11.20.08
What Eight Years of GOP Economics Looks Like
The Bush economy in action:
* The Dow, as Bush takes office: 10,587.59
* The Dow, eight years later: 7,997.28
That’s GOP economics for ya’. You betcha’.
11.13.08
Muslim Leaders Decide That Peace Is The Way To Go
Oh, of course not. I’m just kidding.
Instead they make a mockery of British Laws and say things like “Do not obey the British law” and “There are three types of Muslims, those in prison, those of us that are on our way [to prison] and non-practising Muslims. Brothers and sisters, if you do not fear your home being raided by the Kufar [non-believer] police, you are not enforcing the Sharia.”
Crazy much?
I don’t even bother arguing about religion much anymore. Ignorance is bliss, and no one knows it better than those who ‘believe’ in an imaginary friend.
For example:
11.10.08
America’s New Social Contract
Not to steal any thunder on January 20th or anything, but as I begin to hear more and more rumblings about this, I expect this to be Barack Obama’s big program to get America back as both a community and a superpower in the years to come.
Feel free to check out this link. I’ll wait.
tl;dr? Here’s the skinny:
- Give Back To Your Country
This is the whole “you give us community service, we’ll give you _____”. This involves the most controversial point: “Universal Citizen Service.” I’ll just go ahead and copy and paste so you get the exact wording:
Universal Citizen Service. Citizenship is a responsibility, not an entitlement program. If your leaders aren’t challenging you to do your part, they aren’t doing theirs. We need a new patriotism that brings out the patriot in all of us by establishing, for the first time, an ethic of universal citizen service. All Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 should be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic civil defense training and community service. This is not a draft — nor is it military. Young people will be trained not as soldiers, but simply as citizens who understand their responsibilities in the event of natural disaster, epidemic, or terrorist attack. Universal citizen service will bring Americans of every background together to make America safer and more united in common national purpose.
Now people are already freaking out about this, so arm yourself with knowledge so you can make your mind up about it. I personally think this is fine–it’s not military service. It’s training on how to handle different events that can happen in your country. I think the most important thing it does is that it creates a sense of community amongst Americans. We all know what to do in an emergency, and we can all work together.
- $3,000 tax credit for college. Not four options and confusing loopholes. One set amount.
- Every job has a 401K. It travels around with you as you change employers. Seems reasonable.
- Universal Children’s Healthcare. This is basically what Obama has already proposed–opening the Congressional healthcare system to ordinary Americans.
2. End Corporate Welfare
This is how you pay for the social programs in #1. You end the tax breaks and loopholes available to corporations.
3. Middle-Class Tax Relief
From the plan:
We propose a tax reform plan that makes sure no middle-class family with an income of under $100,000 will ever have to pay an effective income tax rate of more than 10 percent. Our plan cuts the number of tax brackets in half, closes dozens of loopholes by setting a corporate flat tax, and simplifies the tax code by offering four superincentives: a $3,000 refundable college tax credit, a universal mortgage deduction, a simplified family credit for families with children, and a universal pension that replaces the current hodgepodge of 16 existing IRA-type accounts.
And lastly, something we’re going to get next year anyway…
4. Ending the Iraq war.
It’s astonishing what 10 Billion dollars a month will do to a country…particularly when you begin spending that money on your own country.
Now for those who are crying that this is the End of the World As We Know It, remember: Get informed. Nothing is more powerful than knowledge of the issues.
Here is an hour-long interview with Rahm Emanuel, who wrote “The Plan: Big Ideas for America” from two years ago when the book came out.
This is what is to come, and I’m warming up to it.
11.05.08
President Barack Obama!
I can’t believe it!
They kept saying it would be a landslide, then they tried to scare you by saying you were being complacent. Even though my own state is heavily (heavily) Republican, and voted as such, the rest of the country made the right choice.
There’s a lot of talk on MSNBC about the historical impact of this and they’re not kidding. The first African-American President. The guy who said he wouldn’t sling mud and didn’t. Who said he wouldn’t call his opponent names and didn’t when given the chance. You remember when they gave him the perfect softball question to destroy the Palin pick in the third debate? “What do you think about Sarah Palin?” “I’ll let the voters figure that out.” Just one example of many.
I’m so excited. I’m so -proud- of the country. I’m ready to go in a completely different direction, and now we’re seeing everyone else get on board.
This is the first year I’ve ever voted. Yup, could’ve voted, what, three times before now? But it wasn’t until Barack Obama in which I heard someone who was speaking for unity, for opportunity, and for growing the country from the ground up. His incredible speeches and his ability to unify people is second to none.
Man…President Barack Obama. Barack, yes, Hussein Obama. We, as a country, looked past his skin color. His middle name (which, if it swings you as a voter, is -pathetic-). The man, I’m convinced, is going to do incredibly good things for the country.
Call it drinking the kool-aid, but I’m ready to get excited about a President again. When’s the last time you were actually looking forward to hearing your President speak? Watching Senate seat after Senate seat go Democratic means we’ll try something new.
Man. Remember the faces of the Presidents lined up on the wall in elementary school? How cool is it going to be to see Barack up there? Or in the schoolbooks as they learn about the 44th President of the United States.
Just too cool. I’m ecstatic. Let’s do this. Yes we can.
09.26.08
Wow
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/
And people will still vote for this man?
“I’m going to suspend my campaign…” = My campaign is now based in Washington. NOTHING stopped. Not fundraising, not advertising, not anything…except he was in DC.
“No debate until a deal is struck” = We need to push through the most mind-blowing bailout in the history of America in approximately 48
hours. We spent more time talking about steroids in Baseball than we have about the most landmark piece of legislation…well, probably
since the Patriot Act.
“I’ve decided to go to the debates” = My idiotic posturing didn’t work.
I’m flabbergasted.
09.22.08
How The Markets Work
If you don’t understand what the whole mortgage crisis is all about, take in the video below. It will explain it perfectly (and humorously to boot):
The problem with the whole AIG bailout is that it will crash the dollar. That means that the dollar will be worth even less than it is right now versus the Euro, Pound, etc. And let me tell you from traveling abroad, it ain’t worth much as it is. And this would be disastrous.
I understand things would be bad. Things are bad either way. But the alternative is to keep the broken system afloat. I understand no one wants to be the bearer of bad news. Bush would love to blame Democrats on what will be, most likely, the second great depression, and Democrats, honestly, I don’t think want to clean up the mess. It’s easier to say that you will just pump some money into the thing and band-aid it, reward those idiots who bought and sold mortgages while not knowing a) the value or b) the likelihood of those loans being repaid, and as the dollar crashes around the world (such as the recent crude oil price spike in reaction to the news). When our dollar is worth less, that makes everything worth less, including people’s life savings.
If we save AIG and crash the dollar, inflation will demolish the market. Social Security, while bad enough, won’t be able to afford anything. Groceries will continue to rise, sometimes in drastic amounts.
I know it sounds doom and gloom, but the fact is some people fucked up big time. And I’m absolutely ecstatic that Senator Leahy said hold your horses on the bailout deal. This is $700 BILLION dollars that Bush wants to give the head of the treasury department to do whatever the hell Mr. Paulson wants to do with it.
Can you believe this is actually in the bill? This is word-for-word:
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
Is this not absolute lunacy? Non-reviewable? May not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency? Are you fucking serious here? Is this America? Is this the country that we’ve got now? Where you put your get-out-of-jail-free card right in the bill?
I’m saddened, but not particularly shocked. Sigh.
09.16.08
Fed Bails Out A.I.G?!
This is insane. Not only is it insane, it’s obscenely stupid. In Washington, it must be tangerine trees and marmalade skies up there. They’ve gone completely fucking mad.
Here’s a choice quote:
…[the bailout] effectively puts taxpayer money at risk while protecting bad investments made by A.I.G. and other institutions does business with.
That’s exactly right. I’m not a right-winger, I’m a die-hard liberal who thinks that healthcare should (immediately) be socialized. But I do not, in any way, believe that businesses should be. If you run your business into the ground, that is your fault. I certainly believe the government should help you in creating new businesses. But if you screw yourself, you shall remain screwed until such a time that the screw unwinds. If that means financial markets failing, the alternative is worse.
But that’s exactly why they bailed A.I.G out: They didn’t know how bad it could get. Well, they sure as hell made it worse.
Here we are, as taxpayers, basically approving of the stupid overinflating of their mortgage holdings, of their bad loans, of their bad investments, of their bad everything. This puts us in direct responsibility for these people’s mistakes.
Here’s how it works, as explained to me in a brilliant audio podcast whose link I can’t find: What this basically says to the lender is, you don’t have to worry about the debtor paying you back. Because the government always will. So how will the government pay back $X that it now owes to these lenders because the loan defaulted? Well, it will have to print money. As you print more money, existing money becomes worth less. (heh)
I simply don’t know what in the world these people were thinking. Well, I guess the prevailing thought was: We’re going to go broke. The Washingtonians, their friends, their investor buddies.
I mean, let’s face it: I will probably never have to worry about ‘invested securities’ and millions of dollars worth of stock. But those who do are sure as shit not going to let the ship hit the iceberg if they can help it.
Story Time
The iceberg was the mortgage crisis. The boat was A.I.G. The savior was the government. They alerted the ship and averted disaster…by setting the boat on fire so they could see what was in front of them. As that fire burns (work with me here), it appears that “Man, we can see so far ahead of us! This is awesome!” and slowly, ever-so-slowly, they realize that the front of their ship just fell off. Well, shit.
The End.
This whole bailout situation is just ridiculous. There should be nothing “too big to fail” unless it’s the government itself. Then…well, I guess we won’t own 80% of a poorly-run company, now will we?
The McCain / Palin “Healthcare” System
You have to be kidding me. I can’t believe anyone who wants to, you know, actually afford their healthcare to be behind these two. I hope you enjoy valuing your Roe v. Wade over your frickin healthcare. Read the article here.
For starters, the McCain health plan would treat employer-paid health benefits as income that employees would have to pay taxes on.
“It means your employer is going to have to make an estimate on how much the employer is paying for health insurance on your behalf, and you are going to have to pay taxes on that money,” said Sherry Glied, an economist who chairs the Department of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
My question is, why isn’t Obama jumping all over this? He’s giving tax breaks to the middle class while McCain is wanting to tax our benefits. This is insane.
Just another example of the Republican You’re-On-Your-Own thinking. The rich? They couldn’t care less. The ‘middle class’? (You know, those struggling along at 4.9 million) They wouldn’t care either.
Only in America can a man who owns nine house (yes, nine, not seven) who has been privileged his entire life, married to an heiress, could say that the guy raised by a single mom on foodstamps is ‘uppity’ and ‘arrogant.’
Here’s hoping that the populus isn’t buying what McCain / Inexperienced is selling.