Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Rebellion???

The RNC this week is attempting to put together a resolution condemning the support of "socialist" policies by president Bush and some members of the House and Senate. The resolution is a chance for the RNC to stand on record against the bailouts and possible future 'stimulus packages'. But what of it? Is this a signal that the RNC will start taking back policy control of a party that has been hijacked for the last eight (if not 12) years by power brokers and religious zealots? Or is this simply what it appears to be; a non-binding statement attempting to shed blame for the actions that so clearly cost them control of the country?

This may very well be a solid step in the right direction for the RNC but I can't imagine it making even the remotest splash if it is limited to the bailout votes and to future inevitable 'stimulus'. If the RNC wants to get it's feet back on the ground and it's cards back in the game it must start with a complete and full scale disavowal of the anti-liberty policies of the Bush administration. They cannot in good conscience pretend to be outraged at the 'socialism' of the current economic situation, when they were never outraged at "No Child Left Behind", or the Patriot Act, or the largest expansion of non-military federal spending by any administration in the history of the world. It's ridiculous.

I have to applaud the RNC for this attempt to take back control of the Republican party from the power-hungry celebretards that have been in the drivers seat. But I can't applaud much, this gesture might have meant something at say, the convention. Now broken, beaten and out of power this simply looks like a weak attempt to shrug off blame for the mistakes for which they have been consciously complicit all along.

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Another Ebay Auction Lost

Why do people always sneak in and out bid me in the final two seconds of every ebay auction I participate in? This is ridiculous.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Snow Rules Driving

Although we are experiencing frigid temperatures in the mid 60's here in sunny Southern California, some of you out there are in the midst of actual winter. As I remember winter quite fondly and am very jealous I thought I would share a few tips for the road in these difficult conditions.

Driving in snow and ice can be a very frightening proposition particularly if you haven't done it before. But there are many things you can do to ready yourself and to make your winter driving experience safe and maybe even fun.

1. Slow Down: It seems like such and obvious point but it's often the point people forget first. One thing that people tend not to realize is that it is much easier to work your way up to an unsafe speed than it is to come back down from said speed. The reason is that if you are prudently applying force to the drive wheels of the car they will maintain some grip on the road as they are spinning. Stopped wheels, on the other hand do not continually work to hold the road.

2. It takes very little force to move a car in the wrong direction: Several years ago we had an ice storm at my parent's house. The neighbor up the hill (an experienced winter driver) pulled his car out of the garage and into the driveway to warm it up and wait for his wife so that they could drive to work together. Sitting in the driveway in park reading the newspaper he realized he felt the strange sensation of movement. When he pulled the paper down to look outside he realized that a slight cross breeze was pushing his 3500lb car sideways. Before he could react his car was pushed over an embankment and flipped over into his front yard. While parked he managed to flip and total his car. I tell this story to illustrate a point, that driving your car is all about applying force to make changes. Turn the wheel and the momentum of your car is creating force one way while the wheels are translating force in a different direction to cause you to turn. On slippery ground often the slightest force can put you into a troubling slide.

3. Know your car: Do you have front wheel drive or rear wheel drive? Do you have all wheel drive, perhaps four wheel drive? is your car heavier in the front or in the back? What kind of tires do you have and how to they work on ice? Do you have anti-lock brakes or not? All these things and more will drastically effect the way your car handles on slick surfaces. If you haven't driven in these conditions you should get yourself to a large empty parking lot and practice. Learn how your car stops and turns at different speeds. Practice safe braking techniques and learn how to control a slide.

4. Braking: Experts suggest you should at least double the amount of space you give yourself to stop or re-act. Under normal conditions you should leave yourself two car lengths for every 10 miles an hour. For ice make it at least four car lengths. When applying the brakes it's important to know if you have abs. Anti-lock brake systems respond to slippery conditions by stuttering the brake pressure at a high rate of speed. This allows the wheels to continue turning which helps maintain grip on the road, while slowing the vehicle down. If you do not have abs you should practice pumping your brakes in order to get the same effect. Pumping the brakes allows the wheels to slow while still moving and maintaining some level of control. But remember pumping the brakes when you do have abs will only disable the abs. Resist all urges to panic and lock up your brakes this will most certainly cause you to lose all control. An important note for those of us with SUV's four wheel drive is not four wheel stop. Four wheel drive will increase the mobility of your vehicle but once you take your foot off the gas and start to apply the brakes you are back in a regular car again.

5. Turning: In ice and snow turning is a tricky proposition and I will first remind you of rule 1... slow down. The important thing in a turn under these conditions is to maintain the movement of your wheels. This means slow down before the turn and then take your foot off the brake and apply some pressure to the gas on your way through the turn. With front wheel drive this is relatively simple as the front wheels are pulling the car through the turn. With a rear wheel drive vehicle this as with many other parts of ice driving, is more complicated. If you add too much gas to the rear wheels you can fishtail, over-steer, or simply push hard enough to break the turn wheels' grip on the road causing a slide. Prudence is a virtue here. If you have four wheel drive or awd this is where things are the best for you, in a slippery turn you should see driving force on all four wheels helping maintain stability through turns.

6. The Slide: The slide is the thing that keeps many a driver in the house next to the fire with hot cocoa in this kind of weather. When you begin to slide almost universally your instincts are wrong. The first thing you must concentrate on once the vehicle has lost traction and is sliding is returning control of the vehicle. Many many people have gotten in trouble with the instinctive reaction to try and stop everything. The brakes are not your friend in a slide. Experts say you should steer into a slide and apply some gas to re-establish grip with your tires, then steer your way to safety. This is where that parking lot practice session will be invaluable, learning how much gas is the right amount to maintain grip and how much is too much makes all the difference.

7. Smooth Moves: One overall piece of advice throughout your winter driving experience is that all of your moves should be smooth and steady. Panic reactions are learned in your countless hours of dry, safe conditions and simply do not work on ice. The brakes are a useful tool but more often than not they will get you into trouble.

8. Be Prepared: After the first snow you will find (as some friends of mine recently did) that snow chains and traction tires are out of stock quickly. If you live or travel in wintry areas buy a full set of chains and learn how to use them. You may not ever find yourself in a position to need them but boy are they a lifesaver if you do. And again practice, practice, practice.

9. Pay Attention: Maybe this should be rule 1.

Driving in bad weather can be very stressful but a few simple things will help to make it a safe and enjoyable part of your year.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Vilsack to Head Ag. Dept

With this morning's announcement of the appointment of Gov. Vilsack as sec. of Agriculture the Obama administration is signaling at least one if not a whole string of bad policy directions. For starters Vilsack, the Gov. from the great state of Iowa is and always has been firmly in the jacket pocket of the giant corporate protectionist corn lobby. He's spent more time on Monsanto's corporate jet than many of the execs that run the company. He is an outspoken advocate for the pro-ethanol policies and subsidies that are currently choking food supplies around the world. He stands in direct opposition to small family farms and protecting the rights of small farms to grow genetically un-modified foods should they choose. As if that wasn't enough as Gov. he showed himself and outspoken advocate of eminent domain and even attempted to veto a law restricting Iowa's eminent domain to areas that were slums. Apparently he was very disturbed that anyone would hem in the government's power to arbitrarily take viable homes and businesses away from citizens.

This is not only a poor choice by the Obama camp for the USDA, it also signals a willingness for them to hop into bed with big corporate interests right off the block. It lends no credence to the lip service paid throughout the campaign to protecting the small farm and resisting the sweeping corporate agribusiness lobby. Iowa and the corn lobby have had too large a strangle hold on this government for a great many years and this may prove the biggest step they have made against us since they pushed higher tariffs on imported cane sugar.

"Oh there's nothin halfway
about the Iowa way we treat you,
when we treat you,
which we may not do at all."

Monday, December 15, 2008

I'm Trying to Figure Out How the Republicans Lost

There must be some reason that people lost faith in the Republican party... Could it be the war? The Patriot Act? Hmmmm any ideas anyone?


Friday, December 12, 2008

Holy men

The more we see and hear it appears that the president elect has clean hands in the senate seat auction debacle. While to some it seems unreasonable that the giant Obama Chicago machine could possibly be free of ties in this case I can't help but wonder what would motivate them to be involved. I just don't see it and in fact I can only imagine scenarios in which it benefits the Obama camp to put the early pinch on efforts to manipulate them for money or influence. I could be wrong but I only predict any involvement from their camp proves to be on the up and up. There is no possible motivation for Obama or his emissaries to sit down and negotiate with a big fish in the Chicago pond after the victory and fund raising magic they have just completed. There's nothing that the Obama camps stands to gain from engaging in that kind of discussion. There is a place where they would stand to gain significant ground and that is through the intense and obvious denial of these efforts. It may not turn out to be the truth but I can picture a scenario where Rahm Emanuel is the catalyst behind this explosive situation, in that he may have handed this case over to the prosecutor. Obama comes out looking like a golden god of anti-corruption politics without ever really working on it, Rahm comes out with a credit in any future questions about his mobster-like style, and the team gets to hand a massive and very public ass kicking to the corrupt and influential left wing machine. This includes of course the honorable Reverend Jesse Jackson who may very well prove to be the long term loser in this mess.

