Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters Monday that “a stimulus bill must fix the main problem first, and that’s housing.” He promised that Republicans would offer a plan to have the government step in to reduce mortgage rates to the 4 percent range, which could shore up home prices and lower housing payments for millions of Americans.
Housing is not the goddamn problem, or rather, not a fixable cause anymore. While the mortgage rate aspect is somewhat debatable as an effective measure for stimulating the economy, dear lord they should fucking realise the housing market is beyond some kind of magical government ‘saving’, short of them actually buying the houses. This is not something that will help shore up home prices as it isn’t the reason they got so ridiculously high in the first place. And the government shouldn’t be trying to.
In my experience with the government, they have to investigate if it is feasible to investigate them, first, and deliberate over that. They will then find out it is not feasible to even investigate. Then they will investigate their plan. They will find it is infeasible. They will go through with it, anyway. Seriously.
They are buying the houses; it says it in the same article - they’ll be directing mortage loan giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were just [STRIKE]bailed out[/STRIKE] bought by the government, to buy the mortgages and then lower the interest rate and back it up with 30 year loan.
I’m not really understanding the hostility here; it’s being offered as an amendment tonight to the now 920 billion dollar stimulus package. It’s not trying to replace the stimulus package.
But I agree that this isn’t going to have the effect it could have just six months ago; the overspeculation in the housing markets by financial institutions and yes, everyday American people, did play a major role in the financial collapse here in the States, but that damage has already been done. Had the TARP package actually been used to buy those mortgages, like it was supposed to, perhaps it could have been the stopped the bleeding…but housing has actually started to recover, albeit, only a small bit. It’s Main Street the everyday economy that’s suffering now.
Cav: That was half to point out that “Politics [are] bullshit” wasn’t exactly Hades’ position, so much as a common one, and half to make Hades angry 'cos I kinda called him an anarchist.
Well, as one can expect Republicans are shooting their mouths off about Obama’s cabinet appointee resignations, saying it’s contradictory to his promises of ethics reform. I honestly think it’s a little incongruous to claim Obama’s administration is unethical after eight years of Bush which included Jack Abramoff, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, Scooter Libby, Tom DeLay, and Alberto Gonzales. Then there’s the fact that Obama at least had the decency to admit he screwed up, whereas Bush just made one feeble excuse after another for the laundry list of mistakes he made. It’s better with politicians who have baggage to resign now than two years into his term.
I know this completely off-topic, but hell, this is the Obama thread.
Also, Obama actually said he “may have made a mistake,” so, no, he really didn’t. He admitted that, at some point in his life, it is possible he was fallible.
So politicians should not only admit they’re fallible, but declare outright when they mess up. That’s fine, but let’s be fair. When politicians admit their errors, <i>you</i> should be willing to forgive them. You should be willing to work with them in good faith to solve the problems they’re facing and to prevent future mistakes. You can’t demand human decency from politicians, then sneer at them when they offer it, and cynically dismiss their genuine efforts at reform.
Here’s what Obama said:
[quote=““Obama to Katie Couric””]
Let’s just take Tom as an example. I made a judgment that he was the best person possible for the job. I was very eager to make sure that we can deliver on a commitment that I have to deliver healthcare for the American people. I think I messed up. I screwed up in not recognizing the perception that even though this is an honest mistake, I believe, on Tom’s part, that, you know, ordinary people are out there paying taxes every day and whether it’s an intentional mistake or not, it was sending the wrong signal. So again, this was something that was my fault.
[/quote]
This is as much an admission of error as I’ve seen from a politician. The question now is whether you actually care what Obama does. On the contrary, I suspect this was just a convenient hook on which to hang your “politics are bullshit” and other little anarchist aphorisms.
It’s the small semantic differences that can matter the most; Reagan’s “mistakes were made,” is famous for its blame-dodging passive voice. “I may have made a mistake,” is not quite so noncommital, but it’s hardly an open admission of guilt. In both cases, the figure in question basically admits to having made a mistake, it is not as though there is deception; the problem comes from the fact that the figure’s pride seemingly will not allow them to actually say they acted wrongly, dodging it slightly with Genie-in-a-bottle wording.
Bush’s main fault, the main fault of most poor leaders, is the inability to admit they were/are wrong. I believe very few people, if any, are actually “evil.” Most of them just strive in the wrong way for a questionable notion of good. Bush believed God was guiding him and he was doing the will of a divine, infallible power, and this allowed him to justify any means to get to the end he saw as good, while, in truth, it doesn’t seem to have accomplished anything. Everyone tries to do the right thing, the people who end up monsters are the ones who are unwilling to change.
