Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

The Gurus

by digby

Newsweek’s Michael Hirsh says that although there are many people responsible for out current economic meltdown, we should thank one very special guy in particular:

This mess is mostly a titanic failure of regulation. And the largest share of blame goes back to one man: Alan Greenspan. People mainly fault the former Fed chief, who once enjoyed a near-saintly reputation because of his reputed “feel” for market conditions, for ushering in an era of easy credit that accelerated the mortgage mania. But the much bigger problem was Greenspan’s Ayn Randian passion for regulatory minimalism. Under the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act enacted by Congress in 1994, the Fed was given the authority to oversee mortgage loans. But Greenspan kept putting off writing any rules. As late as April 2005, when things were seriously beginning to go wrong, he was saying that subprime lending would work out for the common good—without government interference. “Lenders are now able to quite efficiently judge the risk posed by individual applicants,” he declared at the time. So much for his feel. New regs didn’t get put into place until this past July—long after the crash had come, under Greenspan’s successor, Ben Bernanke. The new Fed chief’s “Regulation Z” finally created some common-sense rules, such as forbidding loans without sufficient documentation to show if a person has the ability to repay.

Greenspan has tried to defend himself repeatedly, though as bank after bank has failed he’s retreated to the shadows. But in a 2007 interview with CBS he admitted: “While I was aware a lot of these practices were going on, I had no notion of how significant they had become until very late.” This, from a man who once told me, in an interview, that he most enjoyed scanning economic reports for hours in his bathtub. Now, with Tuesday’s $85 billion bailout of AIG adding to the hundreds of billions the government has already put up to rescue Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, this apostle of free-market absolutism has realized his worst nightmare. He has given us the largest government intervention into the markets since FDR. Heckuva job, Greenie.

Reimagined as a pitchfork wielding populist reformer (while he tries to figure out how many houses he owns) John McCain is out on the stump this week railing about greed and avarice. But it was only yesterday he was saying this:

McCain’s solution to our economic woes:
“Get ol’ Alan Greenspan — whether he’s alive or dead. And um if he’s dead, we’ll put dark glasses on him and prop him up like they did at Weekend at Bernie’s.”
(Town Hall Meeting in Concord, NH 12/17/07)

And then we have Guru number 2, Phil “you’re all a bunch ‘o whiners” Gramm, the man McCain extols as an economic genius:

When Senator Phil Gramm and his wife Wendy danced, it was most often to Enron’s tune.

Mr. Gramm, a Texas Republican, is one of the top recipients of Enron largess in the Senate. And he is a demon for deregulation. In December 2000 Mr. Gramm was one of the ringleaders who engineered the stealthlike approval of a bill that exempted energy commodity trading from government regulation and public disclosure. It was a gift tied with a bright ribbon for Enron.

Wendy Gramm has been influential in her own right. She, too, is a demon for deregulation. She headed the presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief in the Reagan administration. And she was chairwoman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1988 until 1993.

In her final days with the commission she helped push through a ruling that exempted many energy futures contracts from regulation, a move that had been sought by Enron. Five weeks later, after resigning from the commission, Wendy Gramm was appointed to Enron’s board of directors.

According to a report by Public Citizen, a watchdog group in Washington, ”Enron paid her between $915,000 and $1.85 million in salary, attendance fees, stock options and dividends from 1993 to 2001.”

As a board member, Ms. Gramm has served on Enron’s audit committee, but her eyesight wasn’t any better than that of the folks at Arthur Andersen. The one thing Enron did not pay big bucks for was vigilance.

There’s a lot more you can say about the Gramms and Enron, and not much of it good. But Phil and Wendy Gramm are just convenient symptoms of the problem that has contributed so mightily to the Enron debacle and other major scandals of our time, from the savings and loan disaster to the Firestone tires fiasco. That problem is the obsession with deregulation that has had such a hold on the Republican Party and corporate America.

Enron is so 2001, right? Something out of the past. Except it really isn’t. It’s yet another example of the GOP’s deregulation fetish of the past quarter century, which seems to result every, single time in a bunch of people losing their savings and the taxpayers being on the hook for billions. Sure, the big boys have to take some heat — why some of them are down to their last 100 million or so. But seeing as they’ve been swalloowing a fire hose of money for the past seven years, I think they’ll pull pull through. The rest of us have to stay up nights wondering what the hell the next few years are going to bring us.

