Real conservatism needed
If the election were held today, Barack Obama would be the new President of the United States of America. The latest Real Clear Politics average of national polls shows Obama ahead of McCain by nearly seven percentage points. It looks like the Democrats are going to have control of both the White House and Congress for the next four years. And, mark it down, if there is a Democrat sweep, conservative Republicans will get the blame.
The fact of the matter is, however, that President Bush and the Republicans who dominated Congress during most of his administration governed as anything but conservatives. Except during election season, it has been difficult to find any trace of conservative principles among incumbents within the Republican Party. During their tenure, Republican governance was characterized by out of control spending, record-setting earmarks, affirmative action programs for corporate wrongdoers, corrupt relations with special interests, and sexual scandal. While they often described themselves as "conservatives," their walk was very different from their talk...
During the period of Republican hegemony, no real ground was gained on reforming entitlements, no major effort was made to curb abortion (or even abortion funding), and the national debt as a percentage of gross domestic product rose to a 50-year high!
Few Republicans in leadership in government during the past decade have been authentic conservatives. At best, they have been counterfeit conservatives, which no doubt accounts for why Republicans lost so many seats in 2006 and why they appear ready to lose more seats and the Presidency this November.
Because of the divergence between the words and deeds of those who have called themselves conservatives, there is a lack of clarity of what it really means to be a "conservative." Conservatives are sometimes confused with libertarians. But true conservatives are not autonomous individuals seeking absolute freedom. The siren call of extreme libertarianism is no less destructive than the liberal dream of the nanny state. Conservatives understand that every person is a part of a family and a community; they understand that each generation is just one link in the long chain of human history; and they understand that each person and each generation has duties to those who went before, those who are living today, and those who will come after us. A sense of duty and history governs the lives and thoughts of conservatives....
A recovery of conservatism begins with a recovery of the family. Families are the cornerstone of a healthy society. Families are the units that raise our children, transmit our values, and prepare children for life in society as responsible adults. In addition to providing protection, provision, and guidance, families provide an environment in which children learn how to order their lives as they live in community with others.
Conservatives believe that both mothers and fathers have unique and invaluable roles to play in the development of healthy children. Feminine and masculine role models are important for girls and boys alike. In our youth, we look to our mothers and fathers to learn how to live and relate to others. However, divorce, promiscuity, and co-habitation have devastated America's families. Many children have only a single parent to raise them. Consequently, children are often raised with a "gender gap," and they receive instruction and guidance at home from just a single parent. The pathologies of single parent children are all too familiar: academic failure, drug abuse, teen suicide, sexual promiscuity, juvenile delinquency. Conservatives, therefore, advocate policies that strengthen and undergird the family, knowing that such policies strengthen and undergird society.
Conservatives understand the value of work. Work is the means by which families sustain themselves economically. Since families (unlike government) are not able to print money, they understand the work-wealth connection. Conservatives deem the willingness to work hard to support oneself and one's family a virtue. They eschew policies that diminish incentives to work or encourage a lack of self sufficiency.
Conservatives also understand the importance of living within one's means. They understand the importance of savings and investment and know that to do either requires that they resist the temptation for instant gratification. They understand that the future is uncertain and life has its ups and downs. Therefore, in good times they set aside a portion of their earnings for the difficult times that may be around the bend. They favor policies that promote savings and investment and oppose those that promote unhealthy speculation, which they see as the equivalent of gambling.
Conservatives believe that markets should be free from excessive government regulation and that free market forces, not government intervention, should determine winners and losers in the market place. Competition is typically the best and most efficient way to determine which goods and services the consuming public wants. Government control of the means of production of consumer goods and government dictation of consumer preferences should be discouraged.
More here
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Good Little Stuff from Big Mac
It certainly wasn't the big-bang across-the-board tax-reform and tax-cut plan that I and others lobbied for. But John McCain's "Pension and Family Security Plan" unveiled today on the campaign trail does have some solid pro-growth nuggets. I'm calling it some good little stuff.
The most important pro-growth measure is a reduction in the capital-gains tax rate to 7.5 percent in 2009 and 2010. Although I wish it were permanent, at least it will reward investors who scoop up undervalued assets, including bargain-basement stocks and underwater homes. Two years is not a very wide window. But this could promote a faster recovery in asset prices and wealth creation.
Alongside the cap-gains cut, McCain is proposing to increase the amount of capital losses eligible for tax write-offs from $3,000 to $15,000 for tax years 2008 and 2009. It's an offset to ordinary income. And again, while it should be permanent, at least it will be helpful.
Also in his plan, withdrawals from tax-preferred retirement accounts will be taxed at the lowest rate (10 percent) for the first $50,000 withdrawn from these accounts. Tax rules forcing seniors to sell retirement-account stock holdings when they reach age 70.5 will be suspended. That's good.
In effect, going into the final debate, McCain has a significant corporate tax cut and a modest capital-gains tax cut. He also wants to keep the Bush income-tax cuts in place. All of these measures are pro-growth.
I would have preferred a Paul Ryan modified flat tax with two brackets of 10 and 25 percent. In other words, a true across-the-board reduction in marginal tax rates as an economic recovery measure to connect with folks who are worried about recessionary losses for their jobs and home mortgages. Economic anxieties are big, and a big-bang tax-cut response would be optimal.
But cutting taxes for businesses, capital gains, and individuals does give McCain a lot of pro-growth meat on the bone for the big debate.
Now, if only McCain can succeed in selling these measures. Especially the corporate tax cut, which should be sold as a middle-class consumer tax cut inasmuch as corporations pass along their tax costs to consumers in the form of higher prices. This is the key to selling the corporate tax cut.
Source
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ELSEWHERE
Wayne Lusvardi is campaigning for California's Proposition 8 -- which is aimed at stopping homosexual "marriage". He argues that it is in the interests of feminists to support the proposition. He won't convince the feminazis but lots of women have moderate feminist views.
High ratings for Palin on SNL: "The entertainment summit of the season -- Sarah Palin and her impersonator, Tina Fey -- earned "Saturday Night Live" its best ratings in 14 years. But if you blinked, you might have missed it. Fey was answering questions at a news conference, something Palin hasn't done yet as the Republican vice presidential nominee, when Palin walked on the stage. Fey beat a hasty retreat in the opening segment, walking past the real Palin with a barely perceptible nod. Palin's guest shot, widely anticipated since Fey began imitating her a month ago, led "Saturday Night Live" to its highest mark in overnight Nielsen Media Research ratings since March 1994, when assaulted skater Nancy Kerrigan was guest host. Although a complete audience estimate for the rest of the country won't be available until later in the week, it is likely to be around 14 million. For the first half-hour, when Palin first came out, the audience was about 17 million. That's pretty impressive for a TV program around midnight."
Canada looks to Europe in anticipation of Obama protectionism: "Barack Obama's promise to unilaterally rewrite the North American Free Trade Agreement if Canada and Mexico won't go along with his ideas on labor and the environment has not gone unnoticed in Ottawa. If Canadians are going to have a tougher time selling their goods and services south of the border, who can blame them for looking east -- across the Atlantic to Europe. Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France signed an agreement Friday to begin negotiations for a free trade pact between Canada and the European Union. A Canada-EU study released last week outlines the joint economic benefits of such a partnership, with two-way trade estimated to increase 22.9% by 2014."
Typical Leftist destructiveness in Paris: "In a move that has ignited furious protests, Bertrand Delanoe, the Mayor of Paris, has approved plans for 180 council flats in Porte d'Auteuil, across the road from Villa Montmorency in well-heeled west Paris. Its rich and famous residents have signed petitions, berated MPs and complained that tenants will be able to see into their leafy and secret world from the tower block that Mr Delanoe wants to put up. Claudie Fournier-Christol, the chair of Porte d'Auteuil Environnement, a residents' association, accused the council of bringing "suburban crime" to the doorstep of France's "biggest taxpayers".
Farmers given more control in China: "Anxious at the spreading unrest among farmers left behind in the rush to get rich, China's Communist Party leaders yesterday unveiled sweeping reforms to give its 730 million or more rural residents more say in what they do with their land. The measures herald potentially the most far-reaching changes in rural China since a party plenum exactly 30 years ago when the late leader Deng Xiaoping launched market-oriented reforms with a decision to move away from communes and to allow farmers to till individual plots of land. Approved at a twice-a-year plenum of the party's Central Committee earlier this month, the scheme will allow farmers to transfer their land-use rights and to join share-holding entities with their farmland. The policies, still lacking in crucial details, effectively give farmers - rather than village leaders - the authority to decide how to use their land. Public ownership of land is a fundamental tenet of Communist Party rule and any attempt to enshrine farmers' ownership of their plots provokes howls of anger from Marxist ideologists. However, the current system of 30-year leases that can be extended gives effective ownership while maintaining the fig-leaf of public control - but has created a system rife with abuse. Under the new rules, severe punishment would be meted out to anyone violating farmers' interests."
For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here
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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Monday, October 20, 2008
THE ASIAN MENTAL ADVANTAGE IS REAL
An interesting research finding below
Chinese Children Excel on Novel Mathematics Problems Even Before Elementary School
By Robert S. Siegler and Yan Mu
ABSTRACT- Kindergartners in China showed greater numerical knowledge than their age peers in the United States, not only when tested with arithmetic problems, which Chinese parents present to their children more often than U.S. parents do, but also when tested with number-line estimation problems, which were novel to the children in both countries. The Chinese kindergartners' number-line estimates were comparable to those of U.S. children 1 to 2 years more advanced in school. Individual differences in arithmetic and number-line-estimation performance were positively correlated within each country. These results indicate that performance differences between Chinese and U.S. children on both practiced and unpracticed mathematical tasks are substantial even before the children begin elementary school.
Psychological Science, Volume 19 Issue 8, Pages 759 - 763, 2008
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A big boost to socialism on the way?
The great credit crisis of 2008 and its aftermath come as a result of a "perfect storm" of almost unrelated events. Leftist attitudes were reaching a crescendo among the ideological classes, spurred on by such disparate and often logically irrelevant notions as racism, feminism, environmentalism, global warming, a health care crisis, an unpopular war and high energy costs. The political part of the mix included a bizarre set of primary elections and unlikely final candidates, one of whom is perhaps the most liberal figure in American politics. Globalization and increasing international trade stirred up the nativists and protectionists more than usual. The inevitable market-distorting results of interest rates kept too low showed up alongside a poor man's affirmative action lending program, all of which created a bubble that had to burst eventually. And new and not well-understood financial devices and organizations were creating public confusion and mistrust.
It was unlikely that all these influences would come to fruition at the same time, but they did. That is the nature of random events. The unlikely happens, and, almost by definition, no one is prepared for it when it does.
In spite of government efforts to reinflate the economy, we will now suffer a deep and painful recession/depression or stagflation, after which things will never be the same. That much of New Deal history can be confidently predicted to repeat itself.
The political direction of the country is now determined for a long time to come, and it is inevitably leftward. Politicians would never resist a popular but massive demand for more government regulation (even the few with enough brainpower to recognize what is going on). The business community has never been a strong supporter of free market capitalism, and it certainly cannot be counted on to change its stance this time around. The media, the various leftist trend-setting elites and university faculties have been waiting a long time for an opportunity just like this, and we can be sure that they won't squander it. The shrillness of their attacks on free markets will reach new heights of righteous indignation and assumed moral and intellectual superiority.
No policy issue based on private property, low taxes, small government or free trade will escape the charge that any unregulated free market will lead to disastrous excesses just as happened with the great financial crisis of 2008. This will be true for such soon to be rebuffed ideas as tuition vouchers for private schools, private health care, lower estate taxes, deregulation in its many forms, reduced use of eminent domain, tort liability restraint and free trade.
We can anticipate a new reign of mercantilism, as the protectionists among us wield this strong new weapon against globalization and open markets. And all of this is true in large degree regardless of who wins the forthcoming election. If Sarbanes-Oxley was any indication of the kind of legislation that results from crisis, then we can be sure that even more ham-handed regulation of all kinds will be the main product of the next Congress. Henry Waxman's grandstanding this past week about bankers' greed has been merely the warm-up for what is to follow.
Bankers eager for federal help now will find themselves regulated not far short of total federal control of their business behavior. Banks won't be permanently nationalized, but what we will get will differ from that result semantically more than factually. Derivatives, for all their promise of alleviating panics and distributing risk, will not now be allowed to evolve into the brave new system once predicted for them. Accounting rules will become even more convoluted as we continue to ask for more information out of double-entry bookkeeping than it can ever deliver.
Still, there is a glimmer of hope left to those who detest this seemingly inexorable slide into socialism or its first cousin, the super-regulatory state. That glimmer comes from the ghosts of Adam Smith, Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, who still haunt the halls of the left. And in spite of all the claims made that this debacle marks the demise of free market philosophy, it won't go away so easily.
This time around, unlike during the New Deal, there is a substantial intellectual establishment to ride herd on leftist proclivities. There are numerous free market blog sites, which, for instance, can be properly credited with forcing modification of the recent short-sale ban. There are countless free market think tanks in Washington and all around the country exerting considerable influence on government policies. Libertarians are a small but growing political factor, and there are even a few university economics departments and law schools where sanity prevails or is at least occasionally evident.
Like it or not, these few intellectual bastions of freedom philosophy will be about the only thing that keeps these ideals alive in the coming years. But we should never underestimate the power of good ideas. Like the bad ones we are about to witness in large numbers, they may just have to bide their time until a new crisis causes the fickle and uninformed public to demand a new direction.
