The Ego Knows No Bounds

“It’s very rare that I come to an event where I’m like the fifth- or sixth-most interesting person,” 

Trust me pal, you ain't that interesting...urban progressive from central casting who's won an election or two?  Ho Hum.

This Explains Alot

Not that I am normally politically correct around here, but can we cut to the raw for just a second:

Doesn't "severe intellectual disabilities" mean stupid? Or worse, mentally handicapped, what we used to call retarded?  Why is the DOJ actively looking to hire stupid or otherwise incapable people?  

So, is the government actually trying to hire stupid people?

Good Question

Towns all over America seemed to be getting stiffed on bills for extra security when the Lightworker comes to town.  So here is the question.  After several of these, why are towns and cities still providing the extra security services?  Why not say, "get your own damn extra security"? 

We Are Living In Crazy

A fourth year of $1+ trillion deficits, the incumbent President responsible is even in the polls, and Treasuries are UP today.  As the Good Professor says, "the CRAZY days are now."

Eat Your Peas, You Bitter Clingers That Didn't Build That !!

Apparently Paul Ryan is trotting out some of the Lightworker's golden oldies on the hustings.  Well, let me contribute one to Paul Ryan's Suggestion Box...Eat Your Peas.  If I were Ryan, you know what I'd say.

Faceplant

DB is not normally a Jim Cramer fan, but this is a beautiful Facebook rant.  Cramer should have taken out more wood on Zuckerberg and said "if you invest your money in a company with a 28 year old CEO, you deserve to lose your money."  That would be DB's Rule of Investing #13, right behind rule #12.

Huh?

Bomb them, shoot them, shell them, maim them, rape them, displace them...but whatever you do, don't you dare gas them!!

Housing Recovery

Remember that in 2007 I said that another real estate boom would get going in 2012.

With treasuries and stocks looking bad, usually what happens is capital flows to real estate (think 2002). I think it is fair to say that 2011 is far enough away for the collective memory of where we are today with real estate to have faded by then. I predict another real estate boom circa 2012.

Well, it may not be a boom yet, but check this out via Mark Perry...

 RE/MAX is saying that "2012 has become the year of the housing recovery," and the housing sales data so far this year and for July supports that statement

 I sure hope my readers incorporated real estate into their "Avoid Taxes under Barack Obama" plans. Just sayin'.

Whoops! Germany's "Green" Plan Burns More Coal

#GreenFail: Germany's Green Policy Leads to More Burning of Coal

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government says RWE AG (RWE)’s new power plant that can supply 3.4 million homes aids her plan to exit nuclear energy and switch to cleaner forms of generation. It’s fired with coal.

The startup of the 2,200-megawatt station near Cologne last week shows how Europe’s largest economy is relying more on the most-polluting fuel. Coal consumption has risen 4.9 percent since Merkel announced a plan to start shutting the country’s atomic reactors after last year’s Fukushima disaster in Japan.

and it's not a temporary thing:

“Angela Merkel’s policy has created an incentive structure which has the effect of partially replacing nuclear with coal, the dirtiest fuel that’s responsible for much of the growth in the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions since 1990,” Dieter Helm, an energy policy professor at the University of Oxford, said by phone Aug. 17. Building new coal stations means “locking them in for the next 30 years” as a type of generation, Helm said. 

and of course natgas is so expensive in Europe and the price ain't coming down because fracking is either banned outright or difficult

Much of Europe’s gas, however, lies under Poland, where Exxon Mobil said early results suggest extraction may be unprofitable, and France, which outlawed fracking in July after environmentalists and wine producers raised alarms about water pollution....

Not so in Europe, where environmental concerns about fracking persist even after a study commissioned by the EU concluded that current legislation is adequate to protect the environment. 

Oh well, enjoy that coal.

Checking In On My Prediction

OK, so remember that on June 21 I said that the Obama campaign would implode. 

 While I predicted that Obama would meltdown almost on the day that he took office, we sit on the cusp of his re-election battle and he has stubbornly hung on to stay in contention, at least superficially.  So I am making another prediction, actually more of an update, I guess, to my original meltdown trajectory.  So here goes.  The Obama presidency/campaign/phenomenon will shortly implode.  Yes, "implode", as in spectacularly fail and wind up in ruins.

Shortly after, Chief Justice Roberts saved Obamacare by converting the mandate to a tax, so I was looking dead wrong.  But look what has happened since:
- Romney out-raises Obama by $60 million over two months and has a cash advantage over Obama
- Tina Brown runs "Hit the Road Barack" on the cover of Newsweek
- It is leaked that Hillary turned down the VP slot AND urged a reluctant Obama to strike bin Laden
- Joe Biden turns the Gaffe-o-meter up to a Spinal Tap-ish 11
- It is leaked that there is turmoil in the Obama Campaign HQ
- The MSM shines a light on Obama's brutally negative campaigning
- The Romney-Ryan ticket is playing to packed venues everywhere it goes
- gas prices are rising again and there are reports of a desperation tapping of the SPR
- a Cook County poll showed Obama's lead slipping in Cook County, IL
- and OF COURSE, on July 13th Obama gave his now infamous "You Didn't Build That" speech

I'm not claiming a score here on my prediction, but all this is a solid foundation on which a definite +1 could be built.  If Romney keeps out-raising Obama (which I also predicted a looooong time ago) and the MSM starts to feel their man might be doomed, they might bail on him and we might see more stuff like Tina Brown's recent Newsweek cover.  We may even see someone who is the apotheosis of the MSM, say George Stephanopolous or Eleanor Clift say flat "let's face it, Obama is going to lose."  Then he's toast and I will chalk one up for DB.

