Patterico's Pontifications

2/24/2021

Is the Problem with the Republican Party Just Trump?

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 8:29 am



Yesterday I had a brief Twitter interchange with my friend Dan McLaughlin of National Review. Dan had been talking to Tim Miller and had asserted that the Democrats have nothing to offer the 2012 Republican voter. Someone else begged to differ:

I replied:

When Dan replied to that by saying that Trump’s behavior should not change what you think of the Democrats, I clarified that I was engaging in a comparative and not an absolute analysis. Dan responded to that by claiming that the Democrats are “institutionally bad” while the Republicans have a problem with one person:

Is that true?

Dan got some blowback for that tweet and I think it’s deserved. Several of us reminded him that a majority of the Republican House caucus voted to help Trump steal an election after a violent mob at the Capitol disrupted the counting of electoral votes. Now, we have the wave of censures at a more local level for anyone who steps out of line:

You can’t even take action against a clearly poisonous conspiracy theorist and remain in the party’s good graces.

I try to keep in mind these days that there are good folks like Beldar (and Paul Montagu) in the Republican party. Clearly the problem with the party is not true of everyone in it. But there seems to be a majority that prefers cranks and liars to sensible people. And that’s a problem.

Maybe there are not many people like me, but speaking for myself: if the GOP wants my vote, it has to wake up and figure out how it alienated me and people like me. Demonizing the left ain’t gonna cut it for me anymore. There’s plenty bad about the Democrats — but when a party that bad starts to look like the saner option, the responsibility doesn’t really lie with me to fix it. The party needs to fix itself.

169 Responses to “Is the Problem with the Republican Party Just Trump?”

  1. At this point I can’t see any reason to support the GOP. they don’t seem to be working on things that are of value to me, and supporting them comes at the cost of making common cause with the likes of Greene.

    Time123 (b87ded)

  2. RIP Fanne Fox (84). The Argentine Firecracker.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  3. Death Star PR Dept (1b71f6) — 2/24/2021 @ 9:20 am-

    This report includes direct links to her videos and statements. Enjoy.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  4. Patterico, can you delete my reply to whoever the troll was. It makes no sense out of context.

    Time123 (d1bf33)

  5. Done, Time123.

    The troll has been deleted too.

    Dana (fd537d)

  6. I saw McLaughlin’s tweet, and he’s dead wrong. I even told him so.
    The problem with the GOP is the plurality in 2016 who thought Trump would be a swell president. Trump is a symptom.
    This obviously means that the problem is more than Trump, more than the fascists who objected on 1/6 and signed onto AG Paxton’s suit, more than the minions who worked for him and trotted out his party line. There’s a whole base of adoring followers, larger than the other segments.
    BTW, Patterico, thanks for acknowledging Beldar and myself. I don’t care if you insult my party. Most times it’s deserved and with good reason. I don’t have any magic bullets for extricating Trump and Trumpism from the GOP but, to me, it’s the most important thing this party can do.

    Paul Montagu (77c694)

  7. I disagree with McLaughlin about the differences in the parties.

    In politics, Brittanica defines “institutional” as a set of formal rules (including constitutions), informal norms, or shared understandings that constrain and prescribe political actors’ interactions with one another. Under Trump, Republicans are as unmoored from the values I care about as the Democrats are. They were willing to see people die at the Capitol in service to Trump’s need for validation and, despite that, Trump is still the GOP leader. If that isn’t institutional rot, nothing is.

    DRJ (aede82)

  8. Every election is a Flight 93 election now.

    Davethulhu (6ba00b)

  9. I disagree with the entire concept of chasing after the “2012 Republican voter.” The 2012 party platform was already dead in 2016. Trump didn’t kill it, he just made it obvious. The party would have changed, and changed in much the same direction, Trump or no Trump. It just would have had someone more attuned with Government and more competent to lead it.

    What Trump brought in addition was a lack of respect for the nation, Law and process that are hallmarks of a cult of personality. In that sense, yes, it is just Trump. But it is also what it revealed about the former party leaders, too.

    It is terribly important for the GOP to be rid of Trump, and that will now have to come from outside — either the courts or a schism — but as long as the party is his creature it will lose everyone who supported it out of principle, even if they agree with its platform.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  10. No, the problem is not just Trump, but Trump exploited the problem in the Republican Party.

    The problem is anti-illegal-immigration ideology.

    Plus a lot of semi-inaccurate memes. It’s an echo chamber. Even when there is a basic point to be made, they go wrong. Things are not stated accurately. Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign was not spied on. Joe Biden did not fire a prosecutor who was investigating his son. Andrew Cuomo did not kill all those nursing home patients, but more like about 1/6 of those who died. And so on and so on.

    Sammy Finkelman (c95a5a)

  11. Under Trump, Republicans are as unmoored from the values I care about as the Democrats are

    Different values, still, but yes. There is no party now that believes both in the Rule of Law and individual Liberty. I think that if someone tried to form one, they would have a surprising level of support. To get on the CA ballot, it would need the signatures of about 3% of the “2012 GOP voter.”

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  12. The problem is anti-illegal-immigration ideology.

    Of all the things that Trump brought, that was already there, at least as far as the illegal portion. Trump’s contribution was a racial animus, which — like many other positions of his — degraded the position of everyone who was arguing the side he “joined.”

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  13. I can say this about the general policy positions of the parties: Democrats are full of dogmatism – a tremendous amount of dogmatism – wrong dogmatism in the majority of cases – which cannot be dissented from, but they may keep quiet about it sometimes.

    Republicans are full of at least partially false claims about Democrats, which however, can be dissented from in most cases.

    Republicans are against government planning and against picking winners and losers, except when it comes to immigration.

    Democrats are against trickle down economics, except when it comes to immigration.

    Sammy Finkelman (c95a5a)

  14. I don;t think Trump really added anything. It was all being said before by some people. He maybe popularized it a little bit more.

    Sammy Finkelman (c95a5a)

  15. To me, this has happened before. In the 90’s, when the Christian Conservatives wielded great influence in the GOP, I felt politically homeless. I spent some time then in the Libertarian Party, until I realized they had no interest in anything but posturing. The Dole disaster shook out the GOP a bit and W was far more to my liking and I returned.

    I still think that Mitt Romney would have made a great President, but I wonder if he could have adapted to the end of the Reagan era when the unintended consequences came home to roost.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  16. To get on the CA ballot, it would need the signatures of about 3% of the “2012 GOP voter.”

    To qualify a new political party by petition, no later than 135 days prior to the primary election or the presidential general election, the Secretary of State must determine if a political body intending to qualify collected petition signatures of registered voters equal to 10 percent of the votes cast at the last gubernatorial election. (Elec. Code, §§ 5100(c), 5151(d).) The current signature requirement is 1,271,255 (10% of 12,712,542, the votes cast at the November 8, 2018, gubernatorial election).

    Source

    The number of signatures for a new political party is less than the number required for a recall (12%, currently just under 1.5 million signatures).

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  17. You are right, although that is probably unconstitutional (1st amendment right of petition) as it is a VERY high bar. There is the alternative method of “voter registration”, which is probably what I was thinking when I misspoke (same link):

    To qualify a new political party by voter registration requires that voters equal in number to at least 0.33 percent of the total number of voters registered on the 154th day before the primary election or the 123rd day before the presidential general election complete an affidavit of registration, disclosing a preference by writing in the name of the political body intending to qualify as a political party. (Elec. Code, §§ 5100(b), 5151(c).)

    0.33% of voters registered is less than 100,000.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  18. ……although that is probably unconstitutional (1st amendment right of petition) as it is a VERY high bar.

    Less high than the bar for recall petitions, and proponents didn’t seem to have a problem with that.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  19. Less high than the bar for recall petitions, and proponents didn’t seem to have a problem with that.

    Still, no new party can achieve that number and everyone knows it. The alternative “registration” method is the only viable one.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  20. That a recall petition has a higher requirement is immaterial, as it should be high. Apples and petunias.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  21. If you think the Biden Democrats have any respect for the rule of law, you have slept through the past 110 years of the party’s history & ignored its entire ideology.

    — Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) February 23, 2021

    ROFLMAOPIP Teapot Dome… Watergate… Iran/Contra… =mike-drop=

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  22. @9. It is terribly important for the GOP to be rid of Trump

    If you’ve got a lame horse, changing jockeys won’t make it a winner. The issue isn’t Trump- it’s the horse he rode in on– populism. Fed by the “hay-hay” of the GOP’s Big Lie of the past 40 years: Reaganomics, which peed on the middle and lower middle classes. And desperate conservative plotting by bottom-of-the-deckers at NR to try and retake party control again after 40 years of hell, using the playbooks of Snidley Whiplash or Wylie Coyote is a script full of comedies and errors. The problem isn’t the messenger, it’s the messaging.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  23. Is the Problem with the Republican Party Just Trump?

    No.

    The Trumpiest Republicans Are At The State And Local Levels — Not In D.C.
    ……
    ……The party’s most-Trump and pro-Trumpism contingent and the forces in the party pushing its growing radical and antidemocratic tendencies are often not national Republicans, but those at the local and state levels.
    ……..
    Beyond defending Trump himself, state and local Republicans are perhaps the party’s biggest advocates of the kind of white-identity politics that is sometimes referred to as Trumpism. For example, GOP officials at the state level are now trying to bar schools from using materials from the New York Times’s 1619 Project, which focuses on the central role of slavery in American history. Such bans would effectively use government power to censor part of the public discourse and silence a project hated by many conservatives because of its critical look at Trump-style white-identity politics.

    Also, GOP officials in states, not those in D.C., were the ones who pioneered laws designed to make it harder for liberal-leaning constituencies like Black Americans and college students to vote. Now, GOP officials in states are aggressively trying to limit vote-by-mail programs, after a 2020 election in which Democrats won in part because of strong turnout and Democrats voted by mail at much higher rates than Republicans.

    In 2019, state party leaders canceled Republican caucuses and primaries, virtually eliminating any possibility for a GOP challenger to wage a serious campaign against Trump.

    In Trump’s bid to overturn the election results, GOP state legislators, local and state party officials and GOP state attorneys general were often enthusiastically supporting his moves, while Republicans such as Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell generally didn’t condemn the effort but didn’t openly embrace it either.

    …….According to an analysis by (Jake Grumbach, a political scientist at the University of Washington), the greatest predictor of whether a state has taken antidemocratic steps, such as really aggressive gerrymandering or efforts to make it harder for people to vote, is if Republicans control its state legislature and governor’s office.
    ……..
    ……..Republicans at the state level can take fairly aggressive actions with less of a chance of drawing a massive backlash or other negative attention.

    Similarly, GOP state legislative races generally get less scrutiny and attention from the media than those for the U.S. House and GOP gubernatorial candidates get less scrutiny than Republican candidates for U.S. Senate and president.
    …….
    The party’s more establishment wing seems to be more powerful the higher up the government ranks you go. …….But at the local and state level, activists aligned with the Trump wing of the party are dominant.
    …….

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  24. For example, GOP officials at the state level are now trying to bar schools from using materials from the New York Times’s 1619 Project, which focuses on the central role of slavery in American history.

    That’s not the objection.

    The objection is to claims that the Revolutionary War was fought to defend slavery (!) or that 1619 is the true founding of America. We can say colonialization was, but the key dates there are 1607 and 1620.

    Sammy Finkelman (c95a5a)

  25. ‘Sen. Mitt Romney (Cultist, UT) said Tuesday that if former President Donald Trump were to run again in 2024 he would likely win the Republican nomination “in a landslide.”’- source, NYT.

