What I’ve garnered from focus groups and polling seem to indicate that Biden had a strong victory. Fox News gives a slight edge to Palin, but that’s to be expected.

On TV, the actual words spoken are not as important than images and moods, so it does little good to analyze what was said. Joe may have gotten in a good jibe here and there, and so did Sarah. But it’s more about demeanor (and screw ups – there were none).

For example, who can remember what McCain or Obama said in their first debate? But do we remember McCain’s sneers, Obama’s friendliness? McCain lost to Obama because he was mean and snarly and petulant. Obama was kind and his smile was genuine, and he was calm and cool. He showed gravitas – seriousness and weight, along with a good nature. People could actually picture him in the Oval Office.

Last night Joe Biden came off as a serious and knowledgeable candidate with a real résumé, while Sarah Palin was more like a student trying to make an F into a C- after a night of cramming. Her rote responses and non-responses did not help her. The winking was annoying. The folksiness might be genuine, but it may be put on too. (It worked in Alaska.) The fact that she didn’t screw up only reassured her base – they breathed easier. The rest of us could see that she had been heavily coached.

In the focus groups I’ve read about, the percentage of people who think she won at is around 35% or so – McCain is polling at around 43% average, so it appears as though she even failed to impress even many of those who are going to vote for the top of the ticket. She did not help his cause.

Note: Apparently, Palin only learned this morning, on-air on Fox, that the McCain/Palin campaign had abandoned the state of Michigan. She’s not exactly an insider – more of a prop.

Conservatives are attacking Vice Presidential debate moderator Gwen Ifill, saying she’s probably biased towards Obama.

Ifill, a host on the news channel for higher IQ folk, PBS (no, I don’t watch it), is also author of a forthcoming book “The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama.” It is presumed that she is biased towards Obama because of the book, and as a subtext, because she is black.

What the conservatives are doing is the same tactic they’ve been using against the media since the 1970’s – working the referee. By drawing attention to Ifill, they are hoping she will be self-conscious, and will back off playing hardball with Barbie.

The tactic usually works. We’ll see.

A different take on Monday’s vote, which I heard on talk radio this morning and am now mindlessly repeating: What if the Republicans, connivers that they are, were hoping to hang the bailout on the Democrats? It’s enormously unpopular.

In this scenario, they would have negotiated a bailout bill in bad faith, led the Dems to think they were on board, and then pulled out at the last moment, making it a Democratic bill.

There’s some support for this theory in the fact that the Republican National Committee ran an ad criticizing the Democrats and Obama for passing the bill. It was apparently run by mistake, just as an AP story was run in Butte and Bozeman announcing passage of the bill.

This would make the true heroes of the day those Democrats who refused to be bullied into going along.

National politicians are generally heavily protected by both staff and our media. FDR could not walk, but that fact was concealed from the bulk of the population. Especially in his second term, Ronald Reagan was debilitated by Alzheimer’s, and yet his image was projected on us as a skilled and confident leader.

I had an exchange with another blogger one time about the Reagan situation, and was told that Reagan seemed competent and effective until after he left office, when he began to wither. That was precisely the point – when he left office, the curtain came down, and we saw him as he really was. He was no longer protected.

Joe McGinniss, in his 1969 book The Selling of the President chronicled how Richard Nixon in 1968 was packaged and marketed to us as a product. He was nothing like the images projected on our TV screens, but Nixon’s people understood that television created an alternative reality. Which is real? The man, or the perception?

In the mind of the voter, it’s the perception. If marketed correctly, the man or woman is irrelevant. If their true nature becomes known to us, as Nixon’s did, it is only an accident.

Sarah Palin’s true nature has been exposed – the McCain people seem to have really screwed up.

Marketing is both an art and a science. It doesn’t always give us the silk purse. While John McCain’s handlers have done a credible job of selling his image as war hero and decisive maverick, Sarah Palin has been hopelessly exposed as a beauty pageant queen. Her “brand” is sullied. She may have marketed herself effectively in Alaska – God only knows what that was about – but on the national stage she she splashes before us as an innocent child in a bath tub.

