Debate Open Thread

Catch he second presidential debate from Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee at 9PM Eastern tonight!

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$2 Trillion in Retirement Accounts Lost

This afternoon, the Associated Press reported that retirement accounts have lost $2 trillion in the last 15 months.

Americans' retirement plans have lost as much as $2 trillion in the past 15 months, Congress' top budget analyst estimated Tuesday. [...]

As Congress investigates the causes and effects of the financial meltdown, the House Education and Labor Committee was hearing from retirement savings and budget analysts on how the housing, credit and other financial troubles have battered pensions and other retirement funds, which are among the most common forms of savings in the United States.

"Unlike Wall Street executives, America's families don't have a golden parachute to fall back on," said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the panel chairman. "It's clear that their retirement security may be one of the greatest casualties of this financial crisis."

Yet, John McCain stlil wants to privatize Social Security.

And while Sarah Palin is in Florida promising that John McCain will "protect' entitlement programs, his economic advisers are telling the press that there will be massive cuts into Medicare and Medicaid. Perhaps she hadn't read in the newspapers her what her campaign wants to do just yet.

''The Subject''

We know what kind of game John McCain is going to play tonight at the town hall debate in Tennessee. A top aide recently admitted to the New York Daily News that "If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we’re going to lose."

But Americans are already losing -- their jobs, their homes and their life savings -- and John McCain doesn't want to talk about that. He would rather lose his integrity than lose an election, and will launch more dishonest attack ads about Senator Barack Obama.

In his convention speech last August, Senator Obama said, "this isn't about me. It's about you."

That's what this election is all about -- you -- and John McCain, who is out of ideas, out of touch and running out of time, is desperately trying to change the subject.

It will not work.

Afternoon Open Thread

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N.H. Slowly Trending Blue in Voter Registration

Andy Smith, the Director of the Survey Center at the University of New Hampshire, is reporting a gradual increase in Democratic voters within the state.

The slide from red to blue is slow, and Smith anticipates New Hampshire still will be a battleground state in the 2012 presidential election. But come 2016, the state likely will be voting Democratic, Smith predicted.

"The kind of shift we are seeing is less than 1 percent a year," he said. But in 10 years, we could be a "pretty solid Democratic state."

Morning Open Thread

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Evening Open Thread

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Rewriting History on Keating

John McCain's campaign is trying to rewrite the events of the Savings & Loan scandal nearly twenty years later. In his 2002 autobiography, McCain called the scandal "the worst mistake of my life," but now McCain's campaign is claiming he did nothing wrong.

Additionally, McCain's team is changing their story on what McCain knew. Washington Post:

Sometimes in politics, memories fail.

In a conference call with reporters, attorney John Dowd was asked about a specific part of the Keating Five inquiry, the fact that Cindy McCain and her father had invested in a Keating strip mall.

"It was part of the inquiry, but it did not -- John was unconnected to that and unaware of it at the time, and did not participate in it," Dowd said.

As the Post reported, McCain did know about the investments, in fact, there's video and guess who asked him the question? His lawyer, John Dowd.

Afternoon Open Thread

Some headlines:

• John McCain's campaign is rapidly trying to turn the campaign focus away from the economy -- since John McCain knows nothing about it and seeks advice from guys like this.
• Fighting back: Recently retired admiral John Natham, on behalf of the Obama campaign, is pushing back against the latest lying attack ad from John McCain on the military.

  "As a recently retired Admiral, I know who has the strongest record of supporting the men and women currently serving in our military. Senator Obama has consistently voted to fund our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and, just as importantly, a proven record of support when they return home. That's why independent veterans organizations give Senator Obama higher marks than Senator McCain. Despite consistent distortions of his record, thousands of veterans like myself support Senator Obama because he has the judgment, character and integrity to be a great president. We will need a great president to lead us in these very challenging times."

• Medicare cuts: A top economic adviser to John McCain, Doulgas Holtz-Eakin, says that in a McCain administration, there would be big cuts to Medicare.

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Keating Economics

Find out more -- visit www.KeatingEconomics.com.

Dow Plummets to Lowest Point Since 2004

This weekend, campaign advisers to John McCain say they want to "turn the page" on the economic crisis and explore new depths of dishonorable and sleazy campaigning. This morning, the Dow Jones sank below 10,000 points for the first time in four years.

Wall Street joined a “selloff around the world” today, with the Dow Jones dropping more than 400 points and falling to below 10,000 for the first time in four years. As the AP reports, the “markets have come to the sobering realization that the Bush administration’s $700 billion rescue plan won’t work quickly to unfreeze the credit markets, and that many banks are still having difficulty gaining access to cash.”

Think about it -- while untold thousands of Americans lose their life savings or retirement funds because of the greed of Wall Street, John McCain wants to "turn the page" on the financial crisis.

Then again, we've seen this before from John McCain. He knows a thing or two about thousands of Americans losing their life savings.

Hoosiers Fired Up and Ready to Go

Check out this FiveThirtyEight.com field report from Indiana. Hoosiers are ready for change, and the bustling Obama field offices there are a testament to that energy.

Here in Lafayette, in Mia Lewis' "alternate universe," the volunteers have begun to run out of turf -- because it's already been canvassed. Although John McCain has only one field office open in the state, Barack Obama has two on the same block. One is a large phone bank office, and a few doors down on the corner is the canvass staging area. We heard stories from volunteers who sometimes canvass because the phone bank is so frequently packed to capacity that if they want to volunteer, knocking on doors is the only option. [emphasis added]

And one of Senator Barack Obama's strongest voices in the Hoosier state is former senator and civil rights champion, Birch Bayh.

Retired Senator Birch Bayh has been on a surrogate tour of Indiana, and spoke to approximately 40 volunteers here in the Lafayette office a short while ago. Bayh, legendary for his support of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act, and the primary architect of both the 25th and 26th Amendments (not since the founders can one man claim that distinction), gave a moving speech to the assembled group. Bayh was the principal sponsor of the Equal Rights Amendment and highly influential in getting Title IX passed. He is also the guy who pulled a seriously injured Ted Kennedy from the wreckage of a small engine plane crash in 1964. The guy has been around.

He talked about his own grassroots campaign that first elected him to the US Senate in 1962. What he's seen with Barack Obama's operation in the state of Indiana this time around reminds him of that grassroots surge that won him the Senate seat in this traditionally red state. After speaking about the value of an engaged citizenry, and the consequences of detaching from the public policy arena (the previous eight years being his primary example), Bayh made a prediction.

On the night of November 4, at that early six o' clock hour that is almost always an immediate blot of red in a largely empty map (Indiana reports early), America is going to see something different this time.

A dot of blue.

Morning Open Thread

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Sunday Open Thread

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Saturday Open Thread

Watch this powerful new video on the mounting job losses.

We cannot afford more of the same.

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