sarah palin found guilty in troopergate

not only is sarah palin guilty in the troopergate affair, but time magazine thinks that she and her administration up in alaska are a bunch of idiots. mostly it was her staff and her husband involved in the stupidity, and not her. and while she is guilty of wrongdoing from an ethical standpoint, she and her administration have not actually blatantly violated any laws in the troopergate affair. think of it this way: while it is perfectly legal to cheat on your spouse, it is generally considered unethical and immoral. so sarah palin was not found guilty in a legal sense, but guilty in a moral and ethical sense. more than being found guilty, she was found to be in charge of an administration that was full of incompetent fools who had no idea what they were doing.

in other news, some group called “acorn” is in the news for allegedly engaging in fake voter registrations on a massive scale, and republicans are all over themselves to try to connect this scandal to barack obama. since i do not know much of anything about acorn, i will leave it to the huffington post to tell you what to think. that link goes to all posts on the huffington post tagged “acorn”, regardless of who the author is. same thing on daily kos here. yay! i don’t feel like writing anything about a topic i know absolutely nothing about, namely this a.c.o.r.n. group. those 2 links will constantly be updated with the latest acorn developments long after i post this, so you can stay current. and you can probably find similar acorn news on other websites if you want. whatever. this acorn thing seems to me like an october surprise meant to benefit john mccain, and is highly suspicious. that is not to say that i think this acorn group didn’t do anything wrong or that i am defending them: i know absolutely nothing about them. i just find the entire thing incredibly suspicious and question the motives not only of the acorn people but also of the people prosecuting them and the people pushing this story to the newsmedia. from what little i understand, i can say acorn is set up to register the poorest of the poor to vote, and acorn pays people to go out and register really poor people. i think acorn gets its money from donations since it is a nonprofit, and basically spends it on these people who go out and register poor people to vote. but these people who go out and register poor people, well they might just be doing it for the money, since they are not actual volunteers. so that explains why some of them might just be turning in lots of fake voter registrations: it is easier for them than going out and registering real people. i have heard that the acorn organization itself tries to weed out these fake registrations and fires anyone involved in turning those fake ones in. but obviously they are not doing a good enough job at weeding out the fake registrations. you can find out more information about acorn at sourcewatch, a website that tracks organizations and people involved in politics. or just look at the wikipedia article, which has at the top, “the neutrality of this article is disputed.” i will leave it to you to guess why the neutrality of that article is disputed. it turns out acorn has been involved in a lot more activities than voter registration, including activism that helped eliminate discrimination against minorities by the mortgage industry. acorn’s activism seems to have gotten them a lot of conservative republican enemies over the years, ready to pounce on anything remotely suspicious that acorn ever does. so, now that they are finally caught submitting fake voter registrations... who knows? i think acorn is just going to be vilified and used to make barack obama look bad through guilt by association as part of john mccain’s never-ending smear campaign against our probable next president. as with sarah palin, i doubt the leadership of acorn did anything illegal, although it was probably stupid of them to hire some of the low-ranking people they did for the voter-registration drives. low-ranking people in that organization probably did violate the law, but i doubt any of those people were actually committed to the liberal cause. they were either just trying to make easy money by submitting fake voter registrations or were part of a republican campaign to infiltrate acorn and bring it into disrepute. i doubt anyone actually committed to the liberal cause would ever undermine the efforts of a liberal organization like acorn on purpose, because if they did, that would prove that they are traitors to the liberal cause, like joe lieberman. acorn needs to do better screening to weed out non-liberals and rogue elements of society before hiring people.

in other news, neo-nazi leader jörg haider of austria has died, joining the ranks of fellow austrians who joined the nazi cause and later died, such as adolf hitler. i am sure there is much rejoicing in austria over the demise of such a hated politician, except for the few dolts out there who actually supported the bastard. then again, in the recent elections held at the end of last month, his party won 10.70% of the vote and got 21 out of 183 seats in the austrian parliament, and the other party he used to be in charge of won 17.54% of the vote and got 34 out of 183 seats in the austrian parliament. so together those 2 parties won quite a bit of the vote and are quite a presence in the new austrian parliament. hopefully they will not be in charge of anything, since they are a bunch of neo-nazis. i am related to some people who live in austria and i hope things go well for them.

