29 responses to
“The meltdown.”

1. 

   moe99 said on September 15th, 2008 at 10:16 am

   speak­ing of the finan­cial melt­down, the point was made that John McCain wanted us vot­ers to tie our social secu­rity in to the finan­cial mar­kets with his pri­va­ti­za­tion pro­posal that seemed sooo nifty a while back. Here’s the money quote:

   As part of Social Secu­rity reform, I believe that pri­vate sav­ings accounts are a part of it—along the lines that Pres­i­dent Bush pro­posed,” McCain told the Journal.[Wall Street Jour­nal, 3/3/08; Cam­paign Web­site, accessed 3/3/08]

   Also the Lehman Bros bank­ruptcy fil­ing is the largest in his­tory:

   http://​www​.bloomberg​.com/​a​p​p​s​/​n​e​w​s​?​p​i​d​=​2​0​6​0​1​0​8​7​&​a​m​p​;​s​i​d​=​a​w​h​5​h​R​yXkvs4

   Roubini’s pre­dict­ing that there will be no inde­pen­dent bro­ker deal­ers left:
   http://​finance​.yahoo​.com/​t​e​c​h​-​t​i​c​k​e​r​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​5​6​6​5​4​/​C​r​i​s​i​s​-​o​n​-​W​a​l​l​-​S​t​r​e​e​t​-​R​o​u​b​i​n​i​-​P​r​e​d​i​c​t​s​-​A​n​o​t​h​e​r​-​2​0​-​P​e​r​c​e​n​t​-​S​t​o​c​k​-​D​r​o​p​-​S​a​l​e​-​o​f​-​G​o​l​d​m​a​n​-​M​o​r​g​a​n​?​t​i​c​k​e​r​s​=​L​E​H​,​M​E​R​,​A​I​G​,​G​S​,​M​S​,​WM,XLF

2. 

   john c said on September 15th, 2008 at 10:28 am

   As a for­tu­nate attendee of our blog­mistress’ afore­men­tioned din­ner party, I am here to dis­pute her account of the heat. It did warm up. But it cer­tainly didn’t bother moi. Per­haps it was because I was chat­ting and drink­ing wine, while Ms. Nall was slav­ing over our won­der­ful din­ner!

3. 

   coozledad said on September 15th, 2008 at 10:57 am

   I wish I could offer some tips on how to keep cool besides the time-honored South­ern tra­di­tion of find­ing a shady spot, lying down and hal­lu­ci­nat­ing. But I don’t want to lie to you.

4. 

   Jolene said on September 15th, 2008 at 11:03 am

   No pic­ture of the pie? Shucks.

5. 

   brian stouder said on September 15th, 2008 at 11:10 am

   So now, how often has the “Kitna amongst Lions” joke been made?

6. 

   nancy said on September 15th, 2008 at 11:24 am

   That col­umn is a keeper, Brian. I loved this part, too:

   
   Ford Field needed a reprieve from a fur­ni­ture store to sell out the home opener, but there were plenty of empty club seats and lux­ury suites. And as the Lions left the field, fans stopped boo­ing long enough to be livid. One woman wear­ing a Lions jer­sey leaned over the rail­ing and shrieked, “I’m not wast­ing my time on you losers any­more!”

   When line­backer Alex Lewis went over to say some­thing, she kept scream­ing and point­ing until Lewis walked away.

7. 

   Danny said on September 15th, 2008 at 11:29 am

   Hilar­i­ous!

   As a rule, I do not get emo­tion­ally involved with the Charg­ers any­more. Me and the Charg­ers, we’re dat­ing, we’re just not going steady.

8. 

   Danny said on September 15th, 2008 at 11:33 am

   Hey, look at the bright side of the finan­cial melt­down. All of us will be part own­ers (but, extremely silent own­ers) of the sev­eral invest­ment banks come next April 15th. I’ve always wanted to add “invest­ment banker” to my resume.

9. 