Mess With the Bull, Get 2.6 MIllion Horns

I said mess with the bull, get the horns...well, in today's day and age, it's more like mess with the bull and get 2.6 million horns and counting...

Two Guys with Swords, Two Different Outcomes

Hey, remember that recent post of mine that linked to a NY Times article chronicling the 1986 event where are deranged fellow brought a samurai sword on to the Staten Island ferry?  No, well, it's here, but to refresh...

A homeless Cuban refugee, chanting and apparently deranged, went on a rampage with a sword aboard a Staten Island ferryboat yesterday and killed two people and wounded nine others before being subdued by a retired police officer at gunpoint.

Wielding a two-foot ornamental blade apparently purchased in Times Square, the assailant pursued, hacked and stabbed victims on two decks of the rumbling, 310-foot ferry, the Samuel I. Newhouse, at about 8:45 A.M. as the boat passed the Statue of Liberty, bound from Manhattan to Staten Island.

Two dead.  Nine wounded and the rest just damn lucky that a retired cop packing heat was onboard that ferry.

Now, fast forward to today and clear across the country to Las Vegas.

Police say a clerk at a Las Vegas Dairy Queen shot and killed a sword-wielding, masked man who tried to rob the restaurant.

Detectives say the suspect was shot twice and was lying just outside the doors when officers arrived around 12:15 p.m. Sunday.

The suspect died at a hospital.

Metro Police Lt. Les Lane tells the Las Vegas-Journal the sword was at least three-feet long.

 No deaths.  None wounded.  No cop present.  What was the difference?

Wow: Hillary Made Obama Get bin Laden ??

I thought this was the Clintonite coup de grace to bring the Lightworker down,

what if not only did HRC pass on the VP slot, but if she did it embarrassingly to Axelrod & Co.  Wouldn't that be more in keeping with my theory about the Clintons reclaiming the party from Obama's thug Chicago crowd?  Yes, I think it would.

How would she do that?  Well, she could wait until Uncle Joe made a few of his typical, bone-headed gaffes.  The Clinton machine could then get some of its friends in the MSM and in the blogosphere to kick start up a "swap HRC for Biden" meme, after which it is leaked that HRC has already told the Smartest President Ever, the Some Sort of a God, Lightworking Nobel Peace Prize Laureate..."Um, thanks but no thanks."

but this could top that

Barack Obama cancelled three operations to kill Osama bin Laden before finally going ahead with the mission at the insistence of Hillary Clinton, according to a new book.

The explosive allegation is contained in an expose by journalist Rich Miniter, who argues that the White House’s carefully-crafted narrative of Obama as a decisive leader who dispatched the al-Qaeda leader despite the doubts of advisers is a myth.

Actually, I think there is more of this to come...Bubba ain't messing around.

Europeans Fleeing to Former Colonies

Just as we have our "reverse Dust Bowl" migration here, they're having something similar in Europe, call it "reverse post-imperial migration."

Maria Mendes is returning to the land of her birth four decades after she fled war and revolution.

Hers is no sentimental homecoming, however. Cold economic reality is forcing her and tens of thousands of other Portuguese to seek a new life in Angola

"You can't get by on a pension here," says the 60-year-old retired teacher as she stands in a line for visas that stretches outside the Angolan consulate in Lisbon.

"Salaries there are at least three times higher,” she adds. “That makes it worth all the difficulties.

Mendes, whose husband is already in Angola, has accepted a university teaching job there. 

She was among more than 500,000 Portuguese who joined an exodus from Portugal's African colonies when they gained independence in 1975 after 14 years of anti-colonial war.

But with their economy in the grip of the euro zone's debt-driven recession, many are now flocking to seek new opportunities in a Portuguese-speaking country whose economy is enjoying a spectacular oil-fueled recovery after a 30-year civil war.

Angola.  "Spectacular oil-fueled recovery".  That clearly has implications, no?  Where have I heard that before??

UPDATE:  Welcome Instapundit readers!  Check out the latest updates on the most delicious political conspiracy theory that is actually true here. Check out my current predictions on where the election is headed here.  And don't forget the Greatest Prediction Ever and the death of Global Warming.  Also, lots more, take a look around.

UPPDATE:  Oh, and... FREE PUSSY RIOT!

"Worldwide Recession" If Obama Re-elected

So says Stephen Ross, owner of the Miami Dolphins and CEO of the Related Companies (which btw, is a vastly bigger and more important entity than the Dolphins).  This is what business owners think, even Democrat (highly partisan Democrat I might add) business owners.  And yet CNBC loves to print gibberish about "business leaders" saying Obama is better for the world economy or that the stock market is rooting for Obama.

That's at worst IMHO.  At best, stagflation.

We Need to Supply More Supply and Demand

Nearly seven years ago, in my very first month blogging, I suggested a "Law of Supply and Demand" day.  We have days dedicated to studying all manner of minor concepts and/or the pieties of the victimologists' cult, but not one of the most fundamental laws/concepts that govern human's lives everywhere on the planet.  And we still don't.

Romneycrats?, Part 3

Holy Sh*t, Did Someone Say "Romneycrats"?!?!

Um, yeah.

Tom Morello Is A Pussy

How utterly and predictably banal and jejune.

Morello is a pussy.  If he had any f**king balls and if he really wanted to rage against a machine, he'd give a concert in Helsinki, on Vlad Putin's doorstep, in support of Pussy Riot.

Instead rages at Paul Ryan.  Could his balls be any smaller?

More Pro-Obama Junk from CNBC

I'm simply amazed that the MSM can print stuff like this with a straight face.

