[Most Recent Entries] [Calendar View] [Friends]
Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Firedoglake's LiveJournal:
- What a sad testament to his parents. He obviously didn’t really even know them or what they stood for.
- The apple sometimes falls far from the tree then rolls away.
- Or the best parts was left as a stain on the bedsheet……………
- Christopher Buckley… you will regret your action.
- Chris, come out of the closet already.
- Follow the link and check out the photo of this peter-puffing little fruitcake. I think he has homo-erotic thoughts about Obama. I KNOW he does.
- I didn’t realize William F. had a gay son.
| Sunday, October 12th, 2008 | |
| 2:00 pm | Sumner Redstone: CEO Fail
Why, if this was a movie and there weren't jobs and pensions at stake, this would kind of satisfying to watch
Well played, sir. |
| 11:29 am | Sunday Talking Heads: October 12, 2008
Washington Journal: 7:30am - Bill Adair, PolitiFact, Editor 8:30am - John Zogby, Zogby International Polling, President & CEO 9am - Alexander Their, U.S. Institute of Peace, Afghanistan/Pakistan Analyst -- Report PDF 9:30am - Newspaper Articles & Viewer Calls. ABC's This Week: Former Treasury Secretaries James Baker and Lawrence Summers. Then, Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA). Topics: The economic crises and the political fallout. Roundtable: Dan Balz of the Washington Post, Cokie Roberts, and George Will. contact George Chris Matthews: Howard Fineman Newsweek Senior Washington Correspondent; Cynthia Tucker Atlanta Journal-Constitution Editorial Page Editor; Gloria Borger U.S. News & World Report; David Ignatius Washington Post Columnist. Topics: Can McCain rescue his campaign as the economy sinks? [hmm, lemme think] Who benefits as McCain and Obama question each other's character? [hmm, lemme think some more] contact Chris CNN's Late Edition: "Steve Forbes, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the Washington Times' Tara Wall, Democratic strategist Paul Begala, Republican strategist Leslie Sanchez, Democratic strategist James Carville and CNN's Candy Crowley and Ed Henry." info from LAT's Top of the Ticket 60 Minutes: THE FBI'S WISEGUY - The FBI undercover agent who brought down high-level mobsters tells how he infiltrated the Gambino family and shows his face for the first time, undeterred by the Mafia's penchant for revenge. Armen Keteyian reports. THE BATTLE OF SADR CITY - Weaponry so advanced that it spots the enemy and destroys it from nearly two miles above the battlefield made the difference in the fight for Sadr City last spring. Lesley Stahl's report shows rare footage of the weaponry in action. ALL IN THE FAMILY - The Antinoris have been in the wine business for 600 years – maybe the oldest family business on earth - reports Morley Safer from its vineyards in Tuscany, Italy. To The Contrary: Topics: 1- Economic blues turn women into blue voters; 2- Sarah Palin: feminist or victim of sexism? 3- Courtroom TV star Judge Glenda Hatchett on the disproportionate number of children of color in foster care. Panelists: Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD); Center for Equal Opportunity Chair Linda Chavez; Progressive Commentator Patricia Sosa; and Political Blogger Sophia Nelson. for broadcast times in your area click here CSPAN's Book TV schedule. After Words: CBS News chief Washington correspondent, Bob Schieffer, presents a collection of his essays that range from the political to the personal in his book, "Bob Schieffer's America." Bob Schieffer discusses his book with Rita Braver, senior correspondent for CBS News Sunday Morning. [This will surely be hard-hitting /s] Today, a special FDL Book Salon: "In her moving debut memoir, a young journalist recounts her time as a translator for the detainees of notorious Guantánamo Bay prison." Come chat with host Jamil Dakwar, Director of the ACLU , and author Mahvish Khan about her book, My Guantanamo Diary: The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me, 5 pm Eastern. Plus Wednesday, we have Jon Podesta coming in for a mid-week FDL Book Salon. Join us at 3:00 pm Eastern, to discuss his book, The Power of Progress: How America's Progressives Can (Once Again) Save Our Economy, Our Climate, and Our Country. |
| 5:00 am | LLN FDL: The Midnight Snack Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer present Tom and Jerry in The Midnight Snack. This 1941 film was the second cartoon featuring this classic duo. Directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Produced by Fred Quimby. What's on your mind tonight? |
| 3:00 am | BREAKING: Pat Fitzgerald Set to Indict ACORN, Obama, Pelosi, Dean, Santa Claus on RICO Charges
