Did McCain back off his hate mongering because of the report of the investigation of Gov. Palin?

Late Friday the Alaskan legislature released the report of the investigation (pdf) of Governor Sara Palin for abusing her power as Governor in violation of Statute 39/52/110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. That report will negatively affect the Presidential campaign of the man who chose her as his running mate, John McCain. In fact, it is probably now clear to even the McCain presidential campaign staff that John McCain can no longer win the presidency.

It is stretching credulity to think that this report was not related to the midday effort by John McCain to step away from the hate-mongering towards Barack Obama which he initiated about midday Friday. Choosing Palin as his running mate with inadequate vetting was only one of many long-shot gambles that McCain has employed to try to make his run for the Presidency into something viable. The McCain "hate-fest" was another. The recent Presidential polls strongly suggest that both those efforts and the rest of McCain's campaign have now failed.

Emptywheel raises some interesting issues that the conjunction of those two events raises. Her first issue is to question the connection between those two event.

Second, Since Palin was not removed immediately as the Vice Presidential candidate and the campaign is clearly trying to spin the conclusion of the report, it appears that she will remain on the ticket. That suggests point three - the "maverick" issue that Palin has contributed to are no longer useful to the campaign. So fourth - how much longer can the RNC continue to fund the clearly losing McCain for President campaign while a number of both Senators and Congresspersons are in close elections and can put the same money to much better use than can the McCain campaign? [Emptywheel links to a good short discussion of this at Crooked Timber.]

It looks like the next shoe to drop may be that the RNC cuts the McCain for President campaign loose financially in order to try to preserve as much of the Republican Party as possible. Currently the Democrats control the Senate with 49 Democrats plus Bernie Sanders and Joe Lieberman. Of Democrats running for reelection, only Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu appears to be running a tightly competitive race. 24 of the 35 Senate seats (two are Senate races for less-than-six-year terms) up for election this year are held by Republicans. If Mitch McConnell and Saxby Chambliss both lose their Senate races, then it becomes very likely that the Democrats will reach their filibuster-proof majority of 60 votes in the Senate.

Obama already has an almost overwhelming money advantage in the Presidential race. When the RNC cuts off funding of "McCain for President" ads, it is going to be clear even to the MSM that McCain has lost the race for President. That will happen soon. There are only three full weeks remaining until the election.

---

Addendum 9:37 pm
Steve Benen reports that a number of Republican candidates are declining to appear with McCain at campaign events. That's going to work with any effort by the RNC to withdraw financial support for the McCain campaign ads.

It was Friday again: 14th and 15th banks closed by regulators

The FDIC Failed Banks List announced yesterday that Meridian Bank, Eldred, IL and Main Street Bank, Northville, MI were closed down yesterday. That's number 14 and 15 failed banks for 2008.

The AOL Money reports

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was appointed receiver of the banks. Main Street Bank, based in Northville, Mich., had $98 million in assets and $86 million in deposits as of Oct. 7. Meridian Bank, based in Eldred, Ill., had assets of $39.2 million and deposits of $36.9 million as of Sept. 25.

The FDIC said all of Main Street Bank's deposits will be assumed by Monroe Bank & Trust of Monroe, Mich. The two offices of Main Street Bank will reopen Saturday as branches of Monroe Bank & Trust.

All of Meridian Bank's deposits will be assumed by National Bank of Hillsboro, Ill. Meridian's four offices in Altamont, Carlyle, and Eldred will reopen for normal hours on Saturday, and its Alton office will reopen Tuesday, as branches of National Bank.

The 15 bank failures so far this year compare with three for all of 2007, and federal banking officials have said that more banks are in danger of collapse.

There is currently no reason given for the failures of the two banks. Bad real estate loans? That's been the prevailing reason for the other 13 bank failures in 2008.

There is also a Meridian Bank in Arizona. There is no connection between this failed Illinois bank and the Meridian Bank in Arizona.

Krugman sees it coming. Do you?

Paul Krugman is watching the insanity that is the McCain campaign (see McCain Goes After Michelle ..., Secret Service Steps In ..., George Wallace McCain, Just a Typo, They Say, How Low Can He Go, Take #9, Playing with fire, Cause and Effect, Crocodile Tears, and so on. That's just today.) and here is what Krugman sees coming:

The crisis isn’t the only scary thing going on. Something very ugly is taking shape on the political scene: as McCain’s chances fade, the crowds at his rallies are, by all accounts, increasingly gripped by insane rage. It’s not just a mob phenomenon — it’s visible in the right-wing media, and to some extent in the speeches of McCain and Palin.

We’ve seen this before. One thing that has been sort of written out of the mainstream history of politics is the sheer insanity of the attacks on the Clintons — they were drug smugglers, they murdered Vince Foster (and lots of other people), they were in league with foreign powers. And this stuff didn’t just show up in fringe publications — it was discussed in Congress, given props by the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, and so on.

What it came down to was that a significant fraction of the American population, backed by a lot of money and political influence, simply does not consider government by liberals (even very moderate liberals) legitimate. Ronald Reagan was supposed to have settled that once and for all.

What happens when Obama is elected? It will be even worse than it was in the Clinton years. For sure there will be crazy accusations, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some violence.

The next few years are going to be very, very tough.

If the conservatives can't run the county themselves they will do everything they can to make America ungovernable.

Plan on it.

The right-wing fraud of "voter fraud" accusations

Josh Marshall explains the Republican fraud involved in accusations of voter fraud.

Rumors of "wide spread voter fraud" have invariably turned out to be exaggerated,administrative errors or flat out right wing lies designed to justify voter suppression efforts aimed to prevent Democrats from voting.

---

Other posts on right wing voter suppression:

• McCain's really, really bad day May 25, 2008
• Texas (Republican) Attorney General practices voter suppression May 19, 2008
• How one Republican rigged elections for the RNC December 20, 2007
• Caging: What Bob Woodward doesn't know (or care) about Voter Suppression November 23, 2007
  
• Another great moment in voter suppression November 22, 2007
  
• Florida Republicans working hard to suppress minority voter registrations November 20, 2007
  
• Vote Suppression is the issue May 26, 2007
  
• "Caging" - an explanation of the term May 23, 2007
  
• Where is the REAL voter fraud? April 12, 2007
  
• More on the New Hampshire phone-jamming incident April 24, 2006
  
• More evidence that the 2004 election was hacked for Bush April 09, 2006

There is a pattern here. This should be enough evidence to demonstrate that the Republicans have a nationwide plan to prevent Democratic voters from casting ballots.

