What A Week: My Stimulus Package

Fall is here, It’s summer in San Francisco, and The Second Great Depression is upon us.

A lot has been going on the last week or two.  It came out that the FBI keeps you on terrorist watchlists even if you’ve been cleared of any wrongdoing.  Not sure what is worse here, that there are innocent people on the list or that there are people the FBI thinks are terrorists that “are not the subject of any active investigation (!!!)”  In New York, the police (who can also shoot down planes!) are beating up peaceful protesters and the mainstream news is ignoring it.  Israel is building 1,200 more homes in the West Bank and is derailing any chance of even starting a peace process.  Attacks in Afghanistan are increasing.  At a recent debate Republicans Presidential candidates didn’t admonish the crowd for booing a soldier on national TV and neither did the moderators.  Candidate Rick Santorum said that he would shove all of the gays back into the closet by re-instating Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, to which he received thunderous applause.  I’m guessing that there are a lot of closeted gays in the audience who were missing all the newly out gay servicemen. 

Insurance premiums are going up by 10% this year.  The health care reform package is going to the Supreme Court and could be ruled unconstitutional by the current conservative majority.  Remember that the US is barred by law to negotiate down prescription drug rates.  The drug firms would have prevented this bill from passing if a provision had been included to allow the government to negotiate prices.  The US faces another potential government shutdown in November by a conservative Congress looking for any way to shrink the government in order to pander to their ultra-conservative, anti-government, Christian base.  Why would you want to curtail the biggest spender, the US Government, during a recession?  Morons.  The unemployment rate has more than doubled from 4.5% to 9.1% since September 2006 (Blame Bush-43, The Supreme court for putting him in when not elected, and Al Gore for not suing to get him out).  The US (never mind European) economy is in the toilet and if it doesn’t turn around we’ll have either Mitt Romney (Jesus:  The Mormons are from Mars Dad, we’ve had it checked out) or Pastor Rick Perry as President (Christ is alive?  What millennium does he think it is?!?!).

I’m sure that I have left some things out, but you get the point.

What is my solution to all of this?  Spend more.  That’s right, I said it.  Living in San Francisco has never been cheap but now I’ve decided to go all out.  I don’t have any savings but I’m now borrowing from my future paychecks via the local Mission Money Mart to take vacations.  I will cash in over a year’s worth of change to take a bunch of booze to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in Golden Gate Park.  Next week I will go through my storage to find some shit that I can sell on eBay or Craigslist (lots of unused camera lenses in there).  I will take this money and buy sci-fi books that are overpriced at my Mission local non-chain store and also take my girlfriend out for a night on the town.

If we get rid of all the shit we don’t need and spend a little more on the things that we want, the world might be a little better place.  If we all do this it, really do it, it will help the economy which will keep Obama in office, which will hopefully reign in the FBI, the NYPD and solve the Palestinian situation (a guy can dream can’t he?).  This will also enable Obama in the second term to legalize pot (more taxes for the states), open up Cuba (help the tourism industry), and federally legalize gay marriage, which will finalize the economic recovery in 2014.  I can see the headlines now:  “Gay Bridal Registries Saves Economy.”  This is something that we can all look forward to.