Kevin asked me to alert everyone to the newest addition to our little band of instigators, so I’d like to bid a fond welcome to American Street’s newest contributor, Ara Rubyan.

Ara blogs at E. Pluribus Unum and his meatworld residence is Baton Rouge, LA. by way of Michigan. And yes, he’s one of those Friday cat bloggers, but I don’t hold that against him.

He’s got a way of cutting to the chase, able to say in five words what it takes me five paragraphs to write. In many ways, he’s my blogfather, a loyal ally in our never-ending fight against the hypocrisy and idiocy on the right, and a great friend.

Welcome aboard dude!

Proof that Chris Cilizza picked a bad day to give up sniffing glue… while still sniffing soiled wingnut panties.

Conventional wisdom from the Reaganopoly Era is dead and it’ll take four years for the Village punditry to wake up and smell the lattes.

Some may consider it reassuring that there’s only an estimated 60,000 active white supremacists in our nation of 305 million. But I consider them a huge threat because they’re growing more sophisticated in their outreach, while still pinning blame on people for macroeconomic trends solely because of their race and ethnicity.

Completely excusing Wall Street, the financial industry and the decisions of politicians while suggesting some of the nation’s most underpaid and vulnerable have miraculously destroyed our economy is clearly the claim of fools. But fools have demonstrated surprising resilience in the face of facts throughout our history. Consider, for example, that American agriculture is one of the brightest spots left in our economy. Yet immigrants from Mexico and Latin America who work those fields are blamed for hurting our economy? Simply, it does not compute.

The primary economic sector doing poorly where many immigrants abound is in homebuilding. Yet any economist will explain that subprime mortage lenders and the financials over-invested in them are the real source of that slump.

And while the supremacists present a more civil face in their current recruiting, hate groups remain fertile ground as provocateurs of haters prone to violence. That’s why they require our eternal vigilance and constant marginalization. Their violence is not always visible but it always seethes just below the public field of vision. And it only takes a brief explosion to result in some of the ugliest results this country has ever seen.

Stormfront, along with its peer groups, remains among the most unAmerican and potentially among the greatest threats of domestic terrorism today. We can never rest in fighting what they stand for and what they do.

They are cowardly bullies making scapegoats of the innocent. Not only do they deserve constant scrutinity but every one of them found guilty of hate crimes oughta lose their voting rights for a decade upon conviction. They need to be defeated and suffer huge penalties every step of their way downhill.

Per ABC News today: Twenty seven states currently in recession. Sixteen more very near. A mere seven states still showing economic expansion.

And only five were in recession just seven months ago. The pace of the economic decline is staggering.

So let’s review how voters in those states are responding, according to pollsters. At this point in the campaign, if the most reliably accurate pollsters - like SUSA and Rasmussen - indicate an 8% margin, I consider that definite.

Kerry and Bush states that have crossed over or have swung to tossups are noted in red or blue, respectively.
.

In recession, definitely will give electoral votes to Obama: CA, OR, WI, IA, IL, MI, PA, NJ, DE, RI

In recession, likely or leans to giving electoral votes to Obama: NV, MO, ME

In recession, definitely will give electoral votes to McCain: ID, AZ, KY, TN, AR, MS, AL, GA, SC, WV

In recession, likely or leans to giving electoral votes to McCain: IN

In recession, within 3 pts in polls so rates as a tossup: FL, OH, NC

Nearly in recession, definitely will give electoral votes to Obama: HI, WA, NY, CT, VT, MD, DC

Nearly in recession, likely or leans to giving electoral votes to Obama: MN, VA

Nearly in recession, definitely will give electoral votes to McCain: UT, WY, SD, NE, KS, OK, LA

Nearly in recession, likely or leans to giving electoral votes to McCain: None.

Nearly in recession, within 3 pts in polls so rates as a tossup: ND

Expanding still, definitely will give electoral votes to Obama: NM MA, NH

Expanding still, likely or leans to giving electoral votes to Obama: CO

Expanding still, definitely will give electoral votes to McCain: AK, TX

Expanding still, likely or leans to giving electoral votes to McCain: MT.

Expanding still, within 3 pts in polls so rates as a tossup: None.

1) McCain has already LOST the Bush states of IA and NM, which puts Obama 5 electoral votes from a win.

2) Not a single Kerry state has swung to Mccain and none lean his way. And none are even tossups.

