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Have they no shame?

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

We learn today that people who allegedly have brains are seriously suggesting that Jodi Rell would make a fine vice-president. Recall, if you will, that the Constitution provides that, should the president die, the vice-president becomes president. Connecting the dots, that means that in the likely event McCain dies in office (and someone notices) Rell would become president.

Perhaps it should not come as a surprise that the party that gave us a president as stunningly incompetent as the current White House occupant, or a vice president as evil as the person who currently bears the title, could give us a potential president so totally and gloriously unworthy of the office. Then again, it’s not the puppet that counts, it’s the person who’s pulling the strings.

The amazing thing, the stunning thing, is that in reality she would be an improvement over what we have now, but being better than the worst ever is hardly a recommendation for high office.

After reading the article to which I link above, it occurred to me that, rather than lusting after tax returns, the press should demand full disclosure of all IQ results for potential presidents.

Imagine. Lisa Moody one heartbeat and an empty head away from the presidency. The mind boggles.

No Connecticut related story would be complete without a stupid statement from a stupid Democrat, and this one is no exception. James Amann, the deluded Lieberman lover who thinks he stands a chance to replace Rell’s empty head with his own, had this to say:

House Speaker James Amann, D-Milford, said while he will be supporting the Democratic ticket in November, having Rell on the Republican ticket with McCain would be good for the state. Amann recently announced the formation of an exploratory committee for his potential run for the governor’s office.

“Rell is a very popular governor in Connecticut, and a ticket of diversity certainly wouldn’t hurt the Republicans,” he said. “If chosen, it would be an honor for the state.”

Golly Jim, Connecticut is still trying to live down the last person from our fair state who ran for vice-president. Do we really need to let the whole country know that we have a governor who, with a little training, might be competent to work in a day care center?

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A foretaste of what’s to come

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

This is the sort of thing that is rapidly turning me off to the Clinton campaign:

“William Ayers, in the age of terrorism, will be Barack Obama’s Willie Horton.”
–Former counterterrorism official Larry C. Johnson, The Huffington Post, Feb. 16, 2008.

Who is William Ayers? He is a former weatherman who is now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Both Obama and Ayers were members of the board of an anti-poverty group, the Woods Fund of Chicago, between 1999 and 2002. In addition, Ayers contributed $200 to Obama’s re-election fund to the Illinois State Senate in April 2001, as reported here. They lived within a few blocks of each other in the trendy Hyde Park section of Chicago, and moved in the same liberal-progressive circles.

For those of you less than fifty years old, the Weathermen were a radical group of anti-war folks in the 60s, some of whom set off bombs.

How old was Obama when Ayers was a member of the group?

Eight.

The Washington Post’s Fact checker asks: Is this guilt by association? It sounds more like guilt without much association.

Who is Larry Johnson, who is raising this issue?

A Clinton supporter, “who is not involved in the campaign”.

This is of the piece with the “Obama is a muslim, etc.” emails that made the rounds of the internet. It reminds me of the first George Bush trying to make hay out of the fact that a young Bill Clinton had the temerity to visit the Soviet Union. Somehow, we were to infer from that fact that Clinton was a dangerous radical. It had a note of desperation about it at the time, and this does too. Effective or not, it’s despicable that Clinton surrogates are engaging in these tactics.

As an aside, if this story proves to have legs it will be a good example of the “Clinton rules” being extended to Obama, as it eventually is to all Democrats. The press has never pursued the far more relevant story of the Bush crime syndicate’s connections to Middle East terrorists, including its connections to the bin Laden family. (Illustrative link only, you can Google it yourself, or read House of Bush, House of Saud.

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I’m going to be a pundit

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Sheila Horvitz asked me to appear on Take Back the 2nd (which we have now taken back, but the name remains) on Thursday. So those of you who want to see me pontificate in the flesh, or at least in a pictorial representation of the flesh, can do so at 7:00 PM that night, provided you live in the Norwich cable service area. I guess it’s on Comcast.

In preparation I expect to spend the next couple of days emptying my head of everything I know, and filling it back up with cliches and media tropes, so I can sound just like the professionals.

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Castro wins

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Fidel Castro announced his retirement yesterday, meaning that he has successfully avoided deposition by nine consecutive American presidents. I’ve got no brief for Castro, but it’s hard to argue that American policy toward Cuba has been not only a total failure but a gross injustice to the Cuban people, who have borne the brunt of our pique at Castro.

Afterthought:

We have been trained to think of Castro as being the devil incarnate. But doesn’t he look positively benign next to a guy like Robert Mugabe, with whom we have done business, if sometimes somewhat reluctantly, for 28 years. Castro has, in a country that has been systematically ground down by United States economic trade barriers (we are proving the superiority of capitalism by gaming the competitor’s system) created a society in which people at least get decent education and decent health care, which they weren’t getting before he came along. The country is poor, but you don’t see Castro doing this:

The supermarket shelves are empty, inflation has topped 67,000 per cent and power cuts are a daily event – but Zimbabwe is about to have a party.

Robert Mugabe turns 84 tomorrow and no amount of suffering is going to stop him spending a small fortune in precious currency on a lavish celebration.

Marking the President’s birth has become synonymous with extravagance in the impoverished southern African country – and the ruling party’s aggressive “21st February Movement” makes sure everyone joins in.

The main event will be held in the border town of Beitbridge, while similar festivities will be held across the country. The main event on the border with South Africa is expected to attract thousands of ruling party supporters and Mugabe cronies. While the party is going on, the nightly exodus of Zimbabweans across the Limpopo River into South Africa will undoubtedly continue.

Foreign companies doing business in Zimbabwe have been lining up to donate money to fund the festivities, according to officials. They will also splash out on newspaper, radio and television advertisements wishing Mr Mugabe many happy returns.

