Phil Spector Convicted of Second Most Heinous Crime

Music industry mogul Phil Spector was convicted finally this week for second-degree murder and using a firearm in the commission of a crime. Spector shot actress and night club hostess Lana Clarkson in February of 2003. This was of course a heinous and unforgivable crime. Spector was of course no angel before this however and I think it goes without saying that he should be put to death for his worst crime which is turning

this:



into this:



"Wall of sound"? How about wall of crap I didn't need to hear.

RIP Marilyn Chambers

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The Left Doesn't Like Obama Much Either

Motorhome Diaries

I know I have been conspicuously absent in the past week or so. As some of you may know this blog does not pay my rent so I have been out busting my ass on several different jobs of late. I promise more in depth blogging is around the corner. I certainly have a lot to examine. There's the failing nature of the Obama foreign policy (or lack of one), there's the constant attempts to turn tragedy into justification for enslaving the masses and of course there is the utter failure of the administration to simply operate and staff it's offices. So more to come I assure you.

In the mean time, check out what Jason Talley, Tom Pearson, and Pete Eyre formerly of Bureaucrash, currently of Fr33agents, and most specifically Motorhome Diaries are doing. They are embarking on a grand adventure to tour the country in a motor home visiting with people who share the cause of liberty.

Hope to see you guys when you get out to Los Angeles at the end of April.

Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs is looking at returning the $5b in TARP money that they received late last year. Street Insider has the news.

"Goldman also has the capital to pay back TARP, with a balance sheet with about $100 billion in available cash."

So tell me... If GS has $100b what is it that required our $5b so urgently. Why is it that just the threat of lost bonuses has sparked a hasty return? One wonders if it was necessary or wise to give away free money in a hurry.

Thoughts on Eminent Domain

What the State can do to the richest of us at considerable expense, the State can do to the poorest of us at no expense. Where the poorest among us cannot afford to fight the state the rest of us are obligated to do so.

The guys over at fr33agents have some things to say on the issue.

More Good News for the Half-Dozen or so Appointees that Actually Work for the Obama Admin.

Federal Agents raided the former office of Vivek Kundra (the President's appointee for Chief Information Officer) this week as part of an investigation into corruption. As of yet Kundra is not a target of the investigation.

And Another One Gone

Chas Freeman has withdrawn from his nomination as the Chairman of the National Intelligence Council when it came to light that he had significant ties to the Saudi and Chinese oil industries.

In related news we've acquired a document outlining the complex process by which the Obama admin. selects and vets candidates for presidential appointment.

Step 1. They divide up a 10 acre plot into one foot square parcels.

Step 2. Take a complete list of all current members of the Democratic party plus 50 wild card spots. Place one picture of one person on the list in each of the one foot squares.

Step 3. A herd of donkeys is released into the field and allowed to graze for the day

Step 4. Whoever the donkeys shit on, 'congratulations Mr./Ms. Political Appointee welcome to the team.'

Obama the Dow Killer

Michael Boskin from the Stanford University Econ. Dept. takes on the agenda from the Obama admin. for what it is. A giant lie.

More Losses for O on the Nomination Front

CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta backed out of consideration for the post of Surgeon General this week. Though not yet formally nominated Gupta was widely understood to be the choice for the post within the Obama administration. Gupta sited family related priorities as his reason for withdrawing from consideration. I haven't heard yet if there are any rumors surfacing as to any deeper issues or anything relating to his vetting process. It may be that with a new baby on the way he simply doesn't want to uproot things with his family. The larger issue is that losing nominees is becoming the mark of the Obama presidency.

In related news Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's expected pick for his Deputy has withdrawn her name from consideration as well. Annette Nazareth a prominent former high level staffer at the SEC, has withdrawn for personal reasons as well. There's no indication that policy disputes or vetting related issues are involved in these 'personal reasons'.

With so many high level positions sitting vacant and a seemingly non-stop stream of legal and tax issues for those that have been chosen, its hard to imagine how things are getting done. There is a concern floating around that the Obama admin. is making sweeping policy decision in areas like the economy and health care in a time when it seems impossible for them to have the kind of advice structure in place to truly examine the potential risks in their strategy. The Bush admin. took heat repeatedly for a cowboy-like shoot-from-the-hip policy mentality but nothing they did comes close the wild swings in policy coming out of this admin. and it boggles the mind to think that there really aren't very many experts on board yet. And it's not just the blogosphere that notices. A great many people on Wall Street are sitting up and taking note of the fact that while the credit window is wide open there doesn't seem to be anybody minding the store.