The honorably Rev. Jesse Jackson and his similarly honorable son had much to gain and no history of scruples to protect them. Look for trouble in that camp as I'd imagine an embattled governor looking for a deal. I'm sure he's more willing to roll on the honorable Reverend than Karin Stanford.

I could be wrong this is all mystic prediction, but I'd bet even odds that the honorable Rev. and his family are talking hard with the lawyers and aren't any less sure than I am about their involvement in this debacle.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

32 Republicans that Voted FOR the Auto Bailout

Barton (TX), Buyer, Camp (MI), Capito, Castle, Ehlers, Emerson, English (PA), Frelinghuysen, Hoekstra, Hunter, King (NY), Knollenberg, LaHood, LaTourette, Lewis (KY), Manzullo, McCotter, McCrery, McHugh, Miller (MI), Murphy, T. , Porter, Ramstad, Regula, Rogers (MI), Ryan (WI)Smith (NJ), Souder, Upton, Walsh (NY), Young (AK)
awesome ad

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Chicago Politics are the Best in the World

Once again the Illinois political machine has brought graft and corruption to the front pages of the political world. The Governor of Il. was allegedly trying to sell the United States Senate seat soon to be vacated by President Elect Obama. Among other crimes included in a three year investigation by the FBI. Gov. Blagojevich seems to have spent a significant amount of time, effort and influence to silence his detractors in the press as well.

This isn't an isolated incident as we all know. The Chicago political scene has long been a breeding ground for corruption. And it doesn't just effect things locally. I have it on good authority that a large part of the Alaskan political corruption that Gov. Palin claims to have cleaned up was funded and organized with Chicago mafia money.

It's no wonder that particularly the left wing of the Chicago political world doesn't want to play by the same rules that the rest of us follow; they have a long history of just that and the political ideology to justify it to themselves. They started a lifestyle of large scale criminal ignorance of law during prohibition when of course it made sense. The tradition carried on in a strong way with the radical left during the 1960's. Chicago bred such fantastic political criminals as Saul Alinski and of course Jesse Jackson.

I'm not sure what it is about Illinois that makes this kind of thing in bulk but it seems pretty obvious that the leading export from that state is political corruption.

Hey where did the President Elect start his career?

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

See... It happens.

This hunter should have had a bigger rifle and perhaps this kind of business could be prevented.

Monday, December 01, 2008

Blurred Lines

The Pentagon has finally funded it's long time desire to use the US Millitary against it's own citizens. More to come.

Saturday, November 29, 2008

This is Terrifying

Stand by for the Future Crimes Division. Why does science fiction seem to only be right about the scary shit?.. And where is my flying car?

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Tanner on Baucus' Health Care

Michael D. Tanner over at the Cato Institute addresses Sen. Max Baucus' plan for the demise of health care in America. Here's hoping Baucus fails as it seems he would like to take down small business and the Insurance Industry as well.

"Businesses will almost inevitably respond by reducing hiring or cutting back on wages or other benefits. Any proposal that is likely to make business less likely to hire workers is a particularly bad idea right now with the economy sliding into a recession."

Read the Article Here

Friday, November 21, 2008

Not all Bad Things are Bad Things

It has been brought to my attention that I have, of late, perhaps been slightly negative regarding the winner of the presidential election. Some have expressed concern that I may only be seeing the bad side of having an immensely popular and charismatic communist with no reasonable congressional opposition as the leader of the free world. I will, therefor attempt to assuage the concerns of my readers with a small break from my alarmist railings. I present to you a list of potentially positive things that could result from the election of President Elect Obama.

1. John McCain isn't the President of the United States. While I'm not convinced he was the greater of two evils, he was and is most certainly evil. It must be said that the inevitable positive in dueling scoundrels is that in the end there is one less scoundrel.

2. The Republican party of the last twelve years has most assuredly reached it's demise and not a moment too soon. For those of us with Liberty in our veins the steady swing of the Grand Old Party away from limited government and free people and towards backwoods religious idiocy has been a painful one. Now the party and those of us that left it can look for opportunities to re-think, re-shape, re-build the Freedom Movement in America. The Republican party can choose to come with us or it can go the way of countless other long forgotten parties in American History. This election and a government entirely run by the Left has the potential of freeing a great many people who had feared that a bad Republican party was still worth supporting. Now we can all clearly see that the left is firmly in charge and the bloated ignorant pig that is today's Republican party was impotent in stopping them.

3. Racism? In America? Nah. Not even the French will have the gall to continue to call America a racist nation. Lets see how long it takes them to get a black President.

4. The difference between a big government loving Republican party, and a big government loving Democrat party is that at least the Liberty Movement has a clear and obvious opponent now. The current administration can't do much more to destroy individual liberty than their predecessors and this way we can still pick up support from those that were previously unwilling to abandon the Republicans while they held the reins.

5. If President Obama turns out to not be as bad as I think he is, well then that's good news all around. If he does turn out to be that bad, then an iconic figure is just as effective for his opposition as he is for his supporters. The Democrats can tell you it's easy to raise money and support when you have one central figure to rally against. Where would they have been if Bush had been a fantastic guy?

6. The media loved Obama but I doubt it was for political reasons. The media love anything that makes people pay attention to them. The very least that can be said for this election and it's results. I'll have no shortage of things about which to write.

7. Maybe the results of this presidential election and the passage of Measure 8 in California will finally wake the Gay Community up to the fact that the Democrats just plain don't like them. The Liberty Movement has plenty of room for them and following the Democratic party has once again left them out in the cold.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Beware Obama Minions

I choose to be wary of those that fight fights that are either un-winnable or ill-defined. They always seem to start of with the best of intentions and they never seem to end. Things that don't end, that don't have a logical conclusion, are generally trouble. Take the war in Iraq for example, we freed a troubled nation from a murdering tyrant, but what then? Now we are wading through a quagmire if ever there was one. Look at the 'war on drugs' no real goals there but we have miles of legislation every year, billions of dollars in funding, rampant and wild increases in violent crime, but no real progress in reducing the use and abuse of drugs. What about the 'war on poverty'? How's poverty doing? William Ayers and the Weather Underground declared war on Capitalism; Capitalism seems to be doing alright, just ask Bill who is about to re-release his book in the wake of his new found fame. He's working on another book too. Seems he's not so anti-capitalism after all. I wonder how the families of those cops and security guards he helped kill feel about his change of heart.

We talk a lot about big ideas in this country. Though some say not enough. We seem to be awash with crises, financial crises, terrorism crises, fiscal spending crises here in California. Every where you look there's a crisis. Each and every one calling for immediate action. But are we solving anything? We had a terrorism seven years ago, are we any less scared now? Or are we just less likely to fly?

The thing about ill-defined fights is that you never really know when they are over. If they never end then you never know when to stop funding them. It's a long held belief of those in the government that everything will be alright (unlike how it is now) if only we give them enough money. But what happens to a movement when all the original goals, stated or otherwise, have been met? Seems to me the movement would declare victory and disband. When was the last time you saw that happen? Is it wrong of me to wonder how the same people who stood next to Martin Luther King Jr., who helped in the fight to establish voting rights and to de-segregate the schools, are still working the same jobs they were then? Why is the Reverend Jesse Jackson still fighting the civil rights movement? He won didn't he? We have a black president, what could the civil rights movement possible have left to do? Of course Rainbow Push brings in millions of dollars annually it would be hard to fire all those people. I guess they'll have to find something to do.

That's the thing about political movements, when you drastically swell the number of people working for what looks like temporary gigs. Pretty soon they want job security. Job security is a tough thing in fights that can be won.

Power is an interesting thing. Get a group of people together to fight for something they think is really important and when they get it, they'll want to know what's next. The more they win, the more they think whatever the leadership tells them must be good. The danger is in the baby steps. First your candidate, he's an ok guy. Next this bill, or that bill. Next comes the revocation of one or two little rights. No big deal, we trust in the movement. At this point you are wondering if I'm wearing a tin-foil hat. But it happens, more often than not. People throughout history have engaged in all kinds of vile things when brought to them a little bit at a time. Specifically when a movement, bigger than those leading it, brought them there. Movements have a way taking on a life of their own. Game shows are like this. Many of the most popular game-shows today ask contestants to risk huge sums of money, they would never have bet, for just one more step up the ladder of success. If you can win $10,000, why not risk it for $100,000. It all looks good from inside the movement.

