As 'Lawmakers seek market intervention,' President Bush goes mum on markets, the U.S. government scales the "commanding heights," taking an 80-percent stake in AIG, and the business press is accused of ignoring "the breathtaking corruption that overran the U.S. lending industry."

Sen. McCain declares that "we are a victim of the violation of the social contract between capitalism and the American citizen," and about his attempt to conflate "fundamentals" and "workers," the New York Times editorializes: "In the best Karl Rovian fashion, he implied that if you dispute his statement about the economy's firm foundation, you are, in effect, insulting American workers."

The AP reports on McCain's '2 faces,' and in a discussion about his long history of opposing regulation, it's speculated that the Keating Five scandal could emerge as a campaign issue.

McCain adviser Carly Fiorina will reportedly "now disappear" from TV for a while, following a day that was summarized as 'McCain staffers attempt to derail McCain's campaign,' and with his campaign having "picked off another Obama turn of phrase," the candidate himself gets picked off. Plus: Drudge cozies up to McCain.

A New York Review of Books article look at efforts to "downsize the electorate," that "make it harder for many black Americans to vote," the Obama campaign and the DNC file a lawsuit over the Michigan GOP's plan to use foreclosure lists to challenge voters, and Mark Crispin Miller argues that Gov. Palin could provide a Christian voter "surge" cover story for election theft.

As 'Republicans sue Republicans to help Palin,' her 'evolving excuses' for firing public safety commissioner Walt Monegan, are likened to the U.S. attorney purge, and it's said that "if Palin's new story is true, she fired Monegan for being too aggressive in going after child molesters."

Following a prediction that 'The Sarah Palin phenomenon is doomed,' her 'favorability ratings begin to falter,' in a Hotline-commissioned tracking poll, and as Eric Boehlert contends that "The campaign press has become a joke," it's speculated that a jokester by trade -- Jay Leno -- could be 'Palin's worst nightmare."

Leno makes fun of Palin's upcoming interview with Sean Hannity, who recently addressed the Value Voters Summit, as did Lou Dobbs, lending his endorsement to a popular new product.

Elizabeth Edwards calls the U.S. health-care system "extraordinarily immoral," during a talk in Philadelphia, and Bob Herbert is lauded for putting McCain's health-care plan 'Under the Microscope.' Plus: McCain's 'underwear gnome' plan to fix a broken health care system.'

As Barton Gellman talks "Angler" on "Fresh Air" and "Countdown," the Bush administration is estimated to have "spent $195 maintaining the secrets already on the books for every one dollar it spent declassifying documents in 2007," according to OpenTheGovernment.org's '2008 Secrecy Report Card.'

A bomb and rocket attack on the U.S. embassy in Yemen reportedly killed as many as sixteen people, and as Tariq Ali discusses his new book, and writes about how the 'The American war moves to Pakistan,' the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff follows, making a "hastily arranged visit" to the country on Tuesday.

As 'Afghan senators walk out over civilian deaths,' Defense Secretary Gates 'expresses regret for civilian deaths,' and the senior U.S. general in Afghanistan, blames a shortage of troops for having "to use more air power, at the cost of higher civilian casualties."

In what is being called an act of terrorism, with Mexico's drug gangs fingered, at least eight people were killed and 100 injured when several grenades exploded in the Michoacan capitol of Morelia, on the eve of the country's Independence Day.

Among the interviewees in "The Corpse Walkers," a collection of oral histories by "the most censored writer in China," Liao Yiwu, is someone who observed a corpse walker at work, and an outspoken public toilet manager.

September 16

About a "perfect storm of financial disasters," it's said that much of it "comes as a surprise to those average news consumers who had just settled their brains for a long fall's presidential campaign."

As Sens. McCain and Obama criticize their biggest donors, it's reported that McCain "has no history prior to the presidential campaign of advocating steps to tighten standards on investment firms," having "often taken his lead on financial issues from two outspoken advocates of free market approaches... Phil Gramm and Alan Greenspan."

Calling it 'Time to reform Wall Street,' Dean Baker writes that "The sight of rich bankers getting the boot might be lots of fun if it were just a spectator sport. Unfortunately, we are in the game with these clowns."

As William Greider optimistically suggests that "we can look forward to the new order that emerges from the wreckage," the McCain campaign is called on to ask Carly Fiorina to give back her $42 million golden parachute from Hewlett Packard, which announced on Monday that it's cutting 24,600 jobs.

A Boston Globe photo essay chronicles 'The short - but eventful - life of Ike,' which left 'Floodwaters around Galveston filled with oil and chemicals,' but "Americans are not addicted to oil," says George Allen, "Americans are addicted to freedom."

