Jobber of the Week

This is a waste of time, but it's brilliant because McCain is being a such a whiny little bitch. WAAAH FREE SPEECH HURTS FEELINGS! YOU MUST CONDEMN THE BAD MEN! Never mind that McCain is a rude asshole in real life.

Yeah, if you're willing to do 100 hours of community service, community college is "free." That's not exactly a giveaway. On Mortgages Less than $50k a year is almost bottom 40%. I But if you make less than $50k a year you probably can't afford a house in the first place. "Tax credit to homeowners who own $50,000 a year" doesn't mean much when few people under $50,000 a year are buying a fucking house in a state like California, or even here where people who live in glorified sheds in California can come over and buy a McMansion.

Holy shit, what a call. Id sell right now too, tomorrow it'll probably be down as much as it gained today. And also, I like that NY Post piece, Holy shit, what a call.

May's problem wasn't so much losing to Mackay but losing her party's chair. Well, I'm sure everyone must be pleased as punch that the Bloc controls as many chairs as they do! Scoring something like 17% of the seats despite only getting 10% of the total vote, a significant chunk of Parliament will return to paying attention to Quebec instead of the interests of the country as a whole. Makes you wonder what would happen if one of the anglophone parties came out hard for secession to try and split that vote. You can't just do mere lip service and culture and imaginary nations, because Harper tried that and it doesn't work. Although I'm not sure whether the Bloc is still about secession or not anymore, since a few editorials have suggested that they get voted in simply because they guarantee a huge amount of time in Parliament is going to be spent talking in French.

Liberal was once a centrist party, now it's considered a left one. What does social positions have to do about it? The issue on everyone's minds on the economy, and the pundit wisdom is that talking about a green shift at a moment when everyone is thinking about the health of banks is bad timing.

Nobody could get a majority. It has nothing to do with being "too right wing for Canadians" (on the contrary, the party made inroads in places Liberals had been voted for pretty consistently.) Nobody is going to make a majority because Quebec is too entrenched with the Bloc to allow anybody to have one. The only story of the night is that BQ has enough life in it to ruin everyone's party when the thought was going to be that either one of the big two was going to drink their milkshake. Harper will get his eventually, because the Canadian economy is going to take a hit soon despite his promises that the country is well insulated.

Also, if you think the entire bottom 40% can afford college or a green car or own their own home, you're dreaming again.

You're still pulling crap from a WSJ editorial.

haha Mercer: "This cost us $300 million and nobody accomplished their goals. The only leader with any job security is a separatist. It cost us $300 million to figure that out."

No, Obama is rolling back Bush's tax cuts to Clinton-era level on the top 1%. This reduces the burden on the middle class who are more likely to pump any dollar they get into the economy. The top is more likely to save it and spend it. People who don't have portfolios and 401Ks spend almost everything they make compared to millionaires. Yeah, but it's really easy to make a stupid argument like that because the top 1% covers such a huge range of wealth. That's like saying "This bar graph shows bar A as larger than bar b, but if we change the viewpoints to view it from underneath the bars, they appear the exact same size. So bar A should be made bigger."

So you're saying that barely more than half pays for anything? O.o This is some wacky math. I can't believe you're saying people "pay taxes" and then come out ahead. They may pay LESS than other people, but I can't imagine they actually get more money than they put in for their time unelss they're in a really low tier.

To the contrary, Maxine Bernier did the curb-stomping.

Wait, what. Are we seriously saying 40% of the country pay get all their money back and then some from the tax system?

Ugh. For a minute Grits was winning Trinity-Spadina, but now Mrs. Layton is back up there again. I'm not up on Canadian election law, but how the hell does this couple represents two different sides of Toronto? Am I supposed to buy that they live on opposite sides of the city?

It's pretty hilarious how this is getting no press at all locally. I was at the venue for a concert this weekend and saw "TNA LIVE" written on the upcoming events board but didn't know if it was the same TNA. I found out it was and was pretty surprised, because it's a concert venue and the idea of holding a wrestling show in a concert venue reminds me of WWA's show at the Aladdin (now the Planet Hollywood hotel.) WWA's setup had the ring on the stage and a big projection of random screensaver fractals behind the ring and it was basically terrible. I would think if they were going to do this kind of thing they'd play it smart and use a big ballroom ala K-1's "Battle at the Bellagio" events. If they were willing to do that they could have gotten on the Strip easily at a location like the Venetian or Caesars. The hotel's web site has no mention of it. The hotel is very much a cool hipster douchebag hangout so being associated with wrasslin' isn't their idea of good visibility. There's been no visibility in CityLife, Las Vegas Weekly, the R-J, local affiliates, and so on. What if they held a show and nobody came? The Joint (TNA's location) is a much smaller room than the Aladdin Performing Arts Centre (WWA's location.) The Joint can hold about 1,500 people for a concert when the chairs are removed and everyone is standing. WWA overreached, TNA is just..... Being TNA.

