Wonkette

A transition of power, combined with the crumbling economy, leaves America very vulnerable to the Terrorists. It is very clear to them, the Terrorists, that we do not have our shit together, at all. We have three presidents and 42 cents of real wealth; we grow a lot of corn. If you were a Terrorist looking at this, you’d just want to fucking bomb it, right? This is why we should have elected Republicans, America, because they know two things: (1) camels are from the Middle East and (2) filthy Mexicans are always sneaking into our country and then giving AIDS to our children. And yesterday two camels were seen wandering around a Mexican border city, trying to blend in, acting all cool, keeping it real discreet-like. It’s pretty clear, then, that the Arab Terrorists are coming from Mexico to, uh, eat yr brains. MORE »

NONE OF YOU PEOPLE DO ACTUAL WORK, DO YOU? Click the little picture here and you will see something remarkable: More than 500 of you nuts are playing this little EcoDriving game widget deal, and you’ve accumulated nearly 15 million points. The closest competition doesn’t even have a half-million points, while losers who read Talking Points Memo and Power Line and, presumably, fivethirtyeight.com (Nate’s EcoDrivers?) actually have scores lower than any human math can represent. MORE »

Money-printing liquidity trapper Ben Bernanke has been a Local Loser in recent months after rapidly cutting the federal funds rate to negative 1,000% to no effect whatsoever, except national embarrassment. He’s had to print Master Paulson’s money, alone, every night, as punishment. He is not allowed to shave. But as Paulson and his flack Neel “Chump” Kashkari refuse to do anything right, Bernanke’s had enough and he’s just going to sing it from the rooftops of America! Today, in a big speech, he declared that the “government must step up efforts to prevent home foreclosures, with options including buying delinquent mortgages and providing bigger incentives for refinancing loans.” Meanwhile, back in their lair, Paulson and Kashkari are discussing what evil they must next bring to the global economy. MORE »

How do you “sex up” your latest middlebrow conventional-wisdom financial column in Slate, which is the U.S. News & World Report for people who have learned the computer? You hire a disgraced New York governor now only known for paying far too much money to have sex with a hooker! And that is worth one (1) morning of goofy New York tabloid headlines such as “Slate hot for Love Gov Eliot Spitzer as online finance guru” and two (2) posts on Wonkette. Let’s review Spitzer’s debut as yet another Web freelancer typing zero-research op-eds on the Internets! MORE »

Look at their sweet coordinated dance moves! It’s like that “Thriller” video, only at the end, everybody has to give them 39 billion dollars. [NPR]

Oh dang! Rumor has it that Tim Geithner, our Treasury Secretary-to-be, does not care for our beloved Sheila Bair and her maverick ways. Bair is the chairman of the FDIC and one of the few high-profile Bush administration appointees to very repeatedly and publicly bang the drum about how if our financial crisis is ultimately due to people’s mortgages going south, maybe we ought to work on fixing those bad mortgages. She’s a working class hero! So naturally, Giethner hates her guts. MORE »

Florida Republicans are a very special breed of morons. They will pay you $20 to give you a blowjob in the bathroom, they will keep you up at all hours on the Instant Message Blonker if they think you are a hot pimply teen, and they will hang up on you if you are the President-elect. Florida Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen got a call from Barack Obama and hung up on him, twice, because if she learned one thing from Sarah Palin it’s that world leaders will never call Republicans in earnest. MORE »

• The bombs used in last week’s attacks in Mumbai sat undiscovered in bags in a pile of luggage for a week in the city’s main train station. Indian security authorities make the Bush Administration look competent. [Guardian]
• Holy wow, rates for 30-year fixed mortgages might go down to 4.5 percent. [San Jose Mercury News]
• Central banks in Europe and overseas are all cutting their rates hugely. [Reuters]
• The UAW said they would make “concessions” regarding employment security and retiree benefits for members in order to help with the Big Three bailout, but voter opposition to any kind of government rescue of Detroit is growing. [New York Times]
• Vladimir Putin’s widespread popularity in Russia is suffering now that all the oil barons are going broke. [Bloomberg]
• Lawsuits have been filed in Hawaii, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, California, Georgia and Mississippi alleging that Barack Obama may not have been born in the United States. [Honolulu Advertiser]

The silly DNC spent all of its cash on loser Jim Martin’s 800 losses in Georgia this year, so what do they do, right, they go to Obama and ask for a damn check, and then he e-mails us to hawk some more junk. “Obama for America” writes, “This holiday season, celebrate the historic accomplishment of our movement for change. Treat yourself or a loved one to a limited edition Obama fleece jacket.” It’s really the only appropriate celebration for such an historic accomplishment. They are $50, and if you do not buy one then you hate black people. [Barack Obama]

SPITZER TO EDIT SLATE’S NEW LADY BLOG, XX FACTOR: Or something! The Observer reports that human penis Eliot Spitzer will be writing a column for the online Slate magazine, starting tomorrow. Oh that Slate, always keeping us on our toes! The column “will appear every other week and it’ll be about government, regulation and finance.” In other words: just softcore. And… uh… just imagine that this post had clever sex jokes in it, k? [Observer]

Loveable Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell has opened his fat trap yet again, this time on a hot mic, to celebrate the selection of Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano as Secretary of Homeland Security. He tells a friend that she’ll do well because she’s a fucking unmarried childless loser: “Janet’s perfect for that job. Because for that job, you have to have no life. Janet has no family. Perfect. She can devote, literally, 19, 20 hours a day to it.” Because what the hell else does she have to do, cry all day like a baby, which, again, she’s never had? Does she even have one friend, anywhere?? Also: what is this “thing” that Campbell Brown is doing now, “Cutting Through The Bull.” CNN has no business Dobbsifying this nice lady. [YouTube, Philly Inquirer]

• Police are going to use truth serum (probably just pinot noir) on the only surviving Mumbai terrorist. [Daily Beast]
• Harvard is in a recession too! The elitist madrassa where Barry spent his formative years managed to lose 22% of it’s $36.9 billion endowment in four months. [HuffPost]
• According to Jonah Goldberg, the real victims of Proposition 8 are the Mormons, who were in no way affected by Proposition 8 or any of its outcomes. [Andrew Sullivan]
• Obama loved his new boyfriend Bill Richardson better when he did the whole bear thing. “We’re deeply disappointed with the loss of the beard,” Obama said at a press conference, which was probably held in some art gallery in Providence. [CNN Political Ticker]
• The forgotten territory of Oklahoma is celebrating the completely irrelevant fact that John McCain won the state with a dumb Christmas card. [Ben Smith]

This sign apparently hangs in a ladies’ room at the Department of Veterans Affairs. But is this a standard thing in all ladies’ rooms, everywhere? Ladies? [Endless Simmer]