“Anonymous” takes me to task in a comment to my earlier post of the 13-minute documentary on John McCain’s adventures with Charles Keating:
I won’t argue about McCain’s issues, but why no comments about how the Clinton administration helped our wonderful crisis by pressuring fanny mae to lend more money? This problem isn’t just the fault of over-the-hill-out-of-touch republicans!!
Although I have an aversion to answering comments from writers who check their personhood at the blog door, I felt compelled, to wit:
Clinton was a virtual Republican. Besides, the first expansion of Fannie Mae — into the second mortgage market — took place under Reagan. Fannie and Freddie entered the subprime market in 2002, under a Republican president and a Republican Congress. Not that the Democrats are pristine in any of this; they’re not—especially Clinton. But the fact is that F&F’s subprime adventures were all part of the fanatical Republican fantasy of endless deregulation. You know—the fantasy John McCain used to indulge in before the financial chickens came home to roost.
For what it’s worth….
Ah, very good. I will add this to my “simblin” file.
My online dictionary says: "SPUD: c.1440 ‘small or poor knife,’ of uncertain origin probably related to Dan. <I>spyd</I>, O.N. <I>spjot</I> "spear," Ger. <I>Spiess</I> "spear, lance"). Meaning ‘spade’ is from 1667; sense of ‘short or stumpy person or thing’ is from 1687; that of ‘potato’ is first recorded 1845 in New Zealand English." I’ll go with the 1687 sense for our anonymous common tater.
Missing label: anonymous spuds.