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Bailed Out Banks Teeter Towards Collapse

"If Citibank and Bank of America were going under, that would be a problem," said Mark Blyth, a political economy professor at Brown and a fellow of the Watson Institute for International Studies. "The bailout was meant to deal with a global systemic crisis. It was not to make sure that some bank in Utah with dodgy commercial real estate would be okay."

Ok, Mr. Blyth... As long as the huge, multinatio­nals are doing fine, who cares what happens to all the little people on Main Street, USA. Where is George Bailey when you need him?

Fuck Horatio Alger, Man

Remember when the American dream was all about coming from nothing and making your fortune? To hell with yer pluck and luck. Now all head hunters are good for is telling you to give up your possibly secure job so that you can be the last one hired and likely the first one fired from the next one. Just think. In a few, short months you too can join the ranks of the unemployable Horatio Algeresque losers out there.

And how much do I love this font of employment wisdom's grammar?

"Do yourself and favor [sic] and start looking now," he wrote in the ad. "When you lose your job, you will interview from a position of weakness."

He's a friggin' genius.

Your Tax Dollars Not At Work

Taxes are bad. Watching your house burn to the ground because of unpaid FEES, however, priceless. Get it? Fees aren't like taxes. They're different. Because poor people have to pay exactly as much as rich people, making the system "fair." And if fee-paying people have to sustain a little fire damage because the non-fee-paying people have fires burning out of control, hey, at least the fire department will put out that fee-paying person's fire.

As ThinkProgress reported yesterday, last week South Fulton Fire Department firefighters from Obion, Tennessee, stood by and watched as the Cranick family’s home burned down — which also led to the death of the family’s three dogs and a cat — because their fire-fighting services were available by subscription only, and the family had not paid the $75 fee. Immediately, right-wing writers at the conservative movement’s bulkhead magazine, The National Review, defended the county and argued that firefighting should not be a public service available to all, regardless of ability to pay.

Now, yet another major conservative has joined the defense. On his radio show this afternoon, leading right-wing talker Glenn Beck and his producer Pat Gray openly mocked the Cranick family. After playing a news clip explaining the situation, Gray adopted a southern drawl and began to mock Gene Cranick’s explanation of how the county’s firefighters refused to help his family.

Steny Hoyer: Stephen Colbert's Testimony To Congress Was 'An Embarrassment For Mr. Colbert'

Actors performing in Congress... I remember when a young Kuwaiti refugee named Nariyah testified before both houses of Congress about babies being ripped from incubators and thrown on the floor by Saddam's soldiers. Of course it came out much later that that "refugee" was the daughter of a Kuwaiti ambassador who had lived most of her life in the DC area. She was never identified as such during her testimony. It also came out later that there was no evidence of babies ever having been ripped from incubators by Iraqi troops.

So we have one known actor appearing before congress in character telling the truthful story of his brief foray into farm work. And one undisclosed actor giving utterly fraudulent testimony before Congress. Lying to Congress is a crime; in that case unprosecuted. In one case a comedian brought a bit of poignant levity to a serious issue in a totally transparent way. In the other we had a Hill & Knowlton orchestrated PR stunt that paved the way to an actual war.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Rep. Ellison: 'Gibbs Crossed The Line'

This was just dumb; alienating the liberal base months before an election. This is where Republicans beat us coming and going. They court their lunatic fringe. It keeps them in the fold, even when they don't get everything they want, and it keeps the Overton window moving farther and farther to the right. The "professional" Dems keep proving themselves to be idiots. They're still letting far right Republicans control the debate and control them.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Colleges NOT Worth Their Tuition (PHOTOS)

Where did I get the crazy idea that college was supposed to be about learning? Clearly it's a simple business transaction.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Gulf Oil Spill: BP Tries To Limit Release Of Oil Spill Research

"'That's not wrong. Those are the rules of the game,' he said. 'It's the survival of a company, the survival of a crucial industry is at stake in a vital market area. This is serious business.'"

Call me crazy. I'm a little more concerned about the survival of the planet, of the "crucial" ecosystem, of the "vital" human, animal, and plant lives. I'm eccentric like that.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Ben Stein: Idiot

Any respect I ever had for Ben Stein has thoroughly evaporated. Book smarts aside, the man's an idiot. Anyone who's ever seen lay-offs in action, from investor pleasing dumbsizing to this catastrophic recession-led shredding, knows full well that it's almost completely impersonal. In many cases the decisions are made by people who've never even met the people they've slated for pink slips. So what fucking universe is Ben Stein living in when he says shit like this?

The people who have been laid off and cannot find work are generally people with poor work habits and poor personalities. I say “generally” because there are exceptions. But in general, as I survey the ranks of those who are unemployed, I see people who have overbearing and unpleasant personalities and/or who do not know how to do a day’s work. They are people who create either little utility or negative utility on the job. Again, there are powerful exceptions and I know some, but when employers are looking to lay off, they lay off the least productive or the most negative. To assure that a worker is not one of them, he should learn how to work and how to get along — not always easy.

Matt Taibbi on Journalism's Endangered Species

Matt Taibbi has picked up the torch of journalism so predictably dropped by Politico.

First of all, I want to congratulate Michael Hastings for the amazing job he did on the McChrystal piece. Not only was it a coup for our magazine, but it's a reminder of what journalists are supposed to be doing. For quite a long time political journalism, particularly in Washington, has been reduced to an access-trading game, where reporters are rewarded for favorable coverage of those in the know with more time and availability.

This symbiotic dynamic affects not just individual reporters but whole publications and news channels; it's a huge reason why reporters have in general resisted challenging political authorities. Nobody wants to be the guy who gets not only himself but his whole paper shut out of the access game. Since many recent politicians have made good on this implied threat (George Bush's shut-out of the Washington Post's White House reporters is a classic example), what we get is coverage that across the board fails to ask hard questions and in general treats leaders with a reverence they don't always deserve.

But his bête noire David Brooks reflexively bristles at the notion that reporters and sources shouldn't be chums.

In the column Brooks talks about how the media landscape has changed over the past 50 years, about the gotcha journalism culture in which a public official, sadly, no longer feels safe in having a beer with a reporter and bragging about his mistresses and his Swiss bank accounts. Once upon a time, Brooks says, pols and reporters did a lot of "kvetching" together, gossiping about events in and around the Hill – and most of that "kvetching" stayed out of print:

Those of us in the press corps have to figure out how to treat this torrent of private kvetching. During World War II and the years just after, a culture of reticence prevailed. The basic view was that human beings are sinful, flawed and fallen. What mattered most was whether people could overcome their flaws and do their duty as soldiers, politicians and public servants. Reporters suppressed private information and reported mostly — and maybe too gently — on public duties.

Ah, the halcyon days when reporters could be trusted to protect the elite...

But, as Taibbi also notes, CBS news's Afghanistan "reporter" Lara Logan may be even more callow than Brooks.

Lara Logan, come on down! You're the next guest on Hysterical Backstabbing Jealous Hackfest 2010!

I thought I'd seen everything when I read David Brooks saying out loud in a New York Times column that reporters should sit on damaging comments to save their sources from their own idiocy. But now we get CBS News Chief Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan slamming our own Michael Hastings on CNN's "Reliable Sources" program, agreeing that the Rolling Stone reporter violated an "unspoken agreement" that journalists are not supposed to "embarrass [the troops] by reporting insults and banter."