Oprah has good taste:
In other Tolstoy news, I feel like Hadji Murad should be talked about more. Kind of a precursor to the Anbar Awekening / SOI strategy we’re currently employing in Iraq.
Friday Airport Blogging
The Takeover
Looks like the government is taking Fannie and Freddie into receivorship: “The executives were told that, under the plan, they and their boards would be replaced, shareholders would be virtually wiped out, but the companies would be able to continue functioning with the government generally standing behind their debt, people briefed on the discussions said.”
Not sure I understand the logical behind “virtually” wiping out the shareholders as opposed to totally wiping them out. As per this Economist article the sensible thing seems to me to be to nationalize the GSEs entirely and then eventually have them broken up into bits that are subsequently privatized.
Scarborough On McCain Campaign’s War Against The Media: ‘I Think They’re Making A Mistake’
In her speech on Wednesday night, Sarah Palin attacked journalists for scrutinizing her record. “I’ve learned quickly, these past few days, that if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite,” she said, “then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.”
During an interview with ThinkProgress in St. Paul yesterday, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough told us, “The McCain campaign has made a very calculated decision they’re going to run against the press. Personally, I don’t think it works.” He continued:
Attacking the press for conservatives, for Republicans, it always provides a sugar high. It excites the base. It is never ever worth the pay off. … Don’t engage in a war. I think McCain’s campaign is making a mistake. Because that never pays off in the end.
But, they’ve adopted that strategy. Make no mistake of it. They’ve adopted the strategy publicly, privately. They’re fighting behind the scenes. And we’ll see — maybe it works this year. I don’t think so though.
The McCain campaign recently said journalists are creating a “faux media scandal designed to destroy the first female Republican nominee.” In a jeering and sarcastic column this past week, Politico’s Roger Simon wrote, “On behalf of the elite media, I would like to say we are very sorry” for asking basic questions about Palin’s record.
Scarborough said he’s always had a better relationship with the Obama campaign than with the McCain campaign. He added, “The Bush White House — not a big friend of mine. I think they stopped talking to me after Hurricane Katrina.” Watch it:
When Palin was first announced last Friday as John McCain’s vice presidential running mate, Scarborough declared that she had too little foreign policy experience for the job. Earlier this week, ThinkProgress questioned whether Scarborough was backtracking a bit from his initial criticism.
But during the interview yesterday, Scarborough reiterated his initial concerns. In the wake of developments in Georgia and Pakistan, Scarborough said now is “no time to have a vice president that has so little experience. And I still agree with that.” That being said, he added, “she has a remarkable resume.”
Slicin’ Up Eyeballs
Having a frustrating air travel situation (managed, after some difficulty, to get myself booked on a red eye back to DC that I’m pretty sure is going to wind up getting canceled) but sitting around at the gate I stumbled across the “Debaser” video for the first time and it kinda cheered me up:
Meanwhile, tribute albums are lame, but I think Where Is My Mind? A Tribute to the Pixies is actually quite good. Still, a couple of weeks ago I was talking to someone who referred to “Alec Eiffel” as a Get-Up Kids song and there’s really no excuse for that.
CNBC host praises Palin for ‘putting a skirt on’: ‘I want her laying next to me in bed.’
Donny Deutsch, host of CNBC’s Big Idea, praised Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) as the “new creation” of the “feminist ideal” yesterday on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street. “Women want to be her, men want to mate with her. It’s as simple as that,” he said, adding that Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) failed because “she didn’t put a skirt on!”:
DEUTSCH: There is the new creation that the feminist woman has not figured out in 40 years of the feminist ideal that men can take in a woman in power and women can celebrate a woman in power. Hillary Clinton didn’t figure it out. She didn’t put a skirt on! [...]
She [Palin] talked about energy. Didn’t matter! Today everybody’s running in circles — we want to have her over for dinner. I trust her. I want her watching my kids. I want her laying next to me in bed. That’s the way people vote.
Watch it:
Host Erin Burnett suggested Deutsch could use “a four-letter acronym beginning with M and ending with F.” (HT: Jezebel)
“Uppity” Westmoreland
Rep. Lynee Westmoreland (R-GA) thinks Barack Obama is “uppity.” And it seems he also doesn’t think “uppity” is a racist term:
I’ve never heard that term used in a racially derogatory sense. It is important to note that the dictionary definition of ‘uppity’ is ‘affecting an air of inflated self-esteem —- snobbish.’ That’s what we meant by uppity when we used it in the mill village where I grew up.
