Ok, so let's just start off with this. Thanks a lot, 52 percenters. I mean, fuck the 52 percent who elected the reader of the teleprompter of the formerly free world. But double fuck the McCain primary voters who gave us the asshole who gave up the election to Obama because that's just the kind of Maverick he is.

IBD summarizes what 2 years of Unicorn Farts have done to the economy, along with 4 years of democrat control of Congress.

"TARP Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky told Congress that "nearly 20 preliminary and full criminal investigations" were under way. By June, Barofsky was estimating the total cost of U.S. bailout and stimulus efforts at as much as $23.7 trillion — an astounding sum to pay for regulatory incompetence."

To steal from PJ O'Rourke, What the fuck? What the fucking fuck? I mean really? $23 Trillion? To bail out what? I said it in October 2008, we should let everything break and pick up the pieces. Bailing things out only reinforces the underlying problems. Bankruptcy clears the forest, so to speak. But now we’re on the hook for twice the gross national product.

And now, America is looking down the barrel of even more. WPE is now pimping market reform. And pondering a VAT.

What economist does this guy listen to? Oh right, Che Guevara and Alinsky.

This is scary stuff. With the mindless, robotic help of Congress, Obama is succeeding in pouring concrete into the metaphoric economic gears of the country. High taxes will kill growth. Regulation will kill investment. So what will be left? 300 million people with what?

Leftists seem to assume that America can be the America we know and love, powerful and wealthy and safe without any of the real world stuff that got us our wealth, power, and safety. That is, they think we can eliminate risk (and therefore entrepreneurship etc.) without eliminating prosperity. That we can tax the fuck out of everything without everything disappearing.

People on the right like to talk about Cloward-Piven but this economic strategy is more than that. It's basically an obliteration of an economy. If this isn't done on purpose, these actions have got to be the biggest accident ever. Can Pelosi, Obama, and Reid just accidentally do the wrong thing at every possible moment?

So yeah, what a pisser. It feels like the communists have won. What to do? I mean, I don’t want to live through the next Great Depression.

And president-shit-for-brains pulls this one out. “Obama has claimed his middle class tax pledge only applied to income taxes rather than “any form of taxes”.Right…Promises promises. We can't impeach this guy fast enough.

Jumping to conclusions...

John Allen Muhammad
Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar
Hesham Mohamed Hadayet
Mohammad Sidique Khan
Mohamed Almallah Dabas
Mohammad Ajmal Amir Kasab
Abdulhakim Muhammad

Yes, what do these people have in common?

And let's not forget:
Karim Akbar
Nidal Malik Hasan
Bilal Talal Samad Abdullah.

What a joke. Never Forget means Never Learn.

Also, twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall fell. Mark Steyn asked a good question, who in the free world could've seen the fall of the Berlin Wall, the people escaping from misery and oppression, and been moved to say, "you know, we need some more of that here and everywhere."

Who? The academic elites for one. People like Barack Hussein Obama.

Whatever, the America retards get what they vote for. Maybe the human condition can't handle prosperity and freedom.

The Post-Reagan years have been 30 years of the best years in human history, period. The only people in America who haven't participated in the boom are those who live under the ideal of the Democrat Party. California may as well fall into sea. Michigan no longer produces anything worth buying. The underclass of the inner city are basically feral people at this point. But, laugh at Sarah Palin. Make fun of the Southern States where business has fled to. How does it feel, Washington State, to be so anti-business that Boeing has left?

What does it all mean? Read the bills, control the border, respect basic economic principles, get the government out of your life.

Anyway, in case you're wondering, or you read the New York Times and you have no idea what that list of names is of, here's a key.