If these ideas are maintained in the inventory of ultimate possibilities, then there is always the chance of their public rediscovery and rebirth. It has happened with liberty before. And one thing is absolutely certain: Sooner or later the new era will end in another crisis. Perhaps then the defenders of freedom will be able to claim the moral high ground.
Source
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ELSEWHERE
The Anchoress is collecting reactions to Sarah Palin's brief appearance on Saturday Night Live. The Puffington Host and their ilk are saying that it was a disaster for Palin but they think that it is a disaster that she even breathes. It was of course devoted to ridiculing her but that might actually have gained her some sympathy. Newsbusters has the video.
British airport security a farce too: "Replica bombs were smuggled past security staff in hand luggage during a safety inspection at Britain's second busiest airport. Staff at Gatwick failed to identify artificial explosives carried by undercover transport inspectors from Brussels even though one device was allegedly identified as suspicious by X-ray scanners. The device was apparently handed back to the purported terrorist because the person carrying out the screening did not realise what had been found, according to an airport source. The shortcomings high-lighted by the European commission's inspection this month will be tested again this week in a follow-up audit. Sources at Gatwick claim the work of security staff is being hampered by the need to keep queues to a minimum."
McCain Finally Uses The 'S' Word: "At least in Europe, the Socialist leaders who so admire my opponent are upfront about their objectives. They use real numbers and honest language. And we should demand equal candor from Senator Obama. Raising taxes on some in order to give checks to others is not a tax cut it's just another government giveaway.
What Do They See That Obama Didn't?: "The University of Nebraska-Lincoln has cancelled a speech by Bill Ayres -- after it became clear that an Omaha charitable foundation would pull all its donations to the university if Ayres spoke. That, incidentally, is the appropriate response to a man who tried to blow up the Pentagon, whose group tried to firebomb the home of a New York state supreme court judge, and who said -- as recently as 9/11/01 -- that "we didn't do enough." In essence, the charitable group refused to be associated in any way with Ayres. Why didn't Barack Obama feel the same way?"
For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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An interesting research finding below
Chinese Children Excel on Novel Mathematics Problems Even Before Elementary School
By Robert S. Siegler and Yan Mu
ABSTRACT- Kindergartners in China showed greater numerical knowledge than their age peers in the United States, not only when tested with arithmetic problems, which Chinese parents present to their children more often than U.S. parents do, but also when tested with number-line estimation problems, which were novel to the children in both countries. The Chinese kindergartners' number-line estimates were comparable to those of U.S. children 1 to 2 years more advanced in school. Individual differences in arithmetic and number-line-estimation performance were positively correlated within each country. These results indicate that performance differences between Chinese and U.S. children on both practiced and unpracticed mathematical tasks are substantial even before the children begin elementary school.
Psychological Science, Volume 19 Issue 8, Pages 759 - 763, 2008
********************
A big boost to socialism on the way?
The great credit crisis of 2008 and its aftermath come as a result of a "perfect storm" of almost unrelated events. Leftist attitudes were reaching a crescendo among the ideological classes, spurred on by such disparate and often logically irrelevant notions as racism, feminism, environmentalism, global warming, a health care crisis, an unpopular war and high energy costs. The political part of the mix included a bizarre set of primary elections and unlikely final candidates, one of whom is perhaps the most liberal figure in American politics. Globalization and increasing international trade stirred up the nativists and protectionists more than usual. The inevitable market-distorting results of interest rates kept too low showed up alongside a poor man's affirmative action lending program, all of which created a bubble that had to burst eventually. And new and not well-understood financial devices and organizations were creating public confusion and mistrust.
It was unlikely that all these influences would come to fruition at the same time, but they did. That is the nature of random events. The unlikely happens, and, almost by definition, no one is prepared for it when it does.
In spite of government efforts to reinflate the economy, we will now suffer a deep and painful recession/depression or stagflation, after which things will never be the same. That much of New Deal history can be confidently predicted to repeat itself.
The political direction of the country is now determined for a long time to come, and it is inevitably leftward. Politicians would never resist a popular but massive demand for more government regulation (even the few with enough brainpower to recognize what is going on). The business community has never been a strong supporter of free market capitalism, and it certainly cannot be counted on to change its stance this time around. The media, the various leftist trend-setting elites and university faculties have been waiting a long time for an opportunity just like this, and we can be sure that they won't squander it. The shrillness of their attacks on free markets will reach new heights of righteous indignation and assumed moral and intellectual superiority.
No policy issue based on private property, low taxes, small government or free trade will escape the charge that any unregulated free market will lead to disastrous excesses just as happened with the great financial crisis of 2008. This will be true for such soon to be rebuffed ideas as tuition vouchers for private schools, private health care, lower estate taxes, deregulation in its many forms, reduced use of eminent domain, tort liability restraint and free trade.
We can anticipate a new reign of mercantilism, as the protectionists among us wield this strong new weapon against globalization and open markets. And all of this is true in large degree regardless of who wins the forthcoming election. If Sarbanes-Oxley was any indication of the kind of legislation that results from crisis, then we can be sure that even more ham-handed regulation of all kinds will be the main product of the next Congress. Henry Waxman's grandstanding this past week about bankers' greed has been merely the warm-up for what is to follow.
Bankers eager for federal help now will find themselves regulated not far short of total federal control of their business behavior. Banks won't be permanently nationalized, but what we will get will differ from that result semantically more than factually. Derivatives, for all their promise of alleviating panics and distributing risk, will not now be allowed to evolve into the brave new system once predicted for them. Accounting rules will become even more convoluted as we continue to ask for more information out of double-entry bookkeeping than it can ever deliver.
Still, there is a glimmer of hope left to those who detest this seemingly inexorable slide into socialism or its first cousin, the super-regulatory state. That glimmer comes from the ghosts of Adam Smith, Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, who still haunt the halls of the left. And in spite of all the claims made that this debacle marks the demise of free market philosophy, it won't go away so easily.
This time around, unlike during the New Deal, there is a substantial intellectual establishment to ride herd on leftist proclivities. There are numerous free market blog sites, which, for instance, can be properly credited with forcing modification of the recent short-sale ban. There are countless free market think tanks in Washington and all around the country exerting considerable influence on government policies. Libertarians are a small but growing political factor, and there are even a few university economics departments and law schools where sanity prevails or is at least occasionally evident.
Like it or not, these few intellectual bastions of freedom philosophy will be about the only thing that keeps these ideals alive in the coming years. But we should never underestimate the power of good ideas. Like the bad ones we are about to witness in large numbers, they may just have to bide their time until a new crisis causes the fickle and uninformed public to demand a new direction.
If these ideas are maintained in the inventory of ultimate possibilities, then there is always the chance of their public rediscovery and rebirth. It has happened with liberty before. And one thing is absolutely certain: Sooner or later the new era will end in another crisis. Perhaps then the defenders of freedom will be able to claim the moral high ground.
Source
*****************************
ELSEWHERE
The Anchoress is collecting reactions to Sarah Palin's brief appearance on Saturday Night Live. The Puffington Host and their ilk are saying that it was a disaster for Palin but they think that it is a disaster that she even breathes. It was of course devoted to ridiculing her but that might actually have gained her some sympathy. Newsbusters has the video.
British airport security a farce too: "Replica bombs were smuggled past security staff in hand luggage during a safety inspection at Britain's second busiest airport. Staff at Gatwick failed to identify artificial explosives carried by undercover transport inspectors from Brussels even though one device was allegedly identified as suspicious by X-ray scanners. The device was apparently handed back to the purported terrorist because the person carrying out the screening did not realise what had been found, according to an airport source. The shortcomings high-lighted by the European commission's inspection this month will be tested again this week in a follow-up audit. Sources at Gatwick claim the work of security staff is being hampered by the need to keep queues to a minimum."
McCain Finally Uses The 'S' Word: "At least in Europe, the Socialist leaders who so admire my opponent are upfront about their objectives. They use real numbers and honest language. And we should demand equal candor from Senator Obama. Raising taxes on some in order to give checks to others is not a tax cut it's just another government giveaway.
What Do They See That Obama Didn't?: "The University of Nebraska-Lincoln has cancelled a speech by Bill Ayres -- after it became clear that an Omaha charitable foundation would pull all its donations to the university if Ayres spoke. That, incidentally, is the appropriate response to a man who tried to blow up the Pentagon, whose group tried to firebomb the home of a New York state supreme court judge, and who said -- as recently as 9/11/01 -- that "we didn't do enough." In essence, the charitable group refused to be associated in any way with Ayres. Why didn't Barack Obama feel the same way?"
For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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Sunday, October 19, 2008
Brilliant money manager says the privileged elite are stupid
You see his point when you look at what overvalued assets have just done to the financial system
Andrew Lahde, the hedge-fund manager who quit after posting an 870% gain last year, said farewell to clients in a letter that thanks stupid traders for making him rich and ends with a plea to legalize marijuana. Lahde, head of Santa Monica, California-based Lahde Capital Management, told investors last month he was returning their cash because the risk of using credit derivatives - his means of betting on the falling value of bonds and loans, including subprime mortgages - was too risky given the weakness of the banks he was trading with.
"I was in this game for money," Lahde, 37, wrote in a two-page letter in which he said he had come to hate the hedge-fund business. "The low-hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government.
"All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy, only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other sides of my trades. God Bless America."
Lahde, who managed about $US80 million, told clients he'll be content to invest his own money, rather than taking cash from wealthy individuals and institutions and trying to amass a fortune worth hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars.
"I do not understand the legacy thing," he wrote. "Nearly everyone will be forgotten. Give up on leaving your mark. Throw the Blackberry away and enjoy life."
He said he'd spend his time repairing his health "as well as my entire life - where I had to compete for spaces at universities, and graduate schools, jobs and assets under management - with those who had all the advantages (rich parents) that I did not."
More here
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AN ECONOMY YOU CAN BANK ON
It turns out that John McCain, who was widely mocked for saying that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong," was actually right. We're in a financial crisis, not an economic crisis. We're not entering a second Great Depression, says Casey B. Mulligan is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago. How do we know? Well, the economy outside the financial sector is healthier than it seems. One important indicator is the profitability of non-financial capital, what economists call the marginal product of capital:
* It's a measure of how much profit that each dollar of capital invested in the economy is producing during, say, a year.
* Some investments earn more than others, of course, but the marginal product of capital is a composite of all of them -- a macroeconomic version of the price-to-earnings ratio followed in the financial markets.
* When the profit per dollar of capital invested in the economy is higher than average, future rates of economic growth also tend to be above average.
* The same cannot be said about rates of return on the S.& P. 500, or any another measurement that commands attention on Wall Street.
Since World War II:
* The marginal product of capital, after taxes, has averaged 7 percent to 8 percent per year (in other words, each dollar of capital invested in the economy earns, on average, 7 cents to 8 cents annually).
* During 2007 and the first half of 2008, when the financial markets were already spooked by oil price spikes and housing price crashes, the marginal product was more than 10 percent per year, far above the historical average.
* The third-quarter earnings reports from some companies already suggest that America's non-financial companies are still making plenty of money.
Source
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ELSEWHERE
Death duties dying in Taiwan: "The cabinet's plan, announced yesterday, is to convert the inheritance tax to a flat rate of 10% from the current 2%-50% range and increase the amount of inheritance exempt from any tax. The move would encourage more taxpayers to bring their savings and investments back onshore -- boosting domestic liquidity and consumption and generating employment in the high-paying wealth-management and investment-fund sectors. The plan also would increase the standard deduction on the personal income tax, effectively reducing household tax burdens."
Murdoch publications doing fine: "News Corporation chairman and chief executive officer Rupert Murdoch has expressed tremendous confidence in the media giant's future and its ability to weather the global financial crisis. Addressing the annual meeting of News Corp's stockholders overnight in New York, Mr Murdoch was expected to say the company would most certainly be tested by the current economic turmoil. But he said the company would remain faithful to its core mission that had served it well for more than 50 years. "And as long as we do, we will do what we do best: Connecting people all over the world, creating choice where none exists, informing with a purpose, challenging with a mission, taking on established competitors, and always reinventing ourselves while judiciously investing for the long term," Mr Murdoch said. In advance remarks of his speech, Mr Murdoch told stockholders that News Corp had reported its sixth consecutive year of record earnings." [Political balance pays off]
French bank loses a billion: "French bank Caisse d'Epargne lost 600 million euros ($1 billion) in a derivatives trading "incident" during last week's market turmoil, the company said today. The dramatic loss suffered by the mutual bank, one of France's biggest and generally regarded as a safe haven for cautious small savers, was the latest blow to confidence in a sector already ravaged by the credit crunch. Finance Minister Christine Lagarde ordered France's banking commission to conduct an immediate audit of the bank's trading activity, while stressing that there was no risk of the bank failing. News of the loss came in the same week as directors of Caisse d'Epargne approved plans to merge it with another company, Banque Populaire, and become France's second-largest retail bank. "Because of the extreme volatility in the markets and the stock market crash of the week of October 6, the Caisse d'Epargne group underwent a major incident in the derivatives market," the statement said."
Who are the villains of the mortgage mess?: "In this current mess, one problem is identifying the heroes and villains in Congress. Many analysts conveniently dodge this question and instead make the rather novel claim that the turmoil in financial markets somehow is the result of deregulation. Yet the financial services industry is probably the most heavily regulated sector of the American economy, saddled with hundreds of laws, thousands of regulations and a plethora of government agencies. If red tape were the answer, this problem never would have happened."
