[IWE] 'Wired' - expanded + From the Trenches

[Ashton Brown]

Er, I meant *wired* as-in: the latest, smaller techno /audio receiver/ á 
lá Shrub's earpiece/backpack -- after the fiasco of his first 'debate'.

Topic's a nouveau meme amidst the chattering hordes, including the 
wondering if Ifil will 'pat her down' -- the new hairdo seemed to 
catalyze this A+B=C in many.. and, based on historical precedent: it's 
not even paranoid fantasy, I wot.

Let us see how Beiden works around the /feminine dominance/ gene 
(testosterone-strong in this one) AND the evrybody's Pickin on 
/poor-little-moi/ skit -- a pas de deux that should entertain the whole 
spectrum?


 From the trenches:

David Brooks {!?!} on the divine Sarah --
> "Sarah Palin has many virtues," Brooks wrote in a recent column. "If 
> you wanted someone to destroy a corrupt establishment, she'd be your 
> woman. But the constructive act of governance is another matter. She 
> has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of 
> historic patterns and, like President Bush, she seems to compensate 
> for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness."
> Many of you are obviously very young, naive and clueless. You'll also 
> be the ones who will suffer the most. If things fall apart, don't say 
> you weren't warned. Good night and good luck.
> Miss Marple, correct. And with globalization, our GDP numbers, 
> particularly manufacturing have been inaccurate for well over a decade 
> because we are double-counting products made wholly or partially 
> overseas by shell corporations. Meanwhile reincorporation offshore 
> (Black & Decker for example) wipes out any possibility of taxing the 
> corporation on whatever US income is left after various accounting 
> maneuvers bring liability to as close to zero as possible. But the 
> corporations are always whining they have the highest tax rates, while 
> never revealing what percentages they actually pay. Separately there 
> is consideration of the expansion of how much off balance sheet 
> activity has become permissible.
[Econ - why ... it's whatever You WANT it to be cha. cha.]
> One word. We are all responsible for this catastrophe. True, the 
> "filthy rich" are "low hanging fruit" in this blame game, but even the 
> much-lamented "middle class average American" has, even at his/her 
> lower position on the food chain, benefited wildly from the insane 
> credit bubble. Your microwave? Once made by Raytheon IN THE US - now 
> China, your car? once made by Ford/GM IN THE US, your garlic? once 
> GROWN IN THE US - now China, your clothes? once MADE IN GEORGIA - now 
> El Salvador, even my Mac - made in Taiwan.China. And last but not 
> least - the gas in your car - now flows through an "IV" line straight 
> in to your veins - and the orderly ain't friendly any more. Our system 
> is broken. The air is going out of the ballon.
> "Home mortgages have been a political piñata for many decades," writes 
> Stan J. Liebowitz, economics professor at the University of Texas at 
> Dallas, in a chapter of his forthcoming book, Housing America: 
> Building out of a Crisis. ** In a nutshell, Liebowitz contends that 
> the federal government over the last 20 years pushed the mortgage 
> industry so hard to get minority homeownership up, that it undermined 
> the country's financial foundation to achieve its goal. ** "In an 
> attempt to increase homeownership, particularly by minorities and the 
> less affluent, an attack on underwriting standards was undertaken by 
> virtually every branch of the government since the early 1990s," 
> Liebowitz writes. "The decline in mortgage underwriting standards was 
> universally praised as 'innovation' in mortgage lending by regulators, 
> academic sp ...
> A New York Times article from Sept. 1999 states that Fannie Mae had 
> been under increasing pressure from the Clinton administration to 
> expand mortgage loans among low- and moderate-income people and that 
> the corporation loosened its lending requirements to comply. * An 
> ominous paragraph of the article reads, "In moving, even tentatively, 
> into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly 
> more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic 
> times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble 
> in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that 
> of the savings and loan industry in the 1980s." * Liebowitz likewise 
> predicted in a 1998 paper the risk of sacrificing sound financial 
> policy for social activism. * "After the warm fuzzy glow of 'flexible 
> underwriting standards' has worn off," Liebowitz wrote, "we may 
> discover that they are nothing more than standards that led to bad 
> loans. …
> Freddie Mac warned of the logical pitfalls of pursuing loans on the 
> basis of skin color and not credit history.*The Washington Post 
> reported that the company conducted a study in which it was found that 
> far more black people have bad credit than white people, even when 
> both have the same incomes. In fact, the study showed a higher 
> percentage of African Americans with incomes of $65,000 to $75,000 had 
> bad credit than white Americans with incomes of below $25,000.*Such 
> data demonstrated that when federal regulators demanded parity between 
> racial groups in lending, the only way to achieve a quota would be to 
> begin making intentionally bad lending decisions.*The study, however, 
> came under brutal attack in the U.S. Congress and was ridiculed with 
> charges of racism.
> I am beginning not to care what this old man says or what this old man 
> thinks. He is tired, unimaginative and mean. He is the "Old Politics" 
> of Rove and Bush. He has morphed from the hunted --2000--to the 
> hunter--2008.
>
> His response to the Russian-Georgia problem was classic "Cold War" 
> thinking--Old Thinking.
>
> He is OLD!!!

"What if it turns out that McCain was actually well aware of Palin's 
"Troopergate" problems? What if McCain accepted the fact that he needed 
Palin to win the election, but reckoned that he could deal with her 
later, after they were inaugurated?" A nice bit of speculation but 
pretty unbelievable. You are talking as if the president has to worry 
about controlling or managing the VP after they are elected. That's just 
not the case. On paper the VP is pretty powerless. The position caries 
virtually no responsibilities except to cast tie breaking votes in the 
senate. Of course Cheney was a special case but he seized power due to 
the human vacume that is George Bush and even Bush was able to curtail 
some of Cheney's powers in the last years of his presidency. Just look 
at Lyndon Johnson. There never was a more adept, forceful politician and 
he was virtually impotent once JFK used him to get the Southern vote and 
win the election. Like many people you make the mistake of seeing secret 
Republican machinations where there is just incompetence.


And SO it goes -->