Just keep in mind that in the days ahead clear goals, clear boundaries, and clear stated intentions are the keys to success in any project, business, personal pursuit, or government action. Ill-defined fights are far more dangerous than anything this or that government has in mind. Ill-defined fights will stick around and be run by the enemies of us all. This president for better or worse will be gone in no more than eight years, what happens to his policies depends entirely on who is left to play with the tools he puts in place. So far 'Hope' and 'Change' are the plan. It's time to tie that down to specifics.

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

An Open Letter to House Republicans

Are you feeling a bit lonely, sad. Does it feel like no one around understands you? When you walk those long dim hallways with nothing to do, does it feel like you don't have any friends anymore? Do your days not fill up with legislative work like they used to? Are lobbyists not knocking down your door as they once did?

It may seem like the whole world has passed you by. Just remember the sagely advice that has long carried people in your position.

Quit your whining, you brought this on yourselves. And furthermore you brought it on the rest of us. Count yourselves lucky you still get a paycheck. Get to work thinking of ways you can apologize for the shameful behavior that got you into this mess and start reading the founding principles of your party.

You increased the size and scope of non-military government spending more than any Democrat led government in your lifetimes.

You voted to encroach on the civil liberties of your constituents over and over again.

You caved to environmental extremists when you knew the science didn't support them.

You allowed the whims of those environmental extremists to increase already bloated corn subsidies while driving UP the cost of corn and therefor almost all food products.

You waged a wildly unpopular war without international support, and even if it was the right choice... You lied to us to get into it.

You voted for almost a trillion dollars in bailouts to rich bankers who as expected didn't loosen credit markets with it at all. You knew it wouldn't work and you knew the citizens were against it.

But you did spend the better part of the last 8 years worrying about whether Jill and Sarah might want to do insidious creepy things, like visit each other in the hospital, and leave things to each other should they die unexpectedly.

You did spend the better part of the last 8 years worrying about steroids in baseball, and Terry Schiavo, and where we can and can't display symbols of our religions.

Don't even think about blaming anyone but yourselves. We gave you all the tools to do good things and you pissed them away. You did this, you made this bed, you put yourself in this position and you should be thankful for every day you have left in office.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Elk Season

I will be in Oregon for the next week or so stalking the elusive Spike Elk. I will be mobile blogging here: http://sinnersaremuchmorefun.blogspot.com/ whenever I have service enough to send pics and posts. I will be in Oregon for the election but will be out of the woods by next Sunday so I'll try to post more here after that.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

A Note on Growth

Just an update to my previous post addressing Robert Skidelsky's article, if we had followed his beloved Keynesian economic model and experienced the stable 3.2percent growth he is so enamored with... The Dow would be in the mud 3000s today. How would your retirement account look then?

Monday, October 20, 2008

The John Kerry of the Republican Party

When the Democrats have a veto proof super majority just remember that the Republican party did this to you.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Dead Economics Rearing it's Ugly Head

Robert Skidelsky supposes in the Washington Post yesterday that economist John Maynard Keynes' economic theories would aptly have predicted the current financial crisis, and ostensibly prevented it. Skidelsky couldn't be more wrong nor more misguided. It's not a mystery that as a Keynes biographer Skidelsky would take this opportunity to hawk the Keynesian ideology but he does so with an obvious lack of understanding of both the effects of Keynesian economics nor the theories he claims to debunk.

He writes:

"...what is in even shorter supply than credit is an economic theory to explain why this financial tsunami occurred, and what its consequences might be. Over the past 30 years, economists have devoted their intellectual energy to proving that such disasters cannot happen. The market system accurately prices all trades at each moment in time. Greed, ignorance, euphoria, panic, herd behavior, predation, financial skulduggery and politics -- the forces that drive boom-bust cycles -- only exist off the balance sheet of their models."

The forces to which he is referring can be summed up in one phrase, the title of one of Ludwig Von Mises' seminal works Human Action, and to suggest that Keynes discovered some magical theory for predicting human action is more than misleading. Keynes as we can recall has been shown the architect and follower of a school of economics long since discredited as the type of policy that made the Great Depression last as long as it did. Keynes in fact advocated the kind of price manipulation that led us to the situation we are in today.

Skidelsky further writes:

"It held that governments should vary taxes and spending to offset any tendency for inflation to rise or productivity to fall. And for roughly 25 years -- from 1950 to 1975 -- they did. The developed world grew at an average annual rate of 3.2 percent without a business cycle, with very moderate inflation, and without the benefit of the huge rewards now deemed necessary to keep executives properly incentivized."

Bold times to reference until you considering the fact that such growth is modest at best when compared to a skyrocketing workforce and massive post war productivity. While inflation was stable during that time period it is important to understand that most of the inflation our economy was creating was exported along with the goods and services we sold to other nations whose infrastructures were recovering from the physical effects of a war we did not see on our soil.

"Plagued by inflation, governments around the world took up Friedman's monetarism, which maintained that inflation was due to governments' printing too much money. Central banks were made independent (the Fed already was) and were given the single task of keeping prices stable. Moreover, financial innovation in increasingly deregulated markets was said to make investment less and less risky"

While Friedman did advocate the policies that the FED has used to manage deflation. It's important though to understand that Friedman's monetarism was an answer to the failings of the Keynesian model, not simply an opposing viewpoint but an attempt to fix the failings within his framework. And further that it was not the absence of market manipulation simply manipulation through monetary policy and not fiscal policy. Suggesting that returning to Keynes from Friedman is like returning to the horse and buggy to improve vehicle fuel economy. Keynes didn't oppose market manipulation in fact he loved it, he simply believed in manipulation through the other end of the IS-LM framework. Keynes wanted to manipulate the market through the government's fiscal policy (government taxes and expenditures). That's an important distinction to make when you examine Congress' roll in creating lending policy and in it's encouragement and backing of Fannie May and Freddie Mac. We are in this situation in large part because of the kind of management that Keynes advocated.


"The price level is not a leading, but a lagging, indicator. Asset bubbles can coexist with a stable price level, even while the rest of the economy is starting to slide into depression."

Price is in fact a much more tuned indicator than Skidelsky suggests and while correct that it is not a leading indicator it is the first indicator in a market where it is properly allowed to do it's important job. Price, for instance would and did predict the current crises. The price of homes and mortgages took a drastic and unrealistic upturn while becoming inexplicably dissected from it's usual bedfellow; the rental price indexes. When home prices became separated drastically from rental prices it was an all too obvious indicator of things to come and free market economists have been screaming about it for years now.

He quotes Keynes
"Money, he argued, was being switched from production to speculation. The rich were getting very much richer, while the incomes of the rest were stagnating. "Profit inflation," fueled by collateralized debt, coexisted with an "income deflation.""

And here while he isn't entirely wrong about the events that occurred it is beyond obscene to suggest that the economy of the 1920's with years of prolonged negative growth, resembles the positive growth we have seen even this year in times of turmoil. What's more is that it's clearly not the same kind of "speculation" dissected from production when our economy is booming with production in a great many sectors. While it's true that wages have stagnated recently it's not in the neighborhood of the kind of stagnation that Keynes saw and responded to.

Skidelsky is correct that the most modern economic models do not predict with great accuracy things like what we have seen this year in our economy. That is as we expect because math has a very tough time predicting the very important elements of a person's full (not just financial) self interest, nor the choices that people will make when given the opportunity. Skidelsky is wrong however to suggest that Keynesian models would have predicted this; unless taken as such a vague suggestion that in 'this kind of market instability exists'. What's more important is to note that under Keynesian market management growth, prosperity, and market innovation are greatly stifled by fiscal policy constantly, and with only the vague hope of preventing the short moments of market instability that naturally occur. Regulatory market manipulation, the likes of which Keynes advocated contributed untold force to the current economic situation in this country and only the market and it's vast ability to re-connect prices with their intended properties of communication and incentive, will restore order.

The answer is not simply a return to one form of market manipulation over another. The answer is to implement policies that allow markets to experience the natural adjustments that occur when prices are out of equilibrium with real value. The Austrian model suggests just that. In the theories of F.A. Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises we would see not only the prediction Skidelsky wishes for but also the acceptance that in the long run the market will ebb and flow, prices will inflate and deflate, naturally in order to maintain proper and efficient relationships between producers, consumers, workers, employers and investors.