anyway, sarah palin is guilty in troopergate and john mccain was guilty in keating 5. barack obama and joe biden were never found guilty of wrongdoing by any government investigation, and john mccain and sarah palin both were. the difference is clear. do you want corruption, or not? 4 more years of the failed policies of george w. bush with a different figurehead in charge of the same old republican political machine, or 4 years of positive change led by forward-thinking democrats? for the first 6 years of his presidency, george w. bush could ram whatever legislation he wanted through congress, and the only impediment was democrats who sometimes filibustered things in the senate. if we are lucky, barack obama will get a similar situation, with a congress willing to pass his legislation undoing all of the failed bush/mccain republican policies, and he will be able to appoint liberal democrats to be on the supreme court to replace retiring liberal judges, so the court does not become even more conservative (currently 7 out of 9 justices are republican appointees, 5 are conservative, and 4 are extremely conservative; the 2 democratic appointees are liberal along with 2 republican appointees, and 1 of the 5 conservatives is only moderately conservative rather than an ultra-right-wing extremist). now if just one more supreme court justice joins the court and is of the scalia/thomas/roberts/alito mold, there will be a 5-4 majority in favor of overturning roe v. wade and abortion will become illegal in more than half the states soon after. and that is sure to happen if john mcain is elected president. that 5-4 majority of ultra-conservatives could also make a whole lot of other changes to this country that most people would not like at all, and it could become a 6-3 majority or even a 7-2 majority if even more liberal or moderate justices retire or die. this would give conservative republicans control of the supreme court for a generation or more. we would have mandatory prayer in school, creationism taught in school, desegregation would be reversed, workplace protections would be removed, environmental laws would be overturned, individuals would have no rights to sue the government or corporations for wrongdoing, and we would become a more theocratic and plutocratic nation. we would end up living in the dystopia that conservatives think of as their utopia, and no amount of democratic elections could solve this problem for years to come. we already are seeing the horrific effects of conservative republican economic policies on our nation. why prolong their mismanagement and allow them to make things even worse? that is insanity. we might as well elect robert mugabe president so he can bring us the same hyperinflation, violent represssion, and mass starvation that he brought to zimbabwe, if we want to do something crazy. sure it is unconstitutional, but george w. bush and other politicians have been blatantly violating the constitution for years and never been punished for it. this would just be taking things 1 step further. of course there is still a completely sane option that would actually improve things: voting for the obama-biden ticket. comparing sarah palin to dan quayle is an insult to dan quayle, and comparing john mccain to bob dole is an insult to bob dole. sarah palin is dan quayle without the brains, and john mccain is bob dole without the charisma. my apologies to dan quayle and bob dole for mentioning them in the same sentence as the 2 nitwits running as the republican ticket this year.

UPDATE: my original post failed to mention something that i have now become aware of, since i did not know about it then. apparently sarah palin VIOLATED alaskan ethics LAW, according to the findings of the report, so she actually DID break the law, and i was wrong to say that she did not act illegally. also, apparently the a.c.o.r.n. organization is REQUIRED BY LAW to turn in ALL voter registrations that are turned in to them, EVEN ones that they KNOW are fake. apparently, the reason organizations like a.c.o.r.n. are required by law to turn in all voter registration applications they receive is so they do not favor one party over the other, say, by only turning in applications for democrats and not for republicans, independents, or third parties. so... when someone tries to pull a fast one on a.c.o.r.n. by getting hired there to register people to vote, and then turns in a huge number of fake applications, a.c.o.r.n. would be violating the law if they did not turn those applications in to the local board of elections, along with every other voter registration application they get. since a.c.o.r.n. is such a huge organization that employs so many people in so many states, there are bound to be a few bad apples, and unfortunately, a.c.o.r.n. is legally prohibited from throwing out the fake voter registrations. a.c.o.r.n. does attach notes to the fake voter registrations saying that they are probably fake, or at least they did in nevada. the board of elections in nevada didn’t even read the notes written by a.c.o.r.n., and are now trying to cover their own asses for their incompetence by blaming everything on a.c.o.r.n. and not on themselves, when it is really the job of the board of elections to screen out false voter registrations, and, as previously mentioned, groups that do voter registration drives are prohibited from any such screening of fake voter registrations. now a.c.o.r.n. is not completely blameless in this; they do need some human resources professionals to carefully screen and background-check everyone who wants to work for them. but ok, think of it this way: remember back when there were “disgruntled postal employees” and people talked about “going postal”, all because of a few bad apples in our nation’s gigantic postal service? clearly that was not a fair way to treat that organization, which has served our nation well since the late 1700s by delivering our mail and packages, and i doubt the percentage of postal employees who are homicidal maniacs or psychotic differs much from the percentage of the population at large who are homicidal maniacs or psychotic. i think a.c.o.r.n. is being treated the same way that the united states postal service got treated back when people made unfair attacks against our postal service because of a few bad apples. now i understand there are many cases when “a few bad apples” turns out to be the people in charge of an organization. for instance, look at the torture done in abu ghraib prison in iraq, which turned out to be the type of thing many top bush administration officials (george w. bush, dick cheney, alberto gonzales, etc.) had been trying to get the legal authority to do. in that case the few bad apples turned out to be the leaders of the bush administration. or if you look at companies like enron, the few bad apples were the top executives who were in charge of everything. i have not seen any evidence to suggest that this a.c.o.r.n. controversy is anything but a manufactured controversy created by a desperate mccain campaign that is losing badly in the national polls and in swing state polls. meanwhile, sarah palin lies by repeatedly saying that the report cleared her of any wrongdoing in troopergate, and that she did not violate any laws or do anything unethical. clear, flat-out lies, what she is best at saying. sarah palin makes richard nixon look like george “i cannot tell a lie” washington by comparison. no, wait... that comparison is unfair... to richard nixon. he was a quaker after all, and quakers believe in telling the truth at all times and under all circumstances. i suppose richard nixon must have lapsed in his quaker faith. i guess that means i have something in common with him. also, the story about george washington cutting down a cherry tree as a kid and saying “i cannot tell a lie” is actually just a completely made-up myth to try to glorify our first president. a lot of the “history” we are taught is just myths or propaganda like that. if humanity survives long enough so that the modern era becomes ancient history, i am sure it will be badly distorted by the time the future-people teach it to their children, and it will be full of inaccuracies. even today, the news is very biased and often has inaccuracies, and that will just get worse and worse, the farther people get from the primary source of the information, and the more other people the information went through along the way to get to them. and that is why elections are so close: the news media is a for-profit enterprise, and keeping things close and exciting helps increase viewership/readership and thus boost ad revenue and profits. if one candidate were way ahead of the other and the news media just let that stay the same way for a really long time, everyone would find it an incredibly boring story and not want to bother with checking the news. whenever one candidate gets too far ahead of the other, the news media tears them to shreds, in order to try to keep our country evenly divided. and they are only doing it for one reason: money. ok, maybe i give the news media too little credit for the good work that they do, but you get my point about why our country is almost evenly divided. this is no accident. it is just like how congressional districts are gerrymandered. close elections = bigger ratings for news = profit! so, the news media loves to go after the front-runner and knock them down a few pegs. also, did i mention that taking down someone big and powerful is a great boost to someone’s ego? so for both financial and personal reasons, the news media has a stake in keeping elections close and keeping anyone from becoming too popular. that is a clear conflict of interest, so in the public interest, the news media should be prohibited from covering news. (just kidding about that last part, of course they should get to keep covering news, i love watching or reading the news; i was just applying the same standards to them that they apply to everyone they go after. turnabout is fair play.) anyway, just for fun, watch some rats leave a sinking ship:

