I was outraged after reading Glenn Greenwald's article last night. I went to Google News to find out more. But there wasn't anything on their main screen showing the various segments of the news and the top stories. I did a search of the news using "St. Paul Police Raids,' and came up with about 25 stories almost all from Minneapolis newspapers. No big time media type.

The articles all seemed to support, to varying degrees, the police actions; never questioning their legitimacy. The comments associated with the articles also almost obsessively supported them; saying that the authorities should severely punish the "anarchists."

Anarchy was the most used word, quoting the head-honcho, a guy named Welch.

I have been upset the last 8 years, but what really strikes me across the head is that so many people I know have the same opinion. Destroy the protesters (anarchists) and save this great country of the United States of America!

"could Obama's inability to pull away from John McCain really come down to his skin color?"

Yes, definitely! He didn't win the primary race! HRC lost it because of her inability to tell the truth and her complete mismanagement of her campaign.

The 18 million people who voted for her, voted for her primarily because she is white. All across Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia.

Obama is smart and deserving of the presidency but he won't get it because of the low-information, bigoted, rural vote.

The republicans know this and will use it to their advantage.

Maybe next time, but I think it will be a long time before another candidate, black or white, will have the courage and intelligence and strength that Obama has. It is a shame!

"The implication of this column is that white folks are racist if some of them do not vote for Obama because he is black, but what about the 93% of black voters that are voting for Obama? Is not that in part a decision based on skin color?"

You are right!

Racism is the biggest factor in this presidential race. On both sides of the coin.

Elitism and sexism are the other two major factors.

Issues, such as the pre-emptive Iraq war which has killed a million innocent Iraqis and the economy which has given the elitists all the money they want and caused the destruction of the free market system, and the other important issues are minor considerations. And the McCain campaign intends to keep it that way and they will succeed.

The more the McCain campaign lies, distorts, and wholly obliterates Obama, the higher McCain goes in the polls. Truth matters not.

Palin has caused an earthquake in the republican party, bringing together all the evangelicals.

HRC's racists and feminists have found comfort with McCain/Palin.

It's all over but the shouting!

I agree that the Fed and the Treasury really don't know what they are doing and they are stepping into un-chartered, violent, waters with a leaky ship the size of Manhattan.

Have you ever seen a government agency in action? They operate at about 10 to 25 per cent the productivity rate of private firms and the more complex the work the more they contract it out because they don't have the expertise inside the government. They even have to contract out the RFP work.

This is going to be a huge, huge bonanza for consulting firms and IT firms. It is going to take months to define the requirements and prepare the RFPs. There will be enormous pressure, short-cuts will be taken, and expeditious actions will result in enormous waste. Be sort of like the Iraq War. Was easy to decide on but what a hell of time was had after the initial invasion. Because the decision was off-the-cuff and there was no planning. At this stage of the game everything is easy and "mission accomplished" will be prematurely proclaimed.

Paulson, et al are going to have a one hell of a time! The complexity of determining the value of the CDOs is a daunting task in itself. There are probably tens of thousands of different systems containing various kinds of data and unique methodologies for determining their worth. This will need to be evaluated and standardized. It is going to be a monumental task. Then to process the asset data into a meaningful system to determine valuations. All that data into government systems, yet to be designed, programmed and implemented.

There are tens of thousands of government systems that are ended after millions of dollars have been spent, because they become weighted down with complexity. They take so long to develop that they become out-dated when and if they are done. This has been going on for 40 years that I am personally aware of. The government has no peer in complicating something simple. And this is massively complex.

Consider the mammoth effort required in 1998/1999 to resolve a completely identified, simple Year 2K programming problem. And the world thought at the mark of midnight all systems would halt. That complexity was like one speck of sand in the Sahara compared to the complexity of this undertaking. There were probably tens of thousands of people programming to correct that relatively small problem.

As with any system, the more that is known, the more complex the problem becomes. I predict that a year from now they will still be trying to determine what needs to be done.

Just imagine the system that will be required for compliance and then the enforcement. It's mind-boggling for a detail person like me but easy for the "big picture guys." Like Wolfowitz, Kagan, Strauss and Wohlstetter.