So the Fed now must take the unprecedented step and buy up commercial paper directly in an effort to unblock the credit market freeze. Why are people so on edge? Don’t they remember what Richard Perle said from atop Isengard, not that long ago?
He sagely whispered in our collective ear back in 2003 that when we face more crises, we get better handling them. True, he also had the habit of shifting his meaning of “us”, “we” and “you” within a subordinate clause. But anyway.
Fast forward to today.
What an opportunity we have. The credit and financial markets literally hand us on a silver platter a chance to get even more plus double good crisis management skillz. Talk about leveling up! We’ll be the undisputed unipolar Level 40 Crisis Dealer. Imagine that? No one close. Those kind of mad skillz bonus points we can transfer to other games like Iranian Airstrike 2010.
An employee punching Lehman’s Fuld in the face on a work out machine doesn’t count as mad skillz. First, he got PWNED on a jogging machine. Second, the whole gym scenario conjures cheap ‘Lifetime’ channel video drama. Nemesis should not appear in a ARod wife beater and gym shorts. Finally, there isn’t even a Rather-esque ‘What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?’ hook for a good rock song.
So far our crisis game isn’t going so hot. We started the game as usual tossing the manual, figuring things out on the way. The friggin AI is pretty good. Even solo campaign mode we are getting out butts kicked. And the setting is “average”. But mad skillz are worth sticking it out. And the graphics are awesome ! We’ll unlock all the hidden stuff and then watch out Beijing. Someone tell that to Joe Nocera. We don’t need no pussy fanboys. Buck up, suck up, cowboy up or STFU. We’re on to the next Boss Battle.
Real men keep going with all nighters, bloated on Dominos pizza, Mountain Dew and Countdown repeats. Chris Matthews and his fantasy woman, Peggy Noonan, can both talk about their taste in men. La Noonan with her emotional bulimia always gets to the essence — real men do not think but stand as blank pillars for her own projections. (She is more honest than Tweety). But they’ll both admit the geeks win when they rip open their Portfolio Statements — if they would just get out of the way and bring more munchies.
OK, building up a Level 40 Crisis Dealer is a helluva lot harder than being a Hobbit trader in town. Carpal tunnel on the “A” button just to smack down a CNBC talking head with dragon breath. Finding and making more crises gets old fast. Maybe it is time to stop looking for crises. It’s probably more fun to be a gossip peddler outside town hall.
But then there’s this guy. A friend of a friend says that this guy has a signed Boba Fett 8″ full poseable *in the original* package. And he beat the game. I heard he was at Treasury.
Anyway, my friend received an Italian email guide from his friend at our embassy in Niger. It has a list of all the crises needed to become a Level 40 Crisis Dealer. It also says that only a Level 40 can beat the Natanz Necromongers and unlock all the Scarlett Johansson easter eggs. Suhweet.
And check this, dude. Those Europeans just turned on the game. And they can’t even give every a player a controller! N00bs . . .
Anon says
That McCain ad about Ayers is politically ineffective – There just are not enough Andy McCarthy’s for it to works.
But Leo, is it just us, or is that ad a bit artsy? It’s a high quality piece of editing and filmwork. It will look great when it’s part of a compilation doc at Film Forum in a year or two.
But it won’t affect anyones votes.
Comment says
The MSM media – the Balz types – the Evan Thomases – etc are confused and unsure how to process the John Lewis
push back.
Ironically, they are relying on Obama’s semi-curtailing of Lewis to do the work for them
Media narratives are everything for the media – McCain is not defined as racist, so if he does something that seems racial they don’t really know how to process it.
Everything is either/or — McCain has to either go negative and call Obama a camel jockey or else he must be quiescent and lose with dignity.
It’s as if the media is just unable to manage a real debate of ideas and issues.
Right now the media wants McCain to lose with some dignity, so they can go back to pretending he was St. John who had to do what he had to do and let bygones be bygones.
So they want Obama to let McCain save face (saving face is a big issue with McCain and could lead to war with Russia if he is President) and just chill out and take
a dive on some of this Yokel-racism
at Palin rallies.
Perhaps the bargain is the media erasure of Rev. Wright and a pass on Ayers.
