It was nice to see Senators Smoot and Hawley Collins and Nelson on my tee-vee this morning, and then later that 14 kids octuplet lady who is on NBC every day.

Each one of them seems to have the same basic grasp of basic economics, although having 14 kids in the hopes that someone will pay for them is probably going to actually work in the end.

Meanwhile, in the real world, check out the truly frightening chart Barry Ritholtz has showing job losses for all postwar recessions.

I have no idea how to stop the media from stupidly blibbering about 14 babies and tax cuts, nor do I have any idea how to stop the right wing narrative that revolves around how bad it is to fund things like education. Maybe if we made up words, say like “bankuporking,” it would help.

The morons are winning, that much is clear.

We are at a defining moment in our history. God bless the United States of America.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFvrL_nqx2c[/youtube]

The point is not that the situation is exactly the same, because it’s not, but a president can indeed explain stuff if he can form coherent sentences.

I trust Obama will do so, perhaps in a news conference on Monday, and given the situation it’s worthwhile to hear how it can be done.

I’m old enough to remember when there were debates in the US Senate that were considered historic and important, and you could watch the debate without wanting to hurl things through the screen.

Sadly, the junior senator from Louisiana, David Vitter the whoremonger, just got up and babbled on and on about ACORN and how vital it is that no money go them, offering an amendment as such. I’m sure that’s the first thought of American who are losing jobs and houses.

Truly a different planet.

Anyhow, I try not to post “call your senators” very often because you are likely smart enough to decide when you need to call your senators. Like, um, today. And be nice.

At The Plum Line, Greg Sargent takes a whack at explaining the blogger term “The Villagers.” After tracing its roots back to the Lewinsky scandal and a 1998 Sally Quinn article, Sargent delivers a cogent definition of the political mindset of The Villagers:

In political terms, the term “Villagers” denotes a kind of small-minded refusal to think outside an “acceptable” center-right consensus, and a refusal to acknowledge it when a majority of the American people take a view on a particular issue that is not in line with that center-right consensus. Thus, the “Villagers” include, in part, Democratic elected officials and consultants who insist that their party can’t succeed unless they ally their party with that center-right consensus; think-tankers who churn out position papers designed to prop up this elite consensus view; and elite pundits who insist that mainstream liberal views are radically leftist and insist on “bipartisanship” for its own sake, damn the consequences.

This elite consensus, in the view of the bloggers, represents this particular Village’s hidebound small-town values, which must be maintained at all costs to protect this elite’s status and interests.

And of course there is also The Iron Law Of Institutions, as set forth by Jonathan Schwarz in 2005. Consider the two terms and you have a basic understanding of why the Senate may struggle today to reach 60 votes instead of passing the damn stimulus bill 100-0.

It’s better to be in charge of smoking rubble than to not be in charge.

The President Strikes Back.

Whether you call it bi-partisanship, post-partisanship or non-partisanship, it doesn’t work as a one way street, as the GOP has so quickly and ably proven.

This isn’t about partisanship anyway, it’s about whether the already completely fucked economy becomes the biggest clusterfuck in our lifetimes, if not ever. It’s time to start burying lots of bottles of money, so the capitalists can go about digging them up and people who lost jobs can get back to work. Yes, the titans of industry and finance will insist they solved everything, but since we’re the practical ones we’ll have to allow them that conceit.

Krugman is still warning of a deflationary trap. Granted, no one has a crystal ball and it’s fine to consult with conservative economists, but the stimulus bill cannot be picked to death by Republicans and sell-out Democrats and still stave off disaster.

It’s good the administration seems to recognize this basic fact now.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlynf–lsxA[/youtube]

It does look like leather at least. Smell the Glove, progressives.

This is a fascinating story from California about a mortgage broker who is admitting all kinds of fraud.

The seven-page essay by Christopher Warren, 27, replaced the home page of Triduanum Financial which abruptly closed its doors last month.

Warren said his career in the mortgage industry began when he was still a teenager and took a job with the now-defunct Ameriquest in 2001. Warren claimed he manipulated loan applications to secure financing and eventually hacked into the Ameriquest computer system to approve loans himself with no oversight.

Warren said he left Ameriquest three years later with the personal information of 680,000 Ameriquest customers to start his own mortgage banking operation in Sacramento called WTL Financial.

“At the ripe old age of 22, a fraudster trained by the best corporate environment for fraud, I built a company modeled after the movie Boiler Room,” Warren wrote.

Warren said WTL Financial faked credit scores and W-2s to peddle loans to investors who failed to scrutinize the files.

And now he’s very sorry.

In his essay, Warren said he helped ruin the nation’s economy and hopes his experiences can help reform the mortgage and banking systems.

“Almost a billion dollars of toxic assets came from me,” he wrote. “Looking back at the life I have led, I beg a higher power for forgiveness.”

I guess what we really don’t know is how many of these people are still out there, working in the industry. (And yes, there are many honest mortgage brokers! I’m glad we had one in the early part of this decade, it worked out well.)

But the outright fraud and theft has yet to be reckoned with, and it’s still damaging the economy. When people talk about “fixing the housing market” you rarely hear much discussion of making sure more fraud cannot occur, other than in an abstract, “we’ll get to real reform at some point” fashion.

