Since We’re Talking of Bail Outs, Why Not Bail Out Main Street?

I feel like I’m back in the fall of 2002, when George Bush and Team were painting a picture of urgency. The promise of a mushroom cloud blossoming on the horizon for anyone skeptical of going to war with Iraq. Now we’re being told of almost certain doom again, a financial crisis not seen since the great depression. We must act now.

Deja vu.

Now hold on a second. What is the urgency? No one can paint me a picture of what this gloom looks like? I’d like to know why we can go eight years with a Bush White House and nothing get’s done on health care because of the cost, but the financial crisis is something we need to rescue in the eleventh hour of a lame duck president’s term?

$700 billion. That’s a lot of cash. Why not skip the bail out of Wall Street and bail out Main Street. For starters, I have some lousy debt I’ve been paying on now for 10 years - it’s called student loan debt, and guess what? It’s such bad debt that despite making every monthly payment it never goes down? Wipe that out, and it would free up a nice chunk of my change that could start to lubricate the economy.

John McCain the Mangler | 1st Video

(NOTE: You may have to refresh (F5) your page - as the crazy FLV plugin I have isn’t working).

Here’s a short little video that I put together tonight, inspired by The Mangler (1995), the Beach Boys, Atom Bombs, and a Little Psycho. Strangely, the guy in The Manger intro sounds a lot like John McCain. Very creepy.
As this is my first attempt at putting together a political, John McCain video, and while I’ve been dying to try out my new software (Final Cut Express, After Effects, Garage Band, Flash), I’m still struggling a bit with the tools. I’m sure you can guess which ones. Forgive my rush to publish stolen content in the name of satire and parody.

Peace. (To Be Continued…)

What Paulson Wants for Wall Street

I’m not a genius. My doctorate in economics from Stanford is a fake. Allen Greenspan is no hero of mine. He should be tried for war crimes - like every other Republican that profited from war and has sank the ship.

No, I’m just a pissed tax payer who’s spent the day listening to the idiot Paulson try to explain why he should be given $700 billion to bail out his friends, approximately $2300 of which will be mine.

Why don’t we just admit it right now, once and for all, we are not a capitalist society - not in the sense that you might think? In fact by the end of the week, the government very well may own a good chunk of the shitty finanical assets on bridges to nowhere for all we know. No, we are a socialist economy but one that operates on a fucked up model of rewarding a small 2% with huge bonuses, and screwing the other 98% with unstable job growth, no healthcare, no energy plan, and no retirement plan.

Here’s the basics of what it appears Paulson is proposing. I’ve broken this down into a simple, straight forward outline that makes absolutely no sense to me - and if it makes sense to you - then check in with your doctor.

Paulson wants…

You to feel sorry for the rich. Wall Street made a bad mistake - in fact a series of really bad mistakes. These mistakes made Wall Street very rich for a time. Hedge fund managers flourished in a world where they could move and grow money that they didn’t own, that had no assets backing them, all while avoiding paying any significant taxes. Now it looks like fate is calling. The house of cards is going to fall, and suddenly the prospect of these new rich bastards jumping out of their buildings - well, that reminds us just a bit too much of 9/11. 9/11 is something we want to avoid repeating. So we need to bail Wall Street out. Of course, this is preemptive. These rich bastards haven’t actually lost all of their money just yet, they just face the prospect that they will - by Friday of this week, if we don’t act now, on Monday. Paulson’s plan that he’s presented Congress, asks for $700 billion dollars. He wants no strings attached. He wants to be able to hire and award money to people based on his own discretion. Basically, he wants Paul Bremer powers to do to Wall Street what Bremer did to Baghdad. No one should be looking over Paulson’s shoulder. He’s terribly sorry that the taxpayer has to deal with this and of course, he can’t guarantee that this plan will work, but we have no alternative. If we don’t act now, every one’s 401K, money markets, retirements, insurance, life savings, bank accounts will all be down the drain. And if you’re not scared shit-less by the end of that list - well, Iran’s gonna get nukes and use them on everyone very soon. Now of course, Paulson is also warning against any restrictions that might say, if you get bailed out of your bad debt, the taxpayer might want the CEO to make no more than, say $500,000. No that would be unfair - to the CEO. A CEO of a company that hasn’t failed, but will fail if not bailed out, should be able to be paid whatever his or her board of directors feels is appropriate.

Here’s my thought - and this is why my major in economics is phony - why not let all of these guys go bankrupt. Keep our tax payer money for a few weeks, and then get an awesome deal in bankruptcy court as these assets get auctioned off? This means we avoid any issues of CEO pay. And everyone knows you get a much better deal at a bankruptcy auction, then you do the first day of the “Going Out of Business Sale.” With all of these huge corporations bankrupt, suddenly it might be easier for the little guys to compete. Capitalism is spread, and jobs are created. Now I realize this might hurt a lot of “rich” people but the truth is, there are already a lot of people hurting. And isn’t it time we spread a little bit of that hurt to Wall Street.

UPDATE: I just recieved an email from the people at ImpeachBush.org. Sign the petition at www.votenobailout.org and make sure Congress doesn’t just hand free money over to Wall Street.

Is Zapatero Part of McCain’s Axis of Evil?

