I still think the better bailout proposal is to change the 401K tax code to allow individuals to liquidate their 401K holdings without penalty and without having to leave one’s job or otherwise become unemployed. But only allow liquidations to pay down mortgage debt on a home at risk or to refinance out of a variable interest ARM or HELoC to a standard fifteen to thirty year fixed rate mortgage or jumbo mortgage.
Yes, it would mean stock market declines. But who here expects standard returns year-on-year over the next decade? Honestly. The only reason these 401K accounts exist is to give institutional investors the advantage of being able to shift money around in the market faster than the 401K account holder can. Meaning, they scram while you hold the bag. My Fidelity account sure doesn’t give me many options to bet on a declining market or shift my money out of dollar denominated funds to Euros or other currency.
IOW: Why should you trust these assholes with your money if it’s already clear that they’re crooks? And why not pay down debt, viewing it as an opportunity savings by clearing out future interest payments? If you’re certain to lose money in the stock market or even a savings account (due to inflation losses) doesn’t it make sense to pay down debt?
And if you think that the cause of this nightmare is not “liquidity problems in paper financial instruments” but an underlying misvaluation of physical assets (houses, cars, furniture, etc) that lenders made when giving out loans for assets, then the solution is not to give a shit-load of money to the people holding worthless paper, but to find a way for those people holding those assets to retain them without taking on additional sovereign debt.
2.
Comrade The Moar You Know
Obama/Biden McCain/Palin
FRIENDS FOREVER ’08!
3.
gbear
Well THAT mental health break didn’t last long.
4.
r€nato
Katie Couric: You made a funny comment, you’ve said you have been listening to Joe Biden’s speeches since you were in second grade.
Gov. Palin: It’s been since like ’72, yah.
Sarah Palin has been listening to Joe Biden speeches since she was 7 years old.
Yeah, right.
5.
r€nato
oops blockquote messed up:
Katie Couric: You made a funny comment, you’ve said you have been listening to Joe Biden’s speeches since you were in second grade.
Gov. Palin: It’s been since like ’72, yah.
6.
r€nato
aaaack! It wasn’t me! blockquote tags can’t handle carriage returns!
ack! oh well it still beats WordPress >> Error.
7.
TheFountainHead
Blockquotes are the new Slap in the Face.
8.
Товарищ НеинтереснаяСобака
Anyone know why Onion videos don’t work in Firefox over here? They work in IE, for some reason.
9.
The Other Steve
My Fidelity account sure doesn’t give me many options to bet on a declining market or shift my money out of dollar denominated funds to Euros or other currency.
My Fidelity account does, once I quite my job and turned it into a regular IRA account instead a company tied one. Now I’ve got access to all sorts of funds.
I really don’t understand why it is that Fidelity can offer me a option to manage my own fund, and buy any mutual fund I want as well as individual stocks and everything. But they can’t offer this same behavior when it’s passed to me through a company 401k.
Did you guys catch where Robert Gibbs this morning, when pressed by guests on Morning Joe to explain how Senator McCain was “erratic”, said:
Just yesterday, John McCain said we shouldn’t fix blame. He took a breath and then fixed blame. He said the fundamentals of our economy are strong, and he flip-flopped. He opposed the bail-out of AIG, and then he supported it. This guy zig-zags. Look, if he’s driving a car, get off the sidewalk.
WIN! Steve Benen has the video. And yes, McCain supporters are already crying “ageism!! lipstick on a pig!!” over the quote, seemingly not realizing that drawing attention to this one is probably not in their best interests.
Awesome.
12.
Scrutinizer
I still think the better bailout proposal is to change the 401K tax code to allow individuals to liquidate their 401K holdings without penalty and without having to leave one’s job or otherwise become unemployed. But only allow liquidations to pay down mortgage debt on a home at risk or to refinance out of a variable interest ARM or HELoC to a standard fifteen to thirty year fixed rate mortgage or jumbo mortgage.
It’s not about paying down debt. It’s about shifting commercial paper that doesn’t have a market value out of the asset mix of companies until it can be valued, while freeing up those companies to have lending capital, which the whole fucking world needs in order for economies everywhere in the whole fucking world to continue to function.
Honestly, is it so hard to understand?
13.
b. hussein canuckistani
Gov. Palin: It’s been since like ‘72, yah.
She was wearing her Tina Fey costume at the time.
14.
Eric U.
there is no way she’s been listening since ’72. I was a political junkie since 6th grade in ’70, and I don’t remember hearing from Biden until 2000 or so. I knew he was around before that.
This bailout crap from the republicans has me stewing. I always knew they didn’t care about the fate of our country, but this seems to really be outrageous behavior on their part. Thank goodness the bill didn’t pass, both McCain and the RNC thought it would and acted accordingly. The funny thing is, they did opposite things as a result. McCain claimed credit, and the RNC paid for ads that said anyone that voted for it was anti-American.
Actually it is, because it’s a totally different thing than the talking heads have been discussing for the last year, but it doesn’t sound all that different.
18.
The Other Steve
Anyone know why Onion videos don’t work in Firefox over here? They work in IE, for some reason.
But they can’t offer this same behavior when it’s passed to me through a company 401k.
Fidelity probably offers a few “401k Management” plans for employers: sign up and they’ll manage everything and keep the employees boxed into a few select funds (to prevent people from putting all their money into Nortel stock). Fidelity meanwhile probably gets a little reciprocal from the fund managers in return for the business.
20.
smiley
blockquote tags can’t handle carriage returns!
You’re posting with a typewriter?
