What's a Matter with US?

"It's like a French Revolution in reverse in which the workers come pouring down the street screaming more power to the aristocracy." --Thomas Frank

I read this article over at the BBC, and I have to tell you, they hit on something there. No one cares about facts. They only care about how things make them "feel." It's why people elect idiots to office, who serve not the people who elected them, but Corporate masters. It's why they blame Obama for the mess we're in, and why they blame him for not waving a magic wand to get us out of it. I suppose that Obama should have studied a bit harder at Hogwarts, because he just isn't all that good at magically cleaning up two decades of Republican mismanagement in a year.

Last time I checked, large, complex civilizations don't just turn on a dime. You can think of our civilization as a really big aircraft carrier. You don't just whip it right around like it's a Lamborghini or something. It's not possible.

People are stupid. They don't care about facts, or logic, or what is real, or what it actually takes to accomplish something. All they care about is listening to pundits and talking heads shriek about things that make them "feel" like they have some kind of power over the situation and that validate any emotions they might have about it. Because, when it comes to humanity, facts are never important and neither is the truth.

"Rudy and the Big Lie"

Sounds like it could be the title of a blockbuster movie huh?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

*Sigh* It really makes Goebbels look like an amateur.

Oh, and Rudy here is a frickin' mathematician, 6 days is less than 10. Really? I would have never known that.





Just keep saying it.* The chattel will love you for it.

*"it" being 9/11

Just Say No to... Trolls and your Own Interests while you're at it

Two things today. The first is, no more anonymous posting. I originally (and probably naively so) didn't have a problem with people posting anonymously, until I realized that it's usually only trolls that have nothing to add to the conversation, and that I can't tell who I'm talking to. They're all anonymous. So from now on, you have to be registered. Sorry, but some pricks always have to go and ruin a good thing for everyone else.

The second thing is, I was checking out France24, a news agency in France. I like to watch them, they tend to give a different perspective on things, since they have less of a vested interest in our politics, especially so when compared to local news networks. And I have to say, I love the comments regarding our health care. I'm sure the French, who have that *evil* "socialist" medical system are laughing their asses off at us. Well, at least laughing themselves silly over the idiots in this country. And we wonder why there is a prevalent attitude that Americans are stupid. We re-elected GDubya, so that's a case in point. We have people running around screaming against their own interests in favor of the interests of the Insurance Industry. How dumb can you get? Some comments from France24... translation is mine, and I'm not a native speaker, so I might miss some of the subtelty, but you'll get the gist of it anyway

"When Bush was in power, the Senate didn't hesitate to vote in favor of more funds to support an increase in cost of opearations for the soldiers in Iraq, that money was wasted and lost, but now they hesistate to vote in favor of a project that benefits all Americans, especially the poor."

"I do not understand why certain people (USA) are so hostile to this project? It's simple enough to be empathetic and understand the best interest of the project..."

"Good luck to this President, for this initiative for health."

Yeah, he's going to need all the luck he can get. And yes, it should be simple to understand that we think health care is a right, and that all people regardless of income should have access to it. But that requires critical thinking skills, and those are unfortunately sorely lacking in this country.

When I was in France, I came across a French family vacationing in the Pyrenees. We had a conversation about our vacations and what we were up to. The husband told me he thought it was insane that we didn't get more vacation time here in the States, followed by a little laugh, as if he knew he had the better end of the deal and was thanking his lucky stars he wasn't American. The French get an average of 39 days of vacation a year. In my white collar job, I get 10 a year. Yeah. They understand there, that there is more to life than money. Something that I think we've forgotten in this country. Sure money is important for living, I come from poverty and understand that really well, however it is not the be-all and end-all of life. What happened to enjoying life? Or are we too busy killing ourselves chasing after material shit that the talking heads on the TV tell us we have to have?

