RFE/RL Roundup: Sakartvelo On My Mind

So what's going on in Georgia?

Hmm. The poor, oppressed South Ossetians whom the Russians had to save from Great Georgian Imperialism are ethnically cleansing South Ossetia. I'm sure they don't have Russian permission to do this. Their army must be too overstretched to stop groups of punks with torches.

Don't worry, though, the EU is on the case!

Q: Do you think international community could give real guarantees of safety in the buffer zones?

HUMAN RIGHTS POOBAH: In the buffer zone it ought to be possible after some time because there will be a massive presence of European Union monitors.

Yeah, maybe not.

But don't worry! Soft power to the rescue! Here comes...vigorous debate!

Hey, Georgia, call the Bosnians and see how relying on the EU worked out for them.

Getting down to brass tacks

I'm not a big fan of political spin by any party. This financial crisis that we're facing is not Obama's fault. And while maybe he could have been more vocal in his prior warnings and efforts to rein it in, it is not McCain's fault. Nor is it George W. Bush's fault (even he tried repeatedly to rein it in or encourage Congress to do so). I present an excerpt from Investor's Business Daily editorial that breaks it down along the lines of the now-removed-video in this post (the creator should have dropped the soundtrack anyway, in my opinion). [N.B., the video's back as of late night ET 9/30. —The ŒV] So take a moment and read this or follow the link above and then see if the claim that "failed Bush policies" led us to this crisis...maybe some politicians aren't quite being honest with the people.

To hear today's Democrats, you'd think all this started in the last couple years. But the crisis began much earlier. The Carter-era Community Reinvestment Act forced banks to lend to uncreditworthy borrowers, mostly in minority areas.

Age-old standards of banking prudence got thrown out the window. In their place came harsh new regulations requiring banks not only to lend to uncreditworthy borrowers, but to do so on the basis of race.

These well-intended rules were supercharged in the early 1990s by President Clinton. Despite warnings from GOP members of Congress in 1992, Clinton pushed extensive changes to the rules requiring lenders to make questionable loans.

Lenders who refused would find themselves castigated publicly as racists. As noted this week in an IBD editorial, no fewer than four federal bank regulators scrutinized financial firms' books to make sure they were in compliance.

Failure to comply meant your bank might not be allowed to expand lending, add new branches or merge with other companies. Banks were given a so-called "CRA rating" that graded how diverse their lending portfolio was.

It was economic hardball.

"We have to use every means at our disposal to end discrimination and to end it as quickly as possible," Clinton's comptroller of the currency, Eugene Ludwig, told the Senate Banking Committee in 1993.

And they meant it.

In the name of diversity, banks began making huge numbers of loans that they previously would not have. They opened branches in poor areas to lift their CRA ratings.

Meanwhile, Congress gave Fannie and Freddie the go-ahead to finance it all by buying loans from banks, then repackaging and securitizing them for resale on the open market.

That's how the contagion began.

With those changes, the subprime market took off. From a mere $35 billion in loans in 1994, it soared to $1 trillion by 2008.

Wall Street eagerly sold the new mortgage-backed securities. Not only were they pooled investments, mixing good and bad, but they were backed with the implicit guarantee of government.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac grew to become monsters, accounting for nearly half of all U.S. mortgage loans. At the time of their bailouts this month, they held $5.4 trillion in loans on their books. About $1.4 trillion of those were subprime.

As they grew, Fannie and Freddie grew heavily involved in "community development," giving money to local housing rights groups and "empowering" the groups, such as ACORN, for whom Barack Obama once worked in Chicago.

Warning signals were everywhere. Yet at every turn, Democrats in Congress halted attempts to stop the madness. It happened in 1992, again in 2000, in 2003 and in 2005. It may happen this year, too.

Since 1989, Fannie and Freddie have spent an estimated $140 million on lobbying Washington. They contributed millions to politicians, mostly Democrats, including Senator Chris Dodd (No. 1 recipient) and Barack Obama (No. 3 recipient, despite only three years in office).

The Clinton White House used Fannie and Freddie as a patronage job bank. Former executives and board members read like a who's who of the Clinton-era Democratic Party, including Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelick, Jim Johnson and current Rep. Rahm Emanuel.

Collectively, they and others made well more than $100 million from Fannie and Freddie, whose books were cooked Enron-style during the late 1990s and early 2000s to ensure executives got their massive bonuses.

Back to the USSR?

Far be it from your Œcumenical Volgi to disagree with the estimable Kathy Shaidle, Canada's angriest and sharpest bloggeuse, but apropos her argument here that United Russia is looking increasingly like the old KPSU, Confucius* says respectfully that Russia under Putin—having no ideological claims outside nationalism, no economic ideology other than "we get a cut," and concerned solely with power politics at home and aggressive, revanchist claims abroad—looks increasingly like Nazi Germany rather than the Soviet Union.

Photo: members of the Nashi Youth Movement.

*For those who came in late: Confucius, spelled 孔夫子, is the name of the Œcumenical Volgi.

New York, New York

Today, New York Post headline writers picketed in front of the New York Stock Exchange. The writers produced their own signs, perfectly capturing the sentiment of many Americans who foolishly played by the rules.

** Satire. And picture may be photoshopped. 'Puter's a technological moron.

Preach on, brotherman.

I’m reminded of that superstition today by the absurd overvaluation of intelligence and educational credentials of the Democrats. Of course, as Heather MacDonald points out it’s always possible to go too far in the other direction, but I’m inclined to agree with Charles Murray that sheer intelligence is not only not a qualification for the highest office in the land, it may be a positive disqualification. Just look at Jimmy Carter!

—James Bowman (read it all)

Hell, yeah. Our last certified-intellectual president? Woodrow Wilson. A total disaster at best, and in Jonah Goldberg's account, arguably the architect of the world's first fascist dictatorship.

Get Educated!

Every time I read Thomas Sowell, I'm impressed. I've wondered why some of my relatives lean to the political left, so this column seemed relevant. Just chill on the following quote from the column:

It is hardly surprising that young people prefer the political left. The only reason for rejecting the left's vision is that the real world in which we live is very different from the world that the left perceives today or envisions for tomorrow.

Pretty good and very accessible explanation...

...of the regulatory mess that created the mortgage meltdown. It gets a little partisan and histrionic (though not wrong, I'd wager) at the end, but it's worth watching all the way through.



UPDATE: And for a more precise explanation of the role of left-wing pressure groups, "community organizers," and ACORN (who was up until this weekend penciled in Frank & Dodd, et al., to get some huge tranche of money out of the bailout), in driving the politics behind the regulation that led to the crisis, check out Stanley Kurtz's piece in the New York Post today.

UPDATE 2: Well, the video's down because of a music claim from Time-Warner. If anyone knows the creator's name or if it goes back up sans music, e-mail one of us over on the left-hand side.

UPDATE 3: It's back…for the moment. The internet is a hard beast to kill.

