Really!

So it's not just lefty opinion column writers. And it's not just lefty "objective journalists" now, either.

Now important "non-partisan" civil servants are on the list, too? Sharing secrets and schemes with the group?

How wonderful for them.

Was Orzag a member when he was running the CBO, I wonder?

Thanks to CJ.

Posted by: Ace at 01:22 PM | Add Comment
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It's fucking science or something so it has to be true.

According to Los Angeles psychotherapist Nancy Irwin, a foul economy is prompting more outbursts of foul language.

“There are a lot of elements that are out of our control right now and as a result, there’s a lot more frustration, a lot more fear and anxiety,” she says. “When people feel that, many cuss. Swearing is something that gives us an instantaneous release.”

The economy may be making it worse, but cursing has been increasingly infiltrating public conversation for years, with the rates of vulgar ranting rising right along with our stress levels. Expletives are so commonplace, there's almost no cuss-free zone anymore. President Barack ObamaÂ’s chief of state, Rahm Emanuel, is notorious for his foul-mouthed tirades. Recent outbursts by celebrities and public figures such as Christian Bale, Rod Blagojevich and Joe Scarborough are just a few other recent examples.

A 2006 survey conducted by Associated Press/Ipsos found that 74 percent of Americans acknowledged they encountered profanity in public frequently or occasionally and 66 percent agreed that, as a rule, people curse more today than 20 years ago.

Poor economic prospects and more cursing? It looks like the rest of the country has a case of Ace of Spades Lifestyle Fever and the only cure is more cowbell cockholster!

h/t...A friend of mine who has no idea I write for this blog or that it even exists and would be appalled if she did.

Posted by: DrewM at 12:27 PM | Add Comment
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But it's Rasmussen, a very partisan polling outfit, unlike the straight-down-the-middle Gallup. (See sidebar.)

As Moe says... well you can see what he says by clicking.

Support for the Democratic Congressional candidates fell to a new low over the past week, allowing the GOP to move slightly head for the first time in recent years in the Generic Congressional Ballot.

Posted by: Ace at 10:57 AM | Add Comment
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Awful to listen to.

Listen closely and you can tell from the 911's dispatcher's voice he's suspicious this is a crank. You can't blame him.

Whoops: This is old. Last month. Fox just ran it, so I assumed it was new, but it's not. They ran it in connection with the no-brainer story that the victim's family is suing the chimp's owner. more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:53 AM | Add Comment
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Team Obama used the phrase "smart diplomacy" a lot during the campaign. Apparently it does not mean what they think it means.

Fresh from presenting the Prime Minister of the UK with insulting gifts and an inability to translate 'reset' into Russian, the Smaterest Administration Evah! hits another couple of foul balls in the meeting with Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Brazil has become a major U.S. trading partner, with cautious economic policies that have helped it weather the crisis better than almost all other major economies. With huge new offshore oil finds and abundant ethanol, Brazil could be key to helping wean the U.S. off Venezuelan crude and shift to cleaner energies.

Still, the White House made several moves interpreted as snubs by the Brazilian media.

Silva aides said the trip was pushed forward from Tuesday because of the St. Patrick's Day holiday - making Latin America once again look like an afterthought. Then, the White House announcement misspelled his name as "Luis Ignacio" and put "Lula" - a nickname that decades ago became a legal part of the Brazilian leader's name - in quotes.

Yeah, St. Patrick's Day really sneaks up on you, what with it being the same day every year and all. Plus the tradition of doing something with representatives of Ireland has only been going on for approximately forever.

These morons can't even manage to run meetings with two friendly countries and yet they claimed only The One could bring our enemies to heel through sheer force of his personal diplomatic efforts. Yeah, that's going to work well.

To celebrate the holiday, Obama avoided any questions by asking reporters, "Guys, can't I just finish my Lucky Charms?"

*Thanks to Russ from Winterset for the Ministry of Basic Competence snark which reminded me I wanted to post this story.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:58 AM | Add Comment
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Meet Obama's new Culture Warrior.

President Barack Obama has established a staff position in the White House to oversee arts and culture in the Office of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs under Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser, a White House official confirmed. Kareem Dale, right, a lawyer who last month was named special assistant to the president for disability policy, will hold the new position.

...

“It’s a big step forward in terms of connecting cultural and government with mainstream administration policy,” Mr. Ivey said in an interview on Friday.

...

Mr. Ivey, a former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, said he expected that the job would mainly involve coordinating the activities of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services “in relation to White House objectives.”

Okay, where to begin?

1. Yet another distraction for our overwhelmed president.

2. The former chairman of the National Endowment of the Humanities speaks in ungrammatical English. "Connecting cultural and government"? He should try connecting two nouns.

3. It's fucking creepy.

4. It's unnecessary. Our "cultural" already is falling over itself to connect with "mainstream administration policy."

5. Incidentally, is our new Culture Warrior saying that some of the administration's policy is non-mainstream?

6. Did I mention it's creepy? This guy just admitted that his goal was not to advance "cultural" itself -- already a dubious proposition -- but was in fact specifically "a big step forward in terms of connecting cultural and government with mainstream administration policy." He just announced, in other words, his point was to be a propagandist, to inject "mainstream administration policy" into our "cultural." Like the government-sponsored artists of the 30's, apparently our new "cultural" will be in service not of art but in propagandizing the Obama Administration.

