Changes
Again, more self-referential updates: besides working on UA issues over at the Desert Lamp, I’ve also started doing blogging on broader affairs over at The Kosmopolitan, a new publication that seemlessly combines low and high culture, serious analysis and Thackerian humor (it’s fair to argue that there is no difference), and the arts and politics — we hope. It’s starting to get under away, and I encourage you to explore the site — even in its infancy, there are a lot of great features already up. The blog, entitled Marque and Reprisal (intro post here), will also be doing a live-blog of the imminent presidential debate. Please tune in, adjust your RSS feeders, and don’t maverick play drinking games that result in stomach pumps!
Songs for these financial times
The Great Depression had Woody Guthrie; the Great Bailout will have poor Beatles parodies! All apologies go out to the Fab Four; the original lyrics can be found here.
Paulson and ‘Nanke, assets at your feet
Wonder how you manage to make ends meet
Who find the money, who seeks the rent
Did you think that money is feder’lly sent
Friday night arrives without a bailout
Sunday morning weeping with a gun
Monday morning’s House, they nixed the package
See how they run
Paulson and ‘Nanke, Bear Stearns at your breast
Wonders how you manage to feed the rest
Pay pay pay pay pay. . .
See how they run
Paulson and ‘Nanke, housing market’s dead
Not much you can do from inside the Fed
Tuesday afternoon the market’s bending
Wednesday morning papers, sturm und drang
Thursday night your LIBOR needed mending
See how they run
Lady Pelosi, Paulson at your feet
Wonder how you manage to make ends meet.
Down goes Paulson! Down goes Bernanke!
Instant update on the $700 billion bill:
WASHINGTON — In a moment of historic drama in the Capitol and on Wall Street, the House of Representatives voted on Monday to reject a $700 billion rescue of the financial industry.
The vote against the measure was 228 to 205. Supporters vowed to try to bring the rescue package up for consideration against as soon as possible.
Stock markets plunged sharply at midday as it appeared that the measure was go down.
Remember when Republicans were supposedly Wall Street shills? The GOP has been absolutely insipid over the last few years, but this is strength in the face of the Bush Administration.
As for Wall Street, this song seems rather appropriate:
Mystery Solved
Ever since The Daily Dish jumped the shark polar bear on the Sarah Palin, some in the blogosphere have wondered what happened to the most popular Oakeshottian of all time. Will the real Andrew Sullivan please stand up? Thankfully, Reason’s Hit & Run has unwittingly unveiled the true identity behind the current Dish posts:
Lindsay Lohan chimes in on the big race:
“I find it quite interesting that a woman who now is running to be second in command of the United States, only 4 years ago had aspirations to be a television anchor, which is probably all she is qualified to be.
“Oh, and… Hint Hint Pali Pal—Don’t pose for anymore tabloid covers, you’re not a celebrity, you’re running for office to represent our, your, my COUNTRY!”
Lohan—who is rumored to be in a relationship with DJ Samantha Ronson—also referenced Palin’s views on homosexuality.
“Is it a sin to be gay?” Lohan asked. “Should it be a sin to be straight? Or to use birth control? Or to have sex before marriage? Or even to have a child out of wedlock?
“Is our country so divided that the Republicans best hope is a narrow minded, media obsessed homophobe?”
In conclusion, Lohan cited an Associated Press story reporting that Palin’s church advocates a conference about prayer curing homosexuality. Wrote Lohan: “Palin’s Desire to “save and convert the gays”—really??”
Of course, we still don’t know where the hell Andrew actually is. Perhaps House of Wax 2 will star a hirsute intellectual in Lindsay’s stead?
UPDATE: It seems, however, that there’s a second candidate: the host of Red Eye (the best show on TV), Greg Gutfeld
Progress
Much of the campaign has focused on whether or not America is better off than it was four, or even eight years ago. With this new development, via Conventional Folly, that question can be put to rest once and for all:
Bacon salt is a zero calorie, zero fat, vegetarian and Kosher seasoning that makes everything taste like bacon.
The website is located here. This new, post-LHC world is definitely an improvement. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go the grocery store.
More Palin-mania
Apologies for the lack of posting; unfortunately, I did not make it up to the Man-Su Valley (although that would be quite the excuse, wouldn’t it?). I’m still in the process of putting things together, but for now enjoy the work of the ingenious Fafblog, proof that satire isn’t dead (yet):
MAVERICKNESS.