Optimists

I wasn't able to watch the first debate and all I've seen is the general spin of McCain won or Obama won for various reasons. In the end, it seemed like a wash. Later this weekend, I was sent an email quoting some content by Mona Charen who cites a piece by Josh Muravchik detailing just how left Obama really is. I think they're dead on.

Let me take a brief sidestep here - I'll return to Ms. Charen and Mr. Muravchik shortly. I'm an optimist, almost to a flaw. I always liked the quote, "In the end, a pessimist may be proven right, but the optimist had a better time getting there". I think America in general is an optimisitic country -- at least until the current wave of democrats crept into power. Now we have candidates running for various offices on the democrat side of our political system implying or outrightly stating what a terrible place America is. Maybe that's why Congress' approval rating has hit an all-time low twice in the last year (18%), a point below the lowest George W. Bush has ever fallen. The doom and gloom people out there need some optimism, and to a certain degree, Obama had some of that going for him. Until his true colors shone through that façade. He too believes that America is terrible and the cause of evil things around the world.

Let's jump back and cite a few examples from the authors above:

Obama called himself “progressive,” a term of art favored by veterans of the hard New Left, like Tom Hayden, as well as by old-time Communists. Early this year his wife Michelle, lacking his tact, would kindle controversy by saying that his success in the presidential primaries made her feel proud of her country for the first time. The comment, a faux pas that she was soon at pains to explain away, flowed logically from her view, expressed in her standard stump speech, that our country is a “downright mean” place, “guided by fear,” where the “life . . . that most people are living has gotten progressively worse.” (Note that home ownership, while flawed with the current bailout issue, is close if not at an all time high, unemployment remains very low, and the GDP continues to grow). Obama still reflected the presuppositions of a radical worldview. In one notable remark, he said of voters in economic distress that in their desperation they “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.” Chastised for his condescension, he responded: “I said something that everybody knows is true.” This was elitism of a very specific kind—the mentality of the community organizer, according to which people in the grip of “false consciousness” need to be enlightened as to the true nature of their class interests, and to the nature of their true class enemies. The same suppositions are again evident in Obama’s stances on international issues. Iraq, as he sees it, is only a symptom. “I don’t want to just end the war . . . I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place.” And what would that mindset be? In a 2002 speech that he frequently cites, he said the war resulted from the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors . . . to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne . . . the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income . . . the arms merchants in our own country . . . feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe. In this litany of global perfidy, the issues of Saddam Hussein’s murderous dictatorship, of American security, of the future of freedom, shrink to inconsequentiality next to the struggle of the oppressed against their American capitalist overlords.
When it comes to Iran, Obama has acknowledged that the regime presents a problem. But his actions—he opposed the Kyl-Lieberman amendment designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization—as well as his rhetoric imply that the greater danger emanates from George W. Bush (who is allegedly seeking “any justification to extend the Iraq war or to attack Iran”). Likewise on defeating terrorism, where he rejects the America-centric focus that Bush has given to the issue; instead, in the words of his aides, Obama’s main goal is to “restore . . . our moral standing”—that is, to put an end to our aggressive ways.
Even the events of 9/11 could not shake Obama from the mindset that the enemy is always ourselves. The bombings, he wrote, reflected the underlying struggle—between worlds of plenty and worlds of want; between the modern and the ancient; between those who embrace our teeming, colliding, irksome diversity, while still insisting on a set of values that binds us together; and those who would seek, under whatever flag or slogan or sacred text, a certainty and simplification that justifies cruelty toward those not like us.

Maybe this will come more into the light as we get closer to November. One can only hope. Because that's what makes America great (and trust, me it is great) - we capitalize on hope through ingenuity and create success. There are some democrats who get things right:

A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties. --Harry Truman

The Worse the Better—American-style?

Our friend Chernyshevski would have understood this. Whether or not the specific thesis holds, the Volgi remains flummoxed that Obama's troubling—if not damning—association with all sorts of groups on the far left that has gone entirely unexamined by the "centrist" media who seem to have internalized a pas d'ennemies à gauche ethos in their long years of uncritically regurgitating press releases from Greenpeace, Naderites, and the Soros crew.

If so, then our body politic is distinctly lacking in antibodies to a dangerous set of beliefs. We'll see how far we can go with just talk-radio people and blogs pointing these things out. One would think genuinely centrist Democrats would be alarmed by this—and perhaps they were given the Hillary surge late in the primaries, but at the moment, the dogs of the media have failed to bark—perhaps out of ignorance, ideological sympathy, or just the assumption that someone who shops at Whole Foods like them, went to Ivy League schools, and has such a mellifluous baritone couldn't be the stalking horse of some very unwholesome groups.

(Via Jonah Goldberg.)

Credit where it's due

Strong statement by Condi contra Russian demands:

"We will not permit Russia to veto the future of NATO, neither the countries offered membership nor their decision to accept it…We and our European allies will give our help to Georgia.... The United States and Europe strongly support the independence and the territorial integrity of Russia's neighbors."

We'll see what kind of follow up there is—and this is after all, a piece published in a Greek newspaper—still, that's the right note to strike.

I wonder if Госпожа Rice has mixed feelings about the return to relevance of her Russianist skills.

Great Moments in Teaching, Episode #42,724

Our latest contestant is Sandy Binkley, a high school math teacher in at Portland (TN) High School.  Go Purple!  Ms. Binkley allegedly succumbed to the knowing experience of a 17 year old student.  Ah, young, illegal love.  

'Puter recently discovered a website dedicated to teachers behaving badly.  Stop by and visit Bad Bad Teacher.

Math was always 'Puter's hardest subject. 

We're A Bunch of Selfish Babies

You want to know who's really responsible for this economic crisis?  Look in the mirror.  See that handsome chap/fetching lass staring back at you?  It's all his/her fault.  I want more, I want it now and I don't care what it's going to ultimately cost.  Screw paying cash, or saving up, or foregoing the purchase altogether.  I want it now, and consarnit, I'll put myself in hock to get it!

George Will speaking this morning on This Week with George Stephanopolous commented on exactly this topic.  Briefly, Mr. Will stated that the inability to delay gratification is a sign of childishness.  Mr. Will implied that the current state of America in all sectors is a direct result of the infanitilization (whether government or self inflicted) of the American public. 

The average American savings rate?  For the last four quarters, it averages about 1% of disposable income.  And check out this terrifying series of charts.   Americans now carry nearly as much debt as the entire GDP of the United States in the most current year.  For all households, just under 20% of income goes to pay debt.  The ratio of household debt to income?  About 1.3.  How much revolving consumer credit is outstanding?  At the end of July 2008, about $963 billion.  How much is that?  Assuming 350 million Americans, it's about $2,750 for each man, woman and child in our country.  Family of four?  You owe about $11,000.  Non revolving consumer debt is $1.609 trillion.  Running the same math, that's about $4,600 per capita, or $18,400 for a family of four.  How about the national debt?  That's about $9.85 trillion, or $28,140 per capita or $112,500 for a family of four.

