Undecided
by David Sedaris

I don’t know that it was always this way, but, for as long as I can remember, just as we move into the final weeks of the Presidential campaign the focus shifts to the undecided voters. “Who are they?” the news anchors ask. “And how might they determine the outcome of this election?” Then you’ll see this man or woman— someone, I always think, who looks very happy to be on TV. “Well, Charlie,” they say, “I’ve gone back and forth on the issues and whatnot, but I just can’t seem to make up my mind!” Some insist that there’s very little difference between candidate A and candidate B. Others claim that they’re with A on defense and health care but are leaning toward B when it comes to the economy. I look at these people and can’t quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention? To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?” To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

[more]

End of an Era

Step back a moment from the robocalls and the Biden gaffes and the Valentino jacket to take in the history being made as we watch. I don’t mean the likelihood of a black American President, though that’s mind-bending enough. I’m referring to the complete collapse of the four-decade project that brought conservatism to power in America. The conservative movement was driven by the single unifying idea that government is the problem, not the solution. It attained and kept power through the highly successful political strategy of dividing the country into the hard-working, America-loving, God-fearing majority and the minority of élitist liberals who wanted to tell the majority what to do. What’s happened to that idea and that strategy over the past few weeks? When Obama told an Ohio plumber on camera that his tax plan would take some money from the rich and give some back to the middle- and working-class, the McCain-Palin campaign got very excited—they finally had the key to turning the race around. Since then, the Republicans have been talking about Joe, socialism, and spreading the wealth around at every turn. Did Obama begin to sink in the polls, as pundits predicted? Was Dick Morris finally going to get something about this election right? No, Obama rose—and even on taxes he’s preferred over McCain. Like Democrats running against Herbert Hoover well into the 1970s, the Republican campaign still thinks it’s 1980. But it turns out that in 2008 voters can actually imagine worse things than tax rates on upper incomes returning to their Clinton-era level.

[more]

Republican fears of historic Obama landslide unleash civil war for the future of the party
Senior Republicans believe that John McCain is doomed to a landslide defeat which will hand Barack Obama more political power than any president in a generation.

Aides to George W.Bush, former Reagan White House staff and friends of John McCain have all told The Sunday Telegraph that they not only expect to lose on November 4, but also believe that Mr Obama is poised to win a crushing mandate. They believe he will be powerful enough to remake the American political landscape with even more ease than Ronald Reagan did in 1980. The prospect of an electoral rout has unleashed a bitter bout of recriminations both within the McCain campaign and the wider conservative movement, over who is to blame and what should be done to salvage the party's future.

[more]

Greenspan Concedes Error on Regulation

But in a tense exchange with Rep. Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat who is chairman of the committee, Mr. Greenspan conceded a more serious flaw in his own philosophy that unfettered free markets sit at the root of a superior economy. "I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms," Mr. Greenspan said. Referring to his free-market ideology, Mr. Greenspan added: "I have found a flaw. I don't know how significant or permanent it is. But I have been very distressed by that fact." Mr. Waxman pressed the former Fed chair to clarify his words. "In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working," Mr. Waxman said. "Absolutely, precisely," Mr. Greenspan replied. "You know, that's precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well."

[more]

Poor Greenspan. He was shocked. Delusional fucker. You can only ignore reality so long. Reality always wins in the end.