Thursday, October 09, 2008
Just curious ...
Doesn't "abstinence only" education prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that HOPE IS A PLAN?
The US goes Bananas
Andrew Sullivan / Vanity Fair
In a statement on the huge state-sponsored salvage of private bankruptcy that was first proposed last September, a group of Republican lawmakers, employing one of the very rudest words in their party’s thesaurus, described the proposed rescue of the busted finance and discredited credit sectors as “socialistic.” There was a sort of half-truth to what they said. But they would have been very much nearer the mark—and rather more ironic and revealing at their own expense—if they had completed the sentence and described the actual situation as what it is: “socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the rest.”
I have heard arguments about whether it was Milton Friedman or Gore Vidal who first came up with this apt summary of a collusion between the overweening state and certain favored monopolistic concerns, whereby the profits can be privatized and the debts conveniently socialized, but another term for the same system would be “banana republic.”
... the rest after the click.
Overheard
George Washington University, DC (Tuesday before the debate had started), two friends were talking at a table.
Guy 1: Man... debate or class. Debate or class.
Guy 2: You don't know who you're going to vote for yet?
Guy 1: Nope.
Guy 2: Well, if you're still on the fence, then you're a moron and I'd appreciate it if you didn't vote.
Guy 1: Man... debate or class. Debate or class.
Guy 2: You don't know who you're going to vote for yet?
Guy 1: Nope.
Guy 2: Well, if you're still on the fence, then you're a moron and I'd appreciate it if you didn't vote.
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Kiw da wabbit!
I can't help it. I go through life and everywhere I look, I see scenes from comic books and cartoons. I watched the debate on Tuesday night. It didn't strike me at the time but all day today, on the news channels, in YouTube clips sent by friends and linked from the millions of political blogs I track in my news reader, I've been confronted by clips from the debate.
At one point, the phone rang and I put the little TV in my office on "mute". It was a wrong number ... but I kept watching the clip from the debate with the sound off. That's when it struck me! Elmer Fudd and Buggs Bunny!
There was John McCain, stalking around the debate stage with a microphone in his hand, looking for all the world like the spitting image of Elmer Fudd! All that was missing was the cute little hunting hat and he double barrel shot gun. I could just hear him muttering angrily under his breath, "Kiw da wabbit! Kiw da wabbit!"
And there, on the other side of the stage, sitting leisurely on a stool, one leg languidly extended, dapper and cool, with just the hint of a smile sat Barack Obama .... looking for all the world like Buggs Bunny. I could almost see him munching on a carrot and occasionally huffing on his nails, then polishing them on the lapel of his suit.
The image goes further. At least it goes further in my mind. As I'm sure you know, every time Elmer tries to "kiw da wabbit" he ends up hurting himself.
That was the debate in a nut shell.
At one point, the phone rang and I put the little TV in my office on "mute". It was a wrong number ... but I kept watching the clip from the debate with the sound off. That's when it struck me! Elmer Fudd and Buggs Bunny!
There was John McCain, stalking around the debate stage with a microphone in his hand, looking for all the world like the spitting image of Elmer Fudd! All that was missing was the cute little hunting hat and he double barrel shot gun. I could just hear him muttering angrily under his breath, "Kiw da wabbit! Kiw da wabbit!"
And there, on the other side of the stage, sitting leisurely on a stool, one leg languidly extended, dapper and cool, with just the hint of a smile sat Barack Obama .... looking for all the world like Buggs Bunny. I could almost see him munching on a carrot and occasionally huffing on his nails, then polishing them on the lapel of his suit.
The image goes further. At least it goes further in my mind. As I'm sure you know, every time Elmer tries to "kiw da wabbit" he ends up hurting himself.
That was the debate in a nut shell.
Thank You For Covering Our Assets
(Not the bill in the article - but close enough.)
Like most Americans, Laura Gilbert is outraged by the stock market mayhem, and she would like to wring the necks of those responsible. Failing that, she'd like to ask them soul-searching questions such as, "How do you feel about tanking the economy?" and "Can we have our money back?"
Unlike most Americans, Gilbert devised a plan to vent her anger and pose her questions. A full-time artist based in New York, Gilbert used a computer and her drawing skills to create the "The Zero Dollar," a slightly shrunken version of the greenback. Yesterday, she headed to Wall Street, hoping to find the masters of finance who have just body-slammed our economy and, as she put it, "confront them with my art."
... the rest after the click.
