...but I'll be pushing this over the next couple of weeks. This is a good cause, and the kids who benefit are truly deserving.



Click on the Tipitina's Foundation logo, top left of the page (or click here), to donate. Give till it hurts, and put an instrument in the hands of some very talented kids. Thank you all.

...maybe the Knicks could sign him for some outside shooting.

There was a time earlier this decade when a certain NY Times columnist relentlessly picked on Amazon.com (AMZN), repeatedly citing the company's foremost critic, a Lehman analyst by the name of Ravi Suria (''In 1999, Amazon was a growth story. In 2000 it became a credit story, and in 2001 it's a distress story.'' ) . Relying heavily on Suria, she questioned the company's very viability.

I guess he who laughs last, laughs best:

The Wall St. Journal on Amazon's post-market earnings release:

Amazon.com Inc., shaking off concerns that the slumping economy is hurting the Web retailer's business, reported that its second-quarter profit doubled on a 41% revenue increase, and raised its sales forecast for the year.

And the Wall St. Journal on the NY Times Co.'s after market release:

New York Times Co.'s second-quarter net income plummeted 82% from a year-ago period that benefited from the sale of the company's television stations, as advertising losses continued to mount.

Seems as though Lehman and the NY Times are the distress stories now, while Amazon's doing just fine, thank you.

Umm... Angela Merkel seems kind of, erm, smitten...

erman Chancellor Angela Merkel is an admirer of U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama -- even though she has not yet met him in person.

Asked at a news conference on Wednesday what she thought of Obama, Merkel responded: "I would say that he is well-equipped -- physically, mentally and politically."

[...]

Bush was famously caught on camera at a G8 meeting in 2006 giving Merkel a quick backrub and the chancellor was asked on Wednesday whether she expected more massages from Bush's successor -- whether it's McCain or Obama.

"That's not really up to me," she joked. "But I wouldn't resist."

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Bush says Wall Street has hangover, must sober up WASHINGTON - President Bush, in an unguarded moment, said Wall Street "got drunk and now it's got a hangover."

So let’s put the Wall Street denizens into rehab. Where are the Intervention folks? Get The Cleaner, quick!—Caro

All Hat No Cattle

For more headlines, visit MakeThemAccountable.com.

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

If this guy isn't McCain's campaign manager, they should consider hiring him. At least he'd have a good excuse for running such an inept campaign.

State Police arrested a man early Tuesday whose blood alcohol level allegedly was .491, more than six times the legal limit, which they believe is the highest ever recorded in Rhode Island for someone who wasn't dead.

The man, 34, was arrested after he drove into a highway message board on Interstate 95 in Providence, Maj. Steven O'Donnell said.

After police arrived, the man had trouble getting out of the car, then grabbed it and refused to move, forcing troopers to carry him to the breakdown lane before taking him back to their barracks, O'Donnell said.

A Breathalyzer test showed the man had blood alcohol readings of .489 followed by .491, O'Donnell said, the highest readings anyone at the State Police or the Department of Health could remember for someone who didn't end up dead.

The legal limit in Rhode Island is .08. A blood alcohol of .3 is classified as "stupor," .4 is "comatose" and .5 is considered fatal, according to the health department.

Okay, okay. I realize that McThuselah's opponent (his name escapes me right now) is over traveling in the Middle East, racking up rave reviews, making new friends and picking up new admirers everywhere he goes. But does The Pasty old White Guy's campaign have to act likea bunch of 4th grade nerds who are jealous of the popular guy?

Just going by posts over at TPM Election Central, here's a partial list of what Team Crybaby has pouted and whined aout this week, while Obama was making history:

This ad complained about Obama not going to iraq - a complaint that I'm willing to bet anything they wish they'd never made.

McCrazy then tried to spoil the party by attempting to leak Obama's itinerary. They got that one wrong, too.

After Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki essentially endorsed Obama's timeline for withdrawal, McCain's minions claimed that Maliki agreed with McCain. 0-for-3.

Then these geniuses tried to dispute what Maliki said, apparently based on the premise that neither Maliki nor his translator know their own native language.

Not entirely sure what to do next, they released an ad blaming Obama for high gas prices.

In a fit of apparent pique over the fact that McCain doesn't have the necessary skills to write an op-ed for the NYTimes, the campaign released a web ad - sent directly to journalists - bitching about the media's alleged love affair with Obama.

Then in a clear effort to forever raise the bar for inane campaign 'nontroversies,' McCain's brain trust (heh) criticized Obama for making part of his trip in a plane that he had previously stated was 'wasteful' - apparently not realizing that McCain himself made part of his last trip to Iraq in the same type of plane - after he had described it as 'wasteful.'

I've been alive a while, and the only time I can remember any organization with such a low level of competence - honestly - was the 1962 Mets - or last season's Knicks team, but the less said about that around here the better..