Among the revelations in Barton Gellman's "Angler," reviewed here, is that Cheney turned down Bush's request that he head up the federal response to Katrina, and, as Gellman said during an appearance Monday on "The Daily Show," if what Dick Armey says is true, Cheney "flat out lied" to Armey, during a classified pre-Iraq war briefing.

The U.S. Senate is expected to vote Tuesday on an amendment mandating that the Red Cross be given access to all U.S detainees, and as the 'U.S. denies Pakistan delegation access to Guantanamo detainees,' Glenn Greenwald interviews the ACLU's national legislative director about "the virtually complete invisibility of civil liberties and constitutional issues in the presidential campaign."

With Southern evangelicals said to be "the mainstay of the torture regime in this country," a 'Christian right voter summit sells racist "Obama Waffles,"' and 'Jewish voters complain of anti-Obama poll.'

As 'Gen. David Petraeus leaves Iraq after 20 months,' giving his "final U.S. interview" as commander to Fox News, 'ABC News can't be bothered with Iraq,' Peter Galbraith wants to "settle the issue of 'Who lost Iraq' now," and, it's argued that Bush 43 is only the 5th worst president in U.S. history.

'Pakistan orders troops to open fire if U.S. raids,' one day after both Pakistani and U.S. military officials denied that shots were fired near U.S. military helicopters in Pakistan, and Juan Cole asks: 'Is the Bush Administration at war with its own weapons in Pakistan?'

As Wired reports that "online spaces like 'World of Warcraft' are making some spooks, generals and Congressmen extremely nervous," a new computer game promotes "Muslim Massacre."

Following last week's backtrack by a leading member of the "Palin Truth Squad," Sen. McCain now says that 'Obama didn't call Palin a pig,' while defending his ad claiming that Obama did, and "The McCain campaign's decision to lie about, well, everything," is described as "a rational and obvious response to the rules laid down by the media."

With McCain 'practically bubble-wrapped these days,' on "Meet the Press," Rudy Giuliani tried to narrow McCain's claim about Gov. Palin's energy expertise, blamed campaign negativity on Obama's unwillingness to hold town halls with McCain, and asserted that he wasn't criticizing community organizers in his RNC speech, but rather, Obama's "sparse" record as one.

As media outlets are called on to 'show real spine,' Jay Rosen discusses his 'Spinewatch' campaign, Bill Moyers interviews "Shock Jocks" author Rory O'Connor about 'Rage on the Radio,' and a study finds that conservative are more immune than liberals to the debunking of false claims. Plus: 'Dear Politico, please stop.'

Harper's opens up its archive of articles by David Foster Wallace, who is said to have "left American literature with a body of work as fine as any produced in America in the last two decades."

As the Los Angeles Times reviews "State by State," which features 50 writers on 50 states, 19 of whom read their contribution for a short film, the Orlando Weekly welcomes readers to "the most tragic installment yet in our ongoing Our Dumb State series."

September 15

Stalked by fears of a "Black Monday," the financial system is "shaken to its core" by what a former head of Lehman terms "the most extraordinary events I've ever seen," with the Treasury Secretary opting for "Russian roulette" over bailout, and Nouriel Roubini warning of "a generalized run on most of the shadow banking system."

The White House is reportedly driving a jump in U.S. arms sales, with an attendant increase in the risk of blowback, as Walter Pincus sifts through Pentagon contract proposals for signs of military build up in Afghanistan, and Frida Berrigan examines the 'Pentagon legacy of the MBA president.'

Given the intensity of 'Pakistan fury at US cross-border attacks,' one analyst considers signs that the U.S. may be headed for "a third war."

A conflict between Kurds and Arabs in Iraq verges on explosion, as the press is kept away from the scene of a Baghdad bombing, an Iraqi TV crew is murdered in Mosul, and Patrick Cockburn warns that, if he wins, McCain's "lack of understanding of what is happening in Iraq could ignite a fresh conflict."

The killing of a 'Sunni proponent of reconciliation,' the latest in a string of attacks on members of the "Awakening" movement, highlights the problematic status of decommissioning efforts, as the U.S. led coalition in Iraq continues to dwindle.

In the wake of Ike, Galveston is 'a ravaged island covered with rubbish,' facing "growing public health concerns," where prisoners were left behind to face the storm despite "warnings that those who remained in the area faced 'certain death.'"

Texas faces the 'largest blackout in its history' and the possibility that it will take weeks to restore power, as the price of oil goes down but that of gasoline goes up with the prospect of more extended shortages on the horizon.

