KEATING ECONOMICS

AND *WE* (The American people) ARE A BUNCH OF WHINERS?

WHITE ENTITLEMENT (written a week before financial meltdown)

White entitlement and the election

America is about to become a "minority-majority" nation. It means that collectively all the minorities (Black,Asian,Hispanic etc) will outnumber caucasians. Texas has recently joined Hawaii, New Mexico and California as a majority-minority state along with the District of Columbia This is very scary to a lot of people. I get it.

Most of my friends are in more liberal places like NYC, LA. Miami and here in Vegas. Even if they don't have liberal views- their views are more open on the topic. I spent a couple months in my home state of Michigan last year and attitudes are nuts about race still. That is a big reason I left the area. 1)warm weather and 2) diverse people to interact with. Ok, to be honest I'm not fond of most Haitians, but that is because I met a lot of them and found that 1) they use no deodorant and 2) they bitch about being in the U.S. saying Haiti is so much better. I'm talking hundreds of Haitians! Yes I know we did a military coup on Aristide after we put them in there but I'm running way OT.

I really think with the current financial crisis more of the same is NOT ok. We are losing in two wars. Our deficit is over a trillion. When GW came in office we had a huge surplus. ANYTHING is better. A trillion dollar buyout is NOT ok. WE aren't a socialist country. Remember free enterprise?

Yes- there should be regulations on mortgages ... BUT don't people read what they sign? Where is the sense of personal responsibility? Didn't people see the unemployment levels rising as a result of outsourcing? STILL I see a lot of Toyota's, Honda's, BMW's and other foreign cars. People are showing off that they do NOT support their own country. They are PROUD of it! It really irritates me that people can't grasp that fact.
Again OT.


Vote for whomever you're gonna vote for. I still believe in the process. Please assess your reasons. After my last blog I had no less that 15 people remark that Sarah Palin is hot and that is enough reason to vote for McCain (a lot of people read this blog when I bother. They usually don't comment in writing). A couple were joking. A couple weren't. Is this really something to joke about? People are losing everything because of 8 years of poorly run Republican executive branches. WTF is wrong with people?



Stephen Rebello

Presidential candidate McCain, the self-advertised "maverick" who voted has voted the Bush agenda 90% of the time, traveled the country with Bush in 2005 trying to sell Bush's plan to privatize Social Security -- that is, to invest our private savings in Wall Street. After the Wall Street meltdown of the past few days, guess where all our retirement money would be today?



WHITE PRIVILEGE, WHITE ENTITLEMENT AND THE 2008 ELECTION

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Tim Wise

For those who still canʼt grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.


White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.


White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckinʼ redneck," like Bristol Palinʼs boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll "kick their fuckin' ass," and talk about how you like to "shoot shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.


White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people donʼt all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means youʼre "untested."


White privilege is being able to say that you support the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance because "if it was good enough for the founding fathers, itʼs good enough for me," and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the "under God" part wasnʼt added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.


White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you. White privilege is being able to ha ve a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was "Alaska first," and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fa ils to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think sheʼs being disrespectful.


White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think youʼre being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--youʼre somehow being mean, or even sexist.


White privilege is being able to convince white women who donʼt even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a "second look."

White privilege is being able to fire people who didnʼt support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing20your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks fro m the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.


White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is Godʼs punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think youʼre just a good church-going Christian, but if youʼre black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, youʼre an extremist who probably hates America.


White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a "trick question," while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill OʼReilly means youʼre dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.


White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it, a "light" burden.


And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters arenʼt sure about that whole "change" thing. Ya know, itʼs just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.


White privilege is, in short, the problem.



A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

Tim Wise is the author of White Like Me (Soft Skull, 2005, revised 2008), and of Speaking Treason Fluently, publishing this month, also by Soft Skull.





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The sad part? I'm going to make a LOT of money off this. The stock market is crazy. This is fun in a sick sick way. 4 more years of the same? Hmmm.... financially for me it's a GODSEND.





About the yahoo email hack- I wonder if Sarah Palin knows about the Patriot Act and how violated that makes a lot of people feel? Why on earth would she have government communications in a yahoo account. EVERYONE knows that hot mail and yahoo are constantly hacked. Mine has been hacked at least 5 times over the last 10 yrs. and I had it easy! No one cares about that though.

