Keep it up, Pennsylvania! More cowbell, more blue.

Sarah Silverman: less mature, just as accurate

Drive your Bubbeh! It will be an Obama-mitzvah!


The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

Chris Rock says, return the favor

Probably the most mature discussion of presidential politics I've seen. Bottom line: vote for the guy with one house.

Mind that slippery Electoral College!

www.electoral-vote.com

Wikipedia's sobering view of 1980's bail-outs: Moral Bankruptcy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM4Lak_11eQ

Or, W.C. Fields' "Bank Dick" is looking prescient right now...

Lincoln Savings and Loan

The Lincoln Savings led to the Keating Five political scandal, in which five U.S. senators (Alan Cranston, Don Riegle, Dennis DeConcini, John Glenn & John McCain) were implicated in an influence-peddling scheme. It was named for Charles Keating, who headed Lincoln Savings and made $300,000 as political contributions to them in the 1980s. Three of those senators – Alan Cranston (D-CA), Don Riegle (D-MI), and Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ) – found their political careers cut short as a result. Two others – John Glenn (D-OH) and John McCain (R-AZ) – were rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee for exercising "poor judgment" for intervening with the federal regulators on behalf of Keating.^[10]

Silverado Savings and Loan

Silverado Savings and Loan collapsed in 1988, costing taxpayers $1.3 billion. Neil Bush, son of then Vice President of the United States George H. W. Bush, was Director of Silverado at the time. Neil Bush was accused of giving himself a loan from Silverado, but he denied all wrongdoing.[2]

The US Office of Thrift Supervision investigated Silverado's failure and determined that Neil Bush had engaged in numerous "breaches of his fiduciary duties involving multiple conflicts of interest." Although Bush was not indicted on criminal charges, a civil action was brought against him and the other Silverado directors by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation; it was eventually settled out of court, with Bush paying $50,000 as part of the settlement, the Washington Post reported.^[11]

As a director of a failing thrift, Bush voted to approve $100 million in what were ultimately bad loans to two of his business partners. And in voting for the loans, he failed to inform fellow board members at Silverado Savings & Loan that the loan applicants were his business partners.^{[citation needed]}

Neil Bush paid a $50,000 fine and was banned from banking activities for his role in taking down Silverado, which cost taxpayers $1.3 billion. A Resolution Trust Corporation Suit against Bush and other officers of Silverado was settled in 1991 for $26.5 million.

Consequences

A taxpayer funded government bailout related to mortgages during the savings and loan crisis may have created a moral hazard and acted as encouragement to lenders to make similar higher risk loans during the 2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis.^[15]

For the nuance-impaired

http://www.236.com/video/2008/obama_on_olbermann_closed_capt_1_8837.php

"A Night of Broken Dreams and Fractured Hips"

Image from yeehawindustries.com -- buy something they made!

In 1936...

Gone With The Wind was first published.
The Queen Mary made its first voyage across the Atlantic.
Hoover Dam was completed.
The Green Hornet radio show debuted.
The Triborough Bridge opened.
The San Francisco - Oakland Bay bridge opened.
The first issue of Life Magazine was published.

John McCain was born.

Well thank goodness! Our president is J. Wellington Wimpy

They are putting a significant amount of taxpayer dollars on the line, but they expect it will be paid back eventually. They will GLADLY pay us Tuesday for their hamburger today.



AND luckily, Bush is promising that people who are short-selling will be "caught and persecuted."

Mmmm... Paleo-publicans... Fetch!

Palin also helped push the evangelical drive to take over the Mat-Su Borough school board. "She wanted to get people who believed in creationism on the board," said Munger, a music composer and teacher. "I bumped into her once after my band played at a graduation ceremony at the Assembly of God. I said, 'Sarah, how can you believe in creationism -- your father's a science teacher.' And she said, 'We don't have to agree on everything.'

"I pushed her on the earth's creation, whether it was really less than 7,000 years old and whether dinosaurs and humans walked the earth at the same time. And she said yes, she'd seen images somewhere of dinosaur fossils with human footprints in them."

Munger also asked Palin if she truly believed in the End of Days, the doomsday scenario when the Messiah will return. "She looked in my eyes and said, 'Yes, I think I will see Jesus come back to earth in my lifetime.'"

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/09/15/bess/

Perspective on John McCain: Mmmmm... Ambien!

http://www.thingsyoungerthanmccain.com/

http://therealmccain.com/doctors/

Go, Mudflats!

http://mudflats.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/alaska-women-reject-palin-rally-is-huge/rally12/

Alaska Women Reject Palin!

8th Street, 09/11/08

Dream of Life: A Poem to Fred

Patti Smith at the Film Forum on September 11, New York City.

Our Country

8:46 am

Hands off the librarians!

'As mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." The librarian, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire her for not giving "full support" to the mayor. '

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1837918,00.html

Presumptive Squirmer in Chief

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q8obHEULLg