Just a note to Harry Reid, etc:

I put up with eating lots and lots of shit over the past 8 years. And now, with you in a position to finally do something, you pile on the biggest helping of shit of all.

Let's just say that I'm now at the end of my rope and you've used up any and all credits that you had. This was the last straw. If you don't pull fucking gold out of Lieberman's ass and produce magic ponies bearing the fruits of progressive victory, then you can kiss your majority good bye. And if Lieberman so much as barks the wrong way on ANY issue, then you can likewise kiss your majority good bye.

I know you don't give a damn about us here in the trenches, but I'd say you have 2 years as Senate majority leader.

Now the pendulum of outrage is swinging back against large corporations. America is heading toward another era of regulation. The real question is how smartly we go about it, and whether we can keep the pendulum from swinging too far.

Again, Reich wrote this before the great (and still far from over) disaster of the last 2 weeks. In any kind of sane world, where we have just experienced the entire meltdown of the entire global economy, there would expected to be a back lash. And "boo hoo" to those who are concerned that the reaction "swings too far".

But clearly Reich didn't have much to be concerned about, given the way things seem to be shaking out.

The Bush administration on Saturday formally proposed to Congress what could become the largest financial bailout in United States history, requesting unfettered authority for the Treasury Department to buy up to $700 billion in mortgage-related assets.

The proposal, not quite three pages long, was stunning for its stark simplicity. It would raise the national debt ceiling to $11.3 trillion. And it would place no restrictions on the administration other than requiring semiannual reports to Congress, granting the Treasury secretary unprecedented power to buy and resell mortgage debt.

Please read these two paragraphs again. I'll wait. Done? Pick your jaw off the floor? I mean, the 700 billion dollars is a figure almost unimaginable, for one. The 11.3 trillion dollars of debt we're going to have after this (almost 10% of this was added just by this fiasco, I'll note) is truly a number that defies imagination. But that really isn't the stunning part. The stunning party is

requesting unfettered authority for the Treasury Department

Yes. Unfettered authority. For the Bush administration. Apparently, having the unfettered authority that they (read Cheney) claimed because of 9/11 wasn't quite unfettered enough. Now they simply want the authority to spend almost a trillion dollars (and god knows, I'm sure that the amount they currently want isn't going to be enough - it never is).

Got to admit they have some pretty big brass balls.

Your Typical Financial Disaster Apologist

But really, the pair that Hank Paulsen is strapping on simply doesn't compare to the planetary sized balls that the collective financial wizards are in the process of strapping on (after all, such balls will greatly affect your gait and require a new wardrobe to accommodate them).

What seems to be shaping up as the explanation for this multi-trillion dollar meltdown in our economy and the subsequent multi-trillion dollar bailout (again, I need only point out that $700 billion is simply the first installment Paulsen will be asking for - and this is only what the USA, itself, is shoveling into this gaping maw) is that the reason why things are so fucked up, the reason why everything went south is.... Wait for it:

Government regulation.

Yes, that's right folks. The reason why we're having a melt down on a global scale, the reason why we're pouring sums of money that boggle the imagination down the toilet in a desperate attempt to plug the hole these wizards of Wall Street have blasted through our global financial system is simply because they were regulated too much.

See, what happened is that the poor fellows in the financial community were forced - forced I say - to create almost unbelievably complicated financial pretzels based on obviously worthless loans that would never, ever be repaid is because the government regulations forced them to.

Forced.

I mean, geebus. Paulsen has nothing on these jokers who are going to start pushing this pile of bullshit.

Back in the old days, it used to be that when someone offered you a deal that was obviously bogus, we'd reply "yes, and I have a bridge I'd like to sell you in Brooklyn". Now a days, selling someone (repeatedly, mind you) the Brooklyn Bridge is simply a consequence of over burdensome government regulations.

I guess we've reached the point in our evolution where The Great Filter is about to be invoked. I mean, seriously. If we let these bozos get away with this, then we simply cannot believe that we're fit for extraterrestrial expansion. I have a feeling that the aliens watching this hilarious sit com we've been putting on for them must feel the same way.

I think the absolute last thing they want running around the galaxy is a bunch of dufuses who are too stupid to responsibly regulate their own economy and a species that always ends up holding the bag for a tiny fraction of their own which ends up fleecing the rest.

