There’s Schadenfreude, and then there’s SCHADENFREUDE
schadenfreude \SHOD-n-froy-duh\, noun:
A malicious satisfaction obtained from the misfortunes of others.
This one tops even Eliot Spitzer.
AP: In the end, O.J. Simpson comes up a loser in Vegas
The OJ sentence is read at 2:07 of the video. Enjoy.
I wish I did a talk show in New York…
…that way I wouldn’t have to worry about being bumped by playoff baseball.:) Once again this week, no show Sunday. Red Sox-Angels first pitch on WRKO at 7:17pm. Go Sox.
Disgraceland
Instead of congratulating each other, Congress ought to be hanging their heads in shame tonight. How many times have we been told in the past two weeks that this is “the most urgent financial crisis since The Great Depression”? What did it take for Congress to do the right thing and allegedly save the US and the global economy? It took $100 billion in pork. Get a load of this.
Taxpayers for Common Sense
Top Tax Sweeteners in the Bailout Bill
Sec. 503. Exemption from excise tax for certain wooden arrows designed for use by children
The estimated cost of the proposal is $2 million over ten years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
The Oregon senators were the initial sponsors of the provisions.
Sec. 317. Seven-year cost recovery period for motorsports racing track facility
The provision would cost $100 million.
Sec. 308. Increase in limit on cover over of rum excise tax to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands
Cost is $192 million.
Sec. 301. Extension and modification of research credit
The two-year extension is estimated to cost $19 billion.
Sec. 504. Income averaging for amounts received in connection with the Exxon Valdez litigation .
Cost is estimated at $49 million
Sec. 601. Secure rural schools and community self-determination program. Secure
Sen. Reid (D-NV) talked about the PILT program being one of the important elements of the package when the Senate passed the bailout bill. Cost $1.1 billion.
Sec. 201. Deduction for state and local sales taxes
The bailout bill extends this provision for 2 years at a cost of $3.3 billion.
Sec 502. Provisions related to film and television productions
The cost is estimated at $478 million over 10 years.
Sec. 325. Extension and modification of duty suspension on wool products; wool research fund; wool duty refunds
The 2010 to 2015 cost is estimated to be $148 million.
Sec. 309. Extension of economic development credit for American Samoa
The cost is $33 million, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
Sec. 211. Transportation fringe benefit to bicycle commuters
This provision is estimated to cost $10 million.
Sec. 323. Enhanced charitable deductions for contributions of food inventory
The cost is $149 million, according to Joint Committee on Taxation.
Sec. 324. Extension of enhanced charitable deduction for contributions of book inventory
Extends by two years, until December 31, 2009, a tax benefit for the contribution of books to public schools. The provision is worth $49 million.
Congress has lived up to their twelve percent approval rating.
What the hell is she smiling about?
Palin wins by not losing; Can we focus on who Barack Obama is now please?
I conducted a two person focus group, in real-time, over instant message, with two Democrats, one male and one female. Both were surprised by how well Palin did. I was surprised by how well everyone was saying Palin did, more than I was surprised by Palin’s performance.
I think Palin should send a dozen roses to Tina Fey this morning. She clearly benefited by people expecting so little from her.
Palin did just ok in my book. She clearly has a wafer thin understanding of most issues outside taxes and energy. She ignored many questions and just retreated to her warm and comfy areas of expertise.
Biden did fine by not being his typical overbearing, blowhard self, so I thought he did well.
Like McCain, Palin left so much on the table. When Biden launched into his complete BS about the credit crisis and how Barack Obama was like the Oracle seeing these problems two years ago, I thought great, here’s an opening to hammer Obama and the Democrats. For once, on this issue of Fannie and Freddie and regulation, it was the Republicans who were calling for it and the Democrats who were against it. This has been well documented and is a rock solid fact.
Two years ago, it was pretty clear that there were problems. Obama taking credit for talking about it is like a guy standing outside a house fire saying “this house might burn to the ground”. Well, no sh*t. It was John McCain and the Republicans in 2003 and 2005 trying to increase regulation over Fannie and Freddie, long before there was a serious crisis. Not once did I hear any of that. So frustrating to watch.
Joe Biden should go to confession this morning or have his mouth washed out with soap for what he said about John McCain and Iraq. It was disgraceful in how dishonest it was.
