Wait, Why Am I in Debt at All?

Today the President said we have to give $700 billion to Wall Street because if we don't we won't be able to get loans for cars, college and housing.

Um...

Why in the Hell do people who work every day need loans to by simple things like cars, education and housing?

Seriously, the real failure here doesn't have anything to do with any capital markets, the failure is that our government allowed an economy to develop where the totally reasonable wishes of everyday workers have been priced to the point where those workers have to go into debt to get them.

Personal transportation, education, housing. Those all strike me as reasonable desires that any person might have. If they perform labor in the service of others on a daily babsis, seems to me like those three things should be givens.

The crisis right now is not a credit crisis, it's a compensation crisis. People who work day in and day out simply shouldn't have to borrow in order to meet basic needs. The problem is that managers and executives take too much and that they pay too little to the people who make the profits.

George Bush Is Batman

The Wall Street Journal decided to run this column by a mystery writer who believes that Batman is a metaphor for George Bush, so I thought I'd share the laughs.

Money quote: "...when our artistic community is ready to show that sometimes men must kill in order to preserve life; that sometimes they must violate their values in order to maintain those values; and that while movie stars may strut in the bright light of our adulation for pretending to be heroes, true heroes often must slink in the shadows, slump-shouldered and despised -- then and only then will we be able to pay President Bush his due and make good and true films about the war on terror."

Well, I could pick this apart and make an argument about how the writer, Andrew Klavan doesn't understand the Batman mythos or the movie he saw. But that'd be pedantic and dorky. It'd be pedorkant. Instead, let's just list all the things we know that prove that George Bush is NOT The Batman despite the fact that they both come from rich families and have ties to weapons contractors:

Batman knows better than to go into battle without body armor.

Batman cannot be knocked unconscious by chewing a pretzel.

Batman would not choose a guy who looks like his enemy The Penguin to be his vice president.

If George Bush were Batman, Batman would love the Joker. "That guy's weird. Heheheh."

Batman never gets into a fight without having formulated an exit strategy.