A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.
In the News: (Registration may be required to read some stories)
McCain trails in states that backed Bush - Sen. John McCain is making inroads on some key poll questions, including his ability to handle the economy and to buck President Bush, but he lags far behind his Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama, in several Republican-leaning battleground states where the election will be won or lost. (READ MORE)
New president to inherit Afghan crisis - As a U.S.-led coalition races to develop a new strategy to counter growing Taliban and al Qaeda militancy, the next U.S. president will face a crisis that has left U.S. officials walking a tightrope with both Afghanistan and its nuclear-armed neighbor, Pakistan. (READ MORE)
Lawmakers in safe seats raise huge sums - If you believe the polls, plenty of lawmakers are in jeopardy of losing their seats on Election Day. But some of the biggest raisers of campaign cash are the members of Congress whose re-elections are considered a safe bet. (READ MORE)
European markets follow Asia down - LONDON (AP) – European stock markets opened sharply lower Wednesday following losses in Asia and Tuesday's reversal on Wall Street amid spreading pessimism over corporate earnings around the world. (READ MORE)
$175-an-hour Santa sues to keep job - Yes, Virginia, there was a Santa Claus. He was making $175 an hour greeting children for the past two decades at the upscale Tysons mall in a Washington suburb before he was suddenly fired. He did what any self-respecting 21st-century Santa would do: He lawyered up... (READ MORE)
At IMF, viva la difference? - International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn's reputation as a womanizer may have finally caught up with him, but economists and financial analysts expect the Frenchman to escape the fate of Paul Wolfowitz, who lost his job as head of the World Bank last year under similar circumstances. (READ MORE)
Administration urges patience on bailout - A day after dropping its opposition to a second stimulus bill, the White House said its $700 billion Wall Street rescue plan should be given time to work before more government intervention to jump-start the economy is tried. (READ MORE)
Ex-stadium chief feared O'Malley's retribution - Personal notes and memoranda written in 2006 by Alison Asti show that she thought she was about to be fired as executive director of the Maryland Stadium Authority because she had declined to support then-Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley's campaign for governor. (READ MORE)
Agencies Counted Big Firms As Small - U.S. government agencies made at least $5 billion in mistakes in their recent reports of contracts awarded to small businesses, with many claiming credit for awards to companies that long ago outgrew the designation or never qualified in the first place, a Washington Post analysis shows. (READ MORE)
Fearing a Drought of Aid - President Bush, who has made international aid a cornerstone of his foreign policy, warned yesterday against cutting U.S. assistance to impoverished nations in the midst of the financial turmoil sweeping Wall Street and Main Street, arguing that doing so would undermine America's economy, national... (READ MORE)
Russian Economic Official Abruptly Freed From Jail - MOSCOW, Oct. 21 -- Russian prosecutors agreed Tuesday to release a senior economic official jailed a year ago on corruption charges, a rare reversal by the authorities in a case that has been linked to Kremlin infighting over control of the country's huge reserve funds. (READ MORE)
Candidates Keep Up Attacks in Key States - BENSALEM, Pa., Oct. 21 -- Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain took their competing economic messages to two of the country's biggest electoral prizes on Tuesday, with McCain accusing Obama across Pennsylvania of wanting to raise taxes and Obama attending a jobs "summit" with supporters in Florida, a battleground state struck hard by the economic downturn. (READ MORE)
Poll Shows Slots Plan Has Wide Support - A broad majority of Maryland voters supports a proposal for slot machine gambling on the Nov. 4 ballot as deepening worries about the state budget outweigh lingering concerns about the social problems that slots might bring, according to a Washington Post poll. (READ MORE)
Lifeline for Automakers Dangles Just Out of Reach - A $25 billion loan program rushed through Congress to revive the nation's ailing domestic auto industry may not deliver any money to Detroit for more than a year, federal officials said, prompting concern that the cash may come too late to prop up one of the country's most important manufacturing sectors. (READ MORE)