I love him. As my mother would say, god love him, but he’s been dead wrong on the fundamental issues relating to the conduct of the war. Barack Obama has been right. There are the
facts.
Nobody was more right about what was needed to achieve success in Iraq than John McCain. He was calling for more troops since the war started and was advocating for a surge before one was even proposed. He showed incredible strength and leadership on this issue, all with only one goal in mind, victory for our country and for our troops. It is laid out well in Bob Woodward’s new book, The War Within. That is more than Joe “Partition the country” Biden can say and it’s a hell of a lot more than Barack “Retreat and Defeat” Obama can say. Even to this day, neither Obama or Biden have shown any interest in achieving victory. They never even use the word. They just talk about how fast we can get out.
The last remaining question of the 2008 election is this, can the media coninue to protect Barack Obama until election day?
Will the public at large ever get to know about the nature of his relationship with unrepentent domestic terrorists? Will they ever undertsand how far to the left he is on social issues? Will they ever hear about Obama’s record as a hack machine pol in Chicago? Not likely, since it has no relation to Obama’s rhetoric about hope and change.
For his entire political career, Obama has been a status quo kind of guy. He never worked as a reformer in Illinois. In fact, he thwarted the campaigns of many promising reform minded progressives. You know, people who were what Barack Obama claims to be. He opposed them at every turn in favor of the corruption and incompetence that is the Chicago political culture. In IL and in Congress, Obama has been as partisan as they come. His record of bringing people together does not yet exist.
Yes, when it comes to Obama it is just words. Words about hope and change, a new kind of politics. When you examine Obama’s deeds, you see a different man. You see someone who threatens to put people out of business when they oppose him. When the NRA created negative Obama ads, Obama threatened to pull the licenses of any TV station that broadcast them. How many people know this? Not enough is the correct answer. That is change Mussolini could believe in.
Barack Obama is a complete phony. The record is there for anyone who wants to examine it. The public has four weeks to figure it out on their own, because the MSM will be of no help.
Bottom line: I agree with Barack Obama. He does not have the experience or any record of accomlishment that qualifies him to be president.
Gwen Ifill My Pockets?
VP debate moderator’s impartiality questioned
NEW YORK (AP) - PBS journalist Gwen Ifill, moderator of the upcoming vice presidential debate, dismissed conservative questions about her impartiality because she is writing a book that includes material on Barack Obama.
Ifill said Wednesday that she hasn’t even written her chapter on Obama for the book “The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama,” which is to be published by Doubleday on Jan. 20, 2009, the day a new president is inaugurated.
This is just the latest example of great moments in double standards. Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz calls it “The latest controversy to hit the echo chamber”. He went on CNN and started waiving the race card around, saying how sad it was for people (conservatives) to charge that Ifill can’t be impartial towards Obama becuase she is black. Michelle Malkin says Ifill is doing the same thing.
I was surprised to hear this. She’s black? I hadn’t even thought of that. All I can see is a woman with an obvious conflict and direct financial interest in the outcome of this election.
Simple question: If Barack Obama loses the election, how well do you think a book titled The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama will do?
This is more than the appearance of impropriety. This is the existence of impropriety in that she stands to have a financial benefit from the outcome in favor of one side over the other.
Kurtz is not alone. Others are snickering that conservatives are doing this because they are trying to preempt a much feared poor showing by Palin in the debate. Furthermore, the “timing” of this criticism somehow invalidates it. How convenient. Ignore the obvious financial conflict of interest and point to two irrelevancies. Real honest critique of the media. Very fair and impartial. These same media critics will be writing after the debate how easy Ifill took it on Palin and how this proves the conservative “noise machine” influenced the debate.
Gwen Ifill is a respected journalist but she put herself in this position by not telling, then accepting, the Commission on Presidential Debates offer to moderate.
The host of PBS’”Washington Week” and senior correspondent on “The NewsHour” said she did not tell the Commission on Presidential Debates about the book. The commission had no immediate comment when contacted by The Associated Press.
Should be interesting when Ifill questions the candidates about the need for transparency and disclosure in the Wall Street bailout.
