Archive for October, 2010
Foreclosure Crisis Rides Again
On September 29, the Washington Post had an article (by Ariana Eunjung Cha) about the brewing foreclosure mess which talked about “allegations of forged documents and signatures and other similar problems”. Apart from one solitary reference to forged paperwork, the issue was never fleshed out. It wasn’t clear at all what kind of forgeries were [...]
Some Crazy Possibilities And Probabilities
The weather I have this morning is cold and wet and dreary, so here’s a post to match that mood. Let’s pick, pretty much at random, four of this year’s crop of truly lunatic Republican Senate candidates. And let’s look at how likely they are to be making a complete fool of themselves on Capitol [...]
Since Corporations Aren’t People
I’m certainly perplexed to House Minority Whip Eric Cantor‘s grammar, but I’m even more perplexed to his deep-throated full-throated defense of offending mortgage lenders. This was the slightly misnamed Cantor (by one extra syllable, and one wrong vowel), on Fox Sunday, responding to Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s call for a nationwide moratorium on foreclosures: CANTOR: I’m [...]
Thousands Of Reasons Why You Should Vote On November 2
If a picture’s worth a thousand words, how many words is a moving picture worth? Watch this, and judge for yourself: The video is by Bill Simmon. Insemination credit goes to Steve Benen. Bookmark on DeliciousDigg this postShare on Facebookshare via RedditShare with StumblersTweet about itBookmark in BrowserTell a friend
Adventures In Translation
As the Nobel Committee announces the 2010 Peace Prize and China reacts, I cannot help wonder how much of China’s not-so-great relations with the rest-of-the-world stems from an inability on the part of the rest-of-the-world to distinguish when China says “blasphemy” and when it says “obscenity”. Here, for example, is CNN: The awarding of the [...]
Foreclosure Crisis, Take Two
There’s probably a full-fledged foreclosure crisis looming. Because the foreclosure problems faced by mortgage lenders go well beyond the issues of forgery and flawed paperwork I talked about last week. It turns out that there’s a whole other dimension to the mortgage industry’s foreclosure problems. One that smacks of poetic justice, actually. When you buy [...]
Heathcare Reform And The Enthusiasm Gap
By now it’s a truism that the state of the economy, coupled with the enthusiasm gap that afflicts Democrats, is likely to allow Republicans to make huge gains in the midterm elections (even though Americans think the Republican Party really, really stinks). Short of divine intervention, the economy isn’t going to get turned around in [...]
Taking Our Country Back
(1) Last month, Sarah Palin went to Iowa, to headline the Iowa Republican Party’s Reagan Day dinner. Among other brilliant statements, she declared: “It’s time to take our country back.” I’ve been waiting patiently, but she still hasn’t clarified how many years she wants to take us back. (2) As I sat down to write [...]
Sign Of The Times
Kelly Ayotte is the Republican Senate candidate in New Hampshire. Describing the flip-flop she did on global warning for political reasons, Steve Benen says that she “went from being sensible to being conservative on the issue“. It has indeed become entirely reasonable now to use conservative as an antonym for sensible. Bookmark on DeliciousDigg this [...]
The Sky Will Fall On Our Heads. Guaranteed.
We know that all manner of dire things are going to happen in the next Congress if Republicans wrest control of the House. But what if they fail? How different would things really be? Humor me. I realize that nobody actually expects the Democrats to hold on to a majority in the House. But consider [...]