The caging of Sarah Palin

TPM on the bizarre handling of Sarah Palin:

What’s really sobering is that the McCain campaign continues to block Palin from answering questions even though it’s now resulting in reams and reams of bad press for the McCain-Palin ticket. That suggests McCain advisers know that letting her answer even the most elementary questions in an uncontrolled environment is so dangerous that it’s worth weathering the current media drubbing they’re taking in order to prevent it from happening at all costs.

Of course there’s an alternative explanation: they’re worried that she will sound all too good, and will flip the ticket. I mean, she’s already on record as referring to a “Palin-McCain administration”….
No, no, no: I’m only joking. Really.

Anathem

If it seems as if I’ve posted fewer book-related items recently, there is a simple explanation. I’m reading Neal Stephenson’s latest, “Anathem”, and it’s going to take a while. The good news: I’m reading it on the Kindle, which reduces the weight (and the price!). The bad: it’s still going to take some time: I don’t want to rush it.

"Sarah has a tummy ache"

Andrew Sullivan becomes understandably apoplectic at this nonsense:

At the insistence of the McCain campaign, the Oct. 2 debate between the Republican nominee for vice president, Gov. Sarah Palin, and her Democratic rival, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., will have shorter question-and-answer segments than those for the presidential nominees, the advisers said. There will also be much less opportunity for free-wheeling, direct exchanges between the running mates.

McCain advisers said they had been concerned that a loose format could leave Ms. Palin, a relatively inexperienced debater, at a disadvantage and largely on the defensive.

She’s “unblinkingly” ready to become President, but too delicate to handle a televised debate? My bullshit meter just went off the scale and exploded.
I liked the following comment by Skip Evans over at Dispatches From The Culture Wars:

Dear Mrs. Debate Holder,
Sarah will be absent from the debate today, because she has a tummy ache and is not feeling well. Please excuse her absence.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Karl Rove

Term of art: "fraudulent conveyance"

Andrew Sullivan posts some thoughts by a reader on the proposed financial bail-out.

Third, the administrations proposals continue a process of socializing loss and preserving profits and distributions, many of which were made with full knowledge of the pending losses. When management distributes illusory profits to insiders in full knowledge of a massive loss, this is called a fraudulent conveyance, and in equity proceedings such distributions are routinely recovered for the creditor mass. There should therefore be a careful scrutiny of distributions of profits and bonuses by failed firms.  The bailout we now see may mean effectively that taxpayer money is subsidizing the purchase of macmansions and Bentleys by investment managers who behaved irresponsibly. 

The origins of the mortgage crisis

A number of soi-disant “conservative” pundits have been blaming the sub-prime mortgage mess on “liberal political correctness”. Jim Lippard and Craig Cantoni provide facts rather than FUD:

LAS VEGAS – As part of President Bush’s ongoing effort to help American families achieve the dream of homeownership, Federal Housing Commissioner John C. Weicher today announced that HUD is proposing to offer a “zero down payment” mortgage, the most significant initiative by the Federal Housing Administration in over a decade. This action would help remove the greatest barrier facing first-time homebuyers – the lack of funds for a down payment on a mortgage.

Speaking at the National Association of Home Builders’ annual convention, Commissioner Weicher indicated that the proposal, part of HUD’s Fiscal Year 2005 budget request, would eliminate the statutory requirement of a minimum three percent down payment for FHA-insured single-family mortgages for first-time homebuyers.

“Offering FHA mortgages with no down payment will unlock the door to homeownership for hundreds of thousands of American families, particularly minorities,” said HUD’s Acting Secretary Alphonso Jackson. “President Bush has pledged to create 5.5 million new minority homeowners this decade, and this historic initiative will help meet this goal.”

Maxwell's demon and Sarah Palin

Today’s snorting-coffee-all-over-my-keyboard moment was provoked by a beautiful fisking of the latest utterance from the woman who “knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America” by hilzoy. The comment thread is delightful! And aren’t you glad that “they don’t flag, you know, the molecules”? I know I am!

First thing we do is shut down the rating agencies

Wisdom from Michael Thomas in Forbes.com today:

As I pondered, the thought came to me that if there are particular culprits who are conspicuously and flamingly behind Wall Street’s unholy predicament, and who bear continuing responsibility for its day-to-day worsening, they are the rating agencies. Which leads to the logical conclusion that perhaps the best thing Paulson, Bernanke, Geithner, et al., might do in the present crisis would be to shut down Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s.

Going back three years, at a minimum, any reader of my idol James Grant would have been struck by the undisguised scorn he heaped on the two agencies’ ratings of various structured debt instruments–ratings that were based on “models” that premised that in a ziggurat of crap, the highest layer deserved an AAA rating because it would be the last to stink up the joint.

Ignored was what seemed to me self-evident: Crap is crap wherever and however you stack it. And yet, having gulled both the innocent and greedy into massive purchases of this “AAA” (sic) garbage, they still rule. From day to day, markets convulse in anticipation of, or reaction to, the agencies’ changes in the ratings of AIG and others.

RIP Richard Wright

From the BBC:

Pink Floyd keyboard player and founder member Richard Wright has died aged 65 from cancer.

I think I’ll plug in my headphones and listen to “Umma Gumma” for a few minutes….

"Lie to Me"

Scalzi on McCain.

When there is no real-world penalty for lying, distorting and demonizing, then the only thing to stop you is your own moral compunctions. However, if McCain actually had any moral compunctions on this point, he wouldn’t be running the campaign he’s running now. And I would suggest that a man who shows no moral compunction in pursuit of power is not a man who will suddenly find those compunctions once he has power. An election is a job interview, people. If someone lies to you during a job interview, and says to you “yes, I’m lying, what of it?” when you catch them in the lie, and you hire them anyway, well. You shouldn’t be surprised at what comes next.