From the moment Barack Obama announced his intentions to run for POTUS, I assumed that he would win.   The Clinton machine was worn out, and there were social forces and irrefutable facts that no “conservative” candidate could overcome.  Everything was in place when it came time to vote.  Briefly….

First, demographics:  Immigration and generational changes have eclipsed the Euro-centered, Post WWII electorate.  The young don’t care about Bill Ayers or radicalism any more than my generation cared about Tokyo Rose and Henry Wallace; the world of the young today is so bizarre and free-wheeling that nothing as tame as Jeremiah Wright can stand out and get serious attention.   Immigrants - most of whom have come here from despotic or chaotic countries - are seeking advantage through political power, and Barack Obama poses no threat to their conception of liberty.  They also don’t give a damn about Ben Franklin or Paul Revere, if you get my point.

Second, The Welfare State, or the same thing by other names:  Has grown in every administration since 1936, with a lapse during WWII.  All administrations have supported and expanded Human Resources and Defense ”superfunctions”, until it accounts for almost 62% of federal outlays since 1940 (adjusted for inflation). Everyone gets a piece, including those who call themselves conservatives.  Arguments about The Welfare State are window-dressing, because no faction or party seriously argues about its existence, and none attempt to define its sufficient size.

Third, popular conservatism itself, today, is a side show.   Buckley’s generation-long efforts to make conservatism respectable expired along with his sincerity, good sense and originality.  His heirs - like the bore George Will,  have made the essential muscularity of conservatism into a watery, disgusting gruel fit only for bow-tie wearing drama queens.   George W. Bush’s incoherence and government by passive silence has earned the detestation of almost every political perspective, especially the paleoconservatives.  Compassionate conservatism appeared to be ritualistic soul-cleansing, where things not belonging to you could be freely given to others.  Watch Barack Obama on this issue, too.

On the radio side, conservatism is dished up in the same old tropes, accompanied by country music, audio cuts of Ronald Reagan’s speeches and Wright’s squeals, and endless hammering on the anvils of American Exceptionalism and Rugged Individualism.  Together, their conclusions about why conservatism is moribund, is that voters dismayed by Republican cowardice and cupidity, punished them by voting for liberal Democrats.  Brilliant.   With analysis like this, we can win the T-Shirt slogan contest and forget the battle of ideas.

Speaking of ideas, that was McCain’s fatal problem.  He didn’t have any; he had a maverick personality, a biography, and expected us to generate ideas from there.  Obama projected plainly liquid and uncertain ideas, and his persona expanded like a Macy’s Parade balloon while McCain turned into a homunculus. Why this happened is unclear, and material for another post.

Right now I’m damned angry.   We’re exchanging one set of fools and poltroons who are clueless about the rationale, modes and aspirations of conservatism, for another set who are clueless about life, human nature, and the dangers in the world at large.  Great.

Change you’re going to get

From a Michelle Malkin post today:

Obama’s illegal alien aunt (and campaign donor!) is a deportation fugitive; Bush administration moves to protect her

[snip]
Turns out Aunti Zeituni Onyango, one of Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama’s many relatives made famous in his memoir, is an illegal alien. And not just a run-of-the-mill illegal alien on welfare. [snip]

Barack Obama’s aunt, a Kenyan woman who has been quietly living in public housing in Boston, is in the United States illegally after an immigration judge rejected her request for asylum four years ago, The Associated Press has learned.

Zeituni Onyango, 56, referred to as “Aunti Zeituni” in Obama’s memoir, was instructed to leave the United States by a U.S. immigration judge who denied her asylum request, a person familiar with the matter told the AP late Friday. This person spoke on condition of anonymity because no one was authorized to discuss Onyango’s case.

[snip]
Via cjburch, this Ace of Spades commenter sums it all up: “Obama’s aunt is here ILLEGALLY living in poverty, and is a deportation FUGITIVE. She’s collecting WELFARE and has DONATED to Obama’s campaign, ILLEGALLY! Obama. Family in poverty as he makes millions. Complete lawlessness. Giveaway your hard earned tax payer money to illegal fugitives. CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN.”

Of course, Bush is slowing down proceedings against her.

As our politicians like to remind us, We are a Nation of Laws!

End of the speech…Barack delivers it well, but what exactly will he deliver?  No idea! And that’s why I think he’s still got problems.

10:56 PM “So many lives to mend..” but no thoughts on how to do it.

