In the new issue of The New York Review of Books, the editors gathered together the usual suspects to sound off about the imminent election.Joan Didion is at her best. Here's the conclusion:
"We could argue over whether "intelligent design" should be taught in our schools as an alternative to evolution, and overlook the fact that the rankings of American schools have already dropped to twenty-first in the world in the teaching of science and twenty-fifth in the world in the teaching of math. We could argue over whether or not the McCain campaign had sufficiently vetted its candidate for vice-president, but take at face value the campaign's description of that vetting as "an exhaustive process" including a "seventy-question survey." Most people in those countries where they still teach math and science would not consider seventy questions a particularly taxing assignment, but we could forget this. Amnesia was our preferred state. In what had become our national coma we could forget about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch and AIG and Washington Mutual and the 81,000 jobs a month and the fact that the national debt had been approaching $10.6 trillion even before Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke mentioned the imperative need to spend, which is to say to borrow, $700 billion for securities backed by bad mortgages, a maneuver likely to raise the debt another trillion dollars. ("We need this to be clean and quick," Paulson told ABC.)To read the rest (you really should), click here.
We could forget the 70 percent of American eighth graders who do not now and never will read at eighth-grade levels, meaning they will never qualify to hold one of those jobs we no longer have. We could forget that we ourselves induced the coma, by indulging the government in its fantasy of absolute power, wielded absolutely. So general is this fantasy by now that we approach this election with no clear idea where bottom is: what damage has been done, what alliances have been formed and broken, what concealed reefs lie ahead. Whoever we elect president is about to find some of that out."
16 comments:
Chunk, any news updates on the board meeting?
Wow: thanks for the terrific Didion link, Rebel Girl.
And that Congress that was touted by that fraud Pelosi to "be the most ethical in history"?
Crickets chirping.
This is a call for the LA Times to come clean and release the 2001 video footage of Obama with yet another terrorist at an LA conference. As reported today Khalidi (sp?) of LA is closely associated with the PLO and is a friend of Obama. The report is now saying Obama gave $70,000 to this guy!
The bottom line is: Who do most Americans feel safest with and will trust more as commander in chief? Obama or McCain?
Well, you are from Orange County, after all.
10:50 Polite today, aren't we?
Manage to kick any dogs today? Just askin'.
The fraud Pelosi could have stopped dead ANY Bush bill in the last 2 years. The bill body count? Gee it's about zero. Seems that Bush just kept signing EVERYTHING Pelosi shoved at him. He certainly wasn't looking for a fight from Pelosi was he? So for starters we can lay the $700 billion bank bailout scam at Pelosi's feet can't we?
10:50 Your parents failed miserably when it came to being polite to strangers. You have anger management problems. When Obama gets in office he is going to provide you with mental therapy. Don't worry about the line, you'll be put to the front since you are so special.
Obama seems pleasant, well-spoken and well, slick. But he certainly won't be the panacea many voters think. The polarization this election season has caused is awful. And instead of all this hand-wringing and finger-pointing, all of us--yes, even the usually even-handed Chunk and Reb--should have been concentrating on the SOCCCD board race.
oh I LOVE it when people come and tell the people who work hard on this blog what they should really be covering.
You want to help them cover the local race - well then write some pieces about it why don't you?
It's not all about voting or telling others what to do. It's about doing it yourself. Take some responsibility. Participate fully why don't you.
and the blog - well, it's theirs - not yours, not mine, not really. They don't take pictures of my dog but do you see me complaining?
Jeez.
Why don't you ask the HUNDREDS of faculty in the distcitr who couldn't be bothered to sacrifcie a single evening to phonebank or walk a precinct what they're doing to help the lcoal election?
Lay off these two. We're lucky to ahve them.
uh, didn't Chunk create an entire website devoted to the local cmapaign????
It will soon become necessary to filter out unwanted "comments." (I deleted some recent comments to this post.)
I urge some of you (certainly not all) to follow these rules:
1. If you are commenting on some controversy or issue, make sure you have a point, and if is the kind of point that requires support, provide that support. Assertions are not arguments.
2. Exchanges of curses and four-letter words are undignified and don't belong on this blog. If you must throw such things around, for God's sake be clever about it!
So we can't tell jerks like 4:24 to fuck off?
Remember in Manhattan when Woody Allen discusses going to a Nazi march with bricks and baseball bats? After being told about a devastating editorial in the Times, he responds by saying that yes, fine, but with Nazis,-- bricks and baseball bats.
So when some jerk tries to blame a Democrat for years of Republican destruction, then at least a good invective is called for.
I thus rejoin--please fuck off, you little twit.
Lets see if I get the polemic here:
A)Republicans are the incarnation of all things bad.
and its corollary:
B)Democrats are good.
Wow. IT'S THAT SIMPLE!
Thanks to 11:28's literary shock therapy I now know the truth. Thanks for the wake up 11:28. I got a hard head so it takes me a while to get indoctrinated. I'm an epsilon, you know. I don't think you have to murder me now. But go ahead if you think it's necessary. I really think it's better to be Red than dead though.
Just sayin'...
Chunk, please don't censor them. They're just trying to help the politically afflicted. They're not really being impolite and rude. Vile language is necessary to save America in these trying times. Debate is historical and unnecessary.
"I really think it's better to be Red than dead."
What on earth does that mean?
TB, thanks for the patronizing tone and complete misrepresentation of the argument, but then again, you're voting for M&P, so that's a prerequisite.
Our current financial crisis can be laid at the feet of the god of deregulation. Go ahead and give a smug little response.
I believe the financial crises, in large part, has its genesis in the Community Reinvestment Act. What began as a good idea morphed into a monster that mandated lending to too many people who could not afford the loans.
Deregulation of financial markets began in the Ford Administration and continued in the Carter and Reagan Administration. It ended under Bush 41. Those changes are too far in time removed from this mess to be the proximate cause for the present mess.
A ripe area for blame in this melt down is the unregulated hedge fund and bond "insurance" markets. These are playgrounds for the rich and they suffered for their greed. Trouble is, when the rich lose money, they escape paying taxes. Since the middle class doesn't pay anywhere close to what the rich normally pay the system breaks down without their contribution. The middle class doesn't have enough cash in any case to make up the shortfall. As a society we are overly dependent on rich people to pay for normal government operations. We saw this dynamic in the dot-com meltdown. Something like 25000 California millionaires payed zero income tax instead of their normal $25 billion. They payed zero because they lost money instead of making it.
Another major factor was the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac influence. through the early Bush years there was a major scandal that involved both in accounting fraud. To its credit the Bush Administration sought to enhance oversight. Their congressional supporters nixed that. That scandal was but a shadow of the present one. Congress had a golden opportunity to put the brakes on 4 years ago but chose not to. Remember the mechanics at work here. Bills go from the legislature TO the executive, not the other way around.
If there was deregulation as a contributing factor why doesn't anyone name these mythical regulations that "went away"?
Sorry about not being "smug" enough for you 12:23 but this subject matter is in the record as a failure of existing regulation and a failure to act to strengthen regulation. It was not a fault of deregulation.
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