Obama’s Hypocricy

“What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

One thing that’s become painfully obvious to me since he took the office of the President is the very hypocritical nature of Barack Obama. I emphasize the word nature here, because it seems that it is something that he is totally unaware of. The other part of his character that has been exposed is his ability to blame shift, two qualities which complement each other quite nicely. Concerning the massive and crippling budget deficit, for instance, he did both. First, he blamed and attacked Bush for how huge the deficit had grown, then, just let us know how displeased he was with Bush’s deficit, Obama quadrupled it. He proposed spending that would result in the largest budget deficit mankind has ever known, and increased spending to degrees that might even have caused FDR or LBJ to blush–then, with no apparent irony, no tongue-in-cheek, and presumably straight faced, proposed an economic responsibility conference. Then, he makes a bold pledge to take the defecit which he quadrupled and cut it in half. Only after the economy grows at rates well beyond a prudent forecast would project. But the examples come out every day. Just yesterday he said that we can’t be perpetually bailing out the auto industry. This is another trick Obama plays. While on the campaign trail, Obama pledged he wouldn’t sign a bill with earmarks. Then, he signs a spending bill with thousands of earmarks and immediately declares that this is the last time he was going to do this. Yeah, right. He almost sounds like an addict, declaring this is his last beer, or this will be his last hit. But any objective observer could tell you that if he’s sincere, the addict would forego that last drink. 
Despite what he may say, Barack Obama isn’t spending this money out of necessity. He isn’t taking over companies like Mussolini because he has to. He’s doing it because he wants to. His actions belie fascist tendecies  few who merely listen to what he says could even imagine.

Obama’s stimulus: only for party members

This is a quote of a quote, but I think it is right on point. James Pethokoukis, quotes Economist Joel Kotkin here:http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/2009/3/8/obamas-chicago-style-economics.html saying,

“The question is what strategy? Right now it seems like Chicago style interest politics with a Moveon.org spin. Money will be there for key what passes for”left” groups – urban real estate interests, greens, smart growthers, wind/solar lobby and, the shocktroops, the public employee unions. This is not a growth strategy but a politic technique designed to knit together a coalition of poor urbanites, bureaucrats, professors, greens and the Gorite energy speculators. It may work politically but I wonder what it will do longer-term for the economy.

Few serious people outside the Administration and its “ditto heads” around think this will turn around the private economy, although it may boost many individuals’ economies. Private sector employment is collapsing even in the last strong economies – the Great Plains and Texas. The hangover in capital markets will make the government the defacto funder of first resort.”

My thoughts precisely. These are investments with no expected payoff, except politically. Which is what liberals mean when they call public spending “investment.” It is an investment in their political future, an investment to grow their political base.

