Sarah Palin Interview Generator!
Posted on | September 29, 2008
Heh-heh. I love the Internet.
Gratuitous Video Feed
Posted on | September 29, 2008
Lyle Lovett: “That’s Right (You’re Not From Texas)”
Shakespearean Daily Diss
Posted on | September 29, 2008
“Ay, but he’ll have but a year in all these ducats: he’s a very
fool and a prodigal.” —Twelfth Night, 1.3.25-26
A Ruinous Video Feed
Posted on | September 28, 2008
Sen. Obama’s debate points documented:
Fer It Afore He Was Agin It
Posted on | September 27, 2008
Sen. John McCain’s campaign image relies almost exclusively on his alleged hatred for state earmarks in federal spending. His most famous example, used in last night’s debate, is that of a study of grizzly bear DNA. Today’s punchline, of course, is that he actually voted in favor of that very expenditure:
Senator John McCain has frequently cited an earmark to a bill proving funds for a study of grizzly bears in Montana as an example of the worst pork-and-barrel spending in Washington. The study was included in an ad for McCain entitled “Outrageous” during the primaries. However, according to FactCheck.org, Senator McCain voted for the earmark he now derides.
Senator McCain introduced three amendments to the bill to “reduce funding for projects he considered wasteful or harmful, but none removing the grizzly bear project appropriations” writes FactCheck.org. McCain voted for the final bill, grizzly study and all.
In addition, McCain has mischaracterized the bill. He describes the bill as a “bear paternity test” with “$3 million to study the DNA of bears in Montana”. However, the study actually had nothing to do with grizzly bear paternity. Again, according to FactCheck.org, the study was working to survey the grizzly bear population in Montana by collecting samples of hair on barbed wire. Grizzly bears in Montana are protected under the Endangered Species Act and population counts are vital to any species listed under the act.
John McCain is a liar. Federal earmarks account for about one percent of the national budget, but they comprise ninety-nine percent of his campaign stance–a stance revealed as rank hypocrisy.
Pointing The Finger
Posted on | September 26, 2008
Back in February of this year, then-governor Eliot Spitzer reminded us who bears a lot of the blame for what has since become a looming finacial crisis:
Predatory lending was widely understood to present a looming national crisis. This threat was so clear that as New York attorney general, I joined with colleagues in the other 49 states in attempting to fill the void left by the federal government. Individually, and together, state attorneys general of both parties brought litigation or entered into settlements with many subprime lenders that were engaged in predatory lending practices. Several state legislatures, including New York’s, enacted laws aimed at curbing such practices.
What did the Bush administration do in response? Did it reverse course and decide to take action to halt this burgeoning scourge? As Americans are now painfully aware, with hundreds of thousands of homeowners facing foreclosure and our markets reeling, the answer is a resounding no.
Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.
Let me explain: The administration accomplished this feat through an obscure federal agency called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The OCC has been in existence since the Civil War. Its mission is to ensure the fiscal soundness of national banks. For 140 years, the OCC examined the books of national banks to make sure they were balanced, an important but uncontroversial function. But a few years ago, for the first time in its history, the OCC was used as a tool against consumers.
In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government’s actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules…
Everything the Bush Administration touches turns to fail. Every bit of power they’re given, they use against us. For an entertaining look at the middlemen and the rest of the debacle, though, look here.
Please, Please, Please
Posted on | September 26, 2008
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson literally kneeled before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as he begged her support yesterday for a Wall Street bail-out agreement:
Friday morning, on CBS’s “The Early Show,” Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the lead Democratic negotiator, said the bailout had been derailed by internal Republican politics.
“I didn’t know I was going to be the referee for an internal G.O.P. ideological civil war,” Mr. Frank said, according to The A.P.Thursday, in the Roosevelt Room after the session, the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., literally bent down on one knee as he pleaded with Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, not to “blow it up” by withdrawing her party’s support for the package over what Ms. Pelosi derided as a Republican betrayal.
“I didn’t know you were Catholic,” Ms. Pelosi said, a wry reference to Mr. Paulson’s kneeling, according to someone who observed the exchange. She went on: “It’s not me blowing this up, it’s the Republicans.”
Mr. Paulson sighed. “I know. I know.”
Good grief. Mammon is his god, all right.
Shakespearean Daily Diss
Posted on | September 26, 2008
“I prithee–and I’ll pay thee bounteously–
Conceal me what I am, and be my aid
For such disguise as haply shall become
The form of my intent.” —Twelfth Night, 1.2.50-53
Shakespearean Daily Diss
Posted on | September 25, 2008
“The element itself, till seven years’ heat,
Shall not behold her face at ample view;
But, like a cloistress, she will veiled walk.” —Twelfth Night, 1.1.26-28
Shakespearean Daily Diss
Posted on | September 24, 2008
“That instant was I turned into a hart,
And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds,
E’er since pursue me.” —Twelfth Night, 1.1.21-23
