Some recent Essays I found insightful:

• James Ridgeway, Bush Policies Help Bring the Financial Crisis Home, Mother Jones Blog, 08 October 2008.


• David Corn, The Right's Final Attack: Obama is a Black Muslim, Anti-Christian Socialist Plotting with an Evil Jewish Billionaire, Mother Jones Blog, 17 October 2008.


• Arianna Huffington, The Internet and the Death of Rovian Politics, HuffingtonPost.com, 20 October 2008.


• James Carville & Paul Begala, Let the Blame Game Begin, HuffingtonPost.com, 20 October 2008.
  
  Also on the GOP's forthcoming blame game:
  
  Frank Rich, He Just Can’t Quit W, The New York Times, 18 October 2008.
  


• ** Chris Hedges, The Idiots Who Rule America, TruthDig.com, 20 October 2008.
  ("Our oligarchic class is incompetent at governing, managing the economy, coping with natural disasters, educating our young, handling foreign affairs, providing basic services like health care and safeguarding individual rights. They have no concept, thanks to the educations they have received, of the common good.")


• Glenn Greenwald, Mark Halperin defends Rush Limbaugh's Powell/race theory, Salon.com, 21 October 2008.
  (Good dissection of right-wing propaganda and a racist double standard.)


• ** John Lanchester, Cityphobia, London Review of Books, posted to web 09 October 2008 (23 Oct 2008 issue).
  (A survey of recent economic developments.)
  
  Rating Companies Put Profits First, Critics Testify, Bloomberg.com, 22 October 2008.
  (A more accurate title for this article is: Rating Companies' CEOs Testify Before Congress.)
  
  In the "Very Responsible For This Current Mess" Department..., The Bonddad Blog, 22 October 2008.
  
  ** S&P: We Knew Nothing! Nothing!, The Big Picture, 22 October 2008.
  Ratings agencies: 'Kool-Aid drinking' lapdogs, The Big Picture, 23 October 2008.
  
  As everyone now knows, for several years prominant economists, financiers, politicians, and so on, warned about exactly the problems that the rating companies ignored. See, for example:
  Nicholas Graham, Economic Honor Roll, The Huffington Post, 12 October 2008.
  Graham names some of those who foresaw the U.S.'s emerging economic difficulties, with dated quotes and video; includes Nouriel Roubini; Warren Buffett; Nassim Nicholas Taleb; Byron Dorgan; Joseph Stiglitz; Paul Krugman. The article above from The Big Picture and its comments name many more. See also:
  
  ** Andrew Lahde, Good-bye Letter, Financial Times, 17 October 2008.
  
  Some expect more disruptions. Warning: The essays by Denninger very confidently and convincingly argue that very bad things are about to happen. Nevertheless, the sun will come up tomorrow, and some countries have no government debt and a well regulated financial industry that will not collapse regardless of what happens in the United States (the exemplar country I have in mind is Australia).
  
  Karl Denninger, The Stark Choice Now Facing America, The Market Ticker, 22 October 2008. Comments.
  
  Karl Denninger, Fiscal Cat 5 Hurricane Warning, The Market Ticker, 22 October 2008. Comments.
  
  Kim Asger Olsen, Pay-up time for Lehman swaps, Asia Times, 22 October 2008.
  But then, suddenly, nothing happened:
  Mary Williams Walsh, Tracking Firm Says Bets Placed on Lehman Have Been Quietly Settled, The New York Times, 22 October 2008.
  
  Regarding the present condition and future of the banking industry, a study by IBM finds top- and mid-level bankers clueless and directionless:
  
  David Weidner, The problem with banks is even bigger than you think; Beyond write-downs; The world's banking system shows some disturbing trends, MarketWatch.com, 23 October 2008.
  
  Small consolation:
  
  Michael M. Grynbaum, Greenspan Concedes Error on Regulation, The New York Times, 23 October 2008.
  
