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Most Americans are just now starting to get an inkling of how serious the financial crisis is in this country. In fact, although it is most dire here, it is dragging down the entire world economy. To hear Wall Street and most of the financial media tell it, this mess was caused by stupid or careless corporate executives doing risky things without thinking through the consequences. Nothing could be further from the truth. Just so you know that these periodic financial disasters are not accidents, let's take a look at some history before examining today's situation. We'll use Citigroup as...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Federal Reserve, in coordinated action with foreign central banks, plowed $30 billion into money markets overseas Wednesday, part of an ongoing effort to fight a global credit crisis. The Fed's action -- taken at 1 a.m. EDT -- sets up temporary "swap" arrangements to supply dollars to the central banks of Australia, Denmark, Norway and Sweden in exchange for their currencies.

President Sarkozy of France would refuse to shake the hand of the Iranian president, who has called for Israel to be wiped off the map, the French leader told reporters today at the United Nations. At a press conference shortly after delivering a speech at the opening debate of the U.N. General Assembly, Mr. Sarkozy added that President al-Assad of Syria could be used to exert a positive influence on Iran.

The lobbying firm of John McCain's campaign manager was paid $15,000 a month for several years until last month by one of two housing companies taken over by the federal government, a person familiar with the financial arrangement said Tuesday night. That money from Freddie Mac to the firm of Rick Davis was on top of more than $30,000 a month that went directly to Davis for five years starting in 2000. The $30,000 a month came from both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the other housing entity now under government control because of the crisis in the financial markets....

Is al-Qaeda preparing to disrupt American elections in November, or to influence them through attacks in October? Eli Lake reports on an uptick in communication seen by some in the intel community during the conventions, instructing cells to prepare for operational instructions. Rather than specific plans, though, the messages intended to alert members to watch for further instructions: In the aftermath of two major terrorist attacks on Western targets, America’s counterterrorism community is warning that Al Qaeda may launch more overseas operations to influence the presidential elections in November. Call it Osama bin Laden’s “October surprise.” In late August, during...

A commission convened by some of the country’s most influential college admissions officials is recommending that colleges and universities move away from their reliance on SAT and ACT scores and shift toward admissions exams more closely tied to the high school curriculum and achievement. ... It encourages institutions to consider dropping admission test requirements unless they can prove that the benefits of such tests outweigh the negatives. ... Mr. Fitzsimmons’s group, which was convened by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, also expresses concerns “that test scores appear to calcify differences based on class, race/ethnicity and parental educational attainment.”...

From: "Michelle Obama" To: "Whitey DrownMyanmar" Whitey -- This Friday, we'll reach another milestone in this campaign -- the first debate of the general election, on September 26th at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time. Millions of Americans will tune in to watch Barack debate John McCain about America's foreign policy and our role in the world. Barack will share his plan to bring the change we need -- to restore our place in the world, ensure security at home and abroad, and reestablish the United States as the world's economic leader. This is a great opportunity for you to learn more...

Biden: FDR Led When Market Crashed

Original investigation is from THE JAWA REPORT Here are voices, side by side, from an official Obama ad, the anti-Palin hit piece, and a voice over actress. Listen to the voices. Is it the same person? If it is, the voice over actress is in Chicago. What a coincidence, David Axelrod runs his operation from Chicago. WATCH THE SHORT VIDEO TO COMPARE......what do you think? NOTE: this is hosted on tinypic.com. The first time I watched it, there was no problem. The second time I clicked on it, to make sure the link worked, the sound was there but no...

Estimates of how much money a government program will cost are notoriously unreliable. Estimates of the cost of the current bailout in the financial markets run into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and some say it may reach or exceed a trillion. Many people have trouble even forming some notion of what such numbers as billion and trillion mean. One way to get some idea of the magnitude of a trillion is to ask: How long ago was a trillion seconds? A trillion seconds ago, no one on this planet could read and write. Neither the Roman Empire nor...

When Google announced the Open Handset Alliance (a group of wireless industry players looking to get their names associated with Google's Android open mobile platform project), true open-source smartphones were a great idea that seemed far from commercial realization. This will change on October 22, when the T-Mobile G1 – the product of an exclusive partnership among T-Mobile, Google, and Asian handset manufacturer HTC -- becomes the first shipping mobile device based on the Android platform. The Android platform is open source -- Google has committed to publishing the source code for the entire platform, not just an application-level SDK....

