LEVERAGE Ep 108: Why Yes, We Are Having Fun.

Some people think there's too much mindless explode-y eye candy on TV.



Those people would be wrong.

Bail-Out Overview

Let us be perfectly clear: somewhere between $700 billion and &1.8 trillion of your tax dollars are going to bail out companies that are in trouble because the rich smart men who ran them made bad decisions. Bad decisions they could make because they were not regulated -- there was no oversight. There was no oversight because they insisted oversight would hurt the economy.

I'm betting it wouldn't have hurt it $700 billion worth.

Those rich smart men will now retire with hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses, while you pay for their mess. For bonus points, the text of the bailout act states that there is no oversight over the funds being distributed. Which, as we've seen, works out so well.

In the past, capitalism punished bad decisions. No longer. So, we can socialize the national banking system, but not health care. Aces.

For some historical context (admittedly partisan in analysis, but the facts of record are all accurate).

For the Very Simple Explanation of what exactly happened in a way you can explain to your Grandma, Ezra has this.

For an alternate reasonable solution, you can read Ezra's discussion of this fella.

Do economists like this plan? Noooooooooo.

Whoops, props meeting. Enjoy the New Century!

LEVERAGE Facebook page is live.

Maintained by the Charming Network Overlords, will be the source of LEVERAGE-y goodness. Photos on the site are primarily from the first shot episode, but mid-season air date: "The Bank Shot Job". Written by stalker-boy favorite Amy Berg.

Pictures of Ike

(AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

The Doomed Pulp Novel is post-apocalyptic/flooded city in nature, so I've collected a fair number of these type of photos. Worth a spin, if only to be reminded of some scale issues. That is, Nature has us in both weight class and reach, and we had best smarten up. (h/t Oliver Willis)

Caligula For President

Ugh. I can actually hear gears grinding in my head as I change writing styles. Well, some recommendations should ease us into it.

Our friends at Boing Boing point out that Cintra Wilson has a new book forthcoming -- Caligula for President: Better American Living Through Tyranny. Caligula has returned to lead us into the new century. An excerpt:

You are going to need me, because on the subject of nepotism and dynasty, I must issue a dire warning. I prophesy that young George Prescott Bush III could present a direct threat to my divine authority in 2016.

Jeb Bush should have eaten George Prescott while he was still small enough to swallow whole. This boy is very handsome; he has thick black hair and speaks Spanish. He looks like Enrique Iglesias in a Turnbull & Asser suit. It is my opinion that he will be groomed to emotionally manipulate stadium crowds of fearful, lower-class young Jesus- lovers into a weeping, Elvis-worthy sexual panic, in concert with an organized, psychological operation of relentless global PR carpet bombing of a price and magnitude ordinarily associated with Exxon. The full weight of the Bush legacy's war chest will finally buy the love and total complicity of the cool youth vote: early- adopters, the extreme-sports community, and/or what ever the godforsaken future of Facebook- and MySpace-style social networking holds. A brave new frontier of image-making will mold young George Prescott into one part Che Guevara, one part young Ronald Reagan, and six parts Napoleon.

Combined with his family's patented banana-republic- style tilting of electronic voting machines, George Prescott will be unstoppable.

So, here's a little trick I picked up over the centuries: Take pains to ensure that he becomes addicted to hookers, OxyContin or anonymous gay sex in public men's rooms.

I believe this is the duty of all Americans who do not wish to hand over their children at birth to be trained as bullet- polishers for Halliburton.

Go get him, all you hot, hot, American whores, drug fiends and daring young homosexual men. Go get George Prescott.

I've given out more copies than I care to admit of her book of essays, A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Reexamined as a Grotesque, Crippling Disease and Other Cultural Revelations. I consider it one of the essential primers on moving to Hollywood. I was't a huge fan of her novel Colors Insulting to Nature, as it's basically exploring the same themes but through the lens of some very spun characters. The reviews are all solid, however, and my lack of enthusiasm is plainly biased by my fondness for essay-length writing.

In the Comments: your favorite essay-style book. Non-fiction, no short story collections. Does David Sedaris-style memorium count? I don't know. You hash it out in the Comments.

Serbian speaker?

Anybody who is or knows a Serbian speaker -- have them ding me at kfmonkey@gmail.com.