So, America's inability to be fiscally prudent has the average American in debt for a total of $35,940 of self and government inflicted debt.  And this only accounts for the principal of the debt, not the rapidly accruing interest.  Assuming an all-in debt of the types discussed herein of $12.4 trillion and an annual rate of interest of 6%, debt service is $745.3 billion, or $2,130 per capita.  And this assumes no further borrowing.  So, just to tread water, we have to each pay $2,130 annually.

Living beyond our means has finally caught up with us, and it's no one's fault but our own.  Sleep well, and remember when you're complaining about the economy, it's not just Wall Street that caused this mess, it's that face staring back at you in the mirror as well.  

Nancy Pelosi = Herbert Hoover, Just Dumber

This will work great!  I mean, it worked so well the first time, right?  Like when President Hoover raised taxes in the teeth of an economic downturn, helping the economy to tank and stay in the tank for 15 or so years.  

Oooh!  Speaker Pelosi!  After you do this, why not increase or create new massive government financed welfare programs?  You know, just like the New Deal.  Remember?  It's the massive socialist experiment that is mostly responsible for the current crushing debt burden of the United States and the credit crunch?  You don't recall?  OK.  Go right ahead, then. 

History.  Repeating.  Never mind.  'Puter feels like Cassandra.

Quoth 'Puter's make-believe girlfriend Megan McArdle, the only thing we know that ends a Depression is a massive global war (that we win).  

'Puter hopes a less extreme solution is possible.  

How we got here

The roots of the crisis in four easy steps.

South Ossetia ≠ Kosovo

Doubtless all the Gormogons' readers saw through Russia's silly "Kosovo" pretext for invading Georgia. If, however, you were worried about the details of the claim, Noel Malcolm (who literally wrote the [ok, a] book on Kosovo) goes through the historical and legal details here in Standpoint. It may be a little bit of a slog for those not deeply engaged, but if you feel your attention wandering, do skip ahead and read the last couple paragraphs as his analysis of why Russia's made this claim—in addition to cocking a snook at the West for taking out his client Slobo Milošević—is interesting.

Follow up

As a brief follow up to this story, and without going into details, I do want to say that I've seen promise for various elements of the IC (Intelligence Community). Several agencies are suffering a generational continuity gap and parts are trying hard to adapt to new technology more familiar to the younger generation of intel analysts and operatives coming into the service. There's plenty of problems (the big ones found on the front page of national papers, sometimes even a book comes out about it) but there's plenty of successes that must remain where they are for various reasons that should be obvious to the Gormogon reader. Maybe when some future President names me DNI, I'll fix it all (if only it were that easy). Until then, those involved must continue to battle for what's right and reduce government waste and contractor welfare.

RFE/RL Roundup: Bear Watching (9/26)

So, let's see what's going on.

Rattling sabres, or just flexing, Russia claims it's going to build a space-based missile-defense system and upgrade its nuclear submarines.

And laughing at the U.S. and defiling the grave of James Monroe, she's giving a billion-dollar line of credit for arms and proliferating nuclear technology to Venezuela. (If the latter goes anywhere, look for the Brazilians to restart their mothballed Bomb project, and the Argentinians to probably jump on board as well.)

But don't worry, the West is united and resolute! Oh, my bad.

And, of course, they've managed to give their other vicious dictatorship client, Iran, yet more breathing room to develop the nukes the Russians have been helping them develop.

H&K made this work?!

The OICW, one of the most misbegotten weapons projects in the history of small arms, may have finally borne fruit. For those of you who haven't been following this, the OICW was a massive overreach in terms of technology and practicality. The Army wanted a weapon that had (a) a 5.56mm assault rifle, (b) an integrated 25mm grenade launcher with (c) integrated timer/airburst capacity, and (d) integration into the Land Warrior technoproject.

The end result of this was a huge failure, with tons of money sunk into what was an unwieldy, incredibly heavy, overly complex, utterly unreliable weapon amalgamation. Admitting they had a problem, the Army (and Heckler & Koch, the contractor) first disaggregated the weapon, spinning off the assault-rifle component into the XM8, a solid weapon we've mentioned before.

Now, it seems the electronics of the 25mm grenade launcher (pictured) have finally been made to work and it is—as it always should have been—a stand-alone system. As Steve Schippert points out, there's a long way to go before proving that such a complicated, high-tech weapon is field-ready, but this does seem like a promising first step.

The Volgi's position has always been that this type of weapon is best not given to every infantryman until it's utterly, dead reliable (likely decades hence). However, like a GPMG or SAW, for a single specialist trained in its maintenance and use in a squad (who can each carry an extra magazine of the weapon's very heavy ammo), this gizmo, if it works, would be an awesome addition, especially in obstacle-rich environments like urban warfare. Fire one of these things through a window and have it explode in midair in a room…that room is clear. For a demo, check out this Futureweapons segment on the XM307, which fires a similar airburst round of the same caliber. You can zip forward to 3:38, if you're only interested in the ammunition.

WWHS?

Instead of furthering the inevitable liquidation of the maladjustments brought about by the boom during the last three years, all conceivable means have been used to prevent that readjustment from taking place; and one of these means, which has been repeatedly tried though without success, from the earliest to the most recent stages of depression, has been this deliberate policy of credit expansion. . . . To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about; because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection — a procedure that can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end. . . . It is probably to this experiment, together with the attempts to prevent liquidation once the crisis had come, that we owe the exceptional severity and duration of the depression.We must not forget that, for the last six or eight years, monetary policy all over the world has followed the advice of the stabilizers. It is high time that their influence, which has already done harm enough, should be overthrown.

Friedrich Hayek, in Monetary Nationalism and International Stability, 1932. (Via Organizations & Markets)

Another One Bites The Dust

Well, JPMorganChase and Jamie Dimon just bought up the bricks and mortar and some of the better assets of Washington Mutual at the fire sale price of $1.9 billion, seemingly at the behest of the FDIC.

Not to say 'Puter told you so, but 'Puter told you so.

Worried that the CIA is a self-serving bureaucracy...

...that's basically become the State Department with more levels of classification? Well, this article (via Shmuel Rosner) won't do anything to allay your fears.

VLAD TO W: DROP DEAD

Gordon Chang reports the Russian foreign-policy establishment is saying with one voice, "Look, we're not playing ball. Punish us for Georgia, and we'll upset your precious little multilateral applecart." This is about as blunt as diplomats get.

So, what now, Jack Matlock? I know, "What can we give the Russians to regain that 'genuine strategic cooperation' that's always just around the corner?"

Let's go back to the Fallacy of Foreign-Policy Egocentrism: It's not all about us.

Pauline Kael Revisited

Ah, never one to disappoint, the New York Times offers up an unintentional satire of itself on par with New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael's obliviousness and New York arrogance. Ms. Kael is reputed to have said, in response to Richard M. Nixon's 49 state drubbing of George McGovern, "I don't know how Richard Nixon could have won. I don't know anybody who voted for him." Roger Cohen ably steps into Ms. Kael's role in today's NYT opinion column.

