Faux Renegades Quelled!

John does it again (what exactly we're not sure)!

And is now—surprise, surprise!—heading to Mississippi for the debate. 

No, this is not The Onion ....

The Inuit, I'm told, have several words for snow. I'm beginning to think we need more for the word surreal ... to spare it overuse.

McUnity

Well, it's Friday, and let's thank our lucky stars that John McCain got to Washington just in time to save our financial system from ruin ...

What? No?

But, wait a minute, a new financial genius has stepped up, with some great ideas: his name is Richard Shelby, from Alabama. He and his friends want to sell insurance to banks who hold this lousy debt, which presumably would cost more than the expense of cleaning up the lousy debt, since the actuaries, presumably, already know of a pretty serious pre-existing condition, and would certainly want to factor this in, and maybe—maybe—not insure these people, yes?

We don't know?

Maybe?

While also doing a little more deregulating ... of course. What group of conservative Republicans wouldn't want to do a little more deregulating?

Did I mention they also want to lower the dividend and capital gains tax?

McCain, silent and opaque on stage, is reportedly with them in principle.

Stay tuned! 

And to get you started on what promises to be a Very Exciting Day, check out Krugman and Halperin, below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/opinion/26krugman.html?ex=1380168000&en=0b1abaac54e77e05&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

http://thepage.time.com/

The Stunt Man

When confronted with a crisis, one might say it is virtually an axiom that the person who shows up with an overdone eagerness to help is hardly ever the person one had really hoped would show, hardly ever the person whose help one could really use at the moment, and that such a person nearly always has ulterior motives, the degree of which can be measured by the pitch of his eagerness.

So it is, perhaps, with John McCain, deciding at the 11th hour, after a slew of polls indicate that victory for him and the sassy beauty queen of Wassila on November 4th is slipping away, to "suspend" his campaign, and Friday's debate (he hopes), so that he can jump in and lend a hand on matters that, frankly, are so over his head (and Obama's, for that matter) that he might as well be setting everything aside to help Stephen Hawking work out a calculation on black holes.

As many who are paying attention know by now: it was actually Obama who called McCain early yesterday morning, to discuss issuing a joint statement on the financial crisis—something that might be helpful, given the magnitude of the problem, its abstruse and obdurate particulars that hardly anyone understands—after which, some six hours later, McCain got back to Obama, saying, Yes, let's consider that—and by the way, maybe we should call off our campaigns (since I'm falling further behind and feel the need to take another desperate tack) and Friday's debate (since it probably won't help me at the moment) and go do a little bull in the china closet photo op in Washington.

He then goes on TV and announces all this, gets a bunch of BREAKING NEWS headlines, and everyone from Orrin Hatch to Newt Gingrich is crowing that it's the bravest thing ever.

While Barney Frank, on MSNBC, remarked, "Oh, it's just a stunt—"

See video of Obama's press conference below (and pass it on if you'd like, to as many others as you'd like). Also, below, is the link to this morning's article in the NYT on the subject.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/invite/bolatestremarks/

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/25/us/politics/25campaign.html?ex=1380081600&en=ff252af46d305029&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

And today, our Man in The White House—Katrina W., Or, The Bush who Cried Wolf (but is Really Serious This Time)—will host Obama and McCain to Get This Thing Hammered Out, before it's too late ...

You might as well be calling me in to help get your bathroom project finished before your wife divorces you. Because I've got news for you: unless I've got my checkbook on me, and money in the account—lots of it—I'm not going to be of much help.

You can argue that letting Hank Paulson, of Wall Street, the former bigshot at Goldman Sachs, run this bailout is like turning the fox loose in the hen house, and you might be right. I would say better Hank Paulson than, say, any of the people who have been questioning him these last couple of days, since in all likelihood they're just less competent foxes—people, in any case, who might be just as easily corrupted by $700 billion dollars as the next person—but I could be wrong. 

So we put the brakes on this thing long enough to get some democracy into the oversight at least, some checks and balances built in, and preferably an equity position; let's see to it that Hank buys this lousy debt for pennies on the dollar, just like Barclays bought Lehman. Let's, if we have the time, drive a hard bargain, just like Warren Buffett did with Goldman Sachs. 

Let's, if we're going to get into the capital markets, even if only as a sponge for lousy debt to spare our economy untold misery, go in with the reasonable hope that, long-term, at least, we're going to make a killing.

As Barclays will. As Warren Buffett will. People, unfortunately, who understand what is happening much better than the average American taxpayer, who not only have a good grasp on the currently unsteady system that supports us, but very likely, also, see through the stagecraft we're seeing this week, the manufactured drama around a fait accompli. 

Let's hope—and hope is the best we can do—if we can't necessarily make a killing, that we can at least get a good deal for our $700 billion. That the people taking care of things are paying better attention than the banks who gave out the loans and then sold them to an eager, awaiting Wall Street, than the people who thought it was a good idea to get a loan with no money down, paying interest only, in a hot market, at a teaser rate, to buy a house, the price of which they thought would go up forever.

Let's hope Hank Paulson, or whoever we get to see to this mess, isn't that kind of fool. 

