Here are a few things that are driving me nuts this week.

1. Scapegoating.  In America we always have a need to blame someone for our problems rather than own up to them.  The problem is, rather than do any soul-searching and assign blame where it is due, learn a lesson from those mistakes, and move forward, we scapegoat.  It's easier and politically expedient.  Rather than look at the roots of the financial problems, the media, the democrats and a gullible electorate are blaming George Bush and, amazingly, John McCain.  Financial experts have been saying for some time now that the etiology of these problems was 1977 with action taken by Jimmy Carter in the form of the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977¹.  It "encouraged" lending institutions to increase lending to lower income urban areas in an attempt to improve standards of living.  The act had little in the way of teeth, but laid the ground work for the legislation that would follow.  In 1989 Congress passed the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery Enforcement Act (FIRREA).  This act required all reviews of under the CRA to be made public in a sort of banking report card.  In 1991, under George H.W. Bush, Congress passed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act of 1991 which said that the CRA reviews were to be taken into consideration when a bank submitted an application for a deposit facility.  Poor performance on a CRA meant that banks might not get the approval they sought which in effect held a gun to the heads of the banks: "You want this application approved?  Go make some risky loans."  President Clinton then made changes to the CRA that made the loan documentation requirent for a CRA review less stringent.  The effect was that banks could more easily show their performance against the CRA standards.  During this period, loans to whites increased by 67%; to blacks by 300%; to hispanics by more than 200%.  Urban areas saw loans increase by 137%; suburban areas by only 37%.  This is not in itself bad, except for the fact that many of the people borrowing were not qualified to take out loans in the amounts or terms that they did.  They were rolling the dice; to stay solvent, their home prices had to increase pepetually, and interest rates had to stay low or the adjustable rate mortgages would bankrupt them.  The lessening of lending standards during this period paved they way for the subprime mortgage crisis.  Now mix in a real estate community who was all too eager to get people into a home so they could make their commisions, and the problem got much worse.  When the tech bubble burst, it seemed like every laid off techie went out and got their real estate licence.  By 1999 lending instutions were internally concerned about the possibilty that a decline in housing prices and an increase in interest rates would cause an economic collapse, but to continue to grow their businesses they had to keep issuing these loans.  All of this was before George W. Bush's inauguration in 2001.  Fannie Mae, being one of the largest lenders in the US, was actively cooking their books at this time and the seeds sown by Carter and watered by Bush(1) and  Clinton were now beginning to grow and bear fruit.  In 2004 Dennis Hastert wrote legislation to review and regulate Fannie Mae.  John McCain signed on to this bill and even gave a speech on the Senate floor about the dangers of economic collapse if Fannie should go south.  A total of 5 republican Senators signed onto the bill; no Democrats did.  Certainly not Chris Dodd or Barack Obama who had their hands in the cookie jar at the time.  Some - notably Barney Frank, who is openly gay and had an affair with a male executive at Fannie Mae, defended Fannie as having no problems what so ever.  He as late as this summer said that historically it wasn't the best investment, but going forward was solid; 6 weeks later it collapsed completely.  In any case, Hastert's Senate Bill S190 was allowed to die and we missed our last chance to make changes and avert probably not all, but at least some of this disaster.  So - you can see that there's plenty of blame to go around, but to lay it at the feet of GWB,John McCain and the Republicans in general while absolving the Democrats is ridiculous.  Again, this is scapegoating - and the Democrats are scapegoating the Republicans and John McCain at OUR expense so that they can win the election.  Since they're unwilling to accept responsibility for their role in this mess, how can we trust them to fix it?
   
2. Celebrities ranting about politics.  Maddona hates Sarah Palin?  So f-ing what?  Maddona doesn't even live here any more.  Roseanne has an opinion?  There's a surprise- coming from someone who thought it was a joke to butcher the National Anthem, I'm only surprised she waited so long to vent her spleen.  Matt Damon is worried about Sarah Palin?  Memo to Matt - when Obama raises my taxes, the first thing to get cut from my budget is money to see your films, you wank.
3. Pouting Republicans.  I am volunteering for th McCain campaign and I am tired of people saying "I supported Ron Paul, not John McCain."  Fine, waste your vote then, but keep your mouth shut if Obama wins and the United States Of America becomes the United Socialist States of Obama.  WAKE UP PEOPLE!  Obama won't destroy America - it just won't look anything like America when he's done putting his radicals in places of power.  Check out these links if you doubt Obama wants to mold himself in the image of a radical.  See any similarities?
   
