For the sake of argument let’s grant Playboy that Rick Santelli’s now famous rant came from an authentic, absolutely genuine outrage that wealthy Republican backers might pay someone else to rant on TV instead of him. Obviously Santelli and the CNBC network would have some egg face but, other than that, who gives a crap? …
Archives for February 2009
Saturday Night Open Thread
An almost live action shot from the Tunch Cam™: In other words, Saturday night is looking an awful lot like Sunday through Friday night around here. On to something different, this paragraph in a story about pears confused me: The Bartlett pear was the principal ingredient of fruit cocktail, which my generation back home had …
It’s That Simple
Bankers have discovered the dirty secret of modern finance. If one guy loses a little money he gets fired. If a firm loses a lot of money its position suffers and, if the loss is great enough, the desks and property get sold off piecemeal. But if enough firms make shitty investments and lose enough …
Hateful
Charles Erwin Wilson, a GM exec who eventually became Eisenhower’s Secretary of Defense, once told Congress “I thought what was good for the country good for General Motors and vice versa” (this is the source of the famous “What’s good for General Motors is good for the USA” expression). I’m no corporatist, but I’ve always …
Paging Radley Balko
More of the new professionalism here (via): My favorite part of this vicious assault is after he has kicked her, punched her, banged her head off a wall, thrown her to the floor and beaten her some more, they then handcuff her and have her completely subdued, and pull her to her feet. By her …
On The Positive Side, .005% Of Unemployed Plumbers Will Support Them To The End
It occurred to me that good strategic reasons explain why the Republican party has become sandwich board silly. Let’s run through the institutional advantages that have kept the party afloat until now. * Money from rich people. Other movements have come and gone, but since FDR established the middle class and poor as the Democrats’ …
On The Positive Side, .005% Of Unemployed Plumbers Will Support Them To The EndPost + Comments (55)
But I Thought It Was Pork?
This is kind of funny. While Newt Gingrich is promoting investment in transportation, the official GOP position is that kind of spending is pork, and Bobby Jindal came out swinging against it the other night. Oops: Louisiana’s transportation department plans to request federal dollars for a New Orleans to Baton Rouge passenger rail service from …