Obama and the Big Picture

As the DOW tanks, so do commodity prices. If you're a starving Egyptian (remember the food riots this past summer?), that's good news. Food prices are also linked to oil prices directly, though. An acre sowed with nitrogen-based fertilizer will produce six times the amount of food that an acre without it will. And nitrogen-based fertilizer is an oil product. Since the globe is dependent on nitrogen-fertile soil, as oil prices go, so go commodity prices. It's therefore heartening to know that Obama is at least aware of this stuff:

"the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it's creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they're contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs."

More here.

Middle Class Education

One of Reagan's most incredible feats was convincing the American middle class to vote in favor of tax cuts for the richest Americans. Call it trickle down, call it "aspirational voting," call it whatever, but it worked, and throughout the Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush W. years, the American middle class held onto the fictions that (a) many of them would one day be rich, so why not just go ahead and cut taxes on that bracket, now?, and (b) wealthy Americans would take their tax cut money, and spend it on crap that would generate American jobs. But now, despite all the tax-and-spend-liberal mud that McCain and Palin sling at Obama, Obama leads McCain in the polls on this most important of issues. Given Obama's slim, slim record on the economy, one has to give credit to the market drop, and not Obama (or the Democrats) for this one. (Set aside, for the moment, the fact that the real issue is goverment spending, and both parties have shown themselves incapable of reigning it in.)

McCain Steps Up the Crap

As McCain lowers himself further into the gutter, drawing attention to Obama's middle name and his association with William Ayers, let's take a moment to examine the electorate for whom this will make a difference...

Obama in London Town

Saturday, October 4, 2008, 12:13, London, UK, Camden Town, south-bound lane of the Northern Line tube station...


Permalink: http://dowwtf.blogspot.com/2008/10/obama-in-london-town.html

Watch This. Seriously. Watch This.

As if it weren't enough to have Kevin Phillips (the dude who wrote The Emerging Republican Majority) effectively endorse Obama on his show last week, Moyers also has former US Army Colonel Andrew J. Bacevich calling the Bush doctrine out, and laying the grounds for some realistic and informed American foreign policy (if I were McCain, I'd be up all night trying to figure out how to shake Palin from the ticket)...


Permalink: http://dowwtf.blogspot.com/2008/09/moyers-is-on-roll.html

Market's Betting Hard on Obama

Intrade has Obama up 338/200 over McCain...

...everyone who bought in to Obama positions after the Republican convention owes a big thanks to Palin.

Permalink: http://dowwtf.blogspot.com/2008/09/markets-betting-hard-on-obama.html

Kevin Phillips on the Bill Moyers Show

This is worth it. Phillips is right on...


The take-away point (regarding the election): Obama and McCain both fail when it comes to the economy and the bailout. Neither have been showing leadership or intelligence. But, judging by their selection of advisers, Obama comes out ahead (if only because McCain's are complete fools).