j_b

Brandy to drink straight or with coffee/tea, and vodka with powdered juices (and tomato). It's so easy to find decent cheap bottled wine that I'd consider putting some in one of those plastic draft-beer countainers.

LOL. The word has dynamic meaning and considering the evidence, I assumed Tvash didn't imply that he was either a trendy fashionista or low riding underwear.

I am not sure it is possible around here but may be this is where the pseudo part comes in.

Live and let live, Tvash. My form of entertainment isn't yours, is anything wrong with that? Try to be "liberal" instead of behaving like a cultural stormtrooper.

and don't forget to blame the scumballs who mortgaged their homes to meet living expenses. Wow, STP, these are big numbers. It's tempting to capitalize a new bank with bailout money while letting these greedy fools deal with their gambling debts and IOUs.

Lots more in the rest of the article

Most of academia is also not paid anywhere close to what someone with similar or even much less expertise makes in industry. Comparing academic wages with those made by business types and lawyers is even more incredible. For example, a science post-doc makes 2-3 times less than a lawyer just out of school.

Autoworkers have contracts too, yet it didn't prevent the people now making these arguments about AIG contracts from saying then that autoworkers should be paid less or be sacked. The double standard is simply mind boggling.

They are certainly trying to respond to popular (and populist) sentiment here, but the fact is the bonuses are really only symbolic and not a real substantive issue, no? I'm watching this whole thing with a bag of popcorn. It is substantive insofar it illustrates very well that the banksters will remain in charge and that this administration has no intention of implementing change: Despair over financial policy

it wouldn't be any worse than having in charge the people who invented and refused to regulate credit default swaps.

and don't forget to investigate those in congress who pushed for having insufficient strings attached to bailout money.

Nationalize the damn thing, fire management (and Geithner too) and prosecute the crooks among them.

Patrick McHenry, a key republican strategist, clearly spelled out what they were going to do until 2010: “We will lose on legislation. But we will win the message war every day, and every week, until November 2010. Our goal is to bring down approval numbers for [speaker Nancy] Pelosi and for House Democrats. That will take repetition. This is a marathon, not a sprint.” http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/house-republicans/gop-rep-our-goal-is-to-bring-down-approval-numbers-for-dems/?ref=fp1 In other words, only expect obstructionism and lying propaganda peddled daily by the corporate media while the world economy goes down the shitter. We can only hope this means the end of these neanderthals but there are reasons to be concerned.

I am a big fan of Godard's early stuff (Breathless, Pierrot, Week-end, alphaville, ..), but I am a little confused by the last part of your post considering what you have been writing here for the last 7 years: being ecstatic for the Reagan counter-revolution doesn't jive with "seeing thru the BS the man was throwing down too".

I am afraid that copying and pasting a song and putting 'pooing' in bold isn't really a cogent response, but hey, "keep on trippin dude". May be some day you'll come out of your stupor.

Here's the New York Times peddling the "republicans tried to shut down government because they are concerned about deficits" line as if the last 8 years (and more) didn't happen. Must be a coincidence ...

Hidden Pension Fiasco May Foment Another $1 Trillion Bailout

the rise of the Bushvilles (like the hoovervilles of the 30's) [video:youtube]yz8LXq1q6iI

It's not about shortcoming, it is about systematic propaganda to further the interests of people who own them. Such as when they hired dozens of retired generals who regularly attended white house sessions as "military analysts" to discuss Iraq every night on the news. Or laid off Phil Donahue who had a wildly successful TV talk show because he didn't toe the line on Iraq. Or refused to critize Bush for years while they didn't wait for a month with Obama. etc ...

Um, all Op Ed pages are biased. That's where the 'opinion' part comes in. The reporting (and that would be in a different section) has a focus, as doas any paper, but the writing, editing, and vetting are all of a high standard. Certainly not. The corporate media (so-called MSM) routinely omits, spins and lies like they almost all did for the Iraq war. Latest example: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3733

A little late for your saturday outing, but don't forget that you don't need to practice leading on an established climb. Anyway, it is usually much more convenient to practice on a smaller crag if you want a top belay. For example, they are several low class 5 steep short pitches (~40') just downhill from Icicle/mountaineers buttress.

Market fundamentalists are always quick to invoke "human nature" to justify greed on an unprecedented scale but in fact they know very little about human nature and they are certainly incapable of sorting out human nature from social nurture. Let's remember that widespread gambling didn't occur before deregulation of the financial sector. Much of the public debt is due to real wages going down for the last 30 years. Yes, we know, neoliberals have implemented the deregulatory playbook and financialization of economies in most developped countries.

It's going to take a lot more than "little tweaks" to fix the deregulation bought by the financial industry for more than $5 billion (1998-2008) paid off to politicians and lobbyists in Washington: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/07-3

"Mr. Buffett compiled a data sheet of the men and women who work in his office. He had each of them make a fraction; the numerator was how much they paid in federal income tax and in payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, and the denominator was their taxable income. The people in his office were mostly secretaries and clerks, though not all. It turned out that Mr. Buffett, with immense income from dividends and capital gains, paid far, far less as a fraction of his income than the secretaries or the clerks or anyone else in his office. Further, in conversation it came up that Mr. Buffett doesn’t use any tax planning at all. He just pays as the Internal Revenue Code requires. “How can this be fair?” he asked of how little he pays relative to his employees. “How can this be right?” http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/business/yourmoney/26every.html?_r=1

We were talking about Brooks, not you, which must be difficult to accept for someone with an ego as large as yours.