21.
r€nato
there is no way she’s been listening since ‘72. I was a political junkie since 6th grade in ‘70, and I don’t remember hearing from Biden until 2000 or so. I knew he was around before that.
Biden was elected to the Senate in 1972 and took office in January 1973.
I’d say there is exactly zero chance that anybody in Alaska knew who the fuck was running in a Delaware US Senate race in 1972, let alone an idiot like Palin listening to his speeches in 1972.
22.
Dennis - SGMM
Palin ran her snowmobile into a tree in 1972. She’s been hearing all sorts of things since then.
It’s not about paying down debt. It’s about shifting commercial paper that doesn’t have a market value out of the asset mix of companies until it can be valued, while freeing up those companies to have lending capital, which the whole fucking world needs in order for economies everywhere in the whole fucking world to continue to function.
This argument presumes that the commercial paper was ever worth anything. The only valuation that the paper held was in the minds of investors. Unlike a house, which has intrinsic value. That is, one needs a place to live regardless of “the economy”. Institutional investors who bought into this bunk are irrationally pretending that their investments continue to have value – when they never had value at all to begin with. That’s the real point. Dumping a shit-ton of money into the market to try to “revalue” all those paper investments will only add on additional losses. Well, at least losses for the dolts who bought in. Who would be us.
I’d rather liquidate and pay down debt.
24.
r€nato
You’re posting with a typewriter?
from Wikipedia, that fount of liberally-biased ‘facts’:
In computing, the carriage return (CR) is one of the control characters in ASCII code, Unicode or EBCDIC that commands a printer or other sort of display to move the position of the cursor to the first position on the same line. It was mostly used along with line feed, a move to the next line, while carriage return precedes line feed to indicate a new line. The term derives from the above usage, as early printers often closely resembled typewriters; this control character would activate a physical carriage-return mechanism.
25.
TheFountainHead
Firefox sucks.
…
IE is the cat’s pajamas.
You must be in serious mental anguish to make a statement like that.
26.
smiley
In computing, the carriage return (CR) is one of the control characters in ASCII code, Unicode or EBCDIC that commands a printer or other sort of display to move the position of the cursor to the first position on the same line. It was mostly used along with line feed, a move to the next line, while carriage return precedes line feed to indicate a new line. The term derives from the above usage, as early printers often closely resembled typewriters; this control character would activate a physical carriage-return mechanism.
Excuse me, I did not know that. Now I don’t have to feel like an old fool when my students look at me like I’m an old fool when I say, “now hit return.”
27.
Comrade The Moar You Know
I’d rather liquidate and pay down debt.
Be careful, TZ will shortly be here to accuse you of wanting to work a splintery, tar-coated stake through the bodies of every woman, child, and retiree in America.
Institutional investors who bought into this bunk are irrationally pretending that their investments continue to have value – when they never had value at all to begin with. That’s the real point. Dumping a shit-ton of money into the market to try to “revalue” all those paper investments will only add on additional losses.
The ugly truth. All you’re doing is putting off Judgement Day for a few months.
28.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Firefox sucks.
…
IE is the cat’s pajamas.
You must be in serious mental anguish to make a statement like that.
The guy thinks it’s a good idea to put pajamas on a cat. I think “serious metal anguish” is a vast understatement.
29.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Also, “mental anguish”. There’s an armour joke in there somewhere, but I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
(Hai! We can haz editable posts?)
30.
TheFountainHead
The guy thinks it’s a good idea to put pajamas on a cat. I think “serious metal anguish” is a vast understatement.
Yeah, attempting to put any clothing on a cat is suicide.
31.
Comrade Va Highlander
Don’t mind me, just testing.
I’m curious if putting a non-breaking space between pars in a blockquote will work.
Diddly…
…poop.
32.
Comrade Va Highlander
Wow! It works.
Instead of putting in an elipsis – “…” – as suggested, just use “ ”.
Jeezus…I’m such fuckin’ geek…
33.
Dennis - SGMM
Jeezus…I’m such fuckin’ geek…
Heh. I just tried the antiquated, and obnoxious “blink” tag. Worked in Preview.
34.
Comrade Va Highlander
Okay… Let’s try that again.
Instead of an elipsis – “…” – use [ampersand]nbsp[semicolon] on the blank lines between paragraphs inside a block quote.
35.
Comrade The Moar You Know
Comrade Va Highlander Says:
September 30th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Wow! It works.
Instead of putting in an elipsis – “…” – as suggested, just use “ ”.
Jeezus…I’m such fuckin’ geek…
Let’s see about that.
36.
Davebo
You must be in serious mental anguish to make a statement like that.
You both are.
Google Chrome Rocks!
37.
Comrade Va Highlander
No offense, but we’re looking liek a cupla dueling eedjits.
38.
Comrade The Moar You Know
Testing
 :
for
 :
blockquote
 :
spacing
39.
Comrade The Moar You Know
Oh god, fucking fail. Semicolon, idiot-
Testing
for
blockquote
spacing
40.
Comrade Va Highlander
Um…
“Semi-colon”. “;”, not “:”
41.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Blinky
Okay… Let’s try that again.
Instead of an elipsis – “…” – use [ampersand]nbsp[semicolon] on the blank lines between paragraphs inside a block quote.
Non-breaking space with naked ampersand, shows as an extra blank line on preview
Okay… Let’s try that again.
Instead of an elipsis – “…” – use [ampersand]nbsp[semicolon] on the blank lines between paragraphs inside a block quote.
Non-breaking space with coded ampersand, shows as code on preview
Okay… Let’s try that again.
