Paul Krugman says the deal sucks, Tom Maguire says Krugman is hyper-partisan and should be ignored.
Assignment for readers. Krugman’s track record vs. Maguire’s (hint- Krugman wins).
Bonus points for delving through Maguire’s never-ending Scooter Libby apologia (hint #2- it is all Russert’s fault).
How the fuck was I this stupid to follow these transparently idiotic fools for so long?
John +5
dmsilev
Look on the bright side. You managed to pull out of the bubble and regained some perspective on the world. They’re still trapped in their own little distorted alternate universes.
-dms
Scott H
Best line goes to Atrios:
Stuck in the Fun House
Ah, fudgesickles, it’s Saturday Night and we got homework.
99 Percent Pure
Tim Wise calls it “Your Nation on White Privilege;” I’ll merely politely say that you were duped, and believed the lie.
Just be happy that you’re all right now.
zzyzx
John – one of the hardest things to do is to bust yourself out of the axioms that you believe in. Not only are they largely unprovable, but our brains naturally filter information to support our premises. The smarter you are, the easier it can be to build up rationalizations. That’s one of the reasons I started reading you after all; I wanted to make sure I wasn’t trapped in the liberal bubble.
…of course now you agree with me on almost everything which makes it harder to use you in that manner :)
David
Most likely, you were indoctrinated in childhood… Thinking on your own instead of taking conservative talking points as gospel (literally) requires some cognitive dissonance – like Katrina, the Iraq War, etc.
Nothing like the shock doctrine to wake you to the new (but pre-existing) reality of Republican misrule.
tavella
It’s a question a lot of us who weren’t have asked. I’m not even being snide; figuring how you, who are not inherently a stupid person, was conned by them, and more importantly how you were finally made to see reality, would help a fuck of a lot with the many who are still in their strange enchantment.
eponymous
How the fuck was I this stupid to follow these transparently idiotic fools for so long?
Well, you did say you were a Newcastle supporter back in the day – that does explain quite a bit, actually…
Scott H
How true. John Cole used to be my go-to guy to balance out Kos. Of course, he was bat-shit delusional back then (which naturally made anything I posted a ‘troll’), but he showed promise.
Splitting Image
It’s like the Voice of Saruman that Tolkien wrote about in the Lord of the Rings. Saruman’s skill was his ability to make everything he said sound reasonable to whomever he was directing his words to. He even overpowers Treebeard by convincing him that he had been completely defeated and it was no longer necessary to hold him captive.
The way Gandalf exposes Saruman is to force him to speak in front of several groups of people, all keyed to listen to different appeals. All of them hear Saruman make arguments that they are unswayed by, but which they think other people are bound to listen to.
That’s what’s been happening this year. The Republicans stitched together an alliance of interest groups who all seemed to have more or less good reasons to vote Republican, but who have more or less parted company right now. McCain is forced to speak to each of them in turn, and we’re all watching him and his supporters flip-flop as they go. It’s a pitiful sight.
Barbara
How were you so delusional for so long? Well, many an unhappy spouse has asked the same question of themselves, but the answer is probably that at some point in time, the relative balance of sanity and probity between the parties really was not THIS far out of balance. I do remember that time. There were principled differences, and some Democrats were a little insane about certain things. It all made sense then.
What’s scary is how many apparently smart people still haven’t figured it out. They don’t all begin and end their political disquisition with the issue of abortion. So I don’t know.
jake
They never did anything that made you personally uncomfortable.
The Grand Panjandrum
And thus the FSM smote Timmeh.
Stop beating yourself over this shit. Jesus! Its not like you voted for Bush … twice …
On a more serious note, in a previous thread I believe it was Dennis–SGGM who recommended a small per transaction fee on Wall Street thieves to be put in a trust fund much like the FDIC charges bank for insuring deposits. I say FUCK YEAH! (I say this as a serious investor with a decent portfolio.) Why the hell should my working stiff brother be required to bail these assholes out? I’ve got a few schekels tucked away so I don’t mind paying the freight for some insurance. Isn’t that what this really is? Insurance a posteriori?
Tom Maguire? Please put a warning in the headline next time so I don’t spew perfectly good beer all over my laptop next time. Tom is a very smart guy but he spend too much time with a lot of Republican dick lodged deep in his throat.
Barbara
Also, one point that should be made about this bailout: how clearly it is that the only real leverage Bush has and perhaps ever had is fear. This time it’s fear of implosion — so D’s (and other right thinking people in Congress) should be hiring their own experts to second guess the true doomsayers of Bernanke and Paulson. Bernanke is probably a lot more credible than Paulson, because of his position, background, and relative lack of identification with Wall Street, but still, this looks to me like it has all the usual elements of Bush overreaching enabled by fearmongering.
r€nato
the next person who tells me, “Yeah the Republicans haven’t done a very good job but the Democrats are worse!” is gonna get it. How could you possibly think that anything could be worse than the last 8 years, short of, you know, nuclear war or invasion?
jeffreyw
All hands to battle stations!
Brachiator
Tip? Meet iceberg.