    Yes, Pierre believes…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVJgmp2Tc2s

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  26. McLaughlin’s argument that the Republican’s problem in with one person while the Democrat’s problem is institutional is nonsensical. It ignores what Trump has done to the Republican party, utterly corrupted it.

    Lies, lies and damned conspiracy theories, that’s what the QOP stands for now.

    When you see Sen. Scott reading an asinine article as if to criticize an esteemed jurist, when see Sen. Cruz and Sen. Hawley ask idiotic questions to an esteemed jurist as if to make appear unqualified for office, you see a party that has lost its collective mind and sold its collective soul. Garland is more of an accomplished man than all three of these assclowns combined.

    Question: If Republicans had not bent over backwards to kiss Trump’s butt, would Marjorie Taylor Greene had had a snowflake in a volcanoe’s chance of being elected to any office anywhere?

    Unless or until Trump and Trumpism is completely excised from the party, it won’t be party worth voting for.

    We need more representatives like Kinzinger. Check out his website at countryfirst.com.

    Gawain's Ghost (b25cd1)

  27. “Trump, I believe. Help, thou, my unbelief.”

    No, the problem with the Republican Party is not just Trump, and his marks are not victims. They’re like the lonely hearts club old maids who desperately want the handsome, financially secure correspondent to be real, and several other, probably better, analogies too.

    nk (1d9030)

  28. There wouldn’t be a “Trump” without willing participants. Members of Congress and Trump’s loyal base, who are nearly religious in their support of Trump, are the corresponding “problem” with the Party. Any egotistical grifter can promote himself out there as a savior-figure or valiant champion of the underdog, but without the fawning loyalists, he’s going nowhere.

    Dana (fd537d)

  29. It ignores what Trump has done to the Republican party, utterly corrupted it.

    The party, or most of it, had to allow itself to be corrupted by Trump. So the question is why, and more specifically why R. politicians have mostly doubled down on Trumpism after Nov., 3, after Jan. 6, after Jan. 20.

    Short answer: They don’t want to be primaried by fanatical Trumpers. Or they hope that Trumpers will elevate them from the House to the Senate, or get them the nomination for president.

    A large portion of the GOP voting base view Trump as the lodestar of patriotic virtue. That’s where the problem is.

    Radegunda (20775b)

  30. Trump was only able to do to the Republican party what members (whether in Congress, state level, loyal base) permitted and/or wanted. And clearly, they loved what he was doing. And they still love it because he still remains very influential, powerful, and has a hefty bankroll to put toward candidates he likes. And those, of course, are the ones who have kissed the ring.

    Dana (fd537d)

  31. My argument all along is that Trump is individually bad, Democrats are institutionally bad.

    McLaughlin’s argument seems to ignore the extent to which Trump voters think “institutions” is a bad word. A great many Trumpers have made it clear that their loyalty is to the man, not to the party, or any other governing institutions. Removing Trump doesn’t cure the “blow the whole thing up / burn the place to the ground” fever or the penchant for conspiracy theories about the “deep state” that promoted the elevation of Donald Trump to the status of messianic hero.

    Radegunda (20775b)

  32. Without even talking about the policies of the individuals, I’ll take the Senate Republican leaders over Dem leaders any day: McConnell, Thune and Barasso vs. Shumer, Leahy and Durbin.

    Also house Republican leaders over Dem House leaders: McCarthy and Scalise over Pelosi and Hoyer.

    Mike S (4125f8)

  33. ROFLMAOPIP Teapot Dome… Watergate… Iran/Contra… =mike-drop=

    Until Trump, the GOP transgressions were out of character while the Democrats were ubiquitous. But let’s talk about their noticeable ones:

    Wilson re-segregating the federal government
    Jim Crow
    Most of FDR’s first term declared unconstitutional
    Truman sending troops to take over the steel mills
    The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and 500,000 troops sent to Vietnam.
    LBJ bugging everyone, including all the Republicans
    J Edgar Hoover’s FBI
    Monica
    Fast & Furious
    IRS actions against the Tea Party

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  34. Hoover-Great Depression

    All else pales in comparison.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  35. Bush-Great Recession

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  36. @34. ROFLMAOPIP you’re conflating ‘rule of law’ with ‘lies.

    If you want to go down the lyin’ path– don’t; it’s a GOP trail of tears.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  37. Originally, the problem was just Trump. Now, because of Trump, the problem is with the rank and file with the Republican Party. Even if Trump dies, other Republicans will use his rhetoric to garner votes.

    Imagine if Trump had not run for president in 2016. If any one of the other 16 Republican candidates had defeated Hillary in the general election, do you think there would be a problem with the Republican party now? I think not.

    Trump is part of the small group of people who individually wreaked havoc on the world, like the guy who assassinated Archduke Ferdinand, thus setting off WWI, the aftermath of which led to WWII.

    norcal (01e272)

  38. Until Trump, the GOP transgressions were out of character while the Democrats were ubiquitous.

    Trumpers have insisted that the GOP got nowhere by being principled and following the rules. They said we needed someone who would fight dirty, and they attached their unconditional allegiance to someone who believes that nothing he does for his own benefit could possibly be wrong.
    Transgressivism is a key doctrine of the Trump cult.

    Radegunda (20775b)

  39. Good news:

    FDA review confirms safety and efficacy of single-shot Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine, especially against severe cases

    A Food and Drug Administration review released Wednesday of the single-shot coronavirus vaccine made by pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson found it was safe and effective and completely prevented hospitalizations and deaths in a large clinical trial.

    The review sets the stage for a third coronavirus vaccine to be authorized as soon as this weekend, a point of hope in the middle of a pandemic that has killed more than a half-million people in the United States.
    …….

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  40. The Great Depression was the Fed’s fault. Hoover actually tried to add liquidity. The FDR deepened it. Just imagine the furor today if a politician today tried to get the NIRA passed, with the State taking over large portions of the economy.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  41. *The FDR

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  42. Bush-Great Recession
    Pelosi-Schumer, banks forced to make risky loans, based on race, Great recession. Everything else followed from that. Bush’s mistakes had to do with dealing with the crisis, and bailing out the banks. A better, and better targeted, “bail-out” would have been for the Feds to pay down 10% of all owner-occupied residential mortgages. Better to shore up the front end than try to fix everything at the back end.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  43. If conservatives want to climb back on the horse, they’re going to have to eat some manure and embrace a few populist flags to regain some relevancy w/t people they’ve peed on, suckred, seduced and abandoned for 40 years. ‘Moral Majorrty’ ‘family values’ ‘trickle-down’ were bogus flim-flam. Service some populist themes or, as times marches on, be ‘left’ behind. The smart ones will choose a few; minimum wage, Covid relief, etc. Champion something or be left w/nothing for the next 40 years.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  44. @43. T’was a Bush Baby.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  45. Bush II-Iraq War
    Bush II-Afghan War

    Whatever. This is a silly, sandbox game.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  46. @41. FDR saved America and brought it into the 20th century. Unless you’re ‘one of the bright young men, who want to go back to 1910; a Barry’s Boy.’ ;-).

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  47. “Pelosi-Schumer, banks forced to make risky loans, based on race, Great recession. ”

    Wrong.

    Davethulhu (6ba00b)

  48. @46. All stemming from NR’s McLaughlin’s silly tweet. The last place on Earth to use as a guidebook to GOP salvation is the NR. They’re POV is on the outs, from the local level on up- unless the business plan is to follow the fate of The Weekly Standard.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  49. J&J vaccine:

    On 29 January 2021, Janssen announced that it was 66% effective in a one-dose regimen in preventing symptomatic COVID-19, with an 85% efficacy in preventing severe COVID-19

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad26.COV2.S

    It has advantages in that it needs only normal refrigeration and only one dose. Unlike Pfizer and Moderna it is an Adenovirus vectoring vaccine, with a non-replicating virus used to generate Covid-19 protein(s) to elicit an immune response. However, like the mRNA vaccines, no Covid-19 virus is present in the vaccine.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  50. Also:

    On February 24, ahead of the VRBPAC meeting, the FDA staff’s briefing document for the committee was issued, recommending granting the EUA and determining that the results of the clinical trials and safety data were consistent with FDA EUA guidance for COVID-19 vaccines.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  51. Wrong.

    Predictable reply.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  52. ‘Moral Majorrty’ ‘family values’ ‘trickle-down’ were bogus flim-flam.

    Oh, hardly. They just were not all the truth. The parts of the truth that involved manufacturing streaming overseas and foreign tradesmen flooding in were not widely advertised.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  53. @41. Defending Hoover. Great strategy. You know which ex-POTUS enthusiastically backed loser Goldwater in 1964?

    Loser Hoover.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Republican_National_Convention

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  54. Bush II-Afghan War

    So, you argue that the Afghan response to 9/11 was in error? We should have gone for the Gandhi Option?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  55. @53. If you’re explaining and qualifying— you’re losing.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  56. Defending Hoover. Great strategy.

    No, I just hate lies, even well-accepted ones (e.g. FDR saved us)

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  57. “Predictable reply.”

    Nobody forced the banks to do anything. They were perfectly happy to make bad loans because they immediately resold them to be packaged in MBSs.

    Davethulhu (6ba00b)

  58. @56, far be it from you to explain anything. You just assert.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  59. Nobody forced the banks to do anything.

    Untrue. regulators forced them to make loans they previously would not. Loans even black-run banks would not.

    They were perfectly happy to make bad loans because they immediately resold them to be packaged in MBSs.

    You confuse cause and effect here.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  60. @53. Flim-flam indeed: pop quiz- how many wives between Reagan, Dole and Gingrich…

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  61. how many wives between Reagan, Dole and Gingrich

    Who cares?

    norcal (01e272)

  62. Bill Clinton only married once. I guess he’s a paragon of virtue.

    norcal (01e272)

  63. “Untrue. regulators forced them to make loans they previously would not. Loans even black-run banks would not.”

    Citation needed.

    Davethulhu (6ba00b)

  64. Fast & Furious

    No elected official or political appointee was responsible for Fast & Furious.

    It was career employees at the Phoenix ATF office.

    Dave (1bb933)

  65. “Who cares?”

    The party of “marriage sanctity”?

    Davethulhu (6ba00b)

  66. “You confuse cause and effect here.”

    No I don’t. If MBSs didn’t exist, or if fraud on the part of rating agencies hadn’t happened, the crisis wouldn’t have happened.

    Davethulhu (6ba00b)

  67. Bush II-Afghan War

    So, you argue that the Afghan response to 9/11 was in error? We should have gone for the Gandhi Option?

    For it go beyond Bush II’s second term without solving anything, yes. The Taliban were driven out of power in November 2001. It should have ended in 2004 with the election of Hamid Karzai.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  68. Defending Hoover. Great strategy.

    No, I just hate lies, even well-accepted ones (e.g. FDR saved us)

    Yeah, thank god for Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  69. @62. Family values; shorter: “So?” – Darth Cheney.

    “Sell crazy someplace else, we’re all stocked up here.” ― Melvin Udall [Jack Nicholson] ‘As Good As It Gets’ 1997

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  70. @57. Except he did.

    From Hoover.
    From Landon.
    From Wilkie.
    From Dewey.

    Reagan voted for FDR.

