Tristero over at Hullabaloo has an insight about the bailout BS:
This isn't about obstreperous Republicans blocking a needed financial bailout because it doesn't fit some whacked ideology. This is about a campaign bailout. McCain's campaign bailout.
When I said this:This is also, in a way, the continuation of one way of reading neoliberalism: The privatization of profit and the publicization of risk. Only in this case, it's being done in the open - the risk is being publicized (that is, the bill is being footed by taxpayers) after things went bad.
I didn't think it would be taken so literally:WASHINGTON — The Bush administration on Saturday formally proposed to Congress what could become the largest financial bailout in United States history, requesting unfettered authority for the Treasury Department to buy up to $700 billion in mortgage-related assets.
...
A $700 billion expenditure on distressed mortgage-related assets would be roughly what the country has spent so far in direct costs on the Iraq war and more than the Pentagon’s total yearly budget appropriation. Divided across the population, it would amount to more than $2,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States.
All those political philosophy classes I took seem more relevant than ever right about now. Sadly, this is depressing, not exciting.
So I'll say to Bush what I refrained from saying to Hering yesterday: Fuck you.
... if the Dems fold/cave/go along on this one, there's no doubt I'm fucking voting for McKinney. This is insane.
Also, Atrios retains his ability to spell it out like no one else can:Again, the problem is that lots of bad loans were made, lots of people made highly leveraged investments in those bad loans, and still more people bet on those loans by insuring them. The loans are bad. The mortgages are not going to be repaid in full. Housing prices are not going to magically shoot up 50% over the next 6 months. People gambled and lost and now the Democrats are racing to bail them all out.
In case that I'm not being clear enough, what's happening is that the US government just proposed giving $700 billion to a bunch of companies that knowingly made bad deals. Crony capitalism doesn't even begin to describe it.
UPDATE: Atrios finds this bit in the text of the act submitted to Congress authorizing the spending:Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
Why anyone in their right mind is going to do anything but kick the ass of the folks who submitted this is beyond me. Nevertheless, I predict that Democrats will take this 'bill' seriously.
I didn't watch it, but here are some reactions:
A roundup of TV personalities, courtesy Washington Monthly.
Steve Benen:And that, ultimately, is why the speech didn't work. McCain simply didn't have a vision or a policy agenda for the future. He has his character, and his biography, and he hopes that's enough. The message of the night, and practically the entire convention, seemed to be: "Vote for John McCain, not because he's right, but because he's John McCain."
To be fair, what else can he do? The Republican party is dictating the policies in the platform, even though those policies have never worked. McCain can't effectively sell himself (I hope) as any kind of significant change from the current administration as long as he's supporting the same policies.
All that's left for Republican candidates to do these days is spin furiously, turn out their base and attempt to discredit their opponents. Sadly, it's proven to be a somewhat effective strategy. (Note that it does not include providing any kind of actual leadership or vision.)
A caveat: This strategy, with this particular platform (being driven by the Christian Right and all), does put the Republican business community in a bind; while they see how Bush's policies are a long-term disaster (the Dow reportedly dropped something like 350 points after Palin's speech), the incredibly amounts of profits being made in the short term are proving to be enough of a bribe to get them, on the whole, to keep their mouths shut.
A second caveat: "spin furiously, turn out their base and attempt to discredit their opponents" and "does not include providing any kind of actual leadership or vision" sound like part of Mr. Alexander and Mr. Wineteer's efforts to avoid being recalled and their time on the school board. Heh.
Two items of note today:
Rep. Westmoreland calls Obama ‘uppity'
Fake Soldiers Used In RNC Video
If "shocked" is an emotion, I'm still human, even after eight years of this shit.
From the Oregonian:Do Oregonians have a fundamental right to effective, affordable health care?
That question threw the Oregon House into a lofty and philosophical debate for more than an hour Wednesday before it voted 31-29 along strict party lines in favor of referring it to the November ballot.
Nice.
The Republican response:Republican opponents said the resolution would expand government, socialize medicine and create another entitlement program.
I call bullshit - not only are these the same tired catchphrases the R's always throw out, they're not even related to the measure at hand. Promoting health care as a fundamental right does not inexorably lead to any of the boogeymen listed. It's just a stupid, silly scare tactic: First, train people to respond (negatively, of course) to certain key words or phrases (socialized medicine, entitlement). Second, throw those phrases around whenever you don't get your way and watch people respond like Pavlov's dogs.
