Facts Matter
To any of you who do read this site: my apologies. My English teacher, while a wonderful, enlightened, helpful person handed out a boatload of homework last week. Suffice to say, when I wasn’t banging out papers or beating on ATM machines, I was sleeping. So, to sum up last week: Paulson scares me. The Bill that’s being crammed through the House is a very bad bill loaded with pork that gives almost unilateral power to a Treasury Secretary. The big problem is: People will still lose their homes. The Government removed the ability for federal judges to renegotiate mortgage terms for families that are going through pre-forclosure preceedings. They are only allowed to suspend the interest to lower future payments. Thusly, the U.S. Government, instead of stopping the housing crisis will become a party to it by flooding the market with tens of thousands of new forclosed homes, further dropping the median home price while the availability of credit wil still be very scarce. This is how this whole thing started, I believe, as the subprime mortgage scheme collapsed. So, instead of “pointing the finger of blame behind us,” if we look ahead to future financial crises, this bill has the potential to ruin the U.S. economy and take with it the world. Yeah, I know that’s a lot of doom and gloom but I’m due, it’s been a long week.
So, on to happier things. If you’ve seen any of the debate, you’ll know I’m not talking of the debate. I was disappointed that Biden wasn’t louder and Palin was so folksy as opposed to “factsy.”. The debate ended as a tie but, in the long run, this debate will be seen as a win for McCain camp. I don’t think so, but the media has to look at anything with a 0-net impact as positive when it comes to Palin. No disrespect intended, but she referred to Bush’s former press secretary when asked about the top U.S. commander in Afganistan (she referred to him as General McClellan instead of General McKiernan). Overall, I agree with the consensus that we weren’t seeing Sarah Palin. What we got was the “Sarah Palin Action Figure” (Pull her string! You’ll hear one of 6 prerecorded sayings like “Thanks, but no thanks,” or “Aw Shucks,” or everyone’s favorite “SKWAWK! I’m a Maverick! I’m a Maverick! SKWAWK!”. Her repetition of the same catchphrases since the beginning have a sort of, “down home” McDonald’s familiarity to them. But, quite frankly, I’m tired of McNuggets.
Here’s some of Salon.com’s appraisal of the debate (best point: Sarah Palin’s cold glossing over of Biden’s near-tears story about the death of his wife):
“From the moment Palin walked onstage and asked Biden, “Hey, can I call you Joe?” she projected a folksiness that constantly threatened to tip over from “authentic” to “a little overdone,” all delivered in the kind of nasal snow-belt honk that won Frances McDormand an Oscar in “Fargo.” (For instance, immediately after greeting Biden, she blew a kiss at someone — either moderator Gwen Ifill, which seems implausible, or more likely, Alaska’s “First Dude” in the front row.) That tipping point probably came around the time she spouted this line, which sounded like something out of “Leave it to Beaver” meets “Hardball”: “Say it ain’t so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You [prefaced] your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now, doggone it, let’s look ahead.” Sometimes her folksy language got a little garbled — like when she used what is evidently a favorite phrase and said mortgage lenders were “rearing that head of abuse.”
She might have undone whatever good will she earned with her “aw, shucks” Wasilla hockey mom ways, though, when she utterly failed to react after Biden choked up while discussing the death of his first wife and their daughter. “The notion that somehow, because I’m a man, I don’t know what it’s like to raise two kids alone, I don’t know what it’s like to have a child you’re not sure is going to — is going to make it — I understand,” he said, after Palin said her experience “as a mom” helped persuade McCain to pick her for the ticket. “I understand, as well as, with all due respect, the governor or anybody else, what it’s like for those people sitting around that kitchen table. And guess what? They’re looking for help. They’re looking for help. They’re not looking for more of the same.” Palin’s response was ice cold: “People aren’t looking for more of the same. They are looking for change. And John McCain has been the consummate maverick in the Senate over all these years.” For that matter, so was the way she brought up, apropos of not very much, Biden’s remark in July that offshore oil drilling was an attempt to “rape the continental shelf.” And the way she — not Biden — brought up his wife, Jill. “I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and God bless her,” Palin said. “Her reward is in heaven, right?” (That was followed immediately by Palin giving “a shout out” to her brother’s elementary school students.) “