Instead of an elipsis – “…” – use [ampersand]nbsp[semicolon] on the blank lines between paragraphs inside a block quote.
42.
TheFountainHead
You both are.
Google Chrome Rocks!
Yeah, well when they get off their googly-asses and launch the OS X Beta, I’ll likely agree with you!
God, I love this place. The world’s going to hell in a handbag and we’re trying to tease decent markup out of the new commenting function.
45.
Comrade The Moar You Know
Images?
46.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Naked and clothed ampersands work — w00t! The blink tag didn’t. One more try with blink around a single period, because someone, somewhere has a browser that can read it and the world needs more mental anguish today.
Okay… Let’s try that again.
.
Instead of an elipsis – “…” – use [ampersand]nbsp[semicolon] on the blank lines between paragraphs inside a block quote.
On preview, the period blinks.
47.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Blink still sucks.
48.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
49.
Mike S
Off topic but fits with the humor tag.
Memo to McCain Camp: Washington Has Failed. Send in Gov. Palin.
Can This Bailout Bill Be Saved?
Posted by: Dan McLaughlin
Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 12:28PM
9 Comments
So neither party’s House leadership was able to deliver the votes to save the bailout. As Erick noted above, John McCain fought valiantly but came up short in trying to find support in his own caucus, while Barack Obama sat on his hands:
Mr. Holtz-Eakin said Mr. McCain had made “dozens of calls” on the bill, some to House Republicans who opposed it.
Aides to Mr. Obama said he had not directly reached out to try to sway any House Democrats who opposed the measure.
It seems to me that if the deal is to be saved, and the McCain camp wants to get the credit, it may be time for a last-ditch effort to combine leadership with pure political theater, and send in Sarah Palin.
Read More
Only Redstate could come up with that.
50.
TheFountainHead
Couldn’t we just fix the damn thing instead of having to code our comments?
51.
Comrade The Moar You Know
Heh.
God, I love this place. The world’s going to hell in a handbag and we’re trying to tease decent markup out of the new commenting function.
Name me one better thing I could be doing with my time.
I want images! Somebody pulled it off in the last thread and it’s pissing me off that I can’t figure it out.
52.
Comrade Va Highlander
Non-breaking space with naked ampersand, shows as an extra blank line on preview
…
Non-breaking space with coded ampersand, shows as code on preview
…
53.
The People's Glorious Pantload of Studliness
Google Chrome Rocks!
Huh? Chrome tweeks out on a friggin’ 30-second YouTube clip, for FSM’s sake. They seriously need to address that shit.
54.
Comrade The Moar You Know
TheFountainHead Says:
September 30th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Couldn’t we just fix the damn thing instead of having to code our comments?
Oh, come on. This is fun, educational, and good for you.
55.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Multiple paragraphs in blockquotes work IF:
1) You put each para in its own set of B-Quote tags, OR
2) You put three periods (not two, not one) in between each para and wrap them all in one set of tags, OR
3) You put a non-breaking space on the line in between each para and wrap them all in one set of tags
A nonbreaking space starts with the ampersand (Shift-7 on your keyboard), then nbsp, then semi-colon
[put an ampersand here without the square brackets]nbsp;
56.
TheFountainHead
Oh, come on. This is fun, educational, and good for you.
All true, but I try not to mix any of that stuff with my political rants.
57.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
I couldn’t make standard image coding work, Moar. What thread did someone succeed in?
58.
Comrade The Moar You Know
It seems to me that if the deal is to be saved, and the McCain camp wants to get the credit, it may be time for a last-ditch effort to combine leadership with pure political theater, and send in Sarah Palin.
Market falls 8,000 points.
It’s not fair. You can’t make fun of Republicans because they will end up doing something so patently fucktarded that your feeble attempts at humor fail utterly in comparison.
59.
Comrade Va Highlander
Comrade @50,
I can’t think of anything more worthwhile. When there appears to be nothing that can be done to fix a crisis of this magnitude, at least for most of us, doing nothing and personal amusement seem the best options. Personal amusement is easier.
One last test: &
60.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Nevermind, Moar, found it. Товарищ НеинтереснаяСобака needs to share more …
61.
Comrade The Moar You Know
Comrade Mary:
It was the last thread, titled: Country First, My Ass, comment #139. He got the graph in there and I’m damned if I can figure out how.
62.
Comrade Va Highlander
Okay, I give up.
63.
Comrade The Moar You Know
Hell, let’s see if the button works:
64.
Comrade The Moar You Know
The button doesn’t work.
65.
Comrade Jake
The difference this year is that the McCain/Palin ticket is making The Onion look like a poor substitute:
Couric: You made a funny comment, you’ve said you have been listening to Joe Biden’s speeches since you were in second grade.
…
Palin: It’s been since like ’72, yah.
…
Couric: You have a 72-year-old running mate, is that kind of a risky thing to say, insinuating that Joe Biden’s been around awhile?
…
Palin: Oh no, it’s nothing negative at all. He’s got a lot of experience and just stating the fact there, that we’ve been hearing his speeches for all these years. So he’s got a tremendous amount of experience and, you know, I’m the new energy, the new face, the new ideas and he’s got the experience based on many many years in the Senate and voters are gonna have a choice there of what it is that they want in these next four years.
Boy is she fucking dumb as a post. This is set to air tonight on CBS. Couric must really be showing up in Palin’s nightmares at this point.
66.
TheFountainHead
Testing my blockquotes
Because it seems to be the hip thing to do.
Bitches.
Word.
67.
Comrade Jake
That would be a FAIL on the blockquote. Fuck.
68.