I’m not saying Ifill can’t or won’t be fair to Palin tomorrow night. I’m saying she has a pretty obvious conflict in my opinion and supporters of McCain are justified to be upset about it. While they are at it they should also be asking questions about the competency of the McCain campaign if they are truly just learning about this as they claim.
UPDATE: Some media critics are more honest than others. Here’s the Columbia Journalism Review,
Conflict of interest is often about appearances. There appears, to us, to be a conflict in Ifill moderating tomorrow night’s vice presidential debate….It stands to reason that a book with such a title would sell better if a certain person is inaugurated on that day.
Happy 9th birthday credit crisis
They grow up so fast don’t they?
We didn’t get to where we are today overnight. The crisis we face is the result of a million bad decisions.
Let’s start with us, the public. Many of us thought it was ok to stretch it on a mortgage, after all, prices only go in one direction, up. Plus it was more important to keep up with the Joneses than it was to live within your means. Another set of consumers thought that flipping houses was the way of the future, so they bought and sold, fudged some numbers on their loan docs and many eventually ran into a buzzsaw when the market turned. The third group of consumers as I see it are on the low end of the economic ladder, those who were offered mortgages, often at the behest of the government, that they either couldn’t afford or understand.
The geniuses of Wall Street saw all of this mortgage activity as a form of product development. A technology company develops next generation hardware and software products to sell. Wall Street R&D develops next generation financial engineering which result in new products to sell, like collateral debt obligations.
The purpose of these products is to create tiered cash flows from mortgages and other debt obligations that ultimately make the entire cost of lending cheaper for the aggregate economy. This happens when the original money lenders give out loans based on less stringent loan requirements. The idea is that if they can break up the pool of debt repayments into streams of investments with different cash flows, there will be a larger group of investors who will be willing to buy in.
What about the government? Plenty of blame to go around here too. Attempts by the Bush administration to regulate Fannie and Freddie in 2003 were rebuffed by Democrats like Barney Frank,
”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”
The GOP has to shoulder some of the blame as well, they controlled government for six years while this travesty was allowed to fester. They clearly saw the need for increased regulation as demonstrated by the administration’s attempts to regulate Fannie and Freddie in 2003 and again in 2005. The fact is the GOP had the majority yet didn’t get it the increased regulation they knew to be necessary in place. Same deal with the House Democrats yesterday, they have the majority, and they too failed to get something done.
Everyone is to blame, but some more than others. However, when did this all start? Was there an event that we can point to that led to these millions of bad decisions and the subsequent crisis we now face?
If you believe that Fannie and Freddie are at the core of the crisis, then the answer is yes.
New York Times
September 30, 1999
Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending
In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.
The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets — including the New York metropolitan region — will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.
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.
Is this financial crisis a national emergency or not?
Is this financial crisis a national emergency or not? You would never know it by the behavior of Nancy Pelosi today. Seems like just another peice of legislation to be used for typical Washington bickering. How can anyone defend this partisan hack BS during Pelosi’s speech on the floor today?
Nancy Pelosi put partisan politics ahead of the national interest today. On top of that, she is a weak and feeble leader of the majority party.
Pelosi has 235 members. She needed 218. She could spare 17 members and still pass the bill.
The GOP spotted her 65 members, for a bill that made most Republicans’ skin crawl in both broad outline and in terms of detail.
That meant Pelosi could afford to lose 82 Democrats.
She lost 95.
Sunday night on WRKO: National Review’s David Freddoso; US News’ James Pethokoukis and Chesapeake Energy on natural gas conversion for automobiles
UPDATE: With WRKO being the flagship station for the Red Sox, we are at the mercy of the baseball schedule. The Red Sox were rained out on Saturday and they now have a day-night double header on Sunday which means Pundit Review Radio is bumped for this week. Too bad, we had a great show lined up for you.
I can hardly wait for Sunday night’s edition of Pundit Review Radio.
7pm: David Freddoso of National Review , author of the most indespensible book of the 2008 election, The Case Against Barack Obama
8pm: James Pethokoukis of U.S. News & World Report. James has been all over this Wall Street meltdown. If you are not reading his blog, you are really missing out on some great commentary and insight. He’s been on the show several times now and is an excellent guest.
9pm: Bruce McQuain returns with another edition of Someone You Should Know, our weekly tribute to the men and women fighting for us around the world.