The problem Mr. Skidelski isn't the wrong manipulation, it is that manipulation is wrong.

Monday, October 13, 2008

On Paul Krugman

Peter J. Boettke discusses just some of the reasons the choice of Paul Krugman for the Nobel Prize in Economics is a terrible idea.

The Worst News Yet

PAUL KRUGMAN WINS THE NOBEL PRIZE?

This bodes very poorly for the future of our society. Paul Krugman writes an Op-Ed column for the New York Times, has taught at Yale, MIT and is currently a professor at Princeton. He's also a commie.

In his recent book The Conscience of a Liberal he writes;

"My generation grew up in a nation of strong democratic values and broadly shared prosperity. But both those values and that shared prosperity have been slipping away.

"We can reverse that trend. Political and economic reform turned the oligarchic America of the Gilded Age, a place of vast inequality, bigotry, and corruption, into the imperfect but far better society of the postwar era. The challenge now is to do again what the New Deal did: to create institutions that will support and sustain a decent society."

Are you kidding me? The Nobel Prize for a man who advocates a return to the socialist economic policies that the economics world widely regards as the very thing that kept us in the Great Depression for so long? A man alive during our time, who can actually watch the failure of entitlement ideology like Social Security and still advocates a return to that kind of policy?

Paul Krugman just last night applauded the EU for massive bank nationalizations. This is stupider than when the Nobel went to Gore for learning to use Power-Point.

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

SNL is Sometimes Balanced



Of course when you watch the re-edited version on NBC's website you'll notice that certain parts including a personal interaction between a subprime lender's wife and Nance Pelosi have been edited out. NBC claims that the skit has been edited for 'legal reasons' but that doesn't stand up. It's clear the skit has been edited to lessen the implication that the Democrats in congress were personally involved with the beneficiaries of the inequitable profits in the failing mortgage market. Also removed was the title for the mortgage subprime lenders calling them "people who deserve to be shot". Which is an understandably irresponsible thing to put on tv and likely was removed to assuage the risk of litigation against NBC should subprime lenders actually be shot by disgruntled citizens.

What Do We Do Now

Alright I've railed against the bailout quite a bit and I have tried to shed a little light on how we ended up in this mess in the first place. So to recap I have presented exactly dick for useful information for the average person and for their future. Sure maybe I have had a positive impact on how you might vote against the scummy dirtbags that voted to piss away your money, but as of now I have presented next to no real advice.

So here it is.

DONT PANIC...

In case I wasn't clear I'll repeat

DONT PANIC...

Alright now that I know you have ignored that advice here's a little more. If you absolutely need complete liquidity in the next five years, if you will completely divest yourself of your stock portfolio due to some overwhelming liquidity need, then get out of the stock market right now. I'm not arriving at this decision by myself, in fact I may have been swayed by Jim Cramer. Cramer has to be smarting in part due to his massive public attempt to draw attention to this impending financial crisis in August of last year. It must be the hardest time to find out you were completely right.

With that said and out there, if you do not need to completely liquidate your portfolio in the next five years, DO NOT PANIC. Stay right where you are and take a very long hard look at the holdings in your portfolio. If you own stock in the specific institutions that are going bankrupt, you will likely lose money. If you have high risk venture capital in your portfolio you will probably lose money. Now is the time to pay very close attention to the stable choices in your portfolio and reinforce them. If you own stock in well established, long standing companies with substantial physical resources, stay put, do not bail on those investments. If anything pull together liquid capital and standby to move into markets where the index driven market fears have driven prices to unusual lows but where balance sheets remain intact. This can be the best opportunity for substantive growth in your investment based income you will ever see if you have the time, the patience and the fortitude to ride this out.

Remember if the worst fears come true, which they wont, then it doesn't matter what you do with your money. If they don't come true, which they won't, then the best thing to do is find shelter in long term stable investments, with companies that have real property. Don't invest in companies that make money by moving money, don't by shares in your bank. Soon we will see lows that we haven't seen in years and that's the right time to buy good strong companies. If you do own high risk stocks in financial institutions, take a very long hard look at them and if you need to take a loss to get out before they fall apart then do it, but by all means do not put the cash under your mattress, there are plenty of good companies with a history of weathering storms to shift into at a lower cost than you might ever see again.

As for Congress, we have a bailout allocation and while I'm going to continue to call for their resignations for this massive socialist takeover, now is the time for forward thinking. What do we do now, not last week, but this week? The FED is out of control and needs to be reigned in and while I don't trust a United States Congressman and further than I can throw him, the Congress is the only body in a position to implement some oversight into our currency policy. There's no time like the present. We must find a way to tie the FED's currency decisions to the market in order to prevent bubbles like this in the future. Next, and I am completely stealing this idea from Cramer, if we are going to spend $700b at a time buying these bad assets, then the government needs to renegotiate them one by one and find acceptable terms to keep people paying them off, and then needs to involve private businesses in buying the rebuilt mortgages for a fair price. There is room for the market to actually grow with this new process and if we let private business participate we may yet see an overall gain from it. I doubt highly the balance sheet at government program level will turn a profit here, but they may at least be able to break even while pumping positive growth into the economy. So while I oppose buying the debt in the first place, the government has the unique ability to bend the rules, adjust the value of the mortgages and resell them at real value instead of panic value. Lets all sit back and see if that's what they do. And pay attention this program will need to be revoked at some point. We pass this garbage and then forget about it, we need to keep tight watch over it. Remember the income tax was originally designed to pay back debt from the Spanish American War. I'm not sure but I think we payed that back, but the tax is still going strong.

The next step, and one that congress should take seriously in it's lame duck session in November is to restructure the lending laws to allow institutions to implement any form of lending discrimination they see fit and let the market pick which banks get the loans. Work to find a way to make sense of bundled debt and if any new regulation is required, let it be that risk assessment criteria must be included with each individual debt bundle when it is resold.


And finally we need to make damned sure that Washington feels in it's pockets the hard hitting disapproval of their constituents. If you can't vote for your sitting Congressman's opponent because his party or policy disagrees with your ideology then by all means under vote the slot. Cast a ballot and don't mark a choice in that race. If you can vote for a third party, do it. If your Congressman or Senator made the right choice in this case, call them and let them know, then vote for them in Nov. We may not shift the outcome of the election cycle drastically this year with this effort, but we can shift the debate and we can get them running scared.

And by all means...

DONT PANIC

Monday, October 06, 2008

Drowned By the Anchor

Some people have been asking me of late why it is that such a small portion of the Mortgage market falling into default can bring down the entire economy. I'm not an economics genius but I know a few and am more than willing to henpeck their ideas in order to make my analysis of the situation seem more reasonable than it might have in the first place. I don't have a PHD but I assume that the shameless rape of another person's ideas in order make to make yours seem more plausible, if only by the manipulation of context and syntax, is the highest road to intellectual development. The same is most certainly true of religious zealotry and I can't imagine that higher education and the church differ all that much in their methods.

So I will attempt to make sense of how a relatively small shift in one area of the market can inject the kind of issues we've seen this month. The answer is not drastic shifts in actual money as one might imagine being necessary. The answer is quite reasonably uncertainty. The stock market and most other forms of trade based solely on the movement of money and not real goods, is simply like most markets a place for the exchange of risk from one source to another. Risk is the central theme of it all and is the means by which fortunes are made on Wall Street. For example if I have a company and want to try and make it bigger and better I need to invest money into it, if I invest all my own money I get all the profit but also take all the risk should my endeavor fail. If I offer a percentage of the business up for sale in the form of stock (or any number of other forms) I allow the business to be propped up on another person's money, in exchange for them sharing the risk, they also share in the possible profit. The end result is a positive one for the most part as a well examined risk is one that can be worth taking for the investor and the needed capital can be the thing that makes my business successful for both me and my investors. The problem is that when external factors to that arrangement constrain one or both parties from examining the risk they are buying, then the unknown risks make investment scary and scared investors don't invest.

To bring this into our mortgage 'crisis' scenario think of it this way; Fannie and Freddie by urging and by regulation sent a message to the lending community that they were willing to purchase any debt no matter how high the risk, as long as that debt contained the right quantity of people fitting the right physical description. That of course being an address in the poorest, least fortunate neighborhoods. In order to make the sales of these high risk assets worth while up the food chain, they had to be bundled with large quantities of low risk loans. When bundled together and sold over and over again from one lending institution to another the street level risk gets lost in a pile of numbers that average with other numbers repeatedly. The influx of loose cash on the housing market drove prices up as one would imagine. One of the things about the housing industry is that it has historically been a safe place to invest money for moderate growth over any period of time. In this case a drastic increase in capital without a corresponding increase in wages, meant that people were buying beyond their means. Functionally what we saw was a price increase driven solely by an increase in the number of people participating in the real estate market, not by actual economic growth or prosperity. All of this predicated on 'guarantees' issued by government backed lending institutions to buy all this higher risk debt.

