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Court demands Obama produce real birth certificate. (by J –SOM at Liberal Rapture)
Court says Obama must produce real birth certificate in 3 days. 72 hours…. hmmmm…..this is an interesting turn. Does he have a real birth certificate? Why could he never produce one before? Anyone following this? Is this real or a McGuffin? Also, what is a “certification of citizenship”?
ObamaCrimes.com says the judge hasn’t ruled on the Obama/DNC motion to dismiss, so I don’t know why a document saying that he has would be posted at Justicia.  The suit is real, though.  You can keep up with the proceedings at the aforementioned ObamaCrimes.com.

Bailout passes Senate (AP)
After one spectacular failure, the $700 billion financial industry bailout found a second life Wednesday, winning lopsided passage in the Senate and gaining ground in the House, where Republican opposition softened.
And many sweeteners were added, bringing the total to $810 billion.  Because, after all, $700 billion was such a measly figure.

For the record: Biden, McCain & Obama all vote ‘yes’ on bailout (On Politics, USA Today)
They had made their intentions clear, so this isn’t a surprise. But for the record: Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, Republican presidential nominee John McCain and Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden — all senators – voted “yes” [Wednesday] on the $700 billion bailout rescue for the financial sector. The package passed the Senate by a 74-25 vote. Up next: Another vote in the House, which turned the plan down on Monday.
Scroll down for more on the financial crisis.

Money Quote (by myiq2xu at The Confluence)
If you think the Big Shitpile is a reason we need to elect Obama, think again: “OBAMA: Well, I think there are a whole host of areas where Republicans in some cases may have a better idea. WALLACE: Such as? OBAMA: Well, on issues of regulation…” Can we have Hillary back now?

And now for the REALLY important legislation:
House honors first climbers to scale El Capitan (McClatchy)
WASHINGTON — Lawmakers who blanched at a $700 billion financial rescue package have found time to honor the brave men who climbed Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan peak a half-century ago.

And they snuck this one in while no one was watching.
Senate Votes To Make Nonproliferation A Joke (by Cernig at Crooks and Liars)
Most folks missed it, because the vote came just before the bailout bill, but on Wednesday the US Senate voted 86-13 to approve the India 123 bill, giving India access to US nuclear know-how and materials for the first time since India conducted a nuclear weapons test three decades ago. Both presidential candidates voted for the bill and the House had already passed it 298 to 117… Arms control experts aren’t at all happy with the deal:

Is Palin up to the job? VP debate may be her last chance to show it (McClatchy)
WASHINGTON — Sarah Palin faces a huge problem in Thursday night’s vice presidential debate: She’s in danger of becoming a national punch line.
Click here to watch Palin debate in 2006.  But we may never know whether Governor Palin is up to the job of vice president, thanks to the so-called liberals who have made her a national punch line by lying about her.  Liberals tell us they have women’s issues at heart, but they did their best to ruin Hillary Clinton using vicious lies, and now they’ve “moved on” to Sarah Palin.  And so-called liberal women are helping.  See below.

Open Thread (by bluegal at Crooks and Liars)

This is your liberal blogosphere at work, my friends.  Any woman who dares to run for high office is SCARY, SCARY, SCARY.  The so-called progressives are PROUD of the fact that they’ve made Sarah Palin such an object of scorn that her approval rating has plummeted and her disapproval rating has skyrocketed.  How many times have we fought George Bush for pushing the fear buttons of our citizens with his lies? So why, in goddess’ name, would we want to BECOME George Bush?  And don’t try to tell me Obama isn’t responsible for some of the trashing of Sarah Palin.

Is Palin the New Evita? (by Susie at Suburban Guerilla)
Naomi Wolf believes it. She says Palin has been picked as the titular head of the new police state… Me, I’m way past the point where I ascribe benign motives to these people: “Under the Palin-Rove police state, citizens will be targeted with state cyberterrorism. Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda, a former Reagan official, warned me three years ago that the Bush team went after a Republican who had crossed them through cyberstalking: they messed with his email, messed with his phones and I believe messed with his bank account — he became a cyber-pariah, unemployable and haunted.”
Why can’t we just disagree with the woman on the issues, and refuse to make her an object of derision? Why do we insist on helping to destroy any respect for anyone of our gender who runs for national office?  But if we’re going to talk about coercive tactics, we’d better be equal opportunity talkers.  See below.

Missouri “Truth Squads” To Protect Obama Campaign (video, thanks to No Quarter)

Gov. Blunt Statement on Obama Campaign’s Abusive Use of Missouri Law Enforcement
JEFFERSON CITY - Gov. Matt Blunt … issued the following statement on news reports that have exposed plans by U.S. Senator Barack Obama to use Missouri law enforcement to threaten and intimidate his critics. “…What Senator Obama and his helpers are doing is scandalous beyond words, the party that claims to be the party of Thomas Jefferson is abusing the justice system and offices of public trust to silence political criticism with threats of prosecution and criminal punishment. This abuse of the law for intimidation insults the most sacred principles and ideals of Jefferson. I can think of nothing more offensive to Jefferson’s thinking than using the power of the state to deprive Americans of their civil rights.”

Media Bias: The Fix Is In (by NancyA at No Quarter)
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read an article by Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds about an e-mail he received from a reader who works in a “major newsroom.” “Off the record,” that reader told Reynolds, “every suspicion you have about MSM being in the tank for O is true.” The reader described the situation in his newsroom in stark detail: “We have a team of 4 people going thru dumpsters in Alaska and 4 in arizona. Not a single one looking into Acorn, Ayers or Freddiemae. Editor refuses to publish anything that would jeopardize election for O, and betting you dollars to donuts same is true at NYT, others. People cheer when CNN or NBC run another Palin-mocking but raising any reasonable inquiry into obama is derided or flat out ignored. The fix is in, and it’s working.”
Glenn Reynolds is a right winger and it may not be beyond him to lie about something like this.  But it’s not beyond the candidates left to us to lie, either.

Was NYDN Palin Puff Piece Ordered By Owner? (Gawker)
A day after the paper quoted three Republicans critical of Palin’s embarrassing answers for CBS anchor Katie Couric and others on the campaign trail, the paper ran an article yesterday titled “Eight Reasons Why John McCain Won’t Drop Sarah Palin from Ticket.” We hear the story was considered an embarrassment by News journalists, but was ordered from on high.
Well, why not?  US Weekly did a puff piece on Obama at the behest of its owner.

How reverse racism works (by Joseph Cannon at Cannonfire)
[Email floating around the internet:] How Racism Works
What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review?
What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating
class?…
What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?
What if Obama were a member of the “Keating 5″?… [Etc.]

We can use the same argument to prove that Barack Obama would have gotten nowhere near the nomination if he were white.

How did Barack Obama become president of the Harvard Law Review? How did he get into Columbia and Harvard? His grades, by all accounts, were not spectacular. And why didn’t he publish anything while he held that position at the Harvard Law Review?

Why was an unpublished author — a nobody — given a massive advance to write Dreams From My Father? An advance big enough to justify renting an office and going on a “working holiday” in Bali? (Correction: A reader informs me that the office was granted unto him by the Powers That Be at the University of Illinois, where Obama was immediately granted a comfy sinecure that most lawyers could not hope to attain until later in life.)…

What if John McCain had made sure that fat government contracts went to crooks who poured big bucks into his campaign, and who made sure that he could buy a mansion he could not afford?
Click through for much, much more.

I am so glad Obama has promoted racial healing this year. (by J –SOM at Liberal Rapture)
How many times this year have you been called a racist after you indicated in some way you did not LOVE Obama? Or if not called a racist ourtright, were you given that special Obama Pod look ? The ”Oh, I see, you have racial issues” look- you know the one – it’s just after you’ve said something that questions Obama – there is a smug head nod, or maybe a mumbled “I see” or “Uh huh”. But you’ve been tagged in the Pod’s mind: you have “race” issues. Here is your Get Out of Racism Free card!

Remember, I questioned the timing of the release of Lakeview Terrace, a movie that seems to be about a scary black guy threatening a harmless-looking white guy?  Well, be not afraid that Hollywood might have changed its spots.  See below for two new releases that should help Obama—a lot.

Miracle at St. Anna
The story of four African-American soldiers who are members of the U.S. Army as part of the all-black 92nd Buffalo Soldier Division stationed in Tuscany, Italy, during World War II. They experience the tragedy and triumph of the war as they find themselves trapped behind enemy lines and separated from their unit after one of them risks his life to save an Italian boy.

The Express
Based on the life of college football superstar Ernie Davis, who, in 1961, became the first black man to win the Heisman trophy. He went first in the NFL draft, but didn’t play after being diagnosed with Leukemia.

Study: Dems need white vote gain (Politico)
In an election year where Barack Obama pledged to change the electorate, the centrist Democratic Leadership Council has weighed into the debate with a detailed report arguing it will be difficult for Obama to earn enough African American and youth support to compensate for enduring Democratic failures with white voters. The report, titled “Who are the swing voters,” finds that the party must make historic inroads with working class whites in order to create a sustainable presidential majority.
I don’t know.  Obama seems to be doing fine without us right now.  Not sure that the DLC has ever been right about anything, anyway.

McCain Camp’s Anti-Media Campaign Backfiring? (New York Observer)
Ever since Sarah Palin crinkled her nose and dismissed the media and “all those reporters and commentators” during her speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, the media strategy of John McCain’s presidential campaign has been to assault it as biased, inaccurate and elitist. It doesn’t seem to be working out so great.

Obama Campaign Ignoring NBC’s Cease-and-Desist (TVNewser)
Despite a cease-and-desist notice from NBC News, the VoteForChange.com ad on Sen. Barack Obama’s YouTube channel featuring NBC and MSNBC remains available. NBC News spokeswoman Allison Gollust said YouTube has agreed to pull down the video and will continue to police it. But the Obama campaign, apparently, isn’t budging.

SEC. 503. EXEMPTION FROM EXCISE TAX FOR CERTAIN WOODEN ARROWS DESIGNED FOR USE BY CHILDREN. (by lambert at Corrente)
Yep, that’s your “emergency” right there in section 503 of the Senate’s version Hank Paulson’s trillion dollar giveaway. Jeebus. Couldn’t they at least have exempted something with a real public benefit? My suggestion: SEC. 503. EXEMPTION FROM EXCISE TAX FOR CERTAIN LATEX STRAP-ONS DESIGNED FOR USE BY HAWT LESBIANS WHEN PEGGING THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY. Or words to that effect. Readers, I’m sure you have your own suggestions.

And what the fuck is this: “The Senate bill also would: Make permanent authority for undercover operations. Make permanent authority for disclosure of information relating to terrorist activities.”
Click the link just above to read McClatchy’s list of items added to the bill by the Senate.  Of course, these must be items that have been in someone’s desk drawer and just stuck on.  They didn’t sit around and think up all these things over the last few days.

Asian stocks fall despite Senate rescue plan vote (AP)
Asian stock markets retreated Thursday as broader concerns about a global economic slowdown outweighed any relief over the U.S. Senate’s passage of the bailout package to rescue the U.S. financial system. 