Comrade Va Highlander
And if any other geeks are playing along, I got the amp code for a non-breaking space by typing this – without the spaces:
& # 38;nbsp;
69.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Really? I just put together ampersandnbsp; (where ampersand is actually &) and it worked fine.
70.
Comrade Jake
Test of
 
blockquote.
71.
Comrade Jake
I appear to be terrible at this.
72.
TheFountainHead
I appear to be terrible at this.
That’s okay, you can still run for public office.
73.
Punchy
blockquote tags can’t handle carriage returns!
Who the hell rents a carriage?
74.
Comrade Jake
Here’s
another test.
75.
Comrade Jake
OK, I got it bitches. I was missing the semicolon. The ampersand followed by nbsp followed by semicolon, no spaces, works.
76.
KRK
I think “serious metal anguish” is a vast understatement.
Yeah. That’s some metal anguish that goes to eleven.
77.
gbear
Couric must really be showing up in Palin’s nightmares at this point.
I would have guessed that it’s the other way around.
78.
wasabi gasp
Halp
I haz
buffoon
veepette
79.
Comrade Va Highlander
To clarify:
You can’t normally type this
&npsp;
into the comment window and have it print just as it appears there. What you get is a non-breaking space, not the amp code that produces a non-breaking space.
I wonder how peer-to-peer lending companies like Prosper are going to fare thru this credit crunch. Seems like they might do really well given that people really hate banks now and no one considers anything on wall street to be a safe investment. these PTP lending groups were set up to be an alternative to corporate banks anyway.
86.
gbear
<img src=”https://balloon-juice.com/images/hotair.gif”>
Throw that fucker in & u has balloon.
OMG this place is going to look like Cute Overload in no time.
OTOH, these are all externally hosted images. Eyejunk issues aside, is there really any server load to worry about?
Annette or John, step in and scold us if we really should stop RIGHT NOW.
99.
wasabi gasp
100.
Comrade Va Highlander
I just tried it with another image. No dice. I suspect wasabi did the same. Maybe only gifs work?
I’m not sure. The first time I tried it, I left out the closing quote and got bupkis. Seems to be very sensitive. The meat of the tag is:
img src=”address of image”
with a < at the beginning and a > at the end. That’s all I know. Comrade “Mary, Would Be Minion of Bad Horse” got it to work. Maybe she’ll chime in. I’m using Firefox, if that matters.
101.
Comrade Jake
Mary, what code are you using? The code Moar posted doesn’t seem to work. I’m guessing something needs to be added or deleted, no?
OK, since it’s OK by John, use Moar’s code, but make sure you manually use straight double quotes instead of what gets pasted in, which are those silly, slanted quotes.
Or just use the IMG button, put in the image URL and alt text, then replace the opening and closing angle brackets with & lt; (in the opening position) and & gt; (in the closing position), REMOVING the space between & and the rest of it.
Adjusting width and height is left as an exercise for the coder.
107.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Yeah, wasabi, and I’ve got my makeup shotgun set to whore today. Deal.
108.
Punchy
This blog is about to be overrun now with gifs, tifs, jpegs, jews, cats, rats, mpegs, BPCS, MLBs, Rays, Cubs, ASCII, FORTRAN, and geeks.
Carry on. It’s actually a good test for the server.
Sorry, that was actually me in my John mask…
112.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
All this geeking out really is cluttering the thread, though. Can John or Annette-as-John give us a playpen — err, test thread — where we can keep the japes and tomfoolery?
113.
Comrade Va Highlander
Thanks, Comrade Mary.
I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re right: a simple copy-paste wouldn’t work, ’cause of the smart quotes.
Moar, if you’re trying YouTube, I just dumped the embed code in Notepad and ran Replace to swap all the angle brackets and their appropriate entity codes.
You can really hear Lifeson singing on the chorus on this one; it’s from the SARSStock show.
121.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
<table border=”1″ cellpadding=”5″ cellspacing=”0″ width=”400″>
<tr>
<td width=”50%”>IE</td>
<td width=”50%”>Firefox</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Cat forced into pajamas at great personal cost</td>
<td>Cat sleeps on your pajamas and you damn well deal with it</td>
</tr>
</table>
122.
Comrade The Moar You Know
The Gates Of Hell are now open, ladies and gentlemen.
SARSFest? Woo! I was there. AC/DC RULED. Can you see me, way in the back, near a tree?
(A friend of mine was right up front and couldn’t leave her spot for 12 hours straight. It was so hot that despite the fact that she was drinking water continually, she didn’t have to pee at all.)
125.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
<blockquote>SARSFest? Woo! I was there. AC/DC RULED. Can you see me, way in the back, near a tree?
(A friend of mine was right up front and couldn’t leave her spot for 12 hours straight. It was so hot that despite the fact that she was drinking water continually, she didn’t have to pee at all.)</blockquote>
Hehhehehe.
126.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Crap. This is not the mother of all hacks.
CURSE YOU, BLOCKQUOTE PLUG-IN!!
127.
Comrade The Moar You Know
Wish I’d been there, woulda been fun. Isn’t this where Justin Timberlake got booed off the stage?
128.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
He got bottled, but he bore up with it well and actually gained some crowd respect, I think.
I saw what you did there, Mary. You broke it good.
138.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Oh, much better — thanks! Hubris, eh?
139.
Comrade The Moar You Know
If we don’t break it, how will Annette know what to fix?
140.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Moar, I broke it good TWICE.
Damn. Poor John used to worry about people who didn’t know any coding posting mile-long naked URLs and just making things scroll to the right. Now he has to worry about people who know a little coding blowing entire threads up.
