60 Minutes' Steve Kroft looks at what caused the financial crisis and the under-capitalized house of cards built on shifting sands that the financial giants thought would bring them big money with little risk. It also shows how the bailout money for which Congress capitulated to Bush and Paulson's pleas will do nothing to fix the problem.

On Friday Congress finally passed - and President Bush signed into law - a financial rescue package in which the taxpayers will buy up Wall Street's bad investments.

The numbers are staggering, but they don't begin to explain the greed and incompetence that created this mess.

It began with a terrible bet that was magnified by reckless borrowing, complex securities, and a vast, unregulated shadow market worth nearly $60 trillion that hid the risks until it was too late to do anything about them.

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David Brooks continues his journey as a conservative apostate. He no longer believes in the Republican Party anymore, but then looks in the mirror and realizes he's a bishop in their church. After admitting that Sarah Palin isn't qualified to be President, Brooks praises her for winning the debate, and opines that so much is "stacked against" John McCain.

It's fascinating to watch Brooks as a stark contrast to the vicious nature of Heather Wilson, who immediately preceded him on Face The Nation.

Wake up, Mr. Brooks, it's time to hang up your "conservative" credentials and abandon the Dark Side.

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I often wonder what it's like to live in the simplistic black-and-white world of your typical Republican bobblehead. Are their brains truly this unable to process nuance? Take, for example, Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) who is only too happy to categorize (with host Bob Schieffer's enabling, bless his Republican-loving little heart) Barack Obama as unpatriotic. Why? Because at his speech in Germany, he acknowledged that there have been errors in America's foreign policy.

SCHIEFFER: Well, that sounds like you’re saying that he’s somehow unpatriotic, which seemed to be the underlying theme of what she said yesterday, Congresswoman.

WILSON: Well, he has talked down about America and you know, we’ve always had this history of saying, well, politics ends at the waters’ edge. And it didn’t for Barack Obama. He’s been critical, not only of the President, but of American policy and has kind of a negative view of the American world. That’s not unusual, frankly, among liberals in kind of post-Vietnam America to say that America is the problem. I think Sarah Palin believes that America is part of the solution. We are an exceptional country, we are a force for good and we need to talk about the good things we do.

Sigh. Look, I love my kids more than life itself. I think they are incredible, beautiful, smart children that make me proud to be their mom everyday. But even that primal, ferocious love I have for my kids doesn't prevent me from seeing that they are also impatient, impulsive and occasionally bratty. It doesn't blind me to their failings and I'm not a terrible mother if I acknowledge the areas in which they could improve when they have done wrong.

But apparently, in Heather Wilson's (and Bob Schieffer, let's not forget he is the one framing this as such) world, what I should do is let my kids be monsters outside the house and then ignore others who suggest that they could exercise restraint, blaming them for not recognizing their inherent goodness.

Tell me, how is that acting in their best interests? And this is what Heather Wilson thinks the President ought to do on a national scale?

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If you ever wondered how it was possible that we could possibly have this close an election when the vast majority of the American people highly disapprove of the job George W. Bush has done, yet there is still a disconnect with John McCain supporters that his would be a third Bush term, look no further than what passes for political debate on this morning's Face the Nation.  My head is still hurting from the stupidity of it. 

Still playing to the media narrative that the selection of Sarah Palin should somehow bring women to the McCain camp, they bring on four female proxies--Kay Bailey Hutchinson and former Mass Gov. Jane Swift for McCain, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano and FL Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz for Obama--to frame the debate as Obama vs. Palin.  Strange that.  All this time, I thought it was John McCain running for the office.  You know, the same guy that calls his wife an unforgivable slur and laughs at Hillary Clinton being referred to as a b*tch, and now the Republicans saying they're going to call out sexism when they see it? Maybe my silly little female head got confused.

And when Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz throws down the gauntlet on all the GOP distractions and says that the truth matters and Gov. Swift opts to spin this into an inane deflection of whether Palin was actually in Iraq, wasting close to four minutes of airtime.  Wasserman Schultz holds her ground, pointing out that these embellishments to her record just show what a lightweight Palin truly is, but it's host Bob Schieffer that has to side with the Republicans by pointing out that Palin's actions 'have been alleged' to be less than her claim, but it's up to the voters to decide "the truth."

