Hard News: The Debate and Onwards
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she can't name a single magazine or newspaper she has read:
That's because she has read 'all of them'.
(see page 6 this thread.)
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she can't name a single magazine or newspaper she has read:
That's because she has read 'all of them'.
"Porn shocker: Palin gets foreign policy advice from Hustler Magazine"
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Couric asks her what magazines and newspapers have helped shape her worldview. Palin flails around and it eventually becomes evident that she can't name a single magazine or newspaper she has read:
Oh, come on Russell that's a harsh too far. I'm sure she could name any number of magazines and newspapers on her night stand back in the Governor's residence in Juneau -- but it really would undermine her jus' folks persona if she admitted to subscribing to Vogue and the Wall Street Journal, Those fluffy questions can be the worse land minds of all.
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I called McCain a liar for claiming Obama's insurance plan. Here Palin repeats the lie:
John McCain’s got some great ideas on granting authority, for instance, to the FDIC, making sure that our deposits are insured. He wants to increase that deposit insurance cap of all of our money, our savings, from $100,000 dollars up to $250,000 dollars, so that families like mine, so that we don’t have to worry about our money being safe or not under FDIC.
I think a lot of observers are stunned by the McCain/Palin lying. I think they are mostly too stunned to comment much. Those that do comment have already been shunted aside by their bosses (NBS, for example) at the request of the MCain team.
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By the way, even sagenz was claiming the $250k scheme was Obamas. Sage, is it a better idea now? Just asking.
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In other news, Governor Sarah Plain sits for a free, frank and substantive interview!
HH: Governor, let’s close with some foreign affairs. It is reported that you had an Israeli flag in your governor’s office. You wore an Israeli flag pin occasionally. One, is that true? And two, why your support for Israel?
SP: Well, it is true, and I ran into Shimon Peres recently at a meeting, and he even pointed that out. He said I saw a picture of you on the internet, and you had an Israeli flag in your state government office, and I said I sure do. You know, my heart is with you. And all of those trials and tribulations throughout history that Israel has gone through, not only does that allow me to want to support that country, but Israel is our strongest and most important ally in the Middle East. And they are a democratic country who I believe deserves our support, and I know that John McCain believes as I do that Israel is our friend, and we need to be there to support them. They are there for us, and I do love that country.
And that's it. If you want to read the rest, please be aware that "Hugh Hewitt" is not some Democrat/liberal satirical construct. He's for real, it's just his content that isn't.
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john - $100k - I meant relative small time compared to the problems the banks have. but fair point, loose wording
don - raising the $100 FDIC limit to $250k is almost an irrelevance imho. it seems to be suggested that will make the difference to bank solvency. It might make the difference between some dems voting for it or not.mccain may deserve your slaps now for not delivering a yes vote. But it was a pretty crapulent proposal. The banks need equity to deliver solvency. taking their toxic debt simply creates moral hazard. Some kind of deal is needed but one that provides more upside for the american taxpayer would be better.
The point I was making is that mccain is spending his personal political capital on leading. Obama is sitting back. They are both members of the Senate. They should be involved. Be honest you would have slapped mcCain if he had attended the debate or in a different way if he had not.
McCain is tanking in the polls this week cos he is doing what he thinks is right. There is still a month for people to realise who is leading and who is incapable of making a leadership decision.
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McCain is denying he blamed the Democrats for the bailout failure
When asked whether he blamed Dems and Obama for the bailout collapse yesterday, McCain said "no."But yesterday McCain said: "Senator Obama and his allies in Congress infused unnecessary partisanship into the process."
That is a slightly different statement russell. But you want to twist meanings, crack on. Given Pelosi closing statement ( no craig i dont think they changed wimpy republican minds) mcCain made a reasonable point without blaming them for the repub anti vote.
