Paulson Optimistic Economy Will Turn Around
Cites encouraging e-mail from Nigeria.
Americans Looking for New Start
Pile possessions on car roofs, head for California.
Record 90% Believe Country on Wrong Track
But only 40% intend to vote.
McCain Reveals Plan to Save Economy
Revive poll tax.
Watermelon Found to Have Viagra-Like Effects
Ask your doctor if watermelon is right for you.
STOCKHOLM, Oct 13 (Reuters) - American economist Paul Krugman won the 2008 Nobel prize for economics for bringing together analysis of trade patterns and where economic activity takes place, the prize committee said on Monday.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the prestigious 10 million crown ($1.4 million) prize recognised Krugman's formulation of a new theory to answer questions driving world-wide urbanisation.
"He has thereby integrated the previously disparate research fields of international trade and economic geography," the committee said in its statement.
Republicans Have Bigger Problems than John McCain's Dying Campaign
I'm a watchful admirer of journalistic understatements, and this weekend brought us these: "Republican leaders said Saturday that they were worried Mr. McCain was heading for defeat unless he brought stability to his presidential candidacy and … they were concerned that he and his advisers seemed to be adrift."
And that, my friends, was the equivalent of White Star Line saying on April 15, 1912, that one of their ships seemed to be in a spot of trouble.
"Yet, as we know, Republicans are as addicted to Rovian junk as much as their supply-side product. Like most degenerate addicts, however, they believe a sudden, cold-turkey withdrawal from both self-destructive habits could prove fatal. The opposite, of course, is true -- in fact it's their only hope of survival. Whether they wise up and sober up is the only suspense left."
For years, liberals thought they could catch up in media by playing by conservatives' rules. Rachel Maddow's success proves it's better to just change the game.
Maddow is not a Tim Russert or a Chris Matthews--an ostensibly nonpartisan interviewer who badgers politicians and policy-makers about contradictions in their records. Nor is she a Rush Limbaugh or a Glenn Beck--an attack dog who deals in calculated anger, bluster, and outrage. She's no mild-mannered liberal like Alan Colmes or a veteran observer like Wolf Blitzer or David Gregory. Maddow has broken the broadcasting mold. She has succeeded as an avowed liberal on television precisely because she is not a liberal version of conservatives like Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. Unlike so many progressive media figures who sought to replicate the on-air habits of the aggressive shock jocks of the right, she stumbled upon a workable style for the left. She is liberal without apology or embarrassment, bases her authority on a deep comprehension of policy rather than the culture warrior's claim to authenticity, and does it all with a light, even slightly mocking, touch. She proves that liberals can attract viewers on television when they actually act like, well, liberals.
After a 28-year binge of drunken optimism and blind nationalism – often punctuated by chants of "USA, USA!" and "We’re No. 1!" – Americans are waking up with a painful hangover, facing a grim "morning in America," not the happy vision that Ronald Reagan famously sold them on.
As the United States begins to assess how the nation got into its trillion-dollar bailout mess, a true understanding must go back three decades or so when Reagan deployed his well-honed communications skills and the Republican Right mastered the dark arts of propaganda to get the American people to shed the annoying strictures of rationality.
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As President, Reagan attacked the federal regulatory system and cut taxes so recklessly that his budget director, David Stockman, foresaw red ink "as far as the eye can see." Reagan also justified fattening the Pentagon’s budget by citing dire warnings that the Soviet Union was on the rise (despite CIA analysis at the time that it was in sharp decline).
To marginalize dissent, Reagan and his subordinates stoked anger toward anyone who challenged the era’s feel-good optimism. Skeptics were not just honorable critics, they were un-American defeatists or – in Jeane Kirkpatrick’s memorable attack line – they would "blame America first."
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Significantly, too, Reagan credentialed a new generation of neocon intellectuals, who pioneered a concept called "perception management," the shaping of how Americans saw, understood – and were frightened by – threats from abroad.
Many honest reporters saw their careers damaged when they resisted the lies and distortions of the Reagan administration. Likewise, U.S. intelligence analysts were purged when they refused to bend to the propaganda demands from above. [See Robert Parry’s Lost History.]
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... As of 1Pm Eastern Time, he [the Chimp] has 99 days left in his misbegotten presidency ...
Jeffrey Broussard and D'Jalma Garnier lead The Creole Cowboys in Boozoo Chavez's classic 'Dog Hill'. Live at the Louisiana Musician's Hurricane Relief Benefit Rhodes-on-the-Pawtuxet November 13, 2005
... It’s only in retrospect that we can see that the keep-off-the-grass period was the McCain campaign’s golden era ...
Tamen Sara et Ioannes bury Obama, not praise him. Maverici, ut capiunt auxilium de friga-domina, hench-femina, Cynthia McCaina Birrabaronessa, (quae culpat Obamam periculandi suum filum in Babylonia), brazen-iter distractant mentes populares de minimissimis IV 0 I K.ibus, deminutione “Motorum Omnium,” et Depressione Magna II.0. Omnes de Georgio Busio Secundo colossale goofballo. “V” (because there’s no W. in Latin) etiam duxit per disastrum ad gymnasium.
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If we're going to spend taxpayer money to soften the blow, the taxpayers have to have a stake in the outcome. If we're going to bail out a bank or an investment house, the taxpayer, in the persona of the U.S government, must have a controlling interest in said institution. There is no confidence in the bunch of infidels (and imbeciles) who have been running the show and that confidence won't return until investors know all are playing with the same rulebook, a rulebook (yet to be written) that doesn't allow for shady deals using questionable instruments, leveraged 100:1.
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There was a ridiculous amount of news for a Friday night, the foremost being that President Paulson is finally giving in and doing what should have been done in the first place, purchasing an equity stake in failing banks. The problem is that he is still doing it wrong.
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...Paulson said the government’s program would be designed to complement the efforts of banks to raise fresh capital from private sources. He said that the government’s stock purchases would be of nonvoting shares so that the government will not have power to run the companies.
Actually, we need the power to run the companies, or at least tell the bankers what to do, more specifically that they must lend to one another. They aren't the kind of shares that Warren Buffett got from Goldman Sachs. If this doesn't change bank behavior then it essentially will do nothing. A bank that refuses to lend is not a functional bank, and the government ought to take it over. As Krugman says, this is a half-Gordon - referring to Gordon Brown's recapitalization plan (not the part about suing Iceland).
The journey to the 2007 SSDT. Without doubt, some of the best scenery in the world en route to the best Trial in the world.
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"If Democrats weren’t such pointy-headed coastal-elite pantywaists, the Republican Party would never have become the refuge of deranged racist misogynist theocratic gibberers."
One of the centers of the Line Pine Film Festival is the Beverly and Jim Rogers Museum of Lone Pine Film History, which will host notable Western authors this weekend, including Elmer Kelton and Dan O'Brien. The local high school will screen "Hi-Yo Silver!" and other classics. Other events include a "Wagon Train" celebration with many of the actors from the classic TV series; a tour of Alabama Hills, Ansel Adams' favorite locale in the area; and "Iron Man and Beyond," another tour focusing on the locations used in the Robert Downey Jr. blockbuster movie.
For the townies, it's quite a weekend. "Lone Pine really welcomes the filmmaking community, it's a big boon for us," Langley said, but he admits that for some of the residents, it's a bit much. "You either got to volunteer that weekend or get out of town."
