Dropped into Blizzcon

Photo from MaryDang.

I have spent the weekend in Anaheim, California, scoping out the Convention Center for work I'll be doing next summer.

Our site visit put us right in the middle of BlizzCon, the monster World of Warcraft show and convention where enthusiastic gamers congregate. From what I saw, this is a happy, imaginative culture of devoted role-players and slayers of fantasy monsters.

So, being the politico I am, I had to ask myself, do these people vote? Do they interact with the civic culture outside the game universe? I know I don't know.

Thanks to Google, I found what may provide some of the answer. The Pew Research Center released a report last month entitled Teens, Video Games and Civics. FWIW, convening WOW players don't seem to be teens, but maybe the act of going to a convention makes an economic skew toward an older age group. And WOW is not a video game; it is a MMORPG-- massively multi-player online role-playing game. But Pew may provide some pointers to answers to my questions. They surveyed teens, but I would not be surprised if their findings applied to some extent to the older age groups, especially perhaps to folks who might convene together at Blizzcon.

Among teens who play games with others in the room:

• 65 percent go online to get information about politics, compared to 60 percent of those who do not.

• 64 percent have raised money for charity, compared to 55 percent of those who do not.

• 26 percent have tried to persuade others how to vote in an election, compared to 19 percent of those who do not.

• Teens who take part in social interaction related to the game, such as commenting on websites or contributing to discussion boards, are more engaged civically and politically.

• Among teens who write or contribute to these game-related websites: 18 percent have protested in the last 12 months, compared to 8 percent of those who play games but do not contribute to online gaming communities.

Fascinating stuff. Apparently, social interaction of any sort increases civic participation measurably. It's worth all this canvassing and talking to each that we politicos do.

Further, if game players become protesters at high rates there is some kind of alienation being expressed. Hard to know what kind -- most of us are alienated in one way or another. But apparently gamers are, relatively, inclined to act on their alienation.

Friday cat blogging Frisker is ready to endorse

She considered John McCain but doesn't trust anyone who has seven houses. Can such a person be trusted to make proper arrangements to feed the cat? She doubts it.

Barack Obama does not apparently live with a feline -- and he has children. She does not trust children. But on balance, he seems a more responsible person, perhaps more able to learn that a country is only as successful as its care of cats.

Friday pick me ups

I'm on the road and too busy to blog, but here's some interesting ads to ponder.

Here's a Democratic candidate whose message is worthy of a day when the Dow dropped another nearly 700 points. [:30]

Jim Slattery isn't going to win in Kansas. They don't elect Democrats there, anymore than we elect Republicans in San Francisco. But he's saying things that need to be said. Catch that Wall Street banker.

Here's another, even better: [:30]


H/t Cogitamus.

An ad you should see... and won't if ABC has its way

I watch football on TV. I watched the Olympics. In fact I watch very little on the tube except sports.

But I've seen hours of oil company ads touting their supposed clean energy research, their ever-so-responsible social policies. Being who I am, I don't much believe them, but there is no escaping them.

So I'm downright pissed off to learn that ABC refused to air the Alliance for Climate Protection's Repower America ad about how oil and coal companies have blocked the country's switch to truly clean energy. Here's the ad.



You can help get this run on national TV -- it is only fair. Tell ABC to reconsider their decision and air the Repower America ad.

McCain: depths of dishonor

Tim Dickinson at Rolling Stone has dug through the nooks and crannies of John McCain's biography and drawn a frightening profile of a spoiled brat who never grew up, but pursues boundless ambitions with a child's selfishness and disregard for inconvenient people and realities.

The whole article is worth reading -- but since this blog has been following the development of the U.S. torture regime, I want to pass on what Dickerson writes on that topic.

Then there's torture -- the issue most related to McCain's own experience as a POW. In 2005, in a highly public fight, McCain battled the president to stop the torture of enemy combatants, winning a victory to require military personnel to abide by the Army Field Manual when interrogating prisoners. But barely a year later, as he prepared to launch his presidential campaign, McCain cut a deal with the White House that allows the Bush administration to imprison detainees indefinitely and to flout the Geneva Conventions' prohibitions against torture.

What his former allies in the anti-torture fight found most troubling was that McCain would not admit to his betrayal. Shortly after cutting the deal, McCain spoke to a group of retired military brass who had been working to ban torture. According to [Colonel Lawrence] Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former deputy, McCain feigned outrage at Bush and Cheney, as though he too had had the rug pulled out from under him. "We all knew the opposite was the truth," recalls Wilkerson. "That's when I began to lose a little bit of my respect for the man and his bona fides as a straight shooter."