9:30: Thomas S. Price, Jr., SVP of Corporate Development at Chesapeake Energy, America’s largest producer of natural gas. Chesapeake, like T. Boone Pickens, is working to get America to transition from gasoline to natural gas for automobiles. Why? It’s abundent here in America, it’s much cheaper than oil and it is better for the environment. Perhaps you have seen Chesapeake’s TV ads featuring their CEO Aubrey McLendon?
Full disclosure: I have a small amount of CHK shares in an IRA.
McCain won a close debate, but he could have won decisively
I thought McCain won by a few points over Obama. I found the debate very frustrating because Obama gave McCain multiple opportunities on multiple topics to bring the hammer down. The debate was full of missed opportunities for McCain. He won, but he could have won decisively.
The format: I thought the format was excellent. Two minutes for each candidate to answer the question, then an open five minute period for direct exchange between the candidates. One of the worst aspects of our politics is this insistence that everything be spoken in soundbites. To see these guys given room to talk, for relatively long stretches, was helpful to the voters I think. I certainly appreciate hearing these longer exchanges. That said, both candidates, McCain more than Obama, frequently reverted to the most relevant portion of their standard stump speech when answering the questions. It is striking how many times a direct answer to the question was not given. It started with the very first question, about their stance on the current economic rescue package. Here was Lehrer’s first question,
Gentlemen, at this very moment tonight, where do you stand on the financial recovery plan?
After both candidates responded, Lehrer tried again, which I found amusing,
LEHRER: All right, let’s go back to my question. How do you all stand on the recovery plan?
One thing that goes unappreciated is the power that Jim Lehrer has. He and only he developed these questions. With only three presidential debates, and so much riding on them, that is an enormous amount of power. Jim Lehrer used his power well, asking good questions and working in his understated way to try and get the candidates to engage each other directly.
What I found most frustrating was that McCain let Obama off the hook repeatedly. Ed Morrisey at Hot Air notes about one exchange at the very beginning of the debate,
He never challenged Obama’s assumptions that the current credit crisis came from too little regulation. I kept expecting McCain to talk about the disaster of the Community Reinvestment Act, and the mandates from Congress that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac encourage bad lending by buying up bad paper.
Another frustrating exchange was when Obama tried to claim that he had seen this credit crisis coming.
The question, I think, that we have to ask ourselves is, how did we get into this situation in the first place?
Two years ago, I warned that, because of the subprime lending mess, because of the lax regulation, that we were potentially going to have a problem and tried to stop some of the abuses in mortgages that were taking place at the time.
Really? He must have whispered it to someone. Given McCain’s long record of calling for increasing regulation of Wall Street dating back to 2002, he should have been able to hammer Obama on this, but he didn’t. Given the Democrats resistance to regulating Fannie and Freddie when it could have made a difference, he could have hammered Obama, but he didn’t. Given it was the Clinton administration that forced Fannie and Freddie to lower lending standards, he could have hammered Obama, but he didn’t.
During this exchange, Obama also had the most unintentionally funny line of the evening when he said this,
Last year, I wrote to the secretary of the Treasury to make sure that he understood the magnitude of this problem and to call on him to bring all the stakeholders together to try to deal with it.
No doubt, Hank Paulson found Obama’s letter incredibly educational. I’m sure he learned a whole lot that he didn’t already know about the “magnitude of this problem”.
McCain’s answers were ok on the economic crisis; I just was frustrated by how many opportunities he left on the table.
Speaking of missed opportunities, the one that had me screaming at the TV was Obama’s repeated insistence that Al Qaida is stronger than it has been at any time since 2001. While the Taliban and Al Qaida are resurgent in Afghanistan, the evidence shows they have been decimated globally,
CIA Director Michael Hayden said last week that al-Qaida is losing its war on the West… “Near strategic defeat of al-Qaida in Iraq. Near strategic defeat for al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for al-Qaida globally — and here I’m going to use the word ‘ideologically’ — as a lot of the Islamic world pushes back on their form of Islam.”
Not once did McCain make this point or the point that Obama and the Democrats strategy of retreating in the face of Al Qaida in Iraq would have been a tragic loss for the US and major victory for AL Qaida. Instead, we followed McCain’s strategy, stood and fought, and defeated them dramatically.
