politics, religion, economics, it's all one big mess

[solarbird]

MSNBC, on orders from NBC, bows to Republican pressure (specifically, complaints from the McCain campaign and White House Counselor Ed Gillespie) and yanks Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews from political coverage this fall. However, Mr. Olbermann is not being kicked off his regular show, unlike MSNBC's previously best-rated but too-critical-of-the-GOP host, Phil Donahue.

Meanwhile, the fundamentalist Alliance Defense Fund is organising a mass project for explicitly religious endorsements (presumably of the McCain/Palin ticket) from the pulpit, in direct confrontation to the law forbidding tax-exempt organisations - or more specifically, tax-exempt churches - from issuing political endorsements. They want the Supreme Court to rule that churches can keep their tax-exempt status while engaging in partisan political activity. (Currently, all tax-exempt organisations are prohibited from partisan political activity.)

From elfs, a blogger discusses the religious symbolism used by Mike Huckabee in his speech at the GOP convention.

Also, it appears that VP candidate and Gov. Palin is less a "fiscal conservative" and more along the lines of Chief Executive Bush in that respect, with a taxation record CATO calls uninspiring, and running up major debt as mayor. And she supports the nationalisation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, apparently under the mistaken impression that these were already government agencies and that taxpayers were on the hook for the debts. (This is backwards; before, they were private, if government-chartered; now they are taxpayer responsibility.)

Incidentally, US automakers are rushing to Congress for US$50B in loans before the new Congress and administration take over in 2009, specifically on the basis that the money will be more difficult to get next year. And not entirely incidentally, lots of people who haven't been previously speaking up about these things are starting to question official government numbers on things like GDP, with David Rosenberg, Merrill Lynch's North American economist, reacting to the revised-upward second quarter numbers with, "Are you kidding me?"

Back to Governor Palin; her current church, in addition to hosting Jews for Jesus conferences, is busily promoting one of Focus on the Family's bogus ex-gay conferences. dogemperor notes that her home church in Wasilla also has ties to Focus on the Family. No wonder James Dobson is so enthusiastic. eta: wrog posts a letter he received from a friend who works for a major oil company saying that as far as they're concerned, Governor Palin is just plain crazy. As in, insane, as in, insane is a quote. On the other hand, it's an anonymous quote, so.

More on the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac bailout: Mish looks at the spin-around reaction on Wall Street, specifically in respect to other "troubled" organisations such as Washington Mutual and Lehman Brothers. FNM and FRE's CEOs, by the way, are getting massive severance packages, one instituted just two months ago, and paid for by the taxpayers. Running multibillion dollar mortgage holders into the ground is great work if you can get it. I mentioned this elsewhere, but we're looking at over US$1 trillion, with a T, in credit-default-swap playout from this action.

Comments

[silussa.livejournal.com]

If I understand the financials right....we could be looking at the collapse/failure of several banks when the dust settles from the contract exchanges. The big problem is that, by putting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship, the Treasury has essentially "spun the wheel of fate", with no idea of what might happen.

[king-chiron.livejournal.com]

I think it's simplistic to say that MSNBC bowed to Republicans in this case, although clearly the Repubs are happy about it. A number of article (in the NY Times, Washington Post, etc) make it clear that many of the old-school news people at NBC were upset about the coverage, which they thought was much too close to Fox New-style editorializing than traditional news coverage. And that's the view from a number of media folk who are anything but Republican or right-wing.

For the WaPost -

"Not only was the opinion too overt, but the rancor was getting to be a bit much, and I must say a bit amateurish," said Terence Smith, a former correspondent for the New York Times, CBS and PBS. He said network officials "failed to take the defensive step they could have taken, which is to label them commentators. . . . It just got hopelessly muddled. I'm not surprised it reached a point where they found it embarrassing."

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

I think it was the on-air rancor and not the obvious bias. Olbermann and Mathews hate each other, so they were the ones who had to be slapped by the network. Scarborough and Schuster hate each other and were going at it like cats on the air but they're less high-profile so they got off this time. Brokaw hates Olbermann but is professional enough to keep it off the air. They're a professionally dysfunctional family.

Oddly enough, Rachel Maddow and Pat Buchanan seem to like each other.