I don’t know if this blog is really written by an 82 year old woman living in Texas writing to her friend in Maine, who had to have her blog thingy set up by her grandson so they could talk to each other about politics and life in America, but DAMN, it’s funny and brilliant.
These two “Best Friends for Sixty Years and Counting…” definitely have thing or two to say about the campaign for president.
I was just watching CNN and I couldn’t believe what I heard. Even if McCain loses this election, many in the Republican party will see Governor Moose Meat as the candidate who almost saved McCain. In other words, it wasn’t her fault - he would have been nothing without her. The reporter then took that to a horrifying conclusion - Palin in 2012.
Has everybody gone mad? Dear Lord she is like a cockroach. We’ll never be rid of her! I tell you after the scare of that report my hair went from a lovely silver, just like that sweet Anderson Cooper’s, to stark white… completely devoid of color (my hair not Anderson Cooper).
and they don’t apologize for expressing their opinions. At 82, they’ve earned the right, or something.
New rules:
I will stop calling George Bush a jackass when he stops calling me a terrorist: Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.
I will stop calling John McCain an ass when he stops calling Barack Obama a socialist at every dog and pony show on the Straight Talk Express tour.
I will stop calling Sarah Palin a bitch when she stops calling Obama a terrorist sympathizer. And I will stop calling Sarah Palin a bitch when she stops calling the parts of the country where I don’t live more Pro-American than the part of the country where I do live. And I will definitely stop calling Sarah Palin a bitch when she stops acting like a bitch.
Sarah Palin is a pathetic, mush-for-brains dolt. I used to think she was monumentally dumb and incurious, but had political instincts that could compensate enough for her to succeed in her corrupt career path for the foreseeable future (like George W. Bush did). She does have a special talent, all right, and is hereby awarded first prize in the contest to be the 21st Century icon of proud Republican know-nothings.
This is a matter of how we prioritize the money that we spend. We’ve got a three trillion dollar budget, and Congress spends some 18 billion dollars a year on earmarks for political pet projects. That’s more than the shortfall to fully fund the IDEA. And where does a lot of that earmark money end up? It goes to projects having little or nothing to do with the public good — things like fruit fly research…
As any half-functional high-schooler knows, much of what we know about the causes and treatment of genetic disorders (like Down Syndrome, which Palin’s youngest child has) is grounded in research on fruit flies.
If this is the path Christianity is on, and it certainly seems to be (with apologies to my intellectual Christian friends who are sadly in the minority of their faith), then, thanks to the principles of evolution, it will be extinct in a couple of generations. Good riddance. That level of stupid simply cannot sustain itself.
To decry research in [condescending and amazed tone] “the fruit fly” is a testament to the true idiocy of this woman and to the failure of our public education system. In fact, her own father, Chuck Heath, was a biology teacher – obviously a complete failure of a biology teacher.
(Well Palin herself has been a failure in passing on her values — abstinence outside of marriage — to her children, so there you go: epic FAIL.)
But I liked what Newsweek’s Richard Wolfe said: “This is the most mindless, ignorant, uninformed comment that we have seen from Governor Palin so far, and there’s been a lot of competition for that prize.”
So, yeah, Sarah’s a winner of many prizes. Now go back to Wasilla with your crown and STFU.
Update:
Mithras looks ahead to Palin’s designs on 2012, in a very fun, snarky read:
All this just goes to prove one thing: John McCain used to be a maverick, but isn’t any longer. Sarah Palin is the true maverick. She’s so mavericky, she realized McCain was no longer a maverick a millisecond after the convention, long before anyone else. She’s the ultimate maverick, immune to coercion, restraint, prudence, education, facts, intelligence and common sense. She goes her own way. That’s just what the country is hungering for: A combination of early-Alzheimer’s Reagan and George W. Bush circa Katrina.
Moveon.org has come up with a cool tool to get out the vote — videos than contain the viewer’s name as the deadbeat non-voter who caused McCain to win by one. It’s a horror movie come to life, your worst nightmare you can’t wake up from. Not the way you want to get your 15 minutes.
(Okay, if you’re going to get technical, if McCain won by one vote, then another one for Obama would be a tie, then it would go to the House, etc. etc, but let’s have a little suspension of disbelief in the interest of civic participation, shall we?)
Send a cold chill through your liberal/progressive friends (or, if you’re planning to proudly vote for the Republican ticket, get a starring role in your own political epic).
In a wider discussion of the media’s long-time idolization of John McCain, Glenn Greenwald made this very important point about the militarization of our culture.
If I could be granted one small wish about our political discourse, it would be that reporters and pundits would accept — as disappointing and unglorious as it is — that, under our Constitution and basic government design, people who aren’t in the military don’t have a “Commander-in-Chief.” The President isn’t your “commander,” and the “Commander-in-Chief” power, now synonymous in our political culture with “President,” is actually extremely limited (Art. II, Sec. 2: “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States”).
This endless festishization of “President as Our Commander-in-Chief” is one of those small but pernicious reflections of how militarized we’ve become, of how we are a society in a state of perpetual and endless war. And — though I don’t think there’s a strong complaint to be made that the media generally has been unfair to Barack Obama — this “Commander-in-Chief” fetish is also one of the principal causes of the ongoing media reverence for John S. McCain.
Mccain and Palin and their ilk don’t laugh. They patronize. They don’t smile, they snicker. They don’t debate, they denigrate. They don’t talk, they condescend. They don’t argue, they ridicule. There is a nastiness, a mean-spiritedness, a smug certitude, and a profound and baseless arrogance seething from both of them. These aren’t leaders. They’re not even grownups.
Giving credit where due, I just saw a clip on CNN where John McCain sought to push back against his supporters’ calling Obama a terrorist, “Arab’ and related personal attacks of being ’scary’ and/or unAmerican. It was just a small clip, so not sure of the entire context, but he was getting a good bit of a negative reaction by simply calling Obama a decent person, and asking that everyone be ‘respectful’ in the rest of the campaign.
So, kudos to John McCain, who may be able to lose with honor after all.
Update: I should add that he was booed by his many in his audience when he did this. But he also got some applause when he said the campaign should be about issues.
He may have just divided the conservative movement even further than it was already.
Transcript in this Daily Kos diary, along with the day-long discussion about getting it on the air in swing states. Truthandhope.org has been helping such grassroots video work get the production assistance and funding to be seen nationally, and they are hoping to do the same for this one (per comments in the links diary).
Naturally, tv advertising takes money, so, if you can, give them a few bucks.
Obama spoke about the current economic crisis in Colorado yesterday; video and text of speech as prepared at link.
And, for those who keep saying that Obama hasn’t been giving “specifics” of his policies, please see his web page on the economy, and, last but far from least, the speech he gave exactly one year ago today — literally on Wall Street — addressing the dangerous situation with our unregulated markets directed only by greed (also with video).
There are a number of lessons that we must learn from this going forward. We know that much of this could have been avoided if the market operated with more honesty and accountability. We also know we would have been far better off if there were greater transparency and more information had been available to the American people.
To that extent, I believe there are a few steps we should take to prevent future crises of this kind and restore some measure of public trust in the market:
First, we need more disclosure and accountability in the housing market. To ensure that potential homeowners aren’t tricked into purchasing loans they can’t afford, I’ve proposed updating the current mortgage rules to establish a federal definition of mortgage fraud and enact tough penalties against lenders who knowingly act in bad faith. I’ve also proposed a Home Score system that would create a simplified, standardized metric for home mortgages, sort of like the APR. This would empower Americans to make smart decisions by allowing prospective buyers to easily compare various mortgage products so they can find out whether they can afford the payments. And I believe we should finally enact the meaningful mortgage disclosure laws that the mortgage industry has been lobbying against for far too long.
Second, I believe that if we hope to restore trust in the markets, we must be able to trust the judgment of our rating agencies. The failure of government to exercise adequate oversight over the rating agencies will cost investors and public pension funds billions of dollars - losses we have not yet fully recognized. We cannot let the public trust be lost by a conflict of interest between the rating agencies and the people they’re rating. As Arthur Levitt recently reminded us, this happened when rating agencies continued to give a rosy outlook for Enron despite its impending bankruptcy. And of course we saw it this year when subprime mortgage loans continued to receive strong ratings despite repeated warnings of the instability of the mortgages and the impending slowdown of the housing market.
Here’s the real danger - if the public comes to view this like the accounting analyses of Enron, the markets will be ravished by a crisis in confidence. We must take steps to avoid that at all costs, and that is why I believe there should be an immediate investigation of the relationship and business practices of rating agencies and their clients.
The third thing we need to do is look at other areas in the market where a lack of transparency could lead to similar problems. Many of the people who hold these subprime mortgages are now shifting their debt to credit cards, and if they do not understand the commitments they’re taking on, or are subjected to predatory practices, this could fester into a second crisis down the road. That’s why I’m proposing a five-star credit card rating system to inform consumers about the level of risk involved in every credit card they sign up for, including how easily the company can change the interest rate. If more Americans were armed with this kind of information before they purchased risky mortgage loans, the current crisis might not have happened. Now that so many are in debt, we shouldn’t let the same lax standards create another.
Finally, while it’s not my place to comment on the actions of the Fed, I have heard many of you say that you hope for a sizable rate cut tomorrow to soothe the market turmoil.
But I also know that there are nearly 2.5 million Americans who may lose their homes no matter what happens tomorrow. And so for those institutions that are holding these mortgages, I ask them to show some flexibility to folks trying to sell or refinance their houses. They are in the same liquidity pinch as companies are, but they don’t have the same resources available to protect themselves.
Now, in addition to these immediate steps, I also believe there is a larger lesson to be learned from the subprime crisis.
In this modern, interconnected economy, there is no dividing line between Main Street and Wall Street. The decisions that are made in New York’s high-rises and hedge funds matter and have consequences for millions of Americans across the country. And whether those Americans keep their homes or their jobs; whether they can spend with confidence and avoid falling into debt - that matters and has consequences for the entire market.
We all have a stake in each other’s success. We all have a stake in ensuring that the market is efficient and transparent; that it inspires trust and confidence; that it rewards those who are truly successful instead of those who are just successful at gaming the system. Because if the last few months have taught us anything, it’s that we can all suffer from the excesses of a few. Turning a blind eye to the cronyism in our midst can put us all in jeopardy. And we cannot accept that in the United States of America.
So I promise you this. I will be a President who believes in your success. I will value your contribution to this country and I will do what I can to encourage it, because I understand that how well you do is inextricably linked to how well America does. And I will always be a strong advocate for a market that is free and open.
But today I am asking you to join me in saying that in this country, we will not tolerate a market that is fixed. We will not tolerate a market that is rigged by lobbyists who don’t represent the interests of real Americans or most businesses. And we will not tolerate “what’s good for me is good enough” any longer - because the only thing that’s good enough is what’s best for America.
I am also asking you to join me in doing something else today. I am asking you to remind yourselves that in this country, we rise or fall as one people. And I am asking you to join me in ushering in a new era of mutual responsibility in America.
Now, that’s judgement, experience, forsight and change you can believe in!
What was John McCain — by his own admission the ultimate de-regulator, who for his entire political career has supported bills that eliminated any teeth from government oversight agencies — proposing yesterday?
[W]hen I am president [...] when any Wall Street operator abuses the trust of the public, then they will face the consequences, and they will have a fight on their hands with the president of the United States.
I will fight to reform Wall Street and to protect the savings and pensions of the American people. I will make sure that Washington works for your interests, and not the special interests. I will fight to make it easier for small business owners everywhere to grow and hire. I will fight to make sure you can afford a home loan or a student loan or a small business loan. I will fight to make sure we create more jobs here at home and prosperity for all Americans.
Emphasis mine. What do you suppose his real message was to his war-cheerleader fans?
And let’s look at McCain’s activities (just over) a year ago: Facing down a group of high-schoolers worried about their country and their future. Maybe you heard about it — he called one of them “a little jerk” for asking about his age, and had no idea what “LGBT” meant — but that didn’t stop him from supporting DADT (he knew what those initials meant) and a ban on same-sex marriage.
Apparently, McCain wants to fight, alright — a war of cultural distractions and flip-flopping policy positions.
Perfect framing for this attack of McCain’s cluelessness on the economy on this historic day: played on Fox News, with the tanking numbers from Wall Street on the visual beside Biden.
And, cluelessness isn’t even McCain’s worst factor on this issue. His go-to guy on economic issues is Phil Gramm, who, more than almost anyone, is responsible for what happened to Lehman Brothers.
If McCain wants to hold someone accountable for the failure in transparency and accountability that led to the current calamity, he should turn to his good friend and adviser, Phil Gramm.
As Mother Jones reported in June, eight years ago, Gramm, then a Republican senator chairing the Senate banking committee, slipped a 262-page bill into a gargantuan, must-pass spending measure. Gramm’s legislation, written with the help of financial industry lobbyists, essentially removed newfangled financial products called swaps from any regulation. Credit default swaps are basically insurance policies that cover the losses on investments, and they have been at the heart of the subprime meltdown because they have enabled large financial institutions to turn risky loans into risky securities that could be packaged and sold to other institutions.
