Irving Picard, the dashing trustee representing Madoff victims, has filed a $45 million lawsuit against Ruth. His basic argument: whether she knew it or not, she lived a lavish life with stolen money, and now the victims would like that money back, thanks.

Picard told The Post, "This isn't limited to what she has today. If she has earnings or gets money, from whatever sources, why shouldn't the victims benefit?" Identified in Picard's suit is more than $3 million in personal spending that Ruth rang up on an American Express card.

This is quite a populist argument! Unfortunately Ruth forfeited all her fancy stuff, leaving her with just enough for a 1BR fixer-upper and a trip to California Pizza Kitchen. She probably has not even $2 million to her name right now! So we don't think you victims will see the $45 mil, but still, feel free to approach Ruth on the street and ask her for change.
[NYP. Pic: AP]

Because people these days are mad, see, and when the people are mad, the customers are mad, and that means the companies and especially the ads have to get mad. There is no situation to which the mechanisms of capitalism cannot adapt! Corporate America is the very model of absolute moral plasticity—they agree with you, whatever you happen to be feeling! Why not have some beer with your moral indignation? Why not fly the airline and eat the cereal that really understands your populist angst? Why not allow us to replace your seething anger at things you can't change (THE WORLD, INJUSTICE, ETC.) with seething anger at something you can change:

"We're turning up the volume in relation to what our customers are feeling," said Jeffrey W. Hayzlett, chief marketing officer at the Eastman Kodak Company, which is running ads for a new line of printers and inkjet cartridges that rant about a "$5 billion stain" on the economy caused by "overpaying" for other brands of inkjet printer ink.

Ride your rebellion-spewing Harley Davidson-brand motorcycle right over to OfficeMax and pick up some Eastman Kodak brand inkjet cartridges. That'll show those fat cats! Si, se puede!
[NYT]

Beck was already a popular author before his Fox gig boosted his fame, having published two nonfiction books and a novel, all with Simon & Schuster, and all bestsellers, topping out at 775,000 copies for the fiction, The Christmas Sweater.

The ascendant shouting head's new "multi-book" deal must be worth a bundle. No one has yet affixed a price tag to it, but the Wall Street Journal notes Beck is accepting a lower advance in exchange for a full 15 percent royalty on hardcovers and 7-10 percent on paperbacks.

The evening anchor will somehow find time to write three new titles this year, including audio- and e-books, most of them predictably radical-right-wing titles like America's March to Socialism.

But Beck, not known for his emotional stability, will also be reaching out to children. In the fall comes his "picture book" for children (based on Sweater), followed at some point by "young adult" literature, aka stories for teens.

Between the books, the Fox show and his next comedy tour (sure to be huge with your religious-right college kids), Beck is building a collection of media designed to take conservatives from cradle to grave. He should hope his benefactors at News Corporation don't get too jealous.

Joe Biden says people shouldn't ride the subway? Bonnie Fuller is full of populist rage!

Thanks Joe for joining in the swine flu hysteria. How nice that you and your family have the luxury of riding in the protective bubbles of Air Force Two and the Vice Presidential motorcade. Most of us average folks are stuck with regular modes of transport to get to work—yes those public buses, subways, trains and planes.

This from a lady who made $2.4 million last year and always, always, always had a car and driver provided for her! Haha! And who got mad at the Make-a-Wish Foundation for giving her a free airline ticket to Hawaii in coach!
Populism!
[Huffpo]

"We have the best brand on earth - the Obama brand," she tells WSJ.'s Amy Chozick. "Our possibilities are endless." She likens her approach to that of Dove in expanding beyond a bar of soap.

So, president = dumb floating bar of soap, whose handlers might someday turn him into something more useful and marketable like maybe hand cream or BODY WASH. That should go over well in homes that take the Wall Street Journal.

Also, Rogers okayed one of the worst photo ops ever, until Robert Gibbs got wind of it and stepped in to protect the president, the White House and the future of sustainable agriculture itself. Women's Wear Daily again:

During the WSJ. shoot with Marc Hom, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs vetoed a shot of Rogers in an Oscar de la Renta ballgown in the First Lady's garden...

Looks like Rogers is using her Harvard MBA about as effectively as the last guy to preside over the White House.

[Field Guide: Desirée Rogers]

The last major populist ranter, Lou Dobbs, now appears to be close to finishing out his days at sad, third place CNN, where even the network president is taking potshots at the xenophobic anchor's ratings ("He could stand to attract a few more viewers").

