Read it and Weep

According to Politico, the Bush administration & Congress have given us a Christmas package that consists of 

$8.7 trillion dollars’ worth of potential taxpayer commitments for loans, guarantees and other bailout goodies for businesses and distressed homeowners.

One analyst, James Bianco, points out that in adjusted dollars the current bailouts make the Marshall Plan and even the New Deal look like tiny expenditures. When asked how much money we are really talking about with regard to these bailouts and the planned "stimulus" package, Bianco said to "just use the number infinity." As he pointed out, no one understands the scope of these numbers, including the people pushing the bailouts.

If Senate Republicans don't apply a brake -- as they did temporarily in the case of the auto bailout -- who will? Part of the Senate Republican minority, along with a couple of fiscally conservative Democrats, form the last line of defense against endless bailouts.

Gingrich & Freddie Mac

Newt Gingrich remains popular on the right.  But anyone thinking of supporting him for any future bid for office might want to read this article.  Republicans rightly attacked Democrats for their connections to Fannie Mae.  But it turns out that prominent Republicans helped block tighter regulation of Freddie Mac., including Newt Gingrich.  He received $300,000 from Freddie Mac in 2006 to trumpet the "benefits of the Freddie Mac business model."  What was the impact of Republican lobbying by Gingrich & others? 

The tactics worked — for a time. Freddie Mac was able to operate with a relatively free hand until the housing bubble ultimately burst in 2007.

Now Freddie Mac and its sister company, Fannie Mae, are in financial collapse and under government control

The GOP doesn't need politicians like Gingrich back in power.

h/t Daniel J. Mitchell at Cato@Liberty

The Irrational Left & the Auto Bailout

The reaction to the auto bailout failure in the Senate demonstrates yet again the irrationality of what passes for analysis amongst much of the left.  The Blogometer's 12/12 roundup has the excerpts from the blogosphere.  The basic left-wing view is that evil, nasty Republicans don't care about the economy.  They just hate the UAW and that's why they opposed the bailout. Seriously, they really believe that.  Here's a representative sample:

Jane Hamsher at Firedog Lake: "I think this erases all doubt -- the Republicans quite plainly want the economy to fail"

Digby at Hullabaloo: "At this point, the only route they see power is to make things worse and blame it on the Democrats. What else do they have?"

John Cole at Balloon Juice: "you do have to be crazy to be able to pretend that somehow any principles are at stake other than union busting"

Read pretty much any left-wing site, and the theme is similar.  That brings up a few questions. What about the most evil Republicans of all, Bush & Cheney?  Oh yeah, they favored the auto-bailout.  What about the ten Republicans that voted for it?  How do they fit in to the dirty union-busting Republican theme?  How about all the Republican senators who voted against both the $700 billion rescue package and the auto bailout?  Could it be that maybe they don't think bailouts are a good idea at all?  No, of course not; they just want to destroy the economy.  What about the four Democrats who opposed the auto bailout?  Did they want to crush the union too, or do they get to have principles by virtue of being Democrats?  Eight Republicans didn't even vote.  They must have missed the memo about busting the union.  And if the auto bailout was so crucial to our economy, why did vice-president elect Joe Biden not even bother to vote on it, along with Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and Wyden of Oregon.  Do they not care about the economy? But they're Democrats.  I thought only Republicans wanted to send us into a depression.

Here's the roll call on the financial bailout, and the roll call for the auto bailout.  Of the 31 GOP senators that voted against the auto bailout, 13 of them also voted against the financial bailout. So even assuming the worst, only 18 Republican senators could be accused of targeting the union and refusing to vote for the bailout, even though they were willing to support a much greater bailout.  But that doesn't stop the left from ascribing the worst motivations to Republicans in general.  Why?  Because they know that Republicans are evil and always act based on bad motives.  

How many times have we had to listen to left-wingers whine and snivel about the right questioning their patriotism?  Yet they feel free to portray the entire Republican party as an unprincipled organization bent on destroying the economy for political purposes, based on nothing more than policy differences regarding one vote.

"Language of Faith" Wins Wars?