The New York Times looks at efforts to restore voting rights to ex-convicts who have been disenfranchised under state laws that are often a holdover from the Reconstruction era, as a variety of obstacles to voting in the upcoming election are surveyed.

Gambling on a rejection of traditional standards for what is permissible, John McCain personally takes up his campaign's cry about "lipstick on a pig," as Karl Rove talks on the one hand about "a step too far" but on the other insinuates that Obama's initial comment was somehow both "unconscious" and "deliberate."

With the "Straight Talk Express" increasingly viewed as 'off the rails,' proliferating campaign lies become an explicit campaign target, and Dan Froomkin advises reporters to start asking: "How reality-based is the candidate?"

Digging into Sarah Palin's record of governance, the New York Times finds evidence that she was 'vindictive, secretive, and hypocritical,' provoking a comparison of 'Angler and Barracuda,' as it's argued that 'Palin may not know the Bush Doctrine, but she sure sounds like Bush.'

Although she continues to be a major draw for the GOP faithful, Palin doesn't appear to be scoring so well in the electoral college, and draws a record crowd of protesters in Anchorage, where approval of the governor is far from universal, and different rhetoric is called for.

In her portrayal of Palin on "Saturday Night Live," Tina Fey is said to have "neatly captured real Sarah's self-serving tendency to exploit and appropriate Hillary's stature and political circumstances."

Postmodern writer David Foster Wallace, who committed suicide on Friday, known for his "strobe-lit portraits of a millennial America," also ventured into journalism with observations on "the professional smile," and a piece on a radio "Host," that Jack Shafer termed, "The best article I've ever read about the contemporary cable TV-news business."

One of the articles for which Wallace was best known was his sympathetic snapshot of John McCain circa 2000, which appeared in a variety of incarnations, although his view of the candidate had grown considerably more cynical by the time of his interview with the Wall Street Journal on the subject earlier this year.

A massacre in northern Bolivia underlines a more general escalation in violence and raises questions about U.S. funding of right-wing separatists, as it 'evokes memories of Salvador Allende.' Plus: 'In Pinochet's Footsteps.'

The discovery of the "bodies of 24 people killed execution-style" and local reporters "crowd-sourcing" stories on the drug war out of fear of retaliation illustrate the degree to which organized crime has taken control away from the police in parts of Mexico.

September 12-14

With the Pakistani army reportedly 'ordered to hit back,' and the U.S. military pumping up the drones, Gareth Porter discusses the rationale behind and the backers of the new Bush administration embrace of cross-border raids.

Glenn Greenwald examines how Fox News and the Pentagon have been "working in unison" to bolster "blatant and now clearly demonstrated lying" about "collateral damage" in Afghanistan following, as Tom Engelhardt underlines, a narrative of tell-tale uniformity.

An amendment sponsored by Sens. Lieberman and McCain attempts to achieve "strategic victory" in "the war on terror" by legislative fiat, while a Woodward-inspired narrative painting "President Bush as a valiant hero who stood up to his generals and insisted on the surge" is debunked.

The New York Post leads with "joke politics" on the anniversary of 9/11, as terror fears wane and commemoration goes virtual, while Andy Worthington surveys the bitter legacy of how the Bush administration chose to respond.

The Village Voice critiques the selective truths on display at the new 9/11 museum, an editor at Mother Jones wades through the 'parallel universe' of 9/11 conspiracy films in search of the plausible, and Dennis Kucinich makes the case for moving from the retributive justice of 9/11 to "truth and reconciliation."

Aside from all the prurient details, the corruption scandal at the Minerals Management Service brings to light a failure to prosecute the sexual assault of a subordinate, the cost of wrecking crew values, and a potential weakness for a "pipe dream."

Cindy McCain's 'tangled tale of addiction' hits the front page of the Washington Post after an editing hiccup, with a whistleblower's testimony raising questions about whether McCain tampered with the DEA to protect his career.

Despite an unprecedented 'blizzard of lies' coming out of the McCain campaign, shouting out "an elaborate fictional narrative of victimhood," and skirting the facts, James Carville still refuses to believe that John McCain could possibly have approved.

About the latest McCain display of umbrage, Newsweek notes that "It's not chauvinist -- or disrespectful--to point out when your opponent is lying. Even if she's a woman," while the Los Angeles Times tracks 'a new election low: distorting the fact-checking.'

McClatchy reports that complaints about charging rape victims up to $1200 for medical exams in Wasilla during Sarah Palin's tenure as mayor led to a general ban on the practice throughout Alaska, which has long had the highest per capita sexual assault rate in the nation.

