The Daily Show‘s Michael Steele puppet: It ain’t easy running a Ponzi scheme of stupid! Watch.
The GOP just can’t quit Social Security privatization, even as they try to downplay it in an election year.
A Chinese bank may set the record today for largest IPO ever, breaking the record set by another Chinese bank in 2006.
This smart piece from Reuters makes what should be an obvious observation: The contingency plans all the offshore drillers have for skimming up a major spill rely on materiel and equipment that’s already deployed for the BP blowout. In other words, the industry doesn’t have the skimming capacity to deal with multiple major spills at the same time. (Let’s set aside the issue of how effective our current skimming capacity actually is on a deep sea blowout.)
So it adds up to this: The government won’t let oil companies drill without contingency plans for a spill. The contingency plans all rely on a skimming capacity that is at present unavailable and which in any event can only handle one spill at a time.
If you extend that logic, you end up having to shut down current deepwater production and additional exploration, which isn’t really feasible and which again highlights the point that a lot of what has passed for regulation of the industry consists of providing ourselves with the comfortable illusion that we’ve got a plan for when something goes wrong.
Ex-Con, Ex-Rep. Jim Traficant is now an ex-candidate to get his old job back. Didn’t get enough legit signatures to get on the ballot.
Nye County, NV, makes a run at Maricopa County, AZ, for title of most screwed up county government — or as a defense lawyer trying to take advantage of the breakdown in the local criminal justice system put it in a court filing: “A review of the Internet reveals that Nye County is the laughing stock of the known universe.”