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Can't we send someone over to the US to help them out? Show them how we 'fixed' the BNZ, and then sold it for a 'profit'?
this paper was written in 2004, revised in 2005, and online in 2006:
This situation is exemplified through two case studies documenting an extraordinary recurrence of financial mal-management in the case of the Bank of New Zealand (BNZ). Twice, the BNZ fell into the hands of forceful individuals with political connections who were able to control its management and influence lending policy with disastrous results. In both instances separated by nearly a century, creative accounting masked poor performance, and the government was persuaded to rescue what was once affectionately known as ‘The People's Bank’. Such rescues represented a socialisation of losses, not least because the BNZ was shareholder-owned and those responsible escaped largely unscathed. Reliance upon the possibility of rescue may even promote riskier behaviour.
And, on a tangent, here's a trip down memory lane I can recommend - about the Muldoon years, and his 'control' of the nation's finances.
Muldoon dictated that no-one could buy a new car who had less than a 60 per cent deposit, and the maximum term of any loan was 18 months.
A used car had to have a 60 per cent deposit and be repaid over 12 months. ...
... Muldoon figured his rules would stop the "wrong" people from borrowing for a car they could not afford. In fact he simply made finance companies less vulnerable to bad debts.
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Stephen -
You ought to be disapproving his attempts to interfere in the end of the business cycle.
I admit there is a big part of me thinking the market should rule. From the people calling their politicians to complain getting the result they seem to want to the bankers wanting to socialise losses.
On the subject of greedy insurers I am with you 100%. But AIG was underwriting European bank loans rather than US. so it is a little difficult to link that to the current US crisis.
Congress forced the issue and sowed some of the seeds. Bankers simply did not know when to stop. That should mean neither of them get off the hook. Borrowers believed the bubble would never burst.
I think the Republican congressmen calling bullshit on Paulson's plan was the right thing. But I think a bailout package is on balance a sensible thing.
Call that conflicted opinions. Well, there is no absolute right or wrong answer. Personally I have a large mortgage and have benefited from easy credit in the UK. Is it right for me to cry foul now? I think not.
John - Banks have enough liabilities (deposits) - what they dont have enough of is equity. It is a solvency crisis not a liquidity crisis. Unwinding the CDO/credit default swap money chain will take time and requires more equity. The revised proposals being discussed here and here among other places seem better than simply buying toxic debt.
Bad loans are weighing down the financial system precisely because private-sector experts can't determine their worth. The government would have no better handle on the problem.
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The point I was making is that mccain is spending his personal political capital on leading
... and he should have invested it in AIG stock, for all the good it did. Sorry to sound like a broken record here, but over two thirds of House Republicans voted against the bailout bill, and the best the minority leadership can do is blame Nancy Pelosi.
To be less than generous but truthful, McCain postured heroicly. But in my book, leadership is also about not making promises you don't have a hope in hell of delivering on, and being willing to man up and take absolute responsibility for your failures. Not trying to palm it off on someone else, then (to add insult to injury) trying to bullshit your way out of a hole of your own making.
If that's your idea of leadership, God help us - because nobody else is up to the job. And this is not the time to be handing out gold stars for effort.
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And, Sage, here's another leadership quality: Knowing when to step off and let other people do their jobs. If the management style of a McCain Administration is going to be micro-managerial control freakery, between outbursts of impulsive "Hail Mary" decision-making, then, Houston, we've got a damn big problem.
There is still a month for people to realise who is leading and who is incapable of making a leadership decision.
Well, that's true enough. And I think we've seen why you can't trust a "maverick" to lead in any meaningful sense.
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actually craig what got me on the original comparison was mccains we against obama's you.
and just to make the point. mccain is a senator. Passing the law did require votes from the senate as well as congress. so him being there was doing his job
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@sage
Actually it didn't. The Senate has yet to vote. McCain was grandstanding inthe House process. -
and just to make the point. mccain is a senator. Passing the law did require votes from the senate as well as congress. so him being there was doing his job
Sage: I guess we should be thankful there's one bill we can be reasonably confident McCain is actually going to cast a vote on, but I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't bother.