• http://blog.maisnam.com/files/images/2005.04.08/che_tshirt.jpg
• http://www.notcot.com/images/obama_shep_print_final2.jpg
4. The Media.  When this is all said and done, I hope that the damage the media has done to it's own reputation takes root.  If nothing else, this election process has killed whatever was left of journalistic integrity in this country.  When we can't trust the media, we can't trust the people they support, and that is undeniably Obama.  How the media folks can cry about a right wing bias on Fox News while keeping a straight face about their supposed fair and balanced approach is beyond me.  It just further proves the point that Ann Coulter, Gregg Jackson and others have made about liberals and progressives - they never let facts stand in the way of their arguments.  The problem lies with the people in America to busy, too disinterested or too ignorant of the tactics of the Big Lie to see through the morass and vote based on reality.  30 second sound bites could elect Obama - and that is a sad commentary on the state of politics in this nation.
   
5. People voting Obama because they're black too.  I work with a black woman who, when I asked her who she was thinking about voting for, gestured to her self and said "who do you think?  Obama...McCain's just not speakng to me."  We talked for a while about it, and after listing off a number of issues I see with Obama she said, "I hear you, but I'm just not feelin' it."  Then I asked her how she felt about abortion, especially partial birth abortion - which Obama supports with both arms.  That was the one that got her.  "You need to go now.  I didn't need to hear that." she said.  You see, in the end I agree with Michelle Obama about one thing - you shouldn't vote for someone because you like them, or they're cute - or because they're black.  Vote for them because they stand for what you stand for, or close to it.  A vote for Obama is a vote for unrestricted, full access to abortion including partial birth abortion.  What's next?  Forced abortion?  Genetic selection?  I don't really want to live in GATTACA but that's where we're heading.

Sigh.  That's enough for today.

¹http://www.answers.com/topic/community-reinvestment-act-of-1977

I came across this on YouTube:



I love the use of the Beatles, the 60's hippie spokesband, to underscore Obama as a tax and spend democrat just like Bill Clinton.

In Friday's debate, Obama said he knew two years ago that the subprime mortgage bubble could burst and wreak havoc on the economy.  It's too bad McCain beat him there.  McCain, unlike Obama, took action, though it was to no avail.

Chuck Hagel of Nebraska sponsored Senate bill S190 (knowns as Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005), and McCain signed on as a co-sponsor.  While the full test of his speech on the senate floor on May 26, 2005, can be read here, I'll excerpt the good bits here:

"For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac...If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole."

So what happened to this bill?  It sat on the shelf, with no action being taken, until it expired in January 2007.  Hagel, McCain, John Sununu and Elizabeth Dole were the only people in the Senate to support the bill, and it never even got brought out for a vote. 

Wasn't Obama elected in 2004?  He said Friday that he knew about this risky economic policy two years ago...yet the bill was sponsored in 2005 and McCain gave his speech on it in 2005.  Maybe my math is off a bit here, but shouldn't Obama have been aware of this risk three years ago?  Or was he already out on the campaign trail that day?  Only a democrat could miss the boat by over a year and brag about it during a national debate.  A day late and 700 billion dollars short - that's change you can believe in!

One of the repeating themes of The Case Against Barack Obama is his calculated indecision.  He seldom takes a stand on an issue, being purposefully vague so that people can see in him what they want to see.  This has actually worked for him, as he's risen up from nowhere to be a Presidential contender.  Anyone considering a his qualifications should ask themselves a few questions.

What will Putin see in him?  If people see what they want to see, will Putin will see a formidable foe who should not be tested, or will he see a weak, pushover of a leader who will sell his country dearly for what he thinks is peace?

What will fundamentalist Muslims who would kill Americans wontonly see in a leader who writes in his book The Audacity Of Hope: 'I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.'  Will they see someone who will stand up to them, or someone who will open the door to them, allowing America's "chickens" to "come home to roost." as Jeremiah Wright said so eloquently.

Obama's associations with Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright and Tony Rezko, among others, should give people pause enough.  But couple them with his decisive indecision, allowing people to make of him what they will, and there are some very dangerous possibilities ahead for this country if Obama, the invisible leader, wins the election.

With apologies to the Beastie Boys, Obama is crafty, he gets around...

Whenever he says something with confidence, it's because he knows he cannot be pinned down on it.  In his interview with O'Reilly he makes the statement that Social Security is in better shape than Citibank.  This may be a true statement, but that's like saying someone with terminal cancer is in better shape than someone having a heart attack.  The death of the latter may be imminent, but is not certain; the death of the former is certain but not imminent.