Community Reinvestment Act: The risk of unintended consequences: "As policymakers consider ways to address the current mortgage crisis, it is important to evaluate new proposals with an eye toward their future effects on the economy. The unintended consequences of government programs can have far-reaching economic and social effects. It's important to keep in mind that government intervention played a central role in creating and elevating the current crisis: Interest rate manipulation, tax code loopholes, and 'smart growth' land-use policies all contributed to artificially inflating home prices and shifting investment counter to real demand."
For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
You see his point when you look at what overvalued assets have just done to the financial system
Andrew Lahde, the hedge-fund manager who quit after posting an 870% gain last year, said farewell to clients in a letter that thanks stupid traders for making him rich and ends with a plea to legalize marijuana. Lahde, head of Santa Monica, California-based Lahde Capital Management, told investors last month he was returning their cash because the risk of using credit derivatives - his means of betting on the falling value of bonds and loans, including subprime mortgages - was too risky given the weakness of the banks he was trading with.
"I was in this game for money," Lahde, 37, wrote in a two-page letter in which he said he had come to hate the hedge-fund business. "The low-hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government.
"All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy, only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other sides of my trades. God Bless America."
Lahde, who managed about $US80 million, told clients he'll be content to invest his own money, rather than taking cash from wealthy individuals and institutions and trying to amass a fortune worth hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars.
"I do not understand the legacy thing," he wrote. "Nearly everyone will be forgotten. Give up on leaving your mark. Throw the Blackberry away and enjoy life."
He said he'd spend his time repairing his health "as well as my entire life - where I had to compete for spaces at universities, and graduate schools, jobs and assets under management - with those who had all the advantages (rich parents) that I did not."
More here
****************************
AN ECONOMY YOU CAN BANK ON
It turns out that John McCain, who was widely mocked for saying that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong," was actually right. We're in a financial crisis, not an economic crisis. We're not entering a second Great Depression, says Casey B. Mulligan is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago. How do we know? Well, the economy outside the financial sector is healthier than it seems. One important indicator is the profitability of non-financial capital, what economists call the marginal product of capital:
* It's a measure of how much profit that each dollar of capital invested in the economy is producing during, say, a year.
* Some investments earn more than others, of course, but the marginal product of capital is a composite of all of them -- a macroeconomic version of the price-to-earnings ratio followed in the financial markets.
* When the profit per dollar of capital invested in the economy is higher than average, future rates of economic growth also tend to be above average.
* The same cannot be said about rates of return on the S.& P. 500, or any another measurement that commands attention on Wall Street.
Since World War II:
* The marginal product of capital, after taxes, has averaged 7 percent to 8 percent per year (in other words, each dollar of capital invested in the economy earns, on average, 7 cents to 8 cents annually).
* During 2007 and the first half of 2008, when the financial markets were already spooked by oil price spikes and housing price crashes, the marginal product was more than 10 percent per year, far above the historical average.
* The third-quarter earnings reports from some companies already suggest that America's non-financial companies are still making plenty of money.
Source
****************************
ELSEWHERE
Death duties dying in Taiwan: "The cabinet's plan, announced yesterday, is to convert the inheritance tax to a flat rate of 10% from the current 2%-50% range and increase the amount of inheritance exempt from any tax. The move would encourage more taxpayers to bring their savings and investments back onshore -- boosting domestic liquidity and consumption and generating employment in the high-paying wealth-management and investment-fund sectors. The plan also would increase the standard deduction on the personal income tax, effectively reducing household tax burdens."
Murdoch publications doing fine: "News Corporation chairman and chief executive officer Rupert Murdoch has expressed tremendous confidence in the media giant's future and its ability to weather the global financial crisis. Addressing the annual meeting of News Corp's stockholders overnight in New York, Mr Murdoch was expected to say the company would most certainly be tested by the current economic turmoil. But he said the company would remain faithful to its core mission that had served it well for more than 50 years. "And as long as we do, we will do what we do best: Connecting people all over the world, creating choice where none exists, informing with a purpose, challenging with a mission, taking on established competitors, and always reinventing ourselves while judiciously investing for the long term," Mr Murdoch said. In advance remarks of his speech, Mr Murdoch told stockholders that News Corp had reported its sixth consecutive year of record earnings." [Political balance pays off]
French bank loses a billion: "French bank Caisse d'Epargne lost 600 million euros ($1 billion) in a derivatives trading "incident" during last week's market turmoil, the company said today. The dramatic loss suffered by the mutual bank, one of France's biggest and generally regarded as a safe haven for cautious small savers, was the latest blow to confidence in a sector already ravaged by the credit crunch. Finance Minister Christine Lagarde ordered France's banking commission to conduct an immediate audit of the bank's trading activity, while stressing that there was no risk of the bank failing. News of the loss came in the same week as directors of Caisse d'Epargne approved plans to merge it with another company, Banque Populaire, and become France's second-largest retail bank. "Because of the extreme volatility in the markets and the stock market crash of the week of October 6, the Caisse d'Epargne group underwent a major incident in the derivatives market," the statement said."
Who are the villains of the mortgage mess?: "In this current mess, one problem is identifying the heroes and villains in Congress. Many analysts conveniently dodge this question and instead make the rather novel claim that the turmoil in financial markets somehow is the result of deregulation. Yet the financial services industry is probably the most heavily regulated sector of the American economy, saddled with hundreds of laws, thousands of regulations and a plethora of government agencies. If red tape were the answer, this problem never would have happened."
Community Reinvestment Act: The risk of unintended consequences: "As policymakers consider ways to address the current mortgage crisis, it is important to evaluate new proposals with an eye toward their future effects on the economy. The unintended consequences of government programs can have far-reaching economic and social effects. It's important to keep in mind that government intervention played a central role in creating and elevating the current crisis: Interest rate manipulation, tax code loopholes, and 'smart growth' land-use policies all contributed to artificially inflating home prices and shifting investment counter to real demand."
For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Advice for those conservatives with palm-shaped forehead bruises
Many who are rooting for the McCain-Palin ticket or against the Obama-Biden ticket are frustrated with what they view as an uninspired campaign by Sen. McCain and his advisers. That frustration leaves us susceptible to discouragement - the precise emotion that the Dems' and their mainstream media allies are working very hard at promoting, relying in large measure on political polling whose accuracy is highly suspect.
In particular, right now there's a great temptation for those of us for whom John McCain was not our first choice for the GOP nomination to already start focusing about "How He Lost It." Folks, that's way premature. I've always believed that the Dems would lead in the polls up through election day, and that any GOP nominee would be running as an underdog. Every realistic victory scenario I've ever heard for this year required our team to pass through a trough something like this one - and given the size and urgency of the economic problems, it's actually quite amazing that we're not already totally swamped.
So I'm not particularly pessimistic. Come from behind victories are sweeter, and this one would be very sweet indeed. But even if your worst fears do come true, you'll have four years to polish your coulda-shoulda arguments. And there are better things for you to do right now than just to fume, even if they may be less obvious to you at the moment...
First, recognize that no campaign is optimal. Some of the things that most frustrate you, as a committed conservative, as you watch the path of the McCain campaign may not be miscues at all in the eyes of independent or cross-over voters. And the Biden-Obama campaign has also continued to make its own share of blunders - of which, again, only some of may be obvious to you, since you're not in that swing voter group. To a larger extent than you probably would think likely, each campaign's mistakes will tend cancel each other out.
Next, keep in mind that John McCain's character traits that are dictating the kind of campaign he's runniing - which includes his stubbornness, his instincts toward compromise, and a sense of propriety and decency (which his opponent and his campaign feign but do not truly share) - are, and have always been, parts of a double-edged sword. John McCain is what he is. And he is uninterested in, and incapable of, remaking himself in any fundamental way to meet an acute campaign need. Indeed, friends and neighbors, he's already demonstrated more innovative thinking - by choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate - than I would permit myself to expect back when he clinched the nomination.
And finally, keep in mind that there are limits to what either campaign could accomplish even if either were to suddenly begin to run an optimal, perfect campaign. Even among those voters who are still undecided, most of them will end up making their final decisions based on the underlying fundamentals of the election - not based on the latest proposals from either campaign over the coming three weeks before election day. Between now and November 4th, Barack Obama is not going to miraculously grow a genuine record of legislative accomplilshment, for example, and neither is he going to transmute himself into anything but a first-term Chicago politician who's still "green behind the ears." Yes, he'll come up with new panders and give-aways - tens of billions of dollars worth of those. But fundamentally, he's not gotten any better, and he's just hoping he can keep his current momentum to manage to coast across the finish line.
More here
***************************
The nationalization of the banks
"There's nothing so permanent," Milton Friedman famously said, "as a temporary government program." For instance, I grew up in a rent-controlled apartment thanks to a temporary measure enacted during WWII. I was born nearly three decades after the war ended. Let's hope that the partial nationalization of America's banking system isn't equally "temporary."
In a dramatic meeting Monday between Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and the heads of the nine biggest banks, the U.S. government made the financial industry an offer it couldn't refuse: Uncle Sam is buying big chunks of your banks whether you like it or not. Paulson didn't say, "I can either have your signature on this contract or your brains," the way Don Corleone explained things to Johnny Fontaine's bandleader in "The Godfather," but you get the picture.
Extraordinary crises sometimes require extraordinary measures. The danger is that the extraordinary could become merely ordinary.
Fannie Mae and related institutions were created during the New Deal to help expand homeownership. It was - and is - a laudable goal, and the government can point to some real successes, particularly when such programs were fundamentally conservative in their practices. But even then, the government was simultaneously subsidizing bad risks - hence making them seem less risky than they really were - while delaying the day when those toxic loans would reach critical mass. We've hit that day, and it has cost us trillions of dollars.
The Bush administration's shock trauma team has been doing things they once considered unimaginable and even today find philosophically repugnant. But again, we do things to patients in an emergency that we would never do when they're healthy. The federal government's mandatory quarter-trillion-dollar buy-in to the American banking system, we're told, is a temporary measure. The terms of the loans rammed down the bankers' throats are designed to encourage them to pay it all back within five years.
But who says those terms will stay that way? After all, the government now has a more real and explicit ownership position in these "private" banks than it ever did in Fannie and Freddie, which were so-called Government Sponsored Enterprises. More important, the Bush team is heading out the door. When the next squad comes in, they might discover they like being co-owners of America's banking system.
Democrats in Congress had great fun using Fannie and Freddie as public policy piggy banks, rewarding constituencies, funding pet projects, forcing the private sector to dance to their tune. What's to stop them from renegotiating this week's deal after the election and using Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and the others as Fannie Mae 2.0?
Please don't say that the terms of the deal are set and the government can't revise them. If there's one thing the last month has hammered home, it's that nothing is written in stone. Besides, the banks may grow to like the security of partial nationalization and even lobby to Congress to stay on as less-than-fully-silent partners. Heck, that way they wouldn't have to pay back the loans.
Barack Obama already has a strong record of sympathy for "public-private partnerships" and other schemes that put government in the driver's seat. ACORN, the militant wing of the Democratic Party, has been trying to shake down banks for years, and Obama is on record as saying it and similar groups will have a major role in helping him craft policy. And it's hardly reassuring that Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and Nancy Pelosi will be running Congress. It doesn't seem crazy to suspect that a crowd that sees nationalization of health care as a vital public policy goal will not be dogmatically adverse to the nationalization of the credit markets.
More here
**********************
BrookesNews Update
How central banks destabilized the world' s economies: A step-by-step explanation of what caused the financial crisis. It is impossible to understand the present economic turmoil without knowledge of the economic fallacies upon which the central banks base their monetary policies. To fully comprehend the situation we also need to see why these dangerous fallacies have been adopted and are now generally accepted without question by the economics profession
Why Obanomics = Hoovernomics: Hoover's economic views is that they are not much different from Obama's. Hoover believed in protectionism, so does Obama, Hoover believed that higher taxes were necessary, so does Obama. Hoover believed in greater government intervention in the market place. So does Obama. Hoover believed in protecting money wages no matter what, so does Obama
Biden's Secret Diplomacy: A KGB file reveals that Biden was another Democrat who wanted to cosy up to the Soviets. This liar told the Soviets he only pretended to care about Russian dissidents so as to impress the folks back home. There is no doubt about it. He and Obama were made for each other
Obama's henchmen and the rise of commufascism: The willingness of the Obama campaign to use state power, to censor dissent even before Obama holds the actual power he seeks is deeply troubling. If he are willing to trample on the right to free speech now what would he be like if in the Oval Office?
The bailout of abominations: Socialism has finally arrived, thanks to the shameful collaboration of the people's representatives, under the guise of saving one and all from a phony financial catastrophe. a Chicken Little tale that worked. If you have any doubts, simply have a look at the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008
What If Obama doesn't have America's best interests at heart?: What if Obama doesn't have America's best interest at heart? What if his candidacy has to do with the willful and radical recreation of the country, one that embraces Marxist ideals? What if the "change we can believe in" is directed subversion of the Republic in favor of the sort of socialist state that America-haters like Bill Ayers have been dreaming of since the Sixties?
