- “A million shares of International Gold Plated Hummer and Diamond Encrusted Monacle Co.? What was I thinking?“

Wooooo! It’s the apocalypse! Wheeee! Yaaaaay!

down 700 and falling.. I’m taking all bets! How low will it go?

Barney Frank was asked about Republicans blaming Nancy Pelosi and a speech she gave for it failing.

Frank: “We don’t believe they had the votes and I think they are covering up the embarrassment of not having the votes. But think about this: somebody hurt my feelings so I will punish the country. I mean that’s hardly plausible. And there were twelve Republicans who were ready to stand up for the economic interest of America but not if anybody insulted them. I’ll make an offer: Give me those twelve people’s names and I will go talk uncharacteristically nicely to them and tell them what wonderful people they are, and maybe they’ll now think about the country.”

also:

Barney Frank is awesome. Even when I disagree with him (disagree on the bailout, agree about the republicans being whiny assed titty babies) he’s quite an amusing character.

Don’t always agree with Frank, but I think he’s often funny as hell. I dislike Nancy Pelosi intensely, I think she has a really brittle and ineffectual personality that’s terrible for leadership.

The Republicans are a bunch of pussies, which is funny.

Bush is probably the weakest and most irrelevant President I’ve ever seen. I always declared he’d end up a powerless lame duck, but I never thought it would happen so dramatically (and pathetically). We barely have a person leading the country nowadays… I feel like a family that has an ancient and nearly-dead dog, who sit around the kitchen table wondering aloud if they should get themselves a dog.

Pelosi and Reid both are awful leaders. Just terrible. I’ll admit that Pelosi has the more difficult a task because of the contingent of “Blue Dog Democrats” who are pretty much borderline republicans. Without their votes the Democratic majority in the house is slim to none so she’s constantly had to keep making concessions to those yahoos who for some reason still feel compelled to kowtow their positions and fall in line behind the most consistently unpopular president of all time. I still don’t like her, but her failure of leadership is slightly more understandable. With Reid it’s also a little understandable because of the slim majority in the Senate but I still think even if he had a 60 vote majority he’d still suck as a leader.

I read an interesting thing earlier today from Glenn Greenwald:

“UPDATE: Strictly on the level of “Democratic v. Republican” political strategizing, Nancy Pelosi did exactly the right thing yesterday—she provided just enough Democratic votes in favor of the bailout so that it could pass only if there was substantial GOP support (thus preventing Republicans from cynically blaming the bailout on Democrats), while simultaneously ensuring that Republicans (and McCain) would be blamed if it failed. Strictly on a strategic level, it was—for the reason Matt Yglesias describes… all very well-played by the House Democratic leadership.”