Sadly, No!

Megan – there are plenty of good reasons to not vote for John McCain. His wife stealing recipes is not one of them. That is all.

ABOVE: Jonah Goldberg, Mark Hemingway and Stephen Spruiell

The Lollipop Guild at America’s Shittiest Website™ is confused and can’t figure out what to do about it.

Jonah Goldberg:

Hillary said that students are being victimized by “predatory” student loans that charge 28% interest rates. I’m really quite serious: Is that true?

Mark Hemingway:

I heard Hillary quote that same absurd interest rate for student loans at a rally earlier this year, and I had the same reaction. I don’t even know how it’s possible to get student loans with rates that high.

Stephen Spruiell:

Tonight, Hillary Clinton said, “That’s why I’m in favor of much more college aid, not these outrageous predatory student loan rates that are charging people I’ve met across Pennsylvania, 20, 25, 28 percent interest rates.” Jonah and Mark H. (and I) wondered how that could possibly be true.

If only there were some way to figure this out, say some way this could be researched on the Internet.

[Zeerp] “Hello, dum-dums.”

Why, hello, Great Gazoogle! Do you have something for us?

Sallie Mae: A hot stock, a tough lender

The giant of the student loan industry is the Student Loan Marketing Association, better known by its friendly-sounding nickname, Sallie Mae. Many people think that Sallie Mae, like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is sponsored by the U.S. government. And until recently it was. But at the end of 2004, Sallie became an independent, publicly traded company, completing a process begun in 1996.

It is now radically different than it was even five years ago — an aggressive, highly profitable lender and a stock market superstar. …

“Sallie advocates policies we believe are frequently contrary to the interest of students,” says Luke Swarthout, a higher-education advisor to the U.S. Public Interest Research Groups. He charges that Sallie used its political clout to shape new legislation that will increase the cost of student loans.

Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates, decries Sallie’s growing presence in the ugly business of collecting on defaulted debt. Pennsylvania state representative Doug Reichley alleges that Sallie is engaging in “predatory lending.”

Indeed, Sallie uses high interest rates and fees to charge students as much as 28 percent annual interest on loans. As a result, some have seen their school-loan debt balloon into six-figure delinquencies that they can’t hope to pay when the collection agency (which nowadays may be owned by Sallie) comes calling.

When you’re living on wingnut welfare it’s really hard to imagine how the other half lives, I suppose.

And you can too:

Main ABC switchboard: 212-456-7777

Please be polite. Let the people at the ABC switchboard know that you are not upset at them. Ask them politely if they would convey to someone in charge how deeply displeased you were with the questions in tonight’s debate. Let them know that you are distressed that it took the “reporters” moderating the debate a full 45 minutes to ask one single question about substance.

Seriously, folks, I’ve just about had it with our pathetic, petty “press corps.” The people who ran this debate deserve to be shamed and humiliated. Please help out.

(Thanks to Atrios for the number.)

UPDATE: A little bird has informed me that when you call, you should ask for News, and then press 2 then 199. Then you can leave a message for “Other News.” Also, this is the personal e-mail complaint form. I’ve lodged a complaint here as well, and I urge you to do the same.

UPDATE II: And yes, Jeralyn’s sorta right here:

The biggest joke of the night is to watch Keith Olbermann of NBC say this debate was some travesty, which it was, as if NBC did not run the most offensive, most ridiculous, most unfair debates ever held. There is no doubt that the ABC debate tonight was horrendous and extremely unfair to Obama. There is no doubt that NBC’s debates were all worse.

The reason I say “sorta” is I’m not sure that you can say how NBC’s debates were definitively worse than ABC’s tonight – to me, it’s like a battle of Manos the Hands of Fate v.s. Red Zone Cuba.

But she’s right that Keith has zero right to complain when his network moderated, at the very least, a similarly terrible debate.

From Doodle Bean via messenger owl:

We’re thinking of gathering at the People’s Republik in Cambridge but when? Weekday Evening? Weekend Evening?*

The fact is, the Republik is a cash only bar. Would that be a problem for you? Finally, should we invite Ace?

Post your ideas in the comments. No morel jokes, ple-ee-ase!

---

*Full disclosure: Sadlynauts from the NYC area can attend if we have it on a weekend evening.

Above: Oh, we totally have to invite Ace

…

Anyone watching this debate?

As Atrios says, we’re halfway through and they haven’t asked one policy question yet.

Where: Edinburgh Castle, 950 Geary St., San Francisco, CA 94109, (415) 885-4074

When: Friday, April 18, 2008, 6pm PT to whenever

Who: Everybody who wants to meet up with S,N!, Three Bulls! and BARBARians! regulars and their extensive, high-maintenance entourages

Pass-phrase: “The Ruppert soars at dawn.”

Bill Kristol, a real salt-of-the-earth type, heroically defends the American people against snooty Barack Obama’s Marxist analysis. Wingnuts rejoice. It’s impossible to over-estimate how much Kristol’s smear-job has greased the gears of the great wingnut propaganda machine; he’s opened the rightwing’s entire Cold War archive of pinko-egghead bashing for them to recycle. But then this was probably an inevitable development: wingnuts have little imagination, and so what they did to, say, smear and sabotage the intelligent, urbane Illinoisan Adlai Stevenson was bound to be repeated on the intelligent, urbane Illinoisan Mr. Obama. Yadda yadda yadda.

Anyway… Is what Obama said true? Kristol says no:

My occasion for spending a little time once again with the old Communist was Barack Obama’s now-famous comment at an April 6 San Francisco fund-raiser. Obama was explaining his trouble winning over small-town, working-class voters: “It’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

This sent me to Marx’s famous statement about religion in the introduction to his “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”:

“Religious suffering is at the same time an expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of a soulless condition. It is the opium of the people.”

Or, more succinctly, and in the original German in which Marx somehow always sounds better: “Die Religion … ist das Opium des Volkes.”

Now, this is a point of view with a long intellectual pedigree prior to Marx, and many vocal adherents continuing into the 21st century. I don’t believe the claim is true, but it’s certainly worth considering, in college classrooms and beyond.

But it’s one thing for a German thinker to assert that “religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature.” It’s another thing for an American presidential candidate to claim that we “cling to … religion” out of economic frustration.

I think Bill Kristol is a lying liar. About Obama, yes, but also about himself. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Obama really meant what he said in the most “Marxist” sort of way. So what? At worst, it’s a dispassionate if unflattering analysis of a politically-misguided group. More likely, it’s an empathetic analysis of a frustrating but pitiable group.

Either way, Obama’s intent was not cynical and exploitative — which is more than can be said for the Kristol family’s position in re: the opiate of the masses. Truly rotten people like the Kristomethodists agree that religion is an opiate, but think that’s a wonderful thing, and demand that everyone start planting poppies.

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After my trip to the abortion clinic welfare office drug dealer’s post office yesterday, I walked around in my back yard a bit to check on the pawpaw seedlings I planted last fall, wanting to see if they had begun to leaf. Doop-de-doop, distracted, I picked up a few limbs recently fallen from a clump of dead elm trees and — wot, wot, wot?! did I almost step on? Oh, and another! And — ZOMG!!! Treasure!

Soon, Chef HTML, in his inimitable, bleu state elitist way, will sautee these beauties with wild garlic and scallops. All stoners, gaywads, enemies-of-marriage, hippies, atheists, communists, and effete snobs are invited to attend.

OK, before I got into a two-day-or-so hiatus from reading anything to do with politics, I’d like to offer some praise for actual reporting on actual substance:

Sen. John McCain yesterday offered sweeping rhetoric about the economic plight of working-class Americans, promising immediate assistance even as he spelled out a tax and spending agenda whose benefits are aimed squarely at spurring corporate growth.

In a speech billed as the most comprehensive summary of McCain’s economic vision to date, the candidate proposed to eliminate the alternative minimum tax, slash corporate income tax rates and offer a grab bag of other business breaks. His most direct proposal for relief to working-class voters was a call to suspend the federal gasoline tax for the summer driving season. […]

In yesterday’s speech, McCain played to his maverick image, taking corporate chieftains to task for their “extravagant salaries and severance deals.” […]

But much of what he detailed was a corporate special pleader’s dream: a cut in the corporate income tax rate, from 35 percent to 25 percent, a proposal to allow businesses to write off the cost of new equipment and technology from their taxes, a ban on Internet and new cellphone taxes, and a permanent tax credit for research and development.

He promised to remove the “myriad corporate tax loopholes that are costly, unfair and inconsistent with a free-market economy,” but he offered no specifics.

Offering vaguely pseudo-populist messaging without spelling out any of the actual details (i.e., because there are none) is the hallmark of St. BBQ’s economic package, just as it is with his global warming package.

This stuff is much more interesting than watching candidates take shots.

OK, confession time:

The reasons I decided to support Obama in the primary were two-fold.

First, I thought he was the least likely to get us involved in another war. Hillary’s views on foreign policy have bugged me for a long time, and I wanted to support someone who had been against the Iraq disaster from the outset.

Second: Obama was a media darling during the early part of the primary, whereas the press corps hated Hillary’s guts. Because I’m a complete idiot, I assumed that Obama’s charm would be a stronger bulwark against the press corps’ sickening McCain man-love.

Welp, I’m still standing by the first reason. The second reason is obviously in complete tatters and I’m a moron for not seeing it coming. I’d forgotten that our press corps at its heart has nothing but contempt for any politician to the left of Joe Lieberman, and that they love to paint them all as great big elitist phonies. The belief that Obama could somehow get past this shows a remarkable naiveté on my part. But that’s not the worst bit.

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