finknottle

He is the one we've been waiting for! Or so the media tells me.

What, you mean 'elected?' Should we be saying annointed or something? Elevated or transcends?

Joe is back, and he is on fire! This is one angry poilitician! http://time-blog.com/real_clear_politics/2..._in_americ.html Move over Al Gore - it turns out that Biden was the first to raise the alarm about global warming

Nice Summary: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122212948811465427.html

They tried: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barney_Frank

Apparently the losers should be the responsible ones, and the winners the irresponsible. Nice strategy for America. Were these debts because of the Revolutionary War, or because some states had spent all their money buying estates they couldn't afford, fancy carriages, tulips and imported cheese?

Buy the mortgages, don't renegotiate. Yes, people will start to miss their payments and be threatened with missing their payments. But the government will proceed at the speed of government, so by the time they get around to actually forcloseing - 5 or 10 years say - most people will have dug themselves out one way or another.

My personal favorite was how he won his 1996 state race, in which he used legal challanges to the petitions to invalidate the entire field of competition in the democratic primary, including the incumbent (and long-time Chicago activist) Alice Palmer. Now THATS politics, Chicago style!

Are you saying I should rush out and buy a lamborghini and another house before the legislation is signed?!

I didn't watch the video, having already discussed this a few weeks ago. I'm an animal rights sympathizer, but this line of attack is disingenuous. The fact is that responsible and humane animal population control is not a pretty issue, and just about every state pays somebody to go in and thin the herds. Usually its a night-time sniper hunting deer with a silencer in the community commons. Imagine what you could do with that in an ad! The Alaska approach is the only one that makes sense in a place that big, and the whole foot issue - though distastefull - is simply the best way to ensure accountability.

Less discussed amidst the hype over government bailout of the financial industry is a democratic amendment to include a bailout for homeowners. But it gets even better. Apparently there was language inserted to forgive student loans, car loans, and increase personal bankruptcy protection! I am completely pissed. We've already been discussing the issue of 40% of the country paying no income tax, and having that move to a majority under Obama, leaving contributing suckers like me in the minority and vulnerable to the political mob. We just went through one bout of $500 rebates paid for by that elite group, the actual taxpayers, and apparently going to everybody but myself. Now we are talking about another $500 stimulus, which I have no doubt I will pay for but not be eligible for. What is wrong with this country that you penalize good economic behavior? You worry about the future, work 60 hours a week to build up your own stock portfolio so that you don't have to rely on social security, and you learn that your stock-related taxes will shoot up at least 33%. You save your money instead of going on vacation and buying toys so that you can pay off your student loans, pay for your car in cash, and never carry debt... What is your reward? You miss out on debt forgiveness. You just get to be taxed to pay for everybody elses relief. You save your money, buy a modest house than you can safely afford even in a downturn, pay a premium to lock in the rates, and what is your reward for being responsible? You miss all the handouts to the irresponsible. It wouldn't be so bad if the cost of living responsibly didn't mean a life of hard work and frugality, when you could have been living it up. And the fact that it will be the fiscally responsible ones that pay for everybody else - they will contribute nothing - just rubs salt in the wounds. It this really the direction we want the country to go in? Keep taking from anyone stupid enough to save enough money and strive to become become financially secure, and give it to the no-money-down credit-card class?

I place it primarily on Barney Frank and laudible but ill-conceived social engineering. Barney Frank - Chair of the House Financial Services Committee -> pointman pressuring FM/FM and the banking industry to increase homeownership rates to the poor for decades -> congressional pressure to relax lending standards and re-interpret lending requirements -> erosion of lending standards throughout the banking industry, requires repackaging and commoditization of risk beyond the lenders themselves -> housing market collapses, impact is spread throughout the entire financial community and the insurance community -> prospect of financial sector collapse directly threatens the entire business community. I think this bit from wipipedia sums it up pretty well

Well, you do have to work your way up through the minor leagues.

Interesting bit of detective work on the source of some of the hit ads. A readible summary is http://hotair.com/archives/2008/09/22/corp...for-team-obama/ and the source is http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/194057.php I'm inclined to think it's a professional job.

I guess I just disagree. I think the media would have been all over McCain, and I find it hard to believe that even the most enthusiastic of Obama's supporters wouldn't think so too.

Any takers on the left?

But the founding fathers know all, and are as relevant today as they ever were! I wish I would be around in four hundred years when the Federation takes up the debate on whether transporter technology is a murder of the original self. People will be going over every word of Jefferson and Madison and the gang for guidence, like drooling witchdoctors pawing through the entrails of a goat.

I think that is incorrect (but I'm not 100% sure). In the late 90's the FTC gave away spectrum suitable to high bandwidth to the broadcasters (I believe free - this is the part I'm not sure of). The idea was that they were to begin dual broadcasting on both analog and HDTV. A portion of the old spectrum was freed up early, and the bulk will be freed up when the transition is finalized early next year. [in fact, that's why the transition had taken longer than originally planned. The broadcasters liked getting free spectrum for HDTV, and once they got it they slow-rolled the process of giving up their old spectrum. They liked having extra channels!] In other words, it's just a swap of real estate. I think the confusion arises with what happens to the old spectrum. The plan was to take some of that (low bandwidth) spectrum and reserve it for Public Safety channels. The question was what to do with the remainder... That, they decided, would be auctioned off to users more suited to it: wireless. Companies like Verizon and Qualcomm. Ok, maybe it sounds like I'm splitting hairs. What I'm really saying is that the conversion itself is revenue neutral to both the government and the broadcasters: the government swapped frequencies with the broadcasters, and no money changed hands. So they are not making money on the deal (your original point being that they should pay for the conversion boxes because they are making money off of the sales). In fact, one could argue that the frequencies the government gave up were worth more! Where the government is making some money is by auctioning off newly-available spectrum. Had the analog-digital conversion never occured, they would still be sitting on some spectrum, and would still probably be auctioning it off to the wireless companies to raise money. The point is that the auction is only incidentially connected to the analog-digital conversion.

I assume you are saying that Hillary Clinton had, days prior, made in a major speech a widely-played soundbite to the effect that she was a whatever with lipstick? I guess I missed that... Let me ask you this: What would the media reaction have been if, days after Obama talked about how he "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills," McCain described Obama or his platform as phony as a three dollar bill? Can you honestly say that that otherwise routine attack wouldn't be now interpreted as racist? That McCain wouldn't be accused of trying to suggest to voters that Obama wouldn't be a legitimate president because he is black? Would they then back off if they found that Obama himself had used that same expression in the past?

Is that correct? I thought it was just a frequency transfer, since the point of the exercise was to free up the spectrum they are currently using. Surely they are not giving that up without compensation!

Thanks for the answer. But I'm not asking from the perspective of 'optimal fairness,' nor as a criticism of the Obama plan per se. I'm really just trying to get to the question of how would a democracy behave legislatively if a clear majority of voters paid no income tax? Would the temptation to propose spending programs to be paid for exclusively by increasing in income taxes (on those who pay them) rather than other sources become irresistable to politicians and voters alike? What would be the check on that form of 'tyranny of the majority,' other than opaque economic arguments unlikely to sway the common voters short-term interests? To me the idea of 50% of households paying no income taxes is a sort of psychological alarm bell.

I don't like his position on immigration, but I think the guy was sincere about strengthing the US-Mexico relationship, and only incidentally motivated by politics.

I know how important the idea of 'innocent until proven guilty' is to you. In the investigation, Keating and John Glenn were cleared of all charges. The other three Democrats were found guilty by the Committee. Have any other abuse innuendo, like say steering big contracts to his wifes hospital, or helping the credit card company his son lobbies for get a bill making personal bankruptcy more difficult?

I don't understand what you are saying -

I don't believe it, but I am very troubled by the popularist denial-of-service stuff that has been going on against some media outlets.