A LOTTA LIES GOING DOWN

I will preface this by saying I'm disgusted with the whole process and I can't believe that the Dems OR Reps can't come up with something better than this. Maybe the payscale needs to be increased to attract better candidates. I think I'll throw a vote to Sharpton in protest. Maybe I'll do a write in for Paris. With the whole Diebold debacle who knows if votes count anyway. Those machines are getting pulled so fast it's insane! If you didn't see it you really should check out the HBO documentary "Hacking Democracy". It's on mininova...

I'm usually centered politically, finding either side too extreme. I end up voting Dem as they "seem" less extreme (to me). My dad was a strong Democrat and my mom was a staunch Republican. No wonder I'm so centered. No wonder they divorced when I was 2. I watched Sarah Palin last night compare herself (metaphorically) to a pitbull. Great- John McCain is a million years old and this woman could very well be running the country soon. When she was mayor of Wasilla, AK she had 1,100 votes in her win. Yes- 1k people of the 10k in her town voted for her. It was enough to win. She managed 10k people in the tiny town. Then she became gov. The largest city in her state has 275k people. The entire state of Alaska has close to 700k people.

Is this person qualified to handle 301 MILLION Americans? She has no experience out of the country. She IS a hockey mom...She is a creationist. She scares the hell outta me.
I wish I'd wake up and find out this election is a weird dream.

Again- I'm not an Obama supporter- Can't stand Biden. Never could. This piece is from Associated Press Writer Jim Drinkard in Washington I found it interesting: I hope you will as well.

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Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her Republican supporters held back little Wednesday as they issued dismissive attacks on Barack Obama and flattering praise on her credentials to be vice president. In some cases, the reproach and the praise stretched the truth.

Some examples:

PALIN: "I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending ... and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress 'thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere."

THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a "bridge to nowhere."

PALIN: "There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform — not even in the state senate."

THE FACTS: Compared to McCain and his two decades in the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.

PALIN: "The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes, raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars."

THE FACTS: The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama's plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain's plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded.

Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families.

He also would raise income taxes, capital gains and dividend taxes on the wealthiest. He would raise payroll taxes on taxpayers with incomes above $250,000, and he would raise corporate taxes. Small businesses that make more than $250,000 a year would see taxes rise.

MCCAIN: "She's been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America's energy supply ... She's responsible for 20 percent of the nation's energy supply. I'm entertained by the comparison and I hope we can keep making that comparison that running a political campaign is somehow comparable to being the executive of the largest state in America," he said in an interview with ABC News' Charles Gibson.

THE FACTS: McCain's phrasing exaggerates both claims. Palin is governor of a state that ranks second nationally in crude oil production, but she's no more "responsible" for that resource than President Bush was when he was governor of Texas, another oil-producing state. In fact, her primary power is the ability to tax oil, which she did in concert with the Alaska Legislature. And where Alaska is the largest state in America, McCain could as easily have called it the 47th largest state — by population.

MCCAIN: "She's the commander of the Alaska National Guard. ... She has been in charge, and she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities," he said on ABC.

THE FACTS: While governors are in charge of their state guard units, that authority ends whenever those units are called to actual military service. When guard units are deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, for example, they assume those duties under "federal status," which means they report to the Defense Department, not their governors. Alaska's national guard units have a total of about 4,200 personnel, among the smallest of state guard organizations.

FORMER ARKANSAS GOV. MIKE HUCKABEE: Palin "got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States."

THE FACTS: A whopper. Palin got 616 votes in the 1996 mayor's election, and got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of 1,525. Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got 76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the ballot during the 2008 presidential primaries.

FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOV. MITT ROMNEY: "We need change, all right — change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington — throw out the big-government liberals, and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin."

THE FACTS: A Back-to-the-Future moment. George W. Bush, a conservative Republican, has been president for nearly eight years. And until last year, Republicans controlled Congress. Only since January 2007 have Democrats have been in charge of the House and Senate.

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Then there is McCain.. McCain/Feingold bill UGH.... ::: rant rant rant::::

On another note- I did, however, name my new car "Mitt" -Mitt Romney, my car and I were raised in Mich./his dad was Gov. of MI. Car is from Utah- They didn't have what I wanted here in Vegas so I had them bring it in for me./Mitt is from Utah. I guess I could have named it Donny or Marie, but they don't have quite the same ring- yes they have a new show here at the Flamingo :).








Then again - how do you vote for THIS guy who calls Biden the next President of the United States-