3/4 of debates done

ok, now we have finished 3 out of the 4 debates. first there was the first debate between barack obama and john mccain. john mccain acted like a complete lunatic the week preceding that debate, contradicting himself constantly about the state of the economy and whether he supported the government taking over aig and a number of other things, and then to try to change the subject off his insanity and sarah palin’s complete and utter stupidity that was starting to be exposed in tv interviews, john mccain announced he was suspending his campaign. of course, that was a complete lie, and he still had campaign operations going all over the country, and still had tv ads on, and his campaign advisers were all over the news praising him and bashing barack obama during the time of this so-called “suspension”. he said he was going to washington, d.c. to fix the economy, but did not at first say whether he supported the $700 billion bailout or not. the house and senate democrats announced an agreement on the bailout with the white house and senate republicans that week, but the house republicans walked out of the meeting and said there was no deal. anyway, they decided to have a vote on the $700 billion bailout on the house floor the monday after the first debate (a friday). as early as friday morning, people still had no idea whether john mccain was going to show up to the debate, since he promised to only show up if there was a deal, and there really wasn’t a deal, because the house republicans had already demolished the deal democrats made with the white house. but john mccain showed up at the debate anyway, because not showing up would mean chickening out. however, the fact that he showed up proved that he was a liar, since he promised not to unless there really was a deal. anyway, john mccain lost the first debate, according to all the polls as well as my own judgment, and barack obama won. it was especially devastating when barack obama listed all the things john mccain had said about the war in iraq early on that turned out to be dead wrong. also, john mccain did not look at barack obama even once, perhaps showing that old john mccain was too intimidated to look at his powerful young foe, or perhaps showing that john mccain had no respect for this young upstart and thought him unworthy of being looked upon.

ok, so that was the first debate... guess what happened next? the monday following the first debate, the $700 billion bailout package failed on the house floor, due to overwhelming opposition from the republican rank-and-file, along with opposition from liberal democrats and fiscally conservative democrats. it was still a close vote, however, since the leaderships of both parties supported the bailout and so did a majority of the democrats, who are the majority party in the house. the opposition of house republicans can be credited to the fact that john mccain had officially come out in favor of their position in the first debate, basically giving them a green light to vote against the bill. but apparently john mccain was calling them up, pleading with them to vote for the bill. so who knows what john mccain was thinking? whatever he was thinking, it turned out to be a massive failure, and right before the bill was defeated, john mccain gloated about his success in passing it and berated barack obama for not being involved. anyway, throughout that week, there was work on the bailout, as well as embarrassing tidbits every day about sarah palin that made her look completely idiotic and foolish. on thursday, sarah palin and joe biden finally had their 1 debate, and sarah palin had set very very low expectations for herself, while the expectations for joe biden were quite high. sarah palin did prove herself not to be a complete and utter moron, and capable of speaking coherent sentences, although they were almost all stump-speech-style sound bites that had been rehearsed in advance, and she kept repeating the same ones over and over. she avoided answering the questions that she was asked if she had not already memorized the answers to them, instead answering questions that she had been told the answers to. she even said that she would not answer questions the way the debate moderator, gwen ifill, wanted them answered, basically admitting that she was incapable of answering questions unless someone gave her the answers in advance. she was full of aw-shucks-style silly folksy speak, like “say it ain’t so, joe”, and while she did not make a complete fool of herself, she did act moderately foolish. joe biden, on the other hand, seriously kicked some ass, taking john mccain to task and helping promote barack obama, while showing off some of his encyclopedic knowledge on every issue of domestic and foreign policy that came up. sarah palin kept calling herself and john mccain “maverick”, repeating the word so often it became absolutely ridiculous, and when joe biden gave his conclusion by mentioning the tragic death of his first wife and their daughter, she did not even express her condolences or anything, but just went back to repeating the word “maverick” endlessly. sarah palin was like a well-trained parrot that just kept repeating things it had heard people say, like “maverick”, etc.

so that debate was on thursday and the $700 billion bailout, a revised version, was signed into law on friday. the stock market has continued to go down constantly. the dow jones industrial average is now below 10,000, and it was above 14,000 a year ago. the dow jones was higher than this in the late 90s! so if someone had invested in the stock market in the peak of the boom of the late 90s, they would actually have less money today! all of the gains the stock market has made since 9/11... wiped out. the credit market is totally nonexistent now. nobody can get a loan, not people, not companies, not banks. the only source of credit now is the government. the credit market is much, much worse than the stock market. that is actually the reason all these companies are going under and why the $700 billion bailout was thought to be necessary (while it was necessary to do something, there may have been better solutions to the problem, but it is too late for that now). the economic crisis has spread all over the world, and hit the major financial institutions of europe quite hard. it has likewise caused loads of trouble in asia and the rest of the world, too. the severity of this crisis has intensified every day for the last month. the stock market plummeted monday and tuesday this week, in apparent distress over the fact that people did not think the $700 billion bailout had solved anything, and how they were seeing the crisis engulf the entire global economy. so what has been going on since the debate between joe biden and sarah palin?

