Andy Griffith - Darlings - There Is A Time

A friend of mine told me I should check this out on YouTube. It's the Dillards performing on the Andy Griffith show, with the assistance of "Charlene" on vocals.

Krugman Looks at the New Budget

Since I've been assiduously linking to Paul Krugman whenever he explains why the economy is in the toilet, it's only fair to do so when he sees some signs of hope.

The budget will, among other things, come as a huge relief to Democrats who were starting to feel a bit of postpartisan depression. The stimulus bill that Congress passed may have been too weak and too focused on tax cuts. The administration’s refusal to get tough on the banks may be deeply disappointing. But fears that Mr. Obama would sacrifice progressive priorities in his budget plans, and satisfy himself with fiddling around the edges of the tax system, have now been banished....And these new priorities are laid out in a document whose clarity and plausibility seem almost incredible to those of us who grew accustomed to reading Bush-era budgets, which insulted our intelligence on every page. This is budgeting we can believe in.

T. S. Eliot - Ash Wednesday

Yesterday, to mark the occasion, Tom Watson posted on his blog a recording of T. S. Eliot reading his poem "Ash Wednesday." It's fourteen minutes long, and, to me at least, there is probably not a better way you could spend fourteen minutes than by listening to it here.

The Economy: How We Got into this Mess

I had never before heard of Dennis X. Li. He's not to blame for what happened, but he opened the door to what happened.

H/t to kos

Elaine May, Your Basic Hilarious Genius

I've been an Elaine May fan for about a thousand years, and although she's less visible than she once was she's still got the goods in terms of that whole razor-sharp funny person thing. Here she responds to a questionnaire from Vanity Fair.

Big Banks: Now What?

So Krugman in his usual fashion lays out the alternatives and tries to help the frightened moguls to face reality.

Still, isn’t nationalization un-American? No, it’s as American as apple pie.

Lately the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has been seizing banks it deems insolvent at the rate of about two a week. When the F.D.I.C. seizes a bank, it takes over the bank’s bad assets, pays off some of its debt, and resells the cleaned-up institution to private investors. And that’s exactly what advocates of temporary nationalization want to see happen, not just to the small banks the F.D.I.C. has been seizing, but to major banks that are similarly insolvent.

What's the Matter with Texas?

Being more a Ralph Yarborough type of Texas Democrat myself, I don't find the decline in power mentioned in this article to be a bad thing. But it's worth reading--I haven't seen these matters discussed so cogently before.

But now, barely a month into the Obama administration, even the proudest Texans must admit: The days of Lone Star Power are over. You may greet this news with tears or with relief, but there's no denying it. Now that George W. Bush has hightailed it back to Dallas, there is no Texan of any real significance left on the national stage. Kay Bailey Hutchison is still hanging on, and Texas has that governor, Rick whatsisname, the guy with the haircut, but the most visible Texan in Washington right now is probably the Libertarian Ron Paul. I don't think I need to say much more than that.

The twangy voices of political Texas, once so loud and proud, have been hushed. Molly Ivins is gone; great lady, sorely missed. Progressives such as Ronnie Dugger and Jim Hightower still soldier on, but not like before. The closest thing to a public intellectual Texas can now claim is Kinky Friedman, a Lone Star icon whose political pronouncements -- you'll recall he was a viable candidate for governor a while back -- make Ron Paul look like Lincoln. Offhand, I can't even name another Texas congressman. You?