A friend whose husband is a banker recently emailed me the following:
A fundamental problem is that the government is now holding the bag for assets that have been extremely over-valued, and large numbers of people will still be unable to afford their homes because their incomes were never high enough to qualify them to be homeowners in the first place.
And Bush’s reaction has been typical. He kept insisting that there was no problem, and then when things blew up in his face, he was suddenly trying to get Congress to hurry up and pass legislation which, when you look into the details, maintains the status quo.
And, true to form, the Democrats fall for the okey-doke and capitulate to Bush’s demands.
Man, I hope that Obama, who has held back, releases a plan which does not make either Democrats or the Bush administration happy. I wouldn’t even care if it were flawed. The Bush approach is to always try to prevent reasonable oversight of financial markets no matter what.
As an aside, I was particularly annoyed with the recent edition of the PBS program, Washington Week in Review, which featured a panel of business reporters. I was surprised to see the reporter from the Wall St. Journal admit that Bush’s tax cuts favored the rich and did not result in the creation of more jobs, thus demolishing the central myth of Republican economics.
But instead of moderator Gwen Ifill asking these reporters their opinion of the bailout, I kept wanting her to ask the room: Why is it that none of you predicted the subprime mess and why did many of you indulge the fantasy that housing prices would rise forever?
tom.a
John +5 and it’s not even 7pm yet, I can’t wait for the 11pm post, woohoo!
burnspbesq
Krugman is hyper-partisan. Doesn’t mean he’s not right.
Jody
How were you that stupid? I’ll tell you how.
The goddam right wing in this country treats it’s politics like a football game. Who gives a crap if they’re correct or not; it’s the home team and winning is all that matters.
Tribalism trumps everything else with these guys.
r€nato
How about, ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’, or, “FUCK NO!”
w vincentz
Oh…poor, poor Sarah.
The folks over at Mudflats are nailing her to the cross as we speak. Seems that the luster has worn off and her selection is actually dragging McIdiot’s polling numbers down. Geesh, I actually thought she’d be waving the flag like that beuty in Delacroix”s “Liberty Leading the People”, but it’s not happening.
Is Paris Hilton available? Can she wave a flag?
Just Some Fuckhead
Christ, don’t give ’em any more ideas.
Tax Analyst
Oh, sure…YOU go out of town on the weekend and have fun and WE have to do homework…WAH!!!
But it won’t work with me, because I’M on vacation, too.
Oh…shit – OK, I’ll link over and read it.
Sheesh…teachers.
The Grand Panjandrum
BTW when I announced the purchase of my Undisclosed Location here in New England (OK it’s a small farm, but Undisclosed Location makes me feel like I can be in two branches of gummint at once!) I raised a few eyebrows in the Family & Friends quadrant. They wondered how I could ever give up the Well Fortified Compound in the High Desert of New Mexico! Simple.
1. No fucking water.
2. I need water to grow crops.
Looks like I might be putting Kreskin out of work if this shit keeps up.
Now those raised eyebrows give me the warm fuzzies. Everybody want to come and visit the farm.
Joshua Norton
In your guts, you know they’re nuts.
LiberalTarian
Why were you fooled John?
It’s called cynicism. They used your values against you. Don’t feel bad, they did it to all of us. Remember, it isn’t as if people took to the streets when GW Bush stole the election(s). Republicans rejoiced, not really comprehending that they had bought a plague down on us. If you weren’t in the tank, you could see it well enough, but how were you to know (if you were in the tank), that nothing they said had any meaning?
The question is less how were you fooled so long, as it is how do they (the Mayberry Machiavelli’s) manage to do this to us so often??
No ++ for me. Writing a paper. :o(
w vincentz
guts, nuts, butts, ta-tutts, mutts, and i-dee-utts.
Chuck Butcher
John,
I’m not sure if you were a legacy (R) or not but St Ronnie did have one thing going for him, he could tell the most outrageous bullshit with a folksy aw shucks delivery as a guy people wanted to trust and sell it. I knew better than RR’s trickle down econ, but I was a lot older than you and with wider experiences. Another thing, most of us want to trust those in authority, cripes – they have power over us. By RR’s time the (R) discreditation of the media had pretty good success so your trusted information sources became the legatees of RR. Toss Bill’s indiscretions into the pot as discrediting the (D) and the unending “trust me, I’m good” of Bush team and his faux good ole boy persona and the media fawning after 9-11…
You suppose that you would be able to stand in the face of a massive propaganda machine you already give credence and say, “Oh bullshit,” without a personal smack in the face from the machine? Once you were smacked and began to question the dominoes fell rather quickly – but people are resistant to personal change.
There is something about education and a curious mind, once activated it is dangerous to the status quo, it questions basic assumptions. If you continue on that path you may find yourself truly uprooted from things you still hold to. I had an advantage in the questioning dept – my grandmother who had a hand in raising me was leftist labor person from the ’20s on and an example of the ruthlessness of power and wealth and authoritarianism. I knew at a young age that authority was not to be trusted or given faith. I knew to question long before I read actual history (that was damn young itself) and I read actual history. I discovered the dark places that public school history glosses over, I watched German shepards attack people whose only fault was a desire to be treated as Americans. My parents were both highly educated professionals in arenas where the ability to see beyond the established is of the utmost importance.