3) Only two Bush states lean McCain’s way, IN and MT. Which means both remain vulnerable to Obama, though they currently rank as longshots for him. MT has an expanding economy, which makes it the longer longshot of the two.

4) Extremely important, none of the tossup states were Kerry states. FL, OH, NC were Bush states and are already in recession. ND was a Bush state and is near being in recession. McCain has to defend all but ND in this group to eke out a win by 4 EVs.

5) Most important, Bush states now leaning pretty strong for Obama include NV and MO (both already in recession), VA (nearly in recession) and CO (still expanding). So in addition to the three MUST DEFEND states in #4 (above), McCain HAS TO defend all 4 in these Obama leaners.

6) So Obama has to play offense in 7 states to pick up one, but has none to defend. And McCain has to play defense in all 7 and can’t afford to lose even one. Even more dire for McCain, in CO, NV and MO, he defends 3 states where he’s down by 5% to 7% in the polls, which makes all three longshots despite being must-wins for him.

7) If he had the luxury of playing offense in any, ME and MN would be the Kerry-won states he’s closest in. Yet they are as great a longshot as his defense of CO, NV and MO, meaning he’s 5% to 7% down.

8) The McCain campaign is presenting a public face that it MUST PRESENT now. Not only do they claim to be defending states like CO, but they claim they’ve found a way to victory WITHOUT Colorado. And today’s analysis says the only LONGSHOT way to do that is to pursue MN and ME. And there’s no indication they’re pursuing ME at all. Their campaign shows minimal life in MN now and they keep making the dubious claim they can pull an upset in PA, even though the polls suggest that’s virtually impossible.

I believe that claim can only mean one of two things:

a) they’ve focus-grouped a robocall method that can make some inroads within certain PA demographic groups (maybe the Appalachia voters?), or;

b) by presenting a confident face, they keep fundraising and GOTV efforts going despite the recognition they’re going to lose.

The bottom line: were they still seriously trying to win, you’d see ALL of them constantly campaigning in FL, OH, NC, NV, MO, CO and VA, and occasionally in MN, ME and maybe IN. Instead, they’re wasting time in PA, likely for PR purposes to prevent further erosion.

Barring some catastrophic event beyond my imagination, I stand by my assessment of three weeks ago. McCain has lost. And while we can’t be complacent before the Mountain Time polls close, our principal focus should be on turning the Senate as strongly democratic as we can.

(thx for the current polling aggregates, as always, goes to Nate Silver.)

Give the incompetents more money they didn’t earn by redistributing income from the poor to the wealthy.

That sounds perfectly … Republican. Or Republitarded, if you’re thinking with an actual brain.

And already, nearly $100 billion of the money taken from us is set to be delivered as bonuses to these yokels.

And Bob Geiger culls plenty of smack from their Senate endorsements.

I’ve said before, Udall(CO) and Udall(NM) are in. So is Warner in VA.The Alaska race will ultimately be decided by the jury sitting in judgment of the socialist, Ted Stevens. The races in OR, NH, NC, and MN need more volunteers and cash as they each have very good chances of picking up Dem Senate seats.

And the harder ones, in GA, MS and KY, are now within reach. TX remains the longshot.

If we get all but TX, we’ve got a Lieberman-proof majority.

Dear friend and co-blogger Barbara O’Brien needs our help.

If you can’t give, please pass on her appeal to others.

MSNBC is taking a very cautious approach in its state-by-state analysis. But nobody’s questioning that Obama has yet to lose ground in a single state Kerry won, or that he’ll take back IA and NM from the Bush column. Per CNN, that leaves him just 5 electoral votes from victory, with nobody disputing that.

And MSNBC rates another 111 EVs as too-close-to-call tossups: CO, FL, IN, MO, NV, NC, OH, and VA

Any one of those, shifted to Obama, gives him the win.

So it’s very instructive to see what the internal polls of the campaigns are showing, as evidenced by where the candidates are busy campaigning today.

McCain campaigns in Missouri, making stops in St. Charles, Columbia, and Belton. Obama is in Florida, holding rallies in Tampa and (along with Hillary Clinton) Orlando. Biden is down, but Palin stumps in Colorado, hitting Colorado Springs, Loveland, and Grand Junction. Cindy McCain, in Pennsylvania, holds a rally in Philadelphia with Rudy Giuliani and another one in Yardley with Giuliani and Arlen Specter. And Bill Clinton is in Nevada, campaigning for Obama in Elko and Reno.

So all are in MSNBC’s tossup states except Cindy McCain. She’s in the only Kerry state they’re still contesting, PA.

