PurplePaganSarah’s Centrist World

Extend the Bush tax cuts? Economic stimulus? I’m sorry. Come again? Will W even begin to fathom the monstrosity of his economic policies before it’s too late? If the 80’s brought ‘yuppies,’ then this decade brings the ‘tubbies.’ The tubbies are those people who, already fat, made themselves fatter at the expense of market stability. It’s all about those guys at the top these days. I don’t even know which is worse anymore: athletes with multi-million dollar contracts or CEO’s who have the same!

And when I talk of market stability, I mean the lack of having to worry about hourly updates on the rate of inflation because it’s in a state of contact flux, chaos, and anarchy. Pretty soon stores will be changing their prices on an hourly schedule to accommodate the constantly changing value of the dollar. Please, do not anyone buy a product made outside of the U.S. with your ’stimulus payment.’ I repeat! Stop selling out our nation to the Chinese! We borrow the money from them. You’re just sending it back! When in doubt, get out… of that Wal-mart.

That said, another economic problem is that this is a time of war, albeit undeclared. The Commando-in-Chief distracted us from a plausible threat in Afghanistan in order to sloppily invade a completely separate country without UN consent, which only served to create the unstable, uncontrollable Iraq we’re all so accustomed to today. I doubt with Bush’s approval rating hovering around 19% recently, few would, or could, disagree.

What we all disagree on is what we should do. Our troops need to come home. They’ve done enough to service the ‘empire!’ But what’s worse is, their distance from us is paid for with our tax-payer dollars. So as they drown, we go down with them, and vice-versa. The ‘war’ in Iraq is projected to cost over $1 trillion dollars!

Remember the good ol’ days of the 90’s? Remember the expression, ‘budget surplus?’ Read this story and reminisce with me! Really takes you back doesn’t it? I vividly remember genocides going on in Eastern Europe. Slobodan Milosovic ring any bells? Guess what? Worthy cause. Not a trillion dollars. Darfur, Palestine? Worthy causes. Wouldn’t have cost a trillion dollars. Going after daddy’s arch-enemy? Priceless. Well, no not really. It costs approximately $275 million dollars a day! Let me write the total projection out numerically just so you can see how many zeros that is: $1,000,000,000,000. *phew* That’s a lot of zeros.

Take that, along with the low interest rates, job outsourcing and unemployment, the increase in the cost of living, the falling value of the dollar, an outrageous trade deficit, the so-called ‘credit crisis’ (so-called because it shouldn’t be considered a crisis if you know for a fact you’re going to cause it), and stock market volatility (did I leave anything out?), and you have a recipe for a depression - an honest to Gods depression, not a recession like we’re used to and can usually weather alright.

So what does John McCain feel he can do to remedy the situation? I doubt anything as long as the ‘borrow and spenders’ are financing his run. Say what you will about who finances the Democrats, even about the DLC, but Hillary said it best when she said it would take a Clinton to clean up after Bush. Unfortunately for her, these days Barack Obama reminds people more of Bill Clinton circa 1991 than she does.

No matter what happens from here on in, everyone needs to take financial cover. I have a feeling this one’s going to hurt. Take care out there!

SMS

Commie Girl. You couldn’t leave well enough alone could you? You’ll never understand that your word is not the word of the Gods. I called a cease-fire in the blogs when indeed I was the victim, but then my mere allusion to your person prompted a nuclear response. So much for that. You’ve just sown the seeds of your own destruction, so you want the truth? “You can’t handle the truth!” But here it is:

Jotting down obvious observations about the shallowness of those in OC is not talent. You’re nothing but a hack, In fact, back east a ‘hack’ is a actually cab driver, but I doubt you’re even qualified to do that at this point. You’d better believe if I ever see another article of yours in a newspaper, I’ll lodge a complaint that makes your expletive-laden column look like it was inspired by Gandhi. Wow! You can swear. You’re so controversial!

