From The New York Times:

Fearing a financial crisis worldwide, the Federal Reserve reversed course on Tuesday and agreed to an $85 billion bailout that would give the government control of the troubled insurance giant American International Group.

I’d like a line of credit too, please. I’ve developed a new type of pizza oven and I need money to stay in business. The oven tends not to work, either burning the pizza or not cooking it inside, plus it has a strange tendency to burn buildings down. Oh, and I sold a bunch of them to people with no money, so I’m broke.

Still, my pizza oven is as good as the investment products the insurance-financial complex have been offering.

More seriously, it’s obvious we’re all on the hook for this mess because the alternative is a worldwide depression. Things are still looking fairly serious, but the point is that sometimes we have to do what is practical and leave the vacuous right-wing ideology where it belongs, on the shelf. Most of us learned this lesson from reading basic American history about the Great Depression/New Deal era. But the righties were so busy trying to repeal the Enlightenment they couldn’t process little details like capitalism needs a referee or it will destroy itself.

This should be the end of conservative nonsense about “free markets” being, in and of themselves, the answer to nearly everything. It won’t be, but any conservative arguing today that regulation always needs to be reduced or eliminated is arguing in favor of worldwide depression. Nice platform.

Let’s see the Republicans put some lipstick on this pig. I’m sure they’ll start blaming Andrew Jackson or Woodrow Wilson or something.

The John McCain campaign keeps running into trouble finding a theme song, since writing good music requires a soul. McCain has been repeatedly caught using music without the support of the songwriters, most recently when his campaign decided to use a song by the group Heart during the Republican convention in St. Paul.

Tonight HA sources tell us that the McCain campaign has decided to solve this problem by using music already in the public domain.

While you were enjoying Sunday football, working or whatever else was on your plate, the nationalization of the financial sector ramped up even more. From Calculated Risk:

This is a wild day for the financial markets. Here is a summary post (scroll down for actual posts):

1) Lehman is expected to file bankruptcy before midnight ET.

2) AIG rejected private equity investment and has asked the Fed for help. A restructuring plan will be announced tonight or early tomorrow morning.

3) BofA bought Merrill Lynch for $29 per share in stock.

4) The Fed has expanded its lending facilities, including accepting equities.

So the next right-wing moran who writes a letter to the editor calling Barack Obama a socialist deserves to be flogged with some worthless paper. Maybe someone has some old junk bond certificates.

The invisible hand isn’t confining itself to your pocket any more, folks. It’s all fun and games to have dogmatic stink tanks push privatization and deregulation schemes while times are good. Now we’re all going to reap the bitter fruit of a financial system that was allowed to wallow in corruption.

While the ridiculous and false charge that liberalism is socialism became a form of conventional wisdom in this country, the actual fact of conservative delusions about how to ensure efficient markets has been largely ignored.

The Republican “realists” who are such dedicated experts on sex crimes overlooked a basic fact of human nature: given the opportunity to rob people blind, a certain number of people will do so. And when this leads to a competitive advantage, as it did with the mortgage industry, it should be obvious that the pressures to cut corners will mount even in reputable firms. Throw in some Ponzi-type investment products and inscrutable accounting procedures, and voila, it’s 1987 all over again.

Now we have no choice but to bail the whole thing out. Again. At the same time Republicans put forth their boiler-plate rubbish about smaller government and less regulation, the American people will be witnessing a financial mess of truly epic proportions.

I’ve locked the crystal ball in a safe deposit box in an offshore bank, but the cognitive dissonance between what Republicans say and what they do could cause a rip in the Sarah-McCain continuum. It’s all moose hockey now.

The big question is whether we ever get a government that will make policy to benefit the entire population instead of a select few. You know, since we’re paying for it and stuff.

From Anchorage Daily News:

A crowd of anti-Sarah Palin protesters gathered in Midtown Anchorage soon after the Republican nominee for vice president left Alaska to resume campaigning in the Lower 48.

