It is clear that President Obama's messaging is not working and that he's missing some huge opportunities to call out the ridiculous fantasy of Romney's economic plan when most Americans polled trust Romney to handle the deficit more than Obama. Any sentient being who employs even basic thinking skills should be able to see that Romney and Ryan's economic plans are simply mathematically impossible, but yet, that computation isn't coming through.

Matt Taibbi sees it too and wonders what will it take to wake up Americans:

I've never thought much of Joe Biden. But man, did he get it right in last night's debate, and not just because he walloped sniveling little Paul Ryan on the facts. What he got absolutely right, despite what you might read this morning (many outlets are criticizing Biden's dramatic excesses), was his tone. Biden did absolutely roll his eyes, snort, laugh derisively and throw his hands up in the air whenever Ryan trotted out his little beady-eyed BS-isms.

But he should have! He was absolutely right to be doing it. We all should be doing it. That includes all of us in the media, and not just paid obnoxious-opinion-merchants like me, but so-called "objective" news reporters as well. We should all be rolling our eyes, and scoffing and saying, "Come back when you're serious."

The load of balls that both Romney and Ryan have been pushing out there for this whole election season is simply not intellectually serious. Most of their platform isn't even a real platform, it's a fourth-rate parlor trick designed to paper over the real agenda – cutting taxes even more for super-rich dickheads like Mitt Romney, and getting everyone else to pay the bill.

Taibbi tells Eliot Spitzer that the media needs to pushback hard and demand answers. Yeah well, good luck with that. The media has been enabling Romney and Ryan from the beginning. Think they're gonna actually do their job now?

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I happened to catch this on Viewpoint with Eliot Spritzer last night, and I thought it was really powerful. Zafar is right: What, exactly, do American Muslims have to do before they're American "enough"?

Harris Zafar, national spokesperson for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA, and “Viewpoint” host Eliot Spitzer discuss the possibility that the gunman behind the mass shooting at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., actually intended to target Muslims and whether a rise in anti-Muslim sentiment is linked to political rhetoric.

“The Republican primaries were ridden with such incidents where Mr. Santorum, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann repeatedly spread this message of fear of Muslims, fear of Shariah law,” Zafar says. “It’s really given us this impression that we’re not American enough. No matter how many generations we’ve been here, we’re just not American enough.”

In a segment of a wide-ranging interview, available here, former New York Govenor Eliot Spitzer gives his impression of the effectiveness of Barack Obama's first year in office and advises the Democratic leadership in Congress that the key to the mid-term elections is to give voters a clear and unequivocable Democratic candidate to re-elect, rather than a frightened, ineffectual politician moving to the right for expediency's sake.

While Spitzer's shine has been tarnished by his peccadillos, his own clear-eyed view of the party and reform are difficult with which to argue. Sadly, inside the Beltway, I don't think this message is getting through, so I'm laying it out clearly now for our friends in DC to show their bosses.

Wouldn't you prefer an unapologetic defender of Democratic Party values (who does not get all the legislation passed due to the political gamesmanship) over someone who will get legislation passed, only by watering it down and capitulating to demands to accomodate the Right?

Spitzer, along with Frank Partnoy, a professor of law at the University of San Diego, and William Black, a professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri, make the case in today's Times for releasing all the AIG emails before they're lost forever - and we never really know what happened to trigger their crash. Obviously, it serves the nation to know:

We end this extraordinary financial year with news that the Treasury is in discussions with American International Group about selling the taxpayers’ 80 percent ownership stake in that company. The government recently permitted several banks to break free of its potential oversight by repaying loans made during the rescue. But with respect to A.I.G., the Treasury should not move so fast. There is one job left to do.

A.I.G. was at the center of the web of bad business judgments, opaque financial derivatives, failed economics and questionable political relationships that set off the economic cataclysm of the past two years. When A.I.G.’s financial products division collapsed — ultimately requiring a federal bailout of $180 billion — those who had been prospering from A.I.G.’s schemes scurried for taxpayer cover. Yet, more than a year after the rescue began, crucial questions remain unanswered. Who knew what, and when? Who benefited, and by exactly how much? Would A.I.G.’s counterparties have failed without taxpayer support?

The three of us, as experienced investigators and prosecutors of financial fraud, cannot answer these questions now. But we know where the answers are. They are in the trove of e-mail messages still backed up on A.I.G. servers, as well as in the key internal accounting documents and financial models generated by A.I.G. during the past decade. Before releasing its regulatory clutches, the government should insist that the company immediately make these materials public. By putting the evidence online, the government could establish a new form of “open source” investigation.