   Suzi said on September 15th, 2008 at 11:54 am

   Danny, so sorry about your Charg­ers. We’re still stunned that ND beat the Wolver­ines!

10. 

    Dorothy said on September 15th, 2008 at 12:36 pm

    We had tremen­dous wind dam­age here last night. Trees down EVERYWHERE in town, and Gam­bier has no power. I was on my way into the office this morn­ing when the word went out over the radio that non-essential per­son­nel need not report. I had my cam­era with me so drove slowly through the cam­pus and snapped some pic­tures. I posted them at Flickr. We just got our cable back an hour ago, and our power only flick­ered at the apart­ment. But around us there is word that some of the power might not be back on until Thurs­day at the ear­li­est.

11. 

    Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 15th, 2008 at 1:42 pm

    Re: the pho­tog — i’m think­ing she was going for get­ting McCain to step into full moon­light, to reveal the true Geof­frey Rush undead skull-smile a la Pirates of the Carib.

    We’re just south and a bit west of Dorothy, and we have power where i’m at, but we have under­ground util­i­ties. Even at that, i’m online thanks to a neigh­bor who has cable who was will­ing to offer me the pass­word to their wire­less router. Most of Colum­bus and points north and just east are shut down, and i just heard there are no oper­at­ing gas sta­tions between Cinc’y and Col’s. Would assume same up to Cleve­land.

12. 

    Julie Robinson said on September 15th, 2008 at 2:38 pm

    Lots of rain and wind here, noth­ing major. But in north­ern Illi­nois my mother is watch­ing for a sec­ond major flood in a year. She can­not han­dle it her­self; she’s 76 and a car­diac patient. I’m torn between com­pas­sion and frustration–we cleaned up the last one and then attempted to help her move, only to be rebuffed by her men­tal ill­ness. Sis and I dis­cussed hav­ing her declared imcom­pe­tent but decided she’d never speak to us again. Damn it’s hard when your par­ents get old.

13. 

    Halloween Jack said on September 15th, 2008 at 3:38 pm

    The aston­ish­ing quote re: Galve­ston was from this lady:

    “Next time they should warn peo­ple about this, not the storm itself,” Ms. Jones said.

    Really? What did she think the after­math would be like–picking up a few fallen branches? Maybe run­ning a shop­vac for a few min­utes?

14. 

    moe99 said on September 15th, 2008 at 3:42 pm

    http://​tinyurl​.com/​66squy

    Palin should fit in very well.

15. 

    Connie said on September 15th, 2008 at 4:00 pm

    Ike and friends flew through here over the week­end as well. Was it just a week or two ago that we were beg­ging for rain and com­plain­ing about crunchy grass?

    My husband’s goofy post about Ike, no he was not really in deep water, I think that was a pho­to­shopped pool pic­ture. Love the birds in the bird­bath in the rain. http://​elmores​.net/​r​o​u​n​d​-​h​e​r​e​/​c​o​m​m​e​n​t​s​.​p​h​p​?​i​d​=​1​4​5​0​_​0​_1_0_C

16. 

    moe99 said on September 15th, 2008 at 4:09 pm

    http://​www​.crook​san​dliars​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​0​9​/​1​5​/​r​o​v​i​a​n​-​p​u​s​h​-​p​o​l​l​i​n​g​-​i​n​-​f​l​o​r​i​d​a​-​l​i​n​k​s​-​o​b​a​m​a​-​t​o-plo/

    title of it should tell you every­thing. Any­one who votes for McCain after this should be ashamed of them­selves for sup­port­ing such a liar.

17. 

