John_Schwada's Blog

Gary Cypres is not a household name – yet. But his dream is going to make a splash. Cypres is a pack-rat with a magnificent obsession. For a quarter of a century, this businessman has been assembling a vast, rambling – yes, sometimes eccentric - collection of sports memorabilia. And now, lucky us, he’s sharing it with the world.

I met Cypres last week at his “baby,” the Sports Museum of Los Angeles. The 65-year-old, lanky Brooklyn native was pacing around his 32,000 square foot museum on its opening day, the day after Thanksgiving. He was as nervous as a first-time father in a maternity ward waiting room. After getting a quick tour of his mind-boggling museum, I asked him if his collecto-philia needed to be treated by a psychiatrist. Cypres grinned and admitted he had probably gotten a “little excessive.” (Note to self: patient seems to be a good sport).

For years, a lot of Cypres’ artifacts were stored at his house.

Cypres’ wife must be long-suffering. Can you imagine trying to vacuum around that glass case, in the living room, containing Babe Ruth’s Dodger (yes, Dodger) uniform (Ruth was first base coach for the Dodgers in 1938). That uniform is now one of the thousands of sports artifacts in Cypres’ museum.

Or how about that mock-up of Ebbets Field, so big it could just barely squeeze into the average two-car garage? I can just hear Mrs. Cypres now: “Hey, Gary, can you lift up that Ebbets Field thing so I can dust under it?” His retort: “Gimme me a minute dear, I’m on the phone, trying to get a deal on a dozen 1890’s leather football helmets that were just found in an old maid’s attic in Vermont.”

Or if you’re Ms. Cypres, how about trying to find space on the fireplace mantle for a few photos of the couple’s five kids. “Uh, honey, can I squeeze a graduation picture here of Junior in among these old Charles Conlon photos? Huh, Gary, huh?” His answer: “No problem, sweetiepie. You know, you gotta love those 1920’s photos of Yankee ballplayers. But for Junior’s graduation photo - sure make a little room. And by the way, just a little heads up! I’ve got a truckload of Willard Mullin blue-line sports cartoons coming in this evening....maybe we can drain the pool and store them there? Whatta you think, hon?”

Or what happens when Ms. Cypres, digging around for some grocery money in her husband’s wallet, fishes out a little piece of cardboard with a painting on it of a guy who parts his hair in the middle. “Hey, Gary found this old card, with the funny-looking guy on it in your wallet – should I toss it?” His reply: “No baby! That’s my Honus Wagner! That’s going to be the centerpiece of that museum I’ve been telling you about.” In fact, until recently, Cypres did pack his Honus Wagner T206 baseball card in his wallet; when he pulled it out and showed it to KTTV cameraman Bob Keet about two weeks, he (the cameraman) nearly fainted. The last time a Honus Wagner T206 went on the market it sold for $2.8 million. The T206 - one of the first baseball cards ever made, and this particular one commemorating a pioneering giant of the sport - now holds court, behind protective glass, in Cypres’ museum. It is the most costly single item in his $30 million collection.

Like I said: Cypres has now moved his collection out of his house, out of storage and into the public arena – as a museum, located at the corner of Washington Blvd. and Main Street.

I did a live-shot for KTTV’s 10 am news show from the museum the day it opened to the public, and I was blown away.

The Sports Museum contains the gloves and uniforms of countless Dodger stars on display, including those of Gil Hodges, Sandy Koufax, Duke Snider, all from that era between 1941 and 1956 when the Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers were locked in their legendary rivalry. During those years, the two teams played each other seven times in the World Series and Cypres has got the gloves, balls, bats, uniforms in his collection that tell the story of that rivalry.

Among my favorites: Willard Mullin sports cartoons, the originals (blue-lines), that feature Mullin’s cartoon invention, the Brooklyn Bum, the unofficial Brooklyn Dodgers mascot. My favorite is Mullin’s “Who’s Da Bum!” cartoon that commemorates the Dodgers’ victory over the Yankees in 1955, to win the World Series…

Don’t get me wrong: the Sports Museum also has rooms devoted to basketball, football, tennis and golf memorabilia....Cypres is an equal opportunity collector.

But don’t take my word for it. Go see the Sports Museum for yourself. It's only a hop-skip-and-a-jump from USC, the Coliseum, LA Live! and Staples, at the corner of Main St. and Washington Blvd. Get out of the house, stretch your legs, give your imagination and your memories a little exercise. And thank Mrs. C for pushing Gary and his collection out of the house.

(The Sports Museum lists these ticket prices: adults, $17.50; seniors and students, with ID, $14.00; children ages 5-12, $11,: children under 5, free; special rates for groups of 15 or more).

I’m not bellyaching. Or bragging. But being a journalist can be beautifully painful, exasperating and exhilarating - all at once. Sort of like biting a loose tooth. And sometimes the quintessence of it is packed into a few “crowded hours” (Teddy Roosevelt’s phrase). Suddenly life is like a haiku - on caffeine. Or maybe chicken salad sandwich you sat on in your car. Lots of stuff mashed together. Ugly, tasty, confusing. Take, for example, this day:

THURSDAY, 9 am to noon: I spend the first few hours at work trying to wrap up an investigative piece on telemarketing scams (tele-scam). Part of the morning futilely spent trying to get a booking photo from authorities in Arizona of Robyn Mayhan, a central figure in this story (Mayhan’s $20 million scam involved over-the-phone sales of consumer products, the proceeds allegedly benefiting U.S. Blind Services and Helping Hands of Hope, two “charity” groups); another hour spent re-writing parts of story per managing editor Larry Croner; half-hour or so shuttling copies of finished piece to Fox attorney Lisa Rafferty, to get her sign-off (required for these kinds of pieces). More than a soupcon of anxiety because tele-scam is scheduled to air tonight, and it is only now going to the (video) editor. Not good! KTTV news director Jose Rios is a stickler for wanting to preview investigative pieces (the final product) a day or two before they air. So producer Dan Leighton and I are tiptoeing around the newsroom hoping to avoid Jose and his censure (when he’s mad, Jose gets you in his office, pushes a button and his door shuts behind you; very dramatic, very intimidating - the only thing missing is the soundtrack from some film noir movie of a prison door clanking shut).

THURSDAY, 1-6 pm: As the video editor slowly stitches the piece together, Dan and I completely take leave of our senses and race off to Woodland Hills to see if we can, finally, find and confront Tracy Ballard, the Woodland Hills woman sued in mid-October by the Federal Trade Commission for running an illegal credit repair company (Success Credit Services); Ballard is another central figure in our tele-scam story (she and Robyn Mayhan are running totally separate businesses – both allegedly illegal). If we get Ballard on camera, she’ll probably run or slam a door in our face; supposedly she’s got a temper. Whatever. It’d make good video. (Her attorney has already blown us off completely, refusing to return my phone calls for comment). There are no videographers around so Dan grabs a small video camera, and we go to the Woodland Hills office where Ballard’s father is a realtor. We had a tip Ballard might be there. But there’s no sign of her. At 4 pm we head back to the office (no pages or phone calls from Jose, thank God); we’ve got to take a look at what editor Mark Tickell has wrought. We slip into the station, take the backstairs, see Tickell’s work, tell him it’s great but he needs to finish up. Pronto. “How much time do I have,” he asks. Forty-five minutes; the piece has to be on Jose’s desk by 5:30 pm, or, for sure, Dan and I will get the prison door treatment. Long story short, the piece is finished and on Jose’s desk; he approves it, and it’s ready to be aired tonight, at 10 pm.

