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October 29, 1929Stock market crashes; Debacle linked to Jews, Negroes, Catholics, anarchists, foreigners, women votersMillions thrust into desperate poverty. Wall street fat cats blameless, say financial experts
-- from The Onion, Our Dumb Century Keith Ellison sees something not dissimilar in commentary by some right-wingers about the present financial crisis. Specifically, some are blaming the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977, a law that (according to this MinnPost story) "encouraged commercial banks to invest in housing in cities that were facing both redlining and major decline." On the other hand, the story goes on to [scarequote]defend[/scarequote] that law by saying: But most economists seem to agree that, at most, 20 percent of the bad loans that have led to the collapse can be traced to CRA. Not an encouraging defense. If the figure really is anything close to 20%, then maybe that law really is part of the story. In general, I can readily believe the commentary I've heard suggesting that this crisis has a long history, with both parties contributing. All the same: the right-wing commentary described in this story looks an awful lot like manipulation and scapegoating to me. Edited to add: I saw that a couple of conservative blogs posted links to a NY Times article from 2003 in which the Bush administration recommended more oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but some Democrats opposed it -- Barney Frank by saying those institutions were healthy, Mel Watt by expressing concerns on behalf of low-income homebuyers. Hmm. On the other other hand: Those conservative bloggers do not say what happened to that 2003 recommendation, at a time when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. Moreover, the about.com US politics blogger reviewed Fannie Mae-related legislation from that time and concluded: Republican Congress Talked About Financial Reform, But Did Nothing. Tags: economics, election 2008, politics
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I was thinking more about the two rants I linked to a few days ago, one from the left and the other from the right. I thought back to The Big Sort, which I wrote about back in July. That book asserts that by self-segregating to so high a degree, red-state and blue-state Americans have become more extreme in their views, in particular becoming more convinced that the other side doesn't have anything to offer. Another component of the book involves the history of religion in America, in which the "social gospel" (something like, salvation through good works and helping out in the community) has competed with the "private gospel" (something like, salvation of the individual through faith). The former is more compatible with the idea of [scarequote]liberal[/scarequote] government programs; the latter would be more likely to assert (as ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) meep does) that "The entirety of Jesus's mission was non-political." Beyond these (not very controversial) thoughts, I'm not entirely sure how to respond to those two blog posts. (You, on the other hand, are right on the money.) Tags: politics, you right
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John McCain's choice of Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate has sparked a great deal of interest and controversy. Discussions have ensued over several topics, including: her experience and achievements, her readiness to serve, her Convention speech, her family, her gender, her religion, her social class, her treatment by the media, her state of Alaska, her town of Wasilla, her right-wing political positions, her reputation for independence and reform, her physical appearance, her style, her tone of voice, her past associations, her alleged misconduct and inconsistencies, and her selection and prior vetting by the McCain campaign. Commentators of all stripes have given a wide variety of responses, all of them wrong...except yours! Your opinion of Sarah Palin is uniquely thoughtful, incisive, and untainted by any sort of hidden bias or agenda. It is a comprehensive understanding of who she was, is and will be. It is right on the money. Tags: election 2008, politics, you right
Current Mood:  impressed
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The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart is a book by Bill Bishop. It's about recent social/political/economic trends in the U.S. The book argues that - increased wealth and mobility have made it easier for people to move into communities dominated by like-minded individuals, and
- this has led to an echo-chamber effect in which people's political stances (both Republican and Democrat) tend to grow more extreme and homogeneous.
