Saturday, October 4, 2008

My Next New Bike

Saturday Funny - Get Your War On: Dominating the News Cycle

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

The coming GOP massacre?

All it took was the near complete and utter destruction of the country to get most of America to realize they've been duped for nearly a decade by charlatans and frauds masquerading as competent leaders. But it at least appears they are starting to wake up.

Friday, October 3, 2008

The Money Meltdown

Foreclosure Alley

A snapshot of what's going on everywhere, thanks to unscrupulous lenders and ordinary people who should have known better.

How we got here...

Really not news to anyone who has been paying attention.


The Real Deal

So who
is to blame? There's plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn't
fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or
didn't do. As The Economist
magazine noted recently, the problem is one of "layered
irresponsibility ... with hard-working homeowners and billionaire
villains each playing a role." Here's a partial list of those alleged
to be at fault:


  • The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.

  • Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.

  • Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.

  • Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.

  • The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.

  • Mortgage brokers,
    who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate
    loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.

  • Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.

  • Wall Street firms,
    who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that
    they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds
    using those securities as collateral.

  • The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.

  • An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.

  • Collective delusion,
    or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep
    rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone
    up.

Animal Farm Friday - Bonus

This is just for fun.

Animal Farm Friday - Bears

A tribute to Sarah Palin's tough talk on Russia. It's not a good idea to provoke bears.

Sarah Palin Debate Flow Chart

Sarah Palin Debate Flow Chart.

And this one time, at debate camp...

Palin didn't flame out to Ifill's questions, but that can be attributed directly to there being no follow-ups, and never mind that she didn't even bother to answer most questions, but instead asked then answered her own questions.

No doubt had Ifill asked a follow up questions, we would have seen the Sarah Palin that Katie has been seeing lately. Instead, we got a weak debate platform, hosted by a concilliatory moderator who was afraid to ask any challenging questions of either candidates. No fault to Gwen Ifill though, because if she asked tough questions of both candidates, the McCain campaign would have martyred itself over the affair while the Obama campaign looked on in befuddled wilderment, understandably.

That said, Biden took this debate away hand over fist. There was only one person up on that stage tonight that looked like a potential President of the United States, and that person was debating a someone running as Senior Class President of a small school from a small town in Alaska.

Hey, she plays the flute too!

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Why recycle?

photo of deformed sea turtle

If you care about anything other than yourself, you would.

An amazing speech by the AFL-CIO's Richard Trumka

Energy Leadership from an Unlikely Source: Google

When you think about it though, it makes perfect sense for Google to take a leadership role in crafting a Clean Energy Plan, given how much they rely on electricity.

NO Free Lunch!

Glenn Greenwald has a great conversation with David Cay-Johnston, author of Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill
, a book I recommended not too long ago.

Two big takeaways from this conversation is a clear perspective on how and why our establishment media has ruined the country, and that our politicians are screwing each and every taxpayer - without the Vaseline - with this bailout. Don't be fooled by the new name, because this is not an "Economic Recovery Bill"! This isn't even a bailout bill. It's a "Bleed the Taxpayers Dry Bill".

Trouble in the South...

...as Virginia coal miners bitchslap the NRA.

More on Poll fixing

Nate Silver highlights the exact reason why I don't pay attention to polls... at least polls other than his. I've been writing for months now that the polls are fixed everywhere, not just at RCP. Nate is about the only trustworthy pollster out there in my opinion; then there's Intrade Markets, who predicts Obama to take 353 electoral college votes..

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Not a lame duck, just lame

Bush has become a literal laughingstock to the rest of the world. I'm surprised he hasn't offed himself by now.

The Atlas of the Real World

The Atlas of the Real World

Awesome gallery based on different metrics.

Financial Tsunami: The End of the World as We Knew It

Make-Believe Maverick

Photo

FINALLY! It's about time this story is making it into print in a relatively mainstream publication. Hopefully the rest of the country will start to realize that McCain has always been little more than a spoiled brat of privilege - just like George W. Bush - who had his success in life either handed to him on a silver platter, or he sold himself out for it (like Cindy, Charles Keating, Karl Rove). Yes, he was a POW, but McCain gives POWs a bad name. And so does Bud Day. But there are many more POWs who don't dishonor their names or their service by corrupting themselves for personal gain.

