Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Archive for October 7, 2008
Government by Dow
Last week, the Dow was on the skids, and the media was SCREAMING that Congress “do something!”, even if that something was mortgaging future generations to the tune of $700 billion. The markets were ANGRY that the House had rejected the bailout! Why was Congress dilly dallying?
And no, there was NO TIME to spend devising a better solution to our economic ills. It was the bailout OR NOTHING! Didn’t we know that this was the only way to PROTECT PEOPLE’S 401Ks?????????
This week, the Dow is still crashing, and …. oh well. Oh, are people’s retirements going up in smoke? Shrug.
Forgive me, but I still don’t get how government by Dow works.
“There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”
I guess we got fooled again.
Oh, and this, from the BBC at 6:26PM MDT:
“Asian markets plummet in early trading after Wall St stocks closed at their lowest levels for five years.”
Plummet — to fall or drop straight down at high speed.
Best catch line of the day
“I saw this on CNN early this morning. John Roberts was talking about the smear campaign, trying to do the equivalency dance, and actually said (I’m paraphrasing) ‘Obama is trying to tie McCain to the Keating Five’. Now, maybe I’m wrong, but isn’t that like saying John Lennon was ‘tied’ to the Beatles? He was a Beatle! John McCain WAS one of the Keating Five.”
What a bunch of fools we’re being made into
Less than a week after the federal government committed $85 billion to bail out AIG, executives of the giant AIG insurance company headed for a week-long retreat at a luxury resort and spa, the St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, California, Congressional investigators revealed today.
“Rooms at this resort can cost over $1,000 a night,” Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) said this morning as his committee continued its investigation of Wall Street and its CEOs.
AIG documents obtained by Waxman’s investigators show the company paid more than $440,000 for the retreat, including nearly $200,000 for rooms, $150,000 for meals and $23,000 in spa charges.
Line of the day
“[O]nly 9% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the United States — the lowest such reading in Gallup Poll history.”
Who are these nine percent and what the fuck is wrong with them?
October 7th
Mary Badham is 56 today. You know her as Jean Louise ‘Scout’ Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. She was nine going-on 10 when they made the film and she received a best supporting actress Oscar nomination. Badham has just five other film and TV credits.
Yo-Yo Ma is 53.
Sherman Alexie was born 42 years ago today on the Spokane Indian Reservation.
The book that made him famous was his first collection of short stories called The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993). He adapted it into a screenplay for the movie Smoke Signals (1998). Smoke Signals was the first commercial feature film entirely written, directed, and acted by Native Americans. His newest book is a young adult novel called The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007).
He said, “Indians have a way of surviving. But it’s almost like Indians can easily survive the big stuff. Mass murder, loss of language, and land rights. It’s the small things that hurt the most. The white waitress who wouldn’t take an order, Tonto, the Washington Redskins.”
Alexie’s books and stories are good stuff, and the movie delightful.
Cornell University welcomed its first students 140 years ago today.
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Filed under American Indians and Birthdays on October 7, 2008
Another Frightening Show About the Economy
This American Life was about the economy last weekend. It’s excellent and you will definitely understand more about what is going on and how it extends well-beyond the sub-prime problem we’ve been told to blame. Sub-prime loans may have been the virus, but the disease is much more.
I highly recommend that you download the mp3 or the iTunes podcast this week while it’s available.
The last 12 minutes is the Was The Bailout Bill A Good Idea? segment I’ve already highlighted.
Sweetie Sequence
There are two Sweetie birthdays in October, one today and one coming up Monday.
For six days until Monday, The Sweeties® are 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2.
Happy Birthday Kiley!
Best lines of Monday night
And now we got like 28 more days and the campaign is getting ugly. Barack Obama called John McCain “erratic.” And in response to those charges, McCain responded by yelling, “Turn down that damn music!”
Are you excited about Sarah Palin? Well, yesterday she referred to Afghanistan as our neighboring country. Yeah. Apparently, she can see bin Laden’s cave from her house.
And now she’s going crazy, Sarah Palin. She is ready to go, she is saying now, “the heels are on, and the gloves are off.” And that’s the kind of thing that used to cost Eliot Spitzer a thousand bucks.
— David Letterman
Four weeks to go
This morning FiveThirtyEight.com projects Obama to garner 343.8 electoral votes to McCain’s 194.2. Obama wins 51.7% of the popular vote, McCain 46.7%. Obama’s chances of winning are 88.5%. Missouri and Indiana now lean to Obama.
Polls tell you how the public feels at the time the poll was taken. FiveThirtyEight projects the results of the election based on a systematic analysis of the polls.
The Bradley effect — lying to pollsters to disguise racial bias — appears, by all measures, to no longer be a factor. (It primarily applied to exit polls anyway.) People who won’t vote for Obama or any candidate because they are African-American feel no need to hide their bias. The current estimate is that Obama would be up an additional six points if race were not a factor. That is, the election would be a landslide.
After this election there will be a phenomenon known as the McCain effect — voting for McCain but telling the exit pollsters you voted for Obama because you are embarrassed to have voted for a erratic, angry, seemingly demented old man.