House girds for second try on financial rescue (AP)
WASHINGTON – Now for the big do-over. House members get another chance to vote on a bill that many would like to avoid: a massive financial rescue plan that has infuriated millions of voters but is described by President Bush and congressional leaders as vital to keeping the economy from sliding into a deep recession.

Poll: Despite turmoil, voters think bank accounts are safe (McClatchy)
WASHINGTON — Despite the turmoil on Wall Street and the nation and the collapse of several major banks, a solid majority of registered voters expressed confidence in the security of their bank accounts, a new Ipsos/McClatchy poll has found.

Investors Pulling Billions Out of U.S. Stock Markets (Washington Post)
During September, investors pulled $22 billion from U.S. equity mutual funds, compared with $2 billion in August. At the same time $24 billion was also withdrawn from bonds during September, the largest extraction in a single-month. 

Stock losses take heavy toll on retirement savings (AP)
The financial crisis that toppled major Wall Street banks and snarled credit markets around the world has also taken a toll on nest eggs, forcing people to rethink when — and even if — their savings will allow them to retire. More than half of people surveyed in an Associated Press-GfK poll released Wednesday said they worry that they will have to work longer because the value of their retirement savings has declined.

Joel Pett

Wall Street hits Main Street: Local business owners skeptical (McClatchy)
Washington is telling them it isn’t a $700-billion Wall Street bailout, it’s a Main Street rescue — but the merchants who line our local Main Streets are unsure whether politicians can truly help them.

Thrift stores desperate for donations; sales increase (McClatchy)
Many local thrift shops are facing shortages of goods because sales increase and donations decrease during difficult economic times.

AP Poll: 8 in 10 fear hit from financial crisis (AP)
WASHINGTON – Not just Wall Street is running scared. The consequences of the financial meltdown now are sinking in with ordinary Americans, who worry whether their jobs, home values, children’s futures and retirement plans are at risk, according to a poll out Wednesday. Eight in 10 fear the crisis will affect them directly, according to an AP-GfK poll. Yet 45 percent of all adults still opposed the proposed government bailout. Some 38 percent were in favor of the $700 billion financial-market rescue plan and 16 percent were not sure in the poll, which was conducted Sept. 27-30.

Bank local (by lambert at Corrente)
“Buy local” works with food, so why wouldn’t “bank local” work with money? At least your small, local bank isn’t likely to be fooling around with toxic derivatives, and if they have, someone at the local watering hole is likely to know. Via the invaluable McClatchy: “Chris Courtney can see the effects of big bank failures from his office overlooking the busiest intersection in Oakdale. Residents literally have walked out of Washington Mutual with cashier’s checks in hand, crossed the street and opened accounts at Oak Valley Community Bank… Community banks credit their conservative approach to lending and their close relationships with customers for largely avoiding the troubles that thrust Washington Mutual and Wachovia into the headlines.”
I moved to a local bank seven or eight years ago, after my major bank had changed hands for the second time in just a few years, and all the conditions for my checking and savings accounts changed AGAIN, without any recourse.  I love my bank.  I know the manager, and he knows me.  The bank is very active in the neighborhood, sponsoring photo and art contests, among other activities.  It’s a real part of the community.  Hence the name, Chicago Community Bank.

Obama: Treasury should “study” HOLC (by lambert at Corrente)
That’s not to hard to parse, is it? Obama’s speech from the Senate floor at Big Orange [Daily Kos]: “We should encourage Treasury to study the option of buying individual mortgages like we did successfully in the 1930’s.” Well, alrighty then. Too bad Obama couldn’t quite bring himself to mention the acronym, HOLC, so people know what his cryptic reference means…
Obama has already said that no matter what Congress passes or doesn’t pass this week he’s going to study the economic situation when he’s elected president.  IF he’s elected, I predict that there will be a whole lotta studyin’ goin’ on in Washington.  Obama is not a man who likes to take a stand—or make a decision.  If you’re not familiar with HOLC, read Hillary’s speech on the bailout.  She’s studied it already, and she’s on board, along with at least one distinguished economist who is an unabashed liberal, unlike the University of Chicago right-wing crowd Obama likes to pal around with.

Bill Clinton rocks Florida for Obama: We have to elect a President that will rebuild the American dream (by John Amato at Crooks and Liars)
Bill Clinton gave a blistering endorsement of Barack Obama’s leadership at a huge rally in Ft. Pierce, Florida today. “Clinton: We have to elect a President that will rebuild the American dream, repair a badly shattered financial system and restore America’s standing in the world. Look at the mess that we have  in our financial  system. This is not accidental folks. It doesn’t have to be this way. It matters who the President is, it matters what decisions he makes and it matters what the policies are. Obama’s got better answers.  He knows what it will take to get this country back on track. Obama’s answers are better!” Bill Clinton explains the financial crisis and how Obama will be able to grow the economy and lead America back like no other.
Sorry, John, sorry, President Clinton.  Obama has no answers, he only has questions.  Maybe a few guidelines.  I just don’t see him being willing or able to do anything except sit in the Oval Office and pretend to be president while other people do his work for him.  It’s the story of his life, obvious to anyone who cares to look at him realistically.  Click through to watch the Clinton video.