Americans are increasingly alarmed at the prospect of a Barack Obama presidency, and with good reason. As the always very sensible Michael Barone reports, there can be little doubt that an Obama administration would be a "thugocracy" in which few if any conservative talk show hosts would be free to broadcast idiotic smears without receiving telephone calls from Americans who disagree with them. Even more chillingly, Obama threatens corporate America's cherished right to rig union elections. And Barone does not fail to remind us that in Missouri local prosecutors threatened to arrest anyone who criticizes Obama about anything, something that remains magically true even though the prosecutors he mentions never remotely said anything of the kind (you can watch them fiendishly not saying it here). Fortunately the nation is set to awaken before the nightmare commences. As the always reliable and not at all crazy dead-ender HillBuzz, who supports John McCain and thus remains loyal to Hillary Clinton by doing the total opposite of what Hillary Clinton has said her supporters should do , reported on Thursday,
Well, I was certainly shocked yesterday by the complete lack of this happening. But then again, Patrick Fitzgerald is notoriously crafty prosecutor. The savvy move on his part would be to prosecute imaginary crimes in a pretend jurisdiction. So do not be "shocked" when Judge Cornelius W. Kornflake of the Court of Fantasical Frippery sentences Senator Obama to 500 Unicorn Years in the Gumdrop Gaol. In the meantime you can pore over this sort of intricate trivia, which is damning insofar as it is presented with hyperlinks. Or else you can just rest assured that Obama will eventually be arrested for the heinous crime of winning an election in Chicago. Or maybe you can head to the pawn shop and stock up on firearms, as all sensible Americans are doing in the face of a probable Obama victory, including even black Americans (read the comments), for reasons which may appear mysterious at first but become far more logical once you realize that black Americans have evidence from blogs like "Confederate Yankee" that swarms of halfwit cryptoracist paranoiacs are squawking off to the gun shops. What would you do? (Representative CY commenter: "I've owned guns most of my adult life and still fondly (not) remember the dark Clinton days. But even back then I didn't bother to do what I did last week. I finally applied for a concealed permit." For added fun skip a post and enjoy the commenter who is terrified that President Obama will wickedly fire every US attorney whose politics he doesn't like.) Anyhow you slice it, an Obama victory portends a dystopian hellscape. Worst case scenario, progressives will be able to drag him into putting through, oh, a single payer healthcare system, which is exactly like a gulag except in every possible rational sense. |
| 2:15 am | Wachovia’s 8 million Loan to the Republican Party: Blackmail Money? 
this talks, BS walks So, Ari's outraged at Wachovia lending the RNC 8 million dollars to the NRCC. Not unreasonable. But here's my take. The FDIC arranges a takeover of parts of Wachovia by Citigroup, for $1/share and some FDIC money. They plan to chop the company up. Then Wells Fargo makes an offer for Wachovia at $7/share, or 15 billion and plans to keep substantially the entire company, and want no FDIC money. The FDIC objects and starts trying to stop the Wachovia/Wells Fargo deal even though it's a better deal for taxpayers, for the employees and for the shareholders. Citigroup goes to court and tries to stop the deal. Eventually Citi and the FDIC give up and let the merger go ahead. Right after that Wachovia loans 8 million to the NRCC. Coincidence? I suppose that's possible. |
| 1:00 am | Nature Bills Last: Forest Destruction Costs Exceed Bank Bailout Costs While fanciful fiscal creatures like derivatives and CDO's devoured bricks-and-mortar banks, very tangible bulldozers and chain saws devoured immense expanses of real forests on our real and finite biosphere. Who cares? Well, anyone who thinks bailing out Wall Street is expensive. Compared to the real costs of forest destruction, the $700 billion Paulson/Obama bail-out bill Bush signed over to Wall Street is a bargain. Who cares, anyway? What did the forests ever do for us, anyway? Provide clean water: that stuff we're running out of so fast that it's literally killing some of us. Oh - and absorb carbon dioxide: that stuff we're producing so fast it's literally killing some more of us. How much of the planet's forest wealth do we clever humans destroy every year? And how does that cost compare to the recent Wall Street meltdown?
