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Democrat Barack Obama proposed more immediate steps Monday to heal the nation’s ailing economy including a 90-day moratorium on home foreclosures at some banks and a two-year tax break for businesses that create new jobs.

With the economic turmoil weighing down his Republican presidential rival, Obama also proposed allowing people to withdraw up to $10,000 from their retirement accounts without any penalty this year and next.

The Democratic presidential candidate said his proposals, with a price tag of $60 billion over two years, can be enacted quickly, either through the government’s regulatory powers or legislation that Congress could pass in a special session after the election.

“I’m proposing a number of steps that we should take immediately to stabilize our financial system, provide relief to families and communities and help struggling homeowners,” Obama told a crowd of 3,000. “It’s a plan that begins with one word that’s on everyone’s mind, and it’s spelled J-O-B-S.”

Obama delivered his economic message in Toledo, a struggling blue-collar city in a state that could be critical to Obama’s presidential hopes. Polls show a close race between Obama and Republican John McCain in Ohio, which decided the 2004 presidential election. At stake are 20 electoral votes.

His call for action comes just two days before the final debate of the presidential race and at a time when McCain is sending mixed signals about how he’ll address the economy.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a key McCain adviser, said Sunday the Republican candidate was considering a proposal to reduce taxes on investment, including a possible cut in capital gains taxes, but McCain offered no new economic proposals when he gave a new stump speech Monday morning promising a change in direction from the economic policies of President Bush.

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds accused Obama of planning to raise taxes if elected, something that would “have a devastating effect” on the already-troubled economy.

Obama’s plan calls for raising taxes only on the 5 percent of people who make more than $250,000 a year. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found that under Obama’s approach the wealthiest 1 percent of taxpayers would see their taxes go up on average by $93,709 in 2009, For McCain, those same wealthy taxpayers would see an average reduction of $48,860.

Obama is proposing tax cuts for those making less than $200,000 a year.

Obama’s latest proposals are in addition to other policies the Illinois senator has already offered as the stock market struggles, financial institutions wobble and tight credit chokes the economy.

Obama supported the $700 billion Wall Street bailout plan and endorsed the latest twist on it: the government buying ownership in major banks and partially nationalizing them to keep them afloat. He also calls for tax breaks for most families, cutting capital gains taxes for investment in small business and extending unemployment benefits.

Obama proposed Monday that banks participating in the federal bailout should temporarily postpone foreclosures for families making good-faith efforts to pay their mortgage.

“We need to give people the breathing room they need to get back on their feet,” he said, adding that families living beyond their means share some of the responsibility.

“Part of the reason this crisis occurred, if we’re honest with ourselves, is that everyone was living beyond their means — from Wall Street to Washington to even some on Main Street,” Obama said.

He also called for a $3,000 tax credit for each additional full-time job a business creates. That means a business that adds five jobs would get a $15,000 break. That would end after 2010 and would cost $40 billion, the campaign estimates.

Obama proposes letting people withdraw up to 15 percent of their retirement funds, to a maximum of $10,000, without the penalty that now applies to early or excess withdrawals. The change would apply retroactively to all of 2008, as well as 2009. People would still have to pay normal taxes on the money. He said letting people dip into their IRAs and 401(k)s would help them get through tough times when money is tight.

State and local governments face a money crunch, too, and Obama called for new federal short-term loans to help them through the crisis. He called it a “funding backstop” to ensure that states and cities can meet payroll or keep projects moving.

He ended the speech with a call for people to unite and make sacrifices, as America did during the Great Depression, until the economy is back on track.

“Together, we cannot fail. Not now. Not when we have a crisis to solve and an economy to save. Not when there are so many Americans without jobs and without homes,” Obama said. “We can do this because we’ve done it before.”

Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden met with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili on Friday but didn’t let reporters in as the pair posed for photographers at the beginning of the session.

The decision to allow only photographers, and no reporters, into the meeting briefly at its start recalled a similar move by Biden’s Republican counterpart, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, earlier this week. Some of the news media that cover Palin’s vice presidential campaign protested and got the restriction dropped.

