UMT

Anyone who knows me knows that I hate reality TV. Most of them are gimmicky non “reality” shows that take advantage of tendency of people to need to slow down and take a look when they see a car accident.

Undercover Boss on the other hand is great.

In the last 2 years there has been a lot of populist anti-executive sentiment that I personally feel is correctly placed. Corporate executives are the modern day aristocrats of the western world. This is especially interesting for me because I have met many, many really nice executives. It has been difficult for me to reconcile my opinions of the seemingly good people I have been in meetings with, that happen to be millionaire executives (sometimes even republicans), with the actions of many executives at my and other companies–actions that cause the aforementioned populist sentiment.

So… I just watched the first episode of Undercover Boss. What a wonderful reality show. They took the president and COO of Wast Management and had him doing the remedial entry level jobs.  Yes the comic factor alone makes this worth a watch, but then all you would really have is something akin to Paris Hilton’s crappy whatever that was called show.  The thing I can really appreciate about this show is that it helps me reconcile executives decisions with their personalities.  In this case the guy that was being featured was another one of those seemingly good people and, as it turns out, some of his policies were implemented in terrible ways.   But, and here’s the crux, many of the policies he needs to implement in order to do well by his investors are necessarily directly at odds with the well-being of his workers.  To use a cliche–it’s a sad state of affairs.  I’m going to cut this short because I could go on for another 10K words on this subject, but I’ll leave you by saying that if you can manage it try to have a watch.

Episode 1 on CBS.com

douchebaggery occured: 1/4/10 @ approx 9AM

Mom leaves 3 year old and 11 month old in the car in January temperatures (it was about 20-25 that AM in Enfield) to go in and get a spray tan.

I guess she was trying to help us out by making sure she didn’t re-produce.  Thanks Candy.

I’m going to take a second to review a book.  This will be relatively short, but I though it relevant.  The name of the book (you’ll probably be disappointed now Streeter) is 2 Years to a Million in Real Estate.

I know what you’re thinking.  “Wait, that sounds like some get rich quick scheme.”  Well, no, it may imply get rich quick since the title literally says get rich relatively quickly.  But in reality while the title was meant to sell books the content is meant to be part autobiography (as a case study) and part reference.  More explanation as we progress.

So the author of the book was a man who was in a similar position to me.  Or perhaps me in say 5-8 years if I stay the course with my career.  He was a decently well compensated director level employee at a young technology company in Boston.  Unlike me however the company he worked for was lycos and they were laying people off left and right so he had some real motivation to get a backup plan going.  He had worked in corporate america for awhile and even with what he characterizes as parsimonious spending habits and a 6 figure salary circa 1999 he couldn’t amass the sort of money needed to fulfill his goal of becoming financially independent at the age of 35.  A somewhat lofty goal, but if you truly are a skilled, highly motivated, and fiscally conservative individual not something that should be out of reach.  (I mean, the brat who coded up the first draft of facebook is a billionare and he was born in… 1984!)  Mark, I’m sure you’re a talented guy, but you gotta admit you got a little luck with that one.

Anywho.  Mr. Martinez, we’re back to the author now, had basically realized that to get where he wanted to be he needed to stop trading time for money and start investing his time in something with the potential to give him that independence he sought.  I wrote a couple years ago that a companies profit was the difference between what it’s employees are worth and what they are paid.  That was a bastardization of a quote that I stole from this book that this book stole from Karl Marx.  But it’s true.  I guess the best way to put it is that working a job, even a great one, with great benefits, and great salary is still you trading a portion of your time, of your life, for the benefit of something else.  If this something else is something you care greatly about then more power to you.  In his case it was internet search, lol, not the most earth-shattering of causes.  Furthermore, if that job somehow goes away you are stuck starting over potentially from scratch.  Why subject yourself to the whims of a boss or a buy out when you have the ability to obtain financial independence?

So that’s what this book is about.  Learning how to replace your salary with the income generated from owning and managing residential or commercial Real Estate.

The first half of the book is an interesting ready because it’s an autobiography in the form of a case study.  Mr. Martinez ventured into the market in June 2002 and whithin 1 year had purchased roughly $2 million in apartment buildings (12 units in the Botson area).  Whithin 2 years (the second year is not summarized in the book) he had enough income to replace his salary.  I’m not sure where the 2 years to a million comes from if he owned 1.8 million in properties after 1 year and was generating 100K in profit by the end of the second.  The only thing I can think of it appreciation could have made his net worth a million, though almost none of it was liquid.

