Recently, In the News

Sonya Sotomayor has become the country's first Latino Justice of the Supreme Court. From what I can tell, her judicial record is unremarkable. Maybe in today's ultra-partisan soundbite-driven climate, "unremarkable" is the most we can expect.

Long time no blog, eh? Seems like I never have the time any more. All the amazing stuff going on since my last entry and not a word. Watching Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress drive deficits into realms even George W Bush never imagined has been interesting. Government over-reach continues apace. Now they want to enact health care reform, but typically for our gubbermint they want to do it in as ill-considered and ham-fisted a manner as they can. And the Republicans, bless 'em, have adopted the Democrats' political playbook from the late 90s/early 2000s: their whole strategy seems to be pointing across the aisle while yelling "you guys suck!" Yeah, that worked out so well for the Dems, you might as well try it.

Sarah Palin has resigned the Alaska governorship for reasons best described as "unclear". Or maybe "idiotic", but what do I know?

The economy is showing signs of recovery, but it's juuuuuuuuuuuuust a wee bit early to be celebrating victory, I think. The structural problems that led to the mess have not remotely been addressed, banking and finance types continue to give themselves huge bonuses for being incompetent, Uncle Sam has prevented some big companies from going under - thereby preventing the market from learning the proper lessons from its folly - and all in all, the other shoe has yet to drop. Yeah, buddy.

This is all very superficial, I know, but my time and motivation is lacking these days. Watching the abject foolishness going on in Washington has, frankly, left me stunned.

Oh well, at least the press has its priorities straight.

Or not.

Fannie and Freddie Fall Down Go Boom

It's been terrifying to watch the financial markets unravel these past weeks and months. Decades of bad decisions, bad policies, and bad legislation are paying off. The government is enacting a bail-out plan on a scale never before contemplated, let alone seen, with hundreds of billions of dollars in extra spending suddenly piled onto our already unbalanced budget. Debt, debt, and more debt. This money will come from where? Will be paid back how?

The bottom line is simple, gentle reader: I don't trust the buffoons in Washington to get this right. They are, in my estimation, going to make the crisis much, much worse than it needs to be with their hasty and ill-considered "rescue" plans. We are looking into an abyss. What may be on the other side is hard to determine. America could and probably will lose its preeminance in the world economic order. We're already the largest debtor nation by a huge margin. Loss of economic strength virtually ensures loss of military strength, and the Pax Americana will go the way of the Pax Britannica before it. We may be looking at several decades of world chaos.

Here's an interesting little video regarding Fannie and Freddie. While the presidential campaigns play out, the whole situation is even more politicized than it would normally be, and that's saying something. Altho there's no shortage of blame to go around for this fiasco, somehow the Republicans in general and McCain in particular are catching the worst of it. While I calculate that it's too late for anything as mundane as facts to influence the elections, I nevertheless present this for your edification. Go ahead and watch while I run out for MREs and ammunition to stock the bunker.

Conventional Wisdom

The major political conventions have been and gone. Time to reflect on what we've learned.

Conventions, as the soundbite has it, are these days highly scripted events. There were no real surprises at either one. But they're still instructive, as they give us a chance to see the candidates make major speeches in front of huge audiences. You can get a glimpse of the real personalities in those moments.

Michelle Obama was very impressive. Many politicos are very obviously reading when they give speeches. Not Ms Obama. She sounded like she was talking, not speechifyin'. Her voice fairly trembled with passion in spots and she came across as very earnest. Too bad she's not actually running for anything . . .

Barack Obama demonstrated again that he gives good speech. Not quite at the Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan level, but very natural and warm. Alas, watching him in other venues suggests that he can do this only when working from prepared material. Speaking off the cuff, he tends to "umm" and "aahh" a lot and hesitate a whole lot more. He's stiff, in other words. Nevertheless, he remains well able to stir a crowd and it's not hard to see how he inspires people. Content-wise, well, it was a convention speech and as such full of boilerplate. Nothing particularly memorable, but solid and touching on just about all of the points that needed touching upon. And, as is usual these days, short on actual substance. He's going to do thus-and-such when elected, but we're not told how he'll do it, or what magic he will use to bring opposing (partisan) interests together, or where the money to fund his programs will come from.