Phil Walzak, a spokesman for Democrat Barack Obama’s campaign, said the Biden-Saakashvili meeting was a private session between the senator and a head of state. He said they would likely issue a statement after the meeting but they won’t take questions from reporters.

The GOP campaign, applying more restrictive rules on access than even President Bush uses in the White House, banned reporters from the start of her meetings with with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe in New York this week, so as not to risk a question being asked of Palin. Republican John McCain’s presidential campaign had shielded the first-term Alaska governor for weeks from spontaneous questions from voters and reporters.

McCain aides relented after news organizations objected and CNN, which was supplying TV footage to a variety of networks, decided to pull its TV crew from Palin’s meeting with Karzai.

A day after being accused of making anti-Semitic comments at the United Nations, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met a fringe group of ultra-religious Jews who seek the dismantling of the state of Israel.

“Zionism has greatly weakened and, God willing, it will be destroyed soon and then all Jews, Muslims and Christians can live peacefully with one another,” Ahmadinejad told nearly a dozen rabbis from Neturei Karta International on Wednesday.

The group is a small anti-Zionist organization that says it adheres strictly to the Torah, the Jewish holy book, which it says forbids the establishment of a Jewish state before the coming of the Messiah. It supports Palestinian sovereignty over the Holy Land and financial restitution for past losses.

Its views are considered marginal by mainstream Jews who condemned Ahmadinejad’s speech on Tuesday as anti-Semitic, as did several world leaders, human rights groups and U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Marty Irom, spokesman for the non-profit group the Israel Project, which promotes security and peace in Israel, said Neturei Karta was a “very tiny fringe group that represents only themselves.” He said such meetings gave Ahmadinejad an “air of legitimacy which he should not have.”

Ahmadinejad railed against “Zionist murderers” in his speech at the U.N. General Assembly, dwelling on what he described as Zionist control of international finance, echoing the libel that blamed a world Jewish conspiracy for all the world’s troubles.

At Wednesday’s meeting with the group, which also goes by the English name “Jews United Against Zionism,” Ahmadinejad said Zionism was a political movement “that seeks wealth and power” and was “corrupting the earth.”

Nearly a dozen rabbis dressed in the black garb of ultra-Orthodox Jews sat around a table with Ahmadinejad and his delegation and posed for photographs after the meeting in a Manhattan hotel.

“That we have the honor and privilege to meet with such a distinguished person who understands the difference between Zionism and Judaism is for us a tremendously happy occasion,” the group’s senior Rabbi, Moshe Ber Beck, told Ahmadinejad.

Ahmadinejad has said Israel should be wiped off the map. He has referred to the Holocaust as a myth and his government held a conference in 2006 questioning the fact that Nazis used gas chambers to kill 6 million Jews in World War Two.

Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, spokesman for the group, said Ahmadinejad was no enemy of the Jewish people, that many thousands of Jews lived in Iran without persecution and that the Iranian president was not a Holocaust denier.

Ahmadinejad spoke about World War Two in general terms as “one of the most abhorrent acts” in history. “Numerous crimes occurred against everyone,” he said, through an interpreter.

Ahmadinejad ended by praying with the rabbis, saying: “God, please nullify the propaganda waged by the Zionists, and let them lose hope, and make victorious your deserved people.”

The year was 1984, and the state was Iowa. A white man who had just voted walked out of his precinct caucus and saw the Rev. Jesse Jackson standing outside.

“I did all I could,” the man told Jackson ruefully, “but I just couldn’t bring myself to pull the lever and vote for you.”

L. Douglas Wilder laughs as he relates the story Jackson once told him, the sting eased by time and Wilder’s vantage point as the nation’s first elected black governor.

Now it’s a quarter of a century later, and the man everyone’s talking about is Barack Obama, the Illinois senator holding a slim lead in many polls. But can the polls be trusted? A central question about race and politics hasn’t changed since 1984: Do white people lie — to pollsters or even to themselves — about their willingness to vote for black candidates?

