My Next New Bike

Literally, a Ferrari on two wheels.

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.

The Money Meltdown

Everything you need to know.

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

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!

Why recycle?

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..

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

Awesome gallery based on different metrics.

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

I saw it coming.

Make-Believe Maverick

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.