well, barack obama’s support has gotten stronger and stronger, and john mccain’s has gotten weaker and weaker. barack obama is way ahead in the polls now, his numbers skyrocketing since early september when john mccain was ahead. john mccain has had to give up on michigan, which at one point had been a battleground state that could have gone either way, but is now solidly part of obama nation. barack obama now has a huge lead in virginia, which has not voted for a democrat for president since 1964, and he has leads in most other swing states including ohio and florida. his lead in pennsylvania is probably unbeatable, and he will pretty much definitely pick up iowa and new mexico, 2 states that john kerry lost. all the states john kerry won are solidly in the obama column, while a number of key states george w. bush won 4 years ago may vote obama instead of mccain. of course there is still a large number of solidly republican states that john mccain can count on, but they are almost all states with tiny populations and very few electoral votes. only one of them has a huge population, and that of course is texas. all the other states with huge populations are either solidly obama or leaning obama. lately, sarah palin has started viciously attacking barack obama, ever since the day after she lost the debate to joe biden. she has been accusing him of “palin’ around with terrorists”, when she is actually just referring to william ayers, who is only 1 person, not plural. the william ayers thing has been all over the internet since at least last year and it has been talked about for months, especially in august when there were tv commercials about it, and i think the hillary clinton campaign might have used it against barack obama, too. it didn’t work. william ayers was involved in the weather underground when barack obama was in 3rd grade, and they never met until many, many, many years later, and have only met a few times and are not really friends or anything. barack obama served on the board of an organization to help improve chicago’s public schools along with william ayers and a bunch of other people of all political persuasions, both liberal democrats and conservative republicans. i doubt barack obama even knew about william ayers’s past, since i doubt william ayers went around bragging about it all the time, so this guilt-by-association thing is really ridiculous. plus sarah palin is one to talk, given the quality of people she associates with up in alaska. she associates with a controversial preacher from kenya named thomas muthee who led a witch hunt, declaring one woman in an african village to be a witch and demanding that she either accept jesus christ as her personal savior or leave the village immediately. that woman chose none of the above, and then an angry mob came to kill her, but luckily she escaped. then thomas muthee, who led this witch hunt, ends up in wasilla, alaska of all places, and places his hands on sarah palin to bless her so that god makes her governor of alaska, and she ends up giving him the credit for her being elected. talk about crazy! and remember the alaskan independence party? sarah palin has been to several of their conventions (confirmed to have happened in 1994 and 2000) and addressed them a number of times, including this current year, 2008! her husband todd was officially a member until 2002. originally the alaskan independence party leaders said that sarah palin was also a former member until she decided to run for mayor of her town, but they decided to change their tune on that after john mccain chose her as his running mate, and they now deny that she has ever been a member of their organization. the alaskan independence party is a radical far-right anti-american secessionist movement. its founder joe vogler made a number of very radical anti-american statements. for example, once he said “The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the american government, and i won’t be buried under their damn flag.” another quote from joe vogler: “i'm an alaskan, not an american. i’ve got no use for america or her damned institutions.” this is from a man the alaskan independence party and the palin family venerate as a hero! yet sarah palin has the guts to use guilt-by-association on barack obama. guess what obama hit back with? he didn’t go after sarah palin, because she isn’t the one running for president. he hit back at john mccain, straight in the nuts, with an exposé of john mccain’s role in the keating 5 scandal. that’s gotta hurt! john mccain was actually best friends with charles h. keating, jr., who is now a convicted felon. this is a million times worse than william ayers, jeremiah wright, or tony rezko, who are are all old news and who failed to win hillary clinton the nomination when she mentioned them. in the keating 5 case, we have an actual instance of john mccain being directly involved in corruption, and this case involved a large bank that needed a government bailout. nowadays, we still have plenty of corruption in government, and more banks needing government bailouts than ever. so, the keating 5 case hits close to home, because it really shows the corruption of john mccain and why he can’t be trusted.

