For a while now I have been speculating with my friends that we don't need MORE regulation over the banking industry, we need the EXISTING regulation to work well.  It seems that Warren Buffet, arguably one of the best minds in finance, might agree.  Here's a portion of the transcript of an interview he gave in late August (the emphasis is from the original transcript):

QUICK: If you imagine where things will go with Fannie and Freddie, and you
think about the regulators, where were the regulators for what was happening,
and can something like this be prevented from happening again?

Mr. BUFFETT: Well, it's really an incredible case study in regulation
because something called OFHEO was set up in 1992 by Congress, and the sole
job of OFHEO was to watch over Fannie and Freddie, someone to watch over them.
And they were there to evaluate the soundness and the accounting and all of
that. Two companies were all they had to regulate. OFHEO has over 200
employees now. They have a budget now that's $65 million a year, and all they
have to do is look at two companies. I mean, you know, I look at more than
two companies.

QUICK: Mm-hmm.

Mr. BUFFETT: And they sat there, made reports to the Congress, you can get
them on the Internet, every year. And, in fact, they reported to Sarbanes and
Oxley every year. And they went--wrote 100 page reports, and they said,
`We've looked at these people and their standards are fine and their directors
are fine and everything was fine.' And then all of a sudden you had two of the
greatest accounting misstatements in history. You had all kinds of management
malfeasance, and it all came out. And, of course, the classic thing was that
after it all came out, OFHEO wrote a 350--340 page report examining what went
wrong, and they blamed the management, they blamed the directors, they blamed
the audit committee. They didn't have a word in there about themselves, and
they're the ones that 200 people were going to work every day with just two
companies to think about. It just shows the problems of regulation.

QUICK: That sounds like an argument against regulation, though. Is that what
you're saying?

Mr. BUFFETT: It's an argument explaining--it's an argument that managing
complex financial institutions where the management wants to deceive you can
be very, very difficult. Or even when the management doesn't know what's
going on, and--just take Bear Stearns. Bear Stearns had--I read it,
anyway--750,000 derivative contracts. Now, you know, I could clone Albert
Einstein, you know, and--many, many times and have him work 12-hour days for
me and he would not be able to keep track of what's going on in an institution
like that. It's--the ones that are too big to fail may be too big to manage,
in some cases. And they're particularly difficult to manage if they're
promising Wall Street and their investors that they're going to do things that
can't be done.

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

We are weeks into the "biggest economic disaster since the depression" and we have no clear path out of the mess that Carter planted, Clinton watered, and the 109th/110th Congress has allowed to grow.  It appears we have no choice but to reap what has been sown, and I am not very confident McCain can get us out of this mess, largely because the congress is under Democratic control.  I am certain Obama will make it worse.

One thing that could be done is to replace the unified power that Paulsen enjoys with that of a counsel of economic experts.  Any reader of Forbes knows that they have long been calling for the break up of Fannie and Freddie, most recently in the August 11 issue.  Holman Jenkins of the Wall Street Journal advocates a similar course of action in a pre-bailout article; "With Fannie and Freddie on the ropes politically, let's put them on a path to privatization and liquidation."  He goes on to say "...putting the Fed in the job of helping to regulate them...would just be to put monetary policy at the service of propping up yet more financial services companies.  This is not a policy for financial stability..."

Of course, with hindsight, this is exactly what happened.  There are numerous examples of economic crises throughout American history where letting badly run businesses fail has caused temporary problems, but ultimately long term stability returned within a year to 24 months.  One example of where government intervention only made the situation worse by bailing out failure was the decade long depression of the 1930's.  Here we are 79 years later and the same tactics are being applied again.  It was Albert Einstein who said that insanity could be defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  What is it when you know the action is going to fail but you do it anyway?  Is that insanity, stupidity or arrogance?

I agree that something had to be done to fix the problem of liquidity in the market, but I think that there were several free market solutions that could have provided the same relief that the bailout is intended to provide, without the debt for which we the people are now responsible.  In the end, Chris Dodd led the pigs to the trough and the feeding frenzy ensued.  Republicans made an attempt to try a different approach, but the steamroller was in motion, and they perceived that the only way out was through...and now we have no choice but to go along for the ride.

Would we be better off if the people developing the plan were financial experts rather than politicians?  Almost certainly, but for this opinion to be right, things have to get a lot worse for us living in the real world outside of Washington D.C.  For once, I hope I am wrong.

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!

All the talk of the bailouts in the news lately has me thinking back to several articles I've read in Forbes.  The problem, aside from people borrowing things they could not afford to pay back and realtors and mortgage brokers all too willing to push people over that cliff, is that the Fed has allowed too much money into the financial system in the guise of keeping inflation down.  This has devalued the dollar, reduced the value of everything, and really contributed to this mess.  And now we want to entrust $700 Billion to the same people that got us into this mess in the first place - without them presenting a plan as to what will be done differently this go round so we don't have another bailout next year.  I don't think that sounds quite right.  On top of it all, this has the far left saying out loud "See - we told you that capitalism doesn't work!"  Argh!