It’s a conundrum. If McCain dumps her, he’ll enrage his Christian right wing base. If he keeps her, he can only hope that she becomes the object of sympathy, the victim of a malicious media. Those are his choices.

What to expect from the “debate” on Thursday? I’ve no clue. Like Reagan, she can be effective when scripted. It’s a question of how much retention she has. She’s being crash-schooled in things apparently beyond her grasp, things she never thought or had to care about up north. The Democrats have to treat her gingerly, so not to be seen as mean-spirited. At the same time, they’ve got to prevent her from grabbing the upper hand, as she did at the Republican convention. We’ll see how smart everyone is.

As McGinnis noted in 1968, there’s little substance to connect a political campaign to what a politician will really do once elected. Barack Obama is effectively selling the image of the calm hand, the reasoned leader. Not so with the McCain people – they have lost control of the narrative. Their brand of toothpaste is not selling. They’re inept. They’ve shown us too much of reality. That’s always a mistake.

Only one thing can save them. Election fraud.

The people pushing now for passage of the bailout package are an alliance including the Bush White House, the Democratic leadership, and the Republican leadership.

Are the past eight years beginning to make sense now? Sometimes it takes a crisis for the true nature of things to become apparent.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

GOP Cyber security expert Stephen Spoonamore is the person we have been waiting for, the inside expert who is now detailing how election fraud is done. Spoonamore is founder and former CEO of Cybrinth LLC, an information technology and security firm that serves Fortune 100 companies. This clip is part of a ten-part interview – go to You Tube to see it all – click here*, and the rest of the clips will be available on the right hand side.

Spoonamore, a Republican and McCain supporter, claims that Saxby Chambliss lost by five points to Max Cleland in Georgia in 2002, that Bush lost to Kerry in 2004, and that the machinery is in place to steal the current election. He details how it is done – in a separate case now working its way through the courts, King Lincoln v. OH Sec. of State, he describes how the electronic part of the Bush “victory” in Ohio in 2004 was done: Votes that were supposedly to be transmitted to the Secretary of State’s office were first routed through a computer based in Chattanooga, Tennessee. That computer happened to be owned by a company called SmarTech. That is coincidentally is the same company that hosted the domain for the Bush White House that allowed them to communicate outside official channels. That’s where the tallies were likely changed.

According to an affidavit filed by Spoonamore in the case, “computer placement, in the middle of the network, is a defined type of attack.”

Spoonamore also claims that the “religious Christianist far right” is behind much of this fraud. That would make sense – fundamentalists are so sure that they are right about everything that any means justifies their ends. That’s the danger of fundamentalism.

This is from Mark Crispin Miller, who has done a yeoman’s job in working the election fraud issue:

According to this piece from Black Box Voting, the election results in Illinois, Colorado and Kentucky will be routed to private servers–just as in Ohio in 2004. As Stephen Spoonamore has made clear, this is an extremely dangerous arrangement, whose only purpose would be to facilitate the theft of the election.

The primary reason that this story doesn’t get a full public airing, and that it is relegated to back burners and assigned to conspiratorial limbo, is that the Democratic Party won’t take the issue seriously. When McCain waltzes into the White House after a stunning upset on November 4th, when forecasted congressional gains don’t materialize, and when lightweight beauty pageant queen Sarah Palin becomes our Vice President, perhaps they will take note.

But I doubt it.

*Best quote from the interview: “Diebold machines are not poorly designed. They are brilliantly designed. They are designed to steal elections.”

I have no problems with the House vote today even though the conservative Republicans probably had some philosophical reasons for doing it – you know, like let the market work. You can’t fix stupid+stubborn. And I resist this notion that is being sold by everyone everywhere that something has to be done soon. That’s the same rationale that got us the USA Patriot Act and the Iraq war. I doubt that caution and prudence will make things worse.