anyhow, tonight we had another debate, the 2nd of the 3 debates between barack obama and john mccain, and the 3rd of the 4 official debates sponsored by the commission on presidential debates. now that barack obama is way ahead of john mccain in the polls both nationally and in swing states, john mccain needed a game-changer, but instead, barack obama ended up winning the debate, according to the polls. what i thought was most notable in this debate was how john mccain said, regarding the $700 billion bailout that he publicly supported and voted for, “my friends, some of this $700 billion ends up in the hands of terrorist organizations.” that is a direct quote from tonight’s debate! so john mccain is publicly declaring that he is helping to finance terrorism! that is what HE says! it doesn’t get any better than this! he is attacking himself... we don’t need to say anything other than to replay his own attack against himself and explain how he is accusing himself of financing terrorism. just look at the debate transcript to find that quote! absolutely ridiculous... i can’t believe anyone takes john mccain seriously anymore. he is not a serious contender for the presidency. he proved that a few months ago when he compared barack obama to paris hilton and britney spears. john mccain continues to demonstrate how utterly ridiculous it would be for us to elect him, and what a crazy old man he is. i think john mccain is going through the early stages of senile dementia or maybe even alzheimer’s. i am not joking about this; i am dead serious. john mccain is seriously losing it, and it is sad to see that happen to someone, and downright scary to think of someone with that type of dementia becoming our commander-in-chief. his erratic and inconsistent behavior, his inability to control his campaign staff, his reckless selection of the dangerously underqualified and insane sarah palin, all these signs point to one thing: something is seriously wrong with john mccain, something that was not wrong with him when he ran for president back in 2000. a lot of people who saw him then and are seeing him again now can scarcely believe he is the same person. mostly, these people are professional news reporters who have been trained to report the truth as impartially as humanly possible. so, if he were elected president somehow, here is what i predict would happen: he would be erratic, he would be a loose cannon, he would forget things, he would not be consistent on any issues because he would forget what positions he used to have, and his administration would basically be run by a bunch of other people advising him, who would constantly be fighting each other and jockeying for power in a chaotic mess. if barack obama is elected, which currently has a probability of 89.2% according to fivethirtyeight.com, we will see the exact opposite. barack obama is always calm under pressure and never loses his cool, and internally his campaign has the motto “no drama obama”. he does not tolerate internal fighting or unauthorized leaks to the press, quite the opposite of the mccain campaign. his campaign is slick and well-disciplined because he does not tolerate anything less from them; that is not to say that barack obama is overly strict, harsh, or mean, but rather that he has exceptional leadership capabilities and that his staff are extremely loyal to him. over the weekend, a top mccain staffer said that if the election is about the economy, mccain loses. those types of damaging leaks happen all the time from the mccain campaign, because the mccain campaign is like a sinking ship, all full of leaks. the obama campaign has no leaks, and is much more like a leakproof vessel; you could even compare it to the famously leakproof titanic. despite his current 89.2% projected chance of winning, all it will take to sink that leakproof vessel is a giant iceberg put there by the republicans. so the obama team will need flamethrowers to melt any ice they see in the sea. sorry for mixing metaphors, but it is so fun! anyway, beware the october surprise! i am glad so many states have early voting, because many people will probably vote for obama before election day and before the last-minute mind games that the republicans will inevitably try to pull on everyone. remember 2004 and how a videotape from osama bin laden won george w. bush re-election? maybe the republicans were not behind that al qaeda publicity stunt (i will give them the benefit of the doubt), but there always seems to be some kind of october surprise that helps the republicans out. now, ok, in 2006, the october surprise was the mark foley sex scandal and that won the democrats control of both houses of congress. but usually these october surprises seem to help republicans rather than democrats. i will not let any sort of october surprise change my vote; i am voting for barack obama this november no matter what happens between now and then. there is absolutely nothing that could possibly change my mind on this matter; my mind is more firmly made up than the firm grip of the strongest man in the world.

and you know what? my favorite news network on tv is now msnbc, because they agree with me about supporting barack obama and opposing john mccain. i used to like cnn best, but after years of watching cnn, i got bored with it, bored of wolf blitzer, larry king, and anderson cooper. and don’t even get me started on lou dobbs or on the offerings at headline news of glenn beck and nancy grace! lou dobbs, glenn beck, and nancy grace belong at fox news! what really got me suspicous about cnn is how self-proclaimed conservatives like lou dobbs and glenn beck get their own tv shows, but self-proclaimed liberals, progressives, and democrats do not get anything more than getting to be part of a panel discussion alongside conservative republicans. cnn stacks the deck in favor of the republicans, at least on lou dobbs and glenn beck’s shows, and they provide no balance to this obvious bias. msnbc, on the other hand, has openly embraced liberal bias, but you know what? at least they are honest about it, and don’t go around pretending to be objective and neutral like cnn. i find chris matthews a hell of a lot more interesting than wolf blitzer. now ok, cnn does have one thing going for them, and that is jack cafferty, the grumpy old man who hates republicans. i love watching him. they need more jack cafferty on cnn, to balance out all the lou dobbs, glenn beck, and nancy grace. we need to bring back ted turner and put him in charge of cnn and headline news again. ted turner is someone who i agree with on a lot of things, and he would fix those networks back up so they are as good as they used to be back in the day. and i would never watch fox news; who wants a bunch of right-wing propaganda from rupert murdoch? thanks but no thanks. rupert murdoch already owns a huge number of other media outlets, and i get enough of his propaganda from those. rupert murdoch’s media outlets are only slightly more credible than rev. sun myung moon’s media outlets. and if you don’t know who rev. sun myung moon is, learn how to use google. and then the next time you ever watch tv and see a panelist who is from the washington times, or the next time you see a news story from united press international on the internet or in a newspaper, you will know that it is propaganda from a crazy anti-american korean cult leader who performs huge mass marriages to couples that he selected by looking at photographs of his followers, a cult leader who thinks he is the reincarnation of jesus christ, who is a convicted felon who spent time in jail in the united states for defrauding his followers, who has been honored as the messiah by several republican congressmen, and whose newspaper was ronald reagan’s favorite. rev. sun myung moon symbolizes everything that is wrong with the republican party and its propaganda operations. compared to him, good ole rupert murdoch is a saint.