Once the documents are available for everyone to inspect, a thousand journalistic flowers can bloom, as reporters, victims and angry citizens have a chance to piece together the story. In past cases of financial fraud — from the complex swaps that Bankers Trust sold to Procter & Gamble in the early 1990s to the I.P.O. kickback schemes of the late 1990s to the fall of Enron — e-mail messages and internal documents became the central exhibits in our collective understanding of what happened, and why.

So far, prosecutors and regulators have been unable to build such evidence into anything resembling a persuasive case against any financial institution. Most recently, a jury acquitted Bear Stearns employees of fraud related to the collapse of the subprime mortgage market, in part because available e-mail messages suggested the employees had done nothing wrong.

Perhaps A.I.G.’s employees would also be judged not guilty. But we would like to see the record to find out. As fraud investigators, we would like to examine the trading patterns of A.I.G.’s financial products division, and its communications with Goldman Sachs and other bank counterparties who benefited from the bailout. We would like to understand whether the leaders of A.I.G. understood that they were approaching a financial Armageddon, and whether they alerted their counterparties, regulators and shareholders to the impending calamity.

Via Raw Story, this very enlightening news that the Bush administration blocked efforts to enforce laws against predatory lending. We are so shocked:

Federal regulators in the Bush administration blocked attempts by state governments to prevent predatory lending practices that resulted in the financial crisis now stalking the American economy, a new study from the University of North Carolina says.

In 2004, the Office of the Currency Comptroller, an obscure regulatory agency tasked with ensuring the fiscal soundness of America's banks, invoked an 1863 law to give itself the power to override state laws against predatory lending. The OCC told states they could not enforce predatory-lending laws, and all banks would be subject only to less-strict federal laws.

Now, a research paper (PDF) from UNC-Chapel Hill's Center for Community Capital shows that those anti-predatory lending laws had actually worked. States that had stricter regulations on issuing mortgages were found to have fewer foreclosures.

"We believe that these findings are remarkable, since they suggest an important and yet unexplored link between [anti-predatory lending laws] and foreclosures," the study's authors state.

The study may be the first scientific evidence to back up claims made by many critics that the Bush administration and earlier administrations allowed last year's financial crisis to happen by not enforcing common-sense regulations on lenders.

Last year, seven months before the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the ensuing government banking bailout, then-New York Governor Eliot Spitzer wrote a Washington Post column in which he described how the Bush administration blocked states' efforts to prevent a crisis in the mortgage industry.

Spitzer wrote:

Predatory lending was widely understood to present a looming national crisis. This threat was so clear that as New York attorney general, I joined with colleagues in the other 49 states in attempting to fill the void left by the federal government. Individually, and together, state attorneys general of both parties brought litigation or entered into settlements with many subprime lenders that were engaged in predatory lending practices. Several state legislatures, including New York's, enacted laws aimed at curbing such practices.

What did the Bush administration do in response? Did it reverse course and decide to take action to halt this burgeoning scourge? As Americans are now painfully aware, with hundreds of thousands of homeowners facing foreclosure and our markets reeling, the answer is a resounding no.

Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.

Spitzer's Post column ran a month before the New York Times reported that federal authorities were investigating Spitzer as a patron of high-end hookers, ending his political career and long-running crusade against corporate malfeasance. Some observers, including investigative reporter Greg Palast, say this was not a coincidence.

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The Fox talkers were out trying to spin past the gruesome wreckage of Mark Sanford's political career yesterday, partly by claiming that Republicans always give the boot to such cases of gross immorality, while Democrats are so lascivious that they naturally tolerate such behavior within their own ranks.

First there was Faux Liberal Mort Kondracke on Brett Baier's afternoon show:

Kondracke: But look. You know, multiple affairs did not stop Bill Clinton from being elected president. But that's because the Democratic Party is a lot more tolerant of licentiousness than the Republican Party is. And that's the rub for poor old Mark Sanford here.

Then Ann Coulter attempted more or less the same claim later that day on Sean Hannity's show:

Coulter: But he's a Republican, so he will be gone. Unlike John Edwards, with all of his staff knowing that he --

Hannity: He may not be governor by the end of a couple of weeks.

Coulter: That's right. And even if he is, Republicans vote these guys out, generally.

Oddly enough, Coulter kept bringing up John Edwards, whose political career is pretty much toast -- so it's not a point that actually supported her claim. Moreover, she and Kondracke are glossing over the long history of other Democrats' careers being derailed by sexual hijinks: Gary Hart, Eliot Spitzer, Brock Adams, Jim McGreevy are just a few of the names that come to mind.

Meanwhile, it's not hard to come up with Republicans whose infidelities have been glossed over and "forgiven" (by the pundit class at least). Some of them are major figures in the party even today. To wit:

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In Eliot Spitzer's first interview since he resigned as New York's governor, he tells Fareed Zakaria that the problem with Wall St. isn't the individuals involved, but a culture that sought greater and greater returns without taking any of the risk. He also says he hopes Barney Frank will look more closely into the payments to Goldman Sachs via the AIG bailout funds:

FAREED ZAKARIA: So, do you think that the problems that AIG got into later on stem from some of the same practices that you were trying to get at?

