McCain thinks he won

Intrade numbers

Obama 83.9

McCain 16.3

Intrade numbers are shares in the candidates that are bought and sold on an open market. Want to check the latest?

Intrade

Sorry John it's over. Wake up and have Cindy take you home.

Layoffs

I was looking at the employment picture last night and I have to say it's not looking good. Between housing and spending that is cutting into state and city revenues I'm seeing layoffs of 20, 30 and up to 190 at the city and state level. With corporations it's far worse. Auto plants shutting, airlines cutting back and of course construction that was the first to evaporate jobs months ago. The only bright spot was energy but with the lack of demand it is slipping as well. Mining another bright area is slipping as commodity prices fell.
Around here (Washington state) things aren't looking too well either. Usually the washington economy is the last in on a recession and the last out. Factors changed this time around. Boeing went on strike which affected the local economy. It's estimated that at least two jobs here are tied to each Boeing worker. Starbucks located here has been laying off and closing stores although I can't understand their business model as we have something like six of their stands or stores in a two mile stretch of road. That's on top of five or six other brands of latte stands.
So what's going to happen. There's no way this is going to turn around any time soon. As companies face lowered earnings they will continue their layoffs which in turn will lower spending and as we know 70% of our economy is made up of consumer spending. Expect even more layoffs next year and companies and banks to go under. What about the BIG bailout you say? That didn't put dent in the fundamentals of the problem. Look for big mergers as companies try to survive. We will need a new New Deal to get us out of this mess and it will be far more costly than what FDR came up with but consider the alternative. It will be a great opportunity to fix many of the problems facing this nation. An infrastructure that's fallen apart just look at our bridges, roads and power supply systems to get an idea.

McCain - Wrong again

To call John McCain a maverick is about as far from the truth as one can get. For those who compare him to Bush here's proof positive John is following exactly in Georgie's foot steps. McCain wants to cut the rates on retirement withdrawls that would affect mainly about 3% of seniors. He wants to give capital gains cuts. Hmmm anybody seen any gains lately? McCain is back to the trickle down policys of Reagan combined with the corporate welfare of Bush. This is the same trickle down policy Reagan tried in the early 80s. The going joke then was that money trickled down from the Gettys to the Rockefellers. In todays terms that would be from the Gates to the Buffets. I see no difference in what Reagan did then to what McCain wants to do now. It's just more money to the rich and it didn't work then and it won't work now. So let's send John back to the retirement home in Arizona give him some warm milk and put him to bed. It's time to rebuild this country we don't need any more of these failed ideas.

McCain's economic plan

Hold on a minute

Before you pop the cork on that bottle of Dom stop to remember that the fundamentals have not changed one iota. We're still in debt up to our eyeballs and nothing has changed other than world leaders pulling out the credit card and saying help yourself. I've said it once and I'll keep saying it until somebody starts listening " you can not borrow your way out of debt".
Like a teenager in debt who's finally hit the magic drinking age goes out with his first credit card forgets his debts and spends like there's no tomorrow. Then that statement comes and with bleary eyes and a screaming headache Jr. opens the bill and realizes he'll have to work thirty years or more to pay this back if he's lucky.
I've heard nothing of the details on the international bail out other than nations will buy shares of banks and try to back deposits. Sounds like they're just trying to cover their own asses on this. Nothing in the bail out says anything about the bad debt or mortgages both here or abroad. Sadly in the long run we'll just have to eat it. Like a hundred bucks you lent to the drunk teenager just kiss it goodbye.

Friday news dump 10/10/08

A lot of stuff going on trying to go unnoticed at the end of the week. Helicopter Ben is dumping money into the economy like we were Haliburton in Iraq. While corporations are praying we spend money we don't have this holiday season, uncle Ben has been trying to grease the wheels of the banking sector. His rally cry "Lend damn it lend!!" Had the wall street swat team not stepped in at the end of trading Friday the market would have been down 1000 points at the end of trading. Geez do these guys ever run out of money? Banks seem to be playing a big game of musical chairs only some of the chairs are wired with C4.

John McCain has to back peddle after working his followers into such a frenzy that they shout "Kill Obama". Wonderful and civilized base you've got there John. Now the secret service has to work overtime. Can we send you the bill?

Caribou Barbie gets caught in her lies so what does she do? Issues a statement saying it's all lies. Sorry babe this was a bipartisan panel of the legislature that came to the conclusion. Gee you really must have pissed off your own party on this one. Oh that's right you do all those "mavericky" things I forgot.

GM is in talks to take over Chrysler. You know what that means? More lay offs and an even larger company to bail out later. How are those electric cars that nobody will be able to afford coming along? Anybody seen Lee?

Anybody want to buy a country real cheap? I hear Iceland's for sale. And at the rate America is going we can change our name to the United Socialist States of America. That's got a ring to it USSA like it USSA to be a capitalist country. Welcome to the new era comrade. Gee weren't commies blackballed? What a difference 50 years makes. Hey maybe we could get this socialism thing right. Naaah that's just wishful thinking.

N Korea is now being taken off the axis of evil list and the US will be talking to them. What happened to "we don't negotiate or talk to terrrrists"? My guess. They now have enough nukes to do some serious damage to this country so we better get friendly with them.

Oh darn I missed my Friday beaver spot. There's a beaver shortage out there you know. Save the beavers and the boobies too. Which leads me to:

Last but not least our government is now officially spying on all citizens, intercepting all phone calls. So be careful what you say. They especially love those sexy phone calls. So if you want an instant audience just talk dirty. Hey quit listening in ya perverts!

A republican plan for the current economic mess

Buy Damn it Buy!!!



Hat tip to Frankodelic

Beware of voter registration tricks

My BS meter is starting to run on high. Six states have purged voters from their rolls even though this may be illegal. Several states require that purging can not be done less than 90 days before an election. We saw that happen here in our state after the last election. The only problem with that one was that the rethuglicans purged many of their own legally registered voters.

Voter purge