Amid global financial chaos Bush calmly assures America "We're working on it."

October 10, 2008

Stock markets world wide dropped sharply yesterday in spite of the announced bail out plans by both American and European governments. Today the DOW Jones opened 7% lower than yesterday, causing European markets to also drop sharply. This means that the Dow Jones has lost nearly 25% of its value in the last eight day. European markets are reacting in a similar panicky fashion. All the markets, American and European, then recovered some as the Dow Jones led the way for the European markets. The Japanese Nikkei index has also lost a lost nearly a quarter of its value this week.

It's a rather stunning display by the markets of two things. First, the banks world wide are extremely interdependent. Second, that they think the bail out plan by the American government and the plan announced yesterday by the British government to buy stakes in British banks as well as the the coordinated interest rate cuts announced by European governments yesterday are simply too little too late.

Perhaps more significant than the falling stock markets is the continued very high rate of interest that banks are charging other banks for interbank loans. In spite of the coordinated interest rate cuts by governments, the London Interbank Interest Rate (LIBOR) increased slightly to 4.82 percent. This is two percent age points higher than it was last month. The coordinated interest rate reduction by the governments should have lowered the LIBOR, but failed to do so. The banks which might have money to lend simply don't know which other banks are likely to default on the loans, and they don't think the government actions are likely to work any time soon.

In other words, the interbank credit crisis continues apace with no end in sight.

Into this financial mess steps George W. Bush. At 10:25 A.M. EDT this morning Bush stepped up to the microphones in the Rose Garden and announced to the world "We are aware that there is an economic problem and we are working on it." His short talk contained no new news and has had the reaction appropriate to his lame duck status and record low disapproval ratings.

As to the economic problems - bankers and government financial authorities around the world will be working long hours again this weekend, and no one really knows what will come out of the effort.

Economies around the world are headed into recession now primarily because of mismanagement of the financial sector by Wall Street bankers, by the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan, and by excessive deregulation from the Washington D.C. politicians they bought. How long the recession will last remains up in the air. Bush's total irrelevance is a bit of a surprise.

---

• Yesterday Nouriel Roubini reported The world is at severe risk of a global systemic financial meltdown and a severe global depression.

  The US and advanced economies’ financial system is now headed towards a near-term systemic financial meltdown as day after day stock markets are in free fall, money markets have shut down while their spreads are skyrocketing, and credit spreads are surging through the roof. There is now the beginning of a generalized run on the banking system of these economies; a collapse of the shadow banking system, i.e. those non-banks (broker dealers, non-bank mortgage lenders, SIV and conduits, hedge funds, money market funds, private equity firms) that, like banks, borrow short and liquid, are highly leveraged and lend and invest long and illiquid and are thus at risk of a run on their short-term liabilities; and now a roll-off of the short term liabilities of the corporate sectors that may lead to widespread bankruptcies of solvent but illiquid financial and non-financial firms.
  
  On the real economic side all the advanced economies representing 55% of global GDP (US, Eurozone, UK, other smaller European countries, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Japan) entered a recession even before the massive financial shocks that started in the late summer made the liquidity and credit crunch even more virulent and will thus cause an even more severe recession than the one that started in the spring. So we have a severe recession, a severe financial crisis and a severe banking crisis in advanced economies.

• Today in the Wall Street Journal the last great Federal Reserve Chief, Paul Volker reports We Have the Tools to Manage the Crisis
  Now we need the leadership to use them. Here is a sample from his article:

  Today, the financial crisis has reached a critical point. The sharp decline in the stock market and its volatility dramatically make the point. More important if less visible, the flow of credit through the banking system and the financial markets is seriously impaired -- even in part frozen.
  
  For months, the real economy, apart from housing, had not been much affected by the developing crisis. Now, a full-scale recession appears unavoidable. Important state and local governments face deficits they may be unable to finance. Recessionary forces are apparent in other important countries and exchange rates are unstable.
  
  Those are facts. [Snip]
  
  Fortunately, there is also good reason to believe that the means are now available to turn the tide. Financial authorities, in the United States and elsewhere, are now in a position to take needed and convincing action to stabilize markets and to restore trust.

  Go read the article to see what the tools are.
  
  
• Calculated Risk (CR)This morning eports CNBC: Treasury Preparing Term Sheet for Recapitalization.
  
  
• Earlier today CR also reported Financial Crisis: A Global Response?, a short summary of four different reports on the reactions to the international credit crisis.

The Republican route to ruin

It's pretty clear now that barring some really strange event, Barack Obama is going to win the election for President come November 4th. This year started out as a severely anti-incumbent year, and the recent financial collapse of Wall Street and banks world wide have greatly exaggerated that trend.

The fact that the Republican Party could not field a candidate for President who unified the various factions of the Reagan coalition was easily recognizable early on. There was no Bush-recommended candidate, and every major candidate who could collect enough money to enter the primary peaked out with 40% or fewer of the votes needed to win, so that finally everyone dropped out except the zombie candidate, John McCain, the Non-Republican Republican whose campaign had gone broke in the Summer of 2007 and had to be resurrected. Contrast this with the Democrats who fielded a superb group of candidates which winnowed down to Hillary Clinton and the upstart Barack Obama who were each rolling in money and who fought the primary out over half a year in all 50 states. The final decision of Democrats to choose Obama as the better of the two remaining candidates (by a small factor) was in stark contrast to the Republican choice of John McCain as the only Republican candidate not disqualified by the Primary process.

Throughout the year this was going on the American economic situation continued to get worse, while the economic pundits in the mostly brain-dead and propagandistic media kept trumpeting the "news" that the economy was going to be improving by the end of Summer by the end of 2008 by early 2009 maybe in late 2009. The fact is that no one really knew how bad things were, what was causing the economic problems, or what the future held. It was still possible for individuals trying to sell complicated bank products or elect Republican candidates like Phil Gramm to claim that the economic decline was merely a "mental recession" as late as late Summer 2009. The media was filled with economic "happy talk" even after Bear Stearns investment bank collapsed in March and right up until the other four major Wall Street investment banks disappeared and the largest insurance company in the world, AIG had to be taken over by the U.S. Government in September 2008. Suddenly the media replaced the economic happy talk with gloom and doom to match their ignorance.

