Leave it to a Canadian to come up with the best explanation I’ve seen regarding the current Conservative schism over the bailout. A taste:

If he were to rise from the dead today, Marx might be delighted to discover that most economists and financial commentators, including many who claim to favour the free market, agree with him.

Indeed, analysts at the Heritage and Cato Institute, and commentators in The Wall Street Journal and on this very page, have made declarations in favour of the massive “injection of liquidities” engineered by central banks in recent months, the government takeover of giant financial institutions, as well as the still stalled US$700-billion bailout package. Some of the same voices were calling for similar interventions following the burst of the dot-com bubble in 2001.

“Whatever happened to the modern followers of my free-market opponents?” Marx would likely wonder.

What, indeed.

Mark Steyn provides a voice of reason and prudence on this financial crises. I believe he has it exactly right. Read his post here. What is required here is prudent, cautious action, not a spasmodic knee-jerk reaction.

Barney Frank! Mr. Frank received the award for this statement about the failout.

…Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee [said]: “Because somebody hurt their feelings, they decided to punish the country.”

As they say on the Interwebs, “I see what you did there.”

Frank, one of the prime architects–and by “architects,” I mean “strongarm artists”–of this debacle, has turned around and blamed others for not riding to his rescue. It’s like an alcoholic who’s pickled his liver after 30 years of swigging, then blames his friends for not forcibly locking him in rehab. Or the abusive spouse (insert your own joke about Frank here) who blames the abused spouse (insert another joke about Frank here) for “making him treat you this way.”

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what the Boston Globe had to say about Frank’s complicity in what BizzyBlog artfully called “Barney’s Rubble.”

Time and time again, Frank insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in good shape. Five years ago, for example, when the Bush administration proposed much tighter regulation of the two companies, Frank was adamant that “these two entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not facing any kind of financial crisis.” When the White House warned of “systemic risk for our financial system” unless the mortgage giants were curbed, Frank complained that the administration was more concerned about financial safety than about housing.

Now that the bubble has burst and the “systemic risk” is apparent to all, Frank blithely declares: “The private sector got us into this mess.” Well, give the congressman points for gall. Wall Street and private lenders have plenty to answer for, but it was Washington and the political class that derailed this train. If Frank is looking for a culprit to blame, he can find one suspect in the nearest mirror.

The risk-adverse side of me wants to see Congress pump $700,000,000,000.00 into the private sector. When bad things are happening, I think it is natural to want to see a proactive approach — to do something. What is tough for me is recognizing that my bailout desire is a product of fear, and not a reasoned decision based on what is best in the long term. Let’s face it, any Adam Smith worshipper should cringe at the thought of a “government bailout” of private markets.

That said, there is an argument for doing nothing, and it is an interesting one.

THIS is an interesting site that lets you make your own Obama logo. I think the one I made pretty much says it all. Have fun!

I’m not one of those huge, anti-bailout guys, though I think it sounds like a mistake.  But I keep hearing commentators suggest that this will kill the GOP in the upcoming elections.  Perhaps.  But how does voting against something that a majority of Americans oppose hurt you?  Am I missing something in the political calculation of all this?  I’d really like an explanation on this one.

Howard Fineman has declared the “bailout” to be the end of Reagan-era conservative economic politics, and I believe he may be right. While we have been running around in circles over the upcoming election, the music stopped, and Conservatives are the ones without a chair. (more…)

Although no one thinks the CRA is the sole cause of our current financial crisis, it looks to me as if virtually everyone thinks it’s at least a partial cause of it — and many argue that it is the primary cause.  (I don’t have links for this proposition just now.  Trust me.  I’ll add some later.) 

Surely if Congress has any interest in making sure we don’t go through another such crisis in the future, it will repeal the Act. 

Right? 

Here’s Cato chairman William Niskanen arguing the case for repeal . . . in 1995.

Much has been made by some conservative pundits about Obama being teleprompter dependent and how he racks up the speech pauses when he goes off the cuff. One might recall Rush Limbaugh compiling just the “uh’s” in an Obama appearance for comedic effect or Hugh Hewitt wondering how many of the awkward pauses he would accumulate during the first debate.

I don’t think the issue is that Obama is ‘prompter dependent or that he is inarticulate off the cuff. I followed him closely during the Democratic primary season and found him smooth whether working from prepared remarks or not.

The reason he has begun to seem halting is simple. Obama runs effortlessly to the left because that is his comfort zone. When he can give the “workers of the world unite” rhetoric and promote his reasons for dovish foreign policy, he is at home, talking to his people about what they all believe. That’s why he was so good in the primaries.