Twice as many business executives around the world say the global economy will prosper better with President Barack Obama than with Mitt Romney, according to a poll out Friday. 

This is sheer poppycock.  I talk to business executives all the time.  I am in the business of talking to business executives, and nobody I speak to says that Obama is good for the economy.  Nobody.  Some folks that  I speak to like him, many do not like Republicans, but no one says the economy will prosper because of Barack Obama.  No one.

But notice the qualifier, the survey reveals that it is foreign executives who feel this way.  Of course, look how good they run their economies.  American executives, not so much.  Cue Mort Zuckerman.

Let's Face It, I'm a Bloody Genius

Oh, BTW readers...I just wanted to remind you all of my 2012 predictions, which I laid down, oh, back in January.  Actually, one or two predictions in particular...

- Romney/Tea Party, A Marriage Made in...Well, Just Made: Mitt Romney (who is FINE btw) chooses a VP nominee that solidifies his support with true conservatives just enough to complete his primary electoral strategy of 1) be the "non-scary" Republican that independents and moderate Dems can feel comfortable voting for and 2) be good enough for conservatives and libertarians to turn out like they need to turn out to defeat the constitutional democracy/individual liberty disaster that is Barack Obama. Likely choices are Chris Christie, Bob McDonnell, Jim DeMint, or Paul Ryan. I say it's Romney/Ryan because we need this one badly and Ryan adds tremendously to the ticket (Republican poo-bahs move Heaven and Earth to get Ryan to sign up).

- 2012 Election is Close Until Sep-Oct When Obama Blows It ala McCain in 2008: Obama's political skills are awesome, but his political instincts are terrible. He will do quite egregious things to please his base (wow! as if on cue). He will run neck and neck with Romney/Ryan until he blows it with a policy gaffe that conspicuously reminds voters what an amateur and/or liberal fascist he is. The gaffe could even be a Clintonite engineered self-destruction conspiracy. (Wow! I could be early on this one!)

UPDATE:  BTW, the Greatest Prediction Ever is STILL the Great Prediction Ever!

Was This the Clintonite Coup De Grace?

OK, dear readers, you all know what I've been saying and saying and saying about the Clinton machine taking the Lightworker down.

Could this be that ultimate or penultimate knife wound from which the crucial bleeding occurs and results in our hero dying before we cut to black?

I've always said that no way would HRC take up the VP slot on the ticket and put Dear Leader over the edge and back in the Oval Office for another four years.  Although here is where it gets delicioso - what if not only did HRC pass on the VP slot, but if she did it embarrassingly to Axelrod & Co.  Wouldn't that be more in keeping with my theory about the Clintons reclaiming the party from Obama's thug Chicago crowd?  Yes, I think it would.

How would she do that?  Well, she could wait until Uncle Joe made a few of his typical, bone-headed gaffes.  The Clinton machine could then get some of its friends in the MSM and in the blogosphere to kick start up a "swap HRC for Biden" meme, after which it is leaked that HRC has already told the Smartest President Ever, the Some Sort of a God, Lightworking Nobel Peace Prize Laureate..."Um, thanks but no thanks."  Wow.  How embarrassing!  That might even hit the Lightworker where it hurts - in the campaign's mojo.

And all this could happen about the same time that a guy like Jerry Della Famina suggests that disappointed 2008 Obama voters give Romney a look-see...

Outlandish?  Conspiratorial?  Yeah, I know, it's just too crazy...never mind.

Told Ya' So on "Romneycrats"

What did I say just two days ago about "Romneycrats"??

As if on cue...

Why not?

Almost all of my friends are Democrats; all of them voted for Barack Obama in 2008.
Ask them these days, as I have, if they plan to vote for Obama this November, and they’ll give you an “Oh shucks” sad smile, look down, look back up with guilty eyes and say “I’m disappointed.”
Then they play the party line and say. “But Romney? But Ryan?”

I’m not talking about those African Americans, Latinos and lockstep Democrats who’ll blindly vote for Obama no matter how high unemployment may be or what shape this country may be in.
I’m talking about a good number of intelligent, caring, middle-class Democrats who are a soft nudge away from casting their vote for Romney.

All they need to know is that they’re not alone.

With that last line, um,er, can someone say "preference cascade"?

What's Old Is New Again

In the 1850s, Cornelius Vanderbilt setup the Accessory Transit Company to transport people and goods (mostly people to and gold from California) between the American east and west coasts via a route through Nicaragua, largely on the Rio San Juan and Lake Nicaragua.  Vanderbilt took pay off money from the operators of a route that was a precursor to the Panama Canal and shut down his Nicaragua operation,  although he retained the right to build a Nicaragua Canal, which he never did.

Well, over 150 years later, the idea of a Nicaragua Canal is percolating again.

A Dutch consortium has won a contract to conduct a pre-feasibility study into the construction of a canal through Nicaragua.

Royal HaskoningDHV and Ecorys are to carry out the study which is costing $720,000 and is due to be completed early 2013.

The canal will cater for larger ships than the Panama Canal and will be Central America’s second main waterway, the consortium says.

I think it's a great idea, let's build some redundancy into the global trading system.

There Is That Silly Meme Again...

CNBC continues with the "stock market is rooting for Obama" ninkompoopery, this time trotting out Swiss talking head Marc "Dr. Doom" Faber.  To be fair, Faber doesn't say the market is rooting for Obama's policies, just for the continuity of regime.  I still think this is wrong and I have told you what I think the market is doing here and here.  To recap, I think the stock market is betting that it'll get either 1) Obama with a Republican House and further Republican gains in the Senate - basically a mostly powerless Obama, or 2) Romney.  For the stock market that equals "Heads I Win, Tails I Tie."  Thus the rally.

