Now gimme money!

Apparently the US banking industry is down the tubes and the Obama administration is secretly trying to save it without going back to Congress or telling anybody what they're doing -- all it all, it sounds like credit default swaps actually will cause the end of civilization as we know it.
But you know, here's the thing -- it wasn't just accidental bad luck, everybody got carried away and then the bubble burst, how sad, but nobody could have predicted...
No, there was illegality here. There was lying here. There was fraud and stealing and malice aforethought -- lots and lots of it. These bankers didn't just fritter away millions of dollars by accident, they stole it, or tried to steal it.
They didn't just make a few mistakes, there was wholesale fraud, here, so that bankers and their friends could make more money.
Now, I have no idea how they did it -- who can understand all these derivatives and asset mixes and triple-A credit ratings for the big shitpile. And that's the problem -- even if it gets investigated, these bankers will all walk. I don't think any of them will ever go to jail.
Their crimes are too complicated, too complex, too difficult for a judge or a jury to understand.
No prosecutor except Patrick Fitzgerald would even consider taking them on.
And I don't think even Lord Black would ever have been convicted, except for the video of him sneaking his boxes out the door.

Great line of the day

Via Atrios, here is A Blog Named Sue:

You know, in every movie I've seen about the end of the world, civilization collapses because of something wicked cool happening - an asteroid hits, nuclear war, a supervirus, an ape revolution, whatever. If civilization collapses over credit default swaps I am going to be pissed.

Emphasis mine.

Square Root day

Damn -- I missed Square Root Day this year (though we did experience a strange hunger for parsnips and carrots!). Now there won't be another one until April 4, 2016.
But Pi Day is coming up next week!

Living in a dictatorship

In view of the Bush V Constitution memos, Avedon Carol makes a thoughtful point:

. . . it is perfectly possible to be living in a dictatorship and not experience it as such as long as you are either uninvolved in politics or are a genuine supporter of the regime. . . . in a free country, you don't prevent pacifists from getting on airplanes because you're trying to prevent terrorists from flying, and you don't refuse entry into the country to journalists from friendly nations. Neither do you incarcerate people for lengthy periods without trial, let alone torture them. Saddam was a dictator, but many Iraqis went about their daily business without encountering any trouble with him and his government. Millions of Soviet citizens did the same under the USSR, but that wasn't a free country, either. Pretending that nothing is wrong because you don't personally know any of the people who are being abused this way does not provide evidence that the country you live in is, in fact, free.

Bring the Jubilee

I once read a book called Bring the Jubilee, which was an "alternative history" of the United States from 1864 to approximately 1930 about what happened after the South won the Civil War.
Now Lance Mannion brings us up to date:

As fast as they can the Republicans are erasing the Presidency of George W. Bush from their official history, just as they've pretty much written Richard Nixon out of it and written out Republican isolationism and pro-fascist sentiment in the years leading up to World War II. They still aren't sure what to do with Joe McCarthy. They'd probably like to make him a non-person too but that darn Ann Coulter is so cute when she talks about what a hero Tail-gunner Joe was you just have to think she has a point.
For going on seventy years the National Republican Party has consoled itself, sustained itself, and kept itself alive by telling itself and anyone who will listen an alternative history of the United States. In this alternative history the New Deal didn't do any good at all, the Cold War was fought and won entirely by super-patriotic Republicans, welfare not racism or systemic poverty destroyed the African-American family, anyway racism ended when Martin Luther King's birthday became a national holiday (alternative to the alternative: racism ended with the election of Barack Obama), the 1960s are the root of all evil, the hippies and the liberals lost the War in Vietnam, 9/11 was Bill Clinton's fault, the financial crisis was Bill Clinton's fault, Barack Obama is turning America into a socialist dictatorship.

If people who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it, what are these people going to repeat?

Great line of the day

POGGE writes

If the pundit you're reading seems more concerned with the effect the economic crisis is having on an ideology than with the effect the economic crisis is having on actual human beings then the pundit you're reading is irrelevant. Or should be.

The more you know

Well, well -- turns out the Santelli rant was a set up and CNBC was scammed.
Yes, Virginia, there really is a vast right wing conspiracy. Turns out the anti-Obama "Chicago Tea Party" has been planned since last summer.
I wonder how Olbermann will handle this on Monday?