New Gingrich has proposed a plan in 4 steps below (full story here):

1. Eliminate the "mark to market" accounting provision which is driving companies into bankruptcy unnecessarily.
   
2. Repeal the Sarbanes-Oxley law which failed in every case this year and which burdens new companies with a $3 million-a-year accounting fee.
   
3. Join China and Singapore in eliminating the capital gains tax and watch money pour into the system from private investors at no cost to the taxpayer.
   
4. Pass a strong energy bill to return at least $500 billion a year in energy money to the United States.

If congress really wants to get us out of this mess, I think they'd better take a look at these 4 things - particularly 3 and 4 - before signing off on a what will surely become a bureaucratic boondoggle that will only stifle the system and lead to more financial ruin down the road.

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

In this election year, as things heat up, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that we Americans, when united, are the most formidable force on the planet. Americans are the “sleeping giant” the Japanese awoke in 1941, and less than four years later we had routed both the Nazi regime and Imperial Japanese forces from their positions of power. We are, however, a people easily divided when we don’t have a common enemy. The speed with which the partisan politics returned after the attacks on 9/11/2001 illustrates that sad fact.

On the first anniversary of 9/11, I felt a compulsion to talk to my team at work about what 9/11 meant to me. I composed a note that I emailed to them, and one of my team mates was so inspired by the note that he forwarded it to Lewis & Floorwax of 103.5 The Fox (a radio station in Denver, Colorado). The two Deejays read the letter on the air, which I thought was remarkable given that I hadn’t intended for it to be read to so large an audience.

This year, on the eve of the 7th anniversary commemorating these horrible homicide attacks, I was looking for that letter and could not find it, so I reached out to the guy that had been so moved by it in 2002. His response was really humbling…here’s an excerpt of his response (emphasis is mine):

“I couldn't find the file on my computer but I had a hardcopy that I keep with me. This was a very important letter to me that you wrote and I want to thank you for it. It means a lot to me.”

He keeps a hard copy with him? When I wrote it, I never thought it would affect anyone so deeply, and THAT is why I write this blog…if I could reach this guy and affect him so deeply, if I can do something positive for one person, then maybe here is a vehicle to reach other people.

In its entirety, here is my original note from 9/11/2002:

I vividly remember a year ago, on the morning of Sept. 11th [2001], I was getting ready to leave for work. My girlfriend was working from home and was on a conference call in her office. I went in to say goodbye and she put the phone on mute. She told that one of the guys on her call said that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. She asked if I would turn on CNN and see what was going on. When I turned on the TV the same images were on every channel; a churning cloud of smoke billowing out of the top of the lone building. I remember thinking, “where’s the other tower?” I thought it must have been obscured by the smoke, or hidden by the tower they were filming. It was just a bad camera angle. I didn’t find out until I was in the car on my way to work what I was not ready to believe with my own eyes; that one of the two towers had fallen as a result of what was now obviously a terror attack. Shortly after I arrived at work, the second tower fell. The Pentagon was the site of the third attack, and then flight 93 went down in Pennsylvania. The thoughts that seemed to be on everyone’s minds were “Why?” and “How many more are out there?” and “What’s next?” We worked through the day and tried to make sense of everything that was going on around us.

The devastation was incomprehensible. The images of the people in New York, frantically searching for hope, holding up signs with pictures of loved ones who were missing were especially gut wrenching. I went through the first few days after the attacks feeling numb, and then feeling pain and anguish as the stories the survivors told would bring me to the verge of tears. At every turn the sorrow and the grief grew more and more overbearing. I knew that at some point the shock and the disbelief would begin to wear off, but every time I turned on the TV it killed me to see what was happening. Now, as more media coverage turns to the anniversary I am finding that while I am no longer shocked, the grief is still close to the surface.

Whether you knew someone personally who was in the Trade Center or the Pentagon, or knew someone who knew someone who was there, the odds are you were not more than 1 or 2 degrees of separation away from New York or Washington DC that day. Somehow we all got through it though, each in our own way, at our own pace. We got on with our lives. We’ve made it through the first year.

While words have a hard time describing the totality of this tragedy, there were a few things that came out of September 11th that were positive. For a brief while the bickering between our political parties stopped, and our leaders had a united purpose. At a time when we were faced with the worst things humans are capable of, we saw in the actions of the police, fire departments and medical and rescue workers the best that humans are capable of. There has also been a lasting sense of patriotism that is still going strong.