If only every country were as awesome as the United States of America

However, I must say that poor fashion choices seem to also account for an unnerving percentage of these data points. Again, I blame society. Self image is largely shaped by peer perception and mass media is our peer perception in these modern times.

Although the repressed libertarian in me (don't worry, I'm doing my best to eradicate it) can't help but wonder if a mirror or two might help matters. Doesn't matter when they've shed their clothes, of course, but still. One would think that observing the ill fitting clothes in a reflection would lead to better fashion choices in the long run...

Don't you wish there was someone with a massive public soapbox who could tell things like they really are instead of leading y'all into the biggest strategic disaster in world history? When you find one, I'll be in Singapore. Suckers!

Still, this is the kind of religion that I can back 100%. As they say in the old country, the country of my birth: "F*ck you, Fox".

For example, I don't think that I could have ever - in a million, zillion years - made up both the post and especially the comments over at the BreakingWindOfChange.

First off, the moniker "Armed Liberal" has always made me snort milk through my nose everytime I actually see it in black and white. And following the joker for the past 5 years or so (seems like an eternity, believe me) I have to say that he really gets better and better at his gig the longer he's at it.

One of the commenters there does us all a favor and nicely sums up the ArmedLiberal (snort!) for anyone who's coming to this party late and is wondering what all the laughing is about. There's more, of course, but those comments aren't the hillarious ones. The hillarious ones are from the AL himself (sorry, I am drinking a Sierra Mist and the carbonated water hurts my nose). My favorite is

Steve - really? You don't think Althouse or Reynolds talk to an audience that could vote for Obama? I certainly think they do, and that reaching that audience ought to be a really damn high priority for the party.

But really, what could possibly compare to the triple threat posed by the McMegan/Althouse/Drum trinity? McMegan and Althouse were both expertly skewered in the piece by Roy (the man!) and naturally their feelings were very hurt. All this is to be expected, naturally, by a piece of sardonic wit.

But then Kevin Drum, our favorite slightly left of center liberal, demonstrates the keen insight and tenacious capacity to dig into the heart of an issue which led to his support of the Iraq war, has to pile on in a more utterly clueless fashion than usual, apparently buying McMegan's whiny post about sexism in the blogosphere as the god's honest truth. As Roy points out in his live blogging of the reaction to the VV piece, McMegan's follow up is simply priceless

McUpdate: "Yes, I know the many uses of the phrase 'lipstick lesbian'; indeed, I count several as friends and loved ones." Yet in my mouth it's a horrible slur. Either I poison everything I touch -- the theory endorsed by my family and ex-girlfriends -- or victim status is the new Gold Standard.

I mean, really. This is the Village Voice. McMegan can ho-hum Torture memos coming from the very heart of this government, but my lord! A frank look in the mirror provided by Roy in the Village Voice! Bring the ambulance. And to have Kevin Drum fall hook line and sinker for her drivel is simply bliss beyond compare.

One of the most inexplicable tropes of the liberal blogosphere is its howling disdain for Megan. I guess it all goes back to the moronic "two-by-four" controversy, but it really ought to stop. She writes a perfectly sane, opinionated, moderately libertarian, occasionally obsessive, sometimes provocative blog. I don't often agree with her, and at times I find her maddeningly obtuse, but I'm sure she feels the same about me. In other words, she's a totally normal blogger. Michelle Malkin she ain't.

Okay, back to my regularly scheduled psychosis. Just had to share this gem with y'all in case you were encased in concrete, living in total sensory deprivation like I am.

Hazard? What Moral Hazard?

To understand the madness of our entanglement in Iraq, I find it helps to reject out of hand everything the administration says and continually remind yourself that the point of the occupation is the occupation. For all of its alternating justifications and serial failure, what we have is less a war seeking resolution than a committed government enterprise experiencing cost overruns.

Lately, there's been the enormous spectacle of the Olympic Torch bravely traveling the world as it makes its way to Bejing for this year's Olympic festivities. Apparently, Bejing's crackdown on Tibet hasn't gone over that well with pretty much everyone (except Dan Drezner and McMegan who are wondering what all the petty fussing is about). I mean, it's really just quite comical how Bejing thinks that they knock a few monks around before the torch shows up on their doorstep and no one will notice. Bizarre.

