Insta-Pundit dispatches on the insanity of election 2008

In one day, Joe the Plumber has done more interviews that Sarah Palin.

An article that (now Nobel Prize-winning) economist Paul Krugman wrote back in 1997, Seven Habits of Highly Defective Investors:
7. Play with other people’s money. If, as I said, the people at that meeting were very smart, why did they act in ways that seem so foolish? Part of the answer, I suspect, is that they [...]

We may be entering into RACISM IS OVER territory here soon.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

The single best answer Obama gave last night. One morning later, all major news networks show Obama clearly walked away the winner from this debate with higher favorability numbers than McCain. And with the latest Gallup poll showing Obama leading nationally by 11 points and fivethirtyeight.com projecting for the first time a +90% chance of [...]

Lost in all the brouhaha of the 2008 presidential campaign and the current global financial meltdown is the flurry of events occurring right now in Afghanistan. Once the forgotten war next to Iraq, the conflict in Afghanistan actually surpassed Iraq in casualties for the months of June and July and British troops are now being [...]

Even as McCain attempts to resuscitate his campaign by launching a series of smears aimed at connecting Obama with controversial figures like Rezko and Ayers and even as Obama counters by broaching the subject of McCain’s role in the infamous Keating Five scandal many pundits, journalists, and even high-ranking politicians are whispering behind the scenes: [...]

Krugman warns that the economy might already have jumped over the cliff:
Double plus ungood news on multiple fronts this morning. The credit crunch is getting worse: LIBOR jumped again, the TED spread is at a new record. Bad news on employment: payrolls down 159,000, average work week down, official unemployment rate flat at 6.1 percent [...]

The awesome fivethirtyeight.com discusses how its increasingly clear that even without battleground states, Obama is projected to win 269 electoral votes:
To break down the math, we project all Kerry states save New Hampshire outside of five points, so that’s 252 minus 4, or 248. Then add Iowa (7 EV), New Mexico (5 EV) and Colorado [...]

The Simpsons looks at this year’s election:

We all know pandering is just a fact of life, especially in Congress. But the amount of pandering going on in the Senate’s version of the bailout bill is reaching ludicrous levels.
Rose City Archery Inc., an Oregon company that makes arrows used by children, hit a bull’s-eye with Senate legislation that would rescue Wall Street [...]

Krugman has a nice quote that effectively mirrors most economists’ views on the bailout:
There seem to be two prevailing narratives about the bailout plan(s). Both have elements of truth, but are fundamentally wrong.
One narrative is that of the Wise Men and the Destructive Yahoos. According to this narrative, men who Understand What Needs to be [...]

The Senate is set to vote on the $700 billion bailout today.
The U.S. Senate agreed to vote on a $700 billion financial rescue package Wednesday night that will include a sharp increase in the amount of bank deposits insured by the FDIC, Senate leaders said Tuesday.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid received unanimous consent from the [...]

Yesterday’s bailout vote was directly responsible for bringing the servers of the House to a screeching halt. Accessing House.gov is still quite spotty.
One on hand its good to know that there’s so much interest among people with following the bailout and contacting their local representative. On the other hand, you’d wish that our government could [...]

Palin Gets Ready For Eagerly Awaited Debate With Biden:
Off script, though, Palin has become increasingly tentative. Last week, when a member of the press pool asked Palin a question at the outset of a meeting she and McCain were holding with the presidents of Georgia and Ukraine, she looked to McCain, who shook his head, [...]

Time mag’s Curious Capitalist blog directed me to a new poll by Rasmussen that shows support for the bailout has dramatically increased over the last day (and note this was before today’s histrionics occurred).
As Congress prepares to vote on a proposed economic rescue plan, opposition to the measure has declined significantly. A Rasmussen Reports national [...]

Guess who owns VotefortheMILF.com. Just guess before clicking the link. Just one guess.
Yeah, this is the kind of election we’re in.

It’s become increasingly clear over the past weeks that whatever McCain (aka “the Master”) and his candidates were trying to teach Sarah Palin has failed to sink in. And her recent interview with softball journalist Katie Couric has shown how lost she is when discussing any issue that can’t be answered by a rehearsed campaign [...]

Straight from Washington:
Congressional leaders and the Bush administration reached a tentative deal early Sunday on a landmark bailout of imperiled financial markets whose collapse could plunge the nation into a deep recession.
Analysis to come soon enough. It looks like the basics of the deal pretty much mirror what was there Wednesday with the addition of [...]

According to WaPo’s excellent article it looks like John going back to DC to fix the economic crisis backfired quite a bit.
Pelosi said Obama would speak for the Democrats. Though later he would pepper Paulson with questions, according to a Republican in the room, his initial point was brief: “We’ve got to get something done.”
Bush [...]