Wall Street is melting down, and McCain and the GOP have no credible response. Indeed, McCain is so clearly clueless on this issue, the current battle over who is best suited to deal with the financial crisis should be a rout. And, so far, Obama has shown not just an incomparably greater grasp of the situation and substantive policies to deal with it, but a real fire in the belly in going after McCain's vulnerable flank. But for Obama to show the kind of transformational leadership the crisis demands, he needs to do what so many of his critics have chided him for not doing: take a stand that puts him at odds with the establishment of his own party. He did it in 2002 with the war in Iraq. He can do it in 2008 with the economy.
This will be the third straight election which could be described as very close. This is all but unprecedented in American history.
In response to this financial crisis, consumers must become citizens again, reclaiming their democratic right to fiscal transparency, political oversight and market regulation.
Governor Jindal has noticed a disparity between the federal government's willingness to lift a recovery burden off the state of Texas and its refusal to do the same for Louisiana.
To his credit, Zapatero is downplaying McCain's remarks and chalking it up to the "election process." However, Spanish pride being what it is, the people and media of Spain aren't letting this pass quietly.
The CRA isn't even an issue. But that won't stop the the likes of Rush and his progeny from saying it over and over again until all sorts of people believe it.
If the surge has worked, that must mean victory is just around the corner, right? That's certainly the impression that the Bush White House is trying to give -- without exactly coming out and saying so.
This gaffe would seem to have very significant implications. Not knowing who the leader of Spain was or thinking Spain was in Latin America would not really be shocking coming from his running mate, but McCain has run on his foreign policy expertise.
In 1920, Big Oil picked an obscure, bumbling senator named Warren G. Harding who had barely been out of Ohio and had only fuzzy ideas about politics -- the 1920s equivalent of a hockey mom.
Responding to the recent Chernobyl-sized melt down on Wall Street, McCain insisted, "The fundamentals of our economy are strong," demonstrating a cluelessness not normally associated with folks still in possession of a pulse.
It is no exaggeration to say that bolstering foreign language education for ensuing generations is vital to our nation's economic and national security.
It's often asked how Bush ran as an outsider in 2000 with better connections to classic Washington power structures than anyone and watching Sarah Palin, I finally see that he really was one.
What would happen if Palin were to ask for a briefing from former Republican Secretaries of State to prepare for her foray into foreign policy? She would learn that the McCain foreign policy has an extremist approach to Iran.
