Sunday Funnies (Mooselini edition)

There's so many people doing toons lately that it's difficult for this weekly post to be original. Still going to do my best to supply you with the ones you may not find on those other blogs. RJ Matson at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has done some good ones ...





And then there's the wickedness of Steve Bell, and the best of the
rest ...

"These are your cousins Freddie and Fannie. They're going to be living with us now."

Those words were common among a previous generation's children, when hard times meant that families had to double up. There are many Americans of late who have taken in a family member (or five) in light of more recent troubles. But the cousins whom we're ALL taking in very shortly are, of course, the mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the multi-billion dollar failure of which is going to dwarf the S&L crisis of the '80's:

Senior officials from the Bush administration and the Federal Reserve on Friday informed top executives of mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that the government was preparing to seize the two companies and place them in a conservatorship, officials and company executives briefed on the discussions said.

The plan, effectively a government bailout, was outlined in separate meetings that the chief executives were summoned to attend on Friday at the office of the companies' new regulator. The executives were told that, under the plan, they and their boards would be replaced, shareholders would be virtually wiped out, but the companies would be able to continue functioning with the government generally standing behind their debt, people briefed on the discussions said.

It is not possible to calculate the cost of any government bailout, but the huge potential liabilities of the companies could cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars and make any rescue among the nation's largest ever.

It's likewise impossible to calculate what the long-term effects beyond the simple cost of the initial taxpayer bailout are going to be. With America's automakers teetering on the verge of collapse as well, the United States is entering dangerous economic territory (and it's not as if any of this this was an unexpected development). Take a look at two of the most recommended comments in that link above:

... Privatize the profits, and socialize the loss ...Welfare state for coroprations (sic) and tough love for middle class and below . This bailout is nothing but a massive transfer of wealth from the US taxpayers to astronomically rich private investors and foreign governments. The biggest foreign holders of Freddie and Fannie's debts are China, Japan, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, and Belgium. Do you want to bail them out with your tax dollars? Think this needs to change?

... all other news will pale in comparison in terms of something that will impact our lives. This decision, so rife with moral hazard, will shake the very foundations of our financial system and add even more debt for our children to pay off.....what a sad farce...

This, and the adverse financial developments that will ripple from it, make considerably weaker our credit markets, our currency, our economy and our national security. Do we really need to consider what John McCain and Sarah Palin and top economic adviser Phil Gramm -- who still insists some people are just whining about a recession -- might do about the crises to come?

That would be nothing, in case you were wondering. Absolutely nothing.

The Republican party is going to own this failure for generations to come.

We don't like Ike

Eric Berger:

2 p.m. UPDATE: The early afternoon model runs have come out and they're increasingly clustered around a track that could bring Ike (now back up to 115-mph) into the central Gulf of Mexico.

I sure hope the evacuations we rehearsed for Gustav don't have to be reprised. If there's one thing I have learned it's that people tend to make a decision about how they will respond to the threat of a hurricane based on whether their reaction the last time was justified. Many people who left last week -- particularly in SE Texas -- will be thus disinclined to do so again.

Palinpalooza: the gift that keeps on giving

--- "So Sambo beat the bitch!" Shocktisayshocked to discover she's Rick Santorum Dick Cheney David Duke in a skirt.

-- Do you think anyone will get to question her about this, or the now fast-tracked abuse of power investigation known as Troopergate, or her ties to the fringe Alaskan secessionist political party before the debates? Even FOX? Doesn't seem likely.

My suggestion for the first question regarding that last: "Nice flag lapel pin, Mrs. Palin, but why does it only have 49 stars on it? And which 'Country First' is it you advocate -- the United States or Alaska?"

The more information that trickles out about this woman, the more horrifying it is to consider her presence a heartbeat away. So in the absence of the McCain campaign's ability to shape her narrative beyond "Miss Mooseburger" -- this will prove to be a critical failure in the post-November 4th analysis, I believe -- the more the rest of us are forced to do so. Howard Fineman:

On the floor and in the hallways of the GOP convention, the sentiment was a combination of aggressive defensiveness about her -- from evangelicals and other cultural conservatives -- to a cautious wait-and-see hopefulness from delegates who found it hard to believe that McCain had chosen Palin with what appeared to be a hurried-up, last-minute vetting process last week.

It was as if the skeptics were saying: OK McCain, we didn't like you that much to begin with, so you had better be right about Sarah Palin. But for the time being, until we hear her speak, we will give you the benefit of the doubt.

Friends of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, speaking not for attribution, were caustic. "She is unqualified for the job and everyone knows it," said one.

Whether or not that is true, it's hard to imagine anyone who would be qualified for the raft of personal and political challenges Palin faces. Over the next months, and all at once, a list of the things she'll need to deal with:

• her continuing duties as governor of Alaska
• a legislature-funded investigation into questions of whether she has abused her office in a vendetta against her former brother-in-law, a probe that prompted her to hire a personal attorney
• the care of her fifth child, Trig, born this spring with Down syndrome -- a condition that requires close parental attention and care, especially in the first year of the child's life
• the pregnancy and pending marriage of her teenage daughter Bristol, who is planning to wed the father before Election Day
• learning the routines and rituals of the national campaign trail, which she will be required to traverse on her own plane, with her own staff
• getting a sense of the Lower 48 states, most of which she has never visited
• figuring out how to deal with McCain, whom she barely knows
• handling whatever national press interviews the McCain campaign allows her to do -- and she will have to do some to prepare herself for later events
• prep for the nationally televised vice-presidential debate with Sen. Joe Biden, a legislator with 36 years of seniority, who is personally acquainted with the rulers of nations Palin may never have even heard of

-- Then again, as long as the Corporate Media keep regurgitating the lies she tells, the better off the Republicans will be. Have to watch and see if the Gestapo tactics being used -- which they began implementing in Minnesota this past week -- bully the talking heads into cowering submission.

NSFW Update: Seriously though, how far from reality could this be? We're living Idiocracy. (H/T to that nasty bastard McBlogger for the "Something Awful".)