And John McCain has been out there selling this crap the whole time, vacationing with Keating, being best buds with Gramm and drooling over Alan Greenspan like a Hannah Montana fanboy. If anyone expects change from this guy they are living in a total dreamworld. He’s one of them.

If you like useless expensive wars, financial scandals, stock market crashes, foreclosures and economic instability as far as the eye can see, vote Republican. They’ve got everything you need.

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Gloomy Gusses

by digby

I’m sympathetic to the complaints referenced in tristero’s post below, but I think they are misplaced. This isn’t a blog about heroic first person stories of GOTV. It’s about macro observations about the political culture. It always has been. To that end, all of us have written a lot about the Obama field operation, the new technology and the unprecedented efforts to GOTV in this election.

If you are a Camp Obama canvasser I salute you. Nothing will be more important to Democrats this time than getting out the vote. But it isn’t magic. The essential job of any campaign is to persuade a majority of voters that they want to vote for their candidate. That’s what the polls measure and it’s what we’re talking about here. I hope that Obama’s GOTV is awesomely awesome and people get visited by their friends and neighbors who tell them all the good reasons why they should vote for Obama. But if people aren’t buying his overall message, then it won’t be enough. This morning, it appears that it’s 50/50.

I believe the tide is probably turning. This economic crisis is getting people’s attention and it’s very hard to see how Republicans can possibly benefit from that. So, while I can’t speak for tristero and dday on this, I’m not actually all that gloomy at the moment. It’s not good news for the economy, of course, but better to have this out in the open before the election so the failure of Republican rule can be right out on the table for the voters to see.

I’m sorry the polls are tied. I’m sorry the Republicans are assholes who like to steal close elections. I’m sorry the media are a bunch of dupes for the GOP. But I’m not going to blow smoke so that everyone can feel good. I still fully expect the Democrats to win this election but it’s clear that it isn’t going to be the cakewalk many of us thought it would be, myself included. That’s unpleasant. But “faith” has no place in politics — at least the kind which says you have to put your head down and “believe” in some plan or some party or some politician. This isn’t religion or love. Democracy demands that you use your own eyes and ears and mind to evaluate what’s going on around you.

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Awful

by tristero

U.S. Embassy in Yemen attacked, at least 16 dead. And the outrage stinks of bin Laden. The very same bin Laden that has not been brought to justice because Bush got distracted, turning the hell of living under Saddam into an unimaginably obscene Hobbesian nightmare. And did so with John McCain’s early, enthusiastic, and utterly demented support.

Speaking of Iraq, in Baghdad, ten also died. And that’s not all. Read and weep about the “success” of the “surge.” There’s a damn good reason why even a Republican tool like Petraeus refuses to pretend there’s a “victory:”

It was the second twin car bomb attack in Baghdad this week. On Monday, two car bombs detonated in central Baghdad, killing 12 people and wounding 37 others.

Five roadside bombings struck the Iraqi capital Wednesday, one of which targeted a New Baghdad council leader, the official said. The council leader’s driver was killed, and he and his security guard were wounded in the attack.

Another roadside bombing in eastern Baghdad killed an Iraqi policeman and wounded five others.

Two other roadside bombings in the capital wounded nine Iraqi soldiers and civilians.

Memo to John Bush McCain:

You said:

One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, ‘Stop the bullshit.”

I hate to pop your little bubble, pal, but trust me, It’s not going to work.

Y’know, occasionally I catch some grief by saying I have come truly to despise Bush/McCain and their ideological cronies like Cheney, Addington, Rumsfeld, and so on. Here’s why:

Because the Bush/McCain gang is so ignorant violent, mentally disturbed and powerful, they get hundreds of thousands innocent people killed. Sheer moral hygiene makes it imperative that this country say no to four more years of the same.

Swing Staters: Got Good Campaign Stories?

by tristero

Longtime reader pseudonymous in nc objected to an earlier post I did which was highly critical of the campaign the Democrats are conducting (with the notable exception of Obama, who seems to grow with every appearance):

Every day, you sit in Manhattan and pointificate about how we’re all dooooooomed while people are actually trying to break through on the ground in tough states to crack. Work that doesn’t appear in the blogs you read or the news you watch.

That’s a fair point. For the most part, I don’t know, except to the extent it makes the national papers, what is going on down on the ground. (Oh, and thanks, you’re right: I really do need to exercise more!)

