Troubled asset

Bush’s nominee to be Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, Neil Barofsky, appeared before the Senate Finance Committee today, and, well, everything you need to know about troubled assets...

The temptation in times of economic stress will be to say, oh, trade isn’t worth it

Bush spoke after today’s session of the Oh God, All Our Economies Are So Totally Fucked summit.

He explained the elaborate preparations for this summit: “The first decision I had to make was who was coming to the meeting. And obviously I decided that we ought to have the G20 nations, as opposed to the G8 or the G13.” Becuz, and see if you can follow mah thinking, 20 is more than 8 or even 13, at least that’s what mah number advisers tell me.


WHAT THE WHOLE POINT WAS: “[B]ut the whole point was, was that we recognize that, on the one hand, there’s been a severe credit crisis, and on the other hand, our economies are being hit very hard.”

A COMMON UNDERSTANDING: “And so there was a common understanding that all of us should promote pro-growth economic policy.” Was there a long debate preceding this common understanding? Were there countries arguing in favor of promoting anti-growth economic policy who had to be won over?

IN OTHER WORDS: “We also talked about broader reforms -- so in other words, the discussions were focused on today and what we’re doing about it, but what are we going to do to make sure it doesn’t happen tomorrow.”

IN OTHER WORDS: “All this is an important first step -- in other words, this is a beginning of a series of meetings.”

WHAT PEOPLE SAY: “People say, well, why don’t you have one meeting and, you know, call it Bretton Woods II. Well, Bretton Woods I took two years to prepare. I don’t know what you want to call this one, but whatever name comes from this meeting, it took three weeks to prepare.” Well, that sure puts the people who wanted to call this meeting Bretton Woods II in their place. I trust they’re feeling appropriately chagrined.

WHAT IT ALSO MAKES SENSE TO SAY TO PEOPLE: “It also makes sense to say to people that there is more work to be done and there will be further meetings, sending a clear signal that a meeting is not going to solve the world’s problems.”

WHAT THE TEMPTATION IN TIMES OF ECONOMIC STRESS WILL BE TO SAY: “The temptation in times of economic stress will be to say, oh, trade isn’t worth it, let’s just throw up protective barriers.”


WHAT GEORGE HOPES IT WAS GOOD FOR THEM TO HEAR: “And I hope it was good for them to hear that even though we’re from different political parties, that I believe it’s in our country’s interest that [Obama] succeed.”

Summitry

The G20 summit continues. Bush informed the press this morning, “Obviously, you know, this crisis has not ended.”

Here, President Doesn’t-Know-What-To-Do-With-His-Arms waits for the other national leaders to arrive.



Then, the world’s crankiest host led them one by one into the summit.




Hands! Hands!!


But there is evidently one leader who enjoys the clammy touch of President Dead Man Walking.

Shouting fire in a burning Sodom and Gomorrah

There’s a big wildfire in southern California right now. If Proposition (H)8 hadn’t passed, you know what the Christian Right would be saying right now, don’t you?

Rejecting calls for protectionism, collectivism and defeatism

Bush is holding an economic summit of world leaders, who he told, “All our nations must reject calls for protectionism, collectivism, and defeatism in the face of our current challenge.” Collectivism, huh?

Still, it must be awkward when all your soon-to-be exes show up at once.

I’m a market-oriented guy

You know, I waited the entire election for just the right moment to use Lord Randolph Churchill’s jibe against William Gladstone, “an old man in a hurry,” against McCain, but I waited too long, alas.

Today Bush spoke to the Manhattan Institute about the global economy.

WHAT IMAGINARY PEOPLE SAY TO GEORGE: “People say, are you confident about our future? And the answer is, absolutely.”

BUSH CHANGES HIS ORIENTATION: “I’m a market-oriented guy, but not when I’m faced with the prospect of a global meltdown.”

WHAT HISTORY HAS SHOWN: “History has shown that the greater threat to economic prosperity is not too little government involvement in the market, it is too much government involvement in the market.”

HE HEARS VOICES: “In the wake of the financial crisis, voices from the left and right are equating the free enterprise system with greed and exploitation and failure.” I thought that was the point.

CAPITALISM DOESN’T KILL ECONOMIES; PEOPLE KILL ECONOMIES: “It’s true this crisis included failures -- by lenders and borrowers and by financial firms and by governments and independent regulators. But the crisis was not a failure of the free market system.”