Law for Poor Didn’t Cause Meltdown (by Froma Harrop)
Accomplished Googlers can probably find the original talking points off which dozens of conservatives made essentially the same case: The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 caused the financial crisis… In fact, the CRA had about zero to do with today’s problems… The most obvious clue that CRA did not cause the mess is its date … 1977… If the CRA created this time bomb of lousy loans, why didn’t it go off in 1980 or 1996? The writing of crazy mortgages for low-income people — loans with exploding interest rates, brutal fees and no demands for documentation — was a post-2003 phenomenon…

Far from being spurned by financiers, low-income Americans have become their cash cow. Payday lenders are listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Operators go into poor neighborhoods pretending to be retailers. The product they “sell” — be it a used car or new sofa — is just a hook to saddle the trusting buyer with a loan that eventually costs them several times the ticketed price… [T]his financial scandal is the work of fat cats, enabled by a permissive government. There’s something highly indecent about blaming it on an innocuous law meant to remove some of the unfairness in the lives of the working poor.
I’m reminded of the “lucky duckies” argument—that being too poor to pay taxes means you’re lucky.  Honestly.  Watch the video Foreclosure Alley at Calculated Risk, to see what communities are dealing with.

The Bailout in Plain English (by Susie at Suburban Guerrilla)
Joe Bageant, via email (no link yet): “Any number of cultural historians have noted the American belief that success is a sign of God’s favor. And over the past couple of decades he has had a downright love fest with the already-rich. So much so that the richest 400 Americans now have more money stashed away that the combined bottom 150 million Americans. Some $1.6 trillion bucks. This was accomplished by selling off or shipping out ever available asset, from jobs to seaports, smashing usury and anti-monopoly laws, raiding the public coffers and manipulating the medium of exchange and blackmailing the peasantry regarding common needs such as heath care and energy to keep their asses warm … to name a few. The ultimate coup was to convince the entire nation that the well being of the rich, meaning the well being of Wall Street, was indeed the common man’s well being. All went well for a while.”
Click through to read more.

Terrorist State, Abroad and At Home (by Arthur Silber at the Power of Narrative)
I fully expect that this bailout/rescue/extortion scheme will be passed in some form close to the original version in its essentials, probably in the next several days, almost certainly in the coming week. The system is now set up so that when the ruling class is particularly intent upon a certain objective, even your obedience isn’t required any longer. After all, what are you going to do? Move to another country? Not vote for any of these bastards in November? Most Americans won’t do that. They protest now; once the deed is done, they’ll go back to their lives, such as they will be at that point, and devote themselves to making the ruling class more wealthy and more powerful… I suggest you get used to it. This is your future.

What if the “smart money” guys are all dumb as a box of rocks? (by Sarah at Corrente)
What if offshoring isn’t the boon the corp execs expected? What if investment vehicles (read complicated boondoggles designed to move money from the middle and lower class into the upper class’ pockets via expensively-furnished con jobs run out of the ’credit economy’) really don’t do anything useful? Well, then you get what is happening now on Wall Street… Not all progress is forward, boys and girls. Time to go back to the policies that, for nearly 70 years, kept the country solvent, methinks. Looks like at least a few economists think so too.
Dumb?  Or criminal.  See below.

A Special Prosecutor for Wall Street (by Joe Conason)
Before Congress approves such a stunning expenditure to save the undeserving hides of the super-rich, they may at least create provisions for independent oversight, new regulation, public equity and homeowner relief. There is one more thing that should not be neglected, however. Before this is over, we will need a special prosecutor with an ample budget to find, prosecute, imprison and ultimately deter the criminals responsible for this disaster.

From the bottom-of-the-barrel bucket-shop mortgage salespeople, who sought inspiration and technique from the movie “Boiler Room,” to the geniuses who packaged those bad and often fraudulent loans into bad paper for sale to major banks, investment houses and insurance companies, literally thousands of crooks are out there. Unless we find a way to bring them to justice — starting at the top, by the way — then the “moral hazard” inherent in any bailout will become even more acute.

How Wall Street Lied to Its Computers (by Saul Hansell at Bits, New York Times)
I called some old timers in the risk-management world to see what went wrong. I fully expected them to tell me that the problem was that the alarms were blaring and red lights were flashing on the risk machines and greedy Wall Street bosses ignored the warnings to keep the profits flowing… In fact, most Wall Street computer models radically underestimated the risk of the complex mortgage securities, they said… But many on Wall Street did even worse… They continued to trade very complex securities concocted by their most creative bankers even though their risk management systems weren’t able to understand the details of what they owned.

It’s Time For Financial Dinosaurs To Die (by Henryk A. Kowalczyk at the Huffington Post)
When a mortgage broker sold a low interest, one or three-year arm, mortgage to a person of shaky financial standing, he knew that that person would barely be able to pay monthly installments on the low interest loan and would be even less capable paying them when the rates went up. However, it was not his headache; he cashed his commission. A banker in the bank accepting this mortgage knew the same; therefore, as soon as possible he got rid of this hot potato by selling this loan to a bigger bank; and cashing his check.

The big bank grouped together many loans like this one and moved them further up. Those securities were then shuffled around endlessly… [E]verybody knew perfectly that in order to make money on these thirty-years obligations one should not hold them longer than thirty days. As long as inflated housing market kept fueling this system with sales of new mortgages, to some naive, from afar, this house of cards appeared to be of bricks and mortar. Maybe it was not a classic pyramid scheme, however – taking away all the baloney that Wall Street experts are feeding us – it looks like one…

Brauchli: Newspapers Warned Readers of Economic Crisis (Editor & Publisher)
Don’t tell Marcus Brauchli that U.S. newspapers haven’t been properly warning about the current financial crisis for years. Brauchli, executive editor of The Washington Post and former managing editor and longtime veteran of The Wall Street Journal, says coverage of the coming tide of economic woes, stemming largely from the mortgage and credit crisis, dates back more than a decade.

