All this talk of whether a neo nazi meth head could kill Obama at 750 yards or whether they posed an imminent threat or not since Obama isn't even in town yet is really odd. To be guilty of a criminal conspiracy, one does not have to have a good plan. "Reasonable likelihood of success" is not an element of the crime. You could have the most lame brained plan to rob Fort Knox and you could get busted on Monday when you weren't even planning to rob Fort Knox until early Thursday morning and still be convicted of conspiracy to rob Fort Knox.

Conspiracy is just a fancy word for 'made plans with other people and did something to make it happen.' Basically, the elements in most jx are (1) an agreement between two or more parties; (2) to commit a crime; (3) with knowledge and actual participatation (i.e., the guy at the WalMart who sells you the gun is probably NOT a co-conspirator); and (4) an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy. What do we have here? Apparently an agreement between at least two people to commit murder with knowledge of the plan and active participation who have brought together weapons to commit the murder. That's not looking good. I guess in their meth addled neo nazi way they could just be drug smugglers looking for some street cred, but taking the rap for some firearms and drugs seems much better than spending the better part of your miserable life in a federal pound-me-in-the-ass penitentiary for conspiracy to commit murder.

I mean, of course these asshats have a stupid plan. THEY ARE NAZI METH HEADS! If they really thought they could hit Obama by anything but accident at 750 yards they are high. Well, that is a possible answer as to the role of meth in their lives. They were high and thought that driving around in a crappy car with a broken tail light (or whatever), firearms and illegal drugs was a good idea. Does that mean we shouldn't be worried about meth head white supremacists with rifles planning to shoot black men in suits at or near the Pepsi Center? Um, no. Just because they would only have hit Obama by blind luck doesn't mean they were harmless. Yeah, instead of being convicted for the murder of Obama, they would only have been convicted of the attempted murder of Obama and, depending on the breaks, possibly the murder of some bystander.

Hillary Clinton's speech was great. For Salon posters, I think it will divide by three: (1) those who still think that she is evil and will try to destroy Obama; (2) those who still think that she is great because she will try to destroy Obama; and (3) those who are not completely blinded by their prejudices and/or getting paid by Republicans to create friction among Democrats.

Obama/Biden '08!

"She could become a transformative political presence.

So they are going to have to kill her, and kill her quick.

And it's going to be brutal. It's already getting there."

I guess when Ms. Noonan wrote "they are going to have to kill her . . . And it's going to be brutal" in her editorial, she meant "I am going to kill her . . . and it's going to be brutal."

it's all well and good to consider Palin's comments and analyze them on their own terms, but clearly she had no idea what she was talking about. She just took a guess and relied on stock right wing bromides. Jesus, we can't be so foolish as a country to elect McCain-Palin, can we?

I actually have heard that said by a buddy of mine from college. He was about four or five long island iced teas into a six or seven long island iced tea night, to a bar full of drunk college kids. I think he bought some peoples' dinners too (it was a Mexican restaurant with full bar). That night, over $400 went on what was essentially his grandmother's AmEx, which was part of the reason why his parents pulled him after that semester. I hope the Navy treated him well!

Do we (US citizens) own AIG now?

If not, why not? Will we own these banks after we bail them out?

One can imagine an economic scenario where the people of the USA invest in businesses, and actually own the stock, actually reap profits, and sell when companies go bad.

Where are we headed?

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TBT: Every citizen of this great land, through the United States government, now owns an undivided share of AIG. Soon, we may all own undivided shares of many, many other companies too. Remember when George W. Bush talked about the "ownership society"? Well, there you go.

I guess we will have to put CDS in the same category (marked: DANGEROUS! HIGHLY UNINSURABLE!) as asbestos-related liability and flood coverage for houses along the Mississippi. If losses in the financial products division of AIG, a (relatively) small part of AIG's total insurance underwriting, was enough to destroy AIG, then most likely those policies simply cannot be profitably underwritten because the losses are too big. While it may simply be that the premiums being charged were too small, my gut tells me that there is no premium that would have been both marketable and sound from an actuarial perspective. Perhaps adequate, sky-high premiums would have provided at least some kind of warning sign.

The upshot of this may well be positive: if there are no carriers writing these policies, then are no policies to create a false sense of security about these new-fangled derivatives. If so, then financiers may avoid the kind of risky behavior that created this mess (though, of course, not the kinds of risky behavior that will cause the next meltdown).