In any event, what I found truly odd was the way controversies of this type are always portrayed by the defenders of the Olympics. In a nutshell, the argument is simply that the Olympic Games are above politics and should - like Justice - blind to whatever is going on in that terribly dreary world of politics. Let the god like Athletes shine as they are meant to, without being dragged down to earth and the mud like the rest of us. After all, the Olympics are about Unity. Capiche?

But really, when haven't the Olympics been nothing but politics? I seem to recall that the modern revival of the Olympic games was when Hitler used them as Germany's coming out party. Then there's the gazillion times that national pride in the USSR was restored by the manly athletic prowess of their women's swim team - well, until the steroid scandals. And god only knows how apolitical the Olympics was when the Israeli athletes were gunned down by Arabs in the 70's. But I suppose that one can really look at these examples too numerous to count and come away with an even stronger conclusion that politics should be kept out of the Olympics.

However, is there any more political of a process than the selection of a host country and city? I mean, besides from the cash involved, there's this huge prestige thing. In China's case, it's obviously their version of a Debutante ball in which the blushing vixen is presented to the world in her coming out party. It's a big "We're here!" to the whole world, demonstrating that they are truly a player in todays world. How's that not 100% political?

And so it's with a smirk on my face that I watch the protestations of the Olympic defenders of purity. It's clear that the games were born in politics, sustained by politics and thrive in politics and fuel politics. To believe otherwise is somewhat akin to believing in the tooth fairy - a quaint tale to pass on to the children, but not something that anyone with an IQ over 90 believes.

At issue is that Daniel Drezner and Little Miss McMegan feel that Glenn has been terribly unfair to them both in his rather long screed in which he places them both front and center as object lessons as to why the main stream media is so fucked up. I had read the post Drezner squeezed out between venti mochas and about half way through it my own mocha was splurting out my nose as I was laughing at the kind of half assed way that Drezner was trying to compose an argument. Because rather than an argument, what Drezner invariably does is really more of a high brow sneer with some flimsy veneer as he dashes off to somewhere terribly important.

Little Miss McMegan's response, I'm sad to say, has not graced the monitor of my bitchin' Mac Book Pro nor has the pixels of my incredibly cool iPhone been manipulated by the utterly innane ramblings of someone just a little more intellectually advanced than Paris Hilton and not nearly as "hot". I've found that my IQ level literally drops 10 points whenever I inadvertently read a sentence or two of hers that someone has quoted as they laugh at what passes for logical thought in McMegan's head. And seeing as how I'm just about topping off at the low grade moron level, I really can't afford to lose those IQ points - even if it's only temporary.

In any event, Drezner's response certainly is a prize and a classic model of what can only be described as an adolescent hissy fit. I mean, here's the rub. If you really think that someone isn't worth your effort to respond to, and that you think they really are being such a jerk that you're not going to bother with them ever again, then you simply - you know - just shut up, ignore them, don't respond and never look back in the mirror at them. If you don't, then it's simply painfully obvious that you DO care about them, you DON'T want to ignore them and you're only responding because your feelings are hurt and you want to lash back out at them and give them a smack or two to let them know how hurt you are. Dan's response is essentially a real life enactment of the little boy blue who's crying out that he's going to take his ball and go home because everyone is so mean.

McMegan's response is significantly more manly - from what I can tell - than Drezner's. Again, not surprising as she wears the pants in their relationship (hey, they walk each other home, according to Dan's post, so they be cozy). As she is wont to do whenever someone points out the obvious fallacies of what ever the fuck she is squeezing out on her blog, she drops back into this pseudo intellectual pose and provides the mirror image of Drezner's response. She stomps her high heel down on a picture of Greenwald and pulls out the Pajamas Media Response Kit and uses Wing Nut Defense tactic #275. That being, of course, the assertion that Glenn Greenwald is really just a very angry liberal who's really even more self obsessed than McMegan and Drezner.

Then she goes back to filing her nails.

In any event, it's actually pretty fascinating to see what Drezner thinks is serious self criticism that doesn't pull any punches about his position on the war with Iraq. I remember quite vividly the whole evolution of Dan's terribly serious position as his baby unraveled in the hands of frickin' incompetent bastards who can't even wage a war right. I think my favorite high point was when he held a "debate" between Sebastian Holsclaw and some other dude regarding whether or not the administration had used the phrase "imminent threat" or not. The whole spectacle was truly a performance art that has never been topped since. It was, in a nutshell, the perfect symbolic essence of the entire fiasco. A masterpiece.