THURSDAY, 6-10 pm: God’s got monkeywrenches and a wacky sense of humor, and on this night he deals from the bottom of the deck pulls out a joker (does that sound a little like some dimestore mystery writer’s line?). At about 6 pm, a firestorm sweeps down from the hills, swamping Montecito in flames, dozens of homes are devastated in the first few hours. Dozens more are on the grill, roasting. The piece with Ballard is blown out – held; the newscast is monopolized by fire. Okay, I can handle that. It’s better to be blown out by a real story than by a freeway pursuit that usually ends with some jackalope (you’ve seen the postcards of the jackalope if you ever visited truck stops – a half rabbit, half antelope creature) meekly throwing up his hands and being marched off to jail.

THURSDAY, 11 pm: Just as I’m circling our bed, preparing to lie down like a dog and lick my wounds one last time before falling asleep (crusty tears congealed in my eyelashes), the phone rings. It’s the office, my wife tells me. Uh, oh. I take the phone and am told to report to work at 4 am – in five hours. Go to Santa Barbara, do live-shots from Montecito for the morning show.

I just saw an uplifting, hopeful film that made me feel….justified. It’s rare that you can walk out of a cinematic experience and realize that those secret, idiosyncratic dreams you’ve been harboring, those stolen moments you’ve used to nurture those guilty dreams - that they are exalted, worthy, even respectable. I speak, of course, of that secret cache of grass clippings, coffee grounds and banana peels I have squirreled away in the sideyard despite the looks of doubting family and snickering neighbors.

Actually, what I’m talking about is the documentary film “Food Fight” (link to film website) by producer, director and foodie Chris Taylor. It’s 83-minutes of pleasure and information; I saw it in a packed theatre Saturday afternoon at the AFI FEST, Los Angeles, and it should be required viewing by anyone who cares about why we eat so poorly and how we can change all that.

Chris has put a lot of this puzzle together with the help of food revolutionaries, like chefs Wolfgang “Spago” Puck and Alice “Chez Panisse” Waters, and a bunch of organic farmers with dirt under the nails from Sonoma, Milwaukee and Long Island. Chris’ story goes like this: During WWII U.S. agri-business and food-processors, in order to feed our troops, perfected K-rations and other forms of high-calorie food delivery systems, that became the fathers of the TV dinners of the 1950’s and the grandfathers of today’s fast-food outlets; that agri-business (not the farmers really so much as the giant commodity companies), with the help of Richard Nixon’s agriculture secretary Earl Butz, turned the American farming heartland into a profit-center that sold, off-loaded, if you will, truckloads and silos full of cheap, high-calorie commodities into the gaping pie-holes of the American consumer. Those foods are now killing us – through obesity and rising health care costs. Cheap calories are killer calories, “Food Fight” tells us, as it pans down long aisles of potato chips and snack foods, wrapped in glossy packages like so many whores at the Mustang Ranch….

But “Food Fight” is not content to send us – depressed and angry at our lot – straight to the pantry to grab a bag of comforting potato chips and a bottle of beer. No, Chris Taylor shows us that folks like Puck and Waters and farmer’s markets can lead us out of this nightmare to a land of organic foods that guess what? – tastes a helluva a lot better and is a million times better for our overtaxed stomachs and arteries than the stuff we’ve been eating for years.

The revolution, as "Food Fight" points out, actually began in Berkeley (a place dear to my heart ) where Waters wanted to feed hippies, professors, poets and revolutionaries some good food. In the process, she discovered locally-grown fruits and vegetables tasted better than the stuff she was buying for her larder from super-markets – and Voila! California cuisine was born. Her success and findings set in motion a chain-reaction that has created an expanding loop of good food. More demand meant more supply. Soon well-fed hippies were hip, and restaurants serving amazing food, built around fresh, organically-grown dishes, were sprouting faster than Shittake mushrooms  – led by chefs who apprenticed in Waters’ Chez Panisse kitchen. On a more mundane level, witness the growing numbers of organic meats, fruits and vegetables appearing in even our most venal chain markets. And witness the  increasingly popular farmer's market movement. Yes, these foods cost more than the pre-packaged stuff that is the staple of most restaurants and grocery stores. But, as the computer guys say, junk in, junk out. The bottom-line is that if we eat poorly we cripple and kill ourselves.

Another bottom-line: Go to Chris’ website, see his film, support the organic food revolution…

Oh, and by the way, maybe Chris Taylor's work-of-love-documentary will allow me to step out of the shadows, turn my  coffee-grounds, grass clippings and banana peels into a compost pile – and eventually into a real garden - where I can while away stolen, guilt-free moments digging in the dirt like a worm, making little green things grow. Maybe, too, when I feed a garden-grown heirrloom tomato into my wife's mouth it'll wipe away all her doubts about her husband's "hare-brained" schemes. Thank you Chris Taylor for “Food Fight.”

The media just got another disappointing report card about its presidential election coverage – this time from the American public. The Rasmussen Reports pollsters just found that overall 51 percent of the public believes reporters were biased in favor of Obama’s candidacy; only 7 percent said reporters were biased for McCain.

Nor is the Rasmussen finding a lonely creature crying in the wilderness.

On Oct. 14, the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA) released an analysis of the election coverage of the nightly TV network news programs in the critical period August 23 to Sept. 30. We’re not talking about raving commentator/bloviator-types but the work of anchors and reporters. CMPA’s “scientific” analysis found 65 percent of the references to Obama by anchors and reporters were positive; only 36 percent were positive about McCain (see CMPA article).

CMPA director Robert Lichter said of his center’s findings: "For whatever reason, the media are portraying Barack Obama as a better choice for president than John McCain…If you watch the evening news, you'd think you should vote for Obama." (This finding ifollows on the heels of another Rasmussen poll-finding – that large numbers of voters made up their minds about a month ago, just as network TV anchors and reporters, according to CMPA, were assiduously telling viewers “you should vote for Obama”).

And now, on election day, comes the Rasmussen Report findings (see full findings) that 51 percent of the public believes reporters were biased for Obama. Here's more from that Rasmussen Report:

Men are far more suspicious than women. Fifty-seven percent (57%) of male voters think reporters actively favored Obama, compared to a plurality of female voters (46%). Eighty-four percent (84%) of Republicans and 51% of unaffiliated voters say reporters have tried to help Obama (emphasis added), but just 24% of Democrats agree. Nearly half of Democrats (49%) say reporters tried to be unbiased, and only 12% think they tried to help McCain.

