anyone here still a reagan republican?

if the answer to the above question is "yes", then YOU'RE A FUCKING RETARD.

in case you have been under a rock for the last few days, or too busy paying attention to that ignorant running mate that reminds you of every obnoxious hockey/soccer/abortion-clinic-bombing mother you've ever met, the american economy is finally falling the fuck apart. the house of cards, with cards given clever names such as 'credit default swap,' 'option-ARM,' and 'eviscerate the proletariat' is crumbling, and 2008 is becoming the new 1929. i hate to say we told you so, but

but WE TOLD YOU SO.

so here's the basics of what's up as far as i can ascertain. thanks to decades of deregulation (one of the modern gop's golden calves, along with bastardized christianity and closeted homosexuality), we've stripped away all the fancy rules that we passed post-great-depression to keep our money sound. among the nice little regulations that we stripped away: the glass-steagall act of 1933, which separated consumer banks from investment banks and so forth. i'm no economist, but those who apparently are economists are saying that was a really bad idea. go ahead and thank a republican majority in congress and business-friendly democrat (read: lobbyist crony) bill clinton, who passed the 1999 bill that replaced glass-steagall. if anyone can provide a little more insight, please let me know.

so yeah, a couple of major investment banks of collapsed. merrill lynch is owned by bofa, aig is supposedly owned by you and i, washington mutual is courting suitors, and best of all, morgan stanley wants to sell just under half of itself to CHINA. what's wrong with selling to a chinese business, you say? it's not "a chinese business". it's a sovereign wealth fund. the people's republic of china might buy morgan stanley.

apparently all the rest of this bailout goes to we the people, to the tune of $900b or so. too bad we're already fucking broke. we listened to all of you when you said stupid bullshit like GO SHOPPING OR THE TERRORISTS WIN LULZ and NO SRSLY THE RICH DON'T NEED TO PAY TAXES. guess we'll just put it on the national credit card, right? sure. it's only another NINE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS OR SO, bringing our national debt to roughly $10 TRILLION or so. thank god you guys are all watching out for each other with our money, right?

minotauromachy has suggested i write some about how this relates to social security. that'll come later. if you can't tell, i'm a little too freaked out still to write rationally. instead, i'll leave you with this:

"We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah," bin Laden said in the transcript.

He said the mujahedeen fighters did the same thing to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, "using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers."

"We, alongside the mujahedeen, bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat," bin Laden said.

He also said al Qaeda has found it "easy for us to provoke and bait this administration."

that's from an osama bin laden tape released FOUR YEARS AGO, to coincide with the last presidential election.

i think bin laden might be winning.