Should Andrea Mitchell Really Be Reporting on the Economic Meltdown? (Columbia Journalism Review)
When Andrea Mitchell reports on the current financial crisis — or on anything that relates to the crisis, which is, these days, a lot — there is an excessively large elephant in the control room. Its name is Alan Greenspan. That Greenspan is Mitchell’s husband doesn’t, under normal circumstances, warrant disclosure or special treatment. But the credit crisis is not normal circumstances.

Comedy Shows Turning Politics Into Gold (Variety)
The presidential campaign has been very, very good to Saturday Night Live.SNL has experienced a hefty bump in the Nielsen polls this election season, boasting a 50% gain over last season’s first two episodes. And Comedy Central’s The Daily Show is coming off its most-watched week in history, averaging 1.9 million viewers last week — up 28% from last year.

Law puts thousands of Florida voter IDs in question (McClatchy)
TALLAHASSEE — About 3,200 new voters are in the cross-hairs of Florida’s new and controversial ”no-match” law, which could force them to cast provisional ballots on Election Day if officials can’t confirm their identities.

CBS News: New Study Details Massive Voter Roll Purges Underway in At Least 19 States (The Brad Blog)
Massive voter roll purges being done in secret, with little or no oversight, and often under federal Justice Department cover, in states and counties around the country. And the Democrats, who likely have the most to lose via such secret purges, are doing little or nothing about it.

Male and female executive pay: Shocking but not surprising (News N Economics)
Fortune’s statistics on the top 25 best-compensated male executives’ paychecks compared to the top 25 best-paid women’s in 2007 paints an anachronistic picture: think 1950′s-style workplace with female secretaries wearing corsets and male executives drinking bourbon for lunch; a scene straight out of Mad Men. No really, it is rather shocking… The top male earns $350.7 million and the top female earns $38.6 million. That’s a $312.1 million differential!
We DEMAND equal opportunity graft!

Google comes out against Proposition 8. (Think Progress)
Proposition 8, a California constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage, has attracted an unlikely assortment of foes, including Vice President Cheney’s daughter Mary, Brad Pitt, and Steven Spielberg. [Last week], Google also took the unusual step of jumping in, noting that because it has a “great diversity of people and opinions” at the company, it rarely takes “a position on issues outside of our field, especially not social issues… However, while there are many objections to this proposition — further government encroachment on personal lives, ambiguously written text — it is the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of our employees that brings Google to publicly oppose Proposition 8.”

San Francisco’s Universal Health Care Plan Lives, Federal Court Rules (American Constitution Society)
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected yesterday a legal challenge to San Francisco’s universal health care ordinance. Employer groups, backed by the Department of Labor, argued that the local program was preempted by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). The Ninth Circuit’s decision to uphold the plan, called Healthy San Francisco, bodes well for similar state and local reforms in Massachusetts, Vermont and elsewhere.

Report Offers Legal Reforms To Save Science from Politics (American Constitution Society)
A new Center for Progressive Reform white paper proposes nine legal reforms to help eliminate political meddling in regulatory science… CPR’s white paper, Saving Science from Politics: Nine Reforms of the Legal System, outlines concrete, workable reforms to federal law and regulation that could help eliminate some of the worst abuses of regulatory science.

Media Matters for America headlines

• Ignoring polling data on Obama’s debate performance, Chuck Todd said Obama was “judged as not winning”

• In reporting on new NRCC ad, Cillizza did not note GOP support for Rangel earmark

• Time’s Carney falsely suggested Clinton “pin[ned] the blame for the mortgage crisis on Democrats”

• Hewitt did not challenge Palin falsehood about Obama’s “extreme position” on abortion

• Media have repeatedly asserted Palin faces “low” or “lowered” expectations in debate, despite praise of her debate skills

• Special Report falsely suggested Fannie and Freddie chief perpetrators of “financial mess,” Rep. Frank opposed stricter oversight

• Time poll rehashed smears of Obama: an unpatriotic “elitist” who lies about his faith

• Fox News’ Kelly falsely suggested Ifill’s book about Obama was made “public” only after she was announced as debate moderator

• Even after GOP leaders backed off accusation, Parker claims Pelosi’s speech on bailout bill was responsible for losing GOP votes

• Claiming “I’m not making any comparison here,” O’Reilly asserted that like Pelosi, Hitler also “practiced for hours before making a speech”

• LA Times reported Vets for Freedom ad attacking Obama over troop funding vote, but ignored Obama’s response and McCain’s own record

• Brzezinski on Palin: “[I]t would be great if she could hit it out of the ballpark tomorrow night”

• Wash. Post uncritically reported false McCain claim that Obama “would raise taxes”

EU Makes It Official: You Can’t Randomly Ban People From The Internet (by Stan Schroeder at Mashable)
…and by randomly, I mean without a legal process. You may remember that the European Parliament (most notably French socialist Guy Bono) has asked individual countries of the European Union to “avoid adopting measures conflicting with civil liberties and human rights … such as the interruption of internet access.” This was a reaction to the proposal of a three-strikes law, under which the ISPs could send two warnings to file sharers and completely ban them from the internet on third “offense.”… In other words, you cannot ban someone from the internet unless you have a damn good reason – and file sharing is not a good enough reason.

China’s Fake News Reports From Space
China‘s state news agency published a dispatch from the country’s three latest astronauts describing their first night in space before they had even left Earth. The Xinhua agency, which has sometimes been accused of carrying state propaganda, took down the story and blamed it on a “technical error.”

Finnish site pulls kindergarten shooting game
HELSINKI (Reuters) – An Internet game in which players roam a school and kill kindergarten students with a shotgun has been pulled from a Finnish children’s gaming site one week after the country’s worst school shooting.

