The responsible adults vs. the rebellious teenagers

The financial crisis on Wall Street is a direct result of the radically irresponsible Republican policies of the past dozen years. Now that the the bill is coming due on their malfeasance, it is left mainly to Democrats to clean up the mess.
And instead of pitching in to help out, Republicans are sitting back and throwing potshots at Democrats while continuing to advocate for the same failed policies that got us into this mess in the first place. Seriously.
What we have today is the Responsible Adult Party (Democrats) vs. the Rebellious Teenagers Party (Republicans).
The Democrats are like parents who come home after a weeklong vacation to find that a group of teenagers have trashed their house with a big, long party. They get to work trying to clean up the mess and the teenagers only response is to sit back and say “Party On, Duuuuuudes!”

Considering the Republican’s latest proposal for fixing the Wall Street crisis (i.e. more tax cuts for the rich and more deregulation) I think that “Party On, Duuuuudes!” should be the GOP’s new motto.

Hide Sarah Palin!

I thought that Matthew Yglesias was kidding when he posted this infamous YouTube video

of the South Carolina teen beauty pageant contestant trying to fake her way through a Q and A that she clearly has no idea about and said it was a preview of Sarah Palin’s interview on CBS with Katie Couric.
But now it appears that Yglesias was being very prescient.

Couric asked Palin, "Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries? Allow them to spend more, and put more money into the economy, instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?"

Palin, in a rambling and largely incoherent response, responded, "That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in. Where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy. Um, helping, oh, it's got to be about job creation, too. Shoring up our economy, and getting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions, and tax relief for Americans, and trade -- we have got to see trade as opportunity, not as, uh, competitive, um, scary thing, but one in five jobs created in the trade sector today. We've got to look at that as more opportunity. All of those things under the umbrella of job creation."

My God!
I think the teen beauty pageant contestant made better sense!
Hell, Dan Quayle could have given a better, more coherent response!
No wonder John McCain is in panic mode. Sheesh!

What if a candidate suspended his campaign and nobody noticed...

Except for David Letterman who was obviously ticked when McCain bailed out on appearing on his show at the last moment.



McCain lied to Letterman and told him he had to immediately fly back to Washington to deal with the Wall Street crisis, but instead he went next door to the CBS studio to do an interview with Katie Couric. And Letterman caught him! It was a classic moment with Letterman watching a live feed of McCain getting ready for his Couric interview and yelling “Hey, Senator, I have a question! Do you need a ride to the airport?”

But the best line of the night was when Letterman said “What are you going to do if you’re elected and things get tough? Suspend being president?”

Ouch!!

Meanwhile, there is a sinking suspicion that the real reason for McCain’s desperation move to put off the debates is to Hide Sarah Palin!
Probably not a bad idea.

Chicken!!!!!!

This has got to be the most desperate political stunt by a presidential candidate in our nation’s history!

Republican presidential candidate John McCain announced Wednesday that he is suspending his campaign to return to Washington and focus on the "historic" crisis facing the U.S. economy....
McCain also urged that organizers of Friday's presidential debate at the University of Mississippi to postpone the event.

The Wall Street collapse began 10 days ago, but only now does McCain decide it is imperative that he “suspend” his campaign and postpone Friday’s debate. The truth of the matter is that McCain is getting his butt kicked in the polls and he doesn’t have a prayer of a chance of turning things around in a head-to-head debate on the issues with Obama.
So he is pulling this desperation stunt hoping it will distract people from all the other problems besetting his campaign, like the fact that his campaign manager is suddenly ensnared in a new scandal:

One of the giant mortgage companies at the heart of the credit crisis paid $15,000 a month from the end of 2005 through last month to a firm owned by Senator John McCain’s campaign manager, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement.
The disclosure undercuts a remark by Mr. McCain on Sunday night that the campaign manager, Rick Davis, had had no involvement with the company for the last several years.
Mr. Davis’s firm received the payments from the company, Freddie Mac, until it was taken over by the government this month...

$15,000 a month!!! For doing nothing!!??!!! What the heck is going on here?

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin’s pathetic attempts to bone up on her foreign policy knowledge by exchanging pleasantries with a handful of foreign leaders at the U.N. became a sad spectacle when her handlers refused to allow media more than 30 seconds at each photo-op and No Questions!!!

So let’s see, Palin is running scared from investigators in Alaska looking into her abuse of power scandal during her brief tenure as governor. And now McCain is running scared at the prospect of having to face Obama in a formal debate on foreign policy.
And the most amazing thing of all is that there are still people out there willing to vote for these people to lead our country for the next four years.
How deeply disturbing that is.