And let's hope, down the line, when we're in hock up to our ears, that we aren't so damned stupid as to let the same hustlers who got us into this mess tell us that what we really need to do now is jettison Social Security, and Medicare, and maybe the VA, too, because we just don't have the money anymore. Too much debt, don't know how that happened, but anyway—we certainly can't be raising taxes, because that would just encourage government, and that's never a good idea unless we say it is. 

We like to think of ourselves as being all Emersonian self-reliant types, but the truth is we're at the mercy of a system we have little understanding of. 

We're on the tit of a mom who really doesn't love us very much. 

And act as though we're lucky to have her.

 

McCain's "Straight Talk"

Share with those still on the fence ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLfsG8XKWfw

Trickle Down Misery

Leave it to George Will to provide me with the title of today's post.

Mr. Will, who also said sometime back (and here I must paraphrase): If the Democrats can't win this year, they need to get into a different line of work.

Amen, George.

We are (the United States Treasury is) about to spend, in one fell swoop, $700 billion dollars—roughly the amount spent thus far on the Iraq War—to buy up arcane derivatives that the free market can't seem to sell at the moment, and thus take that burden off the private sector.

Treasury is doing this—socializing the losses—because to not do this, they say (and I believe them) would be a disaster, the likes of which the average individual can't begin to comprehend.

We can be sure of this for at least two reasons: 

1. Because there's no goddamn way Treasury, drunk and tripping on acid, would even be joking about a $700 billion purchase of  assets that no one else wants (after already committing to $85 billion for AIG, and around $200 billion for Fannie and Freddie) unless things weren't already a football field of minefields beyond dire.

2. Because we aren't hearing a peep out of the Ghost of Milton Friedman, nor out of his All Hail the God-like Wisdom of the Free Market disciples, our good friends at the Club for Growth (who, instead, here in Colorado, are putting out ads excoriating Colorado's Democratic candidate for the Senate, Mark Udall, for "Eminent Domain Abuse," which seems an odd thing for bare knuckles capitalists to be getting upset about at the moment), along with the esteemed True Believer Grover Norquist, who is possibly relieved, if he has any exposure to any kind of free market at all right now, that he didn't in fact drown the Big Bad Baby Government he so hates in the bathtub, like he was talking about doing when times were better. Perhaps they are all in a bunker somewhere, with pistols and a gas can, or else deciding how this, too, is the fault of liberals.

The upside: at least, all told, this isn't our money getting utterly pissed down a rat hole, like the $700 billion or so that has so far gone to the Iraq War, where, to paraphrase Scarlet O'Hara, nothing has gone at all like we expected. At least we have something to show for it, something to sell (unlike the oil we thought we would have), though we aren't sure exactly what it is or what it is worth, or who, one day, will buy it.

Perhaps, now that we are doubling down, as it were, on our Iraq party, to pay off the mess of another party, we can get past this discussion of whether The Surge is working or whether it isn't; since, at this point, that is a bit like arguing whether a rape victim had an orgasm or didn't have an orgasm. 

Instead, perhaps we can discuss whether taking our country to war on false pretenses is worthy of sending a few people to The Hague, to stand trial for war crimes (or, as Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor in the Manson Trial, argues in his new book, bring them to trial in this country, on up to 4,000 charges of Conspiracy to Commit Murder). 

Perhaps, rather than himming and hawing about The Surge, we can do what Treasury is about to do in less than a week: suck it up and admit we made a big mistake. We trusted it would all be fine, and if it had all been fine, we didn't want to be remembered as the asshole in the corner complaining.

Alas, this time it wasn't. And so we hear Sam Donaldson on ABC this morning (that is a hairpiece, right?), invoking the late Hunter S. Thompson: it's Fear and Loathing out there.

Trickle down misery, says George Will.

And so, maybe, just maybe, we can get to discussing John McCain's past judgment on economic matters: his cosiness with The Keating Five back in 1989 (those people who brought us the S&L Crisis), as well as his recent remarks that our economy is fundamentally sound (which is why Treasury is about to spend nearly a trillion dollars to shore up one of our fundamentally sound economy's biggest drivers), and that a good place to start making things even more fundamentally better would be to fire the head of the SEC, Chris Cox—which, even if you don't much care what happens to Chris Cox, is kind of like putting Pete Rose's bookie in jail, and maybe firing the head of operations at Caesar's Palace, rather than kicking Pete Rose out of baseball for betting on baseball while he was managing one of baseball's teams.

Anyway, Frank Rich has much more to say on John McCain's generally undiscussed history of poor judgment when it comes to economic matters, in today's Must Read editorial in the New York Times. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/opinion/21rich.html?ex=1379649600&en=b0cb604a759e8234&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Before I go, let me say that, considering the fine mess we're in at the moment, considering our limited options, our even more limited time-frame to do something before the whole Ponzi scheme comes right in our front doors, I am okay, relieved almost, that Henry Paulson, a smart man with a tired scratchy voice, a veteran of Wall Street, not a mayor from some small town in Alaska ( and you thought I was going to leave her alone today), is at the helm, taking care of matters. That, in all likelihood, Barney Frank's objections aside, this arcane debt will get handed over, in lots, to a few of the smarter 20% of mutual fund managers, to decode and sell, which, on the surface of it, seems to create an unbelievable conflict of interest, but, as Steve Liesman (sitting next to the lovely Erin Burnett, both of CNBC) said today on Meet the Press: if you're trying to exhume bodies, it might be best to get those who know where the bodies are buried involved. It was the same logic FDR used in putting Joseph Kennedy, one of the grand manipulators of the stock market during the 1920's, in charge of reforming the SEC during The Depression—you want to put up barriers to protect the chickens, talk to a wolf, preferably one who's had his run.