Obama doesn’t care about your IRA

President Barack Obama doesn’t care about your 401k or your precious IRA. As he said Tuesday, “the market bobs up and down day to day, and if you worry about that, you’re probably going to get your long term strategy wrong.” Displaying his vast lack of financial knowledge, he also stated that stocks are “potentially a good deal” because “profit and earning ratios are starting to get to the point where buying stocks is a potentially good deal if you’ve got a long-term perspective on it.” Of course, P/E ratios, which stands for price to earnings and measures a stocks relative value (literally the value of all outstanding stock divided by the annual earnings) have been going down, but the reason stock prices are more than the earnings is because investors factor in anticipated earnings. Therefore, the stock market isn’t just a barometer of the current economic situation, but also a measure of the perceived future of the economy. And unfortunately for Obama, the market hasn’t fluctuated since he won the election in November. It has tanked. I wonder if he’s noticed? After all, why would he refer to the stock market being down 30% since his election as “market fluctuation”? Isn’t that a slap in the face to everyone with a retirement savings plan? Calling 200 point drops in the DJI average every other day “market fluctuation” is like calling a bank robbery “asset fluctuation” or referring to the Minnesota Timberwolves’ season as “record fluctuation.” It reflects either a lack of understanding of the serious nature of the problem, a callous disregard or ignorance of how it affects investors (including just about everyone with an IRA, 401k or any stocks or mutual funds) or maybe, just maybe he is aware of all of this but just doesn’t care. There’s one thing I want to make abundantly clear here: I am not one to impune the motives of those who I disagree with, no matter how vehement the disagreement. I believe that Barack Obama wants the best for his country. I don’t think that Obama is “a radical communist.” I don’t even think he’s a fascist, despite his fascist tendencies and several blogs I might have written with Obama and fascist in the title. I believe that he believes he knows what’s best for this country, and probably thinks he could help you run your life a little better. And what’s best for this country? Less money for the rich, he can spend it better than they can. Don’t worry, all you demonized yacht and private jet manufacturers, your bailout is coming soon. And don’t worry charities who are losing large donations because of higher taxes on the rich and limited tax deductions for donations. The government can do it better than you. Besides, the government doesn’t have to ask for donations, it just has to raise your taxes.  But this is also why I say President Barack Obama doesn’t care about your IRA. Because he doesn’t care about the stock market. The stock market is simply for the independently wealthy and if they lose money, who cares? And Barack Obama has previously indicated that the health of the economy isn’t as important as fairness. It is more important to bring the rich down than for everyone to do better. This is what he said a little over a year ago while on the campaign trail. “[W]hat I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness. We saw an article today which showed that the top 50 hedge fund managers made $29 billion last year — $29 billion for 50 individuals. And part of what has happened is that those who are able to work the stock market and amass huge fortunes on capital gains are paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries. That’s not fair.” He later stated how he didn’t want to raise our national debt (a lame excuse for raising taxes if there ever were one, and obviously untrue). This was in reaction to a question about how cutting capital gains taxes helps the economy. And he did not bother to disagree with this statement, though he didn’t agree either. The point he made is very clear, however. It isn’t fair to make too much money, and if cutting your taxes helps the economy it doesn’t matter, because fairness is more important. This is the tyranny of socialism. This is the contradiction of so-called progressivism. Equality trumps economic progress. Equality of results is favored over equality of opportunity. So, if those super wealthy lost billions and the average joe just thousands, this is a win in Barack Obama’s mind. Bringing those on the top down is at least as or more important than bringing those on the bottom up. And those on the bottom? Don’t worry, that’s what the government’s there for.

A dispassionate look at the economy

“Men of intemperate minds never can be free: their passions form their fetters.” –Edmund Burke

“We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.” — Henry David Thoureau

There’s a story I am fond of telling, the origin of which is forever lost between synapses destined never to fire again. A professor, in an experiment, assigns to two different groups of students the same project. Go out and survey a certain number of people. The students were told to ask one question, with only a yes or no answer. One group was told that the average or expected results would be 60% yes and 40% no. The other group was told to expect 40% yes and 60% no. The groups came back, and both groups got what they were told to expect. Expectation and perception are two very big shapers of what we commonly call “reality” or “life.” Unfortunately, the liberal media often actively shapes our perceptions in the most imperceptible ways. And it is almost never for the good.
With regard to the economy, it is almost exclusively destructive. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson in As Good as it Gets, We’re drowning here, and they’re describing the water. But it is more like a constant drumbeat of a sort of fatalistic, mololithic press that cries “Recession! Recession!” with the wince of a masochist, barely able to hold back a giant grin. For good news is truly no news these days. Consider the inane and utterly unnewsworthy coverage of gas prices on a weekly basis when our economy was actually growing. Now that gas prices have fallen precipitously, where is the coverage? Where is the silver lining that comes with this recession? I’ll give you a hint: you won’t ever hear of one on ABC or CBS or NBC. You won’t find stories about the natural business cycle in your local, state or national newspaper. No one will ever actually admit that the government can’t prevent, fix, or shorten a recession. Because that doesn’t fit with their story. Its no wonder we’re in a recession. We’ve been talking ourselves into one for the last 3 years. This is why the consumer confidence index is such an important economic indicator. Consumer confidence is by definition a psychological factor– guided by perception as much as hard economic reality. The only fix for this economy is a vital combination of individual action and collective optimism. Individually, we must prepare ourselves for the worst but hope (in the Obama meaning) for the best. Collectively, we need to remember we still live in the greatest nation in the world and have the most economic opportunity of anyone. And focusing on the rising water will only hasten our demise.