Ron Paul Handling MSNBC Host

Cramer Turning on President Obama

Health Status

Ronald Bailey over at Reason takes a look at an innovative new idea for the free market to provide all the the things that people want from health insurance. Portability, affordability, universality and choice. All while supporting a market based structure to maintain the quality of health-care in America. I think as usual the market deserves this chance before we throw in the towel and settle for the kind of health care only the post office and the DMV could provide.

This Might Be How I Know We'll Be OK

Yeah they are dirty liberal hippies... But they encourage freedom, particularly in the drug war. And they know when to put on a suit and rock the anthem. Phish are of course entertainers first and foremost, but I think they help illustrate a point I've tried to make before; we need to recognize in this country the vast difference between enemies and opposition. We have become a country with two teams who hold the other team in a place of utmost disdain. I disagree with a great many things that people think, on any side of the political spectrum. But I wonder if we have to be enemies just because I'm right and everyone else is clearly wrong... The stakes seem very high these days and I think they will for a while, I'm sure that I will fight adamantly and with deep resolve in defense of what I believe is the right course. But I hope that I have the judgment to face opposing ideas not with bitterness and anger, but with the sincerest goal that at the end of the day we see better what it is we all want and how to move towards it. I am not a moral, ethical, or political relativist. I do not believe that all ideas share equal validity, but I do believe much more in the power and value of the converted than I do in vanquishing a foe. There's a fictional conversation between McCarthy and Einstein in a play I read once, McCarthy wants Einstein to testify against communism; "we need someone who had a choice between frankfurters and hot dogs, and chose hot dogs".

Unsatisfied With First Place

California, worried that it's role as King of the Tax States might be in danger, has decided to raise taxes. Yes the people of California pay the highest income and state sales taxes in the country, and California spends more money per-capita than any other state, so of course why not make those taxes higher.

There's absolutely no way that years of tax and spend ideology helped put California in the mess that it's in now. No there's no way that taxing business and their customers to death has lead to, wait for it, a revenue problem. Nooooo.

I guess we all know what Abel Maldonado is doing for the rest of his career. Ha Ha Ha Career.

EPA and CO2

This is no surprise. When I worked in Congress in 2000 I had the privilege of sitting in on some meetings where the concept of an EPA power grab through the regulation of carbon dioxide was discussed. This may seem new to a lot of people but it has been no secret in Washington for years that this would be a step towards greater government control. The point of regulating carbon dioxide as opposed to other chemicals is that while there has been significant hoopla about it in the press, it is produced by almost every chemical or mechanical process in the world. If the EPA has the power to set the limits for regulation of C02 produciton then they have the power to regulate anything. Of course they would only use that power when the fate of the world was at stake... Right?

This Girl Was This Smart in College

Take a look at an old college friend of mine talking about population policy with the Brits.

Rendition

The L.A. Times reports this week that under the President's recent Executive Orders he has maintained the practice of rendition. Rendition as you recall is the transfer of prisoners to other nations without a Judicial over site. Basically kidnapping people and handing them over to allies that have harsher torture techniques than we do. While there are advocates of rendition, most of them are not on the left, and Obama specifically campaigned against this kind of action. It would seem change isn't quite what we had hoped.

Print the Money

This is a perfect analysis of how the Obama administration's plan to spend for growth is ludicrous. But hey I could be wrong. I do have a very nice printer.

Ginsberg

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg had surgery today to remove a cancerous tumor from her pancreas. This of course piques the interest of those either worried or excited about the Obama administration's first opportunity to nominate a Supreme Court Justice. Though doctors say this tumor was caught early and though Ginsberg vows to be back at work when the court re-convenes, there stands a good chance that it wont be for very long. I would caution against panic on either side of the aisle as the current administration would likely replace Justice Ginsberg with someone of similar ideology and political leaning. What I am more concerned about and what should be on the forefront of our national concern is not the ideological position of an Obama appointee. Rather in light of the trouble this young president is having putting together a cabinet, we have to be concerned that a nominee from this President is qualified at all. I can close my eyes and imagine a Senate confirmation hearing in which we discover that a potential Supreme never paid taxes, or perhaps worked as a lobbyist. The trouble with the possibility of an open slot so early in his Presidency (as is the likelihood with pancreatic cancer survival rates being as low as they are) is that this president has had and unprecedentedly small amount of time to learn how to select and vet people for important jobs. He and his team simply cannot get their shit together. This is a dangerous point when we talk about Secretary level posts, but it could be absolutely catastrophic in a lifetime judicial appointment.

