Today:

The Bush administration is examining a range of options for providing emergency financial help to spur a merger between General Motors and Chrysler, according to government officials.

Over the past year:

Every now and then I meet someone in Manhattan who has never driven a car. I used to wonder at such people, but more and more I wonder at myself.

Last campaign season:

People used to complain that selling a president was like selling a bar of soap. But when you buy soap, at least you get the soap.

Earlier this month:

GM said in a statement Friday that bankruptcy protection was "not an option."

Last week:

One of the biggest boosters of the American auto industry said Tuesday that he was bailing out of his large stake in the Ford Motor Company — a stinging no-confidence vote that raised the anxiety level in this city over the deepening troubles of the Big Three car companies.

White House Explores Aid for Auto Deal

Wall Street's meltdown, linked to shady lending practices, reveals the moral bankruptcy of huge segments of the market. Yet political leaders now urge our children to quietly fill-in bubble tests, seeking only to become productive cogs in a broken wheel.

"We use latrines!" the children answered, knowing the right response.

It's a quiet alienation that others are hearing as well.

The question also continually nags as to whether there is a young generation to carry on the tradition.

"Every day we are walking on shaking ground."

But many boomers are ignoring this prospect.

"In my experience, don't worry about that."

We never thought this day would come.

The crisis has complex roots, and Somali warlords bear primary blame.

"I wish it would die already!" Mr. Moonves blurted out in a delightfully unguarded moment.

I have given this a lot of thought, and I think our best immediate course of action is to whine a lot.

Kissinger did not seek to make the world “safe for democracy.” Instead, he sought to create stability based upon trust and cooperation between strong leaders while ensuring continuous mediation by the American government. To him, the establishment and preservation of order and justice were not organic developments, but rather policy choices made by political elites that required active enforcement prior to being accepted by the general public. The pursuit of political goals through more democratic means was, intellectually and emotionally, too dangerous ...

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.

Chiquita was an equal-opportunity terror funder in Colombia: it also made payments to leftist guerrilla groups, including the notorious FARC. Nothing to do with ideology, of course. Just a routine business expense.

The argument here isn’t that voters are rational, well-informed beings. It’s all going to depend on turnout.

The Bush memorandum draws the sweeping conclusion that even federal programs subject to antidiscrimination laws can give money to groups that discriminate. Several law professors who specialize in religious issues called the argument legally dubious.

Down markets are good times to take a hard look.

Many of those who urge postponing dealing with the reform of regulations really hope that, once the crisis is passed, business will return to usual, and nothing will be done.

Mr. Black’s revolutionary idea was simply that we are not as shielded from a sudden dose of bad luck as we might like to think.

I don't share much of the endless cultural fascination with teenage manners and mores, but this has an undeniable, chocolate-level irresistibility.

Words don't just point to things but are saturated with feelings, which can endow the words with a sense of magic, taboo, and sin.

“In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working,” Mr. Waxman said. “Absolutely, precisely,” Mr. Greenspan replied.

That decision showed appalling lack of judgment.

Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.

The relentless promulgation of crude reactionary lunacy ...

Sometimes, of course, a mess is just a mess. Not every entropy increase is accompanied by the formation of an ordered structure.

On second thought -- do I want more structure?

The difficulty in distinguishing the delusional and the venal from the dishonest and fraudulent is why prosecutors would be hard-pressed to indict half the investment bankers on Wall Street.

It's a story of innovators prevailing again and again over skeptics who prefer to preserve the status quo.

A fallen raja, a half-Chinese convict, a plucky American sailor, a widowed opium farmer, a transgendered religious visionary are all united by the “smoky paradise” of the opium seed. It's a sumptuous, angsty, teeming, myth-infused, gaudy, exuberant, many-hued and restless world ... It was basically Summer camp for indie nerds.

Things that make you go "hmmm..."

This is an advance notification of an out-of-band security bulletin that Microsoft is intending to release on October 23, 2008.

This bulletin advance notification will be replaced with the revised October bulletin summary on October 23, 2008. The revised bulletin summary will include the out-of-band security bulletin as well as the security bulletins already released on October 14, 2008.

Microsoft is hosting a webcast to address customer questions on this out-of-band security bulletin on October 23, 2008, at 1:00 PM Pacific Time (US & Canada). Register now for the Out-of-Band Security Bulletin Webcast. After this date, this webcast is available on-demand. For more information, see Microsoft Security Bulletin Summaries and Webcasts.

See here for more details:

This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in the Server service. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if an affected system received a specially crafted RPC request. On Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 systems, an attacker could exploit this vulnerability without authentication to run arbitrary code. It is possible that this vulnerability could be used in the crafting of a wormable exploit. Firewall best practices and standard default firewall configurations can help protect network resources from attacks that originate outside the enterprise perimeter.

This security update is rated Critical for all supported editions of Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and rated Important for all supported editions of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. For more information, see the subsection, Affected and Non-Affected Software, in this section.

The security update addresses the vulnerability by correcting the way that the Server service handles RPC requests. For more information about the vulnerability, see the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) subsection for the specific vulnerability entry under the next section, Vulnerability Information.

