The U.S. public debt now stands at $9,945,578,231,981.59.
It will hit the $10 trillion threshold in the next day or two, up a staggering $1 trillion dollars from the same time last year. I’m not sure throwing another $700 billion of debt on top of that to buy distressed financial assets is supposed to build up anyone’s confidence.
“Hey, Barack. It’s me..”
“Comments are now closed for this story”
h/t to OttRob
Note the dramatic rewrite of this Canadian Press “news” item. I created this post a few hours ago and scheduled it for publication this afternoon (as I often do). When I rechecked the link, it seemed to me that the content of the article had changed considerably.
It has.
The 10:00am version is still up at the Globe and Mail, the 3:45pm “update” at CTV is a completely different article from the CTV readers were responding to.
The original opinion piece posing as a news item, “No hugs for Harper” vs the editorially cleansed “Harper sees daughter off with one-armed squeeze”
And they say bloggers can’t be trusted?
The Pied Piper Of Chicago
Is there nothing that Obama can’t do?
Via readers, an invitation to compare and contrast… This too!
And!
h/t Bryceman
Update – a video response: Obama/Marx ’08
Take Your Retirement Package And Get Lost, Mary Walsh
Audiences gathered around tables in a local pub Monday night to make a long overdue point about St.John’s actor Mary Walsh.
Volunteers dressed as Princess Warrior Marg Delahunty took turns on stage to denounce conservatives of varying political persuasions, in recognition of Walsh’s recent attention seeking behaviour.
Participants at the event were invited to “change the channel” on supplied TV remotes — like they do at home when witnessing the real life version of a saggy, bitter taxpayer subsidized never-was drag her worn schtick through the political weeds on their dime.“I thought, ‘Well, there’s not very much anyone can do, I suppose, but I could go down and sit on my hands until she goes away,’ ” an audience participant told a CBC reporter in attendance.
Contact Charlie
If you liked Christie Blatchford’s Fifteen Days*, but wondered about the X’s and O’s of Task Force Orion’s groundbreaking work in southern Afghanistan, you need to read Chris Wattie’s new book Contact Charlie: the Canadian Army, the Taliban, and the Battle that Saved Afghanistan.
Which isn’t to say the book is all X’s and O’s, because it’s not. The stories of individual soldiers, taken from hours upon hours of interviews, are told in the uniquely intense, funny, and profane style so typical of soldiers. Wattie puts you right into the turret of the LAV with them.
With Chris’ permission, I’ve excerpted a portion of Chapter 10 at The Torch, where some of the communications challenges inherent in coalition warfare come to light, and have provided a brief review.
Short version of that review: buy it, read it, and encourage others to do the same.
* And if you haven’t read Fifteen Days, I can’t recommend it highly enough – go buy that one as well.
Blogging Notes
The fog is lifting. I actually arrived home on Sunday, but it’s taken a day for my head to clear after the most demanding month of work deadlines and travel I’ve endured in several years. Many, many thanks – once again – to the guest bloggers who helped take up the slack, especially on developments on the Canadian election scene, which remains unmentioned in the US media. (I’ve invited the Captain to stay on if he wishes, to better round out coverage of the financial crisis in the US.)
As you were!
Five Democrats Who Owe Their Committee Chairs To Nancy Pelosi
Voted “no”.
Related – a spreadsheet from Kevin Aylward;
If the Treasury simply took the $700 Billion and started paying off taxpayer mortgages, they could pay off every mortgage in the country worth less than $75,000… Or put another way, $700 Billion could pay off well over half of all outstanding first mortgages in the entire country.
Do you really think they need this much money?
“Obviously, killing her is forbidden…”
h/t to Manny from Moncton
Reader Tips
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Monday night jazz show, here are Mr. Nat King Cole and associates performing Route 66 (3:06).
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Decima: 6.71 » 6.20 |
EKOS: 6.00 » 4.80 |
Nanos: 5.67 » 6.20 |
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
The US Needs a Spanking
Always trying to make economics sexy.
Dion’s Pallid Complexion
Explained.
(Makes one long for a return to a more innocent “knife in the back” time…)
Poison
Pill-osi.
The Anchoress revisits her suspicions…
It seems to me that there is an illusion being worked in the middle of all this frenzy; if during this crisis, the Democrats can still worry about laying themselves out for ACORN, and Harry Reid can take the time to try to sneak a ban on oil shale mining into new legislation, then that tells me something. It tells me there is time and room, here, and that more is driving this than we can see. It makes me wonder if we should not hit the brakes before we go over a cliff, because we couldn’t clearly see the bend in the road.
Charity
The Sound Of Settled Science
The four major agencies tracking Earth’s temperature, including NASA’s Goddard Institute, report that the Earth cooled 0.7 degree Celsius in 2007, the fastest decline in the age of instrumentation, putting us back to where the Earth was in 1930.
Is There Nothing That Obama Can’t Do?
Police State Politics
Just another story you won’t see on the CBC.
Vote Geoff!
A metaphor for the 2008 campaign.
Photo credit Peter L.T. in Courtney, BC. “It’s not hard to find the signs, they’re all over. They must’ve had 20 people stenciling the night away!”
In the comments: “I wonder if they got a really tiny stencil for the ‘approved by the Official Agent for Geoff’ line at the bottom??”
NYT: Sept 30, 1999
Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.
In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates — anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.
”Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990’s by reducing down payment requirements,” said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae’s chairman and chief executive officer. ”Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.”
Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.
In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980’s.
More at the link.
h’t Drained Brain
More –
(Via Instapundit)
Reader Tips
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Sunday night classical music show, here are Arthur Rubinstein and some symphony orchestra performing Ludwig van Beethoven‘s Piano Concerto #4 (1967, 19:13).
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Decima: 7.93 » 9.15 |
Nanos: 9.45 » 8.96 |
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Decima: 9.15 » 6.71 |
Nanos: 8.96 » 5.67 |
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
What A Difference A Looming Conservative Majority Makes
CBC News publisher John Cruikshank, via Stephen Taylor;
Vince Carlin, the CBC ombudsman, has now issued his assessment of the Mallick column. He doesn’t fault her for riling readers by either the caustic nature of her tone or the polarizing nature of her opinion.
But he objects that many of her most savage assertions lack a basis in fact. And he is certainly correct.
Mallick’s column is a classic piece of political invective. It is viciously personal, grossly hyperbolic and intensely partisan.
And because it is all those things, this column should not have appeared on the CBCNews.ca site.
[…]
Ombudsman Carlin makes another significant observation in his response to complainants: when it does choose to print opinion, CBCNews.ca displays a very narrow range on its pages.
In this, Carlin is also correct.
This, too, is being immediately addressed. CBCNews.ca will soon expand the diversity of voices and opinions and be home to a diverse group of writers with many perspectives. In this, we will better reflect the depth and texture of this country.
Previous – Unfair. Unbalanced.