How Does McSame Win?

With McSame all but surrendering Colorado, Virginia and Iowa, and playing directly for "low-information" white voters in rural Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida, how does he get to 270?

The map for McSame is actually pretty simple: The battleground states are now IN, MO, NV, NC, OH, PA, and FL. McSame must now take ALL SEVEN of those states to win. His firewall, Colorado, Virginia, and Iowa, are gone. His back is against the wall...he simply cannot afford to lose any more states.

Polls are showing Florida and North Carolina may go to his column now, but Indiana, Nevada, and especially Ohio are slipping away, and Obama's lead is just too much in PA.

At this point he's going to need a miracle. We'll know more next week.

The Sad, Strange Story Of Ashley Todd

Ashley Todd is a 20-year-old white female college student who told police that she was assaulted by "a 6 foot 4 black man" at an ATM in Pittsburgh, and when the man saw her McSame bumper sticker, the man became enraged and scratched the letter B into her cheek, for "Barack Obama" supposedly. Matt Drudge ran this as breaking news last night, and the whole world bit.

The McSame campaign seized on the Todd story as proof that Obama supporters are violent, hate filled racists. McSame himself called Ms. Todd, and this morning the right-wing noise machine was up in arms...amazingly enough not over the attack, but that the attack was fishy. Even Malkinvania cried "foul" over the account.

And surprise! It turns out Ms. Todd made the entire thing up.

A John McCain campaign volunteer made up a story of being robbed, pinned to the ground and having the letter "B" scratched on her face in a politically inspired attack, police said Friday.

Ashley Todd, 20-year-old college student from College Station, Texas, admitted Friday that the story was false, police said.

Maurita Bryant, the assistant chief of the police department's investigations division, said Todd is being charged with making a false police report.

Police doubted her story from the start, Bryant said.

"She just opened up and said she wanted to tell the truth," Bryant said, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. "She was upset with the media for blowing this into a political firestorm."

I cannot wait for this election season to die. Really.

There are some sick people out there. Really, truly sick people. You have to be a complete sicko for Michelle Malkin to call you out as a liar.

Sarah Palin: Policy Maven

Today Sarah Palin laid out the McSame policy on special needs children and health care:

In her first policy speech of this election cycle, Sarah Palin elaborated Friday on how a McCain administration would help children with special needs, a topic that has become a fixture of her stump speech in cities across the country.

Palin, speaking at a hotel in Pittsburgh, unveiled a three-point plan that would expand educational choice for parents, increase funding for children with disabilities and improve services available to parents, medical professionals and schools.

Under the plan, federal money would be used to give parents the opportunity to send their children to a public, private or religious school of their choice.

"Because even the best public school teacher or administrator really cannot rightfully take the place of a parent making these choices," Palin said. "The schools feel responsible for the education of many children, but a parent alone is responsible for the life of each child and how to make that life better."

She also proposed expanding funding of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which was signed into law in 1975 but has never been fully funded. The McCain campaign estimates that fully funding the program will cost an additional $45 billion over five years, money that Palin said could be found by cutting federal pork barrel spending.

"We've got a $3 trillion budget in this country," she said. "And Congress spends some $18 billion on earmarks for their political pet projects, and that right there is more than the shortfall to fully fund IDEA."

It's nice and all, but the Obama response has rather killed any chance the McSame camp has of making this work:

The Obama campaign called the attack a “hypocritical” one. “This is a blatantly false, desperate political attack made by a campaign that’s out of touch, out of ideas and running out of time,” said Pennsylvania spokesman Sean Smith. “Senator Obama has consistently been clear that he would not increase taxes on families making less than $250,000 a year.

“As the Wall Street Journal reported, John McCain’s own health care plan would actually cut $1.3 trillion from Medicare and Medicaid that children with disabilities truly depend on, which makes this attack especially hypocritical. Senator Obama has a comprehensive plan to support families that have children with disabilities and empower all Americans with disabilities.”