How much of this anger is the media's fault?: Is it really a surprise that individuals prone to support McCain that have been following the election closely enough to read alternative, or new media are outraged right now? It's certainly no surprise to me that the lop-sided coverage breeding so much frustration among so many would now attempt to turn that frustration into yet another negative against John McCain and his supporters
For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
Many who are rooting for the McCain-Palin ticket or against the Obama-Biden ticket are frustrated with what they view as an uninspired campaign by Sen. McCain and his advisers. That frustration leaves us susceptible to discouragement - the precise emotion that the Dems' and their mainstream media allies are working very hard at promoting, relying in large measure on political polling whose accuracy is highly suspect.
In particular, right now there's a great temptation for those of us for whom John McCain was not our first choice for the GOP nomination to already start focusing about "How He Lost It." Folks, that's way premature. I've always believed that the Dems would lead in the polls up through election day, and that any GOP nominee would be running as an underdog. Every realistic victory scenario I've ever heard for this year required our team to pass through a trough something like this one - and given the size and urgency of the economic problems, it's actually quite amazing that we're not already totally swamped.
So I'm not particularly pessimistic. Come from behind victories are sweeter, and this one would be very sweet indeed. But even if your worst fears do come true, you'll have four years to polish your coulda-shoulda arguments. And there are better things for you to do right now than just to fume, even if they may be less obvious to you at the moment...
First, recognize that no campaign is optimal. Some of the things that most frustrate you, as a committed conservative, as you watch the path of the McCain campaign may not be miscues at all in the eyes of independent or cross-over voters. And the Biden-Obama campaign has also continued to make its own share of blunders - of which, again, only some of may be obvious to you, since you're not in that swing voter group. To a larger extent than you probably would think likely, each campaign's mistakes will tend cancel each other out.
Next, keep in mind that John McCain's character traits that are dictating the kind of campaign he's runniing - which includes his stubbornness, his instincts toward compromise, and a sense of propriety and decency (which his opponent and his campaign feign but do not truly share) - are, and have always been, parts of a double-edged sword. John McCain is what he is. And he is uninterested in, and incapable of, remaking himself in any fundamental way to meet an acute campaign need. Indeed, friends and neighbors, he's already demonstrated more innovative thinking - by choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate - than I would permit myself to expect back when he clinched the nomination.
And finally, keep in mind that there are limits to what either campaign could accomplish even if either were to suddenly begin to run an optimal, perfect campaign. Even among those voters who are still undecided, most of them will end up making their final decisions based on the underlying fundamentals of the election - not based on the latest proposals from either campaign over the coming three weeks before election day. Between now and November 4th, Barack Obama is not going to miraculously grow a genuine record of legislative accomplilshment, for example, and neither is he going to transmute himself into anything but a first-term Chicago politician who's still "green behind the ears." Yes, he'll come up with new panders and give-aways - tens of billions of dollars worth of those. But fundamentally, he's not gotten any better, and he's just hoping he can keep his current momentum to manage to coast across the finish line.
More here
***************************
The nationalization of the banks
"There's nothing so permanent," Milton Friedman famously said, "as a temporary government program." For instance, I grew up in a rent-controlled apartment thanks to a temporary measure enacted during WWII. I was born nearly three decades after the war ended. Let's hope that the partial nationalization of America's banking system isn't equally "temporary."
In a dramatic meeting Monday between Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and the heads of the nine biggest banks, the U.S. government made the financial industry an offer it couldn't refuse: Uncle Sam is buying big chunks of your banks whether you like it or not. Paulson didn't say, "I can either have your signature on this contract or your brains," the way Don Corleone explained things to Johnny Fontaine's bandleader in "The Godfather," but you get the picture.
Extraordinary crises sometimes require extraordinary measures. The danger is that the extraordinary could become merely ordinary.
Fannie Mae and related institutions were created during the New Deal to help expand homeownership. It was - and is - a laudable goal, and the government can point to some real successes, particularly when such programs were fundamentally conservative in their practices. But even then, the government was simultaneously subsidizing bad risks - hence making them seem less risky than they really were - while delaying the day when those toxic loans would reach critical mass. We've hit that day, and it has cost us trillions of dollars.
The Bush administration's shock trauma team has been doing things they once considered unimaginable and even today find philosophically repugnant. But again, we do things to patients in an emergency that we would never do when they're healthy. The federal government's mandatory quarter-trillion-dollar buy-in to the American banking system, we're told, is a temporary measure. The terms of the loans rammed down the bankers' throats are designed to encourage them to pay it all back within five years.
But who says those terms will stay that way? After all, the government now has a more real and explicit ownership position in these "private" banks than it ever did in Fannie and Freddie, which were so-called Government Sponsored Enterprises. More important, the Bush team is heading out the door. When the next squad comes in, they might discover they like being co-owners of America's banking system.
Democrats in Congress had great fun using Fannie and Freddie as public policy piggy banks, rewarding constituencies, funding pet projects, forcing the private sector to dance to their tune. What's to stop them from renegotiating this week's deal after the election and using Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and the others as Fannie Mae 2.0?
Please don't say that the terms of the deal are set and the government can't revise them. If there's one thing the last month has hammered home, it's that nothing is written in stone. Besides, the banks may grow to like the security of partial nationalization and even lobby to Congress to stay on as less-than-fully-silent partners. Heck, that way they wouldn't have to pay back the loans.
Barack Obama already has a strong record of sympathy for "public-private partnerships" and other schemes that put government in the driver's seat. ACORN, the militant wing of the Democratic Party, has been trying to shake down banks for years, and Obama is on record as saying it and similar groups will have a major role in helping him craft policy. And it's hardly reassuring that Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and Nancy Pelosi will be running Congress. It doesn't seem crazy to suspect that a crowd that sees nationalization of health care as a vital public policy goal will not be dogmatically adverse to the nationalization of the credit markets.
More here
**********************
BrookesNews Update
How central banks destabilized the world' s economies: A step-by-step explanation of what caused the financial crisis. It is impossible to understand the present economic turmoil without knowledge of the economic fallacies upon which the central banks base their monetary policies. To fully comprehend the situation we also need to see why these dangerous fallacies have been adopted and are now generally accepted without question by the economics profession
Why Obanomics = Hoovernomics: Hoover's economic views is that they are not much different from Obama's. Hoover believed in protectionism, so does Obama, Hoover believed that higher taxes were necessary, so does Obama. Hoover believed in greater government intervention in the market place. So does Obama. Hoover believed in protecting money wages no matter what, so does Obama
Biden's Secret Diplomacy: A KGB file reveals that Biden was another Democrat who wanted to cosy up to the Soviets. This liar told the Soviets he only pretended to care about Russian dissidents so as to impress the folks back home. There is no doubt about it. He and Obama were made for each other
Obama's henchmen and the rise of commufascism: The willingness of the Obama campaign to use state power, to censor dissent even before Obama holds the actual power he seeks is deeply troubling. If he are willing to trample on the right to free speech now what would he be like if in the Oval Office?
The bailout of abominations: Socialism has finally arrived, thanks to the shameful collaboration of the people's representatives, under the guise of saving one and all from a phony financial catastrophe. a Chicken Little tale that worked. If you have any doubts, simply have a look at the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008
What If Obama doesn't have America's best interests at heart?: What if Obama doesn't have America's best interest at heart? What if his candidacy has to do with the willful and radical recreation of the country, one that embraces Marxist ideals? What if the "change we can believe in" is directed subversion of the Republic in favor of the sort of socialist state that America-haters like Bill Ayers have been dreaming of since the Sixties?
How much of this anger is the media's fault?: Is it really a surprise that individuals prone to support McCain that have been following the election closely enough to read alternative, or new media are outraged right now? It's certainly no surprise to me that the lop-sided coverage breeding so much frustration among so many would now attempt to turn that frustration into yet another negative against John McCain and his supporters
For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
Friday, October 17, 2008
Obama Hasn't Closed the Sale
By KARL ROVE
This week also brought a reminder that Sen. Obama hasn't closed the sale. The Washington Post/ABC poll found 45% of voters still don't think he's qualified to be president, about the same number who doubted his qualifications in March. This is seven points more than George W. Bush's highest reading in 2000 and the worst since Michael Dukakis's 56% unqualified rating in 1988. It explains why Mr. Obama has ignored Democratic giddiness and done two things to keep victory from slipping away.
First, he is using his money to try to keep John McCain from gaining traction. The Obama campaign raised $67 million in September and may be on track to raise $100 million in October. Sen. McCain opted last month for roughly $85 million in public financing, giving him less than half of Mr. Obama's funds for the campaign's final two months. Even with robust Republican National Committee fund raising to augment his spending, Mr. McCain is at a severe financial disadvantage. So Mr. Obama is spending $35 million on TV this week versus the McCain/RNC total of $17 million. Mr. Obama is outspending Mr. McCain on TV in Virginia by a ratio of 4 to 1, in Florida by 3 to 1, and in Missouri and Nevada by better than 2 to 1. The disparity is likely to grow in the campaign's final weeks.
Money alone, however, won't decide the contest. John Kerry and the Democrats outspent Mr. Bush and the GOP in 2004 by $121 million and still lost. Mr. Obama's other strategy is to do all he can to look presidential, including buying very expensive half-hour slots to address the country next week. He wants to give a serious, Oval-Office type address. This is smart. People appreciate Mr. Obama's empathy on the economy, but as they take a long look at what he wants to do about it, they will be less impressed, especially if Mr. McCain draws sharp contrasts with clear policy proposals.
Mr. Obama is trying to make the case that his lack of experience or record should not disqualify him. But in doing so, he seems to recognize that the U.S. is still a center-right country. His TV ads promise tax cuts and his radio ads savage Mr. McCain's health-care plan as a tax increase. It's a startling campaign conversion for the most liberal member of the Senate. We'll know on Election Day if he is able to get away with it.
Similarly, Mr. McCain appears to be making three important course corrections. First, he and Gov. Sarah Palin are sharpening their stump speeches so their sound bites come off well on TV. Gone are offhand remarks and awkward comments read from notes perched on a podium. In are teleprompters and carefully crafted arguments. Mr. McCain is also more at ease than before and has an ebullient, come-from-behind underdog optimism that will serve him well in the final weeks.
Second, Mr. McCain is shaping a story line that draws on well-founded concerns about Mr. Obama's lack of record or experience. Mr. McCain is also bowing to reality and devoting most of his time to the economy. His narrative is he's the conservative reformer who'll lead and work hard to get things done, while Mr. Obama is the tax-and-spend liberal who's unprepared to lead and unwilling to act.
Mr. McCain is hitting Mr. Obama for wanting to raise taxes in difficult economic times, especially on small business and for the purpose of redistributing income, and for having lavish spending plans at a time when the economy is faltering. He's criticizing Mr. Obama for lingering on the sidelines while Mr. McCain dove in to help pass a rescue plan, necessary no matter how distasteful. And he's attacking Mr. Obama for not joining the fight in 2005 when reformers like Mr. McCain tried to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Mr. McCain's other adjustment is his schedule. His campaign understands the dire circumstances it faces and is narrowing his travels almost exclusively to Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Missouri, Colorado and Nevada. If he carries those states, while losing only Iowa and New Mexico from the GOP's 2004 total, Mr. McCain will carry 274 Electoral College votes and the White House. It's threading the needle, but it's come to that.
This task, while not impossible, will be difficult. By mid-September, the McCain camp was slightly ahead in the polls. Then came the financial crisis. The past month has taken an enormous toll on the McCain campaign.
Whether it can find the right formula in the next 19 days to dig out is a question. If Mr. McCain succeeds, he will have engineered the most impressive and improbable political comeback since Harry Truman in 1948. But having to reach back more than a half-century for inspiration is not the place campaign managers want to be now.
Source
***********************
Houseful of out-of-state Obama activists registered as Ohio voters, received absentee ballots
Something smells at 2885 Brownlee Avenue in Columbus, Ohio. I strongly recommend that the Ohio Republican Party get on the case before it's too late. Today's the last day to challenge voters who registered early in Ohio before the run up to Election Day.
Here's the stench: An entire houseful of young, non-Ohioan Democrat activists have used the Brownlee Avenue address to register themselves to vote in the Buckeye State and secure absentee ballots under extremely shady circumstances - all while mobilizing a large effort to register thousands of others for absentee and early voting. The activists are leaders of a group called "Vote From Home `08." The group is self-identified as having "extensive experience with political organizing, election administration, and Democratic politics." They were hailed as the "Justice League" by a Daily Kos blogger. Their Facebook page brags: "Want to turn the Presidential election blue in a key swing state? Vote from Home is a political organization that was founded by a team of young people for the purpose of assisting, aiding, and tracking voters to elect progressive candidates to the White House. Encouraged by the excitement of the 2008 elections and the movement around the Democratic candidates, Vote From Home will be in Ohio seeking to deliver 10,000 votes to Democratic candidates statewide."
My friends at Palestra.net, a network of young reporters who have been doing the voter and registration fraud reporting that the MSM has been slow to do, have a breaking investigative report on how several members of the Democrat Vote From Home team - all Rhodes, Marshall, Fulbright, and Truman Scholars studying abroad - are turning up on Franklin County voter rolls despite having no bona fide residence in Ohio and admittedly having little to no knowledge about the state before descending on it in August to sign up other new voters in a rush to put 10,000 Obama supporters on the rolls.
Source
************************
ELSEWHERE
There is a big article about polling and the media here which argues that the media bias in favor of Obama may not do him much good and that the polls favoring him may not be right.