i would like to finish by giving a shout-out to tom brokaw as well as the moderators of the previous debates: gwen ifill and jim lehrer. aww yeah! those are some serious unbiased journalists right there! while i personally prefer msnbc and its liberally biased coverage, i recognize the importance of having debates moderated by people who are neutral, like them. but it is so cool that now msnbc not only has keith olbermann have his own 1-hour show, but rachel maddow has a show too! she is awesome! i used to listen to air america radio until their organization went bankrupt and the local affiliate switched to espn radio (which is nothing but sports). i can still listen to air america radio on the internet, but it’s not the same as it used to be... they’ve lost al franken, randi rhodes, janeane garofalo, and mike malloy, among others. but rachel maddow has managed to graduate from air america radio to join the elite ranks of cable tv talk show hosts, mostly populated by conservative talking heads. the more remarkable part about rachel maddow getting her own 1-hour tv talk show is that she is a lesbian. now ok, yeah i know, ellen degeneres and rosie o’donnell are also lesbians and they also got their own shows. but ellen lost her job at her sitcom when she came out as a lesbian, and rosie only came out after she stopped having a show, if i recall correctly. i think this might be the first time the people in charge of tv channels actually went out and hired a lesbian on purpose. it is just amazing that our country has come this far. who knows? soon they might even let black people be news anchors on channels other than b.e.t.! oh wait, i just remembered: david alan grier is getting his own black-guy tv news show on comedy central, called “chocolate news”. how could that have slipped my mind? i watch comedy central all the time... for the news. yes, jon stewart and stephen colbert are even better than the folks at msnbc or cnn... better at being funny! they are true professionals... professional comedians! hah! ok, i suck at humor. but seriously, jon stewart and stephen colbert are just as liberal as keith olbermann or rachel maddow; they just turn it into humor instead of having raw outrage like keith olbermann in his special comments. ok, so keith olbermann’s outrage is not as bad as bill o’reilly’s, and there is a great video of bill o’reilly acting insane, and an even better video making fun of it. for some reason the second video got taken down from youtube... maybe bill o’reilly used a team of foxy fox lawyers to get it taken down... but the video is still at barelypolitical.com so that is what i linked to. i guess once you see the video you’ll see why bill o’reilly would want that video taken down off the intertubes. (“intertubes” combines george w. bush’s “internets” with senator ted stevens of alaska’s “the internet is a series of tubes”, for those of you who don’t understand this reference to republican incompetence at understanding the internet.) by the way, if you use the web browser google chrome, type about:internets into your address bar and press enter for a funny joke. it doesn’t work in other browsers, and only works in windows xp, not vista, plus it doesn’t work from a hyperlink, you have to type it in yourself! also, if you want to keep google chrome up-to-date with the latest code, download this utility to switch google chrome to the “dev channel”. for the record, i still use mozilla firefox for pretty much everything, since it has extensions. and firefox 3 has about:robots, plus all versions of firefox have about:mozilla. i can actually link to those and they work in firefox, rather than making you type them into the address bar like about:internets in google chrome. see? firefox is better.

