It’s the end of the world as we know it

October 13, 2008 by Leave a comment

I woke up this morning to find that I now have a bank account with the government. This is quite a development, when one considers that the institution that I previously dealt with was until a few weeks ago considered one of the pillars of free market capitalism in this country, and not a basket case that has had to be nationalised to save it from bankruptcy.

I should be feeling fine, I am after all a hard-core leftist, and have marched many a time calling for the commanding heights of the economy to be seized by the state. It’s hard to feel good though, when “depression” stops being something that you can treat with Prozac, and starts being something that will throw millions into poverty.

I’ll probably be OK personally; I work in the public sector, and everybody seems to be a Keynesian these days, so I don’t think my job will be cut. They might even give me a raise, in the hope I’ll rush out and buy a new house. There will be no shortage of business anyhow; human misery is the lifeblood of my profession.

At least REM will be happy; they must be raking in the royalties now that every news show is playing their song over footage of stock traders looking shocked and people queuing up outside banks.

Filed under Economics, Politics Tagged with , , ,

Questions of character

October 11, 2008 by Leave a comment

The “Troopergate” enquiry has found that Sarah Palin was guilty of abuse of power and violation of ethics laws, though it also concluded that her decision to fire Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan was “a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority”.

Even with my partisan bias I’m struggling to see this as a fatal blow for the McCain/Palin ticket, though clearly it raises serious questions about her judgement. It’s likely that this report will just strengthen people’s existing views; the left will think that it proves that Palin is unfit for office, and the right will point to it as more evidence that the liberal media elite are out to get her.

It’s a sideshow to the main event anyhow; the economy continues to slide, which is bad news for the GOP, hence McCain’s increasingly desperate attempts to shift the debate on to the “character” issue. Things are likely to get even worse before November, and the election is Obama’s to lose.

Filed under Economics, Politics Tagged with ,

Banking on a crisis

October 8, 2008 by Leave a comment

Second Life is commanding approximately 0% of my attention right now, what with the US elections reaching their climax (though that last Obama/McCain debate was far too even-tempered, and pretty dull) and the world financial system melting down before our very eyes.

Even a couple of weeks ago the idea that the UK government would be nationalising the banks, even partially, would have seemed like some sort of deluded socialist fantasy. Now there are plenty people saying that Brown and Darling haven’t gone far enough, and they should have taken the whole system into public ownership.

I have spent years of my life standing on cold street corners, giving out flyers expressing such Bolshevist sentiments, and, a lot of the time, meeting with general indifference. Now that I’m semi-retired from such activity, the message is becoming popular again. I should quit politics altogether; my ex-comrades would be in power within the week.

Filed under Economics, Politics Tagged with , ,

Superstition aint the way

October 5, 2008 by 1 Comment

I started attaching tags to my posts a couple of weeks ago in the hope that my pitifully low traffic would pick up a bit. I’m not sure how successful this has been; the graph of my visitor numbers has been as erratic as the Dow:

I did get a comment yesterday, for the first time in a while, from Ann’s New Friend. It was a bit snarky, but any attention is good I guess. I felt it was unfair of him/her to imply that I wasn’t interested in reading opinions that conflicted with my own; I look at right-wing journals and blogs all the time. I was just worried that readers might interpret the fact that I had linked to Real Clear Politics without any comment as meaning that I had some sympathy with the views expressed therein.

Hats off to ANF’s work rate though; I had been feeling pleased that I had managed six posts in a week, but he/she is a true stakanovite who produces fifteen in a day. It’s interesting that the biggest item in his/her tag cloud is “Obama” (as indeed mine is “Palin”); it’s always easier to talk about your opponen’s failings rather than your candidate’s qualities.

It did make me think about why I bother commenting on the US election; hardly anyone reads these posts, and those few who do are unlikely to be swayed by a few links to stuff they’ve probably seen before anyway. I have previously expressed the opinion that blogs are vastly overrated as a medium of political discourse, but I am finding myself more and more drawn into the cross-linked world of the political blogosphere.

I made a light-hearted reference to voodoo the other week, but the more I think about it, the more it seems that blogging has a lot in common with primitive religious rituals. (No offence to adherents of voodoo; I’m using “primitive” in the sense of “uncontaminated by civilisation”).

Faced with a process that is likely to affect my life in many fundamental ways, yet which is completely outwith my control – like a volcano, or winter, or the US Presidential race – I am reverting to simple superstition, offering tribute to the secular gods of liberal elitism, and bowing before the mighty deity that is Tina Fey.

Filed under Blogging, Politics Tagged with , , , , ,

Unclear politics

October 4, 2008 by 1 Comment

Apologies for linking to Real Clear Politics in my last post; I though it was a left-leaning site, or at least neutral, because the Guardian has a link to the RCP poll aggregator on its US politics page.