Understanding the 2008 election

“He changes times and seasons; He sets up kings and deposes them. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning.” Daniel 2:21 (NIV)

This is perhaps the most difficult blog for me to ever write. Not that these are exceptionally difficult times or anything melodramatic like that. But because I am both perplexed and conflicted in writing it. Perplexed because I don’t understand the why, and conflicted because I want to think better of my countrymen. But here I am, writing, trying to simplify the complicated while still trying to figure it out. This is what I seek to do in every one of my blogs: to connect the dots which so often seem to be scattered so haphazardly. I do this because it seems that truth is constantly obscured, and also because it allows me to understand things personally. That is, while I know what I believe and what I think instictively, writing enables me to put things in perspective.  There is something enlightening about writing. Writing about a given subject doesn’t expose my understanding of it, but rather enables my understanding. I hope I can do the same thing for those reading this.
First, let’s understand that the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency is not by any means the sole concern of the 2008 election, though of the contests it might have been the most clear. More troubling, it seems to me is the number of “red states” which turned “blue” in the national election. Obviously, this had to happen in order for Obama to win, but the way it happened is quite disconcerting. North Carolina, Colorado and Virginia aren’t supposed to vote for a democrat, but they all did. Likewise, Elizabeth Dole wasn’t supposed to lose her senate seat in the (formerly?) conservative state of North Carolina. Mitch McConnell, Republican Senate minority leader isn’t supposed to struggle to maintain his seat in conservative Kentucky. In Pennsylvania, the detestable Jack Murtha–who openly called his own constituents racists, then when confronted didn’t retract his comment, but instead changed his insult to rednecks–managed to keep his seat in Congress. Of course, this was not Murtha’s only repulsive comment in recent memory. Murtha infamously disgraced himself and discredited his military service by proclaiming that marines had killed innocent civilians in cold blood in the Iraqi city of Haditha. This, despite the fact that the investigation of the Haditha incident was still under investigation and Murtha hadn’t even read the report. But Murtha was an incumbent. The situation in Minnesota is almost as bad. The immently disgraceful one, Al Franken nearly won a US senate seat over the experienced, competent, independent and thoroughly likeable Norm Coleman. Franken isn’t even a good comedian, is an unsuccessful talk show host and a remarkably angry and meanspirited political commentator, and as cuddly as a porcupine. Yet Coleman barely won the election and it was so close there is a mandatory recount that will get started any month now. Granted, Dean Barkley entered the race and probably stole a few of Coleman’s votes, but the fact remains that Al Franken was only a couple hundred votes away from being Minnesota’s second radical left wing senator, possibly to the left of even Amy Klobuchar.
The examples of how liberal this election was are numerous and can be seen at nearly every level. The question is, why? Rather than impune motives, denegrate the intelligence, or question the patriotism of the electorate, I submit that to some extent this election was an indictment of our character. Specifically, this election exposed our growing love of convenience. Leisure has become our new national past time, one which we will legislate, if necessary. Why should we pay for and choose our own healthcare if the government can do it for us? Why should we have to work to pay off our school loans if the department of education can pay for it? Why should we have to pay attention to what we eat, when the FDA and legislators can just outlaw what’s bad for us? Why should we take responsibility for our family, when human services can handle it? We have spurned individual responsibility in favor of newly found “rights.” We have mistaken subjective fairness for objective justice and rejected reason in deference to emotion.
Barack Obama was wrong. His campaign slogan might have been “change we can believe in”, but it was nihilism–a belief in nothing at all– that won the day. This is not a declaration of defeat, nor an indictment of the United States as a whole. This is still the greatest country in the world, and we still love freedom more than anyone else. To lose faith in the American people is unthinkable, for it would mean surrendering to the same nihilism.

