Month: September 2008

More Village Follies

by digby

What can be done about Howard Fineman?

SHUSTER: Howard, it used to be that the mere mention of Vice President Cheney would be enough to quell a conservative rebellion, what‘s the story there?

FINEMAN: Well, David, as “Politico” was saying, you know, there was a revolt there today. They don‘t believe Dick Cheney anymore. He has used up a lot of credibility.

The Republicans are the ones who followed Dick Cheney over the edge of the cliff, in the view of many of them, privately, on the war in Iraq. He‘s the one who said that there was a slam dunk war to be won in Mesopotamia. And a lot of Republicans don‘t like it.

Also, the Bush-Cheney White House has been pretty cavalier in its attitude toward Congress, including, if not especially, Republicans in Congress. They basically ignored them.

And there are two other points, David. A lot of the young Republicans in Congress are populist Republicans; they‘re not Wall Street Republicans. They‘re not old-fashioned Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger politicians who care about Wall Street, number one.

And number two, they‘re all people who don‘t like the idea of big government and they‘re aware of the fact that both because of the war in Iraq, the passage of the Patriot Act, and now these big bailouts, the Bush administration has presided over the biggest expansion of federal power since the new deal and these Republicans that I mentioned don‘t like it and they blame Cheney for it.

How fascinating. if this is true then they really are the Eunuch Caucus because they didn’t breath a word about it when Bush was riding high. In fact, they cheered him all the way down the line and told anyone who disagreed to STFU.

This is blatant nonsense. Fineman is helping the Republicans avoid responsibility for what they’ve done by saying that the “real Conservatives” (like John McCain, by the way) were against all those icky “liberal” Bush and Cheney initiatives which they shoved down the throats of the Democrats and told them to like it. That’s rewriting history. There haven’t been any “Rockefeller Republicans” around since 1994. And every one of these Gingrich revolutionaries have been spouting the free market catechism on a loop.

But that’s not the end of his perfidious blather:

SHUSTER: Now, as far as the Democratic side of the aisle is concerned, is this the Democrats‘ chance to veto the kind of blank check authority that they gave the Bush administration on the Iraq war, something that Congress could never dial back again. I mean, does it look as if they might have learned their lesson?

FINEMAN: Well, I think that‘s the sentiment among many of the ones that I have talked to. But I think it‘s the wrong sentiment. I mean, they can‘t be fighting the last war here. Ironically, they should have had the backbone back then to oppose the war.

Now, if they decide they‘re going to scuttle any bailout bill just to teach Bush a lesson, I think, they‘ll be making a big mistake. And I think, at the end, that‘s not what‘s going to motivate them.

I think they want to do something here, David. But, I think, they want the protections for homeowners, they want to clamping down on the CEOs of the big banks and the financial institutions. They want the oversight. They probably won‘t get the equity stake they‘re talking about, I think Paulson will draw the line there but they‘re going to insist on a lot of these things before they weight this thing on through.

So if the Dems oppose this bill is payback for Bush. In fact, the only thing they are allowed to do is agree to what Paulson has already said he would do.

This is your Village in action. The only possible outcome is for everyone to agree to what King Henry wants. But the newly minted “populist” Republicans will be able to run as principled fiscal conservatives because everyone knows they have always hated Big government and disagreed with Dick Cheney’s approach from the beginning. The Democrats, however, need to roll over or risk being seen as petty obstructionists who are willing to take down the country for simple revenge.

The villagers are already disappearing the Bush administration and laying the groundwork for a “revival” of “real” conservatism.

I’ll say it again. These people are at the center of America’s political crisis.

.

Obama’s Response To Immaturity

by tristero

Apparently, John McCain thinks that the overwhelmingly important task of campaigning and electing a president is some kind of vacation that can be suspended when something he thinks is more important comes along. Apparently, John McCain can’t deal with multiple critical situations at the same time. Apparently, John McCain, behind in the polls, is afraid to be seen together with Obama discussing another set of serious crises facing this country: the foreign policy disasters he aided and abetted George W. Bush in creating.