In any case, now that things are serious, it's comforting to know that we aren't arguing to have some clown with no experience or interest in the matter steer the ship out of the mess. That would be silly, wouldn't it? 

So, we'll see how it all works out. Until then, do what you can for the bottom line and pay your taxes, shop till you drop. Let's make it a great Christmas season!

Who's Your Daddy Now?

The United States of America, unlike many countries, does not have what is referred to on the Street as a Sovereign Fund—a pile of taxpayer cash looking for investment opportunities that will, it is hoped, make some good coin for the country. 

But when our companies get in trouble—particularly those you'd think would never in our lifetime or anyone else's get in serious trouble, ever—they come running to Daddy.

And Daddy, in spite of being laughed at and ridiculed, told to his face, by these very same people, what a pointless, irrelevant, unnecessary albatross he is, and that he should just Leave Them Alone, Get Off Their Back, that the best thing to do with Daddy, one even joked, would be to drown him in a bathtub—comes to their rescue.

But Daddy, to his credit, drives a hard bargain.

In this case, when he lends $85 billion to his tits up son, who, he's come to the painful realization, has his fingers in enough pies that one wouldn't be able to get a decent dessert for years to come if Daddy didn't step in.

So Daddy asks: Where are all your buddies now? Why not ask your wise and plucky laissez-faire chums for a loan. I've got enough problems of my own.

But none of the son's buddies are lending anyone anything. 

So Daddy, after making the son sweat, and after listening to untold numbers of pleas and shrieks, a multitude of tears and plaintive stories about all the son's debts—that there isn't a soul in town he doesn't owe money, and yet every soul in town is counting on him to be there, at the bar on Wednesday, to buy them drinks, before they bet their money on next week's games (it's a complicated mess, he's told, a catastrophe waiting to happen—tells the son, I'll lend you the money.

Oh, thank you thank you thank you, the son, on his knees now, blubbers.

At 8.5% over LIBOR, Daddy adds.

What? the son replies, shocked. I might as well go to a loan shark.

Go to a loan shark, Daddy says. I wish you would.

All right, all right—Jesus! That's over 10%! That's highway robbery!

That's Daddy deciding what the market will bear—certainly you can't begrudge me that. Still, if you're not certain ...

No no no, I'm certain. Jesus!

Just be glad you aren't your brother, says Daddy. He didn't have his finger in quite as many pies, and look what happened to him. $1.75 billion he got from his buddies: 1.5 billion for the house, and a trifling 250 million for his operations. A little over a year ago it was all worth $45 billion. That's life in the fast lane, son. And if I were fair and indiscriminate, I'd leave you to the mercy of your buddies, too. But I won't. Because, to be honest, it would just make my life even more miserable. And I don't need that now, what with all my other troubles.

Daddy gets out his checkbook. How much do you need again?

The son hangs his head, mumbles, 85 billion.

Euros? 

No, no, Jesus—just dollars.

Just dollars. Well thank God for that.

Daddy, in spite of everything said about him, appears to still have his sense of humor, and while he writes the check, adds, By the way, that new fellow you hired to run your life, tell him to find another job.

What? Why? He didn't do anything.

I rest my case.

But he didn't do anything!

Daddy sets his pen down, looks up at the son.

All right, all right. Jesus!

Truth is, I looked around and found a new fellow—an old friend of mine; we used to work together; you're going to love him—to run your life. At least for the next couple of years. Until I get back my 85 billion, plus the 8.5% over LIBOR—

In two years! the son exclaims. You expect me not only to pay you back, but in two years? You must be joking.

Lest I remind you, son, money doesn't grow on trees. Daddy has to print it.

You can't do this! This is bullshit!!

I can do anything. I'm Daddy. And I'm all you got. 

Daddy tears out the check. Here, he says. I'd cash it soon if I were you.

The son reaches for the check, but Daddy pulls it away, points to his pale, wrinkled cheek. How about a little kiss for Daddy, before you go?

The son is aghast. Tries to grab the check, but Daddy is too quick. 

Just a peck on the cheek, son. It'll make Daddy feel good.

The son sighs, gives Daddy his peck on the cheek. Daddy smiles, hands him the check. 

When you see your friends, Daddy tells him as he's leaving, Speak well of me.

Yeah, says the son, crumpling the check from Daddy and stuffing it in his pocket. Sure thing.

 

The Morning After

After Monday's rout on Wall Street, Asia gets beat up badly, with Europe likely to follow as I write this. 

AIG, heavily into the derivatives business (insurance, essentially), fell 60%, after Merrill's "shotgun marriage" to Bank of America, and the bankruptcy filing of venerable, century and a half old Lehman Brothers. 

These are not Enrons, or Global Crossings, or World Coms—companies that came out of no where to do things that few people understood, shot up and then, relatively quickly, crashed. What we saw on Monday was more like waking up after a long weekend to find out the Boston Red Sox were no longer a baseball team.