And while ‘Biden is down’ he’s soon gonna be in McCain territory in WV, on Friday.

Those itineraries speak volumes. McCain’s almost exclusively playing defense now. His weakest campaigner, Cindy, is the only one playing offense, trying to expand that 5 pt Obama deficit to 26 EVs.

Setting aside MSNBC’s method of weighing more than the actual polls, PA is beyond McCain’s reach already and CO/VA are longshots for him to defend. And Obama’s campaigner locales suggest they think FL, NV and WV are worth more effort than OH, MO, NC and IN today.

The actual polls suggest both campaigns are correct, except for PA and WV. My read says McCain’s internal polling says certain robocall messages are finding traction in parts of certain states. And he’s accepting the loss of IA, NM and VA already, needs to hold all the others and pickup just one Kerry state. And he’s going to pour it on in PA which he absolutely MUST capture now.

And unlike MSNBC, I say the next week is the last gasp for McCain, because if he can’t swing the momentum by then, the final week is when the undeideds will roll in, and they’ll reflect the current momentum. A slight narrowing won’t cut it because McCain needs at least 5% of the 7% undecided in that final week.

(I’ve previously stated that I think Obama will capture all the battleground states, with only IN and NV tossups and add ND to that. Then make AR, MT, SC, WV and GA longshots for Obama, but not impossible. I stand by my earlier projection of Obama capturing a minimum of 375 EVs.)

George Will, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan, are bigots.  Deep down inside, or bubbling unbid to the open in the face of having nothing else in their bag of tricks, they believe that America means conservativism and conservatism stands for the preservation of an Ameirca perpetually dominated by wealthy white males.

Attacking the messenger is predictable fodder this close to an election, but when the messenger is someone as distinguished and respected as Colin Powell, especially in Republican circles, there’s not a who heckuvalot of ammunition available, not when he says something like this, what Juan Cole calls his “finest moment.”

I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, “Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.” Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, “He’s a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists.” This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery, and she had her head on the headstone of her son’s grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards–Purple Heart, Bronze Star–showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old. And then, at the very top of the headstone, it didn’t have a Christian cross, it didn’t have the Star of David, it had crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, and he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he can go serve his country, and he gave his life. Now, we have got to stop polarizing ourself in this way. And John McCain is as nondiscriminatory as anyone I know. But I’m troubled about the fact that, within the party, we have these kinds of expressions.’

People, it’s common knowledge that the GOP is a sanctuary for racists.  Argue if you must, but it is merely a side-effect of political correctness that we never discuss in polite company just why they don’t attract minorities or better educated constituencies, and are left with bed-wetting nutbags. 

Birds of a feather . . .

But please understand, I by no means believe that all Republicans are racists.  That’s absurd.  But as Powell said, racisim is tolerated within the ranks of the GOP.  “It is permitted to be said . . .” That racism is allowed, even exploited by the Republican Party — and it is, has been for a long time — diminishes the contributions and accomplishments of General Powell and people like Condoleeza Rice and even Alberto Gonzales, folks who ostensibly rose to their positions on merit and neither despite or because of their minority status.  At least that’s what we were led to believe by the guy who hired them (even if he didn’t fool anyone).  That’s the way it should have been, anyway, and I’m pretty sure Powell earned his stripes even if the others got a White House parking space for being Loyal Bushies. 

Reacting to Powell’s endorsement as simply the token black guy in the Bush Administration going with his own kind is beyond insulting in light of the scathing indictment against McCain’s performance Powell offered.  Those who still gather under the GOP banner must recognize they have a huge problem on their hands.  When they lose Powell they’ve got their work cut out for them.

Kevin Madden, a GOP veteran who was the press secretary for Mitt Romney’s presidential bid, said that “Colin Powell was a proxy for our party’s ability to persuade Democrats and independents to join a center-right coalition of ideas built around economic conservatism and a strong national defense. The endorsement is emblematic of the challenges we face as a party when it comes to winning back these voters.”

The problem with the Wills, Buchanans and Limbaughs of the world is that they refuse to listen to what Powell said.

“This Powell endorsement is the nail in the coffin,” said one Republican official, speaking anonymously to offer candid thoughts about the party’s nominee. “Not just because of him, but the indictment he laid out of the McCain campaign.”

Personally, I don’t believe the GOP is salvageable.  Contemporaneously with the fall of Reaganomics as a legitimate governing theory, so too has the Reagan coalition been irreparably fractured. 

