Sarah Palin, grandmother

Bristol Palin, the 18-year-old daughter of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, gave birth to a baby boy Saturday, said Lorenzo Benet in People.com. The child, Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston, weighed in at 7 pounds, 7 ounces. Tripp’s father, apprentice electrician Levi Johnston, has said he and Bristol plan to wed next year.

Congratulations to the new parents, said Robert Stacy McCain in The Other McCain, but also a note of “cultural criticism”—“What’s up with this ‘baby first, marriage later’ thing?” Would it have been so hard to organize “a private, hurry-up wedding” before Tripp’s birth? After all, “conservatives ought to support real traditional values,” such as shotgun weddings.

The news of Bristol’s pregnancy “shocked a lot of people” just as her mom became the GOP’s vice presidential candidate, said Andrew Malcolm in the Los Angeles Times online, but “the conservative crowd seemed to see the situation as a familiar family one.” And Grandma Palin got more good news than a first grandchild this weekend—she was also named the “nation’s second most-admired woman,” after Hillary Clinton, in a USA Today–Gallup poll.

Grandma Johnston’s news was decidedly more mixed, said Lisa Derrick in La Figa. Levi’s mom was busted “for peddling Oxycontin, aka hillbilly heroin, to state troopers” last week. Still, even that helped the new parents, as the arrest pushed up the bidding price for Tripp’s first photos—People reportedly paid $300,000 for the “snap-rights,” from a starting bid of $100,000.

Why teens are ‘sexting’

What happened

An online poll found that 20 percent of teens had sent X-rated photos or videos of themselves to a boyfriend or girlfriend, or posted them online. A third of young adults ages 20 to 26 said they had done it. (USA Today)

What the commentators said

This is nothing to panic about, said Tracy Clark-Flory in Salon. “Sexting”—sending nude photos by cell phone—raises legitimate concerns—especially when the images get shared with unintended viewers. But it doesn’t mean technology is turning kids into amateur porn stars. It just shows that sexual experimentation, like everything else, has “gone digital.”

So, said Erin Manning in BeliefNet, it’s OK for teens to trade X-rated photos and pornographic text messages as long as nobody gets hurt? Maybe if you see zero value in “such virtues as modesty, chastity, or restraint.” But, even in this day and age, there are people who object to this kind of behavior on moral grounds.

Yes, and some of them are called parents, said Stacey Garfinkle in The Washington Post online. But there are ways for moms and dads to discourage sexting, and they don't even have to ban camera phones. Just make sure your kids know messages and pictures they send over the Internet or on cell phones are never truly private. And go digital along with them, monitoring their behavior and friends in cyberspace the same way you do in “real life.”

The nerd who called the election

On election night, Nate Silver was right about nearly everything, says Stephanie Clifford in The New York Times. Silver, a 30-year-old statistics geek, is the Chicago-based creator of FiveThirtyEight.com, a blog on which he used a sophisticated blend of every poll available to forecast much of the 2008 election with uncanny accuracy. Silver correctly predicted that Barack Obama would win the popular vote over John McCain, 52 percent to 46 percent; he also called 49 of the 50 states’ results correctly. “From a marketing standpoint, I’d rather hedge a little bit more,” he says, “but we’re the ones who are bold enough to say what the polls translate into.” More than 5 million people visited his site on election night. Silver, a numbers wizard since he was a kid, started off using his talents to predict the performance of baseball teams and players. Silver turned to politics late last year after growing frustrated by prevailing poll analysis. “There is so much hyperventilation when a poll moves in one way or another,” he says. “People tend to look at polls that are outliers.” His methodology weights polls based on past accuracy and whether they tend to favor Republicans or Democrats. “It’s only when you take the polls into context,” he says, “that they tell you a story.”

The election: Could the polls be wrong?

Take heart, John McCain, said Bill Greener in Salon.com. Whatever the polls may say, this is still America, where miracles can happen—especially when your opponent is the first African-American to run for president. Polls are showing Barack Obama ahead in key battleground states, but in most of them, the Democrat is still not getting more than 50 percent of the vote. “If history is any guide,” Obama’s lead could well evaporate on Nov. 4. It won’t be because of the so-called Bradley effect, whereby voters tell pollsters they’re voting for a black candidate but let their racial animus surface in the privacy of the voting booth. Instead, we may find that virtually all the “undecided” voters actually had made up their minds to vote for McCain, giving him 5 percent to 8 percent more than polls show—and the presidency.

If the undecideds put McCain over the top, said Aaron Mishkin in The Weekly Standard, it won’t necessarily be because they’re racists. It’s the fear of being thought a racist that makes them reluctant to admit they don’t like Obama for perfectly valid reasons of policy and experience. The media keeps telling them that Obama is the future, and that anyone who doesn’t support him is either a bigot or a moron. So when these “undecideds” choose to disagree, political scientists may have a new phrase in their lexicon: “the Obama effect.”

If you analyze recent election results, said Andrew Romano in Newsweek.com, that theory “really doesn’t hold water.” In some elections, yes, undecided voters have broken disproportionately for a white candidate over a black candidate, but the reverse has also happened. More relevant, surely, is Obama’s record in the primaries, in which he went up against the white Hillary Clinton in election after election and actually “outperformed the polls by an average of 3.3 points over the course of the entire primary season.” Typical polling models simply don’t account for the unprecedented enthusiasm for Obama’s historic candidacy among black voters and people under 30. This country has come a long way over the past decade, said USA Today in an editorial. Some analysts are even speculating that Obama will benefit from a so-called reverse Bradley effect, by which some working-class whites who are furious at the GOP vote for Obama “while telling bigoted friends” and pollsters they’re for McCain.

Still, it would be naïve to write off the potential impact of racism in this election, said Michael Powell in The New York Times. White, working-class voters interviewed in small towns in Pennsylvania—a critical battleground state—frankly admitted they were alarmed by Obama. “Close friends, real close, tell me they can’t get past his race,” said union plumber Vince Pisano, 47, an Obama supporter. But there are also plenty of voters like Peggy Doffin, 79, who supported Hillary Clinton during the primary and didn’t much care for Obama. Then she listened to his convention speech. “Chills ran down my back,” Doffin says. The country’s economic meltdown finalized her decision, convincing her that the country needs a dramatic change in leadership. “Race just don’t matter to me anymore,” she says. Nor does it matter to enough voters to “flip this election,’’ said Frank Rich, also in the Times. With the nation’s economy and foreign policy in shambles, Republicans have nothing left to offer but coded appeals to “real Americans’’ that take the working class for easily manipulated dupes. “This seems to be the election year when voters are figuring that out.’’

The final battle for the ‘swing’ states

What happened

Buoyed by a substantial lead in the polls, Barack Obama this week returned to his original promise to introduce “a new kind of politics” in presenting the “closing argument” of his presidential campaign, while John McCain campaigned vigorously to close the gap. Speaking to enthusiastic crowds, including rallies of more than 100,000, Obama said that in just a few days, “you can put an end to the politics that would divide a nation just to win an election, that tries to pit region against region, that asks us to fear at a time when we need hope.” He said voters face a choice between a new approach to the economy and the “failed” economic policies supported by both President Bush and McCain, including deregulation and tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans.

McCain continued to hammer Obama for pursuing policies that smack of “socialism.” Referring to a just-discovered 2001 interview in which Obama spoke of “redistributive change,” McCain said his rival “is running to be redistributor in chief. It means taking your money and giving it to someone else.” With Democrats poised to pick up seats in both the Senate and the House, McCain also said a vote for him would avert the extremes of an undivided, Democratic government. “My opponent is working out the details with Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Reid of their plans to raise your taxes, increase spending, and concede defeat in Iraq,” he said.

National polls showed Obama with leads ranging from two to 12 points, and six points in the Realclearpolitics.com average. More important, Obama had comfortable leads in all the “blue” states won by John Kerry in 2004, and was also leading in such delegate-rich “red” states as Florida, Ohio, Virginia, and North Carolina. To reach the necessary 270 electoral votes, McCain will have to overcome Obama’s poll leads in every one of those red states, or take some combination of red states and Pennsylvania, where he was trailing by an average of 11 points. “Nothing is inevitable,” said McCain. “You’re going to be up very, very late on election night.”