Iraqi Cabinet Wants Security Agreement Altered - BAGHDAD — In a sign of growing unease with the proposed security agreement between the United States and Iraq, the Iraqi cabinet said Tuesday that it would demand changes to the deal and key Iraqi leaders said it was important to have a backup plan in case there was too much opposition for the pact to win approval. (READ MORE)
Acorn Report Raises Issues of Legality - An internal report by a lawyer for the community organizing group Acorn raises questions about whether the web of relationships among its 174 affiliates may have led to violations of federal laws. The group, formally known as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has been in the news over accusations that it is involved in voter registration fraud, charges it says are overblown and politically motivated. (READ MORE)
Stocks in Asia and Europe Slide - PARIS -- The turmoil in global markets deepened Wednesday, as stocks fell sharply in Europe and Asia, and the euro and British pound fell to their lowest levels against the dollar in years. Oil prices dropped below $70 a barrel. Times Topics: Credit Crisis — The EssentialsIn early trading, the DJ Euro Stoxx 50 index, a barometer of euro zone blue chips, fell 2.7 percent... (READ MORE)
Wachovia Reports $23.9 Billion Loss for Third Quarter - Wachovia on Wednesday posted a $23.9 billion third-quarter loss, a record for any United States lender in the global credit crisis, underscoring the challenges Wells Fargo & Company will face after it acquires the big lender. The loss totaled $11.18 per share, and stemmed mostly from an $18.7 billion write-down of good will because asset values declined, as well as a big increase in reserves for soured loans. Wachovia has lost $33 billion in the last two quarters. (READ MORE)
On the Web:
David Ignatius: A Critical Stage in Iraq - Iraq hasn't gotten much attention recently in the American presidential campaign, thanks to the reduction in violence there, but U.S. policymakers are increasingly worried about what's ahead. The negotiations to complete a new status-of-forces agreement for U.S. troops are deadlocked. With a Dec. 31 deadline approaching, Baghdad and Washington seem to be running out of bargaining room. The Iraqis are determined to assert their sovereignty through legal jurisdiction over U.S. forces, while American officials are demanding broad protections from Iraqi law until U.S. troops are gone in 2011. U.S. officials are warning that if the talks remain stalled, there isn't an easy Plan B, such as a new U.N. Security Council resolution to replace the one that expires at year's end and now provides the legal mandate for American troops. (READ MORE)
Michael Gerson: The Irony of Obama - Less than two weeks away from his likely election as president, the debate continues about the nature of Barack Obama's deepest political beliefs. Is he -- as some liberals quietly hope and many conservatives loudly accuse -- a closet radical? Or is he a more subtle and moderate political figure who embraced, then discarded, the leftism of south Chicago in pursuit of a restless ambition? There is evidence for both views. For those in the first camp, Obama is the associate of Ayers, the acolyte of Alinsky, the friend of Pfleger, the disciple of Wright. The ACORN, in this argument, doesn't fall far from the tree. It is undeniable that Obama's record in the Illinois Legislature was conventionally liberal on crime and spending, and radical on abortion. During his brief U.S. Senate career, he has carefully avoided offending liberal constituencies. As a presidential candidate, Obama has felt no need to develop a third-way alternative to the Gore-Kerry agenda... (READ MORE)
Michael Medved: The Consequences of Defeat - Despite the fact that leading polls continue to indicate a close Presidential election, and point to the very real chance of an upset victory for the McCain-Palin ticket, too many conservatives have begun to embrace a bizarre form of defeatism. According to this destructive logic, a Republican defeat in 2008 counts as not only inevitable, but necessary; some disgruntled voices on the right argue that a decisive win for Barack Obama might actually help the conservative cause in the long run. This notion contradicts both common sense and historical precedent and rests on five deeply damaging and ultimately demented myths. MYTH #1: If Obama gets elected, his extreme liberalism will make him a one term president TRUTH: Whoever is elected in 2008, will almost certainly win re-election in 2012--the business cycle will inevitably allow him to preside over “recovery” (READ MORE)