But we know this already because you and I have a television or a radio and haven't heard anything but this for weeks.

But it's not a huge quantity of default. Sure a ton of people have loans that will be larger than the actual value of their homes for a very long time, but most are still making payments on those loans. Why then is the disaster afoot? It's simple really, the bundling of those high risk loans with other loans throughout the market and the sale of those bundled products repeatedly throughout the market have taken away any simple method for assessing the risk in any individual package of debt. With no firm way to assess risk there's no way to set a scale for acceptable loss, there is no way to set a fair price for sale. No one knows which packages of debt have the most high risk debt and which have the least. Nobody buys uncertain risk at a reasonable price. So thousands upon thousands of good loans are on the market for way below market price and people still aren't buying. Banks who responsibly wish to protect the real assets of their depositors are hesitant to lend money to other banks on the basis of the wild level of uncertainty in their real assets.

Bluntly, you can't see from the outside of these packages if there's more anchor than boat and nobody wants to take the risk. When people aren't willing to take risks businesses stop working.

How the government thinks they have any better shot at picking out the bad risk than the financial institutions holding the packages is beyond me.

Or maybe I'm reading everything wrong.

Saturday, October 04, 2008

October Surprise?

Biden on the way out?

In private a month or so ago I predicted a scenario when things got desperate enough for the Obama campaign that Senator Biden would suddenly have a tragedy in the family that took him out of the race and the only acceptable replacement would be Hillary. At the time I made that prediction Obama's post convention numbers were nothing like they should be considering trends and historical averages. Most of that was due to the Palin addition to McCain's camp. Today it was announced that Biden would be missing some stops including a rally in Virginia due to the terminal nature of his mother-in-law's current condition. Comment pools in online news sources are starting to grow momentum for the idea that this is the time to swap VP choices. I just don't see it.

When I made that prediction the conditions were a moment of desperation, and Biden presenting a serious lag on the campaign. Right now that's not the case and while I'm sure Obama kicked himself several times for his 'safe' VP choice I seriously doubt that a 7 point lead and a strong momentum in swing states is the time to make that change. I doubt highly that Hillary would accept the offer if the campaign wasn't in a very weak position (making her look like the D's shining hero). And I doubt very highly that the chosen family emergency would be the passing of an elderly in-law.

I could be wrong and this might be the shift that takes ol' Joe out of the picture, but I just don't see it. If at the end of the month numbers for Obama have plummeted drastically then I'll return to the point but if sometime this week there's an announcement, count me in the wrong column.

As for right now I'm still busy trying to figure out who is hurt more by the passing of the wildly unpopular, pork filled, bloated embarrassment of a 'bailout' package that caused a drop, yes a DROP in the stock market. I know my Congressman and longtime family friend will get two less votes this election because of his choice to back socialism over the free market and free people.

Friday, October 03, 2008

VP Debate

I'm not going to spend a ton of time on the debate. I don't find them to be crazy interesting. They are, for the most part, barely able to make any positive progress and serve only as mine-fields for those involved. In terms of influence over poling information and trends, sure they have some. But it's hard to point to any debate moment in recent history where we actually learned something about a candidate's policy.

With that in mind I will say that Gov. Palin and Sen. Biden both conducted themselves with a relatively high level of respectability. I could spend a ton of time dealing with all the times Sen. Biden stretched the truth in his answers but the pundits will do it for me. I could also spend a ton of time talking about how badly it must have hurt him to backtrack on comments he has made about Obama and his policies, but again there are plenty of voices to do that for me.

Gov. Palin registers a clear and measurable success in this debate as she has presented herself as having all the qualifications that people accuse her of lacking and lacking all the negative qualities people accuse her of having. That said, Joe Biden has 30 years of experience promoting bad ideas in the US Senate, and tonight he eloquently and professionally expressed his next round of bad ideas. Gov. Palin has only a small legislative record to draw on and only some of those ideas are terrible. Biden draws on his extensive experience to ably control portions of the debate, and while I think on strict debate terms he might edge out a victory, I think in the fight for public opinion he remains a boring communist.

Monday, September 29, 2008

No Socialism Today Thanks!

The American people sent congress a message this week and Congress tried something it's never tried before. They listened. A bloated $700b bailout bill was defeated this morning by the United States House of Representatives. I'm not sure of the specifics but I believe this is the first time the House has ever said no to spending of any kind.

The FED of course responded with $630b worth of it's inflated fake money to ensure 'liquidity' in this time of 'crisis'. Or so the press who apparently love Henry Paulson more than they love even Barack Obama, would have you believe.

Of course I don't think we've heard the last of this issue on the House floor. There will be another bill, and it will look a little different. It may be safe to say that come November it's not a closed ballgame anymore for House seats. This is a game changer for the Republicans at least. Some 90+ so called Blue-Dog D's have taken a step towards protecting their seats and I'll have to take some time to analyze the voting records to see who still sits on an uneven perch when the dust settles. But R's who were in vulnerable seats in this heated and very D' heavy election season have made a major sweep in their own defense and their opponents will only have their party emblem to tie them to the issue, no protest vote on record to save them.

I don't see how the D's can let Nancy Pelosi remain in her seat after the election as she has taken every hope and dream the D's ever had and flushed them down the toilet of the last two years. After all she turned a clear electoral mandate into the least popular congress ever and then couldn't even wrangle her own party to help pass what she thought was the most important legislation of our time.

Reports had Pelosi composing the actual language of the bill behind closed doors, going so far as to take blackberry's away from her staff so that the actual language and contents of the bill would remain a mystery until the very last minute. Perhaps that's not the kind of secrecy that the Unites States needs within it's lawmaking body.

On negative for the public about a failure to pass this bloated socialism in the House is that we don't get to see this morning how the two Senators in the Presidential race would vote. I think we know from the rhetoric this week that even though only 28 percent of the public wanted the bill, both candidates were emphatically in favor of it.

It's odd mojo for me to see the leader of the Democratic House jumping so wholeheartedly behind a bailout proposed and designed by the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, and a Bush appointed Treasury Secretary, all while trying to blame the entire financial situation on the Bush financial team... When I see a bus in flames heading for the train-tracks I don't think 'hey let's jump on board'. Unless of course the bus isn't really on fire, and there aren't really any train tracks, but if I hop on the bus with the crazy guy driving, maybe I'll get to drive a bus. I do like buses.

Friday, September 26, 2008

To Own a Home in the State of Nature

Why isn't anyone anywhere looking at the fact that housing prices were becoming irrationally, and unreasonably high in the first place?

In 1995 Bill Clinton and the 104th congress pushed through legislation altering the Community Reinvestment Act, in essence to promote more home ownership in what were considered to be overlooked, poorer and often minority neighborhoods. A1992 Federal Reserve Bank study on lending determined that a disproportionately small number of minorities were being approved for loans. The first instinct of Washington politicians was not that we as a country needed to address the potential issue that a disproportionately large number of minorities in America were needlessly poor and had bad credit; no the response was predictably that the banking industries method's for calculating lending risk were hopelessly outdated and wildly racist. The result was well over a decade of public policy aimed at forcing lending institutions to adopt low income and high risk neighborhoods. In order to maintain a favorable ranking with the Federal Government (a CRA ranking as came to be called) lenders had to comply or face fines, loan penalties and major roadblocks in deals like mergers and acquisitions. In order to assuage the risk that banks knew existed while complying with federal regulations and HUD policy, banks did two main things. The first was to offer mortgages at variable interest rates in order to ensure that if the cost of federal loans went up they wouldn't lose money. These adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) meant that they could offer reasonable rates to attract high risk borrowers, as long as the FED did the same, but then they could raise rates to cover potential losses when FED rates rose. This as a banker seems like a reasonable idea until you factor in massively inflated home prices (due to too much lending) and stagnating wages.

