The now infamous $25 million Road to Nowhere opened in Alaska this week.

Ketchikan Mayor Bob Weinstein said the 3.2-mile road now is ideal for road races and hunting, and possibly some commercial development. But with no bridge to serve it, that's probably about it.

If I were Sarah Palin, I'd drop both the Bridge and the Road to Nowhere from her list of accomplishments. They are just fodder for late night jokes and they speak poorly of her so-called executive acumen, not to mention her veracity.

Paul Krugman says "No Deal" on the $700 billion bailout.

Not unless Treasury explains, very clearly, why this is supposed to work, other than through having taxpayers pay premium prices for lousy assets.

The Treasury Department's fact sheet on the bailout is here and as I mentioned in an earlier post, the text of the legislation is here. I'm an economically challenged type who has to struggle to understand complex financial things that don't involve crime. Marcy at Empty Wheel explains it in a way I can understand:

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Too busy to engage the issue, but Democrats must say no to the proposed bailout as announced today. It is simply unacceptable. Krugman explains:

[H]istorically, financial system rescues have involved seizing the troubled institutions and guaranteeing their debts; only after that did the government try to repackage and sell their assets. The feds took over S&Ls first, protecting their depositors, then transferred their bad assets to the RTC. . . . The Treasury plan, by contrast, looks like an attempt to restore confidence in the financial system — that is, convince creditors of troubled institutions that everything’s OK — simply by buying assets off these institutions.

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Remember in 2003 when Vice President Dick Cheney began asserting that the Vice President is not part of the executive branch? He's been using that ever since as an excuse to be relieved from preserving documents under the Presidential Records Act.

Today, a federal judge told Cheney to preserve his records.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly is a setback for the Bush administration in its effort to promote a narrow definition of materials that must be safeguarded under by the Presidential Records Act.

The Bush administration's legal position "heightens the court's concern" that some records may not be preserved, said the judge.

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John McCain will undoubtedly accuse Barack Obama of mischaracterizing McCain's position on social security, but voters are beginning to understand that McCain has taken every side of every issue, including social security, during his lengthy career in Washington. McCain is recently on record endorsing President Bush's failed privatization plan, despite his campaign's assurance that McCain is "100 percent committed to preserving Social Security benefits for seniors." McCain tied himself to Bush when he thought it would help him. If the embarrassing knots are difficult to untie now, McCain has only himself to blame.

As he did in this ad, Obama today described McCain as a reckless gambler ready to bet social security trust fund revenue on private investments. Obama seized the moment to make an argument that should separate McCain from a large segment of voters (elderly and getting there) who foresee disaster if part of the social security system is converted to a voluntary program of private investment.

Obama, speaking to potential voters in Daytona Beach: [more ...]

The New York Times reports that at the insistence of the McCain campaign, the debate between Gov. Sarah Palin and Sen. Joe Biden will have different rules than those for the Obama-McCain debate:

At the insistence of the McCain campaign, the Oct. 2 debate between Gov. Sarah Palin and her Democratic rival, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., will have shorter question-and-answer segments than those for the presidential nominees, the advisers said. There will also be much less opportunity for free-wheeling, direct exchanges between the running mates.

McCain advisers said they had been concerned that a loose format could leave Ms. Palin, a relatively inexperienced debater, at a disadvantage and largely on the defensive.

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How big a role will race play in the presidential election? Via an AP poll out today:

According to the poll released Saturday, a little over one-third of white Democrats and independents agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks, and they are less likely to vote for Obama than those who don't hold such views.

....statistical models derived from the poll suggest that Obama's support would be as much as 6 percentage points higher if there were no white racial prejudice.

Full poll results are here (pdf.) AP analysis is here. [More..]

The editorial today in the Anchorage Daily News is Abidcation by Palin, criticizing her for allowing John McCain and his operatives speak for her on TrooperGate.

The governor who said, "Hold me accountable," is hiding behind the hired guns of the McCain campaign to avoid accountability. Is it too much to ask that Alaska's governor speak for herself, directly to Alaskans, about her actions as Alaska's governor?

....Is the McCain campaign telling Alaskans that Alaska's governor can't handle her own defense in front of her own Alaska constituents?

The calls the takeover "offensive": [More...]

Big Tent Democrat is working on a brief this weekend. I'm heading out for the afternoon, here's an open thread for you. Please be civil.

For those of you who are new readers, keep in mind TalkLeft is not a neutral site. It is an advocacy site. With less than 45 days to the election, we will do our part to promote the candidacy of Sen. Barack Obama and Joe Biden as well as Democrats running down-ticket.

I'm not interested in fostering debate on the candidates. We oppose McCain-Palin. That doesn't mean we won't have criticism or suggestions for Obama-Biden or the media. We will. We'll call the polls, news events and upcoming debates as we see them. [More...]

Here is the text of the bailout proposal President Bush has sent to Congress.

Sent overnight to Congress, President Bush says the risk of doing nothing is greater than the risk posed by the bailout.

The plan would allow the Treasury to buy up mortgage-related assets. The aim is for the government to buy the securities at a discount, hold onto them and then sell them for a profit.

Is he right? According to the experts quoted in the article:

When Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin filed her request earlier this week to stop the Personnel Board investigation into TrooperGate that her lawyer had requested just days earlier, she included a new reason for firing former Public Safety Director Walt Monaghan: He was a renegade who took an unauthorized trip to Washington, DC to lobby for money for a program to investigate and prosecute rape.

The project, expected to cost from $10 million to $20 million a year for five years, would have been the first of its kind in Alaska, which leads the nation in reported forcible rape.

The McCain-Palin campaign echoed the charge in a press release it distributed Monday, concurrent with Palin's legal filing. "Mr. Monegan persisted in planning to make the unauthorized lobbying trip to D.C.," the release stated.

But, ABC News has obtained the travel authorization document (pdf). The trip was authorized by Palin's office. [More...]

I received this by e-mail last week from a lawyer. Feel free to check its accuracy, but it sounds legit to me and I'm passing it on.

1. Palin has attacked Alaska Native Subsistence Fishing

Perhaps no issue is of greater importance to Alaska Native peoples as the right to hunt and fish according to ancient customary and traditional practices, and to carry on the subsistence way of life for future generations. Governor Sarah Palin has consistently opposed those rights.

Once in office, Governor Palin decided to continue litigation that seeks to overturn every subsistence fishing determination the federal government has ever made in Alaska. (State of Alaska v. Norton, 3:05-cv-0158-HRH (D. Ak).) In pressing this case, Palin decided against using the Attorney General (which usually handles State litigation) and instead continued contracting with Senator Ted Stevens’ brother-in-law’s law firm (Birch, Horton, Bittner & Cherot).

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