His opposition to privatizing Social Security is yet another indicator that Obama doesn't get the challenges that face his would be constituents.  He views the issue as binary - we either cut benefits or we raise taxes.  The baby boomers shudder at the thought of reduced benefits, while younger people shudder at the thought of higher taxes (if only some of the 45 million babies aborted over the last 36 years were alive and in the work force, maybe we would have a bigger tax base...but I digress).

Social Security is facing the same problem that many coporations are facing. Defined benefit plans are attached to increasing life spans and younger retirement ages, and the strain is breaking the back of many companies.  For example, I work for the same company as my father.  When he started working for this company in 1965, the actuarial tables predicted a life expectancy of 72 years, meaning that when someone retired at age 65 they would live on average for 7 years.  However, my father retired at age 51.  He's already been drawing his pension for 14 years, and God willing, he will for at least another 35.  But this illustrates how the burden of the defined plan has put extreme pressure on corporations and the government alike.  The automotive industry is under increasing pressure from it's pension burdens; the steel industry is being crushed by it's obligations, several airlines have turned the pensions over to the government to manage (for a fee, of course), and Social Security will be out of money by 2045 (this assumes there's enough money in the treasury to pay IOUs taken against the Social Security pool).

There is a third option that the left ignores, I believe, because it removes government from the equation  That option is to priviatize Social Security.  There's no easy answer to this one, but it is certainly not an unsolvable problem.  You would have to have an economist work the numbers, but one way is to divide the labor force into three segments. 

• The first, either retired or retiring within say, 15 years (so age 50 or older), will retire under the current defined plans.  No changes, no need to get all worked up over lost benefits. 
  
• The second group would be people who are under age 50 down to age 30.  The employer contributed portion of their social security taxes will go to the current social security pool, for which they will be eligible for a reduced benefit when they retire.  Their personal contribution (the FICA entry on the pay statement) will go to a private account, which is theirs and theirs alone, to be distributed upon reaching age 65.  Pending an analysis of benefits, those close to 50 may have more of their contribution go to Social Security since their retirement plan may have been more reliant on it than those closer to 30.
  
• The third group - those under 30 - will have both their contributions and those of their employer put in their private fund.  For these people, slated to start turning 65 years old in 2043 (two years before the current predicted insolvency of Social Security), their retirement fund is theirs only, meaning that the government has no obligations to them upon retirement.
  

This is analogous to the cash balance pension plans many large companies are moving to today.  For all groups the 401K contributions should remain as they are, with a reindexing for inflation every 5 years.  To further increase the individual's participation in their retirement future, restrictions on income for Roth IRA contributions should be removed. 

Will McCain try to reform Social Security?  It will be an uphill fight, and I am not optimistic the needed consensus will be gained in the next four years.  However, because the left wants to make us all slaves to the government, we won't see any of this happen if Obama wins the election; remember, his is painting a picture of a system that is "in better shape" than failing and struggling financial institutions.  The more we all struggle the more clamor there is for government intervention, and the liberals will be there to answer the call for more government.  Of that you can be certain.

In a great article on  the Human Events site, A.W.R Hawkins quotes Barack Obama as saying “We're not going to be bullied…I don’t believe in coming in second.”  This is a true statement.  When making his first run for office in the Illinois state legislature in 1996, he gave his typical Yes-You-Can-Change-Hope speech, and wrote about it in The Audacity Of Hope:  "It was a pretty convincing speech, I thought," he writes, and while he wasn't sure that everyone liked it he goes on: "Enough of them appreciated my earnestness and youthful swagger that I made it to the Illinois legislature."¹  Being someone who doesn't believe in in coming in second, he had his campaign go through petition signatures line by line, disqualifying enough of his opponent's signatures to disqualify them, making him the ONLY candidate on the ballot.²   Only ONE person had to be impressed with his youthful swagger and he would have won that election.  That one person was obviously Barack himself, as he so humbly described himself. 

I bring this up now because it should be known how Obama handles his campaigns.  The whole lipstick-on-a-pig controversy was a chess move on his part.  His campaign was thinking two moves ahead on this one, and here's how I think it was laid out.

Step one - make a hackneyed lipstick-pig reference.  The audience will instantly connect it to Sarah Palin's remark from a week earlier and will guffaw like seals at feeding time.

