The Washington Independent - U.S. news and politics - washingtonindependent.com: Comments by Kevin H

Kevin H — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 15:00:49 GMT

What I don’t get is how Spielberg thinks that it was okay to work on the Beijing Games even putting the Darfur issues aside. The massive media censorship, arbitrary arrests of journalists and lawyers, repression of ethnic minorities in Western China, and of course cultural genocide and occupation of Tibet… those weren’t enough to garner his concern (or Congress’ for that matter)?

Kevin H — Sun, 18 May 2008 15:35:34 GMT

I’m pretty surprised that you didn’t refer to the recent Pew report at all (http://pewresearch.org/pubs/773/fewer-voters-identify-as-…). Had you, it’s pretty clear that the story isn’t that independent voters are more important this year (isn’t that what people say every year? Hasn’t the Democratic strategy since 1992 been obsessed with independent voters, often to the detriment of “the base”?), but rather that fewer voters are identifying as Republican. The challenge then is different for the two candidates: McCain must appeal to those fleeing the disgraced Republican brand while at the same time gaining the trust of core cultural conservative Republicans who don’t trust him, while Obama must take advantage of the opportunity to completely flip former Republican voters (the so-called “Obamacans”) while hoping his post-partisan message is enough to solidify the support of Democrats who supported his primary opponents.

My only other comment, referring to rbe1 above, is that if even our good friends at TWI are using phrases like “McCain, with his almost trademarked maverick persona,” it is not only the mainstream media who is contributing to this false frame of McCain-as-maverick. Just off the top of my head, I can think of at least three other Senators who have been regularly a maverick: Sens. Russ Feingold, Jim Jeffords, and Paul Wellstone.

Kevin H — Fri, 30 May 2008 18:20:33 GMT

Non-story.

Kevin H — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:43:04 GMT

On thing strikes me about the beginning of Paul Jackson’s story. Here is a highly educated couple, one who ends up writing for a mortgage blog, and his reaction to 100% financing was that he “couldn’t reconcile how a broker was telling” him that he could afford it. I would have imagined that his reaction, especially in hindsight and given his critique of Congressional foreclosure relief, would be a little more dramatic, something to the effect of “I knew on the spot that this was a terrible idea at the time and that massive floods of foreclosures would occur as a result.”

Maybe I’m reading too much into his phrasing. But my point is simply that many people without PhDs did not have the resources to move to Texas or the credentials to get a job there, and even if they did, do we think that at the time, with everyone promoting how wonderful home ownership was, with no regulation on the way that loans were made and advertised, that everyone who got caught up in this deserves what they’re getting now?

I don’t know enough about this issue to say whether or not the current Dodd legislation is good or bad, but stories like the one above seem a bit more blame the victim than looking at why brokers like the one mentioned weren’t being monitored or regulated more effectively.

Kevin H — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 21:41:03 GMT

“One is ready to lead” might also be a shout-out to that core demographic of Highlander fans.

There can be only one.