SIXinternational.txt

IRC quote: “apparently being the most cunning politician in Alaska is like being the smartest guy at a nickelback concert”

I was thinking this all day yesterday: Who leads the Republican party right now?

This is a verbatim copy of a long, fantastic post on the SomethingAwful forums explaining the steps that led us through the era of subprime mortgages and the selling of mortgage backed securities to the current crisis. Forums user razzledazzle says:

It’s ridiculous to blame the crisis on the Community Reinvestment Act or ACORN or whatever. The central thesis seems to be that the government forced lenders to give loans to risky customers, when in fact lenders chose to give loans to risky customers because there was a vast amount of profit to be made. (Reasonable people can differ on whether the CRA is good policy in principle and in practice, but that’s really besides the point here.)

It works like this:

(more…)

So here’s the situation at 2:30 PM on a Monday:

• The Republicans have voted against the bailout bill en masse, causing it to fail 205-228. As of right now, there is no bailout bill in place, and the only solution House Republicans have in return is “lower taxes”. Earlier in the weekend, Minority Leader Boehner was promising the House Republicans would vote for the bailout and ensure the markets stayed steady.
• The Dow is down 550 points and sinking.
• We are fucked.

The Republicans voted against this not because it’s a bad bill (it’s not great but a truly great bill would not pass with Republicans anyways - as I said, their proposal is to erase the fucking capital gains tax which failing institutions wouldn’t be paying anyways), but so they could sit back and say “HEY GUYS WE VOTED AGAINST IT” in case it didn’t work. Or so they could have something to run against and try to win seats in November. House leadership on both sides wanted it to pass - Republicans who voted against it wanted it to pass. They just wanted to seem like the white knights fighting against this Bush/Democrat bill.

Basically, Republicans played petty election politics and are causing our economy to tank. This is why I’m not a fucking Republican. They have the audacity to put election politics above the good of the nation. A paraphrase of what McCain despicably and inaccurately says about Obama in regards to Iraq, they’d rather lose an economy than win an election.

Oh and  this just in - Republicans are trying to blame the bill’s failure on Nancy Pelosi. Fuck these motherfuckers. I don’t know what else to say. This is amazing in its utter lack of foresight and seriousness.

So now about a month and a half ago I bought a bike, a ‘92 GSX1100G bought off of the wonderful craigslist. I never thought I’d be interested in riding, say, three months ago. Part of the reason was that I wanted to learn to be a little bit of a mechanic rather than just throwing my hands in the air when something happens in the car or bike or whatever. But there’s just something invigorating about riding versus driving. When you ride, you’re really connected. Part of this is not being walled in behind the steel and glass of the car. But part of it is that because you need to be so much more attentive while driving, you don’t suddenly end up home forgetting all of the little things along the way that took you there by getting lost in your radio or cell phone or whatever. But you’re really just there, man. It’s great. I’ve put a probably four or five hundred miles on already just going for nightly rides.

Unfortunately, it’s starting to get cold - now for the first time I understand feeling jealous of people who live where it’s sunny all year. In a few weeks, I’ll need to garage the bike until probably April or May of next year. Seriously, that sucks. Although it’ll give me time and motivation to do big bike projects - we’re going to take the entire thing apart piece by piece and clean/fix up everything so that it runs like new when it’s let out in the spring. That’s an exciting thought.

So, that’s been my past few months. Politics and motorcycles. The other part of the plan is that the motorcycle should go well with photography. I’ve definitely fallen off with my photography hobby, but I think it’s because I’m really only interested in taking photos when it’s something new. Like on vacations and that sort of thing. It’s tough to force myself out driving to cover the same areas in Syracuse again and again. So with the bike, that’ll encourage me to take more vacations and I’ll bring the camera in tow. Those are two damn good reasons to get out of the house.

The Big Lie lives on

Oh Sarah, poor lying and power-hungry Sarah. Debate it all you want, but here’s the truth: McCain is sunk. I’ll bet anything on it that picking her just sealed the deal - Nov 4th, Obama will be selected the next President of the United States, and it’ll be by a wide margin.