  Meanwhile, down in the political gutter, some right-wingers are deliberately divisively promoting a racist interpretation of sub-prime mortgage market problems, as if the abundant and various well documented reports of financial industry greed during the last decade did not exist. Here is one refutation of the racists:
  Barry Ritholtz, Private Sector Loan Losses vs Fannie/Freddie, The Big Picture, 23 October 2008.
  


• Andy Worthington, Guantánamo's bleak farce, The Guardian, 21 October 2008.
  ("After dropping war crimes charges against five prisoners today, the US's use of military commissions is unraveling.")


• Stacy Sullivan, Confessions of a former Guantánamo prosecutor, Salon.com, 23 October 2008.


• Rami G. Khouri, Will Iraq finally end the colonial era?, The Daily Star (Lebanon), 22 October 2008.
  ("The wider issue at stake beyond American soldiers in Iraq is the effective end of the colonial era mentality that put Western troops and officials above the law, and kept indigenous Arab and Iranian national interests subservient to the greater colonial dictates of powers like England, France and, today, the United States. ")


• Daniel Luban, Is the Sun Setting on US Empire?, AntiWar.com, 23 October 2008.
  (This essay summarizes and reviews Andrew Bacevich's recent book The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, Metropolitan Books, August 2008: publisher; Amazon.com.)


• Glenn Greenwald, What is happening to GOP electoral tactics?, Salon.com, 22 October 2008.


• Glenn Greenwald, Bipartisanship and threats of war toward Iran, Salon.com, 23 October 2008.


• Gareth Porter, Final Text of Iraq Pact Reveals a US Debacle, AntiWar.com, 23 October 2008.


• Robert Draper, The Making (and Remaking) of McCain, The New York Times Magazine, 26 October 2008.


• Jane Mayer, How John McCain came to pick Sarah Palin, The New Yorker, 27 October 2008.
  (Mayer is the author of the book The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals, Doubleday, July 2008: publisher, Amazon.com. The book is a Finalist for the 2008 National Book Award, Nonfiction. Listen to Mayer interviewed by Terri Gross, Fresh Air, 15 July 2008 and 24 October 2008.)


• A. Craig Copetas, 'Out of Control' Wall Street Chiefs Spurned Warnings at Davos, Bloomberg.com, 24 October 2008.


• Jeff Stein, Beirut Bombings: Intelligence Warning Sat in Pipeline, CQ Politics, 21 October 2008.

Some recent Essays I found insightful:

• Subrata Ghoshroy, Chomsky: "The Majority of the World Supports Iran", AlterNet.org, 03 October 2008.
  
  Subrata Ghoshroy, Chomsky: "If the U.S. Carries Out Terrorism, It Did Not Happen", AlterNet.org, 04 October 2008.


• * Chris Floyd, The Wounded Shark: 'Good War' Lost, But the Imperial Project Goes On, Empire Burlesque, 05 October 2008.


• Al Jazeera, The End of American Capitalism? 5 Short Takes on Where the Financial Crisis Might Be Headed, AlterNet.org, 07 October 2008.
  (The five economists interviewed are: James Galbraith, Gerald Friedman, Mark Weisbrot, John Berlau, and James S. Henry.)


• Glenn Greenwald, Sarah Palin's museum of trite right-wing tactics: 1980-2008, Salon.com, 07 October 2008.


• Suzanne Goldenberg, McCain is heading for defeat, says Republican analyst, The Guardian, 08 October 2008.


• * Peter S. Goodman, The Reckoning: Taking Hard New Look at a Greenspan Legacy, The New York Times, 08 October 2008.
  
  The Reckoning: "Articles in this series are exploring the causes of the financial crisis." The New York Times.


• Nancy A. Youssef, Financial crisis could put crimp in defense spending plans, McClatchy Newspapers, 08 October 2008.


• * Glenn Greenwald, Major shock: Eavesdropping powers abused without oversight, Salon.com, 09 October 2008.


