Where’s the Outrage?

Here’s the Thursday evening news roundup:

• The Dow Jones Industrial Average roller coaster continues. The Dow gained 410 points today. The Federal Reserve and other major banks offered almost $200 billion for the markets. This will allow banks to borrow more money. It should ease some of the credit crunch.
• Steven Levitt, author of Freakonomics, invited a couple of economics professors to explain what is going on with Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac along with AIG. It is a relatively long and detailed discussion, though somewhat enlightening.
• Putnam investments has closed a $12.3 billion fund in order to limit losses to its investors. This can’t be good.
• Republican presidential nominee John McCain seems to be somewhat confused about Spain and Latin America. His answer to an interviewer’s question simply didn’t make sense.
• John McCain continues to flounder on the economy. Today he said if he were president, he would fire the SEC Chairman. It turns out, although the SEC chairman position is independent, although nominated by the president and confirmed by Congress. Therefore, the president cannot fire him or her. Oops! One would figure that McCain would know this since he has been in Congress for over 26 years and has been a part of the selection process at least two or three times.
• Governor Sarah Palin seems to be digging herself a large hole called Trooper-gate. Neither her or her husband will testify. I guess if you are a Republican, then answering a subpoena is not in your DNA. For a party that swears they do not like lawyers, they sure seem to use a lot of lawyers in their efforts to delay and to stall.
• Brother, can you spare a dime? Or how about a couple of trillion dollars?. Bailouts may cost about that. Now, where is that going to come from?
• The featured speaker at a GOP rally designed to reach out to minorities is none other than former Senator George Allen. Allen lost his re-election bid to Jim Webb partly due to his racial comments — “Macaca.” Seriously.

Tags: Congress, Economy, Election 2008, Senator George Allen by ecthompson
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Sean Hannity of Fox News interviewed Governor Sarah Palin in part one of their 140 part series (I have no idea how many parts of this series will be). After the pleasantries, Hannity asked Palin about the economy. She began her explanation by stating that we need reform and that we are working with 1930s laws in order to govern modern companies. Then, probably most importantly, she backtracked to say that government alone is not the answer. That’s it.

As expected, Hannity did not ask any follow-up questions. What reform? And if government is not the answer, what is? Is Palin echoing the same type of verbiage we heard from President Bush after the Enron scandal, you know, that CEOs and CFOs need to have more moral fiber? Hannity ended this line of questioning.

The Fox News host then asked whether the Barack Obama campaign is politicizing this issue. Palin responded with some gobbledygook then dovetailed into her talking point: Senator John McCain has worked with both sides of the aisle. Of course, this had nothing to do with the question.

Hannity then pitched the softball right down the plate: Who was responsible for the market collapse that we are seeing on Wall Street? According to Palin, Wall Street corruption is the problem. Of course, there were no follow-up questions.

But, what specific corruption is she talking about? Is she saying that the U.S. Attorney General needs to prosecute some of these companies? Or she just talking about bad behavior? Again, she talks about a role for government without being specific. Is she talking about more regulation? Is she talking about enforcing the 70-year-old regulations (she said they dated back to the 1930s) that we already have? Palin can’t even hit a softball.

Somewhere in this interview I’m hoping there’s some meat.

Hannity followed up with a statement– not a question– about Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae with regard to government intervention. It looked like Palin did some of her homework since she had a better understanding of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae than she did a little over a week ago. She stated that the government had to step in because it would have been too “impacting” on the American people. What? What does that mean?

Anyway, Hannity concluded this segment with an extraordinary statement that the Democratic nominee Barack Obama received the second most amount of money in the form of campaign contributions than any other politician from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Really? Palin did not take the bait. Instead, she stuck to her talking points: Lobbyists are evil and cronyism is evil. This is almost laughable when almost all of McCain’s top advisers are former lobbyists.

I can’t wait to see more of this hard-hitting interview. (Dripping with sarcasm.)

Tags: Election 2008, Media by ecthompson
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Stephen Colbert has the lowdown on Republican presidential nominee, John McCain. Basically, McCain had to smear the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama because Obama refused the town hall meetings. This is funny. Enjoy.

Tags: Election 2008, The Colbert Report by ecthompson
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