Why are we cutting down our planet's forests? We cut down some to ship the wood to consumers and paper mills in rich countries and China. We cut down other forests -- like Brazil's Amazon -- to grow more beef for people in the US and other places where people already eat meat in such excess they sicken and die as a result. We cut down yet other forests -- like the rainforests of Southeast Asia -- so people in the US and Europe have more of the under-priced fuel that alows them to continue driving in such excess they sicken and die as a result. And because we're such clever animals, humans in the World Bank and the IMF subsidize the destruction of the developing world's forests for the (very) temporary enrichment of the wealthiest people in the world. Because the Washington Consensus the IMF and WB exist to enforce is, don'cha know, so good for life on this planet: if the lives in question are those of the upper 0.5% in the US and the other wealthy "enforcer" nations. And if we restrict "good" to mean "more money for a handful of years". Who is pricing out the cost of forest destuction? The folks working on The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (Teeb), a review initiated by Germany during their rotating EU presidency and funded by the European Commission. Yesterday at the World Conservation Congress, Teeb's director described how long we've been racking up the bill for forest destruction
OK -- so forest destuction costs more than the Wall Street meltdown. That's still just leaf litter compared to vast canopy of the global economy, right? Uh, not so much. As the BBC report, the Teeb review found deforestation consumes more than one fifteenth of the world's total economic output
Oh well -- what's one-fifteenth of the huge global economy anyway, right? Well, compared to the costs of the groundwater wasted on speculators' commodity bubbles, the topsoil devoured by speculators' housing bubbles, and the global climate change that Big Carbon bribes global governments to continue, perhaps not so much. Teeb will have more to tell us about the global bill for planetary eco-destuction.
Of course, unless the pols who pass for our "leaders" choose to do something about global ecological destruction, all the tree-free reports in the parsec won't help our biosphere. Or the half of the world's mammal species now endangered...much less the 25% of the world's mammals now facing extinction. Or the nearly one-third of all amphibians now facing extinction. Or the one in eight bird species now threatened with extinction. We two legs are such great managers, don'cha know. Right? |
| 12:00 am | Who’s Driving The Hate Talk Express? Overheated rhetoric and personal attacks on our opponents distract from the big differences between John McCain's vision for the future of our nation and the Democrats'. This is getting really disturbing. Every day, John McCain and Sarah Palin stir up more and more violent hatred at their public appearances. As they hammer relentlessly at Obama's supposed connection with William Ayers, their audiences shout "Socialist!", "Kill him!", "Traitor!", "Treason!", "Terrorist!", "Off with his head!", and "Bomb Obama!" (that last one was actually at a Saxby Chambliss rally, but it's part of the same trend). For the most part, both candidates have completely ignored these yawps from the Republican id, with McCain making pleas for decency only in response to direct questions... and getting booed by his own supporters when he does. The Republican base is getting bolder and meaner, and McCain and Palin are either deliberately inflaming the situation, or have lost control of it, afraid to antagonize their own mob. I'm betting on the former, but it's a strategy that plays very badly with the non-crazy, non-base, non-racist demographic. Are the McCainiacs really betting that more than 50% of American voters are not only racist, but so racist that they're willing to overlook the Epic Fail that is modern conservatism? McCain's playing-with-fire campaign isn't just immoral, it's self-destructive. The Republican Party's brand is already associated with corruption, incompetence, torture and war; exposing its angry eliminationist underbelly will poison it even more. It could make the difference between losing "only" six Senate seats, and losing eleven or twelve... and God only knows how many in the House. And it's only going to get worse. The pressure is building, and I think it's going to boil over before the election. I don't know what form the explosion will take, but it will be something so gut-punch monstrous that it shocks and appalls everyone but the diehard crazies. I'm desperately hoping that it will be "merely" ugly and not tragic - that McCain and the Republicans are the only ones who get hurt, and only figuratively. John McCain cannot deny responsibility for the scary turn his campaign has taken since Rick Davis's long-forgotten memo. He could have fired Steve Schmidt at any time, and he hasn't. Senator Honor & Courage is either perfectly content to roll in the gutter, too out-of-touch to realize that he's in the gutter, or too weak to stand up to a subordinate. Not exactly character traits Americans look for in a Commander-In-Chief. |