Say what you will about Ginsberg, it would be difficult if not impossible to claim that she hasn't at least been qualified and above board. She may disagree on important constitutional matters with you, but it would be far worse if she disagreed with you and was corrupt, unable to understand tax law, or in the pocket of a special interest. Lest we too soon forget the Harriet Miers debacle with the previous President.

37 Percent

37 Percent may seem like a particularly high popularity to the members of the United States Congress as they haven't seen numbers like that since, well since the Republicans ran things. But it should be noted that once again the public thinks overwhelmingly that Congress is trying it's damnedest to screw us like a Dupont Circle Whore. Why do they keep supporting this stuff? Right, because we let them.

Call your Senator

Steven Chu

New Energy Secretary Steven Chu is making some bold statements about global warming and it's effects on agriculture. Which is odd, since he is neither a climatologist, nor an agriculture specialist. He is, in fact, a physicist. Which as a physicist friend of mine would probably point out, makes him an expert in a great many things, but not climate or agriculture. The fact that he has a Nobel Prize in physics will likely lend credence in the public eye to his wild assertions but people need to realize that in this area he is not specifically qualified in this area. He is, however, an accomplished molecular physicist, a notable and innovative researcher in atomic physics, and an outspoken advocate for nuclear energy. As such he is a qualified administrator when it comes to the development of energy sources.

I wonder if it's not possible to advocate for better, cleaner energy without stepping outside your discipline and crying that the sky is falling?

I'm thinking of starting a campaign showing the importance of paying bloggers tons of money in order to stave off global warming. I think I can make the point that I use significantly less fossil fuels sitting at my computer than I do driving all over town to my regular job. If we do find a way to pay me way more money (which at this point would be any at all) then the whole world is going to sink into the ocean, and then the apes take over. We all know how that goes and trust me none of us wants to time warp forward into that world and end up on a beach with the remnants of the statue of liberty.

Comment with an email address for information on how to send me money.

So far

So Obama has backed off of his pledge to require the 'buy American clause' in government deals. He's lost at least three of four embattled nominees to various sundry behaviors (mostly tax evasion which incidentally is how they got Capone). He's lost a Kennedy senate appointment (which there is only a mild amount of evidence was his goal anyway). He's failed miserably in gaining the support of the Republicans in congress for his bailout plan. And as of this morning the American public (54 percent) think that the bailout sucks. He's backed away from his pledge to exclude lobbyists from his administration. He's completely ignored an ice storm that's killing a good many people. And according to interviews he, so far, is struck most by the fact that "Every decision you make counts"

CHANGE? Really?... Really?

Seems Familiar

Not a surprise
As someone who was shoved against a moving train car by a crowd on the DC metro some years ago following a fourth of July celebration on the Mall I can attest that it's not a pretty scene there when there are too many people. The DC Metro system is a joke and there is no way to control the crowds that they have there today. I'm happy not to be anywhere near it.

In Better News

Murdering bastard Teddy K. collapsed to the floor of statuary hall today in convulsions. There's a spot in the room where the acoustics are so perfectly tuned that the quietest whispers can be heard clearly from a corresponding spot some 30feet away. One wonders if perhaps Teddy was on that spot and if so what lucky soul got to listen to it. More to come when we know more of course. And as always... Our prayers go out to his family...

Spare Change is Here

Ugh... well it's done anyway. Now comes the part where we spend all the money we don't have to make bureaucrats wealthier in the hopes that we'll get checks in the mail. Hang on to your piggy banks you'll want some change left over.

Atlas Shrugged

Stephen Moore over at the Wall Street Journal has a few interesting things to say about the current economic situation and how it aptly relates to Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged. One hopes that he's wrong about what's to come, but the odds don't seem to be in our favor. Take a read.