John Allen Muhammad - Beltway sniper killed 10 in cold blood.
Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar tried to kill 9 people in UNC chapel hill by ramming them with his SUV.
Hesham Mohamed Hadayet killed two people at the Isreali airline, El Al, terminal. On the Fourth of July.
Bilal Talal Samad Abdullah rammed his SUV into Glasgow and tried to set it on fire.
Mohammad Sidique Khan bombed the London Subway
Mohamed Almallah Dabas bombed Madrid
Mohammad Ajmal Amir Kasab helped murder and torture (real torture, not the play rock music too loud torture) a Jewish family during the Mumbai massacres
Abdulhakim Muhammad killed a soldier at an Army recruiting station
Karim Akbar fragged his non-Muslim fellow soldiers
Nidal Malik Hasan killed his non-Muslim fellow soldiers

Nope, jump to conclusions, the most important thing is to prevent a backlash against the Muslim community even though they support terrorism.

Look at the following image:


What the fuck?

I think some jackass named Keynes is to blame. Blamed because he is the beard for which this thing hides behind to gain credibility.

In reality, of course, this is spending is not based on any economic theory or reality. It's a power grab, it's a reward for allies. And, it's just the beginning.

I am not a tribal hack, hating on HugObama because he's of the wrong political persuasion. That thing above, that is the result of 100 days. And maybe 15 minutes of debate. This thing isn't a moderate, cool, rationale way to govern. This thing isn't even a well thought out way to socialize the country. It's just a testament to how idiotic, ignorant, and dangerous superhacks like Pelosi, Reid, and Obama are. 100 days. Open the floodgates. Any pork, project, or reward...come and get it.

Fine. Even pretending that they're sincere (they aren't or they're ignorant). They believe that you solve a crisis of capital in a financial sector by repaving roads and other "stimulus" activities. Sure whatevers.

The summary of Keynesism is that by merely employing a man, you grow the economy. The example is, apparently, you pay guy to dig a hole and then pay him to fill it back up. He gets paid, he spends the money, and the greatest country and economy that the world has ever seen sprouts to life.

Can we, ah, unpack this train of thought?

What can we agree on? Wealth is created, right? Price follows the law of supply and demand, right? If you are an American and can't agree to these two basic precepts of the market economy, the economic system that has granted you more luxury, safety, and material well being than any other country ever, then leave. Please.

Ok, what is the demand for a dug hole. Not that great. Noone is going to spend a lot of money on a dug hole or a hole that's been refilled. No wealth is created by this meaningless act. It does nothing. Money is invested and nothing is returned.

More insidiously, what does this ditch digging and filling job do to the digger, the man himself? His value is tied to his job, he is not gaining new skills. He is not even being criticized or held to any standards. Just show up and do this thankless, meaningless work. Soon, the man discovers that the sum of his efforts is the same whether he works hard or softly. Or if he shows up drunk or high. Hell, why not show up late and leave early.

His soul degrades to the point where he won't even take a real job. He is programmed to earn his money for free. Real work is devalued because the compensation for an actual job is most likely trivial compared to what he makes for nothing. And, because he is a ditch digger, the opportunities for a jump in income from make-believe work to real work are small.

What proof have I of this? Look at the bloated unions driving GM out of business. Look at the hoards of French protesting the inevitable end of their 2 months of vacation and 35 hour work week. Look at the inner cities of America. These examples sprung not from my cold rationality, but from the empathy of make believe work. You loved these people to death.

Want more proof, what is this?

Now, I am not opposed to some spending. The seduction, the siren call, of giving jobs to people is there. And, maybe, some people can only dig ditches. But this theory is wrong and cannot be the basis by which an economy grows. Furthermore, yes, debt spending (another issue, but a related issue) is not always bad. Reagan had to agree to spending increases in trade for growing the military. At least military spending is the opposite of the ditch digging job. The science and engineering required to make and maintain advanced weapons systems (like the Spartans, there are no American "cannonfodder," every soldier and sailor is precious and can strike back at the enemy with unimaginable power) added to this nation's wealth. We got the internet, radars, VCR's, computers, medicine, etc. Not dug and undug ditches. The men emerging from the military were taught, if not marketable skills (how to shoot a gun, drive a boat, fly an airplane), they gained marketable traits (hardwork, leadership, and responsiblity). This spending added to the country's wealth and made the debt incurred relatively small.

