It appears that Goldman Sachs is look at buying IndyMac, or at least parts of IndyMac, to build out a retail banking network.
Is it just me, or does this have “Epic Fail” written all over it?
Category: Stupid
McCain “Suspends” Campaign
It appears that he believes that his campaign the country needs him to go down to Washington so that he can inject politics into the matter.
He is also calling for a delay in the first debate, doubtless because with the financial crisis, there will have to be some questions asked on the economy, though Obama is having none of this, noting that multi-tasking and delegation are crucial skills for a president.
My theory is that he knows that no one is concerned about foreign policy right now, so he wants the foreign policy debate delayed until people will pay attention.
It’s also certain that the economy would come up in the debate, even with the ostensible focus on foreign policy, so he’s looking to cut and run.
Of course, it may just all be a ploy to distract people from Sarah Palin’s disasterous interview with Katie Couric……How the hell do you get owned in an interview by the mistress of softball questions anyway?
H/T This Modern World for the pic
And in the Never Ending Quest for Budget Dollars…..
Yep, some of the whiz kids at the National Defense University are pitching the idea that they need funding to protect us all from terrorists who would use Wizard of Warcraft to rehearse attacks on all of us.
Yes, it’s real, see, they’ve got PowerPoints, and everything, complete with a conversation using code words, simulated, of course.
See how they simulate some seriously Kule d00dz haxor terrorists?
So they need to pay someone play Warcraft in order to look for this non-existent problem.
I want the job….I REALLY want the job.
In reality, if terrorists want to engage in virtual training, they will do it on a private server…Just like you see people do with Doom….
After all, who wants to be in the middle of planning to nuke the VP residence, when some n00b comes up and starts asking stupid questions?
If this is why my taxes are so fracking high, I’d rather pay for Sarah Palin’s bridge to nowhere.
U.S. Navy Ship Building Frack it Up Again
Specifically, the fact that naval inspectors flagged the New Orleans, the 2nd of the San Antonio class LPDs, as degraded in basic combat capabilities, despite the fact that the US Navy formally accepted the ship.
It’s bad enough that the San Antonio could not deploy with its strike group earlier.
Our defense procurement system is at least as broken as our financial system.
Georgian President Saakashvili More Like Bush Than I Had Thought
Certainly, he’s adopted the Bush mantra, “Never tell the truth when a lie would do,” when he denies spending money lobbying the United States.
Dude, we have the paperwork filed by senior McCain adviser’s Randy Scheunemann’s company, Orion Strategies, showing the payments to them totaling 800 grand.
Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead
I am not calling calling Carly Fiorina a witch. This is rather a reference to the report that when Fiorina was fired from HP, that people there started singing the song spontaneously.
I imagine that after a series of gaffes, McCain staffers are singing it to, because following her latest screw-up, where she said that neither Palin nor McCain (later modified to include Obama and Biden) were qualified to run a large company, she has been kicked off the campaign circuit.
Of course, experience at HP would appear to indicate that she wasn’t qualified to run a large company either.
Now Palin is Now Plagiarizing Her Lies
Remember when political operatives maintained that Sarah Palin’s teleprompter broke and that she had to “wing it”?
Remember, that reports watching the speech, who were in a position to see the teleprompter, and saw that she was reading from a fully working teleprompter, and they could actually read it as she was talking, and that she followed the directions, such as adding emphasis at underlined texts, and pausing when the instruction “pause” was there.
It appears that someone was feeding Neanderbloggers and Drudge a load of crap
Well, now, apparently having run out of her own lies, Palin now feels compelled to use someone else’s lies:
At a fundraiser in Canton, Ohio, this evening, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had an interesting description of her speech to the Republican convention.
“There Ohio was right out in front, right in front of me,” Palin said. “The teleprompter got messed up, I couldn’t follow it, and I just decided I’d just talk to the people in front of me. It was Ohio.”
It really is pathetic when a Republican runs out of lies to tell.
On the bright side for Ms. Palin, I do believe that it is a sign of the coming “Rapture”, which she has been waiting for with baited breath.
Stupid Lawsuit of the Day
Merrill Lynch shareholders suing, because they think that they did not get enough from Bank of America to buy them.
If BoA shareholders sued, they would have a case, because Merril shows every sign of being like Countrywide, where every few days/weeks, more unpleaseantness will be found as rocks are turned over.
BoA bought itself another money pit.
I approve of the right to litigate, but this is a stupid lawsuit.
John Sidney McCain III Invented the BlackBerry
No, this is not a report from Declan “Draw By Crayon Libertarian” McCullagh, this is an actual claim from the McCain campaign:
Asked what work John McCain did as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee that helped him understand the financial markets, the candidate’s top economic adviser wielded visual evidence: his BlackBerry.
