Mind Vomit by the ikss

no bailout for you

I am very happy that the $700 Billion Wall Street bail-out bill was defeated yesterday! Not only am I pleased, but I am curious and, dare I say, overjoyed about the manner in which it all played out. What Michael Moore has called “The Corporate Crime of the Century” was halted yesterday (at least for a few days) by a vote of 228 to 205. It was historic - a bill supported by the President and the leaders of both parties went down in defeat. That just doesn’t happen.

 

As of Monday night, everyone I listened to thought the dang bill would pass. Those of us railing against how unjust it all was, and writing and calling our elected officials to voice that concern, seemed to be in the minority. Whatever questions Congress had about the contents of the initial bill – the dollar amount itself, the lack of oversight and accountability, the lack of a cap on executive salaries – they were supposedly being worked out so that the bill could be passed and “save our economy.”

 

The whole time, I’m sitting here thinking, “it’s not like we screwed this economy up over night - why is it so freakin’ urgent that we pass this bill in the next five minutes, without thinking it through and considering other options???” Perhaps more importantly, I could not conceive of bailing out the very people who fucked us all over to begin with. I’m sorry, but when your normal, average Joe can’t pay his bills he gets his house foreclosed upon, his car repossessed and/or he has to file for bankruptcy. We’re all now supposed to financially bail out those banks which would foreclose on me in a second if I couldn’t pay my home loan?

 

Hardly seems fair, does it?

 

If passed, this bill would result in every single American paying over $3,000 out of his/her own pocket to bail out banks and financial firms - companies who bought and sold and bought again loans which were never strong and never should have been granted in the first place. It is the fact that these loans are so weakly supported that got these institutions in trouble in the first place.

 

Why did this happen?

08 debate #1

What did this particular died-in-the-wool Liberal think of Friday night’s debate? I thought it was pretty much a draw, honestly. John McCain did better than I anticipated and put Obama on the defensive quite often – a position which looks good on nobody, even though Obama handled everything with his characteristic grace and thoughtfulness. IMHO, if you preferred Obama last week, you most likely still prefer Obama; if you preferred McCain last week, you will still prefer McCain post-debate.

Personally, though, I thought McCain came off as an arrogant and condescending knuckle-head, with his constant mantra of “What Senator Obama doesn’t seem to understand…” even while he just made shit up to support what he was saying at the moment or failed to persuade with his own argument. I assume those pretentious words were meant to draw attention to the fact that McCain has much more experience in politics than does Obama. What they did instead was prove what an asshole John McCain can be. As if we needed additional proof of that fact. I think his “handlers”, rather than again try to encourage the experience-proven-by-condescension mode of debating in their next go-‘round, may instead want to see if they can soften McCain’s image. There is plenty of proof on these internets that McCain is a foul-mouthed, easy-to-anger, reactionary blowhard. He really doesn’t need to show us more proof.

On the flip side, one thing which truly irritated me about Obama is that he didn’t call McCain on a lot of things. Like when McCain was blowing smoke about how he supports military veterans – why not mention the fact that McCain has continually voted against increased benefits for vets and to take necessary measures to improve their healthcare?

As an impartial gauge of the debate, however, let’s rip some information off from factcheck.org:

sarah palin interview with katie couric

From Katie Couric’s interview with Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin, last week on CBS Evening News:

COURIC: Why isn’t it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries? … Instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: Ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up the economy...Oh, it’s got to be about job creation too...So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions...

Huh? Talk amongst yourselves...

bob benjamin

“Life is too short to wake up with regrets. So love the people who treat you right. Forget about the one's who don't. Believe everything happens for a reason.  If you get a second chance, grab it with both hands.  If it changes your life, let it.  Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would be worth it.”

 

~~ My co-worker, Bob Benjamin, who died of a stroke on Tuesday September 23, 2008. He sent this out in an email to friends and colleagues on New Years’ Day, 2008.

weekend shenanigans

Well, it’s almost Wednesday so I guess now is as good a time as any to fill you in on my weekend shenanigans…

 

On Friday night, I went to see Mike Stinson at the Cinema Bar with Dr. Niece…and I got drunk.

 

Not like drool-in-my-glass, slur-my-words, try-to-hold-my-own-hair-out-of-my-vomit, pass-out-on-the-bathroom-floor kind of drunk; but drunk nevertheless. I seem to recall grabbing my own breasts at one point…but I don’t remember much else of, say, the last two hours of the evening. I do know that the bartender had us stay after closing time and bought us a drink.

 

You know, cuz I so obviously needed one last drink.

 

Whatever. I had fun. And Mike Stinson still rocks, even when I can’t remember the last portion of his set…

 

I do recall once again dancing to his rendition of Dylan’s Masters of War, something which always makes me feel a tad guilty. I mean, Mike does a killer version of the song and it is a rocking one, musically-speaking; but should I really be throwing my hair around and dancing to lyrics such as:

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

?