These same tricks are getting old. At the least, I would think Republicans would need to find new key words by now.
From Digby - and I should say that I agree with the plausability of this prediction. It's not a happy one, but I think there's a disturbingly large likelihood of it coming true:What Atrios says here is absolutely true. A Democratic president, no matter who it is, is going to pay for the Republicans' sins. But it won't be just because the Republicans and Blue Dogs in congress suddenly "realize" they have co-equal power. I predict that the right wing noise machine will shout far and wide that the election was stolen (probably with the help of "illegal aliens.") The new president will not be allowed to weed out even one right wing plant anywhere in the executive branch without being accused of politicizing it. There will be no executive privilege as the courts rediscover their "responsibilities." Scientists and experts will all be accused of being shills for the liberal special interests. The president will be accused of violating Americans' civil liberties and destroying the constitution. There will be widespread accusations of fraud and corruption and non-stop investigations.
In other words the Republicans are going to accuse the Democratic president of everything we know the Bush administration did.
A less charitable interpretation of her prediction is a bit of goalpost shifting... or simply bringing up the possibility so that people will recognize it when (and if) it happens.
"What bugs me about this is not the fact that the modern Republican Party doesn't really care about actual governance. This is hardly news. At this point, it's an exhausted organization so bereft of ideas that it really doesn't have much choice except to follow a policy of obstruction to its logical, nihilistic conclusion."
The funny thing is, I'm pretty disillusioned by the American political system, even in the abstract form that I learned in Advanced Government in HS. I don't think the structure of that system really matches my values, and I think it preserves hierarchies that need to go. (And, of course, I think it's royally corrupt and only exists in the abstract to boot.)
That said, I feel I can still realize when the system is breaking down, and that such a breakdown has very real consequences, especially since the 'breakdown' is largely being spun and covered up by the highly distorted values of the corporate media:You have to give these Republicans credit, you really do. They are changing the rules of the game right in front of our eyes and daring the Democrats to do something about it.
...
I'm specifically talking here about the executive privilege claims, although it applies to virtually everything. Traditionally, there would be some posturing and back and forth, negotiations and perhaps some court involvement.Presidents may push the envelope, but they try to maintain the relationship with the congress in order that we not push these things into litigation which might go the wrong way (from their perspective) and therefore codify congressional prerogatives. Some presidents might even actually respect the notion that oversight is a necessary part of the balance of power and believe it's important to preserve it without creating new laws and rules that make it more difficult. The balance of power between the branches is actually quite a delicate thing that requires a certain amount of good faith to keep that going. The Republicans have thrown that good faith into the trash bin.
There is a great opportunity for sociological and/or political science-based analysis here: What happens when one of the (two major) parties to an essential and long-standing social contract rips it up and throws it out the window? What are the consequences? How deep does trust in the system run for today's Democrats that they don't even see that one party has decided to no longer abide by the previous set of agreed-upon rules? It's really quite amazing, and sort of terrifying, and a major reason I have little to no respect for the Democratic Party; I think the extent to which they are beholden to corporate donors and the existing (and disappearing) system has severely blinded them to the danger they are in, and their saving grace is that people who don't like Republicans feel they have no other viable alternative than to vote Democratic. The Democrats are winning not on their own strengths (I mean, they've got nothing at this point), but solely on the fact that they are not Republicans.
And perhaps more importantly, at what point will the system reach equilibrium again, if it does? What will the governing political structures of America look like then?
I think this is a very important question, maybe the preeminently important question of the day for political scientists and political philosophers, and most them just don't get it, and I have no idea why not. My faith in academia is taking another hit, and I'm not sure how much more it can survive.
UPDATE: I don't mean to suggest this is an aberration, not really. I think it's actually quite logical if one wishes to gain power - the tipping point, as it were, was the Republicans' decision to value the acquisition of power over keeping the playing field intact (the idea being that once enough power was gained, there was no danger of the tables turning and Democrats using the amassed power against Republicans, since the plan was for Republicans to never lose another election). I also think it's an example of the movement of capitalist values into the political sphere, or perhaps a result of the pressure placed on capitalism by globalization, an increasing world population, and decreased natural resources.