If you want to see an prime example of this, watch HGTV sometime. Watch how prospective home buyers and home owners either talk about or rip out entire kitchens and bathrooms because they're "dated". They complain about the color of the appliances because they're not "in". Talk about environmentally unfriendly! How many resources are wasted to build a new appliance, how many appliances are dumped in landfills because they're the "wrong" color? And these same people talk about going "green" while being the most wasteful fucks on the planet.

Everyone has to have the latest of everything, the latest phone, the latest custom cabinetry, the latest computer (okay well, maybe if you want to play the latest games you'll need that LOL), a brand new car, a brand new this and a brand new that. What happened to using things until they don't work?

Le sigh.

Your Quote of the Day on Health Care, or how you're a fucking idiot if you think private corporations are the answer

"...leaving private insurance companies the job of controlling the costs of health care is like making a pyromaniac the fire chief." --Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y.

You know after much thought, I've decided that if people are so stupid that they don't want universal and public health care like Canada and the UK and much of the rest of Europe have, that they don't deserve it. God forbid that they lie sick in the hospital with cancer, and are having to argue with their creditors because they're losing their house and everything they have because their insurance company dropped them when they got sick. Think it can't happen to you? It can, and it will. If you get sick with an expensive disease, your insurance company WILL drop you. End of fucking story.

Against universal health care? How does it feel to be a pawn of the insurance lobby? If you haven't enough sense in your head to see that the problem is the corporations, the insurance companies, etc., then you deserve exactly what you get. Hope you eat it up. Enjoy! Let me know how that works out for you, k?

I'm sick of the stupidity in this country.

"Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on." --Winston Churchill

Your Anger *will* Consume You

"There is more anger in America today than at any time I can remember." --Arlen Specter

Never thought I'd quote old Specter, but that quote caught my attention. There's a whole lot of anger all right, and a whole lot of ignorance to go along with it. The talking radio heads are pandering to the ignorant masses, feeding them lies and sending them off to disrupt democratic town hall meetings. They're like a two year old throwing a temper tantrum and making it impossible for the grown ups to talk.

They're spray painting swastikas outside of US Representative's offices. They're threatening a revolution. Yes, a revolution because they can't stand the fact that a black man is President. THAT is what this all boils down to. And if you don't believe it, you've not been paying attention. It's bad enough for these people that a democrat is in office, and our civil rights are semi-protected for the time being, but that there's a black democrat in office. That's just the straw that broke the camel's back for them. It has nothing to do with Socialism, they don't even understand the definition of that, as they're using it right now (Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, etc.). That we might have healthcare like the UK, Canada or Sweden, is a good thing, but they believe the lies because they can't think for themselves. For them, money is prime, yet they don't have much of it. They are content to be the pawns of the Republican party, the lobbyists, the Corporations, like the Pharmaceutical and Insurance companies. Oh yes, they're told to be angry and go crash these meetings on behalf of these entities that have no business being in our politics in the first place. And these people are too stupid to realize it. They're rebels without a clue, to quote Tom Petty LOL

Lincoln was right. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. If we let these neo-Nazi wanna-bes crash democratically run town hall meetings, if we let them threaten and intimidate politicians by spray painting racist crap outside their offices, they may eventually get the upper hand, and we all know where that road leads. It isn't a pretty drive. They need to arrest these people and charge them with criminal trespass and disturbing the peace. If they can't come to a discussion and have just that, a discussion, and instead scream and throw their tantrums, they need to be removed from the event and punished, like a two year old, put them in time-out at the local jail.

The Forces of Darkness

War is Peace,

Freedom is Slavery,

Ignorance is Strength.

I don't think that any of these Republicans who are clamoring for their own little totalitarian theocracy have ever read 1984. Because if they had read it, they'd realize that what they're doing is straight out of Big Brother's propaganda machine. These are all from ThinkProgress and all from this evening.

The Democrats are just as bad as the North Korean and Iranian regimes.

Phil Gingrey (R. Ga): "Americans are watching as from Iran to North Korea, the forces of darkness are attempting to silence the forces of democracy and freedom. The irony is on this day, the Democratic process and the nation’s economic freedom are under threat not by some rogue state, but in this very chamber in which we stand."

