The Wall Street Jour­nal (a pretty good source of infor­ma­tion if you avoid the edi­to­r­ial page) has an inter­est­ing break­down of the eco­nomic pol­icy changes pro­posed by both pres­i­den­tial candidates.

To respond to vot­ers who want imme­di­ate eco­nomic help, both can­di­dates have pro­posed spe­cific plans on how to jump-​start the econ­omy in 2008 and 2009. Sen. Obama pro­poses a $1,000 Emer­gency Energy Rebate to fam­i­lies ($500 for indi­vid­u­als) and penalty-​free with­drawals of 15% from 401(k)s and IRAs up to $10,000. He also wants to tem­porar­ily sus­pend min­i­mum dis­tri­b­u­tion require­ments for retire­ment accounts. Sen. McCain pro­poses cut­ting the capital-​gains rate on stock held for more than a year to 7.5%. He also would increase the amount of stock loss that is deductible against ordi­nary income from $3,000 to $15,000, and would tax with­drawals by seniors from IRAs and 401(k)s no more than 10%.

Obama vs. McCain: It’s About Your Money — WSJ.com

So Obama will off­set your energy bills by up to a grand, which will help work­ing fam­i­lies a lot this win­ter, and allow you take up to 15% of your 401(k) out to keep in the bank for pay­ing bills with­out penalty. Not bad.

McCain… really doesn’t sug­gest a damn thing for work­ing peo­ple. All of his sug­ges­tions cen­ter around stocks and mak­ing own­ing stocks more lucra­tive. Well, that’s great for peo­ple who own stocks, but what about the rest of us, John?

I have to admit I watched the Wall Street implo­sion over the last few weeks with no small amount of schaden­freude. I don’t own a lick of stock, so beyond the over­all impact to the econ­omy, I really don’t care what the stock mar­ket does. I may have lost buy­ing power due to the infla­tion we’re in for, but I per­son­ally didn’t lose a dime this month. Because I get 100% of my money from wages, the stock mar­ket doesn’t mean much to me.

That’s the key dif­fer­ence any­more between Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans. Democ­rats are the party of peo­ple who work for their money. Repub­li­cans are the party of peo­ple whose money works for them. If you get the major­ity of your income from wages, as most mid­dle class fam­i­lies do, Democ­rats are the party for you. If you get most of your money from invest­ments, then Repub­li­cans are more your speed.

So, “thanks but no thanks”, John. Cut­ting cap­i­tal gains taxes doesn’t do a damn thing to put more money in my pocket. Your ideas don’t help me at all. I’m vot­ing for “that one.”

Jason Per­low has an inter­est­ing arti­cle over on ZDnet about how the eco­nomic cri­sis might spur IT inno­va­tion to save costs. He’s focused mostly on a top-​down, enterprise-​focused “how the heck can we afford this dat­a­cen­ter” per­spec­tive, but it got me think­ing about netbooks.

Before long y’all are going to be as tired as my RL friends of hear­ing about net­books. I’ve recently pur­chased an HP 2133 Mini-​note, and it has com­pletely changed how I approach using a com­puter. I really think these small, cheap, “under-​specced” lap­tops are going to change com­put­ing. And it occurs to me that they might have appeared at a his­tor­i­cally per­fect moment.

The thing about net­books is that they can be so small and cheap pre­cisely because they don’t do as much as a “real” lap­top. Now over time the def­i­n­i­tion of a real lap­top has changed to the point that my writ­ing partner’s 15” lap­top has more power and bet­ter gam­ing per­for­mance than my desk­top, but that’s beside the point. Net­books are good enough to do about 80% of what you’d want to do with a com­puter. They’re great at email, surf­ing, light media (for instance, as I write this in Win­dows Live Writer, I have Out­look and Fire­fox open as well as tunes in Win­dows Media Player; works fine). In other words, they’re the per­fect sec­ond or kid’s PC for most fam­i­lies. As long as you’ve got one big desk­top in the home for the other 20% work, why would you buy any­thing but net­books from then on?

As we slowly stag­ger into the hol­i­day shop­ping sea­son, expect to see net­books sales sky­rocket while sales of desk­top and larger lap­tops tapers off.

Eco­nomic cri­sis as a tech­nol­ogy change agent | Tech Broiler | ZDNet.com

And sore losers, too, appar­ently. And the elec­tion hasn’t even hap­pened yet.

DENVER (AP) — Democratic Party offi­cials say a sec­ond brick has been thrown through a win­dow at Demo­c­ra­tic Party head­quar­ters in Den­ver. Spokesman Matt Far­rauto says the brick had the word “mav­er­ick” writ­ten on it.

9NEWS.com | Colorado’s Online News Leader | Dem head­quar­ters van­dal­ized by ‘mav­er­ick’ brick

It’s sad, really, that reac­tions like this (not to men­tion cries of “trai­tor!” and “kill him!” when Obama is men­tioned at McCain ral­lies) is what passes for Repub­li­can “Joe Six-​pack” com­men­tary. It’s not sur­pris­ing, but it is sad. It’s not sur­pris­ing because it’s become increas­ingly obvi­ous over the last decade or so that if you’re the kind of per­son who might throw a brick or drink any­thing that comes in a six-​pack, you have absolutely no busi­ness being a Repub­li­can in the first place. The cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance of any­one mak­ing under a mil­lion dol­lars a year who con­sid­ers them­selves a proud mem­ber of the GOP must be nearly crippling.

News­flash for the anony­mous brick thrower: John McCain and Sarah Palin don’t give a toasted damn about you. You’re noth­ing more than igno­rant can­non fod­der for their big money back­ers. Come to the Democ­rats. We’ll not only wel­come you with open arms, but we’ll actu­ally work for your own best inter­est. Think about it.