Your final column, which in your final act of hypocrisy and with a complete disregard for professionalism you sent to press mere hours before quitting quotes a reader as saying, “Stick to writing your crap, and stop thinking you are an expert in anything other than pathetic, self-centered, pompous dumbasses like yourself. You will be forever doomed to writing your self-involved little bullshit columns on toilet-paper rolls in your cat-feces-infested motel room long after OC Weekly finally wakes up and fires you.” I just thought I’d throw that back up there because it’s so painfully true.

Sure, you quit, but only because you saw the writing on the wall and in fact if you ever asked me for a roll of toilet paper in an emergency, I’d probably not give you one in the fear that you may actually write something stupid on it and pass it off as some kind of exquisite art, because while the reader was wrong about you being fired, she was right that nobody else but the Weekly would put up with your arrogant bull. In fact, the last time I checked, and a year later, you were still without a voice in print.

Oh yeah, I’m sure the Weekly was really devastated when you left. Really. I mean, it all just fell apart. What would they ever do without you? They essentially promoted Gustavo, that’s what they did, and rightly so! He’s talented and edgy. You’re just plain crude.

When are you going to admit that it was your loss? When are you going to admit that, lo and behold, the almighty ‘Commie Girl’ (and by the way, what a stupid pseudonym in the greatest democracy in the world), makes any mistakes at all?

People don’t hate you because you’re, as another reader put it, “a Jew… a slut…  (and a) selfish little wimp,” even if you happen to be all of those things, as well as a ‘terrorist’ as yet another reader put it. They hate you because you’re petty and jealous and hateful! When are you going to wake up and realize that?

You don’t like me because not only do I disagree with everything you stand for (and up until recently, respectfully, I might add), but I don’t just beat you at your own game, I improve on it. I don’t need to swear to make my point. Instead I use words that contain more that two or three syllables and proper grammar in an intelligent tone that you could never achieve. You just slammed anything that rubbed you the wrong way that day with the tact and writing skill of an elementary school student.

I don’t like you because I don’t consider having a voice in the media a game. It’s a very serious responsibility and in your heyday I’m sure you wielded a lot of (undeserved) power, but it’s time to face facts. You squandered your opportunity and then blamed it on everyone else, including your employer who never should have given it to you in the first place.

And you should realize that this comment is coming from one of your so-called peers! I’m a woman in her late twenties, a mom, a Democrat (not a socialist like you though), not at all wealthy, and usually considered ‘alternative’ (for whatever that really means). I’m not a Benz-driving junk bond broker from Coto de Caza and I didn’t get rich selling sub-prime mortgages to people who couldn’t afford the inflated payments and is attacking back in order to justify my lack of guilt for hurting people! In my case, I hope I hurt you, because you need to know what it feels like for a change.

Sure, those of us in the dying middle class usually despise greedy, self-involved people, but that’s the whole point! We never needed you to tell us what we already know. Columns about how yuppies suck aren’t exactly groundbreaking, but I guess if you throw in some swear words, then it’s suddenly controversial.

Interestingly, the idea of Communism in theory was supposed to be for people to work together for the common good. You tear people apart to inflate your own ego and conceal your lack of talent. Your comments aren’t pointed, they’re just nasty and self-serving. I hurt people with my accuracy, not blind rage or insanity as you claim in the blogosphere, and I hope to Gods you cry a river because it could end up being another dry summer… for your now-defunct writing career that is. Fucking loser. Go kiss Karl Marx’s rotting corpse ass you fucking pinko.

See? I can be ‘controversial’ too.

SMS

Despite what the pundits say, the fight for the Democratic nomination is not a bad thing. Paul Begala, on CNN March 4th, already made the observation that the current discourse within the Democratic Party is less like a brawl and more like a debate, despite the ‘red phone ads’ and the occasional negativity that gets brought into the conversation. It’s not to say that Barack Obama would sleep through a crisis at 3am, but to say that Hillary has more instinctual knowledge of what needs to be done in a time of crisis with a much more developed sense of decisiveness.

Barack Obama inspired me so greatly with his speech at the DNC in my hometown of Boston in 2004 that I knew, even at that much earlier time, that it was a prelude to a presidential run. It’s not rocket science. This was a freshman Senator given a national stage on which to act as a medium for the spirit of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Of course there was a reason.