Anyone who thinks this is going to sort itself out quickly, by November 4th, by year's end, is dreaming. But it will, eventually, sort itself out, though not in time for John McCain. No, the casino going berserk is not good for John McCain, who is beginning to sound like Hoover back in '32 ...

Let's hope this mess gets sorted out quicker than that one.

And otherwise not get ahead of ourselves. There is still Tuesday to reckon with. While we wait, check out the thoughtful conservative David Brooks, on the subject of experience.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/opinion/16brooks.html?ex=1379217600&en=143f7b9776f9f2b7&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Tina Does Sarah

http://www.clearspring.com/widgets/4727a250e66f9723?p=48cd3b64ddb82bd0

"I can see Russia from my window!"

Links

http://thepage.time.com/

http://mudflats.wordpress.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/us/politics/14palin.html?ex=1379131200&en=dd4449ce3310ba6e&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
http://narrativemagazine.com/

Many thanks to my friend, Carl, who has just taught me how to actually create a link on the blog that you can click (and not have to cut and paste and otherwise mess around more than you should have to). 

Above are a small number of links mentioned in the blog—notably, Sunday's story in the Times on Ms. Palin; also, the link to The Page, Mark Halperin's fine and cogent compendium of the day's political news; Mudflats, a blog out of Alaska; and the link to Narrative Magazine, an excellent, cutting-edge online literary magazine edited by Carol Edgarian and Tom Jenks, where an excerpt to my novel can be read (see About Me section, to the left).

That's all for now. Sleep well.

Lady McPalin

By all means read the cover story in this Sunday's New York Times, which is not short, but paints as thorough of a picture as any the mainstream media has yet composed on the ambitious young woman John McCain has chosen to be his running mate.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/us/politics/14palin.html?ex=1379131200&en=dd4449ce3310ba6e&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

As Bob Herbert, in an editorial in the same paper, points out (perhaps for the benefit of silly optimists such as myself), this whole American Idol schtick isn't just over the top, it might just prevail.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/13/opinion/13herbert.html?ex=1379044800&en=cb1dc3a3ddae456e&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

And what then?

Dare we speculate?

Now the Far Right, Rush Limbaugh's crowd, has never quite trusted John McCain. For good reason. Since they suspect, and are probably correct in their suspicion, that he finds them and their ilk to be a bunch of ignorant, intolerant assholes.

George W. Bush, temperamentally speaking, was much better suited to sidling up to these folks than John McCain ever was, or ever will be.

But John McCain knows, as George W. did, that you can't as a Republican get elected president without paying tribute to these folks. 

Dubya, for instance, in spite of being an Ivy League rich kid who weaseled his way out of a war he supported by joining, with Daddy's help, the National Guard, and then didn't show up, was also, luckily for his future presidential ambitions, a long-standing and repeated fuck-up who drank, who then found Jesus and quit, before deciding he wanted to be president. 

A much better profile, altogether, for someone seeking to be the Republican nominee for president, than being a former Navy pilot and prisoner of war, who shot off his mouth about Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell not being very tolerant folks.

So McCain had to do something, since remarks like that, irrespective his being respected and praised on occasion by Democrats, are going to dig into that pretty well certain 30% of the vote you're going to get if you either talk like a hayseed and have a personal relationship with Jesus, or if you're really cute and sassy, it turns out, and have a personal relationship with Jesus—assuming, of course, you're Against Abortion and Against Gay People Getting Married (and also, Heaven forbid, having gay people, married or otherwise, adopting children whose Mom decided not to have an abortion, but didn't want to get married at seventeen either). 

Now, as a very quick aside, don't misunderstand me: I'm all for people who drink too much, or drug too much, who've messed their lives up royally, and probably a lot of other lives, too, finding Jesus—someone, something, anything, that'll help them quit being that way, and keep them off the highways, where they might otherwise kill people I care about. I would just argue that the logical next step, after finding Jesus and swearing off the booze, shouldn't necessarily be stepping onto Air Force One.

And I know—I know—Sarah Palin wasn't a drunk, she was a beauty queen. She didn't join the National Guard, or have baseball team bought for her so she'd stay out of trouble; she didn't get into much trouble in the first place, won a pageant, got into television, had a family: she has the courage of her convictions ... she doesn't so much appeal to these folks as she is these folks.

Which makes her even more qualified for be a Heartbeat Away from the Presidency, yes? 

Where, in this case, our president would be pretty old, anyway, and already looks pretty tired and worn out, not to mention pale ... 

One of these folks that even the Bush Administration, according to one book by a former staffer, ridiculed, made fun of ... only this one has looks and focus, and surrounds herself with folks like her—though not quite as good-looking, or clever. Who, turns out, aren't very New Testament-like in the way they play with others. 

Meaning, you'd better be careful if you go ridiculing this one, or you'll end up ... smote.

Anyway, she's John McCain's running mate. And if he wins in November, he's going to be mighty beholden to her and folks like her—folks whom the party needs, increasingly, but as yet hasn't had to remodel the store for.

But if you're the vice-president, and think the store needs remodeling, big-time, even though you really don't understand much about the store, much less how it runs, or how it was modeled in the first place, and the someone who actually runs the store dies and leaves you with it ...

You might be like a scary, megalomaniac-type 16-year-old given a Big Store to Run. 

Unless you just can't wait that long. Because a whole lot of people, and maybe even God, have got you convinced that you ought to get the store however which way you can. Before it's too late and we all get hauled off by the Rapture.

