Since I have my own blog, I haven't spent much time these past two years trying to maintain a diary here. Recent events in the US, though, have inspired me to slap down some thoughts once again here a DKos.
Right now, I'm on the outside looking in -- from a teaching position in Hunan, China, far from the madding crowd. Isolated as I am from the big cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, I have to actively seek out news of the USA. It sure doesn't come streaming here into "midwest" China.
What I see is disheartening, and impresses on me even more the necessity that we throw the GOP out of the White House. Eight years was eight years too many.
The economy was a mess when I left the States in August. The mortgage crisis in the US pulled the rug out from a lot of real estate deals worldwide. While it's only speculation, the street violence that erupted in early September in the city I'm living in was indirectly related to the US mortgage markets tanking. Real estate developers here in Jishou, betting on increasing real estate values, promised thousands of unwary, naive investors huge returns on investments. The investors risked unwise amounts of their savings on these illegal investments, and got cleaned out when the real estate markets here tanked. Instead of waiting patiently for government to do something, they took to the streets en masse. Imagine investors in NYC blocking traffic and subway trains when their net worth plummets!
The clear fact that the US economy is so intricately tied to the world's economy seems to have eluded members of the House, and perhaps half the Senate, too. Sure, dropping $700B to prevent a few banks from shuttering their doors is going to hurt the taxpayers. But it might prevent far worse scenarios from playing out, both at home and abroad. "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few," though the GOP for the most part sees it the other way around.
From my perspective out here, McCain looked like a Keystone cop running around trying to act like he knew what to do about the crisis on Wall Street. Obama more wisely actedr as if he would study the situation and not go off half-cocked about quick fixes. Paulson and Bush came up with a typically GOP solution, bail out the big investors and hope the benefits trickle down to the masses, but at least they offered something reasonably quickly. The House seemed willing to wait until after elections were over before it would deign to consider the emergency an emergency. The Senate, well, I don't know. To me, it looked like it's trying to play the statesmanlike House of Lords to the hoi-polloi House of Commons. It approved the bailout proposal. So what? The House will still dilly-dally, while the GOP blames Pelosi for hurting their feelings.
Then there's the matter of McCain's running mate. I mean, what? She reminds me of those girls in the diner in Fargo, saying, "oh, ya," while bobbing their heads up and down. Except she dresses better. In a schoolmarmish way.
But I digress. I laughed when the GOP picked a has-been B-movie actor as its nominee. I stopped laughing when he got elected. I am now in mortal fear that by some weird stroke of luck (or bad vote counting in one critical state or another), Punch and Judy will end up in the White House and we'll have four more miserable years of the GOP there.
McCain used to be a maverick, but the party has made him a lackey of GW. As for Palin, I hope McCain beats the actuarial odds and lives through a full term if he's elected. If you think people overseas laugh at our president now, just imagine how they'll howl if Six-Pack Sally ends up succeeding her aged running-mate. It's a future too gruesome to contemplate.
The polls putting Obama ahead of McCain by a substantial margin encourage me. Perhaps in spite of recent history (the 2000 and 2004 elections), the right man will get both the popular vote and a majority in the electoral college. Then, just maybe, the US will end up on the right track. Or at least not on the one heading for the not-quite-finished bridge over the gorge.