Masterdan's BYOND website

God help us all, in the midst of an Economic Crisis that has been precipitated by the collapse of the housing economy, collapse of many banks, collapse of insurance giants, and has resulted in horrifically high unemployment and a global decline in GDP and the god-forsaken internet only cares about legalizing Pot.

To all the retards who make blog posts on the internet about the brilliant idea of legalizing and taxing pot to solve THE ENTIRE WORLD'S PROBLEMS, go shoot yourself in the face. There is a time and a place for this discussion and it is NOT now, you little retards actually think legalizing pot is going to balance the budget? REALLY?! what are you daft? yes it can be taxed I get your brilliant idea, however it is not without negative consequences and it really is a trivial thing to be promoting so heavily now.

I am talking about of course, this: http://www.salem-news.com/articles/december122008/ barack_cannabis_12-12-08.php
Thank you internet, thank you for discrediting democracy as it pertains to the medium of the internet. Now we all lose the credibility of our opinions through this medium, because instead of asking important questions on unemployment, the cost of government running in deep deficits and health care you chose to flood the internet and the polls with pot legalization questions.

Okay, let me just remind you all that this argument has some merit, pot should be decriminalized as for as holding small quantities go because it is a harmless drug that's only real problem is it makes people gain weight, facilitates being lazy and smells like garbage wrapped in skunk diarrhea. It is certainly less damaging than alcohol to society.

The problem here, is that the Pot argument is an argument of personal liberties, NOT a solution to the economic crisis. Obama responded to these retarded questions with this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M6orSr5QvA&eurl=
And I respect him for it! Laughing at the question of whether or not Pot legalization will create jobs and help grow the economy and making it the top freaking question is the least to be expected. It does say bad things about the online community, it says that we dont care about the big picture, it says that we care more about adding another recreational drug to the legal list of ways to burn your free time more than we care about having a job or maintaining national security or keeping the markets from collapsing.

To all the morons who have decided to use this crisis as an opportunity to flood the political conversation with drug talk, screw you, there are way more important, tough questions to be debating than this. Obama is a good president but his decisions need to be criticized and analyzed and the fact that the democratic public has decided to focus on another trivial and certainly not pressing issue is just asinine.

Im glad Obama stood up to this childishness, Im glad that he isnt the hyper left-wing candidate you thought he was. He has always been a moderate, he has always said moderate things, I'm increasingly annoyed at some of the comments made by bloggers whose minds have been blown by Obama's response to this, they really thought he would take this question seriously, because they really have convinced themselves that this question is pressing.

Newsflash, it isn't.

Weed being sold like it is in Amsterdam has come with consequences, I talked to my Dutch friend about it and she made it quite clear that it isn't that great of a thing, she personally has never smoked it, but apparently the people it attracts (she mentioned German tourists) are absolutely a problem. I am a big fan of Canada's take on this, crack down on dealers and grow ops but dont even criminalize possession of small quantities. Regardless, the merits and flaws of the discussion being posed by the internet at large isnt the point, the point is that this is not the time and place.

The world should have learned its lesson when it ignored the actions the Bush administration was taking during 2003 and instead tuning in to hear about Paris Hilton and other arbitrary bull, so no more, as the nation is in a critical and emergency state the people have to be interested in the big and real issues and pay attention for gods sake. You cannot ignore the trillions of dollars being spent, you need to pay attention and be sure your government is doing things well, dont look back in 5 years of hindsight and blame the rest of society for not being watchful of your government, you start taking this economic collapse seriously internet or face the inevitable decline into obscurity as the executive branch becomes more and more hesitant towards using the internet as a medium because of the shear level of retarded that exists here.

/rant.

I am about to blow your mind.

a) Barack Obama is the number 1 recipient of campaign contributions from AIG

b) AIG insurred the World Trade Centers against Terrorism very shortly before 9/11

c) Barack Obama's middle name is Hussein

THEREFOR, Barack Obama caused 9/11.



(/sarcasm)

Corporations can't contribute to a campaign. It is not surprising that the Democrats received more campaign contributions from AIG employees than Republicans, since the Obama campaign received more in total contributions overall. Mr McCain still received lots of money as well, dont forget that.

