Camel
 

Lots of posts today. Sad to see that ya'll still practicing law these days have so much free time. Hope the billables pick up soon.

To retort:

1) "Barry" is nothing more than a benign nickname. Nothing more, nothing less.

If I had a nickel for everytime someone on your - let's call it - "side of the fence", mocked President Bush as "BusHitler", " Shrub", "Chimp" and etc. ad naseum - I could fund TARP, TALF and the soon-to-be Madoff Fund. Hell, if I paid to add the search feature, Wonk's posts alone would get me over $5K.

2) Not sure what Atticus said - cuz I didn't see it, but I'll demur. I agree with more than half of his thoughtful comments.

3 and 4) You are my friend, but comments like this begin to tax this. Are you being wilfully ignorant? Seriously?

All of these obtuse, Israel-hating, Ivory Tower, in-the-pocket of Middle East money "consultants" to Obama and his people have been around from the get-go. You and I went at it on this same topic months ago when he had Sam Power as one of his leading advisors. If you recall, he threw her under the bus in a large public display back then, after her views of "occupying Israel by force" leaked out - and yet he's quietly brought her back in, and she's in the Admin.

---
PS - let's leave Freeman and Israel aside for a moment. In one week, he personally, and his administration, personally embarassed our greatest Ally, and made us the laughingstock of Russia.

Re: We will never agree on this and therefore it is pointless to talk about!
 

Unless its linked on Drudge, does anyone without an Obama bumper sticker even read the Times anymore?

Re: Gag Me
 

Dude, half of this Board spent the greater part of a decade sharing my love life with everyone, much to my chagrin, so ease up.

Besides, yo momma likes privacy.

Re: We will never agree on this and therefore it is pointless to talk about!
 

This type of coordinated idiocy - between an agenda-driven Leftist government with a mission, and a complicit press, without nary a clue about how the world really works - makes good copy.

First of all, these analysts make calls like these all the time - often substantially risking their own company's holdings in some indirect capacity. I personally saw one prominent analyst declare __ was in decline, which caught much publicity, but then also caused his/her own company to tank in 3 days because of swap exposure. I believe the comment I heard personally from an SEVP was "...doesn't that douche understand that they tanked their own company?"

Second, anyone with an 1/8 of a brain realizes that increased labor costs to Walmart = decreased income to Walmart. So either layoffs, price increases to goods, or both. Neither a charming outcome in the "worst crisis since the Depression" [not my words]

We're just another brick in the wall.
 

Sure. Even Joe Hill and Not "Union Made" Bob would agree that a union workforce would result in decreased income to WalMart (although he and I would disagree with you about it being a "charming outcome" -- the idea that WalMart's alleged low prices are so good for the working class that its anti-union ethos and the forced outsourcing of jobs at its suppliers should be somehow overlooked is, in my mind, specious).

I think that the point was that the analyst might not be all that "disinterested" in the issue if she is moderating a Chamber of Commerce roundtable on how to oppose the bill. And I also think that there is an underlying conflict between research and banking at places like Citi that no amount of Chinese Walls (excuse me, "informational barriers") can really address. But that is a different issue.

Re: Gag Me
 

Bitch, please -- she'd do it in public for an extra $5. It's just you who learned from L'Affaire Paigow.

Re: We will never agree on this and therefore it is pointless to talk about!
 

It's going to be amusing to watch Slim take that outfit over and listening to the Manhattan media circle jerk lament the loss of the grey lady's credibility. Because you just know he's going to do what Rupert did to the Journal.

Not that that's a bad thing at all. The Journal's getting better every week, while the Times, thought I still read it daily, in print form, is sliding.

Of course, both of their groups of regular Oped contributors remain ridiculous hacks.

ETA: They ought to publicly whip that imbecile Sulzberger for what he's done to the paper.

Re: Camel
 

Well, fuck me running. I guess you should know that I agree with Adder about 75% of the time, so there's a decent chance I'm the weak cognitive link here.

Re: Gag Me
 

This is the distinction I was thinking about--if state/local officials were as diliked as Congress, they wouldn't survive--they don't have "them" to blame.

