This sounds like something out of a bad movie, but apparently a load of people in Florida were convicted of crimes and jailed for years on end based on the supernatural powers of a dog and its handler. You know where this is going, don’t you? It was a load of nonsense, and now many of the men are being released three decades later after DNA tests clear them.
Potatoes…
Was wondering if anyone knew why Ahmadinejad is being referred to as President potato by the Iranian students? This Australian piece calls Ahmadinejad’s government a “potato government,” and this twitter references Mousavi saying the following:
“these masses were not brought by bus or by threat. they were not brought for potatoes. they came themselves”
What is the story behind the potato remarks?
Should be interesting
Glenn Beck is doing an online chat at 1pm.
Sad News
This really stinks. John Amato’s father has passed away. John and I have been friends going back 6-7 years, exchanging emails and IM’s about a variety of subjects (I bet the two of us have spent more time talking about BTVS than anything else, tbh), back to the days when Crooks and Liars was just getting started and leading the way with bringing newsclips to blogs and I was a foaming at the mouth right-winger, so I’m really sorry about this. John’s a great guy and this is just terrible.
You’re in our thoughts, John.
Policing Wall Street
New potential regulatory structure to be unveiled this week:
President Barack Obama is expected Wednesday to propose the most sweeping reorganization of financial-market supervision since the 1930s, a revamp that would touch almost every corner of banking from how mortgages are underwritten to the way exotic financial instruments are traded.
At the center of the plan, which administration officials are referring to as a “white paper,” is a move to remake powers of the Federal Reserve to oversee the biggest financial players, give the government the power to unwind and break up systemically important companies — much like the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. does with failed banks — and create a new regulator for consumer-oriented financial products, according to people involved in the process.
The plan stops short of the complete consolidation of power that some lawmakers have advocated. For example, it will allow several agencies to continue supervising banks. It also won’t place specific limits on the size or scope of financial institutions, but it will make it much harder for large companies to be so overleveraged that they threaten the broader economy.
If you thought the screaming over the non-TARP Chrysler lenders was loud, I’m imagining this will provoke the mother of all hissy fits. Sadly, I didn’t see anything in the WSJ write-up that seemed to address the role the ratings agencies played in this current disaster.
Those of you who understand this stuff, what do you make of the report?
Speaking of Group Wanks
It’s the middle of June, so I’m assuming this Politico story is not a leftover April Fools Joke:
The hunks of Capitol Hill
Washington is a magical place, a place where the onetime victims of boyhood gym-locker entombment can grow up to become the objects of affection, admiration, compulsive fandom, BlogSpot pages and Cafe Press T-shirts.
It is, safe to say, the only place where Ari Fleischer could have a stalker.
The haters call Washington “Hollywood for ugly people,” but they’ve got it all wrong. Ugly is in the eye of the beholder, and the beholders inside the Beltway see beauty where others might miss it.
Beauty, says Tammy Haddad, is “the people who make things work in our town because they’re able to move and motivate masses of people, which is really extraordinary.”
Make it stop. I’m begging.
The Blogger Coverage of Iran
I’m trying to follow the Iran situation, but I just can’t handle the American blogger coverage. It just reminds me too much of the warblogging circa 2003, and you just get the sense that the green paint signifying the green revolution is no longer just on the blogger’s hands. Everything is so breathless and over-the-top that it seems less like a dangerous and precarious situation in the Middle East than it does a good old-fashioned American blogger wank. To wit, Allahpundit:
Much depends on the meaning of “accepts,” though, doesn’t it? I’m sure we’ll get some patented Hopenchange drivel tomorrow about “grave concerns,” etc, but if Iran’s kids are expecting The One to walk away from nuke negotiations in protest of the coup, they’re kidding themselves. For one thing, that’s something Bush would do, and of course Bush was never, evah right. For another, if Obama walks away then he’s essentially betting all his chips on a full-blown counterrevolution to erupt and topple the regime. If it doesn’t, or if it’s put down a la Tiananmen Square, Khamenei et al. will be in no mood to forgive and forget. Which means it’s either war to take out Iran’s nuke infrastructure or learn to stop worrying and love the Iranian bomb. Israelis are learning already!
Needless to say, it sounds like Allah has gone and gotten green paint everywhere. And no matter what happens in Iran, he wants to remind you that it is Obama’s fault. Wolverines! Democracy, whiskey, sexy!
*** Update ***
I’m a “special douche” and part of the nutroots. And Allah misses the point completely- what is going on in Iran is deadly serious, with people’s lives on the line, and what bothers me is the breathless wankery I see from American blogs who really have absolutely nothing on the line. Nothing. No matter what happens to all those people over there, no one blogging from the USA will be beaten, thrown in jail, had their head cracked, or worse, killed. No one has any idea what is going on. I wish these Iranian protesters the best of luck and hope for the best for them, but I still have no idea what Allah thinks Obama should do, other than accept responsibility for whatever the folks at Hot Air want to blame on him.