Neal Boortz: To The Undecided Voter - This is long; very long. Hey, I’m a pretty entertaining writer … so give it a go. If you’re an undecided voter in this presidential election the least you owe your country is to try to base your final choice on some substantive facts. No, I don’t have all the facts here … but I have enough of them to perhaps convince you that voting one particular way on November 4th might not be the most brilliant move you’ve ever made. This election is my 10th. My 10th presidential election since I became a radio talk show host. My 10th election since I began spending more time than the average American thinking about, researching, reading about and talking about the choices voters faces. Look; I mean no arrogance here. It’s just that the average American doesn’t spend from 15 (then) to 22.5 (now) hours a week over the period of a presidential race talking about the candidates, the issues, the non-issues and the consequences of voter choice. (READ MORE)
Tony Blankley: The Birth of the Me-Too Conservative - With the rise to enduring power of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in 1933, a new type of Republican emerged in reaction to FDR's attractive and overawing power: the me-too Republican. Until the election of President Reagan five decades later, these me-too Republicans supported, rather than opposed, Democratic Party policies but claimed they would administer them better. Of course, this led to a half-century of Democratic dominance of American government and politics. FDR himself cruelly mocked this pathetic breed of spineless, protect-your-career-at-any-cost Republican politicians: "Let me warn the nation against the smooth evasion which says: 'Of course we believe all these things. We believe in Social Security; we believe in work for the unemployed; we believe in saving homes. Cross our hearts and hope to die, we believe in all these things; but we do not like the way the present administration is doing them. (READ MORE)
Michelle Malkin: The Increasingly Erratic, Super-Gaffetastic Joe Biden - If the prospect of Joe Biden sitting a heartbeat away from the presidency doesn't give you palpitations, you are not paying attention. Hysterical Sarah Palin-bashers on the unhinged left and elitist right have dominated campaign press coverage and pop culture. They've ridiculed her family, her appearance and her speech patterns. They've derided her character, her parenting skills, her readiness and her intellect. Meanwhile, the increasingly erratic, super-gaffetastic Joe Biden gets a pass. What does the guy have to do to earn the relentless scrutiny and merciless mockery he deserves? Answer: wear high heels, shoot caribou and change the "D" next to his name to an "R." Team Obama is hammering John McCain as "erratic" in the closing days of the election campaign. There are now 615,000 Google hits and counting using the search terms "erratic McCain." (READ MORE)
Walter E. Williams: Affordable Health Care - One of the campaign themes this election cycle is "affordable" health care. Shouldn't we ask ourselves whether we want the politicians who brought us the "affordable" housing, that created the current financial debacle, to now deliver us affordable health care? Shouldn't we also ask how things turned out in countries where there is socialized medicine? The Vancouver, British Columbia-based Fraser Institute's annual publication, "Waiting Your Turn," reports that Canada's median waiting times from a patient's referral by a general practitioner to treatment by a specialist, depending on the procedure, averages from five to 40 weeks. The wait for diagnostics, such as MRI or CT, ranges between four and 28 weeks. According to Michael Tanner's "The Grass Is Not Always Greener," in Cato Institute's Policy Analysis (March 18, 2008), the Mayo Clinic treats more than 7,000 foreign patients a year, the Cleveland Clinic 5,000, Johns Hopkins Hospital treats 6,000: (READ MORE)
Ken Blackwell: Assault on Fairness from the Left - While we hear a lot about "partisan politics" in the media, most Americans do not define themselves, first and foremost, by their political party. Many people's beliefs do not fit neatly into the label of "Republican" or "Democrat." The cultural identity of many Americans supersedes their views about the role of government or the proper way to increase health-care coverage. Part of that identity is the belief in the value of a fair fight and in the fundamental right of the American president to be elected by a transparent and accurate vote. That's why the widespread and blatant voter registration fraud and outright voter fraud being reported nationwide is not a partisan issue. This illegal activity affects all fair-minded Americans who want a free, fair and honest election. Republicans and Democrats alike should be up in arms because voter fraud is a direct threat to freedom and bedrock American beliefs. (READ MORE)