Arguing to fully fund this program for $45 billion looks rather bad when making $1.3 trillion in Medicare/Medicaid cuts, huh?

Nice try Sarah. Go back to calling attacks on your $150,000 clothing bill "sexist". I'm sure that'll stick too.

Obamanomics Crashing The Markets

The latest GOP screed (and you can count on US News hack Jim Pethokoukis to spew it out) is that Obama and the Democrats are sinking the stock markets.

Are investor concerns about an Obama presidency influencing the stock market? And by "concerns" I mean "existential panic." And by "Obama presidency" I mean "a tax-hiking and regulatory reign of terror." And by "influencing" I mean "eviscerating." At least that's the overwrought take I get from a few of my more skittish E-mailers. Chillax, y'all!

Now a few of my own (more tranquil) observations about a possible jittery Investor Class, the plunging market, and the now famous Obama Discount Theory:

1) I find it hard to believe that fears about a deep recession are suddenly dawning upon investors and thus are solely responsible for kneecapping the market. I've been hearing such dire forecasts for weeks from top Wall Street economists, and I really think they're already baked into the cake. (And credit markets actually look like they are finally picking up a bit—a plus for stocks.) So with that perception locked in, maybe the future political landscape is finally playing a greater role in the minds of investors, especially with polls showing a possible landslide Obama win and big Democratic congressional majorities. Is it really more plausible to suggest no effect whatsoever from a possible once-a-generation, political sea change, especially one that moves away from the winning economic formula of the past 25 years ? Not even a smidgen of worry? C'mon, now.

The article continues on like this for a good bit, the practical upshot is that the markets are so terrified of the Democrats being in charge that smart conservatives are selling, selling, selling and that Obama deserves most of the blame for the Dow not being about 10,000 again after we "solved the credit crisis". I mean it's not like there could be another reason why the markets are falling, could there?

But the GOP is already blaming Obama for the mess because the market is terrified of what he might do in the future, like, I don't know...regulate it.

US Goes Limit Down

World economic numbers are out today, and they are nothing short of catastrophic.

The pound tumbled below $1.53 in its biggest drop in at least 37 years after a report showed the U.K. economy contracted more than forecast in the third quarter, bringing the nation to the brink of a recession.

The decline surpassed that of Black Wednesday in September 1992, when the U.K. was driven out of Europe's Exchange Rate Mechanism. Gross domestic product contracted 0.5 percent in the three months through September, the Office for National Statistics in London said today, more than the 0.2 percent forecast by analysts in a Bloomberg survey. The FTSE 100 index slumped as much as 9.1 percent and the yield on the U.K. 10-year gilt headed for its biggest weekly decline in a decade.

``This is once-in-a-lifetime stuff, we're all sat under our desks with tin hats on,'' said Neil Mellor, a currency strategist in London at Bank of New York Mellon Corp. ``The U.K. is in the first step toward a recession and the dollar's bid because of repatriation flows.''

Similar news in Japan and China earlier this morning has led to a disintegration of world markets today. Nikkei down 800 points, European markets are down 7-9% at this hour, and US stock futures have reached limit down numbers.

According to Reuters data, December S&P futures hit a low of 855.20, while Dow Jones futures touched a low of 8,224 -- the lowest levels at which both contracts could trade in a session.

"We are in a panic mode, I don't know how else to describe it and when you're in panic mode, all rational thought goes out of the window," said City Index chief market strategist Tom Hougaard. "We've just got to let this thing rage. I think we'll see the Dow below 8,000 today."

With global recession numbers showing that the UK, China, and Japan may actually be in worse shape the US right now, world markets have now thrown in the towel. LIBOR numbers are still high, having only fallen another miniscule less than 2 BP, and the overnight rate went UP 8.

This is going to be a horrendous day on Wall Street. Despite the global bailout efforts, the markets are once again in total freefall. Confidence is a casualty. This was the week where Wall Street tested the waters, and failed miserably. The Dow's been floating around 9,000 for the last couple of weeks, and Monday's close of around 9250 was a good sign that the worst might have been over.

