Speaks for itself …

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndRxGeGZLt0

That wet dog is a hot bitch, too:

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Hubris is one thing, but this is something altogether different… hubris, coupled with arrogance and an unbelievable contempt for the great unwashed masses that can’t possibly understand the things you do and so must be kept in the dark (lest they do themselves harm, you understand).

In 2004 a debate raged inside the Federal Reserve as to whether the U.S. was entering a dangerous housing bubble. Alan Greenspan’s response? Such discussions had to be suppressed. No word of these concerns should leave the ivory confines of the Federal Reserve. The natives, you see, just wouldn’t understand…

We run the risk, by laying out the pros and cons of a particular argument, of inducing people to join in on the debate, and in this regard it is possible to lose control of a process that only we fully understand.

Of course, in retrospect, the most absurd aspect thing about this quote is that Greenspan was worried he might “lose control” of something as irrationally driven and wildly out-of-control as an economic bubble. Was his “understanding” really any different from that of a witch doctor ordering virgins to be thrown into the mouth of a volcano, worried that if he should offend the gods by not doing so, the mountain will erupt?

Playing a hunch, Razib Khan futzes with the General Social Survey and discovers what we all knew about the relationship between alcohol and awesomely smart people like us:

I was expecting it. That is, that the more intelligent, who scored high on a vocabulary test, would drink more than the dumb, who scored low.

New Englanders can drink the rest of us under the table, by the way. And Catholics? Don’t get them started.

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“California Senate candidate Carly Fiorina voiced support Friday for Arizona’s new immigration law even as she deplored a ‘racist tone’ that’s developed in some corners of her party over the highly charged issue.” [Politico, via TPM]

Gene Taylor (D-Mizzippi) would like folks to calm the fuck down about that black death approaching the shore:

What I want people to know is this isn’t Katrina. This is not Armageddon. I did this for the Coast Guard many years ago. Yeah, it’s bad. And it’s terrible that there’s a spill out there. But I would remind people that the oil is twenty miles from any marsh… That chocolate-milk looking spill starts breaking up in smaller pieces… It is tending to break up naturally.

Nice try, Gene, but BP is only paying those five-grand hush-money checks to Alabama right now.

Rep. Taylor Downplays Gulf Oil Disaster By Comparing It To Spilt ‘Chocolate Milk’ [ThinkProgress]

AG: BP Trying To Get Alabamians To Give Up Right To Sue Over Spill [TPM]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSNPFVLIWjI

You may have seen GM CEO Ed Whitacre busting his buttons on the teevee the other day: “We have repaid our government loan,” said the proud papa. “In full, with interest, five years ahead of the original schedule.”

Since GM had only sixty seconds to make the case, there must not have been time for the qualifier — GM’s TARP loan was paid with funds from another government loan:

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