Monday, August 20, 2012

I Root; Therefore I be 'Rooted'

It's really hard anymore to know what or who to root for in this whole economic and political mess

Take the stock market..  if it keeps going up, up, up, only the super-wealthy really benefit in any meaningful way.  You may have an extra $3 added to your pension but professional Investors-- the crap largely responsible for the global recession/depression will have made hundreds of thousands accordingly...

And if the market finally goes down, down, down then the fat globs of greed on Wall St and their personal whores, the finance media, will be screaming for QE3 to artificially push up the Dow, as they've been clamoring now for 18 months and counting..

And if the market drops sincerely Down, Down, Down as it needs to in order to have any realistic Hope (love that word) that policymakers will actually try to fix the problems they ignored in 2007-08, you know there will be some "tool" in the Fed's "tool box"...
~ "I could 'fix' this economy in a jiff.. Just give people like me work..."

We can just picture Mr Bernanke in his cute overalls going outside and 'fixing' the problem with duct tape, nails and spit.  Maybe if the lightning is bad and the ladder is tall enough..

Anyways...

'Tool'-- an apropos word for Bernanke.  If you don't know what that means, go seek the counsel of someone 40 or younger

Words are interesting things..

In America, to 'root' means to cheer on, like 'rooting' for one's sports team to win; in Australia, to 'root' means to fuck.  Not sure what it means in Britain..

So kinda interesting that when it comes to the stock market, its nearly impossible to know who to root for, yet we the 99% are certainly getting a good, rough rooting aren't we?
And there's many in the world of finance and politics, we wish would get rooted cruelly as well, then go 'root off' and disappear forever from any position of power..

But as much fun we are having using the word 'root' in naughty ways, this is as good a segue way as any to go into US politics and ask ourselves who are we really to be rooting (cheering) for?

If you are deeply loyal to one political party or candidate vs the other, then bless you and have a lovely day.  The thing is, know you are in the minority.   Most attach to a party or candidate not because of deep convictions but because ultimately the opposite party is too scary and dreadful.

This election will be no different for the tens of millions of people who bother to vote this early November.   We honestly haven't decided if we're going to be among those, or whether we'll be part of the statistical majority that sits home every election cycle.

The choices are That bad.
On one hand you have a Presidential candidate in Romney whose successes in this life outside of silver spoons, come directly from Wall Street.  He did not generate a net worth of $250million by flipping flapjacks at the local diner.  And his VP choice of Paul Ryan is also as clueless as they come when it comes to the real hurts and needs of the bottom 99%

Then you have the current President who pretends he's independent from Wall St yet suckles at their financial teat at every opportunity.  For all the clamor and lies from the financial elite that Obama hasn't done enough to help them, etc, trust us..he's done plenty.

That nearly 85% spike in the stock market from March 2009 to the present wasn't all the doing of the bearded bastard Ben Bernanke (say that 10x very fast while drinking water, we dare ye!)  No, 'O' did some serious nudging.   And how many bankers and financiers of any importance were so much as arrested, cuffed and fingerprinted?  Um.. 2 divided by 5... pass the 1... um..  that's right..  Zero.

Now these two fine, upstanding gentlemen are not clones... there are differences.  Let's see.. for instance, Obama pushed through his famous 'Obamacare' so that's a biggie.  And the model for it was..  oh yes,  Massachusetts when it was called 'Romneycare'  (Mitt was briefly governor of MA)

Obama is pro-choice.  So if you believe in that, you go 'yay!'..  and Romney.. he..  well he says he's pro-life now but he was pretty pro-choice when Governor and his wife Ann has donated $$ in the past to Planned Parenthood so...
Hmm.. gotta figure some difference between the two..

Romney is a millionaire and Obama is... a millionaire..

Romney went to BYU then law degree at Harvard; Obama went to Occidental College, then Columbia followed by a law degree at..   um.. Harvard..

Oh we're sure there are Some differences between the two men.. just nothing of consequence

So unless you have a specific social issue that is of great importance to you, its really not an easy task to decide who to support.   Both believe in 'trickle down' economics though 'O' doesn't admit it.. only practices it; both know there's going to be some pain ahead in 2013 as either as acting President will have to make cuts in social services that will upset and hurt many while the 1% grin happily...

Still two months to decide but, just hard to choose between 'Tide' and 'Cheer' when you know both are owned by the Same company;  just different colored bottles and boxes.
~ Like Presidential candidates, all "products" shown here are owned by one entity-- Proctor & Gamble, and in the case of the laundry items at least, are products of Quality.