Constant Campaign

Obama re-enlists volunteers to build support for agenda - CNN.com

One of the horrible things of the Bush administration was that the evil Karl Rove constantly worked with a large national organization to try to "control the message". It was often brought out as somehow immoral, and some how "inappropriate" for the Bush administration to try to "influence people". It also had connotations of "big money" being involved.

One of BAD things about the Bush White House was that it was supposedly "in constant campaign mode".

I'd argue that it WASN'T nearly enough in "campaign mode" and that turned out to be a HUGE problem for both Bush and Republicans in general.

So, what would be different now??? This is bigger? The amount of money that BO has to do this kind of thing is more vast than has ever been seen?

Oh, wait -- BO is good, and Bush was EVIL. Yes, that's it!!!

Iraq Anniversary

Got a chance to hear a little NPR piece on the anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq. In the past, I've been lucky to hear a few of these, and they tended to dig into the "lost cause" aspects with gusto. Today had a certain sad and haunting quality as they sent reporters to Fallujah to talk to people about how much they had lost. I really didn't get a chance to hear the whole thing -- one of the problems of radio and the car, but it struck me how certain NPR is. They were certain Iraq could not be run, now they seem certain that it was too costly. Apparently the costs of living under Saddam Hussein are "free" -- sort of like the costs of Castro dictatorship, USSR Gulags, or Mao killing his millions.

Meanwhile, the BO budget deficit is now projected at $2 TRILLION -- Bush getting close to hitting $500 Billion was a scandal for them. The only issue now is that it is important for people to understand that we need "Education, Green Energy and Federal Healthcare" to get out of this. Apparently, there is no such thing as too big a deficit for NPR when we have a Democrat for President.

The new organic garden at the White House that includes arugula was also an important news item!!

Ah yes, publicly funded radio.

Dodd-ering Bonus?

Amid AIG Furor, Dodd Tries to Undo Bonus Protections He Put In - FOXBusiness.com


Think that the financial crisis has any Democrat fingerprints? Gee, AIG alone gave over $100 grand each to Dodd and BO. Early on in the campaign I wondered why BO was getting a huge amount of his money from the financial houses.

If the MSM would report it, everyone would know why now!

That Dodd actually WROTE THE PROVISIONS in the TARP under which these bonuses were paid and is now talking about taxing them would get a LOT of ink were Dodd a Republican.

Maybe Suicide and Stay?

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time - Blogs from CNN.com

Nice to see our elected officials having a good time beating up on businessmen that actually make and LOSE money. Taking money by force, spending that and trillions more on pork while flapping your jaws randomly must be quite respectable in some circles. The average person in prison is probably only about twice as trustworthy as 90% of our Senators.

Given the size of the Federal Deficit and the general ineptitude of our government, potentially we would be MUCH farther ahead if the Senators all committed suicide and STAYED in their positions!!

Grassley's initial comments came Monday afternoon during an interview with Iowa radio station WMT. During the interview, Grassley endorsed what he viewed as Japan's corporate model, saying it is customary for failed executives to either relinquish their posts or commit suicide in disgrace.

"In the case of the Japanese, they usually commit suicide before they make any apology," he said during that interview.

I wonder if Chuck is aware that Japan has been in a deeper recession than we are currently in since '92 and shows no sign of getting out? Does he endorse their RESULTS as well as their practices?

Seems to me that committing suicide prior to making the apology at least guarantees that the apology won't be wordy. In the case of the Senators, I think doing the suicide prior to the apology would REALLY save a lot of time -- heck, Biden might never get around to the permanent exit if he was doing an apology with words.

Bottom?

How Will We Know When the Economy Hits Bottom? - NYTimes.com

This article contains 3 very well done charts. There is no way of knowing if history is any guide at all to the future, but it is pretty much the only thing we really have to look at. Based on the P/E ratio, we MIGHT be either just at, or close to a bottom in the market.

The consumer spending chart would indicate that we are still at pretty high levels of spending relative to savings and will likely need to do some more catchup before we "return to the mean".

The housing chart is the most depressing of the 3 -- Fannie, Freddie and the Democrats took us a LONG way up a steep bubble and we likely to have to drop another 30-40% before we are close to returning to THAT mean.

History is no Guide

Commentary: Don't let history be your guide to investing - CNN.com

The following information is quite interesting:

Historically, stocks have produced the greatest long-term return of any financial asset, and "stocks for the long term" was the traditional mantra.

The thinking was that investors took on a worthwhile risk by putting money in stocks rather than taking the guaranteed interest on a U.S. Treasury bond. The idea was that the risk would be justified by stocks posting a better return than bonds. But by the end of 2008, for the first time ever, we saw a 25-year period in which long-term U.S. Treasury bonds actually outperformed the Standard & Poor's 500 stocks

So are bonds a good bet now?