Apparently, Mr. Cohen has determined that American exceptionalism is a Neanderthal concept only hillbillys and backwards knuckle draggers believe. Particularly those of us who are "angry," and believe the Supreme Court should only concern itself with American law. Much like Ms. Kael, it would behoove Mr. Cohen to become aware of his own deficiencies before commenting on those of others. It's like 'Puter's Scots-Irish hillbilly ancestors said in that old Appalachian Mountain proverb, "It's not what you don't know that makes you look like a fool. it's what you do know that ain't so.''

Mr. Cohen is British by birth. From his bio, it is unclear whether he is a United States citizen. Further, the vast majority of his career has been spent overseas, in places like Zagreb, Berlin, Rio de Janerio, Paris and Rome. Nothing wrong with any of this, but such apparent lack of experience with broader American culture would make 'Puter loathe to offer up such cutting commentary on people with whom he's spent little time.

Mr. Cohen with his gimlet continental eye identifies "[t]he damn-the-world, God-chose-us rage of that America." Presumably, "that America" is anyone who is remotely conservative. Mr. Cohen shows his concern about the "declining global influence of the Supreme Court." 'Puter was unaware of the Constitutional mandate for SCOTUS to be concerned about its global influence. Backwoods Angry 'Puter thought SCOTUS had enough to do sorting out America's fine messes without worrying about foreigners' problems.

Mr. Cohen helpfully offers his perspective on the 2008 Election.

On the Republican side, you have a guy who, in 2008, is just discovering the Net and Google and whose No. 2 is a woman who got a passport last year and believes she understands Russia because Alaska is closer to Siberia than Alabama.

Look past the rambling liberal canards, and you'll see Mr. Cohen's point at last. America should be a multi-cultural, globally dependant cog in the machine that is One World Government. America should know its place; its days of exceptionalism are long past. While this version of reality may excite folks in Manhattan, 'Puter thinks that few in America above 96th Street agree. Even Pauline Kael would see that.

'Puter and many Americans fervently believe that America IS exceptional, and that, with continued hard work and sacrifice, America's best days are ahead of her. That, Mr. Cohen, is the difference between pessimistic elitist liberalism and optimistic bedrock conservatism. And it's also why Sen. Obama cannot attract the votes of those conservative Democrat rubes in the hinterlands of Pennsyltucky, Ohio and Michigan.

’80s awesomeness

Patrick Nagel meets Princess Leia.

Read all about it. And buy GorT one here, before the limited edition of 200 is gone.

UPDATE: Welcome, to all those lashed to the oar at JVL's Galley Slaves! Stick around! Have some fun!

“Tom’s Diner”

Wonderful, wonderful little essay by Suzanne Vega on her gorgeous ditty “Tom’s Diner.”

Ms. Vega's a nice prose stylist, as well a terrific lyricist. And, yeah, the Notorious ŒV listened to Solitude Standing for several years straight. Great, great album. (And he's got a copy of Days of Open Hand around here somewhere too...)

Government as Religion

Two of the three Gormogons have extended family members who are true believing liberal Democrats. The Notorious OEV did a better job of choosing his relatives.

As the election has approached, and truth be told, for the last eight years of dealing with their Bush Derangement Syndrome, something occurred to 'Puter. The family members have given a religious significance to government, particularly the saving power of government. It's as if they are looking for their Savior on Earth, and have after careful determination, decided that the government fills the bill.

'Puter's liberal relative is Christian (United Church of Christ) and 'Puter believes GorT's liberal relatives are nominally Roman Catholic. 'Puter thinks the phenomenon holds for the secular Democrats as well, who are searching for meaning. These well meaning folks have decided that Jesus = social justice, and that social justice = liberal orthodoxy. Therefore, following this flawed logic, Jesus = liberal orthodoxy. Government is good, and must be bigger. Government can solve all our problems. Government is the answer.

It makes sense. Anything or anyone who threatens liberal orthodoxy is treated as a heretic and banished from the fold. See, e.g., Sen. Lieberman. It is a such an all encompassing faith in liberal orthodoxy that not even reason and logic can sway them. My relative believes that 'Puter cannot question Sen. Obama's judgment based on Sen. Obama's unexplained association with Mr. Ayers, an unrepentant Weather Underground member. It simply is out of bounds. My relative believes that Bush lied about WMD, despite the fact that every major Western intelligence agency thought at the time WMDs existed. Bush lied, people died. There is no reasonable basis for these beliefs; only absolute, unbending and irrational faith in liberal orthodoxy can explain it.

Yet, many of these same liberal Democrats cannot see that the same faith they criticize in religious folks (see, e.g., Palin) is on display in their own lives. Perhaps there is such animosity toward the religious because the religious hold up a mirror, and these Democrats see their own reflection, and are disturbed. And these Dems further cannot admit that, to be charitable, their treatment of "disbelievers" is far worse than that perpetrated by mainstream religious folks.

It makes 'Puter think that the Cult of Hello Kitty is saner.

UPDATE: Hello Kitty on the Cross looks kind of like Mark Steyn, noted Canadian free speech martyr. If you put a feline caricature of Mr. Steyn on the Cross, then tattooed it on someone's arm, then squint a little bit. 'Puter loves hisself some right-wing Canadian lumberjack-looking braniacs. And Mr. Steyn loves show tunes as well! We can add Mark Steyn to the list of 'Puter's man crushes.

While they were protecting those poor South Ossetians...

...those crafty Georgians must have forced forced the simple, good-hearted Russian soldiers to destroy their country's cultural patrimony. They're tricky bastards, those Georgians.

This reminds the Volgi of the kind of crimes against history and culture that the Serbs perpetrated in Bosnia, like when they fired incendiary shells into the National Library in Sarajevo.

Axis of Evil® watch

So, we've crossed Iraq off our list of malefactors. Who's left on the actively anti-American front? Well, if we ignore great powers like Russia and China, we've got Venezuela, Iran, Syria & North Korea. (Pakistan's ISI may soon be bidding for Iraq's spot.)

What's up around the Axis?

Hugo Chávez is doing his world tour and is stopping off in China and Russia to bid for favor from potential patrons. China can use his oil, and Russia can use his money. Everybody wins.

Ahmadinejad is in New York on his Let's Kill All the Jews tour.

Syria's blowing off Israel. (N.B., No guarantee on Debka's stories.)

And North Korea is firing up their reactors, having played us for chumps yet again.

So, Iraq is increasingly looking like a win, Libya's WMDs is pretty good, Afghanistan is still an overall plus (though deteriorating), and the rest? Increasingly emboldened, I'd say. With Russia and China riding high, too, things don't bode well for a boring decade coming up.

"Axis of Evil" is a registered trademark of David Frum & Michael Gerson.

Is Change another Clarence Walker?

So is Hubert Chang's claim true? Google has exploded and continues to do so taking on a multitude of competitors (mostly Microsoft) in a variety of fields: search technology, web-based email, web-based applications, photo sharing, maps, location-based services, data centers, and now browsers themselves (note to Google and every other browser writer: STICK to the XHTML standard...none of us developers want to spend hours upon hours debugging why the same XHTML code doesn't work in your browser!). Anyway, back to the program: I'm not sure what Mr. Chang's interest is in bringing this up now. I'd kind of argue that "you snooze, you lose."

