Quick Hits: Volume LXVII

-I don't know about you, but I've never really concerned myself with the goings on in a certain little island country in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.....until now.

Some of Cyprus's banks, like many banks in Europe, are bankrupt.

Cyprus went to the eurozone to get a bailout, the same way Ireland, Greece, and other European countries have.

The eurozone powers-that-be (mainly Germany) gave Cyprus a bailout and insisted that the depositors in Cyprus's banks pay part of the tab — a startling condition that has never before been imposed on any major banking system since the start of the global financial crisis in 2008.

The deal did not touch the bondholders. Why the depositors? These are folks who had their money in the banks for safe-keeping.

When Cyprus's banks reopen on Tuesday morning, every depositor will have some of his or her money seized. The current plan is that accounts under 100,000 euros will have 6.75% of the funds seized. Accounts over 100,000 euros will have 9.9% seized. And then the eurozone's emergency lending facility and the International Monetary Fund will inject 10 billion euros into the banks to allow them to keep operating.

Naturally, as an American citizen, my first inclination is how something like that could never happen here in the United States.

Right?

RIGHT?!?!?!

Well, it's not as though some variation of asset seizure here in the U.S. hasn't been addressed.

Remember in the Fall of 2010 when Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) et al threw out the idea of seizing private 401(k)s? I do. And I haven't stopped thinking about it since.


-It's less than two weeks until the Minnesota Twins host their regular season opener against the Detroit Tigers. In checking the weather forecast this week, overnight low temperatures are expected to reach single digits. In fact, on Monday evening at 10:30 we had a windchill factor (yes, windchill factor) of 8 degrees BELOW ZERO.

This kind of weather makes it just that much more fun imagining our potentially frigid hitters stepping into the batters' box on April 1 and having Tigers ace pitcher Justin Verlander bust a 100 MPH fastball in on the fists. Good times.


-My friend and Northern Alliance Radio Network colleague Mitch Berg has compiled a set of "laws" which apply to certain behaviors of liberals, media types, etc.

The one I've found to be downright irrefutable is Berg's Seventh Law - "When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds."

Because cable "news" station MSNBC has such miniscule prime time ratings, they often jump around like poo-flinging monkeys chide Fox News as being the mouthpiece of the GOP. Their biggest criticism of  Fox is they don't offer any real journalism, instead putting up the likes of Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, who editorialize all the news events. Apparently these dimwits fail to grasp the concept of hard news versus what O'Reilly and Hannity specialize in, which is news analysis. 

According to a recent Pew study, it turns out MSNBC is pretty much everything to the political left as to what they claim Fox News is to political right.

True to its motto, MSNBC has been leaning forward. To the point that its opinionated programming far outweighs its “factual reporting,” according to a new Pew study. While Fox News, too, had more opinionated programming, the network had a much smaller discrepancy between opinion and straight reporting.

The study — which came as part of Pew Research Center’s annual “State of the Media” report — states that opinionated programming comprised 85 percent of MSNBC’s airtime (versus 15 percent of “factual reporting”). Meanwhile, Fox News had opinion 55 percent of the time, with 45 percent straight news.

Paging Alanis Morrissette.

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