$700 billion bailout failed

well, the $700 billion bailout failed in the house of representatives, despite having the full support of the bush administration and the congressional leadership of both the democrats and the republicans. the bush administration and the congressional leaders had been meeting behind closed doors to hammer out a deal, which was achieved over the weekend, and it was simply assumed that if the leaders of both parties were behind something, the rank-and-file members would go along with it, at least enough to get a simple majority. well not so fast! over 99% of the messages members of congress got from their constituents regarding the $700 billion bailout expressed opposition to it, and less than 1% of the messages to them expressed support. both left-wing activist organizations and right-wing activist organizations mobilized campaigns against the $700 billion bailout, rallying both the ultra-liberal activists who volunteer for democrats and the ultra-conservative activists who volunteer for republicans against the “paulson plan”. the political base for each party was firmly opposed to this plan. liberal bloggers and conservative radio talk show hosts were all denouncing it. still, congress came very close to passing it, due to the diligent effects of party leaders, especially the efforts of house speaker nancy pelosi. the leader of the house republicans, john boehner, also claims to have tried really hard to get the bailout passed, although house republicans rejected the plan by more than a 2:1 margin, completely rejecting his overtures. senator john mccain of arizona, who had “suspended” his campaign to go to washington, d.c. and help fix the economic mess, but did not know at first whether to support or oppose the bailout, was apparently closely working with the house republicans, although it is unclear whether he actually supported the bailout or not. he claims to have tried to get the house republicans on board supporting the $700 billion bailout, but in friday night’s debate, he publicly took the side of the house republicans, who had been leading the opposition to the bailout. so john mccain, as usual, is completely incoherent and has no clue what he is doing. now the leaderships of both parties have accused each other of being behind the failure to pass the plan. but the real culprit in causing this deal to fail? the american people, who voiced their opinions loud and clear, and were heard by enough politicians in our nation’s capital to succeed in defeating the bailout... for now. the bailout may return, in the same form or a different form. and only time will tell if the majority of the public is correct on this issue, or if they are misguided and are going to completely ruin our economy with their stubbornness. i, for one, honestly do not know what to make of this bailout package, whether it is a good idea or not, whether it should be implemented or thrown out as a fatally flawed policy. i am not an economic expert, and for me to be commenting on something so far out of my field of expertise would just show my ignorance in this area. on the other hand, i did take enough economics in college (4 courses, which i did quite well in) to learn that economics is based on very oversimplified models of reality where a huge number of assumptions are made, some of them ridiculous. one of the most ridiculous assumptions behind capitalist economics is as follows: people and businesses act in their own rational self-interest. this is clearly not the case. the vast majority of people are highly irrational, and that is the cause of our current economic crisis. what is the solution? i don’t know... no change in government policy would change the fact that we are all fundamentally flawed human beings who are almost incapable of thinking or acting rationally. and i am not just talking about one group of people and not others... i am talking about the entire human race, including me, you, and everyone else. our brains are just not built for this stuff. maybe if we put computer chips in people’s brains to handle logical reasoning, it might solve some of the fundamental flaws of human nature. but i doubt even that would work, because logic is no good if it is based on faulty assumptions, and the entire field of economics is based on faulty assumptions like assuming people are rational. mostly i think people make their decisions based on emotions, and i think that is exactly how almost everyone decided what they felt on this bailout issue. were they afraid of the consequences of not acting by enacting the bailout? were they angry at wall street fat cats being given what seemed to be a blank check instead of being punished? or were they worried that the bailout itself might make things worse instead of better? generally people make decisions on political issues based on emotions, not logic; logic is used to rationalize and justify the decisions people already made based on their emotions. this is true both of us common folk and of the politicians. it is why space aliens, if they encountered our species, might not consider us a form of “intelligent life”, but would look upon our reasoning abilities the same way that nobel prize-winner dr. ivan pavlov looked upon the reasoning abilities of dogs. so, in summation, i do not know what to think about this $700 bailout, because i do not have enough information to have any sort of educated opinion on what its merits are and what pitfalls it might have, or how it compares to either doing nothing or a number of other possible plans that could possibly be proposed to fix the economy. i have followed the news quite closely recently, but i still know next to nothing about this bailout plan, and it seems like nobody else has a clue either. even the news reporters and politicians are all clueless. ESPECIALLY them. it seems the more you know about this plan, the less you understand it. so naturally, the people who understand it best would be those who know the least about it, given that logical axiom. however, that is a ludicrous conclusion, bringing the entire system of logic into suspicion. and so, without logic, all we know is what we have learned through empirical observation of reality. since all of this empirical observation took place in the past, this means nobody has any idea what will happen in the future, except by predicting that things will follow some sort of pattern that was observed in the past. some patterns observed in the past are very good predictors of the future, such as the laws of physics, but even these prediction mechanisms are flawed; why else would we need a large hadron collider if not for a lack of understanding of certain aspects of physics and a need for more empirical observations? economics is not a hard science like physics, but a “social science”, which is to say, it is not a science at all. experts in economics disagree on fundamental aspects of economic theory, so it is impossible to get a consensus among economists either for or against things such as the $700 billion bailout proposal. sure, you can find a bunch of economists on one side of the issue, and organize them together to all sign the same letter explaining that side, but then a bunch of economists on the other side could likewise organize together and sign their own contradictory letter. i am of the opinion that the field of economics was invented by politicians to come up with ideas for them (since the politicians didn’t know what to do) and then take the blame if anything goes wrong, while letting politicians take credit if things turn out well. economics did not really exist as a field of study until the 1930’s, i believe. basically economists create mathematical models of reality that are based on lots of faulty assumptions and are incredibly oversimplified, and then they use those mathematical models to make predictions about what different results different policies would have, and then use this as justification for those policies. and since you can get economists to come up with economic models to justify almost any economic policy, the entire field of economics is rather ludicrous. as for the stock market, it is gambling, pure and simple, and people should not expect a guaranteed return on their investment. as for borrowing money, i am of the opinion that borrowing money is almost always a bad idea, because if your ideas on what to do with the money really were profitable, you would almost certainly be able to profit off those same ideas without having to rely on borrowed money if they actually were profitable ideas. it is a shame that so many people and businesses rely so heavily on borrowing money, because this exposes them to undue financial risk without a sufficient amount of financial reward to justify it. so having the government borrow $700 billion to buy up mortgage-backed securities and other bad investments at inflated prices seems like a very bad idea, at least as far as the government’s finances are concerned, and down the line, it would be bad for taxpayers too, once the government has to pay back its debt. but with so many private-sector firms in financial crises due to their own mismanagement, perhaps having the government bail them out is a necessary evil in order to prevent the complete collapse of our economic system and another great depression. however, even if a bailout did succeed, it would be rewarding bad behavior, the guilty people responsible for creating the mess would make money off it, and we taxpayers would have $700 billion to pay back in debt. plus interest. to quote albert einstein, “the most powerful force in the universe is compound interest.” and with our government and ultimately us taxpayers paying the interest, it looks like a bad deal for us. but if it is the only way to save the economy from complete collapse, we have no other choice, since doing nothing would be an even worse deal for us. it is quite a difficult conundrum. if only we could bring franklin delano roosevelt back from the dead and have him put in charge of this whole thing, we would have nothing to worry about except finding enough brains to feed him, since he would be a zombie. anyway, with regard to the $700 billion, the government should just give me all the money. i promise to do a very good job spending it to stimulate the economy.

dumb and dumber

dumb

and

dumber

update on politics stuff

i went to the broome county young democrats fundraiser and had to pay $15 to get in, as expected. i got 2 obama stickers and a magnet of a donkey wearing boxing gloves for free. my dad has turned the stickers into buttons you can pin on your shirt using the button-making machine he got back when i was a kid. now my dad and i will both wear obama buttons everywhere. the donkey magnet looks really dumb and it is on the refrigerator, although its original purpose is to go on the back of a car (although it really makes democrats look like asses, quite literally). there was plenty of food that was free for me to eat after paying to get in, but all the beverages cost even more money, except water, so i just had food and water. the food was pretty much just tiny hors d’œuvres (i needed wikipedia to look up how to spell that) and some tiny desserts, and the plates were also tiny, but i managed to eat quite a lot of food. i ate the stuff with meat in it, but no cheese; also, i avoided chocolate because it has caffeine, and i avoid both alcohol and caffeine. there were a bunch of young democrats i knew there, and a lot of people i hadn’t met before. the main speaker was state assemblywoman donna lupardo, who talked about the republican demonization of community organizers and how most of us were, in a way, community organizers. another important speaker was matthew silverstein, president of the new york state young democrats, who talked about the importance of our chapter in helping spread the organization upstate. lastly, there was lieutenant christopher marion from the national guard, who recently spent 6 months serving in afghanistan as the commander of 17 men, and who has been in the broome county young democrats since we first began. his day job is as a legislative assistant to a democratic county legislator, when he is not sent on missions by the national guard. he talked about his experiences in afghanistan, a country he has traveled to every corner of, about how each city in afghanistan is different and unique, how the enemy in that country makes much more effective use of propaganda than the american troops there, and how the taliban targets its attacks on forces from the afghan government or our coalition allies rather than united states troops, because they are weaker targets and any attack on u.s. troops is met with an overwhelming response. he is going to be sent back to afghanistan soon. the broome county young democrats elected new leadership earlier in the week before the fundraiser, to the 4 top posts of president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer. i talked to a number of people at the event, even the dj, the magic man, who i know from his radio show on whrw 90.5 binghamton.

