Things I’d Like to Post About Today ….. (100208, Noontime)
….. But I Don’t Have Any Time For:
- Correspondence I’m receiving indicates that my condemnation of Ohio’s GOP-controlled General Assembly over the existence of incurably fraud-prone “early voting,” thus allowing voters to register during an “early voting” period is dead-on. The Legislature “intended” for the voter-registration deadline to be 30 days before voting is allowed to begin (i.e., about August 31), not 30 days before Election Day; but the latter is what is occurring. Hence the overlap with the earliest days of early voting. That doesn’t change the fact that anyone who is a resident of another state and has no business registering in Ohio is cheating (and cheating IS what’s occurring), and should be prosecuted, along with those who assisted them.
- Catch-up I — Final 2nd quarter economic growth came in at 2.8%. That’s down from the August estimate of 3.3%, but up from the original July estimate of 1.9%. A drop of 0.5% in the final report is pretty unusual, and probably doesn’t bode well for the third quarter.
- Catch-up II — Wednesday’s ADP employment report came in showing a loss of 8,000 nonfarm private jobs in September, an improvement over a revised -37,000 in August. The early line on seasonally adjusted job losses in Uncle Sam’s Employment Situation Report coming out tomorrow is -100,000 (added at 2:45 p.m).
- Catch-up III — The Institute for Supply Management’s Manufacturing index tanked in September, going from 49.9 (contracting by a tiny bit) to 43.5 (significant contraction). Primary thanks for this sordid result go to the architects of the third quarter’s POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy. An additional assist comes from the bailout blackmailers in the US Treasury Department, led by Hank Paulson, who should be fired immediately, whether or not the House is intimidated (and that IS what’s going on) into passing the fictionally estimated $700 billion bailout bill today.
- Any person with even the most basic understanding of ethics and conflict of interest knows full well that Gwen Ifill is objectively unfit to moderate tonight’s VP debate — not because she can’t be independent, fair, and balanced in fact. That’s conceivable, though not likely. The incurable problem is that no one can claim with a straight face that she is independent in appearance, and that’s all that matters. Further, that she didn’t inform the Debate Commission of her obvious conflcit, and her lack of independence, means that she is objectively unfit to continue in journalism. Unless and until PBS rids itself of Ifill, the network has ceased engaging in journalism, and is irrefutably in the business of propaganda dissemination. Ifill and PBS have outed themselves as being devoid of all honor. Their fundamental breach of the public’s trust will not be forgotten around here.
Tom, Here’s my conspiracy theory, tell me, how far off the mark am I? http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-vadum/2008/10/02/green-alert-hidden-carbon-tax-provision-paulson-s-bailout-2-0#comment-734446 Read the article then my comment.
Comment by dscott — October 2, 2008 @ 5:07 pm
I believe much of this is contrived. The self-admitted made-up number, the pass-this-now mentality, the Xmas ornaments in the bill, and now the carbon crap, which I do believe is Paulson-inspired.
Comment by TBlumer — October 3, 2008 @ 7:25 am
Connecting the dots: http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN2045763020080820?feedType=RSS&feedName=politicsNews&rpc=22&sp=true
California’s attorney general is reviewing a request by former employees of IndyMac Bancorp Inc to investigate whether a New York senator triggered the bank’s collapse by releasing confidential information.
At issue is a much-publicized letter that Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, sent in June to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) and Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) questioning the company’s ability to survive.
The FDIC took control of IndyMac on July 11 after depositors withdrew more than $1.3 billion over 11 days. It was the third-largest bank failure in U.S. history. At the time, OTS Director John Reich blamed Schumer’s letter for causing the run on the bank.
In a letter to Attorney General Jerry Brown last week, 51 former IndyMac workers wrote: “From the day (Schumer’s) letter was made public on June 26 until the closure of the bank, a run on the bank took place and the failure became inevitable.”
Tom, here is the question, before the IndyMac bank run how much noise was there in the MSM about the mortgage problem other than our discussion with Tracy over the CDO issue? BTW- in my discussions with Tracy, this bail out doesn’t even address the CDO issue which is 10 x worse than the mortgage issue by itself.
Comment by dscott — October 3, 2008 @ 10:28 am