The ballot counting for yesterday’s DC primaries has turned out to be, in the words of the CityPaper’s CityDesk – a total clusterfuck. Go there for details. I just can’t deal with the sort of mindset it takes to screw up such a simple thing, right now.
Category: Politics Page 41 of 73
Congress, apparently because it has nothing better to do, is preparing to shove the preferences of its pro-gun Members down DC’s throat:
The legislation has four main goals. It would repeal the D.C. ban on semiautomatic pistols and rifles; eliminate the city’s gun-registration requirements; allow District residents to purchase guns in Virginia and Maryland; and abolish the regulation that guns kept at home be unloaded and either disassembled or fitted with trigger locks.
Opponents of the legislation said it could have even more far-reaching effects because of what they termed its vague provisions
“You could drive a truck through this language,” said Peter Nickles, acting D.C. attorney general. He noted that the bill would bar the D.C. government from passing any laws that would “unduly burden” residents wanting to have or use firearms as long as they met federal requirements.
But wait, don’t the Democrats control Congress now? Well, let’s not let some silly little principle like self determination get in the way of your election year antics:
[The] legislation is likely to prevail in the House, according to congressional sources and supporters and opponents of the bill. It has won the backing of 48 Democrats, many facing reelection in strongly pro-gun areas, and is expected to pick up broad support among Republicans.
Right. Great job, Nancy.  Useless ()*@#@#%#$ Democrats.
And so would I. Read.
Let me admit up front: while I understand the mechanics of the parts involved in the Fannie/Freddie rescue, I’m not fluent enough in the involved markets to truly appreciate the various big picture results.  So I’m turning to sources that I trust to understand these things better than me. The first place I go is the Wall Street Journal – their Op-Ed page may be run by poo-flinging monkeys, but their financial reporting is consistently excellent (and their general reporting is reliably good, too). So here we get the outline of the rescue plan:
[C]ontrol of [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac go] to their regulator and allow[s] the Treasury Department to purchase billions of dollars of the firms’ senior preferred stock.
The plan, offered jointly by the Treasury Department and Federal Housing Finance Agency, also gives the Treasury authority to purchase mortgage-backed securities from the firms in the open market and a lending facility through the Treasury from its general fund held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Again, I understand the mechanics, but need a little help on the meaning. Jerome a Paris provides quite a bit of help. He explains what the second paragraph above means:
This is huge. This is the federal government taking over the “toxic waste” in a way that will have an impact not just on Freddie and Fannie, but on the whole market. By “buying” mortgage-backed securities instrad of taking them as collateral, the Treasury does two things at the same time:
- it takes off the assets and liabilities off the balance sheet of the two companies in a definitive way (rather than temporarily) and assumes, for sure, the associated risk;
- it sets a price on these securities. This has been the biggest problem to solve the credit crisis: nobody has been willing to set a price on these assets, because of the uncertainty on the real value of the underlying assets (or because everybody could see that they were falling by the day). By setting such a price, the government creates a highly significant precedent – and, in all likelihood, provides a floor to these prices, ie an implicit commitment (or at least the expectation of a commitment) to buy more such securities.
I quite recommend reading both articles, but the takeaway is:
This would seem to be an incredibly ambitious gambit: a nationalisation, an attempted bailout of ALL the banks, and an open-ended commitment of taxpayer money to save the financial world.
US Treasury Secretary Paulson’s no idiot, but neither is he much of a public servant. This is worth worrying over.
Like any thinking person who subscribes to the quaint notion that a functional democracy requires an educated electorate, outrage was my initial reaction to the news that the McCain camp will be keeping Palin from talking to the press for at least another couple of weeks. Andrew Sullivan captures it as well as anyone:
But I think her record is very underwhelming when you look at it, and the record is now clear that she has lied – even being forced to admit it – in public office. I also think it is simply insane that a person who could be president next January and is a total unknown to the world should somehow require being shielded from a press conference. I mean a capable candidate would be begging for an hour alone on Meet The Press, not running to ground in Alaska and taking no questions for three weeks in September before an election.
If McCain picked her, he must believe she can be president now. If she can be president now, why the hell can’t she hold a press conference?
I’m not going nuts. They are.
Even David “Axis of Evil” Frum thinks it’s a very bad idea. Yet, when I start thinking through the actual impact of an interview, I begin to realize that it wouldn’t really matter. There is nothing – nothing – that Sarah Palin could say that wouldn’t be held up as some proof of her inherent goodness, ready ability, and persecuted status by Team GOP.  And this doesn’t even take into account the demonstrated unwillingess of the press to actually demand consistent and coherent responses from candidates. Further, even *if* you could get a decent and truthful interview out of her, Glenn Greenwald reminds us that, well, Americans aren’t influenced by facts nearly so much as by the rhetoric of the campaign:
[If] there’s one indisputable lesson from the last eight years, it’s that political propaganda works exceedingly well — not despite an aggressively adversarial press but precisely because we don’t have one. Carney’s idealistic claims about the short life-span of propaganda in American democracy are empirically false: “Half of Americans now say Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the United States invaded the country in 2003 — up from 36 percent last year, a Harris poll finds” (Washington Times, 7/24/2006); [clipping another half dozen examples of that]
[ . . . ]
This idea that she’s some sort of fragile, know-nothing amateur who is going to quiver and collapse when subjected to the rough and tumble world of American journalism is painfully ludicrous, given that — as the Canonization of the endlessly malleable Tim Russert demonstrated — that imagery is a fantasy journalists maintain about themselves but it hardly exists. The standard journalistic model of “balance” means that the TV journalist asks a few questions, lets the interviewee answer, and then moves on without commenting on or pointing out false claims, i.e., without exposing propaganda (Carney can check his own magazine to see how that sad, propaganda-boosting process works — here, here, and here). Few things are easier than submitting to those sorts of televised rituals.