Also, dont worry so much about contributions from employees at X or Y company, worry about the actions taken from political figures. Barack Obama is president now, he isnt like the other paid off members of congress, I mean logically, if you were running for president and you were going to do it in the interests of Corporations like AIG like people are insinuating, wouldnt you not raise taxes for people making over 250,000 a year? wouldnt you stop the bill returning 90% of AIG bonuses? Actions speak louder than contributions, Obama ran on a platform of transparancy and protecting Main Street from Wall Street, his policies are all progressive taxation and higher regulation on the financial markets. Why would people insinuate that he is pandering to corporations? He has shown no characteristics of being under the thumb of big corporations compared to the last few presidents. I mean, Clinton had Citigroup, George Bush had Enron and the collapse of the Finance sector actually happened under his administration and under his de-regulation, now people are trying to pin Corporate pandering on Obama when he is just fixing a mess created by George, be real hysterical alarmist right wing media, you know this financial collapse wasnt Obama's fault because we all said long before the election happened that you would try to pin it on him. This is all too obvious.

PS: I dont support Congress in its current incarnation at all, we all know that Chris Dodd is in bed with these big banks and AIG, we all know that most of congress is, congress in the USA is the most corrupt institution I have ever heard of. Also, no, I dont think the AIG protests are being created by democratic groups like ACORN in some conspiracy, I think it is a bunch of people who are pissed off at AIG (rightly so) for getting million dollar bonuses with taxpayer money, why would that be a setup? what does the Democratic party gain from falsifying protests of AIG? Also ACORN is just a group that encourages people to get involved with politics and to vote, it is not some group that conspires to manipulate world events. Its mostly grass-roots focused with urban youth involvement in politics.

More Lulz from Silkwizard:
"Ayn Rand died more than a quarter of a century ago, yet her name appears regularly in discussions of our current economic turmoil. Pundits including Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santelli" /post
Rick Santelli and Rush Limbaugh are like the most irrelevant and hated individuals in the public realm, especially right now. With half of America being republicans you would expect Limbaugh to be popular with some porportion of that, but he is only not hated by 10% of Americans, and as such the Democratic party has tried to picture him as the GOP leader in order to discredit the entire party and destroy their chances at being relevant again. These pundits who talk about objectivism is a great example of why objectivism is retarded, these are close minded, hatemongering, socially detached, and entirely controversial and flawed people. Out of all the people you could look up to for level headed and logical advice, Rush Limbaugh is not that man, he is a hate mongering morbidly obese, multiply divorced, ball of seething unrelenting hatred and disconnect with the real world.

These people who subscribe to objectivism are basically psychopaths, I say that because psychopaths only care about themselves and dont care about others at all, this is exactly the attitude touted by the drug swilling, academically irrelevant, hag Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand was like Rush, her marriage was a failure, her ability to connect with real people sucked, she was rejected wholeheartedly by the majority of individuals, and only other psychopaths and dispassionate give her the time of day. The fact that those two pundits like objectivism is just evidence that it is completely retarded.


*continued"urge listeners to read her books, and her magnum opus, 'Atlas Shrugged,' is selling at a faster rate today than at any time during its 51-year history."

So? it didnt get better, it just got media attention because the angriest and most hate filled (and loudest) americans are talking about it. Critics and academics still are calling it horrible.

"There's a reason. In 'Atlas,' Rand tells the story of the U.S. economy crumbling under the weight of crushing government interventions and regulations. Meanwhile, blaming greed and the free market, Washington responds with more controls that only deepen the crisis. Sound familiar?"

Yeah it does, except in her fairy tale world the good guys were the big business titans. In reality these are not the good guys, regulation has to exist from keeping these people from forming monopolies, price fixing, exploiting labor, creating poor social conditions (industrial revolution anybody?), and turning the united states into China. Thank GOD there is regulation and social balance that keeps the standard of living up and protects those who do not control the means of production from starving to death. Nobody cares about billionares, why would we feel bad that they get taxed more? they still have more wealth after tax than a rational person could spend in a responsible way in an entire lifetime, meanwhile people are starving to death and Objectivism says that it is because they have poor characters. Bull, we all know that entitlement exists, we dont start out equal and simply make wealth equivalent to the number of hours worked, its fallacy. Those with connections get white collar jobs and those who dont have to struggle.