Congress passes bill to help save Net radio
Congress has cleared the way for a potential agreement intended to save the emerging Internet radio market from a crippling hike in copyright royalty rates.

U.S. Media Sector Has ‘Healthy’ Liquidity, Fitch Says
U.S. media and entertainment companies have “generally healthy” liquidity and will be supported by predictable revenue and high profit margins in the current credit crunch, Fitch Ratings said in a report. Diversified companies including Walt Disney Co., News Corp., Time Warner Inc., and Viacom Inc. are best positioned to weather market conditions, Fitch analysts Jamie Rizzo and Mike Simonton said.

CBS Gets a Rude Lesson in Citizen Journalism
Like a lot of news networks, CBS jumped on the citizen journalism bandwagon with a free iPhone app, Eyemobile for iPhone, to make it easy for users to upload news to its user-generated news site, CBSeyemobile.com. But a visit to CBSeyemobile.com turns up a few photos that walk the line of not-safe-for-work, a jarring juxtaposition with CBS’s storied news brand.

HuffPo Shilling for Thrillist?
Huffington Post bloggers aren’t supposed to treat their blogs as personal ad space. But if your boss’s dad happens to run the company, you can bend the rules a little. Yesterday, a new blogger named Bill Kearney posted his first entry, announcing the launch of a Miami edition of Thrillist. In making his pitch, Kearney clearly violated section 3.iv of Huffpo’s user agreement, which forbids bloggers to “post advertisements or solicitation of business.”

MediaNews’ Singleton On What’s Ailing Newspapers: It’s The Economy, Not The Internet (PaidContent)
William Dean Singleton, CEO of Denver-based publisher MediaNews Group and chairman of the AP board, believes he can address the challenge presented by online media to newspapers by tying print and interactive ad sales more closely together and by relying on cooperative services from Yahoo, the AP and real estate ad net Zillow.

Murdoch Has Been Losing $1.5 Million Per Hour This Year
The fortune of 77-year-old media tycoon and News Corp. founder Rupert Murdoch declined $2 billion to $6.8 billion this year. News Corp.’s stock price fell 34% over the last 12 months despite the robustness of the Fox brand and its purchase of Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal. Murdoch lost $1,000 every 15.78 seconds, or $63.38 per second.
He can afford it.

McClatchy Loan Deal Wins It Flexibility—With Costs (Paid Content)
The McClatchy Company, like just about every other newspaper publisher, has found itself even more squeezed by the current economic convulsions. On Friday, the Sacramento company announced it has renegotiated $1.175 billion of debt, which includes banks loans and available lines of credit. While the company insisted it was in no danger of default, it needed to amend its debt agreements to alleviate the pressure from falling ad revenues, particularly in its California and Florida markets.

How Not To Turn Alt-Weeklies Into Crappy Blog Clones (by Hamilton Nolan at Gawker)
Ben Eason, the CEO of alt-weekly chain Creative Loafing, which declared bankruptcy this week, wants his alt-weekly writers to spend all week writing for the Web — being bloggers, in essence. Problem: we don’t need more bloggers. Solution: Become an Alt-monthly. Keep the features. Take your time. Consolidate. Save on printing costs. Save journalism.

Star-Ledger Achieves Goal of 200 Buyouts
The Star-Ledger announced that more than 200 non-union employees had signed up for buyouts, achieving the second of three goals set by the ownership to avert a sale or shutdown of New Jersey’s largest newspaper. The newspaper also appeared to be close to a settlement with its union drivers, which must be achieved by Oct. 8 to meet the final condition.

Newspaper in Minneapolis Halts Its Debt Payments
The Star Tribune of Minneapolis said on Wednesday that it had stopped making payments on its debts, the latest evidence of the trouble the newspaper industry is having with debt loads it took on in 2006 and 2007.

The World’s Best-Paid Authors
While the publishing industry has struggled to come up with a “Happily Ever After” storyline in recent years, there’s still plenty of money to be made in the business of books. Sure it isn’t the success it once was–blame it on the economy, the Web and the big-box stores–but the publishing industry’s top earners still manage to turn pages of prose into piles of cash.

Nobel Literature Head: US Too Insular to Compete
Bad news for American writers hoping for a Nobel Prize next week: the top member of the award jury believes the United States is too insular and ignorant to compete with Europe when it comes to great writing. Counters the head of the U.S. National Book Foundation: “Put him in touch with me, and I’ll send him a reading list.”

Tar Founder: ‘You Almost Couldn’t Launch Something During a Worse Time’ (FishbowlNY)
In March, we met with Evanly Schindler, founder of Blackbook, who told us about his newest publication, Tar. At the time, Schindler said the biannual magazine was “a high-concept publication with the ability to be sustainable.” Yesterday, we got a look at the magazine. So how’s it look? In a word: stunning.

Washington Post Company Acquires Foreign Policy Magazine
Newsweek publisher the Washington Post Company yesterday acquired Foreign Policy magazine and its accompanying Web site from Washington, D.C.-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. It was not immediately clear if any layoffs are associated with the acquisition.

TV’s Fall Lineup Disappoints Hopes for a Quick Recovery 
The first week of the fall TV season brought grim news to network executives hoping for a swift recovery from last year’s audience-zapping writers’ strike. Many viewers haven’t rushed back to their television sets to watch this year’s highly promoted season premieres, preferring to catch the shows on digital video recording devices and online — or not catch them at all.

