Sam Harris on Sarah Palin

[_dartagnan]

Oh boy.

[_antishock8]

The Democrats were the ones creating this monster in the first place. ...Thank you Democrats.

Wait a second... Was Reagan a Democrat?

Gagh. This is impossible. You know... I'll be the first one to lay blame at the feet of Republicans for the Iraq mess, or say, for the support of creationist agendas, but one would like a little bit of the same for Democrat partisans. Just once.

[_MsJack]

The problem with the line of reasoning you quoted is that Palin is an expressed fan of Muthee.

Got any quotes showing her devotion to Pastor Muthee besides the one you mention? That's the only one I can find all over the Web, and it's about the most general endorsement of someone I've ever seen. Considering that it was spoken to a group of people who had themselves probably loved Muthee's visiting sermons, it's not a surprise that she got up on stage and said something nice about him. It's not like she was married by the guy or wrote a memoir using the line from one of Muthee's sermons as a title or had him on her campaign staff for months.

I fail to see what the problem is with her crediting God and prayer for her election as Governor. Most religious people credit God and prayer when something good happens in their life, including plenty of prominent Democrats.

[_dartagnan]

Gagh. This is impossible. You know... I'll be the first one to lay blame at the feet of Republicans for the Iraq mess, or say, for the support of creationist agendas, but one would like a little bit of the same for Democrat partisans. Just once.

I was thinking the same exact thing.

[_dartagnan]

It's not like she was married by the guy or wrote a memoir using the line from one of Muthee's sermons as a title or had him on her campaign staff for months.

LOL!

[_GoodK]

Gagh. This is impossible. You know... I'll be the first one to lay blame at the feet of Republicans for the Iraq mess, or say, for the support of creationist agendas, but one would like a little bit of the same for Democrat partisans. Just once.

For the record, I'm not a Democrat partisan.

I just think it's stupid to blame this crisis on Democrats, specifically Clinton, when clearly it started long before he was in office.

Reagan - the Republican Jesus Christ - set the stage for this mess. Maybe that is why they have been so quick to place the blame on Bill?

[_EAllusion]

You're probably referring to a specific program on the show. I don't watch it enough to know what these shows are called, but I can only speak from experience as I occasionally peruse them. Begala is the number one dorko of the lot. Just to give you an example, when Sarah Palin said she saw the SNL skit ridiculing her, she said she thought it was "hilarious." There were no less than four people on that show accusing her of lying.

Begla is a annoying troll-man who would call an SNL skit digging at Palin funny even if it was lifeless. However, that skit was funny and Palin has been engaging in blatant serial lying as she sticks to script even after she's been called out on some of the more egregious points. Pointing that out isn't being biased so much as having a shred of journalistic integrity rather than simply turning it into fact-free he-said, she-said affair for a false sense of "balance" as they are wont to do. If that happened, it's encouraging because usually they just lie down like dogs as they are being lied to by either party. There are numerous Republicans who have been vocal about Schmidt taking the direction of the McCain campaign passed the usual misleading borders into something more contemptible and dishonest, and it is possible the show you saw happened to contain some of them rather than spokesmen for the campaign. I'm not sure. On the other hand, there are things like CNN having tremendous praise for Palin's convention speech with the resident Democratic "strategists" voices being drown out.

Even if remotely true, is this your way of excusing the numerous liberal media outlets that outnumber them? FOX is the only news outlet that can be called conservative, and it is far more balanced than anything to ever show up on the rest.

That what's I'm calling absurd. Fox's bias is so blatant and its status as an arm of a rightwing propaganda machine so apparent that people who argue that it is more "balanced" than the liberal media of the likes of CNN and friends just come off as so ideologically compromised that they can't think straight. You can mine their News ticker for headlines that are eyeroll worthy on a near daily basis. (My personal favorite to this day was something to the effect of, "Will the liberal war on Christmas destroy our economy?")

Just look at the so-called "scandals" that the liberal news outlets focus upon. None of them have anything to do with Obama/Biden and most of them against Palin are of their own creation.

We're, what?, 2 weeks removed from the "lipstick on a pig" story that dominated the media cycle? Prior to that the McCain campaign was controlling the media cycles with similar narratives to the point where Democrats were getting noticeably sweaty over it.

