Cheap Blogging Crutch 11.03

Palinoia
Matt Taibbi gets out his long knives for Sarah Palin in story he wrote over the summer but never published, during her whole resignation embarrassment. I don't know why he didn't publish it. It has great discussions on gems like the "campaign trail version of Mommie Dearest" she put the McCain camp through, the through line of "nutty-ass paranoid behavior" that permeates everything she does, as well as her political supporters to seem to rally behind her because it "validates [their] insane sense of fucked-overness". Worth a read, if only to remind yourself that she's never going to go away and there's still a large chunk of people who want to hand her power.

How Goldman secretly bet on the U.S. housing crash
McClatchy news joins the "bludgeon everyone at Goldman-Sachs with a truncheon" bandwagon with Matt Taibbi as they start up an rather exhaustive series on how our economic betters at G/S have looted government, bet against the country, manipulated markets, and screwed everyone everywhere over for copious amounts of cash. Click on the sidebar for a full rundown. It misses Taibbi's outraged fury, but more than delivers in jaw dropping detail. McClatchy runs a pretty good news operation, shame he couldn't run a baseball team. Ah well Kev, this, and your reporting on Iraq and the war on terror more than make up for running the Buccos into the ground. All is forgiven. Ah, who am I kidding, I'm still fucking pissed off about the Pirates. Fuck you, McClatchy!

Racial disparity: All active ethics probes focus on black lawmakers
Whoops! I'm sure that's just a coincidence. Nice to see that no matter how high up you get in this country, the justice system still works the same way. I'm sure that it's just that there aren't any white crooks that have been elected. As Rod Blagojevich, Eliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Larry Craig, Tom Delay, Jim Traficant, and George Bush have taught us: it's the black politicians you have to watch out for.

Second Circuit Affirms Dismissal of Arar
Something you probably won't hear too much about today and tomorrow as our press decides whether Republicans winning in historically Republican states and districts means that Obama should resign immediately or take two weeks off and then resign: the fact that a US court said it's OK for the US to illegally detain, render to a foreign country, and brutally torture an obviously innocent man without evidence as long as a.) government swears their complete violation of the law was totally for national security purposes, b.) prosecuting the crimes would force a court to scrutinize the effectiveness and legality of government programs and the high level officials that made them and c.) the victim cannot complete the bizarre and completely impossible legal hurdles the court places in front of him. This is the country we live in, America. Be proud.

Omnibusted
On the anniversary of their admittance to the union, The Edge of the American West looks at how the Dakotas and other mountain territories became states. In case you were wondering how states with more sheep than people get two senators with which to fuck over states that actually have people in them, the simple answer is corruption, fear of polygamist Mormons, racism towards brown people, and a desire by Republicans to pack the Senate with more Republicans. So just in case anyone tries to tell you otherwise, the Senate was never a place of congenial good, there was never a "better time" in its history, it was always an awful, stupid and corrupt place. Happy birthday Dakotas!