“At its most basic level, capitalism offers people the freedom to choose where they work and what they do, the opportunity to buy or sell products they want, and the dignity that comes with profiting from their talent and hard work.” What does George know about talent or hard work, or dignity for that matter?

WHAT THE WORLD WILL SEE: “The world will see the resilience of America once again. We will work with our partners to correct the problems in the global financial system. We will rebuild our economic strength. And we will continue to lead the world toward prosperity and peace.” Maybe you need to stop and ask directions.

The transformative and uplifting power of faith

Today Bush spoke at a UN event on “inter-faith dialogue,” or, as he put it, “the transformative and uplifting power of faith.” He started by thanking... wait for it... King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia, and that’s really all you need to know about that.



Here he is putting his hands all over Condi’s bestest pal Tzipi Livni.

I want to do a shoutout to our president and thank him for that

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops is issuing a statement saying that if the Democrats protect abortion rights, it will be taken as an attack on the church itself. Yes, bishops, because it’s all about you.

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Sarah Palin has given another 20 or 30 interviews, perhaps under the impression that she actually won the election (and that “progress” is a transitive verb, as in “I would be happy to get to do whatever is asked of me to help progress this nation”), including one with Wolf Blitzer.

She offered to “assist and support” Obama in any way she could, especially by talking some more about his association with William Ayers, “if anybody still wants to talk about it”. Anybody still want to talk about it?

She praised Bush for “reaching out to Barack Obama and to both potential new Cabinet members also, and those who we know will be in the Cabinet, reaching out to them.” Yes, the moron thinks she knows who Obama has picked as Cabinet members.

She also praised Bush for “keeping our country safe for the last seven years with no new attack on the homeland... You know, I want to do a shoutout to our president and thank him for that.”

She also had to be corrected by Monsieur Blitzer about the number of charges Ted Stevens was convicted of (7, not 4), and even had to be told that the Senate election in her state still hasn’t been decided, since votes are still being counted (indeed, right now, Stevens is losing in the count). Details, details. She does say that while she might run for Stevens’s seat in a special election if the people of Alaska “call an audible on me” and if God’s “got doors open for me,” she won’t appoint herself to replace Stevens (which she evidently doesn’t know Alaska law prohibits her from doing), because she isn’t that “egotistical and arrogant.” Yes, no one could accuse Sarah Palin of being egotistical and arrogant.

It was interesting to watch him go upstairs

Condi Rice was interviewed by CSPAN:

Q: So if Condi Rice is writing the first textbook on the Bush presidency, the first paragraph, what would you include?

RICE: The President believed that all men were created equal and that they were – all men and women were created equal, and that they had the right to live in freedom and liberty. That meant freedom from tyranny, but also freedom from poverty, freedom from ignorance. And he made it the purpose of American foreign policy to begin that journey, knowing that it wouldn’t be achieved on his watch -- it’s a generational struggle, but knowing that ultimately, when it was achieved, there would be absolutely no ground and no basis on which terrorists could hold.

Miss, will that be on the mid-term?

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Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson gave a press conference today to say that he won’t use the $700 billion the Congress so nicely gave him in the way they gave it to him to use, but he’ll do something else with it which’ll be way better. So that’s okay then.

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CNN interviewed George Bush yesterday.

WHAT HE DOESN’T WANT YOUR TROOPS THINKING: “I don’t want your troops thinking that the decisions I have made were about politics or about my standing.”

INTERESTING: On his meeting with Obama: “It was interesting to watch someone that is getting ready to assume the office of the president. ... It was interesting to watch him go upstairs.” You were totally checking out his ass, weren’t you, George?

WHAT HE REMINDS PEOPLE OF: “And I remind people popularity is fleeting. Principles are forever.”

WHAT HE REGRETS: “I regret saying some things I shouldn’t have said. [CNN: Like?] Like ‘dead or alive,’ or ‘bring ‘em on.’ And, by the way, my wife reminded me as president of the United States, you better be careful what you say. I was trying to convey a message. I could have conveyed it more artfully. Being on this ship reminds me of when I went to the USS Abraham Lincoln and they had a sign that said ‘Mission Accomplished.’ I regret that sign was there. It was a sign aimed at the sailors on the ship, but it conveyed a broader knowledge. To some it said, well, Bush thinks the war in Iraq is over, when I didn’t think that. But nonetheless, it conveyed the wrong message.” Notice that he evidently doesn’t regret anything since May July of 2003. Because everything’s gone swell since then.