So I decided to write this post not just because I liked the book, but also to point out to anyone who may be googling this book how ridiculous SOME of the premises are.  This is a good book if you want just the right amount of inspiration and knowledge when you’re starting out as an REI.  But be warned what Mr. Martinez did would be next to impossible to do in the given time frame in today’s market.  In short, yes he was skilled and yes he knew what he was doing, but he also caught a huge stroke of luck.  He hit the market halfway up the ridiculous 1997-2007 housing bubble.  To give you an idea of how lucky he was.  He bought a condo in January of 2000 for $200,000.  When he went to buy his first apartment building in June of 2002 (2.5years) the 200K condo had appreciated in value enough for him to take out $80,000+ as the downpayment on the new property.  That’s 40% of the original price in 2.5 years.  By the time he decided to buy the 2nd property (November of 2002) it had appreciated to apparently $365K so he was able to take the 2nd down payment out of the condo.  If my house in Framingham appreciates at the same rate as his condo it will be worth $480K in February of 2011.  I expect it to be worth about $260K on that date.  The other thing he was able to do that you are not today was put down small downpayments (sometimes less than 10%). The only way you can manage to do this today is through a program offered by someone like the FHA. So in short Mr. M made a killing because he had drive and skill, but even a below average investor could have done well in the market where he made his first millions.

In the end he does a decently good job of summing up why REI is better than a 9-5, does a good job talking about the many aspects of being a landlord, and provides an interesting, though flawed since it’s outdated, account of what it’s like to start out.

Plus it’s only 200 pages and I got it for like $12 so it’s definitely worth your time and money if your able to stay skeptical about the parts that are now un-realistic.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

So it took a couple of days but I finally found some better polling.

The way the polling was conducted:

The Research 2000 Massachusetts Poll was conducted for three organizations — the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Democracy for America, and MoveOn.org — on Tuesday, January 19, 2010 after polls closed in the special election for Senate.

500 Obama voters who did NOT vote in the special election were asked one set of questions. 500 Obama voters who DID vote — and voted for Republican Scott Brown — were asked another set of questions. Each has a margin of error of 4.5%.

2774 Obama voters from 2008 who voted Tuesday were reached — of which 2274 (82%) voted for Democrat Martha Coakley and 500 (18%) voted against her.

Here are the results with breakdowns by gender and party.

boldprogressives.org

Some key takeaways:

82% of swing voters who voted for Brown and Obama support the public option.

48% of these voters oppose the health-care bill in it’s current form (32% favor, 20% not sure).

of that 48% when asked if the bill went too far or didn’t go far enough 23% said it went too far, 36% said it didn’t go far enough and 41% said they are not sure.

By a large margin of 59% to 30% “Brownbamas” dislike the mandate that all people are required to buy health insurance

So at this point what we have discovered is that the vast majority of brown voters who voted for Obama last year support a public option, a small plurality of them hate the current version of the healhcare bill, but of those voters who said they knew enough about the bill to give an opinion on it most of them felt the bill was too centrist.  The jist: Obama+Brown voters in general want to see a good bill passed.  The most notable feature that’s missing is the public option, and the most notable feature they woudl like to see removed is the mandate to buy insurance.

(keep in mind many of these people who were surveyed are republicans who voted for obama on 08 otherwise these numbers might be even higher)

Lets see a little more from the Brownbamas:

57% of Brownbama voters think the administration isn’t doing enough to change Washington.

a small plurality feel obama isn’t “fighting hard enough to reverse bush policies” but that plurality is favored more than 2 to 1 over the opposite answer of fighting too hard (37% to 15%)

Here is a very telling one (along the turd sandwich vs. giant douche lines).  Of these people who voted for Brown in this election (they actually voted for him) When asked “Which candidate … did a better job of representing you and your family on economic issues: Republican Scott Brown or Democrat Martha Coakley ?” a whopping 62% of them said “Neither.”  In fact only 25% of the people who voted for Brown felt like his economic policies represented their views.  That’s pretty redic!

Finally the majority of Brown+Obama voters polled felt that the democrats hadn’t brought the needed change to washington and care more about wall street then main street.

Moving on to the voters who didn’t vote this time and voted for Obama in 08.

