Contributors

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

777

We have definitely entered the Twilight Zone. I spent a lot of time watching the news last night and one thing really stood out at me. After the Dow dropped 777 points yesterday, our leadership in Washington (both parties) looked like a bunch of incompetents. Over the years, there have been so many things that President Bush has done that have embarrassed our country but there was no doubt that he was on the sidelines yesterday. In fact this morning, he looked like a beaten dog.

The embarrassment yesterday and today, though, lies with the US House of Representatives. All of them should be positively mortified at their unbelievable incompetence to get anything done. I heard a few lone voices, on both sides, saying a couple of slightly intelligent things but for the most part, they behaved like impotent buffoons.

I am not necessarily saying I supported the bill. In fact, those voices on both sides that I speak of in the above paragraph were ones that voted against the bill. Couldn't they have worked little smarter to make it better?

I guess not.

Monday, September 29, 2008

Every Picture Tells A Story

As I was driving to Wisconsin last Friday night, I tuned into WPR and listened to the debate. Aside from the disagreements with policy and his outright false statements, I thought John McCain did a good job. I thought Obama did a good job too and my wife and I looked at each other after it was over and ruled it a tie.

Then I checked out the debate re-run on TV later that night when we got to my mom's and there was no doubt in my mind that Obama won. Why? Because John McCain, throughout the entire debate, would not even look at Senator Obama. He would not even acknowledge his presence. And the look on his face basically told me that he believed that Barack Obama did not deserve to be on the same stage as him.

McCain looked pissed off that he even had to be there. In what had to be one of the most bizarre weeks in politics, John McCain gave Barack Obama the same attitude that conservatives have been giving liberals for the better part of a decade: you're weak and you're not good enough.
It's not acceptable to simply disagree with a liberal...you have to show that they are weak, irrational, and given to emotional hyperbole. In other words, how a male from the 1950s views a female.

Put into this context, the ideas that John McCain put forth on Friday night are relics of an age and of policies that have proven to be colossal failures. He offered nothing new on Friday night, even though he tried desperately to distance himself from President Bush, and I saw his candidacy for the farce that it is. As I drive around Minneapolis and see the "McCain-Palin" signs in people's yards, I wonder why people would continue to support failure.

Are they happy with what has gone on in the last eight years?

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Dave Still Has It!

Holy crap, this is the funniest fucking thing I have seen in a long time. Zoom forward to the 6 minute mark and watch from there.

Racing to the airport?

The First Gentlemen of Theater

In what has to be the finest example of acting I have seen in a long time, John McCain is trying to postpone Friday's debate in order to "fix the financial problems" of our country. In other words, he's seen the poll numbers, understands that the policies he supported in the last ten years have helped cause this problem, and is desperately trying to look like he is doing something.

I think Senator Obama said it best. "Presidents have to be able to do more than one thing at a time."

Maybe John McCain is incapable of doing that.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Through The Looking Glass

Hey...guess what? The 2008 Official Republican Party Platform opposes bailouts of private companies.

We do not support government bailouts of private institutions. Government interference in the markets exacerbates problems in the marketplace and causes the free market to take longer to correct itself. We believe in the free market as the best tool to sustained prosperity and opportunity for all.

And yet John McCain is supporting Paulson's plan? A plan that has the blessing of the President? Help me out, here folks. What am I missing?

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

From The Right

I started posting on Kevin Baker's blog again. It's been fun so far. We've been discussing the current financial crisis and I wanted to share with a comment that was recently made to me.

Now, THINK, AT LEAST FOR ONE FUCKING MINUTE, DUDE. The gubmint requires the mortgage companies to make what both sides know are very bad investments. Thus, the reason for making such investments is not the expectation of realizing a profit, and in fact the expectation is that many, if not most, of such investments will realize a loss. (Wait for it ...) This is not capitalism, dude, it is socialism. The investment is made for a social purpose that is mandated by the gubmint, is without regard to issues of profit and loss, and is not the free choice of the lending entity involved.

So basically, the cause of our current crisis is...the government? Wow. I find myself wishing more and more that I was on the right side of the aisle. Things would be so much simpler...having the same answer to everything.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Thank You, Chas!

Many are wondering these days why there is so much attention paid to Sarah Palin. I think the main reason for this is John McCain is old and has a history of health issues. So, the question on many people's minds is...is she ready to lead?