Top Story

Pack your bags for Baghdad? Iraq looks to tourism BAGHDAD - Someone had fun tinkering with the airline board at the old, disused terminal at Baghdad International Airport. It advertises a "special flight" on Japan Airlines from Basra to Sydney, Australia, while a flight from Baghdad to Mexico City is "delayed."

Have a GREAT time!—Caro

All Hat No Cattle

For more headlines, visit MakeThemAccountable.com.

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

Wow. Maybe Phil Gramm was right about that 'nation of whiners' thing - except maybe he should have qualified it and said 'a nation of Republican whiners.



Is the McThuselah campaign consciously trying to re-define the word 'pathetic?'

Although I like to think I'm fairly well-informed, I can't answer the following questions from memory, and I'm not sure where I could find the answers:

1. How many American troops were in Iraq on December 31, 2006, before the announcement of the "Surge"(tm)?

2. How many American troops were in Iraq on June 30, 2007? .

3. How many American troops were in Iraq on December 31, 2007? .

4. How many American troops were in Iraq on June 30, 2008? .

5. Under the current Administration's plan, how many American troops are there going to be in Iraq on December 31, 2008?

6. For each of these dates, how many American-paid "private security" persons were in Iraq?

7. When the surge was announced, how many additional troops were going to be sent to Iraq?

8. When the Surge was announced, when was the number of troops supposed to be drawn back down to the December 31, 2006 level?

I'm thinking that Rebecca Harrison needs a couple of remedial writing courses. Check this opening graf...

JERUSALEM, July 22 (Reuters) - A bulldozer driver went on a rampage in Jerusalem on Tuesday, hitting vehicles near a hotel where U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is due to stay later in the day before he was shot dead.

Seriously. Aren't their editors supposed to check for badly written ledes and fix them?

The Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI) was released this morning. The important three-month moving average edged up to -0.93 from -1.08. The Chicago Fed says that any reading of -0.70 or worse indicates an "increasing likelihood that a recession has begun." The three-month average has been in recession territory since December 2007.

Here's the chart:

Source: Chicago Fed, NBER [NOTE: Yellow bar is likely recession.]

Separately, here's a snippet from the Wall St. Journal reporting on Amex's earnings call:

American Express Co. reported unexpectedly weak second-quarter earnings and shelved its growth forecast for the rest of the year, further illustrating that the credit crunch has spread to a swath of affluent consumers.[...]

The results represented the second quarter of disappointing earnings from AmEx. Even though it previously acknowledged that the environment was poor, the company said on Monday that the deterioration has exceeded its expectations.

June was particularly bad, the company said, and the scope of the problem was "evident even among our longer term, super-prime cardmembers."

With the stimulus about to wear off, I have absolutely no idea what's going to continue propping the economy up. Keep in mind that the US consumer is 70% of our GDP and 20% of global GDP.

And yes, that's "super-prime," not "sub-prime." Apparently the economy's taking its toll on the wealthy as well as the middle class everyone else.

That cranky guy running for President and his assorted minions have been hitting the airwaves today trying to distract people from Maliki's near-endorsement of Barack Obama's timeline. And one of the goofy ways they're doing it is by claiming it's Obama who's moved closer to McCain's position. That requires making up shit about what his original position was. Here's McCain from The Today Show this morning:

"We would have been out last March if Senator Obama's original wish would have been called for. Not 16 months from now, but last March."

Anybody know where they get this from? Because in the very first Democratic debate, nearly a year ago,Joe Biden disagreed with Bill Richardson's assement that troops could be withdrawn as soon as December after taking office, saying it would certainly take longer. And Obama followed by saying "Joe is right on the issue on how long this is going to take. This is not going to be a simple operation." He goes on to say:

"If we have not begun a withdrawal by the time I'm sworn into office, then the next task is to call together the Joint Chiefs of Staff and to give them the mission, which is to begin an orderly, phased withdrawal, so that we can begin the diplomacy that Joe and Bill and the others are talking about."

You'd think some of these high paid talking heads might raise such points when the lies are spewing forth, but then they might not get anymore barbeque.

Top Story

Borrowers and Bankers: A Great Divide (by Gretchen Morgenson at the New York Times) THE credit crisis has exposed and worsened a dangerous and deepening divide in this country between a vast number of average borrowers and a fairly elite slice of corporations, banks and executives enriched by the mortgage mania. Borrowers who are in trouble on their mortgages have seen their government move slowly — or not all — to help them. But banks and the executives who ran them are quickly deemed worthy of taxpayer bailouts.

What was that about moral hazard again? We bailed them out in the 80s, now we're bailing them out in the oughts. They won't stop behaving recklessly until we enforce some regulation on them.—Caro

Matt Davies

For more headlines, visit MakeThemAccountable.com.

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

We'll get the Chicago Fed National Activity Index tomorrow morning. Keep an eye on the three month moving average; a print lower than -0.70 (as we've been getting for six months running) squares with recession.

We mentioned the CFNAI here.