Today's Retail Sales activity for Nov broached expectations, thus cooperating nicely with our anchor. Consumers are far less cautious than before. Thank you very much. But this blog’s about National Politics is it not?
OK, let’s veer away from recent data just a tad and look at another key development: The House Committee on Financial Services (before, the House Banking Comm) is about to acquire a new chairman, thanks to Nov/2. We celebrate this event.
Under Barney Frank the committee went awol. As a result the crisis of Q4 ‘08 was birthed.
Frank never understood the workings of Fannie & Freddie. Bush efforts to reform the twins were blocked by Frank (and his Dem counterparts in the Senate, including BO). He and Clinton and Dodd and Obama may not have known that in encouraging the twins to take just a little more risk, then just a little bit more, in the successful effort to garner black votes that they would trigger the crisis but that was the result. That is, Barney politicized the mortgage origination business and for that he should be strung up by his thumbs (or by something, you pick).
KEY: Walt Street lampreys would have been without a host if not for Frank. (McCain would have won the election if he could have articulated this to the masses. He tried once in debate, then gave up the effort.)
We spent a day in front of the House Banking Committee when under Henry Gonzalez (D - Tex). We didn’t share Henry’s politics but admired the man. He was after Greenspan and Greenspan’s Fed for their multiple indiscretions; so were we. Gonzalez understood banking. He was fair. He was also a boxer in his younger years, something a heckler should have remembered. In a restaurant in Texas one day this poor fool called Henry a communist. Henry was in his late 70's at the time. He jumped up and knocked the guy out, TR style.
Somehow Frank and his sleazy far left politics do not fit this mold, even if he has put that male prostitute business behind him. Frank is sharp but so what? He was nothing more than a pseudo community organizer acting as the helmsman of US finance - a misfit. As a pilot on Twain’s Mississippi, he was sure to run aground.
We can expect the new chair, Spencer Bachus (R - Ala) and vice chair Jeb Hensarling (R- Tex) to unsnarl most of Frank’s mistakes, beginning with the Dodd-Frank act, “to correct, replace or repeal job-killing provisions that unnecessarily punish small businesses and community banks that did nothing to cause the financial crisis,” as Bachus told the Wash Times.
Then onto the twins.
Robert Craven
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Monday, December 6, 2010
Reluctantly an American
Mark Halperin, sr political analyst for TIME laments this week about his one-time idol, Obama. Everybody’s turned against him, Halperin writes, “Liberals believe he is an over-compromising wimp.....the business community considers Obama ignorant... a socialist at worst....The media..now see the president as incompetent and overwhelmed.” Poor Mark. He hopes in desperation that Obama will capture bin Laden, or preside over the fall of Iran; something, anything, “to reintroduce him to the American people and show the strengths he demonstrated as a ...candidate.”
Well, not exactly the “strengths” demonstrated as a candidate, but the lies demonstrated as a candidate. And he cannot be “reintroduced” because he never was one of us. He is only reluctantly an American.
His parents (a habitually drunk, polygamist, socialist father and a hater of America / a libertine, socialist mother and a hater of America), his associations with other America haters, with convicted terrorists, are all formative events.
Few of those who were taken in at the voting booth bothered to look past BO’s half color. If they had, they might have encountered this: From Stanley Kurtz, “The afternoon of April 1, 1983, Barack Obama, then a senior at Columbia University, made his way into the Great Hall of Manhattan’s Cooper Union to attend a ‘Socialist Scholars Conference.’”
“The conference itself was not a secret, but it held a secret, for it was there that a demoralized and frustrated socialist movement largely set aside strategies of nationalization and turned increasingly to local organizing as a way around the Reagan presidency — and its own spotty reputation,” he continues. “In the early 1980s, America’s socialists discovered what Saul Alinsky had always known: ‘Community organizing’ is a euphemism behind which advocates of a radical vision of America could advance their cause without the bothersome label ‘socialist’ drawing adverse attention to their efforts.”
“The 1983 Cooper Union Conference, billed as a tribute to Marx, was precisely when Obama discovered his vocation for community organizing,” notes Kurtz.