Colorado and Michigan are south? Minnesota? If you're from Canada, I guess so. Colorado especially shouldn't be too huge a surprise. Part of the reason of having the convention there AND the general public come to Mile High was that it would turn into a giant on-foot army of door to door.

Okay, this is it.. This the most ignorant post ever made on TSM. Just shut your fucking mouth, Marvin. You clearly have no idea about how the government works and you now also clearly have no idea about what it's like to not have an income, so just shut your mouth before your foot gets any further down it. CA? Are they high? Oh wait, no. They're Murdoch. Anyway, they're just dreaming that CA is a battleground state because there's a gay marriage ban on the propositions. But that's not going to pass.

What the fuck is dubious? Go watch 20/20's Portrait of a President; they talk about the work he did getting projects checked for asbestos.

I am not, nor ever will be, described as a "higher-income person," so no. How many people still use GM as a barometer of the American economy? I don't know many loyal GM buyers anymore. Everyone buys Toyota and Honda, because we're all sick and tired of the power windows stop working and the trim falling off and the air-con dying on it's fourth year. It's not the engines that GM has problems with (well, Northstar has issues) it's the fucking bargain bin plastic. I've been waiting for the blood the flow there for a long time. EDIT: Wait a minute, I see GM up 7%.

He's warming up! HE'S ON FIRE!

Sarah Palin's church thinks enough scripture will make gay people into straight people. Wright is crazy, but not that crazy.

Then watch C-SPAN. Or, if you want some talking heads, watch PBS which has analysts but keeps them shut up the whole time. There's no logos other than your local affiliate's graphic and the occasional little PBS head showing up in the bottom left every 30 minutes or so. I tried BBC for post-debate talk this time. Their reporters and anchor were doing must of the punditry, with one of them complaining about all the question dodging. They brought in two undecided expats living in London from the UK newsroom that I guess they're turning to frequently in their coverage of the election, both of which were more confused than less confused by this debate. Alternative, at the end they did bring in Joe Klein from Time who was pretty accurate.

Davis lied about the budget, and drifted into re-election because he ran ads against Riordan in the primary and helped a ridiculous Orange County conservative who wanted to outlaw abortions and throw gays in closets get the nomination. The other guy had a family business fiasco haunting him and his only real weapon was to accuse Davis of taking illegal bribes in office a photo that turned out to not be in office at all. Davis raised so much money and Simon blew so much of a fortune on the race that the race was more expensive than the recall. Yet the race also had a record low turnout, more or less reflecting Davis hand-picking his own opponent in all practical terms. The recall was so much more entertaining because practically anyone could run. You not only had Michael Jackson and Gary Coleman on the ballot, but even the serious candidates who made it to the debate were a bunch of clowns. You had several Republicans between Arnold and Issa and McClintock: Arnold the moderate, Issa the guy who actually funded and moved the recall forward in an attempt to further his own career and was one of the first to drop out once it was underway, and McClintock as the crazy social conservative. You had the Lt Gov on the Dems side following the great California tradition of stabbing your boss in the back as you take his place, half-heartedly suggesting people vote no on the recall in addition to voting for him should their no vote fail. He had the uphill battle of trying to sell strategic voting in a soundbyte, and was effectively doomed by Arnold's fame and his own participation in a number of La Raza style organizations that believe California is the rightful property of Mexico. You had the Green guy spouting off all this beyond-socialist shit about how there's no such thing as "illegal immigrants" and Ariana Huffington trying to talk over everyone with colourful analogies. The debate was such a zoo that the moderator suggested he forgot he meds.

What the hell does "the American Dream" have to do with shit? This is economics. This is numbers. Unlike psychology or sociology there is margin for error in math. Cars depreciate in value. Homes had been going up and up and up because companies blindly assumed that the bubble would never stop being blown bigger and bigger. Now all these lenders are holding assets nobody wants, and you're complaining that it's because a few people were upside down. This is a housing adjustment.

Having lived in California during a budget crisis or five, I'll say that they do cut things. And spend on things. What they spend on doesn't matter so long as they spend it intelligently. For instance, when Arnold originally ran and promised to cut budgets and taxes, he also supported a measure to subsidize stem cell research on the state level, so that any companies that grow around that research will start in his state.