And TIF is a different issue from general taxes, at least as implemented b/t the coasts. My recollection of CA implementation is dated and fuzzy, so maybe there's a meaningful difference. But the local politician's aversion to raising taxes is not an aversion to $$ to spend, it's an aversion to raising taxes. "It's not my fault" applies to rising asset values, but it's hard to disclaim responsibility when you vote for the 1.5% extra sales tax or the increase in auto registration fees.

Re: Gag Me
 

What does this even mean besides people like to bitch? We don't trust congress and have horrible approval ratings for them year in and year out and yet its membership is almost completely stagnant with incumbents winning some huge percentage.

TM

Re: Gag Me
 

Translation: Yeez ur aw a bunch aye greetin-faced weans wit huvnae goat the bottle tae pit yer hauns oop an accept responsibility for your cynical and selfish electoral choices.

Re: Gag Me
 

Get back to mowing.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Willie.svg.png

Re: Gag Me
 

Re: Camel
 

It's hard to take you seriously when you throw around the term "Israel-hating." Anyone who calls someone an anti-Semite should be prepared to back it up, and the same with this crap. Specifically with regard to Samantha Power, you are full of shit, knowingly or not. You posted this junk several months ago, and then you couldn't back it up. If the search function was working, I would link to the posts, because they were kinda fun. What you call "her views of 'occupying Israel by force'" -- without checking, I'd bet good money that's not a quote of her, but I don't bet -- were based on a tendentious and surely deliberately misreading of something she'd said, something you would doubtless see as a smear if it was said about someone whose views you share. Apparently here it's acceptable collateral damage.

I have no idea what you're talking about, but I am curious.

Re: We will never agree on this and therefore it is pointless to talk about!
 

Your post makes no sense. The first and second paragraph have absolutely zero to do with what I said. As to whether EFCA creates exposure to Wal-Mart, I said that I assumed the analyst was calling it straight until I saw that she led an anti-EFCA conference call the next day.

Re: Gag Me
 

Re: Camel
 

Call him Barry all you want. But try it with a little humor. There should be a genuflection to a Chuck Berry or Barry White number in the next sentence, or a pun on a small seeded fruit, or something other than just Barry.

Unless you're just looking to diminish him by calling back a homey nickname ending in -y, of course.

Re: We will never agree on this and therefore it is pointless to talk about!
 

How long before the newspapers realize that their op-ed pages are a relic of a time when just anyone couldn't publish political opinion on the web? This is not a part of their core value proposition anymore, unless what they're doing is working hard to cull the views out there and find stuff that's really good -- which is arguably what the Times (e.g.) does when it prints an op-ed by a guest. They should scrap most of the columns and hire an editor who's more concerned with finding a really good stuff than with representing the political spectrum.

Re: Gag Me
 

Everyone likes their own Congressmen and dislikes Congress generally. I would be surprised if the same phenomena weren't present at the state level as well.

Re: Camel
 

Here's what appears to be the root blog post for the meme:

http://israelinsider.ning.com/profil...logPost%3A9391

Re: Gag Me
 

If by "like" you mean "reduced level of disgust", I might agree. Personally, I dislike my alderman, mayor, state rep, state senator and both my US Senators. I also dislike all of my local elected adminstrative officials (eg county clerk, treasurer, etc.). I have a somewhat positive opinion of my county board rep, but mostly because the others are *so* bad. I'm fairly neutral on most of the state constitutional officers. I know only a few people who differ meaningfully on this, but I'm sure I would if I met more people--especially those who directly or indirectly work for any of said officials.

Re: Camel
 

No, I'm pretty sure Slave and I had an exchange about months before last October, when that blog post is dated. And the thing he linked to linked, in turn, to a story from an Israeli newspaper, IIRC, not a video clip.

Re: Gag Me
 

Does this qualify for a nickel?

PS - A few years early, but factually correct, no? How would Rather put it - "Fake, but Accurate?"

Re: We will never agree on this and therefore it is pointless to talk about!
 

I agree with you that they need to use more guest Oped writers. Those pieces tend to be more informative than attack oriented. Guys like Bob Herbert haven't written a creative piece in years because they're tied to a narrow viewpoint and area. They wind up repeating themselves week to week. He should be fired, as should Friedman, and both replaced with freelancers on varying topics.