The second thing the banking institutions did was to package extremely risky debt with extremely safe debt and sell it to larger lending institutions under the average overall risk ratings. The problem with this is of course that risk factors on main street are easier to observe in person than they are from thousands of miles away based only on a few numbers. The Federal Government added to this lending trend with the heavy the handed promotion of HUD's government backed lending institutions like Fannie May and Freddie Mac. These government backed lenders worked hard, and were encouraged by the Federal Government to promote and purchase as many of these complicated risk balanced debt packages as they could acquire. In essence the government was creating a giant banking competitor with a virtual guarantee that drove the market to deeply invest in these debt packages with no real understanding of the street level risk. There's no way the market can, by itself, escape a predatory competitor as large and unwieldy as the Federal Government and the government systems within which banks are required to operate. The result when coupled with the low interest rates and loose lending policy in a post 9/11 panic economy, is not simply the collapse of the system we are seeing now, but the precipitation of this collapse by the drastic and unrealistic increase of home prices. Take a look at every aspect of the housing market, from sales to renovation, over the last ten years and you will see the bloody opportunistic profiteering that can only occur in unrealistically sharp market increases. Entire cable TV channels sprung up over night, devoted to flipping houses in what many believed was a magically growing housing market. Prices just couldn't seem to stop multiplying.

The problem is that more and more people, responsible workers, middle class families, and careful investors went looking for that first home and saw a market that had vastly out-priced their stagnating wages, and had inflated beyond the means of their hard earned savings. What had begun as a program to promote increased lending to high risk mortgagees became the only game in town with home prices soaring to astronomical levels.

To put it another way, bad mortgages and bad mortgagees are and have been preventing responsible savers and wage earners from paying the right price for a home. When too many people move into a market with money no one should have lent them, and when at the urging of the government they overextend their reach, they compete with people who live responsibly and who do not overextend their reach. Hard working middle class Americans have been bamboozled by the entire length of this process, not just this end of it. And when we use tax dollars that come from the middle (and yes the wealthy) classes to 'bail out' these institutions, we are in actuality punishing the same people who are already being punished by higher home prices. Whats more the punishment comes in the interest of saving a system that will continue to lend irresponsibly to the segment of the population who, for better or worse, doesn't pay much if any income taxes and who will continue to buy beyond their means.

It's time for the banking industry to take it's own knocks, to tighten it's own policy, and to make the kind of guarantees that investors need to put actual capital into shoring up these ugly debts. Loans from the government can only serve to increase liquidity in these organizations which will only allow them the time they need to sell off what good assets they have left at more appropriate prices. These loans will not make good debt out of bad, and they will not save dying institutions. Every investor knows that you don't make money buying bad debt, but you do make money buying stock in a good company in times of misfortune. Private investment and sensible lending policy is the only recipe' for success in a situation like this.

A better use of the Federal Government's time and money would be to address why we are a country that isn't friendly to the businesses that would hire the poor and less fortunate. To the market, people are not races they are resources. If we foster private business in this nation, we will encourage businesses to take advantage of every available resource. A person with a good job, in a strong community is a responsible lending choice. There is no way to turn an irresponsible lending choice into a responsible lending choice simply by making them a loan recipient. And there is no way to turn a bad lending choice into a good lending choice by shifting the cost of those choices onto the middle class which is already stretched by unrealistically high home prices. This is a time not to look to the government, or the giant government protected corporations. This is a time to look at private business, and encourage it's growth and prosperity, because in that prosperity lies the answers to our 'credit crisis'. The answer isn't more fake money from Washington, and more loose lending on 'main street'. The answer isn't more taxation on the working people of this nation. The answer isn't simply $700b in 'liquidity'. The answer is capital, and that only comes from work. Work comes from jobs, and jobs don't come from Uncle Sam.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Electoral "Math"

Thanks to Real Clear Politics for the electoral map tool. Go there and create your own map if you like.



This is where I see the race for President right now. I base this analysis on a group of polls from a number of different sources and of course a whole bunch of sciencey stuff I like to call 'wild ass guessing' (it's a technical term you might not understand).

Right now I put Ohio, Virginia, and North Carolina in the Toss Up category. I still think all three of these states will end up in the McCain camp for several reasons but the numbers don't support that as of yet. I don't buy the Bradley Effect argument for most of the country but in these states I feel it may have enough of an impact to cover the margin. I also think Bradley will have an effect on Michigan but I just don't think it's enough to make a difference there. Some put Michigan still in play but in my opinion that's just blustering and this state will go D' as it usually does. With this mental math McCain has to keep all the pink states or he's lost the game. If Obama keeps the blue states and all his leaners he only has to turn one volatile state to take the ballgame. I'd keep my eyes on New Hampshire for some Obama attention in the coming weeks. If you pay attention to spending on both sides it seems like Pennsylvania is the proving ground. Traditionally a blue state McCain's numbers here have been the best an R has seen in recent memory. He's still a long shot but he's outspending Obama by a third there and has seen a slight polling lead more than once. A win in Penn and Ohio would deliver the White House for McCain barring a whole bunch of upset.

As of right now I'd say election night lawyers will be flooding into all the really close states with the above mentioned getting heavy attention as well as NV, FL, and possibly Colorado.

Remember though there's a ton of campaigning left to go, and much of the undecided vote is still up for grabs in these states. The events of this afternoon and the rest of this week, as well as the debate activities can have a tremendous effect on fence sitters as well as 'get out the vote' activities on both sides. Also lets not rule out the third party vote, as close races can be upset by the smallest margin there.

Bush on the Economy

All I'm saying is that Sarah Palin's youngest child knows more about economics than this guy.

I particularly enjoyed the part where he devoted a third of the speech to 'explaining' how we got into this 'crisis', by letting all that naughty foreign money flood our banking industry. As if he wasn't the cause of most of those Chinese loans. And he seems to have completely forgotten how the federal government made it nearly impossible for lenders to get loans without lending to insanely risky applicants (I'll use the euphemism 'poor people'). And when he talked about low interest rates contributing to the run up of housing prices, isn't it odd he didn't say "my bad" since his post 9/11 economic policy insisted on a monetary policy looser than Ashley Dupre.

And then he had the gall to suggest that we are probably going to get most of this money back... As if when that miracle occurred, the tax increases the next president will inevitably call for (to pay for this massive government buyout of private industry) would magically go away. I haven't laughed that hard in ages.

Any time the federal government tries to convince you that something is benevolent and wise, ask yourself when was the last time you used those words to describe the President or the United States Congress.

The truth is that they want to save these precious lending programs so that no on notices that it's the fault of the federal government and it's never ending desire to engineer a Utopian, Government Addicted Society, that drove us into this mess in the first place. What's more, if you are placated by thoughts of CEO's losing their enormous salaries over this bailout, remember that most will jump ship before the board of directors ever gets close to this deal. This is the most expensive cover up of government mismanagement in recent history and they are disguising it as an indictment of the free market system they abandoned in the process. The fact that the United States Congress thinks that this is the time to put our money and our faith in them and the FED, when they caused this problem is the most appalling insult we have seen from those scumbags in years. If you had an employee and he set your office building on fire while raping your daughter... Would you hire him to rebuild the place?

Just remember this nightmare in November and Vote 3rd Party, these assholes have had enough second chances, it's time for them to leave. Don't throw your vote away on these corporate whores. Don't vote for a Party, vote for your country.

PETA Whack Jobs

Maybe you are into the whole human breast milk thing, but if you are older than four... you should see a therapist, you know, just in case.

PETA

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Not Qualified!!!

The D's controlling congress announced this week that they are in fact completely incompetent when it comes to the economy. Announcing that they would maintain the current schedule for adjournment rather than stay and work on what looks to be the largest economic crisis in recent history politicians admit what we knew already.

"no one knows what to do" said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, "Congress... is best served by going home."

But rest assured their obvious and now admitted incompetence has nothing to do with the causes of this economic crisis.. Yeah right. And I'm sure they aren't gleefully skipping out the door because they think that rather than work to solve problems they can run campaigns blaming their opponents for the economic downturn.

Don't get me wrong, it's true that nothing that group of bumbling fucking morons could do would possibly work out well for us; it's just so weird to hear them admit it so proudly.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Use of Force

Posse Comitatus tells us that the government is forbidden from turning our military against us. It's a safeguard that is more important than almost any other in defending our rights. But what's the difference if the local police and the FBI are outfitted with military hardware, military tactics, and military training. Adopton of a nationalist doctrine, anti-states rights policy, and massive federal, state and local protections of police agencies have created a socialized local military that not only blurs the line between the military and the police but flat out mixes the two. And the key has been irresponsibly violent drug policy. I promise you that police activity will not cease it's increasing invasion on individual liberties nor it's unrelenting attacks on decent and prudent applications of it's now federally protected over-application of violent force.

This Week

Monday, September 15, 2008

Disgust

I'm not ready to elaborate on the events both in my life and in the media of the last few days. I have experienced what I can only describe as outright bigotry from friends and co-workers of mine on the left. It's odd that while I agree on some issues with these people, when they express hatred for someone all I can feel is a sickness at the idea that countrymen, friends, colleagues of mine can be both admirable people for most purposes and so filled with hate for reasons of simply religious acclimation. Let me just give you the Palin Gibson interview with the edits replaced and I'll write more about people I know when the blood stops boiling and my view of people is less in the toilet.