Meanwhile, gimme another $20 billion, suckers, and don’t tell us how to pay our executives. It may be your taxpayer money but it’s our town.

(Props to The Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter.)

Joe Turner at Political Buzz reports there will be a special, preliminary state revenue forecast on Feb. 19, at the request of Sen. Craig Pridemore, D-Vancouver, and several other lawmakers, including Sen. Joe Zarelli, D-Ridgefield. Apparently Pridemore thinks lawmakers need to get an early look ahead of the scheduled March 19 forecast, so they can well, be more worried.

Tough times. What’s the over-under?

Not pure as driven snow.

Tom Daschle, President Barack Obama’s choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services, withdrew his name from consideration for the post after being dogged for days by disclosures that he didn’t pay his taxes on time.

Along with revelations about Tim Geithner and Nancy Killefer, this is now officially a problem for the Obama administration.

Let’s face it, at a time when many ordinary Americans are petrified about job losses and losing their homes, nominating Democrats who somehow manage to not pay the taxes they owe looks mighty bad. There may be reasonable explanations for some of these cases, but what will hit the late night shows and right wing talk radio will be a distilled version that amounts to “what a bunch of hypocrites.”

Having experienced hands on deck is an admirable goal. The problem is that a lot of the DLC-Clinton types were part of the same money-grubbing, corrupt Washington D.C. establishment that we need cleaned up.

The Obama administration has seemed to take pains to court the DC mandarins, charming them personally and making a visit to the House to speak with the GOP leadership. But this ain’t beanbag. The Republican Party will fight, scratch and claw above or below the belt to carry out the directives of their putative leader, Roach Lumpenbaugh, who has decreed that Obama must fail, even if it damages the country. They will take full advantage of any ethical lapses on the part of Democrats, and we simply cannot afford that.

Americans need reform starting now, in all sorts of areas: the financial industry, health care, energy and the way government itself operates. Might as well bring in some real reformers at this point.

Oh, and check their taxes. It’s hard being pure as the driven snow, but it’s not that hard to pay your taxes.

Pan B is not an abortifacient, even if that inconvenient fact destroys the entire premise of Joe Connelly’s column this morning. While it’s great fun to attack liberals for hypocrisy, it’s actually more fun if it’s actually true.

If I were a pharmacist I would, as a matter of conscience, require men getting erectile dysfunction medications to present a marriage license and an affidavit from their wife acknowledging approval. That would pretty much stop this endless, phony controversy, which at its core represents the desire of religious extremists to subjugate women. If contraception is so evil, why are medically created erections so damn holy? Huh?

This is an excellent example of how regulations need to be written in a practical, careful and balanced manner, since there can be severe medical consequences if a woman is wrong about when intercourse happened or is lying about it. Pharmacists are not doling out chicklets back there, so it might be wise to avoid “make them give it out or else” regulations as well.

We’re supposed to be at the end of the attacks on science, but guess not. It has been cold this winter, so there’s another column that could be written.

Not a surprise, but The Columbian confirms that some people got telephone calls warning them to take their money out of the about-to-fail Bank of Clark County, and some didn’t. And it’s legal!

Insider calling did occur. According to one contractor with $500,000 on deposit at the bank, he was alerted by a telephone tipster to get his money out of the bank two days in advance of the Jan. 16 closure. “Thank God,” he said, “or I wouldn’t now be in business.”

According to Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. documents, customers pulled an estimated $28 million out of Bank of Clark County as word got around that the bank was circling the drain.

Others weren’t so lucky to get the advance notice.

At least one retired senior is wondering when or if she will get back $160,000 in uninsured deposits with the bank.

So the bidness guys and gals made sure their buddies were warned. The hoi polloi who had deposits over the insurance limit, well, we’re sorry.

Let me emphasize that, according to The Columbian, this was all legal. Apparently bankers can go around tipping off their friends, no problem. Neat system we have.

And politicians wonder why people get up in arms. Maybe someone at that big domed thing in Olympia would like to look into all this? I know life isn’t always fair, but little old ladies losing their money while contractors get theirs just doesn’t seem right.

Do bank executives eat peanut paste products?

On Thursday The Big Picture had some excerpts from the January newsletter of GMO, a global investment firm. The comments were written by Jeremy Grantham, the chairman of GMO’s board, and are absolutely fascinating, if not easily quoted on a blog like this.

The excerpts at The Big Picture were run under the title Grantham assigned the first section of his newsletter, “Greed + Incompetence + A Belief in Market Efficiency = Disaster,” and they are worth a moment of your time. If you want to worry about the people Obama has picked to pilot the boat during this storm, check it out.

But the the part that really stunned me was Grantham’s discussion about the scale of the economic disaster, especially when it comes to write-downs and private debt. Keep reading for more. [Read more…]

Romenesko linked to this 1981 television report about how newspapers could someday be delivered via computer. A man named Richard Halloran, identified in the report as “Owns Home Computer,” talked about being able to give “interrogation” to newspapers due to the ability to copy and save articles, thus making him possibly the first man to envision blogging. Sorta.

Sadly, one editor talked about how they weren’t looking to make money at it.