The Media Blame Game

For the last 6 months, it's been anybody's turn to guess wrong in how the market will act that day. It's up, it's down, it went left? Though, it has mostly gone down, unfortunately. The point is, it has been volatile and, for the most part, unpredictable.

Geithner gets up on stage Tuesday and delivers a very bland, anti-climatic layout of the proposed actions for the 2nd half of the TARP funds. Layout is very kind, let's say, he has a very basic idea of some things to do with the money, and no real plan to speak of, which is far from what we were promised by Obama the previous day. And on this day, major stock indexes fell roughly 4%. Including the Dow Jones Industrial average falling 382 points.

So, in this turbulent time, when stock prices are completely wacky to begin with, let's just throw all the blame for the latest market tumble at Geithner. It's all your fault!

Now, don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm not upset and worried about the fact that there is no real plan for the funds, as was promised as late as the previous day. I just find it a bit pretentious to focus all the blame on one man. You can't even put all the blame on the administration. You want someone to really blame? Start looking at bank executives. Start with the people who really let this current recession and financial crisis develop.

That said, Obama, Geithner and the rest of the administration really needs to flesh out a real and working plan quickly, like within a week. Maybe I'm a little demanding, but they did promise we'd have it on Tuesday, then botched the attempt, after all.

Rush Limbaugh: Anti-American?

Of course he is.

Limbaugh: "I hope Obama fails."

Does the man not understand that if Obama "fails" this country and most everyone in it is doomed? He is all but cheerleading for the demise of this country he claims falsely to love so much. He loves his failed ideology and the sound of his own voice far more than this country or anyone else in it.

And as far as Bush not getting a "free pass" his first year.  Well, let's think. He was on Vacation, at his ranch, or just plain doing nothing for nearly a third of the time before 9/11, and then he got his "free pass" for his first year, and the next 3, even though he didn't deserve it then, or now. So cram it.

Limbaugh has long been the voice of the Conservative Right.  So now, I guess their message is "WAHH! WE LOST SO I HOPE THE WHOLE DAMNED COUNTRY GOES UNDER!" Real mature you hapless fanatically religious kooks.

Fox News, onenewsnow.com, Limbaugh, Hannity, and O'Reilly, and every dingbat who follows them blindly, this is directed at you:

The United States of America is no longer a country for your 

hatred, no matter how "righteous" you think it may be. We no

longer want you attempting to poison our politics, children, and

lives with your crazy ideas, inane commentary, and falsified 

biased news. We never want to hear from you again. Go away 

and find a new place to spew your bile.

Who honestly listens to these hate peddlers now anyway? 

Whoever you are, you should be ashamed of yourself!

Victimization

I've become the latest victim of the right-wing propaganda machine. NOOOOO!!!!!

During President Obama's swearing in, the lines got mangled and the pace was an atrocity. I thought "Wow, his nerves are going so crazy, he's having trouble with the swearing in." initially.  I thought of it as the first Obama goof (we all know he will make some during speaking, it's inevitable). No big deal, kind of funny actually.

As all the news outlets talk about it (as if they talked about anything else all day on 1/20/09), they kept saying that Chief Justice Roberts was the one in error. I thought it extremely odd the first time I heard it, but by the 10th time, I was thinking "Wow, the media is really going to extreme lengths to not say Obama screwed up at all, even though it wasn't a big screw up."  I created a "conspiracy" of the news media in my own head.

Today, I heard the pace and wording from Bush's 2005 swearing in. It was the exact pace Obama tried to follow.  And where Obama stumbled on the words, it was because they were the incorrect words for the actual Oath of Office. He paused, as if pondering if he should say the correct oath, or repeat Chief Justice Robert's incorrect directions.  He did opt to go with the latter.

As soon as I heard it all... FACEPALM!!!

Victimized by the Right-Wing. Then again, what else is new after 8 years of Bush.

Economics 101 at Harvard...

Must be a complete waste of time.

I know, I know. Who the hell am I to make such a claim?

