Yesterday I wrote a diarythat looked at the simultaneous interviews Sunday morning.  Obama by Tim Russert on Meet the Press and Clinton on on This Week with George Stephanopoulos.  I focused on one element, what I saw as Clinton's signaling that she would accept the second spot on the ticket with Obama; and I provided a poll of how the readers would accept such a hypothetical.  

Of all the columnists at the Times, I find Brooks one of the most open minded.  In today's column, he also compared the two appearances as I did in my diary, and does an analysis of their differences that is spot on.

I recorded both Obama's interview with Russert on Meet the Press, and the Town Hall Format on This Week with George Stephanopoulos.  First I watched Russert, who tried his best to revive the Rev. Wright issue.  I have always been put off by the adulation of Obama that is dominant on this site, but credit must be given when deserved.

I've never seen more talent, at least since JFK, in political discourse as a performance art than Obama's handling the onslaught by Russert.  His answers were to the point, responsive, and never conveyed the message, "Tim, I've answered this a hundred times, can we go on, please!"  He was respectful, and conveyed the perfect tone, in this as well as the substantive questions that were asked later.

These had been rules for diaries, which you can see right on the top of your user page.

2. Substantive diaries only. If you don't have at least three solid, original paragraphs, you should probably post a comment in an Open Thread.

3. No repetitive diaries. Take a moment to ensure your topic hasn't been blogged (you can search for Stories and Diaries that already cover this topic), though fresh original analysis is always welcome.

The question that is in the public arena is how Barack Obama, unlike his many trivial associations with embarrassing individuals, could have had the relationship he did over the course of almost two decades with Jeremiah Wright.

I am now reading "Audacity of Hope" and based on this amazingly candid auto biography, and certain similarities in my own life, I have some thoughts on this that I want to share.  

I chatted with Justice Scalia about ten years ago after a speech he made at the Jewish Theological Seminary in NYC.  In spite of the vast majority of Liberals in the audience, his charm, his spontaneity, won them (and me) over.

I had been impressed by his deciding vote affirming that the First Amendment prohibits any law against free political speech, even when it takes the form of burning the American Flag.  I value living in a society where the passions of the people are moderated by rules of this enduring charter that are difficult to overturn.

But then there was this opinion that showed that he was not whom he claimed to be:

One of the few advantages of reaching advanced years is remembering when things were different.  And as it looks like we may have a nomination contest right down to the party convention, let me tell you about my memories of those of 1952.

Some of us are beginning to see that there is a vulnerability to a party that has a protracted primary election process, while the other party simply laughs as their future opponent is torn apart by his/her own party. This raises the question of "Is there such a thing as too much democracy within a party."

It turns out that the present system that we have with primary elections being the major determinant of party nominee is quite recent, only being codified by the Democratic party by the efforts of George McGovern, and implemented in 1972

George Stephanopolous was back to being a serious journalist in his probing interview of McCain this morning. He repeatedly pointed out that he could not reduce taxes as he now proposes, and still meet his pledge to end the deficit during his first term.  The New York Times also had an editorialwhere they castigated McCain for the same reasons.

Both of these media, while criticizing his proposal to further decrease taxation, missed the most important aspect of his economic policy speech last week, his turnaround on the Housing-Foreclosure bills being developed in congress.

At a party last week, a tennis friend, after a few drinks was clearly agitated about the raid, and separation of children from their mothers, in the Texas polygamy cult.  When I told him that I had not been following it, and gave him the academic response about the limits of cultural relativism, he wasn't satisfied.

He said, "Al, come on, you know about everything, is it right what they did?"  Well this one stumped me, as I guess it stumps the officials in Texas.  

Let me start this off with a letter I drafted to a friend who is a member of the mainstream Mormons, The Church of Later Day Saints, or simply LDS.

Whew, McCain almost made me vote Republican

And it would have been painful.  But, I have watched the Democrats shaping a response to the foreclosure housing issue with mounting disgust.  I wrote a half dozen diaries on this site that pointed out the hypocrisy of it, and found that some 80% of readers share my outrage.

When it looked like McCain was going to stand with my group: the poor who rent, those who refused to buy into the bubble, people who want the price of homes to be related to earnings; I was facing a terrible dilemma.  But, with today's speech, McCain has solved my problem--- and let me tell you how.

The line used is "Stop the slide of the real estate market" and "keep the homeowners in their homes."  And while some Republican are against it, they are not making this a central issue.  First of all, if it passes it will be great for the financial industry, who will be saved from monumental losses.  