| Saturday, October 11th, 2008 | |
| 11:00 pm | Where the Dollar and Gas Prices Are Going
This sounds like good news and it is. It will be part of a general drop in prices, as inflation gets clubbed over the head as the economy stops thrashing around in the bathtub and just lies there, slowly rotting. If you were to include housing prices in inflation indices, the US is already in deflation. Within about 6 months, unless the Fed or Treasury does something really stupid (always a possibility) the general press will be full of talks of the danger of deflation. The good news on this is that that will get banks lending again. The main reason banks aren't lending isn't fear of counterparty risk, it's because inflation is much higher than they are expected to lend at. When inflation crashes, lending will become profitable for them again, and they will do a lot more of it. Meanwhile, over the next couple months, the US Treasury needs to issue somewhere between 1.5 trillion and 2 trillion dollars of bonds. These will probably almost all be short term treasuries, very likely 3 months. This means the US dollar will continue, paradoxically, to rise, even as the economy craters, because much of that money is going to have to come from overseas. Foreign central banks and normal banks will lend the money because they know if they don't, the US will crash out and take the rest of the world with it. The dollar rising will also help moderate inflation, since it will make imports cheaper, and the US imports, well, most things. The danger point, ironically, will come when the US stops borrowing so fast and so much...
So, once the US stops borrowing as much, the dollar will begin to collapse again. The bottom line is that the US economy basically did nothing for the last 7 years. During that time the Europeans, Japanese and Chinese actually did try and improve their domestic economies. Fundamentally, they're better bets. So, the money will start to go to them. Don't expect all of this to feel as good as you might think. Yes, the price of gas and heating oil will drop, but the recession will make it feel like gas is still $4 a gallon. And the dollar increasing may make things cheaper, but American workers are going to have absolutely no pricing power and neither is American industry, so wages will stagnate at best, for those who are still employed. |
| 9:00 pm | FDL Book Salon Welcomes Steve LeVine: Putin’s Labyrinth
[Welcome Steve LeVine, author of Putin's Labyrinth and Foreign Affairs Writer for Business Week, and Jerome Guillet from DailyKos and the European Tribune.] Lately, whenever I see another article blaming Russia for turning authoritarian again, or threatening Europe (with the infamous "energy weapon"), or bullying its - usually gutsy - neighbors, I cringe. The anti-Russian drumbeat in that period has been consistent and persistent, replete with talk of a new Cold War, uniformly blaming Russia for the tense relations now existing between them and the West, such that the image of Russia again is that of a dangerous, treasonous and unpleasantly powerful enemy, led by vicious ex-KGB officers, and crushing democracy and human rights within and without. The problem with that propaganda is not that it's untrue, it's that it's not news and thus that it hides something else. To wit: why do we care about Putin's authoritarianism today while we did not in the early years of his presidency? (Hint: it's about energy) And it's the breathtaking hypocrisy of our governments towards Russia that galls: how can we take seriously pronouncements from the governments that invaded Iraq and gave us Guantanamo and Abu Grahib, and their cheerleaders, about human rights in and around Russia? So when I was asked to host this Salon and was first given the blurb for Steve LeVine's book about a number of gruesome murders or deaths that took place in Russia or involved critics of the Kremlin in the past few years, I was very worried that I'd have to write a hostile introduction, filled with scathing criticism and abundant debunking (to give you an idea of my opinions on the topic, here are two reasonably representative texts I wrote last summer, following the conflict in Georgia: Russian gas and European energy policy - a reprise and So, what to do with Russia?. But thankfully, this will not be necessary. Not that I don't disagree with Steve on some major issues, but his work has one great quality: despite the fact that he focuses on episodes of political violence under Putin's presidency, he is at least well aware of the history of political violence under Yeltsin, as he covered the wars in Chechnya in the 1990s. I have a lot of respect for the few brave - and rather isolated - journalists that covered these conflicts at a time when it was not fashionable to be as critical of Russia as it is today, and I respect the consistency of his position that covered violence then and now. He chose to make this a highly personalized story - this is a tale where he is not shy to bring himself on stage, as he interviews the family and