Here’s something you don’t see too often, these days, during the Great Big Depression: the launch of a new publication! It’s called Wonkabout, and it’s your guide to all that is fun and interesting and weird and tasty and boozey in Washington D.C., the new capital of the world. Yes We Can! MORE »

Tim “TurboTax” Geithner revealed his magic plan to save the economy and the banks and the Toxic Assets, and the Senate approved the Stimulated Package, and … the markets collapsed! Again. The Dow plunged 340+ points, which is basically what happens every time the government makes some big move to try to stop the collapse, going back to October 2007, when all this shit began to spill. What, exactly, are these traders expecting? MORE »

WE’RE SAVED (OR DOOMED)! The Senate just passed the Magical Economic Recovery Bailout Stimulus Act of 2009, 61-37, hooray for the economies! Uhh …. [AP/CSPAN]

The way this Barack Obama character is always on the teevee, you’d think we live in a country of sadsack losers who plop down in front of the teevee the moment they get home from the unemployment office. And you would be right! So, fancy Internet and Facebook and whatever to get the money, from the elites, and then prime-time propaganda to win over the other 270 million Americans. Let’s do pre-game coverage, now! MORE »

Congratulations to the 35,000 doomed people who filed new unemployment claims last week — thanks to you unlucky folks, January job losses hit 626,000, the highest unemployment numbers since the Ronald Reagan Recession/Depression of 1982. That was a fun catastrophe. Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about Reagan’s Depression? MORE »

Mexican-using payroll cheater Tim “Turbo Tax” Geithner has been approved by the Senate Finance Committee! This means the full Senate will surely anoint him our new Financial Dictator, and then the Economy will be saved, hooray! Geithner is best known for being heavily involved in the disastrous Paulson Bailout Scheme, which has done nothing but burn up $700 billion. Change! [New York Times]

To illustrate some op-ed about Ferdinand Pecora — the brave New York prosecutor of financial fraudsters who did some congressional hearing at the end of Hoover’s presidency — the New York Times dug up this ancient Blingee. There is no explanation for this bizarre old-timey example of a blinged-out spliff-smokin’ Hero of the Depression, and the bland Associated Press photo credit only adds to the Mystery. UPDATE: Oh, this is intended to be art, by an artist. So a blingee that doesn’t move is now considered Art, the end. [NYT via Wonkette tipster Daisy Chain]

Continuing the thème du jour, etc. Thanks to Wonkette commenter “Freakishlystrong.” [MSNBC/AP]

Here’s your almost-president, Barry O’Bomber Obama, explaining how he will fix all the potholes by putting bums to work mixing concrete or asphalt or another road covering material. Soon we will all have government jobs with congressional benefits (hookers, IM sexytime, etc.) and this so-called “terrible recession” can go back to Canada. [YouTube]

Gas will soon cost less than a buck a gallon, as nobody has a dollar, and nobody has a job to drive to anyway. Even Wal-Marts are closing down. And now Knut the cute polar bear, who was photographed topless by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair just last year, is an unwanted and unloved victim of the global economic meltdown. MORE »

CONSOLATION PRIZE: Of all the secretaries of commerce in American History, the only ones anybody has ever heard of are Herbert Hoover, Ron Brown and Norm Mineta. The first is known for making the Depression, the second for being killed in some random plane crash, the third for … doing 9/11? [U.S. Secretary of Commerce]