I watch with great curiousity to see where you alight in time.
jake
Place your bets folks. If McPOW goes down in flames, the ReThugs will blame the dame.
The Thinking Man's Mel Torme
But wait, there’z more!
Bip on over to GOS for the gory details.
w vincentz
@ jake,
Who else could they POSSIBLY blame?
kth
Krugman is hyper-partisan. Doesn’t mean he’s not right.
He isn’t, though, really. Or wasn’t always. All through the 1990s, he was arguing, basically, for Rubinomics against leftier economists like James Galbraith. And he didn’t really engage the Republicans during the Clinton years, except to expose rank charlatans like Newt Gingrich. But Krugman got radicalized during the 2000 campaign, during which Bush made economic promises that were internally inconsistent and no one in the campaign press called bullshit.
I myself used to think the Republicans had as many good ideas as the Dems, and I still have a lot of pro-market leanings. But I was alarmed by the sort of people who came out of the woodwork during the attempted coup against Bill Clinton, and won’t entertain anything the Republicans propose until the radical, unreconstructed, paranoid element is weeded out of the party, root and branch. And this is probably true of a lot of people who seem, as you say, hyper-partisan: it’s strictly a reaction to what the Republicans have become these past 14 years, rather than a truly ideological disagreement.
The Thinking Man's Mel Torme
Once everyone is finished with Nixonland, read Lou Cannon’s Role of a Lifetime for the definitive take on Dutch Raygun. Cannon really liked Reagan as a person, and covered him for decades, but the portrait is still devastating.
zuzu's petals
I never could figure out why you bothered with a hack like Maguire. There are plenty of other reasonable conservatives out there who are willing to carry on a civil discourse with considered opinions. His place is a cesspool.
Stuck in the Fun House
He’s not the only one. IE Moi’
Tax Analyst
I have some CD & DVD players at home that don’t seem to work anymore, anybody want to pay me their original cost to take them off my hands? I didn’t really try to fix them…maybe they just need a little cleaning or something…and they might work real swell at some later date.
Heck, I’ll even take 50 cents on the dollar. This offer could be a real steal for someone.
LiberalTarian
Speaking of hacks, check out the rude and dumb Andrew Sullivan at C&L. He doesn’t get it, and by God nobody is going to help him understand it either (or speak uninterrupted).
He is the classic example of the person who does not listen to what others are saying because he is so busy patting himself on the back about what he is about to spew. Blech. I need to go take a shower.
The Dangerman
That’s a 2 for 1; McCain is history and Palin has the Scarlet Letter “L” (for loser) on her forehead for 2012 when she might have been dangerous.
r€nato
kth, count me in too.
I used to be a middle-of-the-road, bipartisan kind of Democrat. I was proud of saying that I voted for the person, not the party.
It’s hard to remember those days. The Republicans radicalized me with their Clinton witch-hunt/attempted coup. That was 10 years ago and they have only gotten worse. I wouldn’t vote for a Republiscum if the Democratic candidate was John Wayne Gacy.
Stuck in the Fun House
Fluoride Deficiency
LiberalTarian
Josh Marshall makes a good point:
Uh, yeah, what he said. Are we really going to let GW Bush and boys try to fix this problem? Isn’t that throwing gasoline on the fire???
the_millionaire_lebowski
Is it hyper-partisan to point out that Krugman served in the Reagan administration? It is? Weird.
Pennypacker
You’re a beacon of hope now for some of us, John. Maybe it’s a new role and you’re not used to it, but go ahead and savor it — you deserve it.
Dennis - SGMM
Here’s why Maguire is an idiot:
So once the visible hand of Hank Paulson has erased what the invisible hand has written (That these people are morons who shouldn’t be trusted with a burnt match) the money will start to flow their way again.
I like the phrase “dumped their waste” too. Maguire probably calls shit “peanut butter.”
r€nato
what could possibly go wrong?
RSA
How any supporter of the Iraq war (or any of the other Bush administration travesties) can use a line like this is beyond me.
KT
Anyone know if Paulson was an Arabian horse judge by any chance?
Joshua Norton
Maybe we should follow McCain’s advice and let health care be run like the banks. Then in a few years when it, too, melts down the Feds will have to take over anyway and we’ll get National health care anyway.
r€nato
you’re simply not clapping hard enough, liberals.
zuzu's petals
Well, you know he likes to fashion himself as a “retired Wall Streeter, though I’ve never heard an explanation of what the hey that means. I’m pretty sure if it was anything to brag about, he’d be more specific.
Just a guess based on my overall low opinion of the guy.
Marshall
If Sarah Palin was to wave the flag like Marianne in Delacroix”s “Liberty Leading the People,” bare breast and all, I wouldn’t vote for her, but I certainly would look.
protected static
@The Grand Panjandrum:
We’ll see if you’re feeling that way in the depths of your first Mud Season.
(I grew up in what was then rural New England… A little south and east of what is more or less your present location.)
Incertus
If the options are a complete and total meltdown or giving the Bush administration a trillion dollars with no conditions or regulations, I think the meltdown might be preferable.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I really hope the rest of the world, i.e. the people we’ll have to borrow this money from to make it happen, will step in and save us from ourselves.
