SMACK!

For those who appreciated my post last week on the mendacious and despicable attempts of prominent wingnut bloggers to lay the entire blame for the country's economic mess at the feet of poor minority homeowners, I highly recommend reading this transcript of an online chat in which a guy named Matt Taibbi (author of this awesome Rolling Stone article on Sarah Palin) absolutely fucking obliterates one of the very same wingnuts I was referring to on the very same issue which was the subject of my post.

It really gets going about 1/3 of the way through when the hapless, transparently racist wingnut cites "the Democrats' desire to give mortgages to people, particularly minorities" as the primary source of all the trouble. This guy clearly had not the slightest clue what the fuck he was talking about, and as became even more clear had no idea what he was in for or what kind of person he was talking to.

This is the kind of thing that would be pity-inducing if it weren't for the fact that the victim is obviously an ignorant, vicious bully who spends his time looking around for smaller and less powerful people upon which to inflict his impotent hatred.

(Via John Cole, who follows up with some incisive "larger context" commentary on what this says about the modern "conservative" movement)

The short, (relatively) happy political career of Sarah Palin

The discussion at this post is about the future political prospects of Sarah Palin. Will she or won't she be a serious candidate for President in 2012?

Please.

Sarah Palin is finished in politics. As I posted anonymously in the comments, my prediction is that after losing her campaign for reelection as Governor of Alaska, she will accept a slot hosting a Nancy Grace-style current events/gossip talk show at Fox News. That is what she is fit for, and nothing else.

Sarah Palin is a vacant, vacuous, semi-good-looking talking head -- in short, a cheerleader -- who utterly melts down in the face of any well-reasoned opposition -- unless, of course, empowered with the ability to cut off the mic of her opponent. She was only able to become governor of Alaska (Alaska!) through pure serendipity. My guess is that the good folks of Alaska simply needed a little help from the national spotlight in coming to these same conclusions.

Good riddance.

Texas 45, OU 35

Witness the awesome spectacle of #5 Texas crushing the hopes and dreams of #1 Oklahoma. Sooners, nice of y'all to stop by, now take your big-ass trucks with the "nobama" stickers and go the hell home.

Look for Texas to be ranked #2 this week.

Jay Rockefeller: corrupt, incompetent, anti-American

Gee, I know it is really just shocking... but some former NSA employees claim they were routinely ordered to record and transcribe the personal phone calls of U.S. citizens who were suspected of no crime and who had no conceivable connection to "terrorism", including journalists, aid workers and others.

We all knew this was going on. Anyone who didn't is mentally feeble or not paying attention. Which is why it was such a disaster to legally immunize all the people responsible for this with that abortion of a FISA amendment earlier this year, (without, of course, even bothering to investigate or otherwise determine anything about the crimes and malfeasance that it was intended to immunize).

And the person most responsible for the FISA amendment and for enabling the blatantly illegal surveillance in the first place? That would be Jay Rockefeller. Contacted for comment, Jay Rockefeller states that these revelations are "extremely disturbing" to him. Right.

You, sir, are a disgrace to your country. You have utterly failed to uphold your oath of office and have knowingly violated your duty to your constituents and to the nation. You should shut the fuck up, resign your post, and go find a nice quiet place to die. Thomas Jefferson would have had you hanged in the public square.

"The public's out there throwing darts at a board, sport...

I don't throw darts at a board."

Wow, this is truly a bloodbath.

Me, most of my assets are in cash money dolla bills, y'all. (although, as a buddy of mine likes to say, I'm also heavily invested in the used car market.) Time to start buying stocks? Or have we yet to hit bottom here?

During the most recent of my occasional wades through the muck of the wingnut blogs I learned that the present economic, uh, downturn is mostly due to poor (ignorant, perfidious, deviant) minority-type individuals failing to live up to their obligations. (Who knew those folks had so much economic power over the rest of us? Truly a revelation.)

So, yeah, your 401k got eated by all those ungrateful brown people. It's all their fault, to be sure. And Clinton. Can't forget about Clinton, obviously. He had a major hand in it. Because of his blowjob that he got. Or something.

Some stuff about whatever. yawn.

Since I (re)started following politics closely 2 years ago, there have been a lot of bizarre and interesting things that have happened. Helping to up the Are You Fucking Kidding Me? Factor (let's call it AYFKM Factor for short) has, of course, been the only positive contribution of the Bush/Cheney faction. Granted, most everything they do, large and small, tends to be bad and terrible for the world, the country, and me personally, but let no one say that they don't make the world a more interesting place, news-wise.