Um, Bob, isn't that supposed to be your function?  To help the voters know the truth from the spin?

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What is it about McCain ignoring the actual questions and answering questions never asked?  And of course, Bush golfing buddy Bob Schieffer never points out that he didn't actually answer question about why there are so few African-Americans in the Republican Party and how that might affect the long term outlook on his party but lets him instead go on a five minute, rambling non-sequitur about education vouchers. 

SCHIEFFER: I want to ask you about the composition of the...of the convention. There were 36 African American delegates out of 2300 plus delegates there. How can you survive as a party if you become just the party of white people?

McCAIN: We can't. We can't. I saw a bit of information the other day that by, I forgot, I think...don't hold me to it, 2042 or something like that, white Americans will be in the minority in the population of this country. We can't. We've got to reach out; we gotta do a better job. We have to have the Hispanic as well as the African American voters. I've traveled all over this country. I've been to places where there were literally no Republican votes. I have to convince them I'll be the president of everybody. And the Republican party has a job to do. And frankly, it's a job that also spills over into other issues. You've seen the generic ballot difference that we have...[..]

SCHIEFFER: So what are you going to do about that?

McCAIN: Oh, education, economy, small business, create jobs....education, as I mentioned, civil rights issue of this century. Now everyone has equal access to a school. But what's the point of access to a failed school, or a failing school? We've got to give them more choice, more opportunity, all Americans. Because we know in low income America, the schools are failing, with the exception of NYC, now New Orleans and some others. But so, a quality education is really the dream of every parent. As you know in Washington DC, they have an experimental voucher system. Huge number of parents want to take advantage of that, thousands more than they have room for. So we got to provide the kinds of opportunities in education, one of the keys to it, help for small businesses, and get the economy back on its feet, don't raise the taxes, get it going again. Americans are hurting in a way that they have not hurt for a long time. I would probably argue to you that the 65 appearances - I hate to keep bringing that up - that we probably--you and I-never had a conversation when our economy was in greater difficulty than it is today.

Okay, McSame...obviously continuing Bush's policies will change the economy and the minorities' outlook on the GOP how?  Here's a helpful hint from someone who hopes you never step foot in the Oval Office:  if you really want to attract minorities to the GOP, you have to address these issues: (h/t Don Rumsfeld hater in the comments)

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So much for fighting for reform, eh? Sarah Palin built her political capital in Alaska by throwing in with none other than Ted Stevens

Palin's name is listed on 2003 incorporation papers of the "Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service, Inc.," a 527 group that could raise unlimited funds from corporate donors. The group was designed to serve as a political boot camp for Republican women in the state. She served as one of three directors until June 2005, when her name was replaced on state filings.

Palin's relationship with Alaska's senior senator may be one of the more complicated aspects of her new position as Sen. John McCain's running mate; Stevens was indicted in July 2008 on seven counts of corruption.

Palin, an anti-corruption crusader in Alaska, had called on Stevens to be open about the issues behind the investigation. But she also held a joint news conference with him in July, before he was indicted, to make clear she had not abandoned him politically.

Stevens had been helpful to Palin during her run for governor, swooping in with a last moment endorsement. And the two filmed a campaign commercial together to highlight Stevens's endorsement of Palin during the 2006 race.

Shortly after Palin was announced as McCain's vice presidential pick, the ad was removed from her gubernatorial campaign web site. It remains available on YouTube.

And here's that ad, courtesy of TPM, who saved it for posterity.

VECO, the company that gave "gifts" to Stevens, has ties to Palin too according to Think Progress, contributing 10 percent of her total campaign fund when she ran for lieutenant governor in 2002.

Corruption you can believe in!

What's remarkable is that people like Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) are going around repeatedly spouting talking points like "Gov. Palin took on Ted Stevens. If she can take him on, she can take on the Russians. Heh." And the question arises - are they really that dishonest or are they simply ignorant, digging themselves deeper and deeper into holes because of the worst-vetted candidate ever?

