But in all sincerity...

What's the consensus? A draw? A win? A loss?

I honestly expected more assertiveness from Obama, though McCain was quite predictably ornery.

Right now I'll leave the incisive analysis of Debate I to Tim and Wyl, but let me just say...

...at least I have my wardrobe for November 4 officially confirmed.

The Tale of Sen. McCain

Brave Sir Robin ran away,
Bravely ran away, away.
When danger reared its ugly head, he bravely turned his tail and fled.
Yes, brave Sir Robin turned about
And gallantly, he chickened out. Bravely taking to his feet,
He beat a very brave retreat,
Bravest of the brave, Sir Robin.

- Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

Since brave Sen. McCain is ducking the debates and running away from the public (something Eric Rauchway points out was not done by Lincoln in 1864, Hoover or FDR in 1932, FDR or Willkie in 1940, or FDR or Dewey in 1944), why not shout after him a good question that no one is asking:

"Senator McCain, what does your buddy Phil Gramm have to say about all your Wall Street pals that are currently whining so loudly?"

McCain's Suspension Ploy

John McCain has just announced that he'll be suspending his campaign in order to help deal with the economic crisis.

Why this is respectable:
It's pretty much universally agreed upon right now that the economy is in rough shape. The debate is over how to deal with it. One of the most obnoxious things to me about watching high level political campaigns is listening to congressmen, senators, and other high ranking elected officials talking about what they would do, or what should be done. These are people that are fully capable of moving the process forward to get those Woulds and Shoulds done, but they're too busy talking and not acting. I'm all about officials running their campaigns by putting on display that they're doing their jobs and doing it damn well.

Why this is clever political posturing:
McCain's poll numbers have been plummeting this week (even a Fox News poll has him down 6 points nationally, ABC has him up 9). Most people seem to agree that Obama is better equipped to cope with the economy, and have decided that he's not an elitist, but rather that his years helping poor people that had lost their jobs made him more aware of the plight of people who are afraid of losing their jobs and becoming poor. John McCain himself has announced that he's not a very good student of the economy, and he's been digging his own free market grave since he first came to Congress as part of the Reagan Revolution. Senator Six-Homes McCain is making a mad dash to make himself seem more sympathetic to the people his top economic advisor refers to as a "nation of whiners." Not only does it make McCain seem like he's rushing to the aid of the American people, and if Obama doesn't go along with it, Obama looks like he doesn't care. So either McCain's determining the staging of the race and looking more leaderly in the process or making Obama look aloof.

Why this is just a big load of crap:
This would all be very noble, except John McCain has no intention of being any less visible to the voting populace. He's not going to be "suspending" his campaign, he's just going to be campaigning from Washington in between meetings, and from the Senate floor. McCain is pushing this as a way to put himself a rung above electoral politics (the cornerstone of our democracy, by the way, and not something to consider yourself "above") as a man who cares nothing for himself and only about you, but he's only doing this to propagate an image so he can bring his poll numbers back up and get elected. If he weren't running for President, John McCain would be off talking to some B-list newspaper explaining yet again that he doesn't know much about the economy and staying on the fringes of the debate until another war came up that he could support.

To be fair, it's very well executed bullshit, but it is bullshit nonetheless.

"Substituting Vehemence for Coherence"

It's not like me to enjoy a George Will column. I generally find him stuck up and priggish. However, today's column is one of his occasional exceptions. Some excerpts:

Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.

[...]

By a Gresham's Law of political discourse, McCain's Queen of Hearts intervention in the opaque financial crisis overshadowed a solid conservative complaint from the Republican Study Committee, chaired by Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas. In a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, the RSC decried the improvised torrent of bailouts as a "dangerous and unmistakable precedent for the federal government both to be looked to and indeed relied upon to save private sector companies from the consequences of their poor economic decisions." This letter, listing just $650 billion of the perhaps more than $1 trillion in new federal exposures to risk, was sent while McCain's campaign, characteristically substituting vehemence for coherence, was airing an ad warning that Obama favors "massive government, billions in spending increases."

[...]

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

And there you have it. George F. Will has given a backhanded, extremely reticent, lesser-of-two-evils endorsement of Barack Obama over John McCain.