And a black man named "Hussein" makes a seemingly successful run for the presidency? In the day and age of Terrorist Bedwetter Ascendancy? That'll ramp up the AYFKM Factor. As will the spectacle of a mudbrain ignorant beauty contestant being nominated for the office of Vice President on a major party ticket.

And of course who could forget the saga of the public's exposure to the true nature of modern Wall Street as being nothing more than a reckless, irrational, gigantic pyramid scheme requiring a gargantuan injection of funds from the taxpayer (i.e., the folks on the bottom of the pyramid) to prevent the entire Ponzi Structure from toppling into the abyss, in turn wreaking unimaginable destruction on the global economy? Boy, that was a doozy. Glad we got through that whole mess. (Oh, wait... yeah... that's right, it's still going on!)

So, I guess my point is: it seems like a really long time ago that, for example, our primary concern here at Hick Town Rap Star was the possibility that Alberto "Judge" Gonzales might get away cleanly with lying to congress and the public. The AYFKM Factor has -- in my estimation -- increased steadily over the last half-year or so, and, as a result, now only the most outrageous or bizarre news captures my interest (at least to the point where I'll take the time to blog about it).

And I guess the further point being... nothing fitting that description has happened so far this week. So instead I'll treat you to a quote from today's edition of IOZ, who in describing last night's "debate" sez:

On foreign policy, McCain continued to insist that he "knows how to get Osama bin Laden." (McCain foreign policy statements, like fortune cookies, usually benefit from the addition of "in bed", by the way.) This plan appears to consist of figuring out where Osama bin Laden lives and sending people there to capture or kill him, which seems more like the treatment than the screenplay, if you know what I mean.

To which I would only add one point (that I think I've made here before, and recently), which is that if McCain knows how to get Osama bin Laden -- something he's been saying for many months now, by the way -- then isn't it the height of selfishness for him not to have told someone his secret plan before now? Or maybe he's just making shit up in a desperate attempt to come up with something -- anything! -- that might make it even remotely more likely that he will get elected president. But it can't be that, of course, because as we all know McCain is an honorable man with unchallengeable integrity etc etc.

Yawn.

They could've called it "Capital Decimation Partners", but oh well

Interesting new hedge fund here.

One of their "competitive advantages":

We are not limited to looking for opportunities with positive expected returns and so can cast a broader net across the investment universe, thus extending our efficient frontier beyond what other hedge funds can offer.

Here's their note to prospective investors:

If you are interested in investing... you are in luck. The elegance of our approach is we do not need the high cost of marketing or investor relations departments. Rest assured that your capital and assets will be discreetly seized on your behalf.

We won't have Palin to kick around much longer...?

I may have gently alluded to this before, but it looks like Andrew Sullivan may know something about Sarah Palin that we don't.

Brief backstory: Soon after Palin's nomination, Sullivan posted several times with questions about the Trig-baby and whether it was actually Palin's biological child. He made no factual assertions that weren't already in the public record, only questions. He was then viciously attacked by the wingnut brigade. After which, he went incommunicado for two days. Here's a post where he relates this series of events.

Then for three weeks he didn't mention the Trig-baby explicitly, but frequently dropped subtle hints that something was amiss with Palin's candidacy (beyond the obvious things that are amiss). One of his posts was a long and sickeningly sweet ode to Palin's bravery, nobleness, and altruism in choosing to give birth to the Trig-baby and attend to its special needs for a lifetime. Odd, to say the least.

Also over the three weeks, Sullivan continually (and rather weirdly) urged the Obama campaign to demonstrate "patience and steel", the clear implication being that Palin/McCain would self-destruct before the election.

Then a week ago Sullivan wrote the post linked above, which revolves around him privately contacting the McCain campaign in an effort to get an on-the-record statement that Palin is in fact the Trig-baby's biological parent. (They later made such a statement to Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post.)

So... with all that in mind, I've been reading between the lines and my working theory at this point is that Andrew Sullivan knows something -- either has evidence, or believes he is on the point of getting evidence -- about this Trig-baby situation; something that will cause Palin to go down in flames, and that he has been carefully setting up "the reveal" for weeks now.

I mention all this because these two short posts from today are the latest -- and maybe the strongest yet -- to support my theory. Check them out... and let me know if this is simply wishful thinking.

[UPDATE] For those of you who won't click through...

In the first post, he says she fails so badly in interviews either because "she's out of her depth" or because "she's panicked about something else that's hanging over her head", concluding "If I were her, I'd quit now, blame the media and hand the reins to Romney."

In the second, he first invokes Eagleton in the post title, then quotes another blogger saying that McCain can't kick her off the ticket for fear of it looking like "appeasement of the enemy". Which Sullivan then follows with this rather opaque prediction: "I don't think she'll be on the ticket in November. And it won't be appeasement."

Admittedly, this is like reading tea leaves... and maybe I'm merely fantasizing about what would be a perfect conclusion to Sarah Palin's political career... But I guess we'll see.

How low is the bar?

Poor Sarah Palin. It appears that Katie Couric (who knew?) has yet again been practicing some of that "gotcha journalism" you hear so much about. She pulled the dirty trick of asking little Sarah what newspapers and/or magazines she regularly read before being nominated to be Vice President of the United States of America.

Sarah, alas, was not able to name a single one. Such a tricky bitch, that Katie Couric.

Of course, if that question had been asked of me, it would have been kind of a trick question. I haven't bought a dead-tree copy of a newspaper in years. I don't know that I've had a magazine subscription since Mad. But... just checking here... opening up the "history" pane in Firefox.. this is a sampling of some of the news sources I've informed myself with over the last 4 days:

Bloomberg
NBC
CBS
ABC
CNN
MSNBC
FOX
New York Times
Washington Post
L.A. Times
The Economist
Chicago Tribune
San Francisco Chronicle
Wall Street Journal
Newsweek
Dallas Morning News
Reuters
New York Post
AP
Time
Boston Globe
The Guardian
The Daily Mail
BBC News
Financial Times
New York Magazine
Alaska Daily News
Miami Herald
International Herald Tribune
Xinhua
Al Jazeera
Seattle Times
The Politico
Denver Post
The Atlantic
Congressional Quarterly
The New Yorker
National Review
The Nation

Not to mention dozens of blogs and opinion sites. Just in the last 4 days.

But being well-informed about politics and national and world news is my hobby. Not my job. In fact, it is antithetical to my job. Imagine how well-informed I would be if I were actually employed in politics? My guess is that prior to being nominated to be Vice President of the United States of America Sarah Palin rarely read anything other than the local bumfuck Alaska daily, plus maybe People and US Weekly.

And I guarantee -- in fact I would bet my life savings -- that I could tear Sarah Palin to tiny shreds in a debate on just about any topic under the sun (excluding, of course, the proper christianist methods of witch hunting).

And so does this qualify me to be a candidate for the Vice Presidency of the United States of America? Unfortunately, no. I'm no good at glad-handing, back-slapping, small talk, schmoozing, pandering, or any of the other happy shit that politics so often requires. In fact, I am abrasive bordering on antisocial bordering on sociopathic. So that, apparently, disqualifies me. As it probably should.

But yet is this what our national politics have come to? We find some unknown person, who fits the proper demographic profile, who looks good on camera, who holds the right views on god, gays, and guns, and who isn't, as of the exact date of nomination, under indictment for any serious felonies, and place that person in a position to be running the entire fucking country at a moment's notice, simply because she loves god, hates gays, and shoots a bunch of babies out her vagina, but despite the fact that not only is she supremely ill-informed about history, science, politics, and the world in general, but also that she wears her ignorance as a badge of honor, hates, despises, fears, and denounces people who are educated and informed, and to top it all off not only has never bothered to read any news but is also too stupid to be able to fake any good answer or indeed even name a single news source in service of propagating a credible lie to at least mollify and provide the slightest bit of cover for her compatriots in idiocy that insist on supporting her no matter how incredibly fucking stupid she proves herself to be???

These Republican dumbfucks have set the lowest of low bars here. I am embarrassed to live in a country that even pretends to take shit like this seriously.

A boondoggle by any other name...

In case anyone was wondering, the Wall Street bailout legislation which failed today was the same thievery proposed by Bush and Paulson over a week ago, just dressed up in some happy-happy language that congressional Democrats thought would save them from being hauled out of their cushy offices and lit on fire.

Limits on executive pay? Sounds great to the hoi polloi when you go in front of teevee cameras to explain how you are really teaching those greedy Wall Street fuckers a lesson in exchange for allowing them to loot the treasury. (Here, note, "looting the treasury" being merely a metaphor, since the treasury has no money and all these ill-gotten gains must be borrowed.)

But when you see it in print, eh, not so much, buddy. First, it is all "at the discretion of the Secretary". The same Secretary, you'll remember, who didn't want any of this language in there in the first place. Second, even if required by the Secretary, it only does the following: (a) limits "golden parachutes" being put into new exec contracts, (b) discourages exec bonuses which incentivize "excessive" risktaking -- which is obviously a crock, because (1) bonuses are never explicitly based on excessive risktaking, and (2) if your bonus is achieved and actually paid out... then how in the hell can you, looking backward, ever possibly say that any risk was "excessive", since the risk, obviously, paid off!), and (3) allows a "claw back" of bonuses paid out which are later determined to have been based on "incorrect" earnings statements -- in other words, stock fraud, which, last I checked, was already a felony resulting in civil asset forfeiture and, uh, imprisonment.

So, there's your limits on executive comp.

And as for the $700,000,000,000 being broken up into "tranches" so that congress can monitor how it is being spent and whether this "rescue" is working? Heh. You didn't think Henry Paulson was a dummy, did you? Goldman Sachs used to pay this guy tens of millions of dollars to cook their books. You don't think they'd let just any moron off the street do that, do you?

No. Whatever else Henry Paulson may be, he's no dummy. Read for yourself. Sure, the bill starts out by appropriating only $250,000,000,000. Um, but then, "[i]f at any time, the President submits to the Congress a written certification that the Secretary needs to exercise the authority under this paragraph, effective upon such submission" the amount will be increased to $350,000,000,000. [My emphasis] So, another $100,000,000,000 on merely the President's say-so alone.

But what about the other $350,000,000,000? you may ask. Well, either these people are a whole lot smarter than congress, or congress thinks the public is a bunch of shit-for-brains dumbfucks. Because the next $350,000,000,000 may also be requested by the President at any time, and such request will be granted unless congress jumps through a whole lot of hoops with really tight deadlines and passes a law within 15 days rejecting the request. So, ok, well... not entirely impossible, I guess... BUT WAIT, there's MORE! The President may then veto such rejection. In which case, you guessed it, the additional $350,000,000,000 will be appropriated. Unless, of course, congress is able to override the veto with 2/3 majority in both houses before the end of the aforementioned 15 day period. Heh.

Put simply, this bill is and was a complete crock of shit. And just to drive home the point, Paulson's minions at Treasury held a conference call with 800 Wall Street fucks telling them about the toothlessness described above, plus some other toothlessnesses that I'm don't have the energy to blog about right now (oversight? Hah, you mean from this congress? Please. Transparency? In the Bush Administration? You've got to be fucking kidding me.). Suffice to say, all this bullshit touted by assholes in congress over the last several days as "protections for taxpayers" is no more than window dressing to assuage the righteous anger of the taxpayers who were (or, are still) to be stolen from.

Of course, the press was not invited to this conference call. Some bloggers, however, crashed the party. The "Treasury Boys" (you know, those folks putting in their time playing at government before moving to Wall Street to cash in) more or less baldly stated that the exec comp provisions had no teeth (why limit your future paychecks!?) and that the "tranching" was a mere formality, as the whole $700,000,000,000 could be requested pretty much immediately.

The story of this bailout is not that investment bankers want to steal the public's money. That's a "dog bites man" story if ever there was one. No, the real story is how our representatives (yes, OUR REPRESENTATIVES) in congress lined up like whipped curs to help these fuckers loot the treasury.

Well, they have failed. So far.

Sullivan uses flamethrower; Cafferty has shake-voice

Here's Andrew Sullivan's latest blistering attack on McCain/Palin: McCain is a lying liar and is responsible for the "legalization" of torture, and the nomination of Palin is "the worst act of political judgment in my lifetime."

Meanwhile, check out this clip of Jack Cafferty on CNN. He plays one of Palin's answers to Couric, and, while barely being able to control himself, sputters to Wolf Blitzer that in the decades he's been covering politics it is "one of the most pathetic pieces of tape i have ever seen... no excuse... pathetic".

Me, I'm all for Palin-FAIL, but I could barely watch her answer. Just too awful. As others have noted, it's like a Ricky Gervais skit, only more cringe-inducing and painful to sit through. I had to take my headphones off. Absolutely terrible. And the look on Couric's face near the end... it is obvious she's struggling as hard as she can not to close her eyes and put her hands over her ears.

