They’ve done more investigations into Joe the Plumber in 24 hours than they’ve done on Barack Obama in two years…
They’ve also had more interviewers with him lately than they have with Bill Ayers. Aren’t they curious at all as to what he thinks? I mean, he was brought up in the debate, too…
[Friday morning update]
Is Joe the Plumber the forgotten man?
I fully agree with Iain Murray:
While conservatives are angry about a number of things at the moment, they should be at least as angry that the Congressional Democrats who helped stoke the mortgage crisis are getting away with blaming everyone else for it. Today, Senator Chris Dodd, the prime recipient of GSE lobbying funds and proud holder of a sweetheart mortgage from Countrywide, is holding hearings where the witnesses will blame everyone but Dodd, Barney Frank and their cronies. Republicans asked to invite witnesses but were barred from doing so.
The notion that this mess is the fault of Republicans, and “deregulation” and the free market, is one of the biggest frauds ever perpetrated on the American people. And as a result, we could be heading toward both electoral and economic disaster.
[Update early afternoon]
Peter Schiff says don’t blame capitalism:
Just as prices in a free market are set by supply and demand, financial and real estate markets are governed by the opposing tension between greed and fear. Everyone wants to make money, but everyone is also afraid of losing what he has. Although few would ascribe their desire for prosperity to greed, it is simply a rose by another name. Greed is the elemental motivation for the economic risk-taking and hard work that are essential to a vibrant economy.
But over the past generation, government has removed the necessary counterbalance of fear from the equation. Policies enacted by the Federal Reserve, the Federal Housing Administration, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (which were always government entities in disguise), and others created advantages for home-buying and selling and removed disincentives for lending and borrowing. The result was a credit and real estate bubble that could only grow — until it could grow no more.
Prominent among these wrongheaded advantages are the mortgage interest tax deduction and the exemption of real estate capital gains from taxable income. These policies create unnatural demand for home purchases and a (tax-free) incentive to speculate in real estate.
Similarly, the FHA, Fannie and Freddie were created to encourage lending by allowing primary lenders to turn their long-term risk over to the government. Absent this implicit guarantee, lenders would probably have been much more conservative in approving borrowers and setting interest terms, and in requiring documentation of incomes and higher down payments. Market forces would have kept out unqualified buyers and prevented home-price appreciation from exceeding the growth in household income.
Read the whole thing.
I disagree, though that the solution is to take away the home-mortgage interest deduction and the capital gains break. It would be much better to restore the deduction for all interest (as it is for business, and was for individuals until the tax “reform” in 1986). It’s not fair to have to pay tax on interest earned as income, but not be able to deduct interest paid.
Also, rather than treating houses preferentially, peg all capital gains taxes to inflation, to eliminate having to pay a tax when the actual value hadn’t increased.
How many times is he going to let Obama get away with this bullshit that he’s going to cut taxes for people who don’t pay income taxes? He’s done it twice now. It’s a frickin’ handout and redistribution. As I said, John McCain could win this election if he weren’t John McCain.
Sounding a little better on spending cuts. Talking about ending ethanol subsidies and tariffs on sugar (writing off Iowa…). He should have point out how he was going to veto spending bills that Bush wouldn’t (another missed opportunity). Another missed opportunity was to point out that while earmarks are small, it’s how Congress logrolls other members on big spending bills.
[Update]
McCain is actually doing much better now. But he really should stop talking about the “overhead projector in Chicago.” People like planetariums, and it makes him look clueless about science.
[Update]
McCain just pointed out that Obama’s solution (increase taxes, restrict trade) was Hooverlike. This is good in two ways: it helps separate him from Republicans and it’s true.
[Update]
McCain is on fire on health care. Obama seems to think that having an employer providing health care is a wonderful thing, and that everyone agrees on that. But McCain had a great (non?)-Freudian slip. He called his opponent “Senator Government.”
[Update]
The discussion on Roe almost veered into a discussion on federalism. But not quite. But McCain went after him on his vote on the bill to allow failed aborted babies to die. And Obama is obfuscating on his vote.