Or is that too fantastic?

Read the Times article, tell me if I'm way off.

And what if John McCain gets elected and decides, like presidents before him, that he's only going to do so much to placate these folks whose ideas are pretty Out There, and Intolerant, who he's never really liked much anyway but who, nonetheless, got all excited when one of their kind joined the ticket and not only helped his inconstant, tired self get elected, but actually—they'd argue, vociferously—Got R Done?

What then?

How would the Original Mavericks play together in that circumstance?

Being, as they are, kind of different in their approach to mavericking. Each, by and large, getting his or her reputation for pissing off people like the other.

So, what happens when these two mavericks inevitably collide? 

And can it please happen before November 4th?

A Modest Proposal

For those of you who think Ms. Heartbeat Away has been beat up enough by people like me, find something else to do.

However, if you think that the last eight years ought to provide more than sufficient reason to be skeptical—very skeptical—of putting a person whose capacity for reasonable, intelligent thought are, to say the least, limited, in charge, or one step away, from running what is still the most powerful country on Earth, then read on. And consider checking out the sites below: Krugman's editorial today, as well as two blogs that contain plenty of good reading.

About Ms. Heartbeat Away. And what she's like. This woman whose social views are the farthest to the right of anyone who has held the office of Vice-President of the United States.  

What we know: there aren't enough lock step Republicans out there to win this election, and the Democrats aren't going to vote for her ...

So, whether we have a more youthful version of Phyllis Schlafly (who remarks in this week's New Yorker, in "The Talk of the Town," that Ms. Palin is just that, a "youthful version" of her) as our next Vice-President, or a person with thirty-plus years of experience as a senator, with estimable foreign policy credentials, is going to come down to convincing those who don't care much about politics to care at least enough to put someone in the job who knows something about the job. 

Who cares about government, be it big or small; who thinks it ought to be, at the very least, good and competent. Not just another venue to help the already rich and strong.

It will involve, I think, convincing a critical mass of people that Sarah Palin, quite ironically, wouldn't have a chance in hell of being in the position she is currently in if she didn't hold some arguably insane ideas on how our world was created, and what sort of say a woman ought to have when it comes to what goes on with her womb.

Her being a woman really doesn't have that much to do with the phenomenon of Sarah Palin.

Anymore that having a father who was black has much to do, really, with the phenomenon that is Barack Obama.

Their appeal can't be explained by either gender or race. Though both sides are acting as though it can.

A better question perhaps: How did both get to where they are? Each with relative swiftness.

One graduated from Harvard Law School and became a United States senator, and wrote, without help, two books. Another, with a more modest education, quite a lot more modest, believes that the story of creation told in Genesis should be taught as science (and, trust me, couldn't write a book on her own if her life depended on it), and, using her beliefs in a local election, first, where those beliefs would have no impact, became Mayor of a small town, then governor of a state.

Is it too strong of a statement to say: One got there by appealing to intelligence, another by appealing to ignorance?

One phenon believes that a woman ought to have to, by law, give birth to and raise the child of her rapist, or brother—anyone who gets her knocked up, really, regardless of the circumstances—and another who believes that, while such an exercise might lead to love of a transcendent sort, that not everyone is capable of that sort of thing, and shouldn't be forced to be by law ...

And that, just maybe, we shouldn't be making assumptions on what God is willing to happen to others, especially when it comes to another person's suffering, or when horrible things happen to that person, because if you've ever had something really horrible happen to you, you know, or should, that it can be really hurtful to put up with a lot of ignorant judgment to boot.

And so it really isn't very Christian, or decent, or civilized, to have laws that make a woman, in this case, suffer the consequences, regardless.

Is it?

I would venture to say most people agree with me on this. Men and women. In this country, and most others.

And so what, other than her strange beliefs, does Sarah Palin bring to the table? Because we know what Barack Obama, despite his limited experience, brings to the table. Everyone does, whether they like to believe it or not.

Who of us would be intimidated talking with Sarah Palin about, say, the nuances of foreign policy?

Who of us, then, would be intimidated talking with Joseph Biden, or that upstart, inexperienced Barack Obama, about the nuances of foreign policy? 

In all three cases: why?

Would you be comfortable going to court with a lawyer you thought you could out-argue?

Question: What kind of crazy Republican would want to overturn Roe v. Wade? 

Answer: One who doesn't know where his or her bread is buttered.

You want to see a person with the sensibilities of Sarah Palin become utterly irrelevant, overturn Roe v. Wade ...

But they'd just find something else, wouldn't they.

So forget that.

We don't have time for that anyway.

So, if we just get, say, 75% of voting women to vote for the ticket that doesn't have someone on it who believes a woman, by law, ought to have the baby of her rapist or brother simply because it wouldn't have happened in the first place if God didn't want it to, I think we're in good shape. 

Very good shape, probably.

If we got just three out of four women to agree ... that Ms. Heartbeat Away has little to recommend her to high public office other than some extreme and scary beliefs that, for reasons that can't be easily explained, appeal to the supposedly Christian base of a party whose guiding principal derives from the founder of Evolution, Darwin—Survival of the Fittest, we, Obama folks, would be in good shape.

We wouldn't have to pray so hard for the republic.

Maybe.

