The Vig

Josh Marshall wonders aloud about the changing electoral demographics.

But it brings one point into sharp relief: though America’s racial make-up is much more complex than just black and white, in the context of blacks and whites, the Democrats are the bi-racial coalition. They win elections by winning overwhelming margins of African-American votes and keeping the margin close among whites. (Obviously this is different in individual states with larger or smaller African-American populations.) Indeed, if Democrats continue to run strong, though not overwhelmly so, among Hispanics (something that seems probable in the short term with all the recent immigrant bashing on the right) this pattern could well become more pronounced.

There’s nothing wrong with studying these percentages in terms of demography. Nor is there anything wrong with Democratic strategists recognizing that their candidates need to win this or that percentage of white voters to win. But creeping in the shadows of these conversations about how Democrats can no longer manage to win the white vote and are only saved from political oblivion by running up big margins among African-Americans is a little disguised assumption that African-American votes are somehow second-rate.

I don’t think there’s any getting around that.

Watch the talking heads on your tee vee.  They’re all over 50 and white.  They’re watching the country they once knew change around them and they’ve been powerless to stop it.  So they’re going to keep repeating this “but what about the whites?” line until they’ve pounded both the line and themselves into irrelevance.

As usual, the Irvine Housing Blog distills the zeitgeist.

Do you see the mentality at work here? All someone had to do was buy some real estate, improve it if they wanted to, wait a short time and sell it for a huge profit. The prices paid do not matter as long as the greater fool comes along with access to enough money to buy them out. I would not be too surprised if someone would pay this stupid price if a lender enabled them to. The bulls are all lamenting the tightening of credit because they know this is the only thing preventing the greater fool from bidding up prices even higher. After watching The Great Housing Bubble, I have become convinced there is no concept of value in the general public. There is no price that is considered too high as long as prices are rising.

Not to worry though, it couldn’t possibly happen here.

Slog’s Eli Sanders shares a plane ride with a member of the Obama email’s target audience.

Kirby is one of those fascinating people who both know that Obama spent 20 years at a Chicago church with a fiery Christian pastor and firmly believe that Obama is a secret Muslim.

“All the evidence points to that he is,” Kirby told me. “I don’t trust him.”

The evidence Kirby has received comes in the form of emails from “watch dog groups” that he listens to, as well as chatter among his friends. He’s heard it all—Obama not saying the pledge of allegiance, Obama’s pastor engaging in hate speech, Obama being a Muslim—and he believes it all.

Granted, he also thinks Hillary Clinton is “crooked as a snake” and he wishes Mike Huckabee had won the Republican contest, but Kirby is nevertheless quite worried about a potential Obama presidency: “Having a Muslim for a president—if he’s true to his faith he’s going to be pushing the Muslim faith.”

I asked Kirby why he thinks Obama went to church for 20 years if he’s in fact Muslim.

“I have no idea,” he replied. “A lot of people have political reasons behind everything they do.”

The mental gymnastics we force ourselves to perform so we may continue to live in our happy little bubbles can astound. I know I’m not above it. But even as stubborn as I am, I’ll allow the truth to change my perspective.

What would it take to convince him that Obama is a Christian?

“If I heard him say Jesus Christ is Lord it would cause me to listen to him.”

I told Kirby that Obama has, in fact, said he believes in Jesus. Repeatedly.

“Oh, really,” he replied. “I didn’t know that. I hadn’t heard that.”

Kirby gets most of his news from email and the Internet, he told me, and then he instructed me that even if Obama does believe in Jesus, “believing in Jesus and believing that He is Lord are two different things.”

I just keep repeating to myself, “there are people who will not vote for Obama no matter what.”  This guy is one of them.  And that’s alright.

Rush Limbaugh yesterday declared Barack Obama the weakest of the Democratic candidates. Weaker than Kucinich. Weaker than even Gravel.

It’s tough to tell when El Rushbo is kidding or when he’s being serious. Olbermann long ago gave up on trying to distinguish between the two Rushes. He now only refers to him as “Comedian Rush Limbaugh”. A title the talk-show king no doubt relishes.