Pelosi has created an autocracy in the House.

John McCain (R. Az): "And I guarantee you we are using every parliamentary possibility we have and I have great sympathy for my friends in the House because it’s almost under an autocracy now with Speaker Pelosi."

Obama is an Colonial African Despot.

Rush Limbaugh: "We’ve elected somebody who’s more African in his roots than he is American…and is behaving like an African colonial despot."

Because, G.W. Bush wiping his ass with the Constitution of the United States, getting us into two wars we had no business being in, and sending our economy down the fucking drain, promoting theocracy in this country, and being an overall dipshit that the whole world hated, didn't cause these asshats any sort of bother at all. They didn't wake up in the middle of the night, wondering if maybe they should be doing something to save this country.

Now that the democrats are trying to save it, perhaps slowly and perhaps ineffectively, all they can do is scream about how the democrats are really despots and tyrants. Oh please. They wouldn't know a tyrant if they were arrested by them, thrown into prison without trial, and taken out behind a woodshed and summarily executed. Why? Because they don't have any cognizant thought or reason in their heads. Nor do they have any empathy. All they have is a singular idea that god tells them they're special and deserve to have absolute power over everyone else, and because they're rich, they don't have to bother with the lesser classes who should know their place.

Forces of darkness? The only forces of darkness I see are McCain, Limbaugh and the rest of their hangers-on.

Rep. Michele Bachmann Needs A History of The United States for Dummies

First of all, let me say once more for the record that I hate liars. Now, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) might be misinformed. Perhaps she doesn't realize that she's wrong, but I somehow doubt that. You see, these people believe, and rightly so, that if they repeat a lie enough, it will be believed to be truth. If you are going to be in congress, and represent the people, you should at the very least make sure that what you are saying is true. Maybe you're busy and don't have time to research all the facts for yourself, but that's what unpaid interns are for.

FDR saved this country. And for her to act like he caused the depression and then made it worse, makes me very angry. There are already enough stupid people in this country that know nothing of history, and for her to spread lies like this, that unthinking chattel will go about spouting as truth, makes me even angrier.

I'll start with her first point, that the recession that Coolidge faced was worse than that faced by FDR. First of all, the recession caused at the end of the 1910's and beginning of the 1920's was caused by the end of World War I. Factories that had been pumping out items for war, all of a sudden had no market. It took them time to retool so they could start making domestic products again. There was also high unemployment because of returning troops who needed jobs. Second of all, Coolidge didn't deal with it! He didn't become President until 1923, after the recession was over, when Harding died in office. Indeed, it can be argued that all the lax regulation of the 20's that Coolidge and the other Republicans were responsible for led directly to the Great Depression. Another example of a Democrat cleaning up the Republican mess. Mass de-regulation (see the last two decades and the 1920's) leads to a massive crash (like now, like 1929).

Next, I'd like to address her Hoot-Smalley Act [sic] which is really the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. That was enacted by Republicans Reed Smoot and Willis C. Hawley and passed by the house, the Senate which were both controlled by the Republicans, and signed into law by Herbert Hoover, the Republican President. It has been argued by economists that it was responsible for exacerbating the Great Depression. It caused the taxes on many goods to go up by 60%. What was that about not raising taxes?

FDR created the Works Project Administration, a "Socialist" idea, which saved this fucking country from absolute poverty and possibly anarchy and annihilation. It put people who were out of work, to work on the government's dime. You ever notice the stone work on many bridges here dating to that era? That was done by stone masons put to work by the WPA. Ever noticed murals on post office walls, or in other government buildings? Artists were paid by the government to paint murals. People were put to work building things and improving our infrastructure. In fact, most of our modern infrastructure has been neglected since.

In fact, FDR didn't take office until 1933, four years after the Great Depression had begun. Michele Bachmann is either stupid, or a liar, or perhaps both.