WHAT HE KNOWS: “I know I’m going be in Texas. No doubt I’m heading straight home. I miss Texas. I love Texas. I’ve got lots of friends in Texas.” All imaginary.

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Why should we have such unnatural creatures in churchyards?

Today, the 90th anniversary of the end of World War I, the US has one remaining veteran of that war. Britain has 4, France 1. Germany, Austria, and Russia have none.

In Pakistan, Israrullah Zehri, who defended as “honor killings” the burying alive of three girls who demanded the right to choose their own husbands, has been made minister for postal services, while Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani, who presided over an illegal jirga which gave girls, aged 2 to 5, as compensation to the family of a murdered man, has been made minister of... wait for it... education.

Headline of the Day: “Garden Gnomes Banned from Church Cemetery Because They Are ‘Unnatural Creatures.’” According to a spokesman for the Diocese of Bath and Wells, “There is no such thing as a real gnome so why should we have such unnatural creatures in churchyards?” As opposed to your imaginary sky god.

I’ll plow through that door

Headline of the Day/Death of the Day: “Husband’s Coffin Kills Woman in Brazil.”

Unclear on the concept: Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled that an ancient Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem, containing the bodies of illustrious Muslim figures, including Saladin’s warriors, may be partially destroyed to make way for... a Museum of Tolerance.

Sarah Palin, on Fox yesterday, on her presidential prospects in 2012: “I’m like, OK, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I’m like, don’t let me miss the open door. Show me where the open door is. ... And if there is an open door in ‘12 or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I’ll plow through that door.” Don’t let it hit you in the ass, Sarah.

Thirteen

Three 13-year-old girls in the news:

One was an Iraqi, a suicide bomber who killed four people as well as herself.

One is British, a leukemia patient who has been allowed to refuse a heart transplant which her hospital had planned to go into court to force on her against her will.

One was Somali, a rape victim who was buried up to her neck in a packed stadium and then stoned to death by fifty men for “adultery.”

Compare and contrast.

Caption contest

What the hell is that on the wall? The ghost of Hank Paulson?

It’s amazing that we did as well as we did

In her recent interview with local Alaska media, Sarah Palin insisted, as she has in every public utterance since the election, that the Obama victory was not her (or even McCain’s) fault: “If we’re talking change, we want to get far away from what it was that the present administration represented and that is to a great degree what the Republican Party at the time had been representing. So people desiring change I think went as far from the administration that is presently seated as they could. It’s amazing that we did as well as we did.” Last week, she blamed it on the recession. At no point has she ever acknowledged the possibility that anyone voted for Obama because they, you know, wanted him to be president. She is a sore and a graceless loser.

She defended, too, also, her practice of charging the state for living and eating at home, which she intends to keep doing, and even praised herself for “trying to go above and beyond, not accepting any per diem for the kids or Todd at all, they’ve lived outside of the governor’s house.”

On Troopergate: “It’s done. It’s over. People need to move on.” How can we, when you keep saying stupid things that need to be made fun of?

On it and on it

Governor Terminator suggests that legalizing gay marriage is just like weight-lifting and offers this advice: “They should never give up. They should be on it and on it until they get it done.” Um, yeah...

To do

Something else for Obama’s to-do list: unsign all of Bush’s signing statements.

Something for the to-do list of every Arkansan who voted to ban unmarried couples, especially gay ones, from adopting or fostering: sign up as adoptive or foster parents. Seems only fair, and besides, without parents, where will these poor children pick up values, like intolerance and homophobia and, uh... never mind.

Friday pygmy hippo blogging

Three-week old Monifa, at the Taronga Zoo in Sydney.

Mutts, like me

In his first post-election press conference, Obama addressed the all-important puppy issue, saying that Malia needs a hypo-allergenic dog so he may not be able to get one from the pound because “a lot of shelter dogs are mutts, like me.” He said it, not me. Of course after eight years of seeing the White House occupied by an example of the results of excessive in-breeding, a mutt looks pretty good.


Obama said that he had spoken to all the living former presidents but none of the dead ones. “I didn’t want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about, you know, doing any seances.” Er, right. Wait a minute, as I wrote that I just realized: Nancy Reagan had an astrologer, but it was actually Hillary who had seances with the ghost of Eleanor Roosevelt.


Anyway, we know what the Ghost of Ronald Reagan would have said to Obama: “Mister Mayor, how are things going in your city?”