So, if you would be willing to help me learn about the work you are doing in the “tough states,” I would be very grateful and will post at least some of the stories. I need to ask you to please provide links to news articles or websites for documentation. For example, if you are in Virginia, say, and working in a western county to GOTV, please tell us the story in comments and also link to an article in a local paper that describes the work you or your group are/is doing.

Thanks!

Party A Hearts Party B

by tristero

My dear friends, here is the next lipsticked pig, maybe even the next War on Christmas!

As PZ explains, “The state of California now issues gender-neutral marriage licenses: they simply register the legal relationship of “Party A” and “Party B”, where the relevant individuals fill out their actual names.”

And to Bird and Codding, that is unacceptable. “We are traditionalists – we just want to be called bride and groom,” said Bird, 25, who works part time for her father’s church. “Those words have been used for generations and now they just changed them.”

…

Bird and Codding have refused to complete the new forms, a stand that has already cost them. Because their marriage is not registered with the state, Bird cannot sign up for Codding’s medical benefits or legally take his name. They are now exploring their options, she said.

And now they have gained the teeniest glimmer what it’s like to have your right to marry denied. But there’s one difference. Bird and Codding chose not to marry. In most states, if you wish to marry someone of your own gender, you do not have a choice. You are prevented from marrying.

Still, they do have a point. “Party A” and “Party B” is a tad clinical. Therefore I suggest the marriage license form require couples to use their pet names for each other.

I, THE UNDERSIGNED“SNOOKUMS-SWEETY” AND I, THE UNDERSIGNED “CUDDLY-PIE-HONEY-BUNCH-SCOOCHY-SCOOCHY-EEK!” DECLARE UNDER PENALTY OF PERJURY UNDER THE LAWS OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA THAT THE FOREGOING INFORMATION IS TRUE AND CORRECT TO THE BEST OF OUR KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF. WE FURTHER DECLARE THAT NO LEGAL OBJECTION TO THE MARRIAGE NOR TO THE ISSUANCE OF A LICENSE IS KNOWN TO US. WE ACKNOWLEDGE RECEIPT OF THE INFORMATION REQUIRED BY FAMILY CODE SECTION 358 AND HEREBY APPLY FOR A LICENSE AND CERTIFICATE OF MARRIAGE.

There now. That’s so much more romantic and personal, don’t you think?

The Message, Not The Snark

by tristero

Josh clearly means this movie to expose how utterly vapid, robotic, and contemptible McCain is as he repeats his vacuous talking points, all the while fearfully blinking like a two-bit hustler caught stealing from the mafia boss.

Pretty funny, huh? Or maybe you thought it was pathetic. Or pathetically funny. Or something similar, the point being that it turns McCain into a joke, an object of snark. Well, I saw something different in this film. What I saw and heard – and just about the only thing I saw and heard – was that McCain cares about workers.

Modern mass media is non-linear. That is why – duh – McCain or any other politician (or, for that matter anyone selling an idea or a product), must repeat, and repeat, and repeat the same message over and over again to the same media outlets in the same time frame. Sure, when strung together, it looks stupid and comical. That’s why The Daily Show and others do it all the time. And like jokes about all things flatulent, it’s a quick, effective snicker. Don’t get me wrong: these mashups can be hysterically funny.

But that’s not how it looks in reality. By sneering at McCain’s technique here – and spare me the the lecture that McCain deserves to be sneered at, I was mocking McCain back when Josh Marshall thought he was a magnificent maverick, thank you very much – we miss the fundamental point. This is how voters are reached today and it works.

Proof? Look at the polls. Remember: This should be a rout. Objectively speaking, there are pieces of lint that are more qualified than McCain/Bush/Palin to run this country. But this Republican Ticket of the Damned is ahead (or statistically even) in the polls right now and there are reasons for that. Racism explains a lot. Conservative media bias explains a lot. The immaturity and timidity of the media explains a lot. But that’s not the whole story. So, please, tell me how lame McCain looks repeating his talking points when he, Bush, and Palin are down 10 points and I will gladly, gratefully agree.

Let’s can the meta-snark to study what the message is. And the message here is not “McCain is a robot.” The message is “McCain cares about workers.” Therefore, the message Democrats ought to be repeating again, and again, and again – just as clearly and montonously as the Republicans do – is this:

It’s real easy for McCain to say whatever he wants from the personal library of one of his many, many homes, but those of us who are workers know his record and we know McCain is lying through his teeth.