John McCain, famous P.O.W. and torture victim, enabled torture for his personal political profit.

An anniversary: remember Afghanistan?

Opium poppies flourish near Bamiyan, Afghanistan. Peace doesn't do so well. (Omar Sayami photo)

Seven years ago, the United States launched its attack on Afghanistan in response to the attacks of 9/11. The United States is still at war in Afghanistan, though often it is not very clear who the troops are fighting.

Michael T. McPhearson is Executive Director of Veterans For Peace and Co-Chair of United For Peace and Justice. He was a field artillery officer in the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division during Desert Shield/Desert Storm, also known as Gulf War I. Today he shared his thoughts on the Afghan war. (That's the war Senator Obama wants to expand.)

I was in New York City on September 11, 2001. I was horrified, angered and confused by the brutality and audacity of the attack. I knew there would be a military response. So I knelt and prayed that our nation's reaction would be thoughtful and provide leadership to the world through what promised to be the beginning of a dark time. ...

The hope was eclipsed. My government chose to use war as the primary policy direction. As I said, I expected military action. However, to what end? The current policy appears to be, engage the enemy until there is no longer opposition, or in a word “war.” War is not a sufficient policy to address the causes of the attack and will not bring peace. It will only bring more war. There is not a government to defeat or leader to topple. The faces of the opposition change and remain nameless with occasional exceptions like bin Laden. But without a doubt, even if bin Laden were captured today the occupiers and resisters would continue to fight.

Caught in the crossfire of U.S. waging war against a near endless supply of nameless and faceless opponents are civilians who wish to live their lives without fear. Civilians who if choosing between living in fear of U.S. air strikes and home invasions which to them seem to have no rhyme or reason, or in fear of the medieval thinking and actions of the Taliban, will pick the fear with a face they recognize and actions they can anticipate.

Meanwhile, the U.K.'s senior general in Afghanistan says that Western forces can't win against the Afghan insurgency.

An absolute military victory in Afghanistan is impossible, Brig.-Gen. Mark Carleton-Smith told England's Sunday Times newspaper.

What foreign forces must now come to grips with, he said, is reducing the level of insurgency so that it can be managed by Afghan forces and no longer poses a major threat. ...

As such, striking a deal with the Taliban could be considered as a strategic option, Carleton-Smith said. It is an idea that has been repeatedly — and recently — advanced by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

CBCNews,
October 4, 2008

The Canadians are naturally interested; they've lost a lot of soldiers over there. So has the United States -- more than in Iraq in recent months.

What was this war about anyway?

Once again, I cannot recommend strongly enough Ahmed Rashid's Descent into Chaos for a overview of the region and its wars.

McCain's latest race card

The Republican line of yesterday seems to be have been that Senator Obama "hangs around with terrorists." That piece of nonsense is for surrogates and the pathetic Palin to mouth. From the candidate himself, the line was slightly more subtle.

McCain, under the guise of asking legit questions about Obama's record, slips in charged language designed to paint him as a scary unknown. "He's not exactly an open book." "There's always a back-story." "Who is the real Barack Obama?"

Oddly, when McCain delivered that last line there was a visceral roar from the crowd of McCain supporters, as if this attack -- there's an alien in our midst! -- has been the one they'd been waiting for.

I think we have a case here of trying to lead low-information voters from their slightly confused and curious response to the novel Democratic candidate right on over to their distrust of a foreign-sounding, perhaps alien, indubitably BLACK, candidate.

From my experience canvassing for Obama ten days ago, this may work with some. The feeling among those few voters who were still just tuning in was that Obama is too unknown. Those who said this weren't necessarily expressing racism -- they really just didn't know what to make a candidate who wasn't an old white guy who'd been in the news for years. Maybe some of that was a cover for racism, but some was just astonishment at novelty.

I imagine the McCain sleaze attacks go over quite well in focus groups with this dwindling group. He is supplying an ugly content to an unformed feeling.

On the other hand, there are not nearly so many undecided potential voters as there were ten days ago, so there are less for McCain to influence.

Onward to the next debate...

The financial meltdown comes home

She may get some respect, but she is not likely to get a raise. Members of the USF faculty union held an informational picket recently.

Folks know their 401k plans are getting hammered as they watch the stock market tumble, but it is a little hard to envision what the "credit crunch" the media are yammering about might mean. The President of the University of San Francisco, a small Jesuit college, tried to explain it in a letter to his community today [emphasis is mine]:

This communication will come as no surprise! I write to you about the University's response to the widening economic crisis.

