Tom Bodett has my vote!

OK, this is the last post I’m doing on politics or economics. Ever.

If at any time in the future you catch me saying the word “meltdown” without referring to mutant zombies, you have every right to slap me. (Not that you don’t already, but I digress.)

The “bailout” bill failed, yesterday, ostensibly due to an awful partisan speech given by the Speaker of the House…the contents of which I happen to agree with wholeheartedly.

Why the hell is it that we can get $700 billion to rescue Wall Street at the drop of a hat, but nothing but contempt and accusations of “socialism” for a program 1/10th that size to cover medical benefits or education? For that matter, if there’s a spare $700 billion lying around, I’ll take my $2000 share in small, unmarked bills. Hell, make it big, marked ones!

In the end, though, how lame is it to accuse the failure of this bill on either A) Barack Obama….the guy who didn’t come charging in like a mad rhino and whose party did deliver enough votes for passage or B) a speech. I don’t care if she stood up and called all their grandmothers blood-sucking, baby killing, Nazi vampires. If this bill was sooooo important that its passage was required to save the universe, whining about your hurt feewings is not a reason to vote against it. Man up and say “the bill sucked and we believe in free markets.” Sheesh.

One thing that I noticed about the bill is that a lot of folks are complaining about it that probably didn’t read it. I did (I had trouble sleeping the other night.) Also, a detailed summary of its provisions was in the Chicago Sun-Times.

I thought it came out pretty good, considering the original Paulson “hey, can you spare an extra $700 billion?” plan written on a napkin. Do I think it would have helped? Meh. Maybe. Could it have hurt? No worse than any other solution. At this point, things are so messed up that there are no good answers.

On this week’s Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me, the best answer to the crisis was given by panelist Tom Bodett. It went something (but not exactly) like this:

If they do this, and we pay $700 billion, we’ll all still be going to work like we do now, and the taxes will gradually have to be raised so high that we’re not really making any money.

If they don’t do this, the whole thing will come crashing down, there’ll be no jobs, we’ll all stay home not making any money.

So, if we don’t do this, at least we don’t have to go to work!

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2 Responses to Tom Bodett has my vote!

  1. Karan says:

    Two things…

    1. I don’t believe that this will be your last political/economic comment ever.

    and

    2. I’m glad the bill didn’t pass first round because I want wiser heads to stew on it for a bit longer. I don’t care that credit is slowed up a bunch and and I’m glad that finally folks are getting the idea that credit is a benefit, not an entitlement.

    oh and one more thing

    3. Heroes rocks!

  2. Ric The Schmuck says:

    The real question is if Tom Bodett realizes that he has your vote, will he still leave the light on for ya?

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