Terence Jeffrey: Obama's Mandate for Nationalized Same-Sex Marriage - Appearing Monday on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," Joe Biden made the most high-profile statement yet of the Obama-Biden position on same-sex marriage. DeGeneres asked where he stands on California's Proposition 8, a 14-word proposal that says, "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." Those exact words were enacted originally as a California statute in 2000, when 61 percent of voters approved Proposition 22, the California Defense of Marriage Act. This May, in a 4-3 decision, the California Supreme Court threw out Proposition 22, declaring same-sex marriage a "right" under the California Constitution. Proposition 8 would amend that constitution to include the 14 words Proposition 22 originally made state law. If Proposition 8 wins, same-sex marriage will be prohibited in California. If Proposition 8 loses, same-sex marriage will be permitted. (READ MORE)
Austin Bay: The International Crisis Testing Obamas Mettle - Mark my words, Joe Biden told a group of wealthy contributors. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like it did John Kennedy. A moment later Biden added, Watch, we're going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. So lets play Name That Crisis, the one Biden says will test Obama within six months of his inauguration. Understand any answer will be tentative. Even if the prognosticator correctly identifies the antagonists and the battlefield, the actual sequence of events will defy astrologers, political science-fiction scenarists and intelligence agencies. Gomer Pyles kitsch litany (from The Andy Griffith Show) will damn us once again: Surprise, surprise, surprise. Pyles flabbergast served as a plot device in a family comedy. Obamas test will be an American tragedy. (READ MORE)
John Stossel: Unappreciated Spontaneous Order - Avid supporters of John McCain and Barack Obama cannot wait until their man gets into office. They say things like: McCain "will bring peace and stability to the United States." Or that under Obama "our kids and our grandkids will have a better life." But how can one man be expected to do such grand things? It's easy to think that complex problems require centrally planned solutions. But the opposite is true: The more complex a problem, the more centralized political decision-making is not the answer. Try this thought experiment suggested by economist Daniel Klein of George Mason University. Imagine you had never seen a skating rink and were told that people were going to strap blades to their feet and propel themselves on the ice wherever they chose at whatever speed they could -- without a license and with no one directing traffic. (READ MORE)
Lawhawk: Tanking It For Obama - The media is so badly in the tank for the Obama campaign that even Dan Rather has said that if Gov. Sarah Palin said what Joe Biden did, it would be fatal to the campaign. It would be front page above the fold important. Yet, why is it that this story percolates mainly in the blogosphere? The answer is all but obvious to anyone who's paying attention. It's the media bias, stupid. What exactly did Biden say? Who knows what Biden says? Anyone? The media isn't exactly falling over itself to provide that latest bloggy goodness because of how Biden spells out just what many people are fearing - a terrorist attack or other major incident involving the US and Obama incapable of dealing with the crisis in a manner that contains the situation and deals with it appropriately and sufficiently. (READ MORE)
A Soldier's Mind: Coping With Deployment Classes Offered By American Red Cross - Deployments are stressful times for the service member, for their family and their friends. Regardless of how many times a Soldier has deployed, each one is different and each time, family members encounter different things that can tax their coping mechanisms. Spouses are left with having to run the entire household, play the role of both parents and deal with all the day to day issues that tend to crop up. Soldiers are thousands of miles from home and have the stress of being in a combat zone and dealing with the unknown element that brings and having to worry about how things at home are going, especially when something goes wrong. Children, especially very young children, are confused about why their mom or dad is no longer there, while older children may be angry that their parent isn’t there to share in the milestones of their lives that are important to them. (READ MORE)