I'd keep Krugman because, as much as he drives me crazy, he brings a lot of data to the party. Culling out his invective, his views on the intersection of economics and politics are excellent, even if you dispute the conclusions he draws from them, and think, as I do, that ideology drives his writing.

I'd scarp the entirety of their management. It's clearly inept. Buying About.com for $300 million? That's a firing offense alone.

But all that said, I do not want to see newspapers concede Opinion to the web. The incentives on the web are deplorable. The pressure is to sensationalize, to shorten - to write garbage for ADD-addled people with thirty seconds to ingest soundbite-quality writing before the next office stressor hijacks their attention. People need to read things in depth to develop the channels we need to have anything approaching a sensible discourse in this country.*

*Yes, I recognize the rich irony here, considering your most consistent criticism of my reponses here. But really, I do read Krugman. Problem is, my mind having been modified by the speed of the web from both an ingestion and creation perspective, I am unable to recall specifics on a moment's notice. To recall quickly whether what I'm thinking came from Krugman, Roubini, Greenspan or the guy at fuckwallstreetwithalivecattleprod.com. I routinely find myself up at 2:00 reading shit on the web, and I fear it's killing more brains cells than its strengthening.

Re: Camel
 

Then somewhere in the chain this leads to. But I won't chase things that link from Freep or LGF, so I don't know if that was the March origin.

Re: Gag Me
 

So, it should've been a firing offense, like with Rather?

Re: Murrow Shrugged
 

"Art's the lie that tells the truth." Journalism's entertainment these days and entertainment's art. You can do the algebra from there.

Call it the "Picasso Age" of news, that being his quote, I believe.

Re: Gag Me
 

You know, the remnants of the Republi-Can't party are such a deluded lot that it's really no longer even a challenge to ridicule them and their policies. Look at how easily Michael Steele and Rush Limbaugh do it every day.

Re: Gag Me
 

I'm a huge sucker for cheesy word plays, but this is just bad.

Re: Gag Me
 

I'll bet I could sell it on Kos.

Re: Gag Me
 

I used to look at that site for amusement. Not anymore. I find myself walking away with the last shreds of hope I have in humanity questioned. The people on that site need to be sterilized. That we have so many screaming king jackasses with such infantile political views running around this country only convinces me more and more, We Need a King.

Yeah, yeah, I know... The Ayn Rand crowd is just as bad. But we're not talking about them here.

Re: Gag Me
 

No, no, no. the Ayn Rand/Ron Paul crowd is more like the Naderites on the left.

Kos is our equivalent of Limbaugh. It's talk radio for people with squeeky voices. It's meant to be annoying.

Re: Gag Me
 

I am stealing the squeaky voices thing. For years, I've tried to articulate why I reflexively feel an irrational level of irritation listening to that crowd. I think you just nailed it less than fifty syllables.

maybe this soundbite-quality writing on the web isn't such a bad thing.

She gave me a pen.
 

I believe that slave is talking about the crappy gifts BHO gave Gordon Brown (DVDs? WTF?) and Secretary of State Clinton's goofy and mistranslated gift to the Russian foreign minister. If this is what he was talking about, I agree.

(As does slave's buddy Jon Stewart, which is where I heard about them.)

Re: She gave me a pen.
 

Plus I heard that one of the DVDs was Eire Og - Live At The Brazen Head. Awk-ward.

Hillary should have just gone with the Boris and Natasha dolls, but no. She had to try a fancy version of the Staples button. NWTF?

Re: Gag Me
 

the problem you all have is the Rs ain't running anything now, and they ain't running for anything right now, so it is all gonna boil down to "what did the Dems do?" that applies to the next elections and to how my poor business goes.

Re: Gag Me
 

http://www.cbwines.com/blog/images/urkel.jpg

I can just see you making that point.

Did you say that?

Re: Gag Me
 

you wanna take a poll of how many socks see me a dweeby myopic twit compared to how many see you that way?

Re: Gag Me
 

I feel about all of my elected officials -- same party or not -- basically the same way FDR felt about Tacho Somoza. They're all in it to be reelected. That doesn't make them bad, but it does mean that "like" ain't got nothin' to do with it.*

*One exception.

Re: Gag Me
 

big tits?