Recommendation. Microsoft recommends that customers apply the update immediately.

Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification for October 2008

Jane Mayer on the Palin selection.

David Keene, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, who is close to a number of McCain’s top aides, told me that “McCain and Lindsey Graham”—the South Carolina senator, who has been McCain’s closest campaign companion—“really wanted Joe.” But Keene believed that “McCain was scared off” in the final days, after warnings from his advisers that choosing Lieberman would ignite a contentious floor fight at the Convention, as social conservatives revolted against Lieberman for being, among other things, pro-choice.

“They took it away from him,” a longtime friend of McCain—who asked not to be identified, since the campaign has declined to discuss its selection process—said of the advisers. “He was furious. He was pissed. It wasn’t what he wanted.” Another friend disputed this, characterizing McCain’s mood as one of “understanding resignation.”

McCain had met Palin once, but their conversation—at a reception during a meeting of the National Governors Association, six months earlier—had lasted only fifteen minutes. “It wasn’t a real conversation,” said the longtime friend, who called the choice of Palin “the fucking most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.” Aides arranged a phone call between McCain and Palin, and scrutinized her answers to some seventy items on a questionnaire that she had filled out. But McCain didn’t talk with Palin in person again until the morning of Thursday, August 28th. Palin was flown down to his retreat in Sedona, Arizona, and they spoke for an hour or two. By the time he announced her as his choice, the next day, he had spent less than three hours in her company.

I am ambivalent about this article; on first reading, it struck me as rather too Hershy for my taste. But now we're seeing this and this:

Sarah Palin appears to be a continuing – if not an increasing – drag on the GOP ticket.

See also, in today's WaPo:

How do you sell someone as a no-frills hockey mom who sold the state plane, fired the official cook and turned down travel per diems for her family and then try to explain wardrobing her in clothes from Neiman Marcus -- a store occasionally referred to by aggrieved, frugal shoppers as Needless Markup? How do you, in barely two months, lavish her with fashion swag worthy of a starlet and valued at more than her annual governor's salary of $125,000?

That's not careless.

That's just plain stupid.

From a week ago:

In familial relationships, money can be a proxy for love and trust.

The Insiders

Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan

Pakistan.

Pakistan

"The idea in the jihadist forums is that McCain would be a faithful 'son of Bush' -- someone they see as a jingoist and a war hawk," Raisman said. "They think that, to succeed in a war of attrition, they need a leader in Washington like McCain."

I wonder what they think of Palin.

Consider:

"Underwear should be the normal type that people wear, not anything that shows you're a fundamentalist."

...

Conduct a media campaign to fight the enemy's publicity. The campaign should focus on the following important points:

a) Attempt to cause a rift between the American people and their government, by demonstrating the following to the Americans:

* That the U.S. government will lead them into further losses of money and lives.

Recall:

Father: Martin, here's $10 to invest in the futures market.

Martin: "Soy! Soy! Soy! Soy! Soy!"
Father: "Martin, you're up $1 million."
Martin: "Yes!"
Father: "And now you've lost all but $600."
Father: "You got greedy, Martin."

Yes, Father, but Martin is still up six thousand percent ...

On Al-Qaeda Web Sites, Joy Over U.S. Crisis, Support for McCain

From January:

Every now and then I meet someone in Manhattan who has never driven a car. I used to wonder at such people, but more and more I wonder at myself.

Today:

One of the biggest boosters of the American auto industry said Tuesday that he was bailing out of his large stake in the Ford Motor Company — a stinging no-confidence vote that raised the anxiety level in this city over the deepening troubles of the Big Three car companies.

By starting to sell off his $1 billion bet on Ford, an investment that is now worth less than $300 million, the financier Kirk Kerkorian joined the growing ranks of investors who have soured on Detroit’s prospects because of plummeting sales and mounting losses.

From somewhere I can't re-find at the moment:

We used to be a car company that also sold financing. Now we're a bank that sells cars.

And also, the ever-relevant Peter Drucker:

Managers have to learn to ask every few years of every process, every product, every procedure, every policy: "If we did not do this already, would we go into it now knowing what we now know?" If the answer is no, the organization has to ask, "So what do we do now?" And it has to do something, and not say, "Let's make another study."

Kerkorian Sells Part of Ford Stake

Chop, baby, chop, and chop now.

Yahoo was hurting long before the financial crisis got everyone worried about a global recession. Now its pain has become more acute.

Yahoo said Tuesday that it would lay off at least 10 percent of its 15,000 workers as it tries to bring down its expenses. It said reduced marketing budgets had taken a bite out of its online advertising business, sending its net income for the third quarter tumbling by 64 percent.

As Sequoia says, Get real or go home.

See also:

Now it's Zivity that is taking a hit, joining the ranks of start-ups downsizing to make the money they raised from now skittish venture capitalists last longer.

It was a difficult but necessary decision, say the Banisters, who are seasoned technology professionals. They have experienced the industry's ups and downs before.

Yahoo to Lay Off 1,500 Workers as Results Miss Estimates