Step two - if no one objects, it's a successful shot across the bow of the new Palin machine: "See, I can be clever too!"  If people start to complain, get all indignant about "false controversy" and make the McCain campaign, or at least it's supporters, look petty.

Step three - bask in the media's predictable defense the remark, digging out old footage of other politicians, including McCain himself, using the same quip, and point out how this was not an intentional reference to Sarah Palin. 

I think far too much has been made of this, but if people think it was an innocuous remark, I disagree.  The truth is that while he may not have have been referring to her as the pig in this instance, it was certainly a reference to her popular remark, not some happy co-incidence.

This will only get worse, folks.  If you think Al Gore tried to steal the election in 2000, wait until Obama is behind in key states this year.  In a worst case scenario, every vote will be reviewed for it's legitimacy.  Any irregularity, real or percieved, will be used to disqualify as many of McCain's votes as possible.  Of course, McCain's campaign will have to follow suit and the election of our new president could be months in the offing.  It's how he got his start, and if he has to get that petty to win the presidency, he won't pause for a second to drag the nation through the knothole with him.

¹ Obama, Barack, The Audacity Of Hope  (New York: Random House, 2006), 2
² Freddoso, David, The Case Against Barack Obama (Sony eBook edition)   (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2008), 23

One of the things liberals are good at is saying one thing and meaning another.  Like when they say "we shouldn't be talking about experience in this election - we should be talking about the issues" you know they don't mean it.  How could they?  The only thing they are weaker on than the experience of their candidate is his stance on the issues.

Let's pick just one.  Taxes¹ -  Obama wants to have an exemption on the estate tax of $3.5 million and top rate of 45%.  McCain by contrast wants to have a $10 million exemption and a 15% top rate.  Proponents will say this only targets the rich, because after all, who has an estate valued over $3.5 million?  The problem is that estates are comprised of wages and goods that have already been taxed.  But the government wants to stick it's hand in the till one more time.  What's great is if you die and pass it on to someone else it can get taxed a third time!  At least McCain wants to minimize that. 

Obama wants to tax long term capital gains and dividends at 25%; McCain at 15%.  Who chould care about this?  Anyone who plans on retiring.  Retirement portfolios almost always have a capital gains eligible component in them, so if you are retired, or retiring soon, this one will impact you. 

In terms of tax cuts, McCain wants to double the dependent exemption from $3500 to $7000.  This will be a huge boon to people of ALL classes (at least those that have dependents) - and will effectively make lower income families almost exempt from paying income tax.  Obama wants to give a $500 tax credit to each worker.  Thanks for (next to) nothing. 

More importantly, McCain wants to cut the corporate tax rate to 25% from 35%.  Talk about a boon to the economy!  This means more money in the bottom line for investors (again, anyone with a 401K will benefit from that!!), more money for capital investment (which means more jobs!) and more money for research and development into new technologies (like alternate fuels maybe?  Just a thought...).  In addition, when you remove the tax incentive to relocate job to other countries, more jobs will stay here in the US!!  Obama, on the other hand, wants to eliminate tax breaks for corporations that move jobs overseas and give them to companies that create them here².  He doesn't talk about the fact that often times these are the same companies, and that global growth is inevitable, and with America's tax rates the second highest in the world jobs will continue to flow out whether we like it or not.

Popular belief holds that the Great Depression began with a stock market crash in 1929 and that Franklin Delano Roosevelt pulled us out of it.  The truth is that anti-trade talk caused the stock market crash, and the Smoot-Hawley Tariff act sent the economy over the edge.  In the midst of the Depression when the market was actually showing signs of recovery, Roosevelt raised taxes, which prolonged the misery.  Had World War II not come along, the Depression could have lasted well into the 1940's.

Fast forward to 2008.  We're exiting a period of housing depreciation (caused largely by economic policies of excess liquidity implemented by Alan Greenspan and made worse by Bernake, and brought home by banks eager to make a fast - but risky - buck and people either uneducated about that risk or too eager to overextend their ability to repay their loans) and a weak dollar.  We're showing signs of recovery.  Do we really want a president who will reverse trade agreements, penalize companies that do business globally and raise taxes?  As Fred Thompson said on September 2nd, Obama doesn't want to take water from your side of the bucket, he wants to take it from other side.  If you still don't get the picture, go get a bucket and give it a try.  See how it works out for your side.

So I say again - do the libs, who favor tax-and-spend, really want to discuss the issues?

^{1Source: Forbes, June 2, 2008 p 103
2Obama's nomination acceptance speech, August 28, 2008}