Well, I apparently know more about economics than a senior Economics lecturer at Harvard.  He says to cut taxes but not increase spending in order to end or moderate the current recession.  And anyone who has taken even a basic Economics class at any university (or possibly even in High School) will be able to tell you that both methods are effective at minimizing recessions.

I understand he's saying not just to spend on insane projects, which I completely agree with, but his idea of what is an insane project seems to encompass everything.  Instead of increasing spending to repair failing bridges, highways, and roads, he wants to implement more tolls and higher tolls during rush hour.  Yes, this is definitely a good help for a battered economy where millions are struggling to survive as is.  New & Higher tolls will definitely help those people.  Oh, and how about we repeal some wage laws for construction and dangerous jobs too.  Make sure those poor people get poorer by both lowering their salary and increasing their expenses.

Spend some money on research for renewable fuels.  Who could argue with such a thing?  Well, Jeffrey A. Miron for one.  He says the appropriate policy is not increased research for renewable fuels, but raising taxes on fossil fuels, which will enhance the private sector's incentive to do the research on renewable fuels themselves.  The private sector in this case would be mostly oil and energy companies.  Do they really care if you raise the taxes? Nope.  They just pass on the taxes directly to the consumer.  Another case of adding to all American's expenses. Oh, and this won't increase any research at the same time it does this.  This is a horrid idea.

Education? No, don't spend more money there either.  He does make some good points about eliminating policies that limit efficiency (No Child Left Behind, anyone?), but at the same time, more spending on education in this country would be a good thing.  That's investment in the future and a huge step forward in eliminating at least some of the crazy hate speech by everyday Americans we saw so much of during the campaign season this year.  Standardized tests and funding based on "graduation" levels needs to go away.  If you want a reward system, randomly selected students from each district take a short essay test administered by each state, and reward based on the scores.  This prevents the whole "we'll pass you even though you're a brain dead moron, because we don't want to take a hit to our funding" crap that happens constantly under the current system.

I do agree that spending definitely needs to be done outside the normal scope.  We don't need 10,000 new Zoos. But repairing our highway and interstate systems is not a waste of money, and does put people to work and will help our economy.  Renewable energy will create long term jobs and will help us move away from OPEC oil. Ending the Iraq war would enable quite a bit to be done here at home, and increase the troop and equipment totals in Afghanistan, where we should be to begin with.  And while spending can "lag" in its effect to the economy, there are many projects already scouted out that can be started immediately.  They are sitting around, waiting on the go ahead from the government.  The "lag" would be 2-3 months at most.  And who really thinks we won't still be in need of some stimulus in March or April?

Oh, and I don't know who Mr. Miron is wanting to give these tax cuts too, but if it's the rich (as the Bush tax cuts were) they are pointless.  Reganomics and the "top down" ideas work great on paper, but fail in the real world.  The real world has something that paper tends to forget.  Greed.  You give a man who's made his millions in the cutthroat business/corporate world, do you really think he's going to allow that money to "trickle" down? He didn't become a success and a millionaire by allowing his money to trickle away from him.  Oh yeah, you Regan fans should remember, he spent tax money like crazy, more than tripling our national debt during his Presidency.

drop = dead phone = new phone = new Apple fan.

Yesterday, I decided to be an idiot and basically ended up with my iPhone dropping off a table and landing screen down on a tile floor. I pick it up afterwards, and it's nothing but a white screen and some lines going down the left half of it. I was ready to cry.

I ended up finding out that the phone was still working, it was just the screen that was fried. I could still answer calls by sliding my finger across the white screen when it rang. Talked on it several times. Making calls out was basically impossible, since you could see nothing on the screen except white though.

24 hours I had to wait with my busted iPhone before I could get an appointment with the Genius Bar at my local Apple store.  I really didn't realize how much I depend on and use the phone until I was forced to be without it. And I was surfing the web looking for fixes, since the suggested idea of running a restore didn't work, not that I really expected it to. I found some people who had successfully traded their phones out after just such an occasion.  However, it seemed like there were just as many who had been told "no" by Apple. I was very nervous.