The McCain for President campaign then tried to shift the political discussion to how scary Barack Obama's character was, while offering a series of improbable programs that have titles that sound like solutions to the economic problems. Each such program has lasted through about half a week of scrutiny before being relegated to the trash heap and quickly replaced by another faux program.

The outcome of the election is already quite clear. It's just a question of how big Obama is going to win - and considering that the alternative is the aged John McCain with the totally unqualified Sarah Palin as his Vice president, we may all thank God for the likelihood that Obama is going to win the Presidential election.

The Presidential campaign is currently running hot and heavy, and the media is thoroughly invested with trying to sell it as a competition between two equally capable candidates. They have to. Without a solid horse race to sell, the media will suffer a bad loss of advertising revenue. But the media revenue is the main reason they are selling the horse race. Without an unlikely surprise event, the real race for President has been decided.

So what happens after November 4th? At this point we get a sermon [*] from David Frum.

American voters are staggering under the worst financial crisis since at least 1982. Asset values are tumbling, consumer spending is contracting, and a recession is visibly on the way. This crisis follows upon seven years in which middle-class incomes have stagnated and Republican economic management has been badly tarnished. Anybody who imagines that an election can be won under these circumstances by banging on about William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright is … to put it mildly … severely under-estimating the electoral importance of pocketbook issues.

We conservatives are sending a powerful, inadvertent message with this negative campaign against Barack Obama's associations and former associations: that we lack a positive agenda of our own and that we don’t care about the economic issues that are worrying American voters.

Republicans used negative campaigning successfully against Michael Dukakis and John Kerry, it’s true. But 1988 and 2004 were both years of economic expansion, pro-incumbent years. 2008 is like 1992, only worse. If we couldn’t beat Clinton in 1992 by pointing to his own personal draft-dodging and his own personal womanizing, how do we expect to defeat Obama in a much more anti-incumbent year by attacking the misconduct of people with whom he once kept company (but doesn’t any more)?

Here’s another thing to keep in mind:

Those who press this Ayers line of attack are whipping Republicans and conservatives into a fury that is going to be very hard to calm after November. Is it really wise to send conservatives into opposition in a mood of disdain and fury for a man who may well be the next president of the United States, incidentally the first African-American president? Anger is a very bad political adviser. It can isolate us and push us to the extremes at exactly the moment when we ought to be rebuilding, rethinking, regrouping and recruiting.

Normally I don't bother with anything from NRO, including David Frum who occasionally makes sense. But this time he points to the very possible future that the Republican Party is whipping its supporters into an orgy of anger that is not going to die down after the Presidential campaign is over. For a well-known Republican writer like Frum to publish such a warning in the National Review Online [a principle conservative journal] just before the election is a strong indication that he is very concerned that the anger the McCain campaign is building up is a really dangerous trend.

It really is a danger. The Senate Republicans have done everything they could to sabotage any accomplishments by Congress since they lost control of the Senate in January 2007. The major effort by very right-wing House Republicans to kill off the first effort to pass the Paulson Proposal is another example. They reversed themselves only with they found the public was going to blame them for the financial crisis if they continued to act to block action.

It appears that Frum's warning is coming much too late. The anger is already built up. Once the results of the election are known, the conservative Republican anger is not going to be tamped down. The conservatives have already run all the effective Republican moderate leaders out of Congress. There are no remaining "wise old men" to turn to.

The result is going to be that in addition to severe economic crisis facing America in 2009 and two on-going wars, there is going to be an angry conservative Republican Party who would rather blow up the entire American government than work with their opponents to solve America's problems.

I hope I am wrong, but I don't think I am. I see no real hope for good sense and positive efforts to put America first likely to come from the Republican Party in 2009 and 2010. It's going to instead be all anger all the time until the anger burns itself out and the politicians who are fomenting it are mostly removed from office.

Will there be any vestige of the Republican party remaining when that anger is removed from government? Will the brand name survive? That's probably as much a question as what the new structure of banking in the American economy is going to be in the future.

---

[*] "sermon" is Frum's own description of what he wrote.

[ h/t to Laura Rozen at War & Piece. ]

McCain: "My fellow Prisoners..." Can McCAin survive mentally for a four year term?

McCain's mind is going. He doesn't know what words he are using any more.

Listen to this, right after the 20th second.



Can this age 72 guy last four and a half more years? That's mentally if not physically. I really doubt it. And the alternative is - God forbid - Sarah Palin??

Consider also - is John McCain capable of choosing who should become President if he, himself, dies or becomes disabled? McCain is still mentally back in the Hanoi Hilton at times. That's what he means when he says "My fellow Prisoners..."

Observations on the state of the Presidential election

The absence of Bill Ayers last night

Steve Benen reports on the absence of attacks by McCain about Obama's "connection" to Bill Ayers. Apparently the entire shift to character attacks by the McCain camp is being scrapped because the economy is getting worse. Steve speculates that the efforts to use Ayers and Reverend Jeramiah Wright against Obama has polled extremely badly, particularly among independent voters.

How will conservative Republicans react to McCain's loss?

Related to the apparent abandonment of the Ayers/Wright/Resko attack strategy, Kevin Drum speculates on what the Republican reaction is going to be when McCain loses this Presidential election. Conservatives can be expected to blame McCain for losing because he is a RINO - not conservative enough to win. The next election they are going to be urged to "double down" and get really strident and nasty. That will, of course, drive voters away from the Republican Party. The question is how long the Republican Party will act so self-destructively. My bet is that they will look back at the myth of rebuilding conservatism after the Goldwater disaster and keep it going for at least a dozen years - two or perhaps three presidential elections.

How is that related to the McCain camp's apparent abandonment of the Ayers/Wright/Resko attack strategy? When conservatives lose an election they assume that they lost because they were not conservative enough. Being conservative is the same as being nasty enough. So the next time out they "double down" and get twice as nasty. "Tailgunner" Joe McCarthy's behavior was the result of such a redoubling of effort. He lied and destroyed lives, and conservatives applauded him so he did more of it.

