Daily Kos: AIG responds to its bad press

Daily Kos: AIG responds to its bad press

Exhibit A for why taxpayer bailouts are a bad idea. Let me get this down to the very basics.

• Government’s biggest responsibility in a capitalist system is to ensure that there’s healthy competition
• Government capitulates in this responsibility due to a self-perpetuating and fundamentally corrupt system of campaign contributions, greed and ineffectual regulation.
• The result is companies like AIG that are Too Big To Fail (TBTF)
• Because these companies are TBTF taxpayers are forced to bail them out
• Weepy-eyed liberal bloggers feel justified in questioning every business decision said bailed-out TBTF company makes
• Alfredo gets annoyed enough about it to write a blog post

So, what’s the solution? It’s not to write self-indulgent claptrap about how terrible some conference is. If the system was working right and these sort of things were really bad for business the company would fail, which AIG should have. The solution is to make sure the system works right going forward. Companies like AIG should be broken up into smaller, more nimble non-TBTF companies. That way in the future when something like this happens again, and it will, mine eyes can happily watch the stupid companies die and not read whining drivel from infantile liberal bloggers.

The government is completely trustworthy…

Judges Cite Need for Reliable Evidence To Hold Detainees – washingtonpost.com

The best quote: “Lewis Carroll notwithstanding, the fact the government has ’said it thrice’ does not make an allegation true,”

The White House just ignores reports they don’t want

White House Refused to Open Pollutants E-Mail

I have three things to say:

1. It’s sad that this country has had to endure almost eight years of this idiocy.
2. It’s even sadder that we have to endure another six months of it.
3. The saddest thing of all is we voted FOR this idiocy… TWICE!

Prediction Time

So I’ve decided its prediction time for the 2008 election. I went over to the very helpful 270towin site, played around with the map and came up with what I think will be the final tally of the election this year.

If you check out the map you’ll see that swing states are in yellow. I predicted them as follows:

McCain wins: Nevada, Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina, Florida

Obam wins: Colorado, New Mexico, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Virgina

This gives Obama a win with 286 electoral votes to McCain’s 252. You can see that I think big wins in the West, Midwest and South will help Obama win despite McCain taking the two most important swing states of the Bush victories, Florida and Ohio.

Do I think that Obama can do better? Yes, he can, he could conceivably win Ohio and Florida, although I think the former is more likely than the latter. He even has a shot at winning states like Georgia and South Carolina if enough Republicans stay home and new African American and young voters come out. If that happens this election will be a cake walk for Obama.

Later I’ll talk about why I think this is the way it’s going to work out, but I just wanted to get my dart up on the board first.

Obama Wins

Thank God it’s over!

Please God, let it be over…

Obama/Clinton Ticket: Yes or No?

I can’t figure out which I agree with more:

Yes: An Obama/Clinton ticket would do the most important thing necessary for the Democrats right now, unite the party. The reality is that the days when a running mate could carry a state or region for you are long behind us. Having a ticket that would make 99% of Democrats happy and get them to turn out and vote in November is the most important thing to consider and Obama/Clinton would achieve that.

No: Hillary Clinton is one of the most polarizing figures in politics and adding her to Obama’s ticket is just asking for trouble. The fact that’s she’s done well with blue collar Democrats does not mean that she’ll do well with independents, in fact she’s likely to turn off independents. Give McCain’s strength with that constituency that’s just asking to give away the election.

Was Harold Ickes right?

Today the Democrats finally settled the Florida and Michigan disaster. I’m of two minds over the final result. On the one hand I feel like the decision to cut every delegate’s vote in is a good compromise.

On the other hand I have something of a bad taste in my mouth about divying up the Michigan delegate 69/59 as the Michigan democratic party proposed. On the one hand I don’t think there could be an example of a more meaningless primary than the one held in Michigan, on the other hand I somewhat agree with the following sentiment from Kagro X at Daily Kos:

So Harold Ickes is right. This was a violation of the bedrock principle that a vote has to be counted as what it was, not what we wish, guess, or hope it was.

I would have been much more happy if Michigan had been able to hold a Caucus or even a State Convention to decide on the delegate split. Either way the impact on the race would have been negligible. Even if all 59, actually 29.5, delegates went for Clinton it wouldn’t make a significant difference in the race. Which begs the question: why not leave them uncommited?

It’s Over

About a month after I vented my frustration about the length of the Democratic primary race, see the post below, I feel like I can really and truly say it’s over now. Pundits have pretty much declared it over since Obama won in North Carolina and narrowly lost in Indiana last week. What really put the last nail in the coffin for me, however, was that NARAL today endorsed Obama. Given that Clinton is a historic female candidate having one of the largest female oriented organizations in the country support her competitor means that they know her campaign is over. It will take a few more weeks for the exit strategy to be completed, but for all practical purposes Barack Obama is the Democratic Nominee.

The Democratic Primaries are making me angry

After tonight’s results in the Pennsylvania primary I’ve had to come to grips with something about the primary process: it’s making me pretty angry. I’m angry with Clinton for not accepting that she has virtually no chance of winning the nomination. I’m angry with Obama for not sealing the deal. I’m angry with Democrats who are racist, conservative, bastards who refuse to vote for a Black man, and I’m angry with myself for getting so angry.

The truth is that this is our best chance to legitimately win a presidential election in a generation. It’s been that long since a Democrat gathered more than 50% of the vote. I guess what makes me angriest of all is that we seem to be fucking that chance up pretty good.

Two scenarios for the Democrats

I’ve been thinking about the likely scenarios for the Democratic nomination battle. I’ve come up with two scenarios. The most likely is that Barak Obama does very well in the remaining battles in February, after sweeping the three states tonight, but then gets beat in both Ohio and Texas. In this scenario the Democratic establishment, seeking to avoid a long draw out battle, unifies behind Clinton and a deal is brokered that brings Obama in as her Vice-Presidential candidate.

The other scenario is that Obama’s wins in February create enough momentum that he’s able to take one or both of Ohio and Texas. If that happens the establishment is going to unite around him as the nominee. I think this is less likely simply because the demographics of Ohio and Texas are not very favorable for Obama given what’s happened already. If it does, though, you won’t be seeing Clinton picked to be Obama’s VP as she really doesn’t help his ticket.

Of course you know what happened last time I made a prediction, so take this with a grain of salt.