• Juan Cole, Reprint Edn.: Barack Hussein Obama, Omar Bradley, Benjamin Franklin and other Semitically Named American Heroes, Informed Comment, 09 October 2008.


• Mary Shaw, Maryland State Police put nonviolent activists on terror lists, The Smirking Chimp, 09 October 2008.


• Michael Collins, Election 2008: The Difficulty Stealing It This Time; New 2008 Democratic Primary Voters Are The Key to Election Protection, The Smirking Chimp, 09 October 2008.


• Christopher Hitchens, America the Banana Republic, Vanity Fair website, 09 October 2008.


• * Noam Chomsky, Anti-Democratic Nature of US Capitalism is Being Exposed, CommonDreams.org, 10 October 2008.
  ("Bretton Woods was the system of global financial management set up at the end of the second World War to ensure the interests of capital did not smother wider social concerns in post-war democracies. It was hated by the US neoliberals - the very people who created the banking crisis writes Noam Chomsky")


• Justin Raimondo, The American Empire, RIP; The 'declinists' were right, AntiWar.com, 10 October 2008.


• Juan Cole, McCain: Obama Decent, no Arab, Informed Comment, 11 October 2008.


• Nicholas Graham, Economic Honor Roll, The Huffington Post, 12 October 2008.
  (Names some of those who foresaw the U.S.'s emerging economic difficulties, with dated quotes and video; includes Nouriel Roubini, Warren Buffett, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Byron Dorgan, Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman.)


• PAUL KRUGMAN, Gordon Does Good, The New York Times<, 12 October 2008.
  MARK LANDLER and ERIC DASH, Drama Behind a $250 Billion Banking Deal, The New York Times, 14 October 2008.
  LANDON THOMAS JR, British Prime Minister’s Stock Rises as His Bank Plan Lifts Stocks Worldwide, The New York Times, 14 October 2008.
  STEPHEN CASTLE, British Leader Wants Overhaul of Financial System, The New York Times, 15 October 2008.


• M K Bhadrakumar, Energy superpower emerges in the Caspian, Asia Times, 17 October 2008.
  ("The immense scale of Turkmenistan's gas reserves, revealed after an independent audit, elevates the country to the top rank of gas producers. More, it renders Moscow's energy strategy obsolescent and rekindles United States and European hopes of loosening Russia's grip on Central Asian gas pipelines. Former invader China has its own trump cards to play.")


• Aziz Huq, How to manage an imperial decline, Asia Times, 18 October 2008.
  ("As shown with the British empire in the post-World War II years, there is inherent danger when a great power in economic crisis disastrously miscalculates what it can actually do in the world. Now, just as Britain had its Suez crisis, the United States has Iran.")


• Howard Wolfson, The End of Nixonland, The Flack blog at The New Republic, 18 October 2008.


• Seth Colter Walls & Nico Pitney, Colin Powell Endorses Obama, The Huffington Post, 19 October 2008.

Some recent Essays I found insightful:

• * Chris a/k/a "DCLaw1," The Essence of the 2008 Election, Distilled, Inside-Out the Beltway, 14 May 2008.
  (This essay found in the comments to Greenwald's 26 September essay, link below.)


• * Roger Cohen, Palin’s American Exception, The New York Times, 25 September 2008.


• Glenn Greenwald, National Review asks: Did WaMu fail because it employed minorities?, Salon.com, 26 September 2008.


• ** Glenn Greenwald, Bailout follows the 10 normal principles for how our government functions, Salon.com, 29 September 2008.


• Glenn Greenwald, Wash Post's Pearlstein: Anyone opposing the bailout is ignorant, Salon.com, 01 October 2008.
  (Illustrates how a Ministry of Propaganda operates when challenged.)


• Barry Ritholtz, Understanding the Significance of Mark-to-Market Accounting, The Big Picture, 01 October 2008.
  (Link found at The Bonddad Blog, which I usually find informative.)


