Joe the plumber

Did anybody watching the debate last night think that perhaps McCain is dating Joe the plumber? I mean, when you talk about somebody that much it usually means that you've just started dating that person or, even worse, are stalking that person. Maybe McCain is stalking Joe the plumber - he certainly seems to know a lot about him. Also, will Joe the plumber be receiving all of the tax cuts? Because I think that is a conflict of interest, given McCain's infatuation with him. Joe, if you are out there, call the police - get a restraining order. And if you get my tax cut, contact me and I'll tell you where to send the money.

P.S. - McCain, if you can read this, I think Joe the plumber might also be going by Joe Six-Pack - I think your running mate is going out with Joe. Sorry to break the bad news.

The amazingly accurate predictions of The Onion

Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over'

Is it sad that a satirical newspaper, writing tongue-in-cheek in 2001, has somehow more accurately predicted the future than anybody else.

King of the misspelled words

I've been using some Google webmaster tools to see various things about how the world in general (and Google specifically) view this blog. I always get excited when I see that I'm the 3rd highest search result for one thing or the 6th for another. And then I am immensely embarrassed when I realize that I am ranked that high because I misspelled a word and there are a whole bunch of other people who misspell it the same way I do. We should have a meetup. I mean, a meatup. Meatup. There, that should do it.

401k

I finally took a look at my 401k today - it's dropped about $40,000 since the last time I looked at it. So what did I do? I increased my contribution by 2% of my total salary. Why? I guess I just feel that, if we haven't hit rock bottom, we're pretty close. People act like we're doomed to forever be at the prices shares of stock are currently, but the fact of the matter is that it will get better at some point, almost certainly before I retire. Given that, now is an oportunity for me to buy shares at a far lower price than I had before. I just need to remember when I get closer to retirement age that things like this happen and move to a more financially stable platform.

Our National Debt

I was surprised to learn the other day that the National Debt Clock in New York has run out of digits - they had to convert the dollar sign into a one for the time being. We are now at about $10 trillion dollars. That's pretty bad. What's worse, our debt to GDP ratio is increasing, because not only is our debt increasing, but our GDP is decreasing (last time I checked, it was at $14.4 trillion dollars). That comes out to about a 69.4% debt to GDP ratio. I know that, although bad, it's not serious, as we still are making more money than we owe, but that ratio just keeps on increasing. It would be nice to see it go down, but what really gets to me is that not only has it not gone down, it's increased by over 75% with the current president. It's not just the current president, though - since World War II, both parties have increased the national debt. It's just that from 1946, Democrats have increased the national debt by 3.2% per year on average, while Republicans have increased it by 9.2% (based on information provided by Steve McGourty). And in the meantime, GDP has traditionally risen for Democrat presidents far more than Republican presidents (government spending under Clinton was increased by 9%, but government revenue increased by 35% in the same timeframe; meanwhile, spending under our current president has increased 25% but revenue has only increased 10%). I cannot fathom why people think that Republicans will cut the debt - the numbers just don't support it. And Democrats may actually spend money, but the money they spend tends to result in greater revenue. If the economy is your number one concern right now, you might want to go through the historical data yourself - it's pretty convincing.

When guests don't show up

Last night was the VP debate, so I decided to cook for it and make it a quasi-event. My roommate and his girlfriend were going to be there, as well as my next-door neighbor (her husband, being out of state, could not attend for obvious reasons). I invited some other people as well, but they already had plans. So the night before I started cooking the spaghetti sauce (crock pots are awesome, by the way) and put it in the fridge that morning. After work I rushed first to the grocery store to pick up some side items like breadsticks, cheesecake and tea and then got home, started warming up the sauce, baking the breadsticks and boiling the spaghetti. I had told my neighbor we'd start at about 6:30, but fortunately she didn't show until 7 (I still was cooking when she knocked). My roommate had left earlier to go work out, but I assumed he was coming back, probably with his girlfriend, and we'd eat together. After waiting a while, I finally decided to just start eating. So it was just me and the neighbor - we talked and finished eating the spaghetti and then I pulled out the cheesecake. She looked at me and, with eye-brow arched, asked "Is this a date?" I suddently, to my horror, realized that's exactly what it looked like. I mean, I didn't have flowers or candles or anything, and it would have been totally fine if other people had shown up, but with just two people, I couldn't deny that that's what it looked like. So I offered the only statement I could think of: "no," in a sort of croaked voice. Next time, I'm going to make sure that more than one person is going to show up, else I'll just call in embarrassed.

Student Loan

Believe it or not, I've been paying on my student loan for years. November is my final payment - yay! Only three other loans to go.