And it happened under Drezner's tender care.

Myself, I also found it so very appropriate that Dan was the dude who came up with the idea. I mean, imagine if someone had had the foresight during the Clinton impeachment trial to have a high profile blog debate about the meaning of the word "is" - they would have gone down in history and these blog entries would have been preserved for future generations as a monument to the inanity that was the republican "revolution" of Newt Gingrich and his merry band of hanging judges.

In any event, I just find Drezner a prototypical example of pretty much everything that is wrong with the way things are in this world, and that his BFF McMegan was dragged into it along with him a perfectly fitting tribute to pretty much everything that has happened in this shit storm of the last 8 years. Drezner is a conceited prick of the highest order who simply can't be bothered to even finish the argument that he went out and started with Greenwald. I mean, really. It's like he's a poseur bully who has to run back to his panel discussions on how we're going to continue to rape the working class in ever more expansion of free trade. He doesn't have the time to actively engage the ravenous wolf that he's been poking with a sharp stick because he really has to write about how terribly important it is to continue extracting wealth from society as a whole and placing that wealth in the top 0.001% of the world's populations bank account.

I mean, the man has things to do.

McMegan? Well, she has her nails to file and writing the blog gets her lipstick money. And besides, she has to meet Yglesias and Buetler for coffee with Tyler Cowen. Ta!

I mean, it's hard for me to even comprehend how a presumably heterosexual man - heck, even a man who has zero interest in women - would think that covering up one of the more perfect forms that nature has devised is actually something that the entire department of justice in the last remaining superpower on the planet should be focussed on.

Mind boggling...

Still, what I have learned is that despite this inexplicable revulsion of the sight of a female breast, John Ashcroft has repeatedly shown that - at his base - he was truly an American who understood what this country was all about when the stakes were high.

According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."

I know that we're all human (well, most of us anyway - wink, wink). And believe me, I just cannot fathom any heterosexual wanting to cover up the female breast... But here's a guy who when the chips were down, when things were at pretty much the level where you'd think the Goat With A Thousand Young was leading the meeting, seems to be the only one with enough humanity left to raise the obvious point that maybe - just maybe - okaying torture (for whatever fucking reason Cheney came up with) wasn't probably the wisest thing for a presidential administration to be doing.

Add to this the scene with Alberto Gonzalos as Ashcroft was essentially incoherent in the hospital (wrt warantless wiretapping) and I hate to say it but I am beginning to think that I really should just chill out about the whole female breast covering up obsession of his.

Almost... I mean, they are breasts... Female ones...

Again, this is kind of hilarious because, of course, 2008 wasn't supposed to be about Iraq at all. It was deemed a non-issue by the people who make such decisions, and even though 2/3 of polled Americans think the war was a mistake and want us to leave, we have the straight razor express of John McCain leading the charge to stay in Iraq for longer than all of recorded history.

You the man, McCain.

Oh, and to see such sights as RedState telling us that the South has been occupied for over 100 years so what's the big deal with McCain saying we'll be in Iraq.... Well, I can only say that such gems truly are priceless.

You simply can't make shit like this up.

Again, it's pretty funny to see the now traditional liberal tactics grab hold of McCain's "Trollop n' Cunt" line that's been pretty widely reported. It's kind of beautiful, the way the appearance of the issue blooms across the various liberal blogs, popping up like daisies in the spring time. They're pushing the whole bit because they really, truly believe in their heart of hearts that if the American public just knew what McCain was really like, they'd instantly turn against him like a scorned woman, showering him with wrath equal to the free ride that he's been getting that irks them so.

And, again, the almost hilarious bit is that this is actually a feature, and not a bug. Basically, it's something that I can guarantee you is well known within the press already - the comment, itself, was made in 1992 for Christ's sake, so it's not like this is news to anyone. And there's the nub. The press has digested this bit of humanity from a "stressed" individual, weighed it and simply moved on. Just like they have over his "misstatements" regarding Al Qaeda in Iraq vis a vis Iran. Just like they have regarding the absence of his tax returns. Just as they will regarding anything else the man may say or do.