Jake
Sully was pretty much an ass on that show, I’m not sure what got into him. Regardless, in general he’s right on a heckofa lot of things. He’s absolutely blasted the Palin pick from the get-go on his blog.
Rick Taylor
To be fair, I think the Republican party has been getting steadily worse, and it wasn’t always so transparent what a disaster they would be. I was horrified when Bush won in 2000, but I read Molly Ivins (who detailed Bush being a light weight and his failures as a businessman) and Paul Krugman (who detailed his economic deception). If I hadn’t read them, or dismissed what they said out of hand, I wouldn’t have been any the wiser. Maybe you missed the first Gore Bush debate in which Bush fell apart when asked what he’d do in the event of an attack on the country; or maybe you figured his deer in the headlights moment didn’t matter. And Bush and his political team did an excellent job of playing the “compassionate conservative”; a lot of people were duped.
And to be fair, as nervous as I was, I never ever expected the Bush administration to be as it’s been. If you’d told me they would get us to launch a war against Iraq with a trumped up causus belli and botch it so badly we’d be tied down there for a decade, I would never have believed it.
I will admit I don’t understand why it took past 2004 to see the light; when Bush’s own choice to look for WMD said they weren’t there, that should have been game over. But you were hardly alone; he was re-elected, so most Americans didn’t care.
Gemina13
John, I haven’t been reading you or Kos for long, only since January 2008. But I can tell you that I have good friends who are still conservatives. They’re just not Republicans, and haven’t been since 2005. What changed them was Katrina; that incident made them look again at what the Religious Reich and neocons had done to their party, and either figuratively or literally vomit.
They haven’t changed parties, no. But . . . I hesitate to say “the scales fell from their eyes,” because they haven’t had that kind of transformative experience. They’ve seen the truth of what they’ve supported for the last decade or more, but it hasn’t brought them to any real political enlightenment. They want the easy belief they had back. They want to hear the kind of rhetoric they heard in the past. It’s not about change for them; it’s about the reappearance of comfort.
I don’t see that in you, and that’s why I keep coming back to your blog. You’re not satisfied to say, “The GOP betrayed me, and I’m no longer a Republican.” You’re saying, “I believed these shitheels and they made a fool out of me, so I’m going to channel my energy and ideals elsewhere.”
So I’m going to say that, no, you weren’t stupid. Your basic beliefs were appealed to by a group of con artists who knew what they were doing. You were sold a bill of goods. Thankfully, you woke up in time; however, for too many people, even waking up hasn’t brought them to the revelation that they’re holding on to a sack full of weasels when they thought they were buying a prime pig.
As for Krugman or Maguire–one has been right nearly 100% of the time, while the other has GOP kneepads. Which one are you going to trust? I’m going with Krugman.
The Other Steve
Honestly, I can picture my former mortgage associates parsing through the data trying to figure out what they ought to dump on the fed.
Are they taking entire bonds, or just individual mortgages?
cleek
just think of it this way: no money left to enact any liberal prorgams!
the GOP wins by losing.
Notorious P.A.T.
The Republicans aren’t good at anything, but they sure are good at confusing people.
Dennis - SGMM
They’re taking us.
Jake
I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry at this one. Something tells me, though, that the next POTUS is going to take one on the chin. Forget about driving the bus into the ditch, Bush has spent the last six years digging a hole to China.
Joshua Norton
Because the bible thumpers emptied the pews over boys kissing.
protected static
Hence the angry but polite emails I sent to my Senators, Rep & the Obama campaign this afternoon.
Robert Johnston
Krugman’s not a partisan in the normal sense. He has absolutely no allegiance to any partisan organization. He is, however, an anti-Republican. He’s accepted that Republican “policy” pronouncements are generally entitled to a rebuttable presumption of either bad faith or blithering idiocy. He is a far different animal from, for example, Alan Greenspan, who is a true Republican partisan in the classical sense.
Dennis - SGMM
OTOH, I look for McCain to begin advocating that the gov pay investors an additional fifty cents for every dollar of investment income to restore confidence in the system.
Jim Pharo
It’s a seriously good question — what were you thinking? An even better question is what are your thoughts on ways to bringing more or less sentient beings like you and I and all these other nice folks over to the Side of Angels?
I’m trying to get a reasonable couple of points that might actually mean something to someone who thought and believed as our gracious host used to…
LiberalTarian
Well, the next president is absolutely going to have a mess to clean up. I’d rather it were Obama and his appointees. I have (some) confidence that they will actually try to mop up, and not just sweep the shitpile under the rug and continue to stack the DoJ with fundies who will not prosecute Republicans and stack the benches with activist (and idiotic) far right judges.
Pray Obama wins people, and that God really does care what happens to us.
gbear
You’re right! I’m gonna march right up to his door and tell him to JUST STOP IT ALREADY! You listening to me?? Stop giving them our money, you dummy! Quit it.
