Have you turned the news on lately? It’s nothing but bad news. People are getting laid off, no one has any money to spend, credit lines are being pulled… It’s going to be the WORST CHRISTMAS EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OH NOES!!!
Am I the only one who remembers all the way back to last christmas, and the christmas before that, and the christmas before that.. It’s ALWAYS going to be the worst christmas ever. I think it’s some kind of psychological manipulation to get us out to the mall, charging up a storm.
Speaking of malls, have you been to one during this incredible economic down turn? How close to the door did you find a parking space? Yeah, that’s what I figured. Get back to me when you’re done laughing.
Year after year all we ever hear is how the people aren’t buying enough worthless crap and the whole country is going to fall apart because no one bought the leopard skin print scarf at macys. I have news for you people, nothing has changed. Are we seeing a shift in employment numbers? Yep! There are a lot of people being laid off right now and while I don’t envy them their position(mostly because I’ve been in it before) they’ll over come. If they are willing to work, they will find some kind of job. Might not be the cushy job they were used to, but you have to put food on the table, right?
Many more people are opting to stay home this holiday and just enjoy their time with the family. This means instead of spending a huge chunk of cash on a plane ticket, hotel room, rental car, etc while visiting aunt matilda.. they are going to spend money on things for decorating their home, for each other, the kids, the grandkids, whomever. So while travel will be down, consumption will be up. They’ll all buy a nice christmas dinner and have a nice new years eve dinner at home instead of going out to an expensive restaurant.
So mark my words.. when it’s all said and done.. this will be an average or at the very worst a slightly below average shopping season and then after the holiday when everything is 90% off, people will stampeed to the mall and grab everything that’s left in a feeding frenzy normally reserved for a shark tank.
Life isn’t all wine and roses, but it continues on. Sometimes there are bumps in the road and right now the road is bumpy, but everything will work out in the end…. and if you really feel you’ve lost all hope and you can’t see anything positive at all, I’ll give you the best tip you’ll ever get. Turn off your tv. When you stop allowing your head to be filled with nothing but negativity, you’ll be astounded at how much happier you are in life. Don’t let talking heads in a box control you. Get out and live!
A 19 year old Florida college student recently committed suicide. Not a very uncommon thing in and of itself. But, this tortured teen took matters a step further and decided to share his death with the world via web cam. He took an overdose of antidepressants and then went to sleep on his father’s bed as a web cam broadcast his own pathetic end to the world. I am not a big fan of people who commit suicide to begin with. Life is tough. Deal with it and get over yourself. In the end you will be a stronger person and have valuable experiences to share with future generations. Too many people are coddled and allowed to be weak in tough times. It is killing our society by turning us all into a nation of whining pussies. This kid was no different. Apparently he had threatened to kill himself several times before, but either didn’t do it or simply failed.
So we bailed out all the banks and we’ve seen how well that’s gone. Instead of using the money to fix their shit, all these companies are paying out huge christmas bonuses to their top employees and taking lavish vacations with $30k worth of massages. So now all the little guys are stuck saying. WTF?!? I thought this was supposed to fix everything and instead it’s just become a big money grab for Paulson’s friends. Now they are saying they aren’t even going to use the money for what they claimed it was for. Anyone else sitting around with the sad realization that they duped us again? That this was just one more way for the bush administration to steal piles and piles of money from the gov’t treasury and hand it to their friends with no strings attached? It’s truly sickening.
But now… now we are hearing that the car industry is failing. With the nasty taste in our mouth from that last bail out, everyone is screaming at the top of their lungs, LET THE CAR COMPANIES FAIL! FUCK THEM!! Heck, I was one of them. At the end of the day, if you can’t run your business and make a profit, you close up and go home to tell mommy you’re a failure. But the more I started thinking about it, the car companies CAN’T fail.
Now before you get the bbq pit started so you can fry me, give me a moment to explain.
Several years ago I lived up in the Endicott-Johnson area of NY. IBM was king there. They had country clubs and the entire area was thriving. The IBM employess bought cars from local dealers, picked up a pizza pie on friday night, shopped at the mall, bought a new suit, tanked up the car and bought a pack of cigarettes… do you see what I’m saying here? Now on top of that, you had factories in the area that employeed people that would supply IBM with circuit boards, glass for monitors, computer chips, whatever it was they needed.
The area was fat and happy. Lots of people lived in nice homes. Lots of businesses fed off the money their employees spent and times were good. But then IBM started having money problems. They started laying people off, closing locations, selling off the country club.. and people thought, wow. That sucks for people who work for them!
But what they didn’t realize at the time, was that this had a tremendous “trickle down” effect on everyone else. Circuit board factories started to close and lay off their employees. Pizza places closed. The mall became a ghost town.
