Good Morning

So You're Pretty Much Admitting A Vast Conspiracy Of Criminal Fraud?

I've got $20 on Ari Fleischer being the next hire.

Friday Night

Have another song.

Friday Evening

Have a video.

Happy Hour Thread

enjoy.

Righteous

Awesome.

In "normal" times I wouldn't cheer such behavior, but when banks are refusing to do modifications on underwater houses and turning around and reselling them for 30% of the value of the mortgage...

What Will Piss Off Liberals The Most This Week?

I'm sure there are Republicans who really really want the Keystone Pipeline, but the reason to do this type of thing is to show that you are willing to piss off liberals.

Why Can't We Pay Them To Give Us Nice Things

It's not actually loopy lefty conspiracy theory to see that there are entrenched economic interests wedded to the government money firehose. I just haven't quite figured out why "how about you don't build quite as many missiles and in exchange we'll overpay you for the SUPERTRAIN contract" isn't an option.

Causing Confusion

David Cameron's action on the latest Eurocrap is causing a bit of confusion, as while his claimed reasons for it are stupid and not the kind of reasons lefties like, he's still quite correct to keep the UK out of all of that. Just for other reasons.

The Political Class

Sure, have a brokered convention where a bunch of delegates for the crazy candidates who actually ran try to agree on a new crazy candidate.

How It Works

So you lend money to states. There's a risk premium, sometimes sometimes large. You buy insurance to reduce your risk and transmute everything to gold. But the people you buy the insurance from can't possibly pay. You aren't really buying insurance, you're buying the appearance of insurance. It doesn't matter, because no matter how much of a risk premium you were getting, there will never be a default. Because.

IMF Principles

Spelled out pretty clearly.

European Union leaders dropped their demand that investors share the cost of bailouts as Germany abandoned a campaign that helped deepen the two-year-old financial crisis.

Limiting so-called private-sector involvement to the terms accepted in International Monetary Fund bailouts was part of a package agreed upon in Brussels early today as leaders met to forge tighter economic bonds to stem the crisis.

“As regards private-sector involvement, we have made a major change in our doctrine: from now on we will strictly adhere to the IMF principles and doctrines,” EU President Herman Van Rompuy told reporters at a briefing. “Or, to put it more bluntly, our first approach to PSI, which had a very negative effect on debt markets is now officially over.”

Look Forward

I actually paid about zero attention to the whole Blago case and have no opinion about any of the details, but it seems tribal allegiance is strong.

Wakey, Wakey

Lonely

Not my area of knowledge, and the point applies to more than our future clone overlords, but animals are much more social than we tend to acknowledge. We get that our pets need us, but other animals need community too.

They're Evil AND Stupid

Many of them, anyway.

The Worst Person In The World

Josh Block.

Also, too, PPI.

All Blogged Out

Busy day. Talk amongst yourselves.

Afternoon Thread

enjoy

Mysteries

I get that neighborhood parking concerns are real, but could someone please explain that if you do this the impact is to replace four public parking spots with four private ones? That makes that neighborhood parking situation worse, not better.