    Four times.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  71. The republican party had oligarchy running it paid for with donor class money trying to tell former southern white trash democrat populists that should now be economic free trade libertarians. That jobs loss out of the country was capitalism’s creative destruction. Peolple like mitt ronny shutting down their businesses to send jobs out of the country was reagenomics. Trump came along who couldn’t be bought off by donor class and said your populists I am a populist lets vote! Now you want to be let back into power. right!

    asset (c5d7cb)

  72. @59. Self-explanatory; self-evident. Like ‘all men are created equal.’ 😉

    “Some apes, it seems, are more equal than others.” – George Taylor [Charlton Heston] ‘Planet Of The Apes’ 1968

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  73. ” a lot of semi-inaccurate memes. It’s an echo chamber. Even when there is a basic point to be made, they go wrong. Things are not stated accurately.”

    “Accurately” or “Not under the absolute strictest technical legal interpretation?”

    “Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign was not spied on.”

    Yes, it was. Don’t give me any ‘SURVEILLANCE ISN’T TECHNICALLY SPYING’ or ‘NO PHYSICAL WIRES HAD PHYSICAL TAPS INSTALLED!’

    “Joe Biden did not fire a prosecutor who was investigating his son.”

    Yes, he did. Don’t give me any ‘ONE OF THE MOST CORRUPT MEN IN CONGRESS WAS JUST EXTREMELY PERSONALLY CONCERNED ABOUT CORRUPTION IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES WHERE HIS SON HAPPENED TO GET A VERY NICE JOB’

    “Andrew Cuomo did not kill all those nursing home patients, but more like about 1/6 of those who died.”

    How does a novel contagious disease work, exactly?
    So, yes, he did.

    The problem is not law, the problem is lawyers-too many on the wrong side, too many willing to browbeat honest people outside the courtroom 24-7 over these utterly trivial definitions, too many people not willing to tell them to take a hike, too many people not willing to ruthlessly disemploy, disempower, and disrespect any who show any hint of disloyalty.

    I could say “We need more lawyers on our side” but that would simply make the world as a whole a worse place to live. And the type of personality that gets attracted to and good at the art of sociopathic wordsmithing tends to vote Democrat by default. No, I’d say lawyers need to be getting treated with roughly the same level of respect and deference as journalists.

    “B…but the Founders were lawyers!” Yes, and there’s strong evidence that they believed in something more than law, prior to studying law. Building a society on law alone never works (ask Jesus.)

    Raymond Burr (fc3860)

  74. So, you argue that the Afghan response to 9/11 was in error? We should have gone for the Gandhi Option?

    That we remain in Afghanistan today is a problem, because based on the requirements to leave for the last 20 years, it will never happen.

    Basically, the decisions post 2002 were pretty poor around the world for GWOT, I’d put the turning point right around Operation Mongoose, when resourcing became more of an issue WRT Iraq vs Afghanistan. Bush’s, Obama’s, left wingers, right wingers, etc. There were a few people that had better ideas, but once Iraq happened, we were far down a bad path that was/will be extremely problematic to fix.

    I’m a fan of ripping the Band-Aid off as soon as you discover that the path is bad, no matter how far down it you are. There’s a short-cut, stop doing the dumb thing, not an option that anyone has taken so far, not Trump, and I’ll guess not Biden, maybe post Biden when the people in charge have no fingerprints on the original sin.

    Colonel Klink (Ret) (8ed124)

  75. I find it amusing how DCSCA’s read of history perfectly aligns with his political preferences.

    AJ_Liberty (ec7f74)

  76. Nobody forced the banks to do anything.

    Barack Obama represented ACORN in a lawsuit alleging that mortgage lending at B of A was racist — even though default standards were pretty much the same across races, indicating that the same lending standards were applied. That isn’t what ACORN or Obama wanted. They wanted more racially equal results in home-ownership. So the B of A and other banks were compelled to find a way to make it happen. And the government stepped in to “help.” Of course the banks wanted to make it profitable for themselves. I’m not saying that bankers can’t be very greedy, but in this case there were other bad incentives that they did not originate.

    Some of the people claiming to be outraged by “predatory lending” in 2008 may well have been people who earlier fulminated that banks were making home loans too hard for some people to get — as if bankers hadn’t wanted to collect interest payments from the wrong color of hands.

    Bush 43 was made aware of growing fiscal problems at Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac, and he made repeated efforts to get Congress to fix the problem. I’ve seen video of a House hearing where every one of the Democrats on the committee, particularly Barney Frank, insisted that there were no safety and soundness issues at the institutions. Some were basically ridiculing the expert accountant who was testifying. Frank later admitted he was wrong, and that his reason for resistance was largely partisan — because he assumed that the Republicans pushing a reform bill were just being partisan and trying to hurt poor people. He also said that Republicans hadn’t taken the problem seriously soon enough, but it was a GOP-led House that passed a reform bill. I recall when another Democrat on the committee, Artur Davis, expressed regret for resisting the reform, and he even changed parties.

    When the bill got to the Senate, it was filibustered by Chris Dodd and a new senator named Barack Obama. Guess who were the biggest recipients of campaign cash from Fannie Mae?

    There may be blame to spread around, but as a matter of plain fact it was Democrats including Obama who blocked the effort to fix the problem. And as a matter of fact, Obama had played a part in starting the problem.

    Radegunda (20775b)

  77. And speaking of greed: some people at Fannie Mae became quite wealthy, in the name of helping the poor, while they were running the system that crashed the economy.

    Radegunda (20775b)

  78. @56, far be it from you to explain anything. You just assert.

    Always wrong.

    Never in doubt.

    Dave (1bb933)

  79. Guess who were the biggest recipients of campaign cash from Fannie Mae?

    Fannie Mae, as an organization, cannot make campaign donations.

    Their employees seem to heavily favor democratic candidates, regardless of any political favors.

    In 2016, Hillary Clinton out-raised Trump among Fannie Mae employees by almost 20:1.

    Dave (1bb933)

  80. Citation needed.

    Try google. I am not your research department.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  81. Raymond Burr

    Calling yourself “Raymond Burr” does not make you Perry Mason.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  82. Try google. I am not your research department.

    But OK, @77.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  83. Their employees seem to heavily favor democratic candidates, regardless of any political favors.

    Their “employees” do not largely benefit from the profit-sharing/bonuses. Their directors and officers do.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  84. “Of course the banks wanted to make it profitable for themselves. I’m not saying that bankers can’t be very greedy, but in this case there were other bad incentives that they did not originate.”

    The first year default rate for subprime mortgages issued in 2004 was less than 2%. By 2007, this became 8%. Subprime mortgages were not an economy threatening problem until banks (and other mortgage issuers) stopped caring whether or not the loans would be repaid. They stopped caring because the MBS issuers were willing to buy anything. The MBS issuers were willing to buy anything because the rating agencies never adjusted their ratings to match the behavior of the banks.

    Fannie and Freddie were both negligent, but they followed the banks over the cliff, they didn’t lead them.

    I don’t think that the 2008 financial crisis was a partisan issue. It was a bipartisan regulatory failure. The Democrats, however, totally own Obama’s complete failure to prosecute the most egregious cases of fraud.

    Davethulhu (6ba00b)

  85. Manufactured “Beef”?
    https://news.yahoo.com/miller-tangles-florida-gop-freshman-164239649.html

    And in the same environment, there is no natural redoubt for put-upon elderly Asians who in previous GOP cycles would be a low hanging fruit of an electoral pickup for tough on crime and graft local Republicans.

    urbanleftbehind (4037b5)

  86. “Try google. I am not your research department.”

    I’m not going to do your homework for you. If you’re going to make a claim, man up and support it. Instead you let someone else do your work for you.

    Davethulhu (6ba00b)

  87. @76. Be amused:

    “Reality. What a concept!” – Robin Williams

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  88. @79. Always wrong. Never in doubt.

    Reaganomics.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  89. I’m not going to do your homework for you. If you’re going to make a claim, man up and support it. Instead you let someone else do your work for you.

    A claim that has been repeatedly documented on this blog, to the point of tediousness. I see no reason to look up things that you have already been presented with and ignored/disputed before.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  90. “A claim that has been repeatedly documented on this blog, to the point of tediousness. I see no reason to look up things that you have already been presented with and ignored/disputed before.”

    Is this you?

    “@56, far be it from you to explain anything. You just assert.”

    Davethulhu (6ba00b)

  91. 31.Trump was only able to do to the Republican party what members (whether in Congress, state level, loyal base) permitted and/or wanted. And clearly, they loved what he was doing. And they still love it because he still remains very influential, powerful, and has a hefty bankroll to put toward candidates he likes. And those, of course, are the ones who have kissed the ring.

    He’s miffed at Haley this week; still, she served in his administration and left on her own power; wasn’t fired. He may warm to her in time when the moment is right. Unless it’s a race and/or woman thing. Nah. 😉

    If she starts styling herself w/a little of the Ivanka/Melania look, it might help. Dress for success. Literally. A touch of gray and bob that hairdo.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  92. @91. Stonewall. Apologists for, “Let others wallow in Watergate; we’re going to do our job…” do that. 😉

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  93. 50. Kevin M (ab1c11) — 2/24/2021 @ 1:25 pm

    It has advantages in that it needs only normal refrigeration and only one dose.

    Are you sure the same thing wouldn’t be true for Pfizer and Moderna, had they tested them out that way? (J&J msy sctually be more stable at higher temperatures, but Pfizer and even Moderna may not need to be kept as cold for as long as in the original petition.

    This is explained by the fact it uses a virus, not mRNA. By the way, just like with the other vaccines, it is very probably stable for longer than the period in the application:

    https://www.jnj.com/innovation/questions-about-johnson-johnson-investigational-covid-19-vaccine

    The vaccine technology we’ve used can remain stable for two years at -4° F, and at least three months at 35-46° F, which is about the temperature of your home refrigerator. It may be stable for even longer at refrigerator temperatures, and we are actively collecting stability data now to see how long we can go.

    The limitations are being treated as scientific fact, rather than the result of the company not wanting to gamble so much on approval.

    One problem with the J&J vaccine: You can’t give a booster shot, or a shot for a variant, because the body develops immunity to the carrier virus.

    https://www.verywellhealth.com/johnson-and-johnson-covid-19-vaccine-5093160

    …Adenovirus-based vaccines may also pose some problems in that the adenovirus is so common that the vaccine may not be as effective once booster doses are given, or that some people may already have immunity to the virus used in the vaccine.

    .

    Sammy Finkelman (c95a5a)

  94. SF:

    “Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign was not spied on.”

    Raymond Burr (fc3860) — 2/24/2021 @ 2:06 pm

    Yes, it was. Don’t give me any ‘SURVEILLANCE ISN’T TECHNICALLY SPYING’ or ‘NO PHYSICAL WIRES HAD PHYSICAL TAPS INSTALLED!’

    His campaign was not spied on. The FBI avoided doing that. They only spied on people who were no longer associated with the campaign. There was maybe an attempt by someone to get a job in the campaign, but it failed. So, no spying on the campaign.

    The FBI did not obtain, nor did it try to get, politically useful information. Hillary had no inside knowledge of anything Trump was doing.

    Now in 1992, the Clinton campaign did spy on the Bush campaign and obtained texts of commercials before they were broadcast and had instant responses ready. But the spying was all on their own.

    “Joe Biden did not fire a prosecutor who was investigating his son.”

    Yes, he did. Don’t give me any ‘ONE OF THE MOST CORRUPT MEN IN CONGRESS WAS JUST EXTREMELY PERSONALLY CONCERNED ABOUT CORRUPTION IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES WHERE HIS SON HAPPENED TO GET A VERY NICE JOB’

    Joe Biden did not get the prosecutor fired. He lied about doing that in his appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations on January 23, 2018. The timetable does not fit. I think he made up the aborted press conference or his earlier August 2016 claim of the flabbergasted U.S. ambassador in an Atlantic magazine interview online.