In other news, Rep. Westmoreland thinks you are very, very stupid.
The Talk of the Town
Marc Ambinder reports:
Folks at my company are super excited about our newest product — a 300-sample-per-night daily tracking poll sponsored by the folks at Diageo. Last night’s track has Obama up six, 46 to 40 among registered voters.
In the past I’ve noted that the Gallup Daily Tracking Poll’s information is presented in a way that’s likely to generate buzz via misleading narratives — statistical noise looks meaningful the way they present it. But Hotline/Diageo are doing one better by using a much smaller sample, 300 people per day instead of 1000 per day. One bonus of the smaller sample is that it’ll be cheaper. And, ironically, another bonus of the smaller sample is that it’ll produce worse data — more random noise — that, in turn, will probably help gin up more interest in the poll.
McCain’s ‘Specific Ideas’ On The Housing Crisis Failed to Appear At The RNC
Yesterday, the Wonk Room noted how little discussion of the economy occurred during the Republican National Convention. One facet of the poor economy in particular – the housing crisis – was almost completely absent from the RNC.
The Associated Press reported today that the housing crisis is now affecting 4 million Americans, who are “either behind on their payments or in foreclosure.” Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has acknowledged the problem, saying that it is having a “devastating impact on our financial markets and the household budgets of millions of hardworking Americans,” and that “we have a responsibility to take action to help those among them who are deserving homeowners.”
Still, housing was mentioned only once during the entire convention, the same number of times as “Elvis,” and “Tyrannosaurus.”
Former Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AR) said during his address Wednesday that “If you’re a young couple losing your house…you want something to change,” and that McCain has “specific ideas to respond to a need for change.” However, Huckabee didn’t offer the specifics, instead going on to note, in the very next sentence, that “there are some things we never want to change – freedom, security, and the opportunity to prosper.” Watch it:
Perhaps Huckabee declined to put forth specifics because John McCain’s plan for solving the housing crisis consists of “policy platitudes instead of solutions.”
McCain, like President George Bush, advocates a laissez faire approach to housing, and has said that he would only “convene a meeting of the nation’s accounting professionals” and “top mortgage lenders,” who he hopes would voluntarily help Americans.
However, as the Wonk Room has pointed out before, “individual and voluntary negotiations between at-risk borrowers and mortgage servicers is clearly not working.” Instead, “effective solutions for foreclosed properties must be centered on state and local governments and their non-profit, private sector, and philanthropic partners.”
But the RNC speakers just ignored the problem, which is affecting millions of Americans today, and spent their time talking about “drilling,” “mavericks,” and “hockey moms.”
White House Refuses To Deny Spying On Iraqi Prime Minister
Excerpts from investigative journalist Bob Woodward’s new book, “The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008,” reveal that the White House has conducted an “extensive spying operation” on Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, supposedly one of the Bush administration’s strongest allies.
Today in the press briefing, reporters gave White House Press Secretary Dana Perino a chance to deny the allegations. Perino refused to do so, however, adding that she wouldn’t even comment on the book:
Q To follow up on that Dana, why are you not simply denying the allegations in Woodward’s book?
MS. PERINO: Why am I not denying what allegations?
Q Denying that there is — that spying –
MS. PERINO: I didn’t deny it. I said I declined to comment on it. And I will decline to comment on it.
Watch it:
The Iraq government reacted sharply to the allegations today. Spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said that Baghdad plans to press the Bush administration for an explanation. “It reflects also that the institutions in the United States are used to spy on their friends and their enemies in the same way,” al-Dabbagh said in a statement.
Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Ron Suskind also recently revealed that U.S. intelligence agencies had tapped the phones of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated last year.
Transcript: Read more
Rep. Virgil Goode rails against ‘anchor babies’
In a debate on Wednesday, Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) repeatedly used the derogatory term “anchor babies” when talking about the issue of undocumented immigration, calling for a “fix” to the situation:
GOODE: There’s not going to be a consensus in Congress to fix the anchor baby situation until you get more persons like me who are willing to say, No to the anchor baby and no to the Nancy Pelosi’s of this Congress, who depends on the Hispanic Caucus. … But you don’t have blanket anchor babies occurring day in and day out in the United States of America and having the taxpayers continue to foot the bill. They come in from Mexico, Guatemala, Salvador, and have ‘em in this country.
Watch it:
Deporting these legal citizens would require a constitutional amendment stripping the natural-born citizen clause from the Fourteenth Amendment. No wonder Goode’s opponent, Tom Perriello, said there is “exactly zero chance” Goode’s “fix” could pass.