There have been few weeks where I’ve felt as helpless as I have this week. Feeling like we’re just along for the ride here. Good thing I’m already broke…
John, there’s been a million reasons given for why it took you so long to see that republicans suck. Just want to add another ‘glad you’re here now’ to the list.
gbear +0 but listening to Tommy James and the Shondells. That should count as somewhat mind-altering.
Dennis - SGMM
Crimson and Clover, over and over,
Crimson and Clover, over and over,
Crimson and Clover, over and over,
Crimson and Clover, over and over,
Crimson and Clover, over and over,
Crimson and Clover, over and over,
Crimson and Clover, over and over,
Crimson and Clover, over and over…
Stuck in the Fun House
How long before we begin to hear “It’s because the tax cuts weren’t made permanent by the Dhimmicrats”
Then Grover Norquist can drown them in the bathtub, along with entire goddamn country. Wingnuts don’t really much like the country as a liberal constitutional republic anyway. Better to start all over with the proper dog eat dog mentality enshrined in a new Constitution, along with a preacher Bill of Rights to make it right with the God of profit and sexual purity.
Kenneth Almquist
I actually think Maguire has a point. All the news reports I’ve read indicate that uncertainty about the valuations of various securities is a major part of the problem. Krugman doesn’t address this, other than to say that it “seems unlikely” that this is “mainly a liquidity problem.” I don’t know why this “seems unlikely” to Krugman; hopefully he will explain in a future article.
DrDave
I know abunch of otherwise intelligent and accomplished people who are still ground glass Republicans. They recognize the extent to which the GOP has fucked things up and they reconcile it by saying, “The Democrats–those God damned Socialists–would have been worse.” It is intellectually dishonest to the nth degree and I couldn’t do it but then, I’ve never been a true believer.
At least you were smart enought to get off the carousel so be thankful.
Krugman IS hyperpartisan and he occasionally allows his ideology to taint his rationale but it doesn’t happen that often. We are fellow alumni of the same Long Island HS so I usually cut him some slack.
Tim C.
You know there are times when I wonder about my faith in my political beliefs, that maybe we and the GOP are just two sides of the same coin. And that’s understandable given that it is a two-party system.
Fuck it all.
This bailout reeks to high heaven, The fucktard GOP deregulates, then the fucktard GOP gives away a trillion fucking dollars to the same fucking fucked up fucktards who made stupid fucktarded greedhead moronic selfish stupid decisions and by the way that trillion dollars will be borrowed from foreign nations?!?!?
What the hell is wrong with Republicans?!?!? And I mean that in a are they fucking inbred-Hapsburg kind of way!
Me +3, but it’s this awesome 7.8% stuff called Trippel from the dudes who make Fat Tire. so really about +4.9
KT
Lovely. Seems the suited retards who engineered this epic f’up are demandind no conditions on the $1 trillion we’re giving them:
They want to play hardball? OK, let’s. Have Congress demand that the Treasury withdraw the offer. Reinstate short selling (without the uptick rule) let the stocks tank. Buy up a 51 percent stake in all of them, fire all the CEOs and CFOs (without a golden parachute) and start fixing the problem for real.
These arrogant bastards need to go down and go down hard.
Delia
Krugman was calling the housing bubble a bubble for years while the GOP bootlickers were calling him a partisan hack and saying there was nothing wrong with funny mortgages. Guess who was right?
Dennis - SGMM
I think that we should be ruled by a class of Mandarins who are completely out of touch with us and more interested in party politics than the welfare of the nation. Set it up so that they’re more familiar with the wishes of those who will provide them with the money to get re-elected than the wishes of those whom they represent.
Wait, never mind…
Blue Buddha
Fear and greed make people stupid.
Delia
Hello? well, yes, we must have accountability, mustn’t we? At least for the little guys. Fuck these bastards. What is Jefferson’s quote about how often we need a revolution? In any case, it’s been far too long.
Eural Joiner
Ok, am I just over-reacting or mis-reading this thing? WTF does that mean? Is that legal?
For the last few days I feel like I’ve entered the “Twilight Zone”. Stuff is happening out of Washington and it keeps getting stranger and stranger. Maybe I’m losing it….
Ed Marshall
Krugman doesn’t address this, other than to say that it “seems unlikely” that this is “mainly a liquidity problem.”
Christ on a crutch, he doesn’t bother going into it because if it was really a liquidity problem, another private entity would snatch it all up as a bargain!
Delia
What is this “legal” of which you speak? What a quaint concept. Perhaps a few months in the Alaskan Gulag will straighten you out.
Jake
Just caught Bush on TV saying that it’s a big package because this is a big problem.
So why the fuck are we trying to come up with a solution over a single goddamn weekend? Jesus fucking Christ this is dumb.
gbear
Yep. Oh life is a sweet thing.
Notorious P.A.T.
Awesome.
Dennis - SGMM
You are probably not mis-reading. It means just what it says. If Paulson chooses to pay one of his old Goldman Sachs five billion dollars for a bag of used cat litter, his doing so will have no consequences for him.
KT
You’re not losing it, they are. Write your Congress critter and implore them not to approve of this insanity. I’ve found that my Congressmen (even the Republican ones) usually respond to emails from their constituents. You may not always like the response, but they do read them
Dennis - SGMM
OT Breaking news:
Evangelist’s compound raided in child porn case
wasabi gasp
What we need is a financial protest: everybody withdraw every penny from every bank account in one day.
