Among the 500 odd new regulations it imposes, the financial bill, all 2,300 pristine, unread pages of it, has just been passed by the Senate. As we surmised in April, and Bloomberg now confirms, the thing will,
” … create a mechanism for liquidating failing financial firms whose collapse could roil markets, a council of regulators to police firms for threats to the economic system and a consumer bureau at the Federal Reserve to monitor banks for credit-card and mortgage lending abuses. It also expands oversight of executive compensation and derivatives, contracts whose value is derived from stocks, bonds, loans, currencies and commodities.”
“Nowhere in the final bill will you see even a pretense of rolling back the endless federal incentives and mandates to extend credit, particularly mortgages, to those who cannot afford to pay their loans back,” notes Mark A. Calabria of the Cato Institute. “After all, the popular narrative insists that Wall Street fat cats must be to blame for the credit crisis. Despite the recognition that mortgages were offered to unqualified individuals and families, banks will still be required under the Dodd-Frank bill to meet government-imposed lending quotas.”
The title of this post is borrowed from the aptly titled article in the WSJ, which warns that “the legislation hands off to 10 regulatory agencies the discretion to write hundreds of new rules governing finance. Rather than the bill itself, it will be this process—accompanied by a lobbying blitz from banks—that will determine the precise contours of this new landscape … ”
If I’ve learned anything about the American Mind it is this: Truth doesn’t exist until someone in the establishment pronounces it, usually a decade or so after it has been in circulation. Better Late than never, you say. Fine, then. Let’s fawn over the celebrated Ann Coulter for finally clashing with neoconservative Bill Kristol. The first part of the Coulter column, however, would make Bill proud. This section is redeemable:
“Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney have demanded that Steele resign as head of the RNC for saying Afghanistan is now Obama’s war – and a badly thought-out one at that. (Didn’t liberals warn us that neoconservatives want permanent war?)
I thought the irreducible requirements of Republicanism were being for life, small government and a strong national defense, but I guess permanent war is on the platter now, too.
Of course, if Kristol is writing the rules for being a Republican, we’re all going to have to get on board for amnesty and a ‘National Greatness Project,’ too – other Kristol ideas for the Republican Party. Also, John McCain. Kristol was an early backer of McCain for president – and look how great that turned out!
Inasmuch as demanding resignations is another new Republican position, here’s mine: Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney must resign immediately.”
[snip]
I wrote “A War He Can Call His Own” two years ago, but who’s counting? Truth doesn’t count; celebrity does. For what it’s worth (read the complete column):
“By promising to broaden the scope of operations in Afghanistan, Obama has found a ‘good’ war to make him look the part. By staking out Afghanistan as his preferred theater of war—and pledging an uptick in operations against the Taliban—Obama achieves two things: He can cleave to the Iraq policy that excited his base. While winding down one war, he can ratchet up another, thereby demonstrating his commander-in-chief credentials. …
But that initial mission mutated miraculously, and now we are doing in Afghanistan what we’re doing in Iraq: nation building. Nations building is Democrat for spreading democracy. Spreading democracy is Republican for nation building. These interchangeable concepts stand for an open-ended military presence with all the pitfalls that attach to Iraq. …”
UPDATED I (July 10): I’ve actually, mercifully, never read this Gerson sort. The class of commentators you all reference are the least obnoxious to me, because they have some facility with the English language, and can cobble together a vaguely coherent column. Hey, a neocon must make a living too. These pests have kids to feed.
No, it’s the tits-and-ass idiots that offend me. These are the barely literate females who get lucrative book deals for their here-today-gone-tomorrow epistolary vomit, purely because of a combination of ass-ets, pushy self-promotion (which might include heroic action over and above grinding out grating gerunds), and a knack for not threatening Big Cable Egos.
One of the bad things about the rise to fame of a cretin such as SE Cupp, or the deeply silly Margaret Hoover, for example, is that this program for fem affirmative action has made these dumb dodos believe that O’Reilly and Hannity have them on as side kicks because they are so smart.
The ditzes don’t get that they are on TV weighing in on weighty matters—having never uttered an original thought in their lives—because, however hard they try, they simply cannot make their hosts look bad. Impossible.
I do respect SE Cupp’s training as a professional ballet dancer. That requires incredible skill and dedication, a determination IT has applied to the craft of political circus animal. (Ballet dancer: that’s the one aspect of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel that I respect too. Ditto Kip Winger.)
How we got from trash to gold, I don’t know, but I’m glad my mind works in mysterious ways. Feast on this embodiment of American manhood. (The hard work that goes into learning to play as tightly as this and move like this is manly.)
UPDATE II: How could I forget this moron among the Fox News menagerie: Imogen Lloyd Webber is an imported liberal airhead who came up with this shopworn shibboleth on The Factor: “we must build bridges with Islam.” “I’m not particularly bright and I put myself under a lot of pressure to do well,” she said of herself. At least she possesses a modicum of self-knowledge, unlike her American bimbette competitors.
Oh the contradictions of being a Republican! Republicans, the ostensible party for market forces, were furious when BHO and his posse, who work against such forces, indicated that they were keen on privatizing aspects in the operation of NASA, the National Aeronautic Space Administration.
How do Repbulicans reconcile their desire to retain NASA as a state entity, in the face of new revelations about the main mission with which the Democrat-run state has charged NASA?
According to a top NASA official, speaking to Al Jazira, President Obama has charged him with “reaching out to the Muslim world and engaging much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science.”
Do Repbulicans think that a privately-run, for-profit space agency would set Muslim outreach as one of its goals?
There’s a reservoirs of piss-poor conservative commentary on the Internet. (People lap it up.) Trust Lawrence Auster to point out what few others do: “So much of the conservative part of the Web is unintelligent, incoherent partisan trash. Mondo Frazier’s article at Big Journalism about the Gore sex assault charge is an example. I saw it because it is listed in the ‘must-reads’ at Lucianne.com.”