“He did this,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin told reporters this morning, holding up his BlackBerry. “Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce Committee. So you’re looking at the miracle John McCain helped create and that’s what he did.”
It would be less laughable if he had not become chair of the commerce committee until 1997, by which point, RIM had been in existence for seven years.
Barack Obama: Fire Cass Sunstein Now.
Because he just called Roe v. Wade an unsupportable decision. He does day that it should remain as precedent, underthe principle of stare decisis, but that the decision is not based, “in either the text of the Constitution or its own precedents.”
First, this analysis is just plain wrong, the precedents of Griswold v. Connecticut and Eisenstadt v. Baird, which prohibited states banning contraception on the basis of privacy rights, and which he studiously, ignores is clearly on the path to Roe.
Second is that his embrace of stare decisis would invalidate rown v. Board of Education, the national minimum wage, and the National Labor Relations act.
For Barack Obama to continue to have him as an adviser, or to consider him as a member of the cabinet, or as senior Department of Justice appointment would be a betrayal of his supporters and the Democratic party.
H/T TalkLeft.
A Good Consequence of the Lehman Failure
It appears that they are shuttering their carbon trading desk.
Anything that kicks carbon trading in the teeth is a good thing. It is bad, incredibly bad, policy.
The stated idea is, “Let’s let Wall Street apply the same practices ant techniques to a world threatening problem, the innovation unleashed will solve that problem.“
The real goal is, “If we create a market mechanism for this sh#@, then I can pull down major fees as an expert in this sh#@, my Ivy League classmates can get commissions whenever someone sells this sh#@, we can get more commissions whenever we repackage these things as sh#@ backed obligations, and I can get a Porsche.“
Market based solutions: Because baby needs a Porsche.
NASA Doubling Down on Failure
It appears that NASA is looking at extending shuttle launches through 2015 (paid subscription required) to account for delays in Orion, and the recent difficulties in convincing Congress to allow NASA to buy space on the Soyuz.
The shuttle has been sucking the marrow out of the space program for over three decades now, and NASA wants to extend the
And in the World of Ineffective Abusive Security Techniques …..
Mario Labbé, a frequent flying record executive in Montreal, has discovered that his name was erroneously on the no-fly list.
After many attempts to have this corrected, Mr. Labbechanged his name to François Mario Labbé, which ended his monthly harassment.
I’m not sure what concerns me more, that one can be put on the no-fly list with no recourse, or that you can fix it by tweaking your name.
So, I guess Osama bin Laden could fly around the United States as LeRoy Ricks, Professional Elvis Impersonator.*
*3 Shows a day in Vegas……Think about it. It’s the last place that anyone would look for bin Laden.
Paul R. La Monica is an Idiot
As I have said before, and will undoubtely say again, , the writer of CNNFN’s “The Buzz” column, Paul R. La Monica, is a complete Pratt.
Well, a few days back, La Monica claimed that the next bubble will be — get this — short selling.
This is the statement of someone who does not get the concept of a bubble beyond the fact that it’s an “in word” in the media.
A bubble is an artifact of an unreasonable optimism, and short selling is a manifestation of pessimism, but the clue train has not arrived to La Monicaville.
US Air Force Looking at Another Way to Be Unhelpful in Afghanistan and Iraq
Because the USAF just canceled the Common Battlefield Airmen Training(CBAT), a program to train airmen for conducting operations outside the airfield perimeter.
We have seen a greater involvement of USAF personnel in ground combat operations, particularly in areas such as EOD, and this will decision is profoundly unhelpful to the needs of the soldier on the ground, but it’s always been the policy of the USAF top be profoundly unhelpful to the needs of the soldier on the ground.
The Politico’s Roger Simon Gets One Right…..For Once
He apologizes for the behavior of the media on the matter of Sarah Palin.
Actually he doesn’t, he explains just what Republicans find unacceptable about media coverage, and his use of the famous Lily Tomlin quote, “No matter how cynical I get, it’s just never enough to keep up,” is a nice use of quote.
Go read.
I’m not sure if it means much, except that perhaps the “elite media” that McCain is now complaining about, the media that literally heckled Mitt Romney, and did everything it could to get McCain the nomination, is beginning to realize that McCain isn’t another pundit.
It’s only taken them about 26 years that McCain is all hat and no cattle.