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What does it say about Sarah Palin that in her first big appearance before a national audience - her introduction as McCain's running mate - she decided to flat out lie about her accomplishments?

I told Congress -- I told Congress, "Thanks, but no thanks," on that bridge to nowhere.

If our state wanted a bridge, I said we'd build it ourselves. Well, it's always, though, safer in politics to avoid risk, to just kind of go along with the status quo. But I didn't get into government to do the safe and easy things. A ship in harbor is safe, but that's not why the ship is built.

Politics isn't just a game of competing interests and clashing parties. The people of America expect us to seek public office and to serve for the right reasons.

She did that? Well, no. When told that Congress had stripped funding for the bridge, she said she was still in favor of Congressional assistance for that and other Alaskan projects. And when that assistance didn't materialize, she got all sour-grapes about it.

When she finally canceled the $400 million project, Palin lamented the fact that Congress was not more forthcoming with federal funding. She said in a statement at the time:

Despite the work of our congressional delegation, we are about $329 million short of full funding for the bridge project, and it’s clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island.

Despite her claims to be a reformer and "govern with integrity", Palin has kept up her relationship with indicted Seanator Ted Stevens, the father of the bridge to nowhere. He endorsed her for Governor in 2006 and, on July 2, 2008, Stevens and Palin held a joint press conference on energy issues. As Steven's hugged Palin she said "I have great respect for the Senator... He needs to be heard across America. His voice, his experience, his passion needs to be heard across America--so that Alaska can contribute more."

Contribute more to what? America's prison population? Republican coffers? What?

Now, both John McCain and Lindsay Graham are repeating Palin's claims. In response to Graham, George Stephanopoulos told him "But Senator, she turned against that, only she campaigned for it in her 2006 race, and turned against it in 2007 only after it became a national joke. "

Then there's the shadow governor, Todd Palin. He sits in on legislative meetings dealing with oil company negotiations while he's still working for BP. He took a very short hiatus back when Palin was first elected Governor but returned quickly to work citing the need for the "extra income". The Governor of Alaska pulls down a six figure salary and the Palin's own three houses - one residential and two recreational.

Oh, I get it now - contribute more to lying to the American public. To serve for the wrong reasons.

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Bob Schieffer interviewed three Democrats on Face The Nation this morning and all of them were able to cut through the GOP talking points with ease. Governors Ed Rendell, Kathleen Sebelius and Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. did a fantastic job of speaking the truths about John McCain, his elite, lavish lifestyle and how out of touch he is with average Americans.

Schieffer plays a clip of John McCain being interviewed by Katie Couric in which he once again, shamelessly exploits his POW experience to make excuses for why he doesn't know how many houses he has.  Again.  But luckily, the Democrats make quick work of him. This is what we need to see and hear every day from every Democratic politician and pundit -- driving home the message over and over again, that John McCain would carry on the same losing policies as George Bush and to elect him would be a disaster for our country.

Jackson: "...We don't want him in the White House. He says he has seven kitchen tables, we don't want to give him an eighth kitchen table.We understand he has a wonderful life, this is a great country, but millions of Americans at this hour are suffering through a housing market that is collapsed. Housing foreclosures. So when John McCain gets up in the morning and leaves his house to lock his door, he has to shuffle through a number of keys to figure out which key works in which door, in which home he's at at any given time."

Rendell: "What concerns me more than not exactly knowing how many homes he has, Bob, and Jesse's right, it shows he's out of touch, but when he said in January that Americans have done well under the George Bush economy, he's so out of touch. Hardly any American except people who make five, six hundred thousand dollars plus have done well under this economy. Wages are down, everything else is up, Americans - middle class, working Americans are getting slaughtered under this economy. How could he have said that?"

Sebelius: "And he wants  to continue those policies.  I think that's the most terrifying thing, he thinks we have done well and he thinks more of the same will do even better.  That's what we have to let Americans know across this country. He- his top financial advisor talked about the fact that it's a mental recession, and we have a nation of whiners. I'd like him to come to towns across Kansas and Pennsylvania and Illinois and see what's really happening in communities."

