LORD KNOWS WHAT KIND OF WOKE ROMPINGS WENT ON IN THAT BANK!
Man, they're stickin' with it. Also Larry Kudlow is still dumb as shit.
Back during the financial crisis of 2008, there was a myth in wingnut world that the crash was caused by a law called the Community Reinvestment Act, which, according to the Republican lore at the time, FORCED innocent banks into making risky loans to unqualified people, AGAINST THEIR BETTER JUDGMENT, and now look what happened, Obama, NOW LOOK WHAT HAPPENED, OBAMA, THANKS OBAMA.
It was an insidiously racist lie, a way for people like Rush Limbaugh (who was not a dead rotting carcass at the time) to blame a crisis caused entirely by rich white men on poor Black people. You know, like Republicans do.
But looking back on those heady days, we have to acknowledge that at least the lie had moving parts. At least they bothered in their bullshit to construct a myth around a specific law. At least they had a narrative of some sort, albeit a vile and racist and ultimately stupid one.
Witness the deterioration and decomposition of the Republican brain over the course of the last 15 years, and that is how you get to *FAAAAAAAAAAAAAART*IT WAS THE WOKE BANKS WHAT DID IT!
YESTERDAY! Do Banks Fail Because They're Too Nice To Gays? Is That How The Financial System Works?
Larry Kudlow, the rightwing economic idiot who was so stupid he got to run Donald Trump's White House Economic Council, has never been particularly good at this. He's not a guy you'd ask if you were confused about a financial instrument or trend or forecast. Might as well ask Lauren Boebert. But still, he markets himself as an economics guy. You'd hope he'd have something of value to say.
Nah. Instead we have:
LORD KNOWS WHAT WOKE ROMPINGS WENT ON IN THE BANKS! THE HEAD OF THE SAN FRANCISCO FED IS A KNOWN WOKE ROMPER!
He starts by making it sound like he's talking about real finance stuff. "Asset-liability mismatch" and whatnot. And he immediately runs the car off the road into "Lord knows what other leftwing romping was going on in these woke banks!" And Mary Daly? She is "quite a wokester!"
Then he blamed the bank failure on the Biden administration causing inflation, which would seem to negate his earlier argument that it was caused by a woke romping festival at the bank. (Probably held on Lesbian Visibility Day, if we had to reckon.)
This is what passes for "economic analysis" on Fox Business, where they talk about business. Because who is a crank? Larry Kudlow is not a crank!
In this video, Kudlow says Mary Daly at the San Francisco Fed is the "leading woke." Also "she's a climate person." This was in response to babblings from Andrew Puzder, the Trump Labor secretary pick and fast food CEO who was too awful/garbage/stupid for Republican senators to confirm and had to withdraw his nomination.
And in this video, Kudlow says the head of the FDIC is also a woke and has a woke board.
At the end of that thread, Baragona shares a good article Media Matters put together about what this obsessive repeating of a meaningless word Republicans can't even define says about their inability to even talk about policy anymore. It's just not a thing they do. They're abjectly stupid people trying to appeal to even stupider people.
Policy? Governing? Knowing things? All have a well-known liberal bias and we are pretty sure that's woke.
As we said at the top, this is how much the Republican brain has deteriorated. This is what happens to brains when they're not used on a regular basis.
Bless their hearts.
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Do Banks Fail Because They're Too Nice To Gays? Is That How The Financial System Works?
Fox News and Republicans know their constituents are stupid enough to believe this garbage. So they lie to them.
Unfortunately we have to spend another day mocking this "woke bank" shit, because Fox News and Republicans are still claiming Silicon Valley Bank collapsed because it was "woke."
OH NO MOCKING! What Caused The SVB Collapse? Could It Be ... WOKENESS?
Is that a thing? Is that a reason banks fail? Is there some kind of economic principle that says if you are too nice to gays, if you display your pronouns in your email signature, that your bank will fail? And was this bank even a known purveyor of pronouns?
Jesse Watters, your turn:
WATTERS: So this stupid bank in California didn’t see inflation coming. They’re about as smart as the Fed Chair. So when the Fed Chair finally raised rates, the bank got crushed. Well, why weren’t they paying attention? Silicon Valley Bank is a woke Biden bank. They were holding seminars on Lesbian Visibility Day and National Pride Month. Now, if you want to hold a pride month, that’s fine, but you’ve got to be able to chew gum at the same time and walk. So, keep an eye on the balance sheet, guys.
