all-encompassingly

But don’t take my word for it, let’s listen to Barack Obama from a year ago.

Guilty.

Exactly 13 years to the day after being acquitted of the murders he committed, OJ Simpson is found guilty on all counts in the armed robbery case in Las Vegas.

Sarah Palin just finished field dressing Joe Biden’s corpse.

Like I said in August, I couldn’t wait.

Like night and day:

Barack Obama, in 2004, practically got all three male PBS anchors to announce, right there on national TV, that they were gay for him:

Sarah Palin, in 2008, could hardly give a speech without making Gwen Ifill feel like vomiting:

Ifill’s loftiest (only) praise of Palin: “She delivered her speech word for word.”

I’m disappointed.

Gwen Ifill is a good journalist. She’s liberal, sure. I know that a lot of conservative blogs are going all crazy on her for being a liberal. But aside from whatever episodes of anti-Republicanism we could point to, she has always struck me as an exceptionally fair journalist compared to her peers.

So when I say, “I’ve always liked her,” it’s not in the fake “I’ve always voted Republican but am voting for Obama” kind of “always”. It really means: I’ve always liked her.

Anybody who has asked me knows that I think she did by far the best job as a moderator in the 2004 debates. Looking back in our archives, I think Travis feels the same way.

Which brings us to today’s kerfuffle about her moderating tomorrow night’s VP debate. It was recently “discovered” that she is putting together a book that will be released next year. On inauguration day. The title: The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama.

The simple fact is that the sales of her book will be greatly enhanced by an Obama victory in November. That much is obvious. This presents an enormous conflict of interest as a debate moderator. Naturally, many conservatives are calling for her to be replaced. The liberal press, for their part, are writing things like:

PBS journalist Gwen Ifill, moderator of the upcoming vice presidential debate, dismissed conservative questions about her impartiality because she is writing a book that includes material on Barack Obama.

You read that right. The AP’s David Bauder classifies The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama as “a book that includes material on Barack Obama”. Indeed. And this is “a post that includes material on Gwen Ifill”.

But this is to be expected from the liberal AP and other media outlets.

The disappointing aspect of the story is Gwen Ifill’s failure to see her book as a problem. As a seasoned journalist and a consummate professional she should have realized that the perception of a conflict of interest would be too strong to be considered an effective moderator.

With all that said, she may again be the best moderator this election cycle. I certainly hope so.

Right now, however, she is forced to fight back against criticisms. From the AP article she’s quoted as saying, “The proof is in the pudding. They can watch the debate tomorrow night and make their own decisions about whether or not I’ve done my job.” Fair enough. But then she starts reaching for racial straws:

“Do you think they made the same assumptions about Lou Cannon (who is white) when he wrote his book about Reagan?” said Ifill, who is black. Asked if there were racial motives at play, she said, “I don’t know what it is. I find it curious.”

Ugh…

Anyways. This whole episode is just disappointing.

The obvious alternative to a bailout is letting troubled financial institutions declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy means that shareholders typically get wiped out and the creditors own the company.

Bankruptcy does not mean the company disappears; it is just owned by someone new (as has occurred with several airlines). Bankruptcy punishes those who took excessive risks while preserving those aspects of a businesses that remain profitable.

In contrast, a bailout transfers enormous wealth from taxpayers to those who knowingly engaged in risky subprime lending. Thus, the bailout encourages companies to take large, imprudent risks and count on getting bailed out by government. This “moral hazard” generates enormous distortions in an economy’s allocation of its financial resources.

Thoughtful advocates of the bailout might concede this perspective, but they argue that a bailout is necessary to prevent economic collapse. According to this view, lenders are not making loans, even for worthy projects, because they cannot get capital. This view has a grain of truth; if the bailout does not occur, more bankruptcies are possible and credit conditions may worsen for a time.

Talk of Armageddon, however, is ridiculous scare-mongering. If financial institutions cannot make productive loans, a profit opportunity exists for someone else. This might not happen instantly, but it will happen.

[source: CNN]

See also:
I’m with Newt Gingrich on the $700,000,000,000.00 Bailout.
I’m with Ralph Nader on the $700,000,000,000.00 Bailout.

The children of America await you!

Unreal. UNREAL.

Just start watching…the insanity of Democrats is astounding.

Don’t worry though. Once the bailout is passed, these folks will get back to work helping to fix the system.

ABC News’ Tahman Bradley and Arnab Datta Report: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., on Sunday described Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s request for billions of dollars to buy debt from struggling Wall Street financial firms as “un-American” and said the secretary should have stepped down.

Gingrich even expressed concern with Paulson’s connections to Wall Street. The treasury secretary served as the chairman of a major global investment banking and securities firm before joining the Bush administration.

“You have the former Chairman of Goldman Sachs asking for 700 billion dollars, and in his initial request, asking for it in such an un-American way that I think he should have resigned,” said Gingrich. “I think Paulson has terminally misunderstood the nature of the American system. Not just no review, no judicial review, no congressional accountability. Give me 700 billion dollars, 700 BILLION dollars! ‘I’ll be glad to spend it for you.’ That’s a centralization of power that is totally un-American.”

Emphasis added. Source: ABC.

George Will is also highly critical, for the same reasons as Newt. Watch video of the discussion.

See also:
I’m with Jeffrey Miron on the $700,000,000,000.00 Bailout.
I’m with Ralph Nader on the $700,000,000,000.00 Bailout.

Also, as a post-script: There are several tragic elements to the current economic crisis. Not the least of which is me being forced to listen to people refer to “Wall Street” and “Main Street” in the same sentence over and over and over to the point that it has become unbearable.

One guy twitters:

any gas in southwest atlanta? and can gas be made at home?

Emphasis added. From the real time gas updates at #atlgas.

If you play this backwards, it says, “Hillary is dead.”

1. McCain clearly is more comfortable talking specifics about national security than Obama.

2. Neither McCain nor Obama know anything about the economy. The first part of the debate was painful.

3. Obama is a lightweight, phony poser. The most painfully sad part of the debate for Senator Empty Suit:

“OMG!! Hey!! Look at me!! I have a bracelet too! I have no clue whose name is on it, but…uhhh…hmmm…uhhh…”

What. A. Loser.

Update: Oh, geez. Apparently the mom who gave Obama the bracelet asked him to stop talking about it a while ago. Very sad.

Amazing football catch. Wow.

Part I:

Part II:

Part III:

I’m with Ralph Nader because he is the only presidential candidate showing real leadership by talking sense about the trillion dollar bailout.

For example, how do we know the world will end if we don’t bail lenders out by this weekend? And why can’t the US government, as Nader suggests, provide bailout money in exchange for stocks or other incidents of ownership in these companies? That would assure that taxpayers are paid back some day, and it is only fair.

Also, Nader rails at length at the way the Bush administration has tended to do things like this on short notice with claims that we need to trust him and if we don’t go along, then we’ll regret it.

We trusted President Bush on our privacy, we trusted him on Iraq. I don’t want this bailout to be strike three. Nader compared President Bush to the chicken who thinks the sky is falling, but really Bush is the boy who cried wolf. I am done trusting him, especially knowing where the bailout money will be going.

See also:
I’m with Jeffrey Miron on the $700,000,000,000.00 Bailout.
I’m with Newt Gingrich on the $700,000,000,000.00 Bailout.

Heh.