But in the general, he faces a different problem. He can’t roll the same way. He has to think carefully about what he says because all kinds of Americans are paying attention. Those pauses are necessary because the wheels do need to turn. He HAS to find the nuance in order to avoid appearing radical.

Just a little note to the moderates . . .

The Obama Campaign has recently adopted a truly frightening tactic in Missouri. Obama’s campaign is assembling a group of sympathetic prosecutors and law enforcement agents to “target” anyone they think is lying or misleading the public about Obama and his positions. If this intimidation tactic didn’t smack of fascism by its very nature, the title of this group, The Barack Obama Truth Squad, should dispel any lingering doubts. You can watch a local news report about the group here.

The brazen nature of Obama’s ploy is amazing. There is only one reason why Obama would want to assemble a “Truth Squad” comprised solely of prosecutors and law enforcement agents: he wants to quash all dissent through naked intimidation. If all Obama wanted was volunteers to engage the public and challenge the assertions of the opposing candidate he could do so with anyone. But that is not what Obama wants. He wants people with a badge, gun, and/or the power to prosecute going after anyone that says something critical of of the Obamessiah. I find it amazing that liberals will go in to spasms of rage over supposed threats to civil liberties in The Patriot Act (a law designed to stop terrorists) yet have no problem with the “Truth Squad’s” attempt to crush political dissent.

At least the Governor of Missouri gets it. Read his statement here.

Talk about liberal fascism. Sieg Heil, Big Smile.

Ole Miss upsets No. 4 Florida! Go Rebels!

Brazos Press, the publisher of my forthcoming Return to Rome: Confessions of an Evangelical Catholic, has just published on its website the first four of many pre-publication endorsements. They are from Russell Hittinger, J. P. Moreland, Ronald Tacelli, S. J., and Scott Hahn. I have also published their comments on a page on the book’s website, Returntorome.com.

I am honored and humbled that these wonderful Christian scholars have chosen to endorse this book, which was a true of labor of love.

On 21 September 08 I offered a post celebrating Alabama’s victory over Arkansas to which Victor Morton responded as follows:

“You beat a Darren McFadden-less Arkansas and now you think this Crimson Swell team is the second coming of the Bear? So you get to be undefeated going into your first real SEC game, against the Bulldogs. Being undefeated did Hawaii a fat lot of good going into the Sugar Bowl last year, didn’t it?”(Well Victor, after the beating Georgia took at the hands of Alabama during the first half you probably have an appreciation for what Hawaii felt like.)

As annoying and rude as the forgoing comment was Victor was not finished. Victor continued his screed as follows:

“Oh, pardon my manners (or the lack thereof) … the Sugar Bowl … that’s the game in New Orleans where the SEC champ (mostly) plays each year. (That won’t be Georgia this year) Forgive my rudeness for assuming a Crimson Drip fan would recognize that reference, given the dim memories you must have of the Sugar Bowl, having last played there about 10 coaches ago during the first Bush administration. Since then, the Dawgs have rang in the New Year in New Orleans three times (won’t be doing that this year!). In fact, both my Texas Longhorns and Notre Dame Fighting Irish have played in the Sugar Bowl more recently than the Crimson Ripple.

Victor sounds like a yankee transplant that can’t decide which team he is rooting for. To compensate for the lack of accomplishment in his own life he probably rotates between winning programs. i.e. Texas, Noter Dame, Georgia, etc., until he finds something that enables him to talk the kind of smack displayed above.

If Victor had played a sport in high school, rather than being a band geek or chess team member, he might have known that you should not talk smack until the game is over. Such might be the practice with Dungeons & Dragons, but in masculine sports it is best to wait until you have proven you can walk the walk before your mouth writes checks you can’t otherwise cash.

Victor,

Apparently, last week represented the high water mark of your college season. I hope you enjoyed it. As I am sure you are learning now (that is, if you have the courage to visit this site after your embarrassment) He who laughs last laughs BEST!!!

to quote you,”bwahahahahaha”

By the way, I GUESS WE SAW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

P.S. Brian, how do you score this exchange now???????

First of all, it’s pretty sweet that my alum mater hosted the first Presidential debate of the campaign.  Hotty Toddy!

If you were watching C-SPAN before the debate got started, you heard moderator Jim Lehrer essentially say he wasn’t going to take any nonsense from the audience and would have no compunction in putting any houlighans in their place.    I was impressed; who knew a boring PBS guy could be something approaching bad-a**?

“I have a bracelet, too”.  I think this expresses my opinion of that remark better that what I can write.

McCain flubbed a couple of times in a row on Ahmadinejad’s name; he should have just taken the Glenn Beck approach and called him “President Tom“.  That’s what I do.

