Irony, Vibe and Erykah Badu

The Angry Black Woman has an interesting post on Erykah Badu's Vibe cover story. ABW clips a great quote from Badu, which I show in a screencap after the cut, along with Vibe's rephrasing of the quote.

Rick Wolff on S&P in the Guardian

A familiar voice in the Guardian on S&P's judgment on US debt. He says there are "two sane responses: laughter and a yawn." My favorite is this paragraph:

The first [reasonable reaction to S&P's announcement] is sheer incredulity. S&P is famous for having issued what Senator Carl Levin (chair of the Senate investigations subcommittee) recently called "inflated credit ratings" prompted by "rampant conflicts of interest" in the US financial industry. Senator Levin named this company a "key cause" of the economic crisis. That is polite-speak for having published misleading information about credit risks and/or having shown monumentally poor judgment in assessing such risks. So, we now should take seriously what this utterly compromised company says? What?!

This nicely summarizes my own first thought when I heard that S&P was issuing a warning on U.S. debt. Please.

In which I pwn Boing Boing. (?)

This post on my beloved BoingBoing irked me:

Philip Greenspun divided the U.S. 2011 federal budget by 100,000,000 and wrote a little parable:

We have a family that is spending $38,200 per year. The family's income is $21,700 per year. The family adds $16,500 in credit card debt every year in order to pay its bills. After a long and difficult debate among family members, keeping in mind that it was not going to be possible to borrow $16,500 every year forever, the parents and children agreed that a $380/year premium cable subscription could be terminated. So now the family will have to borrow only $16,120 per year.

Understanding Congress's solution to the federal deficit problem.

Oy! This is terrible economics.

Understatement of the day, by Mark Thoma

Republicans aren't Exactly Known for Their Willingness to Cooperate:

The news people are telling me that Obama gave a bad speech -- it made Republicans so mad they'll be uncooperative. "Astute observers" are making the same claim.

And they seem to be serious.

Republicans, of course, would never engage in "aggressive partisan attacks," refuse to play unless they get their way, or use other tactics that might poison the well of cooperation.

I'll say.