Once again Bush’s administration, which John McCain has supported 90% of the time, has failed to address a serious problem in a serious fashion – Secretary Paulson’s initial, thoroughly dictatorial, proposal was so absurd that hardly any real experts on the economy supported it. And we, the American people, are expected to pick up the pieces. Well, we shall. But there is no reason to panic, as McCain clearly has. And there is no reason to drop everything in order for either presidential candidate to contribute effectively to appropriate legislation. As Obama mentioned, he is in constant contact with all the major players in the financial crisis legislation. According to Charles Schumer, that has not been the case with McCain. [UPDATE: Chris Dodd, too]

The McCain campaign’s behavior is worse than a cheap stunt; it’s seriously panicky behavior, the last thing this country needs from its leaders.

Obama was exactly right not to suspend his campaign, and not only because it is a calm, reasoned response to a crisis. It is as vitally important to this country’s future to choose a president who will genuinely change the failed policies of the Bush/McCain era as it is to work on a practical proposal to address the fiscal crisis caused by so many personal friends of the Bush administration, and of John McCain. McCain, apparently, has as much ability to use a phone as he does email. Someone should tell McCain that with modern technology, both he and Obama can help shape this legislation without overreacting or suspending the campaign for presidency.

A president must be a leader who can juggle many balls in the air at the same time. John McCain believes one is too much and so he panicked. A person so limited in his capacity to face multiple emergencies as McCain has shown himself to be clearly is not qualified to be president.

In regards to the debate, I am glad that Obama felt it important to say we should hold to the schedule. (And it is only fair to Oxford, Miss. which would take a $5.5 million loss if McCain chickens out.) This is a vital discussion and the country must have the chance to hear the candidates. As others have mentioned, the debate should be expanded to include both foreign policy and the economy.

One final point. Apparently, the McCain campaign is in a money crunch, the only rational reason for suspending campaign ads to take advantage of free publicity from the stunt. Obama, therefore, should swamp the airwaves with ads.

Good. God.

by dday

I don’t know what to say.

Transcript with full context.

COURIC: You’ve said, quote, “John McCain will reform the way Wall Street does business.” Other than supporting stricter regulations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac two years ago, can you give us any more example of his leading the charge for more oversight?

PALIN: I think that the example that you just cited, with his warnings two years ago about Fannie and Freddie–that, that’s paramount. That’s more than a heck of a lot of other senators and representatives did for us.

COURIC: But he’s been in Congress for 26 years. He’s been chairman of the powerful Commerce Committee. And he has almost always sided with less regulation, not more.

PALIN: He’s also known as the maverick though. Taking shots from his own party, and certainly taking shots from the other party. Trying to get people to understand what he’s been talking about–the need to reform government.

COURIC: I’m just going to ask you one more time, not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation?

PALIN: I’ll try to find you some and I’ll bring them to you.

I think the wrong candidate decided to suspend their campaign. No wonder they’re trying to spike the VP debate.

.

Howling Wolves

by digby

I don’t know what Bush is going to say tonight. But I think it’s fairly clear he’s going to try to fearmonger the public into some kind of panic just. It’s what he has been doing since the day after the election in 2000, when they created the false meme that the country was going to fall apart if the decision wasn’t made immediately. It’s what they did with Iraq and the mushroom clouds. I just heard Huckleberry Graham say that this crisis could be a “financial Pearl Harbor.” And here’s a sample of the kinds of things Bush has been saying so far:

Further stress on our financial markets would cause massive job losses, devastate retirement accounts, further erode housing values,…

Not all presidents speak in these kinds of apocalyptic terms. In fact, perhaps now is a good time to read Franklin Roosevelt’s inaugural address, best remembered for the phrase, “we have nothing to fear but fear itself”:

I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impel. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.

More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.

Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.

Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.

Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.

Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.

Hand in hand with this we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land. The task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, State, and local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical, and unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities which have a definitely public character. There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped merely by talking about it. We must act and act quickly.

Finally, in our progress toward a resumption of work we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order; there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people’s money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.

There are the lines of attack. I shall presently urge upon a new Congress in special session detailed measures for their fulfillment, and I shall seek the immediate assistance of the several States.

Through this program of action we address ourselves to putting our own national house in order and making income balance outgo. Our international trade relations, though vastly important, are in point of time and necessity secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy. I favor as a practical policy the putting of first things first. I shall spare no effort to restore world trade by international economic readjustment, but the emergency at home cannot wait on that accomplishment.

