To help close the gap in the budget, California is selling their surplus on eBay instead of just auctioning it like most states.  To try to get more money out of these repos and impounds, the governor is autographing many of the items.  All a great idea, in my humble opinion. 

What I find really hilarious on one level and mind boggling on another are the comments being made at the bottom of the article.  There are many, many people saying that the problems with California are the fault of the liberals in charge, etc etc.  Uhh, hate to break it to you, Schwarzenegger is a Republican.  The whole problem with California’s economy is two-fold, and neither problem can be placed at any one party’s feet. 

First, they were spending much more than they were making for years.  You can’t do that. 

Second, many in California are being hard hit with the problems with the housing bubble and the economy tanking. 

So in essence, California was spending as much as if not more than they really had coming in, and then they suddenly had less coming in.  Oops.  Seems to me, that’s the problem many people are having too. 

On a personal note, I’m sorry I haven’t been posting much.  It’s been a very busy summer.  My oldest made it off to boot camp, and I’ve gotten one (form) letter back from him already.  I’m sure I’ll hear from him again soon… this time in his own words

My first question is whether Rush Limbaugh has brain damage or if he was just  born a frelling idiot.  I mean he says he wants Obama to fail.  Does that mean he wants the United States to fall apart?  How bad does he want everything to get? Is he just totally clueless or what??? Talk about sour grapes.  This guy is pouting so much that his side didn’t win the elections, that he’s now trying to sabotage the current president and congress.  Uhh yea, idiot.  No better name for him.  Incindiary entertainer or not, the man’s a freaking genius… NOT.  Our country needs Obama to succeed because we need to get out of the economic mess we’re in.  I do have a question for Rush though.  Is he so frelling out of touch with what’s going on with the working class and the working poor or does he just not give a flying fuck about them?  Obviously he has enough money to keep himself sheltered from the problems with the economy.  Since he doesn’t want to do crap about helping fix it, does he want to donate some of his money to help those who are having trouble because they lost their jobs??? I mean even MicroSoft is laying people off.  How about donating some of his money to help those who have lost a good portion of their retirement funds from the greedy idiots on wall street?  Oh yea, I forgot.  Rush only cares about good Republicans or maybe he just cares about himself and his hyper inflated view of his own importance.  Windbag.  Whatever. That tells you how much his opinion is worth.  There are as many good Republicans having problems because of the economy as there are good Democrats having problems because of the economy.  Not everyone is in trouble because they got loans that were more than they could afford.  Some people are having to choose between paying their electric bills or buying food.  Some it’s even more basic, they’re having to choose between buying food and paying their rent.  Yea, then those people who lose their place to live and looking at losing their kids as well.  After all, they’re neglecting their kids if they’re homeless.  Yea, Michigan needs to do something about that.  That’s just WRONG.

As for the rest… well then there are the good little Republicans.  Instead of just badmouthing the stimulus package that Obama wanted to pass, they should have tried to contribute.  Instead all I see is how it’s full of pork, and how it’s a bad idea.  THEN DO WHAT YOU WERE ELECTED TO DO AND WORK TOWARD A COMPROMISE! OTHERWISE SHUT UP AND PLAY NICE WITH EVERYONE ELSE!

Can we tell I’ve been reading the news a bit too much today?

That doesn’t mean I’m going to let the Democrats off the hook.  I saw some of what’s included in the stimulus package.  Some of that could have waited. Yes, it’s pork.  The Congressional Democrats need to play nice too.

Then there are those who think that we should just hand over more money to Wall Street.  I mean the vacation packages and bonuses weren’t enough.  We, those of us who used to be middle class and the working poor obviously need to pay for those nice fat bonuses at some Wall Street firm.  Yea, I know there are strings to the new part of the bailout, but what about the money from last year?

Speaking of the money from last year, I read somewhere today that separate from that $700 billion in Wall Street bailout money is another $2 trillion or so in money given to banks.  Uhh SAY WHAT???

Maybe everyone in congress should share whatever they’re smoking with the rest of us poor saps.  Then we won’t mind so much paying for excessive spending in government and the greedy saps on Wall Street and in the other investment banks.  Maybe they should be made to give the money back like they’re talking about making Madoff do.  That sounds like fair justice.