A regular American guy? A patriot? How so?
An extremist, a radical as we have warned all along? Looks like it.
Robert Craven
Well, not exactly the “strengths” demonstrated as a candidate, but the lies demonstrated as a candidate. And he cannot be “reintroduced” because he never was one of us. He is only reluctantly an American.
His parents (a habitually drunk, polygamist, socialist father and a hater of America / a libertine, socialist mother and a hater of America), his associations with other America haters, with convicted terrorists, are all formative events.
Few of those who were taken in at the voting booth bothered to look past BO’s half color. If they had, they might have encountered this: From Stanley Kurtz, “The afternoon of April 1, 1983, Barack Obama, then a senior at Columbia University, made his way into the Great Hall of Manhattan’s Cooper Union to attend a ‘Socialist Scholars Conference.’”
“The conference itself was not a secret, but it held a secret, for it was there that a demoralized and frustrated socialist movement largely set aside strategies of nationalization and turned increasingly to local organizing as a way around the Reagan presidency — and its own spotty reputation,” he continues. “In the early 1980s, America’s socialists discovered what Saul Alinsky had always known: ‘Community organizing’ is a euphemism behind which advocates of a radical vision of America could advance their cause without the bothersome label ‘socialist’ drawing adverse attention to their efforts.”
“The 1983 Cooper Union Conference, billed as a tribute to Marx, was precisely when Obama discovered his vocation for community organizing,” notes Kurtz.
A regular American guy? A patriot? How so?
An extremist, a radical as we have warned all along? Looks like it.
Robert Craven
Public Sector Unions, Obama and the Economy
Reasonable folk are amazed at the frolics of the left. Why did so much of the stimulus money go to union projects? Is that why it hasn’t worked? Why to Obama is American business simply an afterthought? Why is BO’s main focus on labor and green issues? Why is BO in battle with the private sector, with free enterprise?
Silly us, we thought the present administration had the interests of the American people and their economy in mind. Apparently not. Some of the most useful insight has come from Dem’s themselves, recently chastised.
John Kotkin of Chapman Univ is one of these, highlighting the above noted flaw. He writes that, “Modern-day liberalism... is often ambivalent about expanding the economy — preferring a mix of redistribution with redirection along green lines. Its base of political shock troops, public-employee unions, appears only tangentially interested in the health of the overall economy.” Well natch. These types can’t compete with free enterprise. Ever see a city street crew at work? Or, what’s orange and sleeps three? A Caltrans truck. Enough said. The private sector is a huge threat to these guys. Think BO is going to get away with seeing to the welfare of the private sector over these clowns?
Kotkin continues, “This contrasts with the far broader support for the familiar form of liberalism forged from the 1930s to the 1990s. Democratic presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Bill Clinton focused largely on basic middle-class concerns — such as expanding economic opportunity, property ownership and growth.” Yes they did, but that party was hijacked.
There’s thought and reflection here to be sure. Key is that the modern left’s priorities are misaligned, never mind the method. BO not only screwed up, he didn’t really care in the first place, or if he did his being in hock to the unions precluded any real solution. For BO to have cut taxes then got out of the way would have alienated his party base, big time. Never waste a crisis. Use it to create a program to stimulate the unions.
Again from Kotkin, “Public sector unions are not just the base of the party -- they're the base of the base. As the 2010 campaign ground on, other supporters and donors, notably Wall Street, had abandoned Democratic candidates. But unions representing teachers and state and local employees have doubled down. The National Education Association, the largest U.S. teachers union, spent more than $3.4 million on ad buys and direct-mail campaigns for the key electioneering period from Sept. 1 to Oct. 14. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees spent $2.1 million in that period. Union members and their families are key to the Democratic ‘ground game’ for Nov. 2.”
May thanks to the left and BO and particularly to his state & local employee union pals for their fine contribution to the better interests of this country.
Robert Craven
Silly us, we thought the present administration had the interests of the American people and their economy in mind. Apparently not. Some of the most useful insight has come from Dem’s themselves, recently chastised.