Obama's $700B mistake?

I hate to say it, but I have to agree with folks at FDL, that Obama is making a huge mistake with the $700 billion dollar crap sandwich he's trying to get unloaded onto the taxpayers. There simply is no good side to this issue, because hard economic times are coming no matter what. But in one fell swoop, Obama can saddle the Democrats once again with the reputation as the High Tax/Big Government party. Unless the taxpayers get equity, and that this "bailout" is restructured as an investment where the taxpayers ultimately make out better than Wall St., he and the Democrats are screwed.

Is this McCain's next Hail Mary?

Just wondering if he'll have some sort of medical issue before Palin's debate tomorrow, causing it to be suspended.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

McKeating Five all over again

Seriously, with a history like McCain's, anyone who would take his word on anything has to be functionally retarded. If not that, then they should at least excuse themselves form the real world and slither back under the rocks they oozed out from under.

More, please!

I wish we could see this stuff on national broadcast so that the rest of the country can see what a belligerent, whining bully McCain really is. I mean, imagine what kind of a whining prick he was like as a plebe in the academy when he was crying to his upper-classmen about sicking his Admiral daddy on them when they were breaking him in. Or all the times he cried that same cry about his daddy every time he crashed a plane, just so he could keep from being grounded, and even get the chance to fly again. I don't even doubt he cried that same cry when he was being worked over in the Hanoi Hilton, but he can be forgiven for that, certainly.

But to be a cry-baby bully to the editors at the Des Moines Register in a sit down is beyond pathetic. As my buddy Adam would say, "someone should call the waaaaaah-mbulance" for McCain.



Here's another point I'm not ever going to give up on: just because a soldier had the misfortune of becoming a POW does not give that soldier a free pass to be a dick for the rest of his life when he is freed. You either do something good with your freedom, or you do what John McCain did, and you cheat on (and dump) your crippled wife - who waited for your return - for a rich trophy wife, or you sell out your Congressional office for favors to a criminal financier, or you help an asshole president start an unnecessary war of choice against an oil-rich Middle Eastern country, and ultimately run the most disgusting and despicable presidential campaign, completely devoid of honor and integrity.

Ladies and gentlemen, John Sidney McCain, III. The only guy who can make George W. Bush seem acceptable.

Monday, September 29, 2008

F*** the police!

http://rawstory.com/images/other/2008dnc-beat-092808.jpg

McCain Palin by 51.2%?



If the votes are not actually stolen, my prediction is a massive landslide by Obama, much greater than my original 300+ electoral votes.

But there is a very strong chance that this election will be stolen, so says the expert Stephen Spoonamore.

Crybabies

Barney Frank mercilessly mocks the crybaby Republiscums:



Seriously, Crybaby Boehner needs to change his name to Boner. He's now becoming famous for these pathetic, whining, candy-ass stunts.

The Bailout translated into English

Understanding what it means doesn't make it any less depressing.

What tomorrow will taste like?

The future of meat?

The machinery that's pumped so much meat into our lives over the last half century was never built to last, and now it's breaking down big-time. Feed is more expensive. Gasoline is more expensive. Milk, rice, butter, corn--it's all going through the roof. And for the foreseeable future, it's not coming back down.

...

As a culture, we need to be more curious about where our food comes from. We need to buy from farmers who are trying to do things the right way. We need to think before we eat.

If we do, we'll find that our cuisine and eating habits will more closely resemble those of the nineteenth century than the late twentieth. Hunting will be less about the buck points and more about the meat. Nose-to-tail eating will make a comeback--not because of fashion or Fergus Henderson (whom I love), but because of scarcity and price. And small-scale farming--little vegetable gardens in the backyards of homes in cities, suburbs, and the countryside alike--will become not just economically sensible but cool. Hell, maybe foraging for mushrooms and wild fruits will become a seminormal skill again.



Go Prather!