Depressing Humor for the Day: AIG Edition
Sep 16th, 2008 by Jonathan Goff
Jim Henley hit it on the head (again):
My kids bought me an insurance company! Sweet children: they don’t even have jobs yet.
I’m really looking forward to helping pick up the tab for the past several decades worth of government fiscal mismanagement in this country.
But not to worry folks! Our plucky moose-hunting Reformer (and incidentally that old guy on the ticket, who I hear may have been a POW for 5 years) will save the day! With one snap of the fingers those mavericky mavericks will clean up the government, end earmarks, get the oil drills going, and usher in an era of such economic prosperity that it will be able to balance the budget while slashing taxes and having enough money left over to start up some wars with countries that looked at us funny.
Or we could be rescued by the candidate of change, who will swoop in, and…and…do something! Something different than Bush and that old guy on Palin’s ticket! Something so hopeful and changey that budgets will balance, sea levels will lower, there will be health insurance in every pot, and billions more will be freed up for malinvestment in our public education system.
I mean, with such awesome choices presented to the American people, what’s the worse that can happen?
I’ve enjoyed reading your columns on space technology very much, especially the series on orbital access. May I respectfully suggest that you stick to space. One of the things that makes your blog so good is that it is one of the few places on the web supporting well-informed and civil discussions of space tech. I fear that if you get into non-space-related politics and other topics, the signal-to-noise ratio will decline. There are already plenty of places on the web where we can discuss politics.
I still think the choices this election cycle are better than they’ve been in a while. The massive failure in real estate and finance should remind us of how high the stakes are getting.
Nader.
Barr is the best.
McCain is the best viable.
John,
I agree Barr would be the best.
But I’m just really not that sure that McCain would actually be any better than Obama. He sure wouldn’t be from a foreign policy standpoint. Fiscally they’re both going to be disasters. When it comes to fundamental freedom issues like privacy, free speech, due process, torture, etc Obama still looks much better, in spite of caving often enough that I won’t vote for him. Education-wise Obama would be lousy, but I don’t think that in practice McCain would be much better….
I guess I’m just having a hard time buying the argument that McCain is the lesser evil.
~Jon
Overpoliticized,
I’m not sure how I missed your comment earlier. Sorry about that. You make a legitimate point. I think I understand how you feel. There are some times when I think that not letting people know how you feel is cowardly, so I will probably post more about politics than I did in the past (which was almost never), but I will definitely try to make sure that I keep the S/N ratio good by focusing more on space stuff. I know many/most of you didn’t come here for my political views, so I’ll try to keep my political soap-boxing to a reasonably low level.
~Jon
Hey, blogs are for blowing off steam. No problems. But I’ve read this same rant elsewhere maybe a dozen times. The value-added is not high.
Adam,
Now that’s a fair criticism. Ok, how about this. I’ll try to avoid political blogging unless I have something that I’m pretty sure is new to add to the discussion. That’s pretty much the standard I use for my space blogging as well (though from the number of anti-Griffin/NASA/Ares-1 rants I do, you can judge how good I am at consistently following that ideal).
~Jon
I think you should write whatever you want to and not cater too much (or at all) to everybody and anybody that might disagree with this or that. If visitors can’t handle it at least somewhat reasonably then that’s too bad for them. It ought to be obvious that one doesn’t have to read and agree with everything somebody thinks and writes to cherish some of it.
Nor should one feel obligated to respond all the time. I don’t do that with Ferris Valyn, Sam Dinkin, Jeff Foust (and any and all published by The Space Review), Rand Simberg, Clark Lindsey or anybody else (there’s about 6 billion and counting ^_^) so why should Jonathan Goff be any different?
from the number of anti-Griffin/NASA/Ares-1 rants I do
Nah, those never get old. Besides, isn’t there some new silly NASA attempt to put a happy face on some new piece of NASA bad news every two weeks or so?
If you consider this election to be a case of whichever is the lessor of two evils, you should consider the merits of divided government as means to minimize potential damage. That is — a Republican presidency vs a Democratic congress are much more likely to keep each other honest, than a Democratic presidency + a Democratic congress which will do all they can to cover each other.
Brad,
Unfortunately, while I generally agree in the concept of gridlock, the past two years haven’t left me with a lot of confidence that a Republican president and a Democratic Congress is actually any better for the country than an all Republican or all Democrat presidency/congress.
~Jon