Congress is upset over suddenly learning our financial system is in grave jeopardy! How does it make them feel? Dazed Capital Feels Its Way, Eyes on Election News reports are unrelentingly talking of “crisis.” After decades of deregulation and free-market fealty, antiregulation, small-government Republicans are putting the government in control of a big chunk of [...]

For the last year, the buzzword on Wall Street has been exposure. As in, “Big Investment Bank is exposed to subprime” or whatever financial instrument is failing at the moment. When companies realize how exposed they are to this or that, they make huge write-downs — reassessments of their profits and net worth, often tallying [...]

The Batavian is a blog that has taken over an online news reporting niche that apparently has not been filled by the Batavia Daily News. Josh Shear (a man of many blogs) has a post about Twitter and the many ways it can be repackaged as news. CNY Snakepit blames Billy Fuccillo for local TV [...]

Well! Now that we’re all wearing barrels on suspenders (not just the poor Upstate country cousins)… State Legislature May Convene As city and state officials assessed the potential fallout from the collapse of Lehman Brothers on Monday, the speaker of the State Assembly said he expected the State Legislature to reconvene in an emergency session [...]

In Rwanda, every last Saturday of the month, from 7 to 11 a.m., the entire nation rolls up its sleeves and (by law and custom) cleans up stuff. This is called umuganda (“contribution”), and has been a tradition in the country since before the Europeans arrived. Officially, if you don’t come out of your house [...]

Apologies for the provocative title. “Loser” is a derogatory term that implies bad things about a human being, none of which I would ever think to apply to someone I don’t know personally, especially not someone like Hawkins who is dedicated to providing alternative ideas and points of view at election time. However, it is [...]

Seeing the photo in today’s paper of the new Pentagon 9/11 memorial, I am wondering about the trend in “funerary architecture” of creating memorials with individual identical pieces for individual dead. It didn’t start with 9/11 (Oklahoma City comes to mind) but it does seem like a relatively new emphasis. There is a recently completed [...]

When the blue chicory is in bloom, one doesn’t care so much that weedy medians are not a political issue in western Onondaga County. They are a hot issue in Cobleskill, however, according to Slums Along the Mohawk. Phil at Still Racing in the Street has written extensively about GOP mockery of community organizing (here, [...]

In what counts in Albany as a “gaffe,” Gov. Paterson introduces what may become the most-quoted word in New York politics since “dysfunctional”: Bloodsuckers! As in, “I used to sit in my legislative office and think about how difficult it is to travel 150 miles to Albany on a bus … and how there were [...]

(Bumped up, cause yeah, we’re still talking about her!) No, I’m not talking about Obama, but rather McCain’s VP selection, Sarah Palin. Not someone who particularly appeals to me politically; as a woman, I don’t see her selection causing my finger to hesitate in the voting booth. However, I notice that even the Washington punditry [...]