Cheap Blogging Crutch 06.28

The crime of San Francisco represented topographically. This is prostitution.

In shocking news, an incredibly old man died of incredibly old age. The shocking part isn't that Robert Byrd died or that, at 92, he wasn't even all that old by US Senate standards, it's that we still see fit to send 70+ year old men to serve and then get surprised when they don't understand the issues of the day and enact legislation at the same pace at which they fuck. This is sad for West Virginia because with Byrd's passing this is the last time anyone of note will remember that it is a state and worthy of attention.

Unsurprisingly, the easily foreseeable death of a man that we all should be surprised lived this long has thrown financial reform into disarray. Byrd was the 60th vote. So now an already weak bill that had to add in tons of loopholes, crooked deals, giveaways, and purposefully fails to address the problems that caused our economic crisis to get to 60 votes in the first place, will have to be weakened and compromised further in order to pick up one more vote. I'm just saying don't be surprised if it becomes legal for a Goldman Sachs employee to gun you down in the street in cold blood.

By the by, what's in that financial reform bill anyway? Wonk Room has an overview. FDL has an overview of all the cut rate, cheap shit, last minute carve-outs that were put in despite the fact they benefit no discernible human. Did you know auto dealers are exempt from any consumer protection agency? Because if there's a group of people with a sterling reputation for looking out for consumers, it's car dealers. On the bright side, Sen. Scott Brown scored a bunch of special deals for his corporate masters in order to buy his support... and he then pledged to vote against the bill. So of course this means they'll take out his shady deals and improve the bill, right? Of course not.

Not that any of this matters anyway. As Paul Krugman explains, we're entering a Third Depression: the Long Depression. And why is this? Because our elected betters and the elected betters around the world have decided to focus on imaginary problems instead of real ones. Namely focusing on inflation that isn't occurring and focusing on cutting back spending that isn't at adequate levels in the first place. On the bright side, suffering builds character. And a decade from now the world will have a shitload of character.

Every time Sean or I wants to write another one of the 'Our Betters' Joe Biden pieces, the Veep has to go out of his way to set the satire bar a little higher than we thought it could go. This time Joe was slinging ice cream in Wisconsin, calling people smartasses. We've said it time and time again: we have to make the VP a lifetime position and soon.

We end on a sad note today as we learn that Texas, bane of education and facts, actually can't afford to buy all those textbooks they want to have changed. The main culprit on kids not getting textbooks: their stubborn, grandstanding idiot of a governor, Rick Perry, and his insistence on not taking federal education aid because of the socialism and some dear that it'll somehow weaken their #49 ranking in percentage of adults who have completed high school. Plus, books is witchcraft. There's that.