Better N'awlins style groovin' funkin' nasty rock is hard to find, they absolutely killed it on the boat last night...destroyed it, obliterated it.  If licks could sink ships I'd have been swimmin' in the Hudson.

Dave & Tommy got the, as Keith calls it, "ancient art of basket weaving" mastered.  And boy do they have fun doing it...all smiles and laughs and jokes.  A band that looks like they're having more fun than the crowd, though you'd think that impossible.

And their rhythm section...hot dog, super nasty.  Serious thunder.

David Dayen - who plays a tangential role - describes:

The important moment in the book for me comes conveniently after Barofsky recounts this FDL News item, one of my HAMP horror stories. Barofsky shows how HAMP's faulty design led to all sorts of problems like this, with trapped borrowers, extended trial payments, no-doc modifications, and eventually unnecessary foreclosures. Barofsky mused that Treasury didn't care about the suffering of borrowers under HAMP, and the issue came up in a meeting with the Treasury Secretary, which was also attended by Elizabeth Warren, then the head of the Congressional Oversight Panel, another TARP watchdog.

Warren asked Geithner repeatedly about HAMP. After several evasions, Geithner said about the banks, "We estimate that they can handle ten million foreclosures, over time... this program will help foam the runway for them."

This is a revelatory moment for Barofsky in the book, and should be for everyone reading. Geithner's concern, first of all, was with how the banks would respond to the program, not how homeowners would respond to it. In fact, homeowners are quite besides the point. Regardless of their situation, they will be one of the 10 million foreclosures, in Geithner's construction. His goal was merely to space out the foreclosures and give the banks time to earn their way back to health, mostly through the other parts of the bailout, that enabled them to earn profits.

It's also important to note that this meeting took place in 2009:

This scene with Warren and Barofsky came in mid-2009, when the program was in its infancy. And it's prospective, not retrospective. It's not that Treasury came up with a justification after the performance of HAMP faltered. It's that it was designed this way.

If the music doesn't get you, perhaps the children will.

8-)

I can smell the sh-t on the asphalt.

My palm feels raw as a shredded radish;

The asphalt sh-t is ground into my blood, I think,

& it will give me a disease like Ebola by morning.

I hear the onlookers review my tumble:

"Ooooohhh!"

"Damn!!"

"That boy went DOWN!!!"

I can't say I disagree & I pop up to my feet

& take a bow like I'm performing for the Queen,

When in reality my audience are the homeless,

The addled & the big blonde lesbian

Who checks ID's outside the door of the pot shop.

Next time I won't try to run across Mission with my bum foot.

Next time I'll park on 9th like I normally do,

Then use the crosswalk in its legally prescribed manner.

But maybe by then the Feds will raid the shop,

Close it up & say no more pot for you losers,

Go get drunk instead, like real Americans.