Monday, October 06, 2008
The McCain Video Library
- Sarah Palin Strips for McCain
- The Angry John McCain Song
- John McCain Kicks It "Old School" - Maverick Rap Song
Sarah Palin Strips for McCain
The Angry John McCain Song
John McCain Kicks It "Old School" - Maverick Rap Song
For those who are having a little trouble figuring it all out
Wonkette nails it - Economics 101, kids:
1) A lot of banks made bad housing loans. A lot of financial people bought up these bad loans. A lot of people insured these bad loans. Add several more layers on a global scale.
2) Housing prices fell.
3) Much wealth was lost.
This actually happened, and it has a lot to do with why we’re digging into a deep global recession! On Wall Street, this means asset values… drop! They drop and drop and drop, because no one has much money or credit, and then everyone sells because they’re going to keep dropping dropping dropping. And then when the Dow has dropped 800 points, Wall Street says to itself, “Whoa, 800’s a lot, so now we buy shit?” So it only ends down 350 points — manageable! — and people pretend for another day that maybe our economy won’t contract during a recession, definitions and comeuppance be damned.
... more after the click.
I guess the question now is who knew what and when did they know it?
A good buddy was reassuring. He said the market ALWAYS comes back.
Cramer, on Mad Money, says figure out how much money you're going to need over the next five years and get it the hell out of the market. I found that somewhat less reassuring ...
Can you spell "depression"? I know I'm depressed.
1) A lot of banks made bad housing loans. A lot of financial people bought up these bad loans. A lot of people insured these bad loans. Add several more layers on a global scale.
2) Housing prices fell.
3) Much wealth was lost.
This actually happened, and it has a lot to do with why we’re digging into a deep global recession! On Wall Street, this means asset values… drop! They drop and drop and drop, because no one has much money or credit, and then everyone sells because they’re going to keep dropping dropping dropping. And then when the Dow has dropped 800 points, Wall Street says to itself, “Whoa, 800’s a lot, so now we buy shit?” So it only ends down 350 points — manageable! — and people pretend for another day that maybe our economy won’t contract during a recession, definitions and comeuppance be damned.
... more after the click.
I guess the question now is who knew what and when did they know it?
A good buddy was reassuring. He said the market ALWAYS comes back.
Cramer, on Mad Money, says figure out how much money you're going to need over the next five years and get it the hell out of the market. I found that somewhat less reassuring ...
Can you spell "depression"? I know I'm depressed.
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Someone just like me? I don't think so ...
"She came across like everybody!" -- that's what someone said on one of those post-debate panels of uncommitted voters. "She sounds just like me!" -- how many times have you heard that about her? "She sounds just like me!" That's nice. Maybe she can be Secretary of Next-Door Neighbor. But -- no offense -- I don't want someone who's "just like me" to be Vice President of the United States, any more than I'd want somebody who's "just like me" to be my dentist, or my heart surgeon, or my air-traffic controller. I'd want somebody who's qualified, unless you think that all the problems we're facing are so simple that anyone can solve them.
The rest after the click ...
The rest after the click ...
Herman Melville's assessment of Sara Palin
"A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things."
-- Herman Melville
It works for women, too.
-- Herman Melville
It works for women, too.
Bin Laden Wins
Thank you, George.
In the beginning, bin Laden said he couldn't bring us down. But, he said he'd figured out how to sucker us into bringing ourselves down. The attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 was not a military maneuver, it was an economic gambit.
Knowing full well that we would follow him into the wastelands of Afghanistan, his initial plan was to retreat (which he did) and we'd get bogged down in an endless war of attrition that would eventually bankrupt us. His precedent was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In ten years of fighting, the Soviet Union found it had a tremendous drain on its economy. The unpopular war divided the people of the USSR. The end result was a Soviet withdrawal and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. They went bankrupt!
But Bush went bin Laden one better. Finding that Afghanistan lacked significant targets for a glorious war, the Bush administration used the 9/11 attack as an excuse to pursue plans to invade Iraq ... a priority from day one of the administration. Bin Laden must have cheered! The move took the pressure off bin Laden, provided an unprecedented recruiting tool for his cause throughout the Middle East, and we found ourselves embroiled in an unwinable war. Our lack of intellectual curiosity led us into a quagmire with multiple enemies - the Sunni, the Shi'a, the Kurds, and the former Baathists of the deposed Saddam Husein regime. Our ignorance turned it into an exercise in "learning on the job" and the lesson we learned was that no matter what we did in Iraq, we pissed off one heavily armed faction or another.
The exercise drained our economy at a rate of $10 Billion a month while the economic house of cards we'd built over decades of domestic deregulation started showing signs that it was coming apart at the seams.
