Drinking and debating
Poured myself a jameson, trying to liveblog this shit but Hulu fucked up the first five minutes...

8:0somethhing - Mccain blames the entire crisis on freddie and fannie. IZ MOR COMPLICATED THEN THAT K? duh

8:08 - mccains blinking at least 3x a second. Sounds nervous. Stuttering about tax breaks and small businesses.

8:11 - enough about 'joe the plumber'. FACT CHECK ON TEH SMALL BIZNESS THING PLS

8:13 - mccain: us small business tax rate is high, compares our 35% to Ireland's 11%. No mention of where ireland makes up the difference - I suspect the actual tax rates are ultimately pretty similar, just structured differently. MORE FACT CHEKCS KTHX

8:16 - obama's talking about investing in education. All well and good, but if everyone's got a college education, someone will still end up working in fast food right?

8:16 - 'profligate' is a bit big of a word for amurrcans to understand, mr obama sir.

8:17 mccain's all stuttery again - "well, first, second... ok, wha-what would I cut"...

8:17 - did M say this is the biggest goverment since "the great society"? uh, you mean the great depression?

8:18 - mccain sounds a little ADD - jumping from talking point to talking point, picking bits and pieces from the last two debates.

8:21 Mics are set up poorly. Too much suit rustling.

8:22 Is M trying to make O look like he's avoiding questions by throwing 3-4 concepts at him at a time?

8:22 - O just appropriated the mccainism of 'reaching across the aisle'. His voting record's pretty clear on this one though. Hint - it's along party lines.

8:23 remember when M said he 'doesn't understand economics?' http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=40334&sectionid=3510203

8:24 Getting tired of that forced smile thing obama does when mccain's talking.

8:26 Did M just intentionally let his voice falter or crack while talking about an 'emotional' issue - something about 'congressman lewis' alleging mccain/palin association with racism?

8:29 If I wanted to get drunk I might think about following DebateDrink - http://twitter.com/debatedrink

8:30 M obviously pandering to the sports crowd with a comment on arizona vs. some other team. Why am I not surprised?

8:31 oooooh! O plays victim with the 'terrorist/ kill him' remarks!

8:34 Obama looks down when mccain throws back 'there have been some unflattering remarks about me at your rallies'. Looked guilty.

8:35 AYERRRRRRSSS! ACOOOOORRRRNNNNN!
8:36 what? acorn 'destroying the very fabric of democracy?' christ

8:37 Nice defense. The question is, do swing voters buy it (and do they matter anymore?)

8:38 O namedrops Paul Volcker. that's an economics win

8:39 Mccain keeps pushing the ayers issue. Is it time for O to bring out the Keating Five bit?

8:42 Palin's a role model to women? please

8:43 M: 'breath of freth air'

8:43 M: "autistm"? really? is it on the rise? maybe it's bisphenol A.

8:47. New topic, blah blah blah energy. O may have missed his chance to nail M on the Keating Five.

8:49 Not happy O capitulated on the offshore drilling thing.

8:50 O said 'incluze'. hehe

8:52 M - is it a hundred or a billion? Slight difference.

8:55 I kind of stopped caring for a bit. Maybe it was the whiskey.

8:56 O: Controlling healthcare costs... yeah. it cost my insurance company over a thousand dollars for me to be hooked up to a heart rate/blood oxygen monitor and have a nurse make sure it didn't start beeping for an hour. RIDICULOUS

8:58 DIABETES! OBESITY! OMG!

8:59: M jumps from health care to 'joe the plumber' again, with an incoherent half-sentence foray in mentioning the capital gains tax. What?

9:03 STFU about joe already

9:04 - average cost of a health insurance plan in america? O: $12k. M: $5.8k. Which is it?

9:05: M: calls O "Senator Government" FREUDIAN SLIP?

9:06. I'd forgotten M wants to repeal roe v. wade. NO THX, IZ STEP BACKWURD FR WOMENS RIGHTS K?

9:10 Obama officially wins the feminist vote

9:14. Wonder if M's strategy involves making oversimplified accusations to have O spend time explaining the details?

9:14 O - sex is "cavalier activity"?

9:15 O just got done saying he's not pro-abortion, then M immediately uses the phrase. underhanded

9:26 blah blah education, vouchers

9:27 mccain's even stuttering his prepared closing statements

annnd i'm done. Verdict? who knows. I'll watch the news tomorrow.
- posted by vcmc @  10/15/2008 08:07:00 PM  |  0 comments

 
stfu bernanke
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a_EGuB7kQmyo&refer=home

Says the Fed will "consider discarding its long- standing aversion to interfering with asset-price bubbles".

Don't play dumb. Monetary policy - Fed funds rate below 2% for 33 months, in the first half of this decade - helped create this asset bubble. Not to mention all the emergency rate cuts we've seen so far this year, and - HELLOOOO - BAILOUT PLAN???

How does this not involve "interfering" with bubbles?



- posted by vcmc @  10/15/2008 06:32:00 PM  |  0 comments

 
stupid bloggers, learn math before you go posting about economics

LOG SCALE LOG SCALE LOG SCALE INFLATION ADJUSTED INFLATION ADJUSTED INFLATION ADJUSTED

duh.
- posted by vcmc @  10/09/2008 06:35:00 PM  |  0 comments

 
lol whiny ex-ceo
Mew mew mew! Why didn't we get a federal bailout? It's Not Fair! - ex-Lehman Bro, Dick Fuld. STFU and enjoy your $350 million net worth, which is soooo much less than the $484 million you've been paid in the last 10 years. I bet you almost had to sell one of your yachts!


- posted by vcmc @  10/06/2008 07:47:00 PM  |  0 comments

 
Spammed by Obama (again)
Wow, just got this in my inbox from a 'Nashy P' someone-or-other. Email headers indicate it's from Blue State Digital, the same place where my earlier ObamaSpam came from (to be fair, this was sent to a different address), but the from address was what appears to be Nashy G's yahoo account.

Hey --

In the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, John McCain wants to change the subject from the central question of this election.

Perhaps that's because the policies McCain supported these past eight years are pretty hard to defend.

The Obama campaign put together a documentary about why John McCain's failed philosophy and poor judgment are a recipe for deepening the crisis.

Watch the documentary now and share it with others:

http://my.barackobama.com/keatingvideo

Thanks


---------
A user has sent this message from BarackObama.com. The sender's name, email address, subject and message have not been verified.

Duh. Of course it's unverified. That's the problem. Politics aside, this is incredibly poor email practice. While the company I work for often does set up 'forward to a friend'-type capabilities, we recommend against it for anything political or which otherwise might offend or polarize people - exactly because of this potential for misuse.

Judging by the address this was sent to (an account I've only ever used for reporting spam), my "buddy" NashyG is attempting to get Obama's email service provider reported for spamming, potentially resulting in their email being blocked, or causing problems with their ISP.

In essence, they allow any random interweb idiot to a) cause potential problems for their sending IP and/or domain; b) cause problems for whatever address they enter which the email will be sent 'from'.

As an alternative, why not create a form which dynamically creates a template with a tracking URL (the one in the original message had a tracking string which I've removed), and have people copy and paste it into their own email clients? The biggest problem there would be that the ESP doesn't get paid - and, well, people who don't know how to copy and paste (but even my grandparents know how to do this!)

So it's a business decision then. Potential problems on whatever IP they're using to send these, vs. a few dollars per thousand of these sent. In the time since others have checked the candidates' IP sending reputation, it does appear the score for the IP which originated this particular message has declined significantly. Has it been worth it, Blue State Digital?
- posted by vcmc @  10/06/2008 06:35:00 PM  |  0 comments