The Pessimist

OK, now I’ve seen it all. It’s all over the news: Sara Palin says Obama is a socialist because he wants to take away the money from the rich and give it to everybody. Joe the Plumber is concerned that Obama plans to raise his taxes so that he won’t be able to afford to buy the $250,000 a year business he’s currently employed by.

Un-fucking-believable. As I understand it, Obama has proposed raising the personal tax rate on incomes over $250,000 from 36% to 39% (and no change on rates on income below $250k). If Joe the plumber buys this business and has an income of $260,000 then his taxes will be increased by $300. Woopdy-fucking-doo. I think Joe’s bigger problem is where is he going to borrow the money to buy and run this business, now that the uber-fucking-rich have destroyed the economy and made it impossible for anybody to get credit.

The Republicans have cut every conceivable tax on the very rich – income tax, capital gains tax, capital tax, death tax. And that was supposed to help the economy grow strong. Because rich people make the economy strong and taxes are just a drain on their hard work ethic and the government is just going to waste it anyway. Well, do you think that it is maybe time for a rethink?

I’ve never understood the American hierarchy of cuss works. In ascending order of offensiveness it’s bastard, fucker, mother-fucker, liberal, socialist, communist. Obama is now reached the penultimate insult category, so I think that means he must be saying something right - something that drives the stupid people crazy. All the stupid poor Americans who keep voting for republicans who keep giving bigger tax-cuts, incentives and now out-right bail-outs to the rich. “Yeah! I’d like to vote against my best interests. I need to vote for the republicans so the democrats don’t ruin the country".

Every Republican since Reagan has cut taxes and continued spending like drunken sailors on shore-leave. Meanwhile, they’ve exported jobs to Mexico and China, and they’ve run up the biggest national debt, and the largest trade deficit and fiscal deficit ever. Solid stewardship of the economic purse.

The government can find a trillion dollars to bail out Wall Street. They can find a trillion dollars to fight a war in Iraq. But they can’t find any money to ensure that their citizens have access to health care. The best republican proposal is to let the private sector handle health care and he’ll give them $5,000 to pay the premium. (I believe the average premium is already considerably more than that, and with tricky deductibles, co-pays and out-right denial of service, privately insured Americans are regularly bankrupted by medical expenses). But Americans will vote for this in large numbers, and may yet elect another republican. How stupid.

I couldn’t believe they elected Ronald Reagan. I thought Bush 2’s election in 2000 was a fluke, but his decisive reelection in 2004 proved it. Americans are stupid.

ThePessimist sees the odds this way:

• McCain victory 50%
• Obama victory 45%
• George Bush cancels the elections due to the severity of the economic crisis and serves a third term 5%

Tell me I’m wrong.