Thirty (gasp) six days to E-Day, Couric, SNL and buy (uh, bail) out.

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Bail, bail, bail, bail out bank man... (sung to tune of Barbara Ann by the Beach Boys)

First off, yes I missed a day. Well I didn't actually miss it, it was like any other day but I didn't get to post here.
Countdown day Thirty-seven was spent watching, reading, and talking about the news, barbecuing steak and visiting mom.

***Addendum to Tuesday Sept. 29, 2008: No bail out. Falling stocks. Everybody blaming the other guy (a national passtime.)
Post too long (as usual) I'll think more about this and post tomorrow. As I've said before, shit shifts like the sand... something like that anyway. Nothing much making sense at this point for very long.****

Caught SNL's Tina Fey and Amy Poehler spoof of the Katie Couric interview.
Best line: "Katie I'd like to use one of my lifelines."
Second best: "...or Bono the king of Ireland."

So the thing is that the SNL skit was amusing and mocking (which they do well when they actually get it right)
but the real Couric-Palin interview wasn't nearly so funny because it was real.

Waiting for that Biden/Palin debate, should be interesting if nothing else.
Joe, just answer the questions succinctly, and let her talk herself into a hole.
Don't waste your time getting angry, stick to the facts and keep it short... none of those verbose, run on, more info than you need answers... you won't need them here.
Follow Courics lead. "Say why do you feel that is true..." Practice not looking like you're astonished or think she's a complete dimwit in front of the mirror. Get botox if that's what it takes but seriously Joe, talk to her don't mock her, let her try to explain what the hell she means. Give them enough rope and they will hang themselves.
But do make her answer the questions not just say repetitively John McCain is right and Obama is the antichrist....

I'm happy to see that even some (though not as many as you would hope) of the republicans are questioning Palin finally.
Nothing hurt my opinion of the foremost republican figures who are well educated and experienced more than their going around touting the qualifications of Sarah Palin on foreign or economic policy. Perhaps many of them were simply stunned and had no choice but to get on board.

Still struck by the fact that McCain chose Palin in the first place. How well did he even know her?
Because if he chose her without "vetting" her adequately it says something about his rashness of decisions...
What did he then choose her on? Her cuteness, her voice, her overall wealth and depth of knowledge? Honesty?

On the other hand, if he chose her because he really did research, know her and thought she'd be make the best damn VP he could find...
What does that say? That's even more disturbing to me. If he really DID believe she was the best choice then I can't follow his logic at all. I suspect it was a bit more cynical... Obama picked a man, I'm going to pick a woman, BUT tell me seriously that there wasn't any more knowledgeable, prepared republican woman out there in the pool to pick from.

I would think most of the professional working women out there (especially on capitol hill) cringed at the end of the first part of the Couric interview. She asked Sarah "I'm just going to ask you one more time, not to belabor the point, for specific examples in his (McCain) 26 years of pushing for more regulations"
Answer: "I'll try to find ya some and I'll bring em to ya."
I twitched at that point as I have so many times during this election.

I didn't know whether to laugh out loud or throw things at the tv. How could this be possible?
Not only haven't I ever seen anything like this cardboard cut out of a woman but Bush might actually be smarter than her
and that's scary by itself. We've seen what danger there is to having someone in the office that doesn't understand the finer details needed to run the government produces.

But as I said my respect for party line republicans has gone down. This shouldn't have happened.

Still not terribly excited about either of the candidates, but won't vote for McCain and Palin is out of the question.

http://www.boingboing.net/images/x_2008/putinrearshishead.jpg

The other side of the news: The economic bail out will it happen? There's a plan: Dems and Repubs might pass it in the house... maybe.
I think this whole thing stinks. I don't know enough about all the different degrees or dynamics of economics, but I'm trying to figure it out to best of my ability. Small background in Economic anthropology, Marxist anthropology and Comparison of ancient economic theories. But that was a while ago and some of my hardest classes.

I'm not convinced this is going to work. I think if the problem was caught earlier we could have gotten together an econmic think tank, brain storming summit and really figured out a workable far more comprehensive plan to address this problem.
It's a bit late now. Maybe we can avert total meltdown but that doesn't mean this will be at all pleasant.
In fairness there were people screaming about this quite some time ago but they were ignored.
This country isn't run on industry as much as magic money. Yes, credit is necessary but not like this.
Everybody seems to think the government is bad and that regulation is equally bad but... you simply can't expect any company to regulate itself if the goal of the system is ultimately pure capitalism.
Extreme capitalism without restraint creates abuse of power, people and money.
It does need some regulation especially when it's success or failure can change the future of the very country it exists in.
Capitalism, market economy, and democracy are three different things.

At the risk of sounding naggy... Americans need to stop buying into the bastardized version of the American Dream.
My parents philosophy was simple: if you didn't really need it you didn't buy it. If you didn't have the money for it you definitely didn't buy it. The only thing you could borrow money for was a home or a car, maybe college but you were expected to work. You avoided overextending yourself and here's the missing part: the banks didn't approve of giving out risky loans.

We've done it too. We owe too much money. Wish we didn't but we're working on it.