The thing is though, Obama isn’t that weak. Oh sure, the talk radio hosts will gleefully pound away on Jeremiah Wright and Tony Rezko. But as Newt pointed out, that type of politicking isn’t going to work this time around.

The Republican brand has been so badly damaged that if Republicans try to run an anti-Obama, anti- Reverend Wright, or (if Senator Clinton wins), anti-Clinton campaign, they are simply going to fail.

This model has already been tested with disastrous results.

In 2006, there were six incumbent Republican Senators who had plenty of money, the advantage of incumbency, and traditionally successful consultants.

But the voters in all six states had adopted a simple position: “Not you.” No matter what the GOP Senators attacked their opponents with, the voters shrugged off the attacks and returned to, “Not you.”

The danger for House and Senate Republicans in 2008 is that the voters will say, “Not the Republicans.”

From top-to-bottom, the Republican party has become completely bereft of ideas and instead relies solely on glib name-calling to win arguments and elections.  Even the idea guys don’t have any ideas.  Act Number One of Newt’s “Nine Acts of Real Change that Could Restore the GOP Brand”, for example, is repealing the gas tax.  Number Nine is reminding us about the judiciary.  Really?  Judges are a winner?

The real problem with the Republicans is voters just don’t see themselves in that party anymore.  That one fact. more than anything, is going to prove their undoing in November.  This sort of stuff is going to absolutely kill them.  Period.  Until the party can divorce itself from the Religious Right, it won’t be able to move forward in any meaningful way.  And even then, they’ll have to come up with a new standard bearer.  Their ranks have been so poisoned, though, by the glibertarian wing that it may take a generation for them to recover.

It was a brief comment a few years ago by Winter Hawks announcer Andy Kemper that first made me sit up and pay attention to Tristan King.

I’m going to go on record here in the blog and say that before he graduates, Tristan King will be a star in the WHL.

For most of his rookie campaign, I confused King with Tayler Jordan. That was until I figured out Jordan was the one who liked to fight and King was the one who liked to score. Sometimes. Andy put King on my radar.

Could the kid play? Honestly I couldn’t tell. The entire team reeks. There would be nights I would fall in love with a Brett Ponich only to find myself wondering a week later what I ever saw in him. Colton Sceviour was a similar guy. Bo Montgomery too. Players would distinguish themselves for a game or two then disappear for the rest of the season.

The Tristan King era, if you can call it that, came to an end today with the announcement he’d been traded to Medicine Hat for Killian Hutt. And that’s fine and dandy, I suppose, but I have to wonder if Bardsley is that in love with Hutt or if King perhaps forced the team’s hand by demanding a trade. Toward the end of the season, you’ll recall, the air was filled with stories of families who were upset with the direction of the organization. Were the Kings one of those families? I’d be curious to find out.

The Hawks press release was definitely a sight to behold. Did anyone proof read it before they put it up? Back in the day, Scooter could at least properly punctuate a sentence. This one, with the random Capitalization and the abuse of commas is just…. I mean wow.

The best part of the whole release, though, was Hodge’s quote.

He is an Offensive player who loves to score.

As opposed to Offensive offensive players who don’t particularly enjoy scoring.  Did Bardsley have to get Hodge to sign off on the deal before proceeding?  Interesting.  I thought Hodge had been pretty much cut out of the organizational chart.  Now he’s back in the loop.  Huh.

So the Hawks have yet again gotten themselves a few years younger.  And once again we get to watch a player with a nose for the net figure his way around the WHL.  Eventually the flag is going to drop on Donovan’s five-year run.  It just won’t be this season.  *Sigh*.

The Tropicana hotel filed for bankruptcy protection last night.  It’s long been speculated that the Trop was the next place on the Strip to go.  It’s a natural, I would think, given its location.  This may bring that day one step closer.

I’ll never forget the night I stayed there.  Must have been late 2003?  Anyway, I stayed an extra night after a trade show.  The Trop was running some sort of special.  Like $39/night or some insane number.  The room was in the way back, overlooking McCarran.  Waking up in there was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life.  See, there were mirrors on the ceiling, and when I opened my eyes all I could see was a very large, semi-nude man falling from the sky.  It took me a moment to figure out it was me.  But for $39, what do you expect?