Addendum 2:50 pm

Apparently the McCain camp is not abandoning the Ayers/Wright/Resko attack strategy. They are trying to appear to abandon it by the overt campaign, but are actually trying to shove it down into the below the radar attacks that the mainstream media doesn't report on. That way they can have it both ways.

In that under the radar campaign it will join the organized efforts by the McCain camp to encourage the conservative Fascists who respond to the use of Obama's full name ("Barack Hussein Obama") with cries from the audience (through prepared microphones) of "treason" and "terrorist" and the like.

McCain's proposed method of solving complex problems

Steve Benen also points to McCain's strange idea that if there is a problem then McCain will get the leaders of the various sides of the issue together in a room, force them to sit down, and tell them to "stop the bullshit." It's an intellectually lazy way to claim McCain can solve problems by force of will rather than by actually proposing real solutions. I've never seen it work unless the individual who called the meeting also had a set of proposals that would solve the problem and that were acceptable to all sides prepared in advance of the meeting. McCain has never shown any awareness that he could do anything except bluster.

Obama's history of learning

One thing I have noticed watching the Obama campaign over the last year or so is how he has been constantly learning and improving as he goes along. James Wimberly at the Reality-Based Community provides one small example. That suggests to me that with Obama we have someone who can face new situations and quickly learn and adapt to them. Since the current economic problems are frequently described as both unprecedented and getting worse, Obama's ability to learn on the fly seems likely to make him the right man for the job of President during the next four years.

---

Addendum 2:38 pm

The three (irritating) McCainisms

One thing about last night's debate that really irritated me was McCain's repeated phrase My friends. Jerry Feldman counted. McCain said "My friends" 19 times. That's a neurotic tic - and did I mention that it irritated Hell out of me? The other two phrases McCain overused were "My Hero and I Know How To. "My friends" is a neurotic tic which makes McCain sound like an insincere phony. "My Hero" shows that he is a synchophant, and "I Know How to" do whatever it is is the kind of bragging that a kid who really doesn't know how to do whatever it is often resorts to when challenged.

This one is a really good piece of music

Tristero over at Hullabaloo recommends this with the mild seeming comment "Good one. enjoy." I find it an excellent piece of music, but I am merely a fan and not an professional musician as tristero is.

His title is

Les Misbarack



It's 3:29 you will enjoy.

Tonight's debate

Frankly I didn't hear anything new from either candidate. But Tom Brokaw only interrupted Obama. It was totally clear that Brokaw is in the tank for McCain when, at the end of the debate, Brokaw thanked McCain and ignored Obama.

I do think that Brokaw asked a stupid "gotcha" question early on when he asked both candidates who they would appoint as Secretary of the Treasury. No sensible politician is going to answer that question before the election is over and the candidates have been vetted. So the result is that both candidates avoided a direct answer to the question. They both looked evasive as a result. The reason the question is stupid is that the evasive answer is the only possible answer and Brokaw knows that.

McCain's efforts to belittle Obama were fewer than during the first debate, but McCain's dismissive "That one" with a wave at Obama was an effort to belittle Obama but had only the effect of belittling McCain.

I'll be interested to see what the polls say about who won.

Wall Street's failure and Credit Default Swaps explained - and the future guessed at

Calculated Risk offers a video from "60 Minutes" in which Steve Kroft explains the mortgage crisis, credit crisis, and now the financial melt down on Wall Street and overseas. The key to it is Credit Default Swaps.

There is a short advertisement before the video starts. The video is worth sitting through the advertisement.


Watch CBS Videos Online

This is background information. It does not explain what the bail out legislation is supposed to do to solve the problem. Nor does it explain what the problem is with banks now refusing to lend money to borrowers and especially to other banks. For an explanation of the current problem in which banks are now refusing to lend to anyone, Robert Reich offers as good an explanation as I have seen recently in his recent blog entitled "The Meltdown (Part I)".

Global capital markets have seized up. Confidence is evaporating. Put simply, no lender trusts any borrower to repay, fearing that that borrower won't be able to rely on anyone else to honor obligations. Even banks are hoarding cash, unwilling to lend to other banks. Everyone with any savings is heading for the hills -- for gold, for under the mattress, for wherever savings can be watched. We're witnessing a huge international bank run. We have not seen a global financial crisis on this scale since the 1930s.

What's happened? Put simply, the Bailout of All Bailouts has been a dud, at least so far. Most obviously, it hasn't done what it was intended to do -- reassure financial markets that the Treasury and the Fed would have enough money to handle any financial crisis.

So it's everyone and every institution -- and every country -- for itself. Several nations (Ireland, Greece, Germany) have basically guaranteed all deposits. As a result, global capital is moving their way. They're also thereby creating a new form of socialized capitalism. At the rate they're going, these nations will soon own and run their financial markets, and maybe a big chunk of the world's.

I fault Hank Paulson, first and foremost. He never succeeded in explaining to anyone what exactly he'll do with the bailout money -- how, for example, an auction to acquire mortgage-backed bad debt would work, and whether and to what extent he's planning to recapitalize the banking system. Even now, the American public has no idea what he's up to. Nor, for that matter, do many insiders.

Leadership isn't just about passing a big piece of legislation. It's about explaining and thereby gaining trust and confidence from a public -- including a global public -- that's otherwise afraid and confused. A credible and powerful explanation is necessary right now -- about where we've been, how we got into this mess, and how a particular plan (in this case, the bailout), will get us out of it. Yet Paulson has proven himself uniquely unable to explain anything to anyone. George W. Bush, for his part, is hopeless and hapless. Worse than a lame duck, he's a seriously disabled parakeet, with no remaining store of public trust. Ben Bernanke seems like an able fellow but his capacity to communicate is almost as bad as his predecessor's. Congressional leaders are too busy pointing fingers of blame to be capable of explaining much of anything and summoning confidence. And fewer than three weeks before a national election, both candidates are inevitably caught up in partisan wrangling. Obama does understand what's happening, and could calm global capital markets if he were already president. But he is not president as yet, nor even president-elect.

The leadership vacuum could not happen at a worse time. If credit markets remain frozen, we'll soon witness a huge round of business bankruptcies. We're in completely uncharted terrain.

So what happens next?