Palin Gibsen

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

World News

France negotiates with Russia and as usual hands them the keys to the store.


Poll shows that the rest of the world wants the US to be run by Obama.


It seems US voters read the negotiations between France and Russia and decided to tell the World to SUCK IT!

You're So Vain, You Probably Think This Song is About You

I've read a ton of articles, blog posts, and comments in the last week or so condemning McCain's choice of Gov. Sarah Palin for the R's VP slot. Some points are valid others are decidedly not valid. While I'm sure we'll all get to hear much more about my feelings towards the Palin Gambit in the coming months I would like, at this time to address one particularly irritating subject that wont seem to go away.

Left Wing Feminists have been coming out in droves to express their disgust at the mere idea that people think they can be bought with a little 'obvious pandering' by the R's candidate. The LWF's have been railing about the level to which they are insulted, how deeply their intelligence has been underestimated etc. etc. etc. But here's the thing that I just can't seem to wrap my brain around; does anyone really believe, or did anyone really believe that the choice of a super conservative, pro-life, anti gay marriage, religious, mother of five was designed to woo liberal democrats? Really? People think that? I don't buy it. And frankly you shouldn't either.

The truth is this choice has been an ugly look in the mirror for a great many Lib's who may suddenly have discovered that the world does not revolve around them. The fact that McCain's choice was a woman seeks only to energize and revitalize the members of his own party, members who might otherwise have stayed at home on election day. I know it's difficult for the LWF's to comprehend, having spent the better part of the last 50 years disowning 50% of the American female population, but there are actually women in the Republican party. There are in fact a great many notable and amazing women in the Republican party. Many of whom have chosen a lifestyle that is all but shat upon by the Left Wing Feminist movement. Now at a time when the R's have chosen, for better or worse, to bring the issue of Right Wing Women to the front and center, they are once again treated like lesser humans by the LWF's. Every time you read an editorial by some LWF about how insulting this choice is, remember that what they actually mean is 'any man is better than a Right Wing Woman'.

Susan Nielsen an associate editor for the Oregonian asks "how dumb does John McCain think women are?" and it makes me wonder; I don't know Susan, how dumb are you? Are you dumb enough to believe that women who happen to be pro-life aren't women any more? Are you dumb enough to believe that women who have an R on their voter registration don't have the same drive to protect and further their own rights? Neilsen says "McCain seems to believe that millions of women voters will coo indiscriminately over any female candidate who comes along. He wants disappointed Hillary supporters to stampede to his side, followed by all other women who are enthralled by Palin's life story." What exactly does she mean by "all other women"? She certainly can't be referring to the 48% of women in this country who vote for R candidates and R issues. She goes on to ask "are women -- particularly moderate pro-choice women -- really as impressionable as McCain hopes?" And I wonder again how self centered do you have to be to think that this move to the right is a move on "moderate pro-choice women". If anything McCain being on the ticket himself is more of a move on "moderate" women than Palin. Many women in the Democratic Party were already threatening to vote McCain if Hillary Clinton didn't get the nomination. Mostly blustering to be sure and certainly not the 'stampede' Neilsen eludes to, but what exactly is a stampede in a close race?

According to the Center for American Woman in Politics (citing Edison Media Research) just three percentage points separated George W. Bush and John Kerry in the last election, amongst women voters. This represents one of the smallest gender gaps in recent electoral memory and it stands to reason that McCain (as a moderately unpopular member of the Republican Party) might want to make a move to hold on to that margin, and that trend. To say nothing of the fact that he desperately needed a VP choice that helped cement both the women and the men in his party. Lest we forget that W. won with a 14% positive margin among male voters as well. Cementing the base would mean that McCain was free to pursue the moderate voters who have been his bread and butter audience all along.

Gloria Steinem argues as eloquently as ever in an op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times that Palin "shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton", and that "to vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, 'Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs.'" Which is missing the point. Nobody in their right mind thinks that hordes of Left Wing Women are lustily begging their leaders to let them defect like characters in an Aristophanes play. Right Wing Women, however are lacing up their shoes like never before and are canvasing communities, spreading the word and getting out the vote, while angry Hillary Clinton supporters may choose election day to stay at home and do their proverbial hair instead. And what's more every time Steinem and her ilk voice protest they only serve to affirm for many on the Right that Palin is exactly what they were looking for; a woman who shares 'nothing but a chromosome' with Hillary Clinton.

The LWF's need to get over themselves, not every decision made involving a woman is a decision aimed at them, in fact not every decision involving a woman is aimed specifically at women. Men, I've heard, vote quite a little bit as well. A fact I'm sure they would love to downplay. Let us not forget that angry feminists couldn't even manage to take the D's nomination over a handsome under-qualified man. What makes them think that John McCain would suddenly begin shamelessly courting their massive influence when a hugely popular well known Feminist Democrat couldn't take the Democratic nomination from a first term senator? Feminism has a long long way to go and I think maybe the first steps include finding a way to treat men and women of all parties and all viewpoints with some level of respect.

Sunday, September 07, 2008

The UN Finds New Way to Stay Off My Christmas Card List

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (or the Dirty Pieces of Steaming Shit as their known around my house), decided it wasn't enough for them to call for an end to the transportation industry as we know it, they are now calling for an end to eating meat. Nevermind the fact that their last time they opened their filthy mouths they caused panic all over the world driving up prices on valuable commodities slowing the world economy, for a theory based on some of the worst math ever used by anyone for anything. Nevermind the fact that it was quickly shown that they were more than willing to mislead the public by inflating the number of scientists that actually agreed with their bullshit theory. Now these limp dicked hippies want to take away my dinner. That makes me angry, and it makes my grill angry, and you wouldn't like my grill when it's angry.

Their theory led to a worldwide shift in fuel research, shifting much of the worlds agricultural commitment away from the feeding of people and towards the production of fuel products. Products that have been shown to actually increase dangerous pollution I might add. They drove the price of the global food supply up 75% with no positive results and absolutely catastrophic effects on third world food supplies. Is it any wonder that they have decided to push further into the food market by attempting to drive the cattle and pork industries into the ground.

We stopped producing grains for food causing thousands of poor people to starve, now we want to decrease demand for meat products and thus increase demand for vegetables, which are already nearing impossible price levels already. Wow brilliant. This sounds like a recipe' for a global food crisis. We all know that food crises are the quickest and most effective way to destabilize governments. And if the world's governments which are already having plenty of trouble holding things together start to fall apart, I wonder who will step in to help. I wonder which large governing body will step in to fill the gap... Hmmmm which large governing body would be willing to do that. Oh could it be the very same governing body that issues psuedo-scientific reports recklessly working to destroy the world's food markets?

The Article in this weeks Guardian

I'll eat one less steak a week if every week one member of the IPCC puts a 12ga shotgun in his/her mouth and pulls the trigger. I figure that's the best way to help the environment.

Friday, August 29, 2008

Top Ten Republican VP Qualifications

10. She's the Candidate Everyone wants to Poll

9. She's in favor of laying miles of strategic pipeline for her country

8. Energy policy favoring on-shore-drilling

7. She has a very nice platform

6. Knows exactly how to handle a large Staff

5. Is particularly attractive to Swing Voters

4. Perfect candidate for the #2 Slot

3. She's the candidate you can really get behind

2. Bursting through Glass Ceilings (but not mirrored ones)

1. I hesitate to say it, she's not just brains and talent, she's also an awfully fetching lady.

Genius

This is fantastic.

VPILF


For those older readers who can't figure this out...

Vice
President
I'd
Like to
Fuck

It's Palin

Hot Damn



That is one rockin' way to hijack a news cycle.

More on this later.

Obama 2008 Convention Speech

First off I'd like to say that this might be one of the best written and delivered political speeches I have seen in my lifetime. I'm not drinking the Kool-aid but I'll be very surprised if John McCain has anything up his sleeve that makes him look or sound more like the leader of the free world than this guy.

I disagree with the larger share of what Captain O has to say. I don't think the government is the solution to our problems, I don't think that Washington should be the protector of industries we have long since left for greener and smarter pastures. I don't think the government needs to protect the auto industry when they are making the changes to protect themselves. I don't think the government needs to protect us from outsourcing jobs,when we as consumers know that 'outsourcing jobs' really means importing low cost labor to lower the cost of important goods and services for average Americans. For years foreign automakers have been selling more cars in America than American auto makers and that is because they can provide higher quality, higher fuel efficiency and lower prices. While thousands of Americans work for the auto industry, millions of Americans drive cars, when we 'protect' those jobs, we do so at the expense of other American families. The American auto industry will learn to survive as they always have, through good old fashioned American ingenuity. And if we want to help them, we need to make this country the most inviting country in the world in which to do business.