But I think that Faber's reasoning is flawed and his ability to prognosticate this election is limited.  First, he reasons that the market wants Bernanke and with Obama, Bernanke stays.  First, Bernanke is around through 2014 no matter who wins, and it is no guarantee that he would accept a reappointment by Obama in 2014.  It is been a long arduous road for the Bernank, he might want to get back to cushy life in Princeton.  Second, and finally, this is an election were you can't have much insight sitting off in Europe and reading the conventional wisdom.  This is not a conventional election, there is so much pent up feeling in the hearts and minds of Americans, so much is in flux, and so much in happening under the radar that is opaque if observed through conventional lenses.  I don't think Faber is in a position to see or know what is going on.

As for me, well, you know, dear reader, that DB has his finger on the pulse.  This is what is happening in our election right now...it could all change but this is what is happening today:
1) Obama's 2008 coalition is broken, his campaign is under-performing in reconstituting it

2) Obama is being actively undermined by the Clinton machine
3) Romney is inching forward in workmanlike, incrementalist fashion

Furthermore, the economy will be of no help to Obama, nothing is going to happen that will be perceptibly positive.  Lastly, as I have stated before, Obama has terrible instincts and is prone to making catastrophic errors.  There is a reasonable chance (20%?) that his campaign will melt down in shocking fashion.

Should We Give Obamabots Succor Should Their Worst Fears Come True?

This is sheer brilliance from Roger Kimball. 

You’re seeing these sad people everywhere these days, especially in large East-and West-Coast urban areas and on college campuses. At parties they alternate between a melancholy, far-away wistfulness and a muttering “why me?”-belligerence. They’re touchy and quick to blame others, and they seem to suffer from night sweats and vague feelings of persecution.

Tom Wolfe exposed an extreme version of this cohort in his essay on the Black Panthers hosted by Leonard Bernstein in his elegant New York apartment. Wolfe contributed the term “radical chic” to the language to describe the Bernsteins and their wide-eyed guests. What we’re dealing with here is not quite radical (though Obama may in fact be plenty radical himself, the semi-beautiful people who support him are not), nor is it wholly chic. It is a sort of “consensus chic,” though I appreciate the aroma of contradiction the phrase communicates, since that which is genuinely chic exists self-consciously apart from the consensus of hoi polloi.

First time around, these people voted for Obama, giving themselves a little frisson of self-satisfaction when they pulled the lever and, even more, when the emitted condescension about anyone who happened to vote for John McCain — they didn’t encounter such people often, but it always gave them a little thrill of self-satisfaction when they did. It wasn’t long, however, before doubts began to accumulate. The seas didn’t subside, as promised, nor did the unemployment figures. By now, they’re thoroughly depressed. Their man has clearly let them down, and the inadvertent comedy of Joe Biden screaming that Republicans are going to “put y’all back in chains ^[2]” isn’t helping. Even worse is the news that team R&R, the Romney-Ryan express, is surging among young voters ^[3].  It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way.

Kimball thinks we should offer these people succor.

The deep problem now is how to help the vast regiments of disillusioned liberals.

I am not in agreement.  I want an admission of guilt.  The damage has been so great, the error of such world-historical proportions that I am in no mood to give quarter.  I am in mind of Colonel Nathan R. Jessup who told Danny Kaffee:  "I want you to ask me nicely...what I do want is for you to stand there in that faggoty white uniform and with your Harvard mouth, extend me some f**king courtesy."

Colonel Donny X. Baseball wants the "consensus chic" to admit they were wrong, that they were politically naive and unthinking, that they had an immature crush.  I want them to stand there in the Bay Area or East Village equivalent of the faggoty white uniform and with their Palin-sneering extend those of us who said from day one that Obama would be a disaster some f**king deference. 

Samuelson: Ryan Too Soft on the Elderly

Bob Samuelson is right.  Ryan's budget is too easy on seniors. 

I don't think we should throw granny off the cliff, but we should wheel her to the edge and let her stare into the abyss for a spell...

Paul Ryan Is a Genius

His approach to our deepest challenges as a nation resonate with me - inspired by Hayek, Rand, Friedman and others - but let's talk about the clearly more compelling evidence of his deep, profound genius...

...married a gal from Oklahoma.

Yes, Bubba Is THAT Good...Add Bowles to the Clintonite Death Squad

The Obama campaign's big early salvo against Romney was his career at Bain Capital.  That was crushed by a Clintonite, (many Clintonites actually, one actually named Clinton).

Next beachhead for a major Obama assault is Medicare, hoping to paint Paul Ryan as that mythical evil budget zeroing Republican.  That effort is running into major obstacles (or shortly will) at the hands of another figure who can reasonably be called a Clintonite.

Now, if only there was an influential Clintonite businessman attacking Obama for his miserably disastrous economic policy...oh wait...

What is it with all these Clintonites creating havoc for the Obama campaign?  Yeah, you better believe it, baby.  I'm waiting for the grande finale.  Just how will Bubba make his heroic appearance at the DNC as a putative white knight for Obama, somehow not work out for Obama?  The suspense I tell ya' !!

Obama Messed With the Bull, Is Getting the Horns

Wow, this is pretty wild.  Lots of people, all on record, all with major credentials.  Pretty powerful.  Liberals will whine that this is rank, political "swift-boating" but the indictment in this video is well deserved.  I speculated that that the military and the Obama administration were seriously at odds, much more than the general public could possibly know.  Policy differences are one thing, but the leaks that put people's lives in danger are a bridge too far - our military personnel in the field likely can't bear the thought of another four years of this recklessness.  Mess with the bull Mr. Lightworker and you get the horns.

