Michael McDaniel’s Dawning Awareness

I’m really starting to think that the whole rush to bail out wall street is a fraud.

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio):

Rep. Peter Defazio (D-Oregon):

Definitely a nice break from the current vitriol.

Many generalities, as usual, but also some very important specifics. I particularly like the first bit regarding his lobbying rules.

Krugman writes:

If the government is going to provide capital to financial firms, it should get what people who provide capital are entitled to — a share in ownership, so that all the gains if the rescue plan works don’t go to the people who made the mess in the first place.

That’s what happened in the savings and loan crisis: the feds took over ownership of the bad banks, not just their bad assets. It’s also what happened with Fannie and Freddie. (And by the way, that rescue has done what it was supposed to. Mortgage interest rates have come down sharply since the federal takeover.)

But Mr. Paulson insists that he wants a “clean” plan. “Clean,” in this context, means a taxpayer-financed bailout with no strings attached — no quid pro quo on the part of those being bailed out. Why is that a good thing? Add to this the fact that Mr. Paulson is also demanding dictatorial authority, plus immunity from review “by any court of law or any administrative agency,” and this adds up to an unacceptable proposal.

Write your newspaper editors, congressmen and senators, people. This is a $700 BILLION mistake that our grandchildren will be paying off. Here is a sample letter.

At the New Yorker’s 2007 conference “2012: Stories from the near future”, the social and cultural psychologist Jonathan Haidt talks about the five foundations of morality, and why liberals and conservatives tend to talk right past each other.

I found this talk very enlightening and if, like me, you have ever wondered why conservatives just “don’t get it,” have a look! (hint: they do)

Thanks to Nick for the link.

Required viewing:

Lawrence Lessig on McCain on Technology

Let’s get to it!

I’m sure all 3 of you who monitor my blog have seen this already, but just in case, Barack Obama gave a speech yesterday — a bold, courageous, visionary speech:

We have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle—as we did in the OJ trial—or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina—or as fodder for the nightly news.

We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words.

We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.”

I found this shocking. The incarcerated now account for 1/99th of the US adult population. Even more frightening, 1 in 9 young black men (aged 20-34) is behind bars; among hispanic men, it’s 1 in 36.

The US has passed China as the worlds leading jailer.

I guess the prosecution was wise to boot me from the jury after all.

[via NYT]

I know, why bother, right? Because — otherwise, future madmen will pull crap like this, too:

This evening Attorney General Michael Mukasey, as expected, refused to prosecute the contempt of Congress resolutions against Josh Bolten and Harriet Miers for their refusal to testify in the U.S. attorneys scandal.

[via TPM]