Life Sucks. Get a Helmet.

What we know:
- House of Representatives[1] did not pass the latest version of the bailout plan, at least as of this writing
- $700b figure was essentially pulled out of Secretary Paulson's ass[2]

What I think:
- GOOD. Engage in risky behavior, THERE IS RISK OF FAILURE INVOLVED. There's a fucking news flash. Being insulated from risk in the face of endemic, systemic stupidity and avarice is how we got here in the first place as an economy/society (not to mention why so many otherwise unfit individuals survive to adulthood and procreate, but that's another rant altogether).
- Let the market "correct." If a whole lot of businesses that were poorly-managed and directed fuck the dog, that is, more or less, what they deserve. Apparently, my secondary brick-and-mortar bank (Wachovia) is being bought out by CitiGroup today, because they did some dumb shit. My credit union isn't, because it didn't. Amazing how that works.
- There's a lot of common-sense talk going around by, you know, people who aren't highly-paid Washington or Wall Street suits about "Maybe if you fixed the fairly mundane root of the problem (ie: mortgage fraud, questionable lending practices, sketchy financial instruments, etc), and not the gaudy burning plane crash ass end of it, you might actually do some good."

Of course, that doesn't make for good theater, even if it's the smart fucking thing to do.


From an IM conversation with a colleague:
Him: We're talking about financial collapse that would make the Great Depression look minor by comparison. We would never fully recover. The US would no longer be a financial superpower, the Euro would replace the dollar as the reserve currency for the world. The free market needs regulation. Nobody who knows anything about economics would argue otherwise. This is extreme regulation, but it's necessary because it wasn't regulated enough to begin with.

I'm not sure where to even begin refuting all of those points. Let's just say he and I disagree about as comprehensively on this topic as possible. I am fundamentally ambivalent about the US' remaining as a financial superpower, or the continued use of the USD as the coin of the realm; the Europeans are also, to my understanding, trying to insulate themselves and their market structures from their own misbegotten forays into the shitty mortgage-backed securities and credit default swap insurance businesses.


[1] O HAI, A THIRD OF US ARE LIABLE TO LOSE OUR FUCKING JOBS IN FIVE WEEKS IF WE PISS OFF OUR CONSTITUENTS BY DOING SOMETHING THIS EGREGIOUSLY STUPID. Suddenly, unexpectedly, a synapse fires.

[2] Seriously, I'm not making that shit up about them making that shit up. In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy. "It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number." Source: http://www.forbes.com/home/2008/09/23/bailout-paulson-congress-biz-beltway-cx_jz_bw_0923bailout.html

[Fitness-related, but viewable to all]

MFT, the guy behind Gym Jones, from whom I cadge a fair amount of my workout philosophy, is occasionally so full of shit he squeaks going into a turn, as far as I'm concerned. Not often, but one of his precepts is simply not applicable to the vast majority of athletes - that training ought to be undertaken to provide peak performance at exactly the time it's needed.

In his post-Olympics essay, among a lot of stuff I genuinely agree with, was this: "Serious Athletes plan every aspect of their lives to ensure that they peak for that special event. To ensure that they are at the pinnacle of their career when they compete on the world’s stage."

Admittedly, I am not a "serious athlete." I'm a guy who wants to be in good shape; strong in useful ways, healthy, and all that sort of thing. I don't compete against anyone but myself, every day.

But, fundamentally, I have a different approach: Fitness should mean you're ready to perform at or near your peak any time you need to. Call it the Fireman Philosophy - those guys may be called on to do maximum effort any time, any day. "Peak performance at exactly the time it's needed" in the real world means you're ready to go Right Now if a storm hits, or a car crashes, or a mugger pulls a knife.

You can't schedule life, you can simply be ready to take it on.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/28/131524/628/571/524211
( Money Shot )

[both links snurched from jaylake's salad this morning]

(courtesy of ikilled007)

And some people wonder why I think the vast majority of my fellow citizens are fucking morons, capable of any stupidity (political, personal, and more).