Landslide dreaming

All the national polls have swung back Obama’s way which would explain the noticable absence of TTFKAM (The Troll Formerly Known As Mark) from the comments. He apparently only crawls out from under his rock to pick at me whenever the polls show John McCain leading. Now that the tide has turned he has slithered away again.
I
There is a cool website here that allows you to color each state red or blue to see how the election would play out under different scenarios.
Right now you start off giving each candidate their gimme states. McCain gets Texas, the Deep South, and most of the Mountain West. Obama gets California and the Pacific Coast, Illinois, New York and all of New England.
Then you have to figure out how to divvy up the “swing” states.
If Obama can lock up the Mid-West and Great Lakes region (minus Indiana, plus Pennsylvania). He wins by the slimmest of margins. That means Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa and Missouri.
But there are other pick-ups more likely than Missouri, such as New Mexico and Colorado; Virginia and North Carolina; Ohio and maybe even Indiana; and, of course, Florida.
If any of those state combinations start to flow to Obama, then get ready for a landslide.
Right now, I have high hopes for Virginia. Mark Warner is doing so well in his Senate race over hapless Republican Jim Gilmore that I think he could deliver the state for Obama on his coattails.

Update

The polling news just keeps getting better.
The new Washington Post/ABC News poll has Obama up a whopping 9 points — 52 to 43.
And Hotline/Diageo has Obama opening up a six point lead — 48 to 42, the biggest spread in their polling to date.
And even Rasmussen finally shows Obama starting to pull away 49 to 47.

The end is near

At least as far as my TV viewing habits are concerned.
For several years now the television network executives have relentlessly hacked away at the kinds of TV programming that I find pleasurable or even tolerable. They have slowly canceled all the shows that I used to watch regularly and replaced them with unwatchable “reality show” dreck. New shows that I would find somewhat interesting would get canceled in the middle of a season. This had the effect of teaching me not to invest my time in watching new shows until they are well established.
Then last season I found that I was left with just three shows that I took the time to watch on a regular weekly basis — ER, Lost and Boston Legal. (And to my chagrin, ER and Lost air at the same time). ER, it was announced, was in its final season and they had already declared that their would be a limited lifespan for Lost. So this just left Boston Legal.
Now I have learned that this will also be the final season for Boston Legal, and a truncated one to boot. They only produced half as many Boston Legal shows this season plus a two-hour finale to wrap it all up.
And with that I guess I can just sell my television set. Nothing else that is coming out new this season looks even halfway interesting, and even if it did I know better than to invest my time watching it just to have the networks pull the plug halfway through.
So I give up. After this season I will not have any traditional TV programming to watch. Oh, there will still be plenty of stuff to watch - news shows like Countdown with Keith Olbermann, The Rachel Maddow Show, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report - Home and Garden channel, Discovery Network, Sports, classic movies on AMC and TCM, etc.
But the era of traditional TV programming is being undermined by the greed and stupidity of today’s clueless network executives who wouldn’t know a hit TV show if it bit them on the ass.

Electing Republicans is costly

First there is the $500 billion (and climbing) price tag for the Quagmire in Iraq. And don't forget the $4 a gallon gas prices that came along with the turmoil in the Middle East as an added bonus.
Now we have a $700 billion bailout of the U.S. financial system thanks to the Republicans' slavish devotion to deregulation and "unfettered" free markets. And that may just be the first installment of what could wind up being $1 trillion before all is said and done.
And let's not forget the Bush/McCain tax giveaway to the rich that left a huge hole in our budget even before these other expenses started piling up. Tax giveaways that were supposed to spur an economic bonanza that would trickly down to all of us. Instead, we got a recession followed by a weak, jobless recovery and then another recession. During which time most American's average earnings have gone done while the cost of living has continued to climb.
And in between there has been a steady stream of corruption as Republicans handed the purse strings over to the K Street lobbyists and allowed them to author whatever legislation their hearts desired.
So now, in light of all this, is it any wonder that my jaw is agape when I hear Republican devotees charge that Barack Obama is going to tax us to death and break the bank with all kinds of new social programs? While it is true that Obama will want to redirect some spending toward education and healthcare initiatives that have been long neglected, but that spending pales in comparison to the hundreds of billions that Republicans have been flushing away on a needless war and an economic catastrophe largely of their own making.
Republicans like McCain try to conceal their freespending ways by making overhyped attacks on earmark programs (which Sarah Palin used to pig out on in Alaska) which are just chickenfeed compared to the gusher of funds being splurged elsewhere. The elimination of these earmarks would make no more difference in the size of our federal deficit than opening up more areas for drilling will make in the price of gasoline. In other words, barely a discernable difference if any.
So why would people want to keep Republicans in power for another four years? I dare say that we can't afford it.