A couple of ideas are out there, but not seriously considered. They have to do with making the people caused the mess clean it up. One would be a surtax on high income taxpayers to pay for the bailout. The second idea is a small tax, say a quarter percent (.0025) on all stock transactions. It would raise about $150 billion per year, and would make Wall Street pay for Wall Street’s problems.

These are reasonable ideas that address the idea of personal responsibility. But so powerful is our financial sector, so much influence does it wield on the hill, that they are not even considered.

We’re a long way from out of this mess. As Ravi Batra suggests, the current bailout package could make our economy even sicker than it is by increasing interest rates for all borrowers. And anyway, it is probably just enough to get us through the election. Then it happens all over again.

Note: If your 401K has taken a big hit, remember that John McCain wants to privatize Social Security. He wants equal distribution of misery (Churchill’s definition of socialism).

Note: Hank Paulson, while at Goldman Sachs, collected $38 million in bonuses while his company increased its leveraged debt from $20 billion to $100 billion. I’d say his pocket is a good place to start when looking for money for this fix. Why not just give it back to us?

From the Thom Hartmann Program, Friday, Setpember 26, guest, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont):

Caller: I just wanted to ask you if you share my anger at the Democratic leadership and Dodd and Frank. The way I’m seeing it, they have embraced the Paulson bailout plan, with modifications, but basically, they’ve embraced the urgency of it and that that’s the only way to do it, even though there’s a whole slew of economists saying there are other ways and let’s put the brakes on this and slow down. And now I see the Republicans have taken that and said “Let’s stop”. I think this is the worst thing the Democrats have ever done. Is it just me?

Sanders: No. As a matter of fact I just made that point to Chris Dodd within the last hour. My wife in Burlington is a very good observer. She doesn’t get caught up in the turmoil, and she’s sitting home watching the TV, and her perception is that in fact it is now that Democrats are identified with Bush’s bailout program while the right wing Republicans are out there saying they’re going to protect taxpayers from Wall Street.

There’s going to be some meetings today and I will continue to voice that perspective. Number one, we should be thinking thoughtfully about this. It is not clear that we have to move in quite the time frame that Mr. Paulson has suggested. And number two, bottom line is if a bailout is to occur, then the people, the class of people, who caused the problem, pay for it.

Barney Frank, to his credit, has supported the concept and has been vocal. On NPR the other day he repeated his thought that there should be surtax on the very wealthy. But we are not seeing that in the plan.

In the House Peter DeFazio is proposing a stock transfer tax of a quarter of one percent that would raise about $150 billion per year, and in that sense we would let the stock market bail out the stock market.

Either of those ideas makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately, the Democrats have not embraced them yet.

There’s been an immense capture of wealth by the upper classes during the Bush Administration. Now’s the time to give back. But the idea that the people who benefited from Wall Street’s malfeasance should pay for it is never even broached. It’s eerie.

Debate moderators are chosen for their ability to project gravitas, but their real job is to keep the candidates from veering into substance. Journalists don’t become moderators without selling their souls, internalizing the sellout, and then believing in their phony selves. Jim Lehrer is a professional sycophant whose audience is comprised of higher IQ patrons of public television. He’s a good moderator.

But Jim Lehrer accidentally asked a good question the other night – it didn’t get the answer it deserved – that would not be proper. But it was a good question, nonetheless. Addressing Obama:

As president, as a result of whatever financial rescue plan comes about and the billion, $700 billion, whatever it is it’s going to cost, what are you going to have to give up, in terms of the priorities that you would bring as president of the United States, as a result of having to pay for the financial rescue plan?

The reason why we can’t fix our problems, why we don’t have a health care plan, why college education sinks our kids into lifelong debt, why our infrastructure is crumbling underneath us, why we don’t have a national rail system … is that we use our surplus wealth to take care of our wealthy. Obama is talking about doing something about some of these problems (I don’t know how serious he is) and is also talking about offering some tax relief for ordinary citizens, burdened as they are by two onerous income taxes. But if he is elected, he’ll not be able to do anything, and Lehrer made it perfectly clear why – the money is to be spent rescuing the wealthy sector, and won’t be available.

