Sister Sarah Saga, The Morning After

The difference between the moderately sane conservative pundit and the batshit crazy wingnut has been thrown into sharp relief over the last 24 hours or so. The sane ones, like Ed Morrissey and the Hot Air crew, Rick Moran, Stephen Green, all have like myself come to the conclusion that Palin's career is over.

But it's the folks that seem to believe that this will somehow help Sarah Palin that are the true nutbars, with Bill Kristol and A.J. Strata leading the pack, and Pamela Geller actually blaming Obama for this (yay Obama Derangement Syndrome!)

Over at the Daily Beast, Max Blumenthal goes over the scandal-plagued Palin's career and like myself, wonders what the hell the real reason she resigned was.

If there's no other shoe to drop, if she's just giving up and laying low, she's still done, folks.

You don't come back from something like this. And whoever decided she would have made a good vice-president, from the people who selected her, the people who promoted her, and the people who assured us she had the most experience in the race...the credibility of those people should also be nil at this point.

We dodged a bullet. 46 percent of American voters thought this woman should have been one heartbeat away from the Presidency. Those are the people who right now should be truly pissed off this July 4th.

Working For A Living...For Now

Brad DeLong has a couple more really, really depressing employment charts.

The BLS says:

And David Rosenberg, via Barry Ritholtz:

We're in terrible trouble here, folks. We've dropped down to civilian-employment ratio levels of the mid 80's, and we've made that drop in roughly two or three years. That's bad. All indications are we may have another year plus of this to go.

That second chart however is the real problem. Five unemployed Americans for each open job position? That's unsustainable for an economy. We're getting to the point where the long-term unemployed are falling through the safety net. States are going broke and having to cut back on services or eliminate them totally just when Americans need them the most.

Too many people are still betting on a V-shaped recovery. It's not going to happen. Best case scenario is a long, steady slog over a decade or so back towards where we were, worst case scenario is a second, more severe recession that would have to be considered a depression. The evidence that the latter is coming in 2010 continues to grow.

It's bad now, real bad.

It will almost certainly get worse, and might even possibly get much, much worse.

StupidiNews, July 4th Edition!

• North Korea has now test-fired several short-range Scud type missiles into the Sea of Japan sparking fireworks.
• Los Angeles is bracing for massive crowds at Tuesday's memorial service for Michael Jackson at the Staples Center.
• American Andy Roddick tries to stun the Brits in Wimbledon's men's final, the women's final features both Williams sisters.
• India has become the latest country to question declaring independence from the U.S. dollar as world reserve currency.
• The revolution at Midway Games seems to be settled as Time Warner has stepped in to buy the company.

Have a safe and happy July 4th weekend.