The basic thought that guides these specific means of national recovery is not narrowly nationalistic. It is the insistence, as a first consideration, upon the interdependence of the various elements in all parts of the United States—a recognition of the old and permanently important manifestation of the American spirit of the pioneer. It is the way to recovery. It is the immediate way. It is the strongest assurance that the recovery will endure.

In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others—the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors.

If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we can not merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good. This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife.

With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our common problems.

Action in this image and to this end is feasible under the form of government which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our Constitution is so simple and practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has produced. It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations.

It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.

I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.

But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.

For the trust reposed in me I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less.

We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of the national unity; with the clear consciousness of seeking old and precious moral values; with the clean satisfaction that comes from the stern performance of duty by old and young alike. We aim at the assurance of a rounded and permanent national life.

We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.

In this dedication of a Nation we humbly ask the blessing of God. May He protect each and every one of us. May He guide me in the days to come.

On the other hand, maybe screaming “the sky is falling, run for your lives” over and over again is just as good. Certainly, it’s all we’ve been hearing for eight long years.

.

Stupid Evil People

by digby

For anyone who’s looking for a nice, easy to read primer on the basics of the financial meltdown, I would recommend this post called Economic Disaster and Stupid Evil People. It is pretty long, but this is the nut:

1. People like buying safe investments.

2. Historically, mortgages are very safe investments: people will go to incredible lengths not to lose their homes.

3. Banks realized that they could make lots of money by taking groups of mortgages, and turning them into bonds that they could sell, earning a commission, and passing the risk to whoever bought the bonds.

4. These bonds became incredibly popular. Lots and lots of people and organizations wanted to buy them.

5. There aren’t enough good mortgages to put together the number of bonds that people wanted to buy.

6. So banks started giving out mortgages to people who couldn’t repay them, using elaborate and dishonest schemes to pretend that they were actually not bad mortgages.

7. The people who got mortgages that they couldn’t repay didn’t repay them.

8. The banks act surprised: “My god, no one could have predicted that so many loans would default! Whine, whinge, moan, someone come help us!

What’s going on now is directly related to that mortgage mess. A good metaphor for it is that the current situation is like a huge city of skyscrapers built on a foundation of sand; the mortgages are the sand.

What we’ve been seeing over the last couple of weeks is the same basic scam as the mortgage mess, but on an even larger scale. Lending money is a profitable business. Bundling loans into investment vehicles is an incredibly profitable business for producing what appear to be high-yield, low-risk investments.

Naturally, when there’s a big opportunity to make lots of money, there’s a ton of people looking to get in on it. Of course, just like with the mortgages, there’s a limit. Realistically, there’s only a certain amount of money that can be loaned at any time to people who can pay it back. But there was so much money to be made that as the high-quality loans ran out, they started looking for other things that they could wrap up as investments. Of course, since people who buy these kinds of investments are typically looking for something really safe, that means that they can’t just give money out any-which-way; they need to have some plausible way of saying “This is really safe”.

And here’s where the stupidity really started kicking in.

How do you take a bunch of loans that might not be repaid, and turn them into something that’s safe? Well, what do you do if you had a lot of money tied up in a piece of property that you could lose in an accident? Like, say, a car or a house? You’d buy insurance!

Read on for the amazing next steps…

.

Now She Tells Us

by digby

I’ve been listening to Doris Kearns Goodwin drone on and on for the past year about how the country desperately needs bipartisanship and flogging her book “Team of Rivals” as a blueprint for proper governance. (Obama mentioned he read the thing and everyone assumed that meant he was going to appoint a bipartisan cabinet.) Underlying this whole line of argument is the notion that the ideological differences between the parties are somehow insubstantial and that consensus can be achieved if everyone would just “work together” and stop being so difficult.

Here’s what Kearns Goodwin wrote just a couple of months ago in the NY Times:

Polls show that Americans wish to move beyond the combination of extreme partisanship and ideological rigidity that has for decades prevented Washington from addressing the serious problems facing our country. They have seen the damage caused by the creation of like-minded “echo chambers” in Washington. Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain would do well to keep this in mind as they choose their vice president and cabinet members.

Here she is yesterday on David Gregory’s show:

GREGORY: I want to talk a little about FDR. The comparison has been made more than once now that there has not been this kind of financial crisis since the presidential race of 1932. It is interesting, if you look at his inaugural address, FDR said the following—I want to put it on the screen for our viewers to see: “practices of the unscrupulous money changers”—he‘s talking about the throes of the Great Depression, of course—“stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men. Faced by failure of credit, they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They only know the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision. When there is no vision, the people perish.”