That’ll make a sound.
Ash Can
That’s not nearly as important as the fact that you refuse to have your principles (which haven’t changed) compromised along with the changing definition of the Republican Party over the last 30 years. As has been pointed out on this site before, they’re the ones who have changed, not you. It just took you a little while to realize it.
Ash Can + however many Paulaner Oktoberfests it takes to celebrate the Cubs clinching their division. Everybody dance! :D :D :D
Stuck in the Fun House
You BJ’s might want to read Raw Story Larisa Alexandrovna’s take on this rescue bill. She’s smart and usually level headed but paints a really dark portrait of what’s going on.
Barbara
You know what I would say to these would-be deal killers: It can’t be that bad if you think you can dictate conditions. The Japanese, for instance, did not dictate conditions after Nagasaki. So this must not be the financial equivalent, and if it is, you caused it so why should you even have a seat at the table! STFU!!!
Joshua Norton
I’m going to actually agree with Reagan for once. In this case, government IS the problem – mainly for enabling the greedy dumbfucks who caused all these bubbles and meltdowns.
michelle
My neighbor, who is hooked up to the generator I bought Thrusday and has contributed 10 gallons of gas so far (I’m in 15) wants to stay up late but doesn’t want to turn off the damn generator. I have to stay up until 2 a.m. unless I want the generator I just paid $450 for to simply run out of gas — which is not recomended.
Long way to asking if I can join this conversation even though I’m not quite up to speed on the details.
There’s not much left in my bank account, so I don’t think I would impact a protest much.
Delia
Well, this is basically what Greenwald was saying today. And Arthur Silber has been saying it, too. Greenwald hasn’t been using the f word (fascism), but that’s what it is. Silber also links to a graphic that shows the reach of AIG into virtually every party of the globe and speculates that the takeover gives the US government power to act as a business enforcer against other countries who try to act against our will throughout the world.
link again
Robert Johnston
Good, old-fashioned, brain washing. As noted in an earlier post made by Tim, conservatives, when presented with neutral evidence that popular conservative beliefs are false, become significantly more likely to rigidly adhere to those beliefs. This kind of thought process is a typical symptom of brainwashing, wherein the victim is conditioned to believe that any challenge to accepted dogma is inherently made in bad faith and is a test of one’s loyalty to the cause. Brainwashed conservatives view evidence of the falsity of their views as proof that liberals are evil and that all nonconservatives are crazy liberals. These views just harden over time, except that in some cases, such as yours, cognitive dissonance eventually sets in and conservatism is rejected wholesale once its victim recognizes it for what it is.
Alan
So basically, with this fix Treasury plans to patch the bubble so Wall Street can keep on playing. This reminds me of this Caddyshack scene:
Yeah, let’s keep playing.
Fern
Hoo boy. This is multilevel fuckery.
Montysano
Let me see if I’ve got this straight: the Republicans, not content with having broken into Our House and pilfering all the cash, jewelry, and teevees, have decided to smash the sinks, rip the light fixtures out of the ceiling, rip the pipe and wiring out of the walls, smash the windows, then take a big dump in the middle of the kitchen floor and run off laughing?
Do I have this about right?
Stuck in the Fun House
Off the charts, I’d say. The more I hear of the fine print of this Power Grab, the more breathtaking it becomes. It’s like we suddenly jumped into another dimension of reality, one that’s really difficult to get one’s head wrapped around. Jesus fucking christ, these people are too dangerous to be walking the streets with the rest of us.
Dennis - SGMM
This little gem was released at 7:54 PM, EDT, this evening:
We now have a plan that allows the Treasury to bail out anyone, anywhere, with no restrictions, no review and no accountability. I for one welcome our new fiscal masters.
Dennis - SGMM
You forgot to mention that they expect to be paid for their efforts.
KT
Jump right in. Everyone else does.
wasabi gasp
No. They’re sticking around for dinner. Make extra.
jake
Ah, but you can have your own protest against assholes by switching off your generator. If your neighbor complains, whack him with the gas can.
Ash Can
Gads, where ARE my manners?
*wipes off large cyber-counter to a shining mirror finish. Proceeds to set up cyber-bar: Sets down bottles of single-malt scotch, bourbon, a martini shaker, Ketel-One vodka, a champagne bucket full of ice and three bottles of Veuve Clicqot Grande Dame, various bottles of Stone’s Throw Vineyards reds and whites. Taps a keg of Goose Island Harvest Ale. And, for the teetotalers here, rolls out a dorm-room fridge full of Evian still and Perrier sparkling water.*
OK, everybody, cyber-drinks are on me. But someone has to bring the dry vermouth and olives that I forgot. And someone else has to help me slice the limes and lemons.
Any Tampa Bay fans want to supply some tequila to this party?
*hic*
Go Cubs!
PaulB
I go back a little further than that. With me, it began with the Pats (Robertson and Buchanan) speeches at Bush the Elder’s nominating convention. Those two were clearly batshit insane and the crowd was loving it. Then fast forward to the Gingrich revolution and I realized that the crazies had taken over the Republican Party. The nomination and election of Bush the Younger just confirmed it.
