The Meltdown

So everybody has been affected by the meltdown, at least everybody with either a mortgage or investments in the stock market. And we all wonder, "what is the root cause?" I believe one gentleman from a financial forum I read pins it to the special interest lobby of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:

Fannie [Mae] and Freddie [Mac] had such powerful lobbyists that no attempt to reform or regulate Fannie and Freddie could make it through Congress. In all fairness, there were a number of Republican Senators and Congressman who have been sounding the alarm for at least 15 years. They knew it was only a matter of time before the taxpayer would have to bail them out. They were voices crying in the wilderness. There was no way to stop such large special interests. Fannie and Freddie spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying congress. Is there something inherently wrong with that? Government sponsored enterprises spending millions to lobby the government?

So, who were the lamebrains obstructing reform?

Since 1989, 534 individual legislators recieved money from Fannie and Freddie. Who recieved the most? Chris Dodd, Democrat from Connecticut, Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and the Senator who had a couple of special arrangements with Countrywide, Fannies biggest customer. Who was second in line? A newcomer, who had only been in congress for three years, the junior Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, who now blames Bush for the problem, and says he's going to run a different kind if Washington, free of special interests. There's a sucker born every minute.

Change you can believe in? So long as you believe, "The more things change, the more they stay the same".

The Speech

I didn't see Sarah Palin speak last night, but many blogs and newspapers couldn't stop talking about it. So I did something I rarely do, I read the speech.

Read it.

She SHOULD be our next vice president in 2008.

She SHOULD be our president in 2012.

I won' t say I'm in love, but bloody hell, where have the Republicans been hiding her and are there any more principled people like her in the party who will lead it?

Stuff - mainly news

The NY Times must be wishing for a Ministry of Truth and the Memory Hole (see George Orwell's 1984)so we mere mortals wouldn't be able to see what they said in 2006 and 2007 and what they were forced to report in 2008.

Stories on Sarah Palin and why the Democrats are going nuts with her selection for VP.
Here
here
here and here.

Monday Roundup

Well the Olympics are over. My wife watched the closing ceremonies, said it was too long and carnival like, the opening was much better.

If someone wrote a book that was widely publicised and later turned out to be 100% false (ok maybe was only 99.9999999999997% false) and it was his area of specialty, one would think this person would not be considered an expert worth listening too. Especially if this person insists that the original premise is still valid. Well think again.

Liberal protesters in Denver try to recreate Chicago in 1968 (by provoking the police into responding to them). However, as much as they tried to goad the police into attacking the demonstrators (who did have a permit), they were not successful. I guess there were too many video cameras around so the protesters couldn't start a riot by throwing bottles or something and then blame the police.

Mother nature has a sense of humor.

Senator Obama says we should think of the community and not just ourselves in how we live our lives. Will he follow his own advice when it comes to HIS family?

Doofus

That's Cuba's Angel Matos, an Olympic Taekwondo athlete, kicking a referee in the head after being DQ'd. Nice. Said ref required stitches in his lip. The World Taekwondo Federation (WTF) is recommending a lifetime ban for Matos and his coach.

"We didn't expect anything like what you have witnessed to occur," said WTF secretary general Yang Jin-suk. "I am at a loss for words."

You got that right. I, too, would be at a loss for words right now if I was the secretary general of WTF.

This is a shameful act, disgracing yourself, your team, your country.

Olympic Burnout

Burnt out today. No commentary. Will be back tomorrow.

By the way, Nastia was robbed. ROBBED. Is there any more random way of breaking a tie than that? I could swear I was in Las Vegas at the Circus Circus coffee shop drinking a cup of Joe, sawing at the wafer-thin 1.99 Porterhouse and eggs special watching the keno numbers light up on the board with a grease pencil in hand.

"Oh, 8...15...32...there's 20...and 9.1! 9.0! 9.1! I win!"

It was like they just threw each athlete's scores into a hat, mixed them up, and let each athlete pick one at random. Better would have been rock-paper-scissors--at least that's a contest. Soccer has a shootout so maybe they could have done something gymnastic-y for 30 seconds to impress the judges. Heck, let them compete in one of the ancient Olympic competitions--Greco-Roman wrestling. Clinch, hold, lock, and pin their way to a gold.

But, no, they do what is in its essentials, the gymnatic equivalent of high spade in the hole splits the pot. No, thank you. The scoring in this Olympics has been confusing and almost counter-intuitive. How can you LAND ON YOUR KNEES AND STILL WIN SILVER?

And I still think the Chinese girls look like they belong in a Beverly Cleary novel.

So I guess I'm not so burned out that I'm still good for a bit of rantage.

Peace, out.

What Did You Expect?

Amid all the cheering for the athletes and the enjoyment of the games, we should never lose site of the reality that China is as driven home by an article on China's purported plan to allow protesters.

The applicants? 77 of them for various causes, not the obvious ones we might think of (Tibet, religious oppression), but things such as development projects displacing residents, homeless, welfare.

How many of these protests have been approved? Zero.

Rights groups and relatives have said some applicants were immediately taken away by security agents after applying to hold a rally...

Now that's sort of chilling with a I-can't-believe-this-happens-in-the-21st-Century sort of way. The Chinese government response? As Wang Wei, VP of China's Olympic organizing committee said,

"We think that you do not really understand China's reality. China has its own version and way of exercising our democracy."

Their own version apparently involves rubber hoses, black cars, and state run media. Democracy, freedom, or rights in China?

Not bloody likely in my lifetime.