This is getting to be depressing. Maybe it's time to go back to Mali, to Tombouctou—for the next month, at least, until after election day. After all, it's not too hot there right now, and the Niger River is still high enough for the riverboat to make its way from Mopti to Gao, a leisurely trip with not a lot to do but watch for Tuarags over the sand dunes along the riverbank. There, perhaps, Sarah Palin's dishonest, deceitful, and decadent (yes, decadent) head wouldn't be haunting my waking hours.

First off it's October 6th, and most days bring with them a history of the past, much forgotten quickly and lessons not learned.

Here's just one for today which I'll call The bush Families & GOP's Favorite Terrorist Pal, and no it's not the one nobody thinks about anymore, especially the little bush:

by Jeff Huber

Your plan is a white flag of surrender in Iraq…the surge worked.

--Sarah Palin

Like so many neoconservatives, Sarah Palin has an odd notion of what winning and losing wars means when you're history's first global hegemon.

"Surrender" in Iraq would consist of all of our troops dropping their weapons and raising their hands, and allowing the evildoers to take them to one of Saddam Hussein's old prisons and strip their clothes off, and put ladies' panties on their heads, and threaten to allow German Shepherds to attack them, and make them form human pyramids, and hook electrodes to their genitals and then rape them with chemical light sticks, and then chain a couple of them from the ceiling by their wrists and beat them to death, and if anybody gives the evildoers any guff about their treatment of prisoners, they blame it on a few bad apples and get away with it. And when our soldiers ask to appeal their imprisonment in a court of law, the evildoers tell them they don't have any legal rights because the evildoers have unilaterally declared them illegal.

That, fellow citizens, is what "surrender" in Iraq would consist of, and I want to go on record as saying I'm foursquare against it. I won't presume to speak for Barak Obama or Joe Biden specifically or of the Democratic Party in general, but I think it's a safe bet that they're against that sort of thing too, so that gosh darn Sarah Palin really ought to quit talking like they aren't.

CNN came across with the report abit ago and it slowly drifting into the other news outlets, not much yet but thought I'd post up someting.

From ABC:

Biden Cancels More Events After Mother-in-Law's Death

ABC News' Matthew Jaffe reports: Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden today canceled two days of events after the death of his mother-in-law.

RIP - Bonnie Jacobs

Promoted for the discussion of herosism and humility because there are many of those we often overlook every day in our own lives -

So much is going on right now, with a complicated election, touching us all. But the attacks on one's character and patriotism have been particularly repugnant. It seems that within the divisiveness of McCain's pursuit of the presidency, the integral constructs of both honesty and humility have been lost.

That's the good news, for Ohio!

The bad news -- this Window on "no hassle" Voting
closes tomorrow October 6!

so that Ohio clock is ticking ...

USGS: Magnitutde 6.9 Earthquake - KYRGYZSTAN - 5 Oct 2008

Eventually the news will reach the outside world.

[Update] Reuters/Asia picked it up tomorrow, Oct 6th. (No, that's not a misprint.)

The Christian Science Monitor reports of some unintended consequences of Gov. Sarah Palin's introduction to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari at the United Nations in September.

A radical Muslim prayer leader said the president shamed the nation for "indecent gestures, filthy remarks, and repeated praise of a non-Muslim lady wearing a short skirt."

Feminists charged that once again a male Pakistani leader has embarrassed the country with sexist remarks. And across the board, the Pakistani press has shown disapproval.

Iraq

There have been 4,491 coalition deaths -- 4,177 Americans, 2 Australians, 1 Azerbaijani, 176 Britons, 13 Bulgarians, 1 Czech, 7 Danes, 2 Dutch, 2 Estonians, 1 Fijian, 5 Georgians, 1 Hungarian, 33 Italians, 1 Kazakh, 1 Korean, 3 Latvian, 22 Poles, 3 Romanians, 5 Salvadoran, 4 Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, 2 Thai and 18 Ukrainians -- in the war in Iraq as of October 3, 2008, according to a CNN count. { Graphical breakdown of casualties }. The list below is the names of the soldiers, Marines, airmen, sailors and Coast Guardsmen whose deaths have been reported by their country's governments. The list also includes seven employees of the U.S. Defense Department. At least 30,680 U.S. troops have been wounded in action, according to the Pentagon. View casualties in the war in Afghanistan.

Promoted. Originally posted 2008-10-04 13:53:38 -0500. -- GH

Update: Just saw this on 60 minutes.. 60 Minutes: How Some Arcane Wall Street Financial Instruments Magnified Economic Crisis (An eye opening investigation - buzz word is "swap.")

...this market is almost entirely unregulated.

The result is a huge shadow market that may control our financial destiny, and yet the details of these private insurance contracts are hidden from the public, from stockholders and federal regulators. No one knows what they cover, who owns them, and whether or not they have the money to pay them off.

One of the few sources of information is the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA), a trade organization made up the largest financial institutions in the world. Many of them are the very same companies that created the vast shadow market, lobbied to keep it unregulated, and are now drowning because of unanticipated risks.

It's like what Luaptifer worries about: We have the people who created the mess in control of the mess.

The hits just keep on acoming!.

The CBS 60 minute piece is a lot like the NPR American Life transcript of the Ira Glass program The Giant Pool of Money that JeninRI pointed out a while ago... It is fabulous... audio link here.

In that piece, they talk about some of the people who did these deals... like the guy who was a bartender until he became a mortgage backed securities guy, or the guy just out of college, doing the same thing as Mike and making $100,000 a month.