Would you spend $549 to hear Sarah Palin speak? No? Well, how about $19?

She also focused heavily on her trademark lines as a crutch. During one incredulous example of a way to get motivated describing a bed time fairy tale she told to her daughter: “Last night Piper asked me to tell her a bedtime story and I said ‘YOU BETCHA,’ let me tell you about two brothers named Abel and Cain…”

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After our new Postmodern Overlords dropped one in Minnesota, the next was deposited north of Kansas City.

Now please, don’t go buying a “Who is John Galt?” billboard and spoil the fun.

Tweety seems to get it. The video cuts off before Halperin says anything, but I’m sure whatever he said, it was stupid.

Remember Ronald Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment? Don’t worry, neither do Republicans:

DEMINT: Well, I’m not going to get involved with this race in Arizona. And if John McCain goes with this health care bill, I’ll be his biggest opponent and I think he knows that. But I don’t know that he’s going to do that. But what we’re trying to do is get some new senators from around this country who will stand with us on these key issues.

BECK: This is great news to me. So you are not endorsing him or helping him in Arizona?

DEMINT: No I’m not. I’m not getting involved with — I know J.D. well, and they can have their own race.

This wouldn’t have anything to do with SC teabaggers miscegenating with Republicans, would it? How much longer before Sarah Palin takes back her endorsement of Psychogeezer over teabagger favorite J.D. Hayworth? Maybe Sheriff Joe knows something.

DeMint Appeases Beck On McCain, Threatens To Be His ‘Biggest Opponent’ [ThinkProgress]

Michael “What Up?” Steele, who famously described himself as a “cow on the tracks,” doesn’t understand why he gets all the attention:

I don’t see stories about the internal operations of the DNC that I see about this operation. Why? Is it because Michael Steele is the chairman, or is it because a black man is chairman?

Well, for starters, the DNC chair doesn’t have a tossed salad named after him.

Michael Steele Suggests Criticism Of His Tenure Motivated By Racism [Plum Line]

After Saying “I Don’t Play The Race Card,” Michael Steele Blames His Political Problems On Race [Media Matters]

The mystery billboard [Minnesota Public Radio]

So if we’ve got this straight — which we doubt, but there’s a closed-palm test coming up — Goldman Sachs invested in mortgage-backed securities, severely shorting them with AIG credit-default swaps, convinced other companies to load up on AIG swaps as well, waited for the market to swoon, stiffed AIG for an arbitrary value on their original investments, spread rumors that AIG couldn’t meet its obligations, which undermined AIG stock, forcing the Feds to bail out AIG and pay off Goldman for whatever Goldman said it was owed.

As opposed to, say, taking an actual risk and behaving accordingly. Moral hazard is for amateurs.

We hope you’ve got all that down, because Greece is about to go tits up, and its bonds are “insured” by… wait for it…

Credit-default swaps.

Somewhere there’s a lesson in all this. But the only one we can come up with is “Be so fucking rich, you don’t give a shit.”

How Goldman Bet Against Mortgages and Got Government to Foot the Bill [Our Lady of the Beaver/Washington Independent]

As U.S. stocks fall again, should Greek debts worry us? [McClatchy]