I mean, just look at this woman. Strident, flag-waving, draped-in-righteousness... these people think they're absolutely, unquestionably, beyond a shadow of a doubt right. These are the people who think GWB is doing a great job (independent of the fact that they're from Texas; there are people like this in every state in the union, they just seem to grow 'em bigger, louder, and dumber in Texas). These are the people Tom Tancredo was speaking to before sane, rational reality stepped up and said, "Dude, you're a fucking asshat, sit down and shut the fuck up."

So, there's a whole constellation of electoral fuckery to be bandied about today. Get comfy.

Both national parties are so full of shit that they squeak going into a turn - this whole circus of "caucuses" and "delegates" and the rest of it is simply a way to make sure that the public doesn't actually get the candidate it wants, it gets the candidate its party wants. The Democrats are marginally less assholish about this, going with a proportional distribution of delegates, as opposed to the Republicans' winner-take-all state races (if the Electoral College would follow the Dem's model, I'd have fewer complaints about it, but it should be dismantled and burned to heat the boiling oil Karl Rove and Ann Coulter need to be immersed in).

Of course, each national party has its own internal politics, carping on shit like "electability" at the expense of such trivial things as "competence." Don't even get me started on the legally-sanctioned mass disenfranchisement - the fact that the national parties got their high-handed knickers in a twist when states wanted to move their primaries up to when they might matter and saying "you don't count, don't campaign there." Thanks, assholes, way to give "of the people, by the people, for the people" a nice fucking kick in the eye.

As a Dem-leaning Independent, I want to vote *for* Obama; otherwise, I'm merely voting *against* someone who I think would be the worse alternative.

The math looks like this in my head:

Obama > any GOP candidate

Clinton =?= McCain =?= Ron Paul

In 2000, it would have been McCain > Clinton, but he's lost a lot of credibility due to his continual capitulation to the Bush administration's policies and talking points; "Straight Talk Express," my ass. I have disliked HC since her days as a NY Senator - I believe the phrase I used at the time was "carpetbagging bitch," because, as a NY state native, seeing her waltz in and assume to know what was best and how to represent us was presumptuous; I've still got enough of my "New York Is More Than Just The Fucking City" attitude to go around; also, her inability to own up to voting to authorize Bush's War in any kind of substantial way - sorry, lady, but "if I knew then what I know now" is a fucking cop-out, and we all knew it was bullshit during the run-up; you voted that way to protect your own ass, and now you get to live with it. Paul has no fucking shot, and would be my second choice if some of his social issue positions weren't diametrically opposed to my own.

Clinton > any GOP other candidate, because they're all fucking insane, social conservatives, or both


Yeah, it's an election year.

Funnily enough, there was a cranky thread over on metaquotes on this overnight, but NPR planted the seed for this earlier in the week.

The widespread panic (or "uncertainty" if you're an economist or a pussy) that has come in the aftermath of several mortgage investment funds/firms getting caught by their own bald avarice is actually pretty funny. Everyone talks about how well "the market" self-corrects and all that; what we're seeing here is a large-print edition of what that looks like.

Get a good fucking look. This is what happens when The Market takes the unscrupulous out behind the woodshed with Junior's Louisville Slugger and a roll of duct tape. Shit gets fucked up, because it had that fucking coming to it; had, can you dig this, been asking for it, by flaunting how edgy and high-risk (and high-reward, maybe) a fund it could cobble together and sucker somebody into buying.

It worked for the Pet Rock and Paris Hilton, it can work for sub-prime loan funds!

Greed and culpability make for a powerful tonic for stupidity.

But it's funny, listening to talking heads very narrowly pussyfoot around assigning blame - "It's the fault of Moody's and Standard & Poor's rating services, which gave these shitty instruments glowing marks! They told the banks that put them together exactly how many insect legs and rat testicles were safe in that pound of broccoli!"

There's well-deserved blame there, to be certain, but that is NOT where the shit needs to stop splattering.