What the editorials said

This should be an easy decision for Alaskans, said the Anchorage Daily News. For the first time in history, one of our own, Gov. Sarah Palin, is on a major party ticket. But while Palin has been a respectable governor, “putting her one 72-year-old heartbeat from the leadership of the free world is just too risky at this time.” She’s clearly not prepared to “juggle the demands of an economic meltdown, two deadly wars, and a deteriorating climate crisis.” Obama, on the other hand, has shown keen intelligence and prescient judgment, and will “return to the smart, bipartisan economic policies” of Bill Clinton’s administration.

Obama is certainly “the most inspirational campaigner in memory,” said The Tampa Tribune, but his “short tenure in the Senate has been unremarkable” and “consistently partisan.” His discredited liberal ideas would push America “toward a European-style social democracy,” and expose it to unprecedented dangers abroad. We can’t afford to gamble on “seductive promises.” McCain may not be the candidate “preferred in Europe and much of the Middle East,” but he has “a lifetime of useful experience,” proven toughness, and the knowledge that “economic growth comes from hard work and real investment,” not taxing the so-called rich.

What the columnists said

McCain’s itinerary this week, with trips to Florida and Ohio, shows how badly the odds are stacked against him, said E.J. Dionne in The Washington Post. Pleading for votes in states that were supposed to be safe “is a sign of the extent to which Obama has out-organized and out-strategized McCain.” To make matters worse, said David Frum, also in the Post, “McCain is losing in a way that threatens to take the entire Republican Party down with him.” His campaign has swung so far toward the angry Right that moderate Republicans could be thrown out of Congress by swing voters disgusted by how the GOP has “Palinized itself.”

Actually, McCain is doing better than anyone has a right to expect, said Byron York in National Review. His charismatic opponent has an enormous financial advantage, and McCain is running to succeed an unpopular president from his own party. Nonetheless, he was leading in this race until the financial crisis distracted Americans from his foreign policy expertise. It’s a sign of McCain’s drive and character that he still believes he can win. After all, “this is a man who has dodged death—real death, not political death—many times.”

McCain’s greatest obstacle is John McCain, said Paul Krugman in The New York Times. He claims to be a “maverick,” but that appears to be a personality trait denoting anger and impulsiveness, rather than some objection “to the way the country has been run the past eight years.” With no coherent ideas how to fix the broken economy, he’s based his campaign on “trivia,” shouting about ’60s radicals and socialism even after the financial crisis deepened. Obama started the year with vague platitudes, but when the banks crashed, he rose to the occasion by keeping his cool, calmly seeking the opinions and ideas of experts, and becoming knowledgeable quickly. “Americans have rediscovered the virtue of seriousness.” That’s why Obama will win.

What next?

Anticipating balloting challenges, technology problems, and possible chaos on Election Day, both campaigns are sending tens of thousands of lawyers to the battleground states to monitor polling places, assist voters, and rush to court with legal challenges if necessary. Democrats are sending 5,000 volunteer attorneys to Florida alone. “On Election Day I will be managing the largest law firm in the country,” said Charles Lichtman, who is in charge of the Democratic operation there. Sean Cairncross, who heads the Republican National Committee’s legal effort, said he would have enough lawyers “to respond to any contingency.”

Job cuts heighten recession fears

Signs of dramatic slowdown in the U.S. economy multiplied this week, with big employers announcing major job cuts and the consumer confidence index hitting an all-time low. Appliance maker Whirlpool said it would eliminate 5,000 jobs, Chrysler laid off 4,300 white-collar employees, and Goldman Sachs and Xerox said they would cut thousands of positions. Publishers Gannett, McGraw-Hill, Time Inc., and Tribune Co., announced staff cuts totalling thousands of jobs.

The Federal Reserve this week slashed its key overnight lending rate by half a percentage point, to 1 percent, in a bid to stir the economy. Expectations of a rate reduction sparked a roaring stock market rally, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbing almost 900 points in one day. But veteran investors expect the optimism to rapidly dissipate. “We’ve seen these big rallies before,” said Richard Sparks of Schaeffer’s Investment Research. “This is a significant bounce in an overall down trend.”

The tottering economy poses a major challenge to the next
president—and a “unique opportunity,” said Mahlon Apgar and Stephen Sorett in the Baltimore Sun. The new president can lift employment and strengthen America with much-needed investments in roads, bridges, mass transit, and other public-works projects. “Infrastructure revitalization offers a path out of panic, into recovery, and toward sustainable growth.”

The last thing the U.S. needs is another giant government program, said Steve Forbes in Forbes. Ronald Reagan inherited a stagnant, inflation-riddled economy when he became president, in 1981. Instead of trusting Washington to lead the recovery, he let business do it, by cutting taxes, easing regulations, and investing in national defense. “The American economy came booming back, and the U.S. won the Cold War.”

Government has failed to lift the economy, said The New York Times in an editorial, because it has “failed to deal effectively with the root cause of the financial crisis: unaffordable mortgages.” But Sheila Bair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., has come forward with “a workable plan.” She has proposed a streamlined process for modifying troubled loans and keeping people in their homes. Mortgage servicers, which handle collections and foreclosures for lenders, would be given a financial incentive to make mortgages affordable. That beats “the ad hoc anti-foreclosure efforts of the past year.”

Sen. Stevens guilty of corruption

Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, the longest-serving Republican senator in history, was convicted this week of seven felony corruption charges. The federal jury in Washington, D.C., found that Stevens, 84, failed to report $250,000 worth of gifts, including home renovations paid for by a top business executive. Stevens claimed he never wanted the gifts and couldn’t keep track of them. “We have lots of things in our house that don’t belong to us,” he testified. After the verdict, Stevens denounced the “unconscionable” conduct of prosecutors and said he would appeal.

Top Republicans, including John McCain and Stevens’ fellow Alaskan Sarah Palin, called for his resignation. But Stevens, locked in a tight race with Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, vowed to stand for re-election Nov. 4. “In another state, he would be toast,” said political analyst Charlie Cook. “In Alaska, you gotta make him a significant underdog.”

Stevens’ power was vast and, we now see, corrupting, said Michael Carey in the Los Angeles Times. “The best word to describe it is ‘imperial.’” The list of Alaska projects he sponsored with federal funds is so lengthy “no one can recite it anymore. The money has a generic name: ‘Stevens money.’” Yet he proved unable “to separate his personal life from his professional life.” When this enormously powerful figure suggested he was unable to turn away a tide of gifts, the jury, rightfully, “did not believe him.”

Republicans could soon pay a high price for Stevens’ “dishonor,” said The Philadelphia Inquirer in an editorial. Stevens’ political vulnerability is threatening “his party’s position in the Senate,” where Democrats could be on the verge of “winning a filibuster-proof 60 seats.” Alaska has long been the “reddest of red states.” Not anymore.

One way or the other, Stevens must go, said The New York Times. If he won’t resign “or if Alaska’s voters won’t do the right thing” and vote him out, then “the Senate must act as quickly as it can” to expel him. As John McCain said, Stevens has “broken his trust with the people.”

Greenspan: The Oracle’s mea culpa

If there were any lingering doubts that free-market capitalism is dead, said The Dallas Morning News in an editorial, they were “blown to smithereens” last week by Alan Greenspan’s appearance on Capitol Hill. Greenspan, revered as the Oracle during his two-decade-long tenure as chairman of the Federal Reserve, came to Congress a humbled man, admitting sheepishly that there was “a flaw” in his economic philosophy. He’d spent his life, Greenspan testified, convinced that markets, and societies, work best when not fettered by government meddling and regulation. In the grip of this quasi-religious belief, Greenspan kept interest rates extremely low in the early part of this decade, creating a monstrous housing bubble, and opposed all attempts to regulate the trading of exotic financial instruments, such as the mortgage-backed securities at the heart of the current crisis. “I made a mistake,” Greenspan conceded, saying that the worldwide collapse of banks and financial institutions had left him “in a state of shocked disbelief.”