Beck, a "rodeo clown" and would-be comedian, is clearly planning to avoid this fate by blending his political ravings with weird, wacky hijinks that prove he is just that crazy — and just that hard to look away from. If it's easy to become inured to his strategy day-to-day, reviewing the collective evidence really drives the point home, as seen in the clips compiled by video intern Luke Sacherman and posted at left.

Glenn Beck: Flash in the pan or enduring part of the Fox News circus? Only time will tell, but neither Fox not America's many populist demagogues over the centuries have yet lost by underestimating their audience.

Today Cindy takes fancy Washington guy Barney Frank down a peg. Speak English, Barn!

REP. Barney Frank's hand is out again. He writes that "collateralized debt obligation derivatives and credit de fault swaps at the center of this country's conservative ideology" begs a handout because: "Reaction to the disastrous consequences of an absence of regulation means we can do like Franklin Roosevelt and Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson," who "adopted a set of economic rules to curtail abuses resulting from lack of regulation while maximizing society's ability to profit in an appropriate way." Huh?

Cindy Adams has never understood what "appropriate" means.

He talks of "encountering crass right-wing mendacity" due to "the mythology" of the "far right-wing ideology." And "failing to respond even to dishonest hyper-partisan" crapola is a mistake. So he needs "private sector innovation" and a few bucks to "stave off comprehensive financial regulation by blaming current economic troubles on Democratic efforts to provide social fairness."

"The mythology." What are we, Russian? We didn't spend our lives with our noses buried in a dictionary, unlike some people Cindy Adams could name (Barney Frank).

Listen, anybody who understands what the hell he's talking about should send him a few.

"Take money bad Rrrrrrrahhhhhh!" Cindy Adams responded drolly.
[NYP]

The shows sound pretty awful. Fox News host Beck told USA Today his live shows are a sort of "poor man's Seinfeld," which would make them conservative shows about nothing. "Conservative" in this context apparently means "not funny, to anyone," judging from the clip at left.

But Beck, a self-described "rodeo clown," has been drawing unexpectedly high ratings to Fox with his new show and angry faux populism. He's chosen cities with strong conservative constituencies: Denver, Phoenix, San Diego, Kansas City, Houston and Richmond, Va.

Presumably, then, Beck will draw to his events plenty of people ready to lose themselves in rage — the same folks showing up for those not-so-grassroots tea parties.

If the angry mobs get large enough, Beck may be able to demagogue his way into some real political clout. Rush Limbaugh, watch your cheese.

With all the chuckling over the inadvertently appropriated term, it's starting to feel like "teabagging" is being, well, shoved down our throats. And who wants that? It's suffocating, really.

The humor, in the end, has ended up like a tea bag that steeped too long: All the flavors drained out and we're left with something rather limp, rather than the spicy libation we were hoping to gulp down.

You'll find a highlights reel above, featuring a ballsy take on the issue from Maddow and Daily Beast columnist Ana Marie Cox. You can get your full-length teabagging experience from the same place we obtained ours, Jason Linkins. (Thanks for that, Jason.)

It's never been clear to what extent Glenn Beck is actually unhinged, and to what extent his Fox News Channel antics are pure clowning. But it shouldn't matter much to the aspiring populist-demagogue-in-chief of our era: if he seems too far into the crazy side of the thin line between rage and psychosis, viewers will start to assume he really is mentally incompetent, and be less willing to take up pitchforks with him.

Which is why Beck probably shouldn't be pouring pretend gasoline on a hyperventillating volunteer (some Red Eye staffer, naturally), as he did tonight in a deranged imitation of Barack Obama, then following that up with maniacal screaming against "games" (uhh...) and in favor of "sanity" (HA!).

Beck may have run a disclaimer that the gas can was filled with water, and he may get all kinds of attention on various blogs (we'll plead guilty, preemptively here, to feeding the troll), but the disgruntled red-state housefraus who nod along to Beck's show in the early evening don't want to see a simulated lynching.

Or probably we're wrong, they'll eat this crap up, and Glenn Beck will fulfill his dream of being the Father Coughlin of our era. God help us (especially in getting a clear view of the train wreck).

(Full video available at Media Matters.)

Three British execs from an adhesives company are only the latest bossnapping victims in France, which has a rich tradition of demanding the rights of workers to have jobs for life, the economy be damned. Polls show that at least half of the French public supports this tactic! It gets results.

So why are we Americans sitting around and letting bosses walk free, when we have so many good candidates? There's no need for this to be confined to the manufacturing sector. City officals in Lewisburg, Tennessee could bossnap the investment bankers from Morgan Keegan who sold them (and plenty of other small town marks!) complicated derivatives, causing them to go broke. Macy's workers can grab the company executives out of their plentiful free Town Cars and stash them under the perfume counter. Short sellers can snatch S.E.C. officials out of their cubicles and tie them to Bloomberg terminals until they give up on their regulation plans. Si se puede!