Professional Pundits Are Just Now Getting It In Re Energy

Someone who Walter Russell Mead thinks is "one of the world's top journalists" has this say about the new world emerging due to the energy revolution:

Political progress in combating climate change has been slow, but the battle for hearts and minds, especially of the younger generation, is being won. That political capital can be lost in an instant if the environmental movement allows itself to be equated with opposition to one of the lone sources of growth – and of good blue-collar jobs – at a time of global economic stagnation.

Let's compare that to what someone who has not been similarly lauded had to say, um, a long time ago:

The world has just received a lesson in what happens when people stop consuming oil. From American drivers driving less to Chinese factories producing less goods, "demand destruction" has been the buzz phrase of the second half of 2008, and for many countries around the globe who rely heavily on the production of oil for their economic health or their very survival, the picture isn't pretty.

...

 Each of the countries I have named, and many others that are in the same position on a smaller scale, stand to fall into disarray or be denied dreamed-of living standards at the hands of the next great global climate change initiative. Thus, it will not stand. Individual countries may do what they please to limit hydrocarbon fuels, but only a global initiative stands a chance of doing something meaningful, so the greenies tell us. Just as developing economies won't sacrifice their shot at economic opportunity in order to indulge the developed world, countries reliant on oil production won't vote to kill off global demand for the one industry on which their future rests. The lesson in demand destruction that we've just experienced has shown a large part of the world our potentially green future and I am certain they will have none of it.

Shocker: Obama Ignorant of How Supply and Demand Work

Obama doesn't understand the laws of supply and demand. 

Campaigning in Missouri Valley, Iowa, yesterday, President Obama announced yet another government spending program -- this time designed to inflate meat prices in Midwest swing states. "Today the Department of Agriculture announced that it will buy up to $100 million worth of pork products, $50 million worth of chicken, and $20 million worth of lamb and farm-raised catfish," Obama explained to reporters in front of a drought-stricken cornfield.
"Prices are low, farmers and ranchers need help, so it makes sense," Obama explained. "It makes sense for farmers who get to sell more of their product, and it makes sense for taxpayers who will save money because we're getting food we would have bought anyway at a better price."

When you create additional demand, you raise prices.  Higher prices mean things are more expensive for consumers. 

Then again, when your chief economic advisor doesn't understand supply and demand either, nothing shocks...

Romney's Mojo, Part 2. No, Really.

Back in April I wrote a post titled "Romney Shocks with Actual Mojo".  I could write a 'part 2' post on that same theme given the events this week, beginning with the Ryan pick and continuing with a frontal attack on Obama over his tawdry campaigning as well some attempted Medicare judo.

I can't speak for independents or potential "Romneycrats" (oh yeah, you better believe they're out there), but this libertarianish, Tea Party lovin' dude is liking the Mittster more with each passing day.

BTW, in re the Ryan pick, Gigot & Co. at the WSJ Op-Ed page come out with one of the all-time great DC establishment put-downs in "The Bedwetter Caucus".

Reality Will Eat ObamaCare

John Goodman says in the WSJ what I've been saying here for a long time:  if you want good medical care in the ObamaCare world, forget insurance, get out your Visa, Mastercard or American Express...

Obama Surrogate: He'll Be a Dictator

I can't get the video to play properly but apparently Spike Lee said on Piers Morgan's show (I know, you missed it too, we all - as in all of America - missed it) that "Obama will do whatever he wants in a second term."

Of course, Mr. Lee means Obama will do whatever he can as President within the constitutionally proscribed role of executive and solely within the the powers of the Presidency, right?  Right?  I'm sure that is what Mr. Lee is saying because otherwise Mr. Lee is saying that we are electing ourselves a dictator in November if we cast a vote for Obama.

400 Economists (incl. 5 Nobelists) Support Romney's Economic Program

Here (h/t Mark Perry).  I case you were wondering, Krugman is not among the 5 Nobelists.  Check it out, pretty powerful stuff.

We enthusiastically endorse Governor Mitt Romney’s economic plan to create jobs and restore economic growth while returning America to its tradition of economic freedom. The plan is based on proven principles: a more contained and less intrusive federal government, a greater reliance on the private sector, a broad expansion of opportunity without government favors for special interests, and respect for the rule of law including the decision-making authority of states and localities.
Applying these principles, Governor Romney would:

• Reduce marginal tax rates on business and wage incomes and broaden the tax base to increase investment, jobs, and living standards.
• End the exploding federal debt by controlling the growth of spending so federal spending does not exceed 20 percent of the economy.
• Restructure regulation to end “too big to fail,” improve credit availability to entrepreneurs and small businesses, and increase regulatory accountability, and ensure that all regulations pass rigorous benefit-cost tests.
• Improve our Social Security and Medicare programs by reducing their growth to sustainable levels, ensuring their viability over the long term, and protecting those in or near retirement.
• Reform our healthcare system to harness market forces and thereby reduce costs and increase quality, empowering patients and doctors, rather than the federal bureaucracy.
• Promote energy policies that increase domestic production, enlarge the use of all western hemisphere resources, encourage the use of new technologies, end wasteful subsidies, and rely more on market forces and less on government planners.