Greenspan still doesn’t get it, said Tim Rutten in the Los Angeles Times. His error, he told Congress, was assuming that the “self-interest of organizations, specifically banks,” would keep them from engaging in stupid and corrupt financial trading. The flaw in this theory, as any kindergartner could have explained, is that a bank is a building, not a person. The fateful decisions to buy and sell billions of dollars of dubious derivatives were taken not by banks but by people who work at banks, whose rational self-interest told them accurately that with a little fancy paperwork they could retire at 29 and move to Tahiti. These executives and traders had no loyalty to the companies that employed them, nor did they care about long-term consequences of their wheeling and dealing. That was obvious to nearly everyone—everyone, that is, without Greenspan’s “ideological blindness.”

That’s a bit too harsh, said Zachary Karabell in Huffingtonpost.com. Unlike the parade of Wall Street execs who’ve told Congress that the destruction of their companies just wasn’t their fault, Greenspan was “genuinely contrite” and at least “took responsibility for his mistakes.” In fact, there was actually something “sad and noble” about Greenspan’s testimony, as if, at 82, he was delivering one last lesson for the world—not about interest rates or housing bubbles, but about the danger all of us face when we allow our ideas to harden into ideologies that we don’t dare question.

Palin: A public rift with McCain

Has Sarah Palin gone off the reservation? asked Ben Smith in Politico.com. In the final weeks of the presidential campaign, the Republican vice presidential nominee is visibly putting distance between herself and John McCain’s campaign organization, voicing public disagreement with the decisions to give up on Michigan and not make use of Barack Obama’s connection to his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. To the horror of campaign “minders,” the Alaska governor walked over to reporters on a tarmac one day last week and answered impromptu questions, as if simply to prove she could do it. Palin has also let it be known that she’s blaming McCain’s aides for undermining her “just folks” image by buying her a $150,000 wardrobe. Incredibly, McCain aides are firing back, telling reporters that Palin is “going rogue,” and accusing her of letting her popularity with the party’s base go to her head. “She is playing for her own future,” one McCain advisor told CNN. “She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone.”

There’s only one explanation for this rift, said Andrew Romano in Newsweek.com. Palin is “making plans for 2012.” She’s clearly more interested in her own image than in helping McCain win. By moving to his right, and publicly taking hard-line conservative positions on such issues as Rev. Wright, gay marriage, and abortion, she seems to be telling conservatives, “Don’t blame me if this guy loses.” If, however, McCain does lose, Palin would immediately emerge as a favorite for the 2012 nomination. That’s how it may look today, said Michael Medved in Townhall.com, but vice presidential nominees on losing tickets end up being seen as … well, losers. John Edwards, Joe Lieberman, and Dan Quayle all mounted presidential bids after their respective losses—and all “failed miserably.” If McCain does lose, “many Republicans will blame Palin,” and it’s hard to imagine the fractured party rallying around her as some kind of savior.

Win, lose, or draw, Sarah Palin isn’t going away, said Gerald F. Seib in The Wall Street Journal. Independents and Democrats may view her as unprepared and unqualified, but among the GOP base, she’s already wildly popular: Three-quarters of Republicans have a positive opinion of her. Politicians usually have to work for decades to attain the name recognition and “star power” that Palin has achieved in just seven weeks. Hers is “one of the more amazing political stories of our times,” and whatever happens on Nov. 4, that story isn’t over.

Gay marriage: Armageddon in California

If history points to a turning point in the cultural war over same-sex marriage, said Laurie Goodstein in The New York Times, it will probably be next week’s vote on California’s Proposition 8. The ballot amendment would reverse a California Supreme Court ruling in May that legalized gay marriage, leading to thousands of “exultant” gay weddings. Although similar amendments are before voters in Arizona and Florida, religious conservatives view California, with its reputation for setting national trends, as a potential bulwark against a rising tide. So gay-marriage opponents from across the country are pouring “time, talent, and millions of dollars” into California, with some saying this fight is more important than the presidential election. “This vote on whether we stop the gay marriage juggernaut in California,’’ said Charles W. Colson, a prominent evangelical, “is Armageddon.”

Armageddon might be stating it a little strongly, said Pastor Rick J. Cole in The Sacramento Bee, but gay marriage is not a positive development for society. The primary purpose of marriage is to provide a loving, secure, and healthy environment for children, and children need the balance of “male and female guidance in their life.” Why should society endorse some strange new experiment in which kids conceived through artificial insemination are raised by two mommies or two daddies? Marriage is not a private act, said Maggie Gallagher in Realclearpolitics.com. It is a “shared social ideal.” So if government determines there is no difference between gay unions and traditional marriages, the effects will ripple through society. Public schools will teach our kids that homosexuality is normal—and that any religion that disagrees is bigoted and wrong.

If gay marriage continues, said Randy Triezenberg in The Sacramento Bee, we’ll be teaching our children only that “marriage is important”—society’s way of recognizing, and supporting, loving partners who commit to each other. How is that a threat to marriage? Let’s not forget that 60 years ago, interracial marriage was also considered a “sin” by religious conservatives, and it was illegal in many states. Norms change. Institutions evolve. My views evolved, too, said Ruben Navarette Jr. in The San Diego Union-Tribune, after “a gay family member helped me see that the issue wasn’t as complicated as I was making it.” Look at it this way: More than 11,000 gays have already married in California, and so have thousands more in Massachusetts and Connecticut. And guess what? “Civilization has not crumbled.”

Biden: Will the world ‘test’ Obama?

It may be the “most remarkable thing a vice presidential candidate has ever said about the top of his ticket,” said Jack Kelly in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. During a fundraiser in Seattle last week, Democratic vice presidential hopeful Joseph Biden actually raised the specter of America’s enemies taking advantage of an inexperienced President Obama by triggering a crisis. “Mark my words,” Biden declared, “it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. Watch, we’re going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.” Did Biden just admit what John McCain has been saying all along: That the 47-year-old first-term senator’s lack of experience is, well, dangerous?

It’s impossible to read Biden’s “stunning admission” any other way, said Pete Hegseth in National Review. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “he is experienced enough to know that projecting weakness on the international stage invites aggression.” He also must realize that Obama’s constant emphasis on “engagement” with sworn enemies is a clear signal that he will be “a more accommodating, and weaker, foe.” So consider yourself warned by the No. 2 Democrat: “Unfriendly regimes and networks—from oil-rich dictators to radical Islamists—will seek to exploit a tepid American foreign policy.” Too bad the press largely ignored Biden’s astonishing comments, said Kirsten Powers in the New York Post. The thinking, apparently, is that the gaffe-prone Biden often says silly things, so who cares? “Needless to say, if Sarah Palin said this about a McCain administration, the media world would be exploding.”

Perhaps so, said the Roanoke, Va., Times in an editorial, but the truth is that whoever wins on Nov. 4 will be “tested.” We live in extremely dangerous times, with two wars, a global terrorism threat, a resurgent Russia, and Iran and North Korea moving to become nuclear powers. “Voters should be asking themselves which candidate is demonstrating the calm leadership they would want the president to display during a crisis.” The campaign has answered that question, as Obama has stayed cool and focused while McCain has impulsively bounced from message to message and tactic to tactic. While Republicans were quick to seize on the first part of Biden’s remark, said Matthew Lee in the Associated Press, they conveniently ignored how he completed it: “They’re going to find out,” Biden said, “this guy’s got steel in his spine.”

The hype - and hope - of clean coal

Both John McCain and Barack Obama have expressed support for a new type of coal-burning technology that would reduce its impact on the environment. Is clean coal really possible?

What is clean coal?

An oxymoron—for now, at least. The idea of clean coal is immensely appealing—especially on the political stump—because coal is relatively cheap, and America has so much of it. (As it happens, two of the biggest coal-producing states, Pennsylvania and Ohio, are “swing” states in this election.) At current consumption rates, the U.S. has enough coal to last more than 250 years. Coal, unfortunately, is the most carbon-intensive fuel we use. Worldwide, burning coal produces nearly 40 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, the chief contributor to global warming. The coal and electric power industries often use the phrase “clean coal” to refer to existing technologies that have taken the majority of sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxide out of emissions from coal-powered electric plants. But while smokestack scrubbers and other clean-coal applications have addressed the 20th-century threat of acid rain, they offer little defense against the 21st-century threat of climate change. That’s why some entrepreneurs and scientists are touting a new kind of clean-coal technology.