Hate it when banks forget to look at the balance sheet because they're too busy doing "Free Car Washes For Subaru Outbacks Only" day in the parking lot.
Watters was far from the only one.
Last night Tucker the Bank Expert said "one of the main reasons our big banks are now increasingly incompetent and also one of the reasons Americans are so divided by race" is because Barack Obama forced them to do diversity, equity and inclusion standards. (Ahem, no. But as we all know, Tucker doesn't like it when there aren't as many white men in positions of power as he thinks there should be. So he says things like that.)
Some Fox Business anchor yesterday said this was "the first bank failure that was caused by adherence to woke beliefs and policies." (So don't go looking for it in any economics textbooks!) He said specifically it was "the woke belief that you can just print money without consequence." So that was kind of a remix of the "woke" hit single, tailored for the very business-minded Fox Business viewing audience.
Did this happen because of "cultural and economic Marxism"? Or "Woke DEI, ESG, all of these things, social justice?" Was it "this long march of socialists through our institutions over many decades?" Noted dumbfuck Monica Crowley said last night that it was.
Hate the "cultural Marxism" of banks fucking up and the federal government saving them, but notably not by using taxpayer money.
Anyway, we are sure all the remaining solvent banks will appreciate this free banking advice from Jesse Watters and other Fox News idiots. And Lauren Boebert. And GOP Rep. James Comer.
Comer was still huffing his "woke bank" shit all over the TV last night.
When we say there are literally no sentences in that clip that have anything to do with what happened with Silicon Valley Bank, we are not exaggerating. He babbles about "Green New Deal." He babbles about how this somehow had to do with giving loans to "people who check a box on a liberal wish list." The Silicon Valley Bank did not collapse because of loans. Indeed, a big component of why it collapsed is because of a lack of loans.
Want somebody to explain that to you? Let them! This is an explainable event. Many smart people are explaining it. It's literally all about a bank that serves a particular industry — very un-diversity, in that way! — and got ahead of its skis and read the financial room incorrectly, and it's pretty particular to that bank. (Similarly, Signature Bank, the crypto bro bank that collapsed this weekend, also failed for reasons very particular to that bank.)
Instead, Fox News and Republicans know with 100 percent certainty that their constituents are stupid enough to believe this is happening because of Lesbian Visibility Day, so they are lying to them. How do we know that? Because we know the things Fox News people admit in text messages and emails they don't anticipate the public reading, where they talk about lying.
As for the elected Republicans, it sounds like at least one (1) House Republican is at least trying to encourage members not to just fucking make shit up.
We'll see if anybody listens to him haha JK.
Tech reporter, Silicon Valley whisperer, and all around cool person Kara Swisher was on MSNBC with Stephanie Ruhle last night and she was just as exasperated with all this halfwit Republican garbage as the rest of us. They talked about how the 2008 financial crisis was done by white guys, and how James Comer is "completely ignorant." She said Silicon Valley Bank specifically was a "joke in the valley" for a long time for how much it was just all dudes running it. "There was nothing 'woke' about this bank."
She was probably right when she said we will next be angry about "woke pancakes." We've already been listening to Tucker bitch about woke M&Ms.
Everything is far too stupid now. This country is not going to survive at this rate, we are guessing.
Oh well. Good try, everyone.
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'Fox & Friends' Idiot Ainsley Earhardt Just Saying Maybe It Is Time For BANK RUN!11!1!1!
Also: did that bank fail because of pronouns?
It may not be easy to quickly grasp exactly why Silicon Valley Bank collapsed. Heather Cox Richardson's newsletter is a good place to start.
Not a good place to start? The grunting idiots who sit on the "Fox & Friends" couch. Unfortunately there are people in America who turn on Fox in the morning and think they are watching the news. Dumbfucks might as well be watching cartoons.
And those dumbfucks got to see this highly intellectual discussion this morning, which included host Ainsley Earhardt saying BANK RUN!111! BANK ruUUUUUnnnn!NN!N!
BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): So, this guy David Sacks, who's well respected, general partner of Craft Ventures, he's on a podcast and he's saying he thinks more could — that more banks could go down this road. And then, Wall Street Journal writes today in their editorial that he is a "panic spreader." So, to take it easy today and don't let this ripple through the economy. There's other fear is if you get rid of the regional banks, if all the regional banks say "okay if they fail, I fail," and if we could become a country run by four major banks we all lose.
