Looky-looky:
For those of you counting at home, that green line represents the jobs we’ve already lost in this recession. The other two lines represent the jobs lost during the 1990 and 2001 recession.
Thank God, though, that we have awesome centrists such as Ben Nelson making sure that the stimulus proposal doesn’t spend too much on food stamps!
Here’s what happened over at America’s Shittiest Website™ after Nancy Pelosi referred to “500 Million” American jobs:
And here’s what happened there after Andy McCarthy, one of their own, talked about “billions of American lives” threatened by terror attacks:
Ya think Andy “USA! USA! USA!” McCarthy was counting Central Americans, South Americans and Canadians too?
America is on the brink of economic ruin and the Republicans are still running wild. When will Obama start standing up to them? Insert these phrases into the press conference or interview of your choice!
Sound clips taken from the audiobook, Dreams From My Father, as read by the author. [Cf., cf.; idea guaranteed not hiked from Mike Milliard at the Boston Phoenix.]
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Above: Once pooped someone else’s pants
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.
Unhappy voters jam Capitol Hill phone lines
By Lisa Desjardins
Above: Capitol Hill correspondent for CNN Radio
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The recent debate over the nearly $900 billion economic stimulus plan and revelations of tax problems by three Obama administration appointees have voters angrily jamming phone lines on Capitol Hill to air their frustrations to their elected representatives.
There must have been a point at which the journalistic profession finally lost respect not just for the American news consumer — who has, after all, been falling for its conceits since long before reporting began to style itself as a profession — but for the same limiting abstractions that were so famously abandoned by the Gingrich strain of Republicans in the 1990s. Cause and effect is chief among these. Just as a theory has risen among conservative intellectuals that the recent run of government bailouts is not fixing, but rather caused the economic crisis that later led to, you know, that same run of bailouts, we find journalists reporting occurrences such as “voters angrily jamming phone lines on Capitol Hill,” and we gamely read on to learn who might be coordinating such a classic political pressure campaign, only to find:
Their reactions are putting pressure on Congress and benefiting watchdog groups on both sides of the political aisle.
The calls are benefiting…? On both sides of the…?
We’ll know when sports journalism has joined the Washington reporters’ general melee against reality when we start to see statements like, “A swung bat caused a baseball to be emitted from the hand of pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka, who plays for both teams.”
[…] It’s because of people like Betty Davidson.
“I’m very upset!” exclaimed the 63-year-old from Laguna Hills, California.
She called her senators Tuesday, frustrated with the almost $900 billion-dollar economic recovery proposal.
“What a joke!” she said.
But she is particularly incensed by news that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and former Obama appointees Tom Daschle and Nancy Killefer didn’t pay their taxes properly in the past.
Blah-blah people are blah-blah, and [name], [age], is no exception. Blah-blah [alleged trend] yakkity-yak — just ask [name], [age], of [municipality]. “[Relevant exclamation!]” he or she exclaimed. For are we not all Betty Davidson in someone’s news story?
But wait. Of all the random people who might coincidentally appear in such a story as this, we next encounter the peripatetic anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist, explaining how the scouringly furious and panicful whooping-up of angry calls to Congress by conservative talk radio goblins, by activists, advocacy groups, think tanks, stink tanks, phony nonpartisan foundations, Internet fever swamps, Republican front groups, flying monkey rookeries, once-respected magazines of conservative opinion, recently defunded right-blogs, various freewheeling Republican congressional offices, basic yahoos, rantipoles, clergymen, assorted and non-specific up-whoopers, and Grover Norquist — and then a frenzied catch-up maneuver by liberal activists — was actually kind of the other way around, if you look at it in a certain way:
“Just in the last week … responses to our e-mails out to activists have jumped dramatically,” said Grover Norquist, president of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform. “We’ve had more calls into our offices, more e-mails.”
“Yes,” says Norquist, “Responses have jumped dramatically to the organized campaign to stir up public outrage that conservatives have been conducting.” And okay, fine, if you need a quote for some story you’re trying to pull together, Norquist is ready when you are. But then the theme continues:
That same spike has hit Citizens Against Government Waste, which is also seeing a surge in e-mails, calls and angry posts to its Web site.
Also, that same spike has hit Free Republic, as voters make thousands of angry posts to its message boards. “Bwahaha eat a bowl of Freeper dicks Obamalama MUSLIM HUSSEIN” wrote one voter critical of the stimulus plan. “EVRYBODY CALL NANCY PELOSI AND SAY SUCK IT COMMIE BITCH!!!1” suggested another unhappy voter, adding the phone number of Pelosi’s office and signing the message, “REP. ERIC CANTOR (R VA).”
“Americans are angry at Democrats” explained a liberal-leaning liberal. “Muuuuuh” added bipartisan analyst Zombie Ronald Reagan.
Si c’est jeudi, c’est l’heure du 2 minutes du TownHall!
