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First of all, I pledge not to choke the living crap out of the next Republican who tries to feed me this line of horse manure. Because that would be "wrong." (Actually, it would be good on so many other levels -- but legally? Wrong.)

I happen to think Carl Jung was a genius, because if you want to know what a man's really up to, listen to the accusations he makes against other people. "Rising joblessness, crushing debt, and a polarizing political environment are fraying the bonds among our people and blurring our sense of national purpose. Like free peoples of the past, our citizens refuse to accommodate a government that believes it can replace the will of the people with its own."

Are you kidding me? You have the audacity to repeat this line of happy horse hockey (or at least let some true-believer Hill rat write it for you)?

It's really difficult to communicate with certain types of severely mentally ill people -- and make no mistake, you guys are severely mentally ill. (So are the Democrats, but I beat them up all the time and right now, it's your turn.)

You don't give a damn about the "common good." Show me the last thing the Republican party has done for it. You pledge to "honor the Constitution"? All you care about the Constitution is how easily you can twist it to support your political interests. Tell you what, let's get Roberts and Scalia on live TV and let them explain the Citizens United decision to the American voters, taking live call-in questions.

Oh and yes, all y'all just loves you some Tenth Amendment -- mostly because it's so easy to distort. Yes, we know what "state's rights" is code for. So do your hard-core supporters, who will vote for anyone who tells them they'll stop scary black and brown people from exercising what they claim are "rights."

And liberty? You have the nerve to talk about liberty? You not only want to forbid access to abortion for rape and incest victims, you're backing candidates who want to make birth control illegal.

Screw you, and the elephant you rode in on. Even wifebeaters eventually learn an important truth: You have to sleep sometime. Sooner or later, the new "Third World" workers of the U.S. will slam a cast iron frying pan upside your sleeping heads.

Because once you rig the game, and buy off the refs, well, people won't care anymore about sportsmanship.

Paul Krugman has a terrific column out today about China, and why it's absolutely crucial that the US join Japan in calling out the Chinese for keeping their currency weak in order to continue feeding their trade surplus.

Some background: If discussion of Chinese currency policy seems confusing, it’s only because many people don’t want to face up to the stark, simple reality — namely, that China is deliberately keeping its currency artificially weak.

The consequences of this policy are also stark and simple: in effect, China is taxing imports while subsidizing exports, feeding a huge trade surplus. You may see claims that China’s trade surplus has nothing to do with its currency policy; if so, that would be a first in world economic history. An undervalued currency always promotes trade surpluses, and China is no different.

This is especially bad right now, because our economy desperately needs the manufacturing sector to revive in order to grow again. Because China has a strange hybrid capitalist/communist economy, their currency manipulation rewards Chinese companies while keeping workers' wages low.

Underneath all of this, there is the fear that putting too much pressure on the Chinese to reform their currency policy would cause them to sell off US Treasury bonds. Krugman has an answer to that, and so do I:

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John Brennan, who isn't beloved by the left has actually been speaking up for the administration quite forcefully against the Republican bedwetter attacks on the way Obama is handling our national security. For conservatives, that's a little too much for them to handle.

mcjoan writes about the always pathetic Kit Bond, who is now calling for Brennan to be fired because they aren't used to being called terrorist enablers.

Republicans are back to their usual election year trick of fear-mongering, attacking--of all people--John Brennan, the former Bush director of the National Counterterrorism Center and current counter-terror chief. Kit Bond has called for him to step down, primary because Brennan has been taken the lead in fighting against Republicans attempts to protray Obama as weak on national security. The White House is on the offense...read on

Chris Wallace then dutifully did his part as a GOP shill to help embrace conservative criticisms of the president by feigning outrage over what Brennan had to say to his pals yesterday on Fox's Happening Now with Jane Skinner:

Wallace: Well, I don’t know if there’s a precedent or not, but it really is more a matter of the kinds of things Brennan has said. He went on one of the Sunday talk shows – not Fox News Sunday – last week, and really went after the Republicans. And then he had an article in USA Today on Tuesday, in which – and I don’t have it in front of me – he basically said, and this is pretty close to a quote, that the politically motivated criticism of opponents served the purposes of Al Qaeda.

That gets awfully, ah – and the Republicans certainly were offended, and I think there’s a question as to whether or not that really crosses a line, the idea – I mean, you can agree or disagree on the way that Abdulmutallab was handled, or the decision to try the co-conspirators, the alleged co-conspirators in 9/11 in downtown New York, but for the top counterterrorism advisor for the president in the White House to be saying that criticism of those policies serves the purposes of Al Qaeda, ah, it kind of crosses a line.

And you know, we’ve seen this crossed before. We saw the Bush administration do it after 9/11. But to somehow equate political criticism, or policy criticism, with lack of patriotism really doesn’t do much to help the debate.

Wallace does admit that Republicans used this tactic immediately after 9/11, but now that the shoe is on the other foot, it's totally unacceptable for him.

George Bush and Darth Cheney attacked our patriotism because they wanted to invade a country that didn't attack us and lied in the process of selling the Iraq war to the American people. Then they made sure that anyone who disagreed with them was labeled either a traitor, anti-American or simply soft on terrorism.

It's kind of funny watching their heads spin in shock like Linda Blair after being played by Brennan, who played by their own rules to do so.

And as usual, Fox News gets involved in an all-out smear campaign against Brennan.

So now we know who the real death panelists are!

After the mortgage business imploded last year, Wall Street investment banks began searching for another big idea to make money. They think they may have found one.

The bankers plan to buy “life settlements,” life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash — $400,000 for a $1 million policy, say, depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. Then they plan to “securitize” these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds or thousands together into bonds. They will then resell those bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die.

The earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return — though if people live longer than expected, investors could get poor returns or even lose money.

And really, who could possibly have a problem with that? Why would we think that enormously powerful financial interests would want to, you know, protect their investments by making sure our health care is less than optimal?

Do you ever get the feeling that the class war is over, and their side won? Money for these guys - but massive conniptions over paying for national health care?

Staff at Goldman Sachs staff can look forward to the biggest bonus payouts in the firm's 140-year history after a spectacular first half of the year, sparking concern that the big investment banks which survived the credit crunch will derail financial regulation reforms.

A lack of competition and a surge in revenues from trading foreign currency, bonds and fixed-income products has sent profits at Goldman Sachs soaring, according to insiders at the firm.

Staff in London were briefed last week on the banking and securities company's prospects and told they could look forward to bumper bonuses.

Figures next month detailing the firm's second-quarter earnings are expected to show a further jump in profits. Warren Buffett, who bought $5bn of the company's shares in January, has already made a $1bn gain on his investment.

Go read the whole thing, if you have the stomach. See, this is the whole thing about the Republican-dominated economic policies of the past three decades: They just don't work. You can't magically make liabilities go away by deferring them, but God forbid these pants-wetting politicians should actually take a leadership position in favor of higher taxes now when it could save billions of dollars later! Why, the scary Club for Growth might say "Boo!" to them!

March 3 (Bloomberg) -- The Chicago Transit Authority retirement plan had a $1.5 billion hole in its stash of assets in 2007. At the height of a four-year bull market, it didn’t have enough cash on hand to pay its retirees through 2013, meaning it was underfunded to the tune of 62 percent.

The CTA, which manages the second-largest public transit system in the U.S., had to hope for a huge contribution from the Illinois state legislature. That wasn’t going to happen.

Then the authority found an answer.

“We’ve identified the problem and a solution,” said CTA Chairman Carole Brown on April 16, 2007. The agency decided to raise money from a bond sale.

A year later, it asked Illinois Auditor General William Holland to research its plan. The state hired an actuary, did a study and, on July 17, concluded that the sale of bonds would most likely result in a loss of taxpayers’ money.

Thirteen days after that, the CTA ignored the warning and issued $1.9 billion in bonds. Before the year ended, the pension fund was paying out more to bondholders than it was earning on its new influx of money. Instead of closing its funding gap, the CTA was falling further behind.

Public pension funds across the U.S. are hiding the size of a crisis that’s been looming for years. Retirement plans play accounting games with numbers, giving the illusion that the funds are healthy.

The paper alchemy gives governors and legislators the easy choice to contribute too little or nothing to the funds, year after year.

The misleading numbers posted by retirement fund administrators help mask this reality: Public pensions in the U.S. had total liabilities of $2.9 trillion as of Dec. 16, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. Their total assets are about 30 percent less than that, at $2 trillion.

With stock market losses this year, public pensions in the U.S. are now underfunded by more than $1 trillion.

That lack of funds explains why dozens of retirement plans in the U.S. have issued more than $50 billion in pension obligation bonds during the past 25 years -- more than half of them since 1997 -- public records show.

The quick fix for pension funds becomes a future albatross for taxpayers.

[...] By law, states must guarantee public pension fund debts.

“What appears to be a riskless strategy is actually very risky,” says David Zion, director of accounting research for New York-based Credit Suisse Holdings USA Inc. “If the returns on the pension bond-financed assets don’t exceed the cost of servicing the debt, the taxpayers bear the brunt.”

Baseline Scenario says:

These optimistic assumptions are bad enough, because they allow underfunding of pensions. But what’s even more bizarre is the behavior this causes. As the Bloomberg article explains, local governments issue pension obligation bonds to raise cash for their pension funds. These bonds usually pay fixed interest rates, say 6%, and the proceeds are then invested in risky assets. But the magical thing is that because you are allowed to assume an 8% return, for pension accounting purposes, the difference between 8% and 6% is free money!

Well, it’s free money as far as this year’s assessment of the pension is concerned. In the long term, of course, it’s a crazy investment strategy (and a mistake many people make - comparing a risk-free interest rate you borrow money at with a risky expected rate you hope to earn). And the results in the future are predictable: either higher taxes, or yet more value-destroying pension obligation bonds. Sometimes people get caught saying stupid things, like Christine Whitman saying, “You’d be crazy not to have done this. It’s not a gimmick. This is an ongoing benefit to taxpayers,” but it’s really a systemic problem.

LA Weekly: "[Ray Bradbury's] fear in 1953 that television would kill books has, he says, been partially confirmed by television’s effect on substance in the news."
And Barry Bonds has been indicted...

And very good news: the International Monetary Fund has read their email and is finally moving ahead with debt relief for Liberia.

And don't forget there's a Democratic Debate Open Thread going on tonight, too.

Late Night Open Thread

"Barry Bonds is reportedly now the target of a federal government's month-long probe into whether or not the slugger committed perjury during his '03 grand jury testimony on steroid use."

TDS on Barry Bonds
The Daily Show jumped into the sports arena by doing a segment spoofing Barry Bonds on Wednesday night. Rob Corddry joins him as the big time drug expert. I wonder how he'll approach the steroid controversy?
Something to do with Panda's and cattle I believe. Click here for the Video.

Norbizness: A weekly litany of the crimes, misdemeanors, and other affronts to civilized society committed by "The Left."

My Left Wing: 300,000 people marched in Chicago last Friday. Why doesn't anyone know?

Dissident Voice: Crucify Him! Barry Bonds and the steroid saga.

First Draft: What did Trent Duffy do?

Pharyngula: Darwin interview...

Pharyngula: Darwin interview...