I said then more pain was coming. Surprise! Folks, when Dow futures hit limit down 2 hours before the markets open, it's a disaster. I've been saying for six weeks now I fully expected the Dow to set a new Bush era low under 7,200.

We may very well be there next week. The next couple of days are vitally important. If we drop through the floor today under 8,000, then I honestly think we're heading for a complete meltdown.

What more can world governments do? The US, Japan, Canada, Australia, UK, and Eurozone took unprecedented action to prevent a meltdown just two weeks ago. That action has now failed. The wheels are off, folks. It's sinking in just how bad this is going to be...it's going to be brutal, and it's going to be global.

You will be hearing those two words often in the next several days, I will wager: limit down. We're approaching the point where trading circuit breakers will kick in and stop the markets, and it will happen if not today (we'd need to see an 869.1 point drop before 2 PM to hit the 10% circuit breaker for an hour time-out) then it will happen at some point soon.

After all, the lower the Dow gets, the lower the 10% circuit breaker level gets.

StupidiNews!

• A family emergency has come up for one of the Senator Toobs jurors.
• Karl Rove is blaming the prospect of Obama in office as the main cause of the economic crisis.
• Here in Kentucky, Obama is down by 16 points.
• Broadband internet through power lines? Deader than Nixon.
• The Rays tied up the World Series with a win last night at Tropicana Field.

Zandar Is Wise, Grasshopper

Me, two days ago:

I got a fiver says somebody on the GOP (not a blogger or El Rushbo, but an actual state/national GOP party official or McSame campaign official) denounces Obama's trip to Hawaii as:

1. a campaign stunt to elicit sympathy,
   
2. something that proves just how out of touch Obama is for being able to fly to Hawaii at a moment's notice,
   
3. proof that Obama is using all that "suspect campaign money illegally for personal reasons",
   
4. some combination of the above.

Just sayin.

McCain douchebag Brad Blakeman, today:



Do not doubt the Zandar, people.

Do You See What I'm Up Against?

And every now and then I find folks that make me look perfectly sane here on the internets. Bonus snippet:

I suspect that the media-manipulated polls could lead to violence if Obama is not elected, including injuries to innocent citizens, rioters, and law enforcement officials.

Or in other words BLOOGITY BLAH BLAH SCARY BLACK MAN AND HIS LIBERAL FRIENDS ARE GONNA KILL SOME WHITEYS WHEN MCSAME WINS! GET YOUR SHOTGUNS AND CANNED FOOD NOW!

The Next Stage Of The Meltdown

It's looking to be a race to see which one collapses first: Emerging markets in countries like Russia, Hungary, South Korea, Brazil and Mexico...

Developing nations' borrowing costs neared a six-year high after Standard & Poor's threatened to cut Russia's debt ratings as the global credit crisis deepened.

The extra yield investors demand to own emerging-market government bonds instead of U.S. Treasuries surged 39 basis points to 8.41 percentage points, the biggest since November 2002, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s EMBI+ index. The annual cost to protect Russia's bonds from default soared as S&P lowered Russia's ratings outlook to negative on concern the cost of the government's bank rescue will climb.

Russia has committed as much as 15 percent of its gross domestic product to propping up banks, including a $50 billion credit line to development bank Vnesheconombank. Russia's international reserves, the world's third largest, declined by $14.9 billion last week after the central bank sold currency to support the ruble as investors pulled money out of the country.

``There is now no safe haven globally other than a deeply indebted U.S. government,'' said Jim Reid, head of fundamental credit strategy at Deutsche Bank AG in London. ``The events of the last few days are categorical evidence of the globalization of the credit crunch and its subsequent problems.''

Ex-Soviet republic Belarus added to requests from Iceland, Pakistan, Hungary and Ukraine for at least $20 billion of emergency loans from the International Monetary Fund as the financial crisis leaves nations unable to repay their debt. Belarus has requested ``no less than'' $2 billion and may also seek funds from central banks and commercial banks in other countries, said central bank spokesman Anatoly Drozdov.