That's what "completely uncharted terrain" means. No one knows. But a good guess would start with assuming that economic conditions are going to rapidly get worse between now and the Presidential election on November 4th.

After that?

The problem right now is that no one knows what will happen next, and the current political and financial leadership are all fighting each other for individual advantage. There is no established leader who anyone trusts. Bush, for example, refused to even recognize the housing bubble until recently and when the Paulson Proposal was developed overnight and handed to Congress like the hot potato it was, Bush's name couldn't even be placed on it. The generally unknown Paulson was a much better name to apply to the sales job. And Paulson has also demonstrated no political leadership.

Without leadership, the trust the bankers need to start lending again will not be recreated. The House conservative Republicans who killed the first effort to pass the Paulson Proposal (as directed by Newt Gingrich, in the name of saving the "Free Market" on Wall Street) similarly have no clue. They are fighting to retain the power they have had since Gingrich led the conservative Republican takeover of the House in 1994.

But they are fighting to retain their power and the ability to enforce their ideology, with no regard to what happens to America. That's what happens when a corrupt leadership faces a new threat to the nation. The scrap over power instead of working to solve the problems.

Brad DeLong said last week or so that the problems America face will not be solved until the Republican party is gone. The conservative Republican party needs to be buried, the ground they are buried in needs to be plowed under, and the ground needs to be salted so that they cannot grow back.

I agree with him. The conservative ideology is totally incapable of dealing with the current economic crisis, and the conservatives will continue to obstruct effective actions as long as they are allowed to remain in the government.

After that? Let's hope that the new President can provide some effective leadership quickly - and McCain does not have that capability as the current disastrous condition of his Presidential campaign clearly shows.

We'll have a decent idea what's going to happen by New Year's, I think. But the Recession will last at least the next two years. Beyond that? No telling.

McCain wants to destroy the health care system completely.

There was no health insurance for people over age 65 before Medicare. When someone reached age 65, their health insurance was canceled. That's why Medicare was created.

The Republicans have hated Medicare since it was created. As Krugman points out in his column today, this is why Grinch shut down the government shut down government in 1965. Clinton wouldn't go along with Gingrich's effort to gut Medicare.

Well, McCain's health plan goes Gingrich one better. He wants to destroy ALL health insurance for anyone who is ill!

Here's Krugman's description of McCain's health care plan.

Mr. McCain, on the other hand, wants to blow up the current system, by eliminating the tax break for employer-provided insurance. And he doesn’t offer a workable alternative.

Without the tax break, many employers would drop their current health plans. Several recent nonpartisan studies estimate that under the McCain plan around 20 million Americans currently covered by their employers would lose their health insurance.

As compensation, the McCain plan would give people a tax credit — $2,500 for an individual, $5,000 for a family — that could be used to buy health insurance in the individual market. At the same time, Mr. McCain would deregulate insurance, leaving insurance companies free to deny coverage to those with health problems — and his proposal for a “high-risk pool” for hard cases would provide little help.

So what would happen?

The good news, such as it is, is that more people would buy individual insurance. Indeed, the total number of uninsured Americans might decline marginally under the McCain plan — although many more Americans would be without insurance than under the Obama plan.

But the people gaining insurance would be those who need it least: relatively healthy Americans with high incomes. Why? Because insurance companies want to cover only healthy people, and even among the healthy only those able to pay a lot in addition to their tax credit would be able to afford coverage (remember, it’s a $5,000 credit, but the average family policy actually costs more than $12,000).

Meanwhile, the people losing insurance would be those who need it most: lower-income workers who wouldn’t be able to afford individual insurance even with the tax credit, and Americans with health problems whom insurance companies won’t cover.

And in the process of comforting the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted, the McCain plan would also lead to a huge, expensive increase in bureaucracy: insurers selling individual health plans spend 29 percent of the premiums they receive on administration, largely because they employ so many people to screen applicants. This compares with costs of 12 percent for group plans and just 3 percent for Medicare.

In short, the McCain plan makes no sense at all, unless you have faith that the magic of the marketplace can solve all problems. And Mr. McCain does: a much-quoted article published under his name declares that “Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.”

I agree: the McCain plan would do for health care what deregulation has done for banking. And I’m terrified.

Got that? America has a problem with access to health care for many people who are ill.

Not everyone. If you or a close relative work for a large employer who offers employer-based health care (about 65% of Americans) you have whatever the employer decides to offer. But if you are in a small company or self-employed you might be able to buy health insurance in the individual health insurance market - if you don't have a preexisting condition, and if you don't develop an expensive health condition that causes the insurance to to cancel your policy.

McCain's wants to destroy the employer-based health insurance system and throw everyone into the private insurance market where only the well-paid healthy can afford to buy the policies.

But since many healthy individuals can't afford private policies, McCain is going to offer a tax credit of $5,000 per family or $2,500 per individual. And how will they pay for that? They'll tax your health insurance benefits as income. But that's clearly not enough to cover the (inadequate) tax credits they promise, so they promise to add more money by gutting Medicare and Medicaid.

McCain is obviously demonstrating the logic he learned from his experience during the Vietnam War and applying it to the American health care system problems. As America rolls into the worst economic difficulties it has faced since the Great Depression, McCain offers to fix America's health insurance problems using Vietnam era logic. He plans to "destroy the health care system to save it."

Rove criticizes McCain campaign management

Karl Rove is now criticizing the McCain campaign management a month before the election. Perhaps Karl feels he has to since FOX is paying him as an analyst. Whatever - it is interesting to hear an expert express his opinion.

• Rove can't understand why the McCain camp closed down the Michigan campaign so publicly. It caused a great deal of disruption inside the Michigan Republican Party because of the way it was done.
  
• Rove thinks it strange that McCain camp insiders would speak so publicly about their plans to shift the focus of the McCain campaign from the economy and instead go after Obama for his character traits. It's not something that the press or the Obama camp should be given advance waring of. But if it is done, it should be accompanied by a positive economic message. Obama doesn't publicly explain why they are presenting any given message.
  
• Rove also said that if the election were held right now, Obama would win it with at least 273 electoral votes, primarily because of the economic situation. But the campaign is highly fluid and still has 30 days left to go.

Those are interesting observations.