Answering this question correctly brings a giant pile of conservative bull shit. Y'see, folks, conservatives, or most of the base anyway, don't like it when you question one of their own. To do so is wrong, evil, and unpatriotic. When some in the media began to question Sarah Palin's credentials after she was first picked, the right wing douche bag machine ramped up their shit and before you know it, it was Glory Glory Hallelujah 24-7 on all of the major media outlets.

It's a very effective way of controlling and manipulating the message. Sarah Palin is, in fact, the most under qualified person to ever run for office. As president, she would be a complete disaster in just about every area imaginable. But to conservatives, she feels like they feel so she's A-OK! Odd because, while they bemoan the left for being all about "feelings," they are actually infinitely more guilty of selecting their candidates based on their "guts" than the left is.

The selection of Palin was, however, a brilliant political move because the leaders of the party know that McCain won't win without the base. They know that, by selecting Palin, the left will make accusations of idiocy which will, in turn, rile up the idiots in the base (attacking one of their own) and get them out to vote...the propaganda working perfectly in shaping the erroneous perception of "elites" attacking a "common folk" which further degrades the intelligence level in this country (aka the plan all along).

Thankfully, though, some Republicans are starting to see the light. Chuck Hagel, Senator from Nebraska, said the following last Thursday.

She has no foreign policy credentials. You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don't know what you can say.

Well, you can say that she doesn't know dick about the world but if you did, the Republicans would pull out the victim card again (ah, the delicious irony) and shove it down your throat. Hagel went on.

I think it is a stretch to say that she's got the experience to be president.

No fucking shit. When Palin told Charlie Gibson that she had foreign policy qualifications because Russia is "our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska," Hagel lost it.

I think they ought to be just honest about it and stop the nonsense about 'I look out my window and see Russia so therefore I know something about Russia.' That kind of thing is insulting to the American people.

Thank you, Chas, for saying what no Democrat has the balls to say. It is a complete fucking insult to our country that this woman could possibly be president...and that people support it? President Bush looks like Abraham Lincoln next to her. Ask yourselves this question...can you imagine Sarah Palin dealing with an intricate situation in the Middle East? Or handling the current economic crisis? Good Lord...

So, the answer is no, she is not qualified and it's because she is an idiot. And that's not being partisan. That is a fact. I'm sorry to break the news to the conservative base of this country but the time of electing people based on the fact that they are stupid just like the rest of us isn't going to fly anymore. We have very serious problems that need to be addressed and I want to see someone who is much smarter than me take over in 2009.

I could give a rat's ass if they would be fun at a fucking barbecue.

Friday, September 19, 2008

Why Are Liberals So "Crazy" About Sarah Palin and John McCain

Someone just sent me this email. It sums things up quite nicely.
  • If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."
  • Grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, a quintessential American story.
  • If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
  • Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.
  • Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
  • Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.
  • If you spend 3 years as a community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.
  • If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.
  • If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising two daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.
  • If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.
  • If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
  • If , while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.
  • If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.
  • If you're husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

A Short, Comic Break

Click on the image for better clarity.

It really sums up the elitist bullshit argument, the complete and utter refusal to..um...evolve, their myopic ideology, the spineless turdishness of the Democrats, the FUBAR of Ohio and mother fucking Florida every year(groan), and the empty platform, which 47 percent of voters apparently want, of the Republican Party.

Love it...

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Obamanomics

A recent article in the New York Times fully and completely details, through a series of conversations on a plane, where Barack Obama stands on the economy. I was surprised to find out from the article that his 12 years spent as lecturer at the University of Chicago had quite an impact on him, economically speaking. As many of you may already know, the University of Chicago was the home of Milton Friedman, free market guru and one of the most influential economists of our time. Here is what he had to say about his time there.

During my formative years, there was still ideological competition between a social-democratic or even socialist agenda and a free-market, Milton Friedman agenda. I think it was natural for me to ask questions of both sides and maybe try to synthesize approaches.

Asking questions is something I always look for in a candidate. Someone who makes up his or her mind and sticks with it forever and ever...not so much. Are they being reflective enough to consider all the angles? Here's the first quote from him, though, that really jumped out at me.

Reagan’s central insight — that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic, with Democratic policy makers more obsessed with slicing the economic pie than with growing that pie — contained a good deal of truth.

I agree. And that's why it drives me nuts when people try to say he will create a nanny state. It's complete bullshit and the people that are saying it can't stand the fact, as they did with President Clinton, that a liberal quite possibly could adhere to some of their ideology. Or (gasp!) succeed with it. It simply isn't done! How dare he!

