All the Bailout questions you've had but were afraid to ask...

Anyone interested in reading useful Q and A regarding the Bailout Plan, how it works, and how we got here with not too much opinion worked throughout, check out this site:

Some Really Good Questions

Just a taste:

Where will the $700+ billion go? What exactly will it buy and from whom?

That's the, uh, $700 billion question. Mortgage-backed securities were to be the main target, and banks the main sellers. But Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke wanted a fund that could buy pretty much anything from anyone.

How, exactly, is this bailout supposed to 'save' credit markets?

Not entirely clear. Paulson and Bernanke described it as a way to jumpstart trading in mortgage securities for which there's no market at the moment, thus allowing banks to clean up their balance sheets and get back to lending. But a lot of economists outside government believe that the real problem is that lots and lots of financial institutions are insolvent--their losses, if they actually recognized them, are enough to wipe out their capital reserves. If that's true it would make more sense for taxpayers to give them cash outright, and take a big ownership stake in return (with the idea of selling it off a few years down the road). The Swedish solution, they call it (and longtime readers of this blog know it was being discussed here long before anybody else in the U.S. was talking about it). The version of the bailout plan voted down in the House Monday seemingly would have allowed Treasury to take such action. But it also would have allowed Treasury not to take such action.

Read more here.

By A. Suffragette

Top 10 Reasons Sarah Palin Cancels the Debate

by: David Weinberger



10. Suspicious Russian tourists spotted across the Bering strait in Dezhnevo

9. Wrasslin' a bear

8. Learns Tina Fey will be watching

7. When taken on tour of White House by McCain handlers, is "inadvertently" locked in Cheney's man-sized safe

6. Schedule for memorizing state capitals thrown off by need for new schedule to memorize states

5. Speechless after finally looking up what "MILF" stands for

4. On deadline to finish her book, Namin' Your Baby the Alaskan Way

3. Needs more time to really nail those hilarious hair-plug zingers

2. No matter how hard she scrubs, she can't get Kissinger's moral stank off of her

1. Stuck in traffic on the Bridge to Nowhere


by A. Suffragette

The Economist: Palin 'out of her depth'

Lord knows we've posted enough videos of Sarah Palin looking like a dipshit lately, but even The Economist - not what you'd call a liberal publication - calls a spade a spade:

I think what we're seeing is someone who thought she knew everything discover how little she actually knows, and it terrifies her...With Ms Couric, conversely, she rambled, she edited her own sentences recursively, she looked away from time to time, and her answers did not make sense—and I don't mean political sense; I mean they made no grammatical or logical sense.

There are some parts of America where vague answers to pointed questions will result in screams of "liberal media!" But can anyone argue that Palin gave no intelligent answers during the Couric interview? Being on the PTA does not qualify you to take on Russia, nor does being the governor of Alaska. And the economy? Not even McCain has his ducks in a row on that one. Friends, we're watching a flaming plane fall out of the sky right before our eyes. Only 40 more days...


by Rope Hoover Palin

Hockey Moms against Sarah Palin

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

The Couric Interview

If you haven't seen it yet, here is a visual representation of how it went for Palin:



A special thanks to Couric for having the bravery to actually ask a follow-up question.

By Max Power

A McSame Side Note:

I just saw this on Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, original from Jessica Hagy.

By Max Power

Free Sarah Palin.

Read the full transcript here.


by Rope Hoover Palin

You know...

I can't help but think what a beautiful thing it would have been to see a Palin/Clinton VP debate. I agree with the choice of Biden, and was hesitant to see Clinton in that slot, but man oh man...she would've eaten her for breakfast.

And to hell with sexism.

by A. Suffragette

"I'll try to find ya some..."

Dipshit.

We'll help you out, Sarah. How about John McCain's position on torture (before he changed his mind), or his immigration bill (that he now doesn't support). Those are two recent examples off the top of my head. What do you know about your own running mate?

Platitudes don't qualify you to be the vice president.


by Rope Hoover Palin

Bless you, Marcy Kaptur.

I voted for her.

By: A. Suffragette

McCain keeping Palin boxed up.

From the Washington Post:

Where Dick Cheney made the rounds of five news shows the weekend after he was tapped by George W. Bush, Ms. Palin has not turned up on a single Sunday program.

I'm sure McCain is making the argument that any exposure to the "liberal media" would expose Palin to "sexist" questions (like, "What would YOU do in this economic bailout situation?"), it reeks of inexperience and fear.

The president and vice president have to deal with the press. They have to. It's part of the American political system. And now people are seeing through McCain's cowardly attempts to hide his VP nominee.

by Rope Hoover Palin

Highlights for Palin.

Obama definitely has the creative vote, because the stuff that graphic designers and t-shirt designers are coming up with is fantastic.

But this "Highlights for Palin" may be the most ambitious - a kindergarten-age magazine devoted to the Veep nominee and her conservative outlook. It's friggin' hilarious.

Thanks to John Gruber for the link.

by Rope Hoover Palin

Least Qualified EEEVVVEEERRRRRRR!!!!!

Here's a pretty devastating look into Palin's claim that she has equitable experience to previous vice presidents. (Thanks to Lawrence Lessig!)



Chester A. Arthur is rolling over in his grave.

By Max Power

G-L-O-R.I.A.

So, with all the polar-bear-hating, helicopter-wolf-shooting, teeth-licking, bikini-super-imposing pieces that we post here, this is what I believe:


Palin: Wrong Woman, Wrong Message

By Gloria Steinem

Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women -- and to many men too -- who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the "white-male-only" sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.

But here is even better news: It won't work. This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.

We're here to tell the truth. Yes. But once the truth is told and the facts are laid out, it's time to form an educated opinion. Here's mine: Sarah sucks. Yes. But what I wonder is, who is the real problem here? Do we fault Palin for being blindly ambitious? Or is it time to stop staring at those 350 dollar glasses and start taking a look at the guy that asked her to be 2nd in command in the first place? Where'd the man behind the curtain go?

To quote my beloved Steinem:

So let's be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can't tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.

McCain scolds Obama for being the smartest kid in the class (because, for some unknown reason, Americans don't trust smart people in leadership roles) while at the same time has the audacity to assume that men and women (but mostly women, let's be honest) are stupid enough not to see past Palin the Prop. (And I hope, I HOPE, that most women remember that on the issues, Palin doesn't line up with the vast majority of us.) And at the same time, McCain continues to cater to the same right-wing fools that can't stop thinking about Prius-Driving-Contraceptive-Wearing-Queer-Baby-Killers long enough to notice that it's not the liberals that caused the economic landslide (although the jury is still out as to whether or not we caused terrorism. Depends on who you ask.)

In short - Sarah Sucks. And I assume that for many men it's a lot more fun to stick her head on a nekkid lady's body than McCain's. But let's not forget the real problem.

By A. Suffragette

Still The Man, After All These Years

"If it were left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."

-Thomas Jefferson

25 days without a press conference - your move S.Palin.

Tommy-J, you're still the man!

By Max Power