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Glenn Beck has become a cartoon. You can pretty much guarantee that every afternoon, you can tune in and find Beck saying something so stupidly outrageous, so detached from reality, so unhinged in its lunacy, that you just have to shake your head. It's not really a very funny cartoon, though.

Yesterday he treated us all to a long rant about how liberals are indoctrinating our children with inhuman values that are OK with letting grandma die at the hands of death panels, or something. "We have raised a generation of potential killers," he warned, inspired by a letter to the editor from a young woman who wants health-care reform for her generation especially. Yeah, that's exactly the same thing as pushing for euthanasia.

Beck, obviously, hears strange things when he listens to other people -- things they don't actually say. Instead, they seem to be edited by the voices inside his head.

He featured a later segment with right-wing economist Arthur Laffer -- one of the progenitors of Reaganomics -- who tells Beck all the damage could be repaired overnight with just a simple injection of Reagan-style economics. Of course, Laffer neglects to mention that G.W. Bush followed his economic prescriptions (especially those tax cuts for the wealthy, and the deregulation of the financial sector) to the letter, too -- and we can see where that got us.

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But Beck concludes anyway that Obama is marching us right into a Soviet-style decline and crumble:

Beck: Did you ever read Pravda?

Laffer: I did read Pravda, as a matter of fact.

Beck: Did you read that? Where they're like, 'What is wrong with the Republicans?' We're watching what happened to Russia -- Pravda gives us more truth than the American press!

He's referring, of course, the Igor Panarin's dire predictions of the fall of America, which, so far, have proven laughably wrong.

Indeed, Panarin is actually just a classic Russian propagandist, engaged in the process of explaining to his readers why post-Soviet rule has not exactly been a smashing success -- by claiming that the USA is about to go into a similar decline.

We had no idea Beck was such a fan of post-Soviet propaganda. Quick, someone alert Glenn Beck and see if he can do another of his McCarthyite exposes.

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Frontline Oct. 20, 2009. The Warning:

In the midst of the 1990's bull market, one lone regulator warned about derivatives' dangers--and overnight became the enemy of some of the most powerful people in Washington.

You can watch the entire program on line here as well as additional invertiews with Brooksley Born, Gary Gensler, Michael Greenberger, Arthur Levitt and Joseph Stiglitz.

From Frontline's interview with Brooksley Born:

Q: What's the message that you're trying to spread now in the ashes of what happened in 2008 and '09?

BORN: I think we have to close the regulatory gap. ... We cannot afford as a society to go forward with an enormous unregulated market that poses this kind of danger because it’ll happen again if we don't take the appropriate steps. ... We need to take a lesson from the existing futures markets where exchange trading has been safe. As much as possible of the over-the-counter derivatives market should be traded on a regulated derivatives exchange. The transaction should be cleared on a regulated clearinghouse. There should be robust federal regulation of any remaining OTC derivatives market. And personally, I think that remaining market should be limited as much as possible to no more than the customized contracts that are needed for specific businesses to hedge particular business risks. ...

Q: If this moment passes again, the consequences are what from your perspective?

BORN: I think we will have continuing danger from these markets and that we will have repeats of the financial crisis. It may differ in details, but there will be significant financial downturns and disasters attributed to this regulatory gap over and over until we learn from experience.

Frontline also put together a video timeline of the events starting in 1987-today.

I highly recommend watching the entire hour at PBS's site, but here's one more portion I wanted to share here.

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(The Joys Of Travel)

When the deregulation of the Commercial Airline industry came into full bloom by 1983 (the bill was signed into law in 1978), everything was bordering on chaos. Granted, the major airlines had something of a monopoly for years and abuse was rife. But the pendulum swung the other way and cost cutting measures, layoffs and threatened bankruptcies of airlines like Continental created an uneasy and in many ways, an unsafe environment for air travel. There was talk about considering the airlines a public utility. But as was evidenced by the breakup of AT&T (which was considered a public utility) that alternative wasn't viable either. The trouble was, things were getting worse and no one was willing to offer an alternative. Strangely, they still aren't.

As a reaction to the worsening conditions, The Airline Pilots Union went on strike against Continental Airlines (one of many during the 80's).

The strike was the subject of a "Face The Nation" episode from October 2, 1983 featuring Leslie Stahl and a panel consisting of Sen. Mark Andrews (R-North Dakota), Dan McKinnon (Civil Aeoronautics Board), Phil Bakes (CEO, Continental airlines) and Capt. Henry Duffy (Airline Pilots Association).

Bakes: “It’s interesting that unions will charge us with union busting and not being fair to the employees – the one group of our employees who’s not a member of a union, which are our agents and number over 50 percent of our employees were allowed to vote on the pay cuts that we’ve instituted. Ninety percent of them voted for it. But yet the unionized employees were never allowed to vote. Now they’re voting with their feet and so are the consumers.”

Duffy: "What makes it a union busting maneuver is that, his employees had come to him and told him that they would do whatever was necessary to make that company profitable before they filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Instead, they chose the course of action of going Chapter 11 in order to do away with the union contracts and seniority and all of that’s been done in these emergency work rules that they published, and that tells us what they’re up to.”

Although it didn't dissolve into name-calling, it did cast light on just what a serious mess the Commercial Airline industry had become.

One which we're still living through today.

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Rachel Maddow talks to Byron Dorgan who back in 1999 warned about repealing the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.

Maddow: Did you really foresee that there would be a crisis this big?

Dorgan: Well I'm not necessarily sure I saw this big a crisis but I said at the time to the banks that if you want to gamble go to Las Vegas. I mean this was not about a crystal ball. It was just common sense at the time. You know in the 1930's we saw banks merge with you know real estate and security risks and the whole thing collapsed in the 20's and 30's and so we put in place, I wasn't here, but we put in place laws like Glass-Steagall to prevent all of that and then 1999 we were told that's all old fashioned. Let's strip that away and allow big financial holding companies one stop financial shopping and I thought it was nuts.

I mean how on earth can we forget the lessons that were so important that we learned so well and with such pain about seven decades prior?

Good question Senator. From the article a reminder on just who was right and who was wrong back in 1999:

"I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930's is true in 2010," said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota. "I wasn't around during the 1930's or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980's when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness."

Senator Paul Wellstone, Democrat of Minnesota, said that Congress had "seemed determined to unlearn the lessons from our past mistakes."

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Rachel Maddow talked to Sherrod Brown about the financial crisis and outrage over the AIG bonuses. Brown stated how important it is that people have some confidence in government, in Wall Street and the banking system. Although Brown didn't think that the outrage over the bonuses was unwarranted he noted that there are bigger issues that need to be addressed.

One being looking into why AIG passed billions of taxpayer funds onto financial institutions such as Société Générale, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs and made them whole when that was not necessary to stabilize the financial industry.

He stressed what Congress needs to do next.

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Rachel Maddow reminds all of us just what got us to where we are in the first place with this financial crisis. Deregulation.

For anyone who would care enough to know (and be completely disgusted with) just how big of a mess we're actually in, go read Matt Taibbi's latest article for Rolling Stone: "The Big Takeover: The global economic crisis isn't about money - it's about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution".

Maddow: There would be no outrage about AIG's bonuses if AIG hadn't needed bailing out, right? I mean sure people get mad at fat cats with high salaries when everyone else is broke. But it's the fact that this company was using our money, taxpayers money to pay those bonuses that caused the entire country to grind our teeth down their nub ends to rage at these guys.

So there would be no outrage about AIG turning taxpayer bailout dollars into executive bonuses if there hadn't been a bailout. AIG wouldn't have needed bailing out if it weren't too big to fail, too integral to all these other parts of the financial industries. AIG wouldn't have become too big to fail if they hadn't become a big hybrid complicated uber-financial everything company that made all sorts of arcane financially engineered moves that got them squirreled into every kind of financial related business that you can think of.

AIG wouldn't have become a big hybrid complicated uber-financial everything company if there hadn't been, and this is key, deregulation of Wall Street that allowed firms to get like that. And massive deregulation of Wall Street wouldn't have happened without the rise of a political movement that preached that regulation was inherntly evil and deregulation was inherently wise and virtuous and would make everyone rich and it would be free well behaved puppies for every family.

Do you want an example of how this deregulation thing worked? You can totally use this at the high school dance or a bar or whatever to try to impress someone. Somebody starts complaining about the bailout. Complaining about AIG. You tell them actually the real villain here is Gramm-Leach-Bliley. Just say it with total confidence. Watch. You will get dates.

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From Countdown:

Keith Olbermann places the blame for the economic downturn past President Barack Obama and President Bush to the Wall Street executives who paid politicians and bought deregulation.

From the Wall Street Watch Project, here is their list of the 12 deregulatory steps to financial meltdown. Read their report for more details.

1. Repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and the Rise of the Culture of Recklessness

2. Hiding Liabilities: Off-Balance Sheet Accounting

3. The Executive Branch Rejects Financial Derivative Regulation

4. Congress Blocks Financial Derivative Regulation

5. The SEC’s Voluntary Regulation Regime for Investment Banks

6. Bank Self-Regulation Goes Global: Preparing to Repeat the Meltdown?

7. Failure to Prevent Predatory Lending

8. Federal Preemption of State Consumer Protection Laws

9. Escaping Accountability: Assignee Liability

10. Fannie and Freddie Enter the Subprime Market

11. Merger Mania

12. Rampant Conflicts of Interest: Credit Ratings Firms’ Failure

I've been predicting major food poisoning for the past eight years, and how ironic is it that the most prominent example happens only after Bush is on the way out the door?

I used to work for an FDA-compliance consulting firm, and shortly after Bush took over, the FDA called all its agents back from the field "to rewrite the field manual" (even though it was updated on a regular basis) and announced they would no longer do random inspections of facilities. In fact, the only manufacturing facilities they would inspect were the ones that were already operating under a consent order!

There was even an FDA FAQ directed at employees: Q. "Isn't this defacto deregulation?" A.: "Of course not! We are simply trying to make the agency more efficient." (Hint: Whenever they spell out an objection in order to deny it, it's usually a dead giveaway.)

I was appalled. I gathered up all the supporting documentation and started making phone calls to science and business reporters: The New York Times, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, the Boston Globe, even the trade industry publications.

No one was interested. Everyone I spoke to said they found it hard to believe that the U.S. government would risk the food and drug supply like that and treated me like a crank.

Not so far-fetched now, huh?

The Food and Drug Administration is not staffed to handle the growing complexity of food inspection, especially now that a significant amount comes from abroad and is never inspected, a leading candidate to head the embattled agency said yesterday.

Dr. Steven Nissen, chairman of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic - and reported to be on President Barack Obama's short list to become FDA chief - said food inspection is swamped by the FDA's other responsibilities: the approval of medications and medical devices.

The result is an overworked and understaffed agency continually hit by sweeping food scares that sicken scores of people and sometimes result in death.

"The truth be told, the FDA is a failed agency ... the main problem is that it is terribly underfunded," Nissen said. "It needs to do more inspections, especially of foods brought in internationally. We are all very vulnerable. This has to be fixed and fixed quickly."

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Rachel Maddow reports on George Bush's last big wet kiss he's giving to industry lobbyists before he leaves office.

(Rough transcript)

And President Bush is making a last push to deregulate before he leaves office. The Washington Post reporting today that as many as ninety of the most controversial changes to industry regulations of the whole Bush era are in the works right now. Easing limits on polution from coal fired power plants near national parks, allowing increased polution from oil refineries and chemical factories, allowing for dirtier drinking water and more coal slurry waste from mountain top mines in the streams of Appalachia. Whoever the lobbyists are who were trying to get counter-terrorism rules relaxed for the benefit of the shipping companies, rest easy you country-first guys. The Bush administration is apparently planning on taking good care of you too before they leave.

The Republicans are well aware of the need of the need to get these changes done now. On the afternoon when President Bush was first inaugurated his chief of staff issued a government wide memo blocking the new regulations that were drafted in the last days of the Clinton administration. There's a thirty day or sixty day waiting period before regulatory changes become legal and since Clinton's changes were newer than that the Bush administration just blocked them. Learning from their own experience the Bush administration is getting their goodies in early this year so they'll all be actual law without debate and without Congress by the time the next President takes over.

And this apparently is how we make decisions as a country about whether American kids drink dirty or clean water and breathe dirty or clean air and whether or not the shipping containers in our ports are checked for bombs or not. Ta-da.

Former Fed Chairman destroys Randian "free market" principles in 16 seconds.

I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interest of organizations, specifically banks and others, was such as they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders.

Well, exactly. You said one cotton-pickin', bailout-belying mouthful. Use this as evidence the next time someone brings up "Atlas Shrugged" as the best way to save the economy. Dean Baker thinks he misses the point:

What would Ayn Rand expect to happen? On the one hand we have the hot shot executives, on the other hand the schmucks who own stock in these banks. Would Ayn Rand expect that the executives would put aside their ambition, their lust for success, their greed, in order to benefit shareholders who are too dumb to even know what a credit default swap is?

Not for a second; Ayn Rand would watch the Wall Street big boys run roughshod over their shareholders' interests and be applauding them every step of the way. That is how the game is played. If Greenspan didn't think the Wall Street crew would rip off their shareholders for every last penny, then he was not a worthy disciple of Ayn Rand.

Meanwhile, the Bush Treasury Department redacts more bailout contracts.

On April 14th, 1912, the largest, most technological advanced passenger steamship in the world, hit an iceberg. Two hours and forty minutes later, the Titanic sank, with the loss of 1,517 lives. Only 705 people survived.

Nearly a century later, the sinking of the Titanic has turned into a cottage industry where, as Harvard historian Steven Biel joked, only ‘Jesus and the Civil War have been written about more.’ Nearly 200 books have been written on the disaster, with countless documentaries, movies, historical and scientific studies analyzing what caused the Titanic to sink. Was it the fault of the captain, running the ship too hard to make a deadline to New York? Was it the fault of the engineers, some defect in the ship’s design? Was the fault of the Marconi wireless officers too busy tapping out passenger’s messages they failed to heed iceberg warning from other ships? Was it the wrath of God angry because the White Star Line didn’t christen their ships? Was it incompetence and the lack of enough lifeboats? Was it just plain bad luck? What they all didn’t know was that a confidential investigation launched by the ship’s builders shortly after the disaster had all too quickly – and all too easily – determined exactly what sank the Titanic.

It was the lack of regulation.

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   Bloomberg:

The Federal Reserve will pump an additional $630 billion into the global financial system, flooding banks with cash to alleviate the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression.

The Fed increased its existing currency swaps with foreign central banks by $330 billion to $620 billion to make more dollars available worldwide. The Term Auction Facility, the Fed's emergency loan program, will expand by $300 billion to $450 billion. The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan are among the participating authorities.

The Fed's expansion of liquidity, the biggest since credit markets seized up last year, came hours before the U.S. House of Representatives rejected a $700 billion bailout for the financial industry. The crisis is reverberating through the global economy, causing stocks to plunge and forcing European governments to rescue four banks over the past two days alone. Read on...

I'm not an expert on the economy or Wall St., but this sure looks like an end-around by the Bush administration to give away hundreds of billions of dollars without the approval of Congress. 

I'll admit that although I'm a poltical news junkie, I never really understood the Keating Five scandal as well as I should have.  Jed's newest video fixed all that, summing up in less than two minutes the scandal and John McCain's central role in it. The Obama campaign needs to start hitting McCain on this.