Category Archive

The wrong picture is that each of us has ideas, and we develop language to find out whether we agree or disagree. It is not until communication springs up that we begin to have ideas.

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Until we have an idea of what’s going on in the minds of other people, it doesn’t make sense to say that we have the concept of objectivity.

—Donald Davidson

Couric: And do you believe Roe V. Wade should be overturned?

McCain: No. no.

Couric: No. Why not? Your husband does.

McCain: No. I don’t think he does.

Couric: He believes it should be overturned. That’s what he told me, and that it should go to the states.

McCain: Well, in that respect. Yes, yeah, I do. I understand what you’re saying now. It’s a states issue.

Cindy McCain, interviewed by Katie Couric

We still don’t know a lot about Palin except that she’s better at delivering a speech than McCain and that she defends her own pregnant daughter’s right to privacy even as she would have the government intrude to police the reproductive choices of all other women.

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We’ve already seen where such visceral decision-making by McCain can lead. In October 2001, he speculated that Saddam Hussein might have been behind the anthrax attacks in America. That same month he out-Cheneyed Cheney in his repeated public insistence that Iraq had a role in 9/11 — even after both American and foreign intelligence services found that unlikely. He was similarly rash in his reading of the supposed evidence of Saddam’s W.M.D. and in his estimate of the number of troops needed to occupy Iraq. (McCain told MSNBC in late 2001 that we could do with fewer than 100,000.) It wasn’t until months after “Mission Accomplished” that he called for more American forces to be tossed into the bloodbath. The whole fiasco might have been prevented had he listened to those like Gen. Eric Shinseki who faulted the Rumsfeld war plan from the start.

In other words, McCain’s hasty vetting of Palin was all too reminiscent of his grave dereliction of due diligence on the war.

—Frank Rich

There’s more, but it’s encouraging to see that similar tactical difficulties were met by the British military in the 19th century, as in our own. I suppose the difference would comprise the quantity of salt we might apply to our own wounds.

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…so completely revolutionised and turned turvy all preconceived ideas of Naval Tactics and their necessary adjuncts as heretofore understood at Whitehall that while under pressure the important post he at present fills he in view of the forthcoming Demonstration promised shortly

1. As a rule never go into action if you can possibly help it with ship bottom upwards
2. If unsupplied by the Authorities with proper despatch vessels any pressing emergency fall back upon a torpedo boat and if this up at once as it probably will with rough usage like brown requisition the nearest port for a coal barge or two and man them with any war correspondents who happen to be on board. Failing this get into your own dingy after dark and take the message as well as you can yourself to the nearest marine post office
3. If in command of one of HM s first class four masted Thundereri on sighting an enemy prepare for action by instantly hacking down the whole of her rigging sails spars and tackle and bodily stowing it away in the Senior Officers Mess room. Here let it be cut up into convenient lengths and conveyed to the furnaces. By a rapid recourse to this handy device not only may the smashing in of the ship’s upper decks and decimation of her crew be pleasantly avoided but an additional knot an hour be comfortably added to her usual pace.

Punch  By Mark Lemon,  Henry Mayhew,  Tom Taylor,  Shirley Brooks,  Francis Cowley Burnand,  Owen Seaman

McCain’s idealism is his great strength — but it can also be a weakness when he becomes cocky, even abusive, about his image and lets judgment slip into anger.

—David Rogers – Politico

…It is the most complicated financial crisis I have ever experienced, and I have experienced a few…

…Growth in the economy in this decade will be the slowest of any decade since the Great Depression, right in the middle of all this financial innovation…

…Changes are going to have to be made…

—Paul Volcker

How do we go back to banks accounting for 60% of securitization, vs 30%, at the current cycle’s peak?

• 37.2 million tuned into Palin, or about a quarter of American households.
• 38.4 million tuned into Obama’s acceptance speech
• …and 38.9 million tuned into McCain’s acceptance speech last night

—Nielsen Co.

New Foreclosure Rate: 1.19%

• This is the first time it has been above 1 percent in the 29 years the survey has been conducted

Homes in foreclosure: 2.75%

• This is almost triple the rate since the five-year housing boom ended in 2005

General Delinquency: 6.41%

• An all-time high, from 6.35 percent in the first quarter, on a seasonally adjusted basis, reflecting the share of loans with one or more payments overdue

Unemployment: 6.1%

• A five-year high of 6.1 percent

Misery Index: 11.7%

• Now at highest level since 1991, the misery index adds unemployment to inflation
• Payrolls fell by 84,000 in August, and revisions added another 58,000 to job losses for the prior two months

“We’re losing jobs in all kinds of industries now. This is the clearest recessionary signal we’ve seen.”

—Roger Kubarych, chief U.S. economist at UniCredit Global Research in New York

U.S. Economy: Payrolls Decline, Sending Unemployment to 6.1%
U.S. Mortgage Foreclosures, Delinquencies Reach Highs

“The Gore-Cheney series of vice presidencies have changed the nature of the job. What McCain has done is to try to revert to the 19th-century model, early-20th-century model of vice president — the ‘job isn’t worth a warm pitcher of spit’ model, which means you don’t do anything”

—Gary Hart

…if we are to prevent a continuing asset and debt liquidation of near historic proportions, we will require policies that open up the balance sheet of the U.S. Treasury – not only to Freddie and Fannie but to Mom and Pop on Main Street U.S.A., via subsidized home loans issued by the FHA and other government institutions.

—Bill Gross