Add another one to the ever-growing What If Bush Had Done It? file. There was a hue and cry over a Clinton era (and the Bush era) government program to subsidize TV shows which carried anti-drug messages. Even that was considered a breech and improper marriage of government and media. (I have to say I'm uncomfortable with the precedent myself -- look where it's gone.)

And now Obama's Minister of Culture is going to connect "cultural" with "mainstream administration policy" and the NYT welcomes it as if it's a positive development?

Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?

Thanks to DrewM., via the Corner.

Corrected: It was this Ivey guy who said "cultural," etc., not the new Minister of Culture himself.

Photoshop: by Slublog.

He did that the first night after the movie opened. Before the Botchmen parody hit. I didn't have any place to use it. Well, it's about to go stale, so I'm using it.

It sorta makes sense here. Sorta.

Posted by: Ace at 08:04 AM | Add Comment
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President Barack Obama, February 12, 2009:

And I'm not the only one who thinks so. Yesterday, Jim, the head of Caterpillar, said that if Congress passes our plan, this company will be able to rehire some of the folks who were just laid off. And that's a story I'm confident will be repeated at companies across the country -- companies that are currently struggling to borrow money selling their products, struggling to make payroll, but could find themselves in a different position when we start implementing the plan. Rather than downsizing, they may be able to start growing again. Rather than cutting jobs, they may be able to create them again.

That's the goal at the heart of this plan: to create jobs.

What infrastructure boom? If there is one, Caterpillar (CAT), whose CEO promised Obama that the stimulus would allow it to keep more employees, isn't seeing one.

The company just announced another 2,454 layoffs in three states. This is the company's third round of layoffs in just a few months.

Forgot to include the hat tip: ExurbanJon.

Posted by: Slublog at 07:55 AM | Add Comment
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Just thought I'd mention it, as it seems to be a major point of discussion today.

(See the sidebar's most recent comments if you don't know what I'm talking about.)

In related news, Lace Wigs just emailed me to say "I'm not comfortable with the new direction the site is taking. It's just so tawdry."

Posted by: Ace at 07:26 AM | Comments (3)
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He asks a series of questions designed to refute Goldstein's thesis, at least in its "strong form," as it were. (I should say I don't know if Goldstein actually pushes the strong form of the thesis, so perhaps Patterico is arguing against a case that hasn't actually been made.)

Goldstein responds here. Correction: Not a response to Patterico's piece, but apparently an entry in the Patterico-Goldstein debate.

It's all about race. In these hypotheticals, at least.

Posted by: Ace at 07:21 AM | Comments (1)
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I didn't want to link Hot Air again so early, but I need to.

Bad or delinquent loans? Zero. Foreclosures? None. Money set aside in 2008 for anticipated loan losses? Nothing. … The bank even squeaked out a profit of $87,000. And its Tier 1 risk-based capital ratio was 31.6 percent, or more than three times higher than many community banks in Massachusetts. “We’re paranoid about credit quality,” [Joseph] Petrucelli said. The 62-year-old chief executive has run the bank since 1992.

...

The FDICÂ’s negative review of East Bridgewater Savings BankÂ’s loan volume is an anomaly in todayÂ’s current banking scene as lenders reel from their role in offering too many cruddy mortgage products to borrowers with weak credit.

Still, the FDIC slapped East Bridgewater Savings with a rare “needs to improve” rating after evaluating the bank under the Community Reinvestment Act.

The claim is that the bank didn't advertise its rates well enough. What they mean is that the bank didn't set out to court borrowers who couldn't pay the money back.

We had an argument here about CRA. I forget what the actual point of contention was. I believe it had to do with Bush's initial TARP, and whether or not we had to stop the CRA prior to TARP. Quinn and others contested that unless we stopped that madness, we'd just have more of it.

I disagreed. I contended, if memory serves, that legislators must already be so chastened by the bomb they'd built with the CRA that action in ending this insane program (or at least making it sane) was guaranteed; we hardly had to agitate for such a thing. It was such an unmitigated disaster we could trust even liberals to run to fix the CRA, for fear of their own political survival.

Well. I guess I nailed that one, huh?

The MSM has so effectively blacked out the real causes of the crisis -- all in an effort, of course, to blame it on Bush's tax cuts, deregulation, a lack of universal health care, and global warming (Obama's thesis, of course: he contends we fix the financial mess by addressing these wholly unrelated issues) -- that the public simply doesn't know about this at all. What should have been the outrage of the decade is altogether unknown by the public at large.

I have often noted that 2008 was the media's year of asserting its power. They answered the threat of alternative media by demonstrating that they had both the power and inclination to throw a presidential election whichever way they chose by their misreporting and censorship.

That display of power -- and malfeasance -- continues.

Posted by: Ace at 07:05 AM | Add Comment
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