With the party's brand in the dumps, a group of high-profile GOPers (including Rudy Giuliani, Steve Forbes and Colin Powell) have decided to rebrand themselves as motivational speakers under the 'Get Motivated!'. You can attend for a mere $4.95 or bring you whole office for a mere $19!
[ citing Tough Times ... ]

Douglas Holtz-Eakin wants a conservative version of the Center for American Progress. But as Matt Yglesias points out, there are plenty of think tanks on the right, funded at levels beyond the left’s wildest dreams. If CAP is running rings around right-wing think tanks intellectually — which it is — it’s not due to a lack of institutions or funding.

So what’s the right’s problem? That’s easy: conservative think tanks are short of new ideas because new ideas were the last thing the billionaire funders of those institutions wanted. What they wanted, and still want, is validation of their prejudices; if someone at a right wing think tank forgets the nature of his job and actually, you know, does some independent thinking, he quickly gets fired.

A footnote: does anyone remember this?

In his latest column, the Washington Post’s David Broder extols the virtues of the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, two of the nation’s most powerful and influential think tanks, on their 25th anniversaries. He writes that their “usefulness in Washington politics stems from their intellectual honesty and their willingness to question conventional wisdom, even when their friends are in power.”

[ cf Center for American Regress? ]

In the latest sign of the deepening split among conservatives over how far to go in challenging President Bush, Bruce Bartlett, a Republican commentator who has been increasingly critical of the White House, was dismissed on Monday as a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative research group based in Dallas.

In a statement, the organization said the decision was made after Mr. Bartlett supplied its president, John C. Goodman, with the manuscript of his forthcoming book, "The Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy."
[ cf In Sign of Conservative Split, a Commentator Is Dismissed ]

Milton Friedman in "A Comment on the Critics" approvingly quotes Jacob Viner's (1933) "Balanced Deflation, Inflation, or More Depression":

[I]t woul dhve been sound policy on the part of the federal government deliberately to permit a deficit to accumulate during depression years, to be liquidated in prosperity years.... The outstanding though unintentional achievement of the Hoover Administration in counteracting the depression has in fact been its deficits of the last two years....

[ cf The Chicago School on Dealing with Depression in 1933 I ]

The Most Important Thing In A Time Of War!
Is Tax Cuts!
-- Tom "reality ends here" DeLay

GameStop Corp (GME.N) said on Thursday its same-store sales dropped more than expected in the last quarter and it lowered its full-year same-store sales forecast.

Shares in the video game retailer fell by as much as 17 percent in midday trading after forecasting another weak quarter of same-store sales, a measure of stores open at least a year.

"The real damage here is in the guidance," said Mike Hickey analyst at Janco Partners.
[ cf GameStop same store sales stumble ]

The Federal Reserve took on more than $74 billion in subprime mortgages, depreciating commercial leases and other assets after Bear Stearns Cos. and American International Group Inc. collapsed.

In its biggest disclosure of the securities accepted to stabilize capital markets, the Fed said yesterday it had unrealized losses of $9.6 billion on the assets as of Dec. 31. The bonds, swaps and notes were taken in from Bear Stearns, once the fifth-biggest Wall Street firm by capitalization, and AIG, which had been the world’s largest insurer.
[ cf Bear, AIG Dumped $74 Billion in Subprime, CDOs on Fed (Update1) ]

Now that Bush administration officials have launched a major campaign to persuade us that torture “worked,” perhaps it’s worth recalling that George W. Bush’s own FBI director said in an interview last year that he wasn’t aware of a single planned terror attack on America that had been foiled by information obtained through torture.
[ cf Flashback: Bush’s FBI Director Said Torture Didn’t Foil Any Terror Plots ]

But it’s easy for the Cheney camp to muddy the waters and turn this into a matter of debate by citing unspecified classified info that supposedly supports the claim that it has saved lives — info that we’ll never see. Having the debate focused this way also lays the groundwork for the Cheney camp to say “I told you so” in the event of another terror attack.

One more time: Cheney and the Bushies have mounted a relentless campaign to shift this debate that shows no signs of abating. Whatever the downside of Cheney’s re-emergence for the GOP, it may be working. Where’s the push-back on this from the White House, or at least its allies in Congress and elsewhere?
[ cf Cheney Succeeding In Shifting Torture Debate? ]

I did nothing but promote a video of folks supporting troops, and Charles Johnson has slanderously accused the video of being a British National Party anti-Muslim rally — for it is he who is made of racist accuse-me footage Hitlers. UPDATE: LOL! Look at the hippie fruitcakes protesting the National Front!
[ cf Can wingnuttery be cured? ]

****DO NOT PUBLISH DO NOT PUBLISH DO NOT PUBLISH****

****EYES ONLY EYES ONLY EYES ONLY EYES ONLY****

**** REPEAT: DO NOT ACCIDENTALLY PUBLISH OR WE ARE SUNK****

S,N! editors - please take a quick look at the minutes of yesterday’s clandestine meeting of the liberal-fascist media establishment, progressive bloggers and key provocateurs from the Obama administration. Agenda: Operation Weak Tea, our nefarious scheme to disrupt today’s bold and exciting Tea Party activity planned by virile patriots across this land we loathe as we do all things good and just and pure.

(Speaking - Comrade First-Among-Equals)
[ cf Secret Tea Party Sabotage Plan ]

When liberals complained of an erosion of civil liberties under Bush, we denounced them as traitors — but now that the most vicious totalitarian Nazi regime in the history of Communism is literally issuing reports allusive of thought control via death squad, OMG liberals are such traitors.
[ cf Extremists Release Anti-DHS Reports ( Emphasis to help the near of thot ) ]

Also in play: Reports that the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has decided, as expected, to ease rules that require banks to value toxic debt at fire-sale prices. The FASB told CNN that although discussion that suggested agreement had taken place, a formal vote has not yet occurred.
[ cf Dow rallies above 8,000 ]

One thing you learn rather quickly when working at the International Monetary Fund is that no one is ever very happy to see you. Typically, your “clients” come in only after private capital has abandoned them, after regional trading-bloc partners have been unable to throw a strong enough lifeline, after last-ditch attempts to borrow from powerful friends like China or the European Union have fallen through. You’re never at the top of anyone’s dance card.
...
"The challenges the United States faces are familiar territory to the people at the IMF. If you hid the name of the country and just showed them the numbers, there is no doubt what old IMF hands would say: nationalize troubled banks and break them up as necessary."
[ cf The Quiet Coup (emphasis mine) ]

But asking the Freaks at the IMF if they have read Shock Doctrine, is like asking YOU if you have read Catch-22