There were similar numbers when asking about change and bush policies but the one that really stuck out to me in this group was when they were asked about the healthcare bill and why it sucked.  43% of these obama voters who didn’t vote this time felt that they opposed the bill that just passed (34% in favor).  Of that 43% an amazing 53% said that the healthcare bill didn’t go far enough.  That may not seem that suprising, but these are the peopel who didn’t vote… 39% of them also said they wern’t sure.  That left just 8% who said the bill went too far.  53% to 8%.  That’s almost 7 times as many Obama swing voters who feel that the healthcare bill sucks because it doesn’t do enough than the number who think it goes too far.

a few more:

65% of this group felt neither Brown or Coakley represented their economic views but of this group 26% favored Coakley.

56% would be more likely to vote democrat if there was a wall-street crackdown

Party affiliations

85% of obama voters who voted for brown consider themselved independents

89% of obama voters who did not vote considered themselves democrats

What does this all mean?

Despite what you hear from the right-winged pundits on Fox or wherever else the message is clearly that the administration needs to move farther left and care more about the people.  What do the people want?  They generally want healthcare reform.  But the want the bill to cost less and help reduce the administrative overhead of the medical system in this country.  They feel that insurance companies are fleecing them so they want a public option that is not motivated by greed and profit.  They DON’T want to add to the problem by mandating that everyone purchase health insurance who doesn’t have it.  Economically they want a crackdown in general on Wall St and the fat cats that have been getting rich for the last 10 years because of policies that favored them over the common man. They don’t feel like 2009 brought about the change they were expecting.  Coakley couldn’t motivate the base…  I mean c’mon 89% of non-voting obama voters were democrats.  They, I, We were disillusioned by the fact that we voted for change, we voted for a liberal, and we got a godamn centrist.  I don’t know if he’s just afraid of the right trying to assassinate him or something but he’s a damn centrist.  We voted for a liberal and now we feel that no matter what we do were going to get someone who panders to the rich.  Of the Brownbamas, yes… they were mostly self-proclaimed independents.  But they apparently wanted a more progressive administration and a more progressive congress as well.  To put it in the words of a 6th grader: Independents voted for Brown because Coakley sucked.  I didn’t vote because Coakley sucked.  And the republicans came out en masse because they are delusionally upset about our socialist centrist president.

I think the message is pretty clear.  It’s too bad the people we elect are mostly too greedy or stupid to see that.

Here is some demographic information on the people surveyed:

OBAMA VOTERS WHO VOTED FOR SCOTT BROWN:

Men: 271 (54%)
Women: 229 (46%)
Democrats: 36 (7%)
Republicans: 41 (8%)
Independents: 423 (85%)

OBAMA VOTERS WHO DID NOT VOTE:

Men: 254 (51%)
Women: 246 (49%)
Democrats: 447 (89%)
Republicans: 19 (4%)
Independents: 34 (7%)

Presidential job approval rating… such a loaded stat.  Obama has been hovering between 45 - 50% of people saying they approve and 35 - 40% saying they disapprove of the job he’s doing over the last few months.

As all zero of you who actually read this blog know I am as liberal as they come, but given the opportunity to answer one of these pollsters I would have said I don’t approve.  But the problem is that people assume “If I don’t approve then he must be acting too liberal.”

No!  People don’t approve because they voted for change and instead are just getting a smart, eloquent, but otherwise un-remarkable centrist politician who is doing things the same as they have been.

What have we had in 2009 that was different from 08?

Sent more troops to a war in the middle east - same

gave bailout money to big corporations - same

rang up a deficit - same

didn’t pass, or even legitimately try to pass, a quality health care bill (true universal healthcare with a public option and subsidies for people who can’t afford it [or even better single payer full gvt. healthcare like all othe advanced countries]) - same

lost a ton of jobs - same

These polls should look for ternary results not just binary.  In stead of “Do you approve or disapprove of Obama’s job performance?”  How about “Do you think that Obama’s policies have been too liberal, too conservative, or just right?”  Or perhaps as a follow up to the people who answered disapprove simply ask too conservative of too liberal.  Because right now the assumption at places like fox news is that a 45% job approval means 55% of people think Obama is too liberal.  I’m not going to go as far as to say that the majority of people who disapprove think he is too conservative or too much of a centrist.  But I’m willing to bet that a large minority of them would.  So it’s a bit disingenuous to suggest that polls like a 45% approval rating directly translate to Obama is too liberal.