A word of warning about long-term Treasury bonds. I think rates are likely to rise, probably quite sharply, over the next few years, which would clobber the prices of existing bonds. My reasoning: As the world financial panic (which has turned Treasury securities into a supposed safe haven) abates and the impact of huge U.S. government budget deficits is felt as the government has to sell vast amounts of bonds to raise money, rates have nowhere to go but up.

Diversify, Diversify, Diversify ...

Cutting The Cable

Dreaming of cutting the subscription TV cord | Digital Media - CNET News

In the BO Economy, doing with less is the expectation. One pretty much has to have the internet in the current world unless we are down to ARs and beans over the fire. A discussion of some ways to get by without cable.

An Exception

TSA to look at Vitter airport incident - CNN.com

CNN managed to do a negative article on a Republican Senator without having "R" in the headline, or even in the article! I must admit to amazement.

I'd guess this would never even make the news at all if it were a Democrat, but never the less, I have to give them accolades for not following their normal pattern.

I did enjoy the inclusion of the 2007 item -- are we going to include that Joe Biden quit a Presidential bid due to plagarism and Teddy Kennedy was involved in the death of a young woman (not his wife)? or maybe they will include "David Geitner -- admitted tax cheat" whenever he does something?

I'm not holding my breath.

Ecclesiastes 7:4

There's No Pill for This Kind of Depression - WSJ.com

KJV says it best: "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth."

I think Peggy is back from being "lost", but the Bible verse says it as best as is possible. We are still pretty close to a 50/50 nation in reality. Right now BO's numbers are still high because about 10% of the people that know better are still giving him the benefit of the doubt in hope against hope that this won't be as bad as it looks -- so he is at 60% popularity as opposed to 50. The people that produce, invest, once dreamed of having a future, thought their kids could have a bright future, believed in what had always been America -- those kinds of folks are now mired in a depression that goes beyond mere financial ruin. They see that the core values of America have been squandered and we are careening to being "Really Western Europe", or some yet unknown Pagan Socialist Pauper Nation -- "On Nation Under Nothing" -- or maybe just "Under".

Two, the economy isn't the only reason for our unease. There's more to it. People sense something slipping away, a world receding, not only an economic one but a world of old structures, old ways and assumptions. People don't talk about this much because it's too big, but I suspect more than a few see themselves, deep down, as "the designated mourner," from the title of the Wallace Shawn play.

What I see around me is essentially "the loss of the future". For people in their 40's and 50's, they have seen 12 years of their investing lives go up in smoke, and any last vestiges of job security blow away (if not their actual jobs). They look out at the early wreckage of "the change", and they see no hope of a recovery that allows them to postulate a future any better than most likely a cinder block appartment in a government building where they will essentially be "a ward of the state". The future that looks most likely to them from today is a future that scarcely would have crossed their mind 6-12 months ago.


Meanwhile, our media and the 50% of people that always figured that "things were stacked against them" are in a paroxysm of joy. The wise know that will not last -- that is why gun sales are breaking all records. When the fools realize that yet again, they have duped themselves, they will return again to their natural state of anger. Will BO be able to turn their anger away from where it deserves to be (him) and toward the wise? Who knows, that is why the wise are buying guns.

Gun sales continue up. The FBI's criminal background check system showed a 23% increase in February over the previous year, a 29% increase in January, a 24% increase in December and a 42% increase in November, when a record 1.5 million background checks were performed. Yes, people fear Obama will take away the guns he thinks they cling to, but a likely equal contributor to what The Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch called a "gun-buying binge" is captured in the slogan on one firearms maker's Web site: "Smith & Wesson stands for
protection." People are scared.

I think "scared" is the wrong term -- "prepared" is better. The wise are always thinking of preparation -- a year ago it was saving, investing, not buying on credit, doing well at your job. Today it is laying in some cash/gold, supplies and firearms in case BO continues to take the nation in the current direction. We DO want him to fail to destroy America, but he has one hell of a good start if turning us into Kenya or worse is his objective.

"The heart of fools is in the house of mirth".

Democrats Made Off With Madoff

Media Forgets That Wall Street Rip Off Artist is BIG Democrat Donor | NewsBusters.org

One of my airtight rules: If the negative stories about a person don't mention the political party that they are associated with or have contributed to, you can rest assured that they are Democrats.

Ever see which party Madoff associated with? Nope -- Me neither, so it is no surprise that he is documented to have given in the 100s of K to the Democrats.