That it has the distinct virtue of being absolutely true is an added bonus.

But Democrats need to do more. They need to make news. What news? That is for Obama’s advisers to work out. But here’s a hint: Terry McAuliffe campaigning for Obama in Virginia is not news. It’s what all leading Democrats should be expected to do beginning the day after the convention. The campaign support Obama has received from the party poohbahs has been nothing short of disgraceful.

UPDATE: This, if it happens, is not news either. At best, it is news-ish. Of course, Rove deserves to be held in contempt; hell, he should be locked up with only the Unabomber for company. But the Dems should be thinking up something additional that isn’t so bloody easy for Republicans to swat away as mere politics.

UPDATE: Added this depressing link about the unspeakable childishness of the press.

Congratulations, You Just Purchased An Insurance Company

by dday

Johnny, tell them what they’ve bought 80% of:

Fearing a financial crisis worldwide, the Federal Reserve reversed course on Tuesday and agreed to an $85 billion bailout that would give the government control of the troubled insurance giant American International Group.

The decision, only two weeks after the Treasury took over the federally chartered mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is the most radical intervention in private business in the central bank’s history.

With time running out after A.I.G. failed to get a bank loan to avoid bankruptcy, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, convened a meeting with House and Senate leaders on Capitol Hill about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday to explain the rescue plan. They emerged just after 7:30 p.m. with Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke looking grim, but with top lawmakers initially expressing support for the plan. But the bailout is likely to prove controversial, because it effectively puts taxpayer money at risk while protecting bad investments made by A.I.G. and other institutions it does business with.

Yes, that’s right, you’ve got a troubled insurance giant with billions of dollars tied up in worthless pieces of paper masquerading as securities. Yours for the low low price of $85 billion dollars!

You know, if this was Bolivia, the State Department would put out a strong statement declaiming the nationalization of industry and the stifling of private enterprise. But of course, in this case, industry made horrible decisions, so that justifies the Communism. It’s unclear to me that it’s even legal for the government to structure this absent legislation, but we’re in a brave new world.

To be clear, AIG perhaps was too big to fail. And the hash that has been made of the financial markets cannot plausibly be worked out without government intervention. But can this be the end of the “drown government in the bathtub” rhetoric we’ve heard from conservatives since Goldwater? They eliminated regulation and oversight, ignored the maddening decisions made by the big banks who gambled with borrowed money and lost, and then obliged as the corporations came begging for a handout.

By the way, this could have been handled for $45 billion less three days ago. The shorts battered AIG’s stock so mercilessly that they put taxpayers on the hook for twice as much.

I’ve said it before, but given the circumstances I don’t know why anyone would want to be the President right now. But whoever gets the job is going to have to roll back all the deregulation initiatives that caused this mess. This has cost taxpayers and investors dearly, and the ones responsible are largely getting away with it; the CEO got a $47 million dollar severance package back in July.

Their debt, the result of their horrible choices, is now our debt. The risk has been socialized. And to top it off, this is an INSURANCE company who couldn’t manage their own risk.

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Situational Feminism

by digby

I’m pretty sure I died a couple of weeks ago and nobody told me. Having to watch Rush Limbaugh wave the feminist flag in favor of Sarah Palin’s regressive politics and personal corruption can only be described as my own personal definition of hell:

LIMBAUGH: I’ll tell you what this Troopergate’s all about. I’m going to tell you exactly what it’s all about. It’s about the good ol’ boys of Alaska being upset that a woman had upset the apple cart, got rid of Murkowski, got rid of the other Republican opponent in the primary. This is all about the good ol’ boys of Alaska saying, “We’re not going to sit here and be run by a damn woman. We’re going to take care of it. We’re going to take this woman — ” That’s all this is. And of course this guy’s working with — doesn’t matter.

When the boys don’t like the girl, Democrat and Republican boys will line up, and then they’ll fight each other later after they get rid of the girl. And that’s exactly what is happening here. This is pure sexism in Alaska on the part of these old boys trying to get rid of Sarah Palin, and she didn’t put up with it, and she didn’t bend over and let them have their way.

He may want to work on his metaphors a little bit before he appears at the next NOW rally.

