I have written and said a lot of things before with a lot of emotion and, perhaps even, exaggeration. However, today, I am flat-out mad. Today, October 3rd 2k8, Congress decided that taxpayers were eligible and required to pay COMPANIES for the failures and fuck-ups of Wall St.. Companies did so poorly and took so many risks that they aren’t even liable for their own actions, we, the middle class, are.

Today, the bailout bill was passed, and today the pockets of every tax-paying citizen were reached into so that a companies stock doesn’t go down.

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Today, the stock market slid 778 points; the single greatest drop in the market ever, points-wise. In all, its a 7% drop in the market (Black Monday tallied at 22% drop in the market, the day WWI broke out tallied just short of 25%).

Just felt like I needed to record that in my blog. I leave you with a quote by G.W.:

This economy of ours is on a solid foundation, but we can’t take economic growth for granted.

As I was driving to work today, I got the best idea for a political cartoon. Stay with me on this one till the end:

Imagine a 3 or 4 guys standing together arm-in-arm like something out of a cheesy high-school teeny-bopper movie dressed in business suits. They are walking down a street titled “Main Street” and have pins on that say things like: Bear Stearns, Congress, Lehman Brothers, AIG, etc. They have cash stacks falling out of each and every pocket they have with enormous grins on their faces. At the lower of the picture is a tattered homeless man smoking a cigarette and sitting on the sidewalk. He has a pin on his shirt that reads: “Middle Class” and holds a sign out that reads: “Will work for housing”. It would be critical that he is looking up at the business men but they are paying no attention to him.

I think this will pretty accurately describe the situation going on in our country right now. If someone out there comes across this and is an artist, please share your interpretation of this with me and I will host it here, link to a site of your choosing, and give you credit for the drawing. I can’t draw for shit otherwise I would do it.

Big news at CNN today is the announcement of a “several hundred billion dollar” bank bailout that will “attempt” to get financial institutions back on their feet. If you have been living under a rock for the past two years, the story is: banks were giving out sub-prime loans to people for housing purchases. These people defaulted on their loans in mass leaving the banks with property that wasn’t worth the loan and out the money. This spurred a lack of confidence in investors who would not continue to support the loans forcing the banks to stop giving loans. If the bank isn’t giving out loans, people aren’t buying homes. When people aren’t buying homes, our economy (apparently) tanks.

In response to this, there is plans being put down that will attempt to “bail out” the banks by having the government absorb some or all of the debts of these banks: amounting in hundreds of billions of dollars (apparently).

This is bad… here’s why:

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An article on CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/30/frank.marijuana/index.html) alerted me that a Massachusetts democrat is going to propose legislation that would, to a small extent, make marijuana legal. While it would not be legal to the extent of cigarettes or alcohol, it would be quite a giant leap forward.

No, unfortunately, this is a bill that has promise but, in the political snowball game we like to play, has a few stipulations attached.

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Yesterday really marked the point at which this occurred, but today it became official. President Bush signed the FISA bill today making it a US law, which changes a large number of important laws about federal spying laws. I won’t bore you with the story, since you know it already. I would, however, like to highlight some of the things it does and reflect on how these affect Americans.

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