Look at that thing again. Did our economy quadruple is size? Will it? No. So, where is this money going to come from? I have no idea. I expect we are going to borrow some of it and monetize the rest.


Japan is another example. They had an economic crisis. They spent like mad. They got new roads and shiny new stuff. Did it help or matter? no. They just ended up with more debt. This is known as the "lost decade." So, their debt is coming due and they don't have the economic growth to repay it. That debt is just as expensive now as it was then.

Think about it, you take out loans to get a degree, say $50K. You hopefully get a job that will make you enough money to pay off that debt. That $50K is less of a burden to you after school and better job than on the day you signed those student loan papers. If you went out and spent $50K on shoes and rims that spin, your income remains the same. That $50K is still as expensive to you on day 1000 as it was on day 1.

On the other hand, we have had the last 30 years of economic growth. Our lifetimes have been blessed by the Reagan presidency. He lowered taxes and cut regulatory interference. Our economy grew. We had several recessions and missteps, but we grew and we are stronger because of it. These recessions allowed us to clear the economic deadwood and to learn lessons. Instead of a lost decade, the recession is a rebuilding year. Think about it. We may have just abandoned the Patriots or Colts role model of the metaphorical football world because we didn't win the SuperBowl one year and decided to take up the Detroit Lion's managerial style instead. One bad year versus a bad lifetime.

Nonetheless, despite the success that we've had thanks to an embrace of the markets, the taxes crept back and the regulations crept back. They always do. Governments want more. And the power to tax is also the power to reward and to punish. And, the ignorant think that economics is a zero sum game and taxation is a linear event.

Bush is being blamed for the current recession. He was also blamed for inheriting Clinton's recession. Luck guy, eh? You saw what he did with the recession he inherited. He made life easier for businesses, not government. We grew...yes we did...hitting a record string of months of economic growth. Eventually, we hit a recession. This one caused by things that have no name (i.e., government regulations forcing banks to make bad loans and then forcing these loans to be sold as securities). But, despite a war, despite a lost city, despite many things, the economy grew.

So, think. Please. Many president inherit a recession. It's the cyclical nature of the beast. Funny how that works out. Some presidents do ok, some kick ass, and some cause and prolong the Great Depression.

So, whither Keynes? Fuck Keynes.

Give me Laffer. Give me Friedman. Give me Reagan. Hell, give me JFK. Give me Hayek. Give me Rand. Give me my freedom!

You can keep the change.

UPDATE

The super-duper deficit keeps burrowing into my brain. I grew up post Reagan, I have zero recollection of Carter. We, as a country, have had it pretty good my entire known life. But, one stupid election, the flood gates are opened. The people currently in power are not ready for this and they are dangerously willing to spend away thirty years of economic growth and prosperity.

And think about what else they've done. They rewrote the game of investing without so much as a whimper. So, why ? how? What's going to grow if people aren't even sure that their investments are safe?

And the thing is...there's historical precedent for what happens when people like HugObama take over a society. At best, we could be in for an FDR era rough spell, you know 15 years of poverty. World War. That sort of thing. But as much as liberals love their dystopic-future-fiction, the world's shitholes of poverty, soul killing oppression, and lost time comes from the totalitarian model we may be embracing.

But who knows, maybe all the spending will work. Maybe Obama's a benevolent steward of our welath. Even so, there's one thing Reagan and the Bushes weren't able to even touch. And one thing Obama isn't going to touch. Social Security is going to go boom very soon.

Think of that when Howard Dean tells you that capitalism is bad. Government is much worse.

When I tell people that my parents are basically communists, they ask, well what happened to you?

I used to say, "they taught me to read."

But now...it seems the proper answer is that people like that don't live the way they preach. None of the things that they have done in raising me squares with what they advocate for other people.

Indeed, I see that by not living by the standards by which I was raised leads to your men being shiftless, lazy, and bad parents. That the women end up, well, at best as girls gone wild. From that point forward, the path is down, not up. I see no reason to advocate raising a feral human. I want everyone to experience what I have and more.

