She Got Us Into This Mess, Can She Get Us Out?

"Restoration of normal bank lending will require a very large capital infusion from private or public sources."

Alan Greenspan (2009)

"It may be necessary to temporarily nationalize some banks in order to facilitate a swift and orderly restructuring."

Alan Greenspan (2009)

"To stabilize the American banking system and restore normal lending, additional TARP funds will be required."

Alan Greenspan (2009)

"...At one of the preliminary conferences leading to this week's summit on inflation, John Kenneth Galbraith looked over the 28 other economists who had gathered in the White House and quipped that the remedies for inflation would be about the same for 'Bolsheviks and the devoted supporters of Ayn Rand, if there are any present.' Then Alan Greenspan smiled and spoke up: 'There's at least one.'"


"They are appeasers, compromisers and pragmatists. They do not have one long-range idea."

Ayn Rand on American Businessmen (1974)

"They claim that their sole purpose is to serve the public, which is a vicious statement of altruism and collectivism. What they should say is that they're working for their own profit. And that incidentally, as a consequence, they are serving the public."

Ayn Rand on Oilmen (1974)



"...So there was. The new chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers is a longtime friend and disciple of Ayn Rand, the Russian-born author whose novels of rebellious achiever-heroes (We the Living, The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged) and nonfiction books have sold at least 12 million copies in 38 years. Greenspan, who is 48, makes no secret of his admiration for Rand, who is now a vigorous 69. His admiration extends to Rand's work and her philosophy of Objectivism, which she describes as advocating "reason, individualism and capitalism." It rejects altruism and embraces, says Rand, "rational selfishness." As John Galt, the hero of Atlas Shrugged, puts it at the climax of a 57-page speech that explains Objectivism: "I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." Indeed, the title of one of Rand's nonfiction books is The Virtue of Selfishness. Rand does not like to be compared with earlier thinkers of any stripe, but her beliefs are not too far from the 18th century philosophers who held that if every man were out for himself, society would ultimately benefit. She has long been indignant over the consistent fire she has drawn from hostile critics, who view her as an impractical, closed-minded ideologue rather than a serious philosopher.

No Taxes. Ayn (as in "mine") Rand is openly pleased over her real-life achiever-hero's rise to the White House. She traveled from her midtown Manhattan apartment to Washington, D.C., this month to watch Greenspan's swearing-in, then was introduced to President Ford. "I'm very proud of Alan," she says. "His is a heroic undertaking."

Greenspan is the first known follower of Objectivism to be tapped for a major Government policy-making position. When the appointment was announced, critics wondered only half jokingly if Greenspan's rise would lead to Rand's becoming the Administration's primary behind-the-scenes economics adviser. That sort of speculation is dismissed by both Rand and Greenspan. He says he has little contact with Rand now, and even before the CEA job came, meetings were limited to dinners every month or so with her and her husband of 45 years, Artist Frank O'Connor. On these occasions, Greenspan adds, conversation is just "what old friends talk about." Suspending a policy of shunning press interviews, Rand told TIME'S Sarah Button: "I am a philosopher, not an economist. Alan doesn't seek my advice on these matters. He can tell me more than I can tell him, and knows more about the day-to-day events..."

Read more about Greenspan and his favorite author from the /30/1974 issue of Time.


"...Democrats want to use this crisis to move America toward the sort of Europeanized economy that runs counter to the freedom and entrepreneurial spirit of our people: To usher in an era of greater government control and micro-management of our economy.

It's an audacious scheme: Set off a series of regulatory blunders and congressional meddling, blame the free market for the financial crisis that follows - then use this excuse to impose a more intrusive state. Sounds like something right out of an Ayn Rand novel..."

Congressman Paul Ryan
"Our Founding Principles: The Conservative Roadmap for America's Future"
CPAC Keynote Address
February 26, 2009

Western Wis. Tea Parties On April 15

Here's a couple of Tea Parties scheduled for April 15 in western Wisconsin. Apparently these are non-partisan events where everybody can bitch about their taxes with the fear of getting a spit shower from your local anti-government, reactionary objectivist. I'm going to try and make both of them. I want to be there for the riots that are sure to take place.

North Hudson at Mud-And-Suds from 4-6 PM

For more information, click here.

New Richmond at the City Hall from Noon-1 PM

For more information, click here.

Can Government Run Things As Bad As The Private Sector?