    Gasman said on September 15th, 2008 at 4:18 pm

    Not sure why we’re talk­ing in code about Palin. I appears that she lied through her lip­stick stained teeth dur­ing her inter­view with Char­lie Gib­son. She said that fired Alaska Pub­lic Safety Com­mis­sioner Walt Mon­e­gan had agreed that she and her hus­band Todd had not pres­sured him to fire her ex brother-in-law. It seems Mon­e­gan has said just the oppo­site to Brian Ross of ABC and to the Alaska State Legislature’s inves­ti­ga­tion into the entire mat­ter:

    http://​www​.abc​news​.go​.com/​B​l​o​t​t​e​r​/​s​t​o​r​y​?​i​d​=​5​8​0​4​7​0​3​&​a​m​p​;​page=1

    Besides the appar­ent lies, the arti­cle indi­cates that Todd Palin and not the Gov­er­nor met ini­tially with Mon­e­gan. Why? What the hell is he doing ask­ing the Pub­lic Safety Com­mis­sioner to inves­ti­gate any­thing? Does this guy think it’s appro­pri­ate for him to act as if he were elected? To whom is he account­able? Is this what it means to be a mav­er­ick politi­cian?

18. 

    Catherine said on September 15th, 2008 at 4:30 pm

    Great. The Dow has dropped below 11,000. Melt­down, indeed.

    On a lighter note, from Urban Dic­tio­nary:

    bush doc­trine

    A pol­icy of pre­emp­tive strike, as pro­posed by Pres­i­dent George W. Bush.

    “My pants weren’t dirty yet, but I Bush Doc­trined them and washed them any­way.”

    “I’m going to Bush Doc­trine this test, because I can’t study at the last minute.”

    “If that ass­hat so much as looks at me again, I’m going to Bush Doc­trine his face into the ground.”

19. 

    moe99 said on September 15th, 2008 at 7:16 pm

    http://​www​.thedai​lyshow​.com/​f​u​l​l​-​e​p​i​s​o​d​e​s​/​i​n​d​e​x​.​j​h​t​m​l​?​e​p​i​s​o​d​e​I​d​=​184108

    Just get to about 7 min­utes in where they com­pare Bush’s 2000 accep­tance speech with McCain’s in 2008. It is damn scary.

20. 

    moe99 said on September 15th, 2008 at 8:48 pm

    Got this from my friend, the Klick­i­tat County pros­e­cu­tor:

    Con­fused?

    I’m a lit­tle con­fused. Let me see if I have this straight…..

    * If you grow up in Hawaii , raised by your grand­par­ents, you’re “exotic, dif­fer­ent.”

    * Grow up in Alaska eat­ing moose­burg­ers, a quin­tes­sen­tial Amer­i­can story.

    * If your name is Barack you’re a rad­i­cal, unpa­tri­otic Mus­lim.

    * Name your kids Wil­low, Trig, Bris­tol, and Track, you’re a mav­er­ick.

    * Grad­u­ate from Har­vard law School and you are unsta­ble.

    * Attend 5 dif­fer­ent small col­leges before grad­u­at­ing, you’re well grounded.

    * If you spend 3 years as a bril­liant com­mu­nity orga­nizer, become the first black Pres­i­dent of the Har­vard Law Review, cre­ate a voter reg­is­tra­tion drive that reg­is­ters 150,000 new vot­ers, spend 12 years as a Con­sti­tu­tional Law pro­fes­sor, spend 8 years as a State Sen­a­tor rep­re­sent­ing a dis­trict with over 750,000 peo­ple, become chair­man of the state Senate’s Health and Human Ser­vices com­mit­tee, spend 4 years in the United States Sen­ate rep­re­sent­ing a state of 13 mil­lion peo­ple while spon­sor­ing 131 bills and serv­ing on the For­eign Affairs, Envi­ron­ment and Pub­lic Works and Vet­eran ‘ s Affairs com­mit­tees, you don’t have any real lead­er­ship expe­ri­ence.

    * If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city coun­cil and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 peo­ple, 20 months as the gov­er­nor of a state with only 650,000 peo­ple, then you’re qual­i­fied to become the country’s sec­ond high­est rank­ing exec­u­tive and next in line behind a man in his eighth decade.

    * If you have been mar­ried to the same woman for 19 years while rais­ing 2 daugh­ters, all within Protes­tant churches, you’re not a real Chris­t­ian.