The people that force others into public education where social promotion is the goal, won't send their children to public schools. The easy living of rewarding single motherhood isn't an option. Neither is an abortion. Be responsible. That's what they wanted for me.

From where I was raised, things like bad education, being a victim, living off of others, and countless other things taken for granted were granted to others, but never an option. So, why should I be treated, and expect to be treated, one way, the way that they expected of me, but wasn't expected of others?

Not everyone is gifted. But everyone can do well. I could squander my gifts. You could work hard and be better than you, by all rights, could be. I realized, that what's good for me, is good for you. Not some other standard. I may be fit, but my fitness didn't cause your sloth. My virtue didn't cause your weakness. Jesus said that the poor will always be with us, but he never said that we had to encourage them that their poverty led to a poverty of their souls. The way I was raised wouldn't allow that for me.

There are, it turns out, plenty of poor people. But they still live moral, virtuous lives. Moreso than I could dream of. And these people are looked down upon because they're bitter clingers. Screw that. They are the model, an example.

Some say the poor (or the rich) are different. No. They aren't. Anyone who goes down the wrong path ends at the wrong place. Turn around, it's never too late.

So, in my mind, when Rand wrote, "I swear -- by my life and my love of it -- that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine," I realize that that I can't say rest, do nothing, it's ok, someone else will give you stuff.

I chose another viewpoint. What's good for me is good for others.





So, yeah, live by the same rules. please.

UPDATE

Of course, for most "socialists, libs, etc." types, their positions are more intellectual preening than anything else. Conservatives offer arguments, Liberals offer alliances. To put it clearly, Conservatives want to win the argument to win the crowd, liberals wish to win the crowd to win the argument. It's tribalism versus rationality. Think about that the next time, while watching Jon Stewart, he mocks a political opponent or praises HugObama. You are being told who is cool. Not who is right. So, flush away America's future, ignore what the uncool kids say. It's obviously not important. Following the herd is no excuse, and they should still pay for their thoughtless advocacy, of course.

PS. wow, I got a 3000 word comment. Easily readable because the author managed to condense his thoughts into 4 paragraphs. Very pithy and informative, I am sure. I liked the excess use of all-caps. Persuasive. and deleted.

Let's talk about greed.

Greed is bad. The Church names this as a sin.

You know what else greed is...it's a scapegoat.

That's right, since September of last year, trillions of dollars have disappeared. People have had their retirements reduced to their level of investment at say 2001. So, that's eight years of investing down the drain. And, our brilliant, adorable, smarter than smart president, with the help of mindless dolts like Pelosi and Reid, have borrowed trillions more in an effort to reward their contributors and friends, "fix"* the economy.

And what caused all this damage?

Greed.

Yup, that's it. Go home, nothing to see here citizen. Greed got out of the zoo and ate all the money again.

Fine. What greed was it?

Nope, they say, all you need to know that it was greed's fault. Maybe the greed of a speculator or other participant of the free market.

Is that all, you may ask? To which they would reply, how dare you...it was greed. and the greed on the part of people involved in banks (jews?) and business. Surely, no one in government is or was involved. And if it was a government problem, it's because we didn't let brainiacs like Barney Frank or Chris Dodd tell people how to invest their money. You aren't a right wing, constitutionalist, are you? The Department of Homeland Security has been notified!!!!

So, fine. Greed. Maybe Bush too, but mostly greed did it. That is, because of your political affiliation you don't ask deep questions. And lord knows, the answers to those questions aren't going to jump in your lap like a snowshoe cat. Nope, you would have to read this blog, investors business daily, or the Wall Street Journal to figure out why banks just got caught bare handed. But, for some people, John Stewart is their connection to the real world. And he, sure as shit, is not going to put blame on people inside his beloved political circles. So be it. Just walk away and don't ask about government based entities, community redvelopment acts, acorns, bundling high risk mortgages at the behest of fannie mae. These concepts are not important. It was greed, damn you!