141.
Comrade The Moar You Know
DOIN IT RITE:
Crap. This is not the mother of all hacks.
CURSE YOU, BLOCKQUOTE PLUG-IN!!
DOIN IT RONG:
Crap. This is not the mother of all hacks.
&nsbp;
CURSE YOU, BLOCKQUOTE PLUG-IN!!
Switch that “b” and “s” and the whole thing goes to shit.
142.
Comrade The Moar You Know
Mary, if you can blow it up with a big table, the software is at fault; it shouldn’t accept big tables.
143.
Comrade The Moar You Know
And speaking of tables, let’s try a small one with color:
True, and once John’s designer shows up, that can be looked at. But Annette’s minding the server and isn’t really wrestling with the page design, so this shouldn’t be her problem. I guess it can go on the list, though.
J. Maynard Gelinas
I still think the better bailout proposal is to change the 401K tax code to allow individuals to liquidate their 401K holdings without penalty and without having to leave one’s job or otherwise become unemployed. But only allow liquidations to pay down mortgage debt on a home at risk or to refinance out of a variable interest ARM or HELoC to a standard fifteen to thirty year fixed rate mortgage or jumbo mortgage.
Yes, it would mean stock market declines. But who here expects standard returns year-on-year over the next decade? Honestly. The only reason these 401K accounts exist is to give institutional investors the advantage of being able to shift money around in the market faster than the 401K account holder can. Meaning, they scram while you hold the bag. My Fidelity account sure doesn’t give me many options to bet on a declining market or shift my money out of dollar denominated funds to Euros or other currency.
IOW: Why should you trust these assholes with your money if it’s already clear that they’re crooks? And why not pay down debt, viewing it as an opportunity savings by clearing out future interest payments? If you’re certain to lose money in the stock market or even a savings account (due to inflation losses) doesn’t it make sense to pay down debt?
And if you think that the cause of this nightmare is not “liquidity problems in paper financial instruments” but an underlying misvaluation of physical assets (houses, cars, furniture, etc) that lenders made when giving out loans for assets, then the solution is not to give a shit-load of money to the people holding worthless paper, but to find a way for those people holding those assets to retain them without taking on additional sovereign debt.
Comrade The Moar You Know
Obama/Biden McCain/Palin
FRIENDS FOREVER ’08!
gbear
Well THAT mental health break didn’t last long.
r€nato
Sarah Palin has been listening to Joe Biden speeches since she was 7 years old.
Yeah, right.
r€nato
oops blockquote messed up:
r€nato
aaaack! It wasn’t me! blockquote tags can’t handle carriage returns!
ack! oh well it still beats WordPress >> Error.
TheFountainHead
Blockquotes are the new Slap in the Face.
Товарищ НеинтереснаяСобака
Anyone know why Onion videos don’t work in Firefox over here? They work in IE, for some reason.
The Other Steve
My Fidelity account does, once I quite my job and turned it into a regular IRA account instead a company tied one. Now I’ve got access to all sorts of funds.
I really don’t understand why it is that Fidelity can offer me a option to manage my own fund, and buy any mutual fund I want as well as individual stocks and everything. But they can’t offer this same behavior when it’s passed to me through a company 401k.
cleek
onion vid worked fine for me (FF 3.0.3)
Comrade Jake
Did you guys catch where Robert Gibbs this morning, when pressed by guests on Morning Joe to explain how Senator McCain was “erratic”, said:
WIN! Steve Benen has the video. And yes, McCain supporters are already crying “ageism!! lipstick on a pig!!” over the quote, seemingly not realizing that drawing attention to this one is probably not in their best interests.
Awesome.
Scrutinizer
It’s not about paying down debt. It’s about shifting commercial paper that doesn’t have a market value out of the asset mix of companies until it can be valued, while freeing up those companies to have lending capital, which the whole fucking world needs in order for economies everywhere in the whole fucking world to continue to function.
Honestly, is it so hard to understand?
b. hussein canuckistani
She was wearing her Tina Fey costume at the time.
Eric U.
there is no way she’s been listening since ’72. I was a political junkie since 6th grade in ’70, and I don’t remember hearing from Biden until 2000 or so. I knew he was around before that.
This bailout crap from the republicans has me stewing. I always knew they didn’t care about the fate of our country, but this seems to really be outrageous behavior on their part. Thank goodness the bill didn’t pass, both McCain and the RNC thought it would and acted accordingly. The funny thing is, they did opposite things as a result. McCain claimed credit, and the RNC paid for ads that said anyone that voted for it was anti-American.
J. Maynard Gelinas
Am I allowed to embed a youtube vid yet? Just for yucks:
J. Maynard Gelinas
Nope. I’m not allowed to embed a youtube vid yet. Here’s the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPWZ7ASnhiE
Martin
Actually it is, because it’s a totally different thing than the talking heads have been discussing for the last year, but it doesn’t sound all that different.
The Other Steve
Firefox sucks.
IE is the cat’s pajamas.
:-)
cleek
Fidelity probably offers a few “401k Management” plans for employers: sign up and they’ll manage everything and keep the employees boxed into a few select funds (to prevent people from putting all their money into Nortel stock). Fidelity meanwhile probably gets a little reciprocal from the fund managers in return for the business.
smiley
You’re posting with a typewriter?
r€nato
Biden was elected to the Senate in 1972 and took office in January 1973.
I’d say there is exactly zero chance that anybody in Alaska knew who the fuck was running in a Delaware US Senate race in 1972, let alone an idiot like Palin listening to his speeches in 1972.
