Bush misses last chance to save his legacy.

It was a very very narrow margin. Had he caught the second shoe and tossed it back at the man, he would have been forgiven for everything. He would have not been known as the guy who sucked at everything and lead to the downfall of America as a superpower. He would have been known as the badass that caught a shoe. So close.

Unlike that guy, I resist the urge to toss footware at people whose unprovoked aggression against my country leads to the death of hundreds of thousands of countrymen. Give me one of the 9/11 bombers and I won't toss a shoe at them. That would be rude.

Rachel Maddow: Thanksgiving

Save People Not Corporate Debt.

The US government is wrong dealing with the credit crisis. They are making the same mistake that lead to this current financial problem in reverse.

Joe Blow buys a house for $200,000 suddenly people say Joe Blow's house is worth $500,000 and offers Joe Blow a 125% second mortgage to let him buy a boat. Now Joe Blow owes around $550,000 dollars but has a boat. Suddenly, the market realizes that Joe Blow's house is only worth about $250,000 and starts panicking and raises Joe Blow's interest rates and he's having a really hard time making his payments. They say they are going to foreclose on Joe Blow's house! Joe Blow figures out that $550,000 is less than $250,000 and it's about $300,000 in his interest to let them keep the house. Joe Blow lets the dumbasses keep his house. As do all the Joe Blows who find themselves in the same situation.

So now all these places which suddenly took millions upon millions upon millions of dollars worth of hits because they were giving really bad loans to people who couldn't pay them back and no longer had anything worth what the price of the loan was started to crumble and die. They simply weren't worth what they paid for them. -- Now isn't that a lot like what the government is trying to do. We're trying to prop up a bunch of companies with large sums of money when the companies themselves aren't worth anything. The reason they are heading towards bankruptcy is because they aren't worth anything much less the $1 trillion dollars we're going to end up paying.

Do we really want to buy up all the bad debt? Why? Isn't acquiring bad debt the reason these giant corporations are dying? Why don't we actually embrace the capitalistic thing to do and let them die? We want capitalism when it comes to raking in a profit without any hint of so much as making sure the numbers add up. But, when it comes to losses we're suppose to socialize them? No, we shouldn't. Let the Earthquake happen.

We shouldn't be risking the solvency of the United States government in order to prop up corporations which cost more than they are worth. We're ten trillion dollars in debt and we're suppose to dig ourselves another trillion with war and another trillion with bailouts. The Chinese should stop lending us money. We're a bad investment at this point. We should ignore the corporations and focus on saving the people. We need to make sure they have a roof over their head, food so they don't starve, opportunities in life and a modicum of privacy. We should save the least among us, not the richest. We should, like Joe Blow, walk away from trying to fight the untamable monster of bad debt and simply focus on the Joe Blows of society.

We're making the same mistakes the companies are by letting this debt move up the ladder from bad debtors, to bad lenders, to bad lender conglomerates, to bad business propped up by bad lender conglomerates and trying to fight this with bad government policy. There is an old saying, the solution to pollution is dilution. If we just put enough bad stuff in a large enough area we'll be okay. It'll get to low enough levels that we'll be perfectly fine. In practice, this works fine until it doesn't. There's a point where the toxic contamination just like the toxic debt is enough to overwhelm the entire system and cause it all to come tumbling down with far worse consequences than it would have been if we just cut our losses and dealt with the problems head on.

1 trillion dollars is $3000 dollars from every man woman and child in the United States. In reality, you can live on about $1200 a year if you're mindbogglingly poor and covering all your very basic needs. We can far more easily catch the people with endless welfare checks if need be than we could catch the corporate giants who brought this on themselves. The government will not go broke or collapse saving our own people from starvation, but buying up massive amounts of toxic debt from corporations who spend millions to save themselves billions by using lobbyists to avoid paying taxes.

And while you're at it, legalize pot, living in crappy government housing with crappy government food and crappy government attempts to find you a crappy jobs would be far more tolerable if you were totally high. Ever faced a great depression? Ever faced a great depression on weed?

Bush or Batman

Speaks for itself. The old guy is great.

By lo, cell hi!

In a press conference Thursday, Bush deflected an economics question by saying that 'you should talk to an expert. I got a B in Econ 101, but an A in keeping taxes low. HE HE HE.' Apparently he passed a class they never offered which magically applies to only the rich. Which if you were to look at the US as a business is a sign of a bad leader. More so considering the already massive debt and huge deficits (currently just shy of 9 trillion).

The real lie in the whole thing? He got a B in Econ 101... He really got a C-.

Goebbels would be proud!

WASHINGTON - President Bush, cheered on by Iraq war veterans and their families on the White House's South Lawn, urged lawmakers Tuesday to back his plan to withdraw some troops from Iraq...