My own opinion is that the most interesting observation is that the McCain camp is leaking strategic reasons for their behavior. That's a characteristic of an organization which is under a great deal of pressure, appears to be failing to achieve its goals, and as a result it's members are exhibiting poor morale. It's a dead giveaway of poor overall leadership in an organization under stress.

Good leadership may not be able to change the outcome of the effort, but good leaders can keep morale up even as the effort fails. You get high morale in an organization where everyone feels they belong to a team that is working together even though they may not be successful. That isn't happening with the McCain campaign.

Some of the individuals in such an organization feel that they have to justify the fact that they are doing everything thing they personally can to win the election, but that they can see their individual efforts are not enough. They are leaking now because if they wait until the election results are in, no one will believe they say it coming.

The management of the McCain campaign is a reflection of John McCain's personality and his management style. I'd be extremely interested in finding out how McCain has treated ex-Senator Phil Gramm since his unfortunate "This is a mental Recession" comment, especially considering McCain's obvious Contempt for inferiors and his anger issues.

The post-election analysis books are really going to be interesting next year.

An analysis of McCain's body language by threrapists

Kathlyn and Gay Hendricks tell us what McCain's body language at the Obama - McCain debate tells experienced therapists.

Any good therapist learns to read the language of the body, but you don't need an advanced degree to understand John McCain's. His patterns are about as subtle as the flashing lights on a sign that says "Danger Ahead." Since we may end up married to him for four years, we need to pay particularly close attention to two patterns of his: smirking and jaw-clenching.

The McCain Smirk:
The Mouth Of Contempt
You probably noticed how often McCain smirked, particularly when he was being forced to listen to Obama speak. It's his expression of contempt. If he were speaking the truth behind his smirk, he'd be saying something like "I hold you in utter contempt. I am superior to you. My disdain for you is boundless." Any seasoned relationship coach knows a lot about contempt, because it's one of the most destructive patterns in relationships. One of our colleagues in the relationship counseling field, John Gottman, calls contempt one of the Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse, behaviors that signal doom for a relationship (along with criticism, defensiveness and sulking.) Beware of electing a president who wears the Mouth of Contempt. If McCain is elected president, we'll see a lot of it, because he particularly seems to wear it when someone he disagrees with is speaking.

The McCain Jaw-Clench:
The Painful Art Of Biting Back Anger
Out of politeness one is tempted to look away from McCain's jaws, because his left jaw has a permanent bulge from his bouts with cancer. We encourage you, though, to turn your attention to his right jaw; it's a symphony of clenches that played practically non-stop every time he was forced to listen to Obama in the first debate. Since McCain won't release all his medical records, we don't know the story behind the cancer in his left jaw. However, we know a great deal about what causes his right jaw to clench repeatedly. People clench their jaws when they're angry and can't, won't or don't know how to say it plainly. If his jaw-clench could speak, it would be saying: "I'm mad as hell and trying desperately not to show it." The anger shows in 3-D, though, thanks to the eloquence of Body-Talk. That's a good thing. We need to know when people are trying to conceal their feelings, in our relationships at home and in politics. We need to know what's going on behind the denials and delusions of Mouth-Talk.

Mouth-Talk Vs. Body-Talk
Body-Talk always tells you the truth about what's going on. If your mind thinks you're not scared, but you feel speedy-queasy butterfly sensations in your belly, believe your body. If your mate says he or she isn't mad, but you see him or her clenching those jaws repeatedly, believe the Body-Talk not the Mouth-Talk. Mouth-Talk is useful and often entertaining, but you've probably noticed that we humans can speak a lot of twisted stories, wild justifications and outright lies out of our mouths.

What will be very interesting in future debates is watching how John McCain tries to conceal the Body-Talk that was so obvious in the first debate. He's getting media-coaching around the clock, and will likely try to hide his contempt and anger from us next time. It probably won't work, because the twitches and clenches he'd be trying to hide are caused by trying to hide feelings in the first place. John McCain has been widely reported to have a volcanic temper. A ten-year-old, walking into the room and seeing him on television said, "That guy looks like he's about to blow."

Most people who have not been socialized into ignoring body language will interpret McCain's behavior the same way. McCain's smirk is his expression of contempt and his jaw-clenching is a clear expression of his effort to control his anger. That's the kind of guy I distrust and avoid whenever possible.

The McCain campaign will ramp up the "guilt by association" attacks on Obama

Here it comes. The economy is headed into clear and unambiguous recession four weeks before the Presidential election and McCain's poll numbers are dropping. So the McCain camp is going to try to change the subject off the economy and onto Obama's alleged connection to his fellow-Chicagoan, ex-weatherman Bill Ayers.

Of course, there is no connection between Obama and Ayers other than rarely being in the same room. The McCain camp is going to try to make that into something it is not. There is a much better argument that can be made that McCain is a supporter of North Vietnamese Communism because he spent five and a half years in one of their living facilities.

The guilt bay association attack goes two ways. It is clear that John McCain's close friendship with the ex-Lincoln Savings & Loan chief, Charles Keating led McCain to try to stop the Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB.) from going after Keating for his criminal activities that caused the collapse of Lincoln S&L.

From the New York Times:

The sharpest questioning today was from Mr. Heflin, who interrogated Mr. McCain about his late payments to the American Continental Corporation, Mr. Keating's Arizona holding company, for flights he and his family took on the company's corporate aircraft from 1983 to 1986.

Mr. McCain, who of the five Senators was the closest socially to Mr. Keating, would travel with the businessman to his vacation home in the Bahamas, where they swam, snorkeled and went fishing. But he did not repay more than $13,000 to American Continental until 1989, when he said the company notified him that the bill was due. [Snip]

Under questioning by Mr. Bennett, Mr. McCain said it had never occurred to him that it would seem improper for a lawmaker to have such a close personal relationship with a major political supporter with a matter pending before Federal savings and loan regulators. Politics and Friendship

"I don't think being in political office precludes me from having friends," he said.

Compare that history to the one reported by the New York Times between Obama and Ayers:

At a tumultuous meeting of anti-Vietnam War militants at the Chicago Coliseum in 1969, Bill Ayers helped found the radical Weathermen, launching a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and United States Capitol.