With Brokaw as Elder Statesman, NBC Plans Future of Meet the Press
Sometime between Election Day and early December, NBC News will make a final decision about who will replace Tim Russert and his interim successor, Tom Brokaw, at the helm of Meet the Press. The network is leaning toward an ensemble of hosts that would be led by Chuck Todd, NBC’s political director, and include David Gregory, a correspondent and MSNBC anchor.

‘Project Runway’ Move To Lifetime Postponed After NBCU Legal Win (Paid Content)
Project Runway won’t show up on Lifetime this fall, after all, following an NBC Universa victory in New York State Supreme Court. The Weinstein Co’s hit reality show was supposed to switch from Bravo to the ABC-Hearst-owned network for its sixth season in November. But NBCU won a preliminary injunction (look below for the full pdf) late Friday when Judge Richard Lowe ruled that the GE subsidiary might be able to prove in court its claim that it legally had first refusal for renewing the show. NBCU also had to put up a $20 million bond —10 percent of what Weinstein says the deal with Lifetime is worth, according to Reuters. NBCU claimed victory in its statement; Weinstein also lost its motion for dismissal but tried to find some blue sky in the required bond posting.
Please don’t ask me why I care, but I’d really like to see Project Runway stay with Bravo.

Rosie to Get ‘Variety Show’ on NBC
The table’s set for Rosie O’Donnell’s holiday-season stab at reviving the variety genre. NBC will air Rosie’s Variety Show live from New York on the night before Thanksgiving — Nov. 26 — at 8 p.m. The special, which has been in the works for months, is believed to be the precursor to a regular variety program fronted by O’Donnell that would debut in the new year.

Kathy Griffin Sues KathyGriffin.com Owner
Kathy Griffin has filed a cybersquatting lawsuit against a company that owns KathyGriffin.com, claiming they are making money off her name and image. In a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court Sept. 16, the comedian, who just won another Emmy for her reality show, My Life on the D-List, was contacted in July by the owners offering the site for sale for $3,500.

Jesse Ventura Working on New Series for truTV
Jesse Ventura will be working on a new conspiracy-theory series for truTV. Production of a pilot featuring Ventura begins next month. The project comes from A. Smith & Co. Productions, which also produces Hell’s Kitchen and Trading Spaces. Ventura will travel the country, investigating cases and getting input from believers and skeptics before passing judgment on a theory’s validity.

Starz deal adds many more streamed movies to Netflix
From Spider-Man 3 to No Country for Old Men, Netflix is making another 2,500 movies, TV shows and concerts available for instant viewing through a deal with Starz Entertainment LLC.

AOL TV to Run Star-on-Star Interviews
Online video portal AOL Television plans to premiere an interview-style Web series on Oct. 1 dubbed “Outside of the Box” that will cast popular TV stars interviewing each other using fan-submitted questions. The debut episode will feature Private Practice stars, while future episodes include stars from Desperate Housewives, Life on Mars, Dirty Sexy Money and Scrubs.
Because we don’t know NEARLY enough about our TV stars.

TMZ to Launch Hub on MySpaceTV
News Corp.-owned MySpace and Warner Bros. Television Group are partnering to launch a TMZ-branded entertainment hub at MySpaceTV, the two companies confirmed late Wednesday. The new hub expands upon the two companies’ existing partnership, which began in February 2008 when TMZ launched a branded channel on MySpaceTV.

What YouTube’s ‘Charlie Bit My Finger’ Tells Us About Web 2.0 (by Cole Camplese, Christian Science Monitor)
It’s easy to criticize the rise of participatory social media as a giant waste of time. And it’s true that a fair amount of what’s being created is adolescent. But that criticism misses the point: This trend is setting the stage for greater long-term engagement. It’s an indicator that people are working to find new ways to collaborate and to be part of something larger than they are individually.

25+ Resources for Carpooling (Mashable)
From gas prices to the environment and being able to use the carpool lane, there are many reasons to start carpooling. The question is, how do you easily find people that happen to be driving to the same destination as you?  Luckily, as with almost everything in this day and age, there are Web apps to help you with this very query. For a double whammy of savings, make sure to check out our list, Check Gas Prices Online: 11 Handy Tools to find the cheapest gas for you and your carpooling buddies to split.

DNA on Sale: Familybuilder Introduces Low Cost Testing (Mashable)
New York-based network Familybuilder has been growing quite handily over the past year and a half since it first launched as a Facebook application. As of late June this year, it had grown to encompass users on MySpace, Bebo, Hi5 and Orkut, and had reached over 16 million people. Now it claims north of 20 million or more. And as of October 15, it will do its users one better than simply connecting the profiles of relatives. It will begin to provide DNA tests to users who care for a deeper understanding of their ancestral tree. For just $59.95 per individual.
And many divorces will result.

Logging On for a Second (or Third) Opinion
Paging Dr. Google can lead patients to miss a rich lode of online resources that may not yield to a simple search.

TinEye to Announce Index of Over 1 Billion Images 
The image-based search engine, TinEyem is set to relaunch this week boasting an index of over 1 billion images, double what it was when they debuted back in May. The announcement of an increased index is the first of several developments, including an API, that the Canadian company plans to roll out over the next few weeks.

Google Blog Search Deals Technorati a Knockout Punch With New Homepage (Mashable)
Blog search engine Technorati recently tried to re-invent itself as a memetracker of sorts, changing its homepage to reflect the most popular blog posts at a given point in time. Today, Google Blog Search – long just a blog-focused version of the company’s core search engine – has followed Technorati’s lead and launched a destination site of its own. Much like Technorati, Google Blog Search now organizes posts into a variety of topics – such as politics, technology, and entertainment – and then shows the most popular stories within them. Blog posts about the same topic are grouped into what Google calls “clusters” – with rankings determined by what looks to be a combination of the breadth and velocity of coverage. Each cluster includes a Google Trends-like graph indicating how many blog posts have been made about the given topic during each hour of the day.

