So many low moments in the week's political and financial coverage, our guests are having a hard time choosing. Choire Sicha is stuck on the New York Times political pages, so careful about what they can and can't say and yet...the story beyond the horserace seems to slip out of their grasp.

In terms of guilt by association and the Ayers story, Logan Pollard sees a failure to explain Obama's place as a junior player in the Chicago political scene, where the now-wealthy Ayers is an accepted person in the Chicago education community, and Barack Obama's association with him, however tenuous, is no different than that of the mayor of Chicago, Republicans in Chicago, and the philanthropic education community there. As Joe Conason puts it, there's an "inability to turn over the rock."

Joe Conason used to write about the World Anti-Communist League (a.k.a. "WACLE", "the cesspool of world politics," with support from rogues of the world from Rev. Moon to the Japanese organized crime syndicate Yakuza.) Conason fills us in on the McCain/John Singlaub/IranContra/Keating connection. McCain used to sit on the board of WACLE, which apparently was the norm in the conservative political landscape that an ambitious politician in Arizona would associate. WACLE's U.S. Council For World Freedom head Singlaub was a friend of his dad, Admiral McCain. MSM, if you're going to comb through the associations, you need to . . . really comb through the associations.

Choire Sicha suggests the flamable talking points are perpetuated and amplified into two different internets; if you're not tracking the rightwing internet, you may not be hearing the constant drumbeat of "Obama's a terrorist." The middle is watching CNN, but the base is working the conspiracies and scare tactics.

And then there's the financial coverage. Conservative media are spinning the wheel in the blame game to point at low income folks and government lenders. Conason says NO WAY - the old justifications have got to go. Sicha wants to know why CNN et al are so adamantly pro-bailout, going way past their roles as journalists. The sage Conason suggests the motivation is fear.

This week's media roundtable -- it's a great conversation! Joe Conason is National Correspondent for the New York Observer, Columnist for Salon.com and Director of The Nation Investigative Fund; Choire Sicha, formerly Managing Editor of Gawker, now Editor at Large of RadarOnline; Logan Nakyanzi Pollard, Executive Producer Black Politics and Ron Reagan Shows at Air America Radio