Could the bar be set any lower?

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Thursday night is rapidly approaching, and I must confess to conflicting emotions.  One the one hand, I fully expect Sarah Palin to be a complete disaster.  On the other hand, so does everyone else.

So, how does Joe Biden handle the situation of being on stage with a person who has no right to be there?  I’d advise against the McCain approach of completely ignoring your debate partner even though Joe would have every right to view Sarah Palin with contempt.  Maybe his best approach would simply be to give Palin enough rope and hope that her debate performance mimics the Gibson and Couric interviews.  

But what worries me most is how much of a curve will the media grade Palin?  And is it fair to hold one VP candidate to higher standards than another?  Will one gaffe by Joe Biden carry more weight than fifty by Palin?  Does she win simply by not blinking?

Does the VP debate even take place? 

DEwind: The Week That Was September 22nd

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The big news of the week in the Delaware blogosphere has to be Delaware Liberal’s call for donations to the campaign of Rebecca Young. DL readers and staff donated $1640 dollars to Young’s campaign to unseat Joe Miro. If you pledged money or you just want to make a donation, send your check off today to:

Young 4 the 22nd
P.O. Box 1655
Hockessin, DE 19707 

Earlier in the week, there were two great debates regarding John Atkins, Delaware’s unique creation, went on here and at Delaware Politics. Burris writes:

Lying profusely is what got John into trouble the first time and one would think he’d learned his lesson. Apparently, that is not the case. Unfortunately, people seem to be buying the “new” John Atkins hook, line and sinker. 

And on Sunday, another debate, for those of you counting that’s over 120 comments. Mike, at Down With Absolutes!, predicts Atkins winning by a landslide and kavips skewers Atkins in Profiles of Garbage.

The Next Stunt

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The McCain campaign is not a campaign of ideas.  It is not a campaign based on a ideology.   It is not a campaign based on a strategy.   All the McCain…

Gee, who’d have guessed?

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The study, released yesterday, tested the physiological responses of 46 participants to various threatening images, like bloody faces. It found that people who self-identified as “in favor of socially protective…

Bailout Nation — the Latest Deal

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So after John McCain went to DC last week to collect his credit for the prior deal (and certainly without having one of his own), the news today is that there is apparently a new framework for a new bailout deal:

  • The total is still $700 billion, but is structured to allocate in 3 phases — $300 billion now, $100 billion at the President’s discretion, $350 billion only with Congressional approval;
  • Institutions selling assets to the government have to issue warrants, providing taxpayers an asset stake as a way to get back some of the bailout funds;
  • They expanded the pool of institutions who could participate, including small banks, pension funds, local governments
  • Executive Golden Parachutes are cut for institutions that get bailout funds;
  • An oversight board is created and that board has some accountability to and oversight by Congress;
  • Judicial review is preserved;
  • Private insurance funded by the banks to insure MBS;
  • The Government would somehow renegotiate bad mortgages that it owns either directly of via the securities.

From the Department of Stuff We Would Have Told You For Free

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“The last six months have made it abundantly clear that voluntary regulation does not work.”

-Christopher Cox, Chairman Securities and Exchange Commission in NYT last Friday

More from the same article:
“The chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a longtime proponent of deregulation, acknowledged on Friday that failures in a voluntary supervision program for Wall Street’s largest investment banks had contributed to the global financial crisis, and he abruptly shut the program down . . .

because I can 2

greatest day ever low 60's 2 dogs with you outside feeling the cool breeze on the left side of your face sun shining at 3pm on you face on a…

Republican Talking Point Smackdown — Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae Are Not Responsible for the Meltdown

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John McCain has been talking this bit of idiocy up ever since his call to fire the Chairman of the SEC landed like a dud. It has been taken up by the wingnut media for dissemination to their aggrieved and credulous constituencies. Let’s take a look at why this talking point is complete bull and why they think this is useful to them. This is going to be long (go get your cocktail now) — but unlike any wingnut talking point, there is plenty of data along the way here. We’ll start with this graph from Brad Delong:

Frankly, this ought to be the end of the discussion. Using data from the Federal Reserve Board, you can see who was writing mortgages throughout the life of the housing bubble though the bubble bursting. And the conforming mortgages that Fannie and Freddie could acquire became a smaller part of the total mortgage market share starting in 2002, absolutely cratered (for a combination of reasons — market, political, structural (their accounting scandal) in 2004, 2005 and started ramping back up as the bubble began to pop. The giant spike at the end is when the Administration (aided and abetted by Congress) rejiggered the conforming limits of these GSEs to get them to take on jumbo loans in an impotent attempt to put their fingers in the dike.