• Barry Ritholtz, SEC Deregulation Let Banks Leverage Up, The Big Picture, 03 October 2008.


• Robert Fisk, When it comes to Palestine and Israel, the US simply doesn't get it, The Independent, 04 October 2008.
  (The U.S. electorate is vastly misinformed about the Middle East, Central Asia, and the politics of those regions. Why? Who benefits?)


• Joe Conason, The dumbing down of the GOP, Salon.com, 04 October 2008.
  ("Why aren't more conservatives disgusted that their party nominated a person devoid of qualifications for the vice presidency (again)?")


• * Paul Krugman, Health Care Destruction, The New York Times, 05 October 2008.


• * Chris Hedges, Dennis Kucinich on the Democrats’ Bailout Betrayal, TruthDig.com, 05 October 2008.


• Hale "Bonddad" Stewart, Economy in Shambles; Markets Crashing, The Huffington Post, 06 October 2008.


• Ann Berg, Down the Road to Serfdom, AntiWar.com, 06 October 2008.


• * Nouriel Roubini, Radical Policy Steps Necessary to Avoid a Systemic Meltdown: Interview with the Council on Foreign Relations, RGE Monitor, 07 October 2008.


• Patrick Cockburn, Obama and McCain's Goofy Afghan Bluster, CounterPunch.org, 07 October 2008.


• Gary Leupp, Seven Years in Afghanistan: From "War on Terror" to "War of Terror", CounterPunch.org, 07 October 2008.

Some recent Essays (and other Internet Objects) I found insightful:

• * Kevin P. Phillips, Numbers racket: Why the economy is worse than we know, Harper's Magazine, May 2008.


• * Chris Floyd, Gobblers on Parade: Portrait of a Highly Successful System, Empire Burlesque - Chris Floyd Online, 01 September 2008.


• * William Pfaff, Quagmire, Phase 2: The Invasion of Pakistan, TruthDig.com, 11 September 2008.


• The Falling Land, Empire Burlesque - Chris Floyd Online, 11 September 2008.


• * Katherine Roberts, A Western State of Mind, The New York Times, 13 September 2008.
  (Discusses sociological, economic, and political issues associated with the former frontier states of the western U.S.)


• * A Year of Heavy Losses - Interactive Graphic, The New York Times, 15 September 2008.


• * Dmitry Orlov, Reinventing Collapse, RealitySandwich.com, 15 September 2008.
  (Excerpt of Chapter 2 from Orlov's book Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects, New Society Publishers, June 2008: publisher, Amazon.com.)


• Tariq Ali, Has the U.S. Invasion of Pakistan Begun?; The American War Moves to Pakistan: Bush's War Widens Dangerously, TomDispatch.com, 16 September 2008.


• * Rachel Weiner, Conservatives Turn On McCain-Palin, The Huffington Post, 16 September 2008.
  (Quotes from various conservative political analysts.)


• Robert Creamer, Why the Financial Meltdown Reflects the Fundamental Failure of the Bush-McCain Economic Philosophy, The Huffington Post, 16 September 2008.


• Robert J. Samuelson, Wall Street's Unraveling, The Washington Post, 17 September 2008.


• Paul Jenkins, The Dead Core of McCain's Republican Party, The Huffington Post, 17 September 2008.
  (A concise summary of why McCain and the Republican Party are unfit to rule.)


• Tim Wise, What Privileges Do McCain and Palin Receive Because They're White?, AlterNet.org (via BuzzFlash), 17 September 2008.


• Nouriel Roubini, The transformation of the USA into the USSRA (United Socialist State Republic of America) continues at full speed with the nationalization of AIG, RGE Monitor, 17 September 2008.
  (Describes the "transformation of the USA into a country where there is socialism for the rich, the well connected and Wall Street (i.e. where profits are privatized and losses are socialized).")


