Posts by sarabeth
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.
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.
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 [...]
Not Delivering What You Promise (And Other Dirty Tricks)
It is a widely accepted convention, both in journalism and in blogging, that a story’s lede serves as an introduction to the story. In fact, this convention represents an implicit contract between writer and reader. A lede will typically contain a statement calculated to pique the reader’s interest. As a reader, when I read on, [...]
More Mortgage Industry Shenanigans
The Washington Post brings us news of the mortgage industry’s latest shenanigans: J.P. Morgan Chase, one of the nation’s leading banks, announced Wednesday that it will freeze foreclosures in about half the country because of flawed paperwork, a move that Wall Street analysts said will pressure the rest of the industry to follow suit. I’m [...]