Watching tonight's Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC (opposition research), I noticed an interesting exchange between the host and Andrea Mitchell. Of course we all know that both of these gals are in the tank for Obama, and they were having a typical lib discussion of the "Palin Press Dodge", as the headline called it, at the United Nations today. Of particular interest to me was Andrea Mitchell's response to this question (exchange begins at around the 2:24 mark of the video - this transcript picks up at the 2:40 mark): Maddow: ...Is today's burst of attention sort of a culmination...

The 2004 contest between President Bush and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry marked the beginning of the end for the old media monopoly. On the one hand, clumsy media attempts to fabricate a story, complete with phony documents hastily fabricated using modern word-processing software, clearly indicated that CBS bigwig Dan Rather and his minions were stumping for Kerry. Meanwhile, the old media failed miserably in their shameless attempts to discredit the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth. That organization's thoroughly documented evidence completely unraveled Kerry's baseless claims of heroism in Vietnam. By so doing, the Swift Vets struck the fatal blow to his...

Ruling party leader Taro Aso was elected Japan's next prime minister Wednesday. Aso, who was chosen president of the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party on Monday, had already begun piecing together a Cabinet expected to include a fellow outspoken hawk as finance chief. The opposition-controlled upper house voted for Ichiro Ozawa, head of the Democratic Party of Japan, as prime minister. But the more powerful lower chamber voted to override that ballot in favor of Aso. The right-leaning former foreign minister will confront a country wracked by political divisions and concerns over the economy, which has stalled in recent months amid...

After exploration by millions of visitors over the past 100 years, it is hard to imagine anything left to discover amid the majesty of Yosemite's glacier-cut granite cliffs and giant Sequoia groves. But, by thinking small, scientists have discovered new species of lichen clinging like microscopic starfish to Yosemite icons such as El Capitan, Half Dome and Vernal Falls, and countless slabs of less famous rock. And they are trying to determine whether the species exist anywhere else. The chance to collect and study the lichen that gives the Yosemite's granite faces their distinctive black and rust-colored striping enticed world-class...

The first smartphone based on Google's Android marries a sophisticated HTC handset with software features that outmaneuver iPhone On October 22, T-Mobile will reap the benefits of its founding membership in the Open Handset Alliance. Through an exclusive partnership with Google and Asian handset manufacturer HTC, the T-Mobile G1 will become the first shipping mobile device based on the Android platform. Google and company have worked hard to make the T-Mobile G1 both affordable and easy to use. And while it's too soon to know how far developers will take the open source Android platform, we now know what to...

On Main Street, insurance protects people from the effects of catastrophes. But on Wall Street, specialized insurance known as a credit default swaps are turning a bad situation into a catastrophe. When historians write about the current crisis, much of the blame will go to the slump in the housing and mortgage markets, which triggered the losses, layoffs and liquidations sweeping the financial industry. But credit default swaps -- complex derivatives originally designed to protect banks from deadbeat borrowers -- are adding to the turmoil. . . . The rest of the article is here and is well worth reading...

Algebra in eighth grade was once reserved for the mathematically gifted student. In 1990, very few eighth graders, about one out of six, were enrolled in an algebra course. As the decade unfolded, leaders began urging schools to increase that number. President Clinton lamented, “Around the world, middle students are learning algebra and geometry. Here at home, just a quarter of all students take algebra before high school.”1 The administration made enrolling all children in an algebra course by eighth grade a national goal. In a handbook offering advice to middle school students on how to plan for college, U.S....

Wikipedia: "The term Bradley effect... refers to a frequently observed discrepancy between voter opinion polls and election outcomes in American political campaigns when a white candidate and a non-white candidate run against each other. Named for Tom Bradley, an African-American who lost the 1982 California governor's race despite being ahead in voter polls, the Bradley effect refers to a tendency on the part of white voters to tell pollsters that they are undecided or likely to vote for a Black candidate, when, on election day, they vote for his/her white opponent. "One theory for the Bradley effect is that some...

For those looking for a real start to today's financial meltdown and government rescue, you need to go back — way back — to 1977, and the Jimmy Carter presidency.It was then, for the best and purest of reasons, that well-meaning Democratic members of Congress brought the Community Reinvestment Act into being. The main idea, as the late Democratic Sen. William Proxmire said on the Senate floor in 1977, was "to eliminate the practice of redlining by lending institutions." That term — "redlining" — seems quaint today. But in the 1970s, it was widely seen as the cause of housing...