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WH,
If you haven't seen them already, David Letterman's takes on McCain's no show (nights one and two) are very funny.
This from yesterday's WaPo:
The new [far left/far right] majority isn't worried about ephemeral things such as 700-point drops in the Dow. "No, I'm not," Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) declared after the vote. "The market may be down, but the Constitution is up!"
Indeed, if economic calamity results, there will be many proud authors. Begin with Gohmert, who disrupted proceedings before the first arguments yesterday. "I would move to adjourn so we don't do this terrible thing to our nation," he said. His motion went down, 394 to 8.
Another proud architect of the defeat: Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.), who had an earthy perspective on the bill. "Madam Speaker, this is a huge cow patty with a piece of marshmallow stuck in the middle of it," he declared. "I'm not going to eat that cow patty."
Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.), another opponent, found a precedent in Russian lit. "The choice is stark, and it was put forth in the book by Dostoyevsky, in 'The Brothers Karamazov,' " he said.
Are these the people you'd want making your financial decisions?
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Are these the people you'd want making your financial decisions?
WH: To be fair, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (the former CEO of Goldman Sachs!) shouldn't have expected universal acclaim with his cries of "give me a trillion dollars, and trust me, or else". You can say some kind of bailout, however unpalatable, was necessary. But is it totally out of line to suggest that Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke didn't actually do a very good job of making their case? If there was a worse time for those two to say "trust me, or else" I can't picture it.
And there are actually legitimate concerns, that are no less legitimate because the born-again fiscal conservatives raising them aren't exactly free of electoral self-interest.
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Are these the people you'd want making your financial decisions?
I think you get what you vote for. Sadly in these instances.
And probably no better than the Wall Street types who went along with the whole crazy sub-prime mortgages in the first place. Those are the ones that have been making most of the financial decisions for the past few years.
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Bloody helll... I don't expect Rod Dreher to be a must-read for many PAS readers, but I'd describe him as being on the sane, thoughtful and civil end of the "religious right". And, after expressing pretty mild and reluctant reservations about Sarah Palin this is the kind of shit he gets:
I did get this morning an e-mail from someone who is not like Larson, but who is rather a very thoughtful young conservative intellectual. He writes:
I have to say your actions of the last week have cast serious doubt on your qualities as a man and as a christian. Even if all you say about Palin is true (personally, I believe it's far too early to tell), to say so on national television fails a minimal decency test that any christian always has to set himself. Never mind Reagan's Eleventh Commandment, it is just really poor judgement to openly attack another person whom you have never met. How do you square that with love your neighbor like yourself? Are we not supposed to set a standard for others. Isn't that what being a city on a hill is all about? I fear your behavior is indicative of the total crisis of faith in which the conservative movement finds itself right now. And it makes me really, really depressed.
Ah. So, if I, in my professional role as a columnist, blogger and commentator, criticize the public acts and statements of a conservative politician -- even if what I say is true -- well, then I am a bad man and an indecent Christian. To attack openly a person one has never met is immoral -- a standard that would make the practice of opinion journalism (for one) impossible. I wonder why I've never received from this reader a comment attacking my integrity as a man and as a Christian when I was criticizing Barack Obama on this blog, or anybody else but Sarah Palin? I wonder if this reader has applied the same absurd standard to his own commentary about Obama? I wonder if this fellow is in the habit of passing judgment on the state of other people's souls based on their analysis of a politician's qualities?
As for Reagan's 11th Commandment -- "Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican" -- that bit of dubious bit of strategic wisdom (the leftist version of it is, "No enemies to the left," which the mainstream French left, during the Cold War, used to justify its turning a blind eye to what the Communists really represented) is a proverb useful to political hacks, not to commentators. In fact, if you want to cite an example of a "total crisis of faith" among conservatives, you could hardly do better than the missive above, instructing conservatives critical of the vice presidential nominee that it's their duty as Christian men to pretend that what we plainly see doesn't exist -- this, for the sake of the Cause. Since when is loyalty to anything other than the truth done anybody any good? Did conservatives' who knew better withholding criticism of George W. Bush's failings serve the country, or the conservative movement, well? I'm only surprised the reader didn't tell me that it was my obligation as the Empress's subject to lavish praise on her new clothes.