• Alan Wolfe, The lying game, Salon.com, 18 September 2008.
  ("Like George W. Bush, McCain and Palin have to lie. Because if they told the truth about their policies, they'd lose the election.")


• Steve Fraser, Wall Street and Washington: How the Rules of the Game Have Changed, TomDispatch.com, 18 September 2008.


• William Pfaff, Reality Catches Up to the Free Market, TruthDig.com, 18 September 2008.


• * Froma Harrop, McCain and the Meltdown, RealClearPolitics.com, 18 September 2008.


• Nouriel Roubini, We need a new HOLC - more than a new RTC or RFC - to provide massive debt relief to the household sector. We need to create the HOME (Home Owners’ Mortgage Enterprise), RGE Monitor, 19 September 2008.


• * John W. Dean, Vice President Dick Cheney's Incredible and Deadly Lie: By Deceiving a Congressional Leader, Cheney Sent Us to War on False Pretenses And Violated the Separation of Powers - as Well as the Criminal Law, FindLaw.com, 19 September 2008.


• Robert Fisk, Why Does the US Think It Can Win in Afghanistan?, CommonDreams.org (via The Independent), 20 September 2008.


• * Hale "Bonddad" Stewart, The Death of Republican Philosophy, The Huffington Post, 21 September 2008.


• * Jared Bernstein, Watching History Unfold, The Huffington Post, 21 September 2008.
  ("You hear that implosion reverberating through financial markets? It's the sound of decades of conservative ideology collapsing.")


• Bruce Fein, Impeachable offenses?, The Washington Times, 23 September 2008.
  (In my view, Bruce Fein is one of the few remaining "conservatives" worthy of respect, an honest constitutionalist. I thought his appearance on Bill Moyers Journal last year excellent: Tough Talk on Impeachment, 13 July 2007. Fein's most recently published book is Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, Palgrave Macmillan, September 2008: publisher, Amazon.com.)


• * Naomi Wolf, Has Sarah Palin Been Picked as the Titular Head of the Coming Police State?, AlterNet.org, 23 September 2008.


• * Chris Floyd, Coming Attractions: War Without End, Amen, Empire Burlesque - Chris Floyd Online, 23 September 2008.


• * Glenn Greenwald, Correction on Sarah Palin, Salon.com, 25 September 2008.


• Andrew J. Bacevich, The Petraeus Doctrine, The Atlantic, October 2008.
  (Note: Bacevich's most recently published book is The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, Metropolitan Books, August 2008: publisher, Amazon.com. Bill Moyers Interviews Andrew J. Bacevich, 15 August 2008. 9/11 Plus Seven, The American Empire Project, 09 September 2008.)

Some recent essays I found insightful:

• Andrew J. Bacevich, Worshiping the Indispensable Nation; 9/11 Plus Seven, TomDispatch.com, 09 September 2008.


• Nouriel Roubini, Comrades Bush, Paulson and Bernanke Welcome You to the USSRA (United Socialist State Republic of America), Nouriel Roubini's Global EconoMonitor, 09 September 2008.


• Glenn Greenwald, The government, the media and Afghanistan, Salon.com, 11 September 2008.


• Mark Svenvold, Wind-Power Politics, The New York Times, 12 September 2008.


• Nathan Gardels, Post-Olympic Powershift: The Return of the Middle Kingdom in a Post-American World, The Huffington Post, 12 September 2008.


• Frank Rich, The Palin-Whatshisname Ticket, The New York Times, 13 September 2008.


• Sanford Levinson, The Decider Can Become a Dictator, CommonDreams.org, 14 September 2008.


• Glenn Greenwald, What illegal "things" was the government doing in 2001-2004?, Salon.com, 15 September 2008.


• Nouriel Roubini, The Worst Financial Crisis Since the Great Depression, Nouriel Roubini's Global EconoMonitor, 16 September 2008.

Howard Zinn, Mike Konopacki, and Paul Buhle.
A People's History of American Empire: A Graphic Adaptation.
New York: Metropolitan Books / Henry Holt and Company, April 2008.