    If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and then left your dis­fig­ured wife and mar­ried the heiress the next month, you’re a true Chris­t­ian.

    * If you teach respon­si­ble, age appro­pri­ate sex edu­ca­tion, includ­ing the proper use of birth con­trol, you are erod­ing the fiber of soci­ety.

    * If, while gov­er­nor, you staunchly advo­cate absti­nence only, with no other option in sex edu­ca­tion in your state’s school sys­tem while your unwed teen daugh­ter ends up preg­nant, you’re very respon­si­ble.

    * If your wife is a Har­vard grad­u­ate lay­wer who gave up a posi­tion in a pres­ti­gious law firm to work for the bet­ter­ment of her inner city com­mu­nity, then gave that up to raise a fam­ily, your family’s val­ues don’t rep­re­sent America’s.

    * If your hus­band is nick­named “First Dude”, with at least one DWI con­vic­tion and no col­lege edu­ca­tion, who didn’t reg­is­ter to vote until age 25 and once was a mem­ber of a group that advo­cated the seces­sion of Alaska from the USA, your fam­ily is extremely admirable.

    OK, much clearer now.

21. 

    brian stouder said on September 15th, 2008 at 9:50 pm

    Very well said, Moe.

    Another poster may well chime in at any moment to declare that ‘you’re wrong’, and in so doing, that poster might feel bet­ter about things in gen­eral. What­ever.

    The McCain-as-vampire pic­ture (linked pre­vi­ously) was par­tic­u­larly strik­ing to me, because the whole McCain cam­paign seems to be fol­low­ing the clas­sic Hol­ly­wood sum­mer­time paper­back Vam­pire sto­ry­line;

    the guy is ancient, ancient; prob­a­bly more dead than alive – and his cam­paign was going absolutely nowhere…right up ’til he beguiled the young, attrac­tive, vibrant gov­er­nor of Alaska, and put the bite on her!

    And now, his cam­paign absolutely depends on the fresh blood she gen­er­ously gifts to him; when he appears with­out her he is vis­i­bly weaker, and when he appears with her, she trans­fuses life into him.

    Hon­estly, I do not know what to think of the “Troop­er­gate” thing. Palin flatly promised to coop­er­ate, and now the McCain Cam­paign just as flatly declares that no such coop­er­a­tion will come to pass.

    Is this an all-too-clever scheme to have the press over-react, and cru­elly vil­lify the fair Ms Palin, only to have her vin­di­cated at the last pos­si­ble moment? Or, is there really some­thing dam­ag­ing in the 1100 emails that the Palins won’t release?

    And the under­ly­ing drama is, if McCain goes down in Novem­ber, will Gov­er­nor Palin’s polit­i­cal future be damned in time and eter­nity? Hell, if he WINS – what hap­pens to her? Will they Agnew her out of office? THAT would be a hell of an end­ing – very fit­ting for the vam­pire motiff

22. 

    Gasman said on September 15th, 2008 at 10:29 pm

    Palin sup­port­ers: is there a sin­gle sub­ject in the Governor’s back­ground that she hasn’t openly lied about or engaged in extreme over­state­ment? I can’t think of any­thing that she has cited that has been truth­ful. My Momma told me, “If someone’s lyin’, they’re hidin’ some­thing.” I think Mom was right.

    Remem­ber, Jesus Christ was a com­mu­nity orga­nizer and Pon­tius Pilate was a Gov­er­nor.

23. 

    MaryC said on September 15th, 2008 at 10:31 pm

    she had been avoid­ing eat­ing so she would not have to use the bath­room

    I never thought I’d run out of sym­pa­thy for any dis­as­ter vic­tim but some­thing about this quote and a nearly iden­ti­cal quote from another Galve­ston woman (I think it might have been Hallowe’en Jack’s Ms. Jones, actu­ally) just really pissed me off.

    “I didn’t eat as much because the toi­lets were over­flow­ing.”