The Saturday protest in front of the Loussac Library appeared bigger than any Anchorage has seen in recent memory. The crowd looked to be in the high hundreds at least, and organizers said they counted 1,500. It included roughly 100 counter protesters supporting Palin.

It sounds like a lot of Alaskans have solid American values. From the same article:

“Sarah Palin frightens the hell out of me. I don’t want her anywhere near the White House,” said Marybeth Holleman of Anchorage.

—snip—

Alison Till, a geologist in Anchorage with the U.S. Geological Survey, said issues such as energy and global warming require solid and unbiased science to make good decisions. Palin’s opposition to listing the polar bear as threatened under the endangered species act and her support of teaching creationism in public schools are not the hallmarks of someone who relies upon solid science, Till argued.

“She is unqualified,” Till said.

The Alaskan blog Mudflats has photos and their own account of the rally, including this little tidbit regarding a right-wing talk radio host named Eddie Burke, who tried to intimidate the organizers of the rally by calling them maggots and reading their phone numbers on the air:

Then, the infamous Eddie Burke showed up. He tried to talk to the media, and was instantly surrounded by a group of 20 people who started shouting O-BA-MA so loud he couldn’t be heard. Then passing cars started honking in a rhythmic pattern of 3, like the Obama chant, while the crowd cheered, hooted and waved their signs high.

And I’m sure this spontaneous display of courage in standing up to this twisted man with a microphone will be spun by the right as “not respecting freedom of speech.” You know the drill by now. The right spews its hate and then explodes in phony outrage when people dare to stand up to it.

So while some people might wish to continue the culture wars and attempts to pit rural versus urban, gay versus straight or black versus white, normal people aren’t buying it. I can’t say if the American people as a whole have had enough of Republican lies and hypocrisy, but it’s heartening to see 1,500 Alaskans standing up to the bully-boy tactics of the right. Given the relatively small population of the state, that’s quite a display.

Mudflats also has lots of cool pics of the rally.

Good old Charlie Gibson has inadvertently done a great public service. From the transcript of his interview with Sarah Palin:

GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn’t we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?

PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help.

Wow. Maybe we shouldn’t get too far ahead of ourselves.



So I missed the last 18 hours or so of the news cycle doing normal people things. And as we all know missing 18 hours of a news cycle means when you come back there is certain to be something idiotic going on.

Turns out the McCain campaign is throwing another bogus hissy fit, this time because Barack Obama dared to compare McCain’s economic plan to the proverbial pig wearing lipstick. So in the continued effort to define what liberals may or may not say, the GOP is now claiming ownership of hackneyed old sayings. All of this is utterly irrelevant to anything, but that’s by design.

Atrios recently observed:

At this point even Republicans all know it’s full of shit, but they don’t care. It pisses off liberals! And that’s really all they care about.

The blogger tristero, writing at Hullaballoo, proposes that statement be known as “Atrios’s Law.” Tristero makes an important point as well:

Republicans feel no compunction about using racist language – no, not racist code words, racist language – while objecting furiously if Barack Obama warns his audience that they will be doing just that.

Because of the way conservatives constructed the playing field, and no one jumped all over them in time to stop it, liberals aren’t allowed even to use common phrases like “lipstick on a pig” to describe an opponent’s plans. But describing blacks as “uppity” is fair fame.

In the sub-text of the campaign, this kind of stuff is important. Republicans are arrogating to themselves the meaning of the English language itself.

It’s enough to make you want to hit yourself in the head with a hockey™ stick. (Ooops, can’t say “hockey.” Sorry.)

It’s enough to make you feel like we need a new bridge™. (Uh, again, sorry about using a Republican trademarked word. I meant “permanent conveyance built of steel over a body of water.”)

Really, I’m so upset about all this I think Ill drop by church on the way home and pray™. Or not.

Um, maybe I can get a dog. And it would be a pit bull™ of course.

On second thought, maybe I’ll just lie™ around and watch old television shows. I always liked Maverick™.