Actually, I find all this weirdly comforting. Now there's scientific evidence that the media played spin-doctor for Obama and might have significantly skewed the outcome of a presidential election. I mean, for a time I was worried that I was imagining all this.

So now what? What’s coming? What creature is it that’s slouching toward Bethlehem?

Let’s take a look. The mainstream media is already struggling financially. The LA Times, for example, is a giant sinking ship. Every so often we get new reports of the unfolding media calamity from Times’ survivor/reporters who are either escaping the foundering Times of their own accord or being forced off the ship by new cutbacks. The latest signs of disaster are to arrive later this month; that’s when the Times Washington Bureau will be downgraded…more layoffs. No question internet competition, changing demographics have a lot to do with all this (see article).

But the mainstream media’s bottom-line may also be suffering because of its “credibility gap.” If the public is losing its confidence that the media is being fair, giving them the straight-stuff, providing a real forum for competing ideas, would it be surprising if maybe, must maybe, Martha and John Q. Public stopped buying newspapers, watching the marquee nightly network news shows? Would you blame them? But maybe I’m wrong: maybe no one grimaced – or canceled their subscription - when they saw the Times frontpage headline about the third presidential debate, "McCain Doesn't Seal the Deal."

But why, you ask, should anyone care if the Times sinks under the weight of its thinly-disguised biases?

Well, the unpleasant truth is that if you take the LA Times out of this news market and leave it up to TV news, radio stations, The Daily News, LA Weekly, a few blogs to fill the gap – then you’ve really got a serious problem. Because with rare exceptions, none of these outlets have the news-gathering resources, the depth and talent, to effectively cover the Southland.

Let’s face it: the sad fact is that the Times sets the agenda at news meetings all around town. If the Times doesn’t know what’s happening, doesn’t care or has an agenda that keeps it from telling us what’s happening, the rest of us “other” newshounds are flying sort of blind, relying on self-serving press releases from government agencies, juggling hand-outs from movie star press agents, feeding on the junk dredged from police radio calls, stuffing our news pie-holes with freeway pursuits...Lovely.

And when the mainstream media are marginalized, slash their staff, even go belly-up, who is going to pay professional reporters middle-class salaries to go out and dig up the news? The blogosphere and the internet websites? I’m skeptical. I’m afraid that our “news” will come from part-time, untrained, unedited “reporters” working out of their kitchens….who do not live and breath in the professional reporter culture of a newsroom and imbibe its special, healthy ambience and values.

Hmmm. Remind me again - what good is all that culture, that professionalism, those values, that training and that editing if the media fails to cover a presidential election fair and square?

There must be some agonies greater than getting kids to write their college application essays. But right now, as my household struggles through Parental College-Essay Trauma (known as PCET in academic circles), I’m having a hell of a time coming up with one.

Maybe falling from a ladder and breaking my ankle practically in two – that’s a good start on what this experience is like. Or perhaps being trapped in an elevator with Paul Begala, Joy Behar, Bill O’Reilly and four-dozen boa constrictors. How about a drug-less amputation a la U.S. Civil War? I’m getting warm now. Still, the imagination fails to concoct a metaphor adequate to describe the parental pain of trying to get a 17-year-old, on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon, to write a politically correct and mildly uplifting essay. Maybe something other than 500 words about “how I spent the summer gutting small, helpless birds that I shot with a pellet gun, from the porch of my parent’s summer home in Aspen, while listening to AC/DC on my I-Pod.” Don’t get me wrong, that is totally made-up!!! But you can see how the mind, in mid-torture, can go haywire....

Actually, my kid is a very good writer….when his mind is set on it. But there’s something about serial, ad nauseum compulsory essay-writing that turns him into a sullen, slothful teenager. Imagine that….

“So is watching this football game more important than writing your 250 word essay about which Stanford chemistry professor you would most like to meet and why?” That was my tactless question as I approached the kid, all 6 foot 2 inches of him, sprawled across the sofa watching a Saturday afternoon college football game on TV. His reply, of course, was surly, elliptical and sporadically unprintable. But who can really begrudge him his squalid dereliction? After all, he’s spent the last few months prepping for SAT exams as a sideline (some extracurricular activity, huh?) while taking a full load of college-level AP courses at one of the nation’s toughest high schools.

Waiting for the kid are dozens of essay questions like: “Albert Einstein once said all he needed in life was a slide rule, a hair-brush and a glass of wine to make his life complete. What are the three things you need to make your life complete? Please keep your essay to 450 to 500 words.” I tried to think how I’d answer this one; all I could think of were various tools of self-abuse….razor blades, methamphetamines and safety pins, maybe a shard of glass I could stick in my eye???

Anyway, wielding a whip and chair like the lion-tamer at the circus, I finally managed this afternoon to coax the snarling kid to sit down in front of his computer again to face another dozen or so supplemental college essays. For those of you untutored in the college essay maze, there’s usually one big “common application” essay – good for many schools. But then each school, depending on their US News & World Report sado-masochism ranking (the higher the better, so they say), requires a few extra, “supplemental” essays just to top off the kids’ cup of misery.

Actually, I should feel thankful. One parent recently told me his daughter and her girlfriends had essay-writing sessions where they gather at a friends’ house, share essay ideas, break down into hysterical crying jags and then text-message their parents to immediately make appointments with their psychiatrists. My wife and I have at least been spared that.

Also the kid so far he hasn’t produced a devastatingly acidic essay about his mother and me that lays us out – in full body-slam verbiage – as child-abusers.

I was talking to a parent earlier in the day about her high school senior and the college essay process. She was distraught. To say the least. Her son had actually used his essay as a kind of Malayan throwing knife - that he aimed straight at her and her husband!! And the writing coach, who the mother had hired to assist her son find his “voice” - so he could write “a compelling, authentic-sounding essay” - was actually complicit, encouraging the teenager in his murderous literary attack on his parents. It seems this young man’s thesis was that he was raised like Romulus and Remus on a she-wolf’s teats in the wilderness. His parents – he alleged in his essay - had been so busy making money that they had virtually abandoned him, forcing him to forage for sustenance, both physical and spiritual, at the Santa Monica Promenade.This child-beast, raised-in-the-wilderness, is now hoping his tale of neglect and woe will carry him to Harvard, Yale and Princeton - perhaps on a scholarship for the disadvantaged.

Sounds like a good strategy, come to think of it. But his mother may die of guilt in the interim. Or humiliation. But, as I told this woman, if her son’s essay gets him into a great college she will not have died in vain.

Here's a hoot. The Pew Center for the People and the Press did a survey to see who's most knowledgeable about current political matters: people who read The New Yorker, watch CNN, listen to Rush Limbaugh or watch Hannity & Colmes on the Fox News Channel. Three questions were asked of people who were identified as regular consumers of news from these four news sources - and three dozen others (Chris Matthews' Hardball, The Colbert Report, MSNBC, etc. etc.).

Now hold on to your seat-belts. The best-informed group is those who watch Hannity & Colmes.

Hannity & Colmes, of course, is a show that's reviled by liberals. According to them, H&C's viewers are ignoramuses, in cutoff jeans and wife-beater t-shirts, who sit in their Baracloungers, with a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer clutched in one beefy hand, as they scratch their testicles with their other hand (which is, of course, decorated with a tattoo of a Confederate flag - let your imagination decide which appendage has the tattoo) - and cheer on the arch-conservative Hannity as he pummels the left and browbeats his out-matched liberal co-host, Colmes.

Okay, maybe the Hannity & Colmes audience does not take the trophy for having the best record of answering all three questions correctly - but it comes in 4th place. Forty-two percent of H&C's audience got all three questions right - a record exceeded only by regular readers of The New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly (48%), NPR (44%) and Chris Matthew's Hardball (43%). CNN and Fox News Channel tied - only 19% of their viewers answered all three questions correctly.

But there's another way to look at the numbers: which news source had viewers who got the most answers right on average? Hannity & Colmes. Here's how you figure that out -- On the first question, 84% of H&C's viewers got it right, on the second question, 73% got it right, on the third, 49%. Add the percentages together (84+73+49=206) then divide by 3 (206/3=68.66) and you get 68.66%. In other words, 68.66% of the time H&C's viewers got the right answer. That's higher than any other group, including the folks who read Talk of the Town to find their political views, wear Patek Philippe watches, Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses and vacation at Martha's Vineyard...yes, indeed, the readers of The New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly only answered correctly 67% of the time.

Here are the questions: what party is in the majority in Congress, who is the U.S. Secretary of State and who is the prime minister of Great Britain?

For the complete story about the survey here's the link:
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/993/who-knows-news-what-yo
u-read-or-view-matters-but-not-your-politics

Sometimes I feel like I’m living in a fantasyland. It’s as if we finally have a Ministry of Truth, as envisioned by George Orwell in his novel, 1984. Orwell’s Ministry of Truth treated its citizens like children who could be led to accept the most blatant fairy tales – as truth. Now, it appears we have privately-owned media engaged in producing fairy tales…and doing it so brazenly that it makes you wonder if they don’t believe we are the gullible nitwit/citizens from Orwell’s nightmare about the future.

My example du jour pertains to CNN’s “10 Most Wanted Culprits of the Collapse.” Part of Anderson Cooper’s hold-them-accountable theme, this segment targets those persons CNN blames for our current financial mess, with one culprit revealed and reviled per evening (the series includes focusing a sniper-scope graphic effect on the malefactors – I can’t imagine the liberal outrage if Fox News Channel put a Democratic icon, say a Teddy Kennedy or Barack Obama, into a graphic crosshairs). The number 7 culprit on CNN’s list, revealed Monday, was former Sen. Phil Gramm, a Texas Republican, who had a large hand in the 1999 repeal of certain banking rules enacted in the 1930’s to protect against financial abuses with business concentrations. Gramm’s efforts, according to CNN, are to be blamed for the mess we’re now in (never mind that CNN did NOT explain how the legislative changes wrought in 1999 are related to our current problems).

In a story that clearly seeks to place great gobs of blame on Gramm (at one point he is ominously likened by one on-camera source to the evil sorcerer in a Harry Potter book), there was a brain-rattling non sequitar – something that didn’t follow logically. And that takes us into fantasyland.

The CNN story briefly quoted Marcus Mabry, a New York Times business editor, who is on camera saying that the measure sponsored by Gramm was adopted on a vote of “95 to zero” in the senate, by an equally lopsided vote in the House of Representative – then signed into law by President Bill Clinton (the congressional record shows the vote in the senate was 90-8 and in the House 362-56). Okay, Gramm was the architect but what about all those who voted for his measure? Were they just lemmings? Are they blameless (if, in fact, the legislation had anything to do with our current crisis)? Did the lemmings include Sen. Chris Dodd or U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, now lionized as great defenders of the public welfare against ugly, capitalist predators?

Of course, CNN also mentioned Gramm once was an economic adviser to the GOP’s hapless presidential hopeful John McCain but then had to step down after he embarrassed McCain by saying too many people were whining about the economy. As a further example of CNN’s sloppiness – it did NOT say if McCain actually voted for Gramm’s legislation although the insinuation was left hanging there….Perhaps CNN trusted its trained-seal viewers to fill in that blank by simply assuming that McCain, of course, voted for this evil concoction. But a check of the congressional record shows that, on the key conference report vote, McCain – hold your breath – did NOT cast a vote.

The overall message of the CNN piece was that Gramm was some pied-piper, an enchanter, an evil witch who single-handedly created this legislative debacle. I’ll bet Mabry’s remark slipped by most of CNN’s viewers...

I probably wouldn’t be so exercised about CNN’s report if it hadn’t followed on the heels of the Sept. 28 New York Times lead editorial blaming our mess on three legislative initiatives approved in 1995, 1999 and 2000. These efforts, the Times opined, left the financial system open to abuses that are now bearing their evil fruit in collapsing banks, credit markets, etc. etc. And who was to blame for this legislation? Well that should be pretty obvious from this excerpt from the Times editorial:

          “For decades now, antiregulation disciples of the Reagan Revolution have eliminated vital laws, blocked the enactment of much-needed new regulations, or simply refused to exercise their legal authority…. Indeed, it was in the Bush years that antiregulation and deregulation found full expression, fueled by an ideology that markets know best, government hampers markets, and problems will magically fix themselves.”

But then there’s the inconvenient truth – from the congressional record and Times editor Marcus Mabry’s own mouth in the CNN story - that the 1999 measure was a bipartisan effort.

The NY Times also must believe its readers are living quaintly sheltered lives or suffering from amnesia. How else to explain the inconvenient truth that all three of the legislative initiatives the newspaper cited were signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1995, 1999 and 2000. Last I heard, it is indisputable that Clinton was our Democratic president until Jan. 2001.

Are we children to be fed on fairy tales? I guess so. In George Orwell’s 1984, the “hero” Winston Smith was forever astonished that the government’s lies were so easily accepted by its gullible subjects – who had only to look around them to see that Big Brother’s claims were preposterous. Is that where we are today?

Don’t get me wrong – many Republicans are culpable in all this. But Democrats were also involved, consenting adults. I wonder, however, if any Democrat or associate of Democrats – like Barney Frank or Chris Dodd or Franklin Raines (ex-CEO of Fannie Mae) - will make it onto CNN’s “10 Most Wanted Culprits of the Collapse.” I’m not holding my breath.

People now have a really good reason to hate California. That’s because the state with one in every eight U.S. residents, whose economy is the 5th or 6th largest in the world, was in large part the midwife who helped give birth to the economic mess we’re now in.

The go-go speculative housing market: it’s a California phenomenon. The whacko real estate lending practices: look no further than Countrywide and IndyMac to find the most rapacious practitioners of the cult of easy money. The political correctness that guided Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into the treacherous waters of okaying any loan to anyone, no matter how far-fetched: this moral myopia is an article of faith for many Californians.

California, in other words, is at the epicenter of our nation’s woes, according to veteran economic consultant John Hussing. If you want to know why you’ve lost your job, or your hours have been cut, or your 401 (k) has been decimated, just go to California and you can see the Petri dish where these ills were bred.

To quote Hussing directly about the Big Meltdown: “This to a large extent starts in California - this is the center of where it all comes from - because a lot of it comes from the mortgages written in this state by groups like IndyMac and Countrywide..." “The whole situation we’re facing on Wall Street and internationally comes about because of the housing markets in, in California, in Nevada, Arizona and Florida - those markets that got so boomed. And then you had the crazy financing come in where, uh, you had organizations [bond rating firms] like Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s [giving]u triple A ratings to investment vehicles that were based upon liar’s loans to people who couldn’t afford the housing that they were moving into....[Weren’t Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac enablers in all this?] Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – and partially that’s because they had pressure on them....political pressure to get more people in houses.”

And those crazy markets in Nevada and Arizona? Hussing says: “Las Vegas is Californians. Phoenix is just Californians who’ve moved over there.” Yes, these are California’s satellites, its ugly spawn.

Riverside and San Bernardino Counties is where the California real estate mess reached the height of its madness – even by California standards. The evidence is everywhere in these counties: tracts of look-a-like 3,500-square foot homes, with dirt bikes and dune buggies in the garages, SUV’s in the driveways, built check-to-jowl, walled off – all of them surrounded by orange groves, just waiting for their turn to be sacrificed on the alter of California’s brand of progress.

If you really want to go apocalyptic - who built these houses? In many cases, illegal immigrant carpenters, painters, drywallers, plumbers, electricians, now idled by the housing slump, trying to survive....and if you go to Palmdale, Lancaster and Moreno Valley you can find the cruel hoax of homeownership California-style – rows and rows of foreclosed properties, many once owned by minority families, who got sucked into the 100 percent loans, the no-interest loans....who now have very little to show for it all except wrecked credit and broken dreams.

It’s a tale worthy of the dark, crazy visions of Joan Didion, Ross McDonald and Hunter Thompson.

U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Los Angeles, played a forceful role in protecting mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when regulators repeatedly raised red flags, saying that these two institutions, now disgraced and bailed-out, were in very deep trouble.

Unwitting enablers or co-conspirators? The record is chilling. It shows the feisty Waters and her congressional colleagues ignored repeated warnings that Fannie Mae was a potential train-wreck waiting to happen; that Fannie was loaded down with risky loans, was cooking its books to hide the gaping holes in its portfolio and that the engineers of this impending debacle, in particular Fannie CEO Franklin Raines, were raking in millions of dollars in bonuses based on Fannie's reckless policies.

Fannie and Freddie's overseers in the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) regulators ran into a buzzsaw of skepticism and denial when they testified (repeatedly testified) about their troubling findings regarding Fannie and Freddie before a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee (Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance and Government Sponsored Enterprises) on which Waters and U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts (photo below, right), sat. Frank now is a leading voice in the bailout debate, Waters to a lesser extent.

Fannie and Freddie, the regulators were told by the testy Democrats, were not in crisis; in fact, the OFHEO folks were told by one Democratic lawmakers that they had wasted the subcommittee's time with their findings, that he was literally "pissed off" by OFHEO's work. Talk about shooting the messenger.

Take a look at this videotape now on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs
WARNING: This video is highly partisan and heavily edited. But it does capture the flavor of the congressmembers reacting to a Bush administration proposal to alter and supposedly improve, the oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after an audit discovered some major irregularities.

In 2006 OFHEO produced an exhaustive 390-page examination of Fannie Mae's activities - that goes along way toward explaining that agency's meltdown and its role as an enabler of the housing bubble. http://www.ofheo.gov/media/pdf/FNMSPECIALEXAM.PDF

Here are some excerpts from the transcript of the Sept. 25, 2003 hearing of that subcommittee.

U.S. REP. BARNEY FRANK (D-MASSACHUSETTS):
".... I think it is clear that Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac are sufficiently secure so they are in no great
danger. And I was glad to have Secretary Snow say when he
testified that this is not something we are doing in response
to a crisis. For once, Congress is getting out ahead of a
problem.....In this case, we are taking some anticipatory steps....

"I don't think we face a crisis; I don't think that we have
an impending disaster. We have a chance to improve regulation
of two entities that I think are on the whole working well.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac do very good work, and they are
not endangering the fiscal health of this country."

U.S. REP. GREGORY MEEKS (D-NEW YORK):
"And since I have to go to another hearing, I will try to be just real quick.
As well as the fact that I am just pissed off at OFHEO because if it wasn't for
you I don't think that we would be here in the first place.

"And Freddie Mac, who on its own, you know, came out front
and indicated it is wrong, and now the problem that we have and
that we are faced with is maybe some individuals who wanted to
do away with GSEs in the first place, you have given them an
excuse to try to have this forum so that we can talk about it
and maybe change the direction and the mission of what the GSEs
had, which they have done a tremendous job."

******SCHWADA Note: Meeks' view is that the best defense is a good offense.
But the oversight agency head, Armando Falcon, Jr., fires back:

ARMANDO FALCON, JR., OFHEO DIRECTOR:
"Congressman, OFHEO did not improperly apply
accounting rules; Freddie Mac did. OFHEO did not try to manage
earnings improperly; Freddie Mac did. So this isn't about the
agency's engagement in improper conduct, it is about Freddie
Mac. Let me just correct the record on that."

******SCHWADA Note: And then there's Waters, also defending the GSE's
(Government Sponsored Enterprises, i.e. Fannie and Freddie), opposing any new
regulatory scheme that might interfere with Fannie and Freddie's
missions and - with haunting irony - praising Fannie and Freddie's
"innovative" loan practices - including backing "100 percent loans."

U.S. REP. MAXINE WATERS (D-CALIFORNIA):
"Mr. Chairman, we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac, and
in particular at Fannie Mae, under the outstanding leadership of
Mr. Frank Raines. Everything in the 1992 act has worked just fine.
In fact, the GSEs have exceeded their housing goals.

"What we need to do today is to focus on the regulator, and
this must be done in a manner so as not to impede their [Fannie and Freddie's]
affordable housing mission, a mission that has seen innovation
flourish from desktop underwriting to 100 percent loans."

this is the url that gets you to the full transcript of Sept. 25, 2003 hearing:
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbn
ame=108_house_hearings&docid=f:92628.wais

Did Republicans kill the bail-out – as early news reports have suggested?

Here are the numbers behind the sound-bites, the finger-pointing: Republican members of congress supplied 58.3 percent of all the votes to kill the plan (133 out of 228 no votes) while Democrats provided 41.6 percent of the plan-killing votes (95 out of 228 no votes). In fact, it was a bi-partisan finger on the trigger.