LAWRENCE JONES (CO-HOST): I understand not ensuing panic. But I think it's time to be honest with the American people at the same time.
The talking windsocks on "Fox & Friends" are being honest. Much of the news right now is about how Fox News openly and knowingly lies to the feral hogs watching at home, but "Fox & Friends" is gonna be honest.
It's definitely not that these vile anal abscesses are bursting with excitement fantasizing about a financial crisis happening on Joe Biden's watch. Surely not.
AINSLEY EARHARDT (CO-HOST): We need to go to our banks and take our money out.
Oh for fucks sake.
JONES: Well, I mean, I think if you're above that $250,000 mark.
And do goddamned what with it?
Blah blah blah, more words happened after that. You think it can't get stupider but Brian Kilmeade made it stupider.
KILMEADE: They were heavily into equity and all these Pride days around the world. Where is your focus on regulation and risk? And I think that there's an imbalance there.
And now we transition into how this bank collapsed because of WOKE.
Today's conservative media figures and politicians, all of them very serious people, either believe or are pretending to believe that banks and the military and whoever else are focusing on LGBTQ+ pride instead of preventing bad things from happening. It's the same as their belief that if Pete Buttigieg wasn't making the Transportation Department so gay, all the planes wouldn't have fallen out of the sky and derailed that train in Ohio. (Or whatever they are saying.)
It is one of the stupidest and most deranged -- but more importantly, stupidest -- trains of thought to come out of the conservative movement in decades. And that's saying something.
But again, Fox Newslies for ratings, so we shouldn't assume the hosts themselves are so stupid they believe these things. It's their grubby, smelly viewers.
Should we assume Republican House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer really is that stupid when he stands there on TV with his unnaturally square head and talks about how Silicon Valley Bank is "woke"? We think so, yeah. We feel in our hearts that James Comer is that stupid.
But he's also just reading from the same talking points they all are. For one thing, obviously, when a conservative says "woke," the word is devoid of meaning apart from "thing I don't like." (Real Americans think the actual definition of the word "woke" is a good thing to be.)
Media Matters collected a bunch of examples of these glue-eaters saying this happened because the bank was "woke." Charlie Kirk suggested the bank should have spent more time figuring out whether it could guarantee its loans, and less on "woke." He babbled on and on and on: "Did Silicon Valley Bank get distracted about the mirage and the hologram of diversity, equity, inclusion, rather than running a business? Is this the first modern-era woke bank collapse?”
Tucker Carlson said the bank was too focused on “pioneering glass-ceiling-shattering women." Ron DeSantis said they were “so concerned with DEI and politics,” it “diverted from them focusing on their core mission." As if they had a business meeting one day and said "Let's NOT do the bank parts of our job, and instead just do the gay parts." Donald Trump Jr. said a thing.
It's been constant. They really are all reading the exact same talking points.
Every one of them.
"These types never fail to use every chance to play their sad grievance violin, no matter how unrelated." Ain't that the damn truth.
And it is weapons-grade stupid.
In some kind of parallel reality, we could have a country where the parties disagree on economic and financial policy, and have actual arguments about how things like this happen and what to do about it. We do not live in that reality. Instead one entire party -- the same party, incidentally, whose last president incited his garbage followers to commit an act of domestic terrorism in order to overturn the government -- is incessantly babbling about how the bank failed because the bank was too nice to people who aren't white supremacist Christian fascist men who at least claim to be straight.
That's our country now.
And the dumbfuck "Fox & Friends" woman is telling people to pull their money out of the banks.
Cool.
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We Interrupt Your Regular Programing With GOP's Tech Clown Candidate
It's your very narrow Sunday show rundown!
Every presidential cycle you get candidates who stand little chance of being the nominee, much less being elected president of the United States. Your Marianne Williamsons, Jim Webbs, Herman Cains, Rick Santorums, George Patakis, and Michael Bloombergs, if you will.
The Republican 2024 primary has a new entrant: biotech millionaire Vivek Ramaswamy.
Ramaswamy appeared on this week's CNN's "State Of The Union" with guest host Kaitlin Collins, where he used a lot of meaningless phrases and rambled on about the dangers of "woke."
