Ben Bernanke’s testimony over the past two days gives us our best clue yet about where the administration and the Fed are going with bank rescue. And the answer seems to be … nowhere.

Simon Johnson and James Kwak read it the same way I do:

This is another sign of the serious brainpower that has been expended on finding ways to avoid or minimise government ownership of banks, and to avoid the slightest possibility of offending shareholders – shareholders whose shares have positive value primarily because of the expectation of a further government bail-out.

And The Economist’s Free Exchange puts it bluntly:

At this stage, I joked, I’d be just as happy with them just saying, “We have a strategy, we will continue to inject capital to prop up zombie banks indefinitely. That’s pretty much the whole plan and we’re counting on it bringing the financial sector back to life someday, somehow”. Is it just me or is that pretty much what Ben Bernanke said yesterday?

No, it’s not just you.

Well, that’s good to know. I mean, it seems like a whole bunch of us have been saying this makes no sense, and we don’t want our hard-earned taxpaying dollars going down the drain, but we felt like voices crying out in the wilderness. Perhaps we are not alone afterall:

I’d add a political-economy point. Here’s Noam Scheiber, in the new TNR economics blog:

Yesterday afternoon I spoke to a senior Democratic aide in the Senate who repeatedly emphasized that, the way things stand now, it would be almost impossible to get another cent for the banks. Congress has “bailout fatigue,” the aide said.

Indeed. As long as capital injections are seen as a way to bail out the people who got us into this mess (which they are as long as the banks haven’t been put into receivership), the political system won’t, repeat, won’t be willing to come up with enough money to make the system healthy again. At most we’ll get a slow intravenous drip that’s enough to keep the banks shambling along.

More and more, it looks as if we’re headed for the decade of the living dead.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. But like I said, I’m not a major economist who won a Nobel Peace Prize. Krugman is and did, so I’m gonna listen to him.

So speaking of banks wanting more money, guess who is back at the trough asking for more money from us, the taxpayers I’ll give you a hint – it’s an alphabet company. Yep – you got it, AIG:

Hell freakin’ yeah, they’re back. Some nerve, too, if you ask me, especially after their lavish spending ways. They want us to continue to subsidize them when tey have not demonstrated any fiscal restraint or responsibility?? Are you kidding me?

And while I am on this topic, it is high past time for the Democrats to stop blaming this situation totally on the Republicans. I can understand WHY they are trying to convince everyone that they had absolutely NOTHING to do with this, but the reality is that they have been in charge of BOTH Houses of Congress for over two years now. Where was their oversight of the SEC, in its non-existent oversight of people like Bernie “Made-Off”? Where were they when Franklin Raines ran Fannie Mae into the ground (and Raines, who left in disgrace, was one of Obama’s advisers)? Where were they when Jim Johnson ran Freddie Mac into the ground (and we know where Tim Johnson is – he was on Obama’s Veepstakes Search)?

So, yeah – Bush was horrible – we know that. But for the past 2 years, the DEMOCRATS have been the ones in charge of the purse-strings and the oversight, so stop the blame game, start taking some responsibility, and STOP HANDING OUT OUR MONEY LEFT AND RIGHT!!! Enough already!!

And that ESPECIALLY goes for you, Nancy Pelosi, with this new $410 BILLION dollar package chock-full of pork the House is proposing!! ENOUGH!!!

Donna Brazile, who ran Al Gore’s 2000 campaign, said the Obama campaign has had a “lousy start to the general election. Although the political environment continues to favor Obama and the Democrats, the candidate is still not fully on four cylinders.”

Maureen Dowd, in today’s New York Times column, “May We Mock, Barack?,” in which she chides Obama for his uptight response to the New Yorker cover cartoon:

But he does not want the “take” on him to become that he’s so tightly wrapped, overcalculated and circumspect that he can’t even allow anyone to make jokes about him, and that his supporters are so evangelical and eager for a champion to rescue America that their response to any razzing is a sanctimonious: Don’t mess with our messiah!

If Obama keeps being stingy with his quips and smiles, and if the dominant perception of him is that you can’t make jokes about him, it might infect his campaign with an airless quality. His humorlessness could spark humor.

Dowd continues:

On Tuesday, Andy Borowitz satirized on that subject. He said that Obama, sympathetic to comics’ attempts to find jokes to make about him, had put out a list of official ones, including this:

“A traveling salesman knocks on the door of a farmhouse, and much to his surprise, Barack Obama answers the door. The salesman says, ‘I was expecting the farmer’s daughter.’ Barack Obama replies, ‘She’s not here. The farm was foreclosed on because of subprime loans that are making a mockery of the American dream.’ ”

John McCain’s Don Rickles routines — “Thanks for the question, you little jerk” — can fall flat. But he seems like a guy who can be teased harmlessly. If Obama offers only eat-your-arugula chiding and chilly earnestness, he becomes an otherworldly type, not the regular guy he needs to be.

He’s already in danger of seeming too prissy about food — a perception heightened when The Wall Street Journal reported that the planners for Obama’s convention have hired the first-ever Director of Greening, the environmental activist Andrea Robinson. She in turn hired an Official Carbon Adviser to “measure the greenhouse-gas emissions of every placard, every plane trip, every appetizer prepared and every coffee cup tossed.”

The “lean ‘n’ green” catering guidelines, The Journal said, bar fried food and instruct that, “on the theory that nutritious food is more vibrant, each meal should include ‘at least three of the following colors: red, green, yellow, blue/purple, and white.’ (Garnishes don’t count.) At least 70% of the ingredients should be organic or grown locally, to minimize emissions from fuel during transportation.”

Bring it on, Ozone Democrats! Because if Obama gets elected and there is nothing funny about him, it won’t be the economy that’s depressed. It will be the rest of us.

It’s alright. I’ve always found him boring and humorless.

What disturbs me is that Maureen Dowd — and a long line of “liberal” bloggers — completely ignored the sexist “jokes” of Bernie Mac as well as Obama’s excusing of Mac’s repugnant humor at an Obama fundraiser last week:

“Having a black first lady is different: You’re still going have to do the dishes and the laundry and all that . . . you got to pick up the kids,” Mac said. “‘You didn’t pick up the kids?’ ‘I just came from Korea, talking about nuclear weapons.’ ‘You were on Air Force One and you couldn’t stop to pick up the kids?’”

……………………….

Mac said he is a Democrat “born and raised” but added that “I’m a Republican at tax time.” …

He then talked about his wife who he’s been married to for 35 years, and how she just went through menopause.

“I can’t take it,” he said. “My house is so doggone cold all the time.”

……………………….

The Chicago-born comedian and actor told what he said was a joke about his nephew coming to him and asking the difference between a hypothetical question and a realistic question.

To demonstrate the difference, he tells the nephew to go ask his mother if she would make love to the mailman for $50,000. The mother says she would make love to the mailman and anybody else for $50,000.

He tells the nephew to go ask his sister if she would make love with her neighbor for $50,000. She says she would make love with the neighbor and anybody else for $50,000.

So he tells the nephew: “Hypothetically speaking, we should have $100,000. But realistically speaking we live with two hos,” Bernie Mac said. …

Obama’s response to the audience?

“… Bernie you got to clean up your act. This is a family affair… I’m just messing with you.”

Read the full story here.

Perhaps, instead of worrying about Obama’s lack of a sense of humor, Maureen Dowd should write about the sexis humor that Obama gives a pass.

Perhaps, instead of writing about Obama’s lack of humor, Maureen Dowd should note that getting upset over jokes about one’s self is a sign of narcissism.

Please tell me why it is funny that a menopausal woman, the comedian’s wife no less, is referred to as frigid.

Please tell me why said comedian intimates the only thing a woman is good for is picking up the kids, washing the dishes and cleaning the house.

Please tell me what it says to you that a man running to be President of the United States, who himself has a wife and two daughters, goes onstage to calm down the crowd and admonish said comedian, albeit very flaccidly, then tells Bernie Mac in the next breath, “I’m just messin’ with you, man.”

Senator Obama, when you are going to find a spine and stand up to this sort of misogyny and sexist, objectifying, insecure crap?

How much longer are women going to be subjected to this filthy, denigrating behavior?

Never mind. I just answered my own question.

But Bernie Mac is not alone in treating women this way. Women are comedians’ favorite fodder. As a society we are used to it and even laugh along. Female comedians laugh at men too – but what roles do we perpetuate for them? ‘My hubby never grew up he is still Peter Pan’ nonsense. They cannot see in three dimensions. They are sloppy. They don’t listen. They need to watch the ballgame.

How does that compare with the male version of this diatribe? Terrified of being left, cuckolded or criticized by women, male comics mount a preemptive offensive one cannot fight against: You’re not pretty enough. You talk too much. You don’t suck my dick enough. You’re a gold digger. You are old. You are fat. You are boring. Other women don’t like you. You don’t like each other.

Divide and conquer.

Bill Maher is a perfect case in point. I find that Bill Maher looks like an aardvark, but it is still acceptable for him to criticize a woman’s appearance or attractiveness. He delivers sexist rants on his HBO show, putting women down, calling them filthy names; not to mention flirting with the ‘more attractive ones’, objectifying them, thereby distracting from the message and qualifications of his female guests.

Dana Carvey currently has a new HBO special, most of it hilarious. Of course, he had to do the obligatory political riff. He made fun of just about everyone: Reagan, Bush I & II, Gore. He pretended to take a swipe at Obama, calling him Urkel, but was otherwise almost reverential. Was this a comedy hour or an award ceremony? It was as though he was actually afraid to say anything else. Why Dana – was someone going to call you a racist?

Dana was performing in Northern California, clearly Obama country, and the audience sat silently through his comments about Obama, protective, waiting. So after the Urkel snark, he raced off the subject.

The Clintons however, were not so lucky. Of course, we had to hear from Dana how Hillary’s delivery is so robotic. This is to be expected. Naturally in this country, we prefer style over substance. Never mind that the person he was referring to no longer exists and has been replaced by a much more self assured politician, comfortable connecting with audiences out on the campaign trail. Dana, don’t let that stop you.

Unavoidably, we were, ten years after the fact, subjected once again to Bill Clinton’s sexual indiscretion.

But here is my favorite part. Dana Carvey then sh*t on his own wife, his kids and all women when he basically said, ‘Well, look at Hillary. Can you blame Bill for what he did?’

The audience laughed.

I see. So since Hillary Clinton does not resemble Angelina Jolie, she should expect this kind of treatment? Should all women expect it, too?

Senator Clinton was running to be President, not to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated. And having stood next to Senator Clinton, I can tell you that she is a very attractive lady. Dana Carvey knows this, but he got his cheap laugh at her expense so he could then move on; satisfied. I wonder if Dana’s wife is pear shaped, too, and took offense at his filthy swipe at another woman?

Do you think any women in the audience, aged 60 or otherwise, who also might not look like swimsuit models, took offense? Or did they just laugh along, to protect themselves from being beat up like Hillary has been?

Recently, after Senator Obama’s relationship with the Rev. Wright was reluctantly revealed by the media, the cretinous Chris Matthews and none other than the bullying Chris Hitchens, among others, floated the theory that Obama’s relationship with this divisive, racist Reverend is Michelle’s fault. It must be her influence.

Well, forgive me, but if a 46 year old United States Senator, millionaire, best selling author, husband and father cannot pick up his round behind and leave a place he doesn’t want to be, regardless of what his wife is doing, then he has no spine – and no business running for the office of President of the United States.

In Obama’s constant need to people please his current audience and curry favor with whomever he considers the most important person in the room – in this case, Bernie Mac – it was perfectly acceptable to give this behavior a nod and a wink.

Bernie Mac happens to be a gifted comedian. Are you really trying to tell me that at this kind of a venue, he could not find other material that doesn’t extol the idea that women are low and deserving of abuse and ridicule?

While I do not wish to be hamstrung by political correctness, there is a time and a place for everything. Frankly Senator Obama, Mr. Hopey Changey, has to stop running on the message that he represents ‘a new kind of politics’ and wants to ‘change the world,’ when it is obviously okey-doke with him to treat women as second class citizens.

Actions speak louder than words. Corrections by his staff after the fact will not smooth over his numerous gaffes and insensitivities. But then, you can’t know what you don’t know. If Senator Obama really cared about any of this, misogynist commentary would not get a pass in the first place.

His disrespectful behavior on the campaign trail, his sexist put downs of Hillary and the fact that he pays the women on his staff less than the men indicates very clearly that he has no problem with anything Bernie Mac did or said. It looks as though Senator Obama has no problem with anyone being put down as long as he is elevated by comparison.

This is not the kind of behavior I expect from any decent man, much less a Presidential candidate. Senator Obama needs to take this new kind of politics back to the playground, where it belongs.

John Cole of Balloon Juice gleefully reports that FireDogLake’s story was a spoof, and “I can report that they are stupid enough that they took this spoof at FDL seriously.” Here’s my first-ever “Dear John” letter. Dear readers, feel free to write your own.

Dear John,

Spoofs only work (i.e., are funny) when the material itself is humorous. There’s nothing humorous about Bernie Mac denigrating women as “hos” and complaining his wife is frigid since she experienced menopause. I rarely read your blog, so didn’t realize that you are as immature and sexist as your candidate and his supporters.

Unlike you and, sadly, your female counterparts at FireDogLake, the mature Shakesville bloggers get it. Melissa McEwan, in “Unbelievable,” doesn’t think it’s funny, just one more cruel example of sexism and (her term) misogyny: “Obama chided him for it, only to immediately assure Mac he was just kidding.” Melissa adds:

[I]t really makes me wonder even more WTF Obama was thinking letting off Mac so easy, especially given that he’s “deeply disappointed that John McCain has not spoken out against the attacks leveled against his wife.” (Unless he thinks his wife is magically untouched by misogyny, which I sincerely doubt.)

To response to John Cole’s “How Stupid Is NoQuarter?,” I ask:

Where is the humor in mocking an A.P. report on a comedian’s sexist and crude jokes?

Where is there any acknowledgement by you of the sexism in Bernie Mac’s “jokes”? (I have the answer already: Nowhere.)

Where is there any proof that your candidate — without a teleprompter in front of him — has ever STOOD UP for women?

John, you typify a certain group of young-thug supporters of Obama who cannot see any faults in “The One” and who derisively, unthinkingly mock anyone who does.

Thankfully, there are other blogs for grown-ups. Such as Shakesville, which also has a great piece up on domestic violence, “Looking Over My Shoulder.”

John, you need counseling. Sadly, that is not a spoof remark. I’m serious.

Of course, you’ll first have to recognize that you have a problem. That’s doubtful, but it is critical that impressionable young men and women who read your blog get the message that you too do not tolerate sexism and misogyny.

Read this before your first session: “Feminism 101” at Shakesville. From the section titled On Off-Limits Humor:

On Off-Limits Humor: Here’s the main reason I object to the use of “politically incorrect” humor at this blog: There’s a whole fucking world out there where women and gay men and trannies and racial minorities and the disabled and the overweight and people who are intrinsically and inescapably “different” for any reason are made fun of, marginalized, turned into punchlines. There’s a whole fucking world out there which expects us all to be perfect according to some arbitrary definition and seeks to punish us if we’re not. There’s a whole fucking world out there where people who don’t conform to that standard are not only ridiculed and made to feel not good enough, but can also find themselves at real risk of physical harm. Where they’re denied rights, job opportunities, friendships, votes, equality. If you want to use “politically incorrect” humor that targets those people, you have the entire rest of the bloody world to do it, but you can’t do it here. This is a safe space.

P.S. John, grow up. Calling people “stupid” because they fail to see the humor in degrading jokes about women is a sad sign of immaturity.

________________

Memeorandum is tracking related blog stories.

UPDATE FROM LARRY JOHNSON: It is good to know that we cannot take FireDogLake seriously. It is astonishing that a blog managed by Jane Hamsher and Christy Hardin Smith would tolerate this kind of sexism. If Michael Richards does an intro for John McCain and does another “nigger” rant, would that be “okay?” Hell no.

OBAMA ROCKED BY SCANDAL: Is Presidential Bid Over?

I know we’re not supposed to directly quote AP stories without paying them serious cash, but this story is so important and has such major ramifications for this election — which will of course decide the leader of the free world — that I feel it vital to get this information out there immediately. The AP is to be praised for their tough-minded professional journalism.

The author quotes the sexist, crude joke told by Mac, which we reported at No Quarter this morning. The author continues:

This is potentially game changing. Who would ever have expected such stuff from Bernie Mac? At any rate I don’t see how Obama can possibly win in November in the aftermath of this catastrophe.

However, this story does go some distance towards silencing another controversy that the Obama campaign has been desperate to quiet:

FireDogLake quotes the Associated Press story again:

Mac’s appearance was Obama’s first celebrity event of the evening. Later at a Lincoln Park nightclub, Obama spoke to a raucous crowd of music fans, who paid up to $500 per person to see a performance by Wilco lead singer Jeff Tweedy, and two other band members.

"Before these guys go, I want them to know that I had heard a rumor
that they had suggested that I had nothing by them on my iPod," Obama
said. "That is not true. I love Wilco."

Nevertheless, political observers are certain that the Obama camp is having a great deal of trouble staying on-message, and the candidate himself is prone to terrible gaffes just like "BernieGate." Mac is just the latest in the long line of embarrassing associates Obama has had to throw under the bus, giving rise to speculation that he is a flip-flopper who cannot produce a Sister Souljah moment. Without a doubt, John McCain has once again won the week.

(Emphasis mine.)

Here are NoQuarter’s two stories to date:

• “Sexist Jokester Headlines Obama Fundraiser [Update]”
• “Don Imus versus Bernie Mac“

The CRITICAL FACTOR HERE is Obama’s brushing off of Bernie Mac’s overtly sexist jokes, one after another. This is what Obama told the crowd gathered at the fundraiser:

“… Bernie you got to clean up your act. This is a family affair… I’m just messing with you,” he said.

“I’m just messing with you”?

Obama is excusing Mac’s degradation of women?

Obama is excusing Mac’s degradation of Mac’s OWN WIFE?

Obama is excusing Mac’s crude jokes that have NO place in presidential politics?

Obama is excusing Mac’s remarks about “ho’s” and “menopause” — as a husband and father of two daughters — as well as a nation that is over half female?

Shakesville‘s Melissa McEwan hits the nail on the head:

The headline of this AP article is “Bernie Mac makes off-color joke at Obama event,” though it should be “Bernie Mac makes misogynistic joke at Obama event.” And, for my money, it’s far less newsworthy that Bernie Mac made the joke in the first place, than the fact that presumed Democratic nominee Barack Obama chided him for it, only to immediately assure Mac he was just kidding.
… Read all.

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Memeorandum.com is tracking other blog responses to the A.P. and FireDogLake stories.