A McCain advisor stated that the McCain snub to Spain’s Zapatero was because he wouldn’t commit to meeting with the NATO ally. If this is truly the case, then this demonstrates the complete ass that McCain is, and why he’s dangerous to our national security. He’s basically saying if you’re not with us, then you’re the equivalent of Iran’s leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, another leader McCain’s unwilling to meet with.

The Fundamental Truth About McCain’s Economic Lies

McCain is a liar. I’m not referring to any attack ad he used against Obama. No, I’m talking about his statement today, when he stated, “…the fundamentals of the American Economy are strong.”

Ironically, McCain made this statement on the day he launched a new ad about the economic crisis facing the Americans, and when the DOW dropped 500 points. This follows a weekend when Allen Greenspan describe the economy as the worst in his lifetime, and the Lehman Brothers Bank filed the largest bankruptcy in US history.

To try and recover from his gaffe (if you want to give him that) McCain later clarified. By fundamentals, he meant the hard working, ingenious, American worker.

Whatever he meant, in both cases, its a flat out lie - and one only the most idiot of economic students would make.

The truth is, the American economy is fundamentally about regulated capitalism. Congress and the White House do the regulating. American businesses do the capitalizing. For most of the last eight years the congress and the White House has been controlled by Republicans. This economy is the fundamental result of their regulating making it easy for businesses to capitalize unregulated.

The American worker works just as hard in a good economy as a bad one - maybe even harder in a bad economy, because they don’t want to lose their job. However the fundamentals - money liquidity, inflation, unemployment, tax policy, spending, deficits, trade agreements - these fundamentals are not strong.

People can’t get money - not because they can’t pay it back, but banks are afraid to lend. Liquidity has tightened. The economy is slowing. Layoffs will follow. Interest rates will rise to combat inflation that’s been created by pumping billions and billions of new money into the economy.

More and more of America is actually owned by oil producing countries, and other economies like China.

These are all fundamentals, and they are not sound.

If we are to believe McCain, and take his word for it, that he really meant the American worker as the fundamental economic foundation, well where does he stand on that. Does he not know that over 600,000 jobs have been lost? These are jobs that belonged to hard working Americans? Jobs that are no longer here. That is not a sound fundamental.

Does McCain not understand that while the average American worker continues to lead in productivity, their actual income has dropped by nearly $2000 over the last eight years? And does McCain not understand that by deciding to tax health care benefits as if they are income, which is a tax most heavily on the middle class, that he’s raising taxes on the middle class, while asking little of the most fortunate (and hardly working) rich?

My Republican and Independent friends - what McCain means by the “fundamentals of the economy” is not the American worker. No, he means the fundamentals of the Republican economic policy are sound. This is a policy that reduces taxes, preaches about shrinking government, but really means, using government as a funnel for money to their lobbyists interests. Republicans believe that fundamentally, you are on your own, that regulation is bad.

No, I’m sorry, the fundamentals of the American economy are on shaky ground. The next president will face the toughest economic situation any president has faced since FDR. The one thing Americans need is a President that at least understands the fundamentals are not sound.

OMG…Palin Has a Tanning Bed. Palin Must Have an Energy Plan Too!

What’s ironic about the story of Sarah Palin’s tanning bed , is how much it aligns with apolitical Paris Hilton. Remember back with McCain was against “celebrities” before he decided he was for them? That’s when Paris Hilton came out with her own ad, and convinced the old man that attractive women could have smart energy plans too - who cares if some have to read them from a teleprompter.

After Sarah Palin fired the chef, and got rid of the corporate jet on EBay, (now I give her credit for this) she took the money she was bilking tax payers for by staying at her own home in Wasilla and splurged a little bit on a tanning bed for her personal use while in Juneau.

Now I’m an ex-Alaskan, and I know that those long winters can be tough. And a person’s choice to expose themselves to harmful UV rays is really between that person and their skin, I mean next of kin. What I can’t get though - if Palin’s a frequent tanner (and she has to be to decide she needs her own tanning bed) even if her pregnancy didn’t show up, certainly her lost tan during the months of December, January and February would have. People would have noticed her original color.

Either that or she was tanning while pregnant.

You tell me … did she stop tanning, or just kept on feeling the glow?

Secret Killing Program Key to Iraq Success

What century and what country to I belong to?

That’s what crossed my mind when I read Bob Woodward’s remark, “It is a wonderful example of American ingenuity solving a problem in war, as we often have.” Woodward was discussing his most recent book, The War Within: Secret White House History 2006-2008 (2008). According to CNN, Woodward suggested the secret killing program was comparable to the World War II era Manhattan Project.

“It is a wonderful example of American ingenuity solving a problem in war…”

- Bob Woodward, Journalist

Supposedly, this secret killing program is meant to target al Qaeda and other insurgent leaders. Is this supposed to be comforting? And what do we typically learn about Bush’s secret programs.

I’ve been searching for speculative answers as to what might be entailed in this secret program. A few answers have been offered. One details the use of targeted GPS bombings, another, the random mass killing by new rules of engaged sniper fire.

There’s a complete diary tread that can be followed on the speculation over at the DailyKOS.

Whatever the case may be, a secret killing program is not an example of “American ingenuity.”

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