I’ve been doing more looking at social media lately.  It kinda makes me wonder where things are headed.  I wonder what my kids are going to see that I never would have dreamed of.  Though MySpace may seem ubiquitous, I’ve found out that some of my family has profiles on there.  My reading list looks like my brothers and my music choices look like my sister’s.  Very interesting how that turned out.

I keep reading about how the democrats came up with a plan for helping the economy that they made some compromises on to try to get approval from both sides of the aisle.  I really would like to see this plan to know how much is crap because the republicans are still saying it’s too much and they won’t approve it.  I’m curious how much was really compromised and why it won’t get passed.  We all know something needs to be done out there.  Someone needs to sit down and hammer out a compromise that everyone can agree to.  Playing petty games is what got us into this mess.  Oh and Pres Obama, sorry that your girls schools were closed, but that’s living in the south, especially DC.  LOL I learned that one the hard way myself.

I found out tonight that Hertz doesn’t offer unlimited mileage for minivan rentals.  That makes no sense.  People who rent vans are gonna be taking family vacation type trips.  Why charge extra like that?

I was going to leave a link to a website that I thought was funny, but it’s not pulling up… well, if you wanna see it, check out http://www.chromecow.com/2009/01/20/us-democracy-server-patch-day/ I found it funny, but it leans toward the left, so if you’re a Republican you may not like it as much.

Speaking of which, I’m getting frelling frustrated (say that 10 times fast) with the intensity from both sides of the democracy debate.  I mean seriously.  No matter what you think or how badly you think Bush did in the last 8 years, there’s no reason for childish namecalling.  And I’m getting sick of seeing people say that Obama is going to ruin the country.  Get over it and grow up.  Stop believing the lies you spew are true.  Both sides need to grow up.  Regardless of who you voted for, we need to be behind our president now so that our country can start recovering.

Speaking of which, I was worried something was going to happen at the inaugeration, and I’m glad to know that I was wrong.  To repeat and expand on the twitter I sent after the swearing in ceremony at 11 am CST, Good luck, President Obama

Movie night tonight, I have another environmental & money tip for tomorrow.

I Want My Bailout Money by Michael Adams – The Health Ranger

I’ll put it in a player tomorrow.  Hubby has already started watching In the Name of the King.

For the sour grapes, I’ve read in several places that Obama was staying in the Hays-Adams hotel because the Blair House where the president-elect usually stays has been booked solid.  Uhh, yea, Bush knew that the president-elect was going to need to stay there, yet he books the place anyway?  Can we say sour grapes?  Don’t like the transition?  You’re the one who messed up a number of domestic issues and brought the Republican ratings down so low, Bush.  I don’t care if you’re Christian or not, you needed to have better advisors around you if you didn’t want your approval rating to drop through the floor and if you weren’t smart enough to know what to do yourself.  Figure it out.  Now the Republican party is in shambles because no one can figure out who should be the head of the RNC.  Bah, with all the fighting, they should just disband and create 2 parties.  One of ultra conservatives, the other of the middle of the line people that want to pick up the undecided vote.

Wow, maybe my attitude is a bit of sour grapes tonight too.  But, my chamomile tea is done, so I should head to bed and try to get a bit of sleep before the baby wakes up for more food.  Otherwise, I might end up on a rant about men in general tonight.  It’s been a long day.  What I have to say would do better to not be said in such a public place.

Tomorrow night is movie night.  I told my oldest that we could get some popcorn and watch Dark Knight then For the Kingdom, or whatever the movie is that’s based on Dungeon Siege.  Once my laptop is fixed, I might need to play a few hours of that too to get out some of my frustration with life in general lately.

Next week, I think I’ll start talking a bit about things to help the environment, just because I’m odd that way.  Peace out.

 So when I opened my Yahoo! email last night, I saw that the Fed (namely Paulson) is against a bailout for the automakers.  Honestly, this makes me crabby.  It was so imperative that we bail out Wall Street, for the “trickle down” effects.  The banks needed the bail out so that they could keep lending… uhh yea, they’re tightening the lending standards so much that if you don’t have perfect credit, you cannot borrow anything!

