Psychopolitik 2.0

Shorter Discovery Channel: “Egypt was once ruled by a fat chick with bad teeth”

In my usual news search, came across this. The headline: “Hillary Clinton Slams private equity tax rate“:

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner, on Friday urged closing a tax “loophole” that she said unfairly benefits a few top Wall Street financiers.

Clinton joined other lawmakers in a push to raise the tax rate on “carried interest” gains made by senior partners in the booming private equity and hedge fund businesses.

“It offends our values as a nation when an investment manager making $50 million can pay a lower tax rate on her earned income than a teacher making $50,000 pays on her income,” said Clinton in a campaign statement.

Within the typical media narrative, this sounds like a rather leftish thing to do, like maybe she’s shoring up the party base. Needless to say, one persons radical port-ward tilt is another’s nibble at the edges…

Clinton, like many politicians from both parties, has received campaign contributions in the past three years from some of private equity’s top managers.

Some of her supporters include leaders of firms such as Bain Capital, Clayton Dubilier & Rice, Silver Lake Partners and Warburg Pincus [WP.UL], according to campaign finance records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Clinton continued, “private equity and venture capital play important roles in our economy.” (emphasis mine)

Basically, she’ll still suck it, she just won’t cup the balls while she’s doing it.

Now, I’m no expert, so anyone out there who focuses on things like this, feel free to add $1.98 to my two cents. My question here would be this: what role? From what I do know about the concept of equity firms — they tend to make their money by using debt & loose credit to take over companies, radically restructure them, then take off — it sounds like the entire industry was created out of thin air as a by-product of past banking & finance regulations. If they create actual value, not propped up in any way by the State, I’d like to see it.

I flipped through channels a moment ago to find out ESPN is showing ROCK-PAPER-SCISSORS.  What the fuck, people…

Poker took awhile for me to understand as a sport, but I got the idea.  It at least takes a decent amount of skill.  But this is ridiculous.  If you’re going to try to sport-ize absolutely anything no matter how inane, at least keep it entertaining — I for one propose Synchronized Stripping be televised.

The NY Times damn near made Glenn Greenwald spit his morning coffee over this: a longtime Bush enabler at the “Liberal Death Star” had a change of conscience & started acknowledging how “al qaeda” has become a dead-ender scare term to keep the occupation of Iraq going.

“Liberal media” my ass…

At least somebody other than Haliburton & the oil companies is benefitting from the deliberate decline of our country: British tourists:

British holidaymakers visiting the United States this summer were last night contemplating a surge in their spending power after fresh evidence of the weakness of the US economy sent the pound close to its 26-year high against the dollar.

The pound traded close to $2.0350 against the greenback in the wake of data from Washington showing a slump in American retail sales last month. Spending dropped by 0.9%, far weaker than Wall Street had been expecting and the biggest fall for almost two years. While UK exporters are warning that the strength of the pound will dampen sales to the world’s biggest economy, UK tourists will find that their pounds go further. American tourism to the UK however is expected to be hit.

“They’re a backwards people, w/ a deeply corrupt government and increasing poverty, but if you ignore that it’s cool to go buy stuff there, cuz our money ends up worth more than theirs every day. Plus the coasts just look BEAUTIFUL this time of year!” Sounds like how our elite look at our island neighbors.

For us, however, denial isn’t a river in Egypt…

The dollar also hit a record low against the euro and was down sharply against the Japanese yen before rallying on the back of a survey showing a recovery in consumer confidence. The Michigan University poll showed that despite the weakening housing market and high gasoline prices, confidence was at its strongest in six months. (emphasis mine)

…and the explanation for that would be?

However, analysts said the renewed strength in confidence was unlikely to last unless the Federal Reserve moved to shore up the housing market with cuts in interest rates. This is seen as unlikely at a time when import prices are rising as a result of a weakening dollar.

You know where this is coming from. The structure of strong-arming over the years that holds up our unearned economic dominance is crumbling. This is how trade equalizes itself when you don’t allow a market order, if the poor of the world can’t come up the only option is for us to come down. I just live here, I didn’t ask for this.

Maybe Bush got sick of the “we were one letter off!” jokes about his agitation for war with Iran…:

The Iraqi government has made only mixed progress toward fulfilling goals for political, military and economic reform, the Bush administration said Thursday in a report certain to inflame debate in Congress over growing calls for a U.S. troop withdrawal.

In an interim report required by Congress, the administration accused Syria of fostering a network that supplies as many as 50 to 80 suicide bombers per month for al-Qaida in Iraq. (emphasis mine)

This accusation is actually even dumber than the one about Iran.  On top of the fact that if this were true as stated — that the Syrian government was actively supporting al-qaeda in attacks, including those on US troops — it would be an act of war in and of itself (and thus COMPLETELY suicidal on their part), Syria is run by relative secularists…like Iraq used to be.  The philosophies of the two groups don’t even remotely match up, Syria helping al-qaeda would be like Cheney’s daughter supporting the Phelps nuts.

No George, if you lose one war you cannot go next door and start another one just for the hell of it.  Only someone as childish as Bush could think there are do-overs in war.

I’ve just been informed via email that apparently the comments section is hosed. Hit up the email (longbongsilver -at- gmail.com) until further notice, I gotta reach the administrator.  Stickies don’t seem to be working either, for some reason…

I wanted to post something about the pointlessness behind the publicity stunt of the NAACP “burying” the N-word, but Jon Blanks nailed it already. Bottom line, there’s more important issues than some word.

To add: I personally don’t like it myself either, but I personally think that the fuss over it is what assigns it the power that people are complaining about in the first place.  If you want it to go away, just don’t use it & ignore it as a word, eventually it’ll go away.  It’s worked countless times before with completely non-offensive words, and even entire languages (read anything in Sanskrit lately?), try it.

Say hypothetically that an utter miracle happened and he got the nomination. Who the hell would be his running mate?

Updated 071007 @ 1:32 PM est — Disinter heard a rumor he’s considering Walter Williams.  This would be a shock to me if it were true though, considering he’s enough of a hawk to write crap like this, accusing people who think war is something to resist if at all possible of being appeasers.  If he’s changed his mind since then, I haven’t heard it.

Shorter President Dumbass: “Don’t worry, it’s only a risk of contempt charges.  Shut up and do as I say!”:

President Bush directed two former aides today to defy congressional subpoenas and refuse to testify about the dismissals of nine U.S. attorneys, asserting executive privilege for the second time in two weeks amid rising partisan tensions between the White House and Capitol Hill.

White House counsel Fred F. Fielding notified Congress of the president’s decision in a letter sent this morning, saying that Bush is acting “to protect a fundamental interest of the presidency” in preserving the confidentiality of internal communications. Fielding also rejected a demand for a more detailed justification and accounting of Bush’s previous executive privilege assertion.

They don’t even work for him anymore, so how can he tell them what to do?  On top of that, he’s basically ordering them to break the law — something he’s rather familiar with now…