CombatEffective - Where has my country gone?

...TRex emailed me asking about the transition to the new WordPress format I mentioned in an earlier post. It is happening. The site is actually up and functioning here: http://combateffective.us/wpblog

I have enjoyed using Joomla to run the CombatEffective blog, but WordPress is a better content management system overall (thus the migration). Over the next couple of days, the "new" blog will be populated with much of the visual content the old one has. I was going to keep posting on the "old" one, but I'm farther along in the setup than I anticipated, so new posts will begin appearing today at the new URL. Very soon, I will redirect the main URL to the new blog, meaning simply visiting combateffective.us will take you to the new blog.

Last thing, the existing infrastructure will be held in place until I am able to migrate all of the data over to WordPress. I will not do this until I am sure I can preserve the URL (and any hyperlinks that are out there).

Questions, let me know. See you online!

You may think that's how banks and politicians should feel right now (and you'd be right to think that), but the headline above is actually taken from a banker...slamming someone who argues the social utility of the banking industry in the last decade has amounted to a huge FAIL.

The blog post presents in very good detail the bet Paulson made against the housing industry. That would be the same Treasury Secretary that led the charge to bailout the very firms he set up for failure.

When this man goes to meet his maker, I believe - I want to believe - the conversation will something like this:

God: What life have you led?

Paulson: I was a good man who led a noble, good, and kind life. I did not defraud my fellow man and did not manipulate the global economy for the benefit of me and my investment partners, so we may have gold toilet seats while others could not even afford fake porcelain.

God: Divine Cow Poop. I smite thee to Hell. That is all.

God (to St Peter): Who's next?

St Peter: Tim Geithner.

Mr. Lee equates defaulting on a mortage to shoplifting. Not quite. Even if default is "promise-breaking," the mortgage industry has not honored it's moral obligation to the people in this whole mess.

UPDATE: Commenter Jed Harris (from Mr. Lee's blog) sums up my feeling on the situation exactly: But in the mortgage world, and a lot of other domains, the burden of values seems extremely asymmetrical

I agree with the sentiment of moving away from the gotcha politics, but it just isn't going to happen any time soon.

The lengths to which the politicians have to contort themselves to be offended when one party makes comments like this, then not be when they do it...must wear them out.

...should his lie, under oath, kill his nomination? IMHO, yes. That said, it's a sad state of affairs when the people grilling him are guilty of far worse crimes and will never suffer the consequences of their failures.

...it's a shame they didn't kill the terrorist mofo.

...I disagree. The state cheats taxpayers through its often fradulent, negligent, and wasteful spending of our taxpayer dollars. Were the gov't to make true efforts to regulate that spending, I'd bet folks would be much more inclined to pay taxes.

A very good point. I highlight this not to downplay the threat of terrorism, but agree with FDL a certain amount of perspective is needed.

To my fellow Nevadans: vote this guy out of office.

...I almost blew my lid on reading this...then I saw the word under the title.

No, it didn't. President Obama, please fire this person.

In a move that shows just how disconnected from the rest of us they are, the government has approved a multimillion dollar payout for the top dogs of Fannie and Freddie.

I agree, this debt is not serviceable.

...not even Tiger Woods could have hit them.

Ouch.

Not exactly a scientific term of measure, but it'll do.