Well, whatever happens today, I’m off early to do my citizens duty. in the meantime, I feel like I’m watching the Wizard of Oz. You have liberals joining with people like Robert Rubin saying "we really are so very much the same" and saying almost in unison we won’t tax the rich–in a serious way:

We both agree that individual income tax rates and other taxes for those at the very top could be moved back to the rates of the Clinton era.

   That is truly pathetic. The Clinton top rate was 39 percent. You think that is high? Please. The top rate should easily be 45 percent if not higher. This is absurd.

   And over at The Wall Street Journal, we hear that:

Few economists predict the world is in for a repeat of the 1930s. But the deepening problems — rising joblessness and home foreclosures, falling consumer spending and tight credit — are prompting calls from businesses and Congress for quick action by the next president to clarify, and begin working on, his economic agenda.

   If you read the article, there is no mention of serious tax increase on the upper one percent. The greatest threat we now face is the austerity mongers who will claim that we have no money because no one wants to have a serious conversation about the robbery that has put us in this place. I’ve demonstrated a number of times (including here)–as have others–that we can easily raise $350 billion a year to fund investment in national health care and other critical things–if we are willing to go where the money is.

   And ugly headlines in the Financial Times this morning: "Data gloom clouds election"…manufacturing activity hits 26-year low…and next to it "US car sales sink to lowest level for 25 years". Obama will have huge mess on his hands.