And that’s just how it will go.
Update:Â All that said, it’s still worth noting that Sarah Palin is a liar, and it’s John McCain’s judgment that a liar is what he wants on his ticket.
Update II: So maybe it’ll be more than two weeks. Maybe the entire campaign. The head of McCain’s campaign told Fox News that Sarah Palin won’t be doing any media interviews “until the point in time when she’ll be treated with respect and deference.” And that’s pretty much the McCain/McCain supporter view of the roll of the press in our democracy – subserviance to their needs. And while it just appalls me, McCain’s supporters will just point to it as proof of what a great job McCain is doing. Again, different universes.
Ah, seems that good ol’ Lynn wants us to believe that his calling Obama “uppity” was pure and innocent:
“I’ve never heard that term used in a racially derogatory sense. It is important to note that the dictionary definition of ‘uppity’ is ‘affecting an air of inflated self-esteem —- snobbish.’ That’s what we meant by uppity when we used it in the mill village where I grew up.â€
Lynn, you lying sack of shit. Where did you grow up again? Oh, right. It says Atlanta, right there in your biography. And where did you live for 25 years? Fayette County? The same place where my first day after transferring to Fayette County High School, the girl assigned to show me around pointed to the steps and said, “That’s where the niggers hang out”? Sure. You’ve never ever heard “uppity” used in a racially derogatory sense, you cracker.
~
Blacknell.net Statement for Immediate Release:
I’ve never heard the term “cracker” used in a racially derogatory sense. It is important to note that the dictionary definition of ‘cracker’ is ‘a dry thin crispy baked bread product that may be leavened or unleavened’ That’s what we meant by cracker when we used it in the kitchen where I grew up
This morning, I saw a car with an “Abortion Holocaust” bumpersticker. Rare enough in Arlington, but we get them from time to time. But as my eyes drifted off of it, they found the other bumpersticker “Grow Locally, Buy Locally.” Hrruh? Not the usual pairing, and it made me wonder more about the person in the car. Quickly, she became a person with beliefs, instead of an easily dismissable stereotype. Imaginable, for sure, but not someone who falls in the easy boxes we often find ourselves lazily relying upon.
I was similarly intrigued when someone pointed out this Vegan.com article on Matthew Scully, author of Hunter/Poacher/VP Nominee Sarah Palin’s speech to the RNC last night. Turns out that he’s the same Matthew Scully that authored Dominion. What’s Dominion? Vegan.com characterizes it as ” one of the most influential animal rights books in print.”. This Amazon link describes it:
Throughout Dominion, Scully counters the hypocritical arguments that attempt to excuse animal abuse: from those who argue that the Bible’s message permits mankind to use animals as it pleases, to the hunter’s argument that through hunting animal populations are controlled, to the popular and “scientifically proven” notions that animals cannot feel pain, experience no emotions, and are not conscious of their own lives.
The result is eye opening, painful and infuriating, insightful and rewarding. Dominion is a plea for human benevolence and mercy, a scathing attack on those who would dismiss animal activists as mere sentimentalists, and a demand for reform from the government down to the individual. Matthew Scully has created a groundbreaking work, a book of lasting power and importance for all of us.
Not exactly what you’d expect from a Bush/Palin speechwriter, eh? Apparently even Time noticed the disconnect:
The Palin-Scully pairing is anything but a guaranteed fit, though. Palin is known as an avid hunter; Scully is best known for his vigorous defense of animal rights. A vegetarian who is regularly critical of the NRA and much of the hunting community, he is a passionate advocate for doing away with the more brutal versions of blood-sport, including aerial hunting, which Palin supports.
Our boxes. They don’t always serve us well.
Vivian’s hosting the mutual amusement/pain/horror-fest tonight. Head over and say hi (and if you’re not a regular reader, poke around. Smart stuff, there.
Next week will bring DC’s primary for the DC City Council. Washcycle, impressively enough, was able to get most candidate to respond to his question on cycling issues. Check it out. For a perspective beyond cycling, check out (my increasingly regular read) Greater Greater Washington.
(And to my former classmates that occasionally drop by here, yes, that’s the same Cary Silverman.)
Republican Lynn Westmoreland described Obama thusly, today:
“Just from what little I’ve seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they’re a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they’re uppity,” Westmoreland said.
Asked to clarify that he used the word “uppity,†Westmoreland said, “Uppity, yeah.â€
Just an innocent word that us mean old liberals are using to unfairly paint the Republicans as the home racists, right? Ha.
Lynn Westmoreland hails from Georgia’s 3rd Congressional District, which starts in Atlanta’s southwestern suburbs and heads over to the Alabama border. There is no ambiguous use of the word “uppity” there. It’s the sort of word that starts something that can often end in violence. And when he was given a chance to retract it, good ol’ racist Lynn Westmoreland pressed it home. He can add this accomplishment to his resume, right there with opposing renewal of the Voting Rights Act and being one of two House members to vote against H.R. 923, the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act of 2007 (a bill that would have reopened hate crimes cases from before 1970).
And we wonder why people think the South is full of racists.