In the not-so-distant past, the consensus was a clear yes. Today, however, there is widespread disagreement about whether Obama is subject to the predicament known as the Wilder or Bradley Effect — whether in the privacy of the voting booth, white people will actually pull the lever for the first black man to come within shouting distance of the presidency.

Given that surveys can have trouble uncovering the truth about many things besides race, plus the massive technological, demographic and cultural changes in play, this question is contributing to an almost unprecedented air of uncertainty surrounding this year’s polls.

In 1989, Wilder polled as many as 15 points ahead in the days before the election for Virginia governor, but squeaked into office by a minuscule 6,700 votes. David Dinkins had a similar experience that year, when he became New York City’s first black mayor. And the phenomenon was first noted in 1982, when Tom Bradley endured a stunning defeat in the California governor’s race after exit polls indicated he was the winner.

The reason for these disparities? A significant amount of white people did not admit that race played a role in their voting decision, pollsters and academics say. Another factor: When the person asking the questions was black, respondents were more likely to say they favored the black candidate.

In the recent Democratic primary, exit polls in 28 states overstated Obama’s actual share of the final vote.

Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, doesn’t think people are lying to pollsters today about their support for Obama, “because I don’t think there’s a lot of stigma in saying you’re voting for John McCain.” Kohut said it’s not like polls are asking, “Do you want to vote for the white guy or the black guy?”

But he did see potential for error based on the people who decline to participate in polls, whom he describes as largely lower-income whites more likely than the population at large to have racially intolerant views.

“The real frailty of our polls is that we get very high refusal rates, and we survive because the people who we interview are like the people who we don’t interview on most things,” Kohut said. “(Racism) is not one of them.”

So are current polls accurate? “I don’t know,” Kohut said, “and to be honest with you, this is something every pollster I know is concerned about.”

Wilder, now the mayor of Richmond, Va., said his internal polls during the governor’s race showed it to be much closer than most people thought. “It was clear that people were having the first opportunity to vote for an African-American, and there was uncertainty,” he said. “You know, ‘Is he going to be fair, is he just going to look out for his own people. And who are his own people?’ I think we’ve come a great distance from that. I’ve seen the progress.”

So is Wilder ready to bury the Wilder Effect?

“No, I won’t say that,” he said with a laugh. “I won’t go that far.”

Daniel J. Hopkins will. The Harvard University postdoctoral fellow examined data from 133 gubernatorial and Senate elections from 1986 to 2006 and concluded that the effect vanished in the early 1990s as racially divisive issues such as crime and welfare reform receded from the national stage.

Hopkins said that race could play a larger role if it is injected into the campaign — as it often is in the waning days of close contests involving black candidates.

Days before the 2006 Senate election in Tennessee, with polls showing the race almost deadlocked, Republicans released an ad featuring a ditzy blond actress saying she met Harold Ford Jr. at the Playboy Club and asking the black Democrat to “call me.” Ford lost.

In 1990’s tight North Carolina Senate contest. Republican Jesse Helms was running about even with Democrat Harvey Gantt when he released an ad showing white hands crumpling a job rejection letter as a narrator mentioned racial quotas. Helms won.

Blacks, too, have sought to use race to their political advantage: In a congressional primary this month in Memphis, a black challenger tried to link the incumbent, Steve Cohen, to the Ku Klux Klan. Cohen won easily.

While Obama may face some of these historical hurdles, there are other, unprecedented factors at work: a presidential instead of statewide election, a spike in black voters and the increase in young voters who are more racially tolerant, watch more YouTube than television and eschew the land telephone lines used by most polls.

The racial pendulum may even have swung back the other way, said Anthony G. Greenwald, a psychology professor at the University of Washington, citing a “reverse Bradley Effect” during the Democratic primary: In states with larger black populations, such as Virginia, South Carolina, Mississippi and Georgia, Obama got more votes than polls predicted.

Like Kohut, Greenwald doesn’t think people are deliberately lying in polls. But he does see potential for polling errors due to undecided white voters overstating their support for Obama or choosing McCain at the last minute, and the influence of “racial attitudes and stereotypes that people in many cases are not aware they have.”