Objectivism is simply evil, and not only that, but logically a failure. Any person with common sense knows that the rich arent the ones that make our world work, you cant own a steel mill without the dedicated workers who work 50 hour weeks doing hard labour, the blue collar people are essential to society just as the white collar people, and Ayn Rand pretends that "we dont need you". Im a white collar guy in all reality, but at least I respect my fellow man, those who decide to do blue collar jobs are passionate and hard working and dont deserve to go bankrupt because of a corrupt health care system and dont deserve to lose their house because the heroes of Ayn Rands demented world convinced them that they could afford a mortgage that they couldnt and at the same time did the same irresponsible behavior in a macro scale, by leveraging themselves (investment banks, AIG) way beyond their means and collapsing. We bail out the white collar people and republicans are fine, we bail out the blue collar people and the GOP rally to let these "losers" be homeless.

I hope something horrible happens to these egotists, I hope they lose their house and have to end up on welfare. That would just be fantastic.

"Among the many earmarks are $485,000 for a boarding school for at-risk native students in western Alaska and $1.2 million for Helen Keller International so the nonprofit can provide eyeglasses to students with poor vision."

Basically, earmarks don't mean "wasteful" spending. There are lots of people who assume that earmarks are simply random stupid ideas that Obama has personally come up with and appropriated the majority of the stimulus package to.

In reality, the earmarks make up 2% of the total spending and are as excessive as they are due to the bureaucracy of congress. It isnt Obama coming up with these appropriations, it is the members of congress from both parties, who are the republicans kidding when they put the blame on Obama for doing this? He promised to fight earmarks but that was before the economic crisis got this bad, time is of the essence and when you have to push through significant spending legislation to recover the economy there will be some waste. The biggest problem with this entire discussion is the inevitable blame placed on Obama. You give the guy the biggest collapse of the financial sector since the great depression in his first 50 days in office and you get mad that "earmarks" a word that most people dont really understand make up 2% of the stimulus spending? that basically translates to 2% spent on philanthropic and social causes. None of this money would be appropriated in this bill to something retarded like a 6 year war based on false pretenses that eventually divides the country against itself, costs trillions of dollars and causes a rift between the USA and other nations especially in context of the UN.

However, so quickly we forget. We forget why Obama is forced into a reactionary position, the last guy in office left him with something that due diligence and appropriate regulation would have been exposed much sooner. Any time a politician has to react to a serious collapse of any sector in an expedient manor they are not going to be able to do it without some waste, you know that saying? "Haste makes waste"? well that isn't his fault, you cant take a long time to accomplish something like a stimulus plan or else the economy will take longer to recover and the cost of the GDP will not be worth inefficiencies of the plan due to the short time line.

Im hopeful that Obama will make good on his promises to change congress and stop it from running on lobbyists and corruption. However hes working with a broken system now, a broken system that hasnt been fixed for decades. This focus on earmarks is simply a way of ignoring the shear amount of hard work he has put in and the incredible progress he has made in the face of such a calamity. I've had enough with these idiots who act like they could do better, but are ignorant to the realities of the world.


Omnibus Earmark Spending

Ag-Rural Development-FDA $353,105,900
Commerce, Justice & Science $752,999,420
Energy & Water $3,534,626,863
Financial Services $135,276,814
Interior $433,947,000
Labor-HHS-Education $973,065,800
Legislative Branch $380,000
Transportation and Housing & Urban Development $1,487,607,944

Grand Totals $7,671,009,741

Lets just remember for a minute, that earmarks are not wasted spending necessarily, and that they are the pet projects of senators who Obama doesn't have time to fight right now. I think in the past 8 years you can think of worse uses of money than Education, Science and Urban Development. I mean, this is a stimulus package, maybe paying for some social programs that help people and at the same time create jobs aren't really that bad? Isnt the the whole point of this bill anyway?

Isnt it interesting that these earmarks only represent 2% of the bill, and the bill only represents globally competitive relative portion of the USA's GDP, and yet republicans are pretending that this 2% of the bill is going to doom the country to communism and collapse?