I do have to love how the whole McCain issue is metastasizing with the Democratic nomination process which - I believe - has another 4.5 months to go. I mean, it's like there's a cancer and rather than treat it, we've somehow managed to feed the damn thing and it's now taking over the entire body at an incredible rate. The Democratic party has always been - well, at least since when the Dixiecrats left the party in the 60's - well described by the opening dialog to the original Battle Star Galactica TV Series

"Fleeing from the Cylon tyranny, the last Battlestar, Galactica, leads a ragtag, fugitive fleet, on a lonely quest—for a shining planet known as Earth."

And so we see the fruits of neglect in a party that is sharply and bitterly divided. Hardly a day goes by when I don't see a feminst blogger lash out at pretty much anything Obama for what seems like the slightest imagined gender based insult. And they're not really lashing out at the right because their gender based insults are far too numerous to count and besides, they don't care anyway so yelling at them is like yelling into the wind. Far better to harpoon your own, especially those who are perceived as supporting the interloper candidate who is taking away the only chance HRC has at a Presidential shot.

And god knows that every other special interest group is having a hay day as well. The Penn fiasco is being trumpeted from the virtual rooftops of every Obama leaning blog on the nets, kicking that dead horse for another stimulating round of "How Lame Is Hillary Today". Endless analysis of the gender vs. race split in the party. How any one who actually has a racial bias - read "takes race into account" when voting - votes for HRC.

And really, this stuff is just the civil interaction amongst friends. Friendly jousts, if you will. The really, really nasty stuff is only spoken of between cohorts as they hone their sharpest blades and test their most acidic sardonic statements in carefully isolated laboratories as they continue to ratchet up the pressure in the five months that lead up to the grand finale - or coup de grâce, if you prefer - in the massively nasty floor fight at the Democratic convention. Oh, I know that everyone is telling me that there isn't going to be a floor fight at the convention. But these are pretty much the same people who got Iraq wrong as well, and have consistently underestimated the political environment at every turn, too. So I take their predictions with a kilo or two of salt, so to speak.

Of course, the so called Super Delegates (I always imagine that they wear capes and have tight fitting spandex costumes under their suits and such) could end things now - either way - but true to the stereotyping that the American public has come to accept as the reality of the Democratic party, they are too busy handwringing, desperately hoping against all hope that we won't be in exactly the same position we're in now come the convention date. I admire Nancy Pelosi standing her ground despite an obvious threat by Clinton supporters that, you know, that it'd be a shame if something happened to the donations to the DCCC. All things considered, the threat certainly seems credible, given the way people are digging in their heels - on both sides of the issue - so I do admire her standing firm.

But given that all signs point to a dead heat in all the remaining Democratic primaries we have yet to endure, the writing is on the wall. Neither of the candidates will have a majority of delegates an it's up to the Super Delegates (in their shiny spandex, 'natch) who will have to make the decision.

And as has been repeatedly pointed out by all my friends and cohorts which are HRC supporters, the Democratic nomination process is not a democratic process - it's a party process. And so, at least, the HRC supporters that my biased sample encloses is perfectly happy with a result which doesn't in any way follow whomever has the elected delegate majority at the time of the convention, nor whomever has the majority of the popular vote. In their minds, given the situation with Florida and Michigan, the whole thing is a sham anyway and the count is meaningless. Therefore, they have no problem with rocking the boat.

So I guess we do have another 5 months or so to see how it all comes down, but even if there isn't a floor fight at the convention, there's still going to be a lot of fence mending that needs to be done regardless of whomever wins the nomination. And this will be a major distraction to the candidate - probably more of a real issue than Kerry's inability to spend money and fight back against the Swift boaters. I keep hearing how we'll all pull together in the end, but one thing I've noticed about the Democrats' myriad of special interests is that they have a penchant for holding grudges.

Because, in the end, this whole drama is really nothing more than a Prisoner's Dilemma writ large. And regardless of the obvious strategy everyone can see that they should be following to win in November, the sad truth of the matter is that they - as individuals - simply cannot actually choose that strategy. Thus the perverse dilemma in the way the game works out.

And so, like he did in the Republican Primary, McCain wins not by being the best or running a campaign that eats his opponents' lunches. Nope. He wins by sitting on the outside, serving burgers to his base while his opponents eat each other alive. He's already successfully come back from the dead and won his primary. I'm willing to bet even money at this point that he'll pull it off in the general as well.