Even those Democrats who voted for the plan did so while holding their noses.

Let’s hear what U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, said when it was his turn to address congress on the so-called Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, H.R. 3997.

“Mr. Chairman, I rise today in reluctant support of H.R. 3997,” Waxman said. “This is a Republican bill which must pass with bipartisan votes. Many Democrats don’t like it. Many Republicans are choking on it. But for now, it would be irresponsible to do nothing and I will vote for this bill….what we are voting on is the Bush bailout plan.”

“I would have preferred that we take a different approach. Nobel Prize economists have recommended alternative approaches….But the Bush Administration has been adamant that Congress adopt its approach. They have steadfastly resisted considering other options to protect the taxpayer.”

But then Waxman also praised fellow Democrat, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Boston, for improving the plan with amendments – without mentioning what they were.

If the bailout later failed to pull the economy out of its doldrums, Waxman could say he only voted for it because it was forced down his throat by a stubborn Bush administration while better options were ignored.

On the other hand, if the bailout (providing, of course, that it was approved) did succeed in re-booting the economy, Waxman could say he voted for it and that fellow Democrat Frank made the entire plan workable.

In other words, Waxman had hedged his bets so he was blameless if the bailout failed, victorious if it succeeded.

Real moral victories are hard to find anywhere in this rubble however.

Just look at this perverse element of the proposed (and now failed) bailout: I'm talking about a provision under which the government would have the option of limiting the pay of future executives (of faltering financial institutions that participate in the bailout) who might actually do the hard work of turning around their companies. But the government would not - could not - reduce or eliminate the compensation agreements (aka "golden parachutes") for those past or existing executives who steered their companies into the reckless lending and investment decisions now tearing our economy apart.

In other words, we'd limit the pay incentives for good guys but let the bad guys who created the mess keep their ill-gotten gains? You gotta love it. When are the bad guys ever going to pay...

One last thought: if John McCain's debate performance last Friday wasn't enough to sink his candidacy, today's House vote - as it is initially being widely portrayed in the media - should deliver the final coup de grace. That message: dear voters, Republicans killed the bailout, crushed your 401(K) investment program , all because GOP lawmakers were outraged that House speaker Nancy Pelosi, as the vote was about to be taken, attacked the Bush administration, blaming its "right-wing ideology" for the economic mess. But how does that explain all the Democrats voting against the bailout?

Here's another example: the New York Times lead editorial last Sunday  blamed the Bush administration's hostility to regulation for our mess, citing three votes in congress that stripped away regulatory protections:

"Indeed, it was in the Bush years that antiregulation and deregulation found full expression, fueled by an ideology that markets know best, government hampers markets, and problems will magically fix themselves. The nation is now painfully relearning that the opposite is true."

Those key votes, the Times editorialized, were in 1995, 1999 and 2000.

Excuse me for bringing up an inconvenient truth: George Bush did not take office until January, 2001. Now that does not mean we should let Bush off the hook for failing to stem the tide of bad loans being made in the name of expanding homeownership to everyone in sight. But it does leave us wondering where Bill Clinton - our nation's president from Jan. 1993 to Jan. 2001 - was when those three votes were taken....granted Republicans held majorities in congress during those years but what were the vote breakdowns, Republican/Democrat, on those measures?

In other words, beware of easy, politically-driven explanations for what's going on. There's plenty of blame to go around.

This is the link to the aforementioned NYT editorial:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/opinion/28sun
1.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=deregulation+editorial&st=nyt&oref
=slogin

After tonight’s debate I can say without fear of contradiction that while both of our presidential nominees oppose waterboarding they don’t practice what they preach. Tonight was torture. In fact, the Geneva Conventions ought to be amended to explicitly ban re-broadcasting that debate as a form of cruel and unusual punishment.

Don’t be surprised if some enterprising personal injury attorney starts advertising for clients among debate-viewers. “Were you the victim of the Sept. 26 presidential debate? After watching it have you suffered from a deepening despair about our country’s future? Do you have troubling doubts about the leadership choices? Do you want a re-do on the entire primary season? You may be suffering from post-debate syndrome. If so, call 1 800-NoVotes for a free legal consultation.”

The only thing that kept me watching tonight’s listless matchup was the prospect that someone would call 911 and a paramedic crew would rush onto the stage and seek to revive McCain and Obama with electro-shock therapy.

Uninspired. McCain droning on about ancient history. Vietnam. D-Day. Dwight Eisenhower. Obama sounding like an earnest undergrad.

McCain arrogant, refusing to look at Obama. Obama doing his me-too routine.

Both men treated the big issue of the day – the proposed bail-out plan – like teenage boys who’ve been forced to dance with their great aunt at a church social. They were polite, flat-footed and dispassionate.

Did anyone come away at the end of the economy segment of the debate with any new information about the bail-out? What an anti-climax.

Why couldn’t they just say: "Look, the American public is skeptical about this bail-out, and I share their concerns. The same folks who failed to forestall this debacle – may have even contributed to it – are now saying they’ve got a $700 billion solution. I’m a U.S. Senator, I’m not going to just rubber-stamp the Bush-Paulson-Bernacke plan – which is also being embraced by leading congressional Democrats. I want to take a closer look at this monster and compare to other possible solutions. Isn’t it possible that there’s more than one way to skin this cat? And don’t tell me that if we don’t act now the sky will fall down. It didn’t. Friday, the stock market went up.”

Did we hear any signs of independent, enterprising, outside-the-box thinking from these guys? No way. It was all gutless generalities and platitudes.

In a previous blog, I explored the role of Franklin Raines in the Fannie Mae debacle and his ties to Barack Obama.

Now comes the New York Times, breathing heavily down the neck of John McCain, reporting on his messy ties to Fannie Mae, the giant financial institution that played a key role in creating the giant housing bubble that has hit our economy with the same devastating effect as a suicide bomber in a peaceful market in Iraq.

Rick Davis, the GOP presidential nominee’s campaign manager, was president of a non-profit outfit called the Homeownership Alliance created by the real estate/housing industry and bankrolled, perhaps almost entirely, by Fannie Mae and its little brother, Freddie Mac.

The purpose of the Alliance, if you want to be charitable, was to be a cheerleader for the joys of homeownership and to support efforts to make sure that joy was available to as many as possible.

Churlish skeptics, however, say the Alliance – now apparently disbanded – was a lobbying tool to protect Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from scrutiny and regulatory controls as it embarked, during the regime of its CEO Franklin Raines, on a bold program of trying to double its earnings per share in part by jumping into that then-electrifying (just how electrifying it would take years to know) subprime market.

In fact, Davis’ consulting/lobbying firm, Davis Manafort, received about $2 million from the Alliance over five years.

And – here’s the new part - the Times reported Wednesday morning that it had two sources who claimed the firm, Davis Manafort (not Davis personally), had been paid $15,000 per month from late 2005 until this last August. Now that latter claim appeared to contradict McCain’s recent claim that Davis (who has remained throughout an owner of Davis Manafort) had had no dealings with Fannie Mae for several years.