Twenty-six years later, at a lunchtime meeting about school reform in a Chicago skyscraper, Barack Obama met Mr. Ayers, by then an education professor. Their paths have crossed sporadically since then, at a coffee Mr. Ayers hosted for Mr. Obama's first run for office, on the schools project and a charitable board, and in casual encounters as Hyde Park neighbors. [Snip]

[T]he two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called "somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8."

So here it comes. Obama has associated with someone who was a domestic terrorist 38 years ago when Obama was age 8. But The candidate who is orchestrating the baseless smear is John McCain who took free rides on Keating's jet to his Bahama's getaway and went snorkeling with Charles Keating before trying to stop the FHLB from closing down Keatings already bankrupt Lincoln Saving and Loan.

There's net even any smoke in the Obama - Ayers accusation. There is clearly both smoke and fire in the accusation that McCain was bought by Charles Keating and worked to get him out of his legal problems in exchange for the money and free trips.

That's where McCain's guilt-by-association goes. Directly at the Keating Five scandal.

The key to Palin's "success" in Thursday's debate

The moderator, Gwen Ifill, explains how Sarah Palin appeared competent during last Thursday's "debate."



As Matt Corley at Think Progress explains it:

"During the vice presidential debate on Thursday, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin announced that she “may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear.” In fact, “On at least 10 occasions, Palin gave answers that were nonspecific, completely generic, pivoted away from the question at hand, or simply ignored it.” "

So Palin survived the largest test of her life and of her campaign for the Vice Presidency without committing one of her trade-marked "Moose in the headlights" ® moments.

But John McCain selected Sarah Palin to fill the job of Vice President of the United States if he is elected President. The debate was merely one roadblock Palin had to overcome to reach that job. Palin's debate performance does not indicate any competence for either becoming President or for casting the vote in the Senate to break a tie. Those are the only functions of the Vice President.

Do Americans really want someone as President who looks at a problem America faces, says "Hey! I don't want to decide whether to go to order a nuclear strike on Iran or not. But I'm an experienced Mom! I'll just decide whether or not to pack cookies in the kid's lunch!" or to break a Senate tie vote: "I don't want to vote on issue A. I'll vote (for/against) issue B because I understand it."

But the superbly coached Sarah Palin did pass the test of the debate (with no follow-up questions) without giving her right-wing extremist supporters another heart attack. She is now going to be an irrelevancy in the remaining 30 days until the election.

[ h/t to Steve Benen at the Political Animal. ]

Eight years - same rhetoric - Sarah Palin and George Bush

Here is a compilation of the rhetoric from Sarah Palin now and George Bush eight years ago. The only difference is - lipstick and a wink.




Remember that line Bush mangled years ago? Fool me once - shame on you. Fool me twice - shame on me.


2 Minutes 5 Seconds

(From Faiz Shakir at Think Progress.)

Rich Lowery must not be getting any

Poor guy. What is the matter with Rich Lowery? Maybe he needs to get out and spend more time at his favorite titty bar.



Really? It that why McCain selected the obviously otherwise incompetent Sarah Palin as his Veep? Because she is the kind of coquette who appeals to the conservatives who don't get out enough?

Here's why the politicians fought against regulation of Wall Street banks

The $700 billion taxpayer giveaway to the Wall Street banks was passed and signed into law yesterday in hopes that throwing money at the problem will solve it.

"In hopes..." Yeah that's all it is because no one really knows what's in the bailout bill or how it is supposed to work. All the politicians know is that when they objected to handing out large gobs of taxpayer money to no one knows who for no one knows what last Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Index chastised them by dropping $777 the same day. So they got scared they wouldn't be reelected and handed out the taxpayer funds as fast as they could.

How did Congress and Wall Street let this mess get so bad? Wall street fought regulations that would have prevented it tooth, nail and with many, many dollars to politicians, and the politicians happily played along and let themselves be bought. Here's the story from McClatchy News:

Since 2001, eight of the most troubled firms have donated $64.2 million to congressional candidates, presidential candidates and the Republican and Democratic parties, according to data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

The donors include investment bankers Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, insurer American International Group and mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Since March, with the exception of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, all of these companies have been bailed out by the government, sold to other companies at deeply discounted prices or simply failed.

Both political parties have become beholden to Wall Street.

Legislators failed in several instances to conduct oversight hearings or to raise concerns as the Bush administration adopted rules that fed the mortgage frenzy and set Wall Street on a path to disaster. [Snip]

Some state regulators, recognizing early signs of trouble in housing markets, sought help from Congress when the Bush administration adopted rules barring states from enforcing tough laws targeting predatory lending — the practices that were enabling unqualified applicants to obtain subprime mortgages.

With Wall Street serving a key role in buying, bundling and reselling subprime mortgages, state officials couldn't get Congress to intervene, said John Ryan, the executive vice president of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors.

"You could say that the finance industry got their money's worth by supporting members of Congress who were inclined to look the other way," said Lawrence Jacobs, the director of the University of Minnesota's Center for the Study of Politics and Governance.

"When the spotlight's on, sometimes reason carries," Ryan said. "But when it's not on, all of the influence is overwhelming." [Snip]

"It's unusual that Congress lets a major new program go through without at least oversight hearings," Coffee said. "And they didn't happen."

After the SEC changed its rules, Coffee said, Merrill Lynch's and Morgan Stanley's debt-to-equity ratios soared to 40-to-1 and 37-to-1 respectively from the old limit of 12-to-1, leading to Bank of America's $50 billion purchase of Merrill and contributing to calls for a bailout to rescue Morgan Stanley and other Wall Street giants.

The banking committees also took no action when the Department of Housing and Urban Development adopted a rule change that made it easier for mortgage brokers to collect hefty incentive payments for arranging loans with above-market interest rates for marginal buyers.

The panels also watched from the sidelines when the federal Comptroller of the Currency preempted more than 30 state attorneys general from enforcing state laws holding investment banks liable for predatory lending practices on subprime mortgages.

Ryan, of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, said he was "cut off at the knees" when he tried to fight the Bush administration's ruling on predatory pricing regulation.

He said the state officials agreed to "make as much noise as we can," but recognized that they were facing banking and securities industries with enormous influence from years of financial support to members of Congress.

This is the Reagan Revolution at work. Anyone trying to get a loan today can see the inevitable result of the Reagan Revolution so-called "free market."