WHere is FOX news responsible for inventing scandals against Obama? Surely you can name some, so let's hear them.

Terrorist fist jab? Seriously, though, how about this: http://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=nw6LBbeXTww. There are several examples of that by the way. I don't why you need to make the question so narrow. CNN had imbedded military plants by the Bush administration to advance their line on the Iraq war and portrayed them as independent military analysts. That's pretty scandalous, and it's not even Fox. Darn leftist media.

You really haven't noticed this? Some of the "republican strategists" I see on CNN I have never heard of,

They're often working directly with the McCain campaign, Kevin, or following their coordinated talking points script. If you don't watch CNN much I understand, but wonder why you feel free to offer your analysis. If you do, I'm baffled. I only watch it because I understand its role in shaping public opinion and want to get a sense of what they are doing.

I have. I know Murdoch is supposed to be the Republican charlatan behind FOX and its conservative bias, but then there is George Soros and Ted Turner on the left. So what? The difference is FOX's theme is "fair and balanced" so it has more invested in this mission. The rest wear their bias on their sleeves.

I was referring more sophisticated cases and not just Fox news. Fox is obviously biased to the point where those people wouldn't consider it part of the mainstream media per se. Fox is just rightwing radio on TV. By mainstream media, what is meant is ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and so on. The "fair and balanced" theme is a joke that even you should see as ironic.

Well, I read the first paragraph and began shaking my head. Is this guy serious when he says, "nothing changes the behavior of our media corporations more easily than vocal demands and complaints from the Right, which petrify media executives and cause them to snap into line"?

You have to keep reading. Yeah, he's serious. He makes good points and bad, but he does shine when documenting certain types of bias. Before you let your brain go into adversarial mode, you should just read it. Geeze. I think the were demoted because Olbermann was being a hack during the convention coverage, the show devolved into fights several times, and the ratings were low. Without any one of those factors, and I think they're fine. I think the attacks by the right on NBC's liberal coverage were on the second tier of motivating factors.

His source? The NYT, which is by far the most liberal source on the planet.

The New York Times is the most liberal source on the planet. Now there's a well thought out statement. I think that says all that needs to be said about your capacity to look at this objectively.

The reason Olbermann and Matthews were dropped was due to their ratings dropping. The people "protest" by not watching their shows. The liberal "corporations" are just as interested in making money as any conservative corporation. It was a business decision, which had nothing to do with the "Right" intimidating them.

Heh. He has an extended argument against this, which I'm betting you didn't read. I'd respond to his argument by pointing out there are more abstract, sophisticated ratings concerns that play into their axing of successful liberal shows that have to do with the rights' more organized system of marginalizing and boycotting liberal products.

[_antishock8]

GoodK,

Noted that you're not a partisan. Sorry about that.

From TIME:

"I have thought about that," Clinton told me when I asked whether he was reconsidering any of the deregulatory economic policies his administration pursued under Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Earlier this year, Rubin downplayed the extent of the mortgage crisis, and implied more of the blame could be placed on American consumers than on the excesses of Wall Street. But Clinton's assessment was quite different.

"I actually called Bob Rubin," Clinton said, relaying their recent conversation about what could or should have been done differently during the 1990s to help prevent today's crisis. Clinton said he has two regrets: First, not pursuing more aggressively an aborted attempt to provide stricter oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. According to Clinton, the move was stymied by Democratic and Republican members of Congress and by mayors, who saw the lending giants as "the New Jerusalem" and "pure" because of their role in increasing homeownership to historic levels. But "it just didn't feel good," Clinton said of Fannie and Freddie's outsized political influence.

Clinton also said he should have subjected derivative trading to more public oversight. "We would have failed, but at least we could've sounded the alarm."

One policy Clinton said he doesn't regret is his 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which, for the first time since the Depression, allowed commercial banks to engage in investment-banking activities. Clinton said the commercial banks were an important moderating force on the risk-taking of the big investment firms that collapsed this week. "In the case of the current crisis, I believe the bill I signed allowed Bank of America to take over Merrill Lynch," he said.

I'm simply not up to task for linking all the Democrats who opposed regulation, who took huge donations and sweetheart deals from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and explaining who Senator Obama's chief financial advisor is and why he is. The bottom line is Democrats were in the lenders' pockets, AND they based their policies on misguided "social justice" notions of Marxism rampant throughout their party and their base.