Also, for the record, I personally think "Substituting Vehemence for Coherence" should be McCain's campaign slogan. Thanks George!

Bridging the Chasm

The other day I was reading this Consumerist post on the 10 largest Chapter 11 bankruptcies in US history. Most of us are old enough to remember when United Airlines bit the bullet in late 2002. United held pre-Ch. 11 assets of $25.2 billion, which ranks as the tenth largest bankruptcy.

I remember the talk when Texaco became insolvent in 1987 (my great uncle owns a service station which formerly sold Texaco gas). Texaco's assets at the time of receivership amounted to $35.9 billion, which is bad enough for 5th on the all-time list.

Baseball fans in particular remember when Enron went bust because of the scandal surrounding the naming rights deal the company had signed with the Houston Astros. Enron's pre-bankruptcy assets were valued at $63.4 billion in 2001. That places Enron a distant third.

Remember WorldCom (aka MCI WorldCom), the long-distance carrier and rival of AT&T which tried to merge with Sprint in 1999 until the Department of Justice and the EU got antsy? Three years later WorldCom went down to the tune of $103.9 billion, the largest bankruptcy filing ever at the time. Today, WorldCom is merely second...

...to Lehman Brothers. Prior to this Monday, Lehman's assets amounted to $639 billion, outstripping the previous bankruptcy record by $535.1 billion. This is a massive number that's incredibly hard to contextualize, but thanks to the information provided by Condé Nast Portfolio, I think I've managed to accord it proper scale.

Ford Motor Company's total assets, including global operations in Europe, Australia, and Latin America amount to $178.82 billion as of August. Entities owned by Ford include Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Mazda, Volvo, Motorcraft (parts and service), Ford of Europe, Ford of Australia, the Ford Motor Credit Company (financing), and manufacturing facilities throughout Latin America and Africa.

General Motors is the maker of Chevrolet, Pontiac, Saturn, Buick, Hummer, Saab, Cadillac, Holden (Australia), Opel (Germany), Vauxhaul (UK), Daewoo (South Korea), Delphi Electronics, and 49% of GMAC Financial. GM's total assets, including operations in Europe, Australia, South Korea, and China, amount to $65.92 billion, also as of August.

Chrysler's assets are a bit harder to ascertain. The company's divisions include Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Mopar (Chrysler's parts and service arm), ENVI (hybrid vehicle development), and Chrysler Financial, and previously was part of the now-defunct DiamlerChrysler consortium. Now a private company, with 80.1% owned by Cerebus Capital Management, 19.9% owned by former partner Daimler AG (think Mercedes-Benz, plus a ton of truck companies like Freightliner and Sterling and a bank), I couldn't find any data on the Condé Nast site. An estimation is possible, though. In 2007, Cerebus paid $7.4 billion for the privilage of owning Chrysler, this despite the later's $18 billion in liabilities. If you believe assets minus liabilities equals a sales price, then Chrysler's assets would be in the range of $25 billion.

Lehman Brothers' $639 billion in pre-bankruptcy assets outstrips the combined assets of Ford, GM, and Chrysler ($269.74 billion) by $369.26 billion. So, since we're still not even halfway across the abyss, let's make a few more additions.

Toyota Motor Corporation's operations encompass the Toyota Group (Scion, Toyota, and Lexus), Toyota Financial Services, and 521 other subsidiaries, including a majority stake in Daihatsu, nearly 9% of Fuji Heavy Industries (makers of Subaru as well as ventures in aerospace and eco tech). According to the Fortune Global 500, Toyota is the 6th largest corporation in the world. The total assets for Toyota in August of 2008 amounted to $120.86 billion.

Honda Motor Company is another multinational engineering and manufacturing concern. Honda manufactures cars (Honda and Acrua), trucks, motorcycles, scooters, robots, jets, jet engines, ATVs, watercraft, generators, marine engines, lawn mowers, and aeronautical equipment. As of August the company's total assets amounted to $48.47 billion.

Combine Toyota and Honda with Ford, GM, and Chrysler and the Lehman Brothers Canyon shrinks to only $199.93 billion.

Apple, Incorporated needs no introduction. The company's assets amounted to $28 billion in August. Only $171.93 billion to go!