10:55 PM Outdoor venue not doing a thing for me.  Heard it wasn’t great for JFK either.

10:52 PM Barack has too big of a sense of himself.  He really believes he’s Abraham Lincoln. A little humility wouldn’t hurt.

10:49 PM McCain has no record to run on?  If Barack has a record and qualifications to run on, why can’t any of his supporters list them?

10:48 PM “We all put our country first”….Says the man who described himself as a “citizen of the world” in Germany.

10:46 PM  “The times are too serious”…so says the man with a Greek temple in the background who was running a concert at his convention earlier.

10:45 PM Flip-flop alert…”end the war responsibly”?  He said he’d start pulling troops out when he enters office.

10:43 PM I will say that if Iraq wants us gone, we should leave.  They’re ultimately responsible for their country’s well being.  However, no denying Iraqi PM is playing political games.

10:42 PM  Not following McCain/Osama link..how did McCain not get bin Laden?

10:40 PM But how does throwing money at these programs encourage individual responsibility?  The bigger the net, the less responsibility one has.

10:37 PM Health care for everyone with big tax cuts?  How does that work?

10:35 PM Tax cuts for businesses/95% of Americans while investing $150 billion dollars in clean energy?  How does that work?

10:34 PM End oil dependence? Like we can snap our fingers and do that?

10:32 PM Why didn’t the Democratic Congress reward small businesses with tax breaks?  They’ve held Congress for 2 years now.

10:31 PM Finally some specifics?

10:30 PM I am my brothers keeper…sounds like big taxes to me.

10:29 PM Very average speech…just a big list of gripes so far.

10:28 PM Fortune 500 profits make jobs.

10:39 PM Shrink government?  Does anybody buy that?

10:35 PM Stadium was a bad idea.  They could have rocked the house indoors.  Feels a bit dead.

10:26 PM You’re on your own?  Has Barack seen the slate of social and welfare programs we fund?

10:25 PM The real gamble on Social Security is letting the politicians squander it.

10:23 PM  Has Obama seen the latest GDP numbers?  Revised upward significantly…Maybe Phil Graham was onto something.

10:22 PM McCain votes with Bush 90% of the time?  Dick Morris makes a great point about the number of bills commending high school football teams.  A very misleading stat by the Obama campaign.

10:20 PM Lot’s of grievances so far, but no specifics on fixes yet.

10:19 PM First Bush reference.  Are people buying the idea that McCain and Bush are synonymous?

10:18 PM How can we be one “American family” if half the family speaks Spanish? Of course, we all know which half Obama thinks should learn the other side’s language.

10:17 PM The Obama kids are cute.

10:16 PM The only “spirit” Kennedy embodies is Scotch.

10:15 PM Does anybody really believe the Clinton’s want Obama to win?

10:14 PM “Yes we can chants!” are pretty feint.

10:12 PM Barack finally takes the stage.  Maybe my expectations for crowd noise are too high?  Just not impressed.

10:10 PM I guess that was a picture of the “typical white” people grandparents.

10:07 PM Look at Barack’s Illinois state record on law and order issues.  It’s a horror show.

10:02 PM Obama video clearly trying to make the case he’s an American.

10:00 PM Fox not providing coverage of speakers on the stage now. Dick Durbin seems animated though.

10:56 PM Oprah with diamond studded Obama sunglasses?  I’m sure we can all relate. LOL

9:54 PM Love the Britney Spears references.  So much for escaping the celebrity albatross.

9:52 PM Another half hour till the Messiah?  Uhgh!

9:50 PM Obama repeating Kennedy’s outdoor acceptance speech.  Why am I thinking somebody who copies so much history will never make any of his own.

9:48 PM No specifics in Barack’s speech.  No surprise there.

9:43 PM Kucinich latest Democrat unable to answer why Barack is experienced enough to president.

9:38 PM Hurrah!  A picture of the Messiah entering Invesco!

9:37 PM Colmes says Obama right about prosecution of the Iraq War.  What about Obama’s opposition to the surge?

9:35 PM Lanny Davis says McCain is a conservative.  What’s he smoking?

9:33 PM Lanny Davis talking about “wrong direction” feeling in the country.

9:30 PM I tried watching the PBS coverage, but it was way to0 biased.  Fox News FTW!

9:28 PM It’s dead.  There is zero energy on the field.  I wonder if they overreached with the large venue.