I still think he’s much too inexperienced and much too young for the Oval Office. So was Kennedy, but then, he’s not Kennedy. He doesn’t have Kennedy’s resources or familial political background. Say what you will, but I’m actually comforted by the idea of having the experience of the Clintons back in the White House, and I wholeheartedly believe that it will be Hillary’s show for the future, not a re-run of the Bill Clinton show of the past.

Regardless of what we Dems do in the coming months, the party will fall in line with the eventual nominee because the alternative is more than likely at least 4 more years of the Bush agenda. I also agree with Paul Begala’s assessment that McCain’s endorsement from Bush coming so early is a boon for him in that he can increase his fundraising base for the time being, only to be allowed more time to distance himself from the administration as we draw closer to November. That’s a smart guy that Paul Begala, even if I’m more of a James Carville fan myself. ‘Cajun style!’

As a moderate, I have to admit that I once admired John McCain for bucking the system. His apparent strategy in his current campaign is to remind us that he USED to do that quite often, which is fine for a Republican primary that didn’t see too much of George W. Bush.

Unfortunately for him, there are many independent voters out there who will see past his ‘image’ and understand that his past conflicts with his own party were most likely staged so that he could set himself apart for the general election. Republicans didn’t vote for him because they think he’s a maverick. They did so because if he can maintain the ‘image’ that he is, he greatly increases his electability in November.

Personally, had I voted in the Republican primary, I would have voted for Mitt Romney. Sure, he’s changed positions too, but from my standpoint, he seems to have done so only once whereas John McCain seems to think he’s all things to all people at all times and that simply isn’t true.

If they can label John Kerry a flip-flopper, and I still don’t think he is to this day, then John McCain runs the whole damn factory, churning out pairs of the comfortable summer footwear at a pace of thousands per hour. Seriously, what the hell does he really stand for? The only way to find out is to elect him… I’ll pass on a social experiment in a time of (undeclared) war and recession, thank you very much!

SMS

Hello everyone.

As you can see, my name is Sarah Michelle Spinosa.

I’m a Massachusetts Democrat, except that I’m not a Massachusetts Democrat! Where I come from, the city of Boston, a centrist is still considered a left-wing Democrat, but around my new home here in what I like to call ‘The Real OC’ (you know, where people don’t have maids and Benzes), I guess I’m a bit of a radical. Online political quizzes have labeled me a ‘liberal populist’ but I really just think a government and its people need to always remain efficient and reasonable.

I believe that government should be smaller and less wasteful. It should work smarter, not harder. It cannot and should not attempt to fix all of our problems. Instead, it should concentrate mostly on, but not necessarily be limited to, protecting us from anything that can destroy our life, liberty, and property and let us do the rest, only becoming more involved with citizens when those citizens request it, not when special interests demand it.

A government and its people should have a symbiotic relationship, not an adversarial one. A truly democratic, representative government should be a protective force, but not a controlling one. It should not do the fishing, but instead teach us to fish so that we may be fed for a lifetime.

You’ll learn quickly that I hate hypocrisy and spin for spin’s sake, but I never shy away from a good debate, either as a spectator or a participant. I don’t call people names or ‘go negative’ on people (unless I’m forced that is… more on that in a moment), and when I’m wrong, Gods know I’ll admit it, but I always keep my eyes open for flaws in the logic of others as well as my own and pull no punches in bringing them to light!

I’m tough, but fair. I’m honest, but sensitive to the needs of the many. I’m a minimalist progressive if there is such a thing.

But be warned, get on my bad side and it becomes East Coast hardball time… and I play to win. I was merely 12 years old when I first got involved in politics and now I’m pushing 30 (eek!), so I’ve seen more than my share of political discourse, usually from an insider’s perspective, and I’ve learned how to work an angle from some of the masters.

It’s late right now and I really need to get to sleep, but tomorrow I will interject my analysis of the Presidential contests thus far, the still TWO democratic candidates, and John McCain in the rhetorical remake of ‘Say Anything!’

Please stay tuned as I add an independent voice to the liberal fold in SoCal, because before we can go blue, we’re going to have to go purple!

SMS