entourage of some of the victims (and in some cases, had the opportunity to talk to them before their deaths) and tells their stories through their eyes, focusing on mundane events before or around the time of the murders - and it makes for an original and easy-to-read book. However, and this is a weakness that has been noted by others, it makes the case he makes against Putin in various asides along his tale much weaker. His main message is that Putin's Russia encourages political violence, uses it as a tool to assert itself on the world stage - and (scandalously) gets away with it. The second message is that this is fundamentally coherent with both Putin's and Russia's nature, and that the West's hostile and dismissive attitude towards Russia, which he fairly points out, is ultimately not the cause of this - Russia would have turned hostile and prickly even if the West had been more receptive to its expressed interests. We'll never know, given that we don't get to rewrite history, but he doesn't really make the case and it is an argument that makes me rather skeptical, because, ultimately, it amounts to a criticism of power politics that calls for (more vigorous) power politics to fight it. The West (or rather, Europe) is too "weak" with Russia, it needs to grow a spine and stand strong to the bully. This ignores all the power politics we played on Russia: NATO' extension, the bombing of Serbia without a UN authorization in 1999, the abrogation of the ABM Treaty, the refusal to rescind Jackson Vanik or to admit Russia in WTO, the bases in Central Asia becoming permanent features (and saying that bringing NATO to Russia's border is not hostile does not make it true, from the Russians' perspective, and from any rational observation - just imagine if Mexico had been invited to join the Warsaw Pact). But beyond such hypocrisy, that argument also forgets that we did not really care about Russia's authoritarianism as long as its oil & gas reserves were open to Western oil majors. The tide in opinions about Russia turned at the time Khodorkhovski was jailed (and prevented from merging his oil company, Yukos, with an American one), and strengthened after the latest episode of the Russian-Ukrainian gas wars in 2006 (about which I can only recommend you to read this article I wrote last year - which, by coincidence, was the time when the UK turned from a natural gas exporter into an importer and realized that, contrary to its continental neighbors, it had not built the corporate, contractual and physical infrastructure to deal with that situation. This has taken us away from the murders of Politovskya, and Litvinenko, but given that energy is, as flagged by Steve in his book, what is behind Russia's resurgence, and why we care at all about what's happening in Russia, it is worth mentioning that our policies towards Russia are driven more than anything by our elite's frustration about having lost absolute control over our energy sources, and a desire to create a diversion for the general population for the lack of sane domestic energy policies: it's easier to blame a bogeyman than to explain why we should use less energy. But I'd like to conclude with another point, which will bring my first question: what these murders show more than anything is the profound division of the Kremlin between clans that often fight each other very brutally. The unchecked violence, and the inability of the Russian State to find who's behind them, demonstrates that Putin does not actually control the various clans, and has to build policies around highly public acts he did not initiate. So; does Steve think Putin is all-powerful, or just one figure trying to navigate between forces beyond him? |
| 7:31 pm | Christopher Buckley endorses Obama Christopher Buckley, the son of National Review founder William F. Buckley, endorsed Barack Obama on Friday:
Here's why he wrote this for Tina Brown's online startup rather than share with the discerning readers of NRO:
Judging, though, by the comments at the Daily Beast (to give you the flavor of them, here's a bit of the first)
and what Wonkette found at das frei republik He's going to get those e-mails anyway. Well, at least they won't burden the National Review servers. After all, Buckley is on the Board of Trustees of his father's iconic conservative magazine. He has to watch out for that sort of thing. If you're interested in hearing more about his reasons, he discusses them (as well as why he refused to vote for GWB in '04) here. ----- *Probably not. This is what Buckley pere had to say about the president John McCain voted with 90% of the time
Of those few small spaces where Senator McCain acted like a maverick, let's just say that the Supreme Court case which established campaign money as a form of constitutionally-protected free speech was called Buckley (his brother James) v. Valeo. |
| 8:00 pm | Mormon Millennials to Use Mad Skilz To Pass Prop 8 
Moroni didn\'t like gays During a videotaped press conference on Wednesday, Mormon church leaders asked their young members to use modern tools to help pass Prop 8 and defeat marriage equality in California.