In her interview debut, Palin was, Juan Cole concludes, "nervous, uninformed, green and generally not ready for prime time," and despite a "blizzard of words," Jack Shafer finds that -- the issue of actual presidential qualifications aside -- "She wasn't even ready for this interview."

Although she's popular with the base, and stands with Sen. Inhofe linking 9/11 and Iraq, Politico reports that Palin gets a cool reception from the GOP foreign policy experts, and former GOP Senator Lincoln Chafee goes so far as to describe her as a 'cocky whacko.'

Asked about Palin's foreign policy experience, McCain replies "She knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America," while in her interview Palin tried the same sort of deflection. And both make the same basic error.

Urged to go on the offensive, Sen. Obama releases a new commercial mocking his opponent as "an out-of-touch, out-of-date computer illiterate."

After the 'mother of all bailouts,' reports that the federal government is giving troubled Lehman Brothers a helping hand are fueling an anti-bailout backlash, amid signs that the Bush administration is tossing its faith in the free market overboard. Plus: 'Take a load off Fannie.'

Amid fears that a new cold war could spread to Latin America, another U.S. ambassador gets the boot, in an escalating diplomatic row initially set off by accusations that the U.S. was working with Bolivian separatists -- not to mention some other curious shenanigans.

September 11

With 'South Asia in turmoil,' seven years after 9/11, the 'Pentagon admits Afghan strategy not succeeding,' but Afghans aren't sold on a U.S. "surge."

CJR traces the life cycle of a now dead meme about Afghan security, Keith Olbermann calls on Sen. McCain to share his plan for capturing bin Laden, and a right-wing radio talker rails against the Bush administration for "outsourcing" the hunt for bin Laden, about whom Bush himself is said to have a new-found 'craving." Plus: White House tries to muddy 'mastermind' waters.

In time for its September 11 edition, the New York Times is told by "senior administration officials," that Bush did secretly approve orders in July allowing U.S. special forces to carry out ground raids inside Pakistan, without the prior approval of the Pakistani government.

With the U.S. entering the "endgame" in Iraq, according to Defense Secretary Gates, it's again reminded that the surge has not delivered on political reconciliation, and the Guardian's Jonathan Steele writes that while "Security is massively improved ... one has to mention the enormous legacy of human misery which the invasion and five years of occupation unleashed."

'Iraq cancels six no-bid oil contracts,' some with companies that 'gave sex, drinks, gifts to federal overseers' in the U.S., with accusations centering on the Minerals Management Service, whose officials 'Tried to rewrite ethics rules to accommodate their partying.'

With a report that the 'Oil brokers sex scandal may affect drilling debate,' Hurricane Ike is headed for the greatest concentration of oil refineries and chemical plants in the U.S.

As a study fingers speculators, not supply and demand, as a primary reason for oil price swings, 'Russian bombers land in Venezuela,' where President Hugo Chavez gets some support from the U.S. intelligence community for his claim that "Yankee hegemony is finished."

OMB Watch details 'Bush's last-minute rush to dismantle public protections,' which the press was advised to look out for, and a report from proponents of open government, finds that 'U.S. government secrecy continues to rise.'

As candidate McCain marks four weeks without a press conference, a 9/11 advertising truce will force his campaign to call off the wolves that appear in an ad titled 'Fact Check," which in addition to pulling down an 'Orwell Award,' was actually debunked by FactCheck.org.

Andrew Sullivan finds the alternative to Barack Obama "now unthinkable ... And McCain - no one else - has proved it," and one possible answer to Michael Kinsley's question, 'Why Do Lies Prevail?,' can be found in a he said/she said column touting the McCain campaign's success "in seizing the storyline of the day and putting Obama on the defensive."

As the Wall Street Journal reports that an 'Ethics adviser warned Palin about trooper issue," Politico discovers that she "requested millions of federal dollars for everything from improving recreational halibut fishing to studying the mating habits of crabs and the DNA of harbor seals," and the AP goes up top in reporting that ''McCain and Palin castigate the earmarks she seeks."

SARABC An article does not do justice to ABC's planned synergization of its interviews with Gov. Palin, which "will air across ABC News' platforms, including ABC News Radio, ABC News NOW, ABCNEWS.com and ABC NewsOne."

During an appearance with David Letterman, Sen. Obama said that "This is sort of silly season in politics, not that there's a non-silly season, but it gets sillier."

The online reaction to an article about a BBC poll finding that most people outside the U.S. prefer Obama to McCain, is almost uniformly hostile.