The Gormogons welcome their followers!

Although we're not entirely sure of its utility, the Gormogons have added a "Followers" widget thingy to our sidebar. And, mirabile dictu, we've have our first members! A special Gormogonical welcome to Michael Bird of Yorba Linda, California, and the Walker Across Worlds, from B.C. (though, frankly, the northern locale and the sobriquet makes me suspect it's really Ithaqua, the Walker in the Wastes. If so, welcome, O Wendigo!).

Confucius says: Anyone else who wants to jump aboard is cordially invited to do so, publicly or anonymously if you're worried about the Freemasons' knowing you're a fan.

Photo: Biswaranjan Rout, AP

Japan's new PM: ’70s Action Hero

This hunk of awesomeness is a homebrew video about Japan's new PM, Tarō Asō, whom we've already discussed a little chez Gormogon. Turns out Asō can outshoot the Ghettoputer nine days of the week with a scattergun. He was on Japan's 1976 Olympic team shooting skeet. Some Japanese fan of his made this awesome, '70s-style homage à l'Asō that is too good not to pass on:

Britons are entranced by the exotic in the U.S. race

No, not the half-Luo Hawaiian who spent a bunch of his childhood in Indonesia. That's old hat for the heirs of Empire. No, it's the candidate who's so compellingly, entrancingly American.

RFE/RL Roundup: Bear Watching

Nice gesture by Medvedev; let's hope he does more. Too bad Stalin's the "strong Russia" model Putin is going for.

The Russia Lobby continues to press Washington. Matlock's arguments about the effects of admitting Georgia and Ukraine aren't trivial, but are undermined by his basing them on the Fallacy of Foreign-Policy Egocentrism:

He added that genuine strategic cooperation with Moscow, which vehemently opposes NATO membership for the two former Soviet republics, would be nearly impossible "as long as we're pushing this."

Why, Mr. Matlock, if Russia is interested in "genuine strategic cooperation," won't she lay off her neighbors and allow them to make their own foreign-policy decisions?

And Moldova continues to simmer. Tick, tick, tick.

Populism Run Amok

'Puter's not certain what to think of the bailout. 'Puter doesn't trust Paulson much at all, with his "everything's OK, nothing to see here, move along" shtick of a month ago coupled with his "the sky is falling" position of today. But it's much more difficult to ignore Warren Buffet, who thinks the bailout is a necessity.

Regardless, there are some really bad ornaments the Democrats in Congress are going to try to hang on the bailout bill Christmas tree. The Wall Street Journal writes on the worst of the hangers-on today.

Permitting borrowers to modify the terms and conditions of their mortgages in bankruptcy is, as the WSJ notes, a sure-fire way to cause future interest rates to rise precipitously on home mortgages. But that's small change compared to the damage it will do to the already shaky balance sheets of banks, both of commercial banks and the rotting husks of the investment banks.

Aside from Freddie and Fannie's contribution, the next major contributor the credit crisis has been mark-to-market accounting. Now, 'Puter ain't too bright, but if banks are going to continue to be required to mark their holdings to market values, then what's the market value for a mortgage whose terms and conditions can be changed at the whim of a bankruptcy judge?

"Thirty years at six percent is too steep. I can pay the note and mortgage amortized over 100 years, at 1% interest, so long as you forgive all the past due interest, and write the debt down by 50%. Does that work, you honor?" Based on 'Puter's experience with the bankruptcy bench around the country, many judges are likely to be sympathetic to less exaggerated requests.

Sure, the mortgages in your portfolio are paying like clockwork now, but once the borrowers file bankruptcy, what happens? The short answer: no one knows. So, how do you price that sort of uncertainty? You can't. So what's the market value of the asset? To be careful, better price it around zero, because there's no market. This scenario caused the first crisis. The Democrat geniuses in Congress are unwittingly going to use this crisis' cure to precipitate a new and improved Meltdown II: Electric Boogaloo.

'Puter's canning lots of vegetables and plans on harvesting more than a few deer for use in the bunker during the coming darkness.

Thanks, Congress!

Breaking News!

In a shocking turn of events today, Clay Aiken has come out of the closet! Knock 'Puter over with a feather! This may have been the worst kept entertainment industry secret. Ever.

In all seriousness, best wishes to Mr. Aiken in living the rest of his life as who he really is, rather than who he felt society required him to be.

RFE/RL Roundup: Not so quiet on the Russian front

Well, nationalism and attacking an unbeloved ethnic group is apparently popular in Russia, boding ill for any sort of domestic check on revanchist nationalism and, indeed, likely stoking public anger at the first sign of push-back by the West.

Not that that's likely to happen any time soon. Balts, meet your "allies."

And here at home, process advances against principle.

On the upside, Kazakhstan seems to feel bold enough to conduct exercises with NATO. As they're extremely sensitive to Russian pressure, the Volgi is guessing that they are willing to annoy Russia because they see Russia committing to their western and southwestern flanks, and because the Russians know that the GOK, as the government says, really is no ideological threat to Russia. So Kazakhstan can make a show of its independence, irk Russia mildly, but really face no serious consequences. But that's just a guess. If it's the case, however, NATO (read; the U.S.) should be happy to have on-going diplomatic relations and military-to-military cooperation with Kazakhstan, a potential resource powerhouse on the order of a Gulf State.

Great Moments In Teaching, Episode #42,723

OK, 'Puter knows this is not technically teaching, but 'Puter did get an interesting education on the bus, so 'Puter's going to shoehorn this one into the Great Moments in Teaching series.

And really, what teenaged girl hasn't taken a look at her bus driver, with his pudgy belly protruding from his dirty t-shirt, nicotine stained fingers and thinning hair and thought to herself "Man, I really wish Mr. Bus Driver would send me some sexy text messages so I'd know he was interested. I'd hit that."

Of Course That's What They Meant

On the lighter side, 'Puter finally sat down last evening to do some thinking and drinking, and reviewing of the Sunday ad inserts in the Upstate Fishwrap.

One sporting goods vendor was advertising an end of the season sale on golf equipment. What's the headline on the page? Why, "BALL CRUSHING SAVINGS" of course. Who's the vendor? Dick's Sporting Goods.

'Puter will try to scan and post the actual copy later, but other folks have noticed Dick's new ad campaign as well. See here.

Somewhere, laughing softly to himself, is an underpaid, entry-level copy checker.

Happy 100th Anniversary of the End of the World

At least in the imagination of the people nearest the Tunguska Event of June 30, 1908. (I know, I'm a couple months late, but what's a couple months is cosmic-geologic time?)

Something—no one's quite sure what—created a massive fireball over a remote swamp in Siberia with the force of something like ten Hiroshima-sized atom bombs. An asteroid is the most likely suspect, but no crater or meteorite has ever been found.

A whole lotta theories have been put forward, with "stony-asteroid airburst" seeming to hold the post position with respectable scientists—most of whom freely admit that it's a best guess given the paucity of evidence.