So, obviously, greed is bad.

Let me point out some more greed.

In dealing with aging socialists who are close to retirement, I wonder...isn't it greedy to advance a welfare state, European style stagnating economic policy, to now want to retire like you live in a rich country? You wanted it, you got it. Or, maybe the problem with liberalism is that it's an agenda to tell people to live a way in which you yourself would not choose to live (abortion, bad schools, open marriages, crappy hospitals, crappy economy). Go to the social laboratory. Go see what your experiments have created. America stands at an edge. The next 30 years could be the 1920's to 40's all over again. And you wanted it. So live with it. Don't be greedy.

On a side note, I find it greedy that all these aging baby boomers are now clamoring for grandkids. Well, maybe not all of them, but old people, even aging socialists want grandkids. Well, I think it's greedy for people who laughed at "family values" while their kids were growing up, to be all about their families now.

Greed. Learn what it means. It's wanting something that you don't deserve. Working, earning a living, investing your extra few pennies to make more isn't greed.

Learn about other sins too. Your pride (I am so smart because I mindlessly vote democrat and watch Jon Stewart) and anger (damn you, Bush, it's all your fault, I refuse to even know what you are doing because I've been told it's wrong) lead you to scapegoat greed. It can't be anyone else's fault and it sure as shit ain't my fault. Right. The danger is is that you've spent billions, lost trillions, and you still haven't fixed the problem. Because of your pride.

What a sin.

* the word fix is given scare quotes because really, wink wink, nod nod, uh huh, they are just doing all this because they never want to let a crisis go to waste.

So, two points here.
One, Obama has no idea what he's doing. He is going to be swallowed up by his cabinet. He is going to flail about in the daily running of the government, let alone by how idiotic his ideas on America's place in the world actually are.
Two, Obama's role in the credit crisis shows that his only skill is passing the buck by asking other people to do his job for him.

It seems to me that stories like this should be categorized by the incompetence bomb about to go off in the Federal Government. Other Obama categories will be the Jimmy Carter watch as Obama regularly hinders and punishes our allies, rewards our enemies, and engages in rather wildly conceived military expeditions. A third category should deal with managing expectations. As Obama is all things to all people, it's going to be hard for him to deliver baby, virgin unicorns to everyone in the country. There are going to be some upset folks. Peggy Joseph, I believe you will still be paying for gas and for your house. Finally, a Great March Forward watch. I think the guy's a radical, so let's see what kind of changes he proposes.

So, first Great March forward Watch item:
Hey, college kids, thanks for being so annoying. Thanks for ramrodding Obama down our throats. Here's your thanks: Mandatory Community Service.
Have fun, fuckers.

One of the problems with taking a month off from blogging are that some ideas go to seed.

I was considering the other day, however, about leadership. Every presidential administration is hit by the turmoil of managing many different, high strung personalities. Generally, this is where executive experience is important. You need to manage people because your ideas, strong as you may think they are, will be executed by someone else. That is why Clinton fired all the DOJ attorneys right off the bat. Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and W all had governor backgrounds. W had a Harvard MBA and managed a sports team as well as Texas. George H.W. Bush had the CIA. Generals ran huge organizations.

Senators basically have a staff. Their work product is a vote and a law that is generally written by someone else. McCain, at least, ran several aviation units in the Navy.

Obama. Well, he has 143 days of work as a U.S. Senator. Even those few days were spend campaigning and voting present. In Chicago, he was a cog in the Daley machine before that. He claims to have had experience from running his campaign, although he had a campaign manager to actually, you know, run it. His time at the Chicago Annenburg Challenge was one where he basically handed out money. There was no work product because the kids he indoctrinated had no observable increases in their actual education. His other "community organizer" product was setting up a job bank (fail), setting up a "secondary economy (fail), and running a slum (fail).

Sidenote: It's at this point where I realized that Jesus wasn't a community organizer. Nope, Lenin was a community organizer. That's what Obama did, try to whip up the masses. But that's another post.