    Furthermore he never claimed, of course, that he got the prosecutor fired to stop an investigation, as Donald Trump somehow thought because he didn’t listen carefully to what Joe Biden said on the video.

    And there’s just about nobody familiar with this who thinks that Burisma, or Hunter, was in any danger from Viktor Shokin.

    “Andrew Cuomo did not kill all those nursing home patients, but more like about 1/6 of those who died.”

    How does a novel contagious disease work, exactly? So, yes, he did.

    There are many ways for a disease to get into a nursing home. A statistical analysis by the Empire Center, once they got figures to work with, found that about one sixth of the deaths were probably due to the sending of recovering Covid patients into nursing homes. This could be detected in places with fewer Covid cases.

    https://www.empirecenter.org/publications/covid-positive-admissions-higher-death-rates
    higher-death-rates

    ….Statewide, the findings imply that COVID-positive new admissions between late March and early May, which numbered 6,327, were associated with several hundred and possibly more than 1,000 additional resident deaths….

    ,,,,This analysis focused on two key variables: the number of newly admitted COVID-positive patients to each nursing home between March 25 and May 8, which totaled 6,327; and the number of residents in each facility who died between April 12 and June 4, which totaled 5,780.[ix]

    One sixth of 5,780 is 963. It’s a ballpark figure. It must be a small fraction of the total deaths because nursing homes all over the world had a huge number of deaths and this policy was not everywhere.

    Sammy Finkelman (c95a5a)

  95. Maybe there are not many people like me, but speaking for myself: if the GOP wants my vote, it has to wake up and figure out how it alienated me and people like me.

    You may be overestimating your value; Trump brought a huge swell of diverse voters back into the GOP tent. Those who left- the NR types- likely aren’t missed.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  96. Memo to President ‘shut the virus down’ Plagiarist:

    100,000-plus dead on your watch, Scranton Boy– or is it Wilmington this week; that’s 20% of the casualties– and counting. But you were around in the 1970’s, weren’t ‘ya, Joey… valentines in front yard, lighting candles, moments of silence or maybe yellow ribbons ’round the old oak tree next week…

    “It’s Nixon’s war now.”

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  97. @6. “Your” party created these crazed, angry, betrayed and tired of being peed on citizens.

    They are you.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  98. This is hilarious. Do you know what the soon to be bestselling item in Texas is? Take a wild guess. The Ted Cruz returning from Cancun piňata!

    https://hotair.com/archives/karen-townsend/2021/02/24/ted-cruz-takes-beating-dallas-party-stores-hot-new-item-cancun-ted-pinata/

    Ha ha ha ha ha. It’s a remarkably well done likeness too. The guy who makes these is an artist. You should have seen the piňata he made of Trump.

    Gawain's Ghost (b25cd1)

  99. Whatabout Trump?

    JF (cc02f0)

  100. Bush-Great Recession
    Pelosi-Schumer, banks forced to make risky loans, based on race, Great recession.

    Nobody forced the banks to make those loans. “The Big Short” (the book, not the movie) goes through this in a bit more detail, but basically, the mechanisms for the housing bubble had already been put in place in the 1990s. The late 90s actually saw a much smaller bubble form that was based on subprime and home equity loans. In addition, lenders were incentivized to focus on subprime lending due to the massive disparity in bonuses between fixed-rate and ARM loans. It wasn’t government force that caused the bubble, it was incentive. The problem was further exacerbated by the banks stashing all these bad loans into MBSs and CDOs that were graded as AAA by Moody’s and S&P due to reindeer games with the FICO ratings within the MBSs–the rating was based on an average FICO score, and the banks could distort the value of the MBS by top-loading it with loans that had high FICO scores to balance out the 75-90% of garbage in the rest of it. When those loans started defaulting, the whole MBS structure collapsed.

    Everything else followed from that. Bush’s mistakes had to do with dealing with the crisis, and bailing out the banks.

    That was actually the initial impetus behind the Tea Party starting up–it was a bunch of working- and middle-class conservatives who were angry that these guys had been bailed out. It was also the final straw in whatever support the base might have had for the Bush-run GOP. The base’s populist direction can be traced directly to that single event.

    A better, and better targeted, “bail-out” would have been for the Feds to pay down 10% of all owner-occupied residential mortgages. Better to shore up the front end than try to fix everything at the back end.

    They shouldn’t have bailed them out at all. They should have broken them up and put executives in jail for enabling fraud. Furthermore, it provided the precedent for Obama nationalizing GM and bailing out the UAW after he took office. The Bush-era GOP was mostly a couple of significant success sandwiched within one long string of unforced errors. This all led to its base believing that the party as it stood was nothing more than a banal good old boys club that was far more invested in nurturing their sinecures than representing the people that voted for them.

    You may be overestimating your value; Trump brought a huge swell of diverse voters back into the GOP tent. Those who left- the NR types- likely aren’t missed.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 2/24/2021 @ 7:12 pm

    No, this political realignment is still going on, and it probably won’t be settled for another decade or so. But it won’t be like the one in the 60s-70s, which was sharp, but fairly small and mostly involved black voters becoming the Democrats’ most reliable voting bloc, the Trotskyite Dems morphing into neocons, and the Dems more radical Maoists and Gramsciites beginning the long march through the institutions. It’s going to be like the one that took place between 1890-1930, when a lot of northern Democrats and western Republicans essentially switched parties as the Populist and Progressive movements influenced the parties’ respective evolution into the modern left/right dichotomy that we’re more familiar with. The main reason that the establishment members of both parties are enabling the woke crowd right now is because they know if people start sorting themselves out along class lines rather than racial ones, they’re in trouble.

    But you do bring up an interesting point. The assertion is that the GOP’s base needs to figure out a way to woo back the Bush-era/neocon Republicans into the fold if they want to ever win an election again. But that’s an exercise in question-begging. What’s left unexplored is what exactly has the latter done for the former in the last 20 years that they should even want them back in the first place?

    Factory Working Orphan (f916e7)

  101. Are you sure the same thing wouldn’t be true for Pfizer and Moderna, had they tested them out that way?

    Um, yes.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  102. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/feb/24/lgbt-identification-among-gen-z-at-16-gallup-poll-/

    Shows people choose quite often.

    Can Sodom and Gomorrah be far behind?

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  103. They shouldn’t have bailed them out at all.

    They initially thought that way, and let Lehman fall. Then they saw the “ripples”, people’s life insurance policies become worthless, business loans are called because the lenders are bankrupt, repurchase agreements not fulfilled casuing a collapse of international securities and — next up — the federal debt is called into question, making MONEY worthless.

    They chose not to follow that principled collapse. But rather than making the underlying instruments (mortgages) more solid, they let the mortgage market collapse and tried to cover the losses from the cascade. It ended up costing trillions more than it needed to, it failed to bail out homeowners (and that would have bailed out banks in proportion to their sanity), and instead let the homes go to foreclosure and paid off the fatcats directly.

    They should have broken them up and put executives in jail for enabling fraud.

    No argument. I would have shot the Fanny Mae board, as an example to the others.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  104. Are you sure the same thing wouldn’t be true for Pfizer and Moderna, had they tested them out that way?

    The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are different tech — they use no virus at all to deliver the proteins, instead of J&J’s Adenovirus vector. The mRNA vaccines are entirely synthetic, dialed in by computer given the virus DNA info. They had them ready in March, 2020, but the traditional (soon: legacy) testing protocols kept them off the market until this year.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  105. The assertion is that the GOP’s base needs to figure out a way to woo back the Bush-era/neocon Republicans into the fold if they want to ever win an election again.

    Doubtful. Not with the current crowd. Liz Cheney types have pitchforks at their back now. Populism has rooted deeply in the GOP chiefly due to the wooing, suckering, the seduction and abandonment over and over of these people simply to win cycles. It took years to boil over; from Buchanan to Perot to Palin and finally Trump. For every one of the NR types who left, multiple Trumpsters took their place. 74-plus million is nothing to ignore. The NR types, who opposed Trump and the populism flag he carried from the start, are now essentially irrelevant; whine and bitter dregs being on the outs now; shuffled to the bottom of the deck. The tail no longer wags the dog. Some will stay to work from within– others will just go–and wander in the wilderness for years. Welcome to 1964. The modern ideological conservative movement collapsed easily, too. It was long hollow; empty on performance and delivery. Hence populism fueled. Watch what happens at CPAC.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  106. It surprises me the extent to which some people still want to blame the financial crisis on banks being forced to lend money to poor black people. Others have noted the actual history above, but here’s an additional account, taken from Forbes magazine:

    The story of the 2008 financial crisis

    So let’s recap the basic facts: why did we have a financial crisis in 2008? Barry Ritholtz fills us in on the history with an excellent series of articles in the Washington Post:

    In 1998, banks got the green light to gamble: The Glass-Steagall legislation, which separated regular banks and investment banks was repealed in 1998. This allowed banks, whose deposits were guaranteed by the FDIC, i.e. the government, to engage in highly risky business.

    Low interest rates fueled an apparent boom: Following the dot-com bust in 2000, the Federal Reserve dropped rates to 1 percent and kept them there for an extended period. This caused a spiral in anything priced in dollars (i.e., oil, gold) or credit (i.e., housing) or liquidity driven (i.e., stocks).

    Asset managers sought new ways to make money: Low rates meant asset managers could no longer get decent yields from municipal bonds or Treasurys. Instead, they turned to high-yield mortgage-backed securities.

    The credit rating agencies gave their blessing: The credit ratings agencies — Moody’s, S&P and Fitch had placed an AAA rating on these junk securities, claiming they were as safe as U.S. Treasurys.

    Fund managers didn’t do their homework: Fund managers relied on the ratings of the credit rating agencies and failed to do adequate due diligence before buying them and did not understand these instruments or the risk involved.

    Derivatives were unregulated: Derivatives had become a uniquely unregulated financial instrument. They are exempt from all oversight, counter-party disclosure, exchange listing requirements, state insurance supervision and, most important, reserve requirements. This allowed AIG to write $3 trillion in derivatives while reserving precisely zero dollars against future claims.

    The SEC loosened capital requirements: In 2004, the Securities and Exchange Commission changed the leverage rules for just five Wall Street banks. This exemption replaced the 1977 net capitalization rule’s 12-to-1 leverage limit. This allowed unlimited leverage for Goldman Sachs [GS], Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch (now part of Bank of America [BAC]), Lehman Brothers (now defunct) and Bear Stearns (now part of JPMorganChase–[JPM]). These banks ramped leverage to 20-, 30-, even 40-to-1. Extreme leverage left little room for error. By 2008, only two of the five banks had survived, and those two did so with the help of the bailout.

    The federal government overrode anti-predatory state laws. In 2004, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency federally preempted state laws regulating mortgage credit and national banks, including anti-predatory lending laws on their books (along with lower defaults and foreclosure rates). Following this change, national lenders sold increasingly risky loan products in those states. Shortly after, their default and foreclosure rates increased markedly.

    Compensation schemes encouraged gambling: Wall Street’s compensation system was—and still is—based on short-term performance, all upside and no downside. This creates incentives to take excessive risks. The bonuses are extraordinarily large and they continue–$135 billion in 2010 for the 25 largest institutions and that is after the meltdown.
    Wall Street became “creative”: The demand for higher-yielding paper led Wall Street to begin bundling mortgages. The highest yielding were subprime mortgages. This market was dominated by non-bank originators exempt from most regulations.