The world needs its bosses confined to small spaces in order for any economic resurrection to begin. South Korean automakers! Eastern Ukrainian industrial employees! Nevada hookers! Why must you bear the brunt of the shrinking economy while the fat cats continue to roam free, unencumbered and unmenaced? It simply boggles the mind.

Or if this is too much trouble, we could all just band together and buy Wild Turkey. $575 million solves a lot of problems. [Pic via]

A surly Cafferty complained to Wolf Blitzer today about a protester interviewed at the G20 economic summit. The demonstrator's comments were perfectly reasonable, but she was wearing a multicolored jester's chapeau, complete with those little dangling bells.

As far as Cafferty is concerned, one can't have credibility while playing shameless dress-up games merely to get on camera. (Cafferty's own long-running imitation of Howard "Mad As Hell" Beale from the movie Network is presumably the exception to that rule.)

Thanks to video intern Sarah Moroz for finding this clip.

If nothing else, all this attention from Comedy Central's designated right-wing newswatcher marks Beck as, in his own very twisted way, a rising star. Sure, the front-page New York Times profile was nice, but who reads newspapers anymore? The old viewers Fox already has.

Colbert, though, will get Beck all over Twitter, dominated by the young whippersnappers the shouting head needs to truly "surround" his enemies. Not that the microblogging service's wired hipsters will join up, but, who knows, between Colbert and the buzz maybe Beck becomes Saturday Night Live worthy and gets to mainstream his creepy, creepy brand a little bit more.

“I’m a rodeo clown,” he said in an interview, adding with a coy smile, “It takes great skill.

That sort of self deprecation might protect Beck against the relentless teasing of his Fox News Channel colleagues , who after all must envy the speed with which Beck came out of nowhere (aka CNN Headline News) to top all cable news hosts aside from Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity in viewership.

But disaffected fight-winger David "Axis of Evil" Frum is as worried as ever about Beck, for the sake of conservatism:

...Frum said Mr. Beck’s success “is a product of the collapse of conservatism as an organized political force, and the rise of conservatism as an alienated cultural sensibility.”

“It’s a show for people who feel they belong to an embattled minority that is disenfranchised and cut off,” he said.

As opposed to the enfranchised, cash-drenched bankers and the pro-war necons who were key Republican constituents during Frum's glory days. They're all as bitter and loserish as any libtard Dem now, Frum seems to be saying, leaving the likes of Beck and Sarah Palin to lead the dead-ender, social conservative remnants of the base in an unhinged charge against big government.

And all the would-be conservative pundits not down with that are left to just blog or write for the Daily Beast or whatever and seethe at Fox News, like a bitter loser libtard Dem c. 2004.

Welcome to 2009.

[NY Times]

Now we know better: You have to yell at cable news pundits on television to fix all financial problems. Or at least do some kind of video YouTube mash up thing.

Also, "the White House is now black/we gotta take the radio back" is vaguely Public Enemy c. 1990. (What's a "radio?")

[via Wonkette]

The president's third prime-time address/press conference tonight was basically a call to chill: the president said solving the economic crisis will "take patience," that "we're all in this together" and that we can't afford to "demonize every investor or entrepreneur who seeks to make a profit."

Also, he's only been in office 60 days, and the country is "moving in the right direction."

Obama calmly answered about a dozen questions, including his second high-profile quetion from a website, Politico.com. He avoided any 60-Minutes style laughter.

Obama's PR strategy, with which this press conference fits perfectly, has been to be almost ubiquitous on television; Ad Age summarized it (to paraphrase) as basically "there's no such thing as overexposure, because everyone watches different channels now and/or is apathetic."

This is why Obama was the first president to go on the Tonight Show and, within a month, also did 60 Minutes and SportsCenter.

Tonight was his third presidential press conference in just over two months in office; the networks are already annoyed at how frequent these have been.

If the intended effect of the blitz is to calm everyone down, as it seems to be, a nice side benefit of the exposure is refreshing Obama's political capital. With a bailout, budget and health-care plan to get through Congress, the president will need it.

American bankers are sitting on trillions of dollars in troubled mortgage securities they can't sell without admitting their banks are nearly worthless. So they need billions of fresh dollars from the government.

But the government has been trying to take away their precious bonuses, as if they're not excellent at running banks. So the bankers are being dicks, to the president. According to the Wall Street Journal:

When administration officials began calling them to talk about the next phase of the bailout, the bankers turned the tables. They used the calls to lobby against the antibonus legislation...

The banks' message: If you want our help to get credit flowing again to consumers and businesses, stop the rush to penalize our bonuses.

To summarize, the banks are offering this tremendous bargain: Before they will accept billions from the government, for free, they demand their bonuses remain untouched. If the government doesn't give into these demands, the bankers claim they will go to — seriously, this is what they claim — hedge funds and private equity groups for the money they need.

Private equity and hedge funds are in the same pit as banks because — hello? — they borrowed their leverage from banks. They are desperately salivating over Obama's bailout plan, because they'll finally have a sugar daddy again.

But the bankers apparently figure their bluff will never be called. The government clearly isn't going to let them fail, and it's not like we're about to nationalize the banks and fire all these executives, because who better to get our economy out of this mess than the geniuses who got us into it? (Our Treasury Secretary certainly doesn't know!)

"The Rollout Dazzles This Time" was how the Times billed the story on its website. By which the paper's editors meant it dazzled the stock market, for one day: the Dow closed up nearly 500 points, or 7 percent.

That such a "verdict" would define the day's bailout coverage (along with quotes from those receiving the money) should sound dubious to anyone who has scoffed as conservative commentators said the stock market hates Barack Obama, tanking the day after he was elected, the day he was sworn in and the day he signed the economic stimulus package into law.

It should also sound absurd to anyone who remembers how Congress foolishly contorted itself around the stock market's "verdict" last fall. Stocks plummeted after the House rejected a poorly-structured, $700 billion bank bailout. A panicked Senate scrambled to pass basically the same bill, which soon cleared the House and became law.

Just a few weeks later, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson implicitly conceded that the House had been right the first time: He scrapped his initial crap plan to buy up distressed mortgage securities and instead planned a bank "recapitalization."

Five months have passed, and the press is still letting Wall Street — whose dysfunction is, itself, the financial crisis — define the debate. In Monday's front-page bailout coverage, the Wall Street Journal quoted only Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the head of private-equity giant Blackrock and two Republican senators. Oh, and Obama, from his 60 Minutes appearance.

Which is basically inexcusable. Details of the bailout had leaked two days earlier. Economists had already begun blogging about it. Tomorrow's WSJ front-pager is only slightly better, quoting a broader array of players within the financial services industry but no economists or other experts with a less-than-direct stake in how things turn out.

The stock market has become "the media's real-time economic report card," according to a recent New Republic story. The market plummeted after Geithner outlined a bailout plan in February, but so what?

...was the market drop a signal that Obama's plan was bad for the economy as a whole or just bad for bank stocks? The two propositions mean very different things.

This, alas, is the very distinction the stock-mongers on television fail to grasp.

The magazine was talking about notorious CNBC shouting head Jim Cramer. It's kind of pathetic that these days it could be referring to the front page of the New York Times.

In any case, some of those "parasites" in the blogosphere are taking up the slack, see for example here, here, here and here.

The AIG executives in Britain are basically ignoring Cuomo's populist hardball, given the relative lack of outrage in their country.

But Cuomo announced that nine of the top 10 bonus recipients will return the money! And 15 of the top 20 in the financial products division! Victory!

See? Mob rule Democracy works.How much money was returned, you ask? Like, of the original $165 million? Fifty million dollars, give or take. Another $80 million went to foreigners, and there's $35 million in unreturned U.S. bonuses.

Cuomo would like the Americans holding the latter money to know he is conducting a "risk assessment" about releasing their names/addresses. Emphasis on "risk."

A political group supported by organized labor is planning a bus tour of AIG homes this weekend, according to a front-page New York Times story on the fate of these sad, bonus-dappled plutocrats. The leader of the group, Connecticuit Working Families party, promises to try and not "foment... unnecessarily" all the anger and "rage about what's happened."

He just wants to take a bunch of unemployed and foreclosed-upon people with nothing to lose, put them on a bus, and show them exactly what they're missing, and who to blame.

Anyway, the Times' story has precisely one secondhand report of a death threat, one angry neighbor in a driveway and a couple of pissed off Connecticut residents. None of the various Connecticut police departments contacted by the newspaper has heard anything about any sort of danger to these rich guys.

But still, let's feel anxious and a little ashamed of ourselves, on behalf of these wealthy executives. All that stands between them and terrible, fearsome populist mobs are their private security guards, their lawns, their state-of-the-art security systems, several flights of probably marble stairs and the entrenched political/law-enforcement establishment they bought over the past couple of decades, when the gettin' was good.

(Well, it's pretty good now, actually. When they gettin' was amazing.)