Then again, I didn’t see/hear him actually say “I screwed up,” or “this was something that was my fault,” which are considerably more open (although the latter uses a passive tone and past tense to distance the event). However, I still find his notion of where he screwed up worrisome. He’s basically saying how good a guy Tom is, and how sound his judgment was in picking him, but you guys got all mad over him making an honest mistake, so he’s sorry he “sent the wrong signal”. That’s basically saying the problem isn’t what happened, but that people found out about it; the mistake wouldn’t have been a big deal had it not sent a signal.
I care about what Obama does, I’m just not stupid and naive enough that to believe because some guy talks about hope and change, he actually offers any without seeing evidence first. Right now, I see nothing to differentiate him from a bunch of other people in the same few squares of the political grid who get called “liberal”, despite being conservative, because there is a “D” behind their name.
So you obviously believe that lying repeatedly over starting a war in which thousands die or defrauding Native American tribes for tens of millions of dollars is equal grounds with failure to accurately report and pay taxes?
I am supposed to be hopping with ecstasy that he did not manage to fuck up as hard as past presidents have in both their terms in just over a month? Give him a while to start some shit in Russia or Iran. Maybe he’ll explain how we need to do good and help Africa, and the way to do that is with guns and soldiers to go and force them to be free. Maybe we can see if he legitimately changed anything, actually made forward progress instead of just catching up to half of the regress Bush, by the end of his second term, and I’ll say he made good on his promise to be, at least, some form of change, from the form of politics in America. He hasn’t shown any sign of it, yet, since his inauguration, really since the earliest reaches of his campaign.
What I’m saying is he has quasi-fanatical support by a massive basis who believe him to be almost morally infallible, which is the most dangerous place to be; it’s exactly where we were with Bush, for a while. Obama has the backing of half the internet generation who seem him as some sort of Saint when his politics aren’t really any different, there’s just nicer wrapping paper around the bombs. I’m sick of the same people with different window-dressing getting put in office, and when people get dissatisfied, because the are shitty, the other, nearly identical, group of twats tosses out a toldja so, and we vote that way, make some sort of culture hero out of them, and stay in the neat little upper-right corner of the political spectrum fearing socialism or a little actual liberty in what is supposedly the land of the free like the entire country will catch fire if change happens at a faster pace than my grandmother with post-polio can run.
So no, I do not equate them, and I don’t take kindly to your moronic hyperbole. I’ve been to my tribe’s reservation. I know what happened. Unless you have a language that less people than I could count on my hands speak, anymore, I’d say I know the difference between not paying one’s taxes and taking a group of people who were friendly, peaceful, and even allies to you and taking everything they have but casinos, booze, and novelty headdresses better than you do. If you’d like to be condescending in the future, my I suggest that you skip trying to sound intelligent when you do it and just say, “You’re too young to understand, sonny.”
You can argue semantics but in the end the only thing that really matters is how he tailors his actions by acknowledging his mistakes. I think it was incredibly admirable for Daschle to step down; of course, I wonder if it really was a matter of him stepping down or if Obama asked him to remove himself.
The vetting process has shown a great deal of problem areas; Geithner, I was willing to forgive without much of a thought - we needed a Treasury Secretary and there were issues regarding if his tax status when he was working at the IMF. Fine. 32,000 Dollars; pay it back and we’ll call it a day.
But over 200 grand for Dashcle? That’s pretty hard to overlook. The sad thing is, he’s actually very qualified for the job, but the vetting team just did such a poor job of checkint it out. They even had to relieve someone they appointed for a newly created position; the White House Performance officer. At least with Richardson they managed to push him off the radar before the news began to spread.
Obama can apologize all he wants; but I want to see him learn from these mistakes. If he doesn’t do that, he might as well keep his apologies to himself. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not like Rush - I don’t want him to fail, but if he’s going to hold himself up to a standard he should make sure he meets it. He can fall a couple of times, but if it becomes habitual then he’s the typical politician that we don’t need right now.
I should note that that was a wonderful press conference he pulled tonight. It was probably the most Presidential he’s been since the Inauguration. If nothing else, he at least made sure to leave the time table open for Afghanistan when asked instead of just throwing out a concrete date and he didn’t fall for the whole question from the Huffington Post about willing to charge former members of the Bush Administration. I’m just surprised that a blog has a seat over there.
I am somewhst frazzled by his impatience regarding the stimulus pacakge; I couldn’t have seriously expected the entire Congress to pass this on a bipartisan basis in less than a month.
Yeah, after this I’m the one being condescending. Really. Why are you making this personal when I didn’t even suggest that you don’t know the difference between tax evasion and fraud? I’m simply pointing out that you’re using a one size fits all policy to judge Obama’s ethics a month into office. Retrospectively we treat Clinton’s scandal differently than Nixon’s scandal because
Believe me, Obama isn’t the only one who has staunch supporters. There are people who still believe Bush has been the greatest leader we’ve ever had. The only difference between them and Obama supporters is that the Obama supporters are getting all of the media spotlight because they’re the ones who were relevant in the last election.
