Bush's Endorsement of McCain...SNL

High-Tech Victory in Sadr City

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Keith Olbermann had something to say about Palin’s Choice Glass House

Comic Relief from Chris Rock

Larry King talks with comedian and activist Chris Rock about his thoughts on the hot issues in politics.

Picture of the Day

You have to love photo shop...

Rountable: What's Next for Economy

View, This Week with George Stephanopoulos along with George Will, Robert Reich, Newt Gingrich, and Steven Pearlstein.

USA Today/Gallop Poll

(Q) A new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll shows 46% of people who watched Friday night's presidential debate say Democrat Barack Obama did a better job than Republican John McCain; 34% said McCain did better.

Obama scored even better -- 52%-35% -- when debate-watchers were asked which candidate offered the best proposals for change to solve the country's problems.

More than six in 10 people or 63% in the one-day poll, taken Saturday, said they watched the first faceoff in Oxford, Miss. For those 701 people, the margin of error was +/- 4 percentage points.

Truly Beyond Parody

Money Quote: Andrew Sullivan...Yes, I saw Tina Fey and Amy Poehler last night. And, of course, the amazing thing is that a whole section of the script was directly transcribed from Palin's actual attempted interview with Katie Couric. There is no way Saturday Night Life could make more fun of Palin than she made of herself. How does McCain win an election with a national joke as his running-mate?

McCain's earmark obsession

I remain completely baffled by John McCain's windmill-tilting at federal earmarks.

In last night's presidential debate, the Arizona senator first began by talking about how the United States is in a "fiscal crisis" rather than a financial or credit crisis. Yet U.S. deficit spending as a percentage of GDP is not particularly high in historical terms, and now that there is a flight to safety in the markets, the U.S. government is able to borrow money at a near-zero interest rate. Yes, there is a looming fiscal calamity ahead, but the main problem today has to do with a freezing up of the credit markets, not the federal government's deficit spending.

What's more, McCain seems not to understand that earmarks are just a tiny piece of the fiscal picture. As Barack Obama pointed out during the debate, earmarks represent just $18 billion out of a much larger pie. Compare that to the projected 2009 deficit (not counting the bailout) of roughly $500 billion. Or compare it to the total federal budget of about $3 trillion.

Here's a pie chart, via economist Mark Thoma:

CBS Debate Poll Results

The CBS poll of undecideds has more confirmatory detail. Obama went from a +18 on "understanding your needs and problems" before the debate to a +56 (!) afterward. And he went from a -9 on "prepared to be president" to a +21.

Why Voters Thought Obama Won...

Okay, we thought that McCain had a slight upper hand tonight (though we also said it wasn't a game changer, which is basically another way of saying that McCain didn't do what he had to). But the initial polls suggest that viewers give the nod to Obama in a big way.

TPM has the internals of the CNN poll of debate-watchers, which had Obama winning overall by a margin of 51-38. The poll suggests that Obama is opening up a gap on connectedness, while closing a gap on readiness.

More Results...

Specifically, by a 62-32 margin, voters thought that Obama was “more in touch with the needs and problems of people like you”. This is a gap that has no doubt grown because of the financial crisis of recent days. But it also grew because Obama was actually speaking to middle class voters. Per the transcript, McCain never once mentioned the phrase “middle class” (Obama did so three times). And Obama’s eye contact was directly with the camera, i.e. the voters at home. McCain seemed to be speaking literally to the people in the room in Mississippi, but figuratively to the punditry.

The Obama campaign is quick out the gate with this new TV ad on the economy, criticizing McCain for saying nothing about the concerns of the middle class during the debate:

Letterman rails against McCain for no-show

U.S. New-Home Sales Fell in August to 17-Year Low

(Q) Sales of new homes in the U.S. fell in August to a 17-year low, signaling the housing market suffered another setback even before the latest turmoil in financial markets.

Sales dropped 11.5 percent, more than forecast, to an annual rate of 460,000, the fewest since January 1991, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. The median sales price dropped to a four-year low. Bounce 2 Bloomberg

To Debate or Not to Debate that is Question

Obama Hanged In Effigy

In a State that held the largest political campaign rally during the primary season for Barack Obama, a crowd of 75K, but now an Oregon college is now infamous for a racist effigy. Welcome to George Fox University ...at a Quaker college, no less. The bigotry continues....

A Simple Explanation of What Went Wrong

I read this interesting Brookings paper yesterday, titled "A Brief Guide To Fixing Finance." The most intriguing part of the paper was this simple explanation of exactly how things managed to get so bollocked up in the first place.

The authors note the “domino-like” character to the financial crisis:

1. The bubble in home prices, fueled by the ready availability of credit, resulted in an underestimate of the risks of residential real estate;

2. The peaking of residential home prices in 2006, combined with lax lending standards were followed by a very high rate of delinquencies on subprime mortgages in 2007 and a rising rate of delinquencies on prime mortgages;

3. Losses thereafter on the complex “Collateralized Debt Obligations” (CDOs) that were backed by these mortgages;

4. Increased liabilities by the many financial institutions (banks, investment banks, insurance companies, and hedge funds) that issued “credit default swaps” contracts (CDS) that insured the CDOs;

5. Losses suffered by financial institutions that held CDOs and/or that issued CDS’s;

6. Cutbacks in credit extended by highly leveraged lenders that suffered these losses.

Sure, that's an oversimplification. But it is a good place for the layperson to begin trying to comprehend what exactly went wrong here . . .

Palin In Polling Free-Fall

You can fool some of the people ...

The new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll will be released at 6:30 pm ET, but here's an early look at one set of numbers: Forty-nine percent say that Palin is unqualified to be president if the need arises, compared with 40 percent who say she's qualified. By contrast, 64 percent believe Biden is qualified to be president, versus just 21 percent who disagree.

Business Ownership: How Sweet It Can Be!

For today's Economic lesson: Activity 1 Click Here!

Activity 3...Choose any one of the following Links to complete the seven questions.

Elise McMillan and her brother Evan co founded The Chocolate Farm in Englewood, Colorado, in the late 1990s.

Milton Hershey (more history here)broke ground for his chocolate factory near Lancaster, PA in 1903. It was the beginning of what would become Hershey Foods Corporation.

Forrest Mars, Sr. invited Bruce Murrie, an investment banker and son of the Hershey company president, to be his partner in M&M Ltd. The M&Ms we still eat today were first sold to the public in 1941. The letters in "M&M" stand for Mars & Murrie. Eventually, Murrie left the business but Forest Mars became the owner of Mars, Inc.

Wally Amos launched the Famous Amos Cookie Company in a Hollywood, CA storefront on Sunset Boulevard in 1975.

TIP: If a company has incorporated and is publicly traded, another source of information will be Hoover’s Online Directory.

A Conservative Takes Aim at McCain

The final two paragraphs from George Will's column today are worth highlighting again:

Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?