Argentine Nationalization

In Argentina, lawmakers are battling to block President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner from using $29 billion in nationalized pension fund assets to repay debt as the government struggles to avert its second default this decade. Fernandez announced plans to take over private pension funds on Oct. 21, sparking a rout in the country's financial markets. Argentina last seized retirement savings in 2001, before it reneged on $95 billion of debt and triggered a global selloff.

The yield on Argentina's 8.28 percent dollar bonds due in 2033 jumped 4.11 percentage points, to 33.44 percent at 11:44 a.m. in New York, according to JPMorgan. The bond's price fell 3.5 cents on the dollar to 20 cents, leaving it down almost 17 cents this week.

``It's becoming a mess in emerging markets,'' said New York University professor Nouriel Roubini. ``There are about a dozen emerging markets that are now in severe financial trouble.''

...or if the next disasterous collapse will be hundreds of hedge funds.

Hundreds of hedge funds will fail and policy makers may need to shut financial markets for a week or more as the crisis forces investors to dump assets, New York University Professor Nouriel Roubini said.

``We've reached a situation of sheer panic,'' Roubini, who predicted the financial crisis in 2006, told a conference of hedge-fund managers in London today. ``There will be massive dumping of assets'' and ``hundreds of hedge funds are going to go bust,'' he said.

Group of Seven policy makers have stopped short of market suspensions to stem the crisis after the U.S. pledged on Oct. 14 to invest about $125 billion in nine banks and the Federal Reserve led a global coordinated move to cut interest rates on Oct. 8. Emmanuel Roman, co-chief executive officer at GLG Partners Inc., said today that as many as 30 percent of hedge funds will close.

``Systemic risk has become bigger and bigger,'' Roubini said at the Hedge 2008 conference. ``We're seeing the beginning of a run on a big chunk of the hedge funds,'' and ``don't be surprised if policy makers need to close down markets for a week or two in coming days,'' he said.

Both are poised to go. We're nowhere near out of the worst of the financial crisis yet. It's just beginning. If emerging markets collapse into mini-depressions, or the mighty hedge funds fold by the dozen, the pain we're seeing right now in the markets will be a fevered dream of peace compared to the chaos that will ensue.

And honestly, the question is when, and how badly, will both of these global linchpins disintegrate?

People think we're through the worst and that we've avoided a depression or even a bad recession for the most part, people are looking forward to the next "bear market rally". You're smarter then that, I'm hope...the worst is still to come.

It's No Longer The Credit Crunch...Or Is It?

LIBOR numbers this morning were decidedly mixed for once. The overnight rate and TED spread went up slightly while 1-month and 3-month rates registered tiny declines (1.62 BPs and 0.63 BPs) this morning. Given recent declines of 20+ BP, and the fact the LIBOR numbers are still well above bank rates, it means banks may be holding on to their cash again.

Then again, things like Wachovia's nearly $24 billion quarterly loss tends to scare the crap out of banks. Meanwhile, weekly jobless numbers are out this morning and they are bad. It looks like another dismal day on the markets.

Initial claims for state unemployment insurance benefits increased to a seasonally adjusted 478,000 in the week ended Oct 18 from a revised 463,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said.

Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast 470,000 new claims versus a previously reported count of 461,000 the week before.

The Labor Department said that the effects of Hurricane Ike in Texas added roughly 12,000 claims to the total.

"Job losses are clearly getting worse, we think this month we'll see more than 200,000 jobs lost," Nigel Gault, chief U.S. Economist at Global Insight, told Reuters.

That would bring total job loss number this year to close to a million in 10 months, a pretty staggering number considering in the first 9 months there were 750,000 jobs lost or so. 200k in one month is bad...because there's still two months to go this year. Holiday hiring may help reduce these job loss numbers for November and December, but with nearly everybody cutting back on seasonal hiring this year, by the time January hits, things are going to be downright disastrous. Still, over a million jobs lost in one year will be downright mild compared to 2009's totals. You can count on that.