One of the Twelve Apostles of the Church, Quentin L. Cook, explained to the young people:
Don't you find it interesting that Cook made a point of telling his young co-religionists that what they are doing is legal? Mormons claim to have donated an estimated 43% of the Yes On 8 money -- much of it from outside California. The Mormon Church wants to rollback marriage equality in California -- and they are winning among younger voters, who drove Prop 8's recent gains in public opinion polls.
Please help defeat Prop 8. |
| 6:00 pm | Blue America
I was on the phone with Alan Grayson a few days ago and he told me that he feels the campaign he so painstakingly put together has degenerated into a quest for money to run ads on television, instead of an opportunity to talk with the people of Orlando about how government can help to improve their lives. There are many ways to approach running a campaign, but almost every candidate and staffer I talk to says, no matter how idealistic it starts, it always ends with TV ads. Alan's ground game probably won him the primary-- but his startling TV ads sure didn't hurt. Today Blue America, with our partners at SaysMe.TV, is launching a new application that can make everyone a political media consultant-- or, better yet, a replacement for a political media consultant. Click here to see the program. Start by picking a media market: Cincinnati- Vic Wulsin Then pick which ad you want to run. Right now we have one ad available per candidate but we're hoping to add some more in the next week. Type your name in at the top, because at the end of the ad it will credit you with paying for it. Then pick the network and the daypart (time). An individual ad can cost as little as $10, but the minimum purchase per candidate is $100. Review the ad purchase, then check off all the boxes that attest that you're a U.S. citizen and that you're not a member of the Bush cabinet, etc. And then pay for it with your credit card. SaysMe.TV will notify you before your ads run. This is the beginning of a new world in media buying. I have a feeling it's going to get better and better over the next year or so. Meanwhile, as usual, we're the pioneers. Play around with it. |
| 4:15 pm | What Does TrooperGate Mean for November 4?
First, I sort of suspect that John McCain may have been warned TrooperGate might break badly today, when he decided mid-day to put his legacy ahead of his ego.
Second, at least for the moment, the McCain team is standing behind Palin. They released a statement that claimed that the report had found Palin had not done anything wrong, that the investigation was partisan, and that Palin looked forward to the Personnel Board investigation results as she continues her conversation with the American people. In other words, Palin's still on the ticket, for the moment. They're probably stuck with her. After all, there are few people who would want to take over for her. I think KayBee Hutchison might help McCain--but why would you do it if you were her? Becoming McCain's running mate is no longer a desirable career move. And if he replaced Palin with Lieberman, it would devastate Republican turnout in November. So, for now, at least, Palin remains on the ticket. Which leads me to my third point. McCain's whole campaign since he picked Palin was about "mavericks" who take on the old way of doing things. Was. That's not going to work anymore. So now he's got an unqualified but charismatic fundie fire breather, but a really tainted claim to maverickyness (though I think McCain will claim that his refusal to push the lynch mobs is more maverickyness). In other words, since his poll numbers are already in the 42% range, McCain's bid to be President just got even more tougher, because his brand is for shit. So point four. At some point, the Republicans are going to decide that McCain's going to lose, and they need to save as many of the congressional seats as they can. They've already started pulling advertising out of toss up Congressional districts. But then there's this:
That is, at a time when McCain has already had to withdraw from a swing state (mine!!) because he's broke, the RNC may well pull their funding from him and try to save Mitch McConnell or Saxby Chambliss. So to sum up: earlier today, there was a ceiling for Obama's support. But I think that roof just got raised. |
| 3:45 pm | Baby Palin How to make Sarah Palin even more adorable (and lacking in substance)?... |
| 2:00 pm | Come Saturday Morning: The Contrast
As John Cole said the other day, about Obama:
Even better: He's running a disciplined campaign against a spoiled brat who doesn't know the meaning of the word "discipline". Here's what I mean by that: Obama’s background has been a blessing to him, in the same way that Bush’s and McCain’s backgrounds have been curses. He not only had to claw his way up on merit like Bill Clinton did, he also knew that as a black man he had to keep his nose super-duper clean and to avoid any of the temptations that sunk Clinton, but which Republicans like Rudy and Newt and Dan Burton commit without electoral penalty. Because of this, because he understood how the deck was stacked against him, because he earned every damned thing he got with hard work, discipline and talent honed to a razor’s edge, he is flummoxing the lazy, undisciplined, talentless time-servers on the other side. Not just McCain, but the ranks of College Republican legacy hires that fill up the sheltered workshops that they call ‘think tanks’—the Ben