October 8, 2008 archive

1. With “Ignoring Reality Has a Price“, the NY Times attempts to analyze how bad of a hole we’re in. “All told, the Federal Reserve has pumped $800 billion into the financial system” and that doesn’t include buying short-term debt, nor does it include “any of the money the Treasury Department is laying out, like the $700 billion bailout fund or the $200 billion” to prop up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

   After 14 months of crisis, the federal government – meaning you and me – has put serious money on the line. As a point of comparison, the entire annual federal budget is about $3 trillion.

   Just how are we going to pay for all this?

   The short answer is that the budget problems the country seemed to have a year ago are now even worse. Next year’s deficit (relative to the economy’s size) will probably be the biggest since 1992, and maybe since 1983. Taxes will have to rise or government spending will have to fall, if not both. Trying to contain the mess created by a bubble no doubt costs serious money.

   And it gets worse from there. I think we Americans are really going have to take a look at our defense spending on offensive war capacity and make serious cutbacks. Our failing economy no longer can support having the largest (by serveral factors) armed force in the world.

Four at Four continues with a federal judge ordering 17 men released from Guantanamo Bay, an update from Afghanistan, and news that we’ve stopped evolving and why that’s a good thing.

A two part answer to the question of how McCain can fix Social Security. First, Social Security is not broken and does not need fixing. Second, McCain can’t fix Social Security.

Social Security and Medicare are often lumped together as “entitlements”, and the threat of Social Security not paying off to the current working generation is used to try to grease the wheels of efforts to allow Wall Street to gain income from Security taxes.

Ezra Klein capably addresses the point that Social Security is not “in crisis” in Social Security as Signifier, so I’ll focus on why John McCain can’t fix it. But to get the basic … look at that gentle slope in Social Security … look at that massive explosion in Medicare … Medicare, that’s an entitlement crisis. Social Security, not.

First of all, unless you are over the John McCain line of the Middle Class ….Five Million Dollars a Year, the Class War is NOT directed at you. The term Class War tends to make folks nervous if they are doing okay. The propaganda is that the poor want to wage war on the Middle Class. That is NOT true. Class War is the Middle Class and the Lower Class against the Ruling Class

So, relax! Well, come to think of it, you can only really relax if you are on the side that is winning The Class War. If you do happen to make less than $5Mil….you aren’t. If you make less than $5Mil….you are losing The Class War.

It was very nice of Dear John to delineate the dividing line of The Class War that is currently occurring so succinctly!

The Bush Administration came into office with one overriding, clear, and definite objective: Make the Rich richer. To insulate and inoculate the Ruling Class from the pesky yammering of the Middle and Lower Classes that vexed them under the tenure of Democrats. Yammering like…paying taxes… regulations that were inconveniently forcing them to be responsible stewards of the economy…and of course, yammering about egalitarianism in America. The idea that we are all equal, no matter how much we earn. The idea that our democratic system of government is for the benefit of ALL Americans, not just the Ruling Class.

But they have gone too far at exactly the wrong time and THEY have made this a Class War election. Us regular Americans who think that this is the America of our forefathers, the America of the patriotic myths we were brought up on, the America that exists to benefit ALL Americans….vs…Them. The ones who think that the only function of America and its government is to make them richer, and now to bail them out when they fail. It is OUR job to save THEM? I don’t think so.

THAT is why Obama is going to win this election, and quite possibly, win it in a landslide.

The ‘town hall’ debate actually merits a kudo, amid its problems: there were actually serious questions about energy and global warming, including a direction mention of green jobs.  

In the debate, Barack Obama consistently reiterated that energy is a top-tier issue, linking it to financial, environmental, and international security challenges.  Obama spoke of energy in holistic terms, speaking from individuals to nation/globe, about producing power and seeking energy efficiency, about … Obama sounded like he understood what he was talking about and that he has a plan for solving multiple problems at the same time when it comes to energy.

John McCain also emphasized energy, but his comments were filled with incomplete, disingenuous, and non-truthful elements continuing a sad tradition by both John McCain and Sarah Palin.

John McCain’s body language was so clenched, so tightly wound, I was waiting (ok, almost hoping) for him to explode into one of his famous tantrums.

His forced soft-speak, reminiscent of Bush’s almost whispery speech when he was trying to win people over seemed strained, not natural. The muscles in his clenched jaw visibly flexed and twitched with tension.

Then there is the arm thing. Has anyone else noticed his arms seem to stick out at a 45 degree unnatural angle, binding just below the shoulders in an obvious ill fit from all the padding? Even his body under the suit looked padded, to make him look bigger.

He looks like a robot, with his stiff hands and jerky movements.

Obama however looked comfortable, loose, natural, even graceful. Dominant.