The JPL's best guess is that such things hit Earth on average every thousand or fifteen hundred years. Of course, that's an average. And there may be bigger rocks out there than the Tunguska object in bound. While we probably could figure out how to stop one with enough notice, the question remains how much notice we'll get.

Keep watching the skies.

Pashtun Awakening, possible or not?

So Fred Kaplan here (via Shmuel Rosner) is saying that there's no sign of the necessary preconditions for a Pashtun Awakening or the like that would allow an Afghanistan surge to succeed.

I find this curious, because just last night your Volgi was reading this article thinking, "Hmm, if this is true and widespread enough, this could be turned into a Pashtun Awakening."

You make the call.

Guns for Ivan

Max Boot says:

The Wall Street Journal reports on the sharp boost in Russian military spending, which is due to rise by over 25% to more than $50 billion next year. That may appear insignificant compared with U.S. defense spending(more than $500 billion), but it is significant indeed when matched against our major allies such as the United Kingdom and France, each of which spend roughly $50 billion. It is especially significant when you consider that Russian belligerence toward the West is growing as fast as its military spending–and when you take note of the fact that European defense spending has been flat for years. As I argued in this op-ed, the states of Eastern Europe, in particular, need to increase their military expenditures rapidly so as to deter Russian aggression. The latest news makes that case all the more pressing.

That's a lotta AN-94s.

The AN-94 (pictured) was announced as Russia's new infantry rifle a number of years back, but there wasn't enough money to replace the Kalashnikov inventory. If and when Russia does adopt the AN-94, it's a sea change not only in terms of the end of the Kalashnikov era, but arguably in Russian infantry doctrine. The Kalashnikov is a fantastic, soldier-proof, illiterate-conscript-can-use-and-not-break, pray-and-spray weapon. In this, it's the successor to the PPSh and PPS submachine guns that the Russians used to such effect in urban and close-in fighting World War Two: get a bunch of guys at close range, charge, spraying bullets. Simple and effective. The AN-94, or Nikonov rifle, is, however, a much different beast: mechanically complicated, more maintenance-intensive, and much more suitable for aimed shots (especially using its innovative reciprocating-barrel two-shot-burst fire. If this were to become the Russian infantry's main weapon, it would suggest a professionalization of their forces well beyond the conscript-brutalizing goon-squad blunt instrument that, in many respects, it remains today.

Oh, and yeah, I know they won't be spending all that money on rifles. Duh. Confucius, your Volgi, is just a gun dork.

So maybe Bush is a fascist after all.

Just not in the way the frothing lefties allege.

In 1936, anti-Fascist historian Gaetano Salvemini wrote in his Under the Axe of Fascism that Mussolini's regime subjected the tax-paying citizen to corporations because, “the State pays for the blunders of private enterprise... Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social.”

Hmm.

Time for Jonah Goldberg to knock out an new chapter?

Via Daniel Hannan

Oh, and as an aside, my recommending the anti-trust type solution was intended to point out the doubling-down on idiocy that Ghettoputer points out (though clearly I didn't write it clearly enough). IF the government thinks that companies can get too big to fail (which I don't), and IF bailouts are bad, THEN we have to keep them from getting big enough that we need to bail them out. As I did note, I hate this kind of stuff, but a regime of this sort would seem to have fewer (though still many and significant) opportunities for political meddling in the economy than the Fed and the Treasury being the junk-bond buyer of last resort.

And, look, I could be totally wrong and Paulson & Bernancke are the most far-sighted geniuses of economics since Adam Smith and the guy who invented the Yap Island rock money.

Bully!

'Puter agrees (mostly) with The OEV's post below. To clarify 'Puter's position a bit, this new-found government focus on elimiation of moral hazard certainly changes the rules of the game, making taxpayers implicit guarantors of private equity's risks. We all know how well that works for the taxpayers after reviewing the recent glories of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

OEV notes that one possible solution to this "too big to fail" problem is a return to the Teddy Roosevelt policy of trust busting, in order to reduce the risk of business enterpises imposing too much risk on the overall economy. But this, too, is government intrusion into the free market, whereby government experts decide how big is too big.

'Puter thinks the first part of OEV's post is exactly right. Businesses must fail in order to keep the capitalist system working properly. Preventing businesses that richly deserve to go under from going under only rewards incompetence.

In contemplating increased regulation, let's recall that the contagion that started this credit crunch, the housing shock, and this specific bailout was well-intended government intervention in the market. Who can be against increased home onwership? Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government creations used for the political purpose of increasing homeownership through creation of additional lending capital in banks, created the perfect storm necessary to lead to the current crisis. Without Fannie and Freddie's cheap money and deep (government) pockets, these CDOs and other derivative debt structures would not have been possible. In essence, earlier government intervention created the moral hazard that led to this current crisis, and now the government wants to double down, creating more moral hazard by preventing the natural consequences of bad business decisions.

Government regulation is a necessary evil. But, so too is business failure a necessary evil. Finding the proper regulatory balance is a delicate task, one for which success or failure may not be apparent for decades. Somewhere between socialism and unrestrained capitalism lies the right path for America. 'Puter doesn't know exactly where that path lies, but he does know where it doesn't. And this $700 billion taxpayer funded bailout is not the correct path.

Speaking of returning from occultation...

...there's a brand new article posted on Mark Steyn's website. Might the best opinion columnist in English* be returning from his hiatus? Nous vivons et l'espérons.

Confucius suspects Steyn wouldn't agree but recommends Lou Reed's cover of Weill's "September Song." Check it out for yourself.

*Seriously, agree or disagree with the man, but inspect the craft and note your jaw slackening.

Europa, Europa

Condi: Georgian invasion leaves Russia isolated. Well, except for Europe. (I mean, a three-month delay is enough for invading a tiny neighbor, right?)

Foreign bailouts?

Ok, as y'all know, your Œcumenical Volgi is one Skeptical Volgi when it comes to government bailouts of enterprises. Ghettoputer is not happy with the fact that foreign-based banks operating in the U.S. might be bailed out of their junk-mortgage liabilities as well. Your Volgi, however, sees not a hell of a lot of a difference. If these banks are operating in the U.S. and we're "protecting" or "saving" the U.S. economy here, why wouldn't we bail them out? And why not the car companies? And the airlines? And my friend Dana's coffee shop which lost a lot of money when they did a ton of road construction nearby.

Grab the reins, President Bush.

The Volgi suspects what we have here is an implicit, semi-collusive bargain between the Fed, the Treasury, and the finance industry—the last of which perhaps not coincidentally provides many of the high-level staffers of the former two. Because it looks an awful like the Fed and Treasury are announcing, "Moral hazard doesn't apply to large financial institutions." Which would be a profoundly awful precedent.