Obama’s fascist Third Way

In Barack Obama’s new health care commercial the velvet-smooth narrator intones, “On healthcare reform, two extremes, on one end government run healthcare, higher taxes. On the other end, insurance companies without rules, denying coverage. Barack Obama says both extremes are wrong. His plan? Keep employer paid coverage, keep your own doctor, take on insurance companies to bring down costs. Cover pre-existing conditions, cover preventive care. Common sense, for the change we need.” As my favorite talk show host, Michael Medved would say after hearing such pie-in-the-sky drivel, “uh-huh.” Of course the brilliant thing about this tax–ahem–healthcare plan is the third way aspect. Barack Obama stole one right out of Benito Mussolini’s handbook! As Jonah Goldberg put it in his superb book Liberal Fascism, “Fascist and Nazi intellectuals constantly touted a ‘middle’ or ‘Third Way’ between capitalism and socialism. Mussolini zigzagged every which way, from free trade and low taxes to a totalitarian state apparatus.” Goldberg later continues, “The ‘middle way’ sounds moderate and un-radical. Its appeal is that it sounds unideological and freethinking. But philosophically, the Third Way is not mere difference splitting; it is utopian and authoritarian. Its utopian aspect becomes manifest in its antagonism to the idea that politics is about trade-offs. The Third Wayers say that there are no false choices–’I refuse to accept that X should come at the expense of Y.’ The Third Way holds that we can have capitalism and socialism, individual liberty and absolute unity. Fascist movements are implicitly utopian beacause they–like communist and heretical Christian movements–assume that with just the right arrangement of policies, all contradictions can be rectified. This is a political siren song; life can never be made perfect, because man is imperfect. This is why the Third Way is also authoritarian. It assumes that the right man–or, in the case of Leninists, the right party–can resolve all of these contradictions through sheer will.”
Are the pieces falling together now? Is this portrait clear? Barack Obama, the man who would be king–who fosters so much ambition that he can’t serve more than a year in a national office before starting a Presidential campaign–is now advocating a Third Way, and this isn’t likely to be confined to just healthcare. Obama’s overriding ambition and utopian idealism are a dangerous combination. And with a Democratic majority in both the house and the senate, the damage that could be done might be monumental. Don’t be fooled by Obama’s promise to let us “keep employer paid healthcare” (is that better than allowing people to buy and choose their own healthcare?) he is promising to allow those without healthcare to get the same coverage that government workers get. Which is, of course, better than many or perhaps most of employer subsidized health care plans. So how many people are going to keep their employer paid healthcare if they can get cheaper coverage from the government? Just reading Obama’s healthcare plan exhausts an entire year’s worth of suspended disbelief. But this is the man who requires that you believe in to such an extent that he can raise spending by a trillion dollars yet still cut the budget–without any proposed budget cuts to speak of. Is this hope? The true believers sure have hope. They believe. Call me a doubting Thomas, but I want proof.  

 

If only John McCain were as on point as his ads…

Nothing creepy or cult-like here…

“I begin with the young. We older ones are used up but my magnificent youngsters! Are there finer ones anywhere in the world? Look at all these men and boys! What material! With you and I, we can make a new world.” Adolph Hitler, encouraging children to join the Hitler youth.

Who is responsible for our financial crisis?

This is a very hard question to answer, believe me I’ve tried and tried to figure it out. And it’s only because I don’t have a reactionary temperment, nor endless hours to research that it’s taken this long. The answer: nearly everyone. Is one political party more resposible than another? I am very confident to say that it was more the Democratic than Republican party, but it comes down to individual members than whole political parties. Even Alec Baldwin, as loony left as they get, acknowledges that Democrats, especially Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, have a great deal of responsibility. Read this: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/10/04/baldwin-blames-financial-crisis-clinton-dems-barney-frank. More thoroughly, the eminent economist Thomas Sowell addresses the culpability in one of his recent columns. http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell100308.php3. It is titled “Do Facts Matter?” because Democrats enabled the financial crisis. And of course, one of Barack Obama’s chief financial advisors, Frank Raines just happened to be running Fannie Mae, which nearly single-handedly causes this crisis. But for some reason people “feel” that Obama can help us out of this crisis. It’s like a bad joke.