Some more interesting observations from David Leonhardt

Compared with many other Democrats, Obama simply is more comfortable with the apparent successes of laissez-faire economics.

He also says he believes that there are significant parts of Reaganism worth preserving. So his policies often involve setting up a government program to address a market failure but then trying to harness the power of the market within that program. This, at times, makes him look like a conservative Democrat.

By surrounding himself with economists, however, Obama was also making a decision with ideological consequences. Far more than many other policy advisers, economists believe in the power of markets.

What tends to distinguish Democratic economists is that they set out to uncover imperfections of the market and then come up with incremental, market-based solutions to these imperfections. This helps explain the Obama campaign’s interest in behavioral economics, a relatively new field that has pointed out many ways in which people make irrational, short-term decisions. To deal with one example of such myopia, Obama would require companies to automatically set aside a portion of their workers’ salary in a 401(k) plan. Any worker could override the decision — and save nothing at all or save even more — but the default would be to save.

Hmm..the socialist argument is really starting to look sub moronic now. But the best line comes from the man himself.

The market is the best mechanism ever invented for efficiently allocating resources to maximize production. And I also think that there is a connection between the freedom of the marketplace and freedom more generally. But there are certain things the market doesn’t automatically do.

There it is again. Balance. Level headiness. Connection between free markets and...freedom? Oh no...that sound you just heard is every single person on Kevin Baker's blog (and some here) recovering the pieces of their exploded head. Say it ain't so...Barack Obama is a...good capitalist.

So, when you here some folks on the right say Obama is a socialist, please kindly point this article out to them and tell them to peddle their idiocy elsewhere. Of course, they might not read it because they have brainwashed into believing that the New York Times is a traitorous newspaper but hey....you can at least try.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Where They Stand

The economy is back as the top story of the election and thank God. It's about time. To put it simply, the American economy doesn't work anymore. I am going to spend the rest of the week talking about this and offering all of you what I think are the best solutions. We are going to revisit "Obamanomics" and that wonderful article in the New York Times Magazine from a few weeks ago. Read it again if you haven't yet.

To put it as simply as possible, the reason our economy is in full crisis mode is that the people who have run this country for the last eight years have been incompetent and misguided.And the board room has become filthy with greed. Both George Bush and John McCain have stated in the last few weeks that greed and corruption are what have caused our current crisis. As the President has said, "Wall Street got drunk and now they have the hangover."

What this proves is that corruption can happen anywhere and all of you free market fundamentalists are wrong about it being worse in the government. Sorry, it's something you are going to have to face. Your ideology is terribly flawed. In fact, if you look at when our major crises have occurred in this country (1929, 1987, 2001, 2007-8) they have all come during Republican rule. What does that say to you?

Now, I'll be the first to admit that over bearing government control is a bad thing. But no control at all is also equally disastrous. No regulation, which is what we have had for the better part of 30 years, is also bad. This inaction or sneaky winking from the Washington to Wall Street has put us into a crisis that shows no signs of letting up. Yesterday the market dropped 500 points with the news that Lehman Brothers is bankrupt and Merrill Lynch is being sold to Bank of America. AIG is also in danger.

This is all the result of what happens when you go off the deep end in regards to how our economy should be handled.

By the deep end, I mean people who make the claim that Barack Obama is a socialist. Barack Obama is not a socialist. Please keep your 9 year old girl hysterics out of the adult swim area. He is not going to make America a socialist state. He's not even going to go to an FDR style solution to solve our problems.

Take a look at his plan on taxes, for example:
  • Make many Bush Tax Cuts Permanent
  • Make "work pay" tax credit
  • Index the Alternative Minimum Tax
  • Reduce Estate Tax
  • Automatic 401K and IRA plans, large saver's credits
  • Other Tax Cuts (for college students, seniors, low income filers)
  • Permanent R & D and renewable energy credits
Most of this doesn't sound much different from where conservatives want us to be, right? Now, you balance this out with the fact that we have to let the capital gains tax cuts expire in 2010 in order to increase revenue.

Before all of you righties go apeshit, my source for this is...George Bush. The Bush Administration Treasury Department examined the economic effects of extending the capital gains and dividend tax cuts. Even under the Treasury’s most optimistic scenario about the economic effects of these tax cuts, the tax cuts would not generate anywhere close to enough added economic growth to pay for themselves — and would thus lose money. They estimate between 60 and 80 billion of lost revenue in other less optimistic scenarios.

