Evening Thread

Tuesday is almost over.

Hey, Someone Noticed

Craig Crawford:

They are coming across as a bunch of snarky and bitter old white men who cannot bear the thought of their kind losing power.

Liberal Libation

Off to drink liberally, as is the Tuesday custom. Even without Atrios, the party must go on.

I Don't Know About The Rest Of It

But of course Jonah Goldberg is stupid. Many of them are, though not all, but he's one of their heavy hitters in the stupid category.

Obvious Questions Not Asked

Either Liz Cheney has inside knowledge of classified information (a problem!) or she doesn't. If the former is true that's an interesting story. If the latter is true, then why the hell is she on the teevee talking about things she has no idea about? I mean, yes, this is cable news so that's a common occurrence, but still.

Wanker of the Day

Jeff Sessions.

More Sotomayor Thread

Life In The Village

It's ok there, it must be ok everywhere.

Trolleyopolis

I've been in plenty of cities with tram lines, though never in one where there was an extensive on street tram system which provided the primary system for mass transit in the city. Most places have either replaced most of them with subway systems (both heavy rail subways and moving the existing tram lines underground at least in the urban core), or junked them for buses. Sweden trashed most of its tram systems when they switched from left-side to right-side driving.

So I found Göteborg's intact system to be quite interesting. It's extensive, there's tremendous route duplication throughout the city, and while it's complemented by buses it is the primary way of getting around the city and out to the 'burbs. The rolling stock is a mix of old and newer cars. Trams run frequently, especially in areas where route duplication gives you plenty of choices.

The trams do head out into the burbs, sailing by neighborhoods and apartment complexes. When proposing such things in the US they're always talked about as if they're some epic intrusion on the existing fabric, but there they fit right in, traveling down maintained right-of-ways. It works.

Bygones

Some days I think the Fed should just declare us all too big to fail, pay off all existing debts everywhere, and start the whole damn game over again.

' July 14 (Bloomberg) -- CIT Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Peek moved from a New Jersey office complex to a 28-story glass tower on Manhattan’s 42nd Street featuring a lobby bathed in blue, green and red. Three years later, he’s fighting to keep the lights on at the century-old finance firm. Peek, 62, who joined CIT in 2003 after failing to land the top job at Merrill Lynch & Co., pushed the lender into subprime mortgages and student loans to pump up growth. Now, as investors flee the 101-year-old company’s bonds and shares on concern it may become the year’s biggest financial industry failure, Peek is trying to gain additional government support after receiving more than $2 billion last year. “You could make a cogent argument that senior management didn’t have a good grasp of the financial storm that was on the horizon,” said Sean Egan, president of Egan-Jones Ratings Co. in Haverford, Pennsylvania. “CIT has been through a number of near-death experiences. This time they cut it too close.”

And What About You

Chris Matthews had a prominent daily political talk show on a major cable news network. He famously declared that he was against the Iraq war in his columns (not his TV show), which was true but also to the point as his last column appeared months before the Iraq war started. Where was he?

One Of You

Sometimes The Villagers slip and let a little too much out.

Blowjob

Marcy Wheeler is a pottymouth. OBSERVATION: Saying "blowjob" will get you banned from cable TV more totally than shooting a guy in the face.

The Important Stuff

Glad to see members of Congress taking the time to focus on the things that really impact American families.

Evening Thread

Monday is nearly over.

Nobody Could Have Predicted

Except me and others for some time now...

Good Luck With That

And I mean it! Good luck with charging for your newspaper online. Just don't expect it to be a smart decision.

Happy Hour Thread

It's happy time!

Nobody Could Have Predicted

Blah blah blah...

But two former ranking CIA officials have told TIME that there's another equally plausible possibility: The program could have required the Agency to spy on Americans. Domestic surveillance is outside the CIA's purview -– it's usually the FBI's job – and it's easy to see why Cheney would have wanted to keep it from Congress. Both officials say they were never told what was in the program, and that they're only making calculated guesses. But their theory gibes with other reports, quoting ex-CIA officials, that say the program had to do with intelligence collection, not assassinations.

Maybe Karen should ask Joe for some clarification. He's an expert after all.

Meanwhile

What are we doing there again?

KABUL, July 12 (Reuters) - A roadside bomb killed two U.S. Marines in southern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said on Sunday, the latest deaths in an escalation of violence that has put pressure on coalition leaders over their war strategy.