Now, when I go to visit that area, it’s like night and day. Binghamton has become a ghetto full of drug dealers and you don’t want to be headed there at 12pm on a friday night without your bullet proof vest on. Real estate prices plummeted. The best job you’re looking at up there if you don’t work at a hospital or one of the colleges, is walmart. The entire area died.
Now if you look at this on the scale of gm failing. How many employees do they have? Now, every single one of them is going to be unemployed. So for 40 weeks, they’ll all be collecting unemployement. Then it’s food stamps, medicaid and every other gov’t program they can apply for. PLUS, they aren’t going to be paying any taxes now that they have no job. So instead of sending the gov’t money every april, the gov’t is sending them money every 2 weeks.
During our last election, all you heard was that obama was a socialist. But correct me if I’m wrong here, if people aren’t working and are just waiting for the gov’t to send them a check every two weeks… isn’t THAT really socialism?
What needs to happen is these guys making $200 million a year that are running these companies, need to be fired. Then they need to hire someone for $250k a yr to come in and knock some heads together. Employees need to realize the fat times are over. They need to make less, have less paid vacation and chip in towards their health care. All these old, retired people getting paid to sit on their asses, guess what guys. Gravy train is over. Go get a job as a greeter at walmart. They need to run their business in such a way that they aren’t spending more than they are making.
After all that has been addressed, they need to start making products that are RELIABLE, that will last longer than it takes you to pay it off! Products that are less expensive… lets be honest here. There is NO reason a car should cost you $30k. Especially when in 5 yrs you go to trade it in and they say, well.. I’ll give you $4k for it. There’s no market for your busted down hoopty now. PLUS, these vehicles need to be energy efficient. If that’s an electric car, or a car that just gets 50 miles to the gallon of gas, I don’t care. But churning out cars that get 12 miles to the gallon is fucking ridiculous. There is NO excuse.
Do I think these car companies will get their bail outs? Absolutely. $25 billion is a drop in the bucket compared to the decimated tax base plus the additional financial burden of all those unemployeed people. But it needs to come with some serious oversight and retooling of their business. Otherwise it’s just going to be another bank bail out where the company remains in tatters, while the executives at the top write each other huge checks and take vacations.
You want to see the common man revolt? Put them all out of work. There won’t be enough prisons for the civil unrest that will cause. I’m not sure what the rich people at the top think this situation is going to bring about that is positive, but I’m sure not seeing any shred of hope I can cling to on the road we are headed down.
We heard all about how Hillary Clinton put lots of cracks in the glass ceiling and how good old sarah palin was going to smash right through it and become our first female vice president. When she first spoke at the Republican national convention, she came out strong. She rallied women across our country. Even those of us that didn’t agree with any of her policies.
But then, as the campaign drug on and we realized she was so woefully uninformed about the world we all started to wonder, just who was this woman that we all thought might be our first representative to such a high office? I had to really hang my head in sadness when this woman couldn’t even name a newspaper. Not one. She claimed she reads, “all of them”. So that left me wondering, how does a woman with 5 children and a husband who is responsible for running a whole state, read every newspaper known to man? My guess is she doesn’t read at all. Maybe steamy romance novels if we are lucky. Yippee!
So now that the election is over and Obama is president elect, a lot of background information on this woman is surfacing.
First off, not only was she just plain dumb, she refused to be prepped on world affairs so she could at least sound like she had some grasp of what was going on beyond Alaska.
Reports have come out about her flying off the handle at her staff, throwing things and driving some of them to tears.
Oh and my absolute favorite.. She’s a shopaholic, spending upwards of $150,000 on outfits from some of the most posh stores in NYC and it didn’t end there! She spent $30,000 on clothes for her husband, more money on clothes for her children and she had a stylist following her around for about a month to the tune of about $50,000. Just for a base line. Mccain’s foreign adviser made only about $15,000. So the guy telling mccain what was going on in the world, made far less than the girl putting mascara on sarah the diva.
So this brings me to my point. This woman didn’t bring women to the forefront, it left men saying, HOLY CRAP! Now we remember why we don’t want women in charge! If sarah had become president, she’d have tripled the national debt because she’d be at the mall every day. Screw that meeting with russia about nukes! I’m going to buy a new pair of $1000 leather pumps today! As if that wasn’t enough, she was a flamming bitch too and didn’t treat her staff with any level of respect.
So thank you sarah palin. Not for bringing about the positive change women in our country longed for, but for setting us back centuries in the eyes of males from sea to shining sea.
So unless you live in a cave with no tv, internet, radio, well.. basically any contact with the outside world, you know that the last few days have seen some interesting things in the financial markets. Many top financial companies like Lehman and AIG have been bailed out by our gov’t to the tune of billions of dollars. Others have been bought out for pennies on the dollar like Merill Lynch. People are wondering where the financial future is taking us, and no one I talk to is enjoying the ride so far.