Let's watch!
Collins pointed out the familiarity of a "a multimillionaire businessman running for president promising to shake up Washington." But the thing is that Vivek Ramaswamy is not just that. He is also a man desperately craving attention and fame, which is why he is a pundit fixture on Fox News.
When asked by Collins if he thinks he can win, based on the fact he's never held any elected office nor is a national figure, Ramaswamy performed that tech bro move where they speak fast and contradict themselves but hope no one notices.
RAMASWAMY: [...] I'm not running on my biography or my business credentials. I'm running on a vision for this country that I have articulated over the last several years. And a lot of the conservative base actually is familiar with me through the three books I have written, two of which are published [...]
So, you're NOT not running on your biography or credentials. Got it.
Collins noted that Ramaswamy plans to self-fund his campaign but asked what his limit to that would be. Ramaswamy never fully answers the question while giving a hint that he hopes his "self-funding" might be a bit less as others pitch in.
RAMASWAMY: That being said, I think a lot of businessmen or, history would teach, self-funders make the mistake of thinking that they can just use their own money as a substitute for getting the support of voters. To the contrary, this campaign is actually going to be lifted up by bottom-up grassroots donations. We're already off to a great start in the first few weeks on that front as well. So it'll be a combination of those things. [...]
Pretty sure that despite the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, donations do not equal votes ultimately. But Ramaswamy then tried to use his "self-funding" narrative to make himself seem unbeholden to anyone.
RAMASWAMY: [...]But what it did liberate me from is, many Republicans, what they do is, they ring the tin can, carry a hat in hand, and ask for donors for permission to run. I was allowed to skip that step because of not only my accomplishments, but the fact that I don't want to be beholden to a Republican donor class that's the normal gatekeeper in this process, one of the things I'm calling out.
That sounds cute and adorable, but it's total bullshit. Vivek Ramaswamy is an Ohio native and law school friend of Republican Sen. J.D. Vance. He started Strive Asset Management, which had the financial backing of the billionaire Peter Thiel and Vance’s venture capitalist firm. So while he claims to not be beholden to the "Republican donor class," he looks pretty darn beholden to a libertarian tech billionaire like Peter Thiel. That is not much better.
Collins, mentioning his opposition to "woke" and his "CEO of Anti-Woke Inc" nickname given to him by The New Yorker, asked a simple question.
COLLINS: Can you just define how you — how do you define woke?
Ramaswamy, in apparent panic at having to define "woke," made the same mistake Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis's lawyers did when they had to define the nebulous term in court.
RAMASWAMY: [...] Being woke refers to becoming alert to invisible societal injustices, generally based on genetically inherited characteristics like race, sex, and sexual orientation, and then being called upon to act on those injustices, using whatever potential legally means are necessary, including the market, to do it.
When you define it this way, seems kind of like a self-report that you're fine with doing nothing to fix societal injustices. Because that truth is too revealing, however, Ramaswamy created a strawman he could attack instead ... even if it contradicted his own definition.
RAMASWAMY: [...] Now, my criticism of this is, I think that it's inherently divisive to tell us that we're nothing more than the characteristics we inherit on the day we're born. That divides us on the basis of race and sex and sexual orientation. [...]
The only ones who ever seem to define people solely by their characteristics is conservatives. It's why every time a landmark electoral victory happens for Democrats, the Republicans trot out a superficial copy that misses the actual point. It's the Hershel Walker for Raphael Warnock, the Michael Steele for Barack Obama, or the Sarah Palin for Hillary Clinton. It's always the "try our store brand version of your popular thing" of politics.
Ramaswamy continued throwing out random meaningless phrases and buzzwords such as "unleash the American animal inside the heart of the American economy" and blaming the Silicon Valley Bank meltdown on "diversity initiatives" (which is bullshit) instead of a bunch of tech oligarchs self-inflicting a bank run — some very familiar to Ramaswamy, in fact.
And ultimately this is why Ramaswamy isn't a serious candidate.
He is as empty a suit as Marco Rubio without adopting the full Trump personality like DeSantis did. He's what would happen if you added Andrew Yang to Elon Musk and subtracted the quantum of personality either have and replaced it with more screaming about "wokeism," DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), and ESG (environmental, social, and governance investing) programs.
This might be great in Elon Musk's Twitter universe but in real people's lives, it is meaningless.
Have a week.
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