BART Police Murder Man on the Subway

There's very little in this video that leads me to believe that this was not an act of deliberate homicide. We'll see what the investigation comes up with but I'm betting that as with most police involved murders there will be no charges and the officer will be returned to duty.

Oddly this video makes the Rodney King beating look like a hand shake and cab ride home. I'm not sure why on earth the citizens of SF haven't torn the subway system apart. Hopefully cooler heads will continue to prevail and justice is indeed found in this case but I would imagine that won't be the case.

Friends and Politics

I had an IM conversation today about politics with a friend of mine. He and I agree on quite a few things and disagree on quite a few more things. During the course of the conversation my friend got the impression that I was perhaps becoming upset. That was not in any way the case but I know why he thought that. My argument was becoming more accusatory and less fair. It made me think for a while about the nature of our national political debate. Things in this country right now are particularly harsh. At least they seam to be. Partisan politics have taken on a mentality that seems more oriented towards team spirit than ideology. We have come to think that there is some fight that must be fought. Always an adversary that must be bested. We are more interested in standing beside the person that shares our party orientation than we are in standing with the people who we respect and enjoy. I have friends of many beliefs, many faiths, and many ideologies. I have friends that hold my political beliefs in the highest possible contempt. But I can't help wishing that all of my friends were sitting together at one table, talking about our beliefs and what course we think that a government should take, if it must involve us all. I'm sure that my friend the christian and my friend the communist can break bread with my friend the libertarian and my friend the socialist. I'm positive that all of these people have sound minds and compassionate hearts. We disagree on a great many things in this country, and in this world, but we agree on so much more.

Another friend of mine this week told me that he thought that Americans were ignorant and xenophobic. Perhaps he's right but I suspect that Americans are too interested in taking sides and not interested enough in understanding each other. I don't want to sound all bleeding heart soft, moral relative, all people's opinions are equally valid. I simply don't believe that. Ideas and opinions have very distinct consequences, some are destructive, some lead to very bad places. But I do think that free people, open people, honest people can disagree without silence and without animosity.

I guess my point is this; sure I think my evangelical friends ideas may be bad for liberty, and certainly I think that my socialist friend's ideas will lead to bureaucratic sludge and destruction, but I don't believe that they pursue those ideas with anything other than a full heart and an honest goal for the betterment of our world. Anyone like that may drink in my home and eat at my table. Removing ourselves from each other simply because we disagree over important issues can lead to nothing good. Sharing those ideas helps each of us to understand the people that disagree with us. We may not change each others minds but it's more difficult to go to war with someone you know.

Well of Course

Now it makes sense why CNN and the NYT have been harping on the Israelis all this week. At first it seemed odd that the left wing news sources would come across as so decidedly anti-semetic, but then again no it didn't. Usually the news sources tend to attempt to be at least fair when accosting a country that voluntarily vacated Gaza and tolerated the non-stop shelling of their civilians for three years before undertaking a military response. Although it is just like the left to think that if you have tolerated the shelling of your civilians for three years there's no reason to think that continued diplomatic action is not the only acceptable response. See this has me all scattered. My point is that it all makes sense when you realize that they are prepping the populous for this. Of course the Obama camp is prepared to negotiate with terrorists. Why wouldn't they be. And why would we expect anything from the NYT and CNN but a full-throated effort to fluff the population for that kind of penetration.

Happy Birthday Elvis Presley

Today Elvis Presley would have been 74years old. Still missed big guy.

That's What I Call A Stimulus Package

Larry Flynt (Hustler Magazine) and Joe Francis (Girls Gone Wild) have written a letter to congress asking them for $5B dollars to help with financial troubles. They cite the rise of free pornography on the internet among the contributions to their fiscal woes.

"The government is handing out money," Francis tells E! News. "They're moving toward a nationalized economy, and Larry and I felt we might as well be a part of it."

The porn industry is a leader both in technology and social trends. I wonder what the economic effects would be of a failed porn industry... I, for one, am not particularly worried about it. I know that even if Larry and Joe lose their porn empires there will still be a significant supply of smut for exactly the reasons they have mentioned. People are already providing low cost or no cost pornography to the community via the internet. I surmise that the most interesting part of this will be the reactions from the same people who lobbied for the other bailouts. We can all clearly see that there will never be a shortage of affordable porn because the market provides it. But it stands to reason that the market provides these things precisely because there is nor reasonable expectation that they will receive government aid. It's a perfect example of the kind of tough love that is necessary across the board to help allow this economy to self adjust and return to sensible levels so that growth may continue naturally.