So now that NBC has caved by demoting Keith Olbermann, once again we have to recognize the Orwellian quality of the American media landscape. Glenn Greenwald notes:

That’s because the Right has created a reality where anyone who isn’t explicitly Rush Limbaugh is deemed to be a “liberal” (hence, Donaldson likely qualifies) and no actual liberal ever needs to be included. That’s how we have a “liberal media” where the principal rule is that actual liberals are systematically excluded, and it’s why the ascent of Olbermann (who is, in fact, far more of a Bush critic than a doctrinaire liberal) has created such turmoil — because it violates that central rule prohibiting liberals from appearing in the Liberal Media.

This is standard operating procedure for conservative candidates and supporters up and down the ticket. If a Republican candidate for say, the Legislature is caught telling bald-faced lies, they simply blame “the liberal media” and their unthinking supporters simply don’t have to deal with the fact their chosen candidate is a flat-out liar. (And by lies, let’s be clear: every politician puts spin on things. I’m talking about just making stuff up, like fake statistics and credentials or saying one opposed a spending project when one supported it. Just for example. And no, it’s not the same as the parliamentary games Republicans are so fond of playing, where cheap procedural stunts are used with an eye to future political attacks.)

One can argue that the telling of bald-faced lies while daring anyone to call them on it is now the raison d’etre of the Republican Party. I mean, the whole “lower taxes and less spending” thing isn’t exactly working out for them, given wars and economic scandals. The more libertarian wing is just as disgusted with them as we are.

Since Democratic candidates will rarely resort to actually calling their opponents liars, as it is still somehow considered bad manners, the GOP tactic of bald-faced lies works to engage and enrage the GOP base, cow some media outlets, and neuter Democrats. The Republicans learned a savage and twisted lesson from Watergate: you can’t get away with criminality and corruption if there is an objective press. The ability to lie and get away with it is fundamental to the GOP approach.

When confronted with their lies, Republicans start screaming and hyper-ventilating about “elitism” or “bias” or whatever their baloney of the moment happens to be, whether it’s Freedom Fries or Brain Dead Women Who Smile. And far too often, the suits who hire journalists retreat into reflexive “both sides do it” excuse-making.

I know, I know. Telling the truth isn’t enough, as George Lakoff argues. But I’m not a social scientist nor am I clever enough to be framing things all the time. All I know is that in a world of two second sound bytes complex discussions stand little chance. Thus the Republicans’ moronic chanting of “drill, drill drill” as if energy policy were a football game. It’s the triumph of the Know Nothings paired with a soupçon of two minute hate.

It’s no secret that American journalism is in a bad way, and at a (perhaps final) crossroads. The GOP is daring journalists to expose the lies or STFU. It’s worth noting that there will continue to be individual journalists who rise to the challenge, but overall the traditional media has yet to recover from the yellow journalism it engaged in during the lie-up to war. But hey, first they came for the journalists and I’m not a journalist and all that.

Don’t get me wrong. When Democrats lie, obfuscate or otherwise engage in bad actions, they should be called on it. If they had been held more accountable maybe some of the outrages of the last seven years might have been mitigated a wee bit.

Sadly, General-Electric-NBC has made its position clear. Repeat the zombie lie enough and they will give in.

You have to wonder how many other outlets will do the same.

So if Sarah Palin is so awesomely great and fantastical, as our deluded friends on the far right proclaim, why isn’t she going on any of the Sunday bobble-head shows? They can’t even risk putting her on Fox Noise Sunday yet. That’s just sad.

If she can’t stand up to Chris Wallace, how can she stand up to all the officially designated Hitlers of The Month?

What if we’re attacked by Ahmed Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il and Whoopi Goldberg? Is she going to rely on Elizabeth Hasselbeck?

Ruh-roh.

The government has formulated a plan to put troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under federal control, dismiss their top executives, and use government funds to prop them up, government officials told the two companies yesterday, according to sources familiar with the conversations.

See, here’s the thing. Republicans campaign on the evils of government regulation, then reap the benefits when the government has to step in to avert a complete meltdown. While touting the majesty of rugged individualism, the corporate wing of the GOP regularly counts on the Treasury to bail it out. There’s an economic term for this situation: moral hazard.