First Rule Of Advanced Hole Management

...is when finding self in hole, STOP DIGGING.

Today's contestant? Michele Bachmann, the lovely GOP Congresswoman who suggested the media should do a major expose' on Congress to see if it's anti-American or not. Not only did this prompt Democrats to give about a million dollars since just last Friday to her challenger, Elwyn Tinklenberg, the DNC is in fact matching that million, and now polls show a seat the Dems can now take on November 4.

There weren't enough chairs for the volunteers crammed inside the four-room campaign office Wednesday morning. Every time aides hit "refresh" on their computers, hundreds more online donations appeared. Downstairs, the postal carrier spent 10 minutes trying to cram a two-foot stack of envelopes stuffed with checks into the mail slot.

"It's been raining money," said Beth DeZiel, 39, the campaign's dazed deputy finance director. "There's so much, we can barely keep up. It's unbelievable."

But this unsolicited good fortune -- $1.3 million since Friday -- isn't based on anything the Democratic former mayor and grandfather of seven did. It's all because of something his rival, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, said.

On Friday afternoon, Bachmann appeared on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews" and made what has been dubbed the million-dollar mistake: Bachmann, 52, alleged that presidential candidate Barack Obama may hold "anti-American" views, and proposed a media investigation into "the views of the people in Congress [to] find out: Are they pro-America or anti-America?"

While Sen. Obama's presidential bid has transformed the way campaigns use the Internet to reach volunteers and donors, the technology has also become a way for the public to instantly react -- even to races in which they can't vote.

Those quick reactions, often in the form of donations, can influence the outcome of a campaign, said Julie Barko Germany, director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet at George Washington University's Graduate School of Political Management.

Barko German said "the Internet can be an amplifier," enabling viewers to react instantly to something that incites strong support or fury.

"It's an excellent fundraising tool," she added, citing research indicating that "when you show someone a video online, they donate 10% more."

So at this point, you'd think the Hole Management 101 lessons would kick in: you'd expect a candidate in this situation to own up, apologize, and move past the comments that made a decently easy race into a neck-and-neck one.

But you don't know Shelly Bachmann real well, do ya?

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has dug in further on her position that Barack Obama is against America. Bachmann appeared today on the Hugh Hewitt radio show, and had this to say: "And so, he [Chris Matthews] was using the word "Anti-American" and I told Chris, what I question are Barack Obama's views. Because Barack Obama's views are against America." And here's what she said on the Mike Gallagher show: "What are Barack Obama's policies? Are they for America, or will they be against traditional American ideals and values?"

The GOP has decided to cut its losses now and leave Shelly's pedicured foot deep in her own throat, and has now cut off her party ad budget.

A Republican source has confirmed to Election Central that the NRCC is indeed pulling all its advertising for Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), whose antics since her McCarthyist rant on Hardball have quickly put this once-safe incumbent in serious danger. Several hundred-thousand dollars worth of TV time had previously been reserved on Bachmann's behalf, but now it has all been cancelled, as Huffington Post first reported.

Bear in mind that Bachmann was heavily favored to win re-election before this whole mess happened, but since then her Democratic opponent has received $1.3 million in online donations and another $1 million in commitments from the DCCC. The national party is now directing its attention to other races.

Bachmann could still potentially win, as this district voted 57%-42% for George W. Bush in 2004. But she's now on her own. It's a rare thing for a national party to totally cut off an incumbent, so this should give you an idea of just how unpopular Bachmann is among Washington Republicans right now.

To cut an incumbent off at the knees like that whose seat is now in trouble just two weeks before an election is absoultely unheard of. When your local Congressional Representative becomes a national punch-line, and that person shows zero political skill in damage control, that person will be jettisoned by the Powers That Be.