i have not been able to attend regular meetings of this group for some time due to the fact that their meetings all happen when i am at work at my job (meetings used to be on weekends). i did meet the local coordinator for the barack obama campaign in binghamton, and gave him my name, contact info, and schedule. the obama campaign in binghamton here operates every day except for sunday and he said he would probably have me help out on saturdays, although he could also use some help on weekdays (which are when i work, but i also have some free time on those days). many of our local efforts are focused in pennsylvania since they are a few miles away and a swing state; for instance, the city of scranton, home of joe biden and one of the places hillary clinton was raised, is just a bit south of here on interstate 81. however, the obama campaign is not taking new york for granted, and is campaigning for him in new york as well, albeit nowhere near as aggressively as in a swing state. in new york state, i think we rely on volunteers almost entirely, although i think i did hear that barack obama has paid staff in all 50 states and the district of columbia. anyway, here in a part of upstate far from albany, we are all volunteers. and i say “we” even though i have not started volunteering yet in this election. the first election i volunteered for democrats was in 1998 when i was just 16, and i have volunteered for democrats several elections since then, but only about half the time. i have not been really actively involved in any of this since around the time i got my current job. so i have some catching up to do, but i am sure many things still work the same way, such as how to call people on the telephone to do surveys or how to go around large neighborhoods distributing campaign literature to every house. obviously now this “internet” thing is playing a much bigger role than the first election it was used in, back in 1996, but it seems the internet is a much bigger part of politics than even as recent as 2004, since now we have way more blogs, much more stuff on campaign websites, all these social networking sites and video-posting sites, and basically a lot more popular websites that have a role in the elections than before. i have been blogging for years. i had a different blog before this one, but did not like that blog-hosting site due to a major lack of features and because they temporarily deleted my blog at one point for no good reason, so i moved to blogger and found it to be much nicer and way more customizable. it seems now my previous blog-hosting site actually costs money to use, so it is certainly very good that i switched. anyway, i am already doing my bit on the internet, so now it is time to go back out into the real world and do some campaigning there. the local democratic party headquarters is open on sundays, i think, since it is a totally separate organization from the local obama campaign. so i think there are opportunities for me to volunteer any day of the week. i think starting this saturday would be nice, since weekdays are kind of a mess for me. i have some serious problems with my sleep schedule that i need to fix so i am up during the daytime. anyway, besides the local democratic party and the obama campaign, i could volunteer to help re-elect my democratic congressman, michael arcuri, who won an open seat in 2006 in what had previously been a republican district. i could also volunteer for the other local congressman whose district used to include my family’s house before redistricting: democratic congressman maurice hinchey. maurice hinchey is one of the most liberal/progressive members of congress, probably within the top 10 if you look at his voting record, and ever since the redistricting that followed the 2000 census, he has been in a safe democratic district, plus he has been in congress a long time and has plenty of experience there and knows how to get re-elected. michael arcuri, on the other hand, is still a bit new to washington, d.c., and is quite centrist, since his district (which includes me) is thought to be a bit conservative. as a democrat who is rather new to congress, and in a swing district that used to be solidly republican, michael arcuri is far more vulnerable than maurice hinchey. however, i think both of them will get re-elected pretty easily, given the completely lackluster performance of the republicans this year in fundraising and campaigning for the house and senate. the republicans seem to have everything focused on electing john mccain president, and seem to be neglecting the house and senate elections. back before redistricting from the 2000 census, maurice hinchey’s district was split almost 50/50, and included my family’s house; in those days, he always won elections by incredibly narrow margins, but ever since he got his better new district that does not include my home anymore, he has won by huge landslides every 2 years. that is why i am worried for michael arcuri: he is stuck with a slightly conservative district but he is a democrat. but he is from utica, not binghamton, so i don’t even know if he has an office anywhere near here. here is his campaign website, which shows his congressional district, quite a large one for a state that has so many. his opponent is from utica, just like him and the guy who ran against him 2 years ago. actually the opponent looks like he might be quite formidable and maybe even win. scary! i don’t want another republican representing me in congress. even sherwood boehlert, my previous republican congressman who retired to pave the way for michael arcuri’s victory, and was perhaps the most moderate republican in the house at that time, disagreed with me on most issues and still voted the republican party line most of the time. and with republicans as the minority party, having a republican congressman would mean people in my district would have less of a voice in washington, d.c. of course the importance of my local house race pales in comparison to the importance of having barack obama defeat john mccain. i will be wearing my obama button everywhere i go, and i will start volunteering for the campaign as soon as possible, i hope. i don’t always end up doing what i plan on doing... but this time i will really make the effort.