Eerie similarities in language to the current crisis. This question comes out of this, which is: what kind of vision does a president need faced with a crisis like this?

GOODWIN: What FDR showed was I think two things. That part you just read showed that he understood that it was us versus them, that the people themselves had feared at the time of that crisis that maybe they were responsible for what had happened. They couldn‘t understand what had been going on. So he is saying, no, it is not you. It is them. It‘s this few people over there. And if you band together with me, if you have confidence in leadership and confidence in yourself, then, of course, the fame words, “the only thing to fear is fear itself.”

He was able to project his confidence on to the people. The incredible thing is think about what his theme song was in the midst of a much worse economic crisis, “Happy Days Are Here Again.” He made people feel that the future would be better than the present. That‘s what these two candidates have got to do. Not just talk about the misery, but make people believe their leadership will make things better for them.

GREGORY: What is the difference? Do you see some fundamental difference in the country, in the leadership now?

GOODWIN: The interesting thing is that both candidates are trying to be above partisanship in a certain sense. McCain is obviously trying to run away from the Republican problems of these last years. And Obama has been trying to be a post-partisan candidate. When in a certain case, what FDR did was to say this isn‘t just an election between two men. It is between two doctrines. He laid out the difference between the Republican and the Democratic party, one concerned about government favoring the few and the other one wanting the masses to be sound and that would help the country.

It seems to me Obama is missing a chance. I‘ve thought that all along. My husband is arguing that all along, as an old Democrat. To not argue about the doctrine of the Democratic party. Yes, he wants independents. Yes, he wants to be post-partisan after wins. But right now is the time when the Republican-Democratic brand is so contrasting and I think he has desired to not be in that fight. It‘s not helping him in a certain sense.

This makes me want to put my foot through the television. Kearns Goodwin has been “advising” anyone who would listen for the past year that Americans are demanding bipartisanship and practical comity. Now she says that Obama has been on the wrong track by running as a post-partisan pragmatist and should have been selling the Democratic brand with sharp contrasts.

Luckily, it appears that the American people instinctively get that when one crew has screwed something up so horribly, it’s probably a good idea to relieve them of their duties. But that understanding will be in spite of Doris Kearns Goodwin and the rest of the Village Elders who have been telling the country for months that drawing such contrasts is unseemly and that making an ideological argument is boorish and ill-mannered. It was all about “process, process, process” for months — don’t make trouble. Needless to say, none of them were giving similar lectures during the years of thuggish Republican dominance.

Kearns Goodwin’s observations were good ones. But sadly, they would have been much more meaningful if, instead of passing out endless mushy bromides about bipartisanship for the past year, she would have said it from the beginning.

.

Crisis Manager

by dday

Reuters reports and the teevee tells me that John McCain is suspending his campaign and heading to Washington to work on the bailout bill. He also wants Friday night’s debate cancelled.

Strong, stately General Patton John McCain is dashing into Washington to make everything all better. I expect the pundit swoon any second now.

John McCain sure is managing a crisis, all right. Only the crisis is his failing campaign, and this is his brain trust’s big plan to fix it.

Update: by digby —

I actually think this is pretty savvy. He doesn’t want to give the country a chance to see the two of them together right now and make the logical comparisons. He also wants to show that he can “take charge” in a crisis and the optics of this are that he’s rushing back to to Washington to knock some heads together.

But, this is the second time in a month that McCain has grandstanded like this. First it was “suspending” the convention because of the hurricane and now this. At some point, someone should point out that leadership requires something more than canceling events and posturing for the cameras.

I would love to see Obama say that he agrees to go back to Washington and hold the debate on the floor of the senate — about the economy.

… (by dday) Is the plan for McCain to go to Capitol Hill and tell them to “cut the bullshit”? And get this, Obama called McCain this morning to issue a joint statement on conditions for the bailout. McCain agreed to it, then pulled this stunt. Obama’s about to speak in a minute…

…It’s also interesting that this happened moments after CBS News released a piece of their interview with Sarah Palin today, where she intimated that the country is headed for a Great Depression if we don’t fast-track the bailout. This’ll take the edge off of that.

.