Why can’t we ever have anyone worth voting for on the ballot. I just took a survey and apparently I am 40% aligned with Martha Coakley and 13% aligned with Scott Brown. Massachusetts for the last ohh, 50 - 300 years has been a hardcore liberal state. To this point despite being one of the richest states (6th) out intelligence (3rd) has won out.  What I fear this year is a return to crap because of liberal disillusionment with the fact that Obama is a centrist + hardcore conservatives with blinders on that Obama is a radical liberal.

So the in-laws are over, and for the most part I actually like them. The immediate ones (brothers/sisters/mom/etc) are great, but as you get farther away they get a little… well lets just say we don’t see eye to eye on most anything. Generally this doesn’t affect our interactions so things usually go pretty well. So after dinner and I overhear my uncle in law having a conversation with my brother in law about politics. I of course begin to salivate. Well, I’m going to skip over the conversation because it was mostly more of the same. With the one exception being that my uncle in law (who is a conservative) is actually quite thoughtful and reasonable in his claims and ideas… relative to other conservatives. He is what the conservatives would call a middle of the road guy, and what I call a reasonable republican.

So I obviously get in on the act and we proceed to have a good conversation about poverty, capitalism, and all those topics that I tend to get quite worked up about. As things start to wind down and people begin the procession toward the door I notice that there is an adjacent conversation between the less reasonable republicans. The “believe every word they hear on fox news” types. They are basically telling each-other how ignorant I am… but I try to ignore it. So I get up to walk with reasonable republican to the door and right as we get there one of the other ones decides that she is going to grow some I’m walking out the door balls. She looks at me and moans “A government that gives you everything you want, takes everything you have… Thomas Jefferson” As she breaks the threshold of my front door.

This event infuriated me.

First… Thomas Jefferson was an unfaithful husband and a slave owner. Not every damn thing he’s every done is a good thing.

Second… If you’re going to make a comment to me, don’t be a coward and do it while you are walking out the door. All I could retort was “glad to see you take advice from slave owners.” Not a bad come back, but lacked the depth I would have liked to give the subject.

Third… when you try and make a point by taking an unsubstantiated claim and, rather than support it with facts and evidence, twisting the wording into something catchy, it makes me want to punch you in the face. Why do people tend to agree with statements where you take a sentence, say it, and say it again with one word changed? It doesn’t make what you’re saying more true. A logically equivalent statement to what she said is: “If you were given everything you wanted by the government they would take everything you have.” No, not true… these things don’t go hand in hand. They could take from Joe to give to me. See.

Fourth, You argued against the point I was NOT trying to make. Congratulations! My statement was that we as a civilized people have a responsibility to assist those who are less fortunate than ourselves. How does your goddamn “I heard it on Glenn Beck” freakin sound byte quote of TJ in any way weaken my argument. Christ, what is wrong with you people.

Fifth… Don’t quote people. Have your own goddamn thoughts. I’m sure you can go back and find times where I have quoted people, but generally it’s only when I feel that they have captured the essence of the statement and I would weaken it by paraphrasing. This is not one of those cases. This is her taking something she heard and molding her way of thinking around that statement. Developing her own personal policy based on a catchy phrase she was told by somebody else. Have an original thought.

… given time I’m sure I could steam and little more and come up with a 6 or 7, but I think I’ll leave it at that.

BTW, Don’t you guys realize that Jesus (the poor jewish imigrant worker) was a bleeding heart liberal? Assuming he was a real person, if he were alive today he would probably be a member of the green party. He certainly wouldn’t be a republican, that’s for sure.

Pardon my in-ability to pick a title that can’t be mis-interpreted as me coming out!

The question I pose is one of paramount importance.  I have blogged on and off for a couple of years now and if you’ve read much of what I have to say you know that I spend a lot of time complaining.  I complain about injustices, I complain about ignorance, I complain about social inequality, but most of all I complain that there is no one left to look up to in the world.  I shouldn’t say that… there certainly are many people who would probably fit that build.  But I don’t know any and I’m willing to bet that you don’t know any either.

