October 2008
93 posts
Yo La Tengo — I Heard You Looking
They...
September 2008
134 posts
Follow the money.
It’s long been my belief that it would be wise of the US government to get in the habit of keeping a close eye on the financial sector through the specifically focused lens of Wall St. incomes: whenever people start taking home newly exorbitant amounts of money, look into it. Chances are quite good you’ll come across some newly evolved corner of the market (like credit default swaps)...
For his part, Mr. Palin has worried about the... →
karion:
If you can figure out the strategic purpose of planting that quote in a WSJ story about Palin’s preparation for the debate and further interviews, well, you, too, have been following this election closely.
This is an audio recording of a conference call...
Your Republican Party
Moments before congress was to appropriate 700 billion dollars to an incompetent administration, an administration which enjoys the support of only 26% of its voters, an administration whose failed policies have wrought devastating short- and long-term consequences on this country, Nancy Pelosi enumerated a few of the costs of those many failures.
In response, Republicans withheld support for a...
WAIT.
For real? This was a direct quote? Tina Fey didn’t make this shit up?
But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy. Um, helping the – it’s got to be all about job creation too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track.
My head just exploded.
“This is not the end of capitalism, as some wildly claim; there is no...”
– Will Hutton
“Basically they gave Congress a ransom note: ‘We’ve got your 401(k),...”
– Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) on the Bush administration’s “exaggerated panic“ about an imminent stock market collapse.
Bishop Allen - Rain
Because the skies just...
“Inside John McCain’s campaign the expectation is growing that there will...”
– The London Times via Talking Points Memo.
“Make a list of every Web 2.0 startup to raise an A or B round and cross 80% of...”
– Jason Calacanis on what the state of the market means for startups (sans link since TechCrunch pulled the entry). I think it can be argued that if the 90s taught us anything it’s that economic turmoil results in a far more circumspect VC market, and that this impending shake-up Calacanis...
Further thoughts--
—on the previous post: Though some like to argue that the actual site of the irony with regard to communism’s rescue of capitalism lies instead in the form of the USSR and the Cold War, they’re sorely missing the point. Giving the western world an enemy against which to mobilize had nothing to do with any resolution of capitalism’s fundamental antagonisms; it was rather...
unburyingthelead catches this interesting quote which opens a recent article in The Nation by everyone’s favorite spoiler, Ralph Nader: “Many years ago my father asked his children in a dinner-table conversation, ‘Why will capitalism always survive?’ His answer: ‘Because socialism will always be used to save it.’”
Though Nader takes one approach on the...
My new neighborhood in Boston has been pestered in recent years by a teenage gang that calls itself the Fruits & Veggies. The gang took its name from the fact that all of its members worked after-school jobs in the produce sections of local supermarkets.
While they're on the subject of Pakistan I just...
I miss Benazir Bhutto.
John McCain didn't jump the shark this week.
He did like five somersaults before launching from a back handspring and pirouetting into a triple lutz over it. And he stuck the landing.
Now someone should tell the good senator that Tonya Harding wants her sequined leotard back.
The Kleptones - War of Confusion.
And when it...
26% →
Two points shy of Nixon.
Other Things I'd Like to Delay in Order to Focus... →
Elevator Wit →
Wherein I leverage shame and public scrutiny in a daily and derisive mockery of the sensually oppressive and intellectually deadening televised news feed in the elevator of my office building.
Sen. John Tester asks:
“Why do we have one week to determine that $700 billion has to be appropriated or this country’s financial system goes down the pipes?”
Answer: disaster capitalism. And in the immortal words of Atrios, this has been another edition of Simple Answers to Simple Questions.
“For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence...”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald on Long Island
The show must go on.
Call his bluff, Obama.
The stage has been set; a hall’s been reserved at the University of Mississippi; Jim Lehrer’s already written his questions; CNN camera crews are already in place to broadcast the event. All you gotta do is show up.
So McCain doesn’t want to join you? Fine. Thoughtful Q&A instead of puerile debate? FTW.
“THIS IS WHY WE (America) CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS (functional governments).”
– the word unheard
“So if you want me on wood block I can keep perfect time. Some call me ‘The...”
– George Michael Bluth, because at first I misread the headline for National Punctuation Day as “National Punctuality Day.”
8tracks is your new Muxtape →
With what I find to be one very welcome feature change: track names only appear once you’ve listened to the song. I find that remaining ignorant of where a playlist is headed caters so much more to music discovery.
“If you think of all the social networking sites and profiles pages on the web as...”
– Overheard in the office. I love my job.
Unholy Matrimony
It was reported this morning on CBS that Mark Penn and Karen Hughes will be teaming up to form a political consultancy.
I apologize in advance if your Wednesday, like mine, will be spoiled by the lingering taste of throw up in your mouth.
Over the course of my relationship with portable audio I’ve long marveled at how the sonorous constancy these devices introduce into our lives alters the reliability of certain sensual rituals: we must actually look both ways at crosswalks instead of relying on the sound of the oncoming truck; our judgments of passers-by can result only from attentive visual analyses; and certain fundamental lived...
Death in Vegas - Help Yourself
“The writer’s only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely...”
– William Faulkner. Touché, Bukowski.
“I was lying in bed in my four-room apartment on the West Side when suddenly this...”
– Joseph Heller
Compare, contrast.
Henry Paulson in Sunday’s Times:
The moment that called for action arrived late Wednesday. Less than 24 hours after the Fed bailed out American International Group, the giant insurer, it was clear the turmoil gripping Wall Street was only growing worse and that ad hoc solutions were not working…
“It just happened dramatically,” Mr. Paulson said in an interview on Friday. “There was...
A classic from the Chicago Trib:
Dear American:
I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.
I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to...
“In the street you learn what human beings really are; otherwise, or afterwards,...”
– Henry Miller
Jace: This is some seriously lackluster hummus.
Aaron: Yeah, a serious bummus.
Jace: A little ho-hummus?
Just wondering--
—if Bertrand Russell doesn’t owe at least some of his popularity nowadays to his book having a pretty cover.
