Hard headed economics

Here's a piece of a little argument I had on a comment section of a podunk newspaper site recently:
Me: "Reagan was a great marketing device, creating debt through tax cuts and huge military spending were the reality. Creating TARP, bailing out AIG and Leaman were Reaganomics in action - engineered by supplysiders, Greenspan lovers and other conservatives."

Some conservative dumbass said: "Tax cuts don't create debt, they increase tax revenue but stimulating the economy. How do you think Bush had the money to spend too much. It was actual real money. Not Obama bucks that keeps flying off the presses. Do some research on the tax revenue, not the tax cut."

The views expressed by the dumbass in question are very stubborn. The idea that tax cuts create tax revenue is just stupid. Plainly illogical, historically inaccurate, mathematically impossible, but believed as fact by American Conservative ideologues. What a shameful state of affairs this is.

Reagan cut taxes, increased spending, stimulated economic demand, spurred economic growth and exploded the national debt. GW Bush did the same thing, Obama is trying to do the same thing but is coming up against the old Reagan (and Jack Kemp) supply side argument that tax cuts increase tax revenue.

Did I mention that is stupid?

I am a Halloweenie...

...because I'm not a fan of the pseudo-holiday.

This is a day about fear. Inducing it, feeling it, laughing at it and rolling around in it. When I was a kid I noticed that the older kids (like my Dad) thought the fear on the faces of the smaller kids was cute and funny. For them, that was the joy of Halloween. I remember being afraid, and I didn't like that feeling. I'm still afraid as an adult, and I don't like it now. I especially don't like to see it in my kids. I think one of my main functions as a parent is helping them face and overcome their fear, not induce it and laugh at it.

However, it does have its place. As much as it pains me to admit that I have fallen into line with a very current popular craze, I am all about vampires at the moment. I have long loved Anne Rice's vampires, and I especially identify with Louis (the interviewee in "Interview with the Vampire"). I have just finished reading Bram Stoker's "Dracula" and am currently engrossed in an obscure novel from Chelsea Quinn Yarbro called "The Angry Angel" about Dracula and the making of one of the three slaves from Stoker's novel. I don't like Twilight or Sookie Stackhouse, so I hope that allows me to maintain some street cred.

For me the vampire is a great device to deal with the primal fear of death. I can't get enough of a well written vampire novel. Stoker did it perfectly in Dracula by making the undead a mystery to be chased by mortals. Telling the tale in different voices by use of diaries is a great device to pull the reader along. Too much has been written about this novel analyzing it for sexual, cultural, psychological and historical overtones. Fact is, it just rocks.

Anne Rice made her undead appear as human superheros. They have the failings of humans and the superiority of immortality. Their emotions often get the better of them. When they suffer it is usually at their own hand.

Yarbro makes her starring undead character (St Germain) a secular humanistic hero. He has used his immortality to become more rational and decent. He has learned that cruelty is counterproductive to his own survival, he is sustained by the intimacy and love of those he sucks, and yet he continually suffers at the hands of cruel and ignorant humans.

Everybody's friend

A laudable goal, that
An impossible dream
Protecting one person's secrets can kill someone else
How do you choose?
When in doubt, shut up?
Look out for number one
Now you are your own best friend
Choosing not to stub your toe when doing so could have saved a life
Everybody's friend but nobody's keeper

extremely modest expectations

Find someone to tell me why I'm wrong and they are right.
Compete with someone over something trivial until someone gets hurt.
Receive a lecture on how I should be more like the lecturer.
Smash my finger with a hammer.
Overcook some food.
Eat too much.

September 11 = fear

Politicians, both professional and amateur, have tried to make the day about many other things: service, war, sacrifice, freedom, patriotism, remembrance, love, hate, righteousness, God, Satan and other words too numerous to list here. For me, it was and is primarily about fear. I like to think all those other things are simply different ways to channel that fear and deal with it. My choice was mostly anger and anxiety, but this year it is settling into a simple realization that really bad shit happens that I cannot prevent or control at all.

National Chickenshit Day doesn't seem right, so maybe National Day of Terrified Silence would be a good designation.