Nobrainer’s Think Tank

Apparently Obama supporters have been coming to my house looking for me. According to my roommates, someone showed up at the house around 6:30 tonight because their records showed that I hadn’t voted yet. Very strange.

Also, a TV in the other room is on CNN (I think (I’m trying to avoid the breathless “news” reports)). Wolf Blitzer is announcing that a “major projection” is coming. His announcement contains all the seriousness and value as an announcement that the Hardly Boys are having a major clue.

I got my ass out of bed early this morning to make it to the local school 10 minutes after it opened for polling. The line was about 25 minutes long. I’m just happy the damn thing is about over. I’m ready to see regular commercials on TV again. Tell me to buy a TV, or a car, or new shoes, or OxyClean… any damn thing other political commercials which do nothing but insult everyone’s intelligence.

On that note, I have to agree with Mr. Bingley about the rude awakening in Barack Obama’s future.

Democrats are a roiling bucket of special-interest pandering held together only by their hatred of Bush. Assuming he wins I think that President Obama will be stunned by the vitriol that will flow his way from his own side when his followers discovery that he is not, in fact, able to control the tides and introduce eternal Spring.

Sometimes human behavior is negatively reinforcing.

So I wonder, as the stock market tanks, and “change” becomes more inevitable (i.e. the non-Republican will win), are people fleeing the market, pushing it down further, in expectation that the next guy will only make things worse?

As I wrote the first two “paragraphs” (they are pretty weak for paragraphs), I was making implications about Obama. Although, now, a few moments later, I realize that I have no faith that McCain would do any better.

ADDENDUM: This morning the Fark Business section links to a USNews blog wondering the same damn thing as me.

• Something about the “plan” strikes me as though the Treasury asked everyone on Wall Street what they needed and reported that back. Someone needs to go back and say “what do you really need?”
• The plan is all about taking a short term gain while completely ignoring long term risk. In other words, they are using the exact same mentality as the CEO’s that they are so pissed at right now.
• I think I read somewhere that McCain’s big idea for getting the bailout passed was to relabel it as a “rescue.” Unbelievable.
• “Leaders” are actively working to make policy to specifically lift the stock market. This is dumb dumb dumb dumb. It is socialism in capitalism’s clothes.

UPDATE: I wasn’t making it up:

“The first thing I would do is say, ‘Let’s not call it a bailout. Let’s call it a rescue,” McCain told CNN.

UPDATE 2:

• I was initially pleased that the bailout failed. However I realized shortly thereafter that a newer, bigger version would emerge that would tie in all kinds of unrelated things that might end up swaying votes. And that’s exactly what’s happening. As Mike says,
  

  I shudder when Congress adds honey to a bill so that you don’t notice the part that tastes bad.

• In some places, people are essentially arguing that the bailout is needed to loosen the credit markets which tightened because there had been too much loose credit which caused a catastrophe. And now, people with bad credit histories are unable to get credit and we desperately have to make sure that those people can get credit again. The solution to our problems is a big 360. WeeeEEEEEE!
  

  But most major banks have their own problems with capital right now, so a company trying to get a loan from one has about as much luck as a person trying to get a mortgage — those with clean credit histories will likely get loans, but at high rates. And those with spottier credit histories might not get loans at all.

  And that is the problem we are apparently trying to solve.

Long ago I complained that Obama wanted to prop up the Big 3. John McCain, not to be out-schilled, has finally jumped on the bandwagon.

“It is time to get our auto industry back on its feet. It’s time for a new generation of cars and for loans to build the facilities that will make them.”

McCain’s support of the auto industry on Wednesday contrasts with his position last month when he visited the GM Tech Center in Warren and said he wasn’t inclined to support loans for the auto industry.

Thanks, John, thanks.

The news gets better though.

McCain, who also did not vote on the energy bill creating the loan program in December 2007, said then through his campaign that his proposals — a $5,000 tax credit for consumers to buy more efficient models and a $300-million prize for battery technology — would accomplish the same goals as the loan program.

The “prize” is a joke to everyone with more than 3 remaining brain cells. It’s a stupid fucking idea that only a chain-smoking lottery-addict could love. The tax credit, of course, wouldn’t do what the loan program would do because it’s almost certain that the majority of cars bought would be Toyotas or Hondas.

Obama has backed up to $50 billion in loans for automakers.

Whoa. Up to 50 BILLION? In May, ‘07, he was proposing an already outrageous 3 BILLION.

Fuck both these ass hats! (Yes, I put them both in the exact same class with John Fucking Edwards.)

Some of you will remember the podcast with Mike Munger on price gouging. Obviously with hurricanes flying through the country, gouging is in the news a lot. Anyway, Munger comments on some of the various anti-gouging pieces of legislation throughout the country; the descriptions are frequently so vague as to be unintentionally hilarious. The word “unconscionable” is thrown around a lot, but the real gist of the laws is that gouging is hard to define but that the government will know it when it sees it.

Virginia, it turns out, is not immune to this. I ran across the following hilarity last night when I found the VIRGINIA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE AND CONSUMER SERVICES PRICE GOUGING COMPLAINT FORM.

• The Anti-Price Gouging Act prohibits a “supplier” from charging unconscionable prices for “necessary goods and services” within the affected area during the thirty (30) day period following a declared state of emergency.

So there’s the “unconscionable” part. But what does that even mean?

• The basic test for determining if a price is unconscionable is whether the post-disaster price charged by a “supplier” for a “necessary good or service” grossly exceeds the price charged for the same or similar goods or services either by the same supplier, or within the same trade area, during the ten (10) days immediately prior to the disaster.

So “unconscionable” means “gross.” Thanks, Richmond, that really clears things up.