Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Friend said I should start watching it. Are any of you fans? Is it worth getting the first season?
*** Update ***
Is it just me, or does this story sound like another one of those legends that get ginned up every transition? How long before we hear that they also removed all the o’s from the keyboards, but that Bush screwed up and took off the zero’s?
BTW- Lost interest in Damages since I have not seen season one, but the Savages is on HBO, and it is a great flick.
Sometimes when I check memeorandum, I swear I am having a bad trip. Here are the currently listed stories:
1.) Porn Industry Seeks Federal Bailout– I am going to just assume this is a joke, although I will note it brings new meaning to the phrase “stimulus package.”
2.) Joe the Plumber to become war correspondent– Putting aside the fact that this is Joe the non-plumber going, I have no idea what they think this will accomplish, especially considering that Israel refuses to let any reporters into the zone. Why Joe thinks he will get in is beyond me.
3.) McCain Starts ‘Country First’ PAC– Has no one told that Americans did, in fact, put country first, and thus voted against him and the Wasilla wingnut?
4.) $1.2 Trillion Deficit Forecast as Obama Weighs Options– I remember when a couple hundred billion dollar deficit was breathtaking.
The whole world has gone mad.
So much fail:
Senate Democrats have no choice but to change their tone about Roland Burris becoming a U.S. senator because Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich “called our bluff” in appointing someone over their objections, a senior Democratic congressional source conceded Wednesday.
“We tried to send a political signal to Blagojevich that we would not seat someone he appointed. He called our bluff, in a reckless way,” the Democratic source said.
You mean after a near decade of rolling over for the Bush administration, someone with an iq over room temperature figured out you were bluffing whenever you took a stand on anything? And does this congressional source have the initials “HR?”
And yes, I understand you are tired of this story, but I just can’t get enough of it, because I honestly don’t recall a more ham-handed response to a political issue. I am sure some are out there, but this is just breathtaking. One crooked governor and a guy who couldn’t win statewide office in 85 attempts just made the entire Democratic DC establishment look like total morons. And what is great about this is that they still think it is “reckless,” when pretty clearly, as I stated over and over again, it was the only rational option for Blagojevich. The only thing he has going for him is the legitimate authority of his office, and these keystone cops in DC still have not figured that out.
Someone Is Going To Get a Strongly Worded Letter…Post + Comments (83)
I’ve lost my copy of the Left-Wing Blogosphere Enemies list, so I can’t remember whether or not I’m supposed to hate Jason Zengerle. Either way, Zengerle has a good piece today wherein he catches the late Tim Russert with his socks down today. Here’s Brokaw:
A few years ago, he (Tim Russert) asked me to check on the prospects of a farm-state candidate for governor who spent part of every year on Nantucket and adopted some of the local customs. I called a friend in the candidate’s state to get an assessment, and he said simply, “He doesn’t wear socks.” Tim roared when I passed along the observation, and we often used that expression — “He doesn’t wear socks” — as shorthand for politicians who were tone-deaf.
Here’s Russert sans socks:
I hate to speak ill of the recently deceased and (and it’s Brokaw’s fault, not Russert’s), but this NASCAR nation should be aware that the no socks/no service thing is a slap in the face to candidate Christ. It’s also great news for future candidate Spitzer.
On a more serious note, is there any other important job where the most important qualification is wearing socks? If you needed to have brain surgery, and were told that one surgeon was the best in the world but sometimes didn’t wear socks, would you put your life in the hands of another, less-qualified, more socks-friendly surgeon?
Which leads to the next question: does anyone know if Sanjay Gupta wears socks?
I am laughing after reading this. What else can you do?
Exhibit A, today’s jobs report:
Private-sector employers shed 693,000 jobs in December, a private employment service said on Wednesday in a report that was far worse than expected and pointed to more ugly news from the government’s jobs data due later this week.
The drop, much bigger than the revised 476,000 private sector jobs lost in November, is consistent with about a 670,000 fall in December non-farm payrolls, said Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers LLC, which jointly develops the private sector employment report with ADP Employer Services.
Exhibit B, outsourcing accounting fraud:
Satyam Computer Services, a leading Indian outsourcing company that serves more than a third of the Fortune 500 companies, significantly inflated its earnings and assets for years, the chairman and co-founder said Wednesday, roiling Indian stock markets and throwing the industry into turmoil.
The chairman, Ramalinga Raju, resigned after revealing that he had systematically falsified accounts as the company expanded from a handful of employees into a back office giant with a work force of 53,000 and operations in 66 countries.
I still say that as long as we remember that the recession’s all in our heads, that it was all caused by deadbeat minority homeowners, and that FDR’s New Deal policies were an abysmal failure, we’re going to ride out the Obama Depression just fine.
Update: @Punchy (from Lew Rockwell):
If you keep up with LRC, you probably already know that a major role of the FDIC is to give the public a false sense of confidence. Typically the FDIC keeps a little over fifty billion dollars in its Deposit Insurance Fund to cover the deposits of account holders in the event of bank failure. According to the data published on September 30, 2008, there is just under $8.8 trillion deposited in US banks. The fact that the FDIC has squat for cash to cover bank failures isn’t really news. So long as there are only three or four bank failures each year, the FDIC is able to cover the losses, and life goes on.
In 2008, however, there were more than three or four bank failures. There were twenty-five in total. As a result, the Deposit Insurance Fund has been drawn down to about $35 billion, of which approximately $20 billion is liquid. That’s still okay so long as there aren’t many more bank failures, but each quarter the numbers are looking more and more dreadful. Last we heard from the FDIC, there were 117 banks on its secret “troubled” list, which matches pretty well with my list of banks with incredibly high Texas ratios. If we add up the deposits for those troubled banks, we get a value of $76 billion. So, the FDIC has $20 billion to cover 76 billion dollars of deposits in banks that are on the brink of collapse. Things are looking pretty bleak for the FDIC.
Take things from Rockwell with a grain of salt but I’ve heard the same rumors elsewhere.
Your Daily Affirmation that we’re all screwedPost + Comments (163)
I have started four posts and deleted each one because it was pointless or stupid. For me to recognize I am about to say something stupid should give you an idea about the quality of those posts. So here is a pet pic until I can pull my act together:
