On the eve of Barack Obama’s big speech, I figured it was best to spin you a seafarer’s yarn on why the poor man is going to go gray and bend at the back before this thing is done. Everyone’s curious how this thing is going to start and what he’s going to say. I suggest, perhaps, that our speechifier-in-chief open with “From hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Ye damned whale.”

Why would I suggest such a tone? What deadly sea-creature must Hopey slay? The answer, landlubbers, is the Kraken.

Making the internet rounds: an AIG executive accused of a 500m fraud was sentenced to 4 years. An eagle-eyed Reddit user found that the article describing the sentence was appearing just above an article showing that a homeless man had gotten 15 years for stealing 100 dollars from a bank. Finally! The perfect meme for the failings of our justice system! Uh, no:

Yes, there’s a recession. It’s been a bad month and a bad few years. Everyone is sort of grumpy. Tell you what:

Look into his little eyes. Try to frown now, you sad sack. You can’t. You can’t do it!

Imagine you make cars in America right now.

Fuck you, John Thain.

It’s not just a fuck you for blowing 1.2 mil on your office just as the firm tipped into oblivion.

By ADismalScience

Barack

By ADismalScience

Bienvenue!

What is with the sense of smug superiority and the fine wine?

A lot of people are asking “What the hell is going on with this Bernie Madoff thing?” I should know: Wordsmoker himself shot me a drunken missive asking for commentary. Some want in on the action and others want their confused populist crinkle-brows filled with knowledge but everyone who hears about this asks the same question: how in the world do you build a $50B Ponzi scheme out of a hedge fund?

John Thain wanted 10 million dollars for Christmas and Andrew Cuomo said no. Then a whole bunch of people got really upset and irrational about it until everyone joined hands with Snowball and drove the evil bankers from the land. Most of the Mainstream Media was pretty much okay with this, but not this brave bastard. Not Dennis Kneale.