Like Ike hitting Houston

Rattle their cages and vote YES here.

Seriously, it’s too your advantage for the markets to freak out. When they’re not freaking out, they’re busy cutting backroom deals that fuck over you and your pension while letting the big money boys skip out of town with your retirement funds.

Bush is running up a huge deficit, maybe this time the fat cats can pay the tab instead of sticking the bus boy with the check. Assuming an Obama tax plan that goes after the rich, bailouts that increase the deficit now would, I think, make sure the tab gets paid by the profiteers, and not the pension victims. If Lehman Bros. go under without a bailout, what little money is left goes to the preferred stock holders, and, as I understand it, that’s the fat cats and the Chinese, not the institutional investors.

No bailouts? Good luck with your pension, especially since it looks as though AIG is next to go. All of which makes Donald ‘fucking liar’ Luskin’s WaPo op-ed that much more hilarious.

James K. Galbraith:

    The collapse of Wall Street will hit Main Street like Ike hit Houston.

UPDATE: Oh shit, someone woke up Bush.

—°º°—

The end of the Bush administration is like the end of the world’s longest running criminal conspiracy to defraud the little folks (if you consider China to be a capitalist nation, otherwise Communism wins that honor).

Shit is happening:

Indiana Guard members are sweating exposure to carcinogens in Iraq

Amway Christianists spread P&G satanist rumors just to win market share

Even farmers are breaking with Bush (but not necessarily for ag-related reasons)

Patronage puts key facilities in the wrong places

Wingnuts still trying to game scientific publications (and succeeding less often)

The only people Bush is fooling are Americans

Graph shows what a bullshit hoax offshore drilling is

Evidence mounts that police agitators were responsible for much of the RNC damage

CIA assisted with torture in Uzbekistan

Fox’s insanely pro-Republican reporting bias

Even the useful idiots are slowing wising up

Vote suppression, cont.

Death asked for TV sorcerers

—°º°—

Only establishmentarians would ever think that there is any connection between Thailand, Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, and Indonesia.

I’ve never believed that democracy is right for everyone. Thailand, for example, is a monarchy, and happily so. Their problems stemmed from an abuse of the democratic process that let a fast-talking billionaire sucker the less well educated rural Thai into electing him and his American style economic nostrums. And, thanks to Thaksin, Thailand’s problems with Muslim rebels in the south just keeps getting worse, despite Thailand being one of the most peaceful countries over the past several hundred years. 

Then again Iran, a nation that’s launched even fewer wars than Thailand, was screwed over by the U.S. so bad they ended up becoming a belligerent theocracy. Can Buddhists be belligerent? We’ll find out soon enough, I fear.

But if you want to see some real establishmentarian spore, just try to buttress accusations that Venezuela’s not a democracy with actual facts. Chavez is hardly perfect, but his sins are exactly the same (only less so) than those committed by rightwing Central and South American dictators for decades. 

Venezuela held a free election marked by far less fraud than our last two Presidential elections. Generic sniping at Chavez is weak-minded journalism at best, and Bolivia is undergoing reforms, not moving towards one-party rule. 

The only thing Bob’s list has in common is that the U.S. has fucked with all of these countries. Some ostensibly benignly (Thailand, Argentina), others with great hostility (Venezuela, Bolivia).

As for Russia? Russians don’t want democracy, they want a stable economy. Democracy in a country used to totalitarianism isn’t a good fit.

Maybe we should work on perfecting U.S. democracy before exporting anymore of our defective product to third world nations.

—°º°—

One solution to global warming is as simple as white paint.

There’s a good reason the famous “White Towns” of Andalusia, in southern Spain, are all white-washed. The sun is hot in Andalusia, and white paint reflects the heat, keeping interiors cool.

Could that age-old Mediterranean remedy help fight global warming? Increasingly, a lot of scientists think it could, if big chunks of the earth’s urban rooftops and paved surfaces were covered with light colors that reflected—rather than absorbed—the sun’s rays.

So, if the big money folks would just quickly buy up all the paint companies, Bush might get behind a very inexpensive solution to all this extra heat.

—°º°—

TBogg goes for a new tagline, while Atrios notes an anniversary. 

—°º°—

Here’s my Sarah Palin Baby Name:

I’m not sure, but to me Log Justice sounds like how Elvis died. Anyhow I ran some of my peers’ names through the generator and got this list:

Charlie at Across the Great Divide is now Puck Mule Palin

Tild just became Copper Catfish Palin

Spotty is Tarp Lazer Palin

Disco Stoo is forevermore Jeep Pike Palin

Minnesota Observer is Luger Otter Palin

Mr Sponge becomes Barrel McRaven Palin

Flash elongates into WMD Cessna Palin

Etc. The results DO NOT change if you try to generate a new name, btw, so I’m guessing you’ll also get Steam Fangs Palin if you insert John McCain. The pool of names is limited, however. Obama got the same name as Spotty: Tarp Lazer Palin.

Just goes to show: all the really good names are taken. Even George W. Bush got the recycled Jeep Pike Palin monicker.

—°º°—

Mona Charen, out-Kerstening Katherine Kersten long before the Strib went to the debt dogs.

This post subject to revision if Kersten ever starts quoting Jill ‘lying bitch’ Stanek.

—°º°—

Crap. It is NOT possible to keep up with all the crap on Sarah Palin.

First accomplishment as governor? Palin installed a tanning bed in the Governor’s mansion [kinda like she went in with a white trash shopping list and budgeted accordingly]

The initial evangelical leadership response to the annointing of Sarah

41 pregger teens in Alaska for every 1,000 teen girls (that’s slightly behind Milwaukee, but slightly ahead of the national average)

Lies keep piling up

Dahlia Lithwick wants Palin on the Supreme Court

Neocon programming

Fox reporters hears one too many lies and freaks out

—°º°—

Kate Beckinsale to play NYTimes reporter Judy Miller? Fuck, I never thought they’d go with the RILF approach.

And best wishes to George Takei, who, for many, I’m sure is a TILF. [Trekker I'd Like to Fuck]

—°º°—

They’re dedicating the new I-35 bridge right now, and there’s no shortage of federal folks on hand. As it should be. Pawlenty scrimped, got burned, and of course had nothing in savings for the emergency. Minnesota was bailed out by Congress because, like white trash everywhere, we had about $1.79 in our checking account.

The speeches, on both sides, are gagworthy. No one sums up a catastrophe worse than professional politicians do. And are there ANY elected officials in Minnesota who are not adenoidal?

—°º°—

Here’s a Dick Cheney quote Rick Perlstein wants to epoxy to Dick’s forehead:

To the extent that the Constitution and laws are read narrowly, as Jefferson wished, the Chief Executive will on occasion feel duty bound to assert monarchical notions of the prerogative that will permit him to exceed the law.

Glenn Greenwald on all the illegal Cheney shit Woodward’s new book exposes.

Sadly, Pearlstein’s gem of a quote is only half as stupid as Andy Ostroy’s HuffPo story, Why replacing Biden with Hillary makes perfect sense for Obama. No, no one else is saying anything like that.

But I’ve got plenty more Cheney stories.

—°º°—

Last week’s winners, and this week’s quiz.

Turns out I had seen last week’s movie, but it was one I remember viscerally hating because it didn’t make any sense. Not as bad as the last X-Files movie (which I watched last night then kicked myself for not turning it off once it became obvious what a fucked up douche bag loser of a movie it was), but bad enough that you shouldn’t bother watching it.

How bad? So bad that The X-Files: I Want To Believe has been compared to Sarah Palin.

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