Many pollsters are trying to adjust their methods to account for these unprecedented variables. It’s not easy, however, to solve these new problems in the heat of a tight presidential race.

“I don’t think anyone is correct or incorrect, including me,” Greenwald said of the current poll numbers. “To get to the heart of that, you’d have to do the kinds of research that haven’t been done.”

The Obama campaign declined to comment on how it conducts its polling. The McCain campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Matthew Dowd, an ABC News commentator and former chief strategist for President Bush’s 2004 campaign, expects the Wilder Effect to be a “small factor” in November. “I wouldn’t want to be Barack Obama and up two points going into Election Day,” he said.

“My guess is that (the Obama campaign) understands that and they know it’s not enough to be ahead,” Dowd said. “They have to be ahead by a lot.”

A helicopter plucked two frostbitten Dutch climbers from K-2 on Monday after an avalanche and exposure left at least 11 people presumed dead on the world’s second-highest mountain. The rescue of a stranded Italian was aborted but, he told a colleague, “I am surely not going to give up now.”

One of the rescued men, Wilco Van Rooijen, blamed mistakes in preparation for the final ascent — not just the avalanche — for one of mountaineering’s worst disasters.

“Everything was going well to Camp Four and on summit attempt everything went wrong,” Van Rooijen told The Associated Press by phone from a military hospital, where he was being treated for frostbitten toes.

K-2, which lies near Pakistan’s northern border with China, is regarded by mountaineers as more challenging to conquer than Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak. K-2 is steeper, rockier and more prone to sudden, severe weather.

Van Rooijen said several expeditions waited through July for good weather to scale K-2 and decided to go for the summit when winds dropped on Friday. In all, about two dozen climbers made the ascent, officials said.

But Van Rooijen said advance climbers laid ropes in some of the wrong places on the 28,250-foot peak, including in part a treacherous gully known as as “The Bottleneck.”

“We were astonished. We had to move it. That took of course, many, many hours. Some turned back because they did not trust it anymore,” said Van Rooijen, 40.

He said those who went on reached the summit just before nightfall. As the fastest climbers descended in darkness across The Bottleneck, about 1,148 feet below the summit, a huge serac, or column of ice, fell. Rooijen said a Norwegian climber and two Nepalese sherpas were swept away. His own team was split up in the darkness.

The Ministry of Tourism released a list of 11 climbers believed dead: three South Koreans, two Nepalis, two Pakistanis and mountaineers from France, Ireland, Serbia and Norway.

At least two fell on their way up the mountain, before the avalanche.

Van Rooijen said after the avalanche there was a “whiteout” on the mountain — meaning cloud had descended, making it virtually impossible to see the precipitous route down. But he pushed on as he was starting to suffer snow blindness.

On his descent, he said he passed three South Koreans. They declined his offer of help.

“There was a Korean guy hanging upside down. There was a second Korean guy who held him with a rope but he was also in shock and then a third guy was there also, and they were trying to survive but I had also to survive,” he said.

It was not immediately clear if they were the same three Koreans who died. Two other Koreans made it back to the base camp, which lies at about 16,400 feet, an organizer of their expedition said.

The Italian climber, Marco Confortola, descended to 20,340 feet but bad weather forced officials to abort a helicopter rescue Monday, said Shahzad Qaiser, a top official at the tourism ministry.

“Up there it was hell. During the descent, beyond 8,000 meters (26,000 feet), due to the altitude and the exhaustion I even fell asleep in the snow and when I woke up I could not figure out where I was,” the ANSA news agency quoted the stranded Italian, Marco Confortola, as telling his brother Luigi by satellite phone.

“My hands are fine, while my feet are black from frostbite. Anyway, I can walk and I want to descend to the base camp.”

Agostino Da Polenza of Everest-K2-CNR, an Italy-based high-altitude scientific research group, also spoke to Confortola on Monday.

