Matt Taibbi on the “1%-off”

Barack Obama, whose administration has pursued zero successful corruption prosecutions relating to the financial meltdown of 2008

Matt Taibbi is a writer with the virtues of his faults. The man who coined the phrase “vampire squid” to refer to Goldman Sachs has a knack for arresting rhetoric, but his reasoning can be breathless, too. Goldman Sachs is probably less like an evil sea monster and more like the complex problem of preserving egalitarianism in a post-industrial FIRE economy. Taibbi sure can write a screed, though. On Tuesday, he posted a scathing indictment of the 2012 election and, I think it’s safe to say, contemporary American democracy. As Americans literally riot in the streets over the outsized influence of Wall Street and corporate money on government and society, the race to the race to the White House feels like “a banal bureaucratic sideshow to the real event – the real event being a looming confrontation between huge masses of disaffected citizens on both sides of the aisle, and a corrupt and increasingly ideologically bankrupt political establishment, represented in large part by the two parties dominating this race.” Read that again and tell me any part of it seems implausible besides “looming confrontation.”

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Sarah Palin completes transition to Jeff Foxworthy

This picture chosen entirely for the logo on the podium. I am 32 years old.

This weekend, while the rest of us were chasing dogs around backyard volleyball courts and drinking beer, Sarah Palin was out there getting that money, like she do. On Friday, she appeared at the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she read from her Blackberry a series of “You might be a redneck…” jokes that she found on the internet. First, let me say how glad I am that my father has added Sarah Palin to his email forward list. Second, the NRA seems to have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to someone who is about to get a C in her high school speech class. In refuting the claim that the Tea Party is composed of people who are “violent or racist or rednecks,” Palin said that “I don’t really have a problem with the redneck part of it, to tell you the truth. I don’t. That’s fine with me.” She then glanced furtively at her watch before adding adding, “Yup. Fine and dandy. [Beat.] You betcha. Because we love America. [Pause, consternation.] America! [Applause.]”

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