I’M TYLER RITI

The major, serial bailouts of 2008 were not the result of some unelected, socialist technocrats hidden away in a government basement somewhere exploiting a loophole. They were the results of GOP-appointed Hank Paulson, GOP-appointed Sheila Bair and GOP-appointed Ben Bernanke, all with the support of a Bush White House-sponsored EESA going to Congress and asking that an emergency bill be passed to allow for TARP. If this all happens all over again, and it could, there’s nothing to stop the government from going to Congress and demanding more money for the financial system. Congress can always pass new laws in an emergency, even if it means overturning old laws. The only way to stop this is through prudential regulation on the front end, separating out business lines that need a set of Federal insurance and those that don’t, and a resolution mechanism that is earlier and reduces uncertainty on the backend.

The GOP is opposed to all this. They have already signaled to Wall Street that, starting the morning of November 3rd, 2010, the GOP will be the party that fights sensible Wall Street reform and returns us to the world of 2009, the world most favorable to Wall Street.

Ever since the 1930s, something very much like the tea party movement has fluoresced every time a Democrat wins the presidency, and the nature of the fluorescence always follows many of the same broad contours: a reverence for the Constitution, a supposedly spontaneous uprising of formerly nonpolitical middle-class activists, a preoccupation with socialism and the expanding tyranny of big government, a bitterness toward an underclass viewed as unwilling to work, and a weakness for outlandish conspiracy theories.

What we’re reaching in some classes is the transformation stage. We’re seeing the iPad completely change the way that certain subjects are taught. Our best example so far is Art. I will write and share more about what we’re doing in Art over time but it’s fair to say that it is already far beyond anything I expected in the first year, let alone the first month.

The difference between the smooth Flash trailers on Sony.com, the jerky episode of CSI, and the system locking Flash video on Fox.com is that the smoother ones were optimized specifically for phone playback. But if content providers have to go back and optimize their videos for mobile platforms, one of the key benefits of mobile Flash–backward compatibility with millions of existing videos–is lost. If you’re modifying your videos anyway, why not go the full monty and use an HTML 5 player instead of Flash?

Dr. Laura’s career has been to exalt no-nonsense personal responsibility and self-control, but her radio career is apparently going to end with her wallowing in the most mundane act of self-pity you’d ever expect from a celebrity: “I’m being silenced by my critics,” declared on national television to millions.

But sexual predators aren’t monsters. They’re men (about 98 percent of them are, anyhow). They can be handsome and seem kind. They can be well-liked. They can do you a favor and think nothing of it. They can kiss their wives in public and mean it. They can be brothers, boyfriends, best buddies, talented film directors, beloved athletes, trusted priests and even (prepare to clutch your pearls) lefty political heroes who seem like genuinely nice guys. What they all have in common is the sociopathic rush they get from controlling another person’s body.

In most elevators, at least in any built or installed since the early nineties, the door-close button doesn’t work. It is there mainly to make you think it works. (It does work if, say, a fireman needs to take control. But you need a key, and a fire, to do that.) Once you know this, it can be illuminating to watch people compulsively press the door-close button. That the door eventually closes reinforces their belief in the button’s power. It’s a little like prayer. Elevator design is rooted in deception—to disguise not only the bare fact of the box hanging by ropes but also the tethering of tenants to a system over which they have no command.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the [mailing list name] list:

We at [department name] have an Incredible deal for you!

As of today, we have some lovely AirPort cards for those famous and fast iMac’s everyone once wanted. These cards will make your wire bound iMac able to connect to that new ‘wireless’ network you have heard about. The new wave is here and you can jump on with this amazing offer.

You have seen those people with those killer brick phones that don’t have wires, right? They can talk to someone that even isn’t in the same room, all without wires! These cards allow an iMac to connect and, yes, you guessed it, talk to someone or something that isn’t in the same room – all without wires.

We have a total of 16 AirPort cards free for the taking if anyone want’s / needs them. I would personally like to connect them all together and see if I can talk to someone 16 times the distance away, but with the way technology is I am sure someone has already done this and you are able to cook your lunch with it to so I offer it up to the group in hopes someone can use them in a positive way.

Shoot me an email if you can use them.

But wait, there is more! Oh, well, maybe there isn’t. Sorry.

Employing tricks like needless pagination, auto-refreshing (see Salon.com), misleading headlines, and the like is cheating. You didn’t earn those pageviews, you tricked people into giving them to you. And then you look at shit like popups, popunders, double underlined links, Snap previews, Tynt scripts, and so on, and it’s pretty clear how hostile it all is. It’s nothing but money-grabbing. If you’ve got it set up so bad that your readers are employing things like ad blockers and Safari’s Reader, you fucked up. You did something wrong. You overestimated how much your readers are willing to tolerate.