You want to believe, but you don't dare believe. Then it sneaks up on you, and you find yourself believing... only to get mad at being suckered again.
No, I'm not talking about being Cubs fan, or a Sox fan from a few years ago; I'm not even talking about the specific issue of health care.
I guess I'm talking about the decline of the US, and my hope that the democrats would at least be on the right side of the fight.
I'm not abandoning the democrats, they abandoned me. I'm talking about the politicians, but I think even us folk have been way to easy on them because they are supposedly the party in power, and we didn't want to criticize.
Saying the democrats are in power is about the same as saying we are now in an economic recovery. I really didn't expect too much out of congress, but I thought it wouldn't take that much, so it would all even out. They would be able to shape so much, and the president would do the right thing, because he gives off that sense in waves.
The warning signs were there within his economic team, and I caught some flak in my diaries about coming down hard on what many didn't/don't realize is a pretty sloppy, shady cast of characters.
We were told many, many lies, but one that was oft repeated and easy to float was the too-big-to-fail meme. The action taken was to fold in the failed with the too-big, and make them bigger too-big-to-fail institutions. I'm sure they don't see it as a green light to do it again.
The most sweeping regulation in the year since is the one allowing banks to use mark-to-myth accounting so any vestiges of transparency were painted over.
People can reach a point where they stop being frightened. We saw it in Iraq, as citizens would go to the market, even though the one a street down was just blown up. The woman below is like that. She's sick of the threats, and the fear. She is also representative of what we will be seeing from people who have had enough. She is essentially breaking the social compact. She is what that looks like, and I have to tell you, it looks very good from where I sit.
I learned recently that Al Qaida is no longer in Afghanistan. I also learned that their opium crop is down 40%, to an estimated $400 million distributed among 1.6 million farmers. It works out to a couple hundred bucks a farmer, and they tithe the Taliban some percentage. The Taliban are fighting NATO on a budget of about $500 million. There are Afghans who are trying to be helpful and explain to us that not only is Al Qaida not there, but they don't have tanks and gunships. They are telling us we are not fighting them correctly.
How can I know this and Obama not know this? Does that seem plausible? Maybe I have bad info, but I doubt it.
Now I am hearing that the "compromise" with health care might involve massively subsidizing private insurers. Who were they compromising with, someone wearing an "I Hate Americans" shirt on? They must have been surprised when the democrats had on their "Not As Much As We Do" shirts.
Is it because the private insurers have such a good track record of service and keeping costs down?
There are huge tinderboxes in the economy right now. The FDIC is trying to dissolve many of the banks in an orderly fashion, but the size of the troubled bank list is getting longer, faster.
We know there are huge problems in commercial real estate coming on line this year, and millions of option ARM's are set to recast. After that is a massive wave of interest-only mortgages ($400 billion), and on and on. Most disturbingly is the unemployment rate. I have a lot of respect for Bonddad, God love him, but he is wrong about this recession. It has gone on long enough now that many of the charts have enough X-axis in them to show a remarkable similarity to the charts showing how the Great Depression evolved. Remember, the crash happened in 1929, but it wasn't until 1933/34 that main street was crushed. Things just slid from bad, to worse, to grim.
We are doing zero structurally to address main street. Sure the stimulus helps, and I'm certain the couple of million people who get jobs because of it will be/are very thankful. However, they are potentially just a tiny fraction of the big picture.
The politicians are going to be surprised, and everyone will have thought green shoots, and nobody could have known that large numbers of unemployed people is bad for the economy. They never know anything. It's always a complete surprise.
The government did another thing that was very stupid. By showing such overt corporatist leanings and favoritism toward the banks, they have made it very difficult to bail them out again, yet all that garbage is still on their books. I'm not saying anything will happen to them because I can't. I can't see into their health. They have painted it black. One hiccup, and they will be threatening intergalactic destruction, and could we make the bonuses a little larger this time?
I can't begin to tell you how betrayed I feel. I want to see if I can get permission to show the movie V is for Vendetta in public. You all can wait. I've waited for too long, and I see clearly the writing on the wall. The faster change is forced, the faster we begin to clear the stink.
I hear now the Supremes are considering overturning campaign finance laws. I'm sure that will do wonders for this country. They can take their money, but we have to put the fear into them. They take orders from us, and we have the numbers to back it up.
Do you know what happens when everyone does like the lady above? If everyone has their credit rating dinged, then it means nothing. It means there is a new standard number, and the earth keeps spinning, and they don't in fact control you. You have a tiny bit of freedom left.
If my paycheck is lowered because I have to pay a private insurer, then I will claim more deductions, and at the end of the year, I will send a note to the IRS explaining why I underpaid, and if they don't like it, they can kiss my ass.