Dennis - SGMM
Palin ran her snowmobile into a tree in 1972. She’s been hearing all sorts of things since then.
J. Maynard Gelinas
Scrutinizer wrote:
This argument presumes that the commercial paper was ever worth anything. The only valuation that the paper held was in the minds of investors. Unlike a house, which has intrinsic value. That is, one needs a place to live regardless of “the economy”. Institutional investors who bought into this bunk are irrationally pretending that their investments continue to have value – when they never had value at all to begin with. That’s the real point. Dumping a shit-ton of money into the market to try to “revalue” all those paper investments will only add on additional losses. Well, at least losses for the dolts who bought in. Who would be us.
I’d rather liquidate and pay down debt.
r€nato
from Wikipedia, that fount of liberally-biased ‘facts’:
TheFountainHead
You must be in serious mental anguish to make a statement like that.
smiley
Excuse me, I did not know that. Now I don’t have to feel like an old fool when my students look at me like I’m an old fool when I say, “now hit return.”
Comrade The Moar You Know
Be careful, TZ will shortly be here to accuse you of wanting to work a splintery, tar-coated stake through the bodies of every woman, child, and retiree in America.
The ugly truth. All you’re doing is putting off Judgement Day for a few months.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
The guy thinks it’s a good idea to put pajamas on a cat. I think “serious metal anguish” is a vast understatement.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Also, “mental anguish”. There’s an armour joke in there somewhere, but I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
(Hai! We can haz editable posts?)
TheFountainHead
Yeah, attempting to put any clothing on a cat is suicide.
Comrade Va Highlander
Don’t mind me, just testing.
I’m curious if putting a non-breaking space between pars in a blockquote will work.
Comrade Va Highlander
Wow! It works.
Instead of putting in an elipsis – “…” – as suggested, just use “ ”.
Jeezus…I’m such fuckin’ geek…
Dennis - SGMM
Heh. I just tried the antiquated, and obnoxious “blink” tag. Worked in Preview.
Comrade Va Highlander
Okay… Let’s try that again.
Instead of an elipsis – “…” – use [ampersand]nbsp[semicolon] on the blank lines between paragraphs inside a block quote.
Comrade The Moar You Know
Let’s see about that.
Davebo
You both are.
Google Chrome Rocks!
Comrade Va Highlander
No offense, but we’re looking liek a cupla dueling eedjits.
Comrade The Moar You Know
Comrade The Moar You Know
Oh god, fucking fail. Semicolon, idiot-
Comrade Va Highlander
Um…
“Semi-colon”. “;”, not “:”
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Blinky
Non-breaking space with naked ampersand, shows as an extra blank line on preview
Non-breaking space with coded ampersand, shows as code on preview
TheFountainHead
Yeah, well when they get off their googly-asses and launch the OS X Beta, I’ll likely agree with you!
The People's Glorious Pantload of Studliness
It’s official: The market’s gone Sybil.
Comrade Va Highlander
Heh.
God, I love this place. The world’s going to hell in a handbag and we’re trying to tease decent markup out of the new commenting function.
Comrade The Moar You Know
Images?
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Naked and clothed ampersands work — w00t! The blink tag didn’t. One more try with blink around a single period, because someone, somewhere has a browser that can read it and the world needs more mental anguish today.
On preview, the period blinks.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Blink still sucks.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Mike S
Off topic but fits with the humor tag.
Only Redstate could come up with that.
TheFountainHead
Couldn’t we just fix the damn thing instead of having to code our comments?
Comrade The Moar You Know
Name me one better thing I could be doing with my time.
I want images! Somebody pulled it off in the last thread and it’s pissing me off that I can’t figure it out.
Comrade Va Highlander
The People's Glorious Pantload of Studliness
Huh? Chrome tweeks out on a friggin’ 30-second YouTube clip, for FSM’s sake. They seriously need to address that shit.
Comrade The Moar You Know
Oh, come on. This is fun, educational, and good for you.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Multiple paragraphs in blockquotes work IF:
1) You put each para in its own set of B-Quote tags, OR
2) You put three periods (not two, not one) in between each para and wrap them all in one set of tags, OR
3) You put a non-breaking space on the line in between each para and wrap them all in one set of tags
A nonbreaking space starts with the ampersand (Shift-7 on your keyboard), then nbsp, then semi-colon
[put an ampersand here without the square brackets]nbsp;
TheFountainHead
All true, but I try not to mix any of that stuff with my political rants.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
I couldn’t make standard image coding work, Moar. What thread did someone succeed in?
Comrade The Moar You Know
Market falls 8,000 points.
It’s not fair. You can’t make fun of Republicans because they will end up doing something so patently fucktarded that your feeble attempts at humor fail utterly in comparison.
Comrade Va Highlander
Comrade @50,
I can’t think of anything more worthwhile. When there appears to be nothing that can be done to fix a crisis of this magnitude, at least for most of us, doing nothing and personal amusement seem the best options. Personal amusement is easier.
One last test: &
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Nevermind, Moar, found it. Товарищ НеинтереснаяСобака needs to share more …
Comrade The Moar You Know
Comrade Mary:
It was the last thread, titled: Country First, My Ass, comment #139. He got the graph in there and I’m damned if I can figure out how.
Comrade Va Highlander
Okay, I give up.
Comrade The Moar You Know
Hell, let’s see if the button works:
Comrade The Moar You Know
The button doesn’t work.
Comrade Jake
The difference this year is that the McCain/Palin ticket is making The Onion look like a poor substitute:
Boy is she fucking dumb as a post. This is set to air tonight on CBS. Couric must really be showing up in Palin’s nightmares at this point.