President Bush asks congress to back his plan to withdraw troops. Hey jackass it doesn't count as withdrawing troops if those are just the 5700 kids you aren't allowed to keep there forever and have to rotate them a bit. My goodness, this latest push is pure propaganda and it seems to be tossed around like candy. That entire line there seems to give the distinct impression that:

Bush wants to withdraw troops.
Congress is opposed.

What kind of sick joke is this? Bush isn't at all drawing down any troops at all. He might as well count those kids coming back in wooden coffins as troops he's withdrawn... they are the ones he can't force to stay there and this smug bastard wants to claim the high ground? Man, that is pathetic!

I'm impressed. This is a level of game the Bush administration hasn't been playing since the run up to the war. They are fighting tooth and nail to try and make the idea of a forever-war at least not political suicide.

Bush is an idiot and I hate PR.

Apparently some small withdrawals makes indefinite and untenable war tenable or so Bush would have us believe.

"The way forward I have described tonight makes it possible, for the first time in years, for people who have been on opposite sides of this difficult debate to come together," Bush said

Oh, yeah, what a way to come together. Slightly fewer troops, that's really going to make the fact that we spend billions every month and have lost thousands of lives totally worth it. Now, I can support this unsupportable war... than you Mr. President.

I now see, that when I said we had no business in this civil war, were stupid for going in, act as a lightning rod for violence, and are accomplishing less than nothing by leading to more terrorism and thus should get out right now... what I really meant was 130k people stuck in a worthless war is totally my magic number. Because, I only worry about the number of enlisted men and women and not about our presence in general and the billions of dollars it cost to keep a really crappy foothold in a war zone.

"The more successful we are, the more American troops can return home," Bush said in remarks prepared for a prime-time Oval Office address to the nation.

That's what qualifies as supporting the troops? Keeping them hostage. "Now look, I'm not the ones keeping them there, they just aren't doing very well in a zone of escalating violence and civil war. Don't blame me... blame my war!"

Fuck Bush. -- Seriously, I'm actually really mellow and nuanced, and that's my mellow and nuanced position on the issue: FUCK BUSH!

I can tolerate war, needless genocide, murder and all the little things that makes life end so cheaply... but to be insulted, belittled, and talked down to by the worst president in history and the end all and be all of governmental failure, I won't stand for it.

When Clinton Was President...

When Clinton was President we had one category 5 hurricane: Mitch.

While Bush has been president, we've had eight! : Isabel, Ivan, Emily, Katrina, Rita, Wilma, Dean, Felix

I know, what you're going to say... Oh that's just global warming and the hot water feed the hurricanes power. No. It's an amazing correlation!

Well, under Bush 41's one single 4 year term. There were two: Hugo, Andrew. Though, if you count the time they were president Elect, Bush 41 gets Gilbert added to his tally. Andrew would then not be added to Clinton because it was a month before he won the election. So since this figuring helps my cause let's count president elects.

Bush 41 had 4 years with 3 category 5 hurricanes.
Clinton had 8 years with 1 category 5 hurricane.
Bush 43 has 7 years with 8 category 5 hurricanes.

Bush 41 (R) has a .75 cat5/year index.
Clinton (D) has a .125 cat5/year index.
Bush 41 (R) has a 1.14 cat5/year index.

This also should note that in the last couple weeks Bush 43 has been averaging 1 cat 5 hurricanes a week!

Dislike for congress.

I also think it's classic that many news networks are tossing around the idea that the low opinion of congress somehow vindicates Bush. See, they hate everybody in the government! The truth is they hate Bush because he's the worst president ever and they hate congress because they don't step up, impeach Bush and Cheney, have President Byrd (president pro tempore of the senate, although with the senate that close perhaps Pelosi should do it, though she was the one who wanted impeachment off the table) withdraw the troops, have the senate go nuclear remove the filibuster and ram through a reversal of the last six years perhaps before the next hurricane destroys a city and nobody is around to pick up the pieces.

In short, they hate Bush so much that anybody who isn't fighting with every shred of their being is a traitor.

History views him kindly...

Has anybody considered the irony that historians will have to fight when they write about the worst president in history whose only plea is that perhaps history will view him kindly. That his only Hail Mary is that perhaps historians will be completely stupid and not realize that staying in a worthless intractable war with bizarre delusions about future historians liking him was something noteworthy and respectable?

Secondly, what about the Rapture? Certainly since the crazy nutjob rapture-loving loony Christians are the only ones who are still brainwashed enough to believe Bush (yes I'm talking about Bush 43 if "worst president in history" was clear enough) is anything more than a complete disaster. And if they are yanked into the sky, who will still be around to write a favorable review of Bush in any history book?

Also, it might help if the same powerful lobby that manages to get any evolution tidbit downplayed in text books would also require that history books cater to these delusions.