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™
After a long day wandering the halls of his retirement home, screaming “feminist,” “bitch” and “dyke” at the nurses and female residents, RenewAmerica superstar Carey Roberts settled down at the community computer long enough to pound out a new classic: “Ladies, want job security? Just scream ‘abuse!’ “ This new volley launched in the war of white men everywhere to overcome female oppression not only demonstrates Carey’s clear-eyed view of the modalities of female enslavement of men, but also puts on display his unparalleled ability to interpret proposed legislation to uncover dastardly consequences that not even a Harvard law professor could find.
Carey’s target is the Security and Financial Empowerment Act, which he believes is designed to assure that no woman ever gets fired. As he sees it, this means that eventually women will push all men out of their jobs and create an Amazonian society where every man in America is locked up in a basement, surviving only on granola crumbs and constantly subject to sexual humiliation by female masters.
The whole process gets started by the bill actually allowing woman to appear before judges.
The concept is so simple, it’s amazing no one dreamed this up before. Here’s how it works: All you have to do is trot down to the local courthouse and convince the judge your husband or boyfriend did something that caused “substantial emotional distress or psychological trauma” — those are the words from the SAFE bill: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-739
Now, you’re probably thinking “What’s so bad about that?” But you obviously don’t know the lengths women will go to claim that something traumatizes them the way Carey does:
Remember during the Super Bowl when your heartthrob let loose a terrifying groan after Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner threw that boneheaded first-half interception? Or when he issued that blood-curdling whoop when the Steelers grabbed the lead in the final 35 seconds?
As we all know, watching professional football multiplies men’s proclivity to domestic violence, and any strange utterance signifies he may be teetering on the brink. Of course you were frightened and traumatized, weren’t you? Congratulations, you are now a victim of battering!
To fully understand where Grump-Pa is coming from here, you should realize that he still thinks that his wife divorced him because of his incessant, but altogether necessary, moaning and yowling during his diurnal defecations, rather than because of fifty-some years of embarrassing behavior by him at social gatherings.
Now what? Simple. Just tell the boss you were manhandled by your partner. Now settle back and get ready for all the bennies! The list is pretty long, so you might want to take notes.
Most of all, you have lifelong job security — because the bill prohibits the employer from ever firing you! Maybe you think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. Section 303 says: “An employer shall not…discharge…the individual [who is] a victim of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, or stalking.”
You’re probably also thinking that only someone completely insane would believe that the bill actually says that and that the ellipses and brackets added by Roberts probably have conveniently hidden some really important language that completely changes the meaning of the quoted passage. Sadly, yes! Let me show you what’s hiding behind that “[who is]”:
An employer shall not…discharge…the individual because the individual involved is a victim of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, or stalking.
I think the only possible response here is to quote from RenewAmerica’s own “publishing standards“:
Welcome to the informed community of RenewAmerica!
I really can’t top that.
*Cf.
Are you effing kidding me:
The Bad Bank Assets Proposal: Even Worse Than You Imagined
Dear God, let’s just kiss the US economy goodbye. It may take a few years before the loyalists and permabulls throw in the towel, but the handwriting is on the wall.
The Obama Administration, if the Washington Post’s latest report is accurate, is about to embark on a hugely expensive “save the banking industry at all costs” experiment that:
1. Has nothing substantive in common with any of the “deemed as successful” financial crisis programs
2. Has key elements that studies of financial crises have recommended against
3. Consumes considerable resources, thus competing with other, in many cases better, uses of fiscal firepower.
The Obama Administration is as obviously and fully hostage to the interests of the financial services industry as the Bush crowd was. We have no new thinking, no willingness to take measures that are completely defensible (in fact not doing them takes some creative positioning) like wiping out shareholders at obviously dud banks (Citi is top of the list), forcing bondholder haircuts and/or equity swaps, replacing management, writing off and/or restructuring bad loans, and deciding whether and how to reorganize and restructure the company. Instead, the banks are now getting the AIG treatment: every demand is being met, no tough questions asked, no probing of the accounts (or more important, the accounting).
In case you had any doubts, propping up dud asset values is a form of forbearance. Japan had a different way of going about it, but the philosophy was similar, and the last 15 year illustrates how well that worked.
What we have from Team Obama is a bigger abortion of a :”throw money at bad bank assets” plan that I feared in my worst nightmare. And (when we get to the Post preview), they have the temerity to invoke triage to make what they are doing sound surgical and limited.
Obama — although I didn’t think you were some Messiah when I voted for you, I at least thought you had the sense to stay away from BUSH-QUALITY PROPOSALS. This is some serious bullshit that you’re about to lay down and it will destroy your presidency. I’m being totally serious. What’s more, it will destroy the Democratic Party’s reputation as being the party that does a better job of taking care of the middle class and the poor. You will be spending God-knows-how-much of our money on trash. If you value your country and your legacy, you will throw this proposal straight down into the shitter where it belongs.
