Friday, April 17, 2009





Kiefer Sutherland was on a local radio station last night promoting his record label by hanging out and playing songs by bands on the label. I've watched his show 24 this season and it's really good with loads of great actors (like Mary Lynn Rajskub* and Janeane Garofalo pictured above). Sutherland said they start shooting the next season in three weeks.

Coincidently yesterday the Obama administration released the Office of Legal Council memos about torture yesterday. Hell froze over as Glenn Greenwald had some kind words to say about Obama's decision.

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*Rajskub and Kristen Wiig were good in this past season's The Flight of the Conchords also.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Happy Tax Day!

(And a belated Happy Zombie Jesus Day!)

Patriots Glenn Beck and Nick Cavuto and Dick Armey among others have been organizing "Tea Parties" to protest Obama's alleged drift towards socialism, Think Progress reports. The turnouts were rather low.

Monday, April 13, 2009

DeLong doesn't believe the Obama administration is giving the public a narrative about the Geithner plan.
If the Obama administration were selling any of these three lines of narrative--or were selling all of them--it seems likely to me that it would be having more success is building support for its strategy. But I do not think that it is selling any of these narrative lines to make sense of its policies. Indeed, I do not know what the narrative story it wants to tell about the current situation is.
As I understand, Obama explained that the credit markets have stopped working (and the Fed has already lowered interest rates to zero). They have a three-pronged approach: the first leg of the "stool" is the stimulus, to kick-start consumption and employment.

Second, mortgage relief so people stay in their homes, keep their jobs, and continue to spend. Also this is to help the banks.

Third, TARP and the Geithner plan - or son of TARP plus stress tests, etc. - to sort out the banks and get credit markets flowing again after the stimulus kicks in.

James K. Galbraith doesn't believe the Geithner plan will get credit moving again.

The dismal science is sexy again!