Calamity

by digby

I’m beginning to think the Republicans want to scuttle this plan. Why else would they even contemplate something like this?

President Bush will address Americans directly about the financial crisis tonight at 9 p.m. ET, and his spokeswoman said Wednesday the nation risks “calamity” without bold action.

I’m only being halfway facetious. I do wonder if they actually want to pass this bail out. Paulson’s original plan was so outrageous, so “in your face,” it strikes me now that they might not have been serious. And now this?

If they really do want to pass something, this decision to have Bush speak to the nation indicates that they may foolishly believe they can revive that thrilling sense of national panic after 9/11 and get the public to rally behind their Dear Leader one last time. But the problem is that this time the enemy isn’t a bunch of foreigners. In fact, an awful lot of people blame President Twenty Percent and his greedy friends.

If they think they can trot out Bush and remind people about historical moments in his presidency, they’re right. But they’ve made a miscalculation. This isn’t 9/11. It’s Katrina.

.

Christianists Are NOT Christians

by tristero

There is a huge differene between Christians, the followers of a large number of separate, often mutually antagonistic, religions, and christianists, political radicals who use the symbols of Christianity in order to gain secular power. Christianists deliberately confuse the two.

In these excerpts from a letter by Tony Perkins, the technique is quite clear. They highlight the importance for liberals of distinguishing religious discrimination – which is wrong – from the political marginialization of intolerant right wing hate groups and provocateurs – an essential action in a working democracy. In addition to confusing far right wing fanaticism with Christianity, note the gross distortions of reality and paranoid sense of victimization so typical of christianism:

The stakes are enormous. We face a national menace to religious liberty:

In Boston, a Christian adoption agency was shut down for refusing to place orphans with homosexual couples.

The implication is that The Gay State proactively shut down the agency, who said,”Thanks, but no thanks,” to gay couples. Not true. I looked it up. Christianist Catholic Bishops chose to shut down Catholic Charities’ adoption services. – despite the unanimous support for same sex adoptions by CC’s board:

Eight members of Catholic Charities’ board stepped down in protest of the bishops’ stance. The 42-member board had voted unanimously in December to continue considering gay households for adoptions.

And it clearly was a political decision by Catholic christianists, because Catholic Charities had, in fact, placed “orphans” with gay couples in the past:

Social Services to provide special needs adoption services to children with severe emotional and physical needs since 1977. The contract expires June 30.

In the past two decades, Catholic Charities has placed 720 children in adoptive homes, including 13 with same-sex couples. The bulk of adoptive children in Massachusetts are placed by DSS, rather than outside agencies such as Catholic Charities, the agency said.

Next:

In New Mexico, a Christian-owned studio was fined more than $6,000 for refusing to photograph a lesbian commitment ceremony.

Not quite true.It was a christianist-owned studio. Furthermore, it was an anti-discrimination case. You can refuse to do any job you don’t want to do, of course, but not on the basis of race, creed, gender or sexual preference. If someone refused to photograph a Christian evangelical marriage because they were Christian evangelicals, the same laws would apply. You cannot discriminate. That is the law and it is a good law. It protects Christians as well as lesbians and it is sheer bizarroworld nonsense to flip this around and claim the law discriminates.

Finally:

In San Francisco, the city council officially condemned Christian opposition to homosexual adoption as hateful and discriminatory rhetoric.

That’s absolutely not true. The San Francisco city council condemned a specific, intolerant christianist organization that was organizing what was clearly a cultural/political hatefest that certainly is fair game for criticism or denunciation (as is any other group, including political parties and religions).

Christianists are NOT Christians. More precisely, christianists may be Christians in their private life – or not, as the Jewish nut David Klinghoffer illustrates – just as many christianists may have brown eyes. Their actual religious beliefs are an irrelevant identity to the political activity that uniquely characterizes christianism and makes it a non-religious group that uses the symbols of Christianity.

Back to Africa

by digby

Perlstein deconstructs the racist subtext of the prevailing right wing trope about the cause of the mortgage meltdown:

…let me write about the sewer through which are right-wing friends are navigating to try to win this election. Specifically, this: the right-wing crusade to blame the Negroes for the financial meltdown continues apace. And by now, it’s getting into Protocols of the Elders of Zion territory. Watch this clip of Fox’s Neil Cavuto. See him sandbag Hispanic congressman Xavier Becerra, pinning upon him and his swarthy fellows responsibility for the collapse of America’s financial system by “pushing for more minority lending.” Why didn’t people like him warn that “loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster”?

