Hey, when you're surrounded by a bevy of warships with no way out other than in a body bag, why not demand $20M? Heck, go for $200M or even $200B. You got nothing to lose, right?

I'm sure they'll be given $20M and promises of safe passage. Its what I'd do. I'd also turn'em into a fine pink mist at the first opportunity if they're dumb enough to believe such promises.

..."The crew are safe and not harmed; what we are waiting eagerly is the 20 million dollars nothing less, nothing more."

He also said that "it is true we are surrounded by three foreign military vessels and there are some others we can see from a distance."...

Dumb: try to collect the $20M

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Posted by: Purple Avenger at 12:00 PM | Comments (58)
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Posted by: Ace at 10:23 AM | Comments (32)
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More information on the compromise bailout "intervention" is coming out now. Congressman Roy Blunt provided a comparison of the new bill to the Paulson proposal and the Dodd proposal. Just ignore the editorializing.

To summarize, Paulson wanted Treasury to buy mortgage-backed securities without Congressional oversight and to protect Treasury decisions from judicial review.

Dodd wanted Treasury to buy mortgage-backed securities, other non-mortgage-related assets (including pension plans), and contingent shares of financial institutions. He also wanted Congressional oversight of the new Treasury program with judicial review. He also wanted to tack on provisions allowing bankruptcy judges to rewrite mortgages to protect defaulting homeowners. He also wanted to funnel money to housing programs. And he wanted to cap executive compensation.

So in the compromise bill Treasury gets the power to buy mortgage-backed securities, other non-mortgage-related assets, and contingent shares. Congress will have oversight and there will be judicial review. Bankruptcy judges won't get to rewrite mortgages, but there will be a separate program allowing the government to purchase failing mortgages and rewrite them to give defaulting homeowners better terms. Executive compensation will be capped. And we're adding a "pay to play" insurance program.

If we have to do something, this bill is certainly sounds better than the other proposals. But the inclusion of non-mortgage-related assets is a problem. The point of the bailout is to give banks a second chance on their poor investment in these mortgage-backed securities. Why open the door to all these other assets? We are just giving institutions a free pass on all their poor investment strategies.

Congress wants to style this as an "intervention", not a bailout. Bullshit semantics.

MORE: We won't know until we see the actual bill, but I'm curious what Congress plans to do with the non-mortgage-related assets. Are those going to be auctioned back into the market? Presumably, only the opaque mortgage-backed securities need to be scrubbed and then properly valued. So why the need to buy other assets? What do those assets have to do with the "credit logjam" that precipitated the bailout.

I also want to know what Congress plans to do with the equity warrants, should Treasury use them. Under the terms of the AIG bailout, the government owns owns and controls the 79.9% of company.

So.... I take back what I said about the Fed not actually owning AIG. It does. And it will, because there is no provision for the redemption of the preferred shares if the loan is paid back.

Is that the future of all the financial institutions which participate in the bailout?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:34 AM | Comments (106)
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Because his comparison chart of the Paulson-derived proposals looks promising. Nice to see the more egregious Democratic accretions both explained in simple language and removed from the final version.

Posted by: Open Blog at 09:26 AM | Comments (5)
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The server needed a bit of "me" time.

So I hit it with a stick.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:26 AM | Comments (40)
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Obama needs to apologize for this right now. He ineptly tried to use the memory of a fallen soldier to score points against McCain at Friday's debate, but it turns out the mother of Sgt. Ryan David Jopek had already asked him to stop doing that.

Brian Jopek: Because of some of the negative feedback she's gotten on the Internet, you know Internet blogs, you know people accusing her of... or accusing Obama of trying to get votes doing it... and that sort of thing.

Radio Host Moberg: Yeah

Jopek: She has turned down any subsequent interviews with the media because she just didn't want it to get turned into something that it wasn't. She had told me in an email that she had asked, actually asked Mr. Obama to not wear the bracelet any more at any of his public appearances. Which I don't think he's...

Moberg: It has been a while since he's brought it up.

Jopek: Right. But, the other night I was watching the news and he was on, uh, speaking somewhere and he was still wearing it on his right wrist. I could see it on his right wrist. So, that's his own choice. I mean that's something Barack Obama, that's a choice that he continues to wear it despite Tracy asking him not to... Because she is a Barack Obama supporter and she didn't want to do anything to sabotage his campaign, so, if he's still wearing the bracelet then, uh, that of course is entirely up to him.

What a slimeball.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:03 AM | Comments (39)
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Obama, like, John Kerry, is desperate for the world to love America.
Individuals have feelings like love and hatred for each other. Countries are entities incapable of feeling such emotions.

What the world 'feels' about America (or any other country) can be summed up as the general perception of rulers of various nations about America. These rulers don't act out of love or hatred. They act out of fear or lack of it. Members of the ruling clique may have feelings of love, hatred or (in rare cases) respect for other countries. The common people always have some level of feeling for other countries or their populace.

But love and hatred? Not between countries.

McCain knows that the world cannot love or hate us. All they can do is act out of fear, or lack of it. He would rather have the assholes of the world fear us.