Obama's running mate, Senator Joe Biden, brings badly needed experience to the ticket but somewhat undercuts the "hope and change" mantra due to being such a classic Washington insider. Biden's speech was the speech of a party hack, to be blunt. Gives the impression that he'll be used as the attack dog for the balance of the campaign, allowing Obama to stay at least partially above the fray. But Biden is also a known quantity in Washington, and the choice of him as running mate brings a degree of balance to the ticket . . . neophyte change agent Obama teamed with experienced knows-where-all-the-bits-go Biden makes an attractive package to many potential voters. It's something old and something new, the promise of shaking things up leavened with the reassurance of not shaking things up so much that they fall apart.

On the Republican side, the major story is of course McCain's out-of-left-field selection of Governor Sarah Palin as VP. Timed perfectly to steal Obama's momentum coming out of the Democratic convention, the Palin announcement has reportedly electrified the conservative base, something McCain on his own had almost completely failed to do.

As an aside, the impact of the announcement and the start of the Republican convention was nearly torpedoed by Hurricane Gustav in a "you can't make this stuff up" bit of nearly flawless timing. Amusing that what the McCain team did to Obama by design was almost done to them in turn by act of God.

Anyway, Palin would seem a very odd choice for VP. She takes away McCain's best weapon against Obama, which is the younger man's lack of experience. Any such charge now levelled against Obama immediately boomerangs back on Team McCain thru the obvious lack of experience of a less-than-one-term governor of a relatively small (population-wise, at least) state. The counterpoint to that, tho, is that every time Obama says "I have all the tools I need to be President", Palin can say the same thing, since she's got a good deal more executive experience than has Obama.

The McCain-Palin team is almost a mirror image of the Obama-Biden team. McCain is the Washington insider, despite his oft-repeated claim to being a maverick. Governor Palin is the brash young reformer from Outside, balancing McCain's age and political hack-ness with her youth and uncorrupted outside-the-beltway credentials. Palin is also, very likely, the future of the Republican party. She and a few other up-and-coming new faces (like Governor Bobby Jindal from Louisiana) are the emerging leaders of the next generation.

The two teams mirror in another way as well. Palin gave an outstanding speech when she accepted the Republican nomination, showing poise and sincerity. McCain gave a McCain speech, which is to say, nothing special. Except at the very end when he seemed to really reach inside for some passion. And pardon me for saying, but can the man give one speech without reminding us that he was a POW in VietNam? He mentions it every time he's in front of the cameras, it seems like. While his experiences in VietNam are undoubtedly an important part of his background, and in fact a much more telling glimpse of his character than anything any of the other major players has shown us, he's sort of beating it into the ground and robbing the story of its impact.

The selection of Palin makes the overall Presidential race much more interesting, which may be the governor's major contribution to the whole deal. Well, that and making the Vice-Presidential debate pretty much a no-win situation for Joe Biden . . . he can't attack her too harshly without seeming like he's "beating up a woman" and if he shows the least bit of defensiveness he risks looking like he's being beaten up by a woman. And so far, Palin gives an impression of confidence which suggests that Biden is going to be in for a tough time at the debate.

The real story, obviously, is still the contest between McCain and Obama, as interesting as the VP face-off might be. I personally don't think McCain has enough of a base to win, even with Palin. I think the Obama juggernaut is going to steamroller right in to the White House come November. There are just too many people out there who are sick to death of business-as-usual in Washington and hold the opinon that Obama is the guy to shake things up. So I still project Obama to be our next President.

Iowa Caucus Results

According to the numbers CNN is reporting it looks like Obama takes the primary for the Democrats and Huckabee for the Republicans. Edwards is in second and Clinton in third on the D side, with Romney and McCain taking those slots in the R column. And the 2008 campaign is off to a roaring start.

I find it heartening that Obama is doing so well. Think of the history being made here: a black man is a serious contender for President. If that doesn't tell you we've come a long way, baby then you're just not paying attention.

Huckabee, on the other hand, I expect to fizzle as the primaries go forward. Altho none of the Republicans are especially impressive this time around, I expect either Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani to eventually break out of the pack. We'll see.

Final Jeopardy

So President Bush has commuted "Scooter" Libby's sentence.

Yes, it's within his Presidential perogatives. No, it really, really wasn't a good idea. Really.

Other Presidents have done the same sort of thing. It is not uncommon. But prior example is not justification for a maneuver so nakedly political.

As I said in an email to a friend, it seems President Bush, in the last two years of his administration, is determined to self-destruct as spectacularly as possible. The Republican Party is coming apart (not necessarily a bad thing, since political parties do not seem to be particularly good for democracy) which will make the 08 elections easy pickings for the Democrats.