"...There is every reason to believe that a temporarily nationalized bank will behave much better--even if most of the employees are still the same--simply because we will have changed the perverse incentives. Besides, a government-run bank might spend some time and money teaching its employees about risk management, good lending practices, social responsibility and ethics. The experience elsewhere, including in the Scandinavian countries, shows that the whole process can be done well--and when the economy is eventually restored to prosperity, the profitable banks can be returned to the private sector. What is required is not rocket science. Banks simply need to get back to what they were supposed to do: lending money, on a prudent basis, to businesses and households, based not just on collateral but on a good assessment of the use to which borrowers will put the money and their ability to repay it.

Meanwhile, there needs to be an orderly plan for disposing of the old bad assets. There is no magic in moving them around from one owner to another. In some countries, government agencies (often hiring private subcontractors) have done a good job of selling off the assets. Other countries (including some hit in the East Asia crisis a decade ago) have had an unfortunate experience, bringing in investment banks and hedge funds to dispose of their assets. These institutions simply held them for the short time it took the economy to recover and made a huge capital gain at the expense of the country's taxpayers. To add insult to injury, some even took advantage of tax havens to avoid paying taxes on those huge profits. These experiences suggest caution in turning to hedge funds and other investment firms..."

Joseph E. Stiglitz

Read more @ The Nation.

Ayn Rand RIP...Please

“Ayn Rand died more than a quarter of a century ago, yet her name appears regularly in discussions of our current economic turmoil. Pundits including Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santelli urge listeners to read her books, and her magnum opus, ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ is selling at a faster rate today than at any time during its 51-year history.”

The Wall Street Journal

Read more...



"Men have been taught that the ego is the synonym of evil, and selfishness the ideal of virtue. But the creator is the egoist in the absolute sense, and the selfless man is the one who does not think, feel, judge or act. These are functions of the self."

Ayn Rand
The Soul of an Individualist

"I've met a huge number of conservatives whose world view is what everyone selling a get rich quick scheme is just praying for: "Poor people are poor because they're lazy and stupid. I'm going up. Up. Up!" Unfortunately, like a lot of us, they get a crappy job that pays for shit and they don't go up. Up. Up!

Our would be revolutionaries have gone a step or three down the trail. Clearly anyone who disagrees with them and is doing better than them is part of a conspiracy to hold them back, and anyone doing worse, who is being supported in some way by the state is part of Ayn Rand's great unwashed that would fall into barbarism if not for their continued contribution to society. It's us vs. them! (Well, it's them vs. me, since I work in the sciences and my wife grows arugula and deer tongue in the back yard, but you know.)

Personally, I'm waiting for enough liberal types to get frightened by these guys, followed by the absolute hand waving freak-outery when FOX reports a poll that suggests that a lot more liberals are buying guns."

Kid Charlemagne

Maybe We Should Ban Guns In Commercials...

Maybe it's just me...Maybe I don't watch enough TV...

Here I am watching the NCAA Men's Basketball semi finals and they cut to a commercial. I thought it was a preview for some upcoming show, but it was a commercial for Jimmy John's sandwiches. In the commercial posted below, guns are blazing, people were being terrorized, etc. After the game, the news ran the story on the shooting and killing of three police officers in Pittsburgh.

Maybe it's time to ban guns in commercials. Below is a link to the commercial of which I speak:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00f2Ac9e98g&feature=player_embedded

Three officers die in US shooting



Police say N.Y. immigrant shooter's act no surprise

Another 1st & 2nd Amendment Defender...

Richard Andrew Poplawski was a young man convinced the nation was secretly controlled by a cabal that would eradicate freedom of speech, take away his guns and use the military to enslave the citizenry…

Pittsburgh police Officers Paul Sciullo III and Stephen Mayhle were about an hour short of ending their overnight shifts yesterday when 911 dispatched them to 1016 Fairfield St. in Stanton Heights at 7:05 a.m. The call, described as a domestic argument between a mother and son with no weapons involved, was also heard by Officer Eric Kelly, who had just finished his 11 p.m.-to-7 a.m. shift.

Still in uniform but driving his own white SUV to his Stanton Heights home, he decided to swing by Fairfield to back up his fellow officers from the Zone 5 station in East Liberty.

With 14 years on the force, Officer Kelly knew domestic calls can be the most dangerous an officer faces. This call would underscore that sad truth.

Within minutes, all three officers were fatally shot by the subject of the domestic call, later identified as Richard "Pop" Poplawski, 22. A discharged Marine, he adhered to a number of right-wing conspiracy theories and expressed fears of a "Zionist nation" revoking his right to own guns...

Read more @ the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.



"He was really into politics and really into the First and Second amendment. One thing he feared was he feared the gun ban because he thought that was going to take away peoples' right to defend themselves. He never spoke of going out to murder or to kill."

Edