Friday, August 24, 2007

The Daily Digest


Senator Tom "Coburn feels about pork spending the way liberal environmentalists do about greenhouse gases," writes Stephen Moore: they're both a gateway drug, to deficits and global warming, respectively.

Front-runners are cautious, which is probably why Rudy has yet to setup a blog. Yet for whatever criticism his reluctance generates, the fact remains, He's winning. On the other hand, his continued frankness on the war is beginning to alienate his supporters.

Howard Kurtz names an unpleasant truth: "Everyone who is defaulting on a home mortgage is not necessarily a victim. I feel sorry for anyone in that situation. Losing a home is an awful thing. Some were undoubtedly pressured into buying by unscrupulous lenders. Too many greedy players on Wall Street got away with making shaky loans for too long. They sliced and diced mortgage debt into increasingly exotic paper and lost sight of the risks involved, figuring the Fed would bail them out if things got out of hand. But let's face it: Most of the people who took out home mortgages for no money down knew that this was a roll of the dice. Who gets to buy a house without a down payment? And most of those who took out adjustable-rate mortgages knew that their rate would balloon in a couple of years, and could do so at a level that would be hard to afford. They took the risk anyway. No one forced these folks to take on big mortgages they could barely handle."

Why do we call those who write about the media and movies "critics" instead of something more neutral-sounding, like "observer," "analyst" or "reviewer"?

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