Vice President Charlie Cross wrote to you last week regarding the University's cash flow needs and our careful monitoring of that situation, including students' ability to pay their bills. This later consideration is critical, given that 95% of our operating budget comes from tuition, fees and room and board and that economic instability makes it increasingly difficult for families to afford college. Mr. Cross also pointed out the negative impact of the stock market decline on the University's relatively modest endowment [approximately $200 million before market]. ... we cannot completely insulate ourselves from the market's downward spiral.

Like virtually every household in the nation, the University suffers the effects of rising prices, tightening credit and wildly fluctuating variable-rate debt. There is an emerging consensus that we are at the beginning of a long story and must plan carefully for turns and twists in the plot as we work our way through an increasingly challenging situation. We must engage in the same belt-tightening that families are doing all across the country... The University will develop a graduated set of action steps that prepare it to respond to escalating financial challenges of increasing severity. While we remain hopeful about the future, we cannot allow ourselves the luxury of not preparing for the negative effects of a prolonged economic downturn.

Stephen A. Privett, S.J.
President

I'm not going to pretend I know what action steps they are imagining that will make up for a significant decline in student tuition payments as colleges loans dry up and families loose their savings when their investments plummet. I suspect the good President doesn't have much idea either.

That's the bind we're all in. We don't know and can't imagine what might protect us in a financial meltdown, either individually or collectively.

It would be nice if we had confidence that we have a government working for our interests. But we don't. We've had nearly 30 years of government pretending it worked for our interests by either ignoring the needs of most people or giving super-assistance to rich people. Can we claw our way to envisioning a democratic (small "d") government that weighs the needs of the people, and a frying globe, as of more importance than the needs of the lucky few?

Radio ad for bluegrass fans

Music for a Monday morning. I'm busy today...

Africom launched

Via Crossed Crocodiles.

Most countries exist more happily when they are not on the U.S. political radar screen. Unfortunately, as the New York Times reports today, the African continent is looming more important to Washington policy makers. And this week, it got its very own Africa Command, cutely called Africom for short.

In the newspaper of record, it emerges that this is part of the worldwide militarization of U.S. relations as the empire struggles to preserve a threatened monopoly on shock and awe. When the Pentagon is around, all other agencies of the U.S. government become obviously dispensable bit players.

Refugees International released statistics showing that the percentage of development assistance controlled by the Defense Department had grown to nearly 22 percent from 3.5 percent over the past 10 years, while the percentage controlled by the Agency for International Development dropped to 40 percent from 65 percent.

For another look at the U.S. in Africa, check out Crossed Crocodiles, a site that has been trying to expose the implications of Africom for awhile. Here's the CC take:

The Africa Command is a creation of the Bush Cheney American corporate predator state. It was conceived by people who were focused on Africa’s oil, other natural resources, and on opposing China. These are the same Bush Cheney cronies that have done the most to convert American democracy into a corporate predator state, and destroy American democracy in the process. ...

Although there is a lot of talk from AFRICOM about partnerships, there has been little real consultation with Africans. ...

Funny thing, the prescription of both the author of Crossed Crocodiles and the Africans he quotes is exactly what many of us in the States want:

What is needed is energy, focus, and money to strengthen civilian democratic political, economic, and social institutions, so that democracy, participation of all the people, can grow and flourish.

Democracy remains a potent idea.

Blindness, not insightful

As far back as I can remember, my grandfather was legally blind. With his glasses, I think he could perceive shapes when he held things next to his nose. But he didn't live in the world of the sighted. Every day he got up, bathed, dressed himself, tied his tie -- and retreated to the woodworking shop he'd set up in the attic which was the focus of his life in retirement. If I was very quiet, stayed in a corner, and promised not to move anything, I'd be allowed to watch him use a bandsaw, a drill press, and a table saw, as well as hand tools. He made kitchen utensils, furniture, and best of all, jigsaw puzzles for me. His being blind meant he had to move carefully and deliberately with dangerous tools, but it certainly didn't stop him.

So when my partner came home from a movie multiplex reporting that supporters of the National Federation of the Blind had been flyering in protest of a new film called Blindness, I was interested. Apparently the movie's plot is pretty simple: a mysterious disease starts making people blind. Locked away together in quarantine, the newly blind are unable to dress themselves, and are reduced to defecating on themselves. They then replicate the story of violent social disintegration in the novel Lord of the Flies, finally discover they can emerge from their prison, and mysteriously recover their sight without explanation. Pretty thin stuff -- and a load of defamatory drivel that reinforces fears and misconceptions about blindness that make real blind people's lives more difficult.