Donald Douglas: The Moral Abomination of Robert Farley - Some time back, I wrote about Robert Farley's review of David Horowitz and Ben Johnson's Party of Defeat. Recall that Farley completely bombed in his attempt at making even the slightest dent in the Horowitz and Johnson's thesis, a thesis holding that the Democrats - pandering to their antiwar base - turned against a war they had nominally supported, an about face unprecedented in the domestic politics of American warfare. Horowitz and Johnson show in exacting yet excruciating detail that today's Democrats have demonstrated a eager willingness to abandon objective national security threat assessments for narrow partisan political gain. Where once the party of John F. Kennedy led the fight against communism worldwide, the heirs of Democratic containment have sought to appease terrorism and coddle dictators. From Nancy Pelosi and John Murtha, to Harry Reid and Barack Obama, at no time in our historical memory has a political party sought to weaken American standing in war and diplomacy abroad. (READ MORE)
Gabriel Malor @ Ace of Spades: Court: Army Deserter Ehren Watada Cannot Be Retried Following Mistrial - Lieutenant Watada refused to deploy to Iraq in 2006 because he foolishly and ignorantly believes the Iraq war is illegal. He was charged for missing movement and conduct unbecoming. That trial ended in February 2007 after the judge declared a mistrial. The case fell apart when it turned out that Watada had stipulated that he did not deploy with his unit as ordered and that he gave interviews without authorization. In the military judge's view, Watada hadn't realized the legal consequences of the stipulations, since they largely amounted to admitting the charges. The prosecution had already rested, but their case relied in large part on the stipulations which the military judge wanted to strike. The military judge decided that the best thing to do was declare a mistrial and start over. (READ MORE)
Blackfive: Nick Meo - The Most Self-serving and Incompetent Journalist in the World - This is a MUST READ. The following is a case of gross imcompetence and massive egoism. There are some great reporters out there - the NY TImes has them, CNN has them, Fox has them, the Christian Science Monitor has them. And then there's Nick Meo of the Telegraph UK...this guy is a real piece of work. Two of the soldiers involved in his articles have contacted me as well as officers and sergeants on site. This is the greatest honor I could have, to speak for those soldiers who can't speak out for themselves. Nick Meo should be shunned. His ass should be un-credentialed and tossed out of theater on the slowest garbage scow. We begin with a self-agrandizing article written by Nick Meo titled "The night I was 'killed in action' by a Taliban ambush". I encourage you to read the sickening piece of garbage for yourself. (READ MORE)
The Belmont Club: Operation Grand Slam - In the movie Goldfinger, James Bond, about to be split in half by a laser beam, asks the villain, “do you expect me to talk?” He answers, “no Mr. Bond. I expect you to die.” Roger Kimball exclaims, “is Obama a ‘transformational figure’? You don’t know the half of it!” Michael Medved believes that “for Conservatives, Obama’s changes would be permanent and devastating”. That, my dear Mr. Bond, is the point. Intensity of commitment has long been a decisive component of historical military strategy. It is possible to defeat a superior enemy if you can ‘outcommit’ him: take things to a level where he is afraid to follow. Napoleon did not anticipate that the Russians would burn Moscow rather than let him have it. Napoleon was defeated. Late in the Second World War the Japanese adopted the method of suicide attack, which became famous as the kamikaze. The Japanese still lost, but only because the US was many times more powerful and had the Atomic Bomb to boot. (READ MORE)
Dr. Sanity: AYERS IS DEAD SERIOUS ABOUT HIS 'SOCIAL JUSTICE' - Bill Ayer's name is often preceded by the term "unrepentant terrorist". What does that mean exactly, you may wonder? Ayers has gone out of his way to emphasize in his many interviews that his pathetic little group did not kill many people (except members of the group who had an on the job work accident at their bomb factory in Greenwich Village). He has also said he wished they had "done more"; and there is evidence that at the end of their terror run, they planned to blow up a number of people at a dance at Fort Dix. One of the commenters in a previous post (Beverly) supplied this link related to the Weather Underground. It is from an eyewitness to one of their meetings who later wrote a book (Larry Grathwohl and Frank Reagan, ed., Bringing Down America (New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House, 1976). The following are excerpts of an interview with Grathwohl from a video "No Place To Hide" made some years ago: (READ MORE)