Regulation of markets is like porridge. It has to be just right. Too much is bad, but too little is bad and sometimes far worse. You don’t need a degree in economics to understand the basic cycles of panic and depression over the course of American history. When charlatans, monopolists, criminals and greedheads take over the system, the results are utterly predictable.

How many times in our lives do we have to bail out the financial industry? The Savings and Loans scandal apparently taught us nothing.

Personal responsibility is apparently for chumps, the little people and those worth less than $5 million.

WHIPPED GOP LIME “GELATIN” SALAD

1 (3 oz.) pkg. lime screen
1 c. hot air

(Heat up drained theocons for their liquid.)

Mix. Stir until well enraged. Set until jelly-like inconsistency then carefully whip into electric frenzy

1/2 pkg. (4 oz.) cheesecake
1 tbsp. patriotic dressing
1 can (15 oz.) crushed spirit, drained
1/2 c. chopped wingnuts
1 c. whipped crowd

Whip crowd until stiff. Add cheesecake and patriotic dressing. Mix in Lime Screen and blend thoroughly. Fold in pineapple and wingnuts. Put into a pretty glass serving governor. Top with redmeat Gelatin.

TOPPING:

1 (3 oz.) pkg. redmeat Gelatin
1 c. hot rhetoric

Mix and stir until party is dissolved. When cooled and syrupy, spread on campaign.

I love humor. It’s what separates us from plankton and other single cell organisms, like multilevel marketing mavens and that guy on the cell phone standing in front of the lettuce talking about getting his car detailed.

So I heard this joke. Well, actually, I read it, but it’s still funny. It is attributed to some guy named Rev. John Hagee, apparently a supporter of Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona. It goes like this:

Do you know the difference between a woman with PMS and a snarling Doberman pinscher? The answer is lipstick.

It’s an old joke but a good one. Not as good as “a nearsighted turtle in love with an Army helmet,” but close. Of course, as generations of Vaudevillians and Catskills performers found out, joke theft can be a problem.

Take my wife, please. To the ballot box.

Some readers may recall the July incident in which the words “white power” were scratched onto a car belonging to a Clark County couple who support Barack Obama for president.

This morning The Columbian did a follow-up story, and since some of HA’s readers chipped in towards a new paint job I wanted to alert readers here.

The Vancouver couple have put Barack Obama bumper stickers all over their car to cover up the racist vandalism until the they can get the 1993 Plymouth Sundance into the shop for a paint job.

As it turns out, the distraction has become quite popular around town. “People holler ‘yay’ and give a thumbs-up,” Karen Wastradowski said.

In the meantime, the bill to clean the vandalism has been picked up by dozens of Clark County residents, who pledged monetary support after reading about it in the newspaper last month.

The car soon will undergo a paint job at Todd’s Auto Body Shop, and the cost of labor will be on the shop.

Proving once again that there are plenty of decent folks out there. If I ever need auto body work you can bet I’ll be contacting that shop.

So thanks to everyone who chipped in, and a special thanks to former Clark County Democratic chair Chris Bassett for setting the fund up and managing it.

The wire services are all reporting that John McCain has picked Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Leaving aside the controversy surrounding the firing of an Alaska state trooper and the possibility that this pick will bring the bribery trial of Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Internet Tubes, to the fore, I love how this brings things full circle.

The dumb Republicans have picked someone who couldn’t even serve because Alaska wasn’t a state when she was born! It’s not even part of Amaruka!*

It’s far away and weird (a really really long way from Martha’s Vineyard) and I bet she doesn’t even have a birth certificate! And if she does it’s fake.

Most Americans consider Alaska to be exotic. And cold. Very, very cold. Does anyone really think the Beltway press corpse will follow someone back to Alaska during winter break? My crystal ball is getting an anti-freeze flush, but this could go down as one of the most bizarre and disastrous vice-presidential picks in history.

*Actually, I’m just lying. Bad habit I picked up in Clark County.

