The Feds decided that sometimes there can be too much tough love, and so a creative loan was cobbled together for failing AIG. Even most fiscal conservatives seem to think AIG was too big to let sink; it could have dragged us all down with it.
That leaves the basic problems still in place, and much of Congress still in the pockets of the banking and real estate industries. Campaign promises, shmomises.
Will events of recent days act as a wake-up call? Continue reading →
Love that Pelosi.
Rangel’s woes? Nothing much to see there; moving right along.
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Democrat involvement in the long and complex build-up to the current subprime mortgage crisis? Nah; it’s all the Republicans’ fault, according to Pelosi.
Forget history, forget truth, forget anything but making political hay out of a bad situation.
Although I must say that anyone who thought that electing generic Democrats rather than generic Republicans in 2006 was going to result in reform of Congress was seriously mistaken. I don’t think I ever was that naive, even back when I was a Democrat.
For any one particular corrupt Congressional representative (such as, for example Rangel)—yes, defeating that particular person is a good idea, especially if the replacement has demonstrated ethical behavior in his/her own record. But to think that either party as a whole is more or less likely to be clean or corrupt than the other party as a whole—that’s just a partisan pipe dream, I’m afraid. Politics presents almost unlimited opportunity and motivation to go bad (often, it even rewards it), and it takes a person of especially strong moral fiber to withstand the temptation.
Okay, so I watched it. So sue me; I couldn’t resist.
And I am here to declare that, in the Todd Palin interview with Greta Van Susteren on Fox, it has been conclusively determined that Todd Palin, First Dude of Alaska, is every bit as attractive as his wife. And that’s mighty attactive.
It’s not often that Presidential politics offers us such an opportunity. Maybe for the guys, yes (I seem to recall a lot of heavy breathing over the Bush twins). Continue reading →
The current financial crisis proves the maxim that there’s no free lunch—or rather, there may seem to be a free lunch, but the bill is merely deferred, and ultimately it comes due with interest. How is it that all these oh-so-smart people didn’t see that? I guess they just got too hungry, and the aroma of lunch smelled awfully good.
As for blame, it’s not a Democrat or Republican thing. The history of how this happened is lengthy, complex, and bipartisan. I’ve done quite a bit of cramming on the subject in the last twenty-four hours, and I was going to try to summarize it—but that’s, as someone recently said, above my pay grade.
But here’s a very small attempt. Continue reading →
…how many articles there have been giving Obama helpful advice on what he should do to win the election? Here’s just one, but there have been tons of them ever since he started slipping a wee bit in the polls.
My questions: if he’s so smart, why does he need so much advice?
And if he’s so smart, why isn’t he taking it?
This is shocking, if true. Continue reading →
I’ve said several times that economics is one of my weakest areas. But there are a few things I do know about the current crisis, and here are three of them: there’s a lot of greed out there, loans were made that shouldn’t have been, and now we’re all likely to have to pay.
Is it a Democrat or Republican problem? I don’t think it’s either, or maybe it would be more accurate to say it’s both. Is it clear which party would be better at fixing it? Not at all. But each side will definitely be doing some scrambling to come up with a plan that sounds like it knows how to deal with the mess. And I am fairly sure that, although John McCain is on record as saying he’s no economics expert, he’ll talk to advisors and try to start sounding as though he is. As will Obama.
Mike Allen of Politco writes that this will affect the election, and it makes sense to think so. Continue reading →
According to many Democrats, liberals, and Leftists, leading Conservatives and/or Republicans seem to fall mostly into one of two molds: the evil clods and the evil geniuses. Bush is one of the former and Cheney and Rove the latter.
McCain is a bit different; he doesn’t clearly fall into either category. That’s why Democrats and the press have had to attack him in other ways: age, recklessness, and loudly and repetitively that he’s Bush in McCain clothing.
Palin, however, is much easier to work into the template: she’s another evil clod. Gibson’s “gotcha” interview that “proved” she didn’t know all the answers to his pop quiz on foreign policy was part of this strategy. She’s a dummy, see? Continue reading →
Judith Warner seems to be trying to get it.
In a meandering, unfocused piece in the NY Times, she tries to work through her confusion about Palinmania. Along the way, there is the usual condescension, barely contained.
But towards the end she seems to begin to understand something she may have never grasped before, Continue reading →
Obama will be appearing on Saturday Night Live tomorrow. This makes a certain amount of sense, since lately his campaign seems to be headed into previously uncharted Emily Litella “never mind” waters.
When I heard about this ad I immediately thought it was an error of judgment:
What could Obama possibly gain by alienating people who, for one reason or other, don’t use computers? Continue reading →
Remember this?
That was a character named Howard Beale in the movie “Network.” And now comes another Howard—Kurtz by name—of the WaPo. He’s pretty mad, too, and he’s not going to take it any more.
Who’s Kurtz mad at, and who’s he saying the MSM is mad at? Continue reading →
I’ve got a piece up at Pajamas entitled “Is Obama Buckling Under Pressure?” Please take a look; there’s even some poetry in it!
But I liked my original title (see above) better. Ah, well.