Jules Crittenden: Code Words For Racial Setback - Lots of good PC-bashing fun over that KC Star race-baiter who informed us that when we discuss Obama’s politics, we’re racists. “Socialist” = code word for “black.” But as ridiculous as that sounds, the unfortunate truth is that rather than bringing us forward in race relations, the candidacy of Barack Obama has brought out some of the ugliest sides of our society, and could scar us for decades to come. No, I’m not talking about the closet racists or the brazen bigots that this campaign season has drawn out. (And no, smart aleck, by closet racists and brazen bigots I am not refering to small-town-gun-toting-religion-clinger-bashing Obama, Unproud Michelle, America-God-damning Wright, Western-Civilization-exploding Ayers or even backwoods-cracker-hating Murtha.) Because despite the best poking around efforts of the media, we really haven’t encountered much hidden or naked racism among Obama’s opponents. (READ MORE)
Ed Morrissey: AP: Obama has lost six points in three weeks among likely voters - Take this, as with all polling this cycle, with a grain of salt — but usually the error in the AP polling goes the other direction. A new poll of likely voters has Barack Obama clinging to a one-point lead, 44%-43%, with John McCain making up almost all of a seven-point deficit over the last three weeks. Guess what may have done the trick, according to the AP? “An Associated Press-GfK poll shows the presidential race tightened after the final debate, with John McCain gaining among whites and people earning less than $50,000. Two weeks before the election, McCain and Barack Obama are essentially running even among likely voters. The poll put Obama at 44 percent and McCain at 43 percent among those voters who are considered likely to vote on Nov. 4. The survey supports what some Republicans and Democrats privately have said in recent days: that the race has narrowed as Republicans drift home to their party. McCain’s ‘Joe the plumber’ analogy also seemed to strike a chord.” (READ MORE)
MichaelW: Poll Dancing - People are raising lots of questions about the accuracy of current polling in the Presidential race. Some are almost certainly doing so out of a sense of desperation, hoping against hope that McCain isn't as far behind as it seems. But then, some have legitimate concerns about the state of the polling process, and whether or not the numbers we hear every day have enough integrity to properly handicap the horserace. “The polls are wrong this year, very wrong. I have been saying this for months, and I have backed up my claim with both statistical and anecdotal support. The claims I have made have inspired some, caused others to laugh in derision, and brought others to test their assumptions and revisit the hard data. Along the way, there have been a lot of questions about how and why the polls could be wrong. The most common complaint, is that for all of the polls to be wrong, there would need to be some sort of conspiracy, or else an incredibly stupid decision made across the board. Well, I am not a big believer in conspiracies, but I do think that the polling groups have fallen into a groupthink condition.” (READ MORE)
McQ: Obama Lobbyists - the rest of the story - You'll note the Obama mantra, when speaking of lobbyists, is always specific - "corporate lobbyists". As if they're the only type of lobbyists out there. [We are apparently supposed to assume that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae's contributions to the Obama weren't considered to be from "corporations".] Of course, there are a ton of other lobbyists spending money and time seeking influence, and Mr. Obama is as tied to them as he'd like to claim other politicians are tied to "corporate lobbyists". For example: “With less than two weeks to go before voters cast their ballots, the AFL-CIO launched a massive Get Out The Vote campaign Tuesday, targeting over 13 million union voters across the country in presidential, congressional and gubernatorial battleground states.” (READ MORE)
ShrinkWrapped: Regulation & Innovation - It is generally assumed that a Democratic government would move quickly to increase its control over the economy. Through increasing taxes and redistribution the government would increase the number of people who receive money from its coffers and enlarge its partisan base. People can argue how much good or bad this would be for the economy (and I have certainly suggested it would be harmful) however, there are additional ways in which the government can expand its power and that is my interest here. A Democratic government would almost certainly increase regulation of business.* This would be done in the name of abstract "goods" like the environment, or people's health, or fairness, with the details of how such regulations would actually work ignored. Increasing regulation can always be made to seem a public good without an apparent price because most often the costs are hidden. In the Medical field the hidden costs will play out over an extended time frame as opportunity costs. (READ MORE)
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