Likewise, Microsoft Corporation is familiar to everyone. In August the company was valued at $43.24 billion. Lehman Brothers' lead is shrinking - merely $128.69 billion left!

Google, Incorporated adds another $16.32 billion in assets to the pile. Down to a mere $112.37 billion loss!

Dell, Incorporated pulls off another $21.78 billion from Lehman's Ravine, now $90.59 billion.

The Boeing Company eliminates $25.94 billion more. Lehman's Gulch has shrunk to $64.65 billion.

Hey, what it Bill Gates had a really bad day at the track? His $57 billion fortune gone, the Lehman Gap narrows to $7.65 million.

Let's say that Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp empire goes down, taking with it HarperCollins Publishers, Dow Jones & Company, the Consumer Media Group (including The Wall Street Journal), all of FOX media entities, and hundreds more newspapers, magazines, etc. That's another $6.8 billion gone. Now there's only $850,000,000 left to account for.

California's Governator has an estimated worth of about $800 million, something I found rather surprising (more than Mitt Romney? Really?).

And the last $50 million? That's about what Rudy Giuliani spent to win a single delegate in the Republican primary (the Times' headline is somehow wrong).

Finally!

Ready for the bloodletting? To equal Lehman Brothers' pre-bankruptcy assets, the following companies and individuals would have to lose all value:

• Ford Motor Company
• General Motors
• Chrysler, LLC
• Toyota Motor Company
• Honda Motor Company
• Apple, Inc.
• Microsoft Corporation
• Google, Inc.
• Dell, Inc.
• Boeing
• Bill Gates
• Rupert Murdoch
• Arnold Schwarzenegger
• Rudy '08

That's how big Lehman Brothers was. Was. Now it's not worth a Roosevelt dime. Finita la commedia.

And now we know that Bernanke and Paulson told Congressional leaders that up to $1 trillion will be needed to prevent a second Great Depression.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you're scared shitless about Lehman Brothers' failing, you have every right to be. If you aren't scared, you should be.

Who watches the watchmen?

So, all week, the major financial collapses have been all over the headlines, and I've been silent on it, because high-falootin' finance and money games are well beyond my expertise. So, I did what I always do in cases like this: I asked someone I know who's smarter than me. In this case, my friend Nick, who follows finance closer than anyone I know and has more expertise to assess it. And in order to really communicate how much Nick just scared the hell out of me, I'm just going to post everything he just wrote to me.

Obviously, there's a lot of subjectivity when it comes to economic prediction, but a lot of this makes sense to me. If you have any conflicting or supporting information and ideas, I'd love to hear them.
___________________________________________________________________________________

Q: On a scale of 1-10, where 1 is "minor fluctuation" and 10 is "start looking for refrigerator boxes to sleep in," how bad is this crisis?

A: As far as our lifetimes are concerned? 9.5.

Q: Can you give me a concise, idiot-proof explanation of how we got into this mess? I have a decent idea that it involves mortgage companies giving loans to people who couldn't really afford them(sub-prime rates, 100% financing, etc.), and then that somehow fed back to investment banking and insurance.

A: This sub-prime mortgage mess has been building for a couple of decades and the largest financial bubble in HISTORY is popping. There are three issues you should know about.

1.) At the heart of the issue is poor lending practices to people that cannot afford mortgages. Investments that are risky typically cost more, preventing people from investing too heavily. Banks took these bad mortgages, wrapped them up into securities (think stocks), and sold off the different layers at a non-risky price. They were able to do this because rating agencies (watchdogs that give ratings based on the risk of an asset) gave really risky investments very good ratings. This allowed banks to trade and sell these assets at prices that soon ballooned and created this bubble.

2.) Another problem is lack of oversight from federal regulators. When Enron collapsed the government created stricter standards on accounting through the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation preventing abuse from CEOs. The banking industry has a HUGE lobby that has the sole purpose of deregulating the industry so they can get away with outright fraud. If you've heard of pyramid schemes, this is the mother of all pyramid schemes. Just an FYI, Obama has received $10m in campaign contributions from Wall Street and McCain accepted $7 million.

