Oh my god David Brooks. He too is indignant about the suggestion that a bunch of these racist slob tea partiers are racists. He saw some of them talking to black people last weekend, during the 2.9 billion person (according to conservative blog estimates) tea party march! He was running — which he is wont to do, you see! — and saw that a few of the blacks were having one of their “raps,” and some tea partiers were there with them, listening to the rap. Then he explains that populism means hating people who live in cities, none of whom have jobs or work hard. MORE »

PRESIDENT OBAMA WON’T BE BUYING CARS FOR YOU WELFARE QUEENS ANYMORE: The “Cash for Clunkers” program is going to expire any day now, so you will just have to pay for your new Honda Fit all by yourself, like a man. This disastrously popular program just goes to show you why the government should not interfere in private industry — because Americans are just too addicted to free shit to bother paying for anything themselves anymore. [CBS News]

Look everyone, a wacky sentence: “WASHINGTON — Federal bank regulators plan to release the much-anticipated results of their ’stress tests’ on the nation’s 19 biggest banks next Thursday, several days later than they had originally expected, in part because some of the banks continue to disagree with the government’s initial conclusions.” You do remember these things — the banks, the government bailouts, the stress tests, YOUR LIFE, and that thing that ties them all together, the Economy — right? They’re still “big deals” even if they aren’t so much in the news, because now the issue of whether or not we should throw a few dumb ex-government lawyers in jail has become ALL THAT MATTERS, while people continue to starve. MORE »

Oh hey here is a novel idea: in order to save our tragically beleaguered financial system, we must 1) replace the management at failing banks and 2) liquidate the banks that are completely hosed beyond repair. This makes sense to pretty much everyone, and our new boyfriend Simon Johnson said something like that a while ago on NPR so it must be true. MORE »

Hmm, so this auto bailout problem, is it a good thing or a bad thing? Good, because the government should continue to withhold money from GM and Chrysler until they get their acts together. Bad, because GM and Chrysler cannot get their acts together without money, plus the demise of the manufacturing sector etc. President Obama assures us, however, that no matter what happens “we will not let our auto industry simply vanish.” This is liberal socialist code for “we will raise taxes on the wealthy and give everyone a free Geo Metro.” [Washington Post]

Your friendly neighborhood Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation — the nice people who insure consumers’ bank deposits — has been having a sort of a rough time lately, what with all the banks constantly going broke. The insurance fund was pretty heavily depleted over the past year, thanks to horrific failures like IndyMac which cost the FDIC more than $10 billion. And it’s not like we have seen the end of bank failures, nosir! MORE »

At some point during Barack Obama’s press conference last night — toward the end, after summarizing the major works of the European baroque period, but before reading the entire text of War and Peace in response to a question about baseball — he told reporters to hold onto their pants, because Tim Geithner’s first big press conference Tuesday morning was going to blow their fucking minds. How did it go? Eh, big numbers being tossed around, a lot of crying, the whimpering sounds of a crumbling Empire, crumbling, crumble crumb crumb… MORE »

• The pornography, or “porn”, industry would also like $5 billion for a bailout of its own please. The entirety of government looks forward to the lobbying for this thing. [CNN Political Ticker]
• Boozy teevee starlet Terry McAuliffe has already begun to Robocall the people of Virginia in hopes that they will reward this behavior by electing him governor in two years. [HuffPost]
• It was only after Bush told the Obamas that the White House guest house was booked that George and Laura asked the Prime Minister of Australia, Hugh Jackman, to stay there for literally no reason other than to make sure that if Obama drove by he would see there was a car in the driveway. [Crooks and Liars]
• Joe Biden is off to Southwest Asia now, to finally see the Benjamin Button film. [Marc Ambinder]
• Here your Hope Porn du jour: it’s Barack Obama cuddling with an adorable three-legged puppy that will soon be appointed the new Senator from Illinois because you earned it, America. [The Weekly Standard]
  

Here’s the main image on the RNC’s website: a calendar of George W. Bush, his wife Laura, and their little pooches. They are for sale of course! But no one will ever buy them after today, since George W. Bush decided to take $17.4 billion worth of existing funds from Hank Paulson — who likely spent that much on an evil failed bank between 9:04 and 9:04:08 a.m. this morning — to save potentially 100,000 jobs and the economy of an entire region, for a little while at least. Wow, Bush, KARL MARX MUCH? He’s probably a Muslim too! And now the entire GOP hates him, especially one John “Walnuts” McCain, who blames Bush for ruining his career several times. [RNC, Politico]

The GOP’s two most important and popular “fixers,” Vice President Richard “Mitt” Cheney and Bush chief of staff Josh Bolten, spent yesterday on Capitol Hill in a closed-door meeting with Republican Senators, trying to persuade them to vote for the Bush-Democrat Motorcar Bailout plan of $14 billion. (Somehow, $14 billion has become a lot of money for Congress to spend!) The meeting did not go well at all — Cheney bit them? — and now the Republican Senators will never vote for anything involving money and cars again. MORE »

DRAMATIC IRONY, SPECIFICALLY: We saw this tease on the Washington Post website’s front page fifteen minutes ago and are mentally and physically unable to click through. The headline and subhead have transfixed us with this weird numbing sensation. “Symbolism” and “irony” and “Too big to succeed”! How do these fantastical terms and wordplays relate to giving this huge company a bunch of $$$? We must click to find out! Wait. No! We musn’t. It’s better this way, just knowing that the symbolism and irony are out there, somewhere. [WP]