Month: July 2010

Zing!

Man, ever since they sold out to Amazon, the one-day-one-deal sales machine Woot has totally fallen into line with the dictates of the man and/or Our Corporate Paymasters:

So, The AP, here we are. Just to be fair about this, we’ve used your very own pricing scheme to calculate how much you owe us. By looking through [the AP story on Woot’s acquisition], and comparing your post with our original letter, we’ve figured you owe us roughly $17.50 for the content you borrowed from our blog post, which, by the way, we worked very very hard to create.

Dare I say hoisted on their own petard? I feel a sudden and strong urge to buy some random bag of crap. Or, perhaps, a bandoleer of carrots.

There is no intrinsic contradiction between providing additional fiscal stimulus today, while the unemployment rate is high and many factories and offices are underused, and imposing fiscal restraint several years from now, when output and employment will probably be close to their potential.

Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office
Please print out in the largest font convenient and post along with a similarly dimensioned sign saying Money is not real

The Unemployed can Go Die in the Streets

In which thebroadermarket summarizes a theoretical, GOP-derived wonderland that we here at Lemkin refer to as “Go Die in the Streets”:

Thus, one is left with a situation in which the unemployed would find few opportunities for work, while simultaneously seeing their social safety net dry up. Meanwhile, the lucky employed would see the security of their labor jeopardized at the expense of allowing the financial marketplace to continue to operate relatively uninhibited. I am not one prone to hyperbole, but this just seems like a raw deal.

Read the whole thing

I am prone to hyperbole. But that would be shrill.

You’re aware of death your whole life, constantly sweeping it under the rug and eventually it happens; you just have to hope as painlessly as possible. I once said in a movie that the nicest thing you could wish for is to say goodnight to your loved one, say ‘We’ll go to the museum tomorrow,’ then never wake up again.
[When I die] I’d like to be cremated, and I want no fuss. I would not like a memorial by well-meaning friends, or to be mourned. I’d like to be forgotten as quickly as possible.

Woody Allen

In the first phase, the financial crisis, the government screamed, and did everything it could to rescue the economy. In the second phase, when the financial crisis became a demand crisis, the public screamed, and the government did quite a lot – though not enough – to help. But as the demand crisis reveals itself as a persistent jobs crisis – the third phase – we’re getting used to it, and Senate Republicans are turning their attention to the midterms, [and] we just settle into a new, awful, and unnecessary normal.

Ezra Klein, explaining the current state of affairs. All I have to add is: Yep.