McCain’s strongest part of the evening was when he schooled young Barack on the difference between negotiation with rogue regimes and presidential level negotiation. McCain was also quite strong on Russia.
Overall, a good night for both candidates with McCain coming out on top.
What else don’t you know about Barack Obama?
When it comes to Sarah Palin, the media has been like a pack of rabid dogs going after every possible aspect of her life. Even some aspects of her life that are not at all possible.
They say, as journalists, they have an obligation to dig into her background and help the public get a better understanding of who she is. Fair enough, if they had the same enthusiasm for vetting Barack Obama. After all, it is he who is running for president. The fact is, the MSM largely treats Obama as if he is Teddy Kennedy, a guy who has been around forever and of whom there is nothing left to learn. The MSM has more vigorously vetted Palin in six weeks than they have Barack Obama in 18 months.
That is not to say that there haven’t been negative articles written about Obama. Liberals cite these of proof of the balanced media. That is simply absurd. What it proves is that there are stories out there that raise serious questions about the character and judgment of Barack Obama. What is missing is the feeding frenzy that brings these issues to the forefront of public consciousness.
Like what you say? For starters, how about the first race Barack ever ran, against a popular incumbent in his own party. When Sarah Palin did this, she took them on directly and beat them at the ballot box. What did Barack Obama do? He and his lawyer friends challenged her ballot signatures and had her name removed from the ballot. A new kind of politics? More like Chicago politics. Same goes for every progressive reformer who tried to rise up within Chicago and IL politics. Certainly, Barack Obama would be on their side, working to bring about “change”. Wrong again. Every time, Barack Obama sided with the entrenched, corrupt political machine, standing as a roadblock to the reform he claims to be all about. Then there is his work as a community organizer, specifically his interest in “affordable housing” for low income people. Turns out Barack Obama was working at the behest of real estate developers and against the interests of low income people with housing needs. Our own Boston Globe published a devastating portrait of young Barack the housing advocate? Or the story about Michelle Obama’s 300% raise after Barack became a US senator and then earmarked a million dollar thank you to her employer. How about the story out of Chicago this week that another Obama earmark is being investigated by the IL attorney general?
Have you ever heard of any of these events? Many of you are probably scratching your heads.
The fact is, there is much about Barack Obama we don’t know. Much of what we do know about his background doesn’t make any sense. For example, how in the world Rev. Wright could be a “spiritual mentor” for 20 years and then Obama suddenly claims he didn’t realize all that “God damn America” talk was going on inside his church?
Obama’s connection to Bill Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist from the Weather Underground, is the latest topic the MSM is avoiding like the plague. This is THE ISSUE that you simply cannot know about.
National Review’s David Freddoso has done some great work in his book The Case Against Barack Obama. When I interviewed him, he made the point that so much has been written that raises serious questions about Barack Obama, the problem is, it has been confined to the Chicago papers.
National Review’s Stanley Kurtz has been digging and reporting, filing freedom of information acts to get at the true nature of the relationship between the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers and the would-be president. What he has found so far makes Barack Obama look like a liar, someone who is afraid of the truth getting out. He can’t let you know the true nature of his relationship with the unrepentant terrorist, and who can blame him. Would you want the average American voter to know you worked closely with a guy who is proud of bombing the Pentagon?
No wonder Obama says Ayers is just some guy from his neighborhood.
Peter Kirsanow at The Corner,
Stanley Kurtz’s piece today describing what appears to be an attempt to cover-up the extent of Sen. Obama’s ties to William Ayers should have journalists salivating. This is a big story that, so far, the press seems determined to avoid.
A rookie reporter could look at what Stanley’s adduced and clearly see that Sen. Obama has engaged in serious misdirection regarding his relationship with Ayers. The ties between the two are far more lengthy and extensive than Obama admits.
It appears that Ayers took a keen interest in Obama at a time when Obama was nothing more than, as Stanley puts it, “a young and inexperienced lawyer.” Why? There are tens of thousands of young and inexperienced lawyers in Chicago. What did Ayers see in (or hear from) Obama that caused the former to take such an interest in him?
What else don’t you know about Barack Obama?
Bill Ayers