Rejecting Political Rigidty

“The person who agrees with you 80% of the time is your friend and ally not a 20% traitor” -Ronald Reagan
They’re coming again, those well meaning but ultimately dangerous advocates of political puritanism are back on the attack, up on their high horses. They claim that John McCain’s support for the bailout bills prove that he’s some sort of socialist or worse. The truth is, I’m not sold on how great or awful any of the proposed bailout bills were. There were plenty on both sides of the issue who on other issues would be very unlikely to disagree, and frankly I didn’t have the time and/or patience to read each bill. Obviously, the initial bill was flawed, but to keep insisting that any of the bills would actually cost $700 billion is a bit dishonest since the bills involved purchasing assets and then eventually reselling them. Of course, it is usually this part that conservatives balk at. Clearly, buying and selling property isn’t a normal function of government, and it certainly should be one of the last things that this government does. There are many who have insisted that we should let the free market resolve the credit crisis caused by the unwise use of credit by lenders and lendees, but it wasn’t, in fact the excesses of the free market that caused the credit crisis, but government intervention. Should the market be forced to to correct the wrong that well intentioned federal policies have caused? Perhaps it is betraying my free market principles, but I don’t know how to put the genie back in the bottle. Can we return to a pure free market now, when we have allowed socialism to creep in so far? I hope we can, and it’s too late to debate this since the bill has finally passed, but the credit crisis disabled the free market, and though it would eventually free itself, I don’t see a great deal of harm in this single instance of government intrusion. I certainly could be wrong though, I must admit. It is rare that I feel so politically uncertain as I do right now. But there were many reasonable members of congress who voted for the final bailout bill, including: Bachus, Shadegg, Boozman, Lundgren, Herger, Radanovitch, McKeon, Tancredo, Putnam, Weldon, Souder, Lewis, Rogers, Alexander, Boustany, McCrery, Hoekstra, Camp, Kline, Blunt, Boehner, Schmidt, Cole, Sullivan, Fallin, Shuster, Barrett, Brown, Wilson, Wamp, Sessions, Conaway, Thornberry, Brady, Granger, Cannon, Cantor, Ryan, and Cubin, who all had at least a 90 or higher conservative rating (on a scale of 1-100) from the American Conservative Union in 2007, many who had a perfect 100 rating. Was this the right bill? It’s hard to say, it certainly was very far from perfect. The urgency behind it, though disconcerting, was probably necessary considering the shape of the market last week.
I didn’t mean to go into such detail concerning the bailout bill, because there was a bigger point I wish to make, but it certainly is the biggest political issue since the decision to go to war against Iraq, so I certainly couldn’t ignore it. The point I need to make is that McCain’s lack of perfection isn’t a good enough reason to vote against him. It certainly would be understandable to vote against McCain in the primaries, but this is the general election coming up and rigid political idealism in a national Presidential election would mean voting for someone who has no chance of winning. For a serious conservative, voting for a third party candidate or not voting for President is the same as voting for Obama. For those who proclaim the importance of personal responsibility, copping out and not voting for John McCain is inexcusable, because John McCain is the only candidate who has shown an ability to reject a spending bill, and Barack Obama has never seen a tax he didn’t like. Moreover, there are likely to be two or three new Supreme Court justices in the next 4-8 years. John McCain has promised to appoint strict constructionist judges, Barack Obama prefers activists like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens. The Supreme Court justices should be enough to convince any on-the-fence conservative that voting for McCain isn’t optional. How a conservative can say they are voting their conscience and not vote for McCain in November is beyond me. To me, it seems they are voting with their heart, because I think their conscience would take issue with not voting against Barack Obama, and that’s the real issue, make no mistake. Primary voting is over, and the candidates are the candidates. We don’t get a do-over in November, we just have to make do. A Barack Obama Presidency would be a disaster, one which would be exceedingly difficult to redeem. And remember, there will be no Republican majority in the house or the senate this time. A McCain Presidency is the only thing that will stand between a Democrat majority and total socialism in the United States. Socialized medical care. Higher taxes across the board. Less religious liberty. No more war on terror. A weak national defense. The list is endless. Just try sell to the American people cutting all the programs Obama will create in four years. And you won’t have the McCain voters to blame.