Microsoft SearchPerks to Reward Users for Using Live Search (Mashable)
It was in late May when Microsoft first gave users financial incentive to browse the commercial Web with the company’s Live Search engine. They called the program Cashback. A month later, Microsoft expanded the Cashback system to include eBay Buy-it-Now offers. Now, according to Mary Jo-Foley of ZDNet, it is set to issue SearchPerks, which, in short, provides users product vouchers that, if collected in certain quantities, can offer participants options for free music or air travel, or, alternatively, the chance to make philanthropic contributions of various sorts.

Allstate testing whether games can improve driving
NEW YORK (AP) – Could playing computer games enhance mental agility enough to turn people over 50 into better drivers? Allstate Corp. wants to find out, and if the answer is yes, it might offer insurance discounts to people who play the games.

U.S. Ad Spending Plummets
U.S. advertising spending plunged the most in seven years as companies cut marketing budgets to weather the falling home prices and lending freezes that are stifling consumer spending. Ad spending fell 3.7 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, the biggest decline since 2001, New York-based market researcher TNS Media Intelligence said today in a statement.

How Do Bloggers Make Money?
Bloggers such as Jason Kottke ($5,300/month) and the Fug girls ($6,240/month) pursue what naturally interests them without many constraints on length or style. While those two are genuine stars of the blogging world, there are plenty of smaller, personal blogs that bring in decent change with the Amazon Associates program and search ads from Google.

AOL Announces BidPlace Ad Exchange
As part of Advertising Week in New York, AOL’s Platform-A ad service has unveiled BidPlace, an ad exchange that will launch in the first half of next year. In an ad exchange, advertisers place bids on pieces of inventory, and the highest bidder wins. It’s the premise behind companies such as Right Media, which Yahoo acquired in 2007 after initially investing in it.

Grid of 100,000 computers heralds new internet dawn
A network of 100,000 computers providing the greatest data processing capacity yet unleashed has been created to cope with information pouring from the world’s largest machine. The Grid is the latest evolution of the internet and the world wide web and computer scientists will announce on Friday that it is ready to be connected to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It is designed for schemes where huge quantities of data need crunching, such as large research and engineering projects. The Grid has the kind of power required to download movies in seconds, and the ability to make high-definition video phone calls for the same price as a local call. More importantly, it should help to narrow the search for cures for diseases. However, it is unlikely to be directly available to most internet users until telecoms providers build the fibre-optic network required to use it.

Father of the Internet: ‘Web is Running Out of Addresses’
Vint Cerf, the “father of the Internet” and one of the world’s leading computer scientists, said that businesses and consumers needed to act now to switch to the next generation of net addresses. Unless preparations were made now, he said, some computers might not be able to go online and the connectivity of the internet might be damaged.

On-board Wi-Fi arrive on buses in U.S., abroad
[J]ust as Internet is now getting rolled out on more and more planes, Internet on long-distance buses is coming soon as well. [T]here are now loads of bus companies up and down the Atlantic seaboard that are offering on-board Wi-Fi as well. Both the New York Daily News and, more recently, the New York Times are reporting on all of the bus companies that are adding Wi-Fi to their routes.
As long as they don’t let people talk on their phones.  PLEEEEEEZE!

TiVo’s Software Launches On a PC (Paid Content)
TiVo has launched the first implementation of a fully functional TiVo DVR to actually reside on a PC, in association with DVD software firm Nero. The The TiVo app, called LiquidTV-TiVo PC, will be available through retail stores on Oct. 15…the package, will sell for a $199 suggested retail, includes software and hardware including: a NTSC/ATSC Hauppauge 950Q tuner card, TiVo remote, a portable antenna and one year of TiVo subscription service, reports Twice. If users have a TV tuner card already, then the software-only service is $99 with one year of TiVo service in it. After one year, the prices haven;t been set yet, but the company says it will be lower than usual TiVo sub.
It was bound to happen.

As Expected, AT&T Opts For DirecTV Over DISH (Paid Content)
This one’s been playing out in slow-motion over the last year, but it’s just about resolved: AT&T has decided to partner exclusively with satellite operator DirecTV to market video to some of its customers. The news is a blow to rival DISH, which is currently an AT&T partner. Although this had been seen for a while, there were some raised eyebrows last week when AT&T and DISH extended their relationship by one month, to January 31, 2009. The new service will be marketed after this date, while existing DISH-AT&T customers will continue with their service.

Nintendo to launch camera, music-ready DS in Japan
TOKYO (Reuters) – Nintendo Co Ltd will launch a DS machine that can take pictures and play music, hoping to cement its lead over Sony’s PlayStation and encroach into the territory of Apple Inc’s iPod and iPhone.

Create Geotagged Slideshows of Your Outings with EveryTrail for iPhone (Mashable)
EveryTrail is an iPhone app that lets you record your journey with geotagged photos that are automatically added to a slideshow at their website. These trips can be hikes, runs, bike rides, walks or whatever you want… Once you click the start button to begin your trip, several points of data starts getting captured such as the distanced traveled, the elapsed time and your speed. The Photo button takes snapshots and transmits them automatically to your slideshow on the site. The images are geotagged via GPS and the location coordinates are relayed to the site along with the images. You can also add detailed notes all throughout your travels which is a nice touch. Sometimes pictures don’t always tell the whole story so it’s useful to be able to record your thoughts during your trip as well as the visuals.
I keep tellin’ ya.  Stalkers are going to love this GPS stuff.