Tuesday, September 30, 2008
2004 Video: Democrats Defend Fannie/Freddie from Regulation
Democrates suffering from "Selective Amnesia". Maybe this will help jog the memory.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Democrats Blame McCain for Why Their Majority Can't Find a Majority of Votes
Image via Wikipedia ABC News' interpretation of things:Sen. John McCain may or may not have broken the bailout bill — and surely he didn't do so all by himself.
But he owns it now.
In the battle over perceptions, it really is this simple: There was a deal before McCain came back to Washington. There was not a deal by the time the evening ended. And now there might not be a bill — or a first presidential debate Friday in Mississippi.
Wait a minute. The House Republicans were never on board. And you don't actually need their votes to pass this bill; the holdup is that the House Democrats are terrified of having sole responsibility for the bill.
What changed between yesterday afternoon and evening is that the Democrats position changed from "we're comfortable passing the bill without many House GOP votes" to "we're NOT comfortable passing the bill without many House GOP votes."
How is that John McCain's fault again?
Obama said McCain "injected presidential politics into delicate negotiations." How? By showing up to vote on legislation?
Notice that they never explain how John McCain, simply by arriving inside the Beltway, somehow broke up a consensus that was there earlier in the day. If McCain had come in and persuaded people to oppose the bill, it would be a different story. But the message of Pelosi, Reid, Dodd and Obama is, "McCain is here, so it must be his fault."
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Why Sarah Palin Has the Democrats Running Scared.
Image via Wikipedia Commentary by Caroline BaumSept. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Alaska Governor Sarah Palin electrified the Republican National Convention with her acceptance speech two weeks ago.
And why not? The GOP vice presidential candidate is attractive (hold the accusations of sexism, please), articulate, poised, enthusiastic, homespun, a fresh face with a girl-next- door appeal.
She's everything, in other words, that John McCain is not.
After watching the McCain campaign sleepwalk through the summer, the Democrats can't get their arms around the Palin phenomenon. Who is she -- a Mayor from Nowhere! -- to come along, light a fire under the GOP ticket and threaten our path to the White House?
The spirited response to Palin by the Republican delegates in St. Paul is one thing. These are her people, the almighty GOP base.
When her popularity spilled over to the public at large and manifested itself in fundraising and opinion polls -- the GOP ticket is now tied with or ahead of the Democrats -- it was a real affront to the Democrats.
After all, ``this is our moment,'' ``this is our time,'' Barack Obama said in a June 3 speech after wrapping up the Democratic presidential nomination.
He's right. The 2008 presidential election is the Democrats' to lose.
An attitude of inevitability, of entitlement even, pervaded the Democratic Party -- until it was rudely punctured two weeks ago by the Palin phenom.
Co-Opting Change
The bursting of the inevitability bubble was on view in the real-time reaction to Palin's acceptance speech. The liberal pundits on cable news were clearly caught off guard by Palin's poise in front of an audience just a bit larger than the population of Wasilla. They were speechless. Seriously. Their jaws were moving, but nothing comprehensible was coming out.
It was on view in Barack Obama's demeanor on the campaign trail following the GOP convention. The candidate has gone flat.
And it was on view in the sheer glee the press took in turning over rocks, or icebergs, in Alaska to find some contradictions in Palin's assertions about the fabled Bridge to Nowhere.
On top of that, McCain and Palin have insinuated ``change'' into their campaign. How dare they steal our thunder, the Dems complain. We're the party of change. We're running against the incumbent president. They can't run as anti-incumbents, too.
Experience Boomerang
In short, the Democrats are running scared. And it's not for the reasons you think.
The fear has nothing to do with Palin's views. She likes guns, opposes abortion, wants to drill, is against a windfall profits tax on oil companies, wants to cut spending and earmarks, believes raising taxes hurts small business. She pretty much shares McCain's views on those issues.
The fear has nothing to do with Palin's inexperience -- six years as mayor of small-town Wasilla and two years as governor of Alaska, the largest, albeit a sparsely populated, state. If elected, Palin would be a ``heartbeat away'' from the Oval Office, her critics like to point out.