TheFountainHead
Word.
Comrade Jake
That would be a FAIL on the blockquote. Fuck.
Comrade Va Highlander
And if any other geeks are playing along, I got the amp code for a non-breaking space by typing this – without the spaces:
& # 38;nbsp;
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Really? I just put together ampersandnbsp; (where ampersand is actually &) and it worked fine.
Comrade Jake
Comrade Jake
I appear to be terrible at this.
TheFountainHead
That’s okay, you can still run for public office.
Punchy
Who the hell rents a carriage?
Comrade Jake
Comrade Jake
OK, I got it bitches. I was missing the semicolon. The ampersand followed by nbsp followed by semicolon, no spaces, works.
KRK
Yeah. That’s some metal anguish that goes to eleven.
gbear
I would have guessed that it’s the other way around.
wasabi gasp
Comrade Va Highlander
To clarify:
You can’t normally type this
&npsp;
into the comment window and have it print just as it appears there. What you get is a non-breaking space, not the amp code that produces a non-breaking space.
<img src=”https://balloon-juice.com/images/hotair.gif>
Davebo
  will work without the semicolon in IE, but not in FF (found that out the hard way).
I have no problem with youtube on chrome. I guess that makes me just a wee bit superior!
Comrade Va Highlander
<img src=”https://balloon-juice.com/images/hotair.gif”>
wasabi gasp
Comrade Va Highlander
<img src=”https://balloon-juice.com/images/hotair.gif”>
Throw that fucker in & u has balloon.
TheFountainHead
A guy with horses and some people to move?
gbear
I wonder how peer-to-peer lending companies like Prosper are going to fare thru this credit crunch. Seems like they might do really well given that people really hate banks now and no one considers anything on wall street to be a safe investment. these PTP lending groups were set up to be an alternative to corporate banks anyway.
gbear
OMG this place is going to look like Cute Overload in no time.
wasabi gasp
Comrade Jake
<img src=”http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v334/muzikal203/Obama/n1328940116_30205945_2537.jpg”>
Comrade Jake
I just tried it with another image. No dice. I suspect wasabi did the same. Maybe only gifs work?
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
<img src=”https://balloon-juice.com/images/hotair.gif”>
Comrade Jake
<img src=”https://balloon-juice.com/images/hotair.gif”>
wasabi gasp
Yup.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Err, time to put the genie back in the bottle? Threads full of images will kill the server, right?
Comrade Jake
No dice again, copying the code verbatim. What am I missing?
Comrade Va Highlander
gbear @85:
I’m thinking more like 4chan, but the effect could be much the same. We’ll be up to your asses in mudkips and serious cats in no time.
And then the load time will sky rocket.
And then Annette will ream us a new one.
And then Comrade Cole will throw us out and we’ll have get on with our pathetic lives elsewhere.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
<img src=”http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s281/nettybugs/bunny20imposter12.jpg” alt=”OK, I’ll stop” />
OK, I’ll stop.
Comrade Jake
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
OTOH, these are all externally hosted images. Eyejunk issues aside, is there really any server load to worry about?
Annette or John, step in and scold us if we really should stop RIGHT NOW.
wasabi gasp
Comrade Va Highlander
I’m not sure. The first time I tried it, I left out the closing quote and got bupkis. Seems to be very sensitive. The meat of the tag is:
img src=”address of image”
with a < at the beginning and a > at the end. That’s all I know. Comrade “Mary, Would Be Minion of Bad Horse” got it to work. Maybe she’ll chime in. I’m using Firefox, if that matters.
Comrade Jake
Mary, what code are you using? The code Moar posted doesn’t seem to work. I’m guessing something needs to be added or deleted, no?
John Cole
Carry on. It’s actually a good test for the server.
Comrade Va Highlander
Make that
This is getting annoying…
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
<img src=”http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s281/nettybugs/bunny20imposter12.jpg” alt=”w00t!!” width=”138″ height=”167″ />
wasabi gasp
Trollop
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
OK, since it’s OK by John, use Moar’s code, but make sure you manually use straight double quotes instead of what gets pasted in, which are those silly, slanted quotes.
Or just use the IMG button, put in the image URL and alt text, then replace the opening and closing angle brackets with & lt; (in the opening position) and & gt; (in the closing position), REMOVING the space between & and the rest of it.
Adjusting width and height is left as an exercise for the coder.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Yeah, wasabi, and I’ve got my makeup shotgun set to whore today. Deal.
Punchy
This blog is about to be overrun now with gifs, tifs, jpegs, jews, cats, rats, mpegs, BPCS, MLBs, Rays, Cubs, ASCII, FORTRAN, and geeks.
Thanks.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
<object width=”425″ height=”344″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/65I0HNvTDH4&hl=en&fs=1″></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/65I0HNvTDH4&hl=en&fs=1″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”425″ height=”344″></embed></object>
SGEW
Whoa. What the heck is happening to this place?
Annette
Sorry, that was actually me in my John mask…
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
All this geeking out really is cluttering the thread, though. Can John or Annette-as-John give us a playpen — err, test thread — where we can keep the japes and tomfoolery?
Comrade Va Highlander
Thanks, Comrade Mary.
I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re right: a simple copy-paste wouldn’t work, ’cause of the smart quotes.
Comrade The Moar You Know
<img src=”https://balloon-juice.com/images/hotair.gif”>
Comrade The Moar You Know
Comrade The Moar You Know
<img src=”https://balloon-juice.com/images/hotair.gif”>
Fucking smart quotes.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Moar, if you’re trying YouTube, I just dumped the embed code in Notepad and ran Replace to swap all the angle brackets and their appropriate entity codes.
