Democratic Debate Thread: The Naumachia in Nevada
David Weigel | January 15, 2008, 9:00pm
It's the first three-way Democratic debate, the first since Barack Obama made Hillary Clinton tear up (even if it took a few days) and the first with
genuine drama about the inclusion of Dennis Kucinich.
I doubt I can liveblog in between watching Michigan voters storm the polls for a surprise Duncan Hunter landslide God bless early network projections! You can document the horrors in this thread.
9:05: I'm sorry, Clinton's super-convincing praise for her opponents has floored me. "Senator Obama who has, ah, such a profound, ah, story to tell the world."
9:08: This is unbearable. Will anyone give Edwards the Mitt treatment for saying he "saw young men sit at a lunch counter" to integrate the South?
9:14: An avalanche of Clinton fibbing just now. She's asked about Robert Johnson's comment that Obama was
"doing something" (drugs!) while Clinton was personally integrating schools with a crowbar and a pair of nunchucks. "I take him at his word." Russert asks if he was out of bounds: "Yes, and he said so." But he didn't! He said the charge he was talking about drugs was "irresponsible and incorrect."
9:20: Apparently, the biggest issue in Nevada is whether Clinton regrets what Edwards regrets he regretfully said about Obama's regrets.
9:22: This is a high-def root canal: The questions are all about campaign attacks, and the candidates are pathetically trying to shift the conversation to policy. Clinton's asked about her Obama attacks: "What are the consequences of that in the fall against a Republican candidate?"
How the hell would she know?
9:29: Richard Cohen e-mailed Brian Williams about Obama's secret Islamofascism, so Obama gets what I think is the first attempt to address e-mail smears about him. As long as we're being superficial, let's analyze this superficially: He sounded sort of weak. There was a thimbleful of outrage and a lot of Dukakisian returning to talking points.
9:35: THESE ARE RACE-BASED COMMERCIALS!
9:44: They're in Nevada and they're talking about energy and no one's talking about nuclear. But Obama talked about the sun! Hey, everybody likes the sun.
UPDATE: I ended up doing some other work, but I was struck by Obama's answer on the Latino vote: "They voted for me in Illinois." That was true when he faced Alan Keyes in the general election, but in the primary he had to face Gery Chico, a lawyer and school board president who eventually came in fifth place. Chico only got 4.4 percent of the vote and almost all of it was from Chicago Latinos. Obama won 90 percent of black voters and a 37 percent plurality of whites, but he only split the Latino vote with Chico and machine (white) Democrat Dan Hynes.
von laue | January 15, 2008, 11:52pm | #
from teh wikipedia (yeah, I know)
As of 2007, real estate bubbles have existed in the recent past or are widely believed to still exist in many parts of the world, especially in the United States, Britain, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Spain, Poland, South Africa, Israel, Greece, Canada, Norway, Singapore, South Korea , Sweden, Baltic states, India, Romania, South Korea, Russia, Ukraine and China.
maybe it was a speculative bubble boosted by all of the central banks? sure, republicans suck donkey balls. I'm perfectly happy to pin lots of this shit on Bush and Greenspan and the goddamned "ownership society".
However, I'm not sure how Republicans caused a housing bubble in fucking Norway. Of course I went to Minnesota and not GW, so I can't be an internet supergenius. Maybe the answer is more complicated than 'Republicans did this'?
Let me play a certain pwoggle's tune and say "If I were a partisan, it would save me from all the thinking. Bad, bad, thinking."
lots of libertarians and McGovern-type democrats have been telling the truth about the credit bubble for years. People that even the noblest pwogglers like joe would believe, like Krugman, and Tanta from calculated risk. There are also libertarian types who have been harping on this forever like Mike Shedlock and Kevin Depew, but they might vote for Ron Paul, so fuck them, they hate niggers probably. All that carping they do about income equality and fucking over the middle class? Bullshit. They don't obviously vote democrat, and that's all the proof I need.
right joe? huh?
yeah, it was all the republicans. Up, down, it was them, and TEH FUCKING FREE MARKET!!11!2
not that I expect a response. joe owns you facking idiots most of the time because he knows rule #15 of internet argumentation: "when in doubt, bail out". basically, he's...how you say? Oh yes. Not a man.
joe | January 16, 2008, 10:15am | #
Damn, I should be a troll. I fucking own you people.
von laue asks
what regulations were repealed that let this happen? None, it's the absense of new regulations in response to novel pyramic scheme strategies that was the failure. There's supposed to be somebody minding the store, and there wasn't.
And nice try pretending that I blamed the housing bubble as a whole, rather than the credit bubble and collapse, on the Republicans. I wouldn't want to argue agains what I actually write, either. It tends not to end well.
dumbass, if you were a smartass like me, you would have noticed that I was talking about policymakers, not homebuyers.
prolefeed,
How exactly do you think Republican congressmembers should have preemptively intervening in the marketplace to stop this, again? Setting aside your wishful thinking that the intersection of mortgage-backed securities and irresponsible lending practices didn't serve to insulate lenders from the risk of their irresponsible practices, the answer is a blindingly obvious "By requiring standards for mortgages, and by preventing shysters from passing off their pumped-up paper as bonds."
PS, I'm also in an index fund, and am not overexposed in any one sector. Unfortunately, as you've no doubt noticed, the effects of this lousy-credit-produced-debacle are bringing down the market and economy as a whole.
J sub D,
The housing bubble bursting was "completely unforseen"? New Orleans submerging in a hurricane with burst levees was equally unforseen. Sheesh. I was using the phrase sarcastically, in exactly that manner. It was play on all of the things that the administration has told us "No one could have foreseen...," like the levees collapsing and there being an insurgency in an occupied Middle Eastern country.
