Sunday, January 11, 2009
And... Exhale.
This will sound schizophrenic, but after staying quiet about some depression for weeks, I'm currently listening to Barack Obama in a podcast of Stephonopolus' "This Week", and I'm already feeling better. I don't think Obama is some kind of messiah, and I know he will disappoint me many times over the next four years, but just having a president who can speak articulately and intelligently about his policy proposals is such a dramatic change from the last eight years of "Bring it on", "Stay the course", Heckuva'-job-ruining-the-country style of leadership, it's such a relief to know things will be better, not perfect, not ideal, but better, that my spirits are lifted.
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I don't know. After he condemned the bombings in Mumbai, and then has been silent as over 900 Ghazans are murdered, I've just been too depressed to even write about it. With Stephanopoulis, he did say how it was sad when civilians are killed, be they Israeli or Palestinian, but that just seems far too weak, far too late, far too equanimous. Six Israelis killed is sad, and it is murder. 900 Ghazans killed is horrific, and ethnic cleansing, and yet, Obama remains silent, hiding behind a wall of "Not Two Presidents on International Affairs".
Not to sound too melancholy, but I think you’re depression is a perfectly natural response to the modern condition. We take on more and more work for less and less real pay and if that isn’t enough we are bombarded with little pieces of information from so many different sources that we can’t possibly process, much less comprehend it all. Exhaustion and depression, in my experience, or the only genuine reactions. I marvel at people who don’t react in this way.
My wife and I work harder and harder to “get ahead” when all we’re doing is putting money into the pipeline upwards to those who already have more than they could ever need. The middle class bill of goods of mortgaging your future for an education we were sold aren’t the key to upward mobility at all, they’re the shackles of staying in the middle class. The wealthy in our society (so globally speaking we are all pretty well off, so by wealthy I mean the disgustingly, absurdly rich),are able to buy assets at fire sale prices and will end up being better off than the rest of us for 10 generations out rather than only 6 or 7. Not much to be happy about there.
And I’ve gotta’ echo Abdul’s sentiments, I’m already disappointed in Obama. I read that one of his proposed policies is to change the net operating loss provisions of the Internal Revenue Code. By way of brief background, if a business has an NOL, they are allowed to carry it back for two years (i.e., apply the NOL against two years prior gains on amended returns to reduce prior taxes and/or obtain refunds). Obama wants to extend this to a 5 year carry back. Now, scratch your head for all of two seconds and think about what businesses had losses last year and will this year that had significant gains in the past 5 years. That’s right, Obama wants to say to those industries that caused this situation, “that’s ok, go back and offset your prior gains that you made at all of our expense and we’ll give you a refund.” They’re giving it to all of us twice (if not many other ways). The money flows up and pools...near as I can tell, there isn’t any way to fix this and Obama ain’t gonna’ do a thing about it. Hope I’m wrong, but I don’t have much faith that we can fix the system. - Bill
Too much? My wife told me I wasted all my energy being negative yesterday. - B
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