I was really annoyed with this line from Obama  “… it’s been your president who you said …”  No, President Bush is our President; yours, mine, and that of the rest of the 300 million Americans.  Look, Bill Clinton, though I think very little of him, was my President from 1993 to 2001, just as Barack Obama would be my President if he should <shutter> win.

Senator McCain, please bring your A game on economic matters next time.  Like the one you brought on the actual topic of the debate.

And Quin, I know this sounds harsh, but if you are relying on those focus groups on CNN to validate your gut feelings…um, er…you need to get a better gut.

Lamest line of the night, IMHO.

Ouch!

Every day my decision not to renew my National Review subscription is affirmed just a bit more.  Here’s Kathleen Parker’s sage advice on NRO:

Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.

Do it for your country.

The complete and utter lack of common sense amongst Beltway conservatives – and let’s just overlook the fact for the moment that I live inside the Washington beltway – continues to astound me.  They are completely tone deaf, and Parker is oblivious to the fact that the only reason john McCain has a prayer in this election is due to Sarah Palin’s presence on the ticket.  Conservatives were completely ho-hum about McCain before he selected Palin, and if she were out of the picture, I think a lot of fence-sitters would be gone – permanently.

Kat-Mo at Ace of Spades also responds to Parker’s concerns over Palin’s supposed lack of qualifications. (more…)

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, “a $100,000 state grant for a botanic garden in Englewood that then-state Sen. Barack Obama awarded in 2001 to a group headed by a one time campaign volunteer is now under investigation by the Illinois attorney general.” Apparently the garden was never built and $65,000 of the aforementioned amount ended up in the hands of the volunteer’s wife. (more…)

From a 1999 New York Times article:

Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.  …

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980’s.

 

Look, no matter how you view the bailout, it’s clear that something needs to happen. The Senate Banking Committee has to act. And Obama is a member of that committee. Isn’t he? I mean, he said he was.

Responding to an Israeli reporter’s question Wednesday on his commitment to protect the Jewish state, Barack Obama pointed to a bill “we passed” in the U.S. Senate Banking Committee that tightens sanctions and authorizes divestment from Iran. “My committee,” he called it.Except that he isn’t a member of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.

“Just this past week, we passed out of the out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee – which is my committee – a bill to call for divestment from Iran as way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don’t obtain a nuclear weapon,” Obama said at a press conference in Sderot, Israel.

Oh. As Emily Litella used to say, never mind. (Cross-posted at Time to a Hog.)

Barbara Ehrenreich has an interesting op-ed in the New York Times.  Now, I normally wouldn’t agree with anything either written by Ehrenreich or published in the Times, but she’s actually on to something here:

GREED — and its crafty sibling, speculation — are the designated culprits for the financial crisis. But another, much admired, habit of mind should get its share of the blame: the delusional optimism of mainstream, all-American, positive thinking.

As promoted by Oprah Winfrey, scores of megachurch pastors and an endless flow of self-help best sellers, the idea is to firmly believe that you will get what you want, not only because it will make you feel better to do so, but because “visualizing” something — ardently and with concentration — actually makes it happen. You will be able to pay that adjustable-rate mortgage or, at the other end of the transaction, turn thousands of bad mortgages into giga-profits if only you believe that you can.

Positive thinking is endemic to American culture — from weight loss programs to cancer support groups — and in the last two decades it has put down deep roots in the corporate world as well. Everyone knows that you won’t get a job paying more than $15 an hour unless you’re a “positive person,” and no one becomes a chief executive by issuing warnings of possible disaster.

I’m not entirely sure that I agree that our financial crisis is due to an excess of idealism, but she has a point about the optimistic nature of the American nation. (more…)

I am a sorry excuse for a Protestant, but a Protestant nonetheless. I was raised among the frozen chosen Methodists, but I have always liked the idea of the Southern Baptist Convention even though I wear shoes and believe the Earth has been around a good deal longer than 6,000 years. How can you not love a dogged commitment to principles backed by the orotund strains of The Old Rugged Cross?

Unfortunately, my anarcho-libertarian distaste for things like Jerry Falwell and Intelligent Design has recently tainted my view of the SBC, so I am thrilled to find something on which we can both agree: CNN commentator Roland Martin is an idiot. According to Mr. Martin, Lifeway Resources, the Southern Baptist-owned bookstore chain, has just banned Gospel Today magazine for doing a cover story on female pastors, which is contrary to Southern Baptist doctrine. (more…)

Although typical, certainly, this is a frightening poll result. From Rasmussen:

Forty-one percent (41%) say they are certain to vote for Obama and will not change their mind. Forty percent (40%) say the same about McCain. The remaining 19% are the candidates’ target audience for Friday night’s debate.