The Davis-Fannie Mae issue is a blow tof McCain’s claim to be the scourge in the temple of Washington, D.C. influence-peddling class. Of course, not to rehash too much: Obama’s ties to two former CEO’s at Fannie Mae, including the aforementioned Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson, Raines predecessor, also do little to comfort our troubled souls.

Additionally, the McCain campaigned has pointed out Obama has accepted more than $126,000 in campaign contributions from employees of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac since 2004, while McCain himself has taken only $22,000 since 1998 (this according to the Center for Responsive Politics). On this latter point though, the moral algebra may not help McCain. "I would view [Obama’s]donors as one step removed from someone who is a key advisor [Davis] in the campaign," Sheila Krumholz executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, told the Los Angeles Times. "But there's mud flung on both doorsteps. The candidates are judged by the company they keep."

McCain, of course, is slipping in the polls as the Palin boomlet subsides and as the economy – not Iraq or oil prices – moves to the front-burner on voters’ minds. McCain has seemed to struggle with the economy as an issue, looking at times flat-footed. Meantime, Obama has glided serenely through this mess, looking cool and placid, while really not saying very much about how he’d deal with the crisis.

The bail-out – excuse me, rescue plan – is unpopular with many voters. On the other hand, neither Obama nor McCain has shown any willingness to take the risk of appearing “unpatriotic” in this “national crisis” and strongly opposing the measure.

In a joint statement, the pair Wednesday called the plan “flawed” but also urged Democrats and Republicans to rise above politics and reach a bipartisan plan/solution.

So the pregnant question is: who would you want to have babysit your daughter….uhhh, I mean, oversee the rescue plan over the next few years? McCain or Obama?

Who has shown the independence of spirit that will be needed to overhaul the financial system, make sure the Treasury Department does not go on a sailor’s holiday and pay too much for the mortgage-backed securities it’ll be buying with billions of our tax dollars?

Who’ll satisfy the public’s blood-thirst and actually chase down and prosecute some of the highflying executives who ran some of these companies that engaged in predatory lending (to often greed or brainless borrowers), who passed on their mortgage-backed junk deals to others (who may or may not have been complicit) and cooked their books to hide the growing mess they had created while walking away with bonuses?

Who, indeed, will rise above our cankerous, slumping expectations?

If the economy looks wobbly, what about our presidential candidates? Don't they remind you of drunken sailors on a ship in a hurricane?

John McCain is inveighing against a bailout of insurance giant AIG one day (Tuesday), and the next day, without looking too shame-faced (perhaps he was wearing his “keep-a-straight-face-express” mask), the GOP nominee is saying AIG’s too big, too important, to let it slide into chaos as he applauded the Bush administration takeover, seizure, bailout of AIG. This from the same guy who is simultaneously denying he’s George Bush’s secret twin.

Then, there’s Barack Obama. He seems equally at a loss about what to do.

I still haven’t heard exactly what the Democratic presidential nominee would’ve done about AIG, Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. His statement today (Thursday, 9/18/08) on AIG steers gracefully clear of standing for or against the action taken by the Bush administration. Call him a cipher. But that’s been part of Obama’s entire shtick: ethereal rhetoric over details.

But here are a few details that will make your hair stand on end about Obama’s judgment. While lambasting McCain for having seven lobbyists as senior advisers to his campaign, Obama has tactfully avoided (and who can blame him) that he, too, is up to his eyeballs in cozy relations with those who have been at the sleazy center of the nation’s housing crisis.

Franklin Raines. This is a name you should remember. In fact, Raines deserves a higher place in our rogue’s gallery of corporate buccaneers. The Washington Post in July, 2008 identified Raines as someone who has been advising Obama’s on mortgage finance and housing matters. In 2004, Raines left as CEO of Fannie Mae, the quasi-private mortgage bank that sucked up billions and billions of these crackpot, subprime mortgages. During his Fannie Mae tenure, Raines et al. gave an air of respectability to surreal real estate deals and lied steadfastly about Fannie Mae’s bottom-line. Again who could blame Raines for wanting to hide the facts….after all, as long as Fannie Mae appeared to be doing its job he was being paid millions as its CEO. How many times do the accountants, the investors, the regulators, the public, the taxpayers have to hear this kind of corporate gloss before we finally say: enough already (or basta ya! as they say in Spanish just before a coup d’etat).

More details about Raines. Remember this guy is advising Obama. From 1999 to Dec. 1, 2004, when he took “early retirement,” Raines was CEO of Fannie Mae. Raines stepped down while he and two other top executives at Fannie Mae were under investigation by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) after it was discovered Fannie Mae had overstated its profits by $6 billion or more. Is it too surprising that the same executive’s compensation was tied to Fannie Mae’s bottom-line - well sort of tied to it since corporate executives never seem to get dinged when they screw up. Anyway, here’s what the Washington Post, in a rather fawning feature story published in July, 2008, had to say about Raines’ fall from grace:

“Raines settled charges brought by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight by agreeing this spring to pay $2 million and forfeiting $22.7 million in stock and other benefits. And though none of it will come out of his pocket -- the payment was covered by insurance -- he has not emerged unscathed (my churlish emphasis). He and his wife of more than 25 years, Wendy, are separated. Their house, a 1910 colonial in Northwest Washington, is for sale. An old friend, former Time Warner chairman Richard Parsons, describes him as being "in strong recovery mode."

I hope you did not suffer as I did from Spontaneous Empathetic Trauma (SET) when I read of Raines pain. In fact, I immediately reached for the phone to donate money to the nearest soup kitchen where I was sure I could find Raines, dejected and haunted by guilt.

A Wikipedia article, sourced with Wall Street Journal articles, put it this way:

“Civil charges were filed against Raines and two other former executives by the OFHEO in which the OFHEO sought $110 million in penalties and $115 million in returned bonuses from the three accused.[5] On April 18, 2008, the government announced a settlement with Raines together with J. Timothy Howard, Fannie's former chief financial officer, and Leanne G. Spencer, Fannie's former controller. The three executives agreed to pay fines totaling about $3 million, which will be paid by Fannie's insurance policies. Raines also agreed to donate the proceeds from the sale of $1.8 million of his Fannie stock and to give up stock options. The stock options however have no value. Raines also gave up an estimated $5.3 million of "other benefits" said to be related to his pension and forgone bonuses.[6]”

There were, of course, congressional hearings into these allegations. Most of this congressional outrage, however, was buried in the lower reaches of the journalistic brain, stored away in great grey vaults of oblivion because the public could not understand it or be expected to be regaled by it.

As this mess unfolded, below the radar screen, the Bush administration stepped forward to propose that a new agency be established, to oversee Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Let’s hear it straight from the 9/11/2003 edition of the NY Times:

“The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios (my emphasis).

“The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt -- is broken (my emphasis). A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates.”