    Private sector lenders fed the demand: These mortgage originators’ lend-to-sell-to-securitizers model had them holding mortgages for a very short period. This allowed them to relax underwriting standards, abdicating traditional lending metrics such as income, credit rating, debt-service history and loan-to-value.

    Financial gadgets milked the market: “Innovative” mortgage products were developed to reach more subprime borrowers. These include 2/28 adjustable-rate mortgages, interest-only loans, piggy-bank mortgages (simultaneous underlying mortgage and home-equity lines) and the notorious negative amortization loans (borrower’s indebtedness goes up each month). These mortgages defaulted in vastly disproportionate numbers to traditional 30-year fixed mortgages.

    Commercial banks jumped in: To keep up with these newfangled originators, traditional banks jumped into the game. Employees were compensated on the basis loan volume, not quality.
    Derivatives exploded uncontrollably: CDOs provided the first “infinite market”; at height of crash, derivatives accounted for 3 times global economy.

    The boom and bust went global.
    Proponents of the Big Lie ignore the worldwide nature of the housing boom and bust. A McKinsey Global Institute report noted “from 2000 through 2007, a remarkable run-up in global home prices occurred.”
    Fannie and Freddie jumped in the game late to protect their profits: Nonbank mortgage underwriting exploded from 2001 to 2007, along with the private label securitization market, which eclipsed Fannie and Freddie during the boom. The vast majority of subprime mortgages — the loans at the heart of the global crisis — were underwritten by unregulated private firms. These were lenders who sold the bulk of their mortgages to Wall Street, not to Fannie or Freddie. Indeed, these firms had no deposits, so they were not under the jurisdiction of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp or the Office of Thrift Supervision.

    Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac market share declined. The relative market share of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac dropped from a high of 57 percent of all new mortgage originations in 2003, down to 37 percent as the bubble was developing in 2005-06. More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions. The government-sponsored enterprises were concerned with the loss of market share to these private lenders — Fannie and Freddie were chasing profits, not trying to meet low-income lending goals.

    It was primarily private lenders who relaxed standards: Private lenders not subject to congressional regulations collapsed lending standards. the GSEs. Conforming mortgages had rules that were less profitable than the newfangled loans. Private securitizers — competitors of Fannie and Freddie — grew from 10 percent of the market in 2002 to nearly 40 percent in 2006. As a percentage of all mortgage-backed securities, private securitization grew from 23 percent in 2003 to 56 percent in 2006.

    The driving force behind the crisis was the private sector

    Looking at these events it is absurd to suggest, as Bloomberg did, that “Congress forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp.”

    Many actors obviously played a role in this story. Some of the actors were in the public sector and some of them were in the private sector. But the public sector agencies were acting at behest of the private sector. It’s not as though Congress woke up one morning and thought to itself, “Let’s abolish the Glass-Steagall Act!” Or the SEC spontaneously happened to have the bright idea of relaxing capital requirements on the investment banks. Or the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency of its own accord abruptly had the idea of preempting state laws protecting borrowers. These agencies of government were being strenuously lobbied to do the very things that would benefit the financial sector and their managers and traders. And behind it all, was the drive for short-term profits.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/22/5086/?sh=6b02fca1f92f

    Victor (4959fb)

  107. @NJRob@103 See, as far as I can tell this argument can only make sense to people who are bi, but have chosen to date only one gender or the other. I am not bi, I am not attracted to both genders and couldn’t choose to be. I am not attracted to the people I’m not attracted to.

    Nic (896fdf)

  108. As long as lawyers are alive , we the taxpayer are doomed.

    mg (8cbc69)

  109. We are in a period of very high partisanship…..and Trump didn’t pretend to be a uniter….he played 100% into that partisanship. He hooked evangelicals with conservative judges; he hooked the rich with corporate tax cuts; and he hooked blue collars by raging on about illegal immigrants and unfair trade. The problem is that Trump lost independents by an estimated 13%…the highest margin in 3 decades. Partisans on the right want that venomous snake at the front of the party because he feeds and encourages their rage and anger. “Lock her up” indeed. We need to discuss how to cool partisanship while still having productive political discourse. We seem to have raging nationalists, raging socialists, and people raging about Trump….but no one raging against rage…..

    AJ_Liberty (a4ff25)

  110. @NJRob@103 See, as far as I can tell this argument can only make sense to people who are bi, but have chosen to date only one gender or the other. I am not bi, I am not attracted to both genders and couldn’t choose to be. I am not attracted to the people I’m not attracted to.

    Nic (896fdf) — 2/25/2021 @ 12:48 am

    People have been terrified about their neighbors living in a way they disagree with since before the country was founded. Every proclamation of societal collapsing due to moral decay has been wrong. Best to just ignore the warnings.

    In a generation the ‘new stuff’ that’s happen today will be normal and people like NJRob will have something else to worry about.

    They’ll justify it by pointing to other things they don’t like. But when you look at actual data; Teen Pregnancy, Abortion, high school graduation, violent crime are all improving.

    Tends to support the philosophy that when we let people make the decisions that are right for them and respect those decisions as valid life get’s better.

    Time123 (cd2ff4)

  111. They certainly choose what they say to pollsters. 😉

    nk (1d9030)

  112. No, this political realignment is still going on, and it probably won’t be settled for another decade or so. But it won’t be like the one in the 60s-70s, which was sharp, but fairly small and mostly involved black voters becoming the Democrats’ most reliable voting bloc, the Trotskyite Dems morphing into neocons, and the Dems more radical Maoists and Gramsciites beginning the long march through the institutions. It’s going to be like the one that took place between 1890-1930, when a lot of northern Democrats and western Republicans essentially switched parties as the Populist and Progressive movements influenced the parties’ respective evolution into the modern left/right dichotomy that we’re more familiar with. The main reason that the establishment members of both parties are enabling the woke crowd right now is because they know if people start sorting themselves out along class lines rather than racial ones, they’re in trouble.

    But you do bring up an interesting point. The assertion is that the GOP’s base needs to figure out a way to woo back the Bush-era/neocon Republicans into the fold if they want to ever win an election again. But that’s an exercise in question-begging. What’s left unexplored is what exactly has the latter done for the former in the last 20 years that they should even want them back in the first place?

    Factory Working Orphan (f916e7) — 2/24/2021 @ 10:47 pm

    I don’t think I’m a neo-conn, but the GOP’s current goals have nothing for me. So i’m not voting for them or giving them money. Individually that doesn’t matter but if there are a sufficient number of people like me it can impact elections.

    Time123 (cd2ff4)

  113. The other thing is that homosexuality is the least part of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, but when the only books you’re allowed to read are the King James Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress, you’ve got to get your pron where you find it and allow your libidinous imaginings free rein.

    nk (1d9030)

  114. The other thing is that homosexuality is the least part of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, but when the only books you’re allowed to read are the King James Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress, you’ve got to get your pron where you find it and allow your libidinous imaginings free rein.

    nk (1d9030) — 2/25/2021 @ 5:42 am

    Just because many of the leaders of anti-gay movements turn out to be sex creeps and perverts doesn’t mean all of the their followers are.

    Time123 (cd2ff4)

  115. @Time123, the uncomfortable reality is that many conservatives were hyperbolic about gay marriage for decades…..warning about the destruction of marriage and society generally. I tended to support the federalism arguments, though acknowledged that the moral/social arguments were not very persuasive…and tended to just be mean spirited. We’re only 6 years into broad legalization….and much of what the Falwell’s, Robertson’s, and Santorum’s predicted doesn’t seem to be materializing. It’s not that family structure doesn’t matter at all….it does….it’s just that we made a mountain out of a mole hill. I kind of see the same with NJRob’s obsession with trans-whatever….and the very small subset of problems arising from boys trying to compete against girls in sports. Personally, I still think there are bad choices that shouldn’t just be normalized….but that one-size-fits-all also isn’t the best policy. I think we are a little bit too much up into each other’s stuff…both sides….

    AJ_Liberty (ec7f74)

  116. I don’t think I’m a neo-conn, but the GOP’s current goals have nothing for me. So i’m not voting for them or giving them money. Individually that doesn’t matter but if there are a sufficient number of people like me it can impact elections.

    Time123 (cd2ff4) — 2/25/2021 @ 5:24 am

    That’s why I mentioned that this isn’t going to be settled for a several years yet. But we’re already seeing the trends being played out amongst the elites–the Bush/neocon wings of the party are slowly, but surely migrating over to the Democrats, along with college graduates who have been steeped in several decades of increasingly radical left-wing ideology on college campuses. Meanwhile, old-school liberals are being alienated by the witch-hunt mentality of the woke crowd and their adoption of the “no bad tactics, just bad targets” strategy of socio-political discourse.

    Populism has rooted deeply in the GOP chiefly due to the wooing, suckering, the seduction and abandonment over and over of these people simply to win cycles. It took years to boil over; from Buchanan to Perot to Palin and finally Trump.

    Yeah, this sort of thing has been bubbling under the surface for a while. The base was never all that thrilled with the Bushes running the party to begin with because they had basically taken on the role that the Rockefeller Republicans played for so many decades. The two most prominent Republicans other than the Bushes over the last 60 years were populist, nationalist westerners, not Yankee brahmins.

    The last 30 years have seen the parties dominated by two families, the Bushes and the Clintons. The Republicans are in the process of purging the former and their allies from the party. The latter are still dominating the Dem party’s establishment–Harris being VP is certainly evidence of that–but Occupy Wall Street was the first indication that the base is not happy with the latter, and eventually that conflict is going to come to a head.

    Factory Working Orphan (f916e7)

  117. @Time123, the uncomfortable reality is that many conservatives were hyperbolic about gay marriage for decades…..warning about the destruction of marriage and society generally. I tended to support the federalism arguments, though acknowledged that the moral/social arguments were not very persuasive…and tended to just be mean spirited. We’re only 6 years into broad legalization….and much of what the Falwell’s, Robertson’s, and Santorum’s predicted doesn’t seem to be materializing. It’s not that family structure doesn’t matter at all….it does….it’s just that we made a mountain out of a mole hill. I kind of see the same with NJRob’s obsession with trans-whatever….and the very small subset of problems arising from boys trying to compete against girls in sports. Personally, I still think there are bad choices that shouldn’t just be normalized….but that one-size-fits-all also isn’t the best policy. I think we are a little bit too much up into each other’s stuff…both sides….

    AJ_Liberty (ec7f74) — 2/25/2021 @ 6:16 am

    All of that’s true. But we can go back further.

    In the 70’s and 80’s we normalized the idea that women could enjoy sex and that pre-marital sex became more tolerable.
    Prior to that, (I’d have to look it up) we normalized divorce and it became more acceptable.
    Prior to that we allowed for no fault divorce and stopped having courts make a decision on if it was allowed or not.
    Prior to that we allowed women to marry or not.
    Prior to that we allowed women to pick their husbands, instead off letting their parents do so.

    at every step there were social conservatives frightened of the change and the impact it would have on society. 30 years later they were replaced by social conservatives who took the change for granted and were worried about the next change.

    We’re only 6 years into broad legalization….and much of what the Falwell’s, Robertson’s, and Santorum’s predicted doesn’t seem to be materializing.

    Can you point to any tangible negative impact of legalizing gay marriage?

    Time123 (f5cf77)

  118. I don’t think I’m a neo-conn, but the GOP’s current goals have nothing for me. So i’m not voting for them or giving them money. Individually that doesn’t matter but if there are a sufficient number of people like me it can impact elections.

    Time123 (cd2ff4) — 2/25/2021 @ 5:24 am

    That’s why I mentioned that this isn’t going to be settled for a several years yet. But we’re already seeing the trends being played out amongst the elites–the Bush/neocon wings of the party are slowly, but surely migrating over to the Democrats, along with college graduates who have been steeped in several decades of increasingly radical left-wing ideology on college campuses. Meanwhile, old-school liberals are being alienated by the witch-hunt mentality of the woke crowd and their adoption of the “no bad tactics, just bad targets” strategy of socio-political discourse.

    I think you’re right. I think the GOP base has said they don’t really want to fight for Small Government, Fiscal Discipline, National Defense, and Rule of Law. They want other things.

    Time123 (f5cf77)

  119. I meant the etymology of “sodomy” and its subsequent runaway circular application, and I would say corruption of those beautiful chapters, by some sects.

    nk (1d9030)

  120. I mean, seriously? You have God, God!, allowing Abraham to negotiate with Him, and all those people got out of it was looking for love in all the wrong places?

    nk (1d9030)

  121. 107. Victor (4959fb) — 2/25/2021 @ 12:25 am

    It surprises me the extent to which some people still want to blame the financial crisis on banks being forced to lend money to poor black people.

    It’s frozen in time. Anyone who says so then needs to explain why they stopped doing that.

    The Community Reinvestment Act was not repealed, nor did a court case overturn any requirements. What then? The Obama Administration changed the guidance?

    Sammy Finkelman (c95a5a)

  122. Former Senator David Perdue changed his mind about running in 2022. It’s speculated this was because ameeting he had with Donald Trump did not go well. Trump apparently wanted him to campaign against mitch McConnell and Governor Brian Kemp.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/us/politics/david-perdue-georgia-senate.html

    But the announcement came just days after Mr. Perdue made what is becoming a ritualistic trip for Republicans — to former President Donald J. Trump’s private club in Florida, for dinner and a lengthy round of golf last Friday. That raised questions among some Republicans about what Mr. Trump had said to him during their time together.

    The meeting did not go well, people briefed on it said. Mr. Trump was focused on retribution, particularly against Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, and Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, a Republican whom Mr. Trump views as having betrayed him.

    Two Republicans, one in Atlanta and another in Washington, separately said that Mr. Trump spent much of his conversation with Mr. Perdue making clear his determination to unseat Georgia’s governor next year. Trying to navigate a feud between the former president and his state’s sitting governor for the next two years was deeply unappealing to Mr. Perdue, according to a Georgia Republican who knows the former senator.

    One of the people briefed on the meeting with Mr. Trump said it appeared to be a factor in Mr. Perdue’s decision not to run. But the second person said the biggest factor was how draining another campaign and then potentially six more years in the Senate would be….

    Sammy Finkelman (c95a5a)

  123. 122. Sammy, I am not sure I understand your point. I agree the CRA was not repealed. I disagree that it was the cause of the financial crisis, for the reason laid out in the points of my other post. If you think the CRA was the reason for the financial crisis I would like to understand better your thinking. I note, for one thing, that the CRA did not cause the ratings agencies to lie, did not require the widespread use of derivatives, and was not present in all the other parts of the world that also shared in the financial crisis.

    Victor (4959fb)

  124. As others have said, Trump is a symptom, not a disease. The disease is the growing number of Americans who feel alienated from the political system – neither party is helping them, or even listening to them. They are called different names – flyover country, populists, even racists – but they are falling behind after the politicians who now ignore them promised them a better life with globalism and free trade.

    Democrats could have very easily courted this group but found an easier group to court – the suburban middle class, who seem to be doing quite nicely under globalization and are now concerned about other things than their economic livelihood.

    Republicans have typically ignored these chunk of the population, preferring to saddle up to the big business capitalists who begged for globalism and free trade. But with many of the suburbanites moving to the Democrats, the Republicans reached out to the populists.

    And Trump – a big businessman first but a snake oil salesman foremost – was able to tap that populist resentment and ride the wave to the presidency, much to chagrin of the Democrats and the old school big business GOP.

    You want to get rid of Trump? Help the people who are losing to globalization and free trade. And do it quick before the Democrats decide to do it.

    Hoi Polloi (7cefeb)

  125. For what it’s worth, here’s the Federal Reserve’s analysis of the effect of the CRA on the financial crisis:

    https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/notes/feds-notes/2015/assessing-the-community-reinvestment-acts-role-in-the-financial-crisis-20150526.html

    This is their conclusion:

    Conclusion
    The CRA provides an incentive structure that could plausibly have motivated banks to originate or purchase loans they would have otherwise considered too risky. However, empirical research indicates that CRA-related loans were a small fraction of the subprime market during the mortgage boom. The literature estimating the effect of the CRA finds small increases in originations–if any at all–and effects on delinquencies that are small or even negative. While we do not have a good estimate of the net costs or benefits of the act, the current best evidence suggests that the CRA was not a significant contributor to the financial crisis.

    My reading of the article is that, if anything, this overstates the case. Evidence that CRA loans underperformed others not regulated by the CRA is apparently lacking.

    Victor (4959fb)

  126. A new poll result reveals sharp pessimism on America’s political right
    …….
    “Which comes closest to your view?” the (Economist/YouGov, pp. 6-8) pollsters asked, giving respondents two options. The first was borderline dystopic: “Our lives are threatened by terrorists, criminals, and illegal immigrants and our priority should be to protect ourselves.” The other was far sunnier: “It’s a big, beautiful world, mostly full of good people, and we must find a way to embrace each other and not allow ourselves to become isolated.”

    Overall, Americans were more likely to choose the second option than the first. But among Republicans, a majority found themselves more drawn to the “threatened” statement — and among those who said they voted for President Donald Trump last year, fully two-thirds embraced that view.
    …….
    Some of this may be a function of pessimism after President Biden’s election. We know, for example, that views of how the country is progressing are often partisan, something shown in Economist-YouGov data.

    In October, 62 percent of Republicans said the country was headed in the right direction, compared with 4 percent of Democrats. In the most recent poll, 55 percent of Democrats held that view, compared with 13 percent of Republicans.

    So maybe this bunkering mentality on the right is a reflection of concern about where the country is headed as much as where it is. But then, this is also what Trump spent much of last year talking about. This was the threat he raised: Elect Biden, and the country will devolve into a crime-ridden nightmare. Trump said that this is what would happen if he lost, and then he lost.
    ……
    ……Most Republicans and a large majority of Trump voters ascribe to an everyone-for-themselves approach to gauzy dangers over a maybe-we-can-work-together worldview. A bleak enough finding that it’s worth elevating.
    >>>>>>>>>>

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  127. As others have said, Trump is a symptom, not a disease. The disease is the growing number of Americans who feel alienated from the political system – neither party is helping them, or even listening to them. They are called different names – flyover country, populists, even racists – but they are falling behind after the politicians who now ignore them promised them a better life with globalism and free trade.

    Democrats could have very easily courted this group but found an easier group to court – the suburban middle class, who seem to be doing quite nicely under globalization and are now concerned about other things than their economic livelihood.

    Republicans have typically ignored these chunk of the population, preferring to saddle up to the big business capitalists who begged for globalism and free trade. But with many of the suburbanites moving to the Democrats, the Republicans reached out to the populists.

    And Trump – a big businessman first but a snake oil salesman foremost – was able to tap that populist resentment and ride the wave to the presidency, much to chagrin of the Democrats and the old school big business GOP.

    You want to get rid of Trump? Help the people who are losing to globalization and free trade. And do it quick before the Democrats decide to do it.

    Hoi Polloi (7cefeb) — 2/25/2021 @ 9:04 am

    The Democrat solution is flawed in a lot of ways that I won’t dive into, but basically boils down taxing those who have benefitted from globalism to help those who have not.

    Time123 (daab2f)

  128. I’ll stick with my first judgment. They already felt that they were sucking hind tit. Trump reinforces it, but he didn’t generate it.

    nk (1d9030)

  129. Time: “Can you point to any tangible negative impact of legalizing gay marriage?”

    Increased hypertension among Christian wedding cake bakers?

    AJ_Liberty (ec7f74)

  130. If you think the CRA was the reason for the financial crisis

    “the reason”? Nothing is that simple. But it pushed a bad situation over the edge. Yes, greed, yes the system was set up to look the other way. But the CRA required standards to be lowered and they were lowered across the board. This fed into the other pathologies that were already there.

    The packaging of bad loans had actually started in the early 90’s, if not earlier. At the time they were stuffed into securities with stronger loans. What happened is that the relative strength declined to the point of junk, and the regulators never blinked. The CRA increased the speed at which this happened by introducing additional bad loans.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  131. “Can you point to any tangible negative impact of legalizing gay marriage?”

    Empowerment of angry white gay men to sue Christians?

    I think more the opening the door to actual sexual pathologies becoming “rights.”

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  132. The Democrat solution is flawed in a lot of ways that I won’t dive into, but basically boils down taxing those who have benefitted from globalism to help those who have not.

    Time123 (daab2f) — 2/25/2021 @ 9:36 am

    At best that is a short-term solution. At worst, it creates a permanent underclass desperate for governmental handouts to survive.

    Hoi Polloi (7cefeb)

  133. they are falling behind after the politicians who now ignore them promised them a better life with globalism and free trade.

    I’m going to pull this out of context for a moment, because it makes a point that many miss. The object of government is NOT to act on principle, but to enable a better life for the people who give it power. When governments become destructive to this end, it is the right of the people to alter it, as they say fit.* Which they did.

    Globalism and free trade (and mass immigration) had. by 2016. produced some rather poor outcomes for many Americans. Now, I think it’s obvious that someone other than Donald Trump would have been a better choice to correct the faults, but it’s a fact that he was the only one on offer who said he would.

    The way forward for the GOP is not to return to the status quo ante, but to find someone within the party who can take up the reins from Donald and work to correct these problems using government in a principled and effective way.

    ————–
    for DCSCA: adapted from Jefferson, Adams, et al, “Declaration of Independence”

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  134. *see fit

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  135. At worst, it creates a permanent underclass desperate for governmental handouts to survive.

    The end result of the Democrat solution is to separate those with work from those without and gradually create a wall of lost opportunity between them. Guaranteed Annual Income, “Basic” (SF term), welfare, whatever you want to call it. Rather than create an economy where work is plentiful through growth and innovation, they want a static world where the have-nots are pensioned off and the haves can live comfortably without guilt.

    This idea (and its issues) goes back to Jack Williamson’s “With Folded Hands“, Astounding, July 1947.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  136. @125

    As others have said, Trump is a symptom, not a disease. The disease is the growing number of Americans who feel alienated from the political system – neither party is helping them, or even listening to them. They are called different names – flyover country, populists, even racists – but they are falling behind after the politicians who now ignore them promised them a better life with globalism and free trade.

    Democrats could have very easily courted this group but found an easier group to court – the suburban middle class, who seem to be doing quite nicely under globalization and are now concerned about other things than their economic livelihood.

    Republicans have typically ignored these chunk of the population, preferring to saddle up to the big business capitalists who begged for globalism and free trade. But with many of the suburbanites moving to the Democrats, the Republicans reached out to the populists.

    And Trump – a big businessman first but a snake oil salesman foremost – was able to tap that populist resentment and ride the wave to the presidency, much to chagrin of the Democrats and the old school big business GOP.

    You want to get rid of Trump? Help the people who are losing to globalization and free trade. And do it quick before the Democrats decide to do it.

    Hoi Polloi (7cefeb) — 2/25/2021 @ 9:04 am

    This. All. Of. This.