Snaps up, Mr Dreher!
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Bloody helll... I don't expect Rod Dreher to be a must-read for many PAS readers, but I'd describe him as being on the sane, thoughtful and civil end of the "religious right". And, after expressing pretty mild and reluctant reservations about Sarah Palin this is the kind of shit he gets:
Sullivan also pointed to a similar column by another Palin critic, Kathleen Parker:
WASHINGTON — Allow me to introduce myself. I am a traitor and an idiot. Also, my mother should have aborted me and left me in a Dumpster, but since she didn't, I should "off" myself.
Those are just a few nuggets randomly selected from thousands of e-mails written in response to my column suggesting that Sarah Palin is out of her league and should step down.
Who says public discourse hasn't deteriorated?
And:
The picture is this: Anyone who dares express an opinion that runs counter to the party line will be silenced. That doesn't sound American to me, but Stalin would approve. Readers have every right to reject my opinion. But when we decide that a person is a traitor and should die for having an opinion different than one's own, then we cross into territory that puts all freedoms at risk. (I hear you, Dixie Chicks.)
Our day of reckoning, indeed, may be upon us. Between war and economic collapse, we have enormous challenges. It will take the best of everyone to solve them. That process begins minimally with a commitment to engage in civil discourse and a cease-fire in the war against unwelcome ideas.
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The way laws are made in America is fucking nuts. This is what's going on with the bailout bill:
With each permutation, the bill has steadily grown in size. Treasury’s initial plan was about three pages long. The House version, which failed, stretched to 110. The Senate substitute now runs over 450 pages. And tucked away in the tax provisions is a landmark health care provision demanding that insurance companies provide coverage for mental health treatment—such as hospitalization—on parity with physical illnesses.
Really a bill onto itself, the mental health parity measure has been a bipartisan priority for top lawmakers in both chambers but has stalled because of disagreements again over how to pay for its estimated $3.8 billion five-year cost. In the current climate, that seems to be no longer a stumbling block, and if the Treasury plan becomes law, it will also.
There's also some stuff about funding for rural schools put in by the Republicans. Is there any other major democracy where laws get made like this?
Sage will doubtless be interested to know that Obama's proposal to raise the ceiling on federal deposit insurance was added to the bill by Harry Reid and it seems to be one part of the package that has strong support on both sides of the house. Guess it wasn't such a silly idea then ...
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Sullivan also pointed to a similar column by another Palin critic, Kathleen Parker:
Bloody hell with sprinkles on... And the simply bizarre thing is that people like Dreher and Kathleen Parker (who is a columnist on a paper that's hardly Chicago's answer to The Guarniad) make me look like a flaming Maoist. :)
If you're going to impose an ideological litmus test on any political movement (and I don't think you should), zombie-like fealty to a sub-par candidate is not it.
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There's also some stuff about funding for rural schools put in by the Republicans. Is there any other major democracy where laws get made like this?
To an extent they all do, but I totally get your point.
Westminister systems don't generally permit anything like the level of member-sponsored, public or private, legislation as occurs in the US (which means the ratio of bills to laws is much higher) and which, I guess, accounts for a significant number of the unrelated amendments and attachments. Here's a useful flow-chart, including a page on the amendments process, for the truly dedicated... do I get a chocolate fish (or are you awating a more fullsome piece from Master Edgeler?
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The last time I brought this up with some Americans they told me it was a consequence of the lack of whipping in Congress. Instead of the stick (whipping) you have the carrot (stuffing the legislator's favourite thing into an unrelated bill).
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CBS has the 'Supreme Court' question to both candidates up on their site now and it does Look like Palin couldn't name anything but Roe v. Wade.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/01/eveningnews/main4493062.shtml
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