That proposal never got off the ground. In Sept. 2003, however, the congressional Democratic leadership on finance issues had this to say about increased regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (again this is from the 9/11/2003 NY Times):

‘''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not (my emphasis) facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''

And that, my dear readers, is the saga of Franklin Raines, one of Obama’s economic advisers (and please indulge me in a little more churlishness – as I point out that Obama set up a three-person vice-president search committee that included James A. Johnson, Raines’ predecessor as Fannie Mae’s CEO. Johnson stepped down after it was revealed that Johnson – like Raines – had received favorably priced personal loans from Countrywide Financial’s CEO Angelo Mozilo).

Is it any wonder that voters are not hugely confident in the economic leadership coming from their presidential nominees?

The latest Rasmussen poll says just 24% of those polled say it is “very likely” Obama will bring the kind of change that is needed to Wall Street. Another 29% say he is somewhat likely to accomplish that goal while 42% say he is not likely to do so.

McCain doesn’t do any better. Just 25% say he is very likely to bring about the needed Wall Street reforms. Another 25% say he is somewhat likely to do so while 44% say such accomplishments are not likely in a McCain administration.

Barack Obama gave a very strong speech last night. Here are the highlights and I invite your comments:

These challenges are not all of government's making. But the failure to respond is a direct result of a broken politics in Washington and the failed policies of George W. Bush. America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this.

 It's not because John McCain doesn't care. It's because John McCain doesn't get it. For over two decades, he's subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy - give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else.

Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who's willing to work. That's the promise of America - the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation; the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper.

I don't know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead, but this has been mine. These are my heroes. Theirs are the stories that shaped me. And it is on their behalf that I intend to win this election and keep our promise alive as President of the United States.

And for the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as President: in ten years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East.

America, now is not the time for small plans. Now is the time to finally meet our moral obligation to provide every child a world-class education, because it will take nothing less to compete in the global economy.

And Democrats, we must also admit that fulfilling America's promise will require more than just money. It will require a renewed sense of responsibility from each of us to recover what John F. Kennedy called our "intellectual and moral strength." Yes, government must lead on energy independence, but each of us must do our part to make our homes and businesses more efficient. Yes, we must provide more ladders to success for young men who fall into lives of crime and despair. But we must also admit that programs alone can't replace parents; that government can't turn off the television and make a child do her homework; that fathers must take more responsibility for providing the love and guidance their children need. Individual responsibility and mutual responsibility - that's the essence of America's promise.

And just as we keep our keep our promise to the next generation here at home, so must we keep America's promise abroad. If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament, and judgment, to serve as the next Commander-in-Chief, that's a debate I'm ready to have.

That's not the judgment we need. That won't keep America safe. We need a President who can face the threats of the future, not keep grasping at the ideas of the past.

We are the party of Roosevelt. We are the party of Kennedy. So don't tell me that Democrats won't defend this country. Don't tell me that Democrats won't keep us safe.

These are the policies I will pursue. And in the weeks ahead, I look forward to debating them with John McCain. But what I will not do is suggest that the Senator takes his positions for political purposes. Because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other's character and patriotism. The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain.

Because if you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from. You make a big election about small things. And you know what - it's worked before.

I get it. I realize that I am not the likeliest candidate for this office. I don't fit the typical pedigree, and I haven't spent my career in the halls of Washington. But I stand before you tonight because all across America something is stirring. What the nay-sayers don't understand is that this election has never been about me. It's been about you.

(T)he change we need doesn't come from Washington. Change comes to Washington. Change happens because the American people demand it - because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time. America, this is one of those moments. I believe that as hard as it will be, the change we need is coming. Because I've seen it.

But what the people heard instead - people of every creed and color, from every walk of life - is that in America, our destiny is inextricably linked. That together, our dreams can be one. "We cannot walk alone," the preacher cried. "And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back." America, we cannot turn back. Not with so much work to be done. Not with so many children to educate, and so many veterans to care for. Not with an economy to fix and cities to rebuild and farms to save. Not with so many families to protect and so many lives to mend. America, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone. At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise - that American promise - and in the words of Scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess.

Bill Clinton last night praised Barack Obama for “hitting one out of the ballpark” when he picked Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate. But I heard several Democrats say they thought Biden’s subsequent Pepsi Center acceptance speech was flat, at times inauthentic sounding. “He sounded like a political hack,” one Democrat who closely watched the speech told me; this Democrat was bothered in particular by the laundry list of complaints about John McCain’s positions, followed by the rhetorical refrain:  “That’s not change, that’s more of the same.”

To me, Biden’s speech did sound conflicted (thus perhaps giving rise to that complaint that it sounded inauthentic). On the one hand, the Delaware senator was ripping McCain. On the other hand, he was calling McCain by his first name. “John thinks the economy is doing well…John wants to give tax breaks to corporations” etc. Biden and McCain have been long-time colleagues, in the Senate, a place that prides itself on its clubby-genteel house rules. Biden even admitted “John McCain is my friend.”  So, he probably is conflicted about pillorying one of his long-time Senate buddies. And when he called McCain by his first name, he sort of personalized the Republican in a way that took some of the edge off his attack – which I can’t imagine the Democrats want him to do. They want an attack-dog, off-the-leash….

The best part of Biden’s speech was the heartfelt introduction given by his son – and then Biden’s teary-eyed reaction to it. That seemed real – as did his personal recollections and embrace of his family.

But it’ll take more than Biden to provide the Democrats with the “bounce” in poll numbers that they hope to get out of the convention. So far, the Democratic ticket has not seen a bounce in its poll numbers - the virtually automatic 5-10 point jump that normally comes with a good convention and all the publicity it garners (part of that might be attributable to the very aggressive GOP campaign to spoil the Democratic party which I blogged about two days ago). In fact, a few polls (Rasmussen and Gallup) have shown McCain continuing to close the gap on Obama even during the Democrats’ convention. Not  a good sign....for Democrats.

Bottom-line, if anyone hit one out of the ballpark Wednesday night – speech-wise – it was Bill Clinton. Now his speech was, so far, the most masterful one of the convention…not only in purely technical speech-making terms but also possibly in terms of acting; after all, wasn’t it Bill who was supposedly the least reconciled to Hillary’s defeat at the hands of Obama?  Whether it was an act or not, Bill gave the convincingly generous speech that Hillary was supposed to have given the night before to heal the Obama-Clinton wounds.

I ran into Lt. Gov. John Garamendi Wednesday, at the Pepsi Center, making the rounds of the radio talk shows. His pitch was that his party is still in transition; that the Clinton-istas are in the painful mourning phase of their loss - not to worry, in time, they’ll be fully on board with Obama.

Maybe, maybe not. The real danger is NOT that the Clinton-istas would vote for McCain so much as they would not open their checkbooks to Obama, walk precincts or man phone banks for him.

If it's any solace to Democrats, it’s the same dilemma McCain faces with his own party’s hard-line conservative wing.