    I’m trying to think of a more succinct description as to why Trump and other GOPers enjoys the support they currently have.

    Let’s try this: These voters want their politician to FIGHT for their agendas and not back down when challenged.

    Trump, even when he’s wrong, *still* has his support because he regularly tangos (often inappropriately!) with his critics. His supporters appreciate that.

    That’s why you’re seeing support amongst the Hawley and Cruz of the world.

    pre-Trump, can you remember a time when your favored politician didn’t back down from their critics?

    Dubya literally turned his cheek and let his critics run rampant.

    McCain was feisty, but was a ‘Maverick’ against his own party.

    Romney? Who could forget Romney unwilling to challenge both the moderator and Obama when they were wrong.

    Get my drift?

    To answer Patterico’s question:
    Is the Problem with the Republican Party Just Trump?
    No. Moreso the GOP party itself than Trump himself. Trump has a shelf-life… he may be a kingmaker in the next few years, but then his influence will likely wane.

    The GOP party needs a renaissance with a big tent formulation.

    Maybe there are not many people like me, but speaking for myself: if the GOP wants my vote, it has to wake up and figure out how it alienated me and people like me.

    I’m staying within the GOP, because otherwise I’d have no political home.

    I’m content to vote for GOP just to keep that position of power from Democrats. I still view the Democrat’s own policies far more destructive than anything Trumpism or current GOP does.

    whembly (a23745)

  137. The Democrat solution is flawed in a lot of ways that I won’t dive into, but basically boils down taxing those who have benefitted from globalism to help those who have not.

    Time123 (daab2f) — 2/25/2021 @ 9:36 am

    At best that is a short-term solution. At worst, it creates a permanent underclass desperate for governmental handouts to survive.

    Hoi Polloi (7cefeb) — 2/25/2021 @ 10:05 am

    The idea is sound, and actually comes right from Adam Smith. But their implementation has done exactly what you describe in creating an permanent under class. Something that supported people materially while allowing them to maintain human dignity while the learned a new skill or trade might would be good. But we don’t have that.

    Time123 (6e0727)

  138. 122. Victor (4959fb) — 2/25/2021 @ 8:33 am

    Sammy, I am not sure I understand your point. I agree the CRA was not repealed. I disagree that it was the cause of the financial crisis, for the reason laid out in the points of my other post. If you think the CRA was the reason for the financial crisis I would like to understand better your thinking.

    No, I don’t think it was the cause either of the crisis or of bad loans. My point was, that if it was the cause of bad loans, you – the generic you – would have to explain why did the bad loans stop.

    I think the CRA might have put on some pressure to make loans in risky areas but it was not a factor, because areas were not etting risky because the crime rate was declining, and loans were being made for other reasons. They relied on appraisals. Which went wrong.

    I note, for one thing, that the CRA did not cause the ratings agencies to lie, did not require the widespread use of derivatives, and was not present in all the other parts of the world that also shared in the financial crisis.

    You had a claim here I found interesting – that appraisals were bad not because of any internal reasons (like not realizing housing prices were in a years’ long bubble) but because they wanted to approve the loans that the banks were making. (they followed the banks you said)

    It also was true that credit rating was about the only personal metric that mattered.

    IN other parts of the world they didn’t rely on appraisals. Appraisals were supposed to stop banks from making ad loans. But the method of appraising was faulty. It could not recognize an extended bubble. (caused in part by constantly reducing disqualifying factors thus alloowing rices to be bid up higher. Not that most of the disqualifying factors were sound. But getting rid of wrong ones also raises prices paid.)

    Sammy Finkelman (c95a5a)

  139. “The CRA increased the speed at which this happened by introducing additional bad loans.”

    The CRA was created in 1977.

    Davethulhu (6ba00b)

  140. I found myself agreeing with Tom Nichols and his comparison of the 2021 GOP to the Brezhnez-era Communist Party. Caputo, too. This line applies to Pence.

    There’s a saying by some in Trump’s orbit that “if you’re with him 99 percent of the time, you’re a damn traitor” — a testament to the absolute, unwavering loyalty he demands.

    And this tells you how far gone this party is.

    “About 75 percent of Republican primary voters said supporting Donald Trump is a requirement for office. Again: a requirement. It’s absolutely astonishing,” Donehue said. “So she was seen in this state as being 100 percent with Donald Trump, but now over the last two weeks, we’re starting to hear a lot of rumblings. People still love Nikki Haley here, but she’s got to figure out a way to deal with this. I don’t know how she does, though. Because Donald Trump doesn’t seem to be someone with a short memory.”

    Emphases mine. Last I checked, cults and being 100% in lock-step (or goose-step) are not conservative values.

    Paul Montagu (77c694)

  141. 126. Victor (4959fb) — 2/25/2021 @ 9:11 am

    . Evidence that CRA loans underperformed others not regulated by the CRA is apparently lacking.

    They didn’t. The CRA would have affected loans in declining communities but no communities were declining. Maybe the whole state of West Virginia was, bit nothing limited to as small an area that the CRA might apply to.

    Sammy Finkelman (c95a5a)

  142. Kevin,

    Why call homosexuality a pathology, as opposed to a sexual variation widely practiced in both human and other populations?

    As for the CRA, I won’t repeat the evidence I’ve already noted from the federal reseserve and the Forbes article, and that others have noted, that the CRA’s impact was absolutely minimal if anything at all to the crisis.

    Instead, as an insight into the mentality of some conservative Americans, I am constantly struck by the willingness to overlook or ignore all the significant causes of the crisis, greedy banks, corrupt ratings agencies, oblivious government regulators, predatory lenders to focus their ire on the one part of minimal importance – an old law encouraging banks to stop redlining by extending greater credit opportunities to poor black people. There is a strain in conservative thought that appears to find nothing more infuriating than the idea that somewhere someone is getting something they don’t deserve.

    Redlining was a thing, not a fiction. Laws to correct it were a good idea. Their impact on the crisis was incredibly unlikely to be of any significance at all. Focusing on such laws reveals more about the biases of the person doing it, then any reality.

    Victor (4959fb)

  143. 109.As long as lawyers are alive , we the taxpayer are doomed.

    Burning books just won’t do, eh; so throw another ‘lawg’ on the fire? 😉

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  144. 137. whembly (a23745) — 2/25/2021 @ 10:42 am

    pre-Trump, can you remember a time when your favored politician didn’t back down from their critics?

    Trump backed down. Numerous times in regard to Covid. Even when he was right.

    He backed down on the date for re-opening. He was wrong there, though.

    He backed down from pressuring the FDA to make it at least theoretically possible to approve a vaccine before Election Day.

    He backed down from making neutralizing monoclonal antibodies available to everyone within a week or two.

    Here is where he promised it:

    https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2020/10/09/mega-maga-the-largest-radio-rally-in-history

    It’s a great medicine, and had I not gotten it, Rush, it would have been [waiting] in line for another year, probably, before they brought it out. [Not true. Not that long] Great company — two great companies, actually, make it — you know, make very similar things. But they both work equally well. And we’re gonna send it…

    We’re already sending it starting the process. Hundreds of thousands of vials are being sent to the hospitals all over the country. People are gonna get immediately better like I did. I mean, I feel better now than I did two weeks ago. It’s crazy. And I recovered immediately, almost immediately. I might not have recovered at all from COVID.

    To me, it’s the biggest story. But the press doesn’t even want to report that. They talk about the vaccines. And the vaccines are very important, Rush. But this is more important because we can go in the hospitals and clean out the hospitals literally with people that… The vaccines are very important. It’s a different stage.

    RUSH: Well, yeah, this is the antibodies that you speak of.

    THE PRESIDENT: This is the antibody. This is the antibody, and Regeneron. It’s the most unbelievable thing I’ve ever seen.And I had a meeting with doctors today. You know, it’s always… The good thing about when you’re president, 11 doctors show up, and they’re all the head of Johns Hopkins and this and that. They’re great people. But Walter Reed is an incredible place. These 11 guys came in today.

    They showed me stats. It’s amazing. I don’t know I would have… I don’t know that… You know, I was not in the greatest of shape. A day later I was fine, maybe perfect, but I was fine. But a couple of days later… Now I’m free. I’m… You know, I feel perfect. I have no… I’m not taking anything. You know, I’m off any regimen that they gave me, but it was primarily this one drug.

    And we’re sending that and the Eli Lilly version of it, which is very similar. We’re sending that to all of our hospitals. We’re gonna get people better. We gotta get it there fast. That’s why I’m doing an emergency use authorization. I gotta get ’em to approve it really fast.

    It didn’t get approved till after Election Day and then it got a limited approval (pre-hospitalization and only some institutions are using them) and it is in short supply and still underutilized and way unadvertised.

    At that time (October/November) it would have worked for practically every case of Covid in the United States, and also as a prophylactic. Now we are seeing some mutations against which they may not work, although they are planning to change the antibodies as soon as the bureaucrats will allow them to. If they used 20 antibodies instead of just 2 or 1 it would be no problem. But the companies did that to minimize a possible hitch.

    Sammy Finkelman (c95a5a)

  145. 141. Paul Montagu (77c694) — 2/25/2021 @ 10:56 am

    I found myself agreeing with Tom Nichols and his comparison of the 2021 GOP to the Brezhnez-era Communist Party. Caputo, too. This line applies to Pence.

    No, more like the 1940s era Communist Party in the United States, or heading in that direction. Or Trump wants to take it there.

    Sammy Finkelman (c95a5a)

  146. “Can you point to any tangible negative impact of legalizing gay marriage?”

    Empowerment of angry white gay men to sue Christians?

    I think more the opening the door to actual sexual pathologies becoming “rights.”

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 2/25/2021 @ 9:55 am

    So no tangible harm, just maybe a slippery slope that it might be ok in the future for people to be intimate in a way you find distasteful.

    Time123 (cd2ff4)

  147. I’m trying to think of a more succinct description as to why Trump and other GOPers enjoys the support they currently have.

    Let’s try this: These voters want their politician to FIGHT for their agendas and not back down when challenged.

    Trump, even when he’s wrong, *still* has his support because he regularly tangos (often inappropriately!) with his critics. His supporters appreciate that.

    The love him because he hates the people they hate. He’s not fighting for any policy outcome, he’s just fighting on twitter with people they dislike.

    Bush, McCain, and Romney failed to openly hate their political opponents.

    Time123 (cd2ff4)

  148. So no tangible harm

    Telling crazy people they are normal IS harm.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  149. BTW, since we are talking about crazy political conspiracy theories like QAnon, who come no one gets upset about the FX television series Snowfall, which is premised on the idea that Reagan’s CIA introduced crack into South Central L.A. in order to fund the Contras? Many blacks actually believe this and now we have Fox telling them it’s true.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  150. Let’s try this: These voters want their politician to FIGHT for their agendas and not back down when challenged.

    I would hope that they want their political leaders to make effective changes, not just hold rallies where they cast blame for it not hapenning.

    Trump doesn’t FIGHT, he RANTS. There’s a difference.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  151. So no tangible harm

    Telling crazy people they are normal IS harm.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 2/25/2021 @ 11:45 am

    Which we’re not currently doing. It’s hypothetical.
    Also, when did we stop officially classifying homosexuality as a mental disorder and a crime? 1970’s?

    Again, what’s gotten worse since gay marriage was legalized?

    Time123 (6e0727)

  152. @125. As others have said, Trump is a symptom, not a disease. The disease is the growing number of Americans who feel alienated from the political system – neither party is helping them, or even listening to them.