  For some strange reason, prosecutors in the corruption case against Ted Stevens (R - VECO) don't want to mention a letter Dick Cheney sent at Stevens' behest, shilling for corporate wheeler-dealer Bill Allen's pet pipeline project.

In a conversation secretly tape-recorded by the FBI on June 25, 2006, Stevens discussed ways to get a pipeline bill through the Alaska Legislature with Bill Allen, an oil-services executive accused of providing the senator with about $250,000 in undisclosed financial benefits. According to a Justice motion, Stevens told Allen, "I'm gonna try to see if I can get some bigwigs from back here and say, 'Look … you gotta get this done'." Two days later, Cheney wrote a letter to the Alaska Legislature urging members to "promptly enact" a bill to build the pipeline. The letter was considered unusual because the White House rarely contacts state lawmakers about pending legislative matters. It also angered state Democrats, who accused Cheney of pushing oil-company interests. The former executive director of Cheney's energy task force had gone to work as a lobbyist for British Petroleum, one of three firms slated to build the pipeline.

Stevens confirmed to NEWSWEEK last week that he asked Cheney to write the letter. "We wanted the federal government to tell the state to act quickly on it," he said. (A spokesman for Alaska's other senator, Lisa Murkowski, said her office also had contacts with Cheney's office.) A Cheney spokeswoman said his office does not comment on pending legal matters.

Now why do you think Bush's Justice Department isn't too keen on using this important bit of evidence? Stevens is charged with offfenses under the Ethics in Government Act. Could it be that following all the leads would open up a big can of worms for the White House?

This segment originally aired in November of 2007.  I am a big opponent of the death penalty in general.  It's unfairly applied with minorities disproportionately receiving it, studies show it offers no deterrent to other crimes and the thought of even one innocent person executed wrongly makes it just horrifying to consider.  We are the only Western country that still has the death penalty and the fact that we stand with countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia and China in executing prisoners should not be a point of pride.  We at one time at least held to the standard of not executing the mentally ill or retarded, but even that no longer holds as James Clark of Texas or Greg Thompson above show. 

If you are interested in working towards the abolishment of the death penalty, contact Amnesty International for information on what you can do.

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Who is the last person on the planet that Barack Obama should take advice from?  Naturally, the person that Bob Schieffer asks on Face the Nation, Turd Blossom himself, Karl Rove.  Seriously, this guy is an advisor for the McCain campaign, he's the architect of one of the nastiest and most partisan campaigns in the history of the country and for some reason, Schieffer thinks it's legitimate to ask him his thoughts on Obama's VP pick.  Why?

Rove tries to spin this that if Obama selects a governor like Kaine from a red state, it's a political choice, rather than a presidential one, because all Obama is focused on is the electoral votes.  Okay.  Because Cheney was a real presidential choice...oh wait, Bush didn't make the choice.  Cheney chose himself. That's thinking big and broad.

What cracks me up the most is Karl Rove's attempt to diminish Kaine as a VP candidate:

I didn't say I thought he ought to, I said he probably would pick a Red State Democrat, because I think he's going to make an intensely political choice, not a governing choice. He's going to view this through a prism of a candidate, not through the prism of President. That is to say, he's going to pick somebody that he thinks on the margin will help him in a state like Indiana or Missouri or Virginia. He's not going to be thinking big and broad about the responsibilities as President. Well, with all due respect again to Gov. Kaine, he's been a governor for three years. He's been able but undistinguished; I don't think people could really name a big, important thing that he's done.

And this differs from GWB's tenure as Governor of Texas how?  Oh that's right, the Governor of Virginia actually works more than the constitutionally weak Governor of Texas.  And how did GWB distinguish himself, other than putting more people to death than all the rest of the states combined?  By failing at every other business he started. 

Talk about appealing to the low information voter.