"...as a matter of fact the recession that FDR had to deal with wasn't as bad as the recession Coolidge had to deal with in the early 20's, yet the prescription that Coolidge put on that, from history, is lower taxes, lower regulatory burden, and we saw the roaring 20s where we saw markets and growth in the economy like we'd never seen before in the history of the country. FDR applied just the opposite forumula, the Hoot-Smalley Act [sic], which was a tremendous burden on tariff restrictions and of course trade barriers and the regulatory burden and tax barriers. That's what we saw happen under FDR that took a recession and blew it into a full scale depression. The American people suffered for almost ten years under that kind of thinking."

Republicans are Anti-Worker, but we Knew That

I had another ten page rant about Obama in my inbox this morning. This time from Senator Jim DeMint (Republican) of South Carolina via Townhall.com. Crackpots. They're asking me to sign some petition against unions, because how dare workers organize. Really though, the letter was half attack on Obama and half attack on unions.

I'm not saying unions are all they are cracked up to be, perhaps we could use some reform in that area, but if workers want to unionize they should be able to. My grandmother was in a union when she worked at a factory in the 1970s and she liked it and she made very good money. When I worked for a big box retailer, whose name will remain unsaid, they used scare tactics against any type of organizing, implying that anyone who dared attempt to unionize would find themselves without a job, and saying they had an "open door" policy that meant we didn't need a union. Really? I beg to differ. I think that unions give workers leverage, and the Corporatocracy doesn't like that, because it might eat into their profit margin if workers start demanding enough pay to live. And the sad thing is, the people I worked with who lacked critical thinking skills, were persuaded to believe that unions are a bad thing.

But the thing that really pissed me off about this drivel in my inbox, they don't bother to say what the number is on the bill, or the actual title of the bill, they just call it a "Card Check Forced Labor Bill" which I'm damned sure that's not the name of it, so I can't find what bill they're talking about, and I don't really have time to dig much for it. That in and of itself is underhanded. They spout a bunch of stuff, and make it extremely difficult for anyone with half a brain or a questioning thought in their head to go and see if what they're saying is even true. Oh, and of course at the bottom of the rant, surprise, surprise, they ask for money. There's also a disclaimer at the bottom saying they're "non-partisan". My ass.

Some choice tidbits from the ten page rant:

"You see, passage of the so-called "Card Check" Bill is all that stands between the union bosses and total control over hundreds of thousands of America's small businesses . . .

. . . not to mention the hundreds of millions of forced-dues dollars that will immediately be seized from American workers' paychecks...

Any workers who refuse to sign the so-called "union authorization cards" would find themselves victims of lies, intimidation, threats, harassment -- and worse -- from union militants...

And when you do, please consider a generous contribution of $500, $250, $100 or $35 to the Committee."

They make it sound like the union is going to come in with billy clubs like it's the Republican National Convention and start beating people if they don't want to unionize.

So, I finally found what it is, I had heard of it, but it had slipped my mind. The Employee Free Choice Act. Because you know, it's a terrible thing that employees have a choice about whether they are represented or not. I find the rhetoric in their stupid newsletter a turn off (i.e. Obama is a socialist communist devil worshipper... okay it didn't go quite that far but it might as well have), and I have this sneaking suspicion that it's lies, but I seriously don't have the time right now to go through all their points and research it.

I will say though, that there was a time in this country, when we were prosperous where almost every industry was unionized. Those days are gone. The Corporatocracy has shipped all the high paying jobs overseas and have reduced what they pay to the ones that are left here. So you can't make enough to live any more without a college education, and even then it's dicey.

Republicans, Democrats, What's the Bloody Difference?

In an article from the UK that I stole from The Well-Armed Lamb, it seems that the Obama Administration is taking some pages out of Bush's book. They want to overturn a 1986 ruling (Michigan vs. Jackson) that people have the right to legal counsel before being questioned by the police, and that the police are supposed to inform them of this, and not question them if they want a lawyer. It's designed to protect the mentally ill, the poor, the uneducated, and the young, who may not know that because of the sixth amendment they have a right to a lawyer before being questioned.