What is not being said, but what will be made clear when the Republicans kindly explain this during the election campaign, is that stopping the slide in real estate prices means keeping the prices at the level reached during 2000-2005 run up. This is a bonanza for those who bought into this bubble, but a disaster to those who didn't, whose chance at homeownership will be forever diminished.  

Chutzpah is a Yiddish word that is usually defined by this example: A young man murdered both his parents, and after being tried and convicted,  demanded mercy because he was an orphan.  

Now we have a better definition. Homebuilders, by raising the price on their product based on a demand created by artificially low interest rates and bogus predatory ARM mortgages, made great profits a few years ago.  Now they want their taxes paid on profits from those years returned, since the balloon that they fostered is now ending.  

The judge refused to show mercy for the apocryphal killer, but the Congress of the United States is about to reward homebuilders with ten billion dollars of rebates.

San Diego is a one paper town, The Union Tribune.  It has long supported and reflected the conservative tone of this anti-union city where the biggest industry is the U.S.Navy facilities.

A few days ago they printed this editorial with a rather nasty picture of Representative William J. Jefferson. The actual editorial was reasonable, but the tone was that prosecution of his putative crime should not be unduly hindered.

It seemed to miss something, so I wrote, and they printed this response today.  

It has been argued that only Senator Clinton, with the requirement of mandates, will provide universal health care.  This is one of the only substantive differences between her and Obama.  People whom I respect, specifically Paul Krugman, makes the point that Obama's plan, by not including mandates, could not provide health care for all.

Beyond intra party politics, the more important question is what will be the effect of a law that will add some 50 million people as clients to our existing provider infrastructure.  We get an answer from this article in the New York Times: In Massachusetts, Universal Coverage Strains Care

Today, the shape of the bailout of those facing foreclosure is being decided in the U.S. Senate, and in my opinion, this will have a major effect on the General election.  While the Senate is almost unanimous in wanting to do something, there is a wide range of positions on what to do. Based on this reportof what is taking shape, it looks like the current proposal will be something short of a bailout for most of those facing foreclosure.

Often our political positions are explained by this aphorism,  "Where you stand depends on where you sit"  Or, if you are making a ton of money, you generally want lower taxes, and if you have a great medical plan, universal health care isn't that important.

Here is an interactive map of every county in the U.S., showing their percentage of sub prime mortgages. You can see exactly where you sit.  This map is important, since those in counties with the most, have more of a vested interest in a comprehensive bailout, such as proposed by Senator Clinton.

Paul Krugman is a gentle man, whose nature is not to be confrontational. So in today's column, rather than accuse the Bush administration of the most outrageous deceit in trying to disguise a continuation of libertarian free market ideology as "reform" he buried this exposure in the text with the title "The Dilbert Strategy"  

In Hillary Clinton's speech yesterday she proposed  that Alan Greenspan be among three leaders of a committee to resolve our housing-mortgage crisis.

I would imagine that actually Greenspan would be a good selection to this committee, since who more than Alan Greenspan, the prime architect of the current disaster would have a greater interest in providing a soft landing.  

And who more than Alan Greenspan, based on his own words, would care less about the ultimate long range consequences of such a bailout.

It must encompass the fiscal conservatism that the Republicans used to represent.  Reaganomics must be finally acknowledged as the "Voodoo Economics" that was described by George H. W. Bush.  It managed to survive by stripping the ethical obligations of institutions such as banks and insurance companies to serve the public goods.

Hospitals that previously had the implied social responsibility to train new professional as well as care for the indigent, were undervalued, by those ruthless enough to simply eliminate all that was not required by law. With privatization of these assets came great wealth for the investor, and sickness and death for the community.  

Spitzer was helped out the door by most Democrats, including the person whom he had endorsed, his state's Senator Hillary Clinton.  His crime, spending thousands of his own dollars on prostitutes was not his finest hour; and his pure stupidity in leaving a trail for his enemies to follow still remains incredible to this day.

But, there are crimes of vastly larger magnitude being committed, costing millions of Americans their financial security, that will be less likely to be punished or prevented if his tenacity to root out corruption at the highest levels is rejected.  We must separate Spitzer the prosecutor of "malafactors of great wealth," what he represented as N.Y. Attorney General, from the events that led to his resignation.  I wrote this diarythree weeks ago on an OpEd where Spitzer described how it was the Bush Administration that prevented states from cracking down on fraudulent predatory mortgages.

And now this same administration that protected these criminal corporations are bailing them out with taxpayers funds.