[_dartagnan]

I just think it's stupid to blame this crisis on Democrats, specifically Clinton, when clearly it started long before he was in office.

Reagan - the Republican Jesus Christ - set the stage for this mess. Maybe that is why they have been so quick to place the blame on Bill?

Well, hell it must be true then, because GoodK says so! Who needs evidence to support crazyass assertions when bald assertion will satisfy most liberals?

[_Analytics]

The demise of Bear Sterns, Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual and Lehman Brothers is entirely relevant because it was hit especially hard by defaults on subprime and adjustable rate mortages.

Do you blame their failures on the Democrats too?

The fact is, without the skyrocketing number of unqualified borrowers, there wouldn't be a skyrocketing number of defaulted mortages. The latter is what directly led to the bankruptcy of several corporations.

This is what I tried telling you and others from the beginning. The democrat effort to extend risky loans to unqualified buyers (argued on racial lines!) which began in the 90's, cannot be dismissed as a symptom when it is in fact a cause.

So you are saying that when, for example, Citibank Mortgage Securities Inc. decided it liked the higher yields associated with higher gross weighted average coupons from sub-prime mortgages and decided to purchase sub-prime mortgages and then issue mortgage backed securities, that the Democrats should be blamed?

Anyone who says otherwise has it all backwards.

I thought it was the demand from private investors for high-yield mortgage-backed securities which triggered fully private investment banks to create the securities, which triggered fully private loan originators to offer these loans. Now you are telling me that I have it backwards?! It really isn’t the fault of the people who created these schemes and made the investments—it is the democrats’ fault?!

If people are serious about answers to the most popular question today, "How did this happen?" then they will consider the facts laid out in related news articles illustrating how the democrats have been staunch proponents of forcing banks to give money to people who had no ability or maybe even intention, of paying back.

So you think most of the mortgages that are defaulting are ones that the market didn’t want to issue and that the Democrats forced them to issue?

Your #5 is distorted from the truth. You said,

"5- Materialistic home buyers who bought more home than they could afford."

Materialistic homebuyers?

What makes them "materialistic?" You make it sound like these were mainly rich people who were buying up properties as investments. What exactly did you mean by this?

I mean that when middle-class people buy a house, they usually don’t put down 20%; they put down 0-5% because they don’t have money saved. Then as the value of the house goes up, they withdraw the equity by refinancing or taking out second mortgages.

I’m calling these people materialistic because even though they had respectable middle-class incomes, they weren’t living within their means.

The problem, as corroborated by virtually all educated sources on the subject, was market flooded with poorer, unqualified buyers.

When President Bush addressed the question, he said absolutely nothing about the democrats forcing banks to make loans to poor, unqualified buyers. He also said that most economists agree with him about the causes. Do you think he was lying about what “educated sources” say?

Here is what he said (my comments in brackets):

First, how did our economy reach this point?

Well, most economists agree that the problems we are witnessing today developed over a long period of time. For more than a decade, a massive amount of money flowed into the United States from investors abroad, because our country is an attractive and secure place to do business. This large influx of money to U.S. banks and financial institutions -- along with low interest rates [which were heavily influenced by the Fed]-- -- made it easier for Americans to get credit [notice he blames it on free market forces, not Democrats]. These developments allowed more families to borrow money for cars and homes and college tuition -- some for the first time. They allowed more entrepreneurs to get loans to start new businesses and create jobs.

Unfortunately, there were also some serious negative consequences, particularly in the housing market. Easy credit -- combined with the faulty assumption that home values would continue to rise -- led to excesses [by “materialistic home buyers”] and bad decisions. Many mortgage lenders approved loans for borrowers without carefully examining their ability to pay [their decision—not the Democrats or Fannie Mae’s]. Many borrowers took out loans larger than they could afford, assuming that they could sell or refinance their homes at a higher price later on[these were not people in neighborhoods that would be redlined].

Optimism about housing values also led to a boom in home construction. Eventually the number of new houses exceeded the number of people willing to buy them. And with supply exceeding demand, housing prices fell. And this created a problem: Borrowers with adjustable rate mortgages who had been planning to sell or refinance their homes at a higher price were stuck with homes worth less than expected -- along with mortgage payments they could not afford. As a result, many mortgage holders began to default.