Quitters Stick With It. Winners Quit.

Via TPM, that’s the take-away from Sarah Palin’s speech. On twitter, Ezra Klein advises ambitious bloggers to comb through the speech for other internal contradictions. The headline says it all for me and I hope we’re done with this hack. John McCain was an idiot for putting her on the national stage.

After the jump, there’s a long compilation of Richard’s forwards from the past weeks. Many of the links posted aren’t just opinion pieces from various political blogs… several are legitimate stories from respected news sources.

I’m going to organize these by topic, and older posts first.

Economy: Wall Street and the White House

• Tom Engelhardt tots up everything Obama is in charge of amounting to yet another imperial presidency.
• Russia, China, India, and Brazil increasingly unwilling to shoulder more U.S. debt.
• Robert Reich says Obama’s economic plan won’t work because of the way certain derivatives are still unregulated.
• Banks not worried about the recession being both the cause and biggest beneficiaries.
• Alexander Cockburn runs down how Wall Street is running the White House.

Economy: State Budget Crisis etc.

• Business Week charts private industry job growth over the past ten years; indicates that real recovery is a long way off.
• U.S. states’ budget sets stage for further attacks on the working class.
• A claim that the increase in savings rate indicates deflation.
• Bloomberg: Chase raises rates on outstanding credit card debt to close to 30%.
• Touring the collapse of America’s auto industry.
• U.S. state budget crisis threatens broad social collapse.

Iraq / Pakistan

• The checkered past of Obama’s new man in the Pentagon, General Stanley McChrystal.
• The anti-war Democrats who sold out.

Iran Policy / Iran Election

• The argument that Ahmadinejad really won the election in Iran.
• WSJ: Hard-line Iran policy adviser, Dennis Ross, has Obama’s ear. (Co-founder of WINEP which is dedicated to nuking Iran.)
• More on the possibility that Iran’s “stolen election” is a fraud.
• WSWS picks apart a New York Times editorial on Iran: not too much evidence it was stolen.
• The importance of Twitter and #iranelection called into question.
• More on hardline Iran lobbyist, Dennis Ross, at the White House.
• The Neda video vs. torture images from Iraq. Glenn Greenwald sees deep irony.

Coup in Honduras

• Collection of links and reporting on the Honduras coup.
• Machinations behind the scenes with Hillary Clinton’s hand-wringing and the coup in Honduras.

Healthcare Debate etc.

• Healthcare: If we end up with a public option, insurance companies will be quick to dump high-risk insurers on the government.
• An interesting new campaign advocating for single-payer (not public option) healthcare.
• ABC News: Former health insurance executive blows whistle on healthcare insurance industry. Already dumps high-risk patients.
• Outline of Cuba’s healthcare system.
• Doctors warn: avoid genetically modified foods.

Miscellaneous

• Democracy Now! transcript of a roundtable on how Obama’s secrecy policy adopts and goes beyond George Bush’s e.g., Obama is blocking industrial pollution info.
• Report: Israeli military is beating and torturing Palestinian children.
• File under conspiracy theory: Did Osama die in December 2001? Is there an American Psy-Ops for setting us up with Bogeymen? Iran elections another example.
• Pentagon rebrands “protest” as “low-level terrorism.”
• Media continues to overstate Palestinian violence and understate Israeli violence.
• Obama’s Green Team more of the same.
• Obama preparing order for indefinite detentions.
• A modest proposal for countries tiring of America’s military bases — cash out now!