John Kotkin of Chapman Univ is one of these, highlighting the above noted flaw. He writes that, “Modern-day liberalism... is often ambivalent about expanding the economy — preferring a mix of redistribution with redirection along green lines. Its base of political shock troops, public-employee unions, appears only tangentially interested in the health of the overall economy.” Well natch. These types can’t compete with free enterprise. Ever see a city street crew at work? Or, what’s orange and sleeps three? A Caltrans truck. Enough said. The private sector is a huge threat to these guys. Think BO is going to get away with seeing to the welfare of the private sector over these clowns?
Kotkin continues, “This contrasts with the far broader support for the familiar form of liberalism forged from the 1930s to the 1990s. Democratic presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Bill Clinton focused largely on basic middle-class concerns — such as expanding economic opportunity, property ownership and growth.” Yes they did, but that party was hijacked.
There’s thought and reflection here to be sure. Key is that the modern left’s priorities are misaligned, never mind the method. BO not only screwed up, he didn’t really care in the first place, or if he did his being in hock to the unions precluded any real solution. For BO to have cut taxes then got out of the way would have alienated his party base, big time. Never waste a crisis. Use it to create a program to stimulate the unions.
Again from Kotkin, “Public sector unions are not just the base of the party -- they're the base of the base. As the 2010 campaign ground on, other supporters and donors, notably Wall Street, had abandoned Democratic candidates. But unions representing teachers and state and local employees have doubled down. The National Education Association, the largest U.S. teachers union, spent more than $3.4 million on ad buys and direct-mail campaigns for the key electioneering period from Sept. 1 to Oct. 14. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees spent $2.1 million in that period. Union members and their families are key to the Democratic ‘ground game’ for Nov. 2.”
May thanks to the left and BO and particularly to his state & local employee union pals for their fine contribution to the better interests of this country.
Robert Craven
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Fodder
Most Dems have regained consciousness but still remain dazed, bewildered, deer-in-the-headlights.
Not the far left, not those extremists who until recently controlled the party. They’re guerilla fighters. They’ll sacrifice their own kind for the cause. All of us have just witnessed such an event.
They’re Mac in Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle, the communist labor organizer who like Obama’s Rham Emanuel would, “never waste a crisis,” this one the tension in CA agriculture in the 30's. Mac used farm workers, fresh from the Dust Bowl, as tools for his greater “cause.” Jim was one of these and was sacrificed one night in a peach orchard, in an encounter with a shotgun.
There are plenty of Jim’s now; they’re everywhere, those moderate Dem’s just sacrificed by radical operatives. They have been beaten nearly to death, fodder for the party machine.
This time the party went too far, alienating most of its members, just as Mac finally crossed the line, ignoring even human life in the quest for an abstract. And this is exactly why last year we could predict, correctly as it turned out, that Obama (who is the perfect stand-in for McGovern or Martine Aubry) meant the death of the Democratic Party in its then present form.
Robert Craven
Not the far left, not those extremists who until recently controlled the party. They’re guerilla fighters. They’ll sacrifice their own kind for the cause. All of us have just witnessed such an event.
They’re Mac in Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle, the communist labor organizer who like Obama’s Rham Emanuel would, “never waste a crisis,” this one the tension in CA agriculture in the 30's. Mac used farm workers, fresh from the Dust Bowl, as tools for his greater “cause.” Jim was one of these and was sacrificed one night in a peach orchard, in an encounter with a shotgun.
There are plenty of Jim’s now; they’re everywhere, those moderate Dem’s just sacrificed by radical operatives. They have been beaten nearly to death, fodder for the party machine.
This time the party went too far, alienating most of its members, just as Mac finally crossed the line, ignoring even human life in the quest for an abstract. And this is exactly why last year we could predict, correctly as it turned out, that Obama (who is the perfect stand-in for McGovern or Martine Aubry) meant the death of the Democratic Party in its then present form.
Robert Craven
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Taken
In today’s Wash Post two Dem polsters, Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen write that, “... the president has largely lost the consent of the governed. The midterm elections were effectively a referendum on the Obama presidency. And even if it was not an endorsement of a Republican vision for America, the drubbing the Democrats took was certainly a vote of no confidence in Obama and his party. The president has almost no credibility left with Republicans and little with independents,” and we might add, little with moderate Democrats. For many of these, it’s more than disappointment; they hate the guy.