Comment says
Incidentally, Obama’s people played John Lewis and his parson-like lecture just about right – They defended McCain and then arbitraged his fractured value against Palin, then dived that against the whole/
Comment says
St. John had a tough job – no matter what. Warlord brought about disaster. But lots of s*** McCain pulled like implying (on Letterman) Iraq was behind anthrax was bound to register in the deep psyche of his press fan club – So as soon as he was unfashionable, they would turn on him.
It’s all so sweet and bitter.
Brooks and India – lol – Yeah, too much of India is still too poor for people like Brooks. But damm, in 20 years India will be perfect – if not sooner.
As soon as India has 50 million people upper middle class equivalent, it will be a Brooks fantasy land. There will be a France-equivalent prosperous nation inside of a colorful third world country that has popular fashions with upscale American women.
Dr Leo Strauss says
You deserve the laps.
It’s so appalling to us because we remember being with McCain in South Carolina 2000 (and spent that election nite as close to the candidate as one could be).
The (legitimate) outrage over Ralph Reed and the Warlord/Rove was incandescent. Blazing. (Even Margaret Carlson seemed shaken on the flight back to D.C. So it had to be something).
You’re also right about the Reagan silliness. Unfortunately, Brooks is young enough to repeat the swill in 20 years. He will be interviewed for a New Dehli tv series ‘From Outsource to Outhouse.’ For his Indian employers, Brooks will argue that America stumbled *because* she turned her back on the ‘secret’ intellectual Warlord, who read Camus, and the richness of NRO and Pajama Media.
Comment says
In other words – McCain is playing a poorly conceived of good cop/ bad cop with his own base/Palin. Now Lewis is calling him on it.
Comment says
Comment wants to take two victory laps – We have been very wrong about many things in the campaign, but two things we got right = On this blog, a while back – we predicted that McCain would have to stoke fear among the base and then he would be forced to try to dampen what he started. We see that recently when he finally had to correct some of the buffoons at his rallies who spouted their ignorance on live TV. McCain is in a trap – he cannot win unless a certain percentage of the US thinks Obama is a foreigner, a Muslim, and/or a terrorist. Early on – before Obama gained traction – the Tweety types were ready to play ball. But it’s too late now. The fear stuff has been officially segregated into freak show land and McCain is stuck there.
Second – we told people that McCain won Saddleback and it was bad for Obama, but that his dishonest invoking of John Lewis (the type of lie McCain long engaged in when he was being protected by the media) could come back to haunt him.
Now Lewis is demanding McCain tampen down his rallies – Had McCain not said that, Lewis could have been ignored. But McCain himself said he consults him
Now Lewis is telling McCain that he is Wallacc.
McCain is stuck.
Comment says
There is a measure of truth to Brooks sayings – It’s just not the whole deal.
Comment says
Brooks is participating is this ideologue pundit ritual – wherein the break away from something before they think it will break up. But they always initiate these break ups with a fog of mythos.
Brooks is now creating a myth of lost arcadia of Reagan days of intellectuals. Palins anti-intellectualism is being portrayed as something new and scary, rather than what it is – kinda old and tired.
Aldershot says
Alas, the pedestrian American.
Good call on La Noonan, Doc. Compelling, yet repellent; she…must…find…the…exact…phrase. The other day Tweety and another guest were both talking over her.
DrLeoStrauss says
The French still do scandal better . . .
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4916521.ece
DrLeoStrauss says
Lord knows David Brooks is incensed . . . Palin must remind him of the girl in high school who laughed rejecting his fumbling invitation to the senior prom.
Comment says
We think there is something suspicious about these over-the-top bad ACORN ballots that are getting news.
We bet – a few months from now, it will be revealed that people alligned with McCain staged some provocations (illegal) with ACORN.
The way the story rolled out and was cross marketed with certain right wing pundits is too suspicicious.
Almost all of the alleged bad ACORN forms sound like the poll tested faux-fraud that led to the Rove/Iglesias battle and the firing of the US attorneys.
McCain is now melting – his attack them (communists muslim foreign) is too poorly designed. Rageists on the right are an embarassment to the power elite.
sglover says
Yeah, well, as far as St. Maverick goes: North Vietnamese professional torturers couldn’t get him to debase and humiliate himself as much as the GOP rubber chicken circuit. And at least his Hanoi experience was in some sense involuntary…..
