Month: March 2011

EXTRA: USA NOT BROKE, JUST RESTING

Bloomberg delivers some shocking, shocking stuff:

“The U.S. government is not broke,” said Marc Chandler, global head of currency strategy for Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. in New York. “There’s no evidence that the market is treating the U.S. government like it’s broke.”

The U.S. today is able to borrow at historically low interest rates, paying 0.68 percent on a two-year note that it had to offer at 5.1 percent before the financial crisis began in 2007. Financial products that pay off if Uncle Sam defaults aren’t attracting unusual investor demand. And tax revenue as a percentage of the economy is at a 60-year low, meaning if the government needs to raise cash and can summon the political will, it could do so.

Print out in the largest type possible and stick to the teleprompter of every Serious Person currently inhabiting the media. Likewise, Obama and his proxies need to be talking about this. A lot. So often that we can’t stand it anymore, and then a few million more times on top of that. Then you can start a serious discussion about revenue, which is the only truly serious way out of this mess. Sorry, but it is.

EXTRA: USA NOT BROKE, JUST RESTING

They Are Peons

Bill Simmons writes a little fable:

I am addicted to making money. I have lost any and all perspective. I don’t care if I lose my readers in the short term; they will come back. I don’t care if I lose my staff; I can always find new people. I don’t care about the health of my employees; as far as I’m concerned, they knew the risks. I don’t care if my website is gravitating toward quantity over quality, or that we chase page views with shorter, Google-friendly stories instead of posting the same top-notch content that got people reading us in the first place; I want only to generate more revenue than the previous year.

Technically speaking, it’s all about the NFL ownership and their ongoing labor talks; whatever it’s specifically about it is definitely required reading.

They Are Peons

They’re Doing it Wrong

Jozsef Szajer, a Hungarian politician and member of the European Parliament, wrote an enthusiastic blog post last week detailing how he’s using Apple’s tablet device to flesh out Hungary’s new constitution, the country’s first since 1949. Not only is Szajer using the iPad to churn out new constitutional drafts, but he’s also using it to review new draft proposals. Apparently all aspects of the new Hungarian constitution are being vetted via the iPad in one form or another.

Don’t these people know that iPads are for consumption only? There is no creation on an iPad. Silly Hungarians.

They’re Doing it Wrong

Conservative Radio Hosts Called by Scripted Actors

Premiere On Call is our new custom caller service,” read the service’s website, which disappeared as this story was being reported (for a cached version of the site click here). “We supply voice talent to take/make your on-air calls, improvise your scenes or deliver your scripts. Using our simple online booking tool, specify the kind of voice you need, and we’ll get your the right person fast. Unless you request it, you won’t hear that same voice again for at least two months, ensuring the authenticity of your programming for avid listeners.

The report notes that the “service” is part of the overall operation that syndicates Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity among many others. I keep thinking that one day one of these “shocking revelations about the conservative message machine” will stick, but then we’ve long known that W. Bush and his administration planted editorials, basically employed journalists to run preferred stories, and openly bragged about controlling various “mainstream” media outlets and programs (notably Meet the Press, but also obvious ones like Hannity and etc…). None of those seemed to register with people and the MSM has an obvious vested interest in letting such stories drop. Quickly . This one probably won’t register either, though it does get at their precious, precious two hours hate…and we certainly can’t have that.

Anyway and once again: they are lying to you with malice aforethought. Your entire media construct is bought and paid for with the express intent of fucking you out of what is yours so that the folks at the top can extract an additional fractional percent at your expense this quarter. They call that “shared sacrifice.” There are more of you; one would think the center could not hold. Not forever, anyway. Thanks for consistently proving me wrong on this. It’s really made my day. Over and over and over again. That is all.

(via militantagnostic)

Conservative Radio Hosts Called by Scripted Actors

If it’s Jobs Friday, It’s John Boehner

Boehner, January 7th, 2011: Any signs of job growth are encouraging, but 9.4 percent unemployment and a $14 trillion debt are by no means adequate to get our economy growing. Hard work lies ahead to reduce uncertainty, start creating jobs again, and restore confidence in our economy. It isn’t new faces Americans are looking for – it’s new policies that will cut spending and grow our economy. These are the priorities of the new House majority. We have already implemented reforms to make it easier to cut spending, and cut our own budget to demonstrate our commitment to making real cuts and tough choices. Today, we will take the first steps towards repealing the job-killing health care law, so we can replace it with reforms that will lower costs and protect jobs. Our economy will ultimately recover, but it will do so because of hard work and entrepreneurship, not more wasteful Washington spending.

Boehner, February 4th, 2011: The president’s spending binge is hurting job creation, eroding confidence, draining funds away from private investment, and spreading uncertainty among job creators

Boehner, March 4th, 2011: The improvement seen in this report is a credit to the hard work of the American people and their success in stopping the tax hikes that were due to hit our economy on January 1. Removing the uncertainty caused by those looming tax hikes provided much-needed relief for private-sector job creators in America.

Lemkin: So, to review, jobs numbers were up in January because of generalized excitement around forthcoming and fantastical GOP policies, down in February because of “Obama’s spending binge” that somehow managed to overshadow those still forthcoming and fantastical GOP policies, and then up in March because of non-tax hikes that didn’t take place in the future. Makes perfect sense to me.

GOPoison Control

While a single visit to an emergency room can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars (often paid for by the government), a call to a poison center costs the government only $30 or $40. A study in the Journal of Medical Toxicology estimated that the poison centers saved the State of Arizona alone $33 million a year. Louisiana eliminated its centers in the 1980s but restored them when it realized how much money they saved.

Classic GOP: borrow a billion to save a few million and demolish a demonstrably effective government program. The problem is, no government program large or small can be seen to work. Thus it must go, costs be damned.

If the GOP wants it, you can rest assured it is going to create a bad policy outcome. Bad policy outcomes are catnip to the GOP.

GOPoison Control

The improvement seen in this report is a credit to the hard work of the American people and their success in stopping the tax hikes that were due to hit our economy on January 1. Removing the uncertainty caused by those looming tax hikes provided much-needed relief for private-sector job creators in America.

House Speaker John Boehner, taking credit for the recent and notably improved employment report.
Of course, the uncertainty engendered by the fact that the entire federal government may shut down for an indeterminate period in a couple of weeks has nothing but salutary effects on the economy as well. And, the uncertainty caused by the massive layoffs that seemingly every analysis yet performed says will inevitably result if the GOP economic agenda comes to pass, well that’s also just a massive opportunity for good ole ‘Merican know-how and will, in fact, increase jobs, pay, and consensual reproductive sex between one man and one woman across this great land of ours.

Viewership of Al Jazeera is going up in the United States because it’s real news. You may not agree with it, but you feel like you’re getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news which, you know, is not particularly informative to us, let alone foreigners.

Hillary Clinton, in a statement that both praises Al Jazeera as a fine and uniquely informative news source and calls out the utterly defunct American MSM. Compare and contrast with W. Bush’s plan to blow up Al Jazeera headquarters.
Naturally, it is the Obama administration that is “dangerous to American values.”
Source: blogs.abcnews.com

I’m thinking of writing a bildungsroman in which a star-struck young quiz show contestant from a small town arrives in Hollywood, and the dark forces that try to corrupt him on his way to fame.

I also have a volume of game show erotica coming out in the fall.

The future plans of Ken Jennings, former Jeopardy! champion and more recent Watson chump, doing an AMA on Reddit