Quite an interesting crowd at the old Cinema, too…and I think we conversed with every single one of them. The old dude with the hat on who said he is a friend of Mike’s family; the crazazy dancing bald guy with his shirt unbuttoned to his navel; the super-sweet, older rockabilly man who could cut a serious rug; that musician from the band I can’t recall, but who I can tell spends way too much time on his hair every morning; and, of course, Pamela Des Barres.

 

On Saturday, perhaps needless to say, I slept in. Although a more accurate version of this story would be to say that I made an effort to sleep in; but since the Old Man had to get up and go to work, that meant I woke up. And I never really got back to sleep. Which really sucked the big nut.

 

As you may know, I was supposed to attend my niece’s bridal shower on Sunday evening. However, I spent the first half of Sunday at the county fair with the Old Man’s granddaughter, Lily…and even though I stayed away from the deep fried Twinkies, I apparently ate a bit too much junk food, cuz I ended up with a small stomach problem.

 

And that, in a nut-shell, was my weekend.

 

Amen.

 

lucinda williams

If y'all have not yet checked out the Lucinda Williams Listening Party yet, you really should. You can listen to five songs from her upcoming CD, Little Honey - all of which are fabulous and one of which has Elvis Costello sitting in on vocals.

I am really looking forward to hearing the entire CD now.

and the voter suppression begins

GOP Voter Suppression Comes to Wisconsin

Posted by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet at 3:56 PM on September 13, 2008.

 

A politically timed lawsuit by the state’s Republican attorney general may create chaos at polling places on Nov. 4.

 

Partisan voter suppression efforts have many faces, but they all have one goal: suppressing your political opponent's voters.

 

In Wisconsin this past week, the Republican Attorney General, J.B. Van Hollen, filed a politically timed lawsuit that local election officials say will interfere with turnout for the presidential election on Nov. 4 and create a bureaucratic nightmare for election workers seeking to process a record number of new voter registrations before then. The AG's game plan is simple: create a bureaucratic nightmare to tie up the election machinery before Election Day and then create bottlenecks to confound voters on Election Day.

According to a Sept. 12 report by Steven Elbow at Madison.com, the Wisconsin AG filed suit this past Wednesday forcing election officials to use a tactic being employed by Republicans in other states -- notably Michigan, Kansas and Louisiana -- that involves removing people from voter rolls if the addresses on their voter registration forms does not match the address on their state driver's licenses. The rationale to purge would be based on the assumption that if the addresses did not match then the voter registration would be incorrect and therefore invalid.

john mccain's lies

As we've seen with The Real McCain 2 (nearly 4.5 million views and counting!), once the truth gets out, it's hard to stop. In the last few days we have seen a disgusting descent into the worst of sleazy smear politics. We need to spread the facts and the truth. Send this (clip) to your friends and relations, especially if they are unsure or undecided -- they're more willing to believe you than a talking head!

Spread the truth. Don't wait. It starts with you.

Yours,
Robert Greenwald
and the Brave New team

bad aunt

From: the ikss
Sent: Monday, September 22, 2008 9:26 AM
To: Soon-to-be-Married Niece, Writer Niece, Banker Niece
Cc: Dr. Niece, Number One Niece, Blonde Sister, Brunette Sister
Subject: Shower

Hi guys.

 

While I am not sad to have missed the "Toilet-Paper-as-Wedding-Dress" game, I am very sorry I missed yesterday's bridal shower. I spent most of the evening in the bathroom, courteous of copious amounts of Los Angeles Country Fair Food. The Old Man and I took his granddaughter Lily to the fair and I think I ate more than that huge pig with the obscenely tremendous utters obviously eats per day (have you seen that thing?).

 

I never knew there was such a thing as too much fair food.

 

Lily, however, was fine and wanted another hot dog...

 

I will give you your gift on Sunday, Soon-to-be-Married Niece.

 

I hope y'all had fun and that you actually used the toilet paper after the game winner was announced...

commentary on palin

Drew Westen, Psychologist and neuroscientist:

We've seen what happens when "the average person" becomes president. The world is simply too complex to do that again. She wants to be a heartbeat away from becoming the leader of the free world behind a 72 year old man with a recurrent deadly illness and she gives answers like she's in a beauty pageant and hasn't even followed the news enough over the last 6 years to know what the Bush Doctrine is. It's fine for the average person not to know, but it's not fine for someone who could become President at any moment, any more than it's fine for your pediatric oncologist to say, "Ah, gee whiz, I don't read what's in those fancy medical magazines—I just give it my all and pray a lot when I see a sick child." Time for a second opinion. Like Bush, she also seems to view truth as optional, and most Americans have had enough of that as well. But those are stories the Obama campaign is going to have to tell, tell effectively, and tell repeatedly. Isolated "facts" will just bounce off a folksy persona like hail off a bridge to nowhere.