Anybody know how I can make the text here left-justified, instead of fully-justified? It’s bothering me. (I guess I could try and find a new theme. It HAS been a long time. But then, I barely can be bothered to post more than a few times a week, and that’s on a good month. Imagine spending actual effort on a redesign. Heresy!)
Prominent Republicans raising hell over AIG’s bonuses used to talk about how any limits on private companies being bailed out by the public, especially in regards to eliminating executive pay, would be against The Holy Invisible Hand of The Market and blah blah (and yes, the cited quotes are from after the federal reserve bailout).
One of my biggest pet peeves about political discourse is when someone says some variation on “there’s no difference between the parties” or “politicians are all the same,” or whatever. I really hate that because I think in most cases it just masks a lazy refusal to actually be engaged in anything. Cynicism is easy and doesn’t even require information: just assume everything sucks and call it a day! And that’s why this mess stings so much; it drains enthusiasm and trust from everyone.
Cameron Daigle notices something clever about the original Star Wars films:
To these characters, all of their dirty old world, while anachronistic to us, is old hat to them. They don’t blink at giant starships, garbled alien language, or even a 7-foot-tall walking carpet.
From the comments:
I always appreciated that “casual” use of language in the cantina sequence of A New Hope. When negotiating the fee for the Falcon, I always loved the way they just said “10,000″ without a demonination afterwards. I always felt that would be cheesy if they used some made up monetary system, “10,000 klocktares” wouldn’t just sounded stupid for forced.
If you made a film about gamblers, the characters wouldn’t say “gimme 10,000 *dollars* on fifth at belmont.” No, they’d say “gimmie 10 thousand on the fifth”
It’s certainly not because Americans are dead set against bank nationalization: A Newsweek poll this month found that 56 percent of respondents supported it. Hell, Alan Greenspan supports it. But Geithner seems unable to imagine a banking system not run by its current leaders or owned by its current shareholders or engaged in the same arcane securitization practices that led to its collapse. An administration that is busily creating alternatives to our health-care system and our energy policies is being dragged down by a Treasury secretary who cannot conceive of an alternative to our catastrophic system of banking.
Emphasis mine. Meyerson gets at what’s so maddening about this: amongst signs of creativity in other aspects of what Obama is doing we have this seemingly stubborn, unimaginative, status-quo financial policy. Blah!
Does Obama understand just how bad these guys could sink everything? Now, what do you normally to do high-profile employees who seem to be hapless, and are making you look bad….I think it may start with the letter “F”?
So far I’m generally liking what Obama’s administration is doing *except* for how they’re handling the financial system rescue. It’s just so weird to me: you’d think they’d be able to come up with a better excuse than this. Guys, seriously: these people broke everything. There’s no need to be punitive about it, but there’s no need to be overly concerned about their delicate sensibilities either.