So this would be an example of why we can't afford to spend another four years looking at only one side of the equation. This is what John McCain wants, sadly. If the majority of Americans aren't spending any money because the majority of wealth has been seized by a very tiny percentage of people, we will continue to see more and more of what happened yesterday.

Take a closer look at what Senator Obama is proposing. For more specifics on this plan, visit here. There are many sub sections and pdf files that go into extraordinary detail about how we can fix this mess. Look at the balance. This how America has always worked best.

It is my hope that some of you on the right will wake up and see that Senator Obama has the right amount of balance on this. It's terribly dangerous to be blinded by ideology and outright lies and that's just what's going on right now. Your pocketbook is going to begin to get hit and it is direct result of a flawed way of thinking that may ultimately be our ruin.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Ohio Bullshit Beginning Early

Well, we knew it had to happen. The Republicans would be pulling their usual bullshit in Ohio. Apparently, the McCain campaign re-wrote the absentee ballot request form it sent out to a million people by adding an extra box on it. The box, which is completely unneeded on the form due to the fact that election judges check eligibility anyway, asks you to check it if you are an eligible voter. If you don't check it, under Ohio law, you would not be able to vote.

And, of course, the box is easy to miss. Hmm..I wonder who they sent out the request forms to?

Gee, let me think hard about this one.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Not Many Words

Usually on this day I have plenty to say. This year, I don't. I've been checking out the news and watching the memorials and quite honestly feel pretty sad.

If you know someone who lost a loved one on 9-11 or someone who is serving in Afghanistan or Iraq, give them a call or drop them a note. Let them know how much you love them and that you are there for them on the other 364 days of the year.

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Six More Times

Remember that whole brouhaha we all had a while back about who supports the troops more-McCain or Obama? Check out this story from the AP. Apparently, the troops, particularly those serving overseas, support Obama more and have backed it up by giving more money to his campaign then the McCain campaign...six times more! McCain actually came in third, behind Obama and Ron Paul which, I have to say, is quite embarrassing.

I guess the troops figured out that McCain's GI bill was a load of shit and decided Obama actually had their interests in mind.

Monday, September 08, 2008

A Music Review

One of my many passions in life is music. Actually it's a passion/obsession. As Fairuza Balk says in Almost Famous, "Any time you get sad or lonely, just go to the record store and all your friends are there in the racks.

Anyhoo, I am going to be a regular contributor to IckMusic, my friend Pete's much frequented music blog. Everyone who digs music should check it out. My post is about Todd Rundgren's new album, Arena. Click here to read the review and check in with Pete on a regular basis for all the latest and greatest tunes.

Sunday, September 07, 2008

They Like Her...why again?

Someone sent me this link which we have been talking about in comments over the last few days and I thought I would bring it out front. It is a letter from someone who knows Sarah Palin pretty well. Among the highlights.
  • During her six years as mayor of Wasilla, she increased general government expenditures by more than 33 percent.
  • During those same six years, the amount of taxes collected by the city increased by 38 percent.
  • She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax, which taxed even food.
  • The tax cuts that she promoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.
  • The huge increases in tax revenue during her mayoral administration weren't enough to fund everything on her wish list, though — borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt but left it with indebtedness of more than $22 million.
So, basically we have George Bush once again. Great.

In her tenure as mayor she tried to have several books banned from the public library. When the librarian refused, Governor Palin tried to have her fired. Thankfully, the rest of the town did not support Palin in this endeavor and she was unsuccessful. I haven't been able to find a list of the books she supposedly wanted banned, due to religious reasons. There is a list out there but it may not be entirely accurate. I have to say I thought of Jonah Goldberg and chuckled when I read this part of the story.

Help me out here, folks. I thought conservatives were about less spending, lower taxes, and reduced government in people's lives. How does the information above jibe with any of those tenets?

Reading further in the article, the answer becomes clear.

She's not very tolerant of divergent opinions or open to outside ideas or compromise. As mayor, she fought ideas that weren't generated by her or her staff. Ideas weren't evaluated on their merits but on the basis of who proposed them.

Ah, now I know why they like her:)

Friday, September 05, 2008

Friday Potpourri

Couple things today.

Take a look at the counter to the left. Obama's bounce from last week is starting to show. Let's see what the polls bring next week. Will there be a Republican bounce?