The polls usually show the Democrat ahead "Reviewing the polls printed in the New York Times and the Washington Post in the last month of every presidential election since 1976, I found the polls were never wrong in a friendly way to Republicans. When the polls were wrong, which was often, they overestimated support for the Democrat, usually by about 6 to 10 points. In 1976, Jimmy Carter narrowly beat Gerald Ford 50.1 percent to 48 percent. And yet, on Sept. 1, Carter led Ford by 15 points. Just weeks before the election, on Oct. 16, 1976, Carter led Ford in the Gallup Poll by 6 percentage points - down from his 33-point Gallup Poll lead in August. Reading newspaper coverage of presidential elections in 1980 and 1984, I found myself paralyzed by the fear that Reagan was going to lose. In 1980, Ronald Reagan beat Carter by nearly 10 points, 51 percent to 41 percent. In a Gallup Poll released days before the election on Oct. 27, it was Carter who led Reagan 45 percent to 42 percent."
Black racism, anybody?: "They say an informed electorate is a bulwark of democracy. How are we doing on that score? Well, a colleague of the talk show host Howard Stern traveled up to Harlem to canvas some folks about their choice for President. It is not surprising that most said they supported Obama. Statistics I've seen predict that Obama will get somewhere north of 95 percent of the black vote. But why? Judging from the responses of the men and women in Harlem, it doesn't have a lot do with his policies. Stern's colleague took several of McCain's policies-staying the course in Iraq, being pro-life, setting limits to stem-cell research, even choosing Sarah Palin as his VP-and attributed them to Obama. No problem! As one respondent put, it's very important to stay in Iraq and finish the job: he was really with Obama on that. He was with him, too, on being pro-life! Question: "And if he [Obama] wins, would you have any problem with Sarah Palin being Vice-President?" Answer: "No I wouldn't. Not at all."
For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
By KARL ROVE
This week also brought a reminder that Sen. Obama hasn't closed the sale. The Washington Post/ABC poll found 45% of voters still don't think he's qualified to be president, about the same number who doubted his qualifications in March. This is seven points more than George W. Bush's highest reading in 2000 and the worst since Michael Dukakis's 56% unqualified rating in 1988. It explains why Mr. Obama has ignored Democratic giddiness and done two things to keep victory from slipping away.
First, he is using his money to try to keep John McCain from gaining traction. The Obama campaign raised $67 million in September and may be on track to raise $100 million in October. Sen. McCain opted last month for roughly $85 million in public financing, giving him less than half of Mr. Obama's funds for the campaign's final two months. Even with robust Republican National Committee fund raising to augment his spending, Mr. McCain is at a severe financial disadvantage. So Mr. Obama is spending $35 million on TV this week versus the McCain/RNC total of $17 million. Mr. Obama is outspending Mr. McCain on TV in Virginia by a ratio of 4 to 1, in Florida by 3 to 1, and in Missouri and Nevada by better than 2 to 1. The disparity is likely to grow in the campaign's final weeks.
Money alone, however, won't decide the contest. John Kerry and the Democrats outspent Mr. Bush and the GOP in 2004 by $121 million and still lost. Mr. Obama's other strategy is to do all he can to look presidential, including buying very expensive half-hour slots to address the country next week. He wants to give a serious, Oval-Office type address. This is smart. People appreciate Mr. Obama's empathy on the economy, but as they take a long look at what he wants to do about it, they will be less impressed, especially if Mr. McCain draws sharp contrasts with clear policy proposals.
Mr. Obama is trying to make the case that his lack of experience or record should not disqualify him. But in doing so, he seems to recognize that the U.S. is still a center-right country. His TV ads promise tax cuts and his radio ads savage Mr. McCain's health-care plan as a tax increase. It's a startling campaign conversion for the most liberal member of the Senate. We'll know on Election Day if he is able to get away with it.
Similarly, Mr. McCain appears to be making three important course corrections. First, he and Gov. Sarah Palin are sharpening their stump speeches so their sound bites come off well on TV. Gone are offhand remarks and awkward comments read from notes perched on a podium. In are teleprompters and carefully crafted arguments. Mr. McCain is also more at ease than before and has an ebullient, come-from-behind underdog optimism that will serve him well in the final weeks.
Second, Mr. McCain is shaping a story line that draws on well-founded concerns about Mr. Obama's lack of record or experience. Mr. McCain is also bowing to reality and devoting most of his time to the economy. His narrative is he's the conservative reformer who'll lead and work hard to get things done, while Mr. Obama is the tax-and-spend liberal who's unprepared to lead and unwilling to act.
Mr. McCain is hitting Mr. Obama for wanting to raise taxes in difficult economic times, especially on small business and for the purpose of redistributing income, and for having lavish spending plans at a time when the economy is faltering. He's criticizing Mr. Obama for lingering on the sidelines while Mr. McCain dove in to help pass a rescue plan, necessary no matter how distasteful. And he's attacking Mr. Obama for not joining the fight in 2005 when reformers like Mr. McCain tried to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Mr. McCain's other adjustment is his schedule. His campaign understands the dire circumstances it faces and is narrowing his travels almost exclusively to Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Missouri, Colorado and Nevada. If he carries those states, while losing only Iowa and New Mexico from the GOP's 2004 total, Mr. McCain will carry 274 Electoral College votes and the White House. It's threading the needle, but it's come to that.
This task, while not impossible, will be difficult. By mid-September, the McCain camp was slightly ahead in the polls. Then came the financial crisis. The past month has taken an enormous toll on the McCain campaign.
Whether it can find the right formula in the next 19 days to dig out is a question. If Mr. McCain succeeds, he will have engineered the most impressive and improbable political comeback since Harry Truman in 1948. But having to reach back more than a half-century for inspiration is not the place campaign managers want to be now.
Source
***********************
Houseful of out-of-state Obama activists registered as Ohio voters, received absentee ballots
Something smells at 2885 Brownlee Avenue in Columbus, Ohio. I strongly recommend that the Ohio Republican Party get on the case before it's too late. Today's the last day to challenge voters who registered early in Ohio before the run up to Election Day.
Here's the stench: An entire houseful of young, non-Ohioan Democrat activists have used the Brownlee Avenue address to register themselves to vote in the Buckeye State and secure absentee ballots under extremely shady circumstances - all while mobilizing a large effort to register thousands of others for absentee and early voting. The activists are leaders of a group called "Vote From Home `08." The group is self-identified as having "extensive experience with political organizing, election administration, and Democratic politics." They were hailed as the "Justice League" by a Daily Kos blogger. Their Facebook page brags: "Want to turn the Presidential election blue in a key swing state? Vote from Home is a political organization that was founded by a team of young people for the purpose of assisting, aiding, and tracking voters to elect progressive candidates to the White House. Encouraged by the excitement of the 2008 elections and the movement around the Democratic candidates, Vote From Home will be in Ohio seeking to deliver 10,000 votes to Democratic candidates statewide."
My friends at Palestra.net, a network of young reporters who have been doing the voter and registration fraud reporting that the MSM has been slow to do, have a breaking investigative report on how several members of the Democrat Vote From Home team - all Rhodes, Marshall, Fulbright, and Truman Scholars studying abroad - are turning up on Franklin County voter rolls despite having no bona fide residence in Ohio and admittedly having little to no knowledge about the state before descending on it in August to sign up other new voters in a rush to put 10,000 Obama supporters on the rolls.
Source
************************
ELSEWHERE
There is a big article about polling and the media here which argues that the media bias in favor of Obama may not do him much good and that the polls favoring him may not be right.
The polls usually show the Democrat ahead "Reviewing the polls printed in the New York Times and the Washington Post in the last month of every presidential election since 1976, I found the polls were never wrong in a friendly way to Republicans. When the polls were wrong, which was often, they overestimated support for the Democrat, usually by about 6 to 10 points. In 1976, Jimmy Carter narrowly beat Gerald Ford 50.1 percent to 48 percent. And yet, on Sept. 1, Carter led Ford by 15 points. Just weeks before the election, on Oct. 16, 1976, Carter led Ford in the Gallup Poll by 6 percentage points - down from his 33-point Gallup Poll lead in August. Reading newspaper coverage of presidential elections in 1980 and 1984, I found myself paralyzed by the fear that Reagan was going to lose. In 1980, Ronald Reagan beat Carter by nearly 10 points, 51 percent to 41 percent. In a Gallup Poll released days before the election on Oct. 27, it was Carter who led Reagan 45 percent to 42 percent."
Black racism, anybody?: "They say an informed electorate is a bulwark of democracy. How are we doing on that score? Well, a colleague of the talk show host Howard Stern traveled up to Harlem to canvas some folks about their choice for President. It is not surprising that most said they supported Obama. Statistics I've seen predict that Obama will get somewhere north of 95 percent of the black vote. But why? Judging from the responses of the men and women in Harlem, it doesn't have a lot do with his policies. Stern's colleague took several of McCain's policies-staying the course in Iraq, being pro-life, setting limits to stem-cell research, even choosing Sarah Palin as his VP-and attributed them to Obama. No problem! As one respondent put, it's very important to stay in Iraq and finish the job: he was really with Obama on that. He was with him, too, on being pro-life! Question: "And if he [Obama] wins, would you have any problem with Sarah Palin being Vice-President?" Answer: "No I wouldn't. Not at all."
For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Message to McCain
There's a fine line between "maverick" and "ass." On Friday, John McCain crossed that line right into ass-dom. . At a campaign rally, McCain stood in front of his own supporters and told them Barack Obama isn't so bad. We need not fear an Obama presidency, he said. After all, Obama is a "decent" man. McCain went on to say he still believes he'd be the better president. Thanks, Mac. How about a cocktail with that grenade you just blew up in our faces?
McCain understandably-and justifiably-got booed by those at his rally. They were there to support him. To cheer him on. To buoy him at a time of sinking poll numbers. To give him the energy to fight on. What they got in return was a suggestion from their guy that it was OK to vote for the other guy.
Well, Senator McCain: you may not be angry, but we are. You may not be upset that Obama is about to walk away with this election, but we are. You may not be concerned that ACORN is making off with stuffed ballot boxes, but we are. You may not be teed off about the economic mess, but we are. You may not be upset about America's enemies-from Russia to Iran to North Korea-reasserting themselves, but we are. You may think an Obama presidency won't be "scary," but we do. You may be willing to toss in the towel, but we aren't.
Senator: you've got 3 weeks to turn this sucker around. Three weeks to remind us how "scary" an Obama presidency will be: from appeasing our enemies to filling 3 Supreme Court vacancies to taxing us to death and killing whatever's left of the economy. Maybe that doesn't scare you, but it scares us to pieces. We are fighting for you. We expect you to do the bare minimum in your own fight. And right now, you're not even doing that.
Source
*****************************
America Will Remain the Superpower
When the tide laps at Gulliver's waistline, it usually means the Lilliputians are already 10 feet under.
Constantinople fell to the Ottomans after two centuries of retreat and decline. It took two world wars, a global depression and the onset of the Cold War to lay the British Empire low. So it's a safe bet that the era of American dominance will not be brought to a close by credit default swaps, mark-to-market accounting or (even) Barney Frank.
Not that there's a shortage of invitations to believe otherwise. Almost in unison, Germany's finance minister, Russia's prime minister and Iran's president predict the end of U.S. "hegemony," financial and/or otherwise. The New York Times weighs in with meditations on "A Power That May Not Stay So Super." Der Spiegel gives us "The End of Hubris." Guardian columnist John Gray sees "A Shattering Moment in America's Fall From Power."
Much of this is said, or written, with ill-disguised glee. But when the tide laps at Gulliver's waistline, it usually means the Lilliputians are already 10 feet under. Before yesterday's surge, the Dow had dropped 25% in three months. But that only means it had outperformed nearly every single major foreign stock exchange, including Germany's XETRADAX (down 28%) China's Shanghai exchange (down 30%), Japan's NIKK225 (down 37%), Brazil's BOVESPA (down 41%) and Russia RTSI (down 61%). These contrasts are a useful demonstration that America's financial woes are nobody else's gain.
On the other hand, global economic distress doesn't invariably work at cross-purposes with American interests. Hugo Chÿvez's nosedive toward bankruptcy begins when oil dips below $80 a barrel, the price where it hovers now. An identical logic, if perhaps at a different price, applies to the petrodictatorships in Moscow and Tehran, which already are heavily saddled with inflationary and investor-confidence concerns. Russia will also likely burn through its $550 billion in foreign-currency reserves faster than anticipated -- a pleasing if roundabout comeuppance for last summer's Georgian adventure.
Nor does the U.S. seem all that badly off, comparatively speaking, when it comes to its ability to finance a bailout. Last month's $700 billion bailout package seems staggeringly large, but it amounts to a little more than 5% of U.S. gross domestic product. Compare that to Germany's $400 billion to $536 billion rescue package (between 12% and 16% of its GDP), or Britain's $835 billion plan (30%). Of course it may require considerably more than $700 billion to clean out our Augean Stables. But here it helps that the ratio of government debt to GDP in the U.S. runs to about 62%. For the eurozone, it's 75%; for Japan, 180%.
It also helps that the U.S. continues to have the world's largest inflows of foreign direct investment; that it ranks third in the world (after Singapore and New Zealand) for ease of doing business, according to the World Bank; and that its demographic trends aren't headed toward a tall and steep cliff -- as they are in the EU, Russia, Japan and China.
Above all, the U.S. remains biased toward financial transparency. I am agnostic as to whether mark-to-market accounting is a good idea; last month's temporary ban on short-selling financials seemed a bad one. But a system that demands timely and accurate financial disclosure and doesn't interfere with price discovery will invariably prove more resilient over time than a system that does not make such demands. If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were financial time bombs of one kind, then surely China's state-owned enterprises are time bombs of another. Can anyone determine with even approximate confidence the extent of their liabilities?
