Our improbable nation

Check out Beers with Demo on the lust for liberty that inspired a revolution among those who could have been complacent.

Ponder that before you decide to blow off your next local Tea Party.

A republic, if you can keep it.

President Kumbaya calls in the military

I thought if we just negotiated without preconditions, everyone would be our friends?

Maybe not.

TARP Inspector General: Obama has nationalized the housing market and is re-inflating the housing bubble

He said it, not me:

To the extent that the crisis was fueled by a “bubble” in the housing market, the Federal Government’s concerted efforts to support home prices risk re-inflating that bubble in light of the Government’s effective takeover of the housing market through purchases and guarantees, either direct or implicit, of nearly all of the residential mortgage market.

HT: Calculated Risk

Volcker NYT Op-Ed on bank reform

I came across this:

The phrase “too big to fail” has entered into our everyday vocabulary. It carries the implication that really large, complex and highly interconnected financial institutions can count on public support at critical times. The sense of public outrage over seemingly unfair treatment is palpable. Beyond the emotion, the result is to provide those institutions with a competitive advantage in their financing, in their size and in their ability to take and absorb risks.

As things stand, the consequence will be to enhance incentives to risk-taking and leverage, with the implication of an even more fragile financial system. We need to find more effective fail-safe arrangements.

Read the whole thing. Volcker had better watch his back.

Some nerve

The man who killed capitalism now wants to sell you his story.

Totally not gay Afghan men keep getting anal gonorrhea

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

If he put that in a PowerPoint presentation, he could win a Nobel Prize

Osama bin Laden is a global warmist:

The talk about climate change is not an intellectual indulgence. Rather, it is a reality. All of the industrialized countries, and especially the large ones, bear the responsibility for the crisis of the greenhouse effect. Most of them, though, rallied around the Kyoto accords, and agreed to limits on emissions of harmful gases. However Bush Jr., and Congress before him, rejected this accord in order to please the large corporations, which are themselves the ones responsible for [market] speculation, monopolies, and the rise in the cost of living. And they are behind globalization and its tragic consequences. Then, when these criminals' own evil deeds did them in, the heads of state rush to rescue them with public funds.

Noam Chomsky was right when he pointed out that there is a similarity between the policies of America and those of mafia gangs. They are the true terrorists.

He digs Chomsky, too! Groovy, man!