Book information: the publisher; Google Book Search; Amazon.com.

Lawrence Wright.
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, August 2006.

Book information: publisher, Google Book Search, Amazon.com.

Links:

• LawrenceWright.com.


• Lawrence Wright, Wikipedia.


• Lawrence Wright at The New Yorker.


• Conversations with History: Lawrence Wright, 13 November 2006.
  "Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11."
  Harry Kreisler, Institute of International Studies, University of California at Berkeley.
  link to video


• Wright wrote the screenplay for the film The Seige (1998) (IMDb link).


• Steve Coll & Lawrence Wright, The Book Club: New books dissected over e-mail, Slate.com, August 2006.

This book views the rise of political and militant Islamists throught the biographies of a few individuals, focusing mainly on Ayman al-Zawahiri of Egypt and Osama bin Laden of Saudi Arabia. Wright's well written narrative shows these individuals' emergence in their local economic and political contexts, which allows for some exposition on the various local and international strains of Islamist thought (for example: Sayyid Qutb; the Muslim Brotherhood; the Saudi state-sponsored Wahhab sect). The American response is viewed through the career of John P. O'Neill. This personal view of events has its strengths (Wright shows how individuals' political grievances emerge and morph into participation in violent movements); but Wright's book leaves out significant parts of the story (which no one book could cover). There is no mention of U.S. foreign policy towards the Arab world since 1945; no mention of the role of Israel; very indirect mention of the geopolitics of petroleum; no large scale sociological or historical surveys of the various nations; little discussion of the policies and actions of the secret/security/intelligence services of the various nations. That last topic may be well covered by Steve Coll's book Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (2004). A list of essential books should also include the recent books by Ahmed Rashid: Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia (2000); Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia (2002); Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia (2008).

Lawrence Wilkerson (chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell during the first term of the Bush II administration) has spoken out since 2005 on how Cheney and Rumsfeld subverted the statutory national security decision making process in instigating the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Conversations with History - Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson - 03 April 2008.
"Vice President Cheney and America's Response to 911."
Harry Kreisler, Institute of International Studies, University of California at Berkeley.

Evidence that at least the U.S. Army considers the subversion of that process a serious matter (after all, in addition to the millions of Iraqis who have suffered from the ongoing fiasco, so too has the U.S. Army), consider the recent appearance of this Special Edition of Military Review:
"Interagency Reader," [pdf] June 2008.

Howard Zinn.
A Power Governents Cannot Suppress.
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2007.

Book information: publisher, Google Book Search, Amazon.com.

Howard Zinn, Wikipedia.

HowardZinn.org (his website).

Conversations with History - Howard Zinn - 20 April 2001.
"Radical History."
Harry Kreisler, Institute of International Studies, University of California at Berkeley.

Zinn is probably best known for his book A People's History of the United States.
See more about that book at: Wikipedia; Google Book Search; Amazon.com.

Recently, a "graphic adaptation" of A People's History of the United States was published as A People's History of American Empire.
See more about that book at: the publisher; Google Book Search; Amazon.com.

Bob Herbert, Running While Black, The New York Times, 02 August 2008.

It's very refreshing to see a prominant columinist in a prominant newspaper calling out John McCain and the Republican Party on their use of racism. For more on how the Republican Party uses "values" and other nonsense to divert attention from the economic, foreign, and domestic policy issues that really matter in the operation of government, consider the following essays:

Ira Chernus, War Meets Values on Campaign Trail: Will the Big Winner of 2008 Once Again Be a Conservative Culture-Wars Narrative?, TomDispatch.com, 29 July 2008.

Matt Taibbi, McCain Doesn't Have a Prayer, AlterNet.org, 28 July 2008.
(This essay examines McCain's distaste for right wing evangelical Christianity. Overlook the scatalogical humour and you will find Taibbi's analysis very solid.)

Southern strategy, Wikipedia.