At last! This week of mostly conservative-instigated stupidity, lies and corruption is over!

About the only thing positive that can be said about this week is that it's over. Between the conservative-caused destruction of the American banking system and its associated theft of unbelievable amounts of money from taxpayers by Congress on the one side and the utter idiocy of having to take the concentrated ignorance, immorality and ambition of Tracy Flick Sarah Palin reading note cards to the American voting public as she avoids answering questions on national politics, this weeks has reached a new low in American history.

Ian Welsh nails the bailout stupidity.

Who cares if the government is massively incentivized to protect the value, even assuming the government cares which is far from clear to me since for this plan to do anything it has to buy at far above market value? They're going to be sold the shittiest parts of the shitpile by far because what would you sell to them if you were the banks? Think about it. This stuff isn't called toxic waste for nothing. MBS's may have something behind them, but much of what's going to be sold are massively internally leveraged instruments like first loss bonds, credit default swaps, and other noxious stuff that hardly even has a name. Much of it won't even be mortgage based, and that which is won't necessarily give clear title to the mortgage proper (you can sell different parts of the mortgage to multiple different MBSs). The 700 billion will probably be gone before Obama even gets in power, so you're not betting on what Obama will do, you're betting on what Paulson and Bush will do. Furthermore Wall Street is already saying 700 billion won't be enough. (So, ok, you might be betting what Obama will do with the next 700 billion or so.) [Snip]

Exactly as written this is a huge giveaway of government money to private interests. That is its purpose. It is meant to bribe banks into lending to each other again. "Sure, it's not profitable to loan at below inflation, but we're making it up to you by buying your shit."

Of course, it is nice to know that our political leaders currently campaigning to become President and Vice President are taking the destruction of the American economy for the next two generations seriously and want to do something about it. That's clearly demonstrated in the seriousness with which last Thursday's "debate" between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin was taken.

Oh, wait. Sarah Palin was there. The "debate" was actually a great "Let's shove Palin up the ass of the American voters and see if they will notice." Aden Renkei of ph33r and loathing caught the zeitgeist very nicely.

Sarah Palin is a stupid, self important, ignorant bitch who I wouldn’t put in charge of wiping her own ass. And it’s not just that she’s dumb - which she is - it’s that she’s willfully ignorant of the facts and yet absolutely dead-bang certain that she’s right about her opinions. It’s more of this “governing from the gut” bullshit that we’ve been Chimping along with for the past eight years. I don’t know why it’s a taboo to say someone is too dumb to be President. Hell, most people don’t have the kind of mental sharpness necessary. That’s why it’s so important to pick the right person out of an entire country of potential leaders. But Sarah Palin? She’s not even worth considering. She’s fucking dumb, okay? [Snip]

I’d like to do a bit of a run down. A list, if you will, of the things we’ve learned about Sarah Palin from her very limited, groomed, handled private interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric.

• Sarah Palin isn’t sure what the Bush Doctrine is. She couldn’t even take a wild guess. Everyone who heard her ask “In what respect, Charlie?” knew it, no matter what sort of semantics argument you want to get into over what different meanings that phrase has encompassed.
• Sarah Palin doesn’t know that Freddie Mac and Fannie May weren’t being funded by the federal government before their collapse.
• Sarah Palin thinks that the $700 billion bailout has something to do with health care costs.
• Sarah Palin can only name one Supreme Court case - Roe v. Wade. She couldn’t even conjure up Dred Scott, which even Bush was able to do in the second debate with John Kerry. Speaking of Bush, she couldn’t think of Bush v. Gore. Or Brown v. Board of Education. Or Hustler v. Falwell. Or FCC v. Pacifica (Carlin’s seven words). Or, and this is most stunning of all, Exxon v. Baker - concerning the Exxon Valdez. A case which rendered a ruling during her time as Governer of Alaska, and about which she made public statements in protest of the decision.
• Sarah Palin either could not or would not name a single newspaper or magazine that she reads. She couldn’t think of one. Not the New York Times, the Daily News, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune. Not Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Reports. Hell, she couldn’t even think of a local paper in Alaska. Sarah Palin, by the way, has a degree in Journalism. No shit.
• Sarah Palin cannot name a single instance of John McCain favoring regulation of industry, despite being more than willing to lie right into the camera and say that McCain has been championing regulation for twenty-six years.

There’s probably more, but I could be here all night. The point is, she doesn’t know shit about shit. She has opinions - uninformed ones - and she’s sticking to them come hell or high water.

Click the link to ph33r and loathing, scroll down a bit and look at Renkei's most excellent flowchart that shows how Palin dealt with the debate questions. Or click the Mark Kleiman link Palinflow for the same flowchart.

It's hard to watch the vacuous Palin acting like someone who is significant and then watching the media lap it up and treat her seriously. The media is wasting its resources on her as the American economy is restructured on the fly in ways that will make America a much poorer nation for the next two more more generations.

Consider "The Wink" that Palin threw out at the end of the "debate." That was exactly like the wink that a topless dancer on stage throws at a guy in the audience who she thinks she can induce to give her a tip for taking off her clothes. Palin thought it was "cute." I can see what McCain saw in the aging cutesy beauty queen, but it damned sure had nothing to do with choosing someone to become President if President McCain died in office.

Palin, for all her flaws, is not at fault for the way she has been inflicted on the American public. John McCain did that.

It is a clear demonstration that McCain doesn't have the judgment necessary to be President. Instead of working to resolve the economic disaster that the Reaganite conservatives have bequeathed to America over the last three decades, John McCain has chosen the incompetent Sarah Palin as his Veep to shock and occupy the media and to simultaneously gather the support of the social conservatives. Actually, there is good reason to think that McCain is not yet aware that the bail out bill is about serious economic problems and not just another inside-Washington political exercise. The Palin crap is the direct result of John McCain's desperation to win the Presidency before he dies. Chalk it up to McCain's over-sized ego and lack of good judgment.

Sadly, it has worked. Now all he has to do is to run his lying super-negative campaign for the next five weeks and hope that his roll of the dice will succeed.

Who cares what happens to America as long as the privileged McCain gets elected President at last. The fact that America is spinning down the toilet in front of our eyes doesn't matter as long as John McCain's super-sized ego is satisfied, Right?