What is the new technology?

It’s called carbon capture and storage, or CCS. In theory, CCS could reduce CO2 emissions by as much as 90 percent. Essentially, the process involves capturing a plant’s carbon emissions before they escape into the atmosphere and then storing them where they can do no harm. But even proponents don’t expect the process to be commercially viable for at least a decade. And the development of storage facilities—and the means to transport CO2 to them—is enormously challenging. No such infrastructure currently exists.

Where would the CO2 be stored?

Scientists are researching a variety of options, from injecting large quantities of CO2 underground into depleted oil fields to burying it in sandstone beneath the North Sea. One study estimates that 300 years’ worth of emissions from Pennsylvania’s 79 coal-fired electricity plants could be stored in the state’s saline formations. Some geologists have even suggested that the gas could be injected into volcanic basalt, a common rock found beneath an 85,000-square-mile expanse of Western states; scientists theorize that the CO2’s interaction with basalt could turn the CO2 into a harmless mineral. No matter what form it took, CO2 storage would be daunting. The U.S. produces nearly 2 billion tons of CO2 annually from coal-fired plants, and questions remain about how stable the CO2 would be underground. Any leakage, of course, would defeat the whole purpose of storage.

Are there other obstacles?

Yes. Not only would it cost billions of dollars to build such plants, but the process of capturing carbon is itself incredibly energy-intensive, so it would dramatically lower the productivity of the power plants that use it. Proponents say the technology is viable—it just needs investment and a strong push from the federal government. “We’re not technologically ready to build all the infrastructure now,” says engineer Howard Herzog of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “but we know enough to start.”

Why isn’t clean-coal technology more advanced?

The desire for cheap power has trumped all other concerns. As a result, utilities and power companies have had little incentive to take on the cost of engineering and building new, state-of-the-art plants that would make environmentalists happy. Only a dozen coal-fired plants have been built in the U.S. since 1990, and none is “clean.” The picture is even less encouraging abroad. To provide electricity for their rapidly growing middle classes, China is powering up new coal plants at the rate of one a week, and India is not far behind. Neither country is deeply concerned about CO2 emissions, and the new plants remain a long way from “clean.” The same is true of new plants coming on line in Italy, Germany, Great Britain, and the Czech Republic.

Can existing coal-fired plants be turned green?

That appears to be extremely unlikely. Newer, so-called supercritical coal plants convert coal to energy about a third more efficiently than older plants do. But they still produce enormous amounts of CO2 emissions. And even if CCS technologies advance at a rapid pace, it won’t be easy or cheap to retrofit even the most recently built plants to capture their carbon emissions. That’s why many environmentalists and climate-change experts favor investment in other alternative energy technologies, such as wind and solar, rather than increasing the world’s reliance on coal. “Building new coal-fired plants is ill-conceived,” said James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “We need a moratorium on coal now.”

So is clean coal a mere pipe dream?

Not necessarily. With many technologies competing to lead the way to a green future, and no obvious winner emerging, clean coal remains in the mix. Coal is not only cheap but plentiful. So figuring out how to make it clean would be quite a boon. By 2030, the nation’s electricity consumption will grow 40 percent, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates. Unless that demand is significantly constrained, the power will have to come from somewhere. “There is no silver bullet here,” said James Rogers, chief executive of Duke Energy. “What we need is more like silver buckshot, a lot of things working together.”

An inauspicious beginning

In 2003, the Bush administration launched a public-private consortium called FutureGen to create a first-generation commercial-scale CCS plant. Plans called for a 275-megawatt coal plant that would produce energy from gasified coal and then pump the plant’s CO2 emissions thousands of feet below ground into rock formations. The Department of Energy agreed to provide three-quarters of the estimated $1.8 billion cost. But because of its technical complexity and environmental sensitivity, progress on the project was slow. It took four years just to find a site for the plant, in Mattoon, Ill., and by then, building costs had risen sharply. Earlier this year, citing the mounting costs, the DOE announced it was pulling out of the project. The episode did little to reassure clean-coal skeptics. “It may not work in the end,” said Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute. “And if it is not viable, the situation, with respect to climate change, is much more dire.”

Can conservatism recover?

"Let's face it: We Republicans are now, by any reasonable measurement, deep in the political wilderness," said U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona in The Washington Post. But conservatives can bounce back if we admit the "folly" of the budget-busting Bush administration and return to the bedrock principles of "limited government" and expanded economic freedom. "America loves a chastened and repentant sinner."

Republicans have clearly lost their way, said USA Today in an editorial, and not just by "spending with abandon and gambling heavily on an ill-conceived war." The GOP was defeated in this election partly because so many of its candidates substituted "fear-mongering" for sound policy proposals on the campaign trail. "If they are to find their way back, Republicans need more ideas and fewer attacks."

Conservative ideas still resonate deeply with the American people, said former House majority leader Tom DeLay in The Washington Times. “We are still a center-right nation" where the majority still favors "conservative approaches to taxes, spending, regulation, foreign policy, and traditional values.” All the GOP needs now is “a new, 21st-century political coalition" to remind people of that fact and restore faith in "actual conservatives."

See, liberals, conservatives are down but far from out, said Thomas Frank in The Wall Street Journal. Democrats shouldn't fool themselves that the culture wars are over, and "that stupid bankers sank conservatism for good. This movement will be back, and the biggest fights are yet to come."

The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA From 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America by James Bamford

For a number of years, the best way to reach Osama bin Laden was to call 00-873-682505331. That was the number of the satellite phone the terrorist kingpin lugged about in Afghanistan’s mountains. Snoops at the National Security Agency’s headquarters in Maryland knew that when Osama dialed 011-967-1-200-578, he was checking in on his global operations center, located in a private home in Yemen. By 2000, the NSA was eavesdropping on calls between that house and a young man who had recently moved out. Agents knew the man’s name and suspected him to be an international terrorist. The fact that his calls were coming from inside the United States escaped their notice.

For years, tales about the 9/11 hijackers we should have caught have been circulating, said Bob Kerrey in The Washington Post. But by adding new details, veteran journalist James Bamford “goes where the 9/11 Commission did not fully go.” Twenty-six years after Bamford’s landmark first book about the NSA, The Puzzle Palace, the author’s “disturbing” new portrait of the agency makes a convincing case that America’s intelligence failures leading up to 9/11 had nothing to do with technological or legal constraints. After 9/11, we watch as the NSA switches instantly from being overly cautious to being overzealous, eventually launching its infamous domestic wiretapping program. “In impressive detail,” Bamford also reveals how private contractors, including some with foreign-based owners, have done “the sensitive work” of sorting the data on Americans that the NSA collected.

Bamford wasn’t always a thorn in the NSA’s side, said Scott Shane in The New York Times. In 2001, he published Body of Secrets, a book about the agency that was feted at its Maryland campus. Shadow Factory is thus, in part, “a reporter’s mea culpa for his temporary seduction” by the spies he covers. His anger can be distracting, though, said Gabriel Schoenfeld in The Wall Street Journal. “Despite the wealth of information it provides,” Bamford’s account is distorted by the author’s clear “loathing of the Bush administration.” It’s one thing to question why the U.S. invaded Iraq. It’s another to complain, as Bamford does, that our overstretched Army is now packing its ranks with “criminals, dropouts, and the unemployable.”

The mixed blessing of lower oil prices

It’s the recession’s silver lining, said Gargi Chakrabarty in the Denver Rocky Mountain News. Gasoline prices have tumbled nearly $1 from last July’s all-time high of $4.11 a gallon; prices likely will slip below $3 a gallon in the coming weeks “and stay there for the rest of the year.” The sharp drop is a symptom of the slowing economic activity around the world. Demand for gasoline is falling almost 10 percent a week in the U.S., and even faster in other countries, including China, the developing world’s energy hog. The slowdown is showing up in prices for crude oil, which settled at $74.25 in New York trading this week, a nearly 50 percent drop from the July high of $147. The OPEC countries say they’ll reduce output to shore up prices, but that strategy might fail if the recession is a deep one. “If the U.S., Europe, and Japan go into a major recession,” says oil analyst Mark Pervan, “there’s no reason we can’t see $35, $40 a barrel.”