If you click on the map, you will notice that Obama is ahead in North Dakota. Bush won this state by 27 points in 2004. Granted, his lead is still in the margin of error but the interesting thing to note is that Obama has offices in North and South Dakota as well as Montana. John McCain does not. Obama plans on spending money and campaigning there. Why? Because If he takes two of those three, Iowa and Colorado, Ohio doesn't matter. And he is still leading in Ohio. I think McCain is being terribly short sighted here. He's not looking at the new voters Obama has gotten out in those states.

McCain's lead in Arizona, his home state, isn't all that big either...44 to 36 percent with 20 percent undecided. That's a lot of undecideds that could make it close in McCain's home state and you better believe that Governor Napoliatano is going to be ovaries to the wall for Obama.

I rarely agree with Charles Krauthammer but he is is absolutely right on Sarah Palin.

Obama was sagging because of missteps that reflected the fundamental weakness of his candidacy. Which suggested McCain's strategy: Make this a referendum on Obama, surely the least experienced, least qualified, least prepared presidential nominee in living memory. Palin fatally undermines this entire line of attack.

McCain picked Palin to give the base erections-literally and figuratively-and, in doing so, gave up his argument against Obama's "inexperience" which was an enormous mistake. It was the one thing he could really hammer Obama on which would make some people listen. Now they look at Palin and think, "Well, maybe McCain was disingenuous about Obama and the experience thing. He picked someone who knows nothing about foreign policy.

And speaking of opinion columns. This one has been making me laugh all morning. It is a "text" from a conservative college student to his parents. My favorite line?

Iraq, oil prices, the economy, blah, blah, blah. Here's the thing that I like. Watching Huckabee, Guiliani, and Sara Palin rip into the Obama last night was like watching caged dogs. With our guys (and girl) being the mean dogs and Obama being, like, a Schnoodle with a soft throat.

Pretty much sums up the whole convention.

Thursday, September 04, 2008

No Issue To Be Found

I have watched the Republican National Convention this week in utter astonishment. All of the speeches, the interviews with delegates and pundits, and the overall general theme of the convention point to one thing:

The media is liberal.

This is all they have?

I have tuned in several times throughout the course of the week and EVERY single time I do, I see someone on the podium whooping the crowd into a frenzy over the elite media. Everyone from Fred Thompson to Rudy Giuliani (sadly) made comments about the media. Even the much anticipated speech by VP nominee, Sarah Palin, contained the following line.

...if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.

Setting aside the fact that she actually does lack experience and has some serious problems with judgment, why is that, once again, the party that preaches against a victim society plays the part of the victim so well? It's not Sarah Palin's fault...it's the media.

In addition, it strikes me as highly moronic that the Republicans, for which the media has launched an unbelievable assault in my home town of the Twin Cities, are biting the hands that feed them. As I flipped around the various news channels, all of them seemed perplexed that the Republicans would focus on them when there are so many issues that Americans want to hear about from them.

The right laments the lack of "meat" in Obama's plans and yet offers nothing of their own except more digs at the media and the ever present fear mongering (we are all dead unless we vote Republican).

And, hey, if you don't believe me...why don't we ask McCain campaign chairman, Rick Davies, what he thinks about the election.

This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.

Really?

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

And The Left is Naive?

I popped over to Kevin Baker's blog to see what was new and I found this little commentary, intermixed between the hyper paranoia of what a Barack Obama presidency would mean, on Barack Obama's speech last week. The first line, in blue, is from Obama's speech. The next bit, in red, is the commentary.

For over two decades, (McCain’s) subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy, give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else.

No, it isn't given to them and they aren't "lucky." The vast majority of "the ones with the most" earned it through ingenuity, risk-taking, hard work and sacrifice - and they are the business owners, large and small, that employ the bulk of Americans - asshole

No. Absolutely wrong and a complete fucking myth. A myth that has been put forth by the top 1 percent through its cronies in the media (especially the right wing media). I still can't figure out this nauseating hero worship of wealthy, conservative business owners, the MAJORITY of which got their money through pathological criminal behavior. I have been told by several posters here and elsewhere that I am just jealous and should get over it. It's simply not true. Money is not all that important to me.If anything, given the adulation that is showered upon people like this by many conservatives, it is they that are the jealous ones.

Ingenuity, risk taking and sacrifice? While I am sure there are some people in the top one percent who fit this description, it certainly is not common.

Seriously, what fucking country do these people live in?