    Jeez, ladies, I thought you might have held off eat­ing because you were shar­ing an EMERGENCY SHELTER for WHO KNOWS HOW LONG with CHILDREN and there might not have been ENOUGH FOOD TO GO AROUND so you might want to THINK ABOUT SOMEONE BESIDES YOURSELF FOR A CHANGE. But then it wouldn’t be all about you, would it?

24. 

    Joe Kobiela said on September 15th, 2008 at 11:03 pm

    Keep rip­pen McCain and Palin, Took a look at the polls lately?
    Every time some one try’s to dis­credit them, the lead gets larger.
    I still think there are more peo­ple that like them than any­one thinks.
    Joe

25. 

    Catherine said on September 15th, 2008 at 11:24 pm

    Sarah Palin’s truthi­ness is clearly com­pro­mised. That said, if my sis­ter were going through a nasty divorce from an abu­sive guy, and I could get him away from the fam­ily, I’d be pretty tempted to make a call too. Wait­ing to learn more on that one…

    Gas­man, I love the Jesus/Pontius thing & plan to bor­row it, with your per­mis­sion.

26. 

    Gasman said on September 16th, 2008 at 1:10 am

    Cather­ine,
    Steal away, I did. I heard it on a radio show called “Faith Mat­ters” which runs on one of our local pub­lic radio sta­tions.

    Joe, how come Repub­li­can lies are OK? And what polls you been lookin’ at? You want to bet that McCain is at his poll zenith right now? His num­bers aren’t going to go any higher. Just the oppo­site.

27. 

    moe99 said on September 16th, 2008 at 2:05 am

    This from Robert F. Kennedy Jr in the HuffPo:

    Fas­cist writer West­brook Pegler, an avowed racist who Sarah Palin approv­ingly quoted in her accep­tance speech for the moral supe­ri­or­ity of small town val­ues, expressed his fer­vent hope about my father, Robert F. Kennedy, as he con­tem­plated his own run for the pres­i­dency in 1965, that “some white patriot of the South­ern tier will spat­ter his spoon­ful of brains in pub­lic premises before the snow flies.”

    It might be worth ask­ing Gov­er­nor Palin for a tally of the other favorites from her read­ing list.

28. 

    Jolene said on September 16th, 2008 at 2:13 am

    If the issue were really abu­sive­ness, though, Cather­ine, the thing to do would be to deal with him through law enforce­ment chan­nels. The ques­tion of his employ­ment is not rel­e­vant to his behav­ior toward any­one in the Palin fam­ily. And he was dis­ci­plined for some work-related infrac­tions.

    David Frum has an inter­est­ing take on the “reformer” men­tal­ity that leads peo­ple to over­step their bounds. An excerpt:

    Peri­od­i­cally there is an erup­tion of reform. The lead­ers of these erup­tions have to be brave and charis­matic. They excite intense loy­alty among their fol­low­ers – and pro­voke keen resent­ment among those who have enjoyed the old ways of doing busi­ness.

    But it also often hap­pens that this same bold leader has a strong mes­sianic streak. They see no dif­fer­ence between them­selves and their move­ment. They draw fierce lines between friends and ene­mies. They intensely resent crit­i­cism. They see no con­tra­dic­tion between their demand for total open­ness from oth­ers – and secrecy for them­selves. They can be para­noid and vin­dic­tive – because after all, their ene­mies are ene­mies of the great cause.

29. 

    LAMary said on September 16th, 2008 at 5:20 pm

    You’re right Joe, there are lots of peo­ple like them. They are cur­rently run­ning banks and invest­ment com­pa­nies into the ground and giv­ing them­selves huge salaries. They are run­ning for office on anti-gay plat­forms but hav­ing furtive homo­sex­ual encoun­ters. They want to throw drug users in jail but they can’t sur­vive with­out ille­gally obtained vicodin, per­co­cet and oxy­con­tin. They give jobs to cronies and fam­ily while intim­i­dat­ing expe­ri­enced staff, and best of all they lie about the whole thing. And they want to ban books.