But I'm telling you: We're either tuned in to a nervous breakdown in progress among our friends in the Republican Party, or we are, at this point, a country by and large content to let the lunatics run the asylum.

Three out of four women, though, and we aren't having this argument. 

Check out the sites below. And thank you, Linda. Thank you, Molly. More like you.

Mudflats blog, courtesy of The New Yorker.

Have good weekend!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/opinion/12krugman.html?ex=1378958400&en=c086f0651fb9c71b&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

http://womenagainstsarahpalin.blogspot.com/

http://mudflats.wordpress.com/

Mea Culpa

It turns out that, according to Snopes (which I'm just learning about, and should checked sooner), the quotes attributed to Sarah Palin are made up; the book list is also made up—notably, one of the Harry Potter books was published after the alleged incident with the Wasilla librarian, which, apparently, did happen, though specific books weren't apparently mentioned, and none were ever banned.

See: http://www.snopes.com/politics/palin/newsquotes.asp

We don't like it when they do it to our guys (and gals); we'll try not to do it to theirs.

Rattle and Hum regrets the mistake, and will try to do better next time.

The China Syndrome

I thought today—a rare overcast, drizzly day here on the Front Range, and therefore a fine day to sit down and try to finish (again) a novel—that I'd avoid this fiddling about with politics and current events, pontificating online and the like, and maybe read some Yeats, finish the Alice Munro story in the most recent New Yorker, and get down to Finishing the Novel, so I can make millions, in addition to having the kind of fulfillment people who follow their dreams can sometimes have.

But as anyone who has ventured into this world for any length of time (and has over 100 rejection slips taped to their office wall [like some perverse kook], along with, in my case, admittedly, a copy of a check written to me for a work of fiction—an excerpt from this novel, in fact—as well as a copy of a signed agreement with my agent—again, for this novel, the one I'd better finish, and damned well, someday) knows: Giving up a decent paycheck to follow one's dream can, and often does, end in bitter failure, at least at the commercial level; and so the dreamer, unless utterly delusional (which has its advantages), spends a fair amount of time trying to shove visions of themselves sitting in a small room someday, ala Howard Hughes without the money but still with the long, untrimmed nails, say, explaining to their children that Daddy actually did try to live his dream but it just didn't work out so well, which is why, instead of playing hockey, or the cello, they need to work (unlike Daddy, whose appearance would be a problem in the job market) and, btw, give 50% of the wages they make at the fast food restaurant back to Mom and Dad, to help pay bills ... we try to shove those visions out of our mind, so we can create.

We don't even joke in this house about what happens to the writer in The Shining, though a lot of my friends do, especially the ones with jobs. Probably because they'd just love to see me lose it, entirely, so long as I didn't have to come, with my family, to live in their basement—which is how I screw with them back.

Anyway, dreamy notions of writing aside, you'd pretty much rather cut your toenails than take that initial step of planting your backside in the chair.

Well, I'm halfway to it ...

I'm just writing this first. 

Having been distracted over my oatmeal by Adam Davidson's very lucid and understandable report on NPR of the government stepping in to help out the once no-brainer, must-own-in-one's-portfolio companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

As some of you may know, I am fairly sophisticated when it comes to the investment world, at creating an illusion of wealth, pulling rabbits out of my hat, that sort of thing, and over the years have taken comfort in this knowledge, here and there (when not shoving ugly visions from my mind) believing it will keep me from ending up like a penniless version of Howard Hughes, with long nails in an unkept room, explaining to my children ...

As old Ron would say: There I go again.

But ... what I mean to say is: in spite of my being able to hold my own in financial conversations at cocktail parties, I would not want to have to explain exactly what either of these two companies do ... precisely. Not to a normal person. Neither would Henry Paulsen, I don't think.

But Adam Davidson, on NPR this morning, did a pretty good job, telling us how, essentially, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac help us Americans get into debt on our homes for less money than we might otherwise. And since we get our debt on our homes so cheap, we more often than not get into more debt by buying a bunch of other stuff—a lot of it from China, as it turns out—and our doing this, buying stuff, more from other countries than the other countries do from us, is called Having a Trade Deficit. 

In particular, we have a Big Trade Deficit with China—we send them about a billion dollars more each day than they send us in their currency, the yuan, to buy stuff. And what they do, then, or have been doing, with that money is buy, or invest, in our financial instruments, notably bonds issued by Fannie and Freddie, once thought to be a pretty safe bet, and with a decent yield to boot ... until it turned out that they weren't anymore, on account of all this funny bundling of mortgages, many of which, long and short, went, or are about to go, tits up. And so China didn't want to buy Fannie and Freddie's debt anymore.

Since I have small kids, I tend to think of it like the house who has all the kids over to play, and then takes the toys that the kids left behind and sells them on, say, Craig's List, to that they can afford to add a new addition, a master bathroom, a finished basement, so more kids want to come over and play and leave their toys ... until it's discovered that a few of these toys are contaminated with, say, weapons-grade plutonium, and the whole scheme falls apart.

Which, getting back to Fannie and Freddie's bonds, was a problem. And not just for Fannie and Freddie, which, you'd think, us being all free market nuts and all, we'd just say, Tough Shit, Fannie and Freddie. 

But, turns out we can't do that. Since our country, after the surplus days created by the liberal, buy and spend Clinton Administration, is now in debt up to its yin-yang after being run by the no funny business, Grover Norquist ally free marketers, the conservative Bush Administration. And so we can't, unfortunately, here in the short-term, at least, afford to have flush commie run countries like China not buying Fannie and Freddie's debt instruments. 

Unless we, the whole country, wants to end up just like Fannie and Freddie.

Which is why our current administration—the one who wanted to privatize social security, the one who vociferously opposes, as a rule, the government getting into our business (except when it comes to abortion, and gays getting married, and little libraries in Wasilla having books like The Catcher in the Rye on its shelves—nonsense like that), decided that it would be best for everyone involved if they just took over the companies. Nationalized them, as it were, at least in the short-term. Though that sounds terrible.

And maybe isn't exactly the same thing as when that nut job Hugo Chavez does it down south. 

Though, again, I wouldn't want to have to explain the difference to someone at a cocktail party who doesn't know the difference.

Anyway, the great thing I know, being a sharp money guy and all the rest, is that we—taxpayers—have just bought a couple of formerly top notch companies with government ties on the cheap. On a big dip. Which what they mean when they say, Buy Low, Sell High. Buy while the blood was flowing in the streets, as they say in the investment world. And so if we just sit tight, when Fannie and Freddie roar back someday, we're all going to be rich, right?

No? Not necessarily? 

Well ... actually, it turns out, we haven't really, the taxpayers, invested in these companies in quite that way. 

The better way to look at it is: it's like when you lend money to one of your relatives, with the unspoken understanding that, having slid them some cash, they won't bug you for a while. You don't really expect the cash back, to get a return, really, you'll just be happy, frankly, if they don't come next month and want to move into your basement. 

It's more like that.

And that's what we, the taxpayers, did today. Kept some tits up relatives from moving into our basement.

Where, keep in mind, without Social Security, and Medicaid, we might not have the room in the first place. Our basements would be packed full of tits up relatives who bought too much stuff from China and didn't dollar-cost-average into the market from the time they were young, like smart people managing their own retirement ought to, but wouldn't necessarily have to. Which might well bring out in all of us that Special Kind of Love that Ms. Heartbeat Away talks about. Or not. But it could happen.

So, before you go, read a little more on Ms. Heartbeat Away, and try to keep in mind that if history is any guide, people are going to eat her up. After all, the much maligned (now) Checker's Speech by Richard Nixon back in the early fifties saved his career (the first time). People, by and large, loved it. 

And Sarah, I'd say, is doing better than talking about good Republican cloth coats.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/08/business/media/08carr.html?ex=1378612800&en=95c2d17d97c5b2e4&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Keeping in mind, for all her charm and good looks and sassiness, that she pretty well believes that dinosaur fossils are God's way of screwing with our heads (perhaps she would put The Natural History Museum, all of them, on eBay, turn them into big churches, that wouldn't have to pay taxes), that she was in favor of that bridge to nowhere before she wasn't, and likes her pork as well as she does her caribou, that she believes, as a practical matter, that if your uncle takes a lurid shine to you when you're 14 and you end up pregnant, that you ought to have the child and like it, because that's just the way the chips fell for you, sweetheart, and all the sex education in all the public schools supported by government money [like Ms. Heartbeat Away's salary] ain't gonna change that, or ruin your chances to develop a Special Kind of Love with you and your uncle's offspring. 

So, buck up girls—and parents, get your girls a horse, or a 30-06, something to take their minds off the cold hard facts of life, which we have no business talking about anyway.

Read it, because McCain and Ms. Heartbeat Away are now up 50-46% in the latest USA Today/Gallup poll. Mostly because folks just think Sarah's a kick.

Thankfully, no one has taken me up on that $100 yet.

I'm going to be sick, and then finish that novel, right now.

"Raging Rajas of Resentment"

It's Friday. The RNC is over and—the race is on. Don't panic, and hold fast. 

For today's reading, see Paul Krugman's article in the New York Times: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/opinion/05krugman.html?ex=1378353600&en=afb2b2413bc89607&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Also, today, from Our Man N. Howe, the working partner in the law firm Rattle & Hum retains full-time, for obvious reasons (see below), check out: 

http://www.crooksandliars.com/

Scroll way down to the "John Stewart Exposes ... " section, and see what Uncle Karl has to say, as well as a few other incongruous souls.

And finally, coming soon: Look for Free Legal Advice from Rattle and Hum's august law firm, Dewey, Diddlum & Howe, where name partner, Les Diddlum, will answer your questions in a column entitled: ASK LES. It promises to be very exciting, and, as noted, free, since Les, by his own admission, is rather shamelessly using this forum to drum up business for the firm, which I won't quibble with, since I am in frequent need of their services, and owe them lots of money, and we all know, anyway, that it isn't wise to look a gift horse in the mouth. 

In addition—and in the spirit of full disclosure—I should also mention that Our Man Lester is coming off a little dry out, an unusual period of community-imposed temperance, which, I've heard from the other partners, who aren't happy about it, didn't agree with him at all, and has done little more than set Les back even further than he normally is, which is saying a lot. In any event, Les is back in his office, stocking the bar with a good brand of gin even as I write this post, and tells us that once he gets his office tidied a little, the water in the hot tub changed, a new ribbon in the typewriter, and perhaps a new jar of olives, he'll be ready to go. We hope.