In stark contrast, President Obama has failed to advance policies that promote economic and job growth, focusing instead on increasing the size and scope of the federal government, which increases the debt, requires large tax increases, and burdens business with many new financial and health care regulations. The result is an anemic economic recovery and high unemployment. His future plans are to double down on the failed policies, which will only prolong slow growth and high unemployment.
President Obama has:

• Relied on short-term “stimulus” programs, which provided little sustainable lift to the economy, and enacted and proposed significant tax increases for all Americans.
• Offered no plan to reduce federal spending and stop the growth of the debt-to-GDP ratio.
• Failed to propose Social Security reform and offered a Medicare proposal that relies on a panel of bureaucrats to set prices, quantities, and qualities of healthcare services.
• Favored a large expansion of economic regulation across many sectors, with little regard for proper cost-benefit analysis and with a disturbing degree of favoritism toward special interests.
• Enacted health care legislation that centralizes health care decisions and increases the power of the federal bureaucracy to impose one-size-fits-all solutions on patients and doctors, and creates greater incentives for waste.
• Favored expansion of one-size-fits-all federal rulemaking, with an erosion of the ability of state and local governments to make decisions appropriate for their particular circumstances.

In sum, Governor Romney’s economic plan is far superior for creating economic growth and jobs than the actions and interventions President Obama has taken or plans to take in the future. This November, voters will make a fundamental choice between differing visions of America’s economic future.

And yet MSM doofi like Ezra Journolist Klein will still publish things like "Romney vs. the Economists".  Although I warn you not to go to Klein's Wonkblog, the obsessing over Paul Ryan is a bit nauseating.  Paul Ryan appears to be to Ezra Klein as Sarah/Trig Palin was to Andrew Sullivan.

Homeys In Chains

"Hope and Change" has become "(Tell the) Homeys (they'll be) in Chains."

More Fiscal Genius Out of California

Aside from rewarding police chiefs with $200K pensions for 8 months on the job, the financial geniuses who run things in California are paying for nifty new things with bonds that mature 40 years into the future and which will cost them 10x the amount of the bond in interest...

A California school district is shouldering $1 billion in interest on a $105 million bond in a deal intended to defer most of the payments for 35 to 40 years.

The Poway Unified School District, in San Diego County, structured its 2011 sale of capital-appreciation bonds to avoid debt service until 2033, with the largest sums -- more than $300 million each -- due in 2046 and in 2051, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

That'll make for a great slogan for attracting home buyers to Poway circa 2030, "Come to our town and sign up for your share of $1 billion in debt that you never benefited from!!"

Gee, do you think that residents of Poway are going to educate their children and then get the hell out of dodge before the billion dollar bill comes due???  Will there be any suckers stupid enough to buy their houses?

Gas Price Update

Another bad week for gas prices, national average prices going against us by 8 cents.  Diesel too, although by 11 cents.  And analysts say prices are going higher. 

Exactly as I predicted years ago.  Another price to watch is corn.  I said Obama would not survive 10% unemployment and $4 gas.  He definitely won't survive plus $9 corn...

Extreme

That seems to be all the Dems can say...extreme.  Mitt Romney is extreme.  Paul Ryan is extreme.

Paul Ryan simply says that "not spending $1.4 trillion per annum that you don't have" is sensible.  (And he doesn't even say that).

How is not spending trillions more than you have EXTREME????

Quick Take on Paul Ryan

I love the MSM idiocy in analyzing this pick - Romney's desperate, he's gambling.

Hah!  Idiots.

This is the pick that people wanted Romney to make, it is the pick that he needed to make to show the chops that people have claimed ad infinitum that he doesn't have.

The money and the enthusiasm for Romney only goes up from here.  And the MSM can choke on it.

UPDATE: Paul at Powerline agrees. Also, check this out and keep in mind that the Lightworker won North Carolina in 2008 by 14,000 votes.

And None of This Ever Happened

Breaking:  Time and CNN have determined that the amount of time required for you to forget that they practice fraudulent hackery and call it journalism is exactly...one month.

Sigh. More Silly "Obama Good for Stocks" Silliness

Sigh.  Here is that ridiculous "Obama Has Been Great for Stocks" meme again.  I addressed this here.  To the extent that you can say that Obama has had any effect on stocks it is because his popularity has gone down consistently from the day he took office and his power has gone down correspondingly as well, most notably in November of 2010. 

There is too much at play to make a solid connection, but my educated guess/opinion (I have been investing in stocks professionally for 10 years and investing personally for nearly 20) is this:  Obama has scared the pants off of business leaders, thus they have retrenched, shutting down investment and hoarding cash.  The result is that companies are actually in the best financial health they have been in for ages.  Simultaneously, government debt is slowly being revealed as not quite the "risk free" asset that inane financial theory has regarded it as for decades.  As companies get healthier, governments are getting sicker, thus there is a small shift to stocks relative to bonds among professional investors.  (I can't say the same for the retail investor.  Mutual fund flows have been overwhelmingly out of equities and into bonds, essentially out of what is cheap and into what is expensive.  Individual investors are setting themselves up for a financial ass-reaming of epic proportions.)  This small shift is what the punditocracy is lamely attributing to the Lightworker.

If anything, as I predicted years ago, stocks are up because Obama is down.

Abandoned Reason

I said that "austerity" (which is nothing of the sort) would be the bane of leftists the world over and the new target of ire of the MSM.  I was absolutely correct and yet I didn't expect the sheer shamefulness and idiocy (silly naive me) that the MSM would embrace in order to purvey a campaign of fear over "austerity" (did I mention the Orwellian bullshit logic that labels slightly less profligacy as "austerity"?  I guess I did.) 

