Matt Taibbi - Let's Get It Straight, Hank Paulsen Is a Prick Who Took Down the Economy

"Hank Paulson is a national hero. I said it last October and I'm sticking by it. And now, there's actual evidence to back me up. The TARP bailout worked. The Wall Street crisis is over."

-by Evan Newmark from "Mean Street: It's Time to Enshrine Hank Paulson as National Hero".  -- Wall Street Journal

So here's the letter I wrote to the Wall Street Journal after reading Evan Newmark's paean to Hank Paulson last week:

Dear WSJ,

Just out of curiosity -- did Evan Newmark ever work for Goldman, Sachs? And if the answer to the question is yes, don't you think that might have been a good fact to disclose before he fellated Hank Paulson in his "Mean Street" column?

Sincerely,
Matt Taibbi

Can you imagine what a craven, bumlicking ass-goblin you'd have to be to get a job working for the Wall Street Journal, not mention up front that you used to be a Goldman, Sachs managing director, and then write a lengthy article calling your former boss a "national hero" -- in the middle of a sweeping financial crisis, one in which half the world is in a panic and the unemployment rate just hit a 25-year high? Behavior like this, you usually don't see it outside prison trusties who spend their evenings shining the guards' boots. I can't even think of a political press secretary who would sink that low. Hank Paulson, a hero? Are you fucking kidding us?

Caveat: Donald Duck is the most popular Disney character in the Netherlands. He got his own weekly magazine and when I was still trying to learn how to ride a bike, there were children doing gradn-scale competitions to imitate him.

I'm not too sure about this duck's popularity in other European countries...

"Donald is so popular because almost everyone can identify with him," says Christian Pfeiler, president of D.O.N.A.L.D. "He has strengths and weaknesses, he lacks polish but is also very cultured and well-read." But much of the appeal of the hapless, happy-go-lucky duck lies in the translations. Donald quotes from German literature, speaks in grammatically complex sentences and is prone to philosophical musings, while the stories often take a more political tone than their American counterparts....

Donald Duck's popularity was helped along by Erika Fuchs, a free spirit in owlish glasses who was tasked with translating the stories. A Ph.D. in art history, Dr. Fuchs had never laid eyes on a comic book before the day an editor handed her a Donald Duck story, but no matter. She had a knack for breathing life into the German version of Carl Barks's duck. Her talent was so great she continued to fill speech bubbles for the denizens of Duckburg (which she renamed Entenhausen, based on the German word for "duck") until shortly before her death in 2005 at the age of 98.

Ehapa directed Dr. Fuchs to crank up the erudition level of the comics she translated, a task she took seriously. Her interpretations of the comic books often quote (and misquote) from the great classics of German literature, sometimes even inserting political subtexts into the duck tales. Dr. Fuchs both thickens and deepens Mr. Barks's often sparse dialogues, and the hilariousness of the result may explain why Donald Duck remains the most popular children's comic in Germany to this day.

Dr. Fuchs's Donald was no ordinary comic creation. He was a bird of arts and letters, and many Germans credit him with having initiated them into the language of the literary classics. The German comics are peppered with fancy quotations. In one story Donald's nephews steal famous lines from Friedrich Schiller's play "William Tell"; Donald garbles a classic Schiller poem, "The Bell," in another. Other lines are straight out of Goethe, Hölderlin and even Wagner (whose words are put in the mouth of a singing cat).

Illargi over at Automatic Earth seems to think he's smoking something from Amsterdam:

Ilargi: "Münchau at the FT is losing it. No more critical thinking, but instead a set of preconceived notions against which the world is measured. which results in a warped scenario in which the biggest debtors can be made to walk victorious into a bright sunny future. Where he veers off the track should be obvious."

I am really in the dark with economics and it's grammar, vocabulary, and logic.  So throughout this crises I've been reading online trying to absorb stuff, especially about USD/EUR exchange rates and strengths.

I am just not sure how to tell who is credible and who is a propagandist.  Ilargi, who I read a lot of, states it's obvious to see where he veers off track.  Not obvious enough for me frankly.

Is this guy from the FT credible?  Anyone have any idea?

"Schiller sprach zu Goethe, Steck in dem Arsch die Flöte! Goethe sagte zu Schiller, Mein Arsch ist kein Triller!"

Last summer, the tranquil English village of Kentisbeare woke up to find a dagger piercing its heart.

The man who ran the neighborhood pub, the Wyndham Arms, had decided to call it quits. Hit by hard times, he locked up one evening and never came back, leaving the village bereft of its "local," the watering hole down the road where, for more than 200 years, the good folk here could always drop in for a pint, a pie or a piece of gossip.

The tavern seemed destined to become yet another lost marker of traditional village life, bound for the same remorseless oblivion that had already swallowed the baker's, the butcher's and the petrol station in this lazy green countryside where bluebells nod in the breeze, medieval church towers loom like giant chess pieces and thatched roofs peek coyly through the leaves.

This time, though, residents drew a line. They retrieved the keys to the pub, renovated the whitewashed 16th century building themselves and reopened it less than two months later.

"People couldn't bear the thought of it being boarded up," said Mavis Durrant, 67, a lifelong resident of the village in southwestern England. "There's something very appealing about a country pub, isn't there?"

Today other people on ET started to ask me to be their friends. I felt it a bit redundant since we speak almost every day on ET but how could I say no. I now have eleven friends at last regard. I was a little astounded when Facebook asked me if I'd like to be friends with my ex-wife. How would Facebook know about my ex wife. I spoke to my son in the U.S. and he said he thinks Facebook goes into my email contacts to find possible friends. He also said if I got into it I would enjoy it.

OK. I'm still too bashful to ask other people to be my friends but I'm going to try to get over that. So, if I haven't asked you to be my friend its  not that I wouldn't like to be. If I haven't asked you, please ask me.

I'm shooting for three hundred forty five.

Hey, Grandma Moses started late!

They are having too much fun naming the rocks on Mars.

"Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.

Today is the Democratic Gubernatorial Primary for the People Republic of Northern Virginia and the gun-loving inbreds in those other places (The Real Virginia^TM, as you'll remember those places).

I was thinking of holding my nose and voting tonight, but the weather's gone completely to shit, and I don't care to gamble with my life walking down a major thoroughfare (Washingtonians are stupid and psychotic enough with severe thunder storms and flooding).

Fortunately, I don't care much who wins.  I was going to vote for Moran, since he opposes "clean coal" (unlike Terry McAwful) and isn't one of the gun-loving inbreds (unlike Deeds).  All three candidates make even New Dem douchebag and donkey-human hybrid Mark Warner look appealing, to say nothing of Tim Kaine.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.