So much stupidity

so little time. More catch-up shorters.

The death of a bailout:

I am in receipt of an email yesterday, asking that conservatives and libertarians recognize that the unions have, indeed, made concessions in order to make the bailout work. Sadly, I had not had time to write a post about this before the UAW tanked the Senate bailout.

Uhhhhhh, fuck you.

I know, there is some argument over how much more US auto workers actually get paid. But if the wage differential is small, then the auto workers aren't really being asked to give up much, are they?

Dear Susan and CP,

Please beat up Megan for me. I can't do it, I'm a guy. Thanks.

Just desserts:

I'm hearing the truly bizarre argument that the UAW didn't scuttle the negotiations; it was the Republicans unreasonable insistence that they cut their wages to levels comparable to that of their competition. After all, the UAW was perfectly willing to negotiate their compensation package--in 2011, when their current contract expires.

Why acknowledge the role your ideology is playing in precipitating the second Great Depression when you can flat out lie?

Invidious comparisons

If I'm so fond of workers taking haircuts, why not at AIG and the banks, huh? huh?
Ummm . . . .

Helllllllo? The auto workers aren't rich?

For starters, I am not trying to punish the UAW.

That's the most obvious and blatant lie I've seen from Megan, amazingly.

Holiday Gift Guide: Electronics edition:

Roy covered this one.

Grim tidings for the news biz:

Does Megan have an altar to David Bradley at her new house?

How did Bernie Madoff get away with it?:

The preferred explanation of many of my interlocutors, that this was somehow a result of Bush's deregulatory mania, won't do, and not just because there's not really all that much evidence of Bush's financial deregulatory mania. Tax cuts and financial regulation, however tightly coupled they may be in your mind, are neither substitutes nor complements.

Madoff took advantage of the market's basic incompetence at policing itself, not its unwillingness to be policed. Totally different things. Dontblamerichpeople.

L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace!:

I've made this the comment of the week, because it's exactly right:

Dontblamerichpeople.

On a somewhat related tangent, here's the question that really bothers me about Blagojevich: what if the reason that he thought he could get away with it is that a lot of other politicians he knows about have?

It's cute, watching Megan try to think.

Horlick's memory hole:

I am willing to extend some sympathy to fund managers who are properly embarassed [sic] at having been rooked.

Dontblamerichpeople.

Where's the indignation?:

Bahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaa. That's like asking where's Nixon's shame. Dontblamerichpeople.

The brazenness of it all:

An exchange with a reader reveals that what he got from this post was not the possibly interesting theory that blatant fraud maybe harder to uncover than envelope pushing, but that I'm excusing the SEC. I'm not. It's early days yet, but I'm going to go ahead and assume that at least several people at the SEC deserve to be fired for their pitiful oversight.

(No, I didn't leave out a link. Megan did.) Just be sure they're low level employees who draw salaries, not any masters of the universe. Dontblamerichpeople.

Holiday gift guide: DVD/Blu-Ray edition:

I think she literally just wrote about whatever was on the front page of Amazon's Blu-Ray section. Aside from fucking Point Break. She actually told people to buy Dark Knight.
And remember, Heath Ledger's death was funny, but Patrick Swayze's illness is not.

Getting long, back with the final catch-up and today's posts in a few.