As 'Michigan Republicans plan to foreclose African American voters,' Mississippi's governor and secretary of state are accused of having "come up with a particularly cynical dirty trick for the November election," and Rep. Dennis Kucinich's call for a "National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation" gets few takers among mainstream media outlets.

Rolling Stone profiles Chucky Taylor, the son of Charles Taylor, who was raised in Orlando, but returned to Liberia as a teen, and is now the first U.S. citizen on trial for torture abroad, and New York Times reporter Helene Cooper discusses her memoir about her upper-crust childhood in Liberia, before the family was forced to flee.

September 10

Bob Woodward's "The War Within," is described by Robert Dreyfuss as "the 'In Cold Blood' of national security journalism," and Robert Parry uses it to further debunk the "established conventional wisdom among mainstream Washington journalists that the 'surge' was the singular reason for the recent decline in Iraq's violence."

'Bush's Iraq withdrawal small because gains are, too,' reports McClatchy, and as Bush's troop moves are debated by two generals, one of whom is the retired Jack Keane, Dan Froomkin bids farewell to Lt. Gen. William E. Odom, "the earliest, most prescient and most persistent senior military critic of the war in Iraq."

In '9/11 Plus Seven,' Andrew Bacevich sees the administration's goal of "transforming the Islamic world," as having produced "next to nothing, apart from squandering vast resources and exacerbating the slide toward debt and dependency that poses a greater strategic threat to the United States than Osama bin Laden ever did."

Bin Laden is depicted "as a preferred oil supplier to the U.S.," by the group "Americans for American Energy," which, reports SourceWatch, is funded by a lobbying firm that received a $3 million "no bid contract from the State of Alaska to campaign for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."

'A Big Boon for Big Oil,' is how James Ridgeway describes Alaska's governor, and Michael Kinsley, in assessing 'Sarah Palin's Alaskonomics,' depicts Alaska as, "in essence, an adjunct member of OPEC," and finds "no evidence that being dependent on Alaskan oil would be any more pleasant to the pocketbook." Plus: 'Democrats' proposal would allow some new offshore drilling.'

An article on how 'Palin's leadership style has admirers and critics,' coincides with reports about her promoting the commander of the Alaska National Guard after he abruptly changed his public stance on her duties, and firing an aide after the Palins discovered that he was dating the soon-to-be-ex wife of a close friend of Todd Palin.

An AP report notes that in addition to her comments during flights being off the record, "So far, Palin has barely spoken with voters either," and as a front-page article in the Washington Post describes how "Palin and John McCain ... have been more aggressive in recent days in repeating what their opponents say are outright lies," CJR addresses "the impotence of the standard fact check."

After Obama laid out his education plan in a speech -- video & text -- on Tuesday, the McCain campaign released an ad claiming that Obama supported legislation to teach "comprehensive sex education" to "kindergartners."

As a Scholastic blogger goes "On the Media" to discuss coverage of No Child Left Behind, various articles indicate that the number of homeless students is increasing, and the Memphis Commercial Appeal reports on how a 24-hour curfew zone in one of the poorest areas of Helena, Arkansas, has touched off a battle between the city's mayor and the ACLU.

With the VA now agreeing to allow voter registration at its facilities, a Truthout report on how 'Nearly 600,000 subject to possible caging in Ohio,' is followed by a listing of "some of the key factors that still endanger the vote in Ohio and around the nation." Plus: 'McCain takes lead even as Democrats out-register Republicans?'

The McCain campaign gets more blowback, from New York's governor, for its smearing of "community organizers," and candidate McCain is described as "the first ever third-party candidate licensed to run against a major political party by that party itself."

The concept of loophole-inspired hybrid ads, like this one, is explained, the 'Media embrace McCain's "maverick" re-branding effort,' and Eric Boehlert contends that "The press is just as anxious as McCain to have Bush go away."

As the great "lipstick on a pig" debate rages, which even Mark Halperin characterizes as "the press just absolutely playing into the McCain campaign's crocodile tears," 2004 'Wimblehack champ Bumiller serves notice she won't relinquish crown without a fight.'

Bill O'Reilly offers up the "dubious associations" portion of his interview with Obama, Matthew Yglesias enters 'The Surreal World' of a "Hardball" segment, and Tony Karon asks: "Is there no screed of rabid hysteria too dumb for the New York Times op-ed page?"

'Israeli security made me dance,' says Abdur-Rahim Jackson, who dances professionally with Alvin Ailey, and an Israeli cabinet member, who is an ex-Mossad agent, floats the notion of kidnapping Iranian President Ahmadinejad.

September 9

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