Who makes up this 19% of people who still don’t know who they’re going to vote for? Are these the people paying the most attention to the race but are just torn between candidates, or are they hapless, superficial flakes who probably shouldn’t vote but will anyway? 

Ah, the wonders of the democratic process!

I’ve never been one to go around pointing fingers for every financial downturn because, in my humble opinion, there will always be financial “bubbles” where Wall Street funnels money, bubbles that eventually burst and tank the stock markets. If it isn’t one thing, it will be another.

However, since Obama has decided to blame McCain and the GOP for the subprime crisis, I think a little education is in order:

Democrats have so effectively mastered crony capitalism as a governing strategy that they’ve convinced many in the media and the public that they had nothing whatsoever to do with our current financial woes.

Barack Obama has repeatedly blasted “Bush-McCain” economic policies as the cause, as if the two were joined at the hip.

Funny, because over the past 8 years, those who tried to fix Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — the trigger for today’s widespread global financial meltdown — were stymied repeatedly by congressional Democrats.

This wasn’t an accident. Though some key Republicans deserve blame as well, it was a concerted Democratic effort that made reform of Fannie and Freddie impossible.

The reason for this is simple: Fannie and Freddie became massive providers both of reliable votes among grateful low-income homeowners, and of massive giving to the Democratic Party by grateful investment bankers, both at the two government-sponsored enterprises and on Wall Street.

Via Clayton Cramer. 

I can’t be the only one who finds it interesting that the GOP is being blamed for failing to regulate subprime mortgages, when these mortgages essentially came into being in the last, gasping breath of the previous Democratic Congress in 1994. Did anybody honestly believe that is was the GOP who wanted government-backed companies to start writing bad mortgages to the poor? Does that sound like a Republican philosophy to anybody?

(HT: John McCormack at the Weekly Standard blog).

Here’s the Humane Society’s endorsement of Obama-Biden, accompanied with these pictures:

A fifth grader was suspended for wearing an anti-Obama tee-shirt after having been warned to take it off or turn it inside-out.

I’m with the school administrators.  I follow Clarence Thomas’s line in Morse v. Frederick, aka the Bong Hits 4 Jesus case.

In light of the history of American public education, it cannot seriously be suggested that the First Amendment “freedom of speech” encompasses a student’s right tos peak in public schools. Early public schools gave total control to teachers, who expected obedience and respect from students. And courts routinely deferred to schools’ authority to make rules and to discipline students for violating those rules. Several points are clear: (1) under in loco parentis, speech rules and other school rules were treated identically; (2) the in loco parentis doctrine imposed almost no limits on the types of rules that a school could set while students were in school; and (3) schools and teachers had tremendous discretion in imposing punishments for violations of those rules.

Thomas is right, but he’s sort of by himself in taking such a hard-line stance.  Considering the narrowness of the ruling in Morse, I wonder if this kid might might find some sympathetic ears on the Supreme Court.

(cross-posted at Crankycon)

Those who closely followed the Senate hearings of SA “patron Saint” Bill Pryor will remember that one of the bogus charges against Pryor was that he had taken the “wrong” position on the Voting Rights Act (i.e. that he was at least insensitive to racism), ignoring the fact that black Democratic Georgia AG Thurbert Baker had taken the same position as Pryor. Well, now comes a case in which the part of the Act at issue then, Section 5, is being challenged as being unconstitutional. The plaintiffs are right, and I wrote about it today here.

This, from Ben Smith at Politico:

Biden garbles Depression history

Joe Biden’s denunciation of his own campaign’s ad to Katie Couric got so much attention last night that another odd note in the interview slipped by.

He was speaking about the role of the White House in a financial crisis.

“When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed,” Biden told Couric. “He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’”

As Reason’s Jesse Walker footnotes it: “And if you owned an experimental TV set in 1929, you would have seen him. And you would have said to yourself, ‘Who is that guy? What happened to President Hoover?’”

Apparently, some other differences between our Earth and the Alternate Earth in which Senator Biden resides include Thomas Aquinas’ position on abortion as well as the Catholic Church’s position on the nature of unborn life. Jody Bottum has the details here. Although it is pure speculation on my part, it may be the case that Andrew Sullivan is a visitor from that alternate time-line as well. For it seems that most conservative Christians on his Earth are preparing to implement an impending theocracy engineered by dark forces that want to keep Bob-Jones-University-educated women barefoot and pregnant while home schooling their children in creationism so that they can grow up and shoot abortion doctors.