Primary Care

"[Merle] Haggard, who once derided pot-smoking hippies in his 1969 hit "Okie From Muskogee," got hooked on marijuana after a doctor said it was a good substitute for his Valium habit."

--Dean Goodman, reporting for Reuters

Accountability and Economists

If economists were held accountable in their job performance in the same way as administrative assistants or dishwashers, they would be fired.

--Dean Baker

Who are you for?

"I'm a pastor, not a politician. People always say, 'Rick, are you right wing or left wing?' I say 'I'm for the whole bird.' "

- Rick Warren

On Unification

 

	“It's interesting that so many Obama fans are so eager to throw him under the bus for this decision. I like Rick Warren. He is a brilliant guy and his fight for social justice is rare in conservative Christianity. The fact that he is very conservative makes his voice for social justice much more powerful. For Obama to pick Warren is a unifying act. Much of Obama's campaign was about unifying the country. Obama supporters that are all up in arms about this decision seemed to have forgotten that. Their idea of united Americans is united around liberal social policies. I think this was a good move for Obama.”

- Dustin DeKoekkoek

Legitimacy

The tipping point seems to be the Bernie Madoff $50 billion Ponzi scandal, which represents the grossest failure of authority and hence legitimacy in finance to date in as much as Mr. Madoff was a former chairman of the NASDAQ, for godsake. It’s like discovering that Ben Bernanke is running a meth lab inside the Federal Reserve. And out in the heartland, of course, there is the spectacle of Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich trying to desperately dodge a racketeering rap behind an implausible hairdo. What seems to spook people now is the possibility that everybody in charge of everything is a fraud or a crook. Legitimacy has left the system.

--capt dave

Yeah.... (unless maybe i could get a bit of that wanking and stimulus myself? wait! not that "wanking and stimulus"!)

"Could we have "financial system dollars" and "regular dollars," so that their wanking and stimulus can be self contained to the fake economy, while us real guys can pay an honest buck for a hamburger, a buck whose value is backed by virtue of the fact that it represents actual real labor input to the economy that produced something other than a derivative of a derivative of the shadow of a phantom?"

--Hoopajoops LTD
{lightly edited by dkearns72}

And sadder than the bearded lady?

"Critics are to writers not as doctors are to patients but as bearded ladies are to trapeze artists—another, sadder act in the same big show."

-- Adam Gopnik

On Meaning

 If we cannot say no, then our yes means nothing. 

-Peter Block