Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
These guys are seriously unspoofable:
I’m actually kind of pissed off that Ayers did not also tell her that Obama is a muslim, was born in Kenya, and was sworn in on the Koran the second time behind closed doors with Chief Justice Roberts.
With All Due Respect to a Sack of HammersPost + Comments (93)
I’m not sure how else to describe some of these Republican Senators.
I honestly don’t understand the impulse to defend KBR/Halliburton here. Is it just because it pisses off hippies?
Sully takes another shot at defending his decision to run McCaughey’s pack of lies on Clintoncare:
In my view, it had many interesting points and as an intellectual exercize in contemplating the full possible consequences of Hillary Clinton’s proposal, it was provocative and well worth running.
That is perfect summation of contemporary Slate/TNR journamalistic mores. Interesting points! Intellectual exercises! Who cares if it’s actually true or not? And who cares what impact this wonderful exercise has on the lives of millions of Americans?
Though boys throw stones at frogs in sport, the frogs do not die in sport, but in earnest.
Matt Yglesias on the recent handful of defections from the Chamber of Commerce over the issue of carbon emissions:
But I do think it’s worth taking this further. The fundamental problem the Chamber of Commerce is going to have on this is that they’re really really wrong. Not like how they’re morally wrong about, say, labor rights or workplace safety rules. They’re analytically mistaken about the interests of the United States business community. If we take action to avert ecological catastrophe, economic growth will still happen. Capitalism will march on. Big companies will be big, and people will earn lots of money managing them. Yes, the present-day owners of coal companies or manufacturers specifically wedded to unusually energy-intensive processes will be in trouble. But “business” in a broad and general sense will keep on keeping on. People will still want gadgets and furniture, will shop at stores, will buy and sell, and generally keep being customers for business.
This is completely true, of course. On the other hand, it’s not of much political import. Apple and Nike didn’t quit the Chamber because they care about the environment or what the planet will look like 80 years from now, they quit because they market themselves to younger consumers who are often interested in the environment.
In the end, even though the long-term effects of global warming are likely to harm many American companies, big energy companies care more about killing cap-and-trade than the other companies do about fighting global warming. And, as a result, the Chamber will most likely continue to oppose any and all attempts to restrict carbon emissions.
There’s a similar dynamic with health care. There are plenty of companies that would benefit greatly from health care reform, but they don’t want it as much as health care companies, in many cases, want to kill it.
While, in theory, a group like the Chamber represents a broad consensus of business interests, in practice, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. It isn’t just that business interests control our government, it’s that they often do so in a way that doesn’t even benefit business interests as a whole.
Not sure if you have paid attention, but a remote outpost in Afghanistan was assaulted this weekend by Taliban forces, and they breached the perimeter and killed a bunch of our guys. This write-up at CNN sounds like something out of Platoon or We Were Soldiers Once and Young:
The battle Saturday in which eight U.S. troops were killed was so fierce that, at one point, U.S. forces had to fall back as attackers breached the perimeter of their base, a U.S. military official with knowledge of the latest intelligence reports on the incident said.
***The United States now believes that about 200 insurgents — mostly local fighters, with some Taliban organizers and leaders — had been planning the attack for days, hiding mortars, rockets and heavy machine guns in the mountains. Sources said the Taliban may have been watching the troops make preparations to depart and launched their attack at a time of vulnerability.
The Taliban were able to use their higher positions to fire into the base, pinning down the troops. As the attack progressed, the troops were forced back when enemy fighters managed to breach the outer perimeter of the outpost, the source said.
The story itself is disturbing enough, but then in the comments here there is a link to this website, soliciting donations to replace the… SOCKS AND BALACLAVAS for these guys.
You have got to be shitting me. What exactly is going on in this damned country? This can not be for real. We have two damned wars running, spend over a half a trillion annually on defense, and that is before the supplemental bills for hundreds of billions every year, and we need to pass the fucking hat to buy our troops socks? Seriously. What is going on? I’m seriously about to blow a damned gasket. I bet the lads working for Xe/Blackwater don’t need donations for socks.
Christ on a crutch. This country is just completely screwed. Please tell me this is a hoax or a misunderstanding and our soldiers aren’t relying on donations so they don’t freeze to death in Afghanistan.
The feds are worried about the CRE crash:
Banks in the U.S. “are slow” to take losses on their commercial real-estate loans being battered by slumping property values and rental payments, according to a Federal Reserve presentation to banking regulators last month.
The remarks suggest that banking regulators are girding for a rerun of the housing-related losses now slamming thousands of banks that failed to set aside enough capital during the boom to cushion themselves when the bubble burst. “Banks will be slow to recognize the severity of the loss — just as they were in residential,” according to the Fed presentation, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
In other cheerful news:
A year after Washington rescued the big names of American finance, it’s still hard to get a loan. But the problem isn’t just tight-fisted banks.
The continued disarray in debt-securitization markets, which in recent years were the source of roughly 60 percent of all credit in the United States, is making loans scarce and threatening to slow the economic recovery. Many of these markets are operating only because the government is propping them up.
But now the Federal Reserve has put these markets on notice that it plans to withdraw its support for them. Policy makers hope private investors will return to the markets, which imploded during the financial crisis.
The exit will require a delicate balancing act, government officials said.
“You do it incrementally, where and when you think you can, and not sooner,” said Lee Sachs, a counselor to the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner.
The debt-securitization markets finance corporate loans, home mortgages, student loans and more. In good times, they enabled banks to package their loans into securities and resell them to investors. That process, known as securitization, freed banks to lend even more money.
Many investors have lost trust in securitization after losing huge sums on packages of subprime mortgages that had high default rates. The government has since spent more than $1 trillion trying to restore the markets, with mixed success.
And until something is done to reshape the market does business, no one in their right might would trust this stuff. At any rate, it is going to be both tragic and funny to watch Atrios and the rest of the DFH crowd be right about a double-dip recession.
We’ve spent a lot of time debating the possible existence of peak wingnut here. If this isn’t it, then it’s, at the very least, the Sistine Chapel of early 21st century wingnuttia (via Wonkette).
Update. Via the comments note that the black man in the blue shirt on the left is holding the Glenn Beck bible.
