverted from the canceled research missions to the Mars mission, cancellation of the Mars mission alone pulls the plug on NASA. The fundies are expected to show their deep appreciation. Meanwhile, the Chinese are now spacewalking over the earth.

  22. 22

    Lookie Here AIG gets a bailout and…

    Cycle – Total – Democrats – Republicans %Dems %Repubs

    2008 – $716,892 $485,967 – – $230,525 – – 68% – – 32%

    After Bailout, AIG Execs Head to California Resort

    “Less than a week after the federal government committed $85 billion to bail out AIG, executives of the giant AIG insurance company headed for a week-long retreat at a luxury resort and spa, the St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, California, Congressional investigators revealed today. “Rooms at this resort can cost over $1,000 a night,” Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) said this morning as his committee continued its investigation of Wall Street and its CEOs. AIG documents obtained by Waxman’s investigators show the company paid more than $440,000 for the retreat, including nearly $200,000 for rooms, $150,000 for meals and $23,000 in spa charges.

  23. 23

    SeattleJew, while I like your plan, I would have to relearn how to think Donkey. I got goosebumps when I wrote that line.

    But SeattleJew we’d have to trade our erudite positions! I would have to become a player to mimic a UW professor! There’s you, Darryl, and isn’t there another character here?

  24. 24

    AIG Contributions

    Senate Dodd, Christopher J $104,300 Donkey
    Senate Obama, Barack $71,761 Donkey
    Senate McCain, John $41,699
    Senate Clinton, Hillary $41,431 Donkey
    Senate Baucus, Max $24,750 Donkey
    Senate Biden, Joseph R Jr $19,975 Donkey

  26. 26

    THE STORY is not that a couple of bogus donors were found among the thousands who have donated well over $200 million to Obama. If you look hard enough at McCain you’ll find the same. Neither man is responsible for weirdities in their donor pool, and I’m sure each campaign returns bogus donations. Obama’s certainly does.

    No, THE STORY is that the economy is tanking, the Dow is dropping like a penny off the Empire State Building, and fewer people than ever in our history think we’re doing well. Such people are a bit less likely to favor the incumbent party.

    A new Gallup poll finds that just nine percent of the American public are “satisfied with the way things are going in the United States — the lowest such reading in Gallup Poll history. … The previous low point for Gallup’s measure of satisfaction had been 12%, recorded back in 1979, in the midst of rising prices and gas shortages when Jimmy Carter was president.”

    Not only that, but oddly enough, these people want a candidate who presents solutions to their problems. Because Obama does, he’s ahead. Because John McCain HAS no solutions, he’s got what we like to call “a spot of trouble.”

    Or, in the vernacular, he’s “toast.”

  27. 27

    @12 “Where have I ever supported Republican child porn, sexual assults, pedophilia, etc”

    Where have you ever once condemned the Republican party for having become a magnet for pedophiles?

    URL

    Citation

    Time and Date Stamp.

    You can’t because you have never once condemned your party for what it has become.

    Do you believe in God? Do you think God will forgive you for how you’ve silently condoned the sexual abuse of children by Republican politicians? Will you plead to God, “Where have I ever supported…” And do you really think she’ll buy that? You risk eternity in hell’s fire simply to provide cover for disgusting, pedophile politicians. Why? For a tax cut? Is it the promise of endless war? What’s your problem, Pudz? Why are you so fucked up?

  28. 28

    The stock market is down another 508 points today and $2 trillion has been erased from ordinary citizens’ retirement accounts. Yep, this should be a great time for McCain to reiterate how well Republican Whack-O-Nomics are working! Tonight is the ideal time for him to shill for deregulation and corporate tax breaks! Nothing for workers, more tax cuts for the rich, just shut up voters and wait for it to trickle down to you! Whoops, McCain’s message may not resonate right now …

  29. 29

    28
    Financial crisis? Global economic meltdown? Credit crunch? Who cares? As Sarah Palin said today, “Our opponent launched his political career from the living room of a domestic terrorist.” Now that is something that needs to be addressed at tonight’s debate. McCain cannot let himself get bogged down in insignificant minutiae like setting out a plan for addressing our economic future.

  30. 30

    28 It gets even better…Looks like the dominoes are going to continue to fall. Morgan Stanley is selling off a quarter of itself and becoming Morgan Stanley Mitsubishi. Bank of America is starting to choke, trying to maintain liquidity by issuing more shares into a market where nobody’s buying, after being called upon to consume the festering corpses of one or two too many other failed outfits. Now the FDIC is raising the rates it charges banks to insure deposits. Look for wherever you park your money to pass that along in the form of hikes in checking, overdraft and ATM fees.

    Are we having fun yet?

