So about that political news
I'm...not especially happy with the taxpayer bailouts of the failing gigantic financial institutions.

Let me put it this way:

I make $11,000 a year. $11,000. That's below the poverty line in quite a few states. I get by by living in an area that's cheap to live in (this would never work in, say, Seattle,) not having a car, and watching what I spend. My means are quite limited, but I live within them. Somehow, I've even found a way to send $100 a month to my bank to put into IRA CDs, because my job doesn't have a 401(k) or any sort of retirement plan, so it's basically up to me. My CDs, much like my lifestyle in general, are probably meager compared to what others out there have, but they're something. I'm poor, but responsible, and surviving.

However, this is a story about people on the complete opposite end of the spectrum--people who are unbelievably wealthy, irresponsible, and now not surviving. People who made more money last month than I will have in my natural lifetime got consumed by greed and threw their fortunes around, because more could potentially become even more still. They messed up, though. They didn't know when to quit and they lost it all on one bad gamble after another.

Now here's the part of the story I don't like: As a taxpayer, I have to chip in to bail them out. I make $11,000 and have had to figure out how to make that work, and have done so rather well for years. These people make almost a hundred times that, I'm sure, and somehow managed to completely fail, and I'm the one who ultimately ends up punished for it. I have to pay money that I quite honestly don't have to people who quite obviously have no idea what to do with it. It's like the an alternate version of the story of the ant and the grasshopper, where the government forces the ant to give all of his food to the grasshopper and the grasshopper lives happily ever after and the ant dies of starvation.

As far as the candidates, I have to admit that I'm rather partial to Obama's outline--it's not an actual plan yet, but he's at least said that whatever plan we eventually do come up with should be temporary, hold the greedy investors accountable for this mess, and have some sort of compensation for the actual people who have to pay now. I do like his "put Main Street ahead of Wall Street" theme.

Oh, and the best part about all this is that my job involves weaving throws for people who are apparently wealthy enough that they have unbelievable amounts of money to spend on throws of all things. ( http://www.furaffinity.net/view/417740/ ) Historically, luxury-based businesses don't do especially well in times of financial crisis--who wants to buy a throw when money is harder to come by and could be better spent on practical things?--so I can only hope this doesn't end up derailing the weaving business badly enough to kill it. Wouldn't it be lovely if I had to pay irresponsible rich people but I couldn't because their very same irresponsibility made me lose my job?