This Sounds About Right

Rant on the Economy

I don't get it. We're spending $10 billion a month for the war in Iraq and now the Treasury Secretary is saying the government is going to need to spend "hundreds of billions" of dollars to deal with the financial crisis and to bail out all these corporations that fucked up big time. None of these "solutions" is going to help out the shareholders of any of these companies. They (we?) are out of luck. I'm not exactly sure who the bailouts will help, but my guess is that the CEOs and other executives don't need to worry too much about losing their homes.
And who really pays for it? We do. With our tax dollars.
I thought that deregulating and giving reign to free market forces meant that going out of business was supposed to be a natural end result of businesses that chose poor policies and practices. Apparently government bailouts for major fuckups is okay, but government regulations that could prevent this mess in the first place are bad. That seems to be the logic we have been operating under.
Yeah, definitely time for a change.

Good Night

I've stayed up a little past my bedtime to see what Sarah Palin's speech is about. I think it's about 10 minutes in and so far all she has done is say what a great man John McCain is and then she spoke about her family for a while. What does this have to do with her ability to govern the nation?
Fine, she's an "average hockey mom" and she likes the common folk. What is she going to do about the economy, foreign policy, energy policy?
I don't care that she was on the PTA. Even CNN keeps cutting to footage of the youngest daughter tending to the baby. This is boring. She's regular folk. I get it. I want someone smarter than that running the country. I'm not impressed. I'm going to bed.

Ha!

Good! I think McCain just threw away his chance at the presidency with his VP candidate choice. After all those ads about Obama's lack of experience and "is he ready to lead?" messages, McCain choses a running mate whose experience in governing consists of one term serving as mayor of a town in Alaska and less than two years serving as that state's governor? That's who he is putting in place to be "a heartbeat" from the presidency when one of the largest issues surrounding his candidacy is his age and whether or not he'll be around to even serve out a full term? Wtf were he and his handlers thinking?
I think the choice of Palin is such blatant pandering by the Republican Party to "the female vote." One 30-second look at Palin's stand on the issues will convince any voter that she is a far cry from Hillary Clinton's positions on the issues and women will not now be suddenly, magically flocking to support McCain because he chose a "hockey mom" with a husband who races snowmobiles as his running mate. Is this supposed to offset the elitism of McCain not even knowing how many homes he owns?
I think he's blown it. My dad, sister and I were all in the car on the way to lunch during Palin's speech and my dad even said he wouldn't be voting for McCain now. Most of the time he's a pretty pro-establishment guy (my Dad), and if he is turned off by this decision, I'm sure many other are as well. And I don't think it will convince anyone who was already on the fence about choosing McCain over Obama, to swing in McCain's direction.

The Big Debates

I watched the primary debates last night and all I can say is that I am more undecided now than I was before. I am not a Republican, but I watched their go at it and thought it was a lot of posturing and jabbing at each other. I am also pretty much appalled by the Republican take on managing immigration and wished they would have spent less time talking about walls and sending illegal immigrants to the "back of the line" and more time discussing the economy, which is in the process of grinding down into recession and will probably be the number one issue by November 2008.
The Democrats were a lot more civil and worked harder to find common ground. I had been leaning toward voting for Obama, but I actually like what Bill Richardson had to say the best (aside from his take on how to deal with Pakistan.) I get the feeling that Hillary Clinton is the toughest of the bunch, which of course gets her labeled a "bitch" by people who feel threatened by that. A lot of people make a big deal about Obama's race, but that's a non-issue to me and I feel, over all, there a lot more people in this country threatened by the thought of a woman as Commander-in-Chief than a guy who's father was African. Lots of people say "Oh, I wouldn't mind a woman in office, just not THAT woman." That's fine to say, but once those same people start throwing around the B word and the Ice Queen label, the sincerity of their "I'm fine with a woman in office" statements falls flat. At the very least, the inherent depth of their sexism is showing.
Edwards panders to emotion rather than intellect, which is a big red flag to me. I'm afraid his shucks-y manner and the fact that he's the only status quo white guy in the Democrat lineup is going to pull him a lot of votes. Obama is very charismatic and I do like what he claims to be offering. I'm just afraid I'm a little too jaded to believe he'll be able to pull off as much Change as he promises. I really may not know who I'll chose until I walk into the voting booth on Tuesday.

Live from New Hampshire

Well, I live in New Hampshire and I have a blog, so I guess that qualifies me to be a presidential primary "expert" for the next 4 days . The TV ads are constant and ridiculous. Rudy Giuliani and Ron Paul are running racist ads promoting fear mongering. Giuliani's demonizes the Middle East in general and Ron Paul's seems to say immigrants were fine in the good old days when then immigrants came by boat from Europe, but now they swim across the river and come from Latin America. Mitt Romney continues to be smug and is aiming straight at John McCain, his closest competitor. Huckabee, who stormed the Iowa caucuses, has a weak presence here and I don't think he has a snowball's chance in hell of placing better than third in the Republican primary here.
I really hate Romney and Giuliani. Huckabee is a Religious Right nut job. Ron Paul is way far out there for the general American public, although he has a fairly decent base in NH. I'm not even a Republican, but I'm hoping McCain wins the Republican primary because the thought of any of the other Republican candidates having a real shot at the presidency is terrifying.

As for the Democrats, I think Obama may have the momentum to take the prize and that is fine by me. Overall, the Democrats ads are less apocalyptic and I appreciate that. Everyone has said all along they thought Hillary Clinton was a shoe-in. I never believed it. Edwards does nothing for me. Bill Richardson was the candidate I really had the most interest in, but he never moved out of middle of the pack here.

It was kind of good that the Iowa caucuses took some of the spotlight off of NH this week. I am so tired of the junk mail from the candidates, the radio and TV ads and the poll requests. Four more days to go and then the dog and pony show will move in.