The state-controlled Herald newspaper will carry a special supplement with congratulatory advertisements tomorrow. However, with the Zimbabwean dollar having become worthless over the years and contributions always trailing the budget required, the beleaguered Zimbabwean taxpayer has in the past few years been called upon to meet any shortfalls to Mr Mugabe’s birthday celebrations.

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Simple solutions

Monday, February 18, 2008

Matt Berger passed along this article to those of us on his email list, in which the argument is made that subprime mortgages should be banned.

I am usually wary of simple solutions, but in the case of subprime mortgages, I really think the problem would be solved if a lender were barred from selling or transferring a mortgage for a period of, say, five years. The fundamental problem with the subprime market appears to have been that a system was created that allowed the person making the loan to immediately and deceptively pass on the risk of default. Under those circumstances, why not lend to anyone? In the olden days, banks lent out their depositors money, serviced the loans, and dealt with the consequences of default. They tended not to lend to people who weren’t going to pay them back.

I’m sure our modern day wheelers and dealers could explain why this just wouldn’t work in our modern financial world. I’d like to hear the explanation.

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Nicholas Kristof hearts McCain

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Looks like Krugman is taking some indirect pot shots at fellow Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.

I was amazed myself when I read Kristof’s column. Hypocrisy is alright, abandoning your “principles” is alright, so long as you’re not totally comfortable about it and so long as your name is John McCain.

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Another economic mess coming

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Yet another unregulated and bizarre type of financial device about to fall apart.

They are called “credit default swaps”. Reading about this stuff makes my head hurt, but as I understand it, these are “insurance” instruments whereby the buyer, seeking protection, purchases insurance to protect the buyer in case underlying corporate bonds default. Both they buyer and the seller can sell their rights and obligation under the policy, meaning that neither side to the transaction knows who is on the other side at any given time. Meaning also that the buyer has no idea if the seller has the goods to pay up in the event of default. It is apparently, by the way, unnecessary for the buyer to actually own the bonds in question at any time, until an event of default takes place, at which point they must obtain the bonds in order to surrender them to the insuring party, if they can find them:

For example, when Delphi, the auto parts maker, filed for bankruptcy in October 2005, the credit default swaps on the company’s debt exceeded the value of underlying bonds tenfold. Buyers of credit insurance scrambled to buy the bonds, driving up their price to around 70 cents on the dollar, a startlingly high value for defaulted debt.

Notice something else in there? There are outstanding policies on debt that far exceeds the actual amount of the debt. So in fact, this is not insurance, it’s actually a sophisticated form of gambling in which, of course, you and I will be the biggest losers. There are $45 trillion, that’s right trillion dollars, or credit default swaps out there. That exceeds the value of all the stock in the stock market.

For reasons explained in the linked article, which I fear I can not accurately summarize, this is a potentially big problem. If the losses could be restricted to the schemers that dealt in these instruments it would be a good thing actually, but of course, it never works out that way.

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What? Me a snob?

Sunday, February 17, 2008

I just spent some time doing my Charter Revision Commission homework, so I’m politicked out for now. I will turn then, to an earth shaking question, raised at The Unofficial Apple Weblog: Are Mac owners snobs?

TUAW cites someone’s research to that effect, which research also notes that Mac owners are more likely:

to be perfectionists
to use notebooks
to use teeth whitening products
to drive station wagons
to pay for downloaded music
to go to Starbucks
care about “green” products and the environment
to own a hybrid car
and last but not least … to buy 5 pairs of sneakers in a year

They are also more likely to be liberal (according to the study).

It is not clear whether Mac owners are universally snobby, or whether their snobbishness is restricted to their status as Mac owners. Personally, I question the research. As Muhammad Ali pointed out (or was it Dizzy Dean?), “It’s not bragging if you can back it up”. These researchers appear to have failed to take into account the fact that we Mac persons may in fact be (make that “are in fact”) right about our computers, as we are about our politics and our environmental awareness (ignore, if you will the teeth whiteners and sneakers, neither of which apply to yours truly, unless they count toothpaste). We’re not snobs, we’re just justifiably proud of having made the right computer choice and we want everyone to know it.

I for one refuse to believe that we Mac owners are any different than say, deluded Dell owners or Windows users, who probably think their own choice of computer/operating system (like their more conservative political positions, hatred for the environment and dirty teeth) signifies their own superiority. It’s just that we’re right and they’re wrong.

Finally, it is a base canard to say or imply that we Mac owners are obsessed by all things Apple. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to perusing my Mac related newsfeeds.

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Connecticut Democrats to change Senate vacancy law

Saturday, February 16, 2008

A few weeks ago I heard through the grapevine that there might, in fact, be some legislative movement on an issue I’ve been writing about a bit. Turns out that the rumours were true. Today’s Courant reports that the State Democrats are, indeed, going to try to change state law to allow we the people to fill U.S. Senate vacancies.

Unfortunately, due to the resignation from the State Senate of Bill Finch (who became mayor of Bridgeport), and the real possibility that the Republicans will win the election to replace him (what’s up with that?) the Democrats may lose their veto proof majority. Now we’ll see if the Democrats have the ability to maneuver Rell into signing the law.

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Friday Night Music-Wilco

Friday, February 15, 2008

This is a song suggested by someone who came to the last Drinking Liberally. He actually sent me a number of links, some of which were broken. I decided on this one, anyway, because it’s a little more au courant, (i.e., it does not conclusively demonstrate that I’m stuck in the 60s) and it’s somewhat topical, and I liked it.

When the Roses Bloom Again, by Wilco

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqjTckG6qjA[/youtube]

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