  31. 31

    Imagine the uproar if Michelle Obama was revealed to have joined a black nationalist party whose founder preached armed secession from the United States and who enlisted the government of Iran in his cause! The Obama campaign would probably not survive such an explosive revelation. Particularly if Barack Obama himself was videotaped giving the anti-American secessionists his wholehearted support just months ago.

    But this is just what Sarah Palin has done. She has supported an anti-American seccessionist movement in which her husband was an active member (until she caught the political bug, anyway). She just sent out a video congratulating and blessing these secessionists AS GOVERNOR OF ALASKA. Did she send such a warm fuzzy message of thanks to the state’s Democrats? I think you know the answer. Hint: no.

    I can come to no other logical (using Republican logic) conclusion: Sarah Palin is a terrorist.

  32. 32

    Funny post from Kevin Drum (maybe he didn’t mean it to be):

    It’s possible that there was never any winning strategy for McCain in the first place, but the strategy he ended up with has nonetheless been almost astonishingly bad. It’s like he just put the last few winning Republican campaigns in a blender and decided to repeat them. Neither he nor Steve Schmidt seem to understand that the Republican base just isn’t what it used to be.

    Yep. Funny.

  33. 33

    Fromn DailyKos:

    It’s looking like a blowout, guys. It’s near-impossible to keep up with all the polling anymore. It’s a flood, and it’s all looking ridiculously good for our side. So rather than try to list them all (you can go to Pollster.com to get them), let’s look at the averages of all those polls.

    The Pollster.com averages are from 9/15 to today. The numbers in parenthesis are the October 2 results. As you’ll see, there’s been heavy movement toward Obama:

    Safe Obama states: 197
    Safe McCain states: 143

    Swing states
    Click the link to read the numbers…

    Total (average 9/15-today): Obama 364, McCain 174
    Total (10/2 snapshot): Obama 333, McCain 205

    Obama increased his lead the last five days from 333 electoral votes to 364. But that’s not what’s so amazing.

    Five days ago, Obama crossed the 270 thresshold with New Hampshire and Colorado, both only O+1.8 states. Michigan and Pennsylvania were only four-point Obama leads. Sure, he was winning big in the Electoral College, but it was a thin, shallow, tenuous lead.

    Look at it now. Obama crosses 270 electoral votes with Virginia, and that’s a solid six-point advantage. You have to go down to North Carolina to get under a four-point margin, and by then, Obama has already racked up 324 electoral votes.

    These are blowout numbers. Pennsylvania has utterly collapsed for McCain, with Obama leads in SUSA (55-40), Muhlenberg’s daily tracker (48-38), Q-poll (54-39), and Rasmussen (50-42) over the last week.

  34. 34

    31/32/33 The other delightful possibility is that McCain and Palin were always meant to be “placeholders”, running a sham campaign designed to create as much friction and division as possible among many Americans who otherwise might be peaceful neighbors.

    All leading up to some ghastly “October surprise”.

  36. 36

    For Democrats and prgressives, I do have an obvious reminder. Yes the polls look great, (nice tracking job, btw, its become a favorite morning exercise of mine to poke around and count votes and trends on several sites including pollster.com) even if it is taking a friggin depression to get us there finally. But we cannot count our chickens before they hatch.

    These last four weeks are going to be the nastiest and most awful we have seen. We are facing a seriously tempermental and explosive opponent, a seriously deranged running mate with twisted and weird delusions of grandeur, and an entrenched power base not ready to leave. This, and a flock of media enablers who will provide a platform and an echo chamber for the worst commentary and most ridiculous assertions. The race will become, as I read somewhere today, “a knife fight in a phone booth.”

    We have to close strong and sprint through the finish line, not just run to it. I can remember when we pulled up a bit in 1996, and even though Clinton won, we lost federal and local races by thin margins that affected us in many ways including losing the State Senate. In 2000 and 2004, the Repubs attack strategies and win at all costs approach, truth and morals be damned, allowed them to close more strongly than we did, and got Bush where he is. And thus, it got us where we are.

    Lets not let that happen again. Keep the eyes on the prize. Sprint hard and rest on November 5th.

  37. 37

    36 The media complicity with the RepublicaNazis may evaporate if we see more stunts like Palin turning crowds against TV news crews covering her appearances.

    The excrement hit the airscrew in Chicago in 1968 when Daley’s thugs started roughing up CBS reporters on the convention floor, and Uncle Walter decided to stop playing nicey-nicey. It probably cost the Democrats the election.

  38. 38

    The poll numbers are encouraging, especially in Ohio and Pennsylvania. But I doubt the Republicans are going to let those states go easily.

    Remember in Ohio in 2004, when the Republican Secretary of State disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters (including Veterans in Iraq) based on an illegal Republican caging campaign, and voters in Democratic precincts had to wait in line hours to vote (some had the doors close in their faces) whereas reliable Republican precincts had no waiting lines at all.