If they have any sense, they'll backtrack off this real quick. However, it doesn't do them any favors. If you ever doubted for a moment that this Corporatocracy was run by two parties you have another thing coming. These politicians, on both sides are nothing but lying sacks of shit, plotting on how best they can usurp total control of us all. In the end, that is what both parties want, and they're willing to work together behind closed doors to see it happen. Of course they have to put up the fake fight, it's like a WWE match, so fake you can't even stand it, in public, in front of the cameras, so that we can all see how "different" they are.

And what was that I was saying yesterday about the Swine Flu being used to cover something up... as important as this is, it isn't in any of the American News (yet?), not even on supposedly liberal MSNBC or even on Faux News. Funny that. I would think Faux News would be all over this as much as they hate Obama all. The British report it and it doesn't even affect them. Absolutely fucking amazing.

Made In Communist China

With all the right wing extremist wackos raving and ranting over socialist Venezuela (I dare them to define socialism, the fools don't even know what it is) and Obama the Socialist (huh? like, as if), I got to thinking about it and realized that these people are either one of two camps. They're either the powers-that-be, spreading misinformation for the purpose of advancing their Corporatocracy, or they're sheeple, parroting the last thing their talking head on Faux News or Conservative Talk Radio told them they should think.

Now, China on the other hand. China, which is communist and has terrible human rights violations, these so called capitalist (predominately) Christians don't have a problem with China. Nevermind that communism is further to the left than socialism. Nevermind that American corporations are using slave labor in China to increase their profits so they can make millions, and we can have our cheap plastic crap. So why aren't they decrying us doing business with China? Could it be because China serves us whereas Chavez has basically told us to go fuck ourselves?

From a historical standpoint, it seems that we can set up all the dictatorships we want, and we're fine with their human rights violations, because we seriously don't have any problem perpetrating them ourselves (Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, rounding up Japanese for internment camps in WWII, giving native Americans blankets tainted with smallpox, you get the idea), so long as the country we've jury rigged gives us our proper homage. The second they do something we don't like, well, we'll just set up a military coup. Like that couldn't possibly backfire...

Our Constitution dictates that our government should operate in a certain manner, under a set of laws, but so many Americans seem willing to ignore it, when it serves their purpose to do so. You know, I don't give a damn what your private opinions are, or what political party you like to back, but for the love of god, think. It won't kill you.

Speaking of which... do you think China could export some Reason and Common Sense?

"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."--Siddhārtha Gautama

Cap and Trade Hysteria

For some reason, I'm on multiple right-wing wacko mailing lists. I don't know why. What a waste of bandwidth. I don't have the heart to unsubscribe though, because I figure that it's best to know what your enemies are up to. Most of the time these newsletters are full of lies, and always full of hysteria. They use tactics that are designed to scare people. Make them think that everything is going wrong and they'll suffer for sure. Fear is what they're selling, and obviously quite a few people are in the market for it.

Today I got a newsletter from John Ensign, the Republican Senator from Nevada. This guy is certifiable half the time, and he's elected. He might be a nice guy in person, I've never met him, but his newsletters often stretch the truth of things and propagate hysteria, just like all the other wackos. So the newsletter screams that Obama is going to pass something called a Cap and Trade system on energy and it's going to cost every family $3000 a year. Turns out that $3000 might actually be more like $300, but who's paying attention to where they're getting these numbers?

Now, first of all, as educated as I am, I had no idea what a Cap and Trade system is. I imagine to his uneducated readers who can't think for themselves this sounds scary. Something they don't know what it is, and it costs a lot. But I can think for myself so I went off to find out what this all meant.

Funny thing is, we're already using a Cap and Trade system on a bunch of things, to reduce acid rain and to reduce CO2 emissions. Now, that is the government's website, so since I don't believe everything I read, I have to find some other sources. Turns out that the Canadian press has a very good explanation of how it's supposed to work since they're thinking about doing the same thing.