9:27 PM Wonder if the shots during Obama’s speech will be different?  You can’t even see the Barack temple.

9:25 PM  Biden says America sucks.  Everyone’s being “knocked down”.

9:23 PM Biden makes a surprise visit.  Must be there to warm them up.

9:21 PM Did Mayor Booker just say he wasn’t aware of Barack’s public statements?  Yikes!

9:19 PM Newark mayor says the energy level is high.  The live shot behind him looks like everyone is sleeping.

9:17 PM Considering creation of my own Barack Obama Buzzword Bingo game.  How many times do you think he’ll say “Bush” and “change”?

9:13 PM Another hour before Obama hits the stage?  Not sure I’m going to make it.

9:08 PM  Saw Stevie Wonder earlier.  Hope Republicans avoid the Democrat’s Hollywood circus atmosphere.

9:06 PM  Could Al Gore have been less inspiring?  I’m surprised I’m still awake.

The Middlebury Institute has promoted Vermont secession. Nothing they have provided shows a grasp of the intricacies faced in this process even if it passed.
Today, Vermont is a cassava root ahead of being a Third World Nation; if not for the earmarks dragged in by Sen. Leahy, it would be one.

These numbers below are probably close, given the level of education in this country.

Secession, Ignorance, and Stupidity:

A recent Zogby/Middlebury Institute poll shows that 22% of Americans believe that “any state or region has the right to peaceably secede and become an independent republic.” Belief in states’ and regions right to secede was especially common among blacks (40%), Hispanics (43%) and people aged 18-24 (40%). Interestingly, Political liberals (32%) were more likely to believe in a right to secession than conservatives (17%). 18% of respondents say they would support a secession movement in their own state, including 24% of southerners.

Constitutional law professor Ann Althouse claims that these poll results show that “all these people [who believe in a right to secession] have the law wrong and don’t seem to know the basics of the history of the Civil War.” She concludes that the pro-secession survey respondents are “fascinatingly stupid.” [snip]

I certainly agree with Ann that much of the public is shockingly ignorant about American history and constitutional law. This is one aspect of the more general widespread political ignorance that I have often written about on this blog and elsewhere (e.g. here and here). At the same time, I don’t think that ignorance is necessarily a sign of stupidity. [snip]

I agree with Althouse, fascinatingly stupid is a mild term however. I think the largest majority of them are clueless to what will be in order.
Unlike Althouse, I would encourage them to secede while they still know everything. And once out they cannot return. Citizenship is revoked.

First lets look at the demographics and their political suasion (this is important): from above

• Blacks–40%
• Hispanics–43%
• 18 to 24–40%
• Political liberals–32%
• Conservatives–17%

There are two groups, which I suspect fit in the prior numbers but listed separately:

• Own state respondents–18%
• Southerners–24%

The odds are good that each group has their own ideas as to how and where to form their country. This may cause some discombobulation in some areas for an unknown duration. For the sake of this discussion, all is amicable; selection and agreement is with minimal delay. People leave who wish to and others arrive all done equitably.

Government

With your own country, you need to form a government and some form of document of guidance. This will be by ballot or bullet. Given the liberal’s past history and for that matter most of the world, I’ll let you guess which method forms the ruling body.

Monetary system

Every country needs to have a means of settling internal debts, trade on the world markets and negotiate as something other than a third world nation. Or did these secessionists think they would use Sam’s money? It doesn’t work that way; you are a sovereign nation, act as one. All we have to do is change the color of the currency, declare the old valueless and issue the new in our banks. Don’t be stupid and think the Government hasn’t all ready printed the necessary notes. Those from the military remember MPC’s being changed to shut down black markets overnight.

Infrastructure

Roadways, airports, hospitals and rail lines are in place. All the new country needs is to equip and staff the existing structures and maintain them. Who says the professionals doing this work now are going to stay there. How will they be paid, housed, fed?
Forget keeping the National Guard equipment, guardsmen stay if they wish, but they are no longer paid nor receive any federal benefits if they do. Why should they, now they are foreign troops.

Business and Industry

Whether you have any industry and business depends on the tax structure. The tax structure depends on the country’s monetary system. If you cannot pay the employees in something other than rubles, your industry moves. No industry, what do you trade for things you need?

Basic services

Most of the listed above believe they will get the same basic services they get now: socialized medicine, welfare, WIC, food stamps, public schools Section 8 housing, police, fire and emergency response and working telephones. Yeah, think about that, working phones,

I encourage the above groups to opt for nationhood; pure emotion drives it and it drives it right into the Swamp of Stupidity.

If this should happen, we need to know who occupies what areas. All borders with new nations are fortified like the Korean 38^th parallel until and if treaties are negotiated.

(Political liberals)
New England–The Democratic Republic of Gated Communities (Might contain NYC, Long Island and NJ)
Who will mow the lawns and plow the snow, I haven’t an idea. After seeing what happened in South Africa, nobody but the swells will live there. That is all ready graven in liberal stone.

(18 to 24)

Southern CA—High Kingdom of Surf
Dude, like it will be soooo tomorrow and full of tatts.
It will be until we shut off the water for non-payment and shut off the power so they can conserve to their heart’s content.

(Hispanics)
Florida—Sovereign State of Sunny Sombrero
They can mow lawns, pick oranges and smuggle illegals to surfeit.

(Blacks)
Louisiana—Chocklit Empire
With Chief Nagin as the Wonka Man and Jesse “Fillin’ Man” Jackson as Minister of Appointees with Al ‘Mouth’ Sharpton as Minister of Graffiti, a government with portfolio is formed. This former state, having been run by liberals and Donks for years won’t know the difference except there won’t be any money.

(Conservatives)
I haven’t a clue who these individuals are. Guessing says Bible people so
Del Rio, Texas.
If that is wrong, then the panhandle of Idaho. They’ll all fit and you’ll never see them again.

Here’s a group of bright bulbs, eh?

A group of teenage girls made a solemn pact - not to be friends forever, go to the prom together or try out for a sports team.

They agreed to get pregnant. And they kept their promise.

Seventeen girls at Gloucester High School in Massachusetts are expecting babies, Time.com first reported.

None of the mothers-to-be, who are planning to raise their babies together, are over age 16. One of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless man.

My first reaction was they’ll learn soon enough about the consequences of stupid decisions.  But then I thought about it and that’s not true.  Because the fact is we’ll suffer the consequences.  We’ll pay their rent.  Buy their clothes.  Feed them.  Give them free healthcare.  Finance some form of education for the mother.  And more than likely, we’ll keep paying for the next generation who are much more likely to become welfare wards too.

And all the while, big government types will tell those of us who work, pay taxes, and take care of our families why they need more and more of our money.  This is why Deval can’t give us tax relief.  He has to take care of all the people who need reminders to keep breathing.

Yes, we’re all fathers-to-be and mothers-to-be, but I don’t feel much like celebrating.  How about you?

This has to be one of the more humorous articles published about socialism in some time. No attempt at humor seems to be a cause to write this article, but reality has a way of inserting twists never intended by the penman.

I experienced that “Groundhog Day” moment reading these words, until I realized this is what scribes always write about how socialism turns out.

Sadly, we read about it here too. In Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine, etc.; the list goes on. Our housing troubles, trucking, bad roads, oh pick it. Some entity wants a handout from another’s pocket via pork spending. The government has the solution, right over in that sand pile. Must be, that’s where their heads are.

Read the whole article to see our destination with the Donks, bring tissues:

Spain Smacked by a Dose of Economic Reality

Spaniards, used to socialist largesse, are struggling with market economics — and their prime minister is in heavy denial.

A national truck driver’s strike in Spain may be winding down, but it has brought the already-troubled Spanish economy to a standstill. It has also highlighted what happens when a welfare state goes wild. Some 90,000 self-employed hauliers…[snip]… are betting that the government will cave in to their demands. After all, the Spanish government always gives in to labor unrest. [snip]

Spain complains

[snip]
Considering all these grievances, it seems strange that Spanish voters in March gave Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero another four-year term in office. After all, pre-election polls showed that the majority of Spaniards knew full well that Spain was not on the right track, economically or otherwise.

Maybe they allowed themselves to be persuaded that everything would somehow be okay, thanks to Zapatero’s postmodern relativistic political discourse, which posits that all problems are by definition imaginary. Or perhaps they were bribed by the 22 billion euros — a whopping 2.1 percent of Spain’s GDP — in handouts that Zapatero promised to bestow upon them if re-elected. [snip]

During the past 20 years, Spain cashed in on some 100 billion euros — equivalent to nearly one percent of its GDP every year — by way of EU Structural and Cohesion Funds, which are designed to narrow the gap between the EU’s wealthy and poor countries. But now that Spain has reached a per capita GDP of 98.5 percent of the EU average — it was 72 percent in 1986 — the country will begin paying more into the EU than it receives back.

The implication is that Spaniards will have to strike less and work more. But that seems an unlikely prospect. Spain recently led a block, including Belgium and Greece, which sought to prohibit British workers from working more than 48 hours a week. Spanish Socialists complain that if Brits work more than Spaniards, Britain will have an unfair competitive advantage. (emphasis added)

Can’t have productivity, can we?

Problem? What problem?

Just before the March elections, Zapatero insisted that the Spanish economy would grow by 3.3 percent in 2008; since his re-election, however, the government has revised that figure downwards on an almost daily basis. [snip]

So far Zapatero’s post-modern approach to Spain’s economic crisis seems based on three reality-evading pillars: denial, passing the blame, and more denial. His Plan A has involved a pop psychology campaign advising Spaniards that “pessimism does not create jobs.” Plan B blamed “radical liberalism,” which in euro-speak means the free market. Zapatero now wants to implement Plan C, a global advertising campaign in the world financial press designed to highlight his economic management skills.

Spaniards, having grown accustomed to three decades of spoon-feeding by Socialist largesse, are in for a long, hot free-market summer.

Good, big pain might bring some reasoning gain, like getting out of the EU.

A basic tenet in the prog playbook deals with outcomes at variance with wishes. Lie to yourself about what you see. Works every time; ask Gorbachev, Castro, Jong-Il. Or ask the chink leaders who gave up pure socialism in favor of capitalism, why the Great Leap Forward put them on their butt.

Who knew MA had an extra billion to throw away on corporate welfare?  I guess it’s just property tax relief the governor and legislature can’t find money for.

Untidiness of construction is anathema to me. If one is to erect a building, it should be level and plumb. The following is disturbing so I effected a remedy.

In true  Vermont fashion, the cheapest is usually the best allowing for the old saw, “Waste not, want not.” We have many idle hands collecting welfare. Shipping them out gives them a sense of accomplishment and a visit to foreign lands for the same dollar.

Here is the solution to the leaning problem.

Elegant, is it not?

The election of 2006, how the Democrats changed the country. The links will take you to the data for verification.

Part 1

A little over one year ago:

1. Consumer confidence stood at a 2 1/2 year high
2. Regular gasoline sold for $2.19 a gallon
3. The unemployment rate was 4.5%

Since voting in a Democratically controlled Congress in 2006 we haveseen:

1. Consumer confidence plummet
2. The cost of regular gasoline soar to over $3.50 a gallon
3. Unemployment is up to 5% (a 10% increase)
4. American households have seen $2.3 trillion in equity value evaporate (stock and mutual fund losses)
5. Americans have seen their home equity drop by $1.2 trillion dollars
6. 1% of American homes are in foreclosure

America voted for “change” in 2006, and we got it!
Remember, it’s Congress that makes the law…not the President. He has to work with what’s handed him. Of course sometimes they are hand in glove with Congress.

Quote of the Day: “My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you’ll join with me as we try to change it.” - Barrack Obama

Part 2

Taxes.

Whether Democrat or a Republican you will find these statistics enlightening and amazing.

Taxes under Clinton 1999 Taxes under Bush 2008

Single making 30K-tax $8,400 Single making 30K-tax $4,500
Single making 50K-tax $14,000 Single making 50K-tax $12,500
Single making 75K-tax $23,250 Single making 75K-tax $18,750
Married making 60K-tax $16,800 Married making 60K-tax $9,000
Married making 75K-tax $21,000 Married making 75K-tax $18,750
Married making 125K-tax $38,750 Married making 125K-tax $31,250

Both democrat candidates will return to the higher tax rates. It is amazing how many people who fall into the categories above think Bush is screwing them and Bill Clinton was the greatest President ever.
If Obama or Hillary are elected, they both say they will repeal the Bush tax cuts and a good portion of the people who fall into the categories above can’t wait for it to happen.

Part 3

You think the war in Iraq is costing us too much?

I have been hammered with propaganda that it’s the “Iraq War” and the “War on Terror” that is bankrupting us. RIDICULOUS!

$11 billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year by state governments.
$2.2 billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.
$2.5 billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.
$12 billion dollars a year spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English!
$17 billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.
$3 Million dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.
$90 billion dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare & social services by the American taxpayers.
$200 billion dollars a year in suppressed American wages caused by illegal aliens.
Illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that’s two and a half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US.
During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border also, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into the U. S from the Southern border.
In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin.
“The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes is Committed By Illegal Immigrants In The United States”

The total cost is a whopping $338.3 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR!!
The total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period.”

Are we voters that stupid? I guess so.

I don’t think any of the idiots in DC understand what’s coming. Take P.J. O’Rourke’s advice. “Never let the people with money and the people with guns, be the same people!”

No matter who’s elected president,
the debt party’s over

Talk about Enron type accounting, our federal books are well done, closer to charred. Here’s some of the hidden bills:

• Supplemental financing bills, outside the budget
• No veterans health-care estimates included
• No equipment replacement costs to restore our military
• Nothing about increases in state and homeland security

The real price is $3 trillion; and growing like Topsy, add to the outlay these goodies.

• Interest on the ever-increasing $9.3 trillion federal debt
• Damage to our credibility from a weak dollar
• Out-of-control inflation in energy

Let us add some more items such as bailouts for mortgage writers and lenders, putting the taxpayers on the hook by nationalizing the banking system and all the unfunded entitlement programs that congress won’t cut. The worst are:

Welfare for Wall Street
J.P. Morgan Chase buys Bear Stern’s equity. Taxpayers get the junk debt totaling billions of dollars. With fresh money it’s the samo-samo speculation Monte game. Why not, they’re playing with your money.

A Third World Financial Industry, Nationalized Banking
The sports on Wall Street played fast and loose, inflating bad debt values and embroidering profits. The Fed’s allowing them to gloss over losses to prevent alarm; talk about hiding a sunrise.

Under and unfunded Social and Entitlement Programs, the Untouchables
Medicare and Social Security entitlements soar to $50 trillion to $65 trillion within a generation. Entitlements will consume the entire budget in a generation. Note how concerned Congress is about this!

Pork and the Lobbying Machine, DC’s biggest busiess
35,000 lobbyists will loiter right after the 2009-2012 first term of the next president, screaming for government largess. The Democrats need them. McCain pledges to veto earmarks, look at his campaign staff, the altruistic ones that are working for “gratis.” All sorts of special interest lobbyists “donating” their time.

Bush’s Free Market Policies
“We’re on top of it,” Bush stated in his New York Economics Club speech in March. Probably like Spitzer got on top.

Roads, Bridges, Water, Sewer: The Appian Way is in better shape
Right! Taxes and more taxes on fuel and real cutbacks in services.

Consumer Savings?
They don’t exist. Big TV’s to luxury vacations, welcome to Hedonist Central where there is no waiting.

Recession Reality
We’ve been dancing to a low 1% Fed rate; the tune was bubble up and flip for loot.
Who’s that knocking at the door? It is the meltdown fiddler; he stopped playing and will have his pay.
All those who pooh-poohed Gramp’s hardship tales will get to live them. Call it a repeating verbal history. Yup, you’ll repeat it.
For all the rad-chic ’60’s anti-capitalists, it couldn’t happen at a better time. Kiss your retirement good-bye!

Unrestrained Capitalism is ferocious, a thing to be avoided. Liberal Joe Investor knows nothing of how brutal the corporate world is. They believe all should be fair, equal and of course green and sensitive, which is why Socialist economies always fail. Also, those convinced markets should forever go up fit the above definition of clueless.
In the days of the Gould, Mellon, Carnegie, Rockefeller and Vanderbilt dynasties, lying and cheating each other was routine business practice. Only after small investors involved themselves in the market did some laws come about to control the more rampant thievery. That is Capitalism, not pretty but it works.
A small-scale example is the bakery business in NY for hard rolls (A crusted roll shaped like a Kaiser-sold for breakfast and sandwich service). Profits per roll are measured at ¼ to ⅛ of a cent delivered to the business.Could you make a go of business in this fashion? All food stores work on the same margins.
All well run corporations pay COO and CFO’s to maximize profits while controlling expenses. Would you do that for $15.85/hour?

Insiders Selling at Bear Stearns

As news broke yesterday that the chairman of Bear Stearns, James Cayne, sold his entire stake in the brokerage earlier this week for $61.3 million, experts were reminded of an earlier stock sale, when nine insiders sold nearly $50 million worth of shares just three months shy of the firm’s near collapse.

According to documents filed yesterday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mr. Cayne sold 5.6 million shares at $10.84 a share on Tuesday.

Bear Stearns’s fall has been brutal, with the firm’s shares tumbling from a 52-week high of $159.36 to a recent low of $2.84 following the March 16 announcement that JPMorgan Chase & Co. would buy the bank for just $2 a share. [snip]

The other Bear Stearns insiders who sold stock in December were Jeffrey Mayer, executive vice president; Samuel Molinaro, chief financial officer; Michael Minikes, treasurer; Jeffrey Farber, comptroller, and directors Paul Novelly, Vincent Tese, and Alan Greenberg.

The heavy December selling took many pros by surprise. “It was a clear sign of bearish insider activity,” according to Jonathan Moreland, who has been tracking the buying and selling actions of corporate insiders for nearly two decades and currently heads up research at InsiderInsights, a weekly New York newsletter that monitors insider activity. The sales “relayed a message that Bear Stearns was a stock to avoid or to short,” he said. [snip]

Wall Street has been abuzz with talk that the SEC is looking into Bear Stearns’ December insider transactions, but a knowledgeable source at the brokerage tells me the agency has not contacted the firm. The SEC declined comment.

Insider trading is legal. Owning stock in a company for which you work isn’t a suicide pact with that company. Published insider transactions are on the financial sites of most Internet portals. Pick your company and engage in research. I agree with this.

What is unlawful is trading on information that isn’t available to the investing public. I agree with this also. The balance of regulation is government meddling, to wit, the Sarbanes Oxley Act which stopped foreign investment in America, causing many companies to buy up their stock and go private. The rest raised their prices to cover the cost of this legislation.

The law responded to the problems at Enron, Tyco International, Adelphia, Peregrine Systems and WorldCom. Laws exist(ed) to cover this malfeasance via fraud through the IRS and the SEC; state fraud laws are on the books too. Notice how well they stopped the fraud. Companies that went private are now doing business with no SEC oversight.

Liberals believe corporate officers are overpaid; they rant over corporate greed, corporate welfare or any profit making operation except candle makers, macramé shops and other cottage “industries.” Most of those close their doors just for being worthless without contributing to the community employment.

Wonders never do cease.

An avowed socialist has come half circle to applaud, no, to back corporate welfare. Abetting the bail out by the Fed is our own Don Quixote, who in past times vocalized his abhorrence of the rich getting richer via government largess.

OK Bernie, fess up, why the change? Could it be your corporate investments are endangered? Nothing occurs without reason.

The planets revolve around the Sun and you, on your steed, tilted at the corporations on behalf of the poor, the downtrodden, the little man.

Something cataclysmic must have materialized.

How about letting us, your myrmidons, know in what to invest? Should we buy Goldman Sachs stocks now? For all these years, we thought we were investing in the Radiant Future!

Now we find out you were investing in Bear Sterns.

That one needs to even ask these questions should tell of the dismal conditions of today’s institutions.

Questions to Ask Before You Send Your Child to College.

Before you take out a second mortgage or otherwise deplete your savings in order to pay for your child’s college education, you might want to ask the colleges to which your child is applying some questions.

Can one obtain a Bachelor of Arts degree at your college without having read a single Shakespeare play, one Federalist Paper or one book of the Bible?
If so, why attend such a college?
Does the college allow military recruiters on its campus?
Before being threatened by Congress with a cutoff of federal funds, many colleges denied military recruiters access to their campus. They did so either because of their hostility to military in general or specific hostility to the war in Iraq, or because of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding gays. If you believe, as reason and history argue, that the American military has done more to preserve liberty on earth than all the professors in all the universities combined, you might not want to send your child to a university that is hostile to the military.
In the political science, English, sociology, anthropology and history departments — or any other liberal arts department — what is the ratio of Democrats to Republicans among the professors?
Over 10 years ago, the Rocky Mountain News reported that registered Democrats on the faculty of the University of Colorado at Boulder outnumbered registered Republicans 31-1. If such a ratio exists in the social science departments of your child’s prospective college, why would you want your child to attend such an institution?
What are the names of the speakers invited and paid with college funds to speak last year at the college?
Just ask to see the previous year’s speakers list. Colleges set aside funds for visiting speakers. One would assume that a good college seeks to encourage thinking and to that end invites speakers throughout the political spectrum. If your prospective college has a speakers list that is balanced 10 to one in favor of speakers from the political left, that will help you decide whether indoctrination rather than exposure to great ideas is the university’s real agenda.
Can my child live in a same-sex dorm and are the bathrooms co-ed?
One generation ago and for all of American history, the university acted in loco parentis, in the place of the parent. You could send your daughter to college more or less assured that the college would act on behalf of her welfare as you would — meaning, for example, that boys had to leave girls dorms by a certain hour. Now, most colleges have no boys or girls dorms and do everything they can to enable boys and girls to fraternize in each other’s rooms at any hour of the night and even share bathrooms.
Is Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States the most widely assigned American history book?
If the answer is yes, you should consider sending your son or daughter to another university or at least be aware that you will be paying a lot of hard-earned money for your child to be manipulated into believing that America is a bad country, certainly no better than others, as he or she reads what is essentially a proctologist’s view of American history. Zinn believes, as he told me in an interview on my radio show, that America has done “probably more harm than good in its history.”
Would a typical graduate of your university be able to say anything intelligent about Josef Stalin, Louis Armstrong, Pope John XXIII or Pope John Paul II, differences between Protestantism and Catholicism, Cain and Abel, the Gulag Archipelago, Franz Josef Haydn, Pol Pot, Martin Luther, Darfur, how interest rates affect the dollar, dark matter, and “Crime and Punishment”; explain what the Korean War was about and when it was fought; identify India on a map; and know the difference between the United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council?
How could someone be considered in any way educated and not be able to intelligently answer all or nearly all of those questions? If they don’t know about such essential and basic things, what do they know? Movies? The supposed dangers of global warming? The importance of race, gender and class? The meaning of menage a trois (or “threesomes”)? Great gay writers?

Unfortunately, the chances are that if you receive any response at all to these questions, it will be a discouraging one. Outside of the natural sciences, colleges are either more interested in liberal indoctrination than in a liberal arts education, or they enable students to take courses that are so narrowly focused that your child graduate will likely graduate as a cultural and historical illiterate. Why so many Americans go into debt paying so much money to such failed institutions is one of the riddles of the universe.

It is time to demand that universities teach. Forcing them to answer the above seven questions is a good way to begin. Because granting a Bachelor of Arts degree on someone who never heard of Cain and Abel and never heard a Haydn symphony is a fraud.

If British courts capitulate to Sharia, at least they’ll have company.  The government is already waving the surrender flag for taxpayers:

The British government has cleared the way for husbands with multiple wives to claim welfare benefits for all their partners, fueling growing controversy over the role of Islamic Shariah law in the nation’s cultural and legal framework. 

That’s right.  Even though bigamy isn’t legal in England, the nanny state will still sign checks for the entire household.  Wouldn’t do to offend after all. 

Kurt Daims, you don’t have a hair on your twee buttocks if you don’t front this arrest. True revolutionaries lead; remember CHE.

President Bush may soon have a new reason to go to the left-leaning Brattleboro Vermont: Here activists want him subject to arrest for war crimes.

The measure: “Shall the Selectboard instruct the Town Attorney to draft indictments against President Bush and Vice President Cheney for crimes against our Constitution, and publish said indictment for consideration by other municipalities?” It requires about 1,000 signatures to place a binding item on the agenda at the town meeting; surely, the pitchforks and torches crowd can accomplish this.

Leader of the drive, Kurt Daims claims, “This petition is as radical as the Declaration of Independence, and it draws on that tradition in claiming a universal jurisdiction when governments fail to do what they’re supposed to do.”

Vermont is the land of plenty. Plenty of loons, brain damaged and ignoranti wander up the Long Trail, lured by welfare and the heady rush of finding Brigadoon. In time, they morph into squealing moonbats as they overdose on that certain pollutant in Brattleboro air.

The Bush-Cheney war crimes petition is to be voted on at town meeting day in March, these lobotomized fools will then expect the officials to act.
They won’t, no authority.

However, a superb chance exists for the BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) crowd to rooster their stuff.

Kurt Daims, when either of the duo sets foot on Rte. 5 or 9, plop that silly red beret on your dome, hie there immediately and clap the cur in irons. Your fellow signatories surely cover your six.

For your efforts, immediate ascension to Hero of Vermont; feted in Montpelier for your audacity.

May I suggest a fanny pack of items needed in addition to the irons? Mercurochrome, lots of it, a couple of those reusable wine bottle corks, 10mm size should do, and a splint for your penis. FYI;

The USSS is singularly humorless with defectives.