If she's a heartbeat away on Day Two, President Obama, with zero executive experience, is at mission control on Day One. Accusations of Palin's inexperience ultimately boomerang back to Obama's slim resume.
Loser Image
Besides, no one votes for vice president. The last time a vice presidential pick had a clear impact on the election outcome was John F. Kennedy's selection of Lyndon B. Johnson, who helped JFK carry Texas, according to presidential historians. (Why, then, do we spend endless hours handicapping and analyzing the VP choice every four years?)
No, the real reason the Democrats are scared to death of Palin's popularity is because if they lose this election, it will mean they are bankrupt as a party.
If the Democrats can't win a presidential election after eight years of an unpopular president, five years of an unpopular war, in the face of a lousy economy, a collapse in the housing market and overwhelming sentiment that the country is on the wrong track, it means something is terribly wrong.
This is as good as it gets for a party out of power. A loss in November would be embarrassing -- no, humiliating -- to the Democrats.
If they lose in '08, they will have no one to blame but themselves. Sarah Palin has raised the odds of a Democratic loss. That's why she has to be destroyed.
Wrong For America
Image by Getty Images via Daylife Murdoch: Obama's economic policies are 'naive'News Corp. chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch said he doesn't regret the New York Post endorsing John McCain, even as some say the Republican ticket is the weaker choice for voters concerned about the economy.
"I am very worried," Murdoch said during an interview Friday with Fox Business Network. "I like Sen. Obama very much. I have met him. He is a very intelligent man. But his policy of anti-globalization, protectionism, is going to be -- and card checks -- are going to do two or three things. It's going to give us a lot of inflation. They're going to ruin our relationships with the rest of the world. And they are going to slow down the rest of the world, too. And they're going to make people frightened to add to employment. You are going to find companies leaving this country if it's -- if you put a protectionist wall around it. You're going to get -- his policy is really very, very naive, old-fashioned, 1960s."
Murdoch also was asked about the television business, asked if he thinks if GE's CEO Jeff Immelt is being truthful when he says the company has no interest in selling NBC.
"Well, I take his word for it," Murdoch said. "I can assure you, it's not doing as well as it used to do. Not only because of its prime-time ratings, but because of its local stations. I know, as far as we are concerned -- and we compete with them -- that whole local station market is performing very badly at the moment. Anything that depends on consumer advertising is having a tight squeeze on it."
Murdoch also said that even if GE decided to sell the network, News Corp. would never be allowed to buy it. And NBC Universal's cable networks, he added, are not tempting.
"Take USA Network," Murdoch said. "It's a mature channel. It makes a lot of money. But why pay a high multiple for that when you can't work out how you can double its profit every five years? We like -- we like startups, like Fox News."
Also, Murdoch on the credit crisis: "One has got to go back on this and say, look, this started 15 years ago, with Barney Frank and people pushing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make a lot of bad loans, until they finally had $11 billion -- or nearly $11 billion out there. I don't say all bad, but it became a racket.
On whether government bailouts send to wrong message to the financial community: "I don't think so. I think the people who have done it will have lost a lot of money and their jobs. You know, some of them may even lose their freedom, from what I hear."
On Sarah Palin's call for regulation: “I think they have been sending out different signals, but I think what she says is right. Clearly, there has to be some more regulation, but we have to be careful what that is. It could make things a lot worse. The more you get the politicians in that don't know the first thing about banking, even less than me, and God knows what might come out of it.”
On Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson’s handling of the credit crisis: “I think Secretary Paulson has done a fantastically good job. Now we have got to get it through the Congress, and that is going to be the nightmare.”
Friday, September 19, 2008
Quick To Point The Finger, Senator?
Image by KRISnFRED via Flickr Obama in a statement yesterday blamed the shocking new round of subprime-related bankruptcies on the free-market system, and specifically the "trickle-down" economics of the Bush administration, which he tried to gig opponent John McCain for wanting to extend.But it was the Clinton administration, obsessed with multiculturalism, that dictated where mortgage lenders could lend, and originally helped create the market for the high-risk subprime loans now infecting like a retrovirus the balance sheets of many of Wall Street's most revered institutions.
