“This is a hole in the dike and it threatens to injure the safety and soundness of our banking system. It’s alarming to believe that the Fed, usually the great defender of the banking system, is now leading the deregulatory charge.”

And so, like Babe Ruth pointing the bat towards right field, Chuck Schumer — then a Brooklyn congressman — called the catastrophe that would unfold twenty years later.

The year was 1987, and the occasion was a major Federal Reserve vote that loosened Depression-era restrictions on banks — notably, allowing them to begin underwriting those mortgage-backed securities we’ve heard so much about lately. The 1933 Glass-Steagall Act wouldn’t fall for another dozen years, but this was the beginning of the end.

The Reaganomic argument of the day was that while FDR may have saved capitalism from itself, 1930s protections had been rendered quaint by 1980s conditions, that we needed to take off the leash so American financial oligopolies could compete with oligopolies overseas.

And besides, the Cassandras fearing unimaginable calamities like trillion-dollar bailouts had failed to recognize that the financial system was all grown up now. Thomas Theobald, vice chairman of Citicorp, offered three “outside checks” on market misbehavior:

• “a very effective” SEC
• knowledgeable investors
• “very sophisticated” rating agencies

Give him credit — that’s three for three in naming the most cited failures underlying the current meltdown.

Missing from the conversation that long ago spring was any reference to Gordon Gekko or “Greed is Good,” but that’s only because of a technicality — Wall Street didn’t premiere until December. The movie’s tagline: “Every dream has a price.”

Bank Curb Eased in Volcker Defeat [NYT, May 1, 1987]

The Long Demise of Glass-Steagall [Frontline, 2003]

Didn’t Sarah Palin used to be somebody? We vaguely remember her from a few weeks back — maybe it was a crotch shot in a limo. Or that “Leave Sarah Alone” video. Or the other one. Or the one that’s not the first two.

Maybe this will help:

Another valley activist, Philip Munger, says that Palin also helped push the evangelical drive to take over the Mat-Su Borough school board. “She wanted to get people who believed in creationism on the board,” said Munger, a music composer and teacher. “I bumped into her once after my band played at a graduation ceremony at the Assembly of God. I said, ‘Sarah, how can you believe in creationism — your father’s a science teacher.’ And she said, ‘We don’t have to agree on everything.'”

Ah, now we remember: She’s Chuck Heath’s daughter. You know Chuck — he’s retired now, likes to hunt moose and caribou. Used to teach science. And apparently, near as we can tell, didn’t care much for creationism, at least not in the classroom. Good for him.

The pastor who clashed with Palin [Salon]

Is ‘Palin Effect’ already wearing thin? [SFGate]

It was either this or Yet Another Contrarian Electoral Essay. We figured you could use a break.

The Onion [via Sully]

If there’s one thing we do fear this fall, it’s not the increasingly whimsical attack ads, but the Rovian ground game. While we remain confident that 51 percent of the American electorate will come to their senses soon enough, we’re not at all confident they’ll actually be allowed to, y’know, vote.

Let’s start with a taste of Andrew Hacker’s article in the latest New York Review, which reminds us of the score to date:

Requiring a driver’s license to vote has a disparate racial impact, a finding that once commanded judicial notice. To apply for the state ID card that Indiana offers as an alternative, moreover, nondrivers must travel to a motor vehicles office, which for many would be a lengthy trip…

The Indiana decision [Crawford v. Marion County Election Board] will not only make it harder to add new people to the rolls; many who had previously voted without photo identification are now required to produce an official photograph. If Marion County (Indianapolis) has the same proportion of unlicensed voters as Milwaukee County, I count it as having more than 44,000 black residents who will be needing transport to motor bureaus to ensure that each item in their nondriver ID application has been properly filled in. Extended nationwide, this means that a lot of on-the-ground assistance is going to be needed.

And if that’s not enough to grab your attention, here’s the breaking news from Wisconsin: state attorney general J.B. Van Hollen has filed a lawsuit against the state’s election board, insisting that it crosscheck driver’s license registrations on voters who registered or changed address since January 1, 2006.

an election official said the lawsuit could force clerks to check data on about 1 million voters. And critics accused Van Hollen — a Republican serving as the state co-chair of John McCain’s presidential campaign — of filing the suit for partisan gain.

We won’t even bother listing suspicions about The Company Formerly Known As Diebold, or the integrity of its equipment in the best of circumstances. It’s enough to note that concerted efforts to Block the Vote are already underway, in states where denying the franchise to significantly large numbers of American citizens would be beneficial to a campaign too desperate to lose.

In other words: It’s the Ballots, stupid.

Obama: The Price of Being Black [NY Review]

Van Hollen’s voter-check lawsuit sets off a tempest [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]

Sarah “Pussy” Palin, craven understudy leader of the free world, remains too chickenshit to face the public without a script written by somebody else, raising serious questions about her ability to answer a 3 p.m. call from David Gregory, much less a 3 a.m. alarm about Vladimir Putin.

John McCain, Barack Obama and Joe Biden will all be appearing on the Sunday chatterfests today. Cuddles Wallace held open a slot for Palin, but she had a nervous fit and will be flying back to Alaska to shoot things that don’t shoot back. “She calls herself a pit bull, but she’s acting like a poodle,” says a well-placed blogger, speaking on condition that the neighbors turn down their fucking TV at night.

We’re now in Day 10 of Pussy Palin’s Campaign of Zen, and desperate acolytes are searching for something, anything, to prove to doubters that she’s capable of speaking her mind, and not her speechwriter’s.

Perhaps this will tide us over:

“Turning maybe purple in the state means, to me, it’s more independent, it’s not the obsessive partisanship that gets in the way of doing what’s right for this state, and I think on a national level that’s what we’re gonna see,” Palin said about Obama’s prospects in Alaska before aliens abducted her. “I’m a mom, and my son is going to get deployed in September, and we better have a real clear plan for this war. And it better not have to do with oil and dependence on foreign energy.”

We feel better now. She said that only a few weeks ago.

Palin on Obama [New Yorker]

• how parents chose children’s names is not trivia (FuturePil()t, 05:05, 31 August 2008)
• pregancy water broke 11-hour flight on AS flight + 16 year old daughter might got pregnant and covered up (FuturePil()t, 05:04, 31 August 2008)
• Alan Colmes has reported Track was born less than 8 months after the Palins’ elopement. (Maxbox51, 04:21, 31 August 2008)
• there is no “consensus” just b/c you nakedly assert there is (PassionoftheDamon, 03:08, 31 August 2008)
• Rm libellous Daily Kos conspiracy theory (Kelly, 01:49, 31 August 2008)
• It IS relevant that she complained about pageant judges and then her husband was one. (Poggio, 01:06, 31 August 2008)
• as commander of the Alaska national guard there is nothing wrong with visiting the troops (Hobartimus, 23:20, 30 August 2008)
• Until there is actual news about people “omg her children are named after witches” I’m removing this. Srsly people. (Mboverload, 23:02, 30 August 2008)
• cited article does not say her opposition is restricted to recreational use (KCinDC, 22:43, 30 August 2008)
• rm Moose image – what’s the point? (Happyme22, 18:10, 30 August 2008)
• restore quote, since her accusing Clinton of whining is being talked about in the media (KCinDC, 17:30, 30 August 2008)
• remove military photos that have a propoganda feel. Palin is not known for any foreign policy/military government experience. (Rootology, 16:21, 30 August 2008)
• Protected Sarah Palin: High traffic article attracting a lot of ip vandalism over weekend (LessHeard vanU, 14:14, 30 August 2008)

Revision history of Sarah Palin [Wikipedia]