 Which leads to the problem that the “Big 3″ automakers are having.  They can’t get the credit they need to advance money to their suppliers, so they are close to declaring bankruptcy.  Ultimately, this will mean more than 3 million people out of work.  That’s the people who work directly for the automakers, their suppliers and the various support companies.  A friend of mine in MI is looking at the possibility of losing her job because the company she works for deals with GM. 

Yet, Paulson doesn’t want to bail out the automakers.  Anyone who is against unions is saying that it’s the fault of the UAW.  Uhh yea, ok, the unions are the reason that the automakers have been focusing on the SUV’s and Hummers.  When reading a different article today, I saw an interesting opinion article on the bailout.  I agree with the author of the article, in the long run, it will be cheaper to bail out the automakers.  Otherwise, when they declare bankruptcy, we’ll have to pay unemployment benefits to these 3+ million employees who will be affected by the bankruptcies.

http://suicidegirls.com/news/politics/23423/ (suicidegirls.com is an adult themed website, but they have some interesting articles at times, additionally, you will find that the language could stand to be improved)

Some of the comments in the article point out a few other things that should be considered.  If GM declares bankruptcy, then a Chinese based company could “inherit” the technology they’ve developed, including the plug in technology for an electric car.  Then we’d have to apply to this Chinese company to be able to use the technology in our cars.

On the other hand, some online friends of mine are upset. They think that Obama’s tax plan is going to make the economy tank worse. My feeling is that any changes he makes to the tax code are going to have to go through congress. The Democrats don’t have enough of a majority to push anything through without the support of at least a few Republicans.

People are talking as if the president has the sole power to make our country great or break it down. We have a system of checks and balances for a reason. Plus, though our government may affect others impression of our country (ie France, Australia or the UK), we are all able to make changes to make things better or worse. Each time people demand that our government work on other energy sources, we have a say in how our country operates. No, it’s not as much power as we used to have, but people have chosen to not do as much to curb our government and this is where we’ve ended up. We need to learn to band together and take back our rights as citizens.  Our country was founded on an idea.  That idea is still there, even if we don’t all agree on everything.  The whole point is to find a common ground and go from there.

I read in the comments for one of the blogs I read regularly that some people in Indiana said that the KKK would have something to say about Obama’s presidency.  Let’s hope their wrong.  We need to be united now, not divided.  The recent election was very divisive, not only between the parties, but within the Republican party.  We need to get past that.  We are all Americans.

Another friend of mine is seriously worried about race issues if Obama wins.  She’s afraid that the KKK or the Neo-Nazis won’t like having a black president and will be out to assassinate him.  I can see that… especially after the recent arrests of those two idiotic redneck skinheads.  If he ends up assassinated, we may find the country divided like they were after OJ was accused of killing his ex-wife, or after the Rodney King tape was released. 

What I find even scarier is what’s happening in my own town.  There have been complaints that people are destroying Obama/Biden signs, that’s not the bad part.  That happens a lot during election years.  What’s disturbing is that the people who are stealing these signs are supposedly yelling racial slurs, and keying these peoples cars.  Then you have similar reports in other areas of signs being stolen and cars with McCain/Palin stickers being keyed.

Then I find myself wondering… McCain doesn’t say he’s a Christian, but Palin says she is.  From what I’ve seen of her behavior, she’s not being a very good Christian role model.  No, it’s not up to me to judge.  However, from what I know of the Bible, Christians are not supposed to talk or act like she is. 

Well, after several weeks, I got an answer from OK Senator Tom Coburn about the bailout bill.  Jim Inhofe, who is the Republican incumbent for the senate has a political ad saying that he voted against the bill (of course the ad is attacking the guy running against him, but that’s another matter entirely). 

 I found it interesting that Senator Coburn stated why he voted for the bill, and he says that we should be pointing fingers at Congress for the issues that have lead up to the need for the bailout.  I thought the email was a good read and others might like to see what a Republican senator thought about the bailout.  Granted, some of what he said seems to be regular political rhetoric, but the rest is interesting.