There's an article up at Pajamas Media by Elisabeth Scalia entitled "Winning This War Requires Language of Faith."  The war in question is the fight against radical Islamic terrorism.  Her thesis is that 

As the West evolves into a post-faith society — disdainful of religion and confident in the primacy of reason alone — it is rendering itself ineffective and mute. Mute against an enemy that, for better or worse, communicates solely in the language of the supernatural and belief.

According to Scalia

Silencing the language of faith in public discourse and policy weakens the West’s ability to engage and defeat an enemy entirely motivated by relentless theology. By failing to speak in the same language, it has no weapons for victory, short of destroying whole cities.

I find her argument weak, lacking in specifics, and unconvincing -- it is little more than a call for "faith," as if engaging in magical thinking will somehow help us defeat terrorism.  It is built on a series of strawmen.  Scalia condemns various unrealistic approaches to dealing with radical Islam, such as appeasement and diplomacy.  But what do they have to do with faith? There are plenty of non-religious people, such as myself, who agree on these points.  Does she think that only the religious can understand that radical Islam cannot be reasoned with or accommodated? She appears to be confusing part of the secular left with all secular individuals.  Do prominent atheists Christopher Hitchens & Sam Harris have any difficulty understanding the threat of radical Islam? 

Scalia claims that "We should consider that Islamic terrorism may not be defeatable, except on its own terms, on the battlefield of the supernatural."  What is that supposed to mean?  We need to rely on our God(s) to beat theirs? She never spells out how the "language of faith" should be used, or what it will accomplish.  The article is so vague on these points that she could be calling for anything from mild propaganda to a crusade.  When you write an article that advocates relying on faith as a strategy for fighting radical Islam, you have no standing to criticize anyone else for taking an unrealistic approach.

 

Yet Another Reason to Oppose Bailouts

Bloomberg.com reports that the Federal Reserve refuses to divulge information about what it has done with $2 trillion in emergency loans:

The Federal Reserve refused a request by Bloomberg News to disclose the recipients of more than $2 trillion of emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers and the assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

Bloomberg is suing under the Freedom of Information Act.  

Not only is the government handing out unprecedented amounts of taxpayer money, they don't think the taxpayers even have a right to know where that money is going.  It's only $2 trillion, why should we worry about it?  I'm sure they'll use it wisely, just like the government always uses tax money.

Christian Attack on Bush

Bush's recent interview in which he said he wasn't a biblical literalist prompted a blistering attack from Baptist minister and Constitution Party leader Chuck Baldwin at vdare.com.  Here are some representative snippets: 

acceptance of the Bible's literalness is one of conservative Christianity's most sacred doctrines... Bush twice denied the veracity of the Scriptures...George W. Bush clearly stated that he does not believe the Bible is God's Holy, inspired Word...where are Dobson and PCC now? Will any of them utter a word of rebuke to their "Christian" President for his apostasy

I was wondering if Bush's interview would produce that reaction among fundamentalists Christians. Baldwin has despised Bush for quite awhile, but I would bet that others had a similar response.

h/t John Derbyshire at Secular Right

Diplomatic Failure and North Korea

Throughout much of its two terms, the Bush administration has pursued pointless & counterproductive negotiations with North Korea about its nuclear program, similar to those started by the Clinton administration.  The premise of the six-party talks was that North Korea had "agreed in principle to scrap its nuclear program, including weapons, in return for aid and diplomatic benefits."

Anyone with an ounce of common sense, apparently something not possessed by many diplomats or the Bush administration, would be highly skeptical of making any deals with North Korea and its erratic, possibly insane dictator.  But no, the six party countries, including the U.S.,  promised "one million tons of heavy fuel oil for shutting down and disabling the Yongbyon complex."  More than half has already been delivered prior to any agreement on verification.  The U.S. said that North Korea "verbally accepted" verification.  So basically we took the word of Kim Jong Il.  Smart move.   

This is exactly the approach the Obama administration needs to avoid with regard to Iran. Bribing enemy states to stop doing something is just not a wise policy -- especially when you start paying them off before you have any evidence they've even done what you are bribing them to do.