I wonder how he reconciles that comment with this:

Oh, gosh, that hurts, my friends. It reminds me of my first wife. Ah! Gee! It is just painful to hear this, and then she [Hillary Clinton] starts yelling everywhere — Dawn, you can smile. She’s in there shaking her head. She’s — she’s here in a den of sexists, folks, and she puts up such a game front. Chauvinists, I should say. We’re not sexists, we’re chauvinists — we’re male chauvinist pigs, and we’re happy to be because we think that’s what men were destined to be. We think that’s what women want. [4/15/04]

or this:

Well, Rich Lowry has a column today, National Review Online, and Time magazine has just discovered that stay-at-home moms are women who have made legitimate choices to stay home and raise their young children — a cover story. Time magazine has headlined the case for staying home, and the magazine, according to Lowry, reports without sneering or condescension, the trend toward more new mothers leaving the workforce. Yes, it’s a trend. It started years ago when the feminist movement decided that their best friends were going to be German shepherds. You know. So that’s — well, it’s true. You go to the right airports and you can see it. [3/19/04]

… or any of the other dozens of examples of his disgusting misogyny?

Maybe Palin has made him see the light. (And maybe lipsticked pigs can fly helicopters…)

The truth of the matter is that the two of them, along with the rest of the conservative movement, have created a post modern, up-is-down bizarroworld that normal people have no chance of ever penetrating without going crazy from the dissonance. Like I said — hell.

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Vets Shouldn’t Vote

by digby

They might not vote “correctly.” After all, they’ve seen wars and might not think that it’s such a great idea for the US to constantly be pushing more of them just say “suck on this.”

Recall this:

The [disabled]veterans, at Bally’s for their national convention, gave him a tepid reception, especially considering McCain’s life story. The Arizona senator was a Navy pilot shot down over Vietnam, tortured and held as a prisoner of war for 5 1/2 years.

Just one of 14 veterans interviewed by the Sun after his speech said he is a certain McCain voter, and the nonpartisan group’s legislative director expressed concerns about McCain’s proposed “Veterans’ Care Access Card.”

I wrote a while back about the inexplicable new rule banning voter registration at VA hospitals. The good news is that they’ve rescinded the rule. The bad news is that it may not make much difference:

[O]n Monday, as the Senate Rules and Administration Committee held a hearing in Washington on a bill to ensure veterans living at VA facilities could be helped with voter registration, a legal motion was being filed in federal court in California alleging the VA was still blocking efforts to register voters in time for the 2008 presidential election.

Following last week’s announcement of VA’s new voter registration policy, a VA facility in San Francisco blocked a non-profit group, Veterans for Peace, from registering voters, the legal motion said. The filing said the VA was seeking to require Veterans for Peace members to go through the process of screening VA volunteers, a process that would delay registration efforts. In contrast, the VA does not require screening for most other visitors.

“The VA has disenfranchised veterans and interfered with the freedom of political parties and nonpartisan groups to associate with their members and with other citizens who reside on VA campuses,” the motion said. “This Court should prohibit further interference with voter registration at any VA campus for the imminent federal election.”

Scott Rafferty, the Washington-based attorney who filed Monday’s motion on behalf of a California labor organizer who in 2004 was blocked from registering voters on another VA facility in California, said there were political reasons behind the agency’s refusal to register veterans.

“Veterans’ experience in war gives them a powerful voice,” Rafferty said. “The VA wants to stop them from using their right to speak out and to vote. The VA knows that many veterans oppose the Administration’s conduct of the War, the overextension of the military, and its inadequate support for returning warriors.”

Hey, if you can illegitimately shave off just enough votes from disabled veterans, distressed homeowners, latinos and African Americans and first time voter you can probably just get over the finish line.

Some people call this cheating. Republicans call it winning.

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Mr Fix It

by digby

I wrote a post below about McCain’s head knocking style of governance joking that he seems to think he can bully his way into solutions to even the most complicated economic problems.

Well, it turns out that he really does:

The way I would fix Social Security is to sit down with Republicans and Democrats together at a table, voicing my opposition to tax increases, and sitting down and negotiating a fix to Social Security, which is the only way that Social Security is going to be fixed. That’s my solution to the Social Security system.

I’m beginning to think George W. Bush is a deeply nuanced thinker by comparison. And I’m less concerned that Palin might become president if McCain passes on before his term is up. I don’t see how she can be any worse than he is. They are pretty much the same person — proudly ignorant, aggressive egomaniacs.

Update: The country may be waking up from its Palin stupor. The Gallup tracking poll shows Obama ticking up as of last night. Anybody who watched Mccain speak about the economy these last two days has got to be a little bit concerned.

H/t to bb