3.) Lastly, these banks were gambling with our money KNOWING the government would bail them out. If they thought for one instance they couldn't recoup their losses, this wouldn't be happening now. Banks lent out billions of dollars on these risky investments without the ability to cover their bets. They were somewhat cautious, however, taking out insurance from AIG…but who insures the insurer?

Q: The federal government has now taken control of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG. What exactly are they going to do to make these companies stay viable that the private sector couldn't do (other than prop them up with taxpayer dollars until they can stand on their own)?

A: The last major financial crisis involving financial institutions was the Savings and Loan scandals in the 80's and 90's. The same thing happened with S&L institutions making outrageously risky bets by lending money to unviable firms and people. Do you see any S&L companies now? Not really, because most of them tanked (WaMu is one current example, but it will soon tank as well). 747 S&L institutions fell costing a total of around $160 billion, most of which was paid by the US government (aka US people). As it stands the current fallout from this crisis is $900 billion and still counting.

When the government lends a helping hand to these institutions its first task is to keep them afloat by pursuing precisely the same policies that caused the crisis in the first place. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac purchased these toxic mortgage securities from failing institutions and went bust as a result. What policies has the US government put in place so far? They will continue normal functioning until the end of 2009, and then consider changing course afterwards. Same with AIG. A major concern is that these companies and the government don't even know what the problem is let alone how to fix it. So they put a temporary band-aid on a huge structural issue that cannot be fixed by money. The only way to fix these companies is to let the house of cards fall.

Q: In addition to the aforementioned 3, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and Merrill Lynch have died or been absorbed by someone else in very recent memory. Washington Mutual is on the rocks and the feds are trying to find a buyer before it crashes entirely. We've got anti-trust laws for a reason, but it's looking like competition in the banking and financial services sector is evaporating because of some very, very bad investments over the last decade. The market was already dominated by a few very powerful firms: what happens when that number gets dramatically reduced?

A: The Daily Show last night had a funny skit showing one of the cast in front of a sign "Bank of America and Merrill Lynch." As the skit continued, the sign said, "Bed, Bank of America, and Beyond." Monopolies should be a huge concern to all Americans. When someone is in power, they are able to take advantage of the system at the expense of customers. Competition prevents many of these abuses by giving people a choice to pick banks that won't screw them over. I believe the larger more sturdy banks like Bank of America and Barclays will come out of this with some key purchases making them ENORMOUS institutions. B of A has already purchased LaSalle Bank, Countrywide, and now Merrill Lynch. Unfortunately for them, the credit crisis is still in full swing and the company may have buyer's regret if the asset values of the acquired companies continue to fall. As mentioned earlier, no one truly knows the full extent of the problem and this makes it difficult to put a dollar value on affected companies. Additionally, new regulations will surely cripple the flexibility of operations. Finally, a global recession is about to ensue and banks can't make money when no one wants to borrow money. Growth through acquisition may be a double-edged sword and only time will tell.

The government is also purchasing companies so you have to wonder what's worse, a socialized or monopolized economy?

Q: Who's next?

A: The fallout is just beginning and you'll see effects on the real economy soon enough. First, regional banks will start closing as people borrow less money. They operate on smaller margins than these behemoths and are more susceptible to fluctuations. Second, the auto industry has been asking for bailouts and will likely not receive anything as the core of our economy (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate or FIRE compose 30% of our economy) is shutting down. Any other company that has big ticket and luxury items such as cars, consumer electronics, appliances, etc. will surely feel the effects as consumers buckle down and purchase only necessities. Starbucks and retail operators are closing down stores and will continue until the slump abates. As houses go into foreclosure, property taxes will decrease and local government services will be hurt as a result. The airline industry will have less business and personal travelers and the local tourism industries may see a boost.

From an international perspective, countries that have invested heavily in the US or have exported large amounts to our consumer culture will be hurt dramatically. China's sovereign wealth fund, the largest in the world, is mostly composed of US dollars. They have been inflating the value of the American dollar through their sale of cheap goods for a decade. Not only will their investment in US dollars decrease in value, their export-based economy will suffer accordingly. The US is the largest economy in the world so the ripples will be far-reaching. Already international markets are greatly affected by this credit crisis.