More here
*************************
ELSEWHERE
Federal Court: Ohio Must Check Voter Registrations: "A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered Ohio's top elections official to set up a system by Friday to verify the eligibility of newly registered voters and make the information available to the state's 88 county election boards. The full 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati upheld a lower court ruling that Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner must use other government records to check thousands of new voters for registration fraud. A three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit had disagreed last week. The full court's ruling, in which nine of 16 judges concurred, overturns that decision. Ohio Republicans had sued Brunner, a Democrat. Her spokesman had no immediate comment Tuesday."
Ship held by pirates freed in gun battle: "Soldiers of a regional government, with guns blazing, have freed a cargo ship that pirates had held off the Somali coast for five days, according to an official from the region. The ship and the 11 crew members - nine Syrians and two Somalis - were freed after a gun battle in which one soldier was killed and three wounded, said Deputy Seaport Minister Abdiqadir Muse Geele. No hostages or pirates were hurt, Geele said. The 10 pirates who had held the ship since Thursday surrendered when they ran out of ammunition, said Geele, who is a deputy minister in the government of the northern Somalia semiautonomous region of Puntland."
Oil price now roughly half what it was: "Oil fell more than 3 percent on Tuesday as concerns the global economy could slip into recession and drag down demand outweighed optimism over the bank bailout plans. U.S. crude settled down $2.56 at $78.63 a barrel after hitting $84.83 earlier. London Brent crude settled down $2.93 at $74.53 a barrel. Slumping demand in the United States and other big consuming nations and the mounting financial crisis have dragged crude off record peaks over $147 a barrel hit in July. Further pressure has come as investors sell oil for safer haven investments."
McCain's Killer Question: "If the economy is truly the issue that will decide this election, John McCain only needs to ask one rhetorical question to the American people during Wednesday night's debate: Are you currently working for, or have you ever worked for, a poor person? The implication is so obvious but, in today's liberal-dominated media, a conservative's first duty is to state the obvious. Jobs are produced by people with money who are trying to make more money. This is why those engaging in class warfare by "sticking it" to the rich are ultimately "sticking it" to themselves. Ask them, "Would you rather `stick it to the rich' or have a job?"
UK: Storm over Big Brother database: "Early plans to create a giant `Big Brother' database holding information about every phone call, email and internet visit made in the UK were last night condemned by the Government's own terrorism watchdog. Lord Carlile of Berriew QC, the independent reviewer of anti-terrorist laws, said the `raw idea' of the database was `awful' and called for controls to stop government agencies using it to conduct fishing expeditions into the private lives of the public. Today the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, is expected to signal the Government's intention to press ahead with proposals."
An article posted on Of Interest argues that Sarah Palin gives intellectuals the horrors because she is a rare voice from the workers whom they parasitize.
For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
There's a fine line between "maverick" and "ass." On Friday, John McCain crossed that line right into ass-dom. . At a campaign rally, McCain stood in front of his own supporters and told them Barack Obama isn't so bad. We need not fear an Obama presidency, he said. After all, Obama is a "decent" man. McCain went on to say he still believes he'd be the better president. Thanks, Mac. How about a cocktail with that grenade you just blew up in our faces?
McCain understandably-and justifiably-got booed by those at his rally. They were there to support him. To cheer him on. To buoy him at a time of sinking poll numbers. To give him the energy to fight on. What they got in return was a suggestion from their guy that it was OK to vote for the other guy.
Well, Senator McCain: you may not be angry, but we are. You may not be upset that Obama is about to walk away with this election, but we are. You may not be concerned that ACORN is making off with stuffed ballot boxes, but we are. You may not be teed off about the economic mess, but we are. You may not be upset about America's enemies-from Russia to Iran to North Korea-reasserting themselves, but we are. You may think an Obama presidency won't be "scary," but we do. You may be willing to toss in the towel, but we aren't.
Senator: you've got 3 weeks to turn this sucker around. Three weeks to remind us how "scary" an Obama presidency will be: from appeasing our enemies to filling 3 Supreme Court vacancies to taxing us to death and killing whatever's left of the economy. Maybe that doesn't scare you, but it scares us to pieces. We are fighting for you. We expect you to do the bare minimum in your own fight. And right now, you're not even doing that.
Source
*****************************
America Will Remain the Superpower
When the tide laps at Gulliver's waistline, it usually means the Lilliputians are already 10 feet under.
Constantinople fell to the Ottomans after two centuries of retreat and decline. It took two world wars, a global depression and the onset of the Cold War to lay the British Empire low. So it's a safe bet that the era of American dominance will not be brought to a close by credit default swaps, mark-to-market accounting or (even) Barney Frank.
Not that there's a shortage of invitations to believe otherwise. Almost in unison, Germany's finance minister, Russia's prime minister and Iran's president predict the end of U.S. "hegemony," financial and/or otherwise. The New York Times weighs in with meditations on "A Power That May Not Stay So Super." Der Spiegel gives us "The End of Hubris." Guardian columnist John Gray sees "A Shattering Moment in America's Fall From Power."
Much of this is said, or written, with ill-disguised glee. But when the tide laps at Gulliver's waistline, it usually means the Lilliputians are already 10 feet under. Before yesterday's surge, the Dow had dropped 25% in three months. But that only means it had outperformed nearly every single major foreign stock exchange, including Germany's XETRADAX (down 28%) China's Shanghai exchange (down 30%), Japan's NIKK225 (down 37%), Brazil's BOVESPA (down 41%) and Russia RTSI (down 61%). These contrasts are a useful demonstration that America's financial woes are nobody else's gain.
On the other hand, global economic distress doesn't invariably work at cross-purposes with American interests. Hugo Chÿvez's nosedive toward bankruptcy begins when oil dips below $80 a barrel, the price where it hovers now. An identical logic, if perhaps at a different price, applies to the petrodictatorships in Moscow and Tehran, which already are heavily saddled with inflationary and investor-confidence concerns. Russia will also likely burn through its $550 billion in foreign-currency reserves faster than anticipated -- a pleasing if roundabout comeuppance for last summer's Georgian adventure.
Nor does the U.S. seem all that badly off, comparatively speaking, when it comes to its ability to finance a bailout. Last month's $700 billion bailout package seems staggeringly large, but it amounts to a little more than 5% of U.S. gross domestic product. Compare that to Germany's $400 billion to $536 billion rescue package (between 12% and 16% of its GDP), or Britain's $835 billion plan (30%). Of course it may require considerably more than $700 billion to clean out our Augean Stables. But here it helps that the ratio of government debt to GDP in the U.S. runs to about 62%. For the eurozone, it's 75%; for Japan, 180%.
It also helps that the U.S. continues to have the world's largest inflows of foreign direct investment; that it ranks third in the world (after Singapore and New Zealand) for ease of doing business, according to the World Bank; and that its demographic trends aren't headed toward a tall and steep cliff -- as they are in the EU, Russia, Japan and China.
Above all, the U.S. remains biased toward financial transparency. I am agnostic as to whether mark-to-market accounting is a good idea; last month's temporary ban on short-selling financials seemed a bad one. But a system that demands timely and accurate financial disclosure and doesn't interfere with price discovery will invariably prove more resilient over time than a system that does not make such demands. If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were financial time bombs of one kind, then surely China's state-owned enterprises are time bombs of another. Can anyone determine with even approximate confidence the extent of their liabilities?
More here
*************************
ELSEWHERE
Federal Court: Ohio Must Check Voter Registrations: "A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered Ohio's top elections official to set up a system by Friday to verify the eligibility of newly registered voters and make the information available to the state's 88 county election boards. The full 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati upheld a lower court ruling that Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner must use other government records to check thousands of new voters for registration fraud. A three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit had disagreed last week. The full court's ruling, in which nine of 16 judges concurred, overturns that decision. Ohio Republicans had sued Brunner, a Democrat. Her spokesman had no immediate comment Tuesday."
Ship held by pirates freed in gun battle: "Soldiers of a regional government, with guns blazing, have freed a cargo ship that pirates had held off the Somali coast for five days, according to an official from the region. The ship and the 11 crew members - nine Syrians and two Somalis - were freed after a gun battle in which one soldier was killed and three wounded, said Deputy Seaport Minister Abdiqadir Muse Geele. No hostages or pirates were hurt, Geele said. The 10 pirates who had held the ship since Thursday surrendered when they ran out of ammunition, said Geele, who is a deputy minister in the government of the northern Somalia semiautonomous region of Puntland."
Oil price now roughly half what it was: "Oil fell more than 3 percent on Tuesday as concerns the global economy could slip into recession and drag down demand outweighed optimism over the bank bailout plans. U.S. crude settled down $2.56 at $78.63 a barrel after hitting $84.83 earlier. London Brent crude settled down $2.93 at $74.53 a barrel. Slumping demand in the United States and other big consuming nations and the mounting financial crisis have dragged crude off record peaks over $147 a barrel hit in July. Further pressure has come as investors sell oil for safer haven investments."
McCain's Killer Question: "If the economy is truly the issue that will decide this election, John McCain only needs to ask one rhetorical question to the American people during Wednesday night's debate: Are you currently working for, or have you ever worked for, a poor person? The implication is so obvious but, in today's liberal-dominated media, a conservative's first duty is to state the obvious. Jobs are produced by people with money who are trying to make more money. This is why those engaging in class warfare by "sticking it" to the rich are ultimately "sticking it" to themselves. Ask them, "Would you rather `stick it to the rich' or have a job?"
UK: Storm over Big Brother database: "Early plans to create a giant `Big Brother' database holding information about every phone call, email and internet visit made in the UK were last night condemned by the Government's own terrorism watchdog. Lord Carlile of Berriew QC, the independent reviewer of anti-terrorist laws, said the `raw idea' of the database was `awful' and called for controls to stop government agencies using it to conduct fishing expeditions into the private lives of the public. Today the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, is expected to signal the Government's intention to press ahead with proposals."
An article posted on Of Interest argues that Sarah Palin gives intellectuals the horrors because she is a rare voice from the workers whom they parasitize.
For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
There Are Two Irreconcilable Americas
The Left want whatever America ISN'T
by Dennis Prager
It is time to confront the unhappy fact about our country: There are now two Americas. Not a rich one and a poor one; economic status plays little role in this division. There is a red one and a blue one.
For most of my life I have believed, in what I now regard as wishful thinking, that the right and left wings have essentially the same vision for America, that it's only about ways to get there in which the two sides differ. Right and left share the same ends, I thought.
That is not the case. For the most part, right and left differ in their visions of America and that is why they differ on policies. Right and the left do not want the same America.
The left wants America to look as much like Western European countries as possible. The left wants Europe's quasi-pacifism, cradle-to-grave socialism, egalitarianism and secularism in America. The right wants none of those values to dominate America.
The left wants America not only to have a secular government, but to have a secular society. The left feels that if people want to be religious, they should do so at home and in their houses of prayer, but never try to inject their religious values into society. The right wants America to continue to be what it has always been -- a Judeo-Christian society with a largely secular government (that is not indifferent to religion). These opposing visions explain, for example, their opposite views concerning nondenominational prayer in school.
The left prefers to identify as citizens of the world. The left fears nationalism in general (this has been true for the European left since World War I), and since the 1960s, the American left has come to fear American nationalism in particular. On the other side, the right identifies first as citizens of America.
The left therefore regards the notion of American exceptionalism as chauvinism; the United Nations and world opinion are regarded as better arbiters of what is good than is America. The right has a low opinion of the U.N.'s moral compass and of world opinion, both of which it sees as having a much poorer record of stopping genocide and other evils than America has.
The left is ambivalent about and often hostile to overt displays of American patriotism. That is why, for example, one is far more likely to find American flags displayed in Orange County, Calif., on national holidays than in liberal neighborhoods in West Los Angeles, Manhattan or San Francisco.
The left subscribes to the French Revolution, whose guiding principles were "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." The right subscribes to the American formula, "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." The French/European notion of equality is not mentioned. The right rejects the French Revolution and does not hold Western Europe as a model. The left does. That alone makes right and left irreconcilable.
The left envisions an egalitarian society. The right does not. The left values equality above other values because it yearns for an America in which all people have similar amounts of material possessions. This is what propels the left to advocate laws that would force employers to pay women the same wages they pay men not only for the same job but for "comparable" jobs (as if that is objectively ascertainable). The right values equality in opportunity and strongly believes that all people are created equal, but the right values liberty, a man-woman based family and other values above equality.
The left wants a world -- and therefore an America -- devoid of nuclear weapons. The right wants America to have the best nuclear weapons. The right trusts American might more than universal disarmament.
The left wants to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples for the first time in history. The right wants gays to have equal rights, but to keep marriage defined as man-woman. This, too, constitutes an irreconcilable divide.
For these and other reasons, calls for a unity among Americans that transcends left and right are either naive or disingenuous. America will be united only when one of them prevails over the other. The left knows this. Most on the right do not.
Source
**************************
Negative Advertising
by Thomas Sowell
One of the oldest phenomena of American elections-- criticism of one's opponent-- has in recent times been stigmatized by much of the media as "negative advertising."
Is this because the criticism has gotten more vicious or more personal? You might think so, if you were totally ignorant of history, as so many of the graduates of even our elite universities are.
Although Grover Cleveland was elected President twice, he had to overcome a major scandal that he had fathered a child out of wedlock, which was considered more of a disgrace then than today. Even giants like Lincoln and Jefferson were called names that neither McCain nor Obama has been called.
Why then is "negative advertising" such a big deal these days? The dirty little secret is this: Liberal candidates have needed to escape their past and pretend that they are not liberals, because so many voters have had it with liberals.
In 1988, Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts called himself a "technocrat," a pragmatic solver of problems, despite a classic liberal track record of big spending, big taxes, and policies that were anti-business and pro-criminal.
When the truth about what he actually did as governor was brought out during the Presidential election campaign, the media were duly shocked-- not by Dukakis' record, but by the Republicans' exposing his record.
John Kerry, with a very similar ultra-liberal record, topped off by inflammatory and unsubstantiated attacks on American military men in Vietnam, disdained the whole process of labeling as something unworthy. And the mainstream media closed ranks around him as well, deploring those who labeled Kerry a liberal.
Barack Obama is much smoother. Instead of issuing explicit denials, he gives speeches that sound so moderate, so nuanced and so lofty that even some conservative Republicans go for them. How could anyone believe that such a man is the very opposite of what he claims to be-- unless they check out the record of what he has actually done?
In words, Obama is a uniter instead of a divider. In deeds, he has spent years promoting polarization. That is what a "community organizer" does, creating a sense of grievance, envy and resentment, in order to mobilize political action to get more of the taxpayers' money or to force banks to lend to people they don't consider good risks, as the community organizing group ACORN did.
After Barack Obama moved beyond the role of a community organizer, he promoted the same polarization in his other roles.
That is what he did when he spent the money of the Woods Fund bankrolling programs to spread the politics of grievance and resentment into the schools. That is what he did when he spent the taxpayers' money bankrolling the grievance and resentment ideology of Michael Pfleger.
When Barack Obama donated $20,000 to Jeremiah Wright, does anyone imagine that he was unaware that Wright was the epitome of grievance, envy and resentment hype? Or were Wright's sermons too subtle for Obama to pick up that message? How subtle is "Goddamn America!"?
Yet those in the media who deplore "negative advertising" regard it as unseemly to dig up ugly facts instead of sticking to the beautiful rhetoric of an election year. The oft-repeated mantra is that we should trick to the "real issues."
What are called "the real issues" are election-year talking points, while the actual track record of the candidates is treated as a distraction-- and somehow an unworthy distraction.
Does anyone in real life put more faith in what people say than in what they do? A few gullible people do-- and they often get deceived and defrauded big time.
Barack Obama has carried election-year makeovers to a new high, presenting himself a uniter of people, someone reaching across the partisan divide and the racial divide-- after decades of promoting polarization in each of his successive roles and each of his choices of political allies.
Yet the media treat exposing a fraudulent election-year image as far worse than letting someone acquire the powers of the highest office in the land through sheer deception.
Source
*************************
ELSEWHERE
Jennifer Brunner, Ohio's Goddess of Vote Fraud: "When even the Democratic press release digest known as The Columbus Dispatch expresses dismay at the Ohio Secretary of State's partisan antics, you know things have gotten really out of hand. Jennifer Brunner, whose business card reads "Goddess of Voter Registration Fraud" (or so I've heard), took a well-deserved bludgeoning in today's editorial. ...Brunner made a serious blunder by failing to give county elections boards the names of new voters whose registration records don't match state and federal data. She should comply with a federal court order to release the information within a week instead of appealing... In addition to discrediting herself, Brunner's attempt to withhold the data undermines the integrity of the election system"
It's easy to see who the haters are: "We've seen considerable left wing hyperventilation over an alleged "mob" mentality at McCain-Palin rallies. It is worthwhile taking a look at this five minute video by Oleg Abtashian of McCain-Palin supporters marching through Manhattan. Note the level of civility among the most urbane and sophisticated of blue state urbanites."
For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
The Left want whatever America ISN'T
by Dennis Prager
It is time to confront the unhappy fact about our country: There are now two Americas. Not a rich one and a poor one; economic status plays little role in this division. There is a red one and a blue one.
For most of my life I have believed, in what I now regard as wishful thinking, that the right and left wings have essentially the same vision for America, that it's only about ways to get there in which the two sides differ. Right and left share the same ends, I thought.
That is not the case. For the most part, right and left differ in their visions of America and that is why they differ on policies. Right and the left do not want the same America.
The left wants America to look as much like Western European countries as possible. The left wants Europe's quasi-pacifism, cradle-to-grave socialism, egalitarianism and secularism in America. The right wants none of those values to dominate America.
The left wants America not only to have a secular government, but to have a secular society. The left feels that if people want to be religious, they should do so at home and in their houses of prayer, but never try to inject their religious values into society. The right wants America to continue to be what it has always been -- a Judeo-Christian society with a largely secular government (that is not indifferent to religion). These opposing visions explain, for example, their opposite views concerning nondenominational prayer in school.
The left prefers to identify as citizens of the world. The left fears nationalism in general (this has been true for the European left since World War I), and since the 1960s, the American left has come to fear American nationalism in particular. On the other side, the right identifies first as citizens of America.
The left therefore regards the notion of American exceptionalism as chauvinism; the United Nations and world opinion are regarded as better arbiters of what is good than is America. The right has a low opinion of the U.N.'s moral compass and of world opinion, both of which it sees as having a much poorer record of stopping genocide and other evils than America has.
The left is ambivalent about and often hostile to overt displays of American patriotism. That is why, for example, one is far more likely to find American flags displayed in Orange County, Calif., on national holidays than in liberal neighborhoods in West Los Angeles, Manhattan or San Francisco.
The left subscribes to the French Revolution, whose guiding principles were "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." The right subscribes to the American formula, "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." The French/European notion of equality is not mentioned. The right rejects the French Revolution and does not hold Western Europe as a model. The left does. That alone makes right and left irreconcilable.
The left envisions an egalitarian society. The right does not. The left values equality above other values because it yearns for an America in which all people have similar amounts of material possessions. This is what propels the left to advocate laws that would force employers to pay women the same wages they pay men not only for the same job but for "comparable" jobs (as if that is objectively ascertainable). The right values equality in opportunity and strongly believes that all people are created equal, but the right values liberty, a man-woman based family and other values above equality.
The left wants a world -- and therefore an America -- devoid of nuclear weapons. The right wants America to have the best nuclear weapons. The right trusts American might more than universal disarmament.
The left wants to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples for the first time in history. The right wants gays to have equal rights, but to keep marriage defined as man-woman. This, too, constitutes an irreconcilable divide.
For these and other reasons, calls for a unity among Americans that transcends left and right are either naive or disingenuous. America will be united only when one of them prevails over the other. The left knows this. Most on the right do not.
Source
**************************
Negative Advertising
by Thomas Sowell
One of the oldest phenomena of American elections-- criticism of one's opponent-- has in recent times been stigmatized by much of the media as "negative advertising."
Is this because the criticism has gotten more vicious or more personal? You might think so, if you were totally ignorant of history, as so many of the graduates of even our elite universities are.
Although Grover Cleveland was elected President twice, he had to overcome a major scandal that he had fathered a child out of wedlock, which was considered more of a disgrace then than today. Even giants like Lincoln and Jefferson were called names that neither McCain nor Obama has been called.
Why then is "negative advertising" such a big deal these days? The dirty little secret is this: Liberal candidates have needed to escape their past and pretend that they are not liberals, because so many voters have had it with liberals.
In 1988, Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts called himself a "technocrat," a pragmatic solver of problems, despite a classic liberal track record of big spending, big taxes, and policies that were anti-business and pro-criminal.
When the truth about what he actually did as governor was brought out during the Presidential election campaign, the media were duly shocked-- not by Dukakis' record, but by the Republicans' exposing his record.
John Kerry, with a very similar ultra-liberal record, topped off by inflammatory and unsubstantiated attacks on American military men in Vietnam, disdained the whole process of labeling as something unworthy. And the mainstream media closed ranks around him as well, deploring those who labeled Kerry a liberal.
Barack Obama is much smoother. Instead of issuing explicit denials, he gives speeches that sound so moderate, so nuanced and so lofty that even some conservative Republicans go for them. How could anyone believe that such a man is the very opposite of what he claims to be-- unless they check out the record of what he has actually done?
In words, Obama is a uniter instead of a divider. In deeds, he has spent years promoting polarization. That is what a "community organizer" does, creating a sense of grievance, envy and resentment, in order to mobilize political action to get more of the taxpayers' money or to force banks to lend to people they don't consider good risks, as the community organizing group ACORN did.
After Barack Obama moved beyond the role of a community organizer, he promoted the same polarization in his other roles.
That is what he did when he spent the money of the Woods Fund bankrolling programs to spread the politics of grievance and resentment into the schools. That is what he did when he spent the taxpayers' money bankrolling the grievance and resentment ideology of Michael Pfleger.
When Barack Obama donated $20,000 to Jeremiah Wright, does anyone imagine that he was unaware that Wright was the epitome of grievance, envy and resentment hype? Or were Wright's sermons too subtle for Obama to pick up that message? How subtle is "Goddamn America!"?
Yet those in the media who deplore "negative advertising" regard it as unseemly to dig up ugly facts instead of sticking to the beautiful rhetoric of an election year. The oft-repeated mantra is that we should trick to the "real issues."
What are called "the real issues" are election-year talking points, while the actual track record of the candidates is treated as a distraction-- and somehow an unworthy distraction.
Does anyone in real life put more faith in what people say than in what they do? A few gullible people do-- and they often get deceived and defrauded big time.
Barack Obama has carried election-year makeovers to a new high, presenting himself a uniter of people, someone reaching across the partisan divide and the racial divide-- after decades of promoting polarization in each of his successive roles and each of his choices of political allies.
Yet the media treat exposing a fraudulent election-year image as far worse than letting someone acquire the powers of the highest office in the land through sheer deception.
Source
*************************
ELSEWHERE
Jennifer Brunner, Ohio's Goddess of Vote Fraud: "When even the Democratic press release digest known as The Columbus Dispatch expresses dismay at the Ohio Secretary of State's partisan antics, you know things have gotten really out of hand. Jennifer Brunner, whose business card reads "Goddess of Voter Registration Fraud" (or so I've heard), took a well-deserved bludgeoning in today's editorial. ...Brunner made a serious blunder by failing to give county elections boards the names of new voters whose registration records don't match state and federal data. She should comply with a federal court order to release the information within a week instead of appealing... In addition to discrediting herself, Brunner's attempt to withhold the data undermines the integrity of the election system"
It's easy to see who the haters are: "We've seen considerable left wing hyperventilation over an alleged "mob" mentality at McCain-Palin rallies. It is worthwhile taking a look at this five minute video by Oleg Abtashian of McCain-Palin supporters marching through Manhattan. Note the level of civility among the most urbane and sophisticated of blue state urbanites."
For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
TWO SKEPTICAL ESSAYS ABOUT THE FINANCIAL FURORE BELOW:
There Is No Financial Crisis
By Dick McDonald of Rise up America
Weeks ago I said there was no financial crisis. I said the Federal Reserve prints money and they can print as much as it takes to shore up the financial markets. I kept repeating that the taxpayers were never going to pay for this bail out. People don't pay taxes when newly printed money is used by government for commercial purposes - investments or expenses. Now look at what is happening. According to the NYT:
Now after stampeding the public into believing that they were going to be taxed for the mortgage bail out, the geniuses that run our country have decided to inject newly printed money into the banks to get them working again. The Fed always had the ability to inject capital - it didn't need to ask for Congressional approval. These political paragons of certainty have confused the folks and put them in full panic mode. Taxing people for the bail out was never in the cards.
Weeks ago the President issued a Presidential Order that any bail out would be done off budget and that any credits issued by the Federal Reserve (printed money) would not be added to the national debt (no taxes necessary). That should have given everyone a clue - but the folks are so desperate to participate in their government they made a run on the banks and 401(k) s and crashed the stock market. Silent George didn't make things very clear.
The economy didn't fail - just a portion of the financial sector. By buying non-voting preferred stock in failing financial institutions the cash injected by the Fed will allow those institutions to firm up their balance sheets and begin loaning money again. As the interest the Fed buys is preferred stock, the investing public can enjoy any improvement in the value of the bank by buying common shares. The Fed will eventually get repaid through bank profits or proceeds from the issuance of new common stock based on the bank's increased earning capability. Banks WILL NOT be NATIONALIZED - no socialism here. Some banks will fail and be "creatively destroyed" - but they will be few.
Now the people who will lose money will be the shareholders of these failing financial institutions - so it should be. Other losers will be those who can't pay their mortgages even after their terms are modified. The winners will be those who have held onto their shares of stock as the market will rebound. Those who buy into solid companies here at the bottom should turn a tidy profit. Those who buy real estate at fire sale prices will do well too. And don't forget banks - some of their common is in the penny range - imagine what it will do with the cash infusion by the FED.
Try to avoid the insanity that always accompanies financial upheavals. Don't blame "hedge funds" they perform the necessary task of ridding old companies of costly entrenched bureaucracies and don't blame "derivatives" they shift risk to those who can afford it. Don't prove your ignorance by blaming the wrong thing or wrong people.
This time around blame the Democrat party and special interest lobbying groups like ACORN (Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now) for their insistence on legislation that forced banks to make NINJA loans (No Income, No Job. No Assets). Legislators like Chris Dodd and Barney Frank should be run out of town on a rail. Think about Maxine Waters and her insistence that lending to those who can't afford it is good public policy. Let's get real - these people are a real danger to running a fiscally sound democratic society. They should all be flushed down the drain in November.
And AIG should disband their 310-man London group that insured many securitized mortgage bundles for surely they were the biggest fools of all. As actuaries and underwriters they get an "F".
*****************************
The Data Don't Justify Financial-Market Panic
By Robert Higgs, a senior fellow in political economy at the Independent Institute and editor of The Independent Review.
As the hysteria has grown in the discussion of financial markets and related government policies, I have been puzzled by the discrepancy between the best available data and the descriptions quoted in the press - statements by financial gurus, traders, and professors, as well as by government officials. To hear these spokesmen tell the story, you'd think that the world will soon go to hell in a hand basket, if it hasn't gone there already. Yet every time I look for data to check these claims, I find nothing solid to back them up.
The latest case in point concerns the markets for commercial paper. The Fed has just announced that it will launch an unprecedented program to support this credit market. As MarketWatch describes this initiative, the Fed "will buy unsecured commercial paper in an effort to restart a market that's ground to a virtual halt in recent weeks." This report goes on to explain that the Fed's purpose is "to get lending flowing again." It quotes John Ryding of RDQ Economics, who foresees dire consequences "if the Fed doesn't unfreeze the credit markets." Got the picture? Restart a virtually halted market; get lending flowing again; unfreeze credit markets - all of which suggest that at present nobody is borrowing and lending in these markets.
Such comments are extremely common in the press. Bloomberg's Commercial Paper Primer quotes New York University economist Mark Gertler's statement that "large corporations are having difficulty obtaining funds via the commercial paper market." A commentator at "The Bonddad Blog" says: "people are unwilling to buy this paper. . . . [N]o one is buying any commercial paper" (although, inconsistently, this same blogger notes that "lenders . . . are asking for a higher interest rate to pay them for a short-term loan," which implies that someone is lending).
The Federal Reserve System publishes comprehensive data on commercial paper issuance, commercial paper outstanding, and interest rates on commercial paper. I presume that these data give us a clearer picture of what's going on in the markets than a covey of hyperventilating Wall Street commentators.
Consider first the interest rates for commercial paper. For the past several weeks, 30-day nonfinancial paper has been going for about 2 percent; 60-day and 90-day loans in this market have required a slightly greater rate of interest. Financial commercial paper has been going for roughly 3 percent, give or take a few tenths of a point, with little difference among the 30-day, 60-day, and 90-day rates.
Given that the rate of inflation at present is greater than 3 percent, and presumably will remain greater than 3 percent for the next three months, these nominal interest rates on commercial paper imply that lenders are actually giving away money to corporations that sell commercial paper - the nominal rates of interest are less than the expected rate of inflation. Is this situation what one expects to see during a "credit crunch"? Hardly.
Many commentators claim, however, that virtually no transactions are occurring in this market. These claims are completely false. For the week that ended October 1, which is the most recent week currently reported, total commercial paper outstanding amounted to $1,607 billion. Yes, this amount was down from the $1,702 billion reported for the previous week, but is a 5.6 percent drop a good reason to panic? If we go back to March 2008, when nobody was talking excitedly about the commercial market's "freezing up," we find that the total amount outstanding, on average, was $1,822 billion, or only 13 percent more than last week. In March, the market was working fine; now it's "locked up." This sort of hyperbole, with which we are being bombarded hourly around the clock, is totally without a basis in the facts.
For the year 2006, when the financial markets were, for the most part, still ripping along very nicely, the total amount of commercial paper outstanding, on average, was $1,983 billion; for 2007, it was $1,781 billion. For the past seven months, on average of the monthly data, it was $1,743 billion. Does this 2.1 percent decline from last year's average give us a good reason to jump off a tall building?
Either someone is deliberately trying to spook us, or these panic-mongers have simply lost their grip on reality. Officials at the Fed and the U.S. Treasury are running around like chickens with their heads cut off. They are dragging the world's leading central bankers and finance ministers around with them. The news media are raving like lunatics. The big unanswered question is: WHY?
Source
*******************************
ELSEWHERE
The SEC short-sells us down the river: "The Securities and Exchange Commission took the very drastic step of outlawing the essential financial practice of short selling in an attempt to galvanize financial markets. (The SEC recently extended at least some portions of its initial ban through October 17.) But short selling provides essential information to market participants and helps us update our expectations accordingly. By outlawing short selling, the SEC has eliminated a crucial element of what makes markets work."
A 2006 McCain Letter Demanded Action on Fannie and Freddie: "Sen. John McCain's 2006 demand for regulatory action on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could have prevented current financial crisis. McCain's letter -- signed by nineteen other senators -- said that it was "...vitally important that Congress take the necessary steps to ensure that [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac]...operate in a safe and sound manner.[and]..More importantly, Congress must ensure that the American taxpayer is protected in the event that either...should fail." Sen. Obama did not sign the letter, nor did any other Democrat."
Thousands Of Dead People On Connecticut's Voter Rolls: "An in-depth look at voter rolls across the state by a group of University of Connecticut journalism students earlier this year found that about 8,500 dead people were registered to vote, and that clerical errors made it appear that 300 of them actually had voted. A closer look by state election officials thus far has found no evidence of election fraud, though the review is ongoing. The students' effort focused attention on weaknesses in public record-keeping at the local level that allowed thousands of mistakes to go undetected."
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.
For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
There Is No Financial Crisis
By Dick McDonald of Rise up America
Weeks ago I said there was no financial crisis. I said the Federal Reserve prints money and they can print as much as it takes to shore up the financial markets. I kept repeating that the taxpayers were never going to pay for this bail out. People don't pay taxes when newly printed money is used by government for commercial purposes - investments or expenses. Now look at what is happening. According to the NYT:
"Two weeks after persuading Congress to let it spend $700 billion to buy distressed securities tied to mortgages, the Bush administration has put that idea aside in favor of a new approach that would have the government inject capital directly into the nation's banks - in effect, partially nationalizing the industry."
Now after stampeding the public into believing that they were going to be taxed for the mortgage bail out, the geniuses that run our country have decided to inject newly printed money into the banks to get them working again. The Fed always had the ability to inject capital - it didn't need to ask for Congressional approval. These political paragons of certainty have confused the folks and put them in full panic mode. Taxing people for the bail out was never in the cards.
Weeks ago the President issued a Presidential Order that any bail out would be done off budget and that any credits issued by the Federal Reserve (printed money) would not be added to the national debt (no taxes necessary). That should have given everyone a clue - but the folks are so desperate to participate in their government they made a run on the banks and 401(k) s and crashed the stock market. Silent George didn't make things very clear.
The economy didn't fail - just a portion of the financial sector. By buying non-voting preferred stock in failing financial institutions the cash injected by the Fed will allow those institutions to firm up their balance sheets and begin loaning money again. As the interest the Fed buys is preferred stock, the investing public can enjoy any improvement in the value of the bank by buying common shares. The Fed will eventually get repaid through bank profits or proceeds from the issuance of new common stock based on the bank's increased earning capability. Banks WILL NOT be NATIONALIZED - no socialism here. Some banks will fail and be "creatively destroyed" - but they will be few.
Now the people who will lose money will be the shareholders of these failing financial institutions - so it should be. Other losers will be those who can't pay their mortgages even after their terms are modified. The winners will be those who have held onto their shares of stock as the market will rebound. Those who buy into solid companies here at the bottom should turn a tidy profit. Those who buy real estate at fire sale prices will do well too. And don't forget banks - some of their common is in the penny range - imagine what it will do with the cash infusion by the FED.
Try to avoid the insanity that always accompanies financial upheavals. Don't blame "hedge funds" they perform the necessary task of ridding old companies of costly entrenched bureaucracies and don't blame "derivatives" they shift risk to those who can afford it. Don't prove your ignorance by blaming the wrong thing or wrong people.
This time around blame the Democrat party and special interest lobbying groups like ACORN (Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now) for their insistence on legislation that forced banks to make NINJA loans (No Income, No Job. No Assets). Legislators like Chris Dodd and Barney Frank should be run out of town on a rail. Think about Maxine Waters and her insistence that lending to those who can't afford it is good public policy. Let's get real - these people are a real danger to running a fiscally sound democratic society. They should all be flushed down the drain in November.
And AIG should disband their 310-man London group that insured many securitized mortgage bundles for surely they were the biggest fools of all. As actuaries and underwriters they get an "F".
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The Data Don't Justify Financial-Market Panic
By Robert Higgs, a senior fellow in political economy at the Independent Institute and editor of The Independent Review.
As the hysteria has grown in the discussion of financial markets and related government policies, I have been puzzled by the discrepancy between the best available data and the descriptions quoted in the press - statements by financial gurus, traders, and professors, as well as by government officials. To hear these spokesmen tell the story, you'd think that the world will soon go to hell in a hand basket, if it hasn't gone there already. Yet every time I look for data to check these claims, I find nothing solid to back them up.
The latest case in point concerns the markets for commercial paper. The Fed has just announced that it will launch an unprecedented program to support this credit market. As MarketWatch describes this initiative, the Fed "will buy unsecured commercial paper in an effort to restart a market that's ground to a virtual halt in recent weeks." This report goes on to explain that the Fed's purpose is "to get lending flowing again." It quotes John Ryding of RDQ Economics, who foresees dire consequences "if the Fed doesn't unfreeze the credit markets." Got the picture? Restart a virtually halted market; get lending flowing again; unfreeze credit markets - all of which suggest that at present nobody is borrowing and lending in these markets.
Such comments are extremely common in the press. Bloomberg's Commercial Paper Primer quotes New York University economist Mark Gertler's statement that "large corporations are having difficulty obtaining funds via the commercial paper market." A commentator at "The Bonddad Blog" says: "people are unwilling to buy this paper. . . . [N]o one is buying any commercial paper" (although, inconsistently, this same blogger notes that "lenders . . . are asking for a higher interest rate to pay them for a short-term loan," which implies that someone is lending).
The Federal Reserve System publishes comprehensive data on commercial paper issuance, commercial paper outstanding, and interest rates on commercial paper. I presume that these data give us a clearer picture of what's going on in the markets than a covey of hyperventilating Wall Street commentators.
Consider first the interest rates for commercial paper. For the past several weeks, 30-day nonfinancial paper has been going for about 2 percent; 60-day and 90-day loans in this market have required a slightly greater rate of interest. Financial commercial paper has been going for roughly 3 percent, give or take a few tenths of a point, with little difference among the 30-day, 60-day, and 90-day rates.
Given that the rate of inflation at present is greater than 3 percent, and presumably will remain greater than 3 percent for the next three months, these nominal interest rates on commercial paper imply that lenders are actually giving away money to corporations that sell commercial paper - the nominal rates of interest are less than the expected rate of inflation. Is this situation what one expects to see during a "credit crunch"? Hardly.
Many commentators claim, however, that virtually no transactions are occurring in this market. These claims are completely false. For the week that ended October 1, which is the most recent week currently reported, total commercial paper outstanding amounted to $1,607 billion. Yes, this amount was down from the $1,702 billion reported for the previous week, but is a 5.6 percent drop a good reason to panic? If we go back to March 2008, when nobody was talking excitedly about the commercial market's "freezing up," we find that the total amount outstanding, on average, was $1,822 billion, or only 13 percent more than last week. In March, the market was working fine; now it's "locked up." This sort of hyperbole, with which we are being bombarded hourly around the clock, is totally without a basis in the facts.
For the year 2006, when the financial markets were, for the most part, still ripping along very nicely, the total amount of commercial paper outstanding, on average, was $1,983 billion; for 2007, it was $1,781 billion. For the past seven months, on average of the monthly data, it was $1,743 billion. Does this 2.1 percent decline from last year's average give us a good reason to jump off a tall building?
Either someone is deliberately trying to spook us, or these panic-mongers have simply lost their grip on reality. Officials at the Fed and the U.S. Treasury are running around like chickens with their heads cut off. They are dragging the world's leading central bankers and finance ministers around with them. The news media are raving like lunatics. The big unanswered question is: WHY?
Source
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ELSEWHERE
The SEC short-sells us down the river: "The Securities and Exchange Commission took the very drastic step of outlawing the essential financial practice of short selling in an attempt to galvanize financial markets. (The SEC recently extended at least some portions of its initial ban through October 17.) But short selling provides essential information to market participants and helps us update our expectations accordingly. By outlawing short selling, the SEC has eliminated a crucial element of what makes markets work."
A 2006 McCain Letter Demanded Action on Fannie and Freddie: "Sen. John McCain's 2006 demand for regulatory action on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could have prevented current financial crisis. McCain's letter -- signed by nineteen other senators -- said that it was "...vitally important that Congress take the necessary steps to ensure that [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac]...operate in a safe and sound manner.[and]..More importantly, Congress must ensure that the American taxpayer is protected in the event that either...should fail." Sen. Obama did not sign the letter, nor did any other Democrat."
Thousands Of Dead People On Connecticut's Voter Rolls: "An in-depth look at voter rolls across the state by a group of University of Connecticut journalism students earlier this year found that about 8,500 dead people were registered to vote, and that clerical errors made it appear that 300 of them actually had voted. A closer look by state election officials thus far has found no evidence of election fraud, though the review is ongoing. The students' effort focused attention on weaknesses in public record-keeping at the local level that allowed thousands of mistakes to go undetected."
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.
For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here
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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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