[Final update]
Not a great debate for McCain, but it was his best. And he’s not out of it.
What was missing? Gun control. It would have been a big issue in key states.
Would anyone care to explain to me why Sarah Palin is less qualified to be vice president than John Edwards was four years ago?
Winning over the undecideds:
Think about it. With Barack Obama in office, assholes like us will fade into a distant unpleasant memory. Don’t get us wrong, we’ll still be hanging around, probably as junior staffers in some federal arts agency. But you have our word on it — we’ll be practically invisible. No more C-word t shirts, no more intersection blockades, no more vandalism until the next election cycle. Nosirree, we’ll be timid and well-behaved and quiet as church mice, working away on grant proposals. We think you will also be pleased to know that under Obama, negative news stories and the steady flow of shitty anti-American war movies will virtually disappear overnight.
We know what you’re thinking — “that sounds awesome, but what about the angry right wingers? Won’t they suddenly start storming congressional hearings and vandalizing military recruiting stations? Won’t they start producing Obama assassination fantasy plays at the local college?” Don’t worry, as members of the incoming Administration, we will identify any potential troublemakers and prosecute them to the full extent of President Obama’s new civility laws. And with the re-establishment of the Fairness Doctrine, you won’t have to worry about accidentally tuning into right wing hate radio.
I can’t wait.
Plus, true Grit.
Katherine Manju Ward says that Naomi Wolf has been driven completely around the bend.
She could have walked. Based on her previous writings, it was always bound to be a short trip.
OK, are we allowed to talk about this? Or is that racist?
Between Obama, Ayers, and Jeremiah Wright:
Given the precedent of his earlier responses on Ayers and Wright, Obama might be inclined to deny personal knowledge of the educational philosophy he was so generously funding. Such a denial would not be convincing. For one thing, we have evidence that in 1995, the same year Obama assumed control of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, he publicly rejected “the unrealistic politics of integrationist assimilation,” a stance that clearly resonates with both Wright and Carruthers. (See “No Liberation.”)
And as noted, Wright had invited Carruthers, Hilliard, and like-minded thinkers to address his Trinity congregants. Wright likes to tick off his connections to these prominent Afrocentrists in sermons, and Obama would surely have heard of them. Reading over SSAVC’s Annenberg proposals, Obama could hardly be ignorant of what they were about. And if by some chance Obama overlooked Hilliard’s or Carruthers’s names, SSAVC’s proposals are filled with references to “rites of passage” and “Ptahhotep,” dead giveaways for the anti-American and separatist ideological concoction favored by SSAVC.
We know that Obama did read the proposals. Annenberg documents show him commenting on proposal quality. And especially after 1995, when concerns over self-dealing and conflicts of interest forced the Ayers-headed “Collaborative” to distance itself from monetary issues, all funding decisions fell to Obama and the board. Significantly, there was dissent within the board. One business leader and experienced grant-smith characterized the quality of most Annenberg proposals as “awful.” (See “The Chicago Annenberg Challenge: The First Three Years,” p. 19.) Yet Obama and his very small and divided board kept the money flowing to ideologically extremist groups like the South Shore African Village Collaborative, instead of organizations focused on traditional educational achievement.
If McCain won’t go after this, some 527s need to.
John McCain could win this election if he weren’t John McCain. By that, I mean that some candidate with John McCain’s history and record could win it if he were really willing to take the gloves off. But he’s constitutionally incapable of it. Too many years “reaching across the aisle.” Which is one of the reasons in general that Senators have a tough time being elected president. Unfortunately, we have no choice this year.
Scott Ott has a depressing satire.
We’re all fascists now.
It’s too bad that Senator Obama seems indifferent to actually creating wealth. This is the critical distinction between collectivists and classical liberals. The former think that it’s a fixed (or growing, but according to supernatural forces unaffectable by human intervention) pie to be justly distributed, whereas the latter think that it’s something to be created by maximizing freedom and minimizing how much of it is confiscated by those who want to “spread it around.”
And don’t expect many in the MSM to criticize him for it.