Q: What's going to be the effect of these billions of dollars of bail-outs on the federal deficit, and will it have any appreciable effects on the economy from that end?

A: The bailouts are merely band aids on a mortal wound. The million dollar question is what will happen to the value of our money? Sadly there are both inflationary and deflationary concerns and a coin toss can tell you how it will end up. Inflationary concerns are based on the assumption that the US government will continue to bail out institutions or incur large costs from the current bailouts. To cover expenses, the US can either borrow or print more money. Both will lead to the devaluing of the dollar and cause prices to increase. Oppositely, as consumers and business spend and borrow less, the velocity of money will decrease allowing fewer dollars to circulate in our economy. Fewer dollars increases the value of dollars outstanding and your current savings should be fine (given that you still have a job, and the bank that holds your money doesn't collapse).

To combat inflation, you should invest in gold and silver and other commodities that consistently hold their value. Dollars are paper and are inherently worthless except by popular misconception (fiat money). I have put a little money into gold and silver just in case. If there's deflation, make sure to kiss your boss' ass now so that you retain your job through bad times.

Q: Is there anything I didn't ask that you feel it's necessary to comment on?

A: This is fundamentally an issue of class and neo-liberal capitalism. If our economy were purely capitalistic things might be different. However, the current system provides a reinforcing mechanism for the wealthy and elite through various transfers of wealth. Big business and their lobbyists retain control over our elected leaders pushing through policies that benefit them at the cost of the average American. Wall Street, the Military-industrial complex, and the Healthcare Industry have created an economic system that transfers a majority of people's earnings into a few pockets. Indeed inflation itself is caused by the careless borrowing of our government to fight wars overseas and creates an indirect tax in the form of less bang for your buck. The Federal Reserve is a private company (really a consortium of privately held banks) that creates our money and enacts policies to hurt the average American. Alan Greenspan (former Fed Chair) was a huge supporter of adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) that were a partial cause of the current credit crisis. John McCain's former financial advisor Phil Gramm pushed through legislation that allowed banks to pursue these risky investments. Our credit card companies and educational institutions encourage debt-spending graves that people are unable to dig themselves out of. Our army and emergency services are composed of private companies. Our prison systems are built and monitored by private companies.

There is no magic bullet or well-spoken leader that can bring about the change that is needed. The only change that matters is from an educated populace. Internet bloggers and other grass-roots organizations will help expose lies and bring together communities to enact change.

Buy a gun, read more, spend within your means, and get involved.

Website links:

http://benbittrolff.blogspot.com/

shadowstats.com

rawstory.com

buzzflash.net

Morning thoughts

Three things.

1) I had a dream last night about going to see Sarah Palin speak. It was in a school gym. The crowd, was already staunch Republican: she was preaching to the choir. I remember listening to her spout off all of her standard venom, and listening as the crowd got more and more riled up, and getting more and more pissed off at them. And then she made some line to the effect of, "and then we'll have peace, just like when Nixon was president." And then, unprompted and in complete unison, the crowd chanted "VIETNAM AND CAMBODIA" and then burst into roaring laughter. This is my worst fear about America: that all of the people who are excited about John McCain and Sarah Palin, that 47% of the electorate or whatever it is today, are fully aware of what it is that those two are promising us, they fully understand the truth behind the lies, and are playing along with the joke anyway. I'm terrified by the prospect that all of America understands how we would get screwed by a McCain presidency, and half of them are going to vote for it anyway. My better hopes for the country insist that most McCain voters are good people who just understand the world in a completely different way, but I was still rattled anyway.

2) Perk up though! For all of those of you who feared the worst after McCain and Palin got their convention bump in the polls, you can ease up on your apartment search in Toronto. McCain's little spike is on its way right back down.

3) Harold Meyerson has a fascinating op-ed in the Post this morning giving his final "screw you, you earned this" to Wall Street as we know it. He blames the investment community for creating a whirlwind circle-jerk where big money breeds bigger money without actually contributing anything to the community that allowed it to flourish, allowing the broader national economy to falter enough that when it was time to collect the "projected earnings" (a.k.a. theoretical future money), the actual money wasn't there to back it up.