From NFB's flyer:

• Blind people are responsible; a sense of responsibility is not in any way related to visual acuity.

• Blind people can care for themselves both physically and emotionally.

• Blind people are conscious of the importance of hygiene and personal appearance; they do not live in filth and squalor.

• Blind people can successfully travel; they are not generally disoriented or wandering without direction.

• Blind people are unique individuals; they are not without identity.

• Blind people are active in society, not isolated from others and the world.

• Blind people can perceive their surroundings and exercise judgment.

• Blind people are as dignified and conscientious as their sighted peers.

Thanks for saying it, NFB. Thanks for my grandfather!

S.L.I.M.E. revisited

Just as guest poster Rebecca said back on September 20: the "bailout" is the "the Successful Looting and Investment Manager Employment Act -- S.L.I.M.E."

Now that it has been signed into law, Bloomberg reports:

Oct. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is hiring as many as 10 asset-management firms to join the lawyers and bankers he is recruiting to jumpstart the government's new $700 billion bank-rescue program.

Full employment for financial managers ahead...

American Fascists

In his expose of authoritarian dominionists who have hijacked parts of U.S. Christianity, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America,Chris Hedges challenges complacent mainstream religious organizations:

As long as scripture, blessed and accepted by the church, teaches that at the end of time there will be a Day of Wrath and Christians will control the shattered remnants of a world cleansed through violence and war, as long as it teaches that all nonbelievers will be tormented, destroyed and banished to hell, it will be hard to thwart the message of radical apocalyptic preachers or assuage the fears of the Islamic world that Christians are calling for its annihilation. Those who embrace this dark conclusion to life can find it endorsed in scripture, whether it is tucked into the back pew rack of a liberal Unitarian Church in Boston or a megachurch in Florida. The mainstream Protestant and Catholic churches, declining in numbers and influence, cannot hope to combat the hysteria and excitement roused by these prophets of doom until they repudiate the apocalyptic writings in scripture.

The book covers ground well-worked in recent decades by Sara Diamond, Chip Berlet, and Political Research Associates.

Hedges brings a special anguish to his portrayal of these charlatans who are out to replace our lumbering, fractious democracy with their simple-minded violent theocracy. He acquired his tolerant, humane values from a very different kind of Christianity. Later he earned a Masters from Harvard Divinity School, and saw entirely too much real violence as a war correspondent for fifteen years. The last experience led to his other major book, War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning.

Hedges cares about meaning -- and the religious right, appropriately, scares him. He raises the alarm emphatically:

I do not believe that America will inevitably become a fascist state or that the Christian Right is the Nazi party. But I do believe that the Christian Right is a sworn and potent enemy of the open society. Its ideology bears within it the seeds of a religious fascism. In the event of a crisis, in the event of another catastrophic terrorist attack, an economic meltdown or huge environmental disaster, the movement stands poised to ruthlessly reshape America in ways that have not been seen since the nation’s founding. All Americans, not only those of faith, must learn to speak about this movement with a new vocabulary, to give up passivity and to defend tolerance. The attacks by this movement on the rights and beliefs of Muslims, Jews, immigrants, gays, lesbians, women, scholars scientists, those they dismiss as "nominal Christians" and those they brand with the curse of "secular humanist" is an attack on all of us, on our values, our religious freedoms and our democracy. Tolerance is a virtue, but tolerance coupled with passivity is a vice.

This book is very much worth a read.
***I've been reading Chris Hedges' book about our Christian fascists concurrently with trying to fathom whether John McCain has really put a dominionist on the ticket with him. Because these people don't advertise their true ends, it is not easy to draw definitive conclusions. But it certainly isn't hard to arrive at a sense that Sarah Palin, at the least, comes from a milieu where the wackier beliefs of the radical religious right are part of conventional mental furniture.

• She gives creationism the time of day and seems to think believing in God precludes accepting the truth of evolution.

• She tried to exclude a gay positive book from a local library.

• The particular Assemblies of God congregation she is connected to has some seriously rightwing connections.

• There's all too much evidence that she doesn't understand or accept the science describing climate change. From the VP debate:

  I'm not one to attribute every man -- activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man's activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet. But there are real changes going on in our climate. And I don't want to argue about the causes. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?

  In the midst of that word salad, there's plenty of room for a fundamental denial of the science. I can't help suspecting her of being far more comfortable of attributing it all to a personal First Cause, rather than delving into causes that might, as Joe Biden responded, point to a solution.

