Things I’d Like to Post About Today ….. (092308, Morning)

….. But I Don’t Have Any Time For:

• From Sept. 17 — “Even GOP Says McCain Must Accept Earmarks.” Among those quoted is Ohio’s own Ralph Regula, who said, “I don’t think it’s the right approach. I haven’t done an earmark I wouldn’t be happy to have spread all over the front pages of the paper.” Here’s the deal, Ralph: That’s fine if your precious little earmarks are passed by veto-proof majorities in both houses, one by one, each one by itself. No more larding them into any other appropriations bill, EVER. Is that OK? If it’s not, too bad.
• One of the odder reports I’ve ever seen comes from Expatica Germany (”Islamic charity bosses jailed for fraud”). It’s odd because the jailed are never named.
• It’s pretty hard to pin the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debacles on the presidential candidate I refer to as JS3M3 (John Sidney the Mad Maverick McCain III), given that he publicly called for reform 3-1/2 years ago.
• From IBDeditorials.com, in essence: The big brokerage firms decided that they were smarter than the markets, effectively opened up their own ridiculously leveraged margin accounts with shareholders’ money, and “lost.” The final word is in quotes because the taxpayers are the losers. You can’t write government regulations for everything. The real question is where the Boards of Directors and shareholders were while all this risk was being taken. I guess the now-proven temporary rewards were too intoxicating.
• Two of the latest posts from James Pethokoukis have been, unfortunately, spot on: “4 Ways to Turn a Recession into a Depression” and “Bailout Prevents Great Depression 2.0.” I’m not at all happy with what more and more seems to be necessary, thanks to “Barney’s Rubble.” A futile-seeming hope: There had better really tight controls on who gets paid in all of this (voice in back of head says, “dream on”). I don’t agree with a couple of the “fixes” Newt Gingrich is proposing, but I am totally down with repealing Sarbanes Oxley. Absent that, federal and state governments and all of their entities must be forced to comply (that will ensure that repeal is chosen if those are the only two choices).
• Ouch — “A German bank that handed over 350 million euros this week to bankrupt Lehman Brothers and got nothing in exchange may pursue criminal charges against its own executives, a report said over the weekend. ….. The automated payment on Monday went out just hours before Lehman declared itself insolvent. Lehman did not settle the swap with the equivalent in US currency, $500 million, leaving (the bank) in the queue as a (general) creditor.”
• Last week, multimillionaire NBA basketball player Josh Howard, and beneficiary of a free ride at taxpayers’ expense at the University of Michigan, said of the Star-Spangled Banner, “I don’t celebrate this [expletive]. I’m black.” He also made “a difficult-to-discern comment that includes a (favorable) reference to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.” Though he obviously didn’t have to, Obama had a perfect opportunity to repudiate Howard, and from what I can tell, didn’t. Certainly no candidate is under an obligation to repudiate kook supporters he or she doesn’t know. But repudiating the ones they DO know, especially ones they know well, and doing so on a timely basis is, of course, a totally different story. That Obama has not done this is an irrefutable fact.