Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

Dear legacy media: you are not here to influence outcomes and policies you find desirable.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

We are learning that “working class” means “white” for way too many people.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

There are times when telling just part of the truth is effectively a lie.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

“Alexa, change the president.”

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

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Archives for 2009

Looting

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Two stories in the NY Times:

Sixteen years ago, two economists published a research paper with a delightfully simple title: “Looting.”

The economists were George Akerlof, who would later win a Nobel Prize, and Paul Romer, the renowned expert on economic growth. In the paper, they argued that several financial crises in the 1980s, like the Texas real estate bust, had been the result of private investors taking advantage of the government. The investors had borrowed huge amounts of money, made big profits when times were good and then left the government holding the bag for their eventual (and predictable) losses.

In a word, the investors looted. Someone trying to make an honest profit, Professors Akerlof and Romer said, would have operated in a completely different manner. The investors displayed a “total disregard for even the most basic principles of lending,” failing to verify standard information about their borrowers or, in some cases, even to ask for that information.

The investors “acted as if future losses were somebody else’s problem,” the economists wrote. “They were right.”

***

Mr. Akerlof and Mr. Romer finished writing their paper in the early 1990s, when the economy was still suffering a hangover from the excesses of the 1980s. But Mr. Akerlof told Mr. Romer — a skeptical Mr. Romer, as he acknowledged with a laugh on Tuesday — that the next candidate for looting already seemed to be taking shape.

It was an obscure little market called credit derivatives.

In the other piece, we learn that maybe the banks aren’t that bad off, after all:

On Tuesday, Signature Bank of New York announced that because of new executive pay restrictions in the economic stimulus package, it notified the Treasury that it intended to return the $120 million it had received from the government only three months ago.

What would be the point in taking part in the heist if you aren’t allowed to give the masterminds a cut?

Has anyone written the definitive story tracking down if banks were forced to take the cash, and if so, which ones and why? I have seen it referred to and there were bits and pieces here and there, but no big story.

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Government By Underpants Gnomes

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A Sam Stein piece informs us that John McCain is working on a ten point plan of economic principles for the GOP. What is in this outline of principles, I wonder:

“We are looking for some guidance on a definitive plan (aka contract with america style) on the economy…principles,” writes Buse. “Ten principles that JSM could point to on what MUST BE DONE to address the problems our nation faces.”

Buse doesn’t offer specific suggestions of his own, save “NO TAX INCREASES.”

Why do Republican economic principles sound so familiar:

Step 1: No tax increases
Step 2: ?
Step 3: Profit!

Why not, I guess. It worked so well for California.

Also, this.

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How To Be A Hack and Secure a Lifetime Position at the NRO

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Andy McCarthy in 2004 discussing the 9/11 commission:

Analyzing the intelligence failures attendant to 9/11 is a twofold process. First, the counterterror system designed during the Clinton administration, which was at the helm for eight years while we were under attack by militant Islam, was a prescription for disaster: reducing counterterrorism to a strict law enforcement matter, putting the Justice Department in charge of it, and institutionalizing, as official government policy, a wall that forbade criminal and intelligence investigators from pooling information. Second, that counterterror system was largely maintained by the Bush administration during the eight-month run-up to the attacks. As to the latter, Bush officials have been aggressively questioned for actions they took, or failed to take, between January and September 2001, including the failure to tear down Gorelick’s wall prior to 9/11. This is entirely appropriate. Indeed, it is essential if the commission is to be at all a useful exercise in helping us avoid future 9/11s.

But for a sizable faction of the commission, that exercise is not what this is about. It is, instead, about myopic focus on the eight Bush months as if the preceding eight Clinton years had never happened.

Andy McCarthy today, discussing the stock market:

Veronique, with due respect, it is absolutely preposterous to blame our president for the nearly 3000 point plunge in the stock market. I don’t know how you or Businessweek can sleep at night after repeating such a baseless, slanderous canard.

He is, of course, responsible for today’s rally …

Putting aside the fact that 2000 of the 3000 point drop that McCarthy is attributing to Obama happened under PRESIDENT BUSH (not to mention the entire cause of the collapse and the several thousand point drop during the rest of 2008), a pithy observer might remark that it is almost as if he wants to pretend the preceding eight Bush years had never happened.

Any luck uncovering Obama’s birth certificate yet, Andy?