This is the fundamental difference between the realists and dreamers like Obama who thinks he can make the world swoon to his tune.

Clinton probably understood this too, but I doubt he was engaged enough with world affairs to drive US foreign policy based on this understanding.
He presided over a period of unprecedented peace where American supremacy went pretty much unquestioned. I would have felt more comfortable with Hillary as the Dem nominee. With Obama, we cannot take a chance.

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Posted by: Open Blog at 06:37 AM | Comments (47)
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First thing on a Sunday morning? Yep.

When Chris Dodd and Barney Frank are guffawing, clapping each other on the back and grinning ear to ear, well. What do you suppose that means?

Exactly. Pour me one, too.

In comments to a Kat-Mo post below, Christoph points us to this charming video, which is good for sending another shiver down your spine.

Observe how happy the media and law enforcement officers are to assist Obama's campaign in making tacit threats to the public in general and McCain supporters in particular. Note the little O campaign sticker in the window behind the people being, erm, 'interviewed,' for lack of a better word. They had to make sure that showed, since this is all really just a campaign commercial.

And look at how chirpy and uninquisitive the newsmen are in that video.

How can you be a journalist and have no follow-up questions for public employees who call themselves 'The Truth Squad?'

Wouldn't a journalist pretty much think that's HIS job?
This curious lack of interest signals to me that the media doesn't mind if the State becomes the dispenser of truth in Obamaland.

The Truth Squad is obviously a device specifically designed to stifle any criticism of Captain Bullshit through the threat of legal harassment. The explicit message is to shut up. The implicit message is that there is a state organ (a team of county prosecutors and sheriffs!) devoted to making sure you shut up.

This is what 'a chill wind' really feels like.

Allah posts part of the Governor of Missouri's response.

UPDATE #2: From Jo Mannies at STLToday:

...both sides have “Truth Squads” in numerous states, under numerous titles. McCain’s campaign has an Honest and Open Election Committee, whose Missouri members include former Sen. John Danforth and U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson...

ObamaÂ’s national campaign manager David Plouffe said Saturday that Truth Squads simply monitor attacks and refute them.

Later, state communications director Debbie Mesloh issued a statement that called it “the height of absurdity” for the GOP to contend that the Obama squad planned to go to court or jail critics.

The very fact that all of the Truth Squad members who were mentioned in the original piece are law enforcement officers is I think what gives most people the willies.

I leave it to the reader to draw his own conclusion; was the news piece simply a piece of shoddy work that misled the viewer, or was the threatening tone intentional?

Obama's campaign experiences a lot of these episodes where he seems to imply something shitty then turns around and disavows it.

Flipping the bird at Hillary by scratching his face. "Lipstick on a pig." He has "a funny name" and he "doesn't look like" the portraits on money.

On the other hand, If you've ever been the subject of a news article or even just quoted in the paper, you know how amazingly inept reporters can be at conveying the basic friggin' details of a story.

Again, I leave it to you.

Third and final UPDATE: Eddiebear in STL has some local flavor to add to the story, and an appeal to the local media that you can help with.

Thanks, everybody. more...

Posted by: LauraW at 11:04 AM | Comments (90)
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Meh. Semi-brutal.

Posted by: Ace at 01:11 AM | Comments (113)
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(note: I re-did the title of this post, which is a no-no, but the original didn't make much sense)

Oh hai! We can haz money?

Yep. ItÂ’s come down to this. Welcome to the new economy.

”When you LOL at silly pictures of cats with even sillier captions, Ben Huh laughs all the way to the bank.”
“For the uninitiated, that's Web shorthand for "laugh out loud," an abbreviation that is common in e-mails, instant messages and online chat rooms. Huh, a Seattle entrepreneur, has built a mini-empire on the unique brand of humor illustrated by the "LOLcats" craze: photos with captions punctuated by deliberately misspelled words and mangled phrases.”

LetÂ’s continue, shall we?

”Since buying I Can Has Cheezburger, Huh has added companion sites devoted to dogs, politics and really bad translations of English, among others. A fan favorite is Fail Blog, in which people take joy in others' mishaps.”

”Still, investors are betting more than $2 million that the company, which Huh says breaks even, has staying power.
"Humor is one of those things that is recession-proof," said investor Geoff Entress.
But he says Huh and his team still face a major challenge: continuing to tickle funny bones in different ways so users and advertisers keep coming back for more.
Ada Courtney, 43, a self-described domestic goddess with four cats and two dogs from Rapid City, S.D., made her first Cheezburger entry a year ago. Since then she has added more than 1,100. Her cat captions have hit the front page five times and her dog captions six.
"When I first started looking through the site, I was thinking, 'Good Lord, do these people need lives?' " Courtney said. "Now I see the total attraction of it. It's one of the most wonderful things I have ever done."”

We. Are. Fucking. Doomed.

Fail.

Also, if interested you can still contribute to the LOLcat Bible translation project.

Posted by: Open Blog at 01:02 AM | Comments (19)
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