Work has taken me away from the Beltway for a couple of years. I miss it, but there’s one aspect that’s probably good for me: When I lived there, there was always the slim chance that I’d run into a traitor like Perle, or Smilin’ Billy Kristol, or (as a friend of mine did) Tony Snow — and I would feel duty bound to take a swing at the vermin. It’d be satisfying as hell, but I could sure do without the legal hassles — you know that every one of those rugged individualists would run crying to their lawyers in a millisecond.
Comment says
re NRO Andrew McCarthy – That guy needs to check into a sanitarium.
Anon says
McCain’s gaffe “my fellow prisoners” is symbolic on many levels – McCain is a prisoner of Bush, of sorts – as are all of us. McCain is a prisoner of his past press Straight Talk BS. etc That was a Freudian slip for the ages,
Anon says
Oh and recall McCain saying he would hire the tax raising Obama supporting Warren Buffett? Buffett is a villian among conservatives – esp the non blinking no nothin’ types that make up the base.
But this is the coup de grace:
http://www.jedreport.com/2008/10/mccain-loses-it-calls-american.html
Anon says
Yeah – that was his best moment, but then he rambled and wasted it. Then Obama did ok with the same guy. re Fannie and Freddy – McCain was looking right at the black guy who asked him a question. Not a big deal, but many average people know more about Fannie and Freddie than McCain does.
FYI – post Reagan irony
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2008/1008/1223335466001.html
Aldershot says
Hmmm…I think the chief petty officer interaction was probably McCain’s best moment.
As far as ‘not knowing about Freddie and Fannie,’ it was my impression that he was addressing the entire audience. I’d have to see a replay.
Comment says
Leo – do you think Bush is more popular in Japan or Iceland now?
Comment says
Oh – there was one other moment that Obama almost lost: Obama told a cynical woman in the audiece she was cynical – It was easy to imagine Tweety vomiting about that all the time for a week or so.
But then McCain called her cynical too – McCain said the same thing.
Another McCain flub – telling a black guy in the audience:
“You’ve probably never heard of Fannie Mae.”
Really?
Watching the CNBC chuckleheads this morning – they are trying to take Drudge’s poll seriously.
They act like Drudge’s poll is just like any other poll.
Comment says
Mort has been catatonic for quite some time. Mort is officially a “FNC liberal” – but he cannot hide his hatred for Dems (himself?) and the charade is getting old.
Obama dropped a neutron bomb on McCain tonight – no visible damage, but McCaine’s campaign is virtually dead.
McCain even squandered his Chief Petty Officer moment.
Aldershot says
Brit, Fred, Mort, Bill, and the woman whose name I don’t know looked like they were at a wake.
‘That one,’ sounds like something my grandmother would have said…very, very dated. It was jarring.
Comment says
We will offer one defense of McCain – we did not see anything wrong with McCain’s “that one” comment.
Half of everyone we know talks that way (yeah, they are the McCain voters)
Comment says
Obama won the debate – CNN polls show a huge win. We just see Lindsey Graham on c-span out of sorts and sad.
Obama was basically a human being – McCain was barely that.
CNN is struggling to explain McCain’s loss in a gentle even seeming way.
Comment says
Did McCain manage to place that Chief Petty officer in the gallery?
Comment says
Browkaw – lumped Social Security (small prob) with Medicare (big prob) – that’s a misleading way to ask question
Comment says
re Nailing Jello to the wall – Leo – McCain botched it. But the phrase tested poorly with those response monkeys on the lower screen of CNN.
Comment says
Brokaw throws McCain a question about being in favor of sacrifice – The question seemed to have cross marketing value for Brokaw.
re Overhead projector – McCain looks silly talking about that –
Comment says
So far Obama is winning tonight.
Anon says
re Jpod – we saw him interviewed on c-span this week. There is sad delusional quality to his politics. But when he mentioned his wife’s SNL link we thought it explained some unfunny attempts at right balance on the show. Some possible angles:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ali-gharib/snls-neocon-inside-job_b_132490.html
Dr Leo Strauss says
Who knew controlling Wikipedia controlled short selling?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/01/wikipedia_and_naked_shorting/