I don’t complain about this last point directly, but if there were more people with the moral cojonas to stand up for what is right then I wouldn’t have a need for this blog.  The inspiration for this post was watching an episode of Penn and Teller’s “Bullshit”.  This episode was entitled “Ground Zero”.  The premise of the show today was that 1 World Trade Center NY, AKA “Ground Zero” is hallowed ground and is the last place on earth that political backroom politics should be taking place.  Unfortunately that is exactly what’s happened.  Over the course of the last 8 years we have managed to get about 100′ of the proposed “Freedom Tower” (which has apparently been re-named?) re-built.  Must be inspirational for the terrorists to see that NYC has managed to build and open 2 new baseball stadiums, neither of which had been planned as of 9/11/2001, while what should be this sacred monument has been bogged down in the bureaucracy that is our government.  In any event, the closing scene of the episode was a man speaking of what one would assume was his older brother from the admiration in his words and tone.  I’m paraphrasing but he said that if only his brother were still around he knows that he would have gone in there (into the planning commissions meeting), closed the door, and made sure that no one came out until this thing was done and done right.  That’s the kind of man that I’m talking about.

Don’t get me wrong, his brother was an captain in the NYPD so I’m sure he wouldn’t have had the authority to actually do that, but it was more the pride, faith, and admiration that he had for his brother that hit me. It’s not about the feasibility of the act, but the sentiment of the statement.

Who do people have to look up to anymore; where have all the good men gone?

Some of you might say that I should be counting my blessings after the last 8 years.  To some extent I am.  The former president, who I fell less inclined to insult and ridicule now that he doesn’t have his finger on the button, was obviously not a smart man.  Don’t get me wrong, he had the basics.  Money is power, power is money, and hire sleezeballs if you want to go far. But the guy was not exactly a rationalist.  For him logic was less A implies B and more ‘if A then B, God therefore whatever agenda I want to push.’  So the fact that we have a thinking president does make me feel a little better.  (Can you believe the election was a year ago next week?)  But lets be straight with ourselves.  Obama is not the kind of man I’m talking about.  The president is the kind of guy who would threaten drastic measures when telling his neighbor to stop driving on his lawn.  Only to then “compromise” by paying to have the guys driveway repaved for him when he refused.  That’s change, just not the kind of change I can believe in.  No, the guy I’m talking about knows that while it is important to be diplomatic with said neighbor, if they are acting irrationally they need to be put in their place appropriately.  Compromise is not always the solution.

So who is the guy I’d like to see being watched by America’s youth?  Well in short it’s basically a cross between Jesus, Clint Eastwood, and well Barak Obama.  (Yea that’s right the duality of B. O.) Let me explain.  The perfect man needs to have compassion, this is obviously from Jesus.  (I know, I know I’m an atheist so I’m probably confusing a lot of you but while I don’t believe in an omnipotent being, and who knows if this Jesus character even existed, I do believe that what is written on Jesus portrays a wonderful man that with some added stones in his cheesecloth garment would make a great role-model.  An ideal worthy of a following.)  Not to mention Jesus was a carpenter, so he could build shit and that’s cool.  The perfect man needs to have a backbone and stand up for what’s right.  We can debate right an wrong another time, this is an argument against passivity.  A man who is passive in the face of tyranny and injustice is not a man.  The perfect man needs to have a brain.  It’s not enough to just be compassionate and proactive.  There are plenty of compassionate, proactive, dumb people who push something like abstinence ONLY education or intelligent design.  Listen I understand that it hurts to be shown an argument that contradicts what you’ve been taught your entire life by the people who were supposed to educate and protect you.  Get over it and learn some objectivity.

Those are probably the 3 biggest things that define a man who is a role model to me.  This is probably a good time to mention that any and all of these things also apply to women as well.  I just find that women are less receptive to the “be a man argument” or the “grow some cojonas” argument so I’m going to stick to one gender.  I find it wonderfully attractive to come across a strong, compassionate, and intelligent woman.