"In the cap-and-trade system proposed by the panel, all businesses would have to buy credits to cover the emissions they produce. If a company's emissions exceed the cap set by government, they would have to buy more credits from companies that came in under the cap. Such a system creates financial incentives for companies to reduce their emissions because they can then avoid having to buy more credits and also be in a position to make money selling their unused emission credits."

Now, here's the key thing. This will make prices go up, if energy providers fail to reduce their emissions. They will pass it onto the consumer, obviously. What they'll have then is a very angry consumer. In Texas, we have choice about who we get our electricity from. There's competition and I imagine that they'll be competing like mad to make it as cheap as possible. Secondly, if they can sell any credits left over to make a profit, well that would benefit business.

Thirdly, this money isn't going out the window. They may have to pay the government, they may indeed pass some of it on to us, however in the end, that means that the government has money to use, if we can persuade them to use it on something to benefit us, our infrastructure, our schools, or education, it's a win-win situation.

Lastly, so what if you have to pay a little more? Quite frankly, you can't breathe money. If we don't do something, indeed it may already be too late, the ice at the poles will melt and the temperature of the earth will rise, along with sea levels, and all coastal areas will be flooded. The only question is, by how much? This isn't up for argument. Sure the nutty people who think that Jesus is coming back any day (any time now since 2000 years ago!) and so it doesn't matter, will tell you that scientists are wrong. They haven't bothered to look at the data (surprise, surprise), the fact that the ice sheets are melting quite fast already, or that the mean surface temperature has risen three quarters (0.75) of a degree Celsius in the last century, most of that in the last decade. Oh sure, that doesn't sound like much, until you realize that it only takes about a 7 degree increase to render much of the planet absolutely uninhabitable and that the temperature increase is speeding up.

Let's use our heads, think this through just a little bit. How much crap do you think we can throw into the water or put into the air, before it is too much? Forget the rhetoric, the political motivations, the cost, or anything else. It's common sense. It doesn't magically disappear or go away. It adds up. Sure what you put into the atmosphere in a day might not matter, but compound that by years upon years and that's another matter. Add to that the exploding population, the rising of third world countries to industrialized status who are contributing a lot to pollution too, and we have on our hands what could be a disaster of epic proportions. And to fiddle while Rome burns, isn't an option. We have to *try* something. Even if it's wrong, even if it doesn't work. Do we really want to tell our grandchildren, "Uh, sorry, we didn't think anything was wrong, or we were too lazy or cheap to do anything, and well, uh, you're going to have to live (or die) with this mess."

In the end, the businesses that should be coming up with creative ideas to make things cleaner and more efficient are instead spreading propaganda that there's nothing wrong. It's like Pompei. The volcano erupts and people go back to what they were doing, despite the fact that ash is falling. They think that it will just stop eventually. Well, we know how that turned out don't we?

"Only when the last tree has withered, the last fish has been caught, and the last river has been poisoned, will you realize you cannot eat money."--Native American Proverb

I'll Drink My Tea, Thanks.

For all these morons who are holding "teabagging" parties tomorrow, I think it will blow up in their faces, pun intended. I don't know what they're smoking, but I make above the median income for the United States, and I got a tax cut. I am paying less in taxes right now with Obama than I was under G. Dubya Bush. Republicans don't cut taxes, unless you're rich. So, why am I paying less taxes now? Could it be because the Republican party is comprised of a bunch of lying bastards? Nah, couldn't be.

They want to complain about our government spending money? I'm glad the government spends money. *I* am the face of government spending. I am a private contractor on a research project that is being funded by our government. If the government stops spending money, I lose my job. And the thought of that pisses me off. What do these idiots think the government spends money on? Yes, I'm sure some of it is wasteful, but not all of it. They spend money on road work, building projects, and on research projects that are working to better everyone's lives. They spend money giving grants so students, who otherwise wouldn't be able to, can go to college.

You know the one thing I wish. I wish I made more money so that I would have the priveledge of paying more taxes. Pay me $300k a year, I'll pay the taxes on it! I wouldn't know what to do with that kind of income, but I'm sure I could think of a few things.