Stabilize the currency, keep taxes low, keep bankruptcy laws liberal, and make it easy for failed companies to be liquidated, and new companies to be started. And if we have to worry about companies' being "too big to fail," then restrict their size, analogous to anti-trust rules. If a company becomes "too big to fail," and the government feels like it would have to bail it out in case of a failure, then that company should be forced to sell or forfeit assets until it's small enough to fail. I hate the idea, but if we're playing this game of "oh, these companies are sooo important," then we gotta put a barrier to their getting to that status in the eyes of the government. If GM is too big to fail, break it up. If AIG's portfolio is too critical to fail, spread it around to other companies or new companies. But for God's sake, the more important these sectors of the economy are, the more imperative it is to keep them from being under political control. Unless you like lobbyists and congressmen (with bricks of cash in their freezers) controlling everyone's damn well-being.

Georgia-invasion blowback? (Con't.)

Has Russia just set itself up to lose territory by justifying their invasion of Georgia in terms of South Ossetian self-determination? Because now, Gordon Chang reports, the South Ossetians are mumbling about reunifying with North Ossetia. Which is part of Russia. My advice to South Ossetian honcho Eduard Kokoyty if he keeps this up: get a food taster.

Populism v. Elitism

Populism is the belief that the little guy, the common man, has wisdom that should (and at times, must) be followed.  Elitism is the belief that the betters in our society should rule, and that dictates should come from the top down.

Both approaches have merit, but neither works especially well in practice.  Populism has a propensity to turn a seething mob trying to avenge its perceived victimhood.  Elitism has a tendency to become too removed and detached from the reality of everyday living.  However, populism can be very good at identifying societal problems, and elitism at its best can be very good at solving such problems.  The ideologies seem complementary.

The common man has firsthand knowledge of when he is hurting (see, e.g, rising gas prices, inflation, environmental issues, etc.), but generally do not have the advanced skills and/or knowledge to solve these problems.  Elites, with specific knowledge in the affected areas, have the capacity to propose and implement solutions to these problems, but often miss the problems until they have become unbearable.  

'Puter's simplified this ongoing debate a whole lot, but the gist is that both the average Joe and the East Coast elite would be a heck of lot better off working together, and society would benefit.  Just because Average Joe doesn't have a high-falutin' college degree doesn't mean that he can't identify valid societal issues.  And just because Professor Tweedpatches is an insufferably arrogant priss doesn't mean he can't solve the identified problem.

As Jimmy, the great South Park philosopher once said when negotiating a truce between the Crips and the Bloods, "I mean, Come.  On."  Wise kid, that Jimmy.

Yeah, This Makes It MUCH Better

'Puter's had it with the credit crunch/greed is good/bailout debacle.  'Puter was going to post on aging gay pop-star drug abusers who want your sex receiving minimal punishment, but then he came across this little gem, so he had to reach for five extra fingers of vodka in his martini.  Thinking and drinking is a 'Puter family pass time, especially on dreary, chilly Upstate Sundays. 

Not content to saddle U.S taxpayers for the irresponsible and selfish decision making of American investment banks and banks, the government is now going to saddle its taxpayers with the irresponsible and selfish decision making of foreign investment banks and banks. 

'Puter's no Hank Paulson, and never will be, but c'mon, Hank.  Make the foreigners pick up their fair share of the tab.  Using the reasoning that problems in foreign banks and credit markets may irreparably damage U.S banking interests is fine, but remember that the equation works both ways.  Problems in the U.S. markets are more likely to tank foreign markets than vice-versa.  So, what say you, reputed allies?  How about ponying up your fair share?

'Puter thought not.  Bastards.

Note: When in a hole, stop digging

Sen. Obama is running ads and preaching that the Fannie Mae / Freddy Mac debacle and subsequent bailouts are due to failed Bush policies. Now, I won't defend the current administration as being fiscally conservative. In fact, I agree with Michelle Malkin's assessment that the proposed enormous bailout package is a death knell to fiscal conservativeness by this administration. However, it is clear that both Bush and McCain over the last five year tried to rein in these two organizations. And Democrats blocked them claiming that there is no problem. Now, it's slowly coming to light how much the democrats benefited from Fannie Mae/Freddy Mac and maybe that's why they protected them. We've got the top political donation recipients:

Name	Office	State	Party	Grand Total	Total from PACs	Total from Individuals
Dodd, Christopher J	S	CT	D	$165,400	$48,500	$116,900
Obama, Barack	S	IL	D	$126,349	$6,000	$120,349
Kerry, John	S	MA	D	$111,000	$2,000	$109,000
Bennett, Robert F	S	UT	R	$107,999	$71,499	$36,500
Bachus, Spencer	H	AL	R	$103,300	$70,500	$32,800

Source: http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/09/update-fannie-mae-and-freddie.html

Note that Obama has only been in the Senate for 2 years...and he's #2 on this list. Both he and Sen. Dodd were receiving preferential loans from CountryWide during this time. This doesn't sound like the kind of change I want for America.

RFE/RL...in style

The invaluable Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has a new and improved website. Go poke around.

RFE/RL incidentally is run by Friend and Hero of the Gormogons, Jeffrey Gedmin. Or M.C. 900-Foot Gedmin, as he's known around Gormogons HQ.

Reserve my seats now

Ok, while GungaDin, I mean Ricky Tiki Tavi, I mean Rin Tin Tin is interesting, I'd like to offer up the following movie as the next must see movie. Maybe it's all the Philip K. Dick novels I read as an undergrad in my SciFi class. But the silver screen adaptation of this dark "graphic novel" is high on my list. The trailer was leaked and you can find it here (hopefully). The novel has a dark ending which I'm pretty sure that Hollywood will never do. I'm over the whole buzz over The Dark Knight and Heath Ledger (I still think he plays second fiddle to Jack's Joker).

For those who might bust on the music, the setting for The Watchmen is an alternate 1985 where Richard Nixon is still president, superheroes exist and the cold-war tensions are at an all-time high. The plotline surrounds the investigation of the murder of a former hero and the layers of the onion begin to be peeled back revealing a much larger conspiracy at hand.

Now that's what I'm talking about.

Moving ahead with Eastern European missile defense. God love the Czechs. Thank you. Or as I hear you say, "Moje vznášedlo je plné úhořů."*

By the way, Russian objections to NATO expansion and deepening on its borders—like the Polish-Czech missile defense plans—are not (always) cynical. Sincere Russian fears of encirclement and invasion run deep, hearkening back at least to the Mongol Irruption of the 1200s. That said, the Russians also have some of the world's best military intelligence (bat logo, back again!), and can see from the relatively feeble array of NATO forces arrayed "against" them that NATO isn't actually capable of invading Mother Russia—much less inclined to. Sincere the objections may be, reasonable they are not.

*"My hovercraft is full of eels." Via John McCormack.

Paramount is completely high

Ticket to ride, white-line highway
Tell all your friends, they can go my way
Pay your toll, sell your soul
Pound-for-pound costs more than gold
The longer you stay, the more you pay
My white lines go a long way
Either up your nose or through your vein
With nothin to gain except killin’ your brain

Grandmaster Flash's cautionary advice is once again de trop in Hollywood on the evidence of this story, in which Paramount is refusing to go forward with a movie franchise helmed by two directors with a modicum of commercial success—Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson—and based on a series of books about a globetrotting young journalist-adventurer (and his cute dog) that's gargantuan around the world—the Adventures of Tintin. Now, Tintin's not all that big in the U.S., but I assure you, every freaking kid in Europe has read all twenty-four of the Tintin books, at least six times each.

