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Who's Responsible for the Financial Meltdown: Fannie and Freddie, or Congress?
Tweet Share on Facebook September 24, 2008 Comment (49)Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and Congress, according to my American Enterprise Institute colleague, Kevin Hassett. His Bloomberg column links to a prescient 2005 article by another AEIer, Peter Wallison. And here is Wallison's latest, coauthored by AEI colleague Charles Calomiris. All three are well worth reading.
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'I AM MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY OF THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA.'
Tweet Share on Facebook September 24, 2008 Comment (7)This satiric E-mail currently making the rounds is genius. I wish I knew who originated it (I cannot take credit). Enjoy:
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John McCain's Slide and the Financial Crisis: It's the Economy, Stupid
Tweet Share on Facebook September 24, 2008 Comment (4)Taking respectful issue with my colleague Michael Barone, I disagree with his theory posted earlier this week that Democrats may not benefit from Wall Street's meltdown.
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Mainstream Media Should Pay Attention to Obama's Ties to William Ayers
Tweet Share on Facebook September 24, 2008 Comment (102)Stanley Kurtz has been investigating the Chicago Annenberg Challenge files in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois-Chicago Circle, and he has reported on his results in the Wall Street Journal. I have written before on Ayers, the unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist bomber, who claims to have set bombs at the U.S. Capitol, and Kurtz notes that Obama has tried to play down his long and close association with Ayers. Ayers was the cofounder of the CAC, and Obama was chairman of the board; Kurtz makes it clear that Obama worked more closely with Ayers than previously suggested. But mostly Kurtz concentrates on what the CAC actually did. There are two serious issues here: Mainstream media have shown an almost complete lack of interest in both of them.
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The Surge Worked, but Will McCain Admit the Rest of the Facts?
Tweet Share on Facebook September 24, 2008 Comment (1)As a graduate of Mr. Jefferson's university, a disciple of America's third president, and a delighted resident of Thomas Jefferson Street, I feel it is time to do the right thing, Enlightenment-wise, and place reason before passion.
And admit that the surge in Iraq has worked.
Well, it has been pretty obvious for some months now that General Petraeus and the U.S. military have done a brilliant job at negotiating the treacheries of Iraq and stabilizing the situation there.
But it's an inconvenient truth, for those of us who think that four more years of Republican wrack and ruin are not what the nation needs right now.
And that does make the words hard to say.
Especially since we're not likely to hear John McCain state something truthy on Friday night like, "Well, yes, the surge has worked, thank God, and offered a dignified end to this catastrophic foreign policy debacle I helped push on the American people."
Or, "Yes, the surge has worked—but Senator Obama deserves recognition for opposing this idiotic and costly war from the start."
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The GOP Opposes Bailouts—Its Platform Says So
Tweet Share on Facebook September 24, 2008 Comment (3)It's long been a given in politics that party platforms are outmoded and disconnected from reality. Even so, the section of the GOP platform pertaining to the economy, and specifically government bailouts, is a gem.
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Sexism Study, Take Two—the Absurdity Continues
Tweet Share on Facebook September 23, 2008 Comment (2)I wrote earlier about a new study that shows sexist men make more money than egalitarian males. Quite frankly, there are too many variables in this study to come to much of any reliable or notable conclusion, much less the one the authors came up with. As I noted earlier, many of the participants were children when the data were first being gathered. Of what relevance is a child's salary or income? Second, I have serious problems with the way in which the participants were sorted out as being traditional or nontraditional in their views of gender roles:
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Sarah Palin's International Debut: All Friends, No Media
Tweet Share on Facebook September 23, 2008 Comment (82)Sarah Palin made her international debut at the United Nations today in much of the same manner that she has made her entrance onto the national stage: among friends and with minimal press access.
As my colleague Thomas Omestad reports, Palin met with leaders from "countries tied most closely to American largess and geopolitical support during the Bush years. Those leaders include Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia, Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine, Jalal Talabani of Iraq, and Colombia's Alvaro Uribe." That's a polite way of saying that she met with America's trophy allies.
This is the international equivalent of sending her to Fox News for interviews (which, of course, the McCain-Palin campaign has already done). But it gets better: Even in the gentle company of American friends, the campaign tried to shut out the press. (Or as even Fox put it, "Palin Media Blackout Continues.")
What was it worried she would do?
(This much we know: Had she vomited on a prime minister, the McCain talking points would have focused on how it showed she was presidential.)
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Sexism Pays? Studying It Certainly Seems To
Tweet Share on Facebook September 23, 2008 Comment (3)When I first noticed this study yesterday, I laughed it off. But now that it's getting a lot of media attention, I've got to join the chorus.
"Men with egalitarian attitudes about the role of women in society earn significantly less on average than men who hold more traditional views about women's place in the world, according to a study being reported today," the Washington Post reports.
That's the bad news for us egalitarian types. Over-testosteroned, burly, high-powered corporate men earn big money, and sensitive Birkenstockers with long hair and tattered jeans who treat their women as partners, rather than servants, earn considerably less. At least that's how the results of the study hit me.
And then the next question I asked myself was, who cares? And why would anyone waste their time and money to produce a study that, on one level at least, reinforces the obvious? Good ol' boys earn more money because they're, well, good ol' boys. They form their own corporate and social networks and hire each other because they are like each other.
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Leopold, Loeb, the "Thrill" of Murder, and the Crime of the Century
Tweet Share on Facebook September 23, 2008 Comment (4)It is difficult—looking back at the 20th century and the butchery that took place at sites like Stalingrad, Nanking, or Nagasaki—to consider the murder of a lone American teenager as a "crime of the century."
But so it was said and continues to be. More than 80 years later, the kidnapping and killing of 14-year-old Bobby Franks, in May of 1924, still inspires authors, playwrights, and screenwriters.
It was, to oversimplify just a bit, the first great (nonpolitical) murder that prompted Americans to ask, "Why?"