    And Florida in 2004, where some voters complained that they saw their votes switch from Democrat to Republican the moment they pushed the “vote” button on their electronic Diebold voting machines. In some precincts in Florida, the numbers of votes tallied for Bush were a numerical impossibility.

    Likewise, the exit polling, which is historically VERY reliable as an early indicator of the vote, suddenly had a significant discrepency with the reported vote counts, a discrepency which ALWAYS favored Bush. Remember that exit polling is so reliable, the U.S. government has historically used it as an indicator of the legitimacy of foreign elections. In 2004, the pollsters were left scratching their heads trying to figure out what went wrong. But if the same race was held in a foreign country, the U.S. would have condemned the election as fraudulent.

  39. 39

    As I’ve mentioned quite a few times, the polls still don’t pick up people who don’t have land lines, and only have cell phones. Those people tend to be younger than the national averages, and recent surveys show that they favor Obama by more than two to one. Moreover, young people appear to be more motivated and organized to vote than ever before. It will be interesting to see how this plays out a month from now.

  40. 40

    On to the debate:

    So what are the key words for tonight’s debate? Do we have Bingo cards available?

  41. 41

    Note I did not say that Bush actually “won” election.

    Your points are well taken. I am part of a great effort by many people helping to organize lawyers and non-lawyers alike to serve as poll watchers and to respond immediately to any voting machine problems, long lines, harrassment, or any disenfranchisement efforts. Anyone who wantss can join (even our Repub. friends) by contacting the state party. hre is a lso a great non-partisan effort that had a great and successful training last night and still takes volunteers.

    Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush should have been in jail for 2000 and Kenneth Blackwell or whatever his name in Ohio should have been prosecuted.

    Lets not let it happen again.

  42. 42

    For History’s sake:

    I saw this on one of the history forums I frequent, from a poster who has a reputation for his vast knowledge which he can call quickly to his disposal. The subject was whether the Versailles Treaty was really responsible for the rise of Hitler and WWII (at least, the European part). A portion of his treatise is as follows:

    …Those two plans (Dawes early, Young last), were both before Hitler. He rose to power after the “crash”, and before the Young plan could be put into effect in total. Even though the reparations had been put in moritorium, i.e. “forgiven” before his rise, he took credit for “standing up to the financial interests (read Jew bankers)”, even though he had nothing to do with it. The Weimar Government had unilaterally refused to pay any more of the payments, and the Lucerne group overseeing the gathering of the payments took Young’s advice and approved the forgiving of the reparations. The rest of the Young plan never was implemented until post-war.

    Economically Nazi Germany was similar to a giant “Ponzi” scheme (named after the Italian immigrant Carlo “Charles” Ponzi and used originally in America directly after WW1). However in the Hitler version the original wealth in their control was spent to build weapons of war to conquer and/or assimilate other nation’s wealth (Austria, Czechoslovkia, Poland, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway) rather than pay off old investors. The first defeat on the field of battle was the “death knell” for the scheme. No new material “wealth” coming in, and the internal “wealth” stretched to the limit. A “Ponzi” only works as long as there is new “input”. As soon as the “input” is less than the “output”, it collapses. It was not that it was one ( a Ponzi scheme), just that the driving force was similar to one. Incoming wealth paying for expenditures made in the immediate past, but maybe the “rob Peter to pay Paul” statement would have seemed better….

    By “brndrt1” at whomever you are “Guest”,…

    I couldn’t help but be struck to the similarities with the current election, as well as the current financial situation. While McCain is no Hitler (Hitler and his like have their own special place in Hell), his propensity to claim credit for the efforts of others is strikingly similar (especially the current bailout plan, which he both takes credit for “leadership in it’s enactment” and then turns and criticizes it’s impact upon the voters and how lightly it lets off the bankers. Is there an anti-semetic componant in his (and Palin’s) complaints there also?

    And I also see a similarity between the Republican economic plans over the past couple of decades and the Ponzi scheme. The combined out-sourcing of manufacturing (future income), combined with the extraction of the nation’s accumulated wealth through a variety of means (consumerism, financial services fees & interest, bailouts, looting of the treasury through no-bid contracts, dependence on oil, etc.) has resulted in an unsustainable financial system in the long run. A Ponzi scheme, if you will, which collapses when the money runs out and there is no new money to put into the system.

    Warren Buffett has been warning about this trend for quite some time (at least the past four years that I am aware of). Others have also.

    In the meantime, those of us who have studied logistics and economics with respect to WWII remain flabergasted at the relative strength of the U.S. during that era compared with it’s current status as an industrial flyweight. If not for the aerospace industry, the U.S. would be a minor also-ran in the world of industrial performance, and many nations are posed to take over the U.S. role there, also (Japan, China, etc.).

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