George Carlin might have said it the best:

"They call it the American Dream for a reason...
You have to be asleep to believe it."

Everyone buys so much stuff they don't need. Computers, ipods, clothes, cars, jewelry... tvs, expensive cable, cell phone plans... on and on. It's to the point that whole industries depend on our need to have all this junk so if we were to stop buying it there's a huge problem. But a lot of these items aren't even made in this country anymore. the profit is made by a company who produces something overseas, imports it here and then makes a profit selling it to Americans.

The whole system is bad and we've been running on borrowed time for quite a while now.
Still trying to decide if this bail out is a good idea or not. I wish it wasn't let go until it was a real impending disaster.

All right, I'm going to go for now.

Have a lot to do today.

Later,

Laura


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Forty days to E-day...

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I have to stop in this morning to say that I saw two things all ready that got my attention...

1) Katie Couric's interview with Sarah Palin. Sorry but I really have tried to give Palin at least a thoughtful listen, tried to reserve judgement on her at least personally. Kept it on a political/experience/platform level but she just doesn't inspire any confidence in her potential to be presidential. Isn't this election done for yet? Seriously? She hems & haws, struggles for answers and pulls out parts of information that they've been cramming into her for weeks now. This is what you would expect when you pick someone totally untested and throw them to the wolves of Washington. What was McCain thinking? I guess we'll never know. Even McCain is sounding less presidential these days. She looks like a deer with lipstick in the headlights (or perhaps a moose). Maverick pitbull indeed.

2) McCain said loudly that he would have a suspension of his campaign and not run attack ads. I woke up this morning and turned on the tv to find a nasty attack ad against Obama first thing... and of course it was approved by John McCain. I have no way to know if it went out nationally or not but it was definitely aired in Connecticut. I suppose if criticized for this new twist on honesty he'll say they ran it without his permission. So I guess his own campaign people don't watch the newscasts, read the newspapers or get phone calls or memos from McCain. Nope they didn't get that e-mail did they?
This election is a mean spirited sham.

McCain is not going to agree to the debate, there's no doubt about it.
Will they completely cancel it, or offer up the Palin/Biden debate in it's place?
This financial bailout crisis is going to be used to avoid anything but photo ops for McCain/Palin.
Straight talk express indeed. I suppose if asked about the debate McCain would answer "You know when I was a prisoner in Vietnam I couldn't have any presidential debates." Seems to be his answer for lots of things why not that?

I've never seen anything quite like this in an election before in my life, nasty ads and bullshit, yea we've seen definitely seen that before but the overall calculating cynical "say and do whatever you want to, truth be damned attitude" of this election
The past two elections were bad but Bush was never painted a hero. We cannot as a country afford another 4 years of these republicans. Perhaps they could soul search and come up with a reasonable and fair candidate and stop making their prime directive polarizing the American public.

This financial crisis is going to get worse no matter what they do at this point. Will a bail out avert a full blown recession or depression?
Well that's the trillion dollar question isn't it?

Let the stress begin,
Coffee time for now.
Back later.

What's in store for us today?

I don't have a problem with people's sexual preferences but seriously could Clay Aiken go back in the closet and stay there?
I had to say that I'm sorry. I guess society hasn't accepted homosexuality (or bisexuality) yet or it wouldn't matter if you were in the closet or not. No one would need to be "outed." And they could get married and then divorced just like everyone else.
At the risk of being called a bleeding heart liberal yet again (and I'm not by the way. I lean both conservative and liberal depending on the issue) institutionalized prejudice is not a desired position for a democracy in the land of the free. Hate crimes are called hate crimes for a very good reason.

Back again at 11:10pm:

What a three ring circus this election is:

Biden thinks the fireside chats were on everyone's TV and forgets Herbert Hoover.
Palin answers four questions (well sortof) from reporters... does this count as a first press conference?
Obama Bitches out McCain
McCain bitches out Obama
McCain blows off Letterman for Couric, forgets suspension of campaign and runs anti-Obama ad
Palin gains expertise in foreign affairs via osmosis,
The financial bail out: yes-no-yes-maybe-no... not today...
Presidential debate yes-no-yes-maybe-no-?
Vice Presidential debate Yes-no-yes-no-maybe-?
Palin says everyone's waiting for McCain to give opinion on the bail out, wait, what?
The republicans should adopt Lieberman and the dems should disown the impossible child.
Bush imperative: Bail out Wall Street right now, right away, we need to save the economy from the evil doers, or just save the evil doers... heh, heh.
Lies, lies and more lies.
Have the damn debates, all of them. All Obama & McCain get to do is vote on the bail out. Presidential indeed.
Political posturing is starting to look like a fight in the kindergarden sandbox over who kicked sand at who.

And to think I tried to teach my children as they grew up to stand by their beliefs, be fair, learn from your mistakes and tell the truth. Because telling the truth was more important than being right or wrong. The truth was the truth, a lie was a lie.
What a complete ass I must have been to teach nonsense like that. What the hell was I thinking?

The American public deserves more than this. Probably not going to get anything better just more of the same.

Good Night,

Laura


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