    This simmering rage isn’t unique to the GOP, either. The Royalists learned little if not the wrong lssons from 1/6– other than their castle can be easily breached and need to spend more of the pitchforkers taxes to fortify the drawbridge. A glaring example is the Coivd package. They’ve wasted weeks– again w/ vacations and valentines stuck in the WH yard. Instead of a clean package, they routinely lard it up w/pork.

    All they need to do is pass a goddamned clean bill targeting Covid financial aid for businesses and $1400 for individuals, recovery and vaccine distribution to get the ntion up and running again. A high school student could quill it in a day. But no. Add tunnels, trains, bridges or museums… a new Nancy podium… so unnecessary. If Nancy, Chuck an President Plagiarist believe they’re immune from this flaming populist blowtorch, they’re sorely mistaken.

    ____________

    @134. The way forward for the GOP is not to return to the status quo ante, but to find someone within the party who can take up the reins from Donald and work to correct these problems using government in a principled and effective way.

    Principled? A fresh jockey on the lame horse won’t make it a race winner. The ‘party’ needs to shed dead ideas wrapped in obsolete principles seasoned w/bogus platitudes [family values, moral majority, trickle-down] which they’ve routinely touted then often very publicly betrayed for decades — and dump card-carrying-leaders who do so as well; get practical and pragmatic w/solutions to 21st century problems– to compete and become relevant.

    As of now, they’re not. A truly ‘principled conservative,’ nested in the GOP, would never have voted for President Plagiarist in the past– just not voted at all.

    The DoI isn’t a governing document, merely a grievance charter, Kevin.

    “The object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves, in their separate and individual capacities.” – A. Lincoln, 1854.

    As ‘Impeachment 1’ and the sequel, ‘Impeachment 2’ revealed– there ain’t no Lincolns in the GOP ranks today. So CPAC will showcase the flaghugger; it’s his party now…

    “The enemy’s an age… It happens to have killed man’s faith in his ability to influence what happens to him. And out of this comes a sickness, and out of sickness a frustration, a feeling of impotence, helplessness, weakness. And from this, this desperation, we look for a champion in red, white, and blue. Every now and then a man on a white horse rides by, and we appoint him to be our personal god for the duration. For some men it was a Senator McCarthy, for others it was a General Walker, and now it’s a General Scott.” – Jordan Lyman [Fredric March] ‘Seven Days In May’ 1964

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  153. O.M.G. More wasted time:

    President Plagiarist stands stoically watching people get vaccine marking 50 million shots. Hey, Scranton Boy– 100,000-plus…. over 20% of the Covid casualties, have died on your watch.

    “Folks, here’s the deal… I have a plan…” He’s absolutely useless.

    Putin doesn’t smile anymore.

    He laughs.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  154. Kevin M (ab1c11) — 2/25/2021 @ 11:48 am

    the FX television series Snowfall, which is premised on the idea that Reagan’s CIA introduced crack into South Central L.A. in order to fund the Contras?

    That’s an old 1980s lie.

    I think it was actually probably started as a cover story by drug smugglers – to cover up bribery of law enforcement people. Picked up by some Democrats.

    The CIA of course did not need any money

    Many blacks actually believe this and now we have Fox telling them it’s true.

    They keep on getting told about the Tuskegee syphilis study as if it didn’t date from another era on medical ethics and wasn’t halted almost 50 years ago.

    Sammy Finkelman (c95a5a)

  155. The way forward for the GOP is not to return to the status quo ante, but to find someone within the party who can take up the reins from Donald and work to correct these problems using government in a principled and effective way.

    We saw what the ol’style GOP leadership wrought in microcosm last week when hell truly froze over: Texas.

    A party that’s led by ‘principled’ putzes who puts in place dummies who run a system which can’t keep the lights on or the water running–then leave town and country when it gets chilly isn’t a party to address the problems of the 21st century.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  156. “For God’s sake, wear a mask.” – President Plagiarist, 2/25/21

    God doesn’t catch Covid.

    Idiot.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  157. Time123 (6e0727) — 2/25/2021 @ 11:57 am

    Also, when did we stop officially classifying homosexuality as a mental disorder and a crime? 1970’s?

    1973. (for a mental disorder) I had thought 1969

    https://www.nytimes.com/1973/12/23/archives/the-issue-is-subtle-the-debate-still-on-the-apa-ruling-on.html

    Last weekend, the Board of Trustees of the American Psychiatric Association approved a change in its official manual of psychiatric disorders. “Homosexuality per se,” the trustees voted, should no longer be considered a “psychiatric disorder”; it should be defined instead as a “sexual orientation disturbance.”

    They must have gone further later.

    See also: https://legacyprojectchicago.org/milestone/american-psychiatry-association-vote

    It was in 2003 in the case of Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) that the Supreme Court ruled that it couldn’t be a crime, although they’d stopped enforcing it even in places it still was.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_v._Texas

    Sammy Finkelman (c95a5a)

  158. What would you have cut from the aid plan?” – President Plagiarist, 2/25/21

    Tunnels, bridges, museums, $15 minimum wage, for starters.

    Idiot.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  159. but no one raging against rage…..

    Service the populism just enough and the raging flames will be contained. A party that keep barking ‘no’ eventual hears ‘no way’ shouted back.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  160. Re: contras: Here’s how president Bill Clinton endorsed this by not disputing the premise of a planted question excerpted from a message I wrote in 1996)

    This question was by Sarah McClendon, widely perceived as a woman who asks crazy questions. She works for newspapers in Texas, but really for herself:

    ====================================================================

    THE WHITE HOUSE

    Office of the Press Secretary
    ______________________________________________________________
    For Immediate Release October 7, 1994

    Q Sir, the Republicans are trying to blame you for
    the existence of a small air base in Arkansas. This base was set up
    by George Bush and Oliver North and the CIA to help the Iran Contras,
    and they brought in planeload after planeload of cocaine there for
    sale in the United States. And then they took the money and bought
    weapons and took them back to the Contras, all of which was illegal,
    as you know, under the — but tell me, did they tell you that this
    had to be in existence because of national security?

    THE PRESIDENT: Well, let me answer the question. No,
    they didn’t tell me anything about it. They didn’t say anything to
    me about it. The airport in question and all the events in question
    were the subject of state and federal inquiries. It was primarily a
    matter for federal jurisdiction; the state really had next to nothing
    to do with it. A local prosecutor did conduct an investigation based
    on what was within the jurisdiction of state law. The rest of it was
    under jurisdiction of the United States Attorneys who were appointed
    successively by previous administrations. We had nothing, zero, to
    do with it. And everybody who’s ever looked into it knows that.

    Notice here. Clinton does not do anything to deny the existence of such an air base (for which real evidence is nil) but rather confirms it. He silently acknowledges as truth everything Sarah says about George Bush and Oliver North and the CIA, although not one scintilla of evidemnce of any of this turned up in all the Iran-contra material I have ever read. Neither is there any evidence that the money used to
    buy weapons from the contras came from drug dealing. Rather, it came
    from certain foreign countries and maybe those sales of arms to Iran.

    Then, Clinton, rather than denying that any of this is true, says
    merely that he wasn’t *told* He then says there were imvestigations
    which helps to confirm the idea that the CIA or Iran contra was
    really involved in all this. He finishes by saying that he had nothing to do with it. In other words, yes there was a cover-up of events at Mena, but it was purely *Republican* cover-up.

    Although it took place in Arkansas, he had nothing to do with it.

    People inclined to disbelieve him will think it was bi-partisan and that whatever happened there took place because of Republicans and that Clinton only helped protect it because he was asked to by national administrations and that he did it either out of the noblest motives, or perhaps political advancement. Now what’s going to happen is if Bob Dole doesn’t mention Mena, he’ll be accused of trying to protect Republicans because supposedly Bush or Reagan (whose name they do not
    actually dare to mention in this context) was actually more guilty.

    When in reality, it was *only* Clinton, and the reason the U.S. Attorney helped cover up was not some reason of high policy, but corruption.

    The CIA airbase there to resupply the contras has been invented out of whole cloth, with nothing but two or three “eyewitnesses” like Terry Reed, to sustain it. That is not to say that nothing peculiar
    was going on at or near Mena airport. But rather, that it had nothing to do with the contras or the CIA or any federal agency whatsoever.

    Bush gets mentioned because since he was once CIA Director, he is somehow supposed to be running it for years before and years afterward too, with stuff about Skull and Bones thrown in as an explanation. Bush was really a CIA agent all along, they whisper. Bush somehow belonged to the CIA. In reality, Bush was a jerk in everything he did.

    Sammy Finkelman (c95a5a)

  161. @148

    Bush, McCain, and Romney failed to openly hate their political opponents.

    Time123 (cd2ff4) — 2/25/2021 @ 11:44 am

    No.

    They failed to openly confront their critics.

    That’s one of the lessons that the GOP must acknowledge as to why Trump happened.

    whembly (6c6692)

  162. @151

    Let’s try this: These voters want their politician to FIGHT for their agendas and not back down when challenged.

    I would hope that they want their political leaders to make effective changes, not just hold rallies where they cast blame for it not hapenning.

    Trump doesn’t FIGHT, he RANTS. There’s a difference.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 2/25/2021 @ 11:49 am

    I don’t disagree with that.

    No matter how effective/ineffective Trump was… the point was that he engaged his critics.

    His supporters and some voters appreciate that, rather than the GWB, McCain and Romney types.

    whembly (6c6692)

  163. Sammy@158, thank you for the details.

    Time123 (6e0727)

  164. @148
    Bush, McCain, and Romney failed to openly hate their political opponents.
    Time123 (cd2ff4) — 2/25/2021 @ 11:44 am

    No.

    They failed to openly confront their critics.

    That’s one of the lessons that the GOP must acknowledge as to why Trump happened.

    whembly (6c6692) — 2/25/2021 @ 12:51 pm

    Voting for Trump gave his base a chance to flip the bird at a cultural elite they felt disrespected them.

    Time123 (6e0727)

  165. 110.We are in a period of very high partisanship…..and Trump didn’t pretend to be a uniter….he played 100% into that partisanship…

    81% seems a fairly high united number. But hey, stay a la ‘Rockefeller Republicans’ did in’64 and wok from within– or leave, but buy a compass for those yers lost in the desert wilderness. Clearly you won’t follow, so get out of the way– or get run over, like a rock in a flowing stream:

    ‘Former President Donald Trump’s popularity with Republicans has rebounded with an 81% approval rate, according to a Morning Consult/Politico poll. The poll indicated that approval for Trump among GOP voters has risen by 5% since it hit 76% in mid-January following the Capitol riot and just before the House of Representatives voted to impeach the former president.’ – source, wiki uh-oh.conservativeneoconsscrewed.org

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  166. “No matter how effective/ineffective Trump was… the point was that he engaged his critics”

    Yeah he called them losers….did he engage them substantively? Not really. Did he engage them thoughtfully? No. Did he act like an azz so clapping monkeys could clap louder? Pretty much. When it came to his behavior and word salad, his critics were generally right….and he was wrong. Yes, people like that he was a fighter….but he fought for little that was noble.

    AJ_Liberty (ec7f74)

  167. Trump doesn’t FIGHT, he RANTS. There’s a difference.

    “Please don’t hit me with your taxicab.” – Toledo, Ohio

    “Hey! I’m walkin’ here!” – 48th St., & 5th Ave., NYC

    Yeah. There’s a difference.

    Glorious.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  168. 164. This is just the basics. There must be more details.

    Sammy Finkelman (c95a5a)


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