THE ITALIANS MADE CRAPPY CARS. THEY EVOLVED. THEY BOUGHT CHRYSLER. AND THEY HAVE A PLAN: Fiat looking at GM Europe too. Interesting.

HIPSTERS OF THE WORLD UNITE: No, not a Kari Ferrell post (she's still on the lam it looks like, and maybe she'll stay that way now that her 15 minutes of Internet celebrity are up.) It's this probably-was-in-The-Onion-at-some-point-except-it-turned-out-to-be-true nugget: Chinese getting tattoos with nonsensical Roman characters. (Article does not actually say that, but it's close.)

SOMETHING THAT'S BEEN NAGGING AT ME ABOUT THE ROXANA SABERI SITUATION: How the heck does one become a dual Iranian/American citizen? Particularly when you're from freaking Fargo? It's not like we and they have anything like normal diplomatic relations.

From what I can gather (answering my own question) Iran says she is a citizen because her father has/had Iranian citizenship. I am curious if she sought Iranian citizenship, or if it was forced upon her for the purposes of locking her up.

WHEN YOU'VE LOST LITTLE GREEN FOOTBALLS: What is going on here? Charles Johnson is finding his internal John Cole?

EDIT: Maybe never mind? And JC never did a day full of updates about people talking about him becoming less crazy.

MAKING ME LAUGH ABOUT THE UPCOMING CHINESE SOCIOLOGICAL DISASTER: China Becoming a Total Sausage Fest. Just one of the many headlines of the fairly disturbing news that China has 32 million more boys than girls. Million!

ONLY GIVING YOU THINGS YOU JOKE ABOUT WITH YOUR FRIENDS INSIDE YOUR LIVING ROOM: DougJ breaks blog kayfabe.

Have I mentioned that the evolution of DougJ from spoof poster to Balloon Juice front pager is one of the greatest things I've ever witnessed on the Internet? No? Because that would be true.

THE SECOND TIME, BUT AS FARCE: Thoreau draws our attention to the Obama administration's version of the Hainan Island incident. Really--this one paragraph is all you need to know:

"Because the vessels' intentions were not known, Impeccable sprayed its fire hoses at one of the vessels in order to protect itself," the statement said. "The Chinese crewmembers disrobed to their underwear and continued closing to within 25 feet."

"Cap'n--they're giving us the skivvies!" "Blast--the hosing wasn't enough! Courage, men! Launch the fool moon salute!"

THE GEITHNER TIPPING POINT: Yeah. This here is the last straw of the Geithner hate stuff I've been reading lately. It's probably a bit of a stretch--it blames Geithner for mishandling the Asian financial crisis, which leads to East Asia shunning the IMF (which they have little control over or say in) and building up their foreign currency reserves, which directly feeds into the current debt-fueled nightmare. But in concert with the dithering and lack of imagination and all around lack of response months into Great Depression II: Even The Homeless Have Cellphones? There's got to be somebody better, Barry. And someone not a total high finance thrall either (though that's certainly asking for too much. But just someone who might consider putting the national interest first at some point.)

(This cellphone other thing is yards of silly, by the way. Like cellphones are any kind of a wealth marker, or like every destitute Somalian doesn't have a cellphone at this point.)

"FUCK THE HAWAIIANS. THEY DIDN'T VOTE FOR US ANYWAY:" I mean I don't watch 30 Rock so I can't enjoy that particular bit of Internet fun about the Jindal response last night. And the ridiculousness of the Republicans continuing to repeat the wasteful spending part of their catechism goes without saying. But picking on volcano monitoring? And putting it in scare quotes, as if the very idea that somebody in the United States of America could possibly have a legit interest in volcanoes was just obviously preposterous? They have nothing left, does the GOP. And if Mount Redoubt blows there'll be less GOPers!

(For the record I watched nothing last night, some of us have to work for a living. Barry needs to ditch the Summers/Geithner bankster cabal he's got working for him.)

EMBRACING MY INNER GLENN REYNOLDS: Or why I think I'm becoming a fake libertarian. Two reasons:

1. Most of the posts on Hit & Run about the financial crisis just annoyed the crap out of me, especially anything having to do with the auto bailout. Seriously--in the midst of a global meltdown and after giving bajillions to the people who actually caused the meltdown you're against keeping our manufacturing sector alive? Is "Austrian" Randite for "Hooverite"?

Comments about how much people enjoyed their Toyotas were particularly hard to take. As if the quality of their product was anywhere near the biggest reason the Detroit 2.5 are in trouble. (Or 1.5 as it turned out, Ford obviously put a priority on managing their company over managing the Lions.)