Conservative spending is important, but it only makes sense to spend months battling for leaner spending and reduced waste when the economy is literally on the brink of collapse.

I'm going to see if i can find more specific earmark programs to really illustrate how this isn't the travesty the GOP is pretending it is.

Also Silkwizard, stop regurgitating republican talking points. Your blog blends into a homogeneous glut or no homework relaying of party messages, maybe you should cut back on watching Fox and listening to Sean Hannity for all your opinions and actually think rationally. I mean seriously, Obama could cure cancer today and you would say that he has doomed the world to overpopulation you alarmist partisan hack.

PS:
"Fugsnarf wrote:
> Obama beleives that no one deserves to be rich. He thinks everyone should be at the same level. Sadly that's never going to be the case. No matter how much he tries to even it out, the government will have the most money and abuse it. It's never even, and I think he knows that, he's just power hungry."

Quote from Barack Obama:
"It wasn't under me that we started buying a bunch of shares of banks," Obama said. "And it wasn't on my watch that we passed a massive new entitlement, the prescription drug plan, without a source of funding."

"We've actually been operating in a way that has been entirely consistent with free-market principles, and some of the same folks who are throwing the word socialist around can't say the same."

"By the time we got here, there already had been an enormous infusion of taxpayer money into the financial system," he said, adding, "The fact that we've had to take these extraordinary measures and intervene is not an indication of my ideological preference, but an indication of the degree to which lax regulation and extravagant risk-taking has precipitated a crisis."

These are quotes taken from this article from the global edition of the new york times, the Herald Tribune : http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/08/america/barack.php

Also "Spread the Wealth Around" is a lamen way of saying further progressive taxation, an increase in tax needs to happen to fund the things GWB has put into motion, what is more fair? tax those who cant feed their families because of an economic slowdown or tax those who have millions and millions in the bank. It is a marginal increase in taxation on those making more than 250,000 a year. Boo hoo cry babies. We wouldnt be hearing any complaints about it if it wasnt for the fact that the rich control the media.

posted from an ipod,please forgive typos.
Isnt it a sign of rational weakness that neo cons continue to reduce complex arguments to buzzwords? Socialist,communist,nationalize,terrorist and etc
The focus on extremes represents a strong reliance on the strawman argument of using irrelevant and extreme examples to slander more complicates resolutions. For instance, how do you feel about the idea of bailing out AIG with taxpayers money and then leaving AIG to their own devices? Doesn't it make sense that those who pay the bill ie taxpayers and government by extension then hold the rights to that company and reserve the
ownership temporarily until such time that essentially this investment matures and is prudent to resell to private markets?
the real outrage is that the bailout had to happen in the first place, not that the government should try to control these failures after the fact. In more regulated and more liberal Canada we have no failing banks and actually the most prudent and strong banks in the world right now. We simply werent reactive, we were proactive and regulated without some free market ideological zealotry. Use common sense America, stop focusing on buzzwords and bipolar ideologues.

*Hah at home now and not constrained to the thumb typings of an ipod touch*

I would like to say that I dont support Nationalizing things, private markets that are subject to good regulation run things the best. However the idea that unregulated free markets will act in the macro-economy's best interest is just foolish. Ill outline what the logic is of well regulated markets versus the republican platform:

GOP: Businesses deregulated->less restrictions on individuals->this leads to high risk-> either high return or high losses. If high return->individuals get huge bonuses, if high loss-> individuals might get a salary cap at 500,000 but the corporate entity will be bailed out by the government.

It makes sense why people act so ridiculously under the neo-con system of markets, people want to earn high bonuses and personal salary and not simply make the entity they work for wealthy and thus the shareholders. This is a situation of you being at a blackjack table and being able to gamble with other peoples money, of course you are going to play and play risky. When you lose you dont lose anything personally, when you win your able to take a large portion of the winnings.

In a well regulated moderate and ideologically unbiased society we try something different.

Businesses Regulated->this restricts amount of risk a business can take-> individuals still likely to act in self interest but it is their self interest to not go to jail->moderate risk taken-> Strong financial institutions amidst global credit crisis.