U.S. consumers, though, can take only so much consolation from the price drop, said the Associated Press. That’s because falling home and stock values have been so traumatic, any positive impact of lower gas prices has been blunted. “I’m more concerned about the financial condition of my 401(k),” said Ben Brockwell of the Oil Price Information Service, expressing a common sentiment. Such worries will likely keep a lid on demand, even as prices fall further.

That’s bad news for Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Vladimir Putin, said Simon Romero in The New York Times. While oil prices were rising, “the leaders of Venezuela, Iran, and Russia muscled their way onto the world stage, using checkbook diplomacy and, on occasion, intimidation.” Now, though, “economists in Venezuela are expressing alarm over the government’s ability to pay its bills,” Iran is contemplating an 19 percent cut in its national budget, and Russia is rethinking plans to modernize its crumbling energy infrastructure. “The producers are experiencing a reverse oil shock,” says energy consultant Daniel Yergin.

So are backers of alternative energy, said Steven Mufson in The Washington Post. The drop in prices “threatens a wide variety of game-changing plans to find alternatives to oil or ways to drastically reduce U.S. consumption.” General Motors is now having trouble raising funds to develop its Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid, and Tesla Motors has postponed the introduction of its electric sedan. Tight money is also hurting start-ups’ efforts to develop biofuels from algae, wood chips, and wild grasses. Because any payoffs from such ventures are well down the road, private financing is all but impossible to find. That leaves only government subsidies, which could be scarce without high oil prices to mobilize taxpayers and concentrate policymakers’ attention. Every silver lining, it seems, comes with its own cloud.

Turkey: Exposing a shadowy cabal of nationalists

The indictment “reads like a Dan Brown novel,” said Nicholas Birch in the London Independent. Turkey this week put 86 of its most prominent citizens on trial for allegedly belonging to a secret cabal of ultranationalists—known as Ergenekon—that has been undermining the country’s democracy for decades. Accused of trying to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the defendants are a motley group of retired generals, famous professors and journalists, and even “mafiosi.” Some of them, notably the secularist generals, are thought to oppose Erdogan because of his Islamist leanings. Others, the right-wing academics, are believed to abhor his attempts to bring Turkey into the European Union. Turkish observers are divided on the merits of the case. Supporters of the government are convinced that the group is “behind every act of terrorism in the past half-century.” The secular opposition, though, says that the government has concocted a fanciful conspiracy theory as an excuse “to neutralize its enemies.”

The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, said Yusuf Kanli in Istanbul’s Turkish Daily News. Few Turks would dispute the existence of “the deep state,” a secret group that has long worked to undermine our democracy by creating instability and encouraging military coups. Yet whether all the Ergenekon defendants are really part of the conspiracy is highly doubtful—it looks like prosecutors simply indicted “whoever was a leading opponent” of the government and then tossed in a few underworld figures for “color.” The pro-government media has already helped convict the accused in the court of public opinion, by “reporting at length on alleged confessions by the defendants.” The judges, therefore, face a difficult task. Coming up with a verdict “devoid of political influence” will be a key test for Turkish justice—and Turkish democracy.

But will Ergenekon even let the judges do their crucial job? asked Mumtazer Turkone in Istanbul’s Today’s Zaman. The shadowy organization “is like a giant octopus” that has tentacles deep within the state. Many people believe that those Ergenekon members who have managed to escape prosecution “are trying to create chaos and a climate of fear in order to prevent the organization from being uncovered further and to disrupt the trial.” As long as the trial goes on, and it could be many months, Turks will see every terrorist attack and every political statement as a blow either for or against the cabal. “The prosecutor’s indictment has opened Pandora’s box.” We can only hope that putting Ergenekon on trial means that “a new era has begun in Turkey, in which unlawfulness has no place.”

How they see us: Racism and the presidential campaign

Will American racism cost Barack Obama the election? asked Alexander Downer, former foreign minister of Australia, in Australia’s Advertiser. Polls consistently put the Democrat several points ahead of his Republican rival, John McCain—but the very slimness of his lead is shocking. Both parties share the blame for the global financial crisis, but given that it “happened on the Republicans’ watch,” the Democratic candidate “should win in a landslide.” The fact that McCain still has a chance can be explained by only one factor: race. The truth is, race remains a hugely divisive factor in American politics. We outsiders may not realize it—since we’re used to seeing Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice as the face of America—but polls show that many white Americans view blacks with suspicion, even distrust. “Sen. Obama is doing less well than you would expect not because of his policies, or because of the failure of his character, but because of the color of his skin. That’s very sad.”

But it’s not surprising, said Achille Mbembe in South Africa’s Cape Times. The Republican Party has been practicing “win-at-any-cost” politics for decades. Fighting a close battle with a black candidate, it naturally chose to “descend into the dark territories of race-baiting and xenophobia.” But the tactic may be spinning out of control. McCain’s running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, has been encouraging crowds to see Obama as somehow un-American, possibly even as a terrorist. “Rousing the uglier impulses of America is a symptom of an ideology in an advanced state of decay.”

I have met four Republicans in my life, said Jacob Dlamini in South Africa’s Business Day, and all have been “the very definition of narrow-mindedness and mean-spiritedness.” One of them openly admitted he was a racist, another had a “visceral hatred of gay people,” and the other two believed that the solution to the Middle East’s problems was to “nuke the Arabs.” I know that four people, out of millions, don’t add up to a significant sample. Perhaps there are “many decent Republicans” out there. But I wonder “how many of them feel at home” in the party today.

Let’s hope it’s not many, said Kap Kirwok in Kenya’s East African Standard. True, some of the anti-Obama bumper stickers are downright “scary.” A typical one reads, “Warning: I am a bitter Christian and I am clinging to my gun.” That’s ostensibly a reference to a comment Obama made about people in small towns, but it carries threatening overtones. Still, we should not be disheartened. Obama has a huge and devoted network of supporters, most of them white, and they are working tirelessly to get him elected. He is like “a duck on a lake: On the face of it, it looks all calm and serene, effortlessly gliding along, but below the water surface, its legs are paddling madly.” All we can say is, “Go, Obama, go!”

What goes up must come down

For more than 400 years, financial ‘bubbles’ and panics have shaken empires and altered history. It’s happening again with the housing bubble. Why don’t we ever learn?

What is a financial bubble?

Bubbles are a market phenomenon in which something’s value is inflated far beyond its intrinsic worth. They are probably as old as commerce itself, though the first outbreak of market delirium identified as a bubble was the Dutch Tulip Bubble of 1636–37. A few decades later, the British government tottered after hundreds of thousands of Brits went broke investing in a South American real estate boom. In the 1800s, countless Americans lost their shirts speculating on railroad stocks. The 20th century brought the most destructive bubble of all—the credit-fueled stock speculation of the Roaring ’20s that ended in the Great Depression. More recently, the U.S. has been rocked by the Internet bubble of the late 1990s and this decade’s housing bubble, which ushered in today’s worldwide financial crisis. In fact, bursting bubbles led to nearly all 11 recessions the U.S. has suffered since the end of World War II.

Do all these bubbles have anything in common?

They’re all outbreaks of what historian Charles Mackay called “the madness of crowds.” (See below.) Take the tulip bubble. In the early 1600s, a mysterious virus infected many of the Netherlands’ tulip bulbs, which suddenly started producing brightly colored flowers with unusual streaks and whorls. A craze for the flowers developed, and during the winter of 1636, many Dutch started trading promises—futures contracts, essentially—to buy or deliver tulip bulbs the following spring. Prices rose furiously. One eager buyer traded his house for a single bulb; another swapped 12 acres of land. The outlandish prices brought in even more traders seeking easy riches, and initially, prices rose as new buyers surged into the market. But promises to deliver bulbs outnumbered the actual supply, and as spring approached, many people who had contracted to deliver bulbs couldn’t fulfill their obligations. Contracts to buy the bulbs were suddenly worthless, and the market crashed.