“I never gave up in my life, I am surely not going to give up now,” Da Polenza quoted the climber as saying on his group’s Web site.

Another attempt was planned for Tuesday, Qaiser said.

The Irish climber, 37-year-old Gerard McDonnell, on Friday became the first person from his country to reach the summit of K2. He is believed to have died on the way down.

Pat Falvey, a family friend, said they “are holding up well and are very proud of Ger’s achievement and are still in total shock in relation to the fact that he may not be coming back.”

On Monday morning, a helicopter brought Van Rooijen and Dutch colleague Cas Van de Gevel from K-2’s base camp to a military hospital in Skardu, said Maj. Farooq Firoz, an army spokesman.

Thin air generally prevents choppers from flying above 19,700 feet. The avalanche struck more than 26,250 feet up the mountain.

The reported toll was the highest from a single incident on K-2 since at least 1995, when seven climbers perished after being caught in a fierce storm.

Chris Warner, an American who climbed K-2 last year, said the Bottleneck gully was the deadliest place on the mountain, with an unstable ice wall above and a fall of up to 9,000 feet below.

“You can see how, for people who were exhausted, it would have been nearly impossible for them to descend without the ropes,” said Warner. “Once their hands and feet are frozen, they really are unable to move on their own power, and it takes other people to carry them down.”

About 280 people have summited K-2 since 1954, when it was first conquered by Italians Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedell. Dozens of deaths have been recorded since 1939, most of them occurring during the descent.

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1. Absolutely!!

2. No. The President needs to be intelligent and powerful enough not to be a puppet.

3. Nope.

4. Oh my god no. She is the freakiest person I ever heard of. She makes absolutely no sense when she talks. She speaks in that government speak and does not make any sense. Have I mentioned she makes no sense?

5. Possibly, a black woman being president would be GREAT, but I don’t think there’s a chance she would ever run. She does seem to agree with EVERYTHING Bush does, other than that I think she could handle the job.

6. From what I have seen of her, I would seriously consider her as a viable candidate.

7. I would sooner vote for Condie than for Hillary

8. Helllllllllllllllllllllll Nooooooooooooooooooo!

9. It depends on who she ran against but she is definitely very highly regarded by me.

10. nope…no way …not a frig’n shot, she’s as bad as bush and darth cheney

11. Possibly, yes. IMHO, she’s the most qualified woman in America. However, she has never held an elected position in government. I say that she’d be a good VP running mate for the republican party … that would get Hillary’s and the democrat party’s panties in a bunch!

12. I would vote for her before I would Hillary Clinton. And with the way she handling foreign relations and the mid-eastern peace talks I think she would make a good president.

13. Maybe, depend on the other choice

14. She was so weak as the national security adviser and the Secretary of state that Donald Rumsfeld and the defense department bullied their way in to dictating what state department policy should be.

She would be a weak president.

15. depends on her stances and ideals, but i wouldn’t out right rule it out.

16. You bet. It’s nice to have a leader with class. And she’s tough and is a good speaker.

Joey, what a great idea!

17. No, since I never voted for her in anything in the first place. I want to know who the People get to nominate? All we get is a premade selection of choices that I would never make in the first place.

Theodore Roosevelt bull moose/republican party.

Counteract Violence with Knowledge…educated yourself about the situation at hand and seek out peaceful, collaborative and empowering alternatives. Violence spawns from an attempt to recover what one believes was pilfered. Whether this was money, land, dignity, etc—violence is only a temporary fix to secure these lost assets and rational, intelligent avenues to make the self whole yield the most sustainable results.

Counteract Anger with Understanding…pause, listen and truly hear the angry voice. Anger is frustration and becomes louder because no one will listen. Often anger can be diffused significantly when given a passive audience. You do not have to agree with the position to support the human behind it.

Counteract Hate with Love…hate is toxic. And perhaps my answer is cliché, but in my personal experience…it is the only way. Every individual is human (with good parts and not so good parts) applying this ideology inhibits the reciprocation of this hate. Hating the hate gives it an excuse to hate more, but by loving the hate…the diseased cycle is starved