Muse’s Monday Menagerie

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Good Monday morning! It’s beginning to feel like Fall!

Well last week was sure interesting (and revealing) for Sarah Palin in regards to her qualifications and readiness to be in the White House..

Regarding those “Trade Missions” Sarah Palin mentioned during her interview with Katie Couric (video), Salon looked into them, and here’s what they found (basically, there weren’t any..).

Andrew Sullivan hammers the lies of Sarah Palin once again.

TPM and the Daily Kos point out that the worst of the Couric interview has yet to come out.. Looks like it is indeed coming.

From Bob Geiger: Newspaper Makes Obama First Democrat Endorsed In 72 Years

Calling him the right man at the right time when “our nation desperately needs an inspirational leader” and declaring that he is “the clear choice,” the Stockton Record in California’s conservative Central Valley has made Barack Obama its first Democratic presidential endorsement in 72 years.

The markets are spiraling down as Congress is expected to vote today on the bailout.

Read Chalmers Johnson on how We Have the Money – If Only We Didn’t Waste It on the Defense Budget.

From Truthdig, read Chris Hedges’ Fueling the Fire of Real Change.

From Michael Moore, The Rich Are Staging a Coup This Morning …a Message From Michael Moore.

Friends,

Let me cut to the chase. The biggest robbery in the history of this country is taking place as you read this. Though no guns are being used, 300 million hostages are being taken. Make no mistake about it: After stealing a half trillion dollars to line the pockets of their war-profiteering backers for the past five years, after lining the pockets of their fellow oilmen to the tune of over a hundred billion dollars in just the last two years, Bush and his cronies — who must soon vacate the White House — are looting the U.S. Treasury of every dollar they can grab. They are swiping as much of the silverware as they can on their way out the door.

No matter what they say, no matter how many scare words they use, they are up to their old tricks of creating fear and confusion in order to make and keep themselves and the upper one percent filthy rich. Just read the first four paragraphs of the lead story in last Monday’s New York Times and you can see what the real deal is:

“Even as policy makers worked on details of a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, Wall Street began looking for ways to profit from it.”Financial firms were lobbying to have all manner of troubled investments covered, not just those related to mortgages.

“At the same time, investment firms were jockeying to oversee all the assets that Treasury plans to take off the books of financial institutions, a role that could earn them hundreds of millions of dollars a year in fees.

“Nobody wants to be left out of Treasury’s proposal to buy up bad assets of financial institutions.”

Unbelievable. Wall Street and its backers created this mess and now they are going to clean up like bandits. Even Rudy Giuliani is lobbying for his firm to be hired (and paid) to “consult” in the bailout.

The problem is, nobody truly knows what this “collapse” is all about. Even Treasury Secretary Paulson admitted he doesn’t know the exact amount that is needed (he just picked the $700 billion number out of his head!). The head of the congressional budget office said he can’t figure it out nor can he explain it to anyone.

And yet, they are screeching about how the end is near! Panic! Recession! The Great Depression! Y2K! Bird flu! Killer bees! We must pass the bailout bill today!! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Read on..

I’ve been trying to get on to Paul Krugman’s blog at the New York Times, but it must be getting heavy traffic today.. Oops, just got on. Here’s Bailout questions answered. This was his post from yesterday: The 3AM Call.

From Glenn Greenwald: Bailout follows the 10 normal principles for how our government functions

Dennis Kucinich weighed in on the coming bailout yesterday.

On the floor of House Sunday, Kucinich declared that:

The $700 billion bailout for Wall Street, is driven by fear not fact. This is too much money in too a short a time going to too few people while too many questions remain unanswered. Why aren’t we having hearings on the plan we have just received? Why aren’t we questioning the underlying premise of the need for a bailout with taxpayers’ money? Why have we not considered any alternatives other than to give $700 billion to Wall Street? Why aren’t we asking Wall Street to clean up its own mess? Why aren’t we passing new laws to stop the speculation, which triggered this? Why aren’t we putting up new regulatory structures to protect investors? How do we even value the $700 billion in toxic assets? 

Why aren’t we helping homeowners directly with their debt burden? Why aren’t we helping American families faced with bankruptcy. Why aren’t we reducing debt for Main Street instead of Wall Street? Isn’t it time for fundamental change in our debt based monetary system, so we can free ourselves from the manipulation of the Federal Reserve and the banks? Is this the United States Congress or the board of directors of Goldman Sachs? Wall Street is a place of bears and bulls. It is not smart to force taxpayers to dance with bears or to follow closely behind the bulls.

That Kucinich is spot-on comes as no great surprise.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey has appointed Nora Dannehy, a federal prosecutor from Connecticut as prosecutor in the continued investigation of the removal of nine U.S. attorneys. Read more on this from TPM. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales gets a pass..

Mark Crispin MIller talks more about the plans underway to steal this election (with a series of videos).

Here, in this shattering new interview, Stephen Spoonamore goes into harrowing detail about the Bush regime’s election fraud, past, present and–if we don’t spread the word right now–to come. Since he’s the only whistle-blower out there who knows the perps themselves, and how they operate, we have to send this new piece far and wide.

Here Spoon tells us that McBush’s team–i.e., Karl Rove and his henchpersons– have their plan in place to steal this next election: by 51.2% of the popular vote, and three electoral votes.

He also talks about the major role played by the Christianist far right in the electronic rigging of the vote.

And he defines our electronic voting system as a major threat to US national security, calling for it to be junked ASAP, in favor of hand-counted paper ballots.