Our Keystone Cops response to bin Ladin's simple act of hijacking a couple planes and flying them into a couple of prominent buildings in Manhattan became a text book demonstration of chaos theory which posits that the motion of a butterfly's wings on the slopes of Mount Fuji can set currents in motion that eventually result in typhoons in the South China Sea. Bin Laden was a butterfly and the economic consequences of his single act on 9/11 have set in motion economic currents that are about to swamp our ship of state.
It's hard to say you're winning the War on Terror when you just went bankrupt. With a national debt rapidly approaching $11 Trillion that forces us to borrow vast amounts just to service the interest, it's difficult to make the case that we are not.
In the beginning, bin Laden said he couldn't bring us down. But, he said he'd figured out how to sucker us into bringing ourselves down. The attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 was not a military maneuver, it was an economic gambit.
Knowing full well that we would follow him into the wastelands of Afghanistan, his initial plan was to retreat (which he did) and we'd get bogged down in an endless war of attrition that would eventually bankrupt us. His precedent was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In ten years of fighting, the Soviet Union found it had a tremendous drain on its economy. The unpopular war divided the people of the USSR. The end result was a Soviet withdrawal and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. They went bankrupt!
But Bush went bin Laden one better. Finding that Afghanistan lacked significant targets for a glorious war, the Bush administration used the 9/11 attack as an excuse to pursue plans to invade Iraq ... a priority from day one of the administration. Bin Laden must have cheered! The move took the pressure off bin Laden, provided an unprecedented recruiting tool for his cause throughout the Middle East, and we found ourselves embroiled in an unwinable war. Our lack of intellectual curiosity led us into a quagmire with multiple enemies - the Sunni, the Shi'a, the Kurds, and the former Baathists of the deposed Saddam Husein regime. Our ignorance turned it into an exercise in "learning on the job" and the lesson we learned was that no matter what we did in Iraq, we pissed off one heavily armed faction or another.
The exercise drained our economy at a rate of $10 Billion a month while the economic house of cards we'd built over decades of domestic deregulation started showing signs that it was coming apart at the seams.
Our Keystone Cops response to bin Ladin's simple act of hijacking a couple planes and flying them into a couple of prominent buildings in Manhattan became a text book demonstration of chaos theory which posits that the motion of a butterfly's wings on the slopes of Mount Fuji can set currents in motion that eventually result in typhoons in the South China Sea. Bin Laden was a butterfly and the economic consequences of his single act on 9/11 have set in motion economic currents that are about to swamp our ship of state.
It's hard to say you're winning the War on Terror when you just went bankrupt. With a national debt rapidly approaching $11 Trillion that forces us to borrow vast amounts just to service the interest, it's difficult to make the case that we are not.
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Monday, September 29, 2008
The Bailout Fails
The Republican leadership including President Bush and John McCain couldn't deliver the promised votes from their side of the aisle. The Republican defectors blame Speaker of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, for her overly "partisan speech" as their reason for not voting for the measure as their leadership had promised.
Senator Barney Frank summed it up best, "... one of the truly great coincidences in the history of numerology; the number of deeply offended Republicans who put feeling over country turned out to be exactly the number you would need to reverse the vote."
In response to Republican bruised egos, the Dow Jones Average closed DOWN 778 points. That represents well over a Trillion dollars lost in the stock market this afternoon ... enough money to cover the bailout about one and a half times. The market is lower now than it was when Bush took office in 2000! At least now we know what Republican egos are worth and that is far more than we can say for the assets held by their deregulated buddies in the financial sector.
The Australian market was down over 4% in the first fifteen minutes of trading ... opening after the vote of the US House of Representatives had been counted.
COUNTRY FIRST!!!!
Can you spell "C-o-n-g-r-e-s-s-i-o-n-a-l C-l-u-s-t-e-r-f-u-c-k"?
Senator Barney Frank summed it up best, "... one of the truly great coincidences in the history of numerology; the number of deeply offended Republicans who put feeling over country turned out to be exactly the number you would need to reverse the vote."
In response to Republican bruised egos, the Dow Jones Average closed DOWN 778 points. That represents well over a Trillion dollars lost in the stock market this afternoon ... enough money to cover the bailout about one and a half times. The market is lower now than it was when Bush took office in 2000! At least now we know what Republican egos are worth and that is far more than we can say for the assets held by their deregulated buddies in the financial sector.
The Australian market was down over 4% in the first fifteen minutes of trading ... opening after the vote of the US House of Representatives had been counted.
COUNTRY FIRST!!!!
Can you spell "C-o-n-g-r-e-s-s-i-o-n-a-l C-l-u-s-t-e-r-f-u-c-k"?
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Hard to tell fact from fiction
... and then there's this from the Couric-Palin Interview Transcript:
COURIC: Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?
PALIN: That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the—it's got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.
Hay, Sara? I can see the end of your political career from my house!
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