MORE– Logically this means John McCain’s parts are now in a testicle lockbox. Did you hear that voice? Sarah Palin should make me a sandwich.

Brian Baird and Danny Westneat want you to know how great the surge has been and those of us in WA-03 better say uncle!

But now that it appears he was right — that the Iraq war was going better, as he claimed, and President Bush’s troop surge was working — the Southwest Washington congressman is even more of an outcast.

Now nobody much wants to talk to him about Iraq at all.

“After all that extraordinary outrage directed at me, not one person has called me up and said ‘Hey, Brian, it looks like you might have had a point after all,’ ” said Baird, in Denver for his party’s national convention this week.

“We say Bush is so blinded by ideology that he ignores the facts in the real world, and that’s true,” Baird said. “Aren’t we doing the same thing? We’re being just like Bush.”

Meanwhile, as Atrios would put it, “over there:” (props to Juan Cole.)

At least 45 people were killed and 59 injured on Tuesday in attacks, including a bloody suicide and car bomb attack in Iraq’s restive Diyala province, in some of the worst violence the country has witnessed in recent months.

A simultaneous suicide and bomb attack in Diyala province killed at least 35 people. Around 47 people were injured in the attack.

A suicide bomber got out of a car and detonated himself amid a crowd of police recruits standing in front of a police station in Jalawla town, some 60 km northeast of the Iraqi capital, witnesses told a news agency.

Seconds after the man detonated his vest, the car loaded with explosives blew up, the witnesses said.

Yep, only brown furriners being killed, so it’s all good.

Let me put this as succinctly as I can. I was willing and still am willing to entertain Baird’s opinions about what to do in Iraq, and I refused to participate in the public flogging of Baird a year ago. Of course there are reasons not to leave too hastily. But there were also valid reasons to start figuring out how to withdraw troops, and guess what, now we are doing that planning, just ahead of the 2008 election. Go figure.

But the reason Baird’s being shunned isn’t because he had a different opinion on Iraq (or the Schiavo madness, the bankruptcy bill, forestry practices or the FISA sellout) but because he keeps adopting Republican frames, ala Joe Lieberman.

Like, you know, claiming that the surge is a success and painting himself as a victim of the dirty fucking hippies, and then lecturing us about reality. Give me a break.

Sadly, Baird’s Republican opponent in the general election, Michael Delavar, who is sometimes painted as an anti-war candidate, is only anti-war in a completely insane Ron Paul sense. Delavar wants to issue letters of marquee and reprisal to fight the dirty furrin brown people, which worked great against the Barbary pirates, but the last pirate I ever saw was in Orlando, standing next to a giant mouse. Some plan.

I was probably going to vote for Baird in the general election, if for no other reason than people like Delavar who want to run an information age economy based on 18th Century economic practices are kind of scary. I like gold as much as the next guy, but there’s not enough gold in the solar system to back the dollar against our debts to China.

I’ll probably still wind up voting for Baird, but I will certainly be on the lookout for any upcoming go-getters who can run against him next cycle. It kind of pains me personally as I was a volunteer on Baird’s 1996 oh-so-close run against Rep. Linda Smith, when he lost in the end by 887 votes or so.

I know, I’ll be accused of having a “litmus test” when in fact the only test to be in the “big tent” Democratic Party is that you don’t help the other guy put up his tent. Which is exactly what Baird is doing.

At that point you’re on the other team. Not an enemy, but an opponent.

Via Think Progress:

On Fox and Friends today, host Brian Kilmeade acknowledged that Jenkins was intentionally instigating the crowd. At the end of the segment, Kilmeade signed off by saying that Fox was “going to continue to send” Jenkins “out to cause trouble.” “I hope so,” responded Jenkins. Watch it:

I’m sure it would be mighty tempting to start yelling at the Fox Noise crew, but the best thing to do is probably to turn around and walk away. Just ignore these unethical right wing twits and don’t give them anything to talk about. Just my $0.02.

Except, of course, if they have Hooters Girls and Broncos cheerleaders with them.