Comedy Interlude

Too busy reading about the bizarre-O circus that our country has become to blog much, but here are a couple of funnies:

First, IOZ, always trying to be inside Vlad's head:

Imagine if you are Vladimir Putin. You do not drink or smoke, and aside from occasionally fucking your gymnast nymphette into catatonic submission while a 10,000 piece orchestra plays Gimn Sovetskogo Soyuza outside your window, you do not carouse. Your life is occupied with grim, atavistic fantasies, which are just now coming to fruition, and as you nurse your bloody dreams in the Siberian expanses of your glittering, Satanic soul, you flip on the teevee and see the only force on earth with any capacity to foil or retard your ambitions rapidly consuming itself in an orgy of abject ridiculousness, a Marx-brothers comedy of political ineptitude so baroque in its Vaudevillian slapstick that it melts, for just one moment, the crimson popsicle that is your KGB heart and from your mouth, for the first time since you traded your soul for life eternal and a thirst for blood one thousand years ago, you let out one brief, delicious: Ha!

Second, the Onion with Point/Counterpoint (you don't have to read through the whole "Point").

Third, I give you the next Vice President of the United States:

COURIC: Have you ever been involved with any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?

PALIN: We have trade missions back and forth. We-- we do-- it's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where-- where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is-- from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to-- to our state.

Thank you, South Carolina!

These people cannot be trusted.

I don't care about their credentials, what their reputations are, how sincere they may seem, or how many people think they are "honest brokers". The fact is, they work for Bush. And that one simple fact by itself means that they have zero credibility.

Fool me twice... uh... won't be fooled again

[Well... I wrote this last night, but neglected to post it. Now people all over are asking the same questions. Here's Yglesias, and here's a guy that won a Pulitzer Prize writing about economic issues. Not that it's exactly an original thought; Atrios has been bashing it from Day 1.]

The more I think about it, the more I don't get where this "consensus" is coming from about how something must be done, NOW to save these Wall Street assholes from the consequences of their own idiotic pyramid schemes investment vehicles.

I've seen this all over the place. Even hardcore anti-Bush, anti-business bloggers are buying into this, saying things like "there's a real crisis here, that requires real governmental intervention", while railing against the current "plan" (which, as the scare quotes indicate, is not actually a plan, but rather a dollar figure signifying the amount of money we will be handing over).

But how do we know there's a "crisis" which "requires" government to "intervene"? The only thing that's come to light so far is a scary and disturbing conversation that Paulson had with lawmakers on Thursday night. Prior to that, no one was talking about a huge bailout of the entire industry.

So, where is the evidence? Are we going on Paulson's word alone? And what led him to form his conclusions? There is very little information on this. I presume Paulson talked to some investment bankers, who presumably told him "Boy, things are bad. Like, really really bad. But not just for us. We're about to go down, and if we go down, then everything goes down. And the only way to solve this is to transfer huge sums of money to us."

Not exactly surprising that they would say something like this. I don't doubt that they are in quite a bit of trouble. And when people are in trouble, they will say a great many things to get out of it.

And it's not exactly surprising that Paulson believed them. They are his friends and colleagues. And, let's not forget: these people are -- truly -- the world's best salesmen. They get paid tens of millions of dollars a year to sell shit to people. Like, for example, huge packages of debt that will never be paid back.

Notes on a swindle

A couple of things to consider when trying to figure out what's going on with the Bailout:

1. There's this idea that runs through all the coverage in the media. In brief, it is that all the experts agree that something must be done, and right fucking now! to avert an unprecedented disaster that will throw the country and the world into a deep economic pit from which we may never recover. I don't know enough to dispute this idea on the merits, but I would simply ask: who, specifically, is making this claim? And if the answer to that question is:

(a) "the same people who stand to be paid $700,000,000,000"

OR

(b) "the same people who stand to have unchecked power to hand out $700,000,000,000"

then I think someone oughta, you know, find out whether the claim is actually true.

2. A lot of the opposition to the bailout from GOPers and "conservatives" appears to be based on the idea that, while it might be ok to let Bush/Paulson hand over this money to Wall Street, we sure as hell don't want Obama and his people to have this authority come January. I've also seen this talked about in media reports.

I really don't understand where this comes from. I've read the Bush/Paulson proposal. The authority it would grant would expire after two years. But that is all it says in terms of timing. There is no mechanism whatsoever for preventing Bush/Paulson from paying out the entirety of the 700,000,000,000 prior to the end of Bush's term. And if you think for one minute that that's not precisely what they intend to do... then I'll just go ahead and assume you've been living in a dark cave for the last 8 years.

3. And, of course, the main feature of the Bush/Paulson proposal is this:

Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

I think that one sentence pretty much conclusively sums up the Bush theory of governance.