The World According to TARP
Hey! The stock market went up! And with it perhaps our level of sanity about financial regulations. Perhaps the one good thing about the enormity of the economic meltdown is that it’s huge enough to make everyone realize that we need stop letting fund managers use financial tools based on phrenology, moonbeams, and train robbery.

Elizabeth Warren, Chair of the Congressional TARP oversight panel, dropped in to chat with Rachel and WOW, does she hate credit card companies!

Warren is hoping our government will use a little less carrot and a little more stick with the banks. She also has the crackymcwacksalot idea that no individual bank should be allowed to get large enough to take the country with it if it goes down the tubes, so get ready for another round of people screaming about Socialism and the oppression of corporate civil rights.

Rachel and Warren also touched on the subject of AIG, causing Warren to exhibit what I can only describe as demure fury. It’s kind of fantastic.

One More Thing:
The Good News: Bernie Madoff is going to jail!

The Bad News: His guilty plea means he doesn’t have to tell anyone which mattress he stuffed all the money into.

The Good News: Good luck living long enough to enjoy it, Bernie! Seriously – nobody sell him so much as a cigarette in that prison.

GOP in Exile
Tuesday’s segment provided an important reminder for those who are contemplating future lives of political corruption: If you’re going to put yourself in the position of possibly going to prison, don’t do it over hockey tickets. Sheesh.

GOPaganda
Hey, Rachel was right! Republicans really hate the Employee Free Choice Act.

I think political disagreement and public argument is an important part of our process, and I don’t want to squelch that. But if the reasons against it are so great, why is it that EFCA’s opponents are doing so much public squawking about the reason that’s not actually true?

If you’re going to oppose it, sack up and freaking oppose it. Stop spreading rumors about it in your Congressional slam book.

Ms. Information
North Korea’s elections seem to bear an uncanny resemblance to some of the monstrously corrupt stuffed animal elections my sister and I held as kids. Actually, that’s not true: Kim Jong-Il put up way better numbers than King Lamb used to.

And yes, of course there is a sailors-in-their-underpants update!

An impossibly named spokesman said that the Impeccable had trespassed in a Chinese sovereign economic zone, but nobody will comment on why the response to the Impeccable’s fire-hose defense was a military presentation of the Y-fronts.

Good lord. It’s an international underpants cover-up!

3/10/57 – ???
Tuesday was Osama bin Laden’s birthday. I hope everyone celebrated by intending to seize and stomp on cake, but then failing to find one.

Rachel continued in the venerable Dorothy Parker tradition of teasing vile world leaders with a side-by-side comparison with some of his contemporaries that might lead one to believe that wherever he is, bin Laden does not have access to the latest in alpha-hydroxy lotions.

Demise-istan
Wise Owl Zbigniew Brzezinski returned to talk about the complicated issues swirling around Afghanistan and Pakistan and give Rachel a sharp rap on the wrist for joking about Osama bin Laden.

A charmingly flustered Rachel defended tomfoolery in the face of evil, and much as I respect Dr. Brzezinski’s knowledge of world affairs, I am totally on her side.

Bottoms Up!
Rachel and former Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson discussed the fact that it’s kind of hard to get alcohol in the Beehive State.

Alcohol, hell – have you ever tried to get caffeine? There’s no faster way for a get-started-early-on-this-beautiful-morning road trip to turn into a hundred miles of the crankies.

Anyway, the largely teetotal state legislature has come to a deal in which new restaurants have to have a special area for mixing drinks that is out of the sight of the young, the impressionable, and the maraschinophobic.

Rachel, an enthusiastic participant in the mixological arts, seemed shocked and baffled that bartenders would be kept out of view, but as a former drink-slinger I didn’t think it sounded all that different from a service bar. I always liked working the service bar in the back because one could listen to the radio, blend drinks without worrying about the noise, and learn amazing new swear words from the waitstaff.

Cocktail Moment
Whoa!

Hope your day goes in from 90 feet at the buzzer as well.