Arnold Schwarzenegger hates your dog

Gov. Terminator wants to raise the regressive sales tax in California by 1½¢. He also wants to eliminate dental and vision coverage for MediCal, cut various forms of support to the blind and disabled, and drastically cut spending on education, always his first target. But you know what pisses me off the most, personally? He wants to extend the sales tax to, among other services, veterinary bills. I think you should be able to deduct vet bills from your income taxes, just like the medical bills of any other family member; you sure as motherfucking hell shouldn’t be taxed for taking care of your pet.

Can you tell I had heavy vet bills this year?

The governor also appointed his children’s nanny to a paid position on the board overseeing guide dogs.

The contest in my previous post yesterday asked for sample dialog from Bush’s meeting with Obama next Monday. Athenawise offered “Heckuva job, Bammie,” which suggests the topic of our next contest: Bush does have an obnoxious habit of giving people nicknames, doesn’t he? So what nickname will be bestow on Obama? “Bam Bam?”

At least we still have Ted Stevens to kick around

This may well have been the last chance for a Vietnam veteran to be elected president. Think of all the veterans of World War II, a much shorter war, we’ve had as presidents.

I think that in the spirit of reconciliation, Obama should appoint Sarah Palin ambassador to the nation of Africa.

In a perverse way, I’m quite pleased that Ted Stevens was re-elected. I’m looking forward to the Senate debate on expulsion, to watching Republican senators forced to decide whether to stand with the decrepit felon or not. Meanwhile, the odor of greed and arrogance wafting off him attaches itself to the already stinking corpse of the Republican Party. Good times.

Oh to be a fly on the wall when Obama visits the White House Monday. What will he say to Bush? What will Bush say to him? Possible quotes and sample dialog in comments, please.

Election round-up

Bush says “Across the country, citizens voted in large numbers. They showed a watching world the vitality of America’s democracy, and the strides we have made toward a more perfect union. They chose a President whose journey represents a triumph of the American story -- a testament to hard work, optimism, and faith in the enduring promise of our nation.” As opposed to your slackerism and fear-mongering, George?

Note his choice of pronoun: they chose a president.

UR DOING IT WRONG: The US bombed yet another Afghan wedding party, killing maybe 40 and wounding the bride. Said army spokesmodel Col. Greg Julian, “It is the worst possible outcome if civilians are harmed as a result of our trying to defend them.”

Arkansas voters passed a ban on adoption and fostering by anyone who is living with someone to whom they are not married. This was intended to get around a state supreme court decision that a specific ban on gays adopting was discriminatory by banning not just gay couples, but also relatives of the child or people designated as guardians by the child’s parents if they happen not to be (or are not legally allowed to be) married. Given that the number of children needing foster or adoptive families was already several times the number of such families, getting out of orphanages will now be even more of a lottery.

Arkansas voters also passed a measure creating a state lottery.

Washington state passed physician-assisted suicide for terminal patients.

California voted to give chickens more wing space.

Arizona and Florida and California banned gay marriage. Now that little girl will never be able to marry a princess. The Florida measure also banned domestic partnership benefits for all unmarried couples. The California proposition, uniquely, reversed an actually existing right to marriage (and is badly enough drafted that we don’t know if it invalidates gay marriages already enacted). But (with 96.6% of the vote counted), it only did so by 52.2%. The issue is rapidly reaching a tipping point in California if not elsewhere in the country. I say supporters of gay marriage should take a leaf from the people who push props for parental notification for abortion on us every single damn election (this year’s lost, just like in 2006 and 2005), and not take no for an answer. Don’t wait for demographics to create a pro-gay majority in 10 or 20 years, but bring it back in 2 years and 4 years and 6 years, because it forces the anti-gay side to enunciate their prejudices. Half of the function of the abolitionists, the women’s suffrage movement, and now the gay marriage supporters, is to force the other side into revealing the emptiness and mean-spiritedness of their bigotries. Arguably, gay marriage didn’t even lose on its merits, but on the false claim that school children would be taught all about the joys of gay marriage, and their parents couldn’t do anything to stop it , oh won’t someone think of the children. You heard very little from the pro-Prop 8 side about what’s so wrong with the idea gay marriage, except that it’s not “traditional marriage.” The anti-8 side didn’t go after them to demand they be more explicit: “Really, ‘God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,’ that’s the best you’ve got?” Rather, it mostly talked about equality, which is a good argument and a high-minded one, but which (sigh) doesn’t seem to have worked on black voters, who were the one solidly anti-gay-marriage demographic (much more so than Latinos, which I can’t say I understand).