As a moose-hunting Jesus-fearing hockey-mom mother of five who hunts moose, Sarah Palin isn’t some petty Washington bureaucrat. She’s a petty Alaskan bureaucrat, and she’s gonna shake things up in Washington! For her first reform she will pose for photographs with a gun and a stuffed moose head! For her second reform she will say something bold and brassy. For her third reform she will give birth at a live press conference to six eagle scouts, three peregrine falcons and an American mastodon, rear them in the Christian faith and release them into the wild before hunting them down, shooting them and mounting their heads in the Roosevelt Room!
Seriously, read the rest here.
Paleocon Paradise
Via Reason’s Hit & Run, a place I wouldn’t mind vacationing to myself:
Q: I was just talking to someone who claimed to have knowledge of Alaska to some degree, and they say where Sarah Palin comes from it’s the equivalent of Humboldt or Chico in California, like, of course, you know, she’d have a Girls Gone Wild phase, and smoking pot. Is this just wishcasting, or what can you tell us about her geographical background?
A: So the Mat-Su Valley, you know, Matanuska-Susitna Valley, otherwise known as Upper Wingnuttia, is full of right-wing libertarian militia fundamendalist Christian gun-toting, pot-growing dope-heads.
Q: Awesome.
A: Yeah. If Jerry Falwell rolled his own, you would have the Mat-Su Valley. I live in South Anchorage, and my raspberry plants, courtesy of 22 hours of daylight in the summer, grow eight and a half foot high. That’s a raspberry bush. Can you imagine what a single pot plant would turn into? [...]
Note that Alaska legally allows possession of up to an ounce of marijuana, and also allows for the possession of 25 plants.
The title, of course, is merely an excuse to link to this song. Who knew that Axl Rose was a curmudgeony Buchananite on the inside?
Drug war quote of the day
From a New York Times story on the war on coca in Bolivia:
“The Chapare was the caldron of violence out of which Evo [Morales] was born,” said Jim Shultz, a political analyst in Cochabamba. “If there had not been a U.S. war on drugs, there would not have been a President Evo.”
Of course, allowing for the rise of Hugo Chavez wannabes in South America is worth it, because it has really helped to restrict the cocaine market in the States . . . right?
Or not:
VPILF of the future
Andrew’s jumped the shark so many times this election, I wouldn’t be shocked to see him capture a long-jumping gold for the Brits in 2012. This time, the Palin pick has him nearly bounding over the Pond:
Think about what the Palin pick really says about how McCain views this campaign and how he views his potential responsibilities in national security.
Think about what it says about the sincerity of McCain’s own central criticism of Obama these past two months in foreign affairs.
Think about how he picked a woman to be a heartbeat away from a war presidency who hadn’t even thought much, by her own admission, about the Iraq war as late as 2007.
Think about how he made this decision barely knowing the woman.
. . .
Here’s the real slogan the McCain campaign should now adopt:Putting. Country. Last.
Sigh. Putting that last hyperbole aside, this entire argument is made moot by the fact that McCain is not going to win the presidency. Let me say this again: John McCain will not be president of the United States. It’s not as though we didn’t know this from the beginning: the GOP brand is still poison, Obama is still a rhetorical master, and parties don’t carry the White House for three consecutive terms, unless they were really successful (which this one, clearly, was not). Sure, there were stories about a closing McCain, and tightening polls, which served the dual purpose of giving the press an ephemeral reason to continue the excessive punditry, as well as to get more money out of the donors — no one gives freely to a dominating campaign (OK, that might be a bit cynical. But the point remains).
The GOP realizes that it must throw this election under the bus. McCain, whose hero is Hemingway’s Robert Jordan, is fit perfectly for the tragic role. He relishes this.
So where does Palin fit in? Palin is inexperienced, yes. Couldn’t find Iraq on a map? Perhaps (although she would be in good company if that were the case). But she’s got promise; she is, ultimately, the future.
She will figure out the rough-and-tumble world of punditry the hard way, and by the time 2012 rolls around, a Palin-Jindal ticket will be a force to be reckoned with. Jindal is already relatively well-known, but Palin barely exists outside of the Internet and the Arctic Circle. By placing her on the ticket, the GOP has actually set up a poignant diptych: McCain is the heroic past, raging against the dying of the light; Palin is the future, a bit unsteady on her feet, but quickly learning. Their opponents laugh now, but I suspect that the GOP will have the last laugh when it comes to the former governor of Alaska.
Hat tip to Reason’s Hit & Run for the delightful picture.
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