What a City...

Ahhhh...so beautiful... Even though it may be difficult getting around the city right now (there hasn't been weather like this in Seattle for 10 years), you can walk outside and find snowboarders and sledders shredding it up on Queen Anne hill. Today was our first sunny day in a week, although I'm hoping the snow doesn't let up until my winter vacation starts on Christmas Eve.

Well, looking at the latest administration squabble with the press, it's a good thing politicians don't value irony. In an official statement to the NY Times whining of "gross negligence," they accuse them thusly:

The Times' 'reporting' in this story amounted to finding selected quotes to support a story the reporters fully intended to write from the onset, while disregarding anything that didn't fit their point of view.

If any should be able to recognize that technique, it would be the Bush administration. Aftere all it is standard procedure for this crew. This presidency surpasses all others in the level of contempt and all-out animosity it has demonstrated for the role of the press. Eric Alterman and George Zornick have a four-part series on this here, here, here, and here.

To the bailout of the banks: With Paulson begging for the next $350 billion, it has become clear that Congress wasn't serious about oversight, despite all of their assurances to the contrary: In over 100 hundred pages dealing with oversight in the bailout bill, there is nothing that forces recipients of federal money to report back to the federal government on how they spent the money. Seriously? ANP interviews David Vladeck of Georgetown University about this:

Also, let's keep in mind that out of the 116 banks that have received government funds, $1.6 billion accounted for executive bonuses and payouts to those very people responsible for tanking their companies. All right: Increased productivity doesn't mean higher wages for working people, and hasn't for many years, and yet, the financial class gets away with millions in bonuses----not for stagnant performances, but for actually running their respective institutions into the ground. Incidentally, it's often this breed of saprophytic corporate shill that is most prone to crying "class warfare," that age-old demagogic rhetorical device used by liberals to unfairly bring economic reality to the public mind. And for them, one must be a "Marxist" to have the temerity to even mention economic injustice. Redistribution be damned...

The AP really nails the "thinking" of these "private tyrannies" (as Chomsky labels them). When questioned about what they were doing with the money the taxpayers provided them:

Others, such as Morgan Stanley spokeswoman Carissa Ramirez, offered to discuss the matter with reporters on condition of anonymity. When AP refused, Ramirez sent an e-mail saying: "We are going to decline to comment on your story."

Most banks wouldn't say why they were keeping the details secret.

"We're not sharing any other details. We're just not at this time," said Wendy Walker, a spokeswoman for Dallas-based Comerica Inc., which received $2.25 billion from the government.

Oh boy, this is just too much...From this very minute on: I'm promising myself not to give matters of the economy (such as it is) any attention whatsoever; but instead, my focus shall be the hearty winter ale served at our local pub until the next issue of Harper's comes out with Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes' article, "The $10 trillion hangover: Paying the price for eight years of Bush."

Beer me, please...