WaPo headline: “McCain Asks His Backers to Get Behind Obama.” Graciousness, or an ominous threat? You be the judge. If I were Obama, I wouldn’t want those people behind me.

Tom Tomorrow: “We’ve regarded our leaders with dread and anxiety for so long, it has come to seem like the normal state of things.” More.

The audacity of pup

CONTEST: Name the promised First Puppy. In comments, Athenawise has already suggested Maverick. I would nominate Joe the Dog. Your ideas?

America gets a new puppy

I think it’s a welcome sign of Iranian rapprochement with the West that when the interior minister decided to fake a degree, it was from the University of Oxford (an honorary degree – who fakes an honorary degree?).

McCain concession speech: his was “the most challenged campaign of modern times.” I think that’s some sort of euphemism.

Obama speech: new puppy! The Obama kids are getting a new puppy!

Medical marijuana wins in Michigan, plain old marijuana in Massachusetts. The abortion ban in South Dakota fails, ditto the Colorado prop. defining human life as beginning “when a guy gets a kinda funny feeling, you know, down there.”

They vote

And then the voting machines recorded all their votes for McCain, the end.

Mac and Puhleeze

One day left. Sarah Palin suggested today that she knows all about discrimination because Todd is part Inuit and asks if Democratic proposals for defense budget cuts show that “they think the terrorists have all the sudden become the good guys and changed their minds”? McCain says that “the Mac is back,” which must be true, because it rhymes.

From the last couple of days of campaigning, the many finger gestures of Mac and Sleaze.









A bonus picture of Sarah Palin speaking in Jefferson City, Missouri, while Thomas Jefferson checks out her ass.

Shoring up the strategies that we need over in Iraq and Iran to win these wars

Yesterday, Greta van Susteren at Fox interviewed Palin. 7-year-old Piper Palin, who is cute as a button and just like her mother. She also doesn’t know what the vice president does:

PIPER PALIN: I like the campaign trail.

VAN SUSTEREN: You like it? What -- any thought on what a vice president does? What’s your thought?

PIPER PALIN: I don’t know.

VAN SUSTEREN: No idea?

PIPER PALIN: No.

GOV. SARAH PALIN: What would a vice president do?

PIPER PALIN: Go to a lot of rallies.

She also answers questions about things she doesn’t understand:

VAN SUSTEREN: Is she the disciplinarian?

PIPER PALIN: Yes.

VAN SUSTEREN: Do you know what that means?

PIPER PALIN: No!

Sadly, Van Susteren did not ask Sarah Palin if she knows what that means, but she did ask her what she would do if she suddenly became president and faced a crisis. Sarah mostly said what she wouldn’t do. No prizes if you guessed “blink”: “But you do not blink when you have to make a decision to defend on the home front, to defend American lives. And that is, of course, the top of any president and vice presidential team’s agenda is to protect American people, so in not blinking there, you -- in assembling your team and your advisers, you make the right call and you make sure that Americans are protected.”

She said that she feared Obama would destroy the American work ethic, and that he “seems to want government to mandate that we be generous and compassionate with one another via spreading the wealth. That is not the American way. We don’t need to go down that road.” The generous and compassionate road? Heaven forfuckingfend!

She accidentally declared war, talking of the need to “really shore up the strategies that we need over in Iraq and Iran to win these wars”.

Todd Palin perhaps gave an insight into his marriage that we did not need to know, saying that “Senator McCain and -- they are so much alike, it’s almost scary.” I’m not sure if saying that McCain and Palin are so much alike it’s almost scary is more insulting to McCain or to Palin. I’m really not sure.

Would McCain have figured out he wasn’t talking to Sarkozy?

And... “Marcel the guy with bread under his armpit”?

Who would you want in that cell with you?

At that campaign event yesterday, Schwarzenegger asked – because this is clearly the test of fitness for public office that all of need to ask ourselves – “If you were in a POW cell, with the threat and danger and torture as part of the daily life, who would you want in that cell with you? A man — you want a man of eloquence or a man of proven courage”? Depends, does one of them have a flatulence problem? ‘Cause 5½ years can be an awfully long time stuck in a cell with a farter, is all I’m saying. Also, it gets pretty boring in a prison cell, so damn right you want “a man of eloquence,” because and how many times can you hear McCain’s repertoire of jokes about women being raped by gorillas before they begin to get a little, you know, old?

Anyway, since I don’t devote as much time to the Democratic side, here’s a picture of Barack Obama with a pumpkin: