The Palin De-Factor

I’d just like to say first and foremost that I called it, and that Governor Sarah Palin has been nothing more than a liability to John McCain during his presidential bid in 2008.

To be honest, if none of us stands up and decries the embarrassment that is Palin, then it is a failure of democracy, plain and simple. Her abject stupidity, faux-folksy demeanour and bimbo-like posturing screams everything that no one wants as a vice-president. She has more right to be on the cover of some tabloid than in the White House. To date, she has done more to ruin McCain’s presidential bid while furthering her own political ambitions, rather than actually play her part in a presidential campaign. If anything Palin is, she is not a team player.

Take her recent history for example, showing abuse of gubernatorial powers in allowing her husband to attend official meetings, trying to get her sister’s-in-law ex-husband fired as a State Trooper, misappropriated state funds to fly her children around the country and, get this, the latest updates, spent $150,000 on clothing, hair-styling and accessories for her vice-presidential bid.

Holy Jesus, that costs more than Joe the Plumber’s house!

So far, evidence has surfaced that Palin’s nothing more than “just another politician”. She’s not another maverick, despite selling an unneeded, extravagant private jet at a loss to the state of Alaska or saying no to the Bridge to Nowhere, but then keeping the money instead. She’s corrupt, abusive and power-hungry: not a good combination in any leader that you’d want.

In fact, let’s just be frank about it. It’s undeniable that Sarah Palin has generated huge buzz when she was chosen. It’s true that she “energized the GOP base” and that she “breathed life into McCain’s campaign” and that she was a choice that made McCain more of a maverick than some old, tried-and-tested politician.

But therein lies the brilliant lie. People didn’t like Sarah Palin. In fact, no one has made up their minds about her yet. But truth be told, people were curious about Sarah Palin. That’s why there was all this hype. People haven’t made up their minds yet who Sarah Palin is, and it is to a large extent, part of this curiosity that led to a misleading surge in numbers. And so people were really curious about what this woman had to offer.

And to everyone’s horror, so far, nothing good’s been coming out of her closet. The GOP party has slumped to find good points to pad her thin and starving resume. Sure, she said no to the bridge, but that was a flip-flop after she learnt that people didn’t want the bridge, so kudos to her that she actually listens to the public. But then again, she kept the money, and funnelled it into other seemingly useless pork-filled projects. Then how about the plane? Yeah, it was sold at a loss on matter of principle, but it wasn’t a good business decision anyway.

Look, the thing about this Palin is that there are plenty of things to criticize about her. And most of it is relevant to the campaign. And most of it is true too. Which is why she hasn’t come out and repudiated most of these claims. Instead, knowing that she has no reason for anyone to vote for her, she goes out there and panders to the crowd about a hundred and one reasons not to vote for Obama.

Palin’s enjoying the limelight she definitely doesn’t deserve. In fact, the public should not let her fade into obscurity like most VP-candidates of failed presidential bids, but she should rise to notoriety to the likes of infamous traitors to their cause; Benedict Arnold, Guy Fawkes and Marcus Junius Brutus. She has turned traitor to the McCain’s presidency, flaunted her newfound popularity just like all those new upcoming celebrities and drowning in her own fame as more and more of her misdoings are uncovered. She has failed the litmus test of McCain’s maverick-styled leadership and instead of backing McCain, she is trying to run this campaign as though it was hers. She’s becoming an increasing liability to McCain, and she’s constantly making false claims and wrongful accusations of the other camp, pandering to common smears and lies.

If George W. Bush has ever proved one thing, it is that we don’t want a C-average student running the country. Then how do we put up with a Barbie-doll, hockey-mom who has gone through four colleges, regularly shoots moose and thinks that she has sufficient foreign policy experience just because Alaska is next to Russia?

The efforts to paint Sarah Palin as “one of us” has failed miserably, even with her folksy talk and cutesy gestures. She’s a dumbass, true and simple, and if she winks one more damned time at the camera, I’ma gonna demand to see her on the cover of Penthouse. And what’s the difference between a pitbull and a hockey mom again?

Lipstick, $150,000 worth of clothing, and a long list of ethical and legal abuse, that’s what.

Inhale Life

I have no interesting tales about how I bought my first cigarette. No sneaking non-existing tobacco sticks out of my mom’s purse or paying some homeless bum for a packet of cigarettes. If anything, I’ve started smoking at the young age of twenty-three, with most of my mental faculties still intact, albeit eroded by the liquor-filled days of college. In fact, I remember clearly like it was only… Okay, it was only yester-year when I walked into Dwayne Reed and bought my first packet of Malboro Lights. Malboro, because that’s the brand that always stood out in my mind with the Malboro man, and Lights, because it just felt like the right thing to buy. Not too strong, not yet anyway, at least.

I coolly held a bottle of soda in my hand, as I leaned a little forward as though scrutinizing the prices of the cigarettes behind the counter, before calmly mentioning, “Pack of Malboro Lights, please.” The attendant’s eyes barely flicked upward, and I wasn’t sure if I should be offended that she didn’t ask for my ID. Maybe it was the word, “Please” that threw her off. But I could feel her judging me, thinking to herself that I’m definitely a non-smoker.

If anything, I was born too late to start smoking, both age-wise and era-wise. Long gone were the days where smoking was the social norm, and those smoke-filled bars soon gave way to health clubs and detox drinks. New York, led the charge of this new revolution of health-conscious young people, and lighting up a cigarette these days is as offensive as farting in an art gallery where the high-class people are too busy turning up their noses at the latest masterpieces.

And age-wise, maybe if I was eight years younger, posing as some curious under-aged kid thinking of trying cigarettes only to get hooked at an early age, then I might have an excuse for buying cigarettes. No one starts smoking when they’re going through their mid-twenties. It seems anti-thetical because rational people aren’t suppose to smoke. Rational, college-educated people are too smart to fall for extinct cigarette ads, and peer pressure seems to have morphed from having a smoke to going to the gym. From what mainstream media seems to tell me these days, the only people who smokes these days are the really old, the really young and the really curious.

To my misfortune, I don’t fall into any three of those categories. I just… Didn’t care. Despite repeated surgeon general warnings, societal disapproval and knowledge that I will be thrashed to hell by my own parents for engaging in this disgusting habit, I picked up my first cigarette, flicked my lighter into life and inhaled.

There is something about being a smoker in New York City though. It’s like pitting yourself against all that everyone else stands for. I never quite realized the alienation smokers go through until I found myself huddling under the eaves of a building, holding a cigarette in my trembling fingers and watching its embers meagrely glow as it warded away the cold of the night. It becomes a startling realization that the city hates you. Usually it ignores you on those cold streets where people average the fastest walking speed in the world. But now that you’ve lit up, it literally hates you, right down to the ‘No Smoking’ signs, all the way to the absence of ashtrays in public venues. The once commonplace relic of the smoker which always seemed to cry, “Hey there, grab a smoke, sit down and relax,” is now absent from most of city life.

The other day, I walked by the storefront for New York Health and Racquet Club, and was holding a cigarette in my lips in front of a platoon of hip young New York women, wearing their tank tops and tights, plugged into their iPhones and running on treadmills calculating the amount of calories burnt. And then I felt it like I’ve never felt it before. There I was puffing my already deteriorating health away on my Malboro Lights while these women slave away for the perfect toned body. As beads of sweat and self-torture roiled down their already stunning bodies, I kinda realized maybe that’s why everyone hates a smoker: that we do what we want in spite of the consequences.

And despite all these dagger-like looks hurled at my back, I come to find kinship and brotherhood where there were none before. In an increasingly unfriendly city, human connections begin appearing where there were none before. In a not too distant past, John Doe would walk up and ask casually, “Got a light?” and I would shake my head in disappointment at meeting a man with so little regard for his health. But these days, as I silently draw out my cheap 80 cent lighter, it became sort of a secret handshake between renegades in an increasingly health-conscious world. It was the fist bump of smokers, when my thumb rolls over the flint and sparks flew to life and a bright orange flame burned.

The cigarette lighter became a cheap badge of honor, just like the type you get from sending in a dozen tops of cereal boxes. We belonged to a secret underground group with our own secret codes and handshakes. There by the corner of the bar, we’d hold our cigarettes in silent defiance as we bow our heads against the chilly wind and nod to each other in solidarity. And we share our cigarettes as though we share our lives and human connections are formed over a simple, “Can you spare me a cigarette?”

Hockey moms, lipstick on pigs and for god sake, it's not a bailout!

Yeah, yeah, let me take the unpopular stand here right now and say it's not a bailout.

Alright, don't warm up those baseball bats too soon. I can waffle a little and say that it's a partial bailout and that basically it's going to make some people insanely wealthy, while others are going to be stuck with the bill. But that's simply overlooking the fact of what this bill is going to achieve. This bill is going to make the American taxpayer the proud owner of the toxic sub-prime debt derivatives that caused this whole mess of banks collapsing in the first place.

That doesn't sound half as bad as the media points it out to be, to tell you the honest truth. In fact, while blood is running down on Wall Street, savvy investors like Warren Buffet are sifting through the sea of carrion and picking up awesome investments at ridiculously low prices. In fact, his $5 billion purchase of a stake in Goldman Sachs should clue people in that there's money to be made even when everything has gone to hell.

If I had the money, I would sift through these crap investments and look for something that would bring me at least 40% returns by next year. To be honest, it's all about pricing, oversight and making sure that the taxpayers don't get ripped off. In fact, I would think that it's a good deal to buy all these toxic assets for pennies on the dollar, and then once market has resumed normalcy, sell them off for a huge profit.

C'mon! Taxpayers are the ones with the bargaining power here, man! They can negotiate for the prices they want, mainly because markets have failed. And if taxpayers can get these assets at an attractive enough price, then, viola, what's supposed to be a bailout becomes the single greatest tax rebate for American tax payers everywhere.

It's all about pricing.

Of course then again, one could expect little with Paulson at the helm. But that's just the fine print about implementation and execution. Fundamentally, the "bailout" is sound. It aims to remove toxic assets from balance sheets, and prevent companies from declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy as their equity levels fall far enough to jeopardize their debt covenants. And it's not a case of whether these companies want to sell or not, but rather at what price are they going to sell these things at. The sellers are practically falling over themselves to get rid of these stuffs.

It's a buyer's market out there!

And I'm somewhat revolted by the abject ignorance of the politicians when it comes to this. What really irks me most is that this bailout is going to go through, but not without additional earmarks meant to "protect the taxpayers" whatever that means. I'm seeing here additional tax breaks for smaller businesses and individuals, I'm seeing here more congressional earmarks, but fundamentally the bill remains the same as it is. A USD700 billion ba-... I mean, fund to purchase toxic assets.

And while I'm looking at this pork-stuffed barrel, it sickens me to the core to hear politicians talking about Main Street, not Wall Street, and I've just had about enough of it after hearing Governor Sarah Palin, vice-presidential hopeful, harp about how Main Street, or Wasilla, Alaska according to her, is under threat by these greedy corporate bastards. I find it ridiculous that she keeps blaming predatory lenders for their predatory lending practices.

Darn right it was the predator lenders, who tried to talk Americans into thinking that it was smart to buy a $300,000 house if we could only afford a $100,000 house. There was deception there, and there was greed and there is corruption on Wall Street. And we need to stop that. - Governor Sarah Palin, October 3 2008, Vice-Presidential Debate.

She wasn't just "right" but she was "darn right"! Never mind that her statement implicitly calls for more government regulation which is antithetical to her party policy line, but her statement barely even stands under the scrutiny of itself. Yes there was deception and greed and corruption. But deception and greed and corruption on whose part? C'mon, stop giving me bull because I refuse to believe for one moment that there was no greed on the homeowners part. Homeowners are as much the problem here. They aren't the innocent victims here. In fact, for the last five years, they have been profiteering by living beyond their means in houses that they shouldn't have been able to afford in the first place!

And on top of that, didn't some alarm bells sound in people's head when someone approaches them and claims that they have a deal that is too good to be true? Is the government suppose to protect the people from these sort of salesmen? Whatever happened to the good ol' days of caveat emptor? How much longer would Americans stand to be unaccountable for their own rampant stupidity? Just because they were being stupid, the rest of us have to foot the bill?

Look, maybe I'm just cold and callous, but those people rightfully deserve to lose their houses. They gambled and they lost and they got burned. No one's bitching about it when they lose money in the stock market. Okay, they do, but then they also suck it up and dive right back in. Except that the problem here isn't just one or two people defaulting, but a whole bunch of people defaulting. In fact, this is where moral hazard comes into play more critically than before. Homeowners are choosing to default, rather than continue paying for a mortgage that they cannot afford in the first place! They were counting on appreciating house prices to pay off that balloon payment at the end of the mortgage, but the housing bubble burst and everyone's suddenly calling all bets off, packing up and leaving in the middle of the night. If anything, I'm thinking that the banks got screwed over because people were defaulting en masse not because they have to, but because they want to.

It's in vogue to be bankrupt these days.

But let's be fair to Sarah Palin, despite the fact that we shouldn't be, because she is running for the second most important post in the world. She doesn't want to insult the voters, she doesn't want to blame the voters. In fact, there's nothing maverick-y about her playbook besides mentioning the word 'maverick' three times in her vice-presidential debate with Joe Biden. She's as phony and pretentious as they come, and her recent display of a lack of knowledge and diplomacy makes her an atrocious choice as a vice-president who is supposed to more often than not be a proxy for the president on the world's stage. Her cutesy act and redneck drawl might be endearing to people who think they've just tuned in to the latest season of American Idol, but in my opinion, Joe Biden did no one any favors by not savaging her, ripping her apart and tearing her up on that political stage. He might not want to seem like a bully in front of the American voters, but Putin, Ahmadenijad, Kim Jong Il or any of the world's dictators wouldn't even be half as kind.

The American public and media are still coddling her, setting the bar so low for her that as long as she manages to speak without fainting, that can be easily hailed a victory and great success on her part. Before lamenting how far our standards have dropped, one has to wonder how she got on the ticket in the first place. Her tactic of only dancing to her own tune has backfired on her tremendously as she dodged questions by Gwen Ifill, as she doesn't let people know what kind of person she is and where she stands on the issues that matter. In fact, she's been nothing more than a cheerleader for McCain and clearly enough, if elected, she is going to spend the next four years even more obscure than McCain because she is nothing but a huge national embarrassment. Her poise and knowledge is nowhere close to that of Hillary Clinton, she exudes none of that political prowess or quick wit when sparring with Joe Biden, and she clearly does not know what the vice-president does, as so clearly framed by Biden.

So I'm disappointed. Disappointed in the American people for letting this fiasco run on longer than it needs to, delaying this 'bailout' longer than it has to, and letting this political charade run its course longer than anyone can stomach. The 'bailout' isn't going to be different much the next time around. It's just going to be stuffed with more handouts to make things seem more palatable.

But no matter how you frame it, it will always be lipstick on a pig, but damn hell, we need this pig a lot more than you'd think. And I'm not talking about Sarah Palin.