These authors conclude that Obama should announce “immediately” that he won’t run in 2012. That way he can make the tough decisions, “standing above politics, seeking to forge consensus.” He could, “make hard decisions about Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan based on what is reasonable and responsible for the United States, without the political constraints of a looming election.”
Won’t happen guys.
These two lament in the article that Obama’s actions have not been consistent with his campaign rhetoric. Caddell, Schoen and the rest, the taken, the willfully blind may have done their own research but they ignored the results if they did.
Obama acted perfectly in character all along, first saying what was needed to get elected, which by the way included making a bargain with guilty whites.
Now he’s acting just as he did as a state and later US senator - partisan, divisive, and oblivious to the real world concerns of most Americans. Our nursery pals and the rest invented a candidate. If Caddell and Schoen think Obama is listening, they repeat that mistake.
This is not about what is best for the country for goodness sake; it is about what is best for Obama. Where in his writings, his partisan voting record, his past associations or even his family background is it that he or his family ever maintained the interests of the United States as a priority? (See our Mischief of Nov/3 for more on that).
Background: To Obama, the United States is an unsavory institution. We noted family earlier because most agree family has formative dimensions. We know that his dad, a perennially drunk polygamist, was a hater of the West because he said so. We know that his mom while in Indonesia prevented BO from associating with other Americans as these were, “not my people.” Correct. Her people were the hate-America types, socialists, Marxists, the same crew BO chose to pal around with in his later years, his adult life. From Janice Shaw: “America’s supposed decline....is for our president — in accordance with all he was taught by his hate-mongering pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright — a matter of the 'chickens coming home to roost.'"
Do Caddell and Schoen really think this guy is going to do what is best for America? Probably not.
Robert Craven
These authors conclude that Obama should announce “immediately” that he won’t run in 2012. That way he can make the tough decisions, “standing above politics, seeking to forge consensus.” He could, “make hard decisions about Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan based on what is reasonable and responsible for the United States, without the political constraints of a looming election.”
Won’t happen guys.
These two lament in the article that Obama’s actions have not been consistent with his campaign rhetoric. Caddell, Schoen and the rest, the taken, the willfully blind may have done their own research but they ignored the results if they did.
Obama acted perfectly in character all along, first saying what was needed to get elected, which by the way included making a bargain with guilty whites.
Now he’s acting just as he did as a state and later US senator - partisan, divisive, and oblivious to the real world concerns of most Americans. Our nursery pals and the rest invented a candidate. If Caddell and Schoen think Obama is listening, they repeat that mistake.
This is not about what is best for the country for goodness sake; it is about what is best for Obama. Where in his writings, his partisan voting record, his past associations or even his family background is it that he or his family ever maintained the interests of the United States as a priority? (See our Mischief of Nov/3 for more on that).
Background: To Obama, the United States is an unsavory institution. We noted family earlier because most agree family has formative dimensions. We know that his dad, a perennially drunk polygamist, was a hater of the West because he said so. We know that his mom while in Indonesia prevented BO from associating with other Americans as these were, “not my people.” Correct. Her people were the hate-America types, socialists, Marxists, the same crew BO chose to pal around with in his later years, his adult life. From Janice Shaw: “America’s supposed decline....is for our president — in accordance with all he was taught by his hate-mongering pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright — a matter of the 'chickens coming home to roost.'"
Do Caddell and Schoen really think this guy is going to do what is best for America? Probably not.
Robert Craven
Saturday, November 13, 2010
An Education - At Our Expense
Obama laid waste to our economy. He tanked US prestige in the international community. There is no forgiving that.
BO experimented domestically at our expense, aiming to level the meritocracy he regards as offensive.
Next, he ignored fiscal lessons learned long ago. Even Europe looks sober in light of Obama’s recent binge.
Now we see the headline - “Obama To Be Back On Top.” What’s that mean? So now that he’s the last guy on the block to catch on and maybe apes Clinton, we should forgive him? Never. We want his transgressions to plague him every single day of his remaining term and we want him tossed to the dogs come 2012.