I’ve been trying to piece together in my head just what in the heck is going on with the economy and commodity prices. Maybe this summer I’ll take a couple of economics courses to figure this stuff out. In the meantime, I just read and listen.

From Marketplace (emphasis mine):

MOON: Well, you already know that the Fed’s been making tens of billions of dollars in loans available to the banking system. Well, today it’s basically admitting that these big institutions are just being stubborn about this — that they’re not lending to each other still. Basically, they still don’t trust each other. They remain worried about the exposure that they could put themselves in to these bad mortgage loans.

RYSSDAL: Powerful as it is, then, what can the Fed do?

MOON: Well, the Fed keeps telling these banks, “OK, look, come to our lending window instead. We’ll give you the money that you need to make loans to businesses and individual borrowers” — they’re really finding it difficult to find the loans they want right now. Well, this time the Fed is going to be boosting the total of emergency reserves that it’s offering to U.S. banks to $150 billion in the month ahead. That compares to about $100 billion it supplied in the past month.

RYSSDAL: Bob, I don’t understand though. With all this money that’s already out there, shouldn’t we just be flooded with liquidity?

MOON: Ah, that’s the big-money question here. There is some thought that the banks might be hoarding some of this cash. Or, to put it in more polite terms, they’re sitting on their reserves — OK? Maybe it’s just taking a little longer than the Fed had been hoping to top off their reserves. There’s one new estimate that when all is said and done here, the banking system is going end up needing about $333 billion of new capital, and that study figures that something over $200 billion has been raised already.

RYSSDAL: So we’re about two-thirds of the way through, right?

MOON: Possibly.

But wait, it gets better…

MOON: There is concern that this flood of money is pouring into investments right now in commodities. Some critics are even suggesting that’s what’s behind the excessive run-up we’ve seen in food and oil prices is this flood of money. Wachovia’s chief economist John Silvia does voice some concerns about that, and what a sudden flood of money could do to inflation in the future:

SILVIA: You know, you flood the pipeline, somehow not much of it seems to be getting through the hose, and all of a sudden the day wakes up and everybody says, “Oh, everything’s OK!” And then all of a sudden you’ve got this huge flood coming through. So, yes, there’s a risk there.

MOON: To explain that further, Kai, the more dollars that flow into the economy, the more those dollars end up being worth less — you’re diluting the purchasing power, if you will. People start demanding more dollars to make up their buying power. So the Fed’s gambling, in a way, that all these different moves go according to plan.

RYSSDAL: Nice to know that Ben Bernanke’s gambling.

It’s nice to know indeed.

So are the very decisions being made to prime the pump, in talking head-speak, being used to kick us in the teeth instead? Interesting.

Countering all this, the dollar has been rallying against the Euro for almost two weeks now.  This has caused oil prices to retreat just a hair.  Combine the stronger dollar with current over-supply of oil in the system and things could turn around quickly on the energy front.  If they do, will banks abandon their investments in commodities and instead turn their attention elsewhere?  I don’t have the foggiest idea.  I just know it’s interesting to watch.

Know hope.

HT: Sullivan

The Washington Post has an interesting angle on the condo market.

Now Moss, 33, wants to find a tenant for her condo while she waits out the economy. But the condominium association allows only 20 percent of the units to be leased at once, so Moss is on a waiting list. If she tries to rent the unit without permission, she could face a $500-a-month fine.

I wonder how many SoWa and Pearl towers have similar restrictions. If I were an owner-occupier, I sure as heck would fight tooth and nail to enforce the restriction.  When I lived in Mountain Park a few years back, in a rented condo, my landlord rented another place out around the corner.  Turns out the folks they rented to were meth dealers.  Eventually our little corner ended up on the police watch list.  Good times.

I’m not saying all renters are meth dealers, but having seen second hand what landlords out there are dealing with, there’s no way I’d want to live around any more renters than I absolutely had to.