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Posted by: terrance in asides
Its sounds like a joke, but it’s true. You know the economy has gone South when folks around in Macon (or anywhere else in the south) are going to restaurants and not ordering sweet tea.
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Every once in a while, I get an idea that turns out to be bigger than I thought was. Such is the case with the Meltdown 2008 timeline I debuted in the previous post.
That timeline is still developing. (Which means I’m still adding to it.) But before I could start the process of putting it together, I had to figure out a way to do it. That lead to even more time researching online timeline-building tools. I didn’t know they existed before, let alone that there were so many. But now that I’ve settled on which to use for this project, I wanted to share what I learned from my research about what else is out there.
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Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for October 2nd through October 5th:
- Fourth Wave: How many times have you seen this today? - The Palin-Fey juxtaposition is disconcerting, even for me, and I’ve been reading all the political blogs and The New York Times and The Huffington Post. I recognize that Palin is grossly inexperienced, that I do not agree with her on a single issue, that her stance on abortion frightens me, that her “tolerance” of LGBTQ “lifestyles” infuriates me, that her disregard for the environment is mind-boggling, and that her version of women’s rights is not just nonexistent but regressive. And yet, as Le Loup-garou reminds us, the association with Tina Fey’s brilliant parody still manages to make her seem funny instead of downright terrifying. Don’t get me wrong. I think satire is important. But it’s not SNL’s job to make Sarah Palin look bad or good or scary or anything. SNL is just supposed to be funny, to hold a wavy circus mirror up to our already twisted contemporary political landscape and let us laugh a bit here and there. And maybe that’s enough–to expose and magnify the inconsistencies and the incompetency and the obvious ploys that distract us from actual policies and beliefs. But the tenuous boundary between what’s funny and what’s real is something we should keep in the back of our minds while we’re guffawing over Queen Latifah as Gwen Iffil and her raised-eyebrow disbelief at Palin-Fey’s antics.
- Sarah Palin is a Bitch… there I said it. « Margaret and Helen - Who can turn the world on with her smile? Who can take a nothing day and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile? Well it’s NOT you girl… Look. I am going to say what everyone at CNN, CBS, ABC and NBC is thinking but is afraid to say. Governor Palin is a stupid, conniving bitch. And it’s not because she is a strong woman - I like strong women… worship them… It’s actually the opposite. She is a weak, pathetic woman who thinks big hair, winking, baby talk and self deprecation is somehow becoming of a woman who wants to lead the free world. My god, where is Margaret Thatcher when you need her!
- ACLU Blog: Because Freedom Can’t Blog Itself: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union » When Will We Learn? The Many Failings of Abstinence-Only Programming - In addition to being vulnerable to attack under the federal Equal Protection Clause, as the authors meticulously detail, these programs are also subject to challenge under state constitutions and state anti-discrimination statutes.For example, some state constitutions contain explicit equal rights amendments that require state courts to engage in a higher scrutiny of sex-based classifications than what is demanded under the federal Constitution.Moreover, many states prohibit sex discrimination in schools under either a statute that applies specifically to the public school setting, or under a statute that prohibits discrimination in public accommodations. This gender discrimination is part and parcel of an overall discriminatory scheme:by definition abstinence-only-until-marriage programs exclude lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth because the federal definition of marriage is limited to a man and a woman.
- Palin: Another Sociopath | PEEK | AlterNet - But there’s something about Palin’s speeches and interviews that I’ve found unnerving, and this morning I finally realized what it is. She never, ever talks about the future. Ever. One would think that the mother of four children, including an infant, and the soon-to-be-grandmother of another infant, would use her “hockey mom” persona to frame her ticket’s agenda as creating a better world for her children. Barack Obama does it when he talks about his daughters. Joe Biden does it when he talks about his grandchildren. Even Hillary Clinton, a woman who Sarah Palin makes look like Mamie Eisenhower by comparison, did it. Sarah Palin doesn’t. And I think I know why. It’s because Sarah Palin doesn’t believe there is a future.
- Op-Ed Columnist - Pitbull Palin Mauls McCain - NYTimes.com - We are not a nation of whiners, as Phil Gramm would have it, but the G.O.P. is now the party of whiners. That rebranding became official when Republican House leaders moaned that a routine partisan speech by Nancy Pelosi had turned their members against the bailout bill. As the stock market fell nearly 778 points, Barney Frank taunted his G.O.P. peers with pitch-perfect mockery: “Somebody hurt my feelings, so I will punish the country!” Talk about the world coming full circle. This is the same Democrat who had been slurred as “Barney Fag” in the mid-1990s by Dick Armey, a House leader of the government-bashing Gingrich revolution that helped lower us into this debacle. Now Frank was ridiculing the House G.O.P. as a bunch of sulking teenage girls. His wisecrack stung — and stuck. Palin is an antidote to the whiny Republican image that Frank nailed. Alaska’s self-styled embodiment of Joe Sixpack is not a sulker, but a pistol-packing fighter. That’s why she draws the crowds and (as she puts it) “energy” that otherwise elude the angry McCain. But she is still the candidate for vice president, not president. Americans do not vote for vice president.
- Why I Trust Barbara Lee - Jack & Jill Politics - The Congressional Black Caucus is split on this issue and they shouldn’t be. Most of them have districts that were the hardest hit by foreclosures, job losses and any other economic calamity you can think of, yet most of them voted to pass bills like the Bail out, the equally god-awful Bankruptcy Bill a couple of years ago, and they continue to vote money to fund the clusterf–k that is the Iraq War. The fact that majority ReThugs sent this bill to defeat only speaks to the fact they got bombarded with phone calls, emails and faxes from their districts, putting them on blast that if they voted to bail out Wall Street, they could pack up their offices in DC because they wouldn’t be returning for another term. Boehner can blame House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s speech all he wants (like a lil’ byotch blaming his mama); guess he thought he’d break into tears on camera and ruin his make up tan and eyeliner on cue. Let me not get started on what pissy lil’ whiny ass tittie babies the majority of the Republicans are and have been of late.
- This is NOT a Pleasant Man . . . - Jack & Jill Politics - Joy Behar (lol. . . yes . . . I am going to quote The View) said it best: It’s like McCain can’t distinguish between an adversary and an enemy. Obama is McCain’s adversary . . . a terrorist is McCain’s enemy. Does McCain know the difference??? Sorry, but I need a President who understands that difference. Otherwise, how should I expect McCain to work with a Democratic Congress? How can I expect transparency in government if McCain wages war on the media? Not a good look.
- Hope vs. Fear — In These Times - One thing is certain: either Senator Barack Obama’s race will prevent him from being elected president, or it won’t. I wonder about this not just as an African-American citizen and voter, but professionally, as the legislative and political director of a union that endorsed and supports his campaign.
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The vice presidential debate is over and much ink has been spilled and bandwith burned discussing how it all went.
The bar was set so low that if she managed to walk out there on two legs, breath air, and speak in complete sentences then she met expectations.
She met the expectations set for her in this debate. But that’s all.
Did she meet the expectations of someone who’s experienced and “ready on day one” to serve in our highest office?
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I have a confession to make. I’ve been trying to grasp the national global economic situation. I even constructed a (popular and recently updated) timeline. But I’ve never felt I could make any sense of it. Because, no matter how many times I’ve had it explained to me, it sounded like a bunch of people playing games with Monopoly Money; or some other “worthless” paper (a phrase I’ve heard a lot in the past week). Then this handy video from The Guardian confirmed my worse fears.
During these last several months I’ve had to learn phrases like “debt securities “ and wrap my brain around concepts like “credit swaps.” Just when I think I’ve got a handle on it, I find myself thinking , “No, it can’t’ be that. Surely not everyone would fail to see what was wrong with what going on. Someone must have known that it couldn’t go on; that it was unsustainable, because nothing in the system had any real value.” )
It all sounds like a pyramid scheme or a ponzi scheme — one with the top 1.5% or so of the population at the top and the rest of us closer the bottom.
[Photo via Matthew Hull.]
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Yikes! I realized that the Meltdown 2008 timeline needed updating, with all that’s gone on this week. And when I logged in to add new events I discovered my timeline was featured on the front page, among the “Trending Topics - Making a Splash”! (The screenshot below is for posterity’s sake, since I don’t know how long it will stay up there.)
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Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for October 2nd from 12:53 to 12:59:
- Mombian » Blog Archive » Sarah Palin Almost Convinced Me - Sarah Palin almost got me. Not that I’d ever vote for the McCain/Palin ticket, but I was almost convinced that Palin had a spark of understanding about LGBT issues when she said of “one of my absolute best friends for the past 30 years, who happens to be gay,” that “She is not my gay friend, she is one of my best friends. . .” Well put. Then she blew it.
- Dean Baker: Responsibility and the Bailout: Will They Resign If It Fails? - If it is not possible to stop the bailout, how about a fallback position? Perhaps we can force our political leaders to take responsibility for their actions. Remember, we are only in this economic mess because the people who designed this bailout (Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, and President Bush) failed to stem the growth of the housing bubble. Rather than take responsibility for this disaster, they are demanding $700 billion bailout to patch up their mistakes. How about a commitment to take responsibility this time?
- Sen. Bernie Sanders: Don’t Make Working People Bail Out Wall Street - This country faces many serious problems in the financial market, in the stock market, in our economy. We must act, but we must act in a way that improves the situation. This bill does not effectively address the issue of what the taxpayers of our country will actually own after they invest hundreds of billions of dollars in toxic assets. This bill does not effectively address the issue of oversight because the oversight board members have all been hand picked by the Bush administration. This bill does not effectively deal with the issue of foreclosures and addressing that very serious issue, which is impacting millions of low- and moderate-income Americans in the aggressive, effective way that we should be. This bill does not effectively deal with the issue of executive compensation and golden parachutes. Under this bill, the CEOs and the Wall Street insiders will still, with a little bit of imagination, continue to make out like bandits.
- How Does Iraq Play Into the Economic Crisis? | The American Prospect - The focus is on our unstable credit markets — but we shouldn't forget that Bush's foreign policy has exacted its own costs on our economy.
- Editorial - Show Us the Hope - NYTimes.com - At last count, six million people were expected to default on their mortgages this year and next, putting them at risk of losing their homes unless they can catch up in their payments or catch a break on their loan terms. And they’re not the only ones at risk. As prices drop, millions of people who have never missed a mortgage payment stand to lose their home equity. Leaving these Americans out of the bailout bill is unwise and unfair, but neither Congress nor the Bush administration has ever shown anywhere near the sense of urgency to rescue homeowners at the bottom of the collapse as they have for the financiers at the top of it.
- TPMCafe | Talking Points Memo | The Almost-Done Deal, and the Era of Angry Populism - While more Americans are coming around to "supporting" the bailout bill, the vast majority still hate the idea of bailing out Wall Street. They're for the bailout bill now only because they fear that a failure to pass it will have worse consequences — drying up credit at a time when Main Street is struggling. But make no mistake: America is mad as hell. They resent what they perceive as extortion by the Masters of the Universe.
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Brother Nikanor, a Nasdaq broker turned monk, advises former colleagues to put a jar with soil on their desks to remind them where we are all heading and what matters in life.
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A veiled threat by Apple to close its iTunes store has emerged 18 months after it was issued and just a day before royalty rates are to be set.
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This was too cute not to share; children dressed up like Gandhi to celebrate his 139th birthday.
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