All this just as what seems to be the biggest conflict of cultures since World War II looks to be shaping up. Well done, gentlemen. Well done.

And the Results

Hmmm. My predictions seem to have been of the "close but no cigar" variety.

Voter turnout seems to have been very heavy, for one thing. Many of the tight races remained tight right up until the last votes were counted. The Democrats did indeed take the House, but by a somewhat wider margin than I thought. The Senate is still in contention as I write this, with only the Virginia race still undecided, but it looks from here as tho the Dems will take a two-seat majority in the Senate.

This of course means disaster for the Bush administration, as the subpoenas will no doubt begin flowing shortly after the reins are handed over in January. Don Rumsfeld has already resigned/been fired, probably in an attempt to head off some of the venom.

Meanwhile, Joe Leiberman handily won reelection as an independent, nicely embarassing the reality-impaired lefties who forced him out of the Democratic party. The lesson there is, once again, that the mainstream of the country is nowhere near as liberal as some like to believe.

What lies ahead? Well, if I were the boss of the Republicans, I'd say that for the next two years they should let the Dems do whatever they want. Let them raise taxes, pile on the spending, pull us out of Iraq, enact whatever goofy legislation they want. Just smile and say "You got it!" Then, in 2008, the choice between the two parties should be nice and clear. Plus, there would be no charges of obstructionism or gridlock to be leveled. The Repubs could just say "Okay America, you've had two years of unrepressed Democratic leadership. How's that workin' out for ya?"

I have every confidence that the rush back to conservative principles would be seismic in its proportions. But meanwhile, I'm just going to say congratulations to the Dems. They somewhat clumsily seized the moment and are ascendent once again. Probably just the shock the Republicans needed at this point, since some twelve years after the "Republican Revolution" they have quite clearly lost their way. Time to refocus, reexamine, do some belly-button contemplation, all that good stuff.

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In other news, Bill Whittle has a nice piece up on his blog that everyone should take a look at. Some good analysis there.

Day of Decision

Very quickly, as we all know, tomorrow is Election Day. Many heated races, much sturm und drang, talking heads on television about to melt down from the sheer excitement. So I want to go on record with my official predictions.

The Democrats will take a slim majority in the House - maybe ten seats, maybe fifteen, but probably not more than that. They will also take a razor-thin majority in the Senate - one or two seats.

Many races will end very closely, and the lawyers will be working overtime to sue their favorite candidate into office.

Allegations of voter fraud will be rampant. No matter who wins, the other side will scream about cheating.

Dems win, taxes go up, economy slows down, investigations into/possible impeachment of the President.

Now along about Wednesday or so, we'll see how I did.

I'm also interested in seeing if any of the super-tight races (according to current polling) wind up being blow-outs for one side or the other. See, as much as we talk about the big national issues and party implications, Congressional elections tend to be very local affairs. Everyone agrees that Congress is doing a bad job . . . except for my guy, of course. So we'll see if the power of incumbency makes any sort of difference this time around.

Still, I sense a mood of profound disgust out there among the public. They don't like what's been going on, they're tired of the partisan nonsense, they want things to change. Which leads me to my final prediction: fairly low voter turn-out, even by mid-term election standards.

We'll see.

A Little Economic News

Just briefly, it seems that Bush's economic policies are paying off (so to speak). One of the few things going right for this hapless administration.

Since it looks like the Republicans have adopted the Democrats' "watch us self destruct!" election playbook this year, it's likely that the Dems will take back at least the House this election. I personally expect both House and Senate to switch hands, given the Foley/Hastert meltdown, the successful media effort to portray the Iraq war as a lost cause, and the general malaise affecting the Republicans. This of course means that the Bush tax cuts will be undone, taxes will go up (because that's one of the unchanging ground truths of the Democratic Party - they like higher taxes. Only on "the rich" of course, but strangely it's always the middle class and small business that takes it in the shorts when the Dems get to pass their tax bills. But I digress), revenues will go down, spending will continue to spiral out of control and the deficit will balloon again. All of which will be blamed on Bush's "failed economic policies" once Bush is out of office.

History shows that lower taxes stimulate the economy, bringing increased revenue and sustained growth. But, as always, the reality-impaired are not interested in the lessons history has to teach, but in enacting their flawed theories. Really, how many more times does "higher taxes=poor economy" have to be proven before the lesson finally sinks in?