I attended the opening ceremonies of the Highland Games in Estes Park this past weekend. As part of the ceremony they played the National Anthem, and I don’t recall ever hearing a crowd sing it so loud. The piper bands played “Amazing Grace” in honor of those who died in the attacks. There is no more sorrowful sound than bagpipes playing that song, and many people began to openly weep. It really hit home to me just how deeply the attacks still are affecting people. Our society has been scarred by these events, and while they took place a full year ago, at times it seems to me that it was yesterday, or the day before. There are many days and weeks since then from which I don’t remember anything in specific, but that day is as sharp and clear in my mind as this very moment.

At the Highland Games opening ceremony, the last speaker was the Commander of NORAD, the North American Air Defense Command center buried deep within Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. He spoke of that day, of the way the staff inside NORAD responded. He echoed the words we have heard from this nation’s leaders many times. He said that every citizen of this great land has a duty to live their life, to go to work every day, to attend events like the Highland Games, football and baseball games, to show that the spirit of freedom cannot and will not be put down by cowards who live in caves and murder innocent people. I couldn’t agree with him more.

As the anniversary of the attacks is imminent we have a lot of uncertainty about what may happen. Many rumors and warnings of new attacks are flying about in the media, and certainly there will be a lot of trepidation surrounding the many memorial services. One thing I do know is that the sun will rise tomorrow and I have a job to do. I’m not a policeman, or a fireman, or one of the heroes in uniform actively fighting terrorism half a world away. But I am an American, and I will live like one. I will get up, go to work, and do my job. I play a role in the survival of this country, just like each of you, like everyone you see. I am an American, and no one will take that away from me.

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}

The liberal left have a playbook and they share it with all of their people. 

The first step is to DECEIVE.  The most classic example of this tactic is the myth of the back-alley abortion.  In the 1960's Bernard Nathanson and the group NARAL put forth a statistic that 10,000 women died each year from botched back-alley abortions.  He knew this number was false - exaggerated by about 4,000% - and really was between 200 to 250.  But he also knew the tactic of the big lie...make a false statement, repeat it often, get it picked up by the media, and soon everyone believes it.  When he changed his view on abortion after the advent of ultrasound technology and came forward with the truth, he fell victim to the second liberal tactic.

The second tactic is DEFAME.  When they engage in this process, they never let facts get in the way of the issue at hand.  In Nathanson's case, liberals blamed his change of heart on the fact that he is born again Christian.  Aside from the obvious fallacy that being Christian is bad, this argument is not true.  He changed his views in 1972 when the first ultrasound technology came out and he could plainly see that the fetus was a separate life; he was baptized Catholic in 1995.  There's hardly a cause and effect there, but no matter to liberals.  Just last night, Nancy Giles asked on MSNBC if John McCain is so opposed to torture, then "why hasn't he come out against" it?  This is a great example pointing out why Americans need to be discerning when they listen to actors.  There are dozens of articles about it, including this one from CNN, which highlight not only McCain's opposition to torture but his ability to stand up for what he believes rather than go with the herd.  With all this information readily available, you would think Giles could have done 5 minutes of research and avoided making a ridiculously inaccurate statement...but that defeats the whole premise of the left's tactics.

The third is to DECRY.  When they have nothing to work with they will simply talk down about someone.  After Sarah Palin's speech on Wednesday, Ron Allen of MSNBC had this to say about Sarah:  "She was really on the attack in a very sort of sarcastic, and velvety but, um, very direct way."  No bias included in THAT statement!  Tom Brokaw took extreme umbrage over Guiliani's use of the term earlier in the evening, but this is a sterling example of why people refer to the media as the "liberal media."  If you think Allen (a professional TV news reporter) was eloquent above, watch his one-sided duel with Newt Gingrich here.

The magician was tied into a straight jacket, wrapped in chains that were padlocked together and lowered head first into a tank of water.  The curtain was raised around the tank and the assistants walked in circles around the hidden water tank waving their arms and smiling for the audience.  After a couple of minutes, just as the audience was getting nervous, the curtain dropped and the tank was empty.  The audience gasped, and from the back of the theater the magician came walking down the aisle toward the stage.  As more people saw him the applause grew, until he climbed back onto the stage and the crowed roared with approval.

When it comes to magic, half of the trick is performed by the assistant.  It's all about misdirection.  The pretty girl dances around, waves her arms and keep the audience's attention focused on her so they can't see that there's nothing magic about the magician.  After getting out of the tank he drops through a trap door, runs under the stage and around to the back of the theater for his dramatic entrance.

This is the same thing the Obama campaign is doing with the race card.  They bring it up periodically and rightfully catch some flack for it.  But the mission is accomplished nonetheless..  The seed planted, liberal guilt kicks in and minds starts to wander - am I voting for Obama because he's black?  Am I not voting for him because he's black?  Should his race even matter?  And just like that, the audience is distracted and no one pays attention to trick.