Comrade The Moar You Know
Been wanting to put this one up for years:
<img src=”http://i526.photobucket.com/albums/cc342/arbiterusa/01th_OMG.gif”>
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Aw, sorry Comrade Va Highlander — that was your code, not Moar’s.
Comrade The Moar You Know
Credit to Va Highlander, big time. Let’s try You Tube. This one’s for John:
<object width=”425″ height=”344″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/nhcM_hx0zxw&hl=en&fs=1″></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/nhcM_hx0zxw&hl=en&fs=1″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”425″ height=”344″></embed></object>
You can really hear Lifeson singing on the chorus on this one; it’s from the SARSStock show.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
<table border=”1″ cellpadding=”5″ cellspacing=”0″ width=”400″>
<tr>
<td width=”50%”>IE</td>
<td width=”50%”>Firefox</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Cat forced into pajamas at great personal cost</td>
<td>Cat sleeps on your pajamas and you damn well deal with it</td>
</tr>
</table>
Comrade The Moar You Know
The Gates Of Hell are now open, ladies and gentlemen.
Comrade Va Highlander
<div style=”border: #000 1px solid”>No problem, comrade.</div>
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
SARSFest? Woo! I was there. AC/DC RULED. Can you see me, way in the back, near a tree?
(A friend of mine was right up front and couldn’t leave her spot for 12 hours straight. It was so hot that despite the fact that she was drinking water continually, she didn’t have to pee at all.)
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
<blockquote>SARSFest? Woo! I was there. AC/DC RULED. Can you see me, way in the back, near a tree?
(A friend of mine was right up front and couldn’t leave her spot for 12 hours straight. It was so hot that despite the fact that she was drinking water continually, she didn’t have to pee at all.)</blockquote>
Hehhehehe.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Crap. This is not the mother of all hacks.
CURSE YOU, BLOCKQUOTE PLUG-IN!!
Comrade The Moar You Know
Wish I’d been there, woulda been fun. Isn’t this where Justin Timberlake got booed off the stage?
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
He got bottled, but he bore up with it well and actually gained some crowd respect, I think.
Comrade Va Highlander
<div style=”border: #999 3px inset; padding: 5px;”>Cool
We can do divs and stuff.
Isn’t this dangerous?</div>
Comrade The Moar You Know
We’re figuring out how to drive a Model T with two wheels and a parrot in the engine.
Comrade The Moar You Know
Had I been there, I cannot say with any honesty that I wouldn’t have thrown a bottle.
It is. However, as things stand most folks here aren’t going to be able to figure this out.
I want avatars!
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
sorry …
(Clean up in aisle 7?
Comrade Va Highlander
<div style=”border: #aaa 3px inset; padding: 5px;”>
Heh. Well put.
Curiously, this program will let me wrap a post in a div, set a bunch of properties, but it mangles the thing exactly as it does a blockquote.
Go figure.</div>
Comrade Va Highlander
You’re in trouble now!
Annette’s gonna open up a can a whoopass on you!
It’ll be cool.
jake
WTF?
The world turned upside down.
jake
Seriously. Is Balloon Juice + 12 or what?
Comrade The Moar You Know
I saw what you did there, Mary. You broke it good.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Oh, much better — thanks! Hubris, eh?
Comrade The Moar You Know
If we don’t break it, how will Annette know what to fix?
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Moar, I broke it good TWICE.
Damn. Poor John used to worry about people who didn’t know any coding posting mile-long naked URLs and just making things scroll to the right. Now he has to worry about people who know a little coding blowing entire threads up.
Comrade The Moar You Know
DOIN IT RITE:
DOIN IT RONG:
Switch that “b” and “s” and the whole thing goes to shit.
Comrade The Moar You Know
Mary, if you can blow it up with a big table, the software is at fault; it shouldn’t accept big tables.
Comrade The Moar You Know
And speaking of tables, let’s try a small one with color:
<TABLE frame=”box” rules=”groups” summary=”Tables”>
<CAPTION>Tables</CAPTION>
<COLGROUP align=”center”>
<COL>
<COL style=”background-color: #FFFFAA;”>
<COL style=”background-color: #BDFCC9;”>
<THEAD>
<TR>
<TH>Game
<TH>Elements
<TH>Entities
<TFOOT style=”background-color: #05FFFF;”>
<TR>
<TD colspan=”3″>Table of Win
<TBODY>
<TR><TD>1<TD>3<TD>0
<TR><TD>2<TD>5<TD>4
<TR><TD>3<TD>2<TD>8
<TR><TD>4<TD>7<TD>9
<TR><TD>5<TD>0<TD>1
</TABLE>
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
True, and once John’s designer shows up, that can be looked at. But Annette’s minding the server and isn’t really wrestling with the page design, so this shouldn’t be her problem. I guess it can go on the list, though.
Comrade The Moar You Know
Not what I wanted. Time to go home.
Comrade Jake
<img src=”http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v334/muzikal203/Obama/n1328940116_30205945_2537.jpg” alt=”Obama ftw!”>
Here we go.
Comrade Jake
<img src=”http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/funny-pictures-bird-cat-cage.jpg” alt=”epic fail”>
protected static
Anyone brave enough to try an iframe?
protected static
(*whew* Glad it didn’t work…)
Michael D.
Let’s see if the new place allows Javascript!
Click here
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Mom! Michael’s playing with JavaScript. Make him stop!
(Protected static, I was thinking about iframes, but I had one of my rare attacks of common sense and refrained.)