Tough new regulations forced lenders into high-risk areas where they had no choice but to lower lending standards to make the loans that sound business practices had previously guarded against making. It was either that or face stiff government penalties.
The untold story in this whole national crisis is that President Clinton put on steroids the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-intended Carter-era law designed to encourage minority homeownership. And in so doing, he helped create the market for the risky subprime loans that he and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but "predatory."
Yes, the market was fueled by greed and overleveraging in the secondary market for subprimes, vis-a-vis mortgaged-backed securities traded on Wall Street. But the seed was planted in the '90s by Clinton and his social engineers. They were the political catalyst behind this slow-motion financial train wreck.
And it was the Clinton administration that mismanaged the quasi-governmental agencies that over the decades have come to manage the real estate market in America.
As soon as Clinton crony Franklin Delano Raines took the helm in 1999 at Fannie Mae, for example, he used it as his personal piggy bank, looting it for a total of almost $100 million in compensation by the time he left in early 2005 under an ethical cloud.
Other Clinton cronies, including Janet Reno aide Jamie Gorelick, padded their pockets to the tune of another $75 million.
Raines was accused of overstating earnings and shifting losses so he and other senior executives could earn big bonuses.
In the end, Fannie had to pay a record $400 million civil fine for SEC and other violations, while also agreeing as part of a settlement to make changes in its accounting procedures and ways of managing risk.
But it was too little, too late. Raines had reportedly steered Fannie Mae business to subprime giant Countrywide Financial, which was saved from bankruptcy by Bank of America.
At the same time, the Clinton administration was pushing Fannie and her brother Freddie Mac to buy more mortgages from low-income households.
The Clinton-era corruption, combined with unprecedented catering to affordable-housing lobbyists, resulted in today's nationalization of both Fannie and Freddie, a move that is expected to cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.
And the worst is far from over. By the time it is, we'll all be paying for Clinton's social experiment, one that Obama hopes to trump with a whole new round of meddling in the housing and jobs markets. In fact, the social experiment Obama has planned could dwarf both the Great Society and New Deal in size and scope.
There's a political root cause to this mess that we ignore at our peril. If we blame the wrong culprits, we'll learn the wrong lessons. And taxpayers will be on the hook for even larger bailouts down the road.
But the government-can-do-no-wrong crowd just doesn't get it. They won't acknowledge the law of unintended consequences from well-meaning, if misguided, acts.
Obama and Democrats on the Hill think even more regulation and more interference in the market will solve the problem their policies helped cause. For now, unarmed by the historic record, conventional wisdom is buying into their blame-business-first rhetoric and bigger-government solutions.
While government arguably has a role in helping low-income folks buy a home, Clinton went overboard by strong-arming lenders with tougher and tougher regulations, which only led to lenders taking on hundreds of billions in subprime bilge.
Market failure? Hardly. Once again, this crisis has government's fingerprints all over it.
Wako Hollywood at it again.
The Washington Post isn’t the only daily D.C. newspaper to rave about Sandra Bernhard’s anti-Palin ranting. Wednesday’s Washington Examiner joined in, with the headline "Comedienne delivers enraged optimism." Barbara Mackay claimed "in the end, oddly and subtly, Bernhard’s message is positive."
That’s not the impression you’d get from the blog of Theater J, where Bernhard is appearing. It has video of Bernhard calling Palin "Uncle Women," a "turncoat b—h" and a "whore." One complaint on the blog that Bernhard crosses a line of political incorrectness draws a defense from Ari Roth of Theater J that really drops the curtain on how coarse this show is:
In fact, the play wears its politically VERY correct heart on its sleeve with its indictment of America as "A Man’s World, It’s a White Man’s World, It’s a F–ked Up White Man’s Racist World" and can only be suggested to be racist in its content if one is hell-bent on protecting White Folk for Sandra’s blistering indictment.When Sandra warns Sarah Palin not to come into Manhattan lest she get gang-raped by some of Sandra’s big black brothers, she’s being provocative, combative, humorous, and yes, let’s allow, disgusting.