Great line of the day

The Province editorializes against the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and the Canadian Police Association both trying to muscle the Dziekanski inquiry:

For the police to come out now and boldly suggest more Tasers are needed is, at once, bullying, egregious and insensitive.

Canadians talk sense

In spite of a belligerent, derisive, even hostile tone which many journalists are bringing to the Plans of Abraham reenactment story -- witness Macleans and Rex Murphy -- the so-called ordinary Canadians commenting on these stories are displaying much greater sense. Here are some of the comments from Macleans and the Globe to these columns:

Personally, I think it was a good move to cancel the re-enactment of the Battle on the Plains of Abraham. Ever since 1759 this little battle has been a sore point with every generation of French Canadians. Why would the rest of Canada want to flaunt “our” win in glowing colours and graphic productions?

It’s time to move on, to stop dressing up, brandishing muskets, pikes and tomahawks. There is much more to write about in our nation than the nostalgic foolishness to which you devote a page.

Were we to focus more energy on making more perfect the union of anglophone and francophone cultures that make, in large part, our wonderful nation, we might one day get over the silly desire to reenact, and learn to appreciate the good that came of the unfortunate need for a "contest" of this nature in the first place.

No doubt Mr. Murphy also sees nothing wrong with the Orange Order marching through Catholic neighbourhoods in Ulster each year, to taunt residents with the defeat of their forefathers at the Battle of the Boyne. As significant as the battle on the Plains of Abraham is, it was a defeat for the French and is regarded with personal ignominy by many Quebec residents.
Perhaps, Rex, we could persuade Stephen Harper to perform an annual re-enactment of the tearing up of the Atlantic Accords .....on Signal Hill, of course. I'm sure Danny's boys would welcome him with open arms.

Exactly! Canceling this reenactment was a positive step for today's Canada. And now McGinty won't allow it in Ontario, either -- good for him.
The organizers are apparently talking about moving the event to upstate New York, why I don't know. It makes even more questionable whether the goal of this whole exercise was ever to simply reenact history or to actually rub Quebec's nose in it.

Ahhh. Isn't this sweet?

We're still friends, Saskatchewan Premier says of Ottawa
Spike and Chester, together again.

He said "stimulus" heh heh heh

Paul Krugman explains:

the political philosophy of the GOP right now seems to consist of snickering at stuff that they think sounds funny. The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead.

Just desserts

Four mounties were afraid of a stapler? The Mounties will have a hard time living this one down. They may win the battle in the Dziekanski inquiry, but they'll lose the war.

Shh! Don't tell the Republicans

Tonight, after Obama's great inspiring speech, Republican Bobby Jindall was babbling about the Republican health care plan.
As Chris Matthews said, Uhhh? Six years in power and the Republicans never once mentioned health care or did anything about it. For the last eight years, the Republicans did absolutely nothing about health care in America.
And it occurred to me to wonder -- what if they did?
For much of the 45 years since Tommy Douglas brought in medicare, Saskatchewan voters kept voting NDP. And for much of the 40 years since the Canadian Health Act enforced nation-wide medicare standards, Canadian voters kept voting Liberal.
Oh, sure, I know, there were lots of reasons that people voted for and against the NDP and the Liberals over the last four decades. But medicare was a core value of both parties, and the voters knew it. Basically, we knew medicare would continue to be safe as long as we kept the NDP in power provincially, and the Liberals in power federally.
Now, I've read that the Republicans don't want the Democrats to bring in universal medicare because they're afraid of how popular the Democrats would be as a result.
But I wonder if the Republicans will ever realize that, if they could only introduce or take credit for bringing Americans real honest-to-goodness universal medical care, they will have guaranteed themselves American voters for the next 40 years?

Please, God, send another bubble

I promise not to miss it this time.
During the tech bubble, when people were selling website wisps and visions for hundreds of thousands of dollars, my husband and I were saying to each other, "We don't understand this, there's no value there, how can this be worth any money?"
And we didn't make a penny.
And during the housing bubble, when people were selling condos for hundreds of thousands of dollars, my husband and I were saying to each other, "We don't understand this, there's no value there, how can this be worth any money?"
And we didn't make a penny.
Obviously, I guess, that's the clue -- when we don't get it, its going to be big!
So the next time we find ourselves saying "We don't understand this, there's no value there, how can this be worth any money?" -- time to plunge!

Great line of the day

Steve at Far and Wide warns us not to let Harper bask in Obama's glow:

Don't let the ass ride the donkey.