Delia
Weeelll . . . . Looks like Kevin Drum has a new post up — lots of good links inside it — bottom line is the tide seems to be turning against the bailout plan. Maybe the Great And Wise Wonderful Wizards pushed just a little too hard, and seeing as everybody has all weekend to think things through. . . . And Sarah Palin didn’t have the Great Alaskan Gulag finished, so they couldn’t get Glenn Greenwald and Paul Krugman off doing productive work building the Great Alaskan Pipeline, and instead they just sat around thinking up things that were wrong with the Wonderful Bank Bailout Plan. . . . Just maybe by Monday morning there will be lots of people sniping at the plan — enough to stop it.
And I’ve got to quote this from the end of Kevin’s post. It’s from an article on how the rich are coping with the meltdown.
Ash Can
BTW, didn’t mean to bold that stuff. I’ve just learned what asterisks are shorthand for in this particular HTML markup.
Bruce Moomaw
Maguire: “Now, if the underlying crisis is due to solvency rather than liquidity (Krugman’s guess, but who knows?) then after all the firms have dumped their waste we will see that some firms lack sufficient capital to continue. What then? A possible answer – since the mysteries of their balance sheet have been resolved (and the variance of their future value reduced), these firms ought to be more able to attract new capital than they are at present. Fingers crossed again (and is hope a plan?)”
Well, idiocy sure isn’t. Let’s see: once we’ve firmly discovered that “some firms lack sufficient capital to continue” because of their incompetence, then once “the mysteries of their balance sheets have been resolved” they “ought to be more able to attract new capital than they are at present.” Has Maguire been sniffing Dippy Dust lately?
As for Krugman the Terrible: the first time I ever heard of him was in 1998 when I read his book “The Accidental Theorist” — in which he spent a great deal of time excoriating Robert Reich, Ralph Nader and William Greider (the “accidental theorist” of the title, who actually proves the opposite of what he intended) as dimwitted leftists. This made it rather difficult for me to regard him as a Screaming Leftist when he started opening up on the Brush-Clearer In Chief and his minions.
KT
Poor bastard. We all know what that’s like.
Montysano
Amazing: a quick tour of the right wing fever swamp reveals:
LaShawn Barber: worried about abortion;
Little Green Footballs: creationism;
The Corner: teh gay;
Red State: Obama needs to repudiate some video made back in Feb;
Hot Air: Rev. Wright, goofy photos of Hillary;
Powerline: Uh… I dunno. Worst blog on teh toobz.
Malkin has a post about the “Death of Fiscal Conservatism”, and it’s not bad:
However, her commenters are ripping her a new one, reminding her how this is all the fault of both Bill Clinton and those brown people who bought too much house.
cleek
opening skit on SNL was pretty good: McCain in a sound booth giving the “I’m John McCain and I approve this message” to a bunch of absurd anti-Obama ads.
not even an attempt at pseudo-balance.
sweeeet.
michelle
It’s got 6 gallons of his gas in it right now — enough for Sunday football, he figures. I little to much for me to weld (?) at this point.
michelle
Just an FYI if SnarkyShark hasn’t said as much (my time on the tubes has been limited these last few days) the Republicans, including Gov. Perry, were lamenting that people were supposedly grabbing up FEMA ice and water instead of buying that stuff at the open supermarkets (which often enough had neither) up until the last couple of days. I’m wondering if the proposed bailout had some sort of temporing (?) effect on that sort of talk.
The Moar You Know
That’s it. I formally volunteer for the firing squad.
The Dangerman
Ah, shit. I must be sauced off my ass because there is no way in hell that Malkin can actually write an article that I can agree with…
…but I can’t be sauced off my ass as I don’t recall consuming anything. I’m so confused right now.
zuzu's petals
More proof for the Jesse*-writing-the-blog theory.
*PhD in economic policy analysis
Dave_No_Longer_Laughing
Why doesn’t Krugman like the bailouts? Simple: because Hillary! wasn’t behind them. Krugman likes this kind of stuff. Remember: Krugman was a paid shill for Enron. Pay him no mind.
John O
Thanks for the Tom M. link.
Had a lot of fun commenting out there amongst the morons.
I asked two very simple question: One, who’d write a blank check for $700,000,000,000 to anyone, for any reason?
The other one I stole from El Cid: Don’t you find any irony in the solution to a problem at least partially caused by lack of oversight and regulation to said solution’s explicit lack of, you know, oversight and regulation?
Crickets.
I got two typically brilliant responses. One was didn’t I know Paulson was a lib? The other was, how is that third party voting thing working out for you?
We are overrun by morons.
slaney black
Most self-insightful statement by a Democratic partisan I’ve seen yet.
You ‘n me both, John. Might come down to something like this:
We’ve been used to thinking of the presidency as a matter of policy choices – not a matter of effective leadership, juridical precedent-setting or national narrative-driving.
On policy choices alone, the Bush people had a plausible case to make for everything except maybe Iraq. And with Iraq, the policy question was a red herring.