OK, This Offends My Fashion Sense
Vanity Fair, who gets such thing right, took a look at the outfits worn by Cindy McCain and Laura Bush at the convention, and generated price tag:
Laura Bush
Oscar de la Renta suit: $2,500
Stuart Weitzman heels: $325
Pearl stud earrings: $600–$1,500
Total: Between $3,425 and $4,325Cindy McCain
Oscar de la Renta dress: $3,000
Chanel J12 White Ceramic Watch: $4,500
Three-carat diamond earrings: $280,000
Four-strand pearl necklace: $11,000–$25,000
Shoes, designer unknown: $600
Total: Between $299,100 and $313,100
I know that then I comment on women’s fashion, I am way out of my comfort zone, but honestly, I find nothing wrong with ODL’s beige dress, but what Cindy McCain is wearing is fugly, and you can be fugly for a lot less than 300 grand.
If someone could help me out though….There is clearly a MasterCard “Priceless” ad in this somewhere.
NATO Conducts Raid Inside Pakistan
Way to piss off an essential ally against terrorism in the region, by sending in a helicopter based infantry assault, and killing some number of civilians.
I’m not sure if this is the start of a new policy, a statement of displeasure regarding Pakistan’s Ramadan cease fire, or some attempt to gin up something for the us elections, but in either case, the consequences, in terms of destabilizing a nuclear armed Pakistan, are very concerning.
Note that this was not the NATO force that did this, as, “American troops in Afghanistan operate under a NATO chain of command, the Special Operations forces who carried out this attack answer only to American commanders.”
In any case, this does not bode well for US-Pakistani relations.
Time for a Painful Palinectomy, Dude
I’m not sure what the hell McCain was thinking, but my most likely reasons are that he:
- Did it in a fit of pique because his reported first choice, Joe Lieberman, who was shot down by the religious right.
- That he had no number two after his reported first choice, Joe Lieberman, who was shot down by the religious right, and he panicked.
- That he figures that after picking her to be the VP, enough will come out so that he can dump her after the convention, and select his his reported first choice, Joe Lieberman, who was shot down by the religious right.
My money is on the first possibility, but in any case, you have McCain staffers saying that she was not interviewed until the day before the announcement.
In any case, you have to love the irony of Dr. Laura saying that Palin is morally unfit to be VP.*, though the fact that Jamie Lynn Spears† sending a a gift of designer baby burp cloths to Bristol‡ Palin to show moral support comes close.
The strange thing is that as Josh Marshall notes, the McCain campaign appears to be doing it’s level best to pimp Levi Johnston, the alleged father of the alleged child:
Let’s be clear about what’s happening here. Overwhelmingly, reporters are pressing eminently reasonable questions — her role in troopergate, her lack of experience, her connections to the AIP, her history of earmarking and lobbyists, etc. Meanwhile, the McCain campaign is going absolutely non-stop about Palin’s daughter. It is unmistakable.
Look at the video. It’s clear that McCain is attempting to make sure that this self described “Red Neck” is front and center:
Of course, it would not be fair to mention the National Enquirer article which said that Palin was pressuring Bristol‡ to get a quickie marriage, but that, “Bristol, 17, refused to go along with the plan and that sparked a mother-daughter showdown over the failed coverup.”
Honestly, I expect that there was some shouting and screaming in such situations, but those are private matters, and the National Enquirer should be ashamed of itself.
That being said, Palin’s opposition to reality based sex education, along with her veto to slash funding from the Alaska program that helps teenage mothers get their lives together and keep their kids are legitimate policy issues that should be on the table.
Meanwhile, it appears that the state house investigation of “Troopergate” will be released a few weeks before the election, at least it will be if Palin’s private lawyer, hired at state expense, doesn’t manage to quash the investigation.
Thus far, we have already been treated to the spectacle of Sarah Palin filing an ethics complaint against … Sarah Palin in order to move the investigation to the state Personnel Board, whose members are appointed by … you guessed it … Sarah Palin!
Still, we have other ethical problems, such as her violation of state ethics laws by failing to disclose business interests.
Additionally, Time took a loor at her time as mayor of Wasilla, and found her systematically going after professional staff who were not sufficiently “loyal to the mayor”.
I believe that the translation for this is, “Heck of a job, Brownie.”
*Actually, you have to love the irony of Dr. Laura saying that anyone is morally unfit for anything.
†Yes, I know, she is, indirectly at least, one of Those Who Must Not Be Named, but there is a political context here.
‡Is it that I affect British English too much, or do other people find it odd that someone named their kid a slang term for breasts?
40% of UK Energy Now Generated by Tapping Orwell’s Spinning
Top Republican Admits That GOP Is Running “Ministry Of Truth” Against Obama.
What the heck can I add to that.