Domenechs and Jonah Goldbergs and Ann Coulters of the world. They screech and screech and chase their own tails because they have never had to actually think hard and work, and now they’re up against someone for whom hard work, discipline, patience, and proper use of brain and talent is as natural as breathing. Worse yet for them, the old tools that worked for them in the past, the crutches they relied on to avoid thinking—the appeals to racism and stupidity and naked selfish greed—are losing their power. Despite the McCain's camp's breaking through the bottom of the barrel with their nakedly racist and inflammatory posturings, they're losing ground with the very group towards which those posturings are directed: working-class white people. And meanwhile he rolls on, unruffled, No-Drama Obama, calm in any situation, and crushes the McCainites and the rest of the GOP while keeping a steady hand on the wheel. Res ipsa loquitor. The thing speaks for itself. |
| 12:15 pm | Pull Up A Chair, Special Edition On most Saturday mornings, Christy puts on a pot of coffee and invites us over to chat. Today, though, it's our turn to offer some very special FDL love to Christy and her family in the loss of her husband's mother this week. We lean on each other so much here that it has become a real community of shared joys and sorrows. We offer Christy, her husband, and their family our deep sympathy, our hugs, our spiritual energy, and our flowing love as they go through this terrible loss. We are with you. When people in our own neighborhoods suffer a loss like this, a lot of us would bring over a casserole, so that the family wouldn't have to worry about cooking for a while. Today, I'm asking you to bring a virtual casserole (or other comfort food) to Pull Up A Chair, since it's what we would do if we all lived in the same physical community. Bring your favorites here, either a description or the recipe, for her family to contemplate, and maybe some of those recipes will become favorites of her family in the future as they remember the community who loves them. We all grieve in different ways. At its worst, grief can nearly knock people down physically, and it can be hard to endure one hour to the next. It can be hard to imagine why the sky is still blue -- does it even matter? And how can people go on living normal lives all around us? Don't they understand that everything is different now?
In mourning we often need an unknown combination of time alone to contemplate and then time to be surrounded by others who care for us. It can be difficult for others to know what is the right thing to do or say. But it's always right to show that you care, that you are there for each other. A simple "I'm sorry for your loss" or a hug can be more healing than you imagine. One of the loving ideas that comes to us from the grieving family is that they are asking, instead of flowers, for folks to donate to their own local library -- libraries being a lifelong passion of Christy's mother-in-law. I am going to pass this idea along in my own circle of friends and family. We're at a physical distance from each other: Christy in the east, other family in the west, and firepups all over the globe. Even so, keep Christy and her family with you in love and in spirit this morning. She does so much for us, and today we can return her hospitality as we surround her and her family with our caring. It's been a rough time for Christy, her husband, and The Peanut as they've dealt with all of this. Christy may join us in the comments this morning, or she may decide to sleep in and check out the comments later on. Either way, please come on in, set your casseroles on the kitchen counter, and pull up a chair.... |
| 7:40 am | Paulson To Use Fannie and Freddie As Conduit to Bail Out His Friends 
Clap! Apparently Fannie and Freddie are to start buying 40 billion a month (20 billion apiece) of non-performing crap mortgage securites. This is Paulson's way to get things moving before his TARP fiasco is up and running, a way to spend more money than Congress gave him, and a way to make up for having to divert money from TARP to an equity infusion by buying preferred stocks. 200 billion was made available to Freddie and Fannie at the time they were placed into receivership. This plan will blow through that in 5 months and that doesn't even cover the fact that, well, Freddie and Fannie had massive losses and the money was meant to cover those losses, not as a slush fund to buy up trash. At this point I simply have no benefit of doubt left to give to Paulson or his cronies in the Bush administration. TARP never made any sense, and the rationale of supporting mortgage markets through this is transparently stupid. If the mortgage markets are having problem and Freddie and Fannie need to be used to support them, then buying up old crap mortgage securities is far less helpful than having them buy up new mortgages or mortgage backed securities. Instead this seems designed to help Hank's friends offload trash, more than to clear a market blockage. But, as they say in the tech business, I guess from the Bush administration's point of view, that's a feature, not a bug. |
| 5:00 am | Late Late Nite FDL: Death Cab Cutie Finds Fire Pups In The Big Tent
Chris Walla of Death Cab For Cutie boldly dove into the Big Tent in Denver for Current TV during the DNC. He found a few Firedogs along the way. What's on your mind tonight? |
| 3:35 am | McCain to followers: be respectful. Cindy, Palin: Nuh-uh. 