SPITZER: They stemmed from an effort from the very top to gin up returns whenever, wherever possible, and to push the boundaries in a way that would garner returns almost regardless of risk. And so, to the extent that there is a discussion, did this begin before or after the tenure of Hank Greenberg, it's unambiguous -- unambiguous that the structures and the flaws and the policies began while he was there. That is why the board that he had controlled with an iron fist asked him to leave. It was their decision -- not my decision, their decision -- to ask him to step down, something that was then and is now very unusual.

He has invoked the Fifth Amendment, which, of course, is his right to do. But he was asked to leave by his own board, because they saw the flaws and the problems that have since multiplied and created this monster that can bring down the financial system.

Back then I said to people, AIG is at the center of the web. The financial tentacles of this company stretched to every major investment bank. The web between AIG and Goldman Sachs is something that should be pursued.

And as I have written...

ZAKARIA: Meaning what? Meaning that a lot of the money that we the taxpayers gave AIG has ended up being paid to Goldman Sachs...

SPITZER: Precisely. And...

ZAKARIA: ... and other companies.

SPITZER: The so-called counterparties to these very sophisticated financial transactions.

When AIG initially received $80 billion -- a decision that was the consequence of a very brief meeting of the president of the New York Fed, the secretary of the Treasury, perhaps Chairman Bernanke and arguably, some reports say, the chairman of Goldman Sachs -- $80 billion, virtually all of it flowed out to counterparties, $12.9 billion to Goldman Sachs.

Why did that happen? What questions were asked? Why did we need to pay 100 cents on the dollar on those transactions, if we had to pay anything? What would have happened to the financial system, had it not been paid?

These are the questions that should be pursued. Look, bonus is a real issue. It touches us viscerally. The real money and the real structural issue is the dynamic between AIG and the counterparties.

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That's the question the House Financial Services Committee will begin to start investigating.

New York Times:

Eight months after a federal investigation into a prostitution ring brought about the downfall of Gov. Eliot Spitzer, the question still persists in some circles: Was the federal government out to get Mr. Spitzer?

No evidence has surfaced to support such an assertion, and the prosecutor in the case has said that politics played no role in the pursuit of Mr. Spitzer, a Democrat. But that has not put to rest suspicions, expressed on left wing blogs, that Mr. Spitzer, a zealous pursuer of Wall Street wrongdoing who some thought could one day be president, had been singled out.

Now, a congressional committee is pursuing what would be the first public examination of the events that prompted the initial inquiry into his bank transactions, which showed he was sending money to a front company for Emperor’s Club V.I.P.

The House Financial Services Committee intends to take up the matter early next year and tentatively plans to hold hearings that could include testimony from the United States Treasury’s law enforcement unit, along with Mr. Spitzer’s bank, North Fork, and HSBC, a bank used by a company connected to the prostitution service.

This should be interesting. After the whole USA scandal, I don't think any reasonable person will dispute the notion that justice has become politicized under George Bush. Whether or not it's the case here will remain to be seen.

Project Censored included this possibility in the yearly Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009. Check it out here.

APFN: Last February Eliot Spitzer wrote a blistering opinion piece for the Washington Post detailing how, in 2003, the Bush administration had stopped the states from going after predatory lenders. During the same period, he testified before Congress on the matter. It wasn't long afterward Spitzer became the target of a White House and Wall Street dirty tricks operation to silence one of its most dangerous critics in the handling the financial crisis we're now living through.

Mother Jones: Where Credit is Due: A Timeline of the Mortgage Crisis

naked capitalism: On the dishonest sale of the bailout plan

The Daily Banter: Andrew Sullivan's fantasy world

Talk To Action: Ron Paul endorses a theocrat for president

Faithful Progressive: The Era of No Government is Over

Download | play Download | play (h/t BillW)

This morning on CBS' Sunday Morning Ben Stein gave his take on the Eliot Spitzer scandal and his thoughts may surprise you. I'm no fan of Stein, but I think he may have made some valid points. As with many political scandals involving sex, it's the naughtiness that gets the coverage and many important issues are often overlooked. As Stein puts it, it sets a dangerous precedent when a handful of appointed officials brings down elected officials, seriously impacting the will of the voters.

"...However, in Governor Spitzer's case he got humiliated, disgraced and then the voters lost the guy they voted for. It is deeply scary to me that a few employees of the federal executive branch can start a train rolling that has such immense effects on the electoral process. Basically a few career civil servants have nullified the will of the voters of the Empire state, over something clearly wrong, I don't doubt that, but it's not a political crime, not treason, not terrorism..."

What do you think? Does he have a valid point?