I don't want my government to protect farms, as O says, because farms don't need the kind of protection that he claims to offer. Farms, for the most part in America today aren't owned by mom and pop, they are owned by huge multi-national corporations with huge lobby's. The corn industry alone has an enormous strangle hold on the American political system(try buying a Coke with real sugar); corn subsidies drive world prices to unrealistic places while undercutting competitors in nations that need corn, not for wild eyed fuel strategies, but for food. The farms that are owned by small businesses and families require only the protection of a government that doesn't give hand outs to their enormous corporate competitors.

O claims that he will make the government leaner by stripping out unnecessary programs and streamlining the programs that remain. I'd imagine his definition of 'necessary' differs from mine, but i'm for that plan. I'm also in favor unicorns and the fountain of youth but I'm not voting for a politician that promises me those either.

It's ballsy to threaten a crowd of D's with individual responsibility. A thought that usually sends shivers down their spines. One wonders what the leader of the government can actually do to foster said ideas, if in fact he has any intentions of doing so.

I'm not buying what he's selling but I'll tell you this; If tonight is any hint at the next few months, we're going to find out if I'm wrong.

It's McCain's turn to blow our doors off and I've seen very little that makes me think he has it in him.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Hillary Convention Speech String

Nice slideshow...

7:47 the bitch is back
They went with the orange pantsuit which would have been my choice with her skin tone.

Michelle looks cranky before any words are spoken

"and as a proud supporter of Barack Obama..." that must hurt.
It obviously hurt Bill

"Sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits" that's funny.

holy hell this is a boring speech.

How can Hillary Clinton talk with a straight face about the middle class?

McCain stands for "more war and less diplomacy" Didn't her husband bomb an aspirin factory?

When did gender income inequality make it back on top of the D's platform?

Harriet Tubman "keep going" quote is good speech writing.

I'm incredibly sick of the glass ceiling bullshit.


All in all a sufficiently predictable unity speech. Nothing particularly of interest for me. She's playing to the party as we all expected. It looks like she wants their support in 2012. She also pandered pretty heavily to the feminist voters which she and O both really need.

I'm interested to see Bill's speech to find out if he's capable of being this deferential.

The D's are doing a good job of staying positive which has always been their weakness. They are not doing a good job of defining policy and party identity. This will be the weak point of their election bid this year. If they don't find an identity and illustrate it, the R's will do it for them.

They are also running on one of the biggest mistakes they've been carrying around; running against Bush and not against McCain. Watch for the R's to push a very well identified party platform, and for McCain to be billed as his own man.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

The Royal Penis

I swear that of all the things I care deeply about in this world, I can't find space on my list for where John Edwards puts his dick.

I just don't care.
I don't care if he knocked up a campaign worker.
I don't care if he's into guys, like Ann Coulter suggests.
I don't care if he's up right now at 4am, standing outside a closed Victoria's secret at the mall in a ninja costume, holding a watermelon with a hole carved in it, fantasizing about fucking his own relatives at a picnic.

The reason that I don't care is that he's not running for president anymore, and he's not a candidate for office where I live, so it's NONE OF MY GODDAMN BUSINESS.

A man's particular integrity is important, but it is important only in as much as he has influence over the lives of other people. When we consider a person for the office of the president we all have an interest in his or her integrity and his or her lifestyle.

When we consider a person for a congressional seat, the people of that particular district have a right to know about the dirty secrets lurking within the man or woman who will potentially represent them.

But it's pretty simple: if you aren't running for anything I vote for, and if you aren't laboring to maneuver your cock into a child, a coma victim, my family, or a puppy... AND if you don't kill them afterward (thanks Ted) It's NONE OF MY GODDAMN BUSINESS.

AAAAAANNND as such it doesn't belong in my newspaper.

Monday, July 28, 2008

George W. Bush is the new FDR

This is unreasonably stupid economics. I'm depressed for the entire country over the oft misused instinct to react with reckless abandon to emotionally charged issues. What's worse is that the tradition of Democrats being the giant reactionary pussies while republicans sat back and calmly waited things out, are certainly over.

If you had to guess the party of a president who oversaw economic hardship and responded by drastically growing the size of government while increasing the overall tax burden, the deficit and the number and size of massive government departments, what party would it be?

It's a good thing this prick will be out of office soon.

It's just to bad the next president is a guaranteed first class douche-bag no matter the outcome of the election.

Friday, July 18, 2008

I'm Still Saying it. GLOBAL WARMING IS A SCAM.

GLOBAL WARMING IS A SCAM.

I was watching an episode of some tv show or another this week on DVD. Al Gore did a guest spot in which he let slip a very telling remark.

"we need C02 taxes to replace the payroll taxes"

And it got me thinking. Not just about a convoluted scheme to change the tax system; because I'm all for eliminating the payroll taxes. And not just about the idea that big time commie's like Al Gore do nothing but sit around and think of ways to raise taxes, because we all know that. What I started to think about is what would be the benefit and to whom would it go, if global warming were in fact an intentional bullshit scam and not just the ravings of scientists who are shitty at math.

Obviously an environmental crisis is good for people who make 'environmentally friendly products'. Even today at work we discussed how we could get a grant to upgrade our equipment as long as we used LED technology because it uses less electricity and is therefor 'green'. If, in my business we are scamming for green dollars you can bet your ass the rest of the world is clamoring for them as well. So it stands to reason that there is a large base of people who benefit economically from the scam... I mean the crisis of course.

But I wonder if there might be a larger more interesting grift in progress. If you want to employ a conman with the largess of a man who thinks he was robbed of the most powerful position in the world, one wonders what you might have come up with as a motivator. Perhaps the greatest motivator of all is in the mix... World Domination.

I know it sound preposterous, like the ramblings of a conspiracy theorist, or the plot to a Hollywood movie. We are historically, constantly amazed by the presence among us of those who strive for such obscene and grandiose ideas. But historically thats just what we have had. We have tended to give long leashes to those in our midst that sought these kinds of ends, but we have never been in short supply of them.

Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Napoleon. None of these men seemed like crazy sons-of-bitches bent on the sick pursuit of global power at the start. Sure we know they were psycho now, but at the time at least the majority of their countrymen, (or the majority of their elite) thought them to be reasonable men with a passionate cause for all mankind.

We are not past that kind of thinking and we are not past that kind of ambition. So then what would be my evidence for this supposition. Lets be clear at this point that I am hypothesizing, and not presenting a set of concrete conclusions. I am not doing what the environmental lobby does which is to turn supposition into indisputable fact. All I'm doing is suggesting that it's possible that there might be an ambition behind the global warming movement that isn't exactly altruistic.

Al Gore, was endorsed in the presidential race by Dick Gephart, who is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. George W. Bush was endorsed by his father who is a member (and leader for a time) of the Council on Foreign Relations. George Bush Sr. proposed a 'new world order' which has long been a goal of the Council on Foreign Relations. Al Gore supposes that a series of questionable data points to a crisis of global proportions requiring global solutions, that also has the benefit of a nebulous time scale beyond "drastically urgent". This crisis also benefits from the the fact that the only real evidence used to promote it's existence is... Any kind of weather. I'll repeat that for those of you that were skimming, the evidence that global warming disasters are approaching is any kind of weather event. What's required to solve this crisis is a system of world wide treaties, taxes, penalties and laws, to ensure that, in a global economy, everyone plays the same.

The perfect storm for say... the Council on Foreign Relations.

It's perfect, there's no way for an event to happen that gets in their way, there's no kind of weather that doesn't help their cause. They can explain anything because their data is hardly concrete. And no one can dispute their basic argument that WEATHER CHANGES.

To top it off the current president has bungled almost everything he's done to the point of devaluing the American currency and driving the cost of commodities such as fuel and food, through the roof. Both important commodities in maintaining the independence of the last major super power, or as some might see it the last remaining stronghold of economic independence. But does the current president seem upset as his leadership is widely regarded even by his own party as a monumental disaster? No, he seems upbeat about it. Is that perhaps because he is the foil to the larger ambitions of his brothers at the CFR, to tear down the world economies just in the same period of history most ripe for globalization? I mean that has to be a coincidence right? Al Gore and George Bush have nothing to do with each other right? Except that they are both endorsed and promoted by the Council on Foreign Relations, which is widely known to seek a single global government.

I could be wrong. This might not be the case.

But it might. And if it is, holy shit you think rising tides are scary?

And for the record, MAN MADE GLOBAL WARMING IS BULLSHIT.