Monday, September 22, 2008

Uncle Scam

Shelly Goldstein was the first of several folks to forward this to me...

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully,
Minister of Treasury Paulson

I dunno who wrote it but it's pretty darned clever.

• Posted at 8:31 PM · LINK

Double Delight

Okay, so the political news is pretty dreary. I'll cheer you up with a couple of goodies. Over at the website of Turner Classic Movies, you can watch one of the best Laurel and Hardy features (some think it's the best), Way Out West, which they made in 1937. The whole thing's online and it's absolutely free. What's better than Laurel and Hardy? Free Laurel and Hardy. Click right here and enjoy my favorite comedians at the peak of their Laurel and Hardiness.

And if you want to make a 1937 double feature of it, you can view another pretty fine film from that year — Topper starring Roland Young, Constance Bennett and Cary Grant — by clicking over here. Sorry I can't supply free popcorn but Bill Gates hasn't figured out yet how to let the Internet do that. Give him time, give him time.

• Posted at 11:09 AM · LINK

Amazing Numbers

Way back on June 7, 2005, you read the following statement on this weblog...

George W. Bush's approval rating is now a full twenty points lower than Bill Clinton's was on the day he was impeached.

How did I figure that? Bush's approval rating was then at 48%. Clinton's, on the day he was impeached, varied between 68% and 73%. For the sake of fairness, I took the low.

Then on March 24, 2006, I pointed out that the gap was now thirty points. Bush was at 38%.

On April 27, 2007, I noted that the gap was at forty points. Bush was at 28%.

On June 5, I predicted that Bush was would hit 45 points below Clinton's impeachment numbers and might even make 50.

Well, I wasn't paying attention and I missed it when he reached 45. In fact, we're probably about to see 50. According to one poll, Bush's approval rating is now at 19%, which is 49 points lower than Bill Clinton's on the day he was impeached. And this is before the full impact of the current financial debacle settles in over this country.

The thing that I find amazing is that Bush's actual popularity rating is probably lower even than that. My friend Roger voted for the guy, hates the guy, thinks Bush has undermined every Conservative principle that made him an appealing candidate in the first place. But if a pollster asked Roger what he thought, he'd say Bush has been the best of all possible Chief Execs. Roger fears that the unpopularity of Bush is translating into negative feelings about those Conservative principles; that to repudiate Bush is to harm the cause of lower taxes, eliminating abortion and gay marriage, being tough with terrorists, etc.

If the pollsters could administer Sodium Pentathol, Bush would probably be in single digit popularity...you know, about where Cheney is without the Sodium Pentathol.

• Posted at 10:38 AM · LINK

Money Matters

Before we hand hundreds of billions of dollars to the Bush administration to buy and socialize our way out of the current financial crisis, it might not be a bad idea to pause. Pause and consider how efficiently they've handled large sums of cash in the past.

Think Progress has a partial list of cases where money has either simply disappeared or has been spent to get almost nothing in return. Some of it looks like deliberate efforts to transmit zillions in government funds (i.e., our money) to favored private corporations. Some of it looks like sheer, bone-stupid incompetence. None of it inspires confidence that they won't take all the money they now say they need to disperse and spend it all on gin.

• Posted at 9:18 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

I have no idea where this is from, other than it must be from around '63 when John Glenn's name was in the news and the movie of Bye Bye Birdie was hot. It's Ethel Merman on some variety show singing "I've Got a Lot of Livin' To Do" with special lyrics. It was probably shortly after she sang this song, that she married Ernest Borgnine, who was not exactly what she was describing in this number.