So tonight I walked into the Apple store hoping I wasn't about to have to shell out another wad of dough for a second iPhone, but basically resigned that I was going to end up throwing a fit, being told no anyway and settling on buying another phone anyway.  However, I walked in, and with minimal questions and in minimal time, I was walking out with a brand new iPhone that looked exactly like my last one.

With customer service being a dying art, I'm now a huge fan of Apple.  I can't say that I'll completely abandon PC however. I still like gaming and Apple is not the system for such a thing. However, I'm pretty sure that the next computer I buy will be a Mac.  I'm sure this will surprise quite a few people, as I've always been completely on the side of PC.  But this really sold me.  That's unbelievable customer service, and I know I'd never get treated like that by most companies.  I'll probably go desktop as PC, and Mac laptops from now on.  Especially that new green MacBook they have, but that's a topic for another time

Hard work equals?

So after much hard work, a whole lot of studying, and putting off of major projects, papers, and study time for tests, I can now say that I am a CompTIA A+ Certified PC Technician.  Sounds fancy, eh?

Unfortunately, that doesn't exactly translate into a job, especially in today's battered economy and job market.  But hey, I passed the certification exams, and in a couple of weeks, I'll have the certificate to hang on the wall.  I'll be spiffy then.

New Era?

Or is this merely a fresh coat of paint on the same old crap we've seen for too long?  November 4th, 2008 had some ups and downs.

Good News:

Obviously, Barack Obama and Joe Biden win the White House over John McCain and Barbie Wannabe... I mean Sarah Palin.  I've ranted enough on this one, and I'll just say:

THANK YOU AMERICA FOR NOT BEING A MINDLESS WASTE OF VOTING PRIVILEGES!

Even though McCain still got way too many votes.  Especially in my home state of the 4Rs (Redneck Retardedism Run Rampant), otherwise known as Tennessee.  One day, I'll make it out of this backwards place.

Kay Hagan defeated Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina.  Dole spent the last couple of weeks smearing Hagan because she "associated with atheists."  I'm seriously thankful that this poor attempt at defining atheists as evil was met with a 9 point win for Hagan.  On the downside of this, Hagan ran from the atheists at full speed when the smear campaign started, instead of insisting that us atheists are people too.  Oh well, at least Hagan was the one meeting with an atheist instead of swearing we're evil people.

Colorado voted down an amendment to define a person as such at the moment of conception.  This was a measure that was made to circumvent Roe v Wade and was despicable at best.  Good job Colorado!

Washington State voted to uphold the legality of Physician-Assisted Suicide.  This isn't something I care deeply about, but it's nice to see freedoms being upheld, and know there is a place I can go when I can't take the pain any longer and want to be put out of the misery.

Michigan voted yes to amend to the state constitution to allow Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research with certain restrictions.  Even with restrictions, this is a great win for science and for the future.

Both South Dakota and (most likely, votes are still being counted) California voted down an Abortion Restricting proposition.  The restrictions are some that I feel comfortable with, but I still feel it's a woman's choice, and if women only had voted this choice in, I might be OK with it.  But I see it also as a starting block for the anti-abortion crowd to stand on, and we don't need to give these loons any of those.

Bad News:

Florida, Arizona, and even (so it appears, votes are still being counted) California all passed bans against gay marriage.  And Arkansas passed an initiative preventing gay couples from adopting children.  Shame on these states and their dedication to promoting intolerance and preventing freedom.

This infuriates me so much.  Why do these people care?  Because some old cryptic book barely implies they should, and their religious official says they should?  How about the fact that these people are preventing the pursuit of the American dream from people they've never met for something that is none of their business to begin with.  Anyone who voted yes to this, or even considered voting yes to this, the following is addressed to you specifically:

You complain that homosexuals are a threat to the American family.  YOU ARE THE THREAT.  You would prevent these people from having the freedoms guaranteed to them in the constitution because of a religious belief.  That violates the 1st Amendment.  You are the one who is unAmerican, not the homosexuals.  They aren't going against the Constitution, which is the heart of America. YOU ARE!  Stop your hate mongering.  Stop your Intolerance.  Stop letting your religion make your political choices for you.  Otherwise, you're basically the same as the people in Iran.  Their religion controls their government too.