The MSM keeps a very careful picture of Republicans as "wealthy and corrupt" in front of the eyes of the sheep. Actually, Republicans are pretty much made up of:
 
- Practicing Christians
- working people of modest means that believe in responsibility and independence vs the Nanny State
- middle income folks that are trying to "work / invest their way up"
- nasty iconoclastic independent thinkers that don't believe "what everyone knows to be true"

Most all of the Wall Street Fat Cats, CEOs, "Intelligencia" and "wealthy over $500K" are Democrats, because they can afford to be, and if you are taking everyone's money, it is better if they like you. Basically the top and the bottom are Democrats -- The plutocrats and the teeming masses looking to be gaurenteed happiness by someone else.

Success for BO

The World's Billionaires - Forbes.com

It's working! There is already less income disparity, the billionaires have lost an average of 23% in the last 12 months!!! GREAT!! Of course most of the rest of us that have worked and saved our whole lives have lost more like 50% because we don't have enough money to be nearly as diversified as they are, but Hey -- LESS DISPARITY!!! If we can just all get to ZERO, then we will all be EQUAL!!!

Won't that be grand? I can hardly wait!

Thanks a bunch to BO and his loyal sheep, things are just going wonderfully!

Why Can't the Left Be Happy?

The A-word | Salon

"apocalypse"???? From Salon, a magazine so left it makes the NYT look middle of the road? EEEEEK!!!!

I think the biggest problem with putting the left in charge is that NOBODY is happy! Did Jimmuh Carter look happy to you when he was President??? I know Slick Willie was trying his best to get his mind off how tough things were going with pizza and BJs at the offfice during the day, but I still think that is a sign of shall we say "not being totally into the job". (or at least I think my management would take that view if I was similarly spending my work time).

It is true that the left is never happy, but I think that they are actually as positive as they can get when they are hopping mad at the imperfection of some feckless Republican leader. When are in charge, they quickly descend into despair and it starts to look to them like the world is ending. Heck, we have only lost $26 Trillion in value out of the market SO FAR, and of course the vast majority of that money wasn't theirs anyway since they were mostly long on hemp sandals and hooka pipes.

The Democrat Platform

Quoted off this Wikipedia page:

The Socialist Party candidate for President of the US , Norman Thomas , said this in a 1944 speech: " The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of "liberalism," they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened." He went on to say: "I no longer need to run as a Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Party . The Democrat Party has adopted our platform."

This guy was early, but he knew of what he spoke. Welcome to Socialist Amerika!

BO's Rove

David Axelrod, Obama’s Political Protector, Is Ever Close at Hand - NYTimes.com

It is nice to be on the left, the media let's you define yourself as you see fit. When you are the Republican version, (Rove), THEY define you -- and they color in the horns and tail that they add in RED to be sure that everyone "gets it". Here? "Political Protector" -- poor BO needs that, because of all the nasty right wingers! See, Bush didn't have ANYONE in the press or on the other side "hoping he would fail" -- nope. There were NEVER any indications of say him being "appointed rather than elected", "most incompetent President ever", etc early on in HIS administration!!

He never needed a "protector", but he had the shadowy evil Rove in the background!

Hey Hill-Billy, WRONG BUTTON!!

VIDEO: Wrong red button - David S. Cloud - POLITICO.com

For starters, what could possibly be a more reasonable way to try to "improve" relations with Russia than to give them a BIG RED BUTTON!! Let's see now, has there ever been any BUTTON involved in US / Russian relations??? Oh well, as long as we are being stupid, lets just muddle on. Hey, let's denigrate the previous US administration to a foreign government that we might have to do tough negotiations with!!! That's smart, shows the US people elect STUPID PEOPLE from time to time --- er, well, IN THE PAST!!!

Here we are, let me mention my wonderful self Hill Billy, qualified for this post by hanging around a womanizing husband that treated me like crap for a long time. Oh, and of course there is Joe "let me copy your paper" Biden, and the legendary BO, failed community organizer from Chicago.

See, it says RESET !!! Oops??? It doesn't??? You mean our most brilliant in the history of the universe administration can't find anyone that knows the difference between "reset" and "overload" in Russian??? Hmmm, damn!!

Ok, well at least nobody in the MSM or late night TV will make fun of the BO Administration, so that is good. Too darned bad that we haven't cleaned up the rest of the media yet, so no doubt some right wing zealot idiots will pick this up and take it the wrong way. No matter -- soon we will have all that "hate media" off the air and have those wingnuts rounded up and "dissappeared".

Anyway, the new administration is tough, fair, and SMART ... especially SMART!!!

Gotta love this one off another site in passing:

Translation gaffes are nothing new. President Kennedy famously declared himself a jelly donut standing in Berlin. President Carter's translator, wishing to express the commander in chief's enthusiasm upon arriving in Warsaw, mistakenly told the stunned Poles that Carter would like to make love to them.

Let's see here ... Kennedy, Carter, Obama??? Pattern? They are all the "smart ones", right? How could such a thing happen to them? I'm guessing "right wing plot" -- only reasonable explanation.