quote of the day

"A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to economic recovery.

Over the last two weeks, what should have been a deadly serious debate about how to save an economy in desperate straits turned, instead, into hackneyed political theater, with Republicans spouting all the old clichés about wasteful government spending and the wonders of tax cuts.

The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge."

– nobel prize winning economist paul krugman

UPDATE 2/8/09 – krugman takes a look at what's happened to the stimulus bill in the senate over the last day or so, and doesn't like what he sees:

"My first cut says that the changes to the Senate bill will ensure that we have at least 600,000 fewer Americans employed over the next two years.

The real question now is whether Obama will be able to come back for more once it’s clear that the plan is way inadequate. My guess is no.

This is really, really bad."

we're all gonna die

one image: 100 meters long, 178 people, 20 days.

photographer simon hoegsberg has created an intriguing online image that i first saw about a week ago. it's a composite of photographs taken over the course of 20 days from the same spot on a railroad bridge in berlin (a fraction of which appears below.) at first glance, i thought it was interesting, but i moved on rather quickly.



over the course of the week i've returned to it time and again, sometimes without thinking. i've spent time with it, gotten to know it. each visit revealed something new, some new person, some new story to be told.

hoegsberg's title for the image, we're all gonna die – 100 meters of existence is nearly as intriguing as the image itself. the finality of that initial thought is not made any cheerier by labeling this an image merely of existence.

sometimes i expect to see myself in this image. sometimes i do. i see people i know, and people i've come to know. one particular face, one smirk or sideways look, can prove endlessly fascinating one day. the next day, another is much more interesting.

in many faces there appears to be a blissful ignorance – no immediate awareness of that statement: we're all gonna die. in a few – some sad, some stark, some content, some rebellious – there seems to be an unbelievably clear grasp of it.

waiting for failure. or attack.

after reading this interview with former vice president dick cheney, tpm media's david kurtz, like me, is smelling the stench of "i told you so" hanging in the air:

"The GOP's plan to regain political viability in the short term rests on two disaster scenarios: the failure of the financial rescue efforts (stimulus, TARP, and other bailouts) to stave off complete economic collapse and a new mass casualty terrorist attack -- both of which they are positioning themselves to blame Obama for."

somewhere along the way

the "S" blinked off and on...slowly. st. louis, missouri. sometime in 2002.
(hat tip d. noble)

change i can believe in

not once during his eight years in office did our last president apologize for or even admit to making a mistake.

tonight, after fifteen days in office, our current president said: "i screwed up."

humility.
how's that for a change?

say yes to stimulation!

on sunday night, during the fourth quarter of the super bowl, thousands of tucson area comcast cable subscribers were inadvertently shown 28 seconds of porn. late in the quarter, larry fitzgerald scored to put the cardinals ahead and suddenly there's a man sitting on a sofa, unzipping his pants and "revealing his genitals." as an apology to their subscribers, comcast has offered to give $10 to each customer "who was impacted."

if someone gave me $10 every time i watched porn, i could retire by the end of the year.

fwd: say no to stimulation!

john "the fundamentals of our economy are strong" mccain has sent an email to his supporters asking them to "vote no" on the stimulus package. oh that's good. let's have a stimulus popularity contest.

guess what – we already have one. it's called the gallup organization, and their results show that 75% of americans support this stimulus package in one form or another. 56% of republicans want it passed, with changes. 20% of democrats and independents say reject the plan completely and only 35% of republicans agree with the scrap it and start over idea.

besides, doesn't john mccain already have a list of people who would vote no if he asked them to? aren't they called "the people who voted for him for president"? and does anyone really think this man has any credibility left on economic issues?