Brain: Monday, With Little To Think

[elfs]

Terroist attack on American Soil: Chemical Weapons used against children at religious center.

If you haven't yet heard about it, you should know that a far-right-wing Jewish organization called The Clarion Fund is distributing for free a DVD called Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West. They've sent over 28 million copies to citizens in swing states. They claim that it's just to educate voters, but it comes at the same time as an organized email campaign seems to be launching "educating" voters about Barack Obama's "Muslim background." Very suspicious.

Just days after the video appeared in newspapers in Dayton, Ohio, a man sprayed an unknown chemical into a room full of children at a mosque, causing illness and eye irritation.

The police say they have no evidence of a hate crime, and the hazmat team can't figure out what was sprayed. The mosque's director says he's not linking this incident to the recent distribution of Obsession in his town. He's very kind to say so, but it still reeks of a hate crime to me. I mean, if it happened at a temple or a church, you'd think people would be going nuts over this.

Actually, FOX would avoid referring to it as a "terrorist attack." One of their talking points is that no terrorist attacks have happened on American soil since 9/11. And in fact, FOX news doesn't carry an article about this incident at all.

The People Have Spoken. The Bastards.

We understand that angry constituents have been bombarding members of Congress with e-mails and phone calls protesting the bailout. We understand that the bill did not offer enough breaks for homeowners to please the populist left and that it contained too much federal intervention to please the populist right. That's what happens in a compromise. Given the poor marketing of a proposal whose advertised $700 billion price tag will probably never materialize in full, and given the fact that the rapidly developing credit crisis has not quite been felt on Main Street, we are not surprised at the angry correspondence from voters -- or, rather, from certain self-selected voters.

Everyone got that? The WSJ editorial board would like you to know that, if the economy goes south, you should find your friends who called Congress and demanded they vote 'no', and have that auto-da-fe Charles Krauthammer recommended as an emotional purgative.

Shorter Megan McArdle: "We fucked our country because Nancy Pelosi hurt our self esteem."

One of the saddest things to come out of yesterday's vote collapse on the bailout bill is that the Republican leadership, which failed by a 2-to-1 margin to get Republicans to vote for the bailout, blamed Nancy Pelosi because she gave a "mean speech" on the floor of the Senate. Nancy blamed Republicans and George Bush, and that hurt their feelings so they decided to vote against the bill Nancy wanted.

Waaaaaah!

Come on. You guys were in charge from 1994 until 2006.

The Wall Street Journal: Republicans Are Stupid

The WSJ also blames Democrats, Nancy Pelosi, Henry Paulson, and Think Tanks.

Matt Yglesias: How Grown-Ups Govern

The smart thing to do would have been to privately alert key congressional leaders that he thought the ad hoc approach wasn't sustainable and they and their staffs should expect to spend the weekend in sequestered talks with him and Ben Bernanke to work something out. They could have announced to the public that bipartisan discussions were underway to think out a comprehensive approach to problems in the financial system. I bet something could have been worked out.

Instead, Paulson unilaterally unveiled a plan that, in its initial form, was completely unacceptable to legislative leaders in either party. And then, in a misguided effort to ramrod a bad bill through congress, he did the equivalent of strapping a bomb to the entire US economy by dramatically announcing that the entire banking system was on the verge of imminent failure.

For the record, all of my senators and representatives voted "Yes."

Now we get to see if the Republican mantra has always been right: left to itself, without government intervention, industry always finds a way to survive. It innovates its way out of disaster. We're about to see just how true that is. And I suspect that it might indeed be true.

Although I suspect Brad DeLong might be right: "Raze the Republican Party to the ground. Plough it under. Scatter salt in the furrows so it can never grow back. We need another, very different opposition party to face the Democrats. We need it now."

And I don't know what's more surprising: that John Stewart last night made a Two Girls One Cup joke (warning: that link is probably safe for work, but if you don't know what 2G1C is about and you're squeamish at all, don't follow it. I don't enjoy reading it, let's just leave it at that), or that some in the audience got it and started saying "ewwww!" as John mimed being ill. He mocked CNN and Wolf Blitzer's "We have something for the debate you won't find on any other network" with the line, "We call it Two Candidates, One Cup."

Ewww.

Comments

[solarbird]

When did your senators vote on the bailout, then?

Jay Inslee, much to my surprise, voted "no."

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Ah, good point. The senate never did. My rep did.

[heofmanynames.livejournal.com]

As happens so often, I agree - and in detail.

I for one am NOT convinced that any kind of bail-out is required - or even advisable. Given the funds available to Bernanke alone, already in the Fed's arsenal, it seems to me that the smart thing would be to simply force these companies to fold: terminate 'exit clauses', force the companies to write down their losses, and liquidate. The officers and share-holders are the ones who should take the hit, so let them. The Fed can then mop up surviving assets to hold 'in escrow', at FAR LESS than the 700 billion the Bushicans want to transfer to their predator-class buddies.

We, the people, owe them no more than the fruits of their labors.
Period.

Not familiar w/ Matt Yglesias before this: thanks!

Always glad to know that Brad agrees w/ me: I have been saying for some time that the RP must follow the Whigs into the dustbin of history. Frankly, I feel the DP deserves the same fate. The blocs of political power in the nation have remained substantially unchanged since the Puritans first arrived...and have remained essentially frozen since the tragically-misnamed 'Reconstruction'. The great opportunity of an Obama presidency (vice his simple candidacy) is that it could truly bust up the political map for good.

And about damn' time, too!

In re: 2G1C - that destroyed my appetite for the rest of the week...and all I did was scan the Wikipedia entry....

[rand0m1.livejournal.com]

I'm not an economist and have no experience on the subject. Because of this, I've been very frustrated with my inability to find something substantial that describes what the 'experts' feel would be the consequences of allowing them to fall with no bail-out at all. I've read a whole lot of "the sky is falling" articles but nothing that goes into any detail.

This, of course, makes me wonder how much of this 'disaster' is real and how much is smoke and mirrors designed to cause people to make hasty and panicked decisions.

Personally I think I'm having to agree with the above view point of allowing it to fold, remove exit clauses, have everyone take responsibility for his/her actions, and then pickup the pieces/rebuild afterward.

As for political parties....don't even get me started there :) The US in general has an extremely bad habit of insisting on a binary view of the world. The major political parties have really concentrated on this by almost defining themselves more as the opposite of their competitors than by really concentrating on policies and issues.

I'd personally would love to see a handful of parties with similar level power base come into the picture. Maybe we'll eventually figure out that there are always more than two options available in any situation and that you don't have to go to extremes just to prove yourself as different from the opposition.

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

My rep voted yes. I shall carry through on my promise to never give her a vote or a dime, and to vote and fund and campaign for her opponent. Forever.