As soon as we asked “is this a good policy choice or not?” we were already led astray.
Those who kept their eye on the ball of what it meant for executive power, constitutional balance, the setting of precedent, and the manipulation of the media – those were the ones who were’t fooled.
Brachiator
Sorry guys. Having to give up the private jet is not the worst of it. You have to look to the HEGI — the High End Girlfriend Index. Hard times have truly hit when the Wizards of Wall St can no longer afford lap dances and exclusive men’s clubs or to keep mistresses in the lap of luxury (“The High-End Girlfriend Index”: A new economic indicator?).
For some of the moneyed elite, monogamy is for suckers, and a loser is someone who has to go home every night and have sex only with his wife.
Martin
I’ve only been in management positions for about 8 years now, but in my experience policy matters a hell of a lot less than competence and leadership. Consistent and enthusiastic implementation of bad policies usually works out a hell of a lot better than half-assed implementation of great policies. I mean, people almost never put forward truly bad policies, so really we’re usually talking about good policies vs. less good policies. But in competent implementation of a bad policy you get course-correction. The competent people will recognize where the policy is bad and make adjustments on the fly and make it better. But incompetent people or lack of leadership takes any policy, good or bad, and at times makes it disastrous. There’s always a huge downside potential to do harm that competency avoids, which incompetency cannot.
zuzu's petals
Brave soul. It’s a nasty, not very bright bunch over there.
TenguPhule
How good are you at making sure the shot hits them in the belly?
Viva the coming revolution.
zuzu's petals
Note to John O :
Oh noes, now they’re calling you an Obot!
KSMIAMI
Basically from what I understand (and I must qualify this by saying my husband is a former analyst and now CFO…) The bank assets even if you sold off the good assets would be zero and if the bad debt is on the books, you have negative value. In other words Atrios is spot on in calling it a shit pile, but it is a negative shit pile vortex that may suck up the USA and small towns in Norway.
SnarkyShark
First of all, glad you made it through the storm all right. I am alive, and I was a renter so I will survive. I got to look at a satellite picture of my apartment complex, and it looks like the entire roof is gone. Doesn’t look good for the few possessions I had to leave behind.
As to your question-the fed is broke. Perry and his friends tried real hard to show that free market forces are the best remedy for hurricane relief. After all, we wouldn’t want the fed response to be too good. Then people might expect such things. I don’t think anybody is buying their oh so subtle bullshit.
Long story short- either the bailout of wall street or the reconstruction of SE Texas/SW La will bankrupt USA. Together it is a dead certainty. The Federal government is like a crack addict who is about to have his power shut off. There aint enough to pay the bill, but you could get a couple of rocks.
Its really pathetic.
Tom Maguire
Assignment for readers. Krugman’s track record vs. Maguire’s (hint- Krugman wins).
I will glumly concede that Krugman was a bit more insightful on the general ineptitude of the Bush Administration.
However, over the years he has belly-flopped many times on specific points related to economics. And he is wrong again with “No Deal”.
This may be difficult, but try to imagine that a guy who was right about the war is not automatically right about everything.
And I am not sure of the relevance but my official editorial position was that Libby was guilty. Rove I gave a pass, and I had plenty of other questions, but it’s water under the bridge.
KSMIAMI
Hey Tom Maguire – you asshats are trying to justify one of the largest heists in the history of the US. You don’t get a pass on this and Republican ideology is a farce. Now go look for your new talking points cause here at BJ, we see through your shit.
SnarkyShark
Yep…if you spent half the time keeping your fucked up party in line as you did battling the imaginary Hippies that hide out under your bad maybe this shit wouldn’t have happened.
It is time for all the “i can’t get past 1968” ass hats and Uncle Miltie cultists to be marginalized and left to dream of some 1950s world that never really existed while be shunned by children and small animals.
Your worldview is a lie, your belief structure is a joke.
Any opinion you hold and feel you must regurgitate out in public is by necessity-suspect.
I lost a lot of respect for Krugman over the Hillary dust-up, but he’s worth a hundred of you.
And even if you ever do get it right, why would anyone listen?
Thats the price you pay for pissing of liberals/DFHs for eight years. Because as far as I can tell, pissing of hippies is about as much substance as your Philosophy ever had.
Hope it was worth it.
zuzu's petals
Humph humph harrumph …
TenguPhule
And that’s why you have a place on the wall right behind him when the revolution comes.
liberal
Tom Maguire wrote,
LOL! Thanks for trying.
Krugman was right, very early in the game, about Bush’s proposed tax cuts (and their impact on the deficit level). Even wrote a book about it.
binzinerator
Montysano Says:
Pretty much, but you forgot they also now want a trillion dollar bailout too.
mere mortal
I hope this reaches you minus zero plus, but the answer is relatively simple.
It is imperative, in order to be a rational person, that one considers attacks and even insults apart from their ad hominem basis. The skill of accurately judging the merit of criticism against oneself is a key to the ability to reason (and as you have done, to radically change position).
My goal is not to preach, as such a failure is quite often my own.
KSMIAMI
Also HERD mentality = EPIC FAIL in life, politics and investing