UPDATED 2:09 pm:
This article expresses a lot of what I think I've been feeling (as well):
Emotion Without Thought in New Hampshire
(Judith Warner/Domestic Disturbances on NYTimes website)
-----
I really have no knowledge or understanding of economics, so I won't pretend to. I will say, though, that I don't make a lot of money and don't necessarily need to. Frankly, I would appreciate my tax rate to be less than it is, but only slightly. Right now my take-home pay is about 75%-77% of my actual gross pay. It would be really excellent if that were more like 85%. Why do they need my money? Just that 10% more could get me a little nicer, a little closer living space in Manhattan.
The other thing is living paycheck to paycheck, which almost everyone I know does. The money I make now does not allow me to save much, if any at all (without living like an absolute ascetic). Really and truly the only reason that concerns me is because I am uninsured, and couldn't even get private health insurance if I tried. No one will currently insure me! And I can't get it through a temp agency work situation. My biggest fear in NYC is if I fell down and hurt myself and was unable to receive the care I need because I don't have the cash and/or I am uninsured.
So what does this mean, that we might be falling into a recession?
Could it possibly mean bursting the real estate bubble in NYC? So that poor folk like me could maybe possibly re-afford places I easily could have inhabited just ten years ago that now are only privy to the mega-rich and to Calvin Klein, Marc Jacobs, and Diane von Furstenburg boutiques?
If so that would so incredibly excellent.
-----
In other news, Does this Media Hate Hillary? asks AMERICAblog.
They offer up How Bashing Hillary Backfired from Salon.
I just feel bad for Hillary, and I feel like she's due, in a way (?). I know what it's like to work really hard, to be the really smart one in the room, and then to always be passed over as difficult/controlling/bitchy or just "too much" for the kid that everyone likes, who does an OK job, who's "nice enough" (as Obama called the Hill), and who knows it. Obama, I think, knows deep down that Hill's more on top of certain issues -- and he exploits her (frankly) inability to discuss them complexly by offering up his "inspiring" oratorical solutions. He's the Golden Child of this campaign, and that's why I can't get behind him: because everyone else is, or would be were they not "nice enough" folk who are honestly backing the Hill, not for who she is (a la Obama supporters) but for what she honestly wants and what she'll honestly try to give.
-----
Re-reading Hamlet at work. It's so much more exciting than it ever was in school.
-----
Birthday Plans
Definite: Happy Days at BAM on Tues (my actual bday), dir. Deborah Warner and starring Aunt Petunia herself, Fiona Shaw
Maybes: Anything fun that any of my friends my care to think up. Ugh, it is such work coming up with your own goddamn birthday plans!
-----
Final note: Loving the Public.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
This gives a good impression of why I cannot get behind Senator Clinton.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/14/the-clintons-and-history/index.html?hp
The word that I associate most with her (and Bill) is entrenched. In politics and corporations and Washington muck. I would be for Barack Obama so much more purely if there wasn't this cynic in me that thinks he would never get done what he feels needs to get done (for the good of the world, for our good) because of how deep it all runs in Washington. That's bad. And Clinton represents that.
Though she is getting dragged through the mud by the media, I think its indicative of her nature (and Bill's) to freak out because of it, only feeding the hounds who cannot be satiated. I think she (and Bill) is shifty. She completely bogarted Obama's platform (of Change, a word which is beginning to gross me out), not because she really means it, but because she thought she (and Bill) could sell it better with her gold-plated politics.
And there's a lot of stuff being written recently that's pretty convincing that the 90's weren't all that great. And I don't think we can afford to keep going back and forth with this pretty-good-to-really-bad-to-pretty good-and-back-again cycle we've had for the past century. I'm willing to take a chance on someone I think can take us out of it. But I could just be singing the tune that has thrown us into "really bad" so many times before. Ugh! It all makes me so cynical. Maybe I'm just voting to counteract my own cynicism. (Arggh! What a cynical thing to say!)
At any rate, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!! Hope you enjoy the show. Lemme know how it is...
Post a Comment