During the late, lamented Wall Street boom, America's leading investment institutions were plenty bullish on China's economy, on exotic financial devices built atop millions of bad loans, and, above all -- judging by the unprecedented amount of wealth they showered on the Street -- on themselves. The last thing our financial community was bullish on was America -- that is, the America where the vast majority of Americans live and work.

Over the past eight years, the U.S. economy has created just 5 million new jobs, a number that is falling daily. The median income of American households has declined. Airports, bridges and roads are decaying. Rural wind-power facilities cannot light cities because our electrical grid has not been expanded. New Orleans has not been rebuilt. And as productive activity within the United States has ceased to be the prime target of investment, household consumption -- more commonly known as shopping -- has come to comprise more than 70 percent of our economy.

[...]

Finance set the terms of corporate behavior over the past quarter-century, and not in ways that bolstered the economy. By its actions -- elevating shareholder value over the interests of other corporate stakeholders, focusing on short-term investments rather than patient capital, pressuring corporations to offshore jobs and cut wages and benefits -- Wall Street plainly preferred to fund production abroad and consumption at home. The internal investment strategy of 100 years ago was turned on its head. Where Morgan once funneled European capital into American production, for the past decade Morgan's successors have directed Asian capital into devices to enable Americans to take on more debt to buy Asian products.

Cut the Crap

It's worth making a separate post to add to the one about the Lipstick issue, Obama's personal remarks on the matter.

Some of you may have -- I'm assuming you guys have heard this, watching the news. I'm talking about John McCain's economic politics, I say, "This is more of the same, you can put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig."

And suddenly they say, "Oh, you must be talking about the governor of Alaska."

[Laughter from audience]

See it would be funny, it would be funny except -- of course the news media all decided that that was the lead story yesterday. They'd much rather have the story -- this is the McCain campaign -- would much rather have the story about phony and foolish diversions than about the future.

This happens every election cycle. Every four years. This is what we do. We've got an energy crisis. We have an education system that is not working for too many of our children and making us less competitive. We have an economy that is creating hardship for families all across America. We've got two wars going on, veterans coming home not being cared for -- and this is what they want to talk about! this is what they want to spend two of the last 55 days talking about.

You know who ends up losing at the end of the day? It's not the Democratic candidate, It's not the republican candidate. It's you, the American people. because then we go another year or another four years or another eight years without addressing the issues that matter to you. Enough.

I don't care what they say about me, but I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies and phony outrage and swift-boat politics. Enough is enough.

Furthermore (and thanks to our friend Anna for tipping me off on most of this) even Mike Huckabee has come out on Obama's side on this.

"It's an old expression, and I'm going to have to cut Obama some slack on that one. I do not think he was referring to Sarah Palin; he didn't reference her. If you take the two sound bites together, it may sound like it."

Stop Proving Mencken Right

"It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place."

"In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell."

-- H.L. Mencken
__________________________________________________________________
Q: Do politicians lie?
A: Of course.

Q: Why do politicians lie, despite a near-unanimous longing for honest public officials?
A: Because lies work.

Obama has proposed eliminating income taxes on seniors making less than $50,000 a year, but 41 percent of those seniors say their income taxes would go up in an Obama administration.

Keep this in mind when you hear about the current "lipstick on a pig" kerfuffle. Barack Obama is being accused by the Wall Street Journal (whose editors should have been on this like a rash) and Drudge (predictable) of using the common saying "you can put lipstick on a pig; it's still a pig" in reference to Sarah Palin. Here's the actual quote.

Let's just list this for a second. John McCain says he's about change, too. Except -- and so I guess his whole angle is, "Watch out, George Bush, except for economic policy, health-care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy, and Karl Rove-style politics. We're really gonna shake things up in Washington." That's not change. That's just calling some -- the same thing, something different. But you know, you can -- you know, you can put lipstick on a pig; it's still a pig.

So if John McCain wants to get mad about being called a pig with lipstick, that's fine. But let's be clear that A) it was McCain, not Palin, B) Obama was talking about the policy, not the man, and C) IT'S A METAPHOR.

Once again, humanity has the dubious honor of having been described accurately by H.L. Mencken. Knock it off, people.