The GOP doesn't want to help her at all now. They are abandoning her seat to the Dems just two weeks before the election. Given all the losses the GOP will suffer congressionally this year, she just added one more, and the GOP has no desire to even give a damn. That's amazing, especially given the day before she went on Hardball, polls showed she had only a 4-5 point lead in a district where the third party candidate was getting 6-8% and there were still 15% undecideds.

But that was last week. I'm betting those undecideds are a lot less undecided right now.

See ya, Shelly!

StupidiNews!

• September foreclosure numbers? Up 21% from last year.
• A fourth GOP Senator has come out against GOP robocalls.
• Year-over-year gas prices may be lower for once.
• A technical look at reports that WV touch screen voting machines are flipping votes.
• The Phillies hold on to take Game 1 of the World Series, 3-2.

Whither The Dow?

Dow dropped another 500 points today, despite LIBOR rates clearly lower this week. The Credit crisis is no longer the problem, but dismal 3Q numbers and the prospect of a multi-year recession is scuttling the market.

Stocks fell sharply Wednesday after the latest bevy of big names reporting earnings issued gloomy outlooks or missed their targets altogether.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down 514.45, or 5.7 percent, at 8519.21. The blue-chip index saw wild swings and dramatic falls today, particularly in the last half hour: At one point in the final 15 minutes of trading, the Dow was down nearly 700 points.

Today was the Dow's seventh biggest point drop in history. Of the top 10 drops, four have occurred this month. The Dow is now off more than 5600 points, or 40 percent, from its October 9, 2007 high of 14164.53 -- that's twice as much as the 20 percent required to declare a bear market.

"This is the worst first year of a bear market in history," Wayne Kaufman, chief market analyst at John Thomas Financial, told CNBC.

Things will only get worse from here. It's a new ball game, folks...and not many of us are going to like the score.

The Science Of Delegitimization

Over at hullabaloo, Digby talks about the coming press backlash against Obama.

This is correct. It's true that the Republicans are on the run and their movement is crippled by the epic failure of the Bush administration. But they have a permanent character assassination apparatus, funded by extremely wealthy aristocrats, devoted solely to the destruction of liberalism. They aren't closing up shop and taking up needlepoint. Indeed, they are much more active when the Republicans are out of power than when they are in.

It's not inevitable that Obama will not have a honeymoon or that the press will become the willing love toys of the rightwing as they did in the 1990s. But it pays to remember that the media were quite in love with Bill Clinton during the last half of that campaign and they turned on a dime once the wingnuts started working the refs in earnest. (You see, as with John McCain, the conservatives didn't care for Bush Sr and were actually quite happy that Clinton won so they could purge the party of its moderates and focus on its "revolution." For them, the way to real power is in being a ruthless opposition.)

So, as Rosenberg writes, this voter fraud nonsense is about legitimacy. Regardless of whether Obama wins a clear victory, the story doesn't stop the day of the election. Indeed, they will be recycling the left's complaints from 2000 almost verbatim making us sputter in rage about the absurdity of such a comparison. And they'll build a powerful myth of victimhood around the phony belief that Democrats steal elections. Lack of faith the in the electoral system serves conservatives far better than it serves liberals.

I honestly think Digby's seriously underestimating what the GOP is capable of. They've lost control of the Haterade Factory, and it's not just the media clucking its tongues at the man for being a dirty, filthy liberal, it's going to be all the news reports on the crazies out there that want Obama gone by any means necessary, and then the media's efforts to cover for them.

"Well gosh, there's a groundswell of anger out there towards President Obama" stories are going to come at a machine-gun clip, as will all the Village Idiots doing their best to dress up the rotting corpses of racism and bigotry in an effort to make them presentable to the rest of us.

They'll just be reporting the news from "real America" or course. The aiding and abetting of the hate against Obama will make the Clinton years look like a picnic.

Somebody's going to try to "save America from Obama" the way Squeaky Fromme and Tim McVeigh did.

Well, My Work Here Is Done

Swiped from Terrence DC over at the Frog Pond, it's this gem.



"Dude, you heard her, we have to stay in there until the job's done."