Sometimes I think I am still libertarian, but I think the unit of competition should be the nation-state, not individual companies. I mean do you think Japan or Germany would let their automakers fail? Of course not--they'd get in there and muck around because they know their national prosperity is at stake. And yet it's a big debate in this country. Maybe our nation-state needs more government intervention in business and such to stay competitive with the other nation-states, you know? It certainly works for the rest of the world.

Other time I think the big gaping hole in libertarian economics is there is no conception of finance--that is, there is no conception of how money actually works, I guess because it's a practical, pragmatic field that you can't just yell "GOLD STANDARD!!!" at and explain anything. The only libertarianish thinker (she was in Reason once) I've enjoyed during this whole megadebacle is Yves Smith, who was in the big money business and is absolutely nondogmatic about this stuff. More libertarians need to get into the sausage-making business, I feel like, even if they become less pure by their exposure to the messy way things actually get done.

2. I am completely on board with government intervention to bring down the BCS, like the Utah AG is trying to do right now. The BCS is as clear an example as I can think of of the free market reaching the worst outcome possible. And yet you hear people say "if the government gets involved think of how bad it could get!!!!!!" How could it be worse than what we have right now? We have the worst of all possible worlds right now. It's not really a poll-based system anymore, since the final poll isn't allowed to vote anyone other than whoever wins the BCS Championship as number one. You can still split a championship but only if you're somebody who's on the AP's radar from the beginning, those dudes are not going to say to themselves "you know what, Utah? We were wrong all along" (even though they were wrong all along, of course) and give them half the title. And it definitely isn't a playoff. I remember reading somewhere that the BCS sort-of made sense coming out of the late 90s when it was always clear who #1 and #2 were (not sure if this was true or not, but it's a nice idea.) But now? No sense whatsoever. There is no legitimacy in a 1-2 matchup today, but especially this year.

And yet ESPN has bid to broadcast this system through 2014? Are you serious? Five more years of anticlimax? Of national media peoples pretending anything was settled on the field? Ugh, and ugh again. The people in charge of college football have shown no inclination to change their ways, and they're not going to, even if everybody's (on ESPN) favorite coach, Pete Carroll himself, thinks they're full of it. The conference commissioners are in charge and will be in charge until somebody takes power away from them. The networks and advertisers don't seem like they want the power, even though they have the money. (I've never understood why no one has tried to set up a competing system yet. Fox gets outbid for the BCS? Okay--flash some cash at the non-BCS schools, try to peel off a few BCS programs for added legitimacy--USC can't be happy about Rose Bowl after mindnumbing Rose Bowl--instant Counter-BCS! Or playoffs even.) The government is the only entity capable of rectifying this situation. And antitrust seems a perfect way to do it, as we really do have teams excluded from championships based purely on what conference they play in. But no matter how they do it, they're the only ones who can.

And so my libertarianism gets faker. Next I'll be writing sympathetic portrayals of how THE LEFT!!!! destroyed poor Alberto Gonzales. But I'm not a Republican!

(Sorry no links in the above, you need a blog that updates more than twice a year for that kind of attention to detail.)

EPITAPH FOR THE BUSH YEARS, OR THE FINAL REPUBLICAN POOR DECISION: Yglesias:

The House conservatives who sank the bailout didn’t do so because they were listening to loud and angry voices. They sank the plan by accident. They were trying to double-cross the Democrats. First, they wrung lots of concessions out of Democrats at the negotiating table as the price for delivering 80 votes. Then, by not delivering 80 votes and forcing Pelosi to pass the bill as a partisan Democratic bill, they were going to wage a demagogic anti-bailout campaign. But Pelosi refused to be played for a sucker and so the conservative inadvertently sank a bill that, all evidence suggests, they actually wanted to pass. They just wanted to vote “no” on it for short-term political gain.

Getting rolled by Nancy freaking Pelosi is the final indignity for the GOP. If Matt's right with this, I mean.

And of course playing political chicken with financial armageddon in the balance is probably in poor taste. That said, I'm glad the bill died on Monday, since by all accounts it really is a big giveaway that won't solve the fundamental problem--see Yves. Of course Paulson's going back to try and get this particular bill done again, without explaining what the problem is (of course not, then he'd have to come up with a plan that wasn't a giveaway.)

By the way--I've always been curious if hedge funds contribute anything of real value to the economy, or if we'd even notice if they and their gallons of wealth disappeared. I guess we find out tomorrow!

AND PONTIUS PELOSI SAID TO THE CROWD, "WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE PASS UPON YOU: A BAILOUT, OR A DEPRESSION THAT SHALL BE CALLED GREAT?" AND THE CROWD SAID, "FREE MARKETS!!!11!: Pelosi to give everyone a day to decide if they like the final bailout bill or not. If a bill gets done, that is.

Yes, I am moving into the "something must be done fairly quickly" camp. Too many people (Roubini, Krugman, Buffett) saying we're in it deep this time.

OH LIKE LAUTENBERG EVEN KNOWS HOW TO WORK A FAX MACHINE: But if he did he'd be seeing this totally state-of-the-art Krugmanny bit of US American democracy:

I’m one of your constituents, and I want to urge you to not vote for any version of the bailout plan that does not involve an exchange of equity for taking troubled assets off a bank’s books. This is close to what Sweden did when they were going through a similar crisis to our own, and I think it would work much better than the massive cash dump Chairman Bernanke and Secretary Paulson are proposing. The Chairman and the Secretary seem to think the crisis is one of confidence, and if we just pump more money into the banks things will turn around. I do not think they are right. We are in the midst of a massive deflation of the housing market and no amount of emergency lifelines from the Federal Reserve will change that. I think Congress will be serving the nation much more effectively if they offer banks the chance to exchange equity for their bad assets. This will ensure that the banks that are in trouble receive help—at a price—without simply giving money away. I believe this was how Sweden dealt with their crisis; it was painful, but it dealt with the crisis quickly. The alternative model is Japan’s, which propped up their failing banks for far too long and lost a decade of economic growth because of it, that they even now have not fully recovered from. I do not think that needs to happen here.

Thank you.

Hurray! My vote counts! Or something. Anyway--as far as I can tell the housing bubble is deflating no matter what. Tossing money at banks who may not even need it is not going to help.

ADMIRAL ACKBAR, A LONELY NATION TURNS ITS EYES TO YOU: Please, Democrats. Don't fall for it.

(Harry Reid said somewhere that they had no idea what to do. They should stick with that.)

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION REALLY HAS ONLY ONE RESPONSE TO A CRISIS: When in doubt, take more power!

AH, THE ECONOMY: At this point it's hard to do anything besides sitting back and watching the carnage.

MY FINAL WORD ON THE AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION AS OF TODAY: I just don't think this is the year where stupid shit like moose hunting is going to work.

And at this point I should probably just secede from the blog reading community as I do have stuff (ugh) to worry about. But I probably won't.

WHY SO SERIOUS: Is making me pine for the days of I drink your milkshake.

YOUR POLITICAL CARTOON WITH JAY WARD REFERENCE OF THE DAY: Rocky & Obamawinkle. I laffed and laffed....

....otherwise I might get depressed! I don't get these Democrats. You have this one who's picked up this gas tax holiday thing from a Republican and is running with it for all it's worth. You have this other one who's pointed out that a gas tax holiday is not going to change a blessed thing. And yet the one who's pushing the Republican idea, and who went on the Republican house organ tonight, is the one who is coming on strong. Is--how you say?--curious.

(This is my preferred explanation for the Wright-Obama breakup: they're in cahoots! Wright says something off the wall, Obama says "now you've gone too far" and DENOUNCES!!!! and REJECTS!!!!!! him, the cretinous media finally lets it go. Obama doesn't look like he's turned on his friend, especially after defending him for what feels like months. Wright keeps his ability to say whatever comes into his head. Everybody wins!)

NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT, NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT, NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT: John Cole is right, nothing to worry about, Barry is in fine shape. Yep. Said the Kerry/Dean before Kerry/Nader in '00/Perot in '96 supporter. I'm so scared....[/blair witch whisper]

Yeah. I personally am on the Obama "no stupid bullshit, love it or leave it" train. But I fear a steady disembarking, just enough for the hideous Clinton strategy to pay off. Oh numbers, help me!

Close in Indiana.
Still way ahead in NC.
This little data in Kentucky?
Not much in Oregon either but it looks like Obama country.
Same for West Virginia except it's Clinton country.
South Dakota is for Obama. Don't see any Montana numbers but I'm sure they're similar.

So John's right--she just can't win straight up. Her only hope is the same hope she's always had, that the supers get all nervous as the economy becomes a bigger issue than the war (profiting Clinton in conventional wisdom terms) and they vote her in over the primary results. But if anybody can win in this backhanded way, it's a Clinton. And then Justin Slotman, mild-mannered office drone with an endless graduate school campaign, becomes the purple-shorts-wearing INCREDIBLE MCAINIAC! SLOTMAN SMASH PUNY CLINTONS! And so on.