How about those lenders who built the questionable instruments in the first place? Anybody believe they didn't know how sketchy these things were? You know when you're making a bucket of jungle punch when you've substituted Mr. Boston for Absolut, and shouldn't be surprised when somebody yarks in the linen closet or tells you the next afternoon about the army of pickaxe-wielding garden gnomes infesting their skull.

Greed and culpability make for a powerful tonic for stupidity.

But, going back even further (after all, we're sub-priming this pump from end to beginning); what about all those banks that made loans to folks with lower credit scores? Now, let me be clear - having a credit score over or under 650, or whatever the sub-prime threshold is, isn't the end-all, be-all determinant for somebody's ability to pay a mortgage... but in the interest of making a quick and easy buck, lenders stopped doing their due diligence - finding out if Mr. Homebuyer was actually making that $55k he claimed, or Ms. Homebuyer was hiding some student loans. Nope, they just wanted that signature on the dotted line so they could start earning interest on principal and escrow. "Why would they lie to us about their income and financial situation?"

Greed and culpability make for a powerful tonic for stupidity.

Adjustable-rate, interest-only, and the litany of other "entice you now, fuck you later" mortgages were just a symptom of this; the fact that they are made of fail is practically beside the point.

Which brings us to the folks getting the mortgages themselves - READ THE FUCKING PAPERWORK. This is the single biggest purchase in your life. Don't embellish your earnings and assets to compensate for having an undersized cock just so you can store it in an oversized foreclosure waiting to happen.

I've said it before, and I'll say it one last time:

Greed and culpability make for a powerful tonic for stupidity.

Four years since "Mission Accomplished," and El Shrubbo used his pen to scrawl the very second red X on something of his administration.

I'm going to put on my extra-partisan hat here for a moment.

WHY AREN'T THE DEMOCRATS OR THE CHICKENHAWKS EXCORIATING HIM FOR "NOT SUPPORTING THE TROOPS" BECAUSE HE JUST VETOED $124 BILLION IN MILITARY SPENDING, HMMM?

Mr. Pro-War President just cut the military off at the pocketbook, and NOBODY is calling him on it. They're blaming Congress. Guess what, fucksticks? CONGRESS PASSED THE BILL.

That's the Democrats' problem - they're too fucking nice. Light into him for "Not supporting the troops" by hanging them out to dry; under-equipped, with funding set to dry up in the next two months, when he could have done something about it.

This isn't even about the open-ended asshattery of the myriad evils; this is cut and fucking dried. For a guy who says he's behind our troops and the war, he just gave them all a big ol' "Fuck You" with that veto.

Somebody hold his dick to the fucking fire for it.

[This is why all politics is bullshit - the Democrats made a clever play to make the President be the bad guy, and now that he's gone and done so, NOBODY is standing up and saying "ZOMG, THERE IS A FUCKING ELEPHANT IN THE BEDROOM!" You laid the trap, he walked right fucking into it, now pull the fucking trigger and let's see some brain matter hit the fucking wall. Don't become the pussies the GOP knows you are, Dems. Harry Reid can't have -all- the balls in the party.]

Worst CGI wolf this side of Van Helsing.
Worst CGI blood effects, possibly ever.
All the subtlety and nuance of being sodomized with a tent peg.

See 300 if:
- you're into manflesh
- you don't know dick about history

It is, not to put too fine a point on it, poorly-done sword porn.

I'm looking forward to reading the graphic novel in hopes of enjoying it. I've liked everything else of Miller's that I've read so far.

Yeah... something like that.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20070117/cm_thenation/20070129mcgovern

Of course, the man's too big a fuckstick to hear sense, and needs to get more of an Old Yeller treatment than a mere backhanding in the mush.

Ann Coulter is so cute when she's a raging hypocrite..

No, wait... she's an emaciated harpy who needs to have her hands and tongue torn away before she is fed to fire ants.

Ann, news flash for ya. Your ilk made words like "liberal," "activist," "secular," and "progressive" epithets.

Have a nice big game of hide and go fuck yourself, on me.