So it’s ok for him to waste two years? Water’s wet in the real world. For two years he tried to prove otherwise, the abstract. Now that he may come to agree, we should celebrate?
Are we here simply to provide therapy for BO so that he may prosper? Is all this really just about one guy? Sacrifice the country so that one half-black guy can achieve fame, so that guilty lefties can feel better about themselves?
Obama is without a sense of either history or economics yet was set free by swooning coeds and nursery types to have his way, to mold as he thought fit a country and a people and enterprises with whom in fact he has very little in common. That, compounded by his chronic lack of judgement explains why he so dangerous.
He is naive, even childish, a product of the faculty lounge. For example, from Vic Hansen, “Obama seems to think that making money is a casual enterprise, not nearly so difficult as community organizing, and without the intellectual rigor of academia — as if profits leap out of the head of Zeus.”
Then offshore, following the example set by his father Obama promotes American guilt at every stop; again parroting his father, he’s a paladin for anticolonialism, lecturing the Western powers that they prosper on the backs of others.
And now after seeing their party murdered, most Dems hope BO will abandon his adolescent ways, that is, the ways of the progressive, the looniest of this bunch. We have predicted that won’t happen and why and we darn sure hope we’re right. We don’t want to see BO move to center for goodness sake. We’ve already had to pay a heck of a price. Why pay for his education? We want to see BO and his wife and all of her 22 assistants (who cost us $900M annually) get the boot.
We’re told that we don’t have to respect the individual but always respect the office. This guy’s making that out to be a chore.
Robert Craven
BO experimented domestically at our expense, aiming to level the meritocracy he regards as offensive.
Next, he ignored fiscal lessons learned long ago. Even Europe looks sober in light of Obama’s recent binge.
Now we see the headline - “Obama To Be Back On Top.” What’s that mean? So now that he’s the last guy on the block to catch on and maybe apes Clinton, we should forgive him? Never. We want his transgressions to plague him every single day of his remaining term and we want him tossed to the dogs come 2012.
So it’s ok for him to waste two years? Water’s wet in the real world. For two years he tried to prove otherwise, the abstract. Now that he may come to agree, we should celebrate?
Are we here simply to provide therapy for BO so that he may prosper? Is all this really just about one guy? Sacrifice the country so that one half-black guy can achieve fame, so that guilty lefties can feel better about themselves?
Obama is without a sense of either history or economics yet was set free by swooning coeds and nursery types to have his way, to mold as he thought fit a country and a people and enterprises with whom in fact he has very little in common. That, compounded by his chronic lack of judgement explains why he so dangerous.
He is naive, even childish, a product of the faculty lounge. For example, from Vic Hansen, “Obama seems to think that making money is a casual enterprise, not nearly so difficult as community organizing, and without the intellectual rigor of academia — as if profits leap out of the head of Zeus.”
Then offshore, following the example set by his father Obama promotes American guilt at every stop; again parroting his father, he’s a paladin for anticolonialism, lecturing the Western powers that they prosper on the backs of others.
And now after seeing their party murdered, most Dems hope BO will abandon his adolescent ways, that is, the ways of the progressive, the looniest of this bunch. We have predicted that won’t happen and why and we darn sure hope we’re right. We don’t want to see BO move to center for goodness sake. We’ve already had to pay a heck of a price. Why pay for his education? We want to see BO and his wife and all of her 22 assistants (who cost us $900M annually) get the boot.
We’re told that we don’t have to respect the individual but always respect the office. This guy’s making that out to be a chore.
Robert Craven
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Handicapped - Race and the Economy
The past two years the Democrats have ministered to the US economy pretty much as they practice their race policy, pretty much as they minister to the blacks. Blacks are treated as a population somehow handicapped, disadvantaged, and key - in need of gov’t guidance and support. A few fall for this nonsense; this serves the party purposes quite nicely. (This stealth approach is at variance with earlier Democratic policy. Then, slavery was actually part of the party platform. At least these folk were honest, cretins to be sure but honest.)