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  It's rule #1 in the Republican playbook that if you repeat something often enough -- irrespective of its veracity -- it becomes common wisdom.  Somehow, I don't think that rule is going to work for Senator Tubes.   TPMMuckraker:

On Saturday, Stevens visited the small town of Ketchikan, for their annual blueberry festival and gave an interesting quote to the Ketchikan Daily News (sub. req.):

"This is an indictment for failure to disclose gifts that are controversial in terms of whether they were or were not gifts. It's not bribery; it's not some corruption; it's not some extreme felony."

Felony, schmelony.   Interesting that his levels of severity have bribery and corruption as extreme, but his felony...that's nothing.

or: Ted Stevens: So Dirty Even The Bush Administration Had To Indict Him.  (h/t AdamS)

The Justice Department has just handed down a grand jury indictment against Republican Senator Ted Stevens (.pdf) consisting of seven felony counts of making false statements. Basically Stevens is being charged for failing to disclose over $250,000 in gifts he received from 1999-2006, as well as improperly favoring fishing legislation that would benefit his son. For more on the specifics, PBS NOW covered the story extensively in November of last year.

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McClatchy:

Sen. Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in the U.S. Senate and one of the chamber's most powerful members, was indicted Tuesday in Washington for failing to disclose more than $250,000 worth of gifts that he received from businessmen who were seeking his help on federal issues and projects.

The seven-count indictment charges Stevens with making false statements by failing to disclose things of value he received from the Veco Corp., an Alaska-based oil services compmany, and from its CEO, Bill Allen, over an eight-year period.

In real world terms, this has huge ramifications for the Republican Party. Stevens is up for tough reelection this year and is actually currently polling behind challenger and Anchorage mayor Mark Begich. Today's news may very well put us one seat closer to that coveted super-majority. 

Kos has more on where the Alaska Republican party now finds itself.

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MN's WCCO CH4 news' "Reality Check" segment destroys, point-by-point, a new intentionally misleading Sopranos-spoof TV ad by the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, which is actually a cartel of national business groups including the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) and Wal-Mart, masquerading as a pro-union, pro-worker group on behalf of Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) against his Democratic challenger Al Franken.

The ad exploits "a distorted stereotype of the Mafia, and of labor unions as tools of organized crime" to misrepresent legislation that, despite what the ad implies, would actually make it easier for workers to organize unions.

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Actually, it's hard to think of anything that the talking heads inside the Beltway Bubble think would hurt John McCain's chances.  But this is so slippery and the terminology so vague that it's troublesome to see the potential to sway a lot of low information voters.   With the news that we are considering drawing down forces in Iraq, beginning in September (reg. req'd), Roger Simon of The Politico, who never met a Republican for whom he wouldn't apologize, insists that this "October Surprise" will help John McCain.

SIMON: Yeah. It may be an October surprise in July. I think anything that signals that the war in Iraq is generally winding down would be good news for John McCain. He has always said that he wants to leave Iraq, too, but he wants to leave it with victory and honor. And if a drawdown of troops is seen to be militarily justified because we're winning, because the surge is working, and not political trickery because Republicans need it for the fall elections, then that is likely to be effective. 

So how many caveats did you count?  There's a lot of stars that have to line up just so to make that work, but let's focus on the purposeful vagueness and empty rhetoric. 

McCain has ALWAYS said that he wants to leave Iraq? Does anyone ever explain how you can leave an occupation (remember, we "won" the war back in 2003) with "victory"?  Is there any honor to that? 

'The surge is working' meme is working my last nerve as well.  Yes, violence is down within Baghdad (where the majority of those escalation-designated troops were sent), but outside of that area, in Kirkuk, Diyala, Mosul and Fallujah?  Not so much. And is it considered a "win" when we're talking about 4.5 million Iraqi refugees?

What happens if the "drawdown" (which is Beltway speak for returning to pre-surge levels) is NOT militarily justified but politically justified?  Is it still a "drawdown" if we're simply moving them to Afghanistan where violence and attacks has jumped lately?  Will it still help McCain when the number of troop deaths in Afghanistan increase even more, like today's attack in Kabul?

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