Anyway, the irresponsibly atrocious story that got my Irish up this week was this story about the putative outbreak of child abandonment taking place in Europe, which CNBC directly links to "austerity".  This is flatly bogus.  I am not denying that abandonment is going on, although the data appear to be thinly and dubiously sourced; I am sure abandonment is happening in increasing numbers.  But, just as in the example of Greece's lack of aspirin, the cruelty is not in the remedial actions taken to save/mitigate an exploding system, the real cruelty lies in building and subjecting a populace to a system that will inevitably collapse in destructive fashion.  Any outbreak in abandonment is not attributable to "austerity", but it is attributable to the European social model exploding in catastrophic fashion.  "Austerity" is a result of the larger failure, not the cause of it.  Children are being abandoned because they were always effectively wards of state, their government-dependent parents essentially just middlemen, nominal providers of resources that have their origin with the state.  Now that the state, the real provider for many children, is bankrupt, these children have no provider and are being abandoned to the hope of care and provision elsewhere in society.

WSJ: Obama Campaign a Bunch of Lying Liars

Wow.  The WSJ is scathing today.  Essentially they're saying Obama, via his campaign, is a lying sack of shit. 

Great Minds Think Alike, Paul Rahe Edition

Here is me on 2/19/09: 

"...it is One Term City for the Big O...this guy's well of goodwill is a mile wide and an inch deep"

Here is Paul Rahe today:

"Obama’s support is a mile wide and a quarter of an inch deep."

Also today, Rahe traces the arc of destruction that Obama has left upon his own party:

 In consequence, none of these psephologists has reflected adequately on the significance of the emergence of the Tea-Party Movement, on the meaning of Scott Brown’s election and the particular context within which he was elected, on the election of Chris Christie as Governor of New Jersey and of Bob McDonnell as Governor of Virginia, and on the political earthquake that took place in November, 2010. That earthquake, which gave the Republicans a strength at the state and local level

That would be the same arc I traced in October of 2010:

although it is obvious, seems to be long forgotten ancient history - the anti-Obama electoral wave started with New Jersey and Virginia and rolled on up to Massachusetts. (What's more, the Dems didn't just lose these races. In the case of New Jersey they spawned, in republican rock star Chris Christie, what to them is surely a Frankenstein monster loose in the land.) So in looking at the entire string of events from Virginia, New Jersey, and Scott Brown to what is shaping up to be a very bad Nov 2nd

Just sayin'.

ObamaCare's Costs Start to Hit Everyday Life...

Well, Papa John's Pizza has gone one step toward taking my advice and letting consumers know just how the destructive legislation that has come out of the Obamacrats affects them.

Papa John’s warns it will have to raise the price of its pizzas due to President Obama’s health care law.  John Schnatter, CEO and founder of Papa John’s, said pizza will cost up to 14 cents more when the Affordable Care Act goes into effect in 2014.  “We’re not supportive of Obamacare, like most businesses in our industry"

Still this is only letting the word out, I would like to see these costs itemized out on bills so that consumers have a daily reminder of what stupid laws like Obamacare are doing to the economy.

Climate Change Legislation - Calculate the cost of compliance with any climate change legislation on a per unit basis and make that cost transparent to your customers. A half of a penny on every can of Pepsi or $100 on every new car...whatever it is, put it right there on the package. Let the buying public know that climate change legislation costs them on everything, everytime they buy.

Universal Healthcare - Take the increased costs out of cash wages and show the numbers to all of your employees. Stuff a leaflet in every paycheck that says, "Universal healthcare mandates costs us $X per employee over our previous healthcare arrangements, thus your cash wages have been reduced or your potential raise been scaled back by an equivalent amount. Please note you are earning the same but your compensation comes more in the form of healthcare than cash remuneration."

Gas Price Update

After a brief retrenchment, which many pundits were quick to note would help the Lightworker in his bid for re-election, gas prices are on their way back up.  And fast too, I might add.  Notice the $0.25 rise in "PADD2" which contains a bunch of swing states like Ohio, Iowa, Missouri, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin (yes, these last three are swing states this year).  And crude continues to retrace it's losses from May and June, so prices could move higher still.

UPDATE:  Just saw this too - it's getting worse as we speak.

180 Degrees: Economists Now Dislike Savings

Well, we've come full circle.  Not so long ago (five, six years ago?) most academic economists (ergo, mostly lefty economists) lamented the low savings rate in America as both economically dangerous and culturally deplorable (such commentaries normally dripped with sneering contempt of American consumerism, i.e. loathing of the average rube).

Well, saving is back and the economists don't like it one bit.

The personal saving rate, which measures savings as a percentage of disposable income, jumped to 4.4% in June from 4% a month earlier and a recent low of 3.2% in November, the government said Tuesday, as consumers squirreled away cash amid the weak economy.

Spending on everything from vacations to clothes was largely flat in June. Spending fell less than 0.1%, after easing 0.1% in May, even though Americans’ income after taxes rose 0.4%, the most since March. Consumer spending is the biggest single driver of the U.S. economy, accounting for roughly two-thirds of demand.

Let me guess, would it perhaps have something to do with the state of the economy being essentially the only potential obstacle to four more years of the Smartest President-Lightworker-Some Sort of a God fellow occupying the oval office???

Economist: Economy is "An Economist's Horror Movie"

The trends are an economists' horror movie. Real GDP seems not to be recovering at all -- no period of swift growth to go back to a trend. We seem stuck at 2.4% growth forever. The CBO is giving up on us too. Employment will not recover as a fraction of population until the economy recovers. We seem stuck at low employment forever. And now we seem headed to a 1970s productivity slowdown as well.