Obama and crew predictably treated the US economy in similar fashion, in doctrinaire style - as if it were handicapped. Everything done by the majority past two years is a perfect fit.
First, the economy was visited by a crisis, this the result of Dem malfeasance regarding supervision of the twins, the discharging of prudence in mortgage origination. The purpose - to buy black votes.
Next, a resuscitation was hampered by the same policy the Dem’s apply to race, and with the same result. It amounts to nothing more than an intrusion, a lack of respect for sake of politics. The party has no decency. Set upon by BO and his type, reminded of (manufactured) handicaps, burdened by layer up layer of interference, and layer upon layer of uncertainty, the economy struggles (or did).
Gov’t spending does not create jobs on net, does not and never has reduced unemployment, at best acts as a wash, at worst a retardant. Some of us knew that early on; all but the most willfully blind know it now. Special privileges, quotas and bureaucratic interference in matters of race - the same result. Both sound great but never work. Money thrown at bigger and better public schools in the ghetto for example might as well be destined for the outhouse.
So a recovery has been thwarted by the left. To simply stand aside, lower taxes and hold on - no way, a violation of party identity, and for BO, an erosion of his political base.
Yet BO’s accomplices cannot stand still, even now. The Fed, having no fear of inflation is buying billions of US debt in an attempt to fire the system (the money comes from..... right - out of thin air). This is again simply interference. Still lower real interest rates in the US will deplete the incomes of savers and pensioners but do little to spark growth, not now. We know the Fed so we know this cute little trick will make little difference to a recovery but it will create distortions, $ moves for example, perhaps higher commodity prices, and perhaps stagflation to boot. Such a waste.
Renew the tax cuts, remove employer uncertainty and you have it - vigor. Simple. Yet such a common sense approach is nothing less than an apostasy to those scoundrels who traffic in the fraud that things are just so, so difficult, so complex that only they, the anointed, carry the wisdom and grace to deliver; it is only they who can provide salvation.
These misfits are soon to be gone. This is why we are optimistic for 2011 and beyond.
Robert Craven
Obama and crew predictably treated the US economy in similar fashion, in doctrinaire style - as if it were handicapped. Everything done by the majority past two years is a perfect fit.
First, the economy was visited by a crisis, this the result of Dem malfeasance regarding supervision of the twins, the discharging of prudence in mortgage origination. The purpose - to buy black votes.
Next, a resuscitation was hampered by the same policy the Dem’s apply to race, and with the same result. It amounts to nothing more than an intrusion, a lack of respect for sake of politics. The party has no decency. Set upon by BO and his type, reminded of (manufactured) handicaps, burdened by layer up layer of interference, and layer upon layer of uncertainty, the economy struggles (or did).
Gov’t spending does not create jobs on net, does not and never has reduced unemployment, at best acts as a wash, at worst a retardant. Some of us knew that early on; all but the most willfully blind know it now. Special privileges, quotas and bureaucratic interference in matters of race - the same result. Both sound great but never work. Money thrown at bigger and better public schools in the ghetto for example might as well be destined for the outhouse.
So a recovery has been thwarted by the left. To simply stand aside, lower taxes and hold on - no way, a violation of party identity, and for BO, an erosion of his political base.
Yet BO’s accomplices cannot stand still, even now. The Fed, having no fear of inflation is buying billions of US debt in an attempt to fire the system (the money comes from..... right - out of thin air). This is again simply interference. Still lower real interest rates in the US will deplete the incomes of savers and pensioners but do little to spark growth, not now. We know the Fed so we know this cute little trick will make little difference to a recovery but it will create distortions, $ moves for example, perhaps higher commodity prices, and perhaps stagflation to boot. Such a waste.
Renew the tax cuts, remove employer uncertainty and you have it - vigor. Simple. Yet such a common sense approach is nothing less than an apostasy to those scoundrels who traffic in the fraud that things are just so, so difficult, so complex that only they, the anointed, carry the wisdom and grace to deliver; it is only they who can provide salvation.
These misfits are soon to be gone. This is why we are optimistic for 2011 and beyond.
Robert Craven
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