They will reform, of that I’ve no doubt.  And they probably will lurch further to the right before they again learn to compromise (or a plausible portrayal of reasonability) and find the center again.  But the party that will emerge (or the one that takes it’s place) will not be something easily recognizable for those of us steeped in the tradition of opposing Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes.  What’s frightening is that it might be transformed into something someone like me doesn’t instinctively reject out of hand.  But that might be a good thing.

But they’d have to get rid of the bigot wing of the party for me to be fooled. 

As long as people like Limbaugh and his apostles Hannity, O’Reilly and the Michaels Reagan and Savage pollute the airwaves, answerable to no one and accountable only to their bankers, until such personifications of hate and the perpetuation of divisivness and bigotry they represent are publically rebuked by a political right who otherwise relies on their propaganda, we really won’t see the end of this stuff.

Something like this …

McCain is a fine American who is running an un-American campaign. He is a tolerant man who tolerated un-American bigotry and divisiveness from his subordinates and allies within the Republican Party.

Colin Powell insists he is an American first, not an African-American, or a Veteran-American, or a Republican-American, or a Politician-American — but an American, and he believes that Barack Obama will make a great American President.

Good stuff.  Especially good to hear in those less patriotic, less pro-American areas of America that have been voting with their wallets in anticipation of voting for real who are about sick to death of the dog whistles and personal attacks coming from the right.

Official: Sarkozy’s bank account hacked by thieves

In desperate times, scammers pounce

A brief guide to busts, manias and greed

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, French head of IMF, in sex scandal

A one-night stand has endangered the stellar career of the French head of the International Monetary Fund and dismayed President Sarkozy as he seeks to put a French stamp on a new world financial order.

The news that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, 59, is being investigated in Washington over a fling with a former subordinate has unsettled Mr Sarkozy because he has mounted an effective double act with him in the effort to manage the financial crisis.

Paris had been hoping that no news would break until Mr Strauss-Kahn had been cleared later this month and the matter would disappear in the din of the US presidential election.

Risk management: Hunt is stepped up for the rogue traders

In January, SociĆ©tĆ© GĆ©nĆ©rale revealed that unauthorised dealing by JĆ©rĆ“me Kerviel, a futures trader in Paris, had resulted in losses of ā‚¬4.9bn ($6.6bn) for the French bank, the biggest rogue trading scandal in history.

… however, even the best risk management practices may not stop a rogue trader.

ā€œSomeone with fraud on their mind can find ways to get around any system,ā€ says Ms Downs.

ā€œAnd sometimes systems fail, no matter how much you think they canā€™t … We need to be looking at what

can slip through the cracks.ā€

Cisneros helped build flawed American dream

Henry Cisneros

After a sex scandal destroyed his promising political career and he left Washington, he eventually reinvented himself as a well-regarded advocate and builder of urban, working-class homes. He has financed the construction of more than 7,000 houses.

For the three years he was a director at KB Home, Cisneros received at least $70,000 in pay and more than $100,000 worth of stock. He also received $1.14 million in directors’ fees and stock grants during the six years he was a director at Countrywide. He made more than $5 million from Countrywide stock options, money he says he plowed into his company.

Not much is new in world of scandal

Although the sex scandals are entertaining, they are signs of deeper disorders. Power, Money and Sex are hopelessly intertwined. The ego drives each one. They are a natural combination, but, they often evolve into a PT Barnum attitude. “I am smarter, sexier and more worthy that the general public … a new sucker is born every day”. My personal needs and urges trump virtue, so I can screw you with immunity. I am special … you are my sport …

The fallout from today’s global economic crisis is multi-faceted and very dangerous. Opportunity for bold cons, scams and exploitation is ripe. Internet hackers are targeting banks, bank accounts and personal information. Phishing is rampant. Your emails are filled with enticing offers and alerts and promises of unexpected windfalls. Anyone using their computer for online banking is a target. Phishing attacks have increased on individuals. Banks are under seige every day by hackers. The vigilant among us will be tested. There are multiple resources available on the web to arm you with scam protection, but some of these are also suspect. Personally, I would reduce online private transactions altogether. But if you don’t or can’t do that, here are some resources.

Banking Scam Revealed

Warning over UK’s overseas bribes culture

How to Report and Identify Phishing, E-mail Scams and Bogus IRS Web Sites

Identity Theft and Your Tax Records

Identity Theft And Your Social Security Number

Welcome to the Bureau of Consumer Protection