Our economy is a disaster and needs some kind of infusion to kick start it again. Maybe something like investing in our country through building more green sources of energy or repairing our crumbling infrastructure. But on monday, Presidential candidate John Mccain said “the fundamentals of our economy are strong.”
Not even three hours later, the Arizona senator was backtracking, telling another audience, “The American economy is in a crisis.”
So uhm.. which is it buddy? Do you even know or do you just spew whatever your handlers tell you to?
This election has contained more flip flopping, more dirty tricks and more out right lies than I have ever seen before in my life. You really want a laugh? Carl Rove even said he thought “Some of the mccain ads were over the top”. Ya think? Wow. You know they are playing dirty when Carl Rove says they are.
Now we are hearing how John Mccain helped us all have a blackberry. This 90 year old guy who readily admits he can’t “work the google on the internet machine”. He can’t even figure out email. What?!? There is no reason for that unless it’s just plain ignorance because my grandparents are almost 80 and they have computers, surf the internet, buy things online and use email. (Mostly to send me pro John mccain propaganda, but that’s a story for another day. lol)
So the mccain/palin ticket’s new slogan should be.. “We don’t know a whole lot about anything, but we’ll tell you anything you want to hear.”
Today I was curious and started looking up info on past presidents such as Jimmy Carter. He gets a really bad rep in the news. How he totally messed up our country. But when you read about it, not get your info from the news media, here is a guy who wanted to do a lot of good for our country. But I digress.. This is not the point of this post. This is :
Back during the carter administration, we had double digit inflation, high unemployement, high interest rates, an oil crisis and turmoil in the middle east. Sound familiar?
Now lets compare two images.
This image is how the states voted in the election that Jimmy carter won. Blue is Dem, Red is Rep. Just like now.
1976 Electoral College Map
Looks like it was a good race. Being used to the modern day maps, it was odd to see California vote red and texas vote blue. lol
Ok. So now on to when ronald regan won.
1980 Electoral College Map
Looks like it was a friggin landslide to me! What do you think?
So why? Can someone please explain to me. WHY is it that when we are hearing about polls on tv, they are actually saying the Republicans are winning? Are they only polling republicans? Seriously. I’m dumbfounded. After everything our country has endured under their watch. How do they continue to have so much unconditional support from so many americans?
I’ve rationalized it. I’ve blamed the media. I’ve blamed the american peoples lack of time due to stressful jobs, bills they can’t pay, kids who have activities, lack of intelligence and other things. But my god. If every time you walk through a door, you hit your head on the door jam and it smarts. How do you not learn to change course? Every 4 yrs for the past 8, we walk right into the door and then spend the next four years saying, wow. That really hurt! And to add insult to injury it looks like that’s where we are headed for the next 4 yrs too.
I’m not going to spend this post ranting about how messed up our country is. I’ll save that for a future rant… or maybe you already know and that’s why you’re reading this. But the fact of the matter is, how do the american people NOT know? When the local factory is closing and you’re upside down on your mortgage and you don’t even know how you’re going to make it. How do you go in the voting booth and pull the red lever? What have republicans ever done for you that you give them such blind faith and trust?
Maybe because I don’t watch a lot of televison. I don’t have talking heads telling me how to interpret a situation, what to think, how to feel.. and I arrive at those feelings on my own. Maybe that’s why I can see what so many more of my countrymen can’t.
If you’re reading this, then you’ve got access to unlimited information. Pick a topic, do a search and you will be amazed at what you can learn. Instead of watching this weeks episode of desperate housewives or deal or no deal. Go read up on the things that have occurred and how your freedoms have been subverted and out right removed in the last 8 yrs and then form your own opinion.
Where is the outrage? Take your government back people!
If you watched the Republican National Convention this past week, no doubt you heard a recurring theme and that is that people who try to make a difference in their communities, are insignificant and couldn’t possibly garner any kind of real life experience from taking part in them. Tell that to the people who take time out of their day to deliver meals on wheels, or who volunteer in soup kitchens, charitable organizations, etc. All great people who are trying to make a difference in their neighborhoods and help people who are elderly, sick or just plain down on their luck.
No one ever accused the Republican party of being the party of compassion, but this hit’s it home how little they think of the hard working people who care about their fellow man.
What a sad day when we feel it is not important to help those less fortunate than us.
Shame on you Sarah Palin. Shame on you John Mccain… and Shame on you to the Republican party!
A guy sitting in a prison cell for 5 yrs and a woman learning how to speak in front of a crowd while she parades around in high heels and a bathing suit certainly doesn’t make you qualified to lead a country. Give me a “community leader” over that any day.