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Testing the Goldberg Theorem

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While many of you think that Jonah Goldberg was just making shit up when he put forth his convincing theories about the causal relationship between President Obama’s electoral odds and day-to-day market performance, I think it would be unwise to dismiss someone who has produced such scholarly pieces of work such as Liberal Fascism.

As such, I think it is clear to anyone and everyone that the fact the market is up a couple hundred points today is proof that the markets reacted VERY favorably to Obama’s education plan.

Coincidence? I think not!

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Where’s The Street-Wise Hercules?

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Glancing at memeorandum, it appears the wingnut tour de farce shows no sign of letting up:

Soon after President Barack Obama signed an executive order lifting the ban on the use federal funding of embryonic stem cells in medical research, the wizards behind the White House web site posted the photo above. Though I find it less troubling than the president’s continuing assault on the unborn, the file name (hero_stemcell_main2.jpg) under which someone at the White House saved the photo of the signing ceremony this afternoon is disturbingly creepy.

***

To imply that President Obama is somehow heroic by signing a measure that lifts a ban on the slaughter of human embryos for scientific purposes goes beyond the pale. Such an amateurish action should not, however, surprise anyone familiar with Obama’s socialist agenda (a.k.a., “Obamalism”) and his follower’s blind allegiance to “Dear Leader.”

And there was much rejoicing in right blogistan- Cultists! Hero worship! Um, no:

Yes, it just proves that there is a cult of personality surrounding Obama, and that really we are just one step closer to a personalistic dictatorship that will never end. Not to mention the pending socialist dystopia that will be reigning shortly at a state capital near you.

Or, maybe not. Photographers call the best shot of a series the “hero shot.”

Undeterred, Our Lady of Perpetual Outrage marches on:

What’s amusing is not that the term “hero” was used — “hero shot” is a common photography term to describe the best images of a series of shots.

What’s amusing is that every damned shot that’s ever taken of Dear Leader is classified as a “hero shot.”

Except, of course, for that shot of him trying to enter the Oval Office through the window. D’oh…

She then links to a picture from the White House website to prove her point that the White House names every image of President Obama with the hero prefix except for embarassing ones. Just kidding. She links to a picture at the New York Daily News.

Which proves that like the wicked, there is no rest for the stupid.

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“Obama refers to America in the third person, as a foreigner would…”

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I was reading this Jesse Taylor post, and came across his description of the Conservapedia entry on President Obama, in which he claimed it had the “wingnuttiest introduction possible.” As a connoisseur of the wingnut genre and recovering wingnut myself, I had to dive in for a taste:

Barack Hussein Obama II (allegedly[1][2][3] born in Honolulu Aug. 4, 1961) is the 44th president of the United States, and previously served as a first-term Democratic Senator from Illinois (2004-2008). Obama and his running mate Senator Joseph Biden won the presidential election[4] after 23 months of campaigning, raising an unprecedented $750 million and spending over $700 million of it,[5] most of which came from anonymous donors. Post-election, Obama’s aides surprised some by indicating that he would make an unprecedented speech within his first 100 days from a Muslim capital.[6] Obama used his Muslim middle name when sworn in as President,[7][8] and chose not to use the Bible for his real, private oath. Elected by claiming he’s a Christian, Obama has since avoided attending church on Christmas and Sundays.[9]

Obama refers to America in the third person, as a foreigner would. In his first television interview after becoming president, Obama declared that “all too often the United States starts by dictating.” Earlier, when Obama gave his acceptance speech, he said “We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America – I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.”[10]

That is 100% pure wingnut, alright. Pharmaceutical grade.

Seriously, that has to be spoof.

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The Real Geek Squad

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Interesting piece in the NY Times about physicists and the Wall Street meltdown worth reading, a topic we have covered several times. Buried within is this nugget:

Physicists began to follow the jobs from academia to Wall Street in the late 1970s, when the post-Sputnik boom in science spending had tapered off and the college teaching ranks had been filled with graduates from the 1960s. The result, as Dr. Derman said, was a pipeline with no jobs at the end. Things got even worse after the cold war ended and Congress canceled the Superconducting Supercollider, which would have been the world’s biggest particle accelerator, in 1993.

They arrived on Wall Street in the midst of a financial revolution. Among other things, galloping inflation had made finances more complicated and risky, and it required increasingly sophisticated mathematical expertise to parse even simple investments like bonds. Enter the quant.

The SSC only cost a couple of billion, and by comparison, seems pretty cheap.

The Real Geek SquadPost + Comments (113)