What does this mean for the 44th president? Well, he needs Rahm Emmanuel to keep his people in line because Obama is going to be overwhelmed. Executives can give big picture directional guidance. I don't think, however, that anything in Obama's history has prepared him for dealing with actual results based activities or dealing with other executives. You've seen people who've actually run states and armies get bogged down and betrayed by their staffs. Obama? he won't see it coming and won't know what to do about it.

Which brings me to the letter.

Obama claimed to have foreseen the Housing Crisis and its landslide impact into what he have now. That's a lie, of course. He loved sub prime loans and all the other things that were done to create this crisis.

Nonetheless, the letter he wrote is here.

Here is his leadership.

"There is grave concern in low-income communities about a potential coming wave of foreclosures. Because regulators are partly responsible for creating the environment that is leading to rising rates of home foreclosure in the subprime mortgage market, I urge you immediately to convene a homeownership preservation summit with leading mortgage lenders, investors, loan servicing organizations, consumer advocates, federal regulators and housing-related agencies to assess options for private sector responses to the challenge."

Get it? Uh, can you please do something about this so that the people who got home loans they couldn't afford don't lose their homes.

It gets better:

"The summit should consider best practice loan marketing, underwriting, and origination practices consistent with the recent (and overdue) regulators’ Proposed Statement on Subprime Mortgage Lending. The summit participants should also evaluate options for independent loan counseling, voluntary loan restructuring, limited forbearance, and other possible workout strategies. I would also urge you to facilitate a serious conversation about the following:

* What standards investors should require of lenders, particularly with regard to verification of income and assets and the underwriting of borrowers based on fully indexed and fully amortized rates.

* How to facilitate and encourage appropriate intervention by loan servicing companies at the earliest signs of borrower difficulty.

* How to support independent community-based-organizations to provide counseling and work-out services to prevent foreclosure and preserve homeownership where practical.

* How to provide more effective information disclosure and financial education to ensure that borrowers are treated fairly and that deception is never a source of competitive advantage.

* How to adopt principles of fair competition that promote affordability, transparency, non-discrimination, genuine consumer value, and competitive returns.

* How to ensure adequate liquidity across all mortgage markets without exacerbating consumer and housing market vulnerability."

So, yeah, the lending industry was torn apart by people like Obama who forced banks to loan money to risky borrowers in the name of affordable housing. These loans are now decried by people like Obama as "predatory lending." Nonetheless, Obama looks past the damage to the financial sector done by FF/MM in packaging these risky loans into AAA rated MBS's guaranteed by the under capitalized FF/MM.

And also note, that he wanted to help community based organizations (i.e., ACORN) profit from the mess. Also, he wanted to figure out how to make the borrowers have an easier time not paying back their mortgages. That's the solution he had. You and me, homeowners that actually work and pay our bills on time, we're just a bunch of suckers.

Nope, his concern is keeping every one's villains, the idiots who got subprime loans when they couldn't afford them in their houses. Maverick and W both tried to actually fix the problem. Obama wants Bernanke to, uh, convene a summit to figure out how to give poor people more of your money. A job of a Senator is to do things like the things he wants someone else to do. Senators write laws. They hold hearings. They hopefully foresee and solve problems.

Obama simply wrote a letter to Santa Clause and addressed it to the guy who oversees the American money supply. AND IT MISSED THE WHOLE POINT OF THE CRISIS. The crisis was the cancer that these loans were. They killed the AAA rating of the MBS holding them, causing -under current idiotic mark to market laws- the inability of institutions holding these items from using them as valuations in their liquidity.

I wish that Bernanke sent the following reply:

"Dear Senator Obama,

After much research and deliberation, we have come up with the following response to your wishlist, fantasy, extortion letter:

Tell your deadbeat constituents to get jobs and pay their bills.

Thank you,

people who actually worked for a living."

(all my links and formatting got shot to hell, so imagine that this post looks nice and has links to cool stuff)