The idea that redistributing wealth to the largest and wealthiest corporations in the country simply because they would like to continue to thumb their noses at the market is categorically preposterous. The fact that most of us can agree on that only when the product is, to some, morally objectionable is, well i suppose it's just how the United States Congress works.

New Thing

I have added a link to a store front. You can buy t-shirts and stickers and stuff like that. Right now it's just an experiment with only one design. I will add more soon. I'm trying to iron out the kinks in it before the launch of the new site.

Buy Stuff

I HOPE They Don't Arrest You for Your Music

Just a paragraph from Associate AG nominee Tom Perrelli's bio on the website for his firm.

"Mr. Perrelli regularly represents the recording industry in cutting-edge intellectual property, technology, and anti-piracy litigation. He has represented the recording industry in a host of cases arising under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), as well as in copyright infringement and digital piracy litigation. He has also represented the record industry and recording artists in a series of copyright royalty proceedings before the Copyright Royalty Board. Since his return to Jenner & Block in 2001, Mr. Perrelli has also represented Democratic voters and elected officials in redistricting litigation arising out of the 2000 Census."

So if I have this straight, the debate on intellectual property rights just ended and you had better stop making copies of the music you own and putting those copies on things like music players. I wonder if this is what HOPE means? Hope for the RIAA just like last week's Hope for Monsanto. Is it too early to say I told you so?

John Mayer

The Guardian has an article in which 'musician' John Mayer is quoted saying some nonsense about the video game Guitar Hero sullying the image of people who are "talented" and can actually play a real guitar. This once again substantiates a point I have made many times before: John Mayer is a giant tool and needs to be fed to hogs. This idiot started his pop career with a song mocking people who went to college instead of becoming rockers and now he is mocking people that play Guitar Hero, many of whom listened to his advice and skipped college. It is my sincerest hope that Jennifer Aniston comes to her senses and stabs the little bastard.

A quick side note

Looks like the former head of Time Warner is under consideration for the commerce sec. post that would have been Bill Richardson's had he not been the alleged criminal we all thought he was in the first place. I'm always glad to see the head of a corporation that can't even manage to keep an internet connection running end up in charge of commerce. Commerce isn't very important anyway. I was kinda sick of it.

Sanjay?

According the the Washington Post sources close to the nominations process are confirming an offer of the Surgeon General position to none other than CNN's very own Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

While I'm not particularly bothered by the SG being a TV doctor, I do sincerely hope that he has been chosen due in some part to his qualifications and not his notoriety. His qualifications do include a Medical license and he also seems to actually be a neurosurgeon. He appears to have been an adviser to Hillary Clinton when she was not an elected official but was still interested in developing the most ridiculously failed attempt at health care policy in years. But he also appears to have been only one in a large group of advisers she had at the time, so there's no telling if the HillaryCare gem belongs in his ring or not. He does seem to have a history of pissing off Michael Moore so that's something.

The Obama camp considered other "professionals" for the top slots in the US government. Among them are former White House Staffers for with no intelligence experience for intelligence related jobs, former military leaders for education posts, whores to the corn lobby for agriculture posts, the same military advisers who ran the Iraq war to remain on and run the Iraq war. I could go on but I won't. I suppose if a priest can be a marriage counselor then this will all turn out just fine.

In Case You Wondered What Social Security Was

CATO has the answer.

I Can't Help It

I love watching Democrats do what they always do. I wont deny that my upbringing with the other party leads me to a sick kind of joy when the left buries themselves. It's just a part of how I am. So the fact that the Senate is a disaster of hardly viable new senators is like a little tiny Christmas present for me. On the one hand the D's may very well seat a comedian who won on a tiny court maneuvered majority vote. Or maybe they lose a court case and lost the seat... Who knows. Either way they end up looking stupid. They either lose a seat or they win and they have Stuart Smalley in their midst.