( examples )The book also brings in lessons learned from the discipline of marketing. For example, a salesperson (or religious missionary, or political campaign volunteer) has a far greater success rate if they [scarequote]fit in[/scarequote] with the people they're trying to sell to. ( examples )The book concludes by pointing out that this kind of segmentation may be good for business but it's awful for politics. The author perhaps bites off more than he can chew in this book, and I'm not sure I agree with everything presented, but it's got much that's worth thinking about. 30 Days is a reality TV show hosted by Morgan Spurlock. I've now seen two episodes of this show. In one, a vocal opponent of gay parenting stays for 30 days with a gay couple who have adopted children. In another, a gun-control advocate stays for 30 days with a rifle enthusiast and his rifle-enthusiast son. In neither case does anyone change their mind substantially, but everyone seems to gain a new appreciation for the other point of view. The folks who take part in this show are brave (braver than I would be, to tell the truth). Given the phenomena described in The Big Sort, I think that 30 Days is a Good Thing. Tags: books, politics, religion
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At TPM: Tales From Inside the Editorial Board Room. It is depressingly consistent with the leftist media critiques leveled by the likes of Noam Chomsky. On a related note: I've been meaning to write about a key phrase uttered Back Then by Dick Cheney, one that features prominently among those [scarequote]935 false statements[/scarequote] about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Cheney is quoted as saying: Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us. Is this a lie? Well, one might ask, Why did he phrase it the way he did, starting with "There is no doubt?" Why did he not just say, "Saddam now has WMD. He is amassing them to use against us?" I would conjecture that the wording he used gives him some wiggle room. If he's ever tried for war crimes or perjury or whatnot and asked about that statement, he might say that he wasn't making any statement of fact about weapons at all. Rather, he was making a statement of opinion, regarding public perceptions about weapons. He could say: "I never said there were weapons. I merely said that people were convinced there were." A similar thing happened when Rumsfeld danced around the words [scarequote]imminent threat[/scarequote] -- I searched, but could not find, the video from moveon.org where Rumsfeld says, "I don't know that they aren't an imminent threat!" Tags: media, politics
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I wanted to like this DVD but ended up turning it off about halfway through. It's a left-wing documentary that is compelling in places (e.g., where it compares corporations to the church and the monarchy in terms of power and significance in society), but its main idea seemed unconvincing to me. The main idea is this: The movie describes the legal treatment of corporations as persons and then asks, What kind of person would a corporation be? The movie's answer: "psychopath." At one point the movie uses an analogy that I liked better: A corporation cannot be described as good or evil any more than a shark can. The movie claims that the corporation evolved to foist harmful externalities on the public in much the same way the shark evolved to prey on animals. The animal analogy makes more sense to me than the human analogy; it makes me wonder about what business would look like when viewed as an ecosystem. The movie does give some description of the history of the corporation, but it only gives a few highlights. The movie also also falls short (IMO) when addressing the libertarian argument about exploitation of cheap Third World labor ("No one is forcing these people to work;" the movie did bring up child labor, which is one but not the only response to this argument). Long story short, I doubt that this movie is going to do more than preach to the choir. In fact, sad as this is, I'm now imagining someone making a "Left-wing Documentary Movie" spoof, a la "Scary Movie," "Date Movie," "Epic Movie," etc. Such a movie might have several elements that appear in The Corporation: Interviews with Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore; ironic quotation of old newsreels/classroom movies; footage of some phrase being repeated in the mainstream media (in this case, "a few bad apples"); a pro-business figure admits he/she's BS'ing; a pro-business figure is interviewed but his/her comments are not taken seriously. Of course, it's hard to do irony about irony... Tags: movies, politics
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Slate.com has a piece by Jeff Greenfield about Obama's perceived elitism, referencing a book by George Orwell from 1937 called The Road To Wigan Pier. Apparently in that book, Orwell describes socialists as condescending snobs, using language similar to that often used to criticize liberals today. Greenfield concludes: ... if you want to court these voters in a way that will resonate with them, you could do a lot worse than heeding the cautionary words of George Orwell. And Barack? Ix-nay on the egg-white omelets. Greenfield's piece reminded me of adamcadre's reviews of works by Orwell. These include a review of Wigan Pier that bashes Orwell's anti-intellectualism. Cadre's conclusion, rather different from Greenfield's, is that ultimately The Road to Wigan Pier is less a political tract than a psychodrama. ... [Orwell comes across as being] terrified that he's too soft, insufficiently manly. So he overcompensates, like Chris Matthews going into raptures about Fred Thompson's musk. His intellect tells him to be a socialist, but inside him is a twelve-year-old who never grew up and is haunted by the question, "Is that normal?" I wonder whether Obama will try to build issues of class and elitism into another [scarequote] landmark speech[/scarequote], what he'll say, how he'll do. On a related topic, slate.com also has a piece on possible reasons why many Catholics are choosing Clinton over Obama. Tags: politics, psychology
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So the current mini-controversy in the Democratic primaries is over this passage from a speech by Obama: And it's not surprising then [that small-town Americans] get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations. The circumstances play a role in the controversy: Obama was offering that explanation to wealthy California donors. Did he say "cling?" Clinton and McCain have criticized this quotation as evidence that Obama is out of touch: They're saying he's reducing working-class folks' deeply held beliefs to some kind of acting out over money. And he's doing it behind their backs, to rich people in San Francisco, no less. Pundit Mickey Kaus characterizes it as "gruesomely off-key condescension."Did he say "bitter?" Oh noes! Obama supporters, meanwhile, don't quite get what all the fuss is about. Yes, people are bitter. What's the big deal? Of course people are bitter.My take is that Obama's opponents are trying very hard to create a macaca moment. On the one hand, those Obama supporters are missing the point (the problem with the quotation is not the bitterness, it's the patronizing treatment of red-state issues). On the other hand, I have to ask: Are this quotation and its less-charitable interpretations representative of what Obama thinks and feels about small-town Americans? If Clinton/McCain can't make that stick, then the whole uproar will backfire on them. Obama put his spin on the situation, rather effectively, I thought.
Edited to add: More interesting tidbits on this topic. - From an Associated Press article (Star Tribune, registration required):
Political insiders differed on whether Obama's comments, which came to light Friday, would become a full-blown political disaster that could prompt party leaders to try to steer the nomination to Clinton even though Obama has more pledged delegates. Clinton supporters were eagerly hoping so.
They handed out "I'm not bitter" stickers in North Carolina ... I would like to see one of those stickers, myself. - CNN's politix blog reports on a Clinton speech in which she discusses her own experience with guns. Highlights:
- "You know, my dad took me out behind the cottage that my grandfather built on a little lake called Lake Winola outside of Scranton and taught me how to shoot when I was a little girl," she said.
- "I have gone hunting. I am not a hunter. But I have gone hunting."
Clinton said she has hunted ducks.
- A Talking Points Memo reader predicts that Obama will defuse this controversy and his campaign will be fine. If I had to guess, I'd say that Obama will lose Pennsylvania; that pundits will (erroneously) attribute that loss to this gaffe; and then he'll win big in North Carolina, and this controversy will be forgotten till the Republicans pick it up again in the summer. I don't know for sure though...if Obama loses PA by more than, say, 10 points, then perhaps this topic will have played a not-insignificant role.
This topic is reminding me of what The Onion said is the most important issue for 2008 voters.
Edited to add, once more: The Atrios blog makes a comment that captures the dynamics of these kinds of things well, I think. He claims, that much of the time ... ... all that matters who is perceived as playing offense and who is perceived as playing defense. The details are usually irrelevant, although occasionally such things backfire. If you can get the press to report your team as playing offense, then you're winning, and the team playing defense is seen as losing. Tags: politics, predictions
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A Talking Points Memo Cafe post, by a blogger named "FlyOnTheWall," has some plausible analysis of yesterday's primary results, including: ( some claims about trends in the candidates' support )The hyperlink in that passage leads to a Politico blog post from Feb. 7 that contains a remarkable spreadsheet forecast, reportedly leaked by the Obama team. That spreadsheet had Clinton winning OH and TX. It also has Obama winning big in WY and MS, then Clinton winning with 52% of the vote in PA, followed by Obama victories in IN and NC. KY and OR will be a wash on May 20. After that, Hillary will need to do extremely well with the superdelegates. The spreadsheet isn't perfect (e.g., it has Obama winning 50%-48% in VA, whereas in reality he got an astonishing 64% of the vote) but it looks pretty darn good on balance. For what it's worth, at the end of their post, FlyOnTheWall predicts that ( it'll be over in two weeks ) I find myself hoping that's the case, not only because I'm rooting for Obama but also because I can't seem to shake this political junkie habit. Tags: politics, predictions
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She won in Texas and Ohio last night, but she still trails in delegates, and young voters still favor Obama. So now I'm picturing her soliciting the support of indie bands, the way Arcade Fire and the Black Eyed Peas guy have promoted Obama. What if, on the eve of the May 6 North Carolina primary, she gets some Chapel Hill types -- a Ben Folds, say, or a Superchunk -- to play on her behalf? And then there's the Oregon primary on May 20. If she can get Portland resident Stephen Malkmus to reunite Pavement for the occasion, then that would send a powerful message. If she can also get Sleater-Kinney on the bill, then forget it; you might as well cancel that primary and assign all 52 delegates to Clinton. The only problem will be to convince voters that some of these artists' endorsements aren't ironic. April 24. Edited to add: Superchunk endorses Obama. Tags: politics, silly
Current Mood: onioney
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