I discovered my mistake when I read this post on the site, via Annsnewfriend’s Weblog (which, I hasten to add, I visited purely randomly while tag surfing). RCP’s Republican sympathies are embarrassingly obvious if one even glances at the homepage – they link to a Bill Kristol column today – which once again proves that posting while tired/drunk/stoned is inadvisable.

I toyed with the idea of changing the link to some other poll site, but I had a feeling that that would be dishonest, though of course no one would have noticed.

Readers will have noticed a veritable tsunami of posts recently, which is partly due to my reawakened interest in US politics, what with the election, and the financial meltdown and everything, but mainly because I have had a bit more free time recently, and it’s been raining a lot. I’ve even managed to sneak in a reference or two to Second Life. I doubt that I’ll be able to keep up this pace, but I’ll try.

Filed under Blogging, Politics Tagged with ,

St. Louis Vice

October 3, 2008 by Leave a comment

Well, the VP debate turned out a little dull; no amusing videos of Republican gibberish to link to today. Palin performed reasonably competently (here’s how she did it), but Biden still scored a solid victory, by focussing on the key issue that is concerning the electorate – the economy, stupid – and tying McCain firmly to the Bush administration’s responsibility for the crisis. Mike Madden at Salon has a good summary of how it went down. For light relief, read Fox News’ take on the event.

The polls are looking good for Obama; with a month to go what could go wrong?

In other news, the $700-billion financial rescue plan finally passed in the House – McCain and Palin can always hope that this means that the economy will be completely fixed by election day.

Filed under Economics, Politics Tagged with ,

Voodoo Chile

September 28, 2008 by Leave a comment

Actually, my magic powers may be stronger than I thought – I implored the Lords of the Netherworld to curse Sarah Palin with humiliating inarticulacy, and, judging by the Katie Couric interview, they granted my wish.

Seriously though, CBS News is primetime viewing right? Watched by millions of voters? You have to believe that Palin has sunk the ticket by giving an interview that wouldn’t get her a gig as a – well, insert your choice of menial job here, I don’t want to offend anyone by suggesting that their honest labour is on a par with something this woman would be qualified for.

Tina Fey was very funny on SNL this week, but really, Palin is beyond parody.

Filed under Politics Tagged with , ,

Virtual stability

September 26, 2008 by Leave a comment

I was perhaps a bit harsh in my condemnation of the Second Life banking system; it turns out that, compared with our real-life institutions, the virtual Wall Street was a model of financial rectitutde.

This is an old story, I know. Even George W Bush seems to have got his head around the details. I just wanted to put on record my admiration for all the erudite commentators who have filled the financial pages of the newspapers with explanations of the crisis, for the benefit of us poor rubes who would otherwise be completely unable to understand why borrowing money on the short term market, then lending it to people with poor credit histories so that they could buy houses at inflated prices, was a questionable business model. I am sure that there is some really good reason why they didn’t share this wisdom with us twelve months ago.

(In case that last link goes dead for some reason, I’ll note that it led to the “Awards and Recognition” page on the Lehman Brothers corporate website, wherein they boasted that “Fortune magazine named Lehman Brothers the #1 “Most Admired Securities Firm” in its [2007] rankings of  ‘America’s Most Admired Companies.'”)

Filed under Economics, Politics, Second Life Tagged with , , ,

(No) Black Magic Woman

September 26, 2008 by Leave a comment

Apparently Sarah Palin has received a blessing that protects her from all forms of witchcraft.

Damn. That means that that chicken-sacrificing ritual I did was a complete waste of time.

Filed under Politics Tagged with ,

Reptilia

September 17, 2008 by 3 Comments

I don’t usually get too emotionally exercised about politics – though I have strong opinions, my engagement tends to be confined to ideas rather than passions. This is due in part to my generally phlegmatic personality, but also reflects the political temperament of my homeland, a country where change, even of the most profound nature, mostly presents itself as slow evolution rather than violent revolution. This is a decidedly mixed blessing; it bestows a reassuring stability on the polity, but allows our governments to get away with things that would provoke insurrection in more excitable nations.

It is rare then for me to feel anxiety, let alone twinges of fear, when I am considering some political question, especially one concerning a foreign country. Yet the more I read about Sarah Palin, the more I find myself worrying about John McCain’s health.

Faced with the prospect of a US president who believes that The Rapture will happen within her lifetime, all one can do is embrace the relatively comforting notion that the occupant of the White House has no real power anyway, since the world is actually controlled by a cabal of giant lizards.

Filed under Politics Tagged with

← Older posts

Newer posts →