The real truth is that race doesn't matter in this election.  What matters is the substance under the skin - and here is where Obama's act begins to fall apart.  The thing that is going to do the most damage to the country is quite possibly his economic policy.  The dollar is weak, but getting stronger.  The housing market is showing signs of life.  We've taken a hit over gas prices this year, but seasonal demand and the easing of tensions in Iran have begun to bring prices down.  If Obama wins, he will raise taxes across the board first by increasing the capital gains tax from 15 to 28% (possiblly cratering the stock market in the process) and then by letting the Bush tax cuts expire in 2010.  This second one is especially devious, because he's made all this noise about raising taxes on the people making over $150,000 and NOT raising taxes on the working class.  By letting the tax cuts expire, he can say that HE didn't raise taxes, Bush did by not fighting to make the cuts permanent.  He is also talking the language of protectionism, retreating from NAFTA and raising tarriffs.  These are the exact kinds of things that got us into and then deepened the depression in 1930 and beyond.  The depression wasn't caused by the market crash in 1929, rather the crash was caused by talk of trade protection.  President Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley tarriff bill in 1930 and sealed the economy's fate.  Steve Forbes refers to Obama as Herbert Hoover Obama for just these reasons (Forbes Magazine, June 30, 2008, P20).  Rather than getting the country out of the depression, the same types of actions by Roosevelt (raising taxes on an already depressed labor force) prolonged the time it took for the economy to recover. 

So keep in mind the magician's trick - don't watch the assistant, watch him.  You'll see that very quickly the luster wears off the golden child.  The GOP theme for the DNC will prove true - A mile high, but an inch deep.

Religion.  The word by itself conjures up images in one's head based on one's background.  When I wrote that word, religion, I had a mental picture of the black bible given to me as a child by the pastor at the 1st United Methodist Church.  Other people may picture Christ on the cross, or the Virgin Mary, or the nun who hit their knuckles with a ruler in grade school.  Other people think about religion and see only zealots and snake charmers.  Still others see a waste of time, a black hole that conjures up no imagery whatsoever.

Liberal loons hate religion.  They hate the fact that people have something to feel good about.  As a certain progressive presidential candidate patronized, people "cling to" their religion.  He said it like about people in depressed areas of Pennsylvania, I think in an attempt to show empathy for their plight, but he came off as an elitist.  He made it sound like people are all drowning and will grab anything to survive.  The subtext is that he views it as unnecessary - vote for him and you can quit clinging to religion.  But a Harris Interactive Poll shows that 90% of people believe in God, so either there's a lot of bitter people in dire straights out there or not as many people are "clinging" to religion as some would have us believe.  In times of trouble, people do turn to prayer for solace and comfort, and it's hard to find that a negative - unless you don't want people to have comfort, or don't want them to get it from God, but instead from some nanny-state entitlement.

The Founders established in this country freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion.  There is no separation of church and state in the constitution, only a provision that the state can't mandate the religion people will follow.  Henry VIII created the Church of England out of personal desperation; there would be no Church of America.  America has survived on faith based capitalism for 232 years.  Godless Soviet Communism died in less than 70.  The monstrous Nazi regime lasted less than a decade.  In the Ardennes in 1944, do you think God was in the foxholes with our men?  I'll put a sawbuck down that they would tell you yes (Dick Winters of Band of Brothers fame was a deeply religious man.  His book Beyond Band Of Brothers goes into some detail about his beliefs.).

I'll close with a tale of divine intervention.  In 1996 I was driving south out of Ft. Collins, Colorado in my 1984 Ford Tempo.  I wasn't wearing my seat belt, and at the last red light at the edge of town, I was struck with a very powerful, specific sense of vulnerability.  I've not felt anything like this before or since that afternoon, but on this day I had a vision of just how unprotected I was without my seat belt.  I literally had chills run up and down my spine, I got goosebumps and I shivered.  Almost compulsively, I fastened the seat belt and immediately the feeling went away.  20 minutes later I was in a head on collision with a small pickup truck that turned in front of me.  The crash totalled both vehicles and sent the other driver to the hospital with multiple serious injuries.  I walked away virtually unscathed, with only bruises on my hips and neck from the seat belt.  The accident investigation unit, or AIU officer said that I most likely would have been killed had it not been for that seat belt.  She was actually amazed that I was even able to stand under my own power. 

Did God tell me to put the seat belt on?  Was it Divine Intervention?  I can offer no proof other than my own testimony.  I believe without question that the urge to put on that seat belt came from outside of myself.  The forcefulness of that feeling has never been duplicated in any situation since then, and I can't chalk it up to anything I can explain; nor can I believe, as skeptics will surely say, that it was a coincidence.  Someone was looking out for me that day, and that's all I really need to know.

I will have upcoming blogs looking at the new religion the progressives have embraced, and why it has the capability to doom us all.

Question - have you experienced divine intervention in your life?