I don't view this as contentious, outside of Presidential politics. Paul Krugman thinks the economy is pretty awful too.

What to do? If only it were so simple as to have the Fed print up another two trillion dollars, or have the Treasury borrow another $5 trillion and blow it on stimulus boondoggles. We're stuck in sclerotic growth, and to everyone but a few die-hard extremists, that means growth-oriented policies are the only way out. 

RTWT here.

Most Telling Sign of Lefty Panic Yet?

The Left's NGO-Media Complex must be gearing up for a Romney administration!

The Ford Foundation awarded a $500,000 grant to the Washington Post to expand its government-accountability coverage, the foundation’s second major grant to a for-profit newspaper this year.

The foundation made its first for-profit newspaper grant to the Los Angeles Times this spring—an award of $1 million to enlarge coverage of local immigration and ethnic communities.

The grants come as newspapers continue to struggle with print revenues declining much faster than digital revenues are growing, forcing closures and job cuts throughout the industry. The Washington Post’s newsroom, for instance, has shrunk to around 600 people today from about 1,000 at its peak in 2000.

The one-year grant to the Post, which is owned by Washington Post Co., will fund four reporters to work on “special projects related to money, politics and government,” under the paper’s investigative unit, according to a memo from Post editors.

“The Foundation’s support enables us to build on one of our central missions, and the terms of the grant give us complete independence,” the editors said.

After all, why would they suddenly be interested in "government accountability" 98 days from another four years of Obama?

Rahm Assailed, Chickens Inhaled

This is pure awesomeness.  Here too.  And I can accurately report a similar mob scene at the Chik-fil-A on May Avenue in Oklahoma City as well.

Jeez, I'd love to own a business that the libtards target with their self-righteous ire. I'll get working on that business plan...

UPDATE:  Wow, the word play fun here is almost endless.  Prof. Jacobsen has coined "Chicagoans Flip Rahm the Bird".  A commenter at SayAnything had "Democrats Lay an Egg, the People Eat Chicken".  Keep 'em coming!

UPPDATE:  The NBfPB command center here in New York just got a report that the Chik-fil-A in Edmond, OK has lines so long they've shut down traffic, people waiting in their cars patiently for long periods in order to patronize the Chik.

I Don't Recall Chuck Schumer Calling for Sword Control...

Naturally, after the Aurora movie theater massacre, there are numerous ill-thought out calls for restrictions on firearm ownership being put forth by the punditry.  Here is a case in point.

“When it is no longer safe to attend a movie without being mowed down by automatic weapons recently purchased by someone visiting a psychiatrist for possible mental illness, it is time to reexamine the beliefs we are holding so dear . . . I can’t figure out how assault weapons have a place in our society.” 

I won't get too deep into rebutting that other than to dredge up this story that I remember quite well from my days as a wee lad.

A homeless Cuban refugee, chanting and apparently deranged, went on a rampage with a sword aboard a Staten Island ferryboat yesterday and killed two people and wounded nine others before being subdued by a retired police officer at gunpoint.

Wielding a two-foot ornamental blade apparently purchased in Times Square, the assailant pursued, hacked and stabbed victims on two decks of the rumbling, 310-foot ferry, the Samuel I. Newhouse, at about 8:45 A.M. as the boat passed the Statue of Liberty, bound from Manhattan to Staten Island.

So let's see if we can't revise Mr. Ponder's ruminations

“When it is no longer safe to attend a movie take the ferry without being mowed down slashed by automatic weapons samurai swords recently purchased by someone visiting a psychiatrist for possible mental illness, it is time to reexamine the beliefs we are holding so dear . . . I can’t figure out how assault weapons sharp blades have a place in our society.” 

Also note, it was a man with a gun that stopped the killing spree on that ferry boat in 1986, who just happened to be a retired cop. Folks were lucky there just happened to be that retired cop onboard.  But there is no reason that it needed to be a retired cop, it could have been any responsible, self-trained citizen.  And the odds would have been greater that more carnage didn't take place if New York wasn't a gun control paradise and ferry riders didn't have to rely on mere luck.

Mitt Romney's Subversive Radicalism

Mitt Romney, if you believe what is written by the professional punditry, is a cautious, anodyne banality who defines the very notion of conventionality.  And yet, on his visit to Jerusalem let loose one of the most subversive statements one could possibly imagine.

In today's infantilized, wooly-thinking, post-modern world there is nothing so incendiary to prevailing sensibilities than the notion that culture matters and that certain cultures produce positive results and others produce less admirable results.  Of course, this is as obvious as the sun in the sky, but such are the depths to which we've sunk into a morass of post-modern delusion, that this statement could light a raging fire in the minds of world's victimologists and relativists.  That is because, in the words of Lt. Colonel Nathan R. Jessup, they can't handle the truth.

In their worldview, nobody is better than anybody else, no set of priorities is better than others, no virtues more worthy than others, no system of organizing and advancing a society is better than other systems.  Every person and nation would be equally prosperous, healthy, and flourishing if it weren't for oppression and rampant victimization and exploitation of innocents by a pernicious other.  Thus the ridiculous accusation of racism coming out of the Palestinian leadership.  As John Podhoretz points out, the Palestinians have stolen billions of foreign aid, they wield a crushing hand of cronyism and corruption over the economy, and they teach their children that death is glorious.  Thus their people live in poverty and living conditions in Palestinian areas are deplorable. Israel has a culture of life, learning and betterment.  The contrast couldn't be more stark and the results, at least economically, are obvious. Such however is the depth of delusion and denial in the world that people refuse to see what is directly in front of their face and that could morph Mitt Romney into the most radical of rhetoricians.