• Most tellingly of all, John McCain may not have vetted Palin much when he was looking desperately for a VP who would satisfy the Christian right segment of the Republican party. But the luminaries of the dominionist establishment sure think she is just great. I can only assume they know a good deal she isn't telling us, in addition to appreciating her stance in favor of forcing women to carry all pregnancies through to births.

Hedges' American Fascists, a volume that had been sitting for months in my "to be read" pile, seems timely indeed.

Oh that's what he meant...

Joe Biden, while effectively crushing the tiresome Ms. Palin last night, had one really odd moment that left me jaw dropped. He seemed to be saying the United States had driven Hizbollah out of Lebanon. How the hell would that happen? Hizbollah is a group of Lebanese.

Time's Joe Klein explains:

Joe Biden, by contrast, demonstrated a real knowledge of the issues in question. He made several verbal fumbles -- it was Syria, not Hizballah, that left Lebanon...

Oh, that's what he meant. I couldn't call that demonstrating real knowledge. In general, most of the world does better when our politicians think about their countries less.

Veep debate: Governor Non-Sequitur spews

When I do trainings for people who are going to have to deal with the media, I have learned from the Center for Third World Organizing to have people practice using a rather amusing exercise: whatever an interviewer asks them, their job is to explain the fact that "my dog has three legs." It's fun -- and it is remarkable how proficient very ordinary people can become at this exercise with a few hours training.

Somebody seems to have tried something similar with Governor Palin -- they gave her talking points on about fifteen issues and instructed her to get them in. She's a quick study. She's getting most of them in, regardless of what Gwen Ifill or Joe Biden happen to be talking about.

What I've learned from watching this: it's harder for an uninformed person to learn to parrot fifteen talking points than to advocate for just one.

Debate anxiety -- VP edition

If you are like me, you are worried about the Biden-Palin set-to Thursday night. Things have seemed to be going almost too well for the Obama campaign recently. Pollsters say, if the election were held today, Obama would win, very big.

But now we have to get through the Biden-Palin debate. And though the Alaska governor probably has been dragging down that sinking ship, the McCain Squirrelly Express, with her inarticulate responses to Katie Couric's interview questions, she has also provided the only life raft Republicans have found in this season.

Moreover, people who have debated her say she is good in a debate format. Here's how Alaska Republican Andrew Halcro experienced going up against Palin in gubernatorial debates:

During the campaign, Palin's knowledge on public policy issues never matured -- because it didn't have to. Her ability to fill the debate halls with her presence and her gift of the glittering generality made it possible for her to rely on populism instead of policy.

We're in a decidedly populist mood these days, confronted with the prospect of funneling billions of dollars to bankers and financiers who we believe already ripped us off. Collectively, we may give Sarah Palin some benefit of the doubt -- though both parties have allowed themselves to be trapped into supporting the unpopular bailout.

Palin will probably "exceed expectations" because expectations could hardly be lower. Pundits may conclude she "won" the debate.

But none of that matters. Here's why:

• the enormous audience this event will draw is primarily a form of voyeurism. Palin is more theater than a serious contender. The very lack of seriousness McCain demonstrated by selecting her has been undermining his credentials.

• Obama "won" last week's presidential debate in the way that mattered most: he came across as a plausible President. Since we've never had a black man with an African name in the job, that's a huge hurdle. But polling and punditry agree that he cleared it. McCain either did nothing for himself or perhaps demonstrated a churlish side. But in essence, Obama won.

• Debates mostly speak to the undecided. Even more than before last week's Obama-McCain debate, most of us now know who we are going to vote for. Barring an absurdly poor performance, those of us who have decided will almost always feel our candidate won. Meanwhile, the persuadable undecided have dwindled to something like 5 percent of potential voters. There just are not very many viewers there for Palin to win over -- probably less in total than Obama's current 5 percent margin in the polls.

• Besides, vice-presidential debates don't swing elections. Pollster Charles Franklin was asked bluntly in an online chat today:

  Marion, Ind.: Is there any history of the vice presidential debates moving the polls?
  Charles Franklin: No. Though post-debate polls have sometimes found clear winners and losers in the VP debates, there isn't much evidence that the national polls at least move much.

So, though it is hard, we need to relax and enjoy the show. Go on over to Jane R.'s place and tell her what you'll be drinking.

Google speaks: "No on Prop. 8"

The official statement:

... Because our company has a great diversity of people and opinions -- Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, all religions and no religion, straight and gay -- we do not generally take a position on issues outside of our field, especially not social issues. So when Proposition 8 appeared on the California ballot, it was an unlikely question for Google to take an official company position on.

... it is the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of our employees that brings Google to publicly oppose Proposition 8. While we respect the strongly-held beliefs that people have on both sides of this argument, we see this fundamentally as an issue of equality. We hope that California voters will vote no on Proposition 8 -- we should not eliminate anyone's fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love.

Sergey Brin, Co-founder & President, Technology

Well I'm glad the search engine company I use every day got that right.

The Prop. 8 argument is between a fraction of the public who think they need to impose their moral postures on society in order to protect themselves from personal and social impurity -- and another (hopefully larger) fraction that thinks legalizing same-sex marriage is a matter of elementary fairness, of civil equality.

That Google and other monster corporations might place themselves on the side of civil rights is not surprising. Large, impersonal corporate entities thrive in defined legal environments in which prejudices and passions are constrained by law, though they are not always so good on equity for the low end of their workforces.

In general, they have supported affirmative action policies that create anxiety of about possible unfair outcomes in white populations. The upside of having clear rules that promote inclusion outweighs the downside of the anxieties of some (mostly) white men.

Many of the big guys, including banks, clothing maker Levi Strauss, and the power company, PG&E, have long been supportive of normalizing the legal status of gay people. For them, it's simply good business. And having a reputation for tolerance probably offers a competitive advantage in recruiting a young, creative workforce.

The culture of people who support something like Prop. 8 barely intersects with that of the No folks. I'll be writing more about this in a few days, but if you want a look at what moves the folks who feel threatened by same-sex marriage, try Chris Hedges' American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. The link is to a Google book, by the way. It's everywhere, that Google.

Is the Obama campaign is something new?

Long time readers of this blog may remember my thesis that

If the campaign is run by labor and the volunteers are working class people, there will be donuts.

If the campaign is run by community advocates and recruits the employees of non-profit organizations, there will be bagels.

So is the Obama campaign more like a non-profit organization or a labor union? Neither it turns out. This campaign is something else again.


On Saturday in Reno, besides the standard coffee and orange juice, we were offered fresh fruit, and, under the aluminum foil, a homemade frittata.


Not that sweets were absent from the spread.

Financial follies and fluctuations

Working on campaigns encourages me to feel as if I were in control of my life. Watching the bailout go down in Congress and the stock market gyrate (Dow up 485 today -- huh?), reminds me that I'm really just flotsam in a storm, a cork bobbing in vast seas, hoping I don't get thrown up on a rocky shore. This is possibly a realistic reminder that I am not in control, that I am dependent on community and chance. But that doesn't mean I like it.

So I've read a lot of articles about the financial system -- and I am not going to pretend I understand all this. If you want a good collection of points of view, this might be a good starting point.

In my opinion, Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, offered one of the clearest explanations and prescriptions:

The main cause of the economy's weakness is not insolvent banks and lack of credit; it's the loss of $4 trillion to $5 trillion in housing equity as a result of the bubble's partial deflation. Families used their equity to support their consumption in the years from 2002 to 2007, as the savings rate fell to almost zero.

With much of this equity now eliminated by the collapse of the bubble, many families can no longer sustain their levels of consumption. The main reason that banks won't lend to these families is that they no longer have home equity to serve as collateral. It wouldn't matter how much money the banks had, they are not going to make mortgage loans to people who have no equity.

And house prices are not going to come back. This is like Pets.com. We are not going to get the price of $200,000 homes in central California back up to $500,000.

The main problem in recovering from the recession will be finding ways to boost demand other than household consumption. In the longer run, this will mean reducing imports and increasing exports. In the short-run, we will have to rely on government stimulus to help spur growth and reduce unemployment. The Democratic demands for stimulus were not extraneous to the legitimate goal of a bank bailout bill. Fiscal stimulus must be central to any serious effort to boost the economy.

He wants the U.S. government to put money directly into banks so they start loaning -- and get what private enterprise would get for its cash: partial ownership of the banks.

Probably too simple for Congress to achieve.

Guess who said it...

"Tradition has brought us this far, but the future is right in front of us."

• Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulsen on the market tanking after the bailout bill failed in the House today?

• Speaker Nancy Pelosi on why she must bring the bailout bill back for another vote?

• Sarah Palin on the desirability of drilling for oil in ANWR?

• Christian Right preachers on why they should be able to endorse John McCain from the pulpit?

• Someone else?

Answer in the first comment.