Links: 2010-02-15 – Bayh, Greece, Palin and Kevin Smith
- Evan Bayh To Retire – Swampland – TIME.com
- Ron Paul vs. Sarah Palin for the Soul of the Tea Parties – Jane Hamsher
- FiveThirtyEight: Evan Bayh – Non-Strategic Retirement
- Update: The Kevin Smith Southwest Airlines Fat-Flight Tweakout of Epic Proportion – Kevin Smith – Gawker
- Say it ain’t so: Joe the Plumber feels used by McCain, Palin | Midwest Voices
- Alleged Ala. killer was suspect in attempted bombing of Harvard professor – Local News Updates – The Boston Globe
- FT.com – Otmar Issing – Europe cannot afford to rescue Greece
- Germans say euro zone may have to expel Greece: poll | Reuters
- FT.com – Gideon Rachman – Why Mexico is the missing Bric
- FT.com- Race riots hit Milan
- FT.com – Scientists discover the secret of ageing
- Germany growls as Greece balks at immolation – Telegraph
- The real reason for the euromess | Paul Krugman | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
- FT.com – Fed’s Bear Stearns portfolio value falls
- Greece: Our Debt, Your Problem – Paul Kedrosky
- interfluidity – Can we handle the truth?
- Economics of Contempt: Mind-Boggling Nonsense from John Cochrane
- Wall St. Helped Greece to Mask Debt Fueling Europe’s Crisis – NYTimes.com
- No bank failures this Friday – Rolfe Winkler
The Hamsher piece concerning the contestation between Sarah Palin and Ron Paul for the “soul” of the Tea Party movement caught my attention. Most revealing, these paragraphs, since it is already a given that establishment/neo-con/ReichsChurch Republicans like Palin have succeeded in seizing the reins of the Tea Parties from their founders in many instances:
“But it underscores a rift between the anti-tax, pro-civil rights libertarians who started the tea parties and the corporatist neocon grifters of the GOP who are now trying to swoop in and capitalize on all of the hype. And in the irony of ironies, tea party-identified candidates are now trying to oust Ron Paul from his Texas House seat.
“Paul appeared on Rachel Maddow last night to speak about it. Rachel asked him about his relationship to the tea parties, and he said: ‘I think the message gets a little bit diluted when a lot of people come in and the Republican party wants to make sure that maybe there’s a Neocon type of influence’.
“Ron Paul was reluctant to reject Sarah Palin’s endorsement of his son, and mostly tried to change the subject.”
The imbecile enthusiasms of his adolescent following notwithstanding, yet again the vaunted Ron Paul proves himself to be just the most garden variety type of political self-seeker. After having whetted their appetites during the 2008 campaign only to back away from an independent campaign for the presidency in favor of keeping his Republican seat in Congress – as though voters in his district somehow couldn’t do without him – the supposedly “principled” and “anti-system” Paul now eagerly accepts Palin’s endorcement of his son’s run for a Senate seat from Kentucky! What a colossal phoney this man is! When your son runs for a Senate seat based primarily on the name of his father and that while the old man is trying to foist himself off as an anti-system figure is the very height of opera buffa. To be sure its another snap-shot of the travesty that is libertarianism.