THIS MODERN WORLD

I haven’t watched Saturday Night Live for a very long time, but tuned in last night in hopes of catching Tina Fey’s much-hyped Sarah Palin parody, and out of curiousity about how they might be taking on the presidential election generally, not to mention the financial meltdown.

This is what I saw:

— an opening skit about how political ads distort the truth.

–the host’s opening monologue, an extended riff on the fact that he is a famous actor who is also attending Columbia University.

-an interminable skit about “cougars“.

–a skit about a James Bond-type secret agent who is — wait for it — a stoner!

And then, four set pieces into the show, they got back to current events — with a hi-larious bit about how difficult it will be to find impartial jurors in the latest O.J. Simpson trial.

At which point I turned the television off.

Seriously: why does this show still exist?

(Full disclosure: I had an unhappy experience working on some animated pieces for SNL ten years ago. But my question still stands.)

link

Financial-market wise guys, who had been seized with fear, are suddenly drunk with hope. They are rallying explosively because they think they have successfully stampeded Washington into accepting the Wall Street Journal solution to the crisis: dump it all on the taxpayers. That is the meaning of the massive bailout Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has shopped around Congress. It would relieve the major banks and investment firms of their mountainous rotten assets and make the public swallow their losses–many hundreds of billions, maybe much more. What’s not to like if you are a financial titan threatened with extinction?

If Wall Street gets away with this, it will represent an historic swindle of the American public–all sugar for the villains, lasting pain and damage for the victims. My advice to Washington politicians: Stop, take a deep breath and examine what you are being told to do by so-called “responsible opinion.” If this deal succeeds, I predict it will become a transforming event in American politics–exposing the deep deformities in our democracy and launching a tidal wave of righteous anger and popular rebellion. As I have been saying for several months, this crisis has the potential to bring down one or both political parties, take your choice.

The rest.

One of Paul Krugman’s readers sent him this quote from a recent article “by” John McCain called “Better Health Care at Lower Cost for Every American” (pdf):

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

The only way McCain could do more to help Obama win is if he went on stage for the first debate next Friday, pulled a kitten out of his pocket, and bit off its head. Yet despite McCain’s assistance, I still have faith the Democrats may manage to pull this out of the fire at the last second and lose.

Alan Greenspan was knighted by the Queen of England in 2002. Here’s the citation announced at the time by the British Treasury:

The award is in recognition of his outstanding contribution to global economic stability and the benefit…realized from the wisdom and skill with which he has led the U.S. Federal Reserve Board.

Certainly would be a good time to have some of the $500 billion plus we’ve spent on the Iraq war.