How big are these books? Charles de Gaulle once remarked to André Malraux, "Au fond, vous savez, mon seul rival international c'est Tintin!" ("At bottom, you know, my only international rival is Tintin.") And the Dalai Lama bestowed an award on a Tintin title which explored the culture of Tibet. And, perhaps a tad more prosaically, two hundred million Tintin books have been sold.

I don't know how much coke Paramount is doing to make them think this is a bad idea, but it's catastrophically bad. If this gets made under the current direction, Spielberg & Jackson's involvement will sell the movie domestically, and internationally, it's a guaranteed blockbuster even if it's just adequate.

Boom goes the dynamite

For all your housing-market-induced-meltdown news, here's the Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter.

Voting for the JV

I was doing a little light reading in between coughing fits and stumbled upon* today's article in The Week by Gormogon favorite David Frum. I'll clip a few highlights here, but it's worth the extra click or two to pop over and read the full story here. After reading it, it just seems like a vote for Obama/Biden is a vote for the Junior Varsity.

In an ongoing family email debate (ok, maybe our family is a little weird), I have relatives claiming that Obama demonstrated leadership with his stance on the Russia-Georgia mess (which all Gormogon readers should be well versed). Frum hits the nail on the head:

Crisis does not bring out the best in Barack Obama. His instinct is to equivocate and temporize. We saw that tendency in August, when the Russians invaded Georgia and Obama had to work through a gamut of soft-line stances before arriving at the same position that John McCain had announced immediately.

So, maybe Obama is onto something blaming the current mortgage crisis on "failed Bush policies". Well, let's check in with the astute Mr. Frum:

Obama omits a key point: the specific policy underlying the mess is one he has enthusiastically endorsed throughout his career—the use of public loan guarantees to stimulate private home construction.

While I have my own issues with McCain, he at least DID something - he proposed legislation over two years ago to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac. In doing so he ripped into then-CEO of Fannie Mae, Raines (now an advisor to the Obama campaign). Maybe the Obama camp should reconsider blasting McCain for having lobbyists on the team - Biden's son is one, and Obama has a host of them too...but much like I've mentioned before, people are blinded by their own hypocrisy.

* - Note, for those of you using Mozilla Firefox, I'd like to recommend an add-on called "Stumble Upon". It adds a toolbar to your browser with a button that will take you to random websites based on favorites you've set.

Highways and Hot Dishes

It's official. 'Puter is putting Minnesota's Department of Transportation and the contractors who rebuilt the I-35W bridge in charge of every highway project in the nation.

These guys finished the project on budget and three months early. I guess eating tuna noodle casserole makes our Scandinavian friends uber-efficient.

So, a hearty Gormogons cheer for Minnesota, and the lead contractors Flatiron Construction Corp. and Manson Construction Co. You restore (a little) 'Puter's faith in government works projects.

Who's Winning?

We've all heard way too much recently on the dark side of the current financial meltdown. 'Puter was thinking and drinking last evening and came to the realization that we've heard little about who's taking advantage of the instability in this market. Fortunes can be made in times of turmoil.

'Puter's candidate for the winner in this fiasco is JPMorganChase. "But 'Puter," you wail, "financial stocks are taking a beating! How can this be?" Two words: Jamie Dimon.

Chase has been conservative through the years in its lending. It appears to have weathered the initial subprime writedowns well. It has significant assets and cash on hand. In short, the fundamentals are good. But look beyond the fundamentals for a moment here.

Mr. Dimon, in one of the first episodes in this crisis, had JPMorganChase purchase Bear Stearns. With your (taxpayer) money. At a $10.00 per share, a little less than the recent $170 per share pricing. Chase had to back the first $1 billion in bad Bear Stearns liabilites, with the feds covering the remaining $30 billion or so. In June, Mr. Dimon announced that JPMorganChase expects to earn $1.1 billion off Bear Stearns business in 2009. Mr. Dimon quietly faded back into the woodwork. But Mr. Dimon was still looking for bargains.

Recently, Mr. Dimon's name surfaced again, in conjunction with an attempted private financing of AIG. While Mr. Dimon and the feds couldn't cobble together a private bailout of AIG, Mr. Dimon was right there in the mix. And he was right to be there. There is significant value in the pieces of AIG, from their insurance operations to their aircraft leasing arm.

Jamie Dimon is building an empire from the ashes of Wall Street, and woe betide those who underestimate him. 'Puter can't wait to see what Mr. Dimon pulls off next.

Jaw-jaw may be better than war-war...

...but not by much, and possibly less for actually getting things done. Or such is the upshot of Joshua Muravchik's piece in the new Commentary. A brisk jog through the history of twentieth-century summitry and other high-level diplomatic stunts, he concludes:

To say that talking with our enemies has more often done harm than good does not mean that we should always avoid it. But when we do speak, it is essential that we eschew the conceit that, whoever they may be and whatever their own purposes, it lies within our power to manipulate or seduce them into becoming friends or serving our interests. If they have truly undergone a metamorphosis and wish to revise their relations with us, they will find ways to let us know about it—as happened, despite early missed signals, both in the case of Mao and Chou and in that of Sadat. That is why it is preposterous to assert, as some continue to do, that at a certain moment in 2003 Tehran sent a message through a Swiss diplomat that it was ready to settle all of its differences with Washington—but, because the Bush administration failed to seize the opportunity, the moment was lost forever.

What is essential is to understand whom we are talking to. In particular, messianic revolutionary regimes operate in a moral universe whose values are antithetical to ours. Their goal in talking is virtually never to have better relations for their own sake, but to have the advantage of us. The fatal allure of transformative diplomacy is that, by means of summitry, the lions can be charmed not just into lying down with lambs but into becoming lambs. That goal is a chimera; it has never happened.

Finally, we must always remember that such regimes are in a state of permanent war with their own subjects, and that every measure of legitimation they receive from the outside serves to discourage those subjects’ hopes for freedom and impair their will to resist. Even the government of the Soviet Union, our superpower counterpart, was eager for the symbolism of being treated by America as an equal. How much more so would the power of the petty tyrants or would-be tyrants who rule Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea—the countries with whose leaders Barack Obama expressed his readiness to meet and talk in the first year of his administration—be inflated by an audience with an American President. In this, especially, there is much to be lost—by ourselves and by those under their rule.

Should we talk with our enemies? Yes—to tell them what we think of them, and what we ourselves stand for. We should talk to them, that is, on our own terms and not theirs, and with their captive peoples in mind. But to the question that Anderson Cooper put to Senator Obama, the simple and correct answer was “No.” If Obama ever gains the presidency, the world will be safer if he has figured that out before he enters office.

Once again, the Fallacy of Foreign-Policy Egocentrism rears its ugly head. Diplomacy has real, hard limits. And as much as we must avoid war whenever possible, we have to recognize that it's not always possible and that even short of war, we must wield sticks in addition to dangling carrots.