[…]

The pattern being drawn across the right—the Big Lie so notorious it’s hard to believe they’d even dare it—is that this financial mess is something black people have done to white people.

They’ve been saying this for a while now. Here’s a post of mine from almost a year ago:

Just in case any of you have the mistaken impression that the housing meltdown (what Atrios refers to as “Big Shitpile”) has anything to do with rapacious lenders and a bunch of greedheads who made sick profits using complicated financial instruments that even they didn’t understand, think again. Guess whose fault it is?

Last week’s 360-point drop in the Dow was fueled by the announcement of NYAG Andrew Cuomo that he is subpoenaing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for information on all mortgages they had bought from Washington Mutual as part of a general investigation into mortgage loans. Fannie Mae stocks fell 10 percent, Freddie Mac 8.6 percent, and Washington Mutual a whopping 17 percent, turning what was already a bad day into the worst drop in over a year. Cuomo has decided that the reason for the mortgage meltdown is — you guessed it — big-time fraud.

All this is just a search for scapegoats. The reason we’re in a mortgage meltdown is this. For years the federal government and everyone else has done everything possible to encourage people to buy their own homes. One of the biggest liberal criticisms of the market was that low-income people — particularly blacks and Hispanics — were excluded from ownership through “blackballing,” “red-lining,” and other forms of discrimination.

So the banks and mortgage markets responded. They invented “sub-prime” loans for high-risk customers and tried to spread the risk by bundling them into broader financial instruments. Eventually the market became overextended and we’re all suffering the consequences. Only demagogues like Andrew Cuomo think this has anything to do with legerdemain.

See? The banks and mortgage markets were just trying to help out the blacks and the Mexicans like the liberals kept telling them to and this is the thanks they get for it. Now everybody’s blaming them when the lazy blacks and Mexicans refuse to pay their bills … as usual. (Try to do someone a favor…)

This is why we need to deport all the illegal immigrants and get “tough on crime” like the Republicans are urging us to. This crass exploitation of the poor banking and mortgage industry has got to stop. It’s costing real Americans their homes!

Here’s one just today from The Corner:

I have no way of judging whether the Wall Street bailout is a necessary evil or an impending disaster. But we’re in this mess, ultimately, because our political elites thought it was good social policy to encourage banks to give mortgages to uncreditworthy people, resulting in what Sailer months ago called the “Diversity Recession” (if this doesn’t work, make that the Diversity Depression). In other words, if poor people in general, or blacks or Hispanics in particular, were less likely to be approved for a mortgage, the only possible reason was racism or classism or whatever. Thus “creditworthiness” was an illegitimate, dead-white-male concept, like middleclassness. Because, after all, isn’t everyone entitled to credit? Therefore, I propose any bailout bill start with these words: “It is the sense of Congress that credit is not a civil right.”

It’s hard to believe they can say this stuff with a straight face considering the pending trillion dollar bailout of their rich friends, but shame isn’t part of their personal reality. Perlstein points out the particularly breathtaking hypocrisy of this line with this observation:

And you know what makes this whole conservative hustle all the more brazen? They spent the entire 2004 Republican Convention bragging about their supposed triumph in increasing minority homeownership.

They even had a cute little name for it: the ownership society.

At moment like these it’s always important to remember the biggest bastard liberal black man of them all:

WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Monday that Americans’ preference for long-term, fixed-rate mortgages means many are paying more than necessary for their homes and suggested consumers would benefit if lenders offered more alternatives.

In a standing-room-only speech to the Credit Union National Association meeting here, Greenspan also said U.S. household finances appeared generally sound, despite rising debt levels and bankruptcy filings. Low interest rates and surging home prices have given consumers flexibility to manage debt, he said.

“Overall, the household sector seems to be in good shape,” Greenspan said…

“American consumers might benefit if lenders provided greater mortgage product alternatives to the traditional fixed-rate mortgage,” Greenspan said.

All those poor people who were promised they could afford their homes and adjusted rate mortgages because the housing market was going to go up, up, up, and they’d be able to refinance in a couple of years, should have known that their crazy Old Uncle Alan was just kidding. It’s all their fault.

.