So, stay tuned. And send in your questions, via the comment section at the end of this post. Les'll get to them as soon as he can.

Be well, and enjoy the weekend.

The Beauty Queen of Wassila

I certainly hope some of you watched the speech last night, and got good and scared—because she was good. She had um all whooped up there at Excel Center in St. Paul, where the Minnesota Wild plays hockey, and the base has found its savior. 

 She ain't no cream puff, this one. With her background in beauty pageants and television, she seemed quite at home on the big stage. In fact, you got the sense, there at the end, that the base would have liked to switch out their candidates—run her instead of that treacherous old tired looking bastard McCain. Sarah wouldn't fuck um, not like that shit McCain has time and again. She'd get rid of that Liberal Washington Establishment. Just like she got rid of that luxury jet up there in Juneau. Just like she might even, given the chance, put Air Force One on EBay, get rid of those cooks that put together the cottage cheese and ketchup for Nixon, and the goddamn limousines and motorcades, and the Service Service—no, it wouldn't hurt those Washington types one bit to order out like all the rest of us, fly commercial with all the rest of us assholes, and buy just the one SUV, with a V-8, preferably, since we have oil to burn on that North Slope, and plenty of room, and get a goddamn dog and a shotgun if they felt they needed protection.

All the money the government pisses away, it's sickening ...

If we could only have Sarah. What a good wholesome kick she'd be, that one. And she likes hockey. You have to love that.

But, you know, the funny thing about these regular good-looking wholesome folks who hate government that I've just never been able to understand is: Why are they so eager to become government officials?

With all the other good jobs they could get with their good looks and cleverness.

I mean really ...

Would you go to a surgeon who does nothing but complain about how stupid doctors are, and how you ought to have your head examined if you ever even considered getting put out and having some palsied half-wit disinterested prick like him (or her) doing an operation on you?

Look, I know all about the special kind of love that a child, children, with special needs brings out in us; and I also know that it is quite a lot easier to keep the flame of that special love constant if you are fortunate enough to get a break from it now and then. If you're able to pass off the moment to moment reality of that beautiful special need to someone else for a good portion of the day, thereby allowing someone else the blessed opportunity to find their own kind of special love with that precious individual that might otherwise, truth be told, be a little bit much to contend with 24/7. 

You could argue that to do this—to spread that love around—is only Christian.

But for such a traditional mother like her, with all those kids, and grandkids coming (I, for one, was happy to see young Bristol was marrying someone her own age, that they might, the two of them, have at least another prom ahead of them, if they can find a sitter), to give all that special love and fulfillment up to go out and get a job in government—why, it would have to be hard, yes?

Now, I know, I'm being sexist, right? No one would be asking what a guy with five kids would be doing with his children while he was off being a big shot government official. And I'm not wondering, in fact, what Ms. Palin does with her five kids while she's out mucking it up in the corners of her government job. She does just what any man does: she farms it out to someone else.

Which some may find a little odd, coming from such a traditional Christian woman, but I say, If she can afford it, if she can get folks to help her, if she can get a break, and wants to go run with the infidels in Washington and, most importantly, Change That Goddamn Place—then more power to her.

And if, to boot, she can draw up in some small way that Lovin Feeling from back in her youth, that little tickle of nostalgia for her pageant days, when she was in front of the camera, on television. All that fun that Bristol might have had, well I don't begrudge her that either.

But I have to tell you—I worry it isn't going to work out so well. Sure, she's riding high now, but she's getting in with a bad sort. Not the most Christian folk there where she's heading. And you don't know what they'll find out. The kind of cruel ironies that might come out about Sarah Palin, as she nears that evil place that is the center of our government.

I'm not saying we're going to find out that in addition to enjoying a good ride on a snowmobile, that she likes being spanked. Not necessarily.

But something. 

You watch. It won't always be so funny.

It could get very scary still.

Very scary.

I'm still taking bets.

  

 

Where are we? Where are we going?

This will short—I have a novel to finish—but take a look at the NY Times article written by William Yardley yesterday, on how Sarah Palin managed to get elected Mayor of Wasilla back when. Perhaps, also, take a look at moderate Republican David Brook's editorial today, in the same paper, and understand that this woman isn't crazy, or incompetent; but she does have a point of view that I would like to think is worrisome to a plurality of this country. 

And it is that point of view—one that is a bit too Little House on the Prairie, a little too born-again-and mean-as-hell Christian for someone waiting first in line off stage, for my tastes—that ought to be considered, good and hard, in the next couple of months.

The question asked by everyone to the left of the Christian Right Chorus that is very possibly (we'll see) leading the GOP to a kind of nervous breakdown: Is this really what the country, and the world, need right now?

Enough? Or, Higher and Deeper?

There are consequences to personal decisions that will play out with or without the pundits help. So, if Sarah Palin and her husband are eager to be proud grandparents, if they're elated that there 17-year-old daughter is about to have a child and get married and have their lives possibly under a Real Big Microscope during their early years as a newlywed couple, that is their business.

Just as it was John and Elizabeth Edwards' business to press forth with the husband's candidacy for president after finding out that the wife had had a recurrence of cancer.

As with the reality of a forty-year-old virgin, it might be a sweet thing, and it might not.

But do we really want to find out?