Bernanke and Hard-Drinking Shrews

The Annotated Fed


Hat tip to Wagga for this find:
A tropical shrew with a taste for alcoholic nectar has been identified as the hardest-drinking creature in the world.

Pentailed tree shrews have such an appetite for alcohol that each night they imbibe, weight for weight, the equivalent of a human downing up to nine glasses of wine...

Allen Ginsberg poetic redux for WALNUTS via Wonkette comment:
Neilist says at 4:50 pm, July 27th, 2008
- ReplyA SUPERMARKET IN LIMBO
[With Apologies to Allen Ginsberg]

What thoughts we have of you tonight, Oh WALNUTS!, as
you walk down Aisle 6, under the canned goods, with a headache
self-consciously looking at Barack’s news coverage.

In your hurt and spleen, shopping for ANY image, you went
into this neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!

What speeches and ellucidations! Whole families
running in fright! Aisles full of apple sauces! Wives who are soccer moms;
your black babies in their arms! — and you, Barry Goldwater, what
were you doing down by the watermelons?

We saw you, WALNUTS!, voteless, lonely old grubber,
poking among the meats in the refrigerator, looking for your favorite mastodon cutlets,
and eyeing the Electorials.

We heard you asking questions of each: Who killed McCain-Feingold?
What price compromise? Are you my next ex-wife?

We wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans
following you, and followed in our imagination by Federal Election Commission detectives.

We strode down the open corridors with you in your solitary fancy,
stroking lobbyists, evangelicals, possessing every K Street dollar, and still your budget was in arrears.

Where are we going, O WALNUTS? The doors close in
November. Which way does Joe Liebermann point you tonight?

(We touch your campaign biography and feel absurd. Did you really
shoot down five of your own planes?)

Will you walk all night through solitary streets? The
voters are gone, John; lights out in the houses: you’ll be
lonely.

Will you stroll dreaming of the lost America of love
past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?

Ah, “Flags Of Our Fathers,” graybeard, lonely old Tokyo Rose-broadcaster,
what America did you have when your Admiral daddy and granddaddy quit poling your ferry,
and you got out on a smoking bank of your first marriage and
stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of your reputation?

Los Angeles, 2008

[That started out funny, but it took kind of a nasty twist there at the end.]

Out of Time update!