The Week in Review

So the week started off with a series that should be up for awards from the Washington Post on the disaster our National Intelligence organization has become since 9/11. Most of this stuff probably comes as no surprise to those on any side of the political spectrum - it has all the hallmarks of a classic washington horror story. Well intentioned move by government to make things better becomes moneypit, loses efficiency, and becomes a behemoth that's so big it cant be reined in.

I worry about what happens to the country when, as a result of programs like these, that the money spigot in congress will be unable to turn itself off (whether from fear of lost jobs in one's congressional district, or from the positive reinforcement of major campaign contributions from firms getting paid to sift through my phone records). At what point is 'keeping america afraid' such a big part of the economy that it cant be changed - or are we already there.

Does government get out of control when it spends without a backstop? of course it does... pretty much every time... but so do private sector companies awash in cash without any responsibility to productivity (90s internet VC play anyone?). This is generally the argument against giving people money for unemployment - that those people's marginal propensity to spend might be very high, but they're not doing anything productive themselves while they spend - so it's not a good use of money in the economy. Of course, this isnt the argument used by the MSM talking heads - rather it's 'they wont get work when they're getting paid to sit at home'. Of course, that doesn't square with the data at all - but that never stopped the idiots from spewing their opinions as facts...

The first big distraction this week was Jessi Slaughter trolling Good Morning America. An 11 yr old girl played the 'i've been bullied by 4chan card' on her youtube channel, became a meme, was yucking it up with 4chan a couple hours after... but has played the drama card for all it's worth.

Speaking of which, the other major trolling distraction this week was the utterly manufactured Sherrod story - take a girl, take a quote out of context, spew hatred, get girl fired, spew hatred for firing, ask each other questions about why questions weren't asked sooner... about as effective a smokescreen as I've seen the media kick up in a long time...

Why the smoke? Because the president passed 'sweeping' legislation to reform wall street - that didnt reform much of anything. Regardless, the right didnt want to talk about the 'victory' and this latest Bush administration didnt want to own up to how useless it all was, or talk about some of the other nightmares...

Like former BP executives sitting on the board of the company that makes Coreexit....

or the increased jobless claims for the week...

or the way the financial reform bill shut the asset backed security market down...



or that the climate bill is dead... and we get nothing but an exploding john kerry in return

in the end - being reminded of how screwed up the entire system is - whether by how goldman starved millions playing games with commodity prices or seeing racists and bigots be upset because calling them bigots is discriminatory... or how the oligarchs through Obama through Geithner have gamed treasury to screw the public out of a colossal amount of money.

Seriously... why do i even try.

How do you begin to fix this place.