That’s not the impression you’d get from the blog of Theater J, where Bernhard is appearing. It has video of Bernhard calling Palin "Uncle Women," a "turncoat b—h" and a "whore." One complaint on the blog that Bernhard crosses a line of political incorrectness draws a defense from Ari Roth of Theater J that really drops the curtain on how coarse this show is:
In fact, the play wears its politically VERY correct heart on its sleeve with its indictment of America as "A Man’s World, It’s a White Man’s World, It’s a F–ked Up White Man’s Racist World" and can only be suggested to be racist in its content if one is hell-bent on protecting White Folk for Sandra’s blistering indictment.When Sandra warns Sarah Palin not to come into Manhattan lest she get gang-raped by some of Sandra’s big black brothers, she’s being provocative, combative, humorous, and yes, let’s allow, disgusting.
The fact that the show has a few riffs like this does not — to my mind — make it a "disgusting show." there’s too much beauty, variety, vitality, and intelligence to label the entire show as "disgusting." I’ll agree with you that we produced this show because we did find it to be edgy — because we wanted to give right wing conservative Jews a good run for their money by being on the receiving end of some blistering indictments from Sandra.Does it go over the edge sometimes? On the gang-rape joke, yes. Sure. Not much else. It goes over the edge and then comes right back to the cutting edge. [Profanity editing is mine.]
Forgive me if gang-rape jokes don't greet my ears as oddly and subtly positive, as the Examiner suggests, and forgive me if gang-rape jokes aren't "a rotating sprinkler that a spectator washes in most happily," like the Washington Post insists.
Roth insisted to the complainer that the D.C. Jewish Community Center is loving their Bernhard show, and partied with Bernhard on opening night. They’re in tune with her right-bashing rage:
We’re proud of our producing -- proud of Sandra’s sense of timing -- taking the fight out to the house and to the street beyond, channeling so much of our rage and frustration at the bizarre recent twists of fortune since Karl Rove trotted out Sarah Palin for John McCain to briefly meet and then get in bed with.Sandra’s face is hanging 10 feet tall in a banner over the DCJCC steps and we’re proud that she’s a new emblem and ambassador for our theater and our center. She’s not the only one who represents us. But her large heart, her generous talent, and her big mouth are all a big part of who we are.
"Who we are" at this theater clearly isn't someone who's interesting in presenting anything other than rage. The video itself, presented like a commercial for the show, explains who the show is intended to please. The average person probably wouldn’t find it the least bit funny. But if you really, really hate Sarah Palin or Christian conservatives, this show is for you.
Here’s some of what she says in the promo:
Now you got Uncle Women, like Sarah Palin, who jumps on the s--t and points her fingers at other women. Turncoat b---h! Don’t you f--kin’ reference Old Testament, bitch! You stay with your new Goyish crappy shiksa funky bulls--t! Don’t you touch my Old Testament, you b---h! Because we have left it open for interpre-ta-tion! It is no longer taken literally! You whore in your f--kin' cheap New Vision cheap-ass plastic glasses and your [sneering voice] hair up. A Tina Fey-Megan Mullally brokedown bulls--t moment.
Now you got Uncle Women, like Sarah Palin, who jumps on the s--t and points her fingers at other women. Turncoat b---h! Don’t you f--kin’ reference Old Testament, bitch! You stay with your new Goyish crappy shiksa funky bulls--t! Don’t you touch my Old Testament, you b---h! Because we have left it open for interpre-ta-tion! It is no longer taken literally! You whore in your f--kin' cheap New Vision cheap-ass plastic glasses and your [sneering voice] hair up. A Tina Fey-Megan Mullally brokedown bulls--t moment.
Is it too broad an interpretation to suggest that when Bernhard attacks Palin's "new Goyish crappy shiksa funky bulls--t," she means the New Testament? It sounds like she's telling the Christian to stay away from "her" Old Testament, as if Christians don't have an Old Testament in their Bible. It's quite clear that the D.C. Jewish Community Center is not attempting an interfaith dialogue with this rantfest
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