People really thought tulips could make them rich?

It sounds silly. But that’s the nature of bubbles—frenzied speculators part with common sense in their “irrational exuberance’’ for the next big thing. In the mid-1800s, new U.S. railroad companies were working to link markets that had never before been connected, thus revolutionizing commerce. Millions of Americans borrowed money to buy shares in railroad companies, and stock prices soared. But the steep costs of building the railroads proved too much for many companies, and several collapsed, ruining investors who planned to repay their loans out of their stock profits. The Internet bubble of our own time was remarkably similar.

In what way?

Investors were so excited about the potential, they lost sight of reality—hope triumphed over reason. Take the notorious case of Webvan, a company that delivered grocery orders placed over the Internet. On the day Webvan went public in 1999, its stock market value soared from $375 million to $8.5 billion—one of the best opening days of any stock in history. Webvan could never deliver enough groceries to justify that value, and the company went bankrupt in 2001. But it wasn’t just faith in the Internet that led speculators to bid up Webvan’s price. They also had faith that other people believed even more fervently in the Internet’s potential. In short, people who paid a foolish price for Webvan and hundreds of other Internet firms figured they could always find a greater fool to pay an even higher price. And many did, compounding their folly by buying their shares with borrowed money. Eventually, of course, the bubble burst.

What does borrowed money have to do with it?

Without borrowed money, there likely would be no bubbles. That’s because bubbles first inflate when credit is easy to obtain, and pop when credit tightens. During the stock bubble of 1929, for instance, many investors bought shares with borrowed funds. When prices started to fall in October 1929, investors rushed for the exits, hoping to sell their shares while they were still worth more than their loans. But because everyone was selling at once, stock prices plummeted, leaving many investors with debts they couldn’t repay. Many U.S. banks were among those investors. Hearing about the banks’ losses, depositors rushed to withdraw their funds, starting a bank run that caused thousands of banks to collapse.

Is something similar happening today?

In many ways, yes. The housing bubble first started to inflate when interest rates fell to 1 percent after the 2000 dot-com crash. Banks happily granted mortgages to almost anyone who could fill out an application. Millions of borrowers bought houses they really could not afford, figuring they could sell at a profit if they got in a pinch. It wasn’t such a far-fetched idea—in much of the U.S., housing prices had risen steadily since the late 1970s. But prices eventually hit a peak and started to fall, and the inevitable stampede for the exits began. As in 1929, says finance professor Lawrence Kryzanowski, people thought “the good times were going to go on forever. And then very quickly, they stopped.” History provides one consolation, however: Just as every boom inevitably comes to an end, so does every recession.

The madness of crowds

Many economists believe that people tend to make rational financial decisions. But the recurrence of bubbles suggests that greed, emotion, and peer pressure can overwhelm rationality. When we see friends and neighbors making big bucks trading dot-com stocks or flipping McMansions, we want in on the action. For a while, as everyone joins the party, rising prices become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But then comes a seemingly minor event that reverses the psychological polarity, turning endless optimism into bottomless panic. (In the case of the housing bubble, it was one big bank’s announcement in March 2007 that it was experiencing higher-than-expected losses on its mortgage holdings.) The same herd mentality that drove people to crowd into the market now drives them to flee the market en masse. Falling prices then become the self-fulfilling prophecy, and the panic feeds on itself, sweeping aside caution, common sense, and historical memory. Super-investor Warren Buffett has seen it happen over and over again through the years. “What we learn from history,” he likes to say, “is that people don’t learn from history.”

Crisis moves from Wall Street to Main Street

What happened

President Bush said this week he was open to taking additional steps to stimulate the flagging economy, amid new indications that the U.S. is sliding into a deep recession. A slew of downbeat earnings reports and a steep jump in unemployment claims convinced policymakers and investors alike that the financial crisis had extended beyond Wall Street and was battering the “real economy.” The Bush administration reversed itself and voiced support for a new economic stimulus package, as did Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Congressional Democrats quickly got to work producing a $300 billion package with new infrastructure spending, unemployment benefits, and Medicaid assistance to states. Congress plans to hold a special session after the election to take up the legislation.

Following a stock market rally that reflected widespread relief that the credit crisis was easing, stock indexes plunged as corporations reported dramatically lower sales and earnings. Construction equipment giant Caterpillar called the economic contraction “the worst we’ve seen in years.” Internet portal Yahoo! announced it would lay off 1,500 workers, and thousands of other layoffs were announced by Merck, PepsiCo, and other companies. “This is an equal-opportunity recession,” said Cathy Paige of temporary-staffing supplier Manpower. “Everyone is feeling it.”

What the editorials said

The Fed chairman knows which way the wind is blowing, said The Wall Street Journal. With a Barack Obama presidency looking increasingly likely, “Bernanke all but submitted his job application” to Obama by endorsing the interventionist, Democratic approach to fiscal “stimulus.” A “tougher” Fed chairman would refrain from “meddling in campaign tax-and-spending debates” right before an election, but Bernanke has opted for self-interest over principle.

Washington’s inclination to intervene is admirable, said USA Today, but the public would be better served if policymakers let the recession play out. It may sound “harsh,” but “recessions are as necessary to prosperity as are recoveries.” Growth can resume only after the economy is purged of its excesses. There’s room for limited steps to ease the downturn’s impact on the most at-risk Americans, but expensive new programs that add to the soaring deficit “could do more harm than good.”

What the columnists said

Welcome to “the Great Incomprehensible Recession of 2008,” said Steven Weisman in The New Republic. “The only thing easy to understand” about the mess we’re in is that panic is everywhere, from the stock exchange to the halls of Congress. Nearly everything else is comprehensible only to “a priesthood of experts.” As Washington moves beyond short-term fixes to consider long-term reforms, the first priority “must be to make the entire global financial system more transparent, comprehensible, and accountable.”

Too bad that’s not the Democrats’ main concern, said James Capretta in National Review Online. The stimulus measures that the Democrat-led Congress will take up in November represent the first step backward toward “the failed liberal policies of the 1960s.” Those policies, with their “large expansions of federal entitlements and explicit efforts to redistribute income,” will foster dependence on government and stifle initiative and innovation.

Washington has its priorities, I have mine, said Warren Buffett in The New York Times. And that’s to “buy a slice of America’s future at a marked-down price.” One rule has guided all my investment decisions: “Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.” Right now, fear is coursing through the markets, knocking down the prices of some of the world’s soundest companies to levels not seen in decades. Those companies “will be setting new profit records five, 10, and 20 years from now.” I’m positioning myself now to share in those profits, and so should you.

What next?

President Bush said this week that he’ll host an economic summit, beginning on Nov. 15, at which leaders of the world’s biggest economies will consider coordinated efforts to combat the global slowdown. The announcement cheered European leaders, “who’ve already forced the U.S. hand on key design elements of the financial rescue effort that’s currently underway around the world,” said John D. McKinnon in The Wall Street Journal. European leaders are “hoping that a politically weakened Bush administration will be more likely to accept their ideas at the summit.”

Is Obama a ‘socialist’?

So this is what desperation looks like, said John Nichols in The Nation. Having failed to convince a majority of Americans that Barack Obama is either a terrorist, a closet Muslim, or a vapid celebrity orator, John McCain has found one final epithet to hurl at Obama in the waning days of the campaign: “Socialist!” As evidence for this charge—currently featured at McCain-Palin rallies nationwide and around-the-clock on right-wing talk radio—McCain cites an exchange Obama had with an Ohio man now nationally known as Joe the Plumber, who had complained that Obama wants to raise taxes on people making $250,000 a year. “When you spread the wealth around,” Obama fatefully replied, “it’s good for everybody.” That notion is certainly debatable, said Rex Huppke in the Chicago Tribune, but it isn’t socialism. Real socialists believe that all important industries should be nationalized, and that everyone should have roughly the same amount of money. These are not Obama’s positions, and if he were a socialist, why would he have the support of such iconic capitalists as Warren Buffet?