Next they have a relatively qualified, black, Senator from Chicago appointed legally by a sitting governor. If the D's refuse to seat him, they clearly have no respect for the law and the fact that people are innocent in America until they are proven guilty in a court of law. Not to mention the fact that they will be standing in obviously racist opposition to a qualified black Senator. Of course if they do seat him, they are encouraging a man who is obviously corrupt and an indicator of a larger corruption running rampant within the party.

It's kind of sad watching a party eat itself alive before it even gets to work on anything. But then again maybe it's not so sad.

More Trouble for Obama

Before anybody is even sworn in the President Elect's choice for Commerce Secretary is stepping down amid investigations into contracts handed out to his donors.

Seems like the Obama admin just can't help themselves from stepping into messes. We'll how this plays out but it stands to reason that the honeymoon will have to come to an end eventually and people will start to see what's on this administration's shoes.

Open Source

I don't spend much time talking about technology on this blog. The reasons for that are simple; 1. The areas of technology in which I am an expert are not the areas I am interested in writing about, nor do they have a broad appeal 2. I know people who are actual experts in the areas that I would be interested in writing about 3. I am not an expert in those areas. That being said I am currently in the midst of an annual ritual from which I get a sick amount of joy: reformatting my hard drive and reinstalling my operating system and programs. I enjoy this because I get the chance to clean up old messes, streamline things, update and replace programs, research new apps and consolidate old data. It's fun. Usually I like doing it when I've set aside some time, lined up options, prepared. This time I was not so lucky. Despite diligent efforts and numerous layers of protection, updated frequently, I still managed to get a nasty Trojan horse virus on my laptop. I'm sure with enough time and effort I could have defeated it but after three hours of attempts at running my anti virus from a command line inside windows safe mode I just said screw it and began the time honored reformat process.

So while I have endeavored on this process again I thought I would take a moment to glow about the teaming world of open source software and share a few of my old favorites and some new discoveries as well.

If you aren't familiar with open source software it is a world of software and apps that is developed out in the open without hiding source code and is editable by anybody in the known world that is interested in working on it. They are entirely free to users and developers. Well not entirely free, people who develop the products often invest time, personal resources, and sometimes commercial resources to which they have access. Open source is great because users and developers aren't locked into one company's strategy or needs. Each person can build what they choose, support the product as they choose, and the entire community responds to the needs and desires of the users. To put simply millions of possible developers are working diligently on whatever problem you might face precisely because they themselves might face the same problems and because they can.

Ubuntu A fantastic Open Source operating system. If your needs as a user don't go beyond the basic average user and you are willing to get past a small learning curve this is fast becoming a viable alternative to Windows or Mac OS

Open Office A complete office suite that for my money has completely replaced any need I had for Microsoft Office. Completely compatible with Microsoft Office file formats and just as feature heavy.

ClamWin Is an anti virus program that I have only recently started using. It comes highly recomended.

Firefox If you haven't already discovered this, or upgraded to Firefox 3 I just can't imagine that you still actually bother with the internet.

VLC Media Player This is an amazingly compatible media player that has replaced all kinds of apps on my system. It plays many different vid. and audio formats with no trouble at all.


These are just a few, the web is crawling with programs like them. For more information on Open Source software and the philosophy check out the Open Source Initiative.

I Sometimes Wish My Name Was Kennedy

Because I am completely unqualified to govern and yet I think it would be fun. Of course as a man that comes with heavy baggage, murdering women and things of that nature. Do you think Caroline as a Kennedy and as a woman ever feels a strange overwhelming urge to go swimming at night, alone?

Hank Paulson Again

After an exhaustive search Hank Paulson comes up with a theory for the current economic crisis that, if he says it just right, and manages to keep a straight face, might convince five people that neither he, nor the house of representatives deserves to be doused in their own excrement and dumped at sea. But all five of those people are members of the House of Representatives. Oh and maybe one guy that cares about the ocean.

It Makes Sense

Really the idea of a faith based institution with a history of wide scale political manipulation and using the unknown and the mythical to control large unwitting populations receiving investment capital from the Church of England is not all that strange.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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?

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.

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

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?

See... It happens.

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

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To See How Empty Lives Are

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.

America: Halfway to a Black President

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.

Stossel Part 6

Stossel Part 5

Stossel Part 4

Stossel Part 3

Stossel Part 2

Stossel part 1

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.