These sheeple can take their tea bags and shove them where the sun don't shine. As for me, I'll take my tea black, with sugar.

If Civilization Collapses, I'm Going Deer Hunting

I haven't written in a couple weeks. I don't know whether it's because I've had nothing to write about, or if I've been busy, or I've just not felt like writing.

I was trying to concentrate enough to focus on working on some side projects but I can never seem to concentrate enough to finish them. It's not helped either by the fact that I've found a really cool online game to play. XD

The Hunter is as close to real hunting that you can get! It's beautiful too. Even if you don't hunt, you should try it if only to wander around the environment and marvel at how real it looks at times. It's fairly accurate and gives a good feeling of how hunting really is, as much as a video game can. So, if I don't write much for the next few weeks you can bet I'm probably playing :D

Ah, and now for the rant. If I read one more time that it's all Obama's fault that the stock market is in the toilet because "...the market has fallen X amount..." since he was elected, I think I might scream. As if the previous two decades of mismanagement, deregulation, lax lending policies and a corrupt previous administration (who I'd like to remind you were in power from election day to January 20th), had absolutely nothing to do with the current predicament we find ourselves in. Yes, that had nothing to do with it, it's all Obama's fault [/sarcasm]. People are idiots.

They continue to vote the same jokers back into office because they believe the rhetoric. Republicans, Democrats, they're all the same. They want us to fight over petty crap like gay marriage so that they can continue to dismantle this democracy and strip us of our Constitutional rights so they can make a buck and extend their power. If you doubt this, you are part of the problem, and I'd like it if you'd get your head out of your ass, as the very survival of this country relies on it's citizens to be thinkers, and critical and suspicious of anything the government wants to do.

It's the same shit, just a different day. I don't think anything will ever change. This has all happened before now, and whatever lessons were learned from it, died with the people who learned them. They certainly didn't pass any of it on to a new generation. Well, as my dad used to say, sometimes you gotta learn the hard way. Well, this is the hard way. Depression v.2.0. It's gonna be some interesting times here. Perhaps the lessons we learn from it will carry on to those who come after us? Nah, that'd be too easy.

Malkin and Her Short Memory

Lay the blame anywhere but where it belongs.

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/02/17/president-obamas-2000-point-tumble/

Ms. Malkin seems to think it's all Obama's fault that the stock market is in a free fall. She states that it's fallen 2k points since he was elected, never mind that he wasn't even in office for a majority of that time.

It couldn't possibly be the failed economic policies of the last decade. Nah, it couldn't possibly be the corruption, the deregulation, the lack of government oversight with the banks and mortgage lending. It couldn't possibly be the Republicans allowing all of the high paying factory work to be shipped to China or Mexico so that their crony CEO friends could make record profits and take home record bonuses of hundreds of millions of dollars while using slave wage labor in third world countries. It couldn't possibly be a Republican's fault.

When G. Dubya took office we had a budget surplus, which he quickly squandered. He also squandered a lot of other things too. The friendship and trust of our allies and the wealth of this country are just the tip of the iceberg to what that man and his administration squandered.

Malkin must have a very short memory, because from May of 2008 until G.Dubya Bush exited office on January 20, 2009 the stock market fell over 5,000 points. It went from over 13k to under 8k. In fact, since January 20th when Obama took office, until today, the stock market had been up a little bit on average. Of course, today it fell a lot, and I suspect it's going to continue that trend, as reversing the mismanagement of the previous administration isn't going to happen overnight.

I have a good friend who told me right after the election that she figured that the Republicans would prop up the economy the best they could until Obama took office, then they would not cooperate, and would let everything collapse and blame it all on Obama and the Democrats. That makes for a nice excuse for all sorts of fascist aspirations. I'll leave your imagination to that one.

Perhaps Malkin and her ilk, if they want to know the reason for the state our economy is in, they can go and look in the mirror. They voted for it, and they continue to advocate for failed policies.

The blame lies at their own feet.