(AP Photo/Tom Uhlman) Senator McCain has apparently noticed the chorus of disapproval about the bloodthirsty behavior of supporters at his and Governor Palin's rallies. Or maybe he noticed the hit he's taking in the polls. At any rate, he tried to tell his supporters today to rein it in
Within limits, of course
So what does that unreduced ferocity look like?
Governor Palin disagrees. She thinks their campaign is not being inflammatory enough
So what form has that ferocity been taking?
Mrs. McCain apparently agrees that her husband's campaign is justified. Now, I would say that Mrs. McCain, who was faced in South Carolina eight years ago with a smear campaign by, well, Mr. Rove says it wasn't him, would have a fairly strong basis for comparison when discussing ugliness in political campaigns. It seems, though, that Mrs. McCain's ambitions for her husband have affected her memory some.
and which tactics would those be?
Well, fair enough. I can see how, in order saying the woman supported Pat Buchanan just because he said she did saying she belonged to a seccessionist party just because they said she did, her husband did, and she spoke to their conventions looking into the past of an almost completely unknown woman who wants to be the back-up plan to a man with recurrent cancer who was born before WW2 accusing, er, prominent lobbyists of being lobbyists and using e-mail are _completely equivalent_ to, well
suppose it would be awkward for Mrs. McCain to bring all that up just now, as her husband has hired one of the guys involved to mind Sarah Palin. But that's OK. I'm sure her husband understands. No, I'm _really_ sure her husband understands. So does Governor Palin. And so do the rest of us. Right? |
| 2:35 am | How McCain Can Win As The Straitjacket Express hurtles ever faster towards the ditch, belching toxic plumes of race hatred and flop sweat, I find myself wondering just what it would take for the Palin/McCain ticket to eke out a victory in November. After much brain-wracking, I have come up with several possible scenarios. They don't all have to come true; two or three would probably be sufficient. 1. McCain successfully unleashes his secret plan to get bin Laden, sends Sarah Palin into Afghanistan with helicopter and high-powered rifle. Bin Laden said to be wearing Obama button before Palin field-dresses him. 2. Obama inexplicably turns final debate into profanity-laced tirade about how much he hates white people. 3. Stock market makes miraculous recovery after McCain announces his "tax cuts and ice cream for everybody" bailout plan. 4. "First Dude" Todd Palin releases wildly successful beefcake calendar, and John McCain doesn't. 5. Iraqi Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds settle their differences and form liberal democratic coalition government. To show their appreciation for Bush and McCain's glorious Surge, they hand over enormous hidden stockpile of WMDs and several thousand militants. 6. Swing-state Obama supporters afflicted with mysterious 24-hour coma on Election Day. 7. In stunning series of reversals, Al Gore and both Clintons endorse McCain; Joe Lieberman endorses Obama. 8. Obama busted in drug-fueled sex orgy and/or multi-state crime spree with Bill Ayers, Reverend Wright, and Tony Rezko. 9. DIEBOLD MADNESS!!! 10. Fairy-tale wedding between Bristol and Levi eclipses Charles and Di in ratings and swoon factor. 11. Alaska Independence Party registers 50 million new voters. 12. Medical researchers announce that McCain has survived cancer so many times that his blood now cures it. 13. We all take this list seriously and stay home. |