I don’t think that’s an accident. George Bush came to office in 2001 faced with a huge problem – an accidental budget surplus brought about by an unforeseen flurry of economic activity and a stock market bubble. He set out to eliminate it as fast as he could by giving it to the wealthy in the form of tax cuts. It was a dangerous time, and he faced the challenge with resolve and courage. Had the surpluses been allowed to go on, Americans would have demanded the things listed above, and there would be no good reason to say no.

Deficits are intentional. Surpluses are accidental and problematic. We are an enormously wealthy country – we have money to provide for a reasonable retirement for everyone, health care and public transportation and education of our youth, but these are not the things that the owners of the country want for us. These things are egalitarian – they have a leveling effect. So our leaders present us with an endless series of hobgoblins – imaginary monsters to fight – and fighting them absorbs all of our surplus and redirects it at the military industrial complex. Much of the debate last Friday was dedicated to reinforcing the notion that we must fight these imaginary monsters.

It’s been that way all of my life. We fought a massively expensive Cold War with the Russians that lasted from the early 1950’s until 1991. We never actually fought them, but they were the reason why we invested our surplus wealth in missile systems and aircraft carriers. Every time we wanted to attack someone, it was the really the conspiring Russians that were causing the problem.

But the Russians never really threatened us in any meaningful way. We threatened them with missiles, they responded. We occupied West Germany, they occupied East. But they mostly stayed in their sphere, we in ours, and both were happy with that system.

It was a good system, a good way to assure that our surplus wealth was directed at Eisenhower’s military industrial complex. Russia was useful. But then she went and collapsed on us, catching everyone by surprise, and we had no enemy to fight, and no justification for misuse of that surplus wealth. Our leaders frantically searched for enemies, even settling on little Libya at one point. Who to fight? Who to scare us with? For a time during the 1990’s (there’s still some residual) they said we were involved in a global war on drugs, but that didn’t really resonate the way Russia did – foreign substances did not really take the place of really evil foreign people. It was hard to put a face on that enemy. But it was all we had.

We were adrift, having no real enemies, and along came that surplus, and the problem was apparent to all in power – there was a real threat that our wealth would be used to force some kind of equality upon us – health care, educational opportunities, infrastructure – we were starting to dream.

And along came terrorism. Finally, a new and permanent enemy – one to last generations, one to justify the continued squandering of our wealth in such a way that ordinary people do not benefit. Warfare, the GWOT, the counterinsurgencies, Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan are really part of a bigger war, class warfare. We ordinary Joe’s who produce the wealth of our land are the enemy.

The bailout is a massive wealth transfer, and as always, it is directed upward. It, along with military spending, will preclude any spending on ourselves for things we want for ourselvesfor decades to come. It is being presented to us as a fait accompli, and will be driven into us like a spike by both Democrats and Republicans.

Whenever there is “bipartisan” agreement in Washington, there is going to be a massive screwing. The job of politicians and the media right now is to garner public support for the latest wealth transfer. That’s been the push for the last few weeks – not to fix Wall Street so much as to con the American public into accepting the idea that we owe Wall Street anything; that keeping them healthy will keep us healthy. That’s why Lehrer’s question was so appropriate.

It’s never been a perfect system. The bailout may not pass. Occasionally we win a thing or two. There is still some residual of the New Deal and Great Society in our land – Social Security and Medicare and unemployment insurance and the like – those are ways that we use our surplus wealth to help each other. Those programs really work and we can easily afford them. But they interfere with other objectives, so we are told are too costly, that they must be reined in. The object of a successful McCain presidency will be to turn these programs into profit centers for the wealthy, and to squeeze ordinary people out. If Obama is elected, there will be a full court press to keep him from implementing anything he has espoused.

My money is on McCain. I’m not far away from Social Security. I’m feeling unlucky.

h/t: Dr. Peter Rost