Obama may not fit the academic definition of “socialist,” said Byron York in National Review Online, but ordinary people know one when they see one. Like all leftists, Obama wants to punish success and redistribute income from those who earn it to those who live on government handouts. That idea has always been a tough sell in America, where even plumbers believe they can become rich someday. As a result, Joe the Plumber has become more than just “a zinger in McCain’s stump speech.” Supporters are flocking to his rallies with placards identifying themselves as “Phil the Bricklayer” and “Rose the Teacher,” an army of Americans who work too hard for their money to let Obama and his ilk—whatever you want to call them—“spread” it “around.”

McCain’s argument on this point might be stronger, said The Washington Post in an editorial, if he didn’t himself believe in “spreading the wealth.” The radical notion of the wealthy paying tax at a higher rate than the poor happens to be a feature of our current tax system—and has been for a century. It’s called “progressive taxation.” In all his years in Washington, McCain has never opposed progressive tax rates. In fact, back in 2001, McCain even opposed one of President Bush’s tax cuts, saying that “so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us, at the expense of middle-class Americans.” And that was before the financial crisis, said Michael Cooper in The New York Times. The truly surreal aspect of McCain’s attacks on Obama’s “socialism” is that they’re coming from a man who just voted for Bush’s nationalization of the banks and financial system. To put it mildly, McCain’s message “sounds a bit mixed.”

You’re missing the point, said Michael Barone in USNews.com. This isn’t an abstract argument about the tax code. When Barack Obama told Joe the Plumber he wanted to “spread the wealth around,” he revealed an attitude—a liberal elitist’s “contempt for the working man,” whose pockets he feels entitled to pick. That admission might just “turn the election around.” You might be right, said Dan Rodricks in the Baltimore Sun, except that Americans have just lived through a prolonged period of Republican, trickle-down economics in which the wealth “trickled up,” not down. Now, with working people struggling to pay their bills and worrying about losing their jobs in a recession caused by Wall Street fat cats, “socialism” is the least of their fears.

Obama with a commanding lead

Barack Obama headed toward the finish line of his two-year-long campaign for the presidency with a growing lead over John McCain in national polls and a commanding advantage in funds. Obama’s lead this week averaged more than seven points, with some polls reporting a double-digit spread. Support for McCain running mate Sarah Palin continued to erode, with 55 percent of respondents to the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll calling her unqualified. Obama raised a staggering $153 million in September. Flush with cash, Obama flooded swing states with campaign workers and TV ads, and took the fight to McCain in “red” states, including North Carolina and Virginia, where polls showed Obama leading.

Obama was further buoyed by the endorsement of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who called Obama “a transformational figure,” and said he was very troubled by McCain’s selection of Palin and by his campaign’s insinuation that Obama was connected to terrorists. Portraying himself as an underdog, McCain sought to rally working-class voters to his side by portraying Obama as an untested and untrustworthy “socialist” who “believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that grow our economy and create jobs and opportunities for all Americans.’’

What the editorials said

“We have known Obama since he entered politics a dozen years ago,” said the Chicago Tribune. “We have tremendous confidence in his intellectual rigor, his moral compass, and his ability to make sound, thoughtful, careful decisions.” This is the first time in the Tribune’s 161 years that we have endorsed a Democrat for president. But Obama is “ready,” and at this perilous moment in history, we need a man who seeks “consensus,” not partisan “savagery.”

As a POW and a veteran member of Congress, John McCain “has demonstrated the grit, energy, and determination that the present challenges demand,” said The Columbus Dispatch. With Congress becoming even more heavily Democratic, we need a president who is committed to cutting the swollen federal budget and reducing the runaway national debt. Having sacrificed so deeply himself, McCain has “unmatched moral authority” to “call on Americans to make sacrifices.’’

What the columnists said

Imagine a Republican who broke a promise to take public financing and “instead dealt the post-Watergate campaign financing system a blow from which it will never recover,” said Rich Lowry in National Review Online. Then the Republican raises $600 million and “out-advertises his opponent” by 4–1. Everyone would call it “obscene.” Yet when Obama does it, “everyone stands back in admiration.”

Republicans are experiencing “a disoriented fit of pique,” said Thomas F. Schaller in the Baltimore Sun. In its “disgusting robo-calls and television ads,” the McCain campaign is insisting that Obama is a dangerous man with terrorist friends and a mysterious past. On the stump, Palin is differentiating between “real America”—where people are patriotic and hardworking—and everywhere else. Guess what millions of “real” Americans are doing while all this sleaze pours forth? “Writing checks to Obama.”

A McCain comeback is not impossible, said Steve Kornacki in The New York Observer, but the electoral map makes it extremely unlikely. Polls show him trailing by nearly 10 points in Iowa, Virginia, Colorado, and New Mexico, all of which President Bush won in 2004. To win, McCain has to take at least three of these states, and keep Obama from winning a single “red” state where the Democrat is now running either ahead or slightly behind, including Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Missouri. Barring a major game-changer, McCain’s chances are dim.

What next?

First-time voters support Obama by a whopping 73–26 percent. Yet they are notoriously unreliable and, without them, Obama’s lead shrivels to a mere three points, according to the ABC News/Washington Post poll. But Obama hopes to buttress youthful enthusiasm by maintaining a constant presence on television while fielding an enormous get-out-the-vote operation. “McCain,” said Evan Tracey, who monitors campaign spending on television ads, “is in a shouting match with a man with a megaphone.”

Conservative soul-searching

Conservatives will have to do some soul-searching after election day, said Peter Wehner, a former deputy assistant to President Bush, in The Washington Post. No matter who wins the White House, Democrats should increase their margins in the House and Senate. But if Republicans use the "wilderness years" ahead to "become champions of an ambitious conservative reform agenda, they will begin the road back to political dominance.

"That's "absurd," said David Sirota in Blog for our Future. The Republicans made this election "an ideological contest between Reagan conservatism and supposed wild-eyed liberalism/socialism," and a Democratic landslide would be "a huge repudiation of conservative ideology." The Right can't just erase what will be a huge progressive mandate by telling voters "nah nah nah can't hear you!"

Some conservatives believe that shoring up the base is the first step toward a comeback, said Sean J. Miller in National Review online. But Canada's conservatives moved to the center after a near-death experience 15 years ago, emphasizing economic issues over social ones. And Prime Minister Stephen Harper's conservatives "are now in the ascendency, having won back-to-back elections," so Republicans might want to look "look north."

Conservatism: Requiem for a revolution

The modern conservative movement is “sputtering” toward irrelevance, said Paul Waldman in The American Prospect. Barring the outbreak of a new war, the No. 1 issue in this election will be our imploding economy. With the government bailing out the free market from its own stupidity, and the public clamoring for oversight and regulation, the November election could produce “a dramatic repudiation of Republicans at all levels.” The Reagan era is over, said Timothy Noah in Slate.com. When Ronald Reagan revitalized conservatism in 1980, he did so with an appealing blend of muscular militarism, family values, and, especially, the message that “government was the common enemy.” But the catastrophic financial collapse has demolished the “fundamentalist belief in untrammeled capitalism.” Even if John McCain and Sarah Palin somehow manage to win this election, it’ll be as populist reformers, not traditional conservatives. Either way, conservatism “sure looks dead.”

Responsibility for that homicide lies squarely with George W. Bush, said The Economist. His “ruthless partisanship and iron commitment to presidential power” served him well enough at first; most Republicans swooned to his “huge tax cuts” and war on terror. But Bush’s “my way or the highway” approach ultimately fractured his own party. Fiscal conservatives were appalled by his reckless spending. Paleocons resented his invasion of Iraq. Nativists opposed him on immigration reform. The “most damning verdict” on Bush’s mismanagement came last week, when conservative House Republicans initially voted to reject his $700 billion financial bailout package. Their defiance signaled how little respect conservatives now have for their once-beloved leader. Far from “forging a lasting Republican majority,” Bush has left his party “in the worst state they have been in for decades.”

And yet, said John Harwood in The New York Times, Republicans may have reason to be optimistic. When a party is cast out, it often uses its time in the wilderness to “refocus its message and agenda” and stage a comeback. That’s what the Democrats who are now poised to take power have been doing since 2000, and what conservatives did after Barry Goldwater’s humiliating defeat in 1964. In January, Democrats may well assume ownership of the country’s numerous, intractable problems. What better time for conservatives to begin work on their “political renewal”?

Economic gloom spreads to Wall Street

What happened

Wall Street officially entered a bear market last week, in the midst of a number of gloomy signs for the U.S. economy. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed more than 20 percent below its October peak, meeting the commonly accepted definition of a bear market. “It’s a validation that all hell has already broken loose,” said economist Keith Hembre. The sell-off was partly a reaction to skyrocketing energy costs, as oil hit a record high of $144.15 a barrel and a gallon of gas reached a national average of $4.11. Last month’s stock drop was the market’s worst June performance since the Great Depression.

The Labor Department reported that 62,000 people lost their jobs in June—the sixth straight month of job losses and the longest such period since 2002. Sales of new homes also dropped precipitously. Acknowledging that the credit crunch is not abating, the Federal Reserve this week extended a program to provide struggling investment banks with low-interest loans and readied new rules to restrict high-cost loans to people with poor credit. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said he now believes the economic slowdown will extend well into next year.

Economic issues dominated the presidential campaign. John McCain pledged to jump-start the economy by cutting taxes and balancing the federal budget within four years through spending cuts. Barack Obama said McCain’s approach would help only “big corporations and multimillionaires,” and he renewed his call for a $50 billion stimulus package for working families that includes a taxpayer rebate.

What the editorials said

“The economy has shifted into reverse,” said The New York Times. The 438,000 jobs lost this year won’t come back until consumer confidence improves, and that won’t happen as long as the housing crisis continues. The Fed’s moves could help, but Congress needs to stop playing politics and pass a foreclosure prevention bill. If Washington doesn’t act soon, “things will get worse before they get better.”

McCain’s policy of “competitiveness, prudence, and growth” is just what the doctor ordered, said National Review. It was heartening to hear him revive his promise to balance the federal budget, and he’s right that it can be done without raising taxes, as long as wasteful spending is targeted. But first, “he must get elected,” and he’ll have a hard time doing that unless he offers direct benefits to the middle class, such as their own tax cut.

What the columnists said

McCain’s economic plan is dependent on “a vast number of ‘magic asterisks,’” said Ed Kilgore in Salon.com. To make his numbers work, he promises undefined “reviews” of federal programs and, most laughably, counts the money we’ll save from achieving “victory” in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not that it matters—since the entire policy is built around private-sector-oriented reforms in health care, energy, and entitlements that no Democratic Congress would ever agree to. McCain isn’t making a serious proposal, he’s just trying to shore up the Republican base.

If you believe that any president “will instantly reverse the decline of housing prices, bring gasoline prices crashing back to earth, and generally kick the economy back into gear,” said Daniel Gross in Slate.com, “I’ve got some subprime mortgages I’d like to sell you.” History shows that the economy expands and contracts according to cyclical factors beyond any leader’s control. About the only thing a president can affect is “the short-term national mood about the economy.”

That mood is gloomier than it needs to be, said Chris Lester in The Kansas City Star. The 5.5 percent unemployment rate is nothing compared to the 10.8 percent peak of 1982, and our 4.2 percent inflation is dwarfed by 1980’s high of 14.76 percent. Even the housing crisis doesn’t really affect many ordinary people who bought their homes to live in, rather than as part of some “highfalutin” investment scheme. “It sometimes seems like we’ve completely forgotten what hard times really feel like.”

What next?

Wall Street rallied in response to the Federal Reserve’s actions and a slight decline in crude oil prices. But most analysts expect any recovery to be slow. Historically, it takes investors more than three years to recoup their losses after a bear market, said Adam Shell in USA Today. The current market is really only “a cub bear. The question now is whether the slide will turn into a grizzly bear.”

McCain: Why his campaign is in trouble

John McCain is getting frustrated, said William Kristol in The New York Times. The GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee, sources tell me, knows he’s losing ground to Democrat Barack Obama, and that Obama is generating most of the presidential race’s energy, momentum, and headlines. Some polls now show Obama opening a lead of more than 15 points. For McCain, this is immensely “galling”: Obama’s campaign is managing to make the inexperienced, one-term senator seem “more presidential” every day, while his own campaign has made a war hero and accomplished political warrior “seem somehow smaller.” The problem is simple, said Liz Sidoti in the Associated Press. Three months after he won the Republican primaries, McCain still has no coherent message. “He can’t seem to stick with a particular line of argument in favor of his candidacy for more than a couple of days.” Last week, he reshuffled his top staff for the second time in a year, bringing on a new campaign manager. There are still four months left before the election—plenty of time to change the dynamics of the race. Still, when McCain “calls himself an underdog, that may be an understatement.”

Republicans are getting worried, too, said Maeve Reston in the Los Angeles Times. They don’t understand why McCain hasn’t seized the political center he used to own. Instead, McCain seems torn between trying to appeal to independents and trying to convince conservatives that he’s one of them. In one recent stretch, he asked disgruntled Hillaryites to vote for him, then touted his anti-abortion views. He delighted conservatives by calling for offshore oil drilling and appalled them by professing deep concern about global warming. “There’s a lot of unease,” said one Republican strategist. “People generally like him. But when it comes down to getting excited about the candidate, it just isn’t there.”

“Republicans shouldn’t panic,” said John Fund in The Wall Street Journal Online. On most core issues, the country still leans right. History shows that as presidential elections draw nearer and voters really examine the issues, Democratic leads tend to melt away while Republicans surge. Michael Dukakis, let us not forget, once led George H.W. Bush by 17 points. The excitement over Obama’s “glitzy ‘hope and change’ rallies” will eventually fade, said Victor David Hanson in National Review Online. McCain will then have an opening to prove himself the steadier and wiser hand. Remember the Republican primaries? Much as the storied tortoise beat the hare, “the dead-last, written-off McCain eventually walked past all his front-running rivals.” It just may happen again.

Don’t bet on it, said Stuart Rothenberg in RealClearPolitics.com. After the Bush presidency, Americans have soured on Republican leadership. Polls show that voters see Democrats as more likely to bring improvements on nearly every issue, from the economy to Iraq to fiscal responsibility. McCain’s only hope, said Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal Online, is that voters like and respect him, even if they’re down on the GOP. So his handlers should “let McCain be McCain,” His biggest mistake was to put on a straitjacket when he won the primaries—to become more cautious and formal. Mr. Maverick’s appeal has always been his biting, irreverent wit and his “unblinkered candor”—his willingness to say what other politicians won’t. If McCain rediscovers his “inner rebel,” he’s got a real chance. Just watch: Up until October, Obama will maintain a big lead in the polls. Then suddenly, “America will say, Hey, wait a second, are we sure we want that? And the race will tighten indeed.”

Why Andy Dick was arrested on sex and drug charges

What happened

Comedic actor Andy Dick was arrested early Wednesday morning on drug and battery charges after he allegedly pulled down a 17-year-old girl’s tank top and bra. The incident reportedly took place outside of a Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant in Murrieta, Calif., where Dick appeared to be intoxicated and was found to be in possession of Marijuana and Xanax. (AP)

What the commentators said

Andy Dick “has a reputation for crude behavior,” said the Associated Press. He’s reportedly “exposed himself to audiences at least twice,” and was “forcibly removed from the set of the show Jimmy Kimmel Live last year after he repeatedly touched guest Ivanka Trump without her permission.” And let’s not forget his arrest in 1999 for “possession of cocaine and marijuana after driving his car into a telephone pole.

”Yup, the great “wacktor” has been arrested again, said Perez Hilton, and the police report is hilarious. Not only did Dick allegedly grope a teenager, he also urinated in public and was identified in a curbside lineup. “Is a stint on Celebrity Rehab in his future?” If he’s lucky—he might be going to jail.

There’s really nothing funny about any of this, said Marc Rawden in the blog Cinema Blend. “Snorting coke and grinding up against unwilling kids half your age is creepy and sad.” And it’s hard to watch Dick “fall from loveable, quirky, over-the-top drama queen to haggard, drug-addicted has-been.” We really hope you get your life together, Andy—“we need less of this and more scene-stealing roles.”