As I move on past word 1000 in this essay I’d like to talk for a minute about some of the ancillary traits that in and of themselves probably don’t turn too many heads, but in my mind separate the good men from the great men.  I mentioned this briefly before but a man needs to be able to build shit.  What separated us from the monkeys so many years ago was that we stood up, fashioned tools, and built things.  We built baskets for gathering nourishment, we built weapons for defense from predators (and once again for nourishment), we built farming tools for, uhh, nourishment.  OK I’m noticing a theme, the point is without having built things our society would not be where it is today.  It is our duty as ancestors of those great men (once again I also recognize women but I’m choosing to stick to one gender) to further that cause.  Or at the very least learn to fix a damn stuck kitchen drawer yourself.  I mentioned before that a man needs to be a thinker, well he also needs to be a doer.  Do not confuse this with pro-activity.  There is probably a correlation between people who have this trait and people who have the aforementioned pro-activity gene.  This one is more closely aligned with productivity then pro-activity.  This is the ability to push through any obstacle on the way to your goal.  Not getting stuck.  This is what separates the people who have great ideas from the people who create great things.  Don’t get me wrong, you have to be a thinker too single handily accomplish these great things as well.  But, in a setting where you are trying to reach an end goal, I will take a doer over a thinker any day.  Artistic ability, creativity, and critical thinking are next on my list.  I put these phrases together because I they are very closely related.  I guess I would say artistic ability is coordination + creativity and critical thinking is creativity + a knowledge base.  If you’ve studies AI you probably find that last statement familiar.  Some of you might say, “Why artistic ability Jeff?”  Well my friends it’s less about being able to paint something and more about being able to express yourself.  A man who has this trait has the ability to inspire people.  He has the ability to make something beautiful, even if it is in the eye of the beholder.  How are you ever supposed to advance as a society of nobody ever thinks of anything new?  An appreciation for things that should be appreciated.  I know it sounds vague but this is basically the ability to fend off nihilism.  When you analyze everything in life, as I and I’m guessing many other thinkers do, you find yourself coming to the same conclusions over and over again about so many seemingly disparate things.  These conclusions are never ground breaking, but ever present.  Often times these thoughts bring me back to the question “Why does any of this even matter?”  The answer to that question is that it doesn’t.  Nothing matters.  But then you come back to reality when you encounter something that deserves to be appreciated.  I intentionally chose to leave this bullet point hanging with tension here.

So this has been a lively post.  I’ve done some thinking and come up with, in my opinion, a pretty good list of the traits that I wish all men aspired to.  Now I’d like to take a moment and talk about the people who inspire me.  (Besides Jesus!)

(actually it’s getting late I need to cut this short, but I’ll complete it in another post later)

Bill Maher says things every now and then that make moderate democrats cringe. (of course I’m far left so I just laugh) Usually these statements are not un-true, but are a little crass. For example a couple weeks ago Mr. Maher was on Larry King and he said that Americans are stupid.

To be clear I think intelligence is relative and Americans are relatively smart… when compared with the average human being on this planet. So I guess I would have to say that I disagree with that statement based upon my theory of relative stupidity.

If, however, I modify my definition to mean stupid people are people who do stupid things… Americans are fucking stupid.

I’m watching footage of people who are so emotional and so enraged about health care based upon hearing rumors that are untrue. Do they take the time to actually research what is being floated around in congress right now before they make their outlandish statements? Yea right.

Am I to believe that right now on the table is a bill that is about to be passed which will simultaneously strip me of my healthcare, allow the president to send someone to my grandmother’s house to tell her they will be killing her in a few weeks, kill Stephen Hawking, cause our national debt to explode (?what is is now?), and cause me to instantly die if I ever get sick in any way and am over 40 years old? Oh yea, and this apparently is also leading us in the same direction as the Nazis.

I am astonished that you fucking idiots actually believe this shit. I usually try to be cordial, but you fucking tools don’t deserve to waste my air by breathing it.

There is no excuse for ignorance. Don’t you get it, you need to believe half of what you see and none of what you hear. When you hear a rumor, go to a town hall meeting, and scream that rumor at someone, what are you expecting to accomplish? To be clear I actually don’t mind people getting emotionally invested in the topics and becoming outraged because of it. But if you are going to act like this, you better be justified. If you idiots had said something to the effect of: “I don’t want to be prioritized lower on the list for an MRI because my condition isn’t as dire as someone else’s” then at least you’ve done your homework about what exists in other universal-health-care-countries. Now… I would think that you are wrong and debate that point and ask how else people should be prioritized, but I would at least respect the fact that you made sure you knew what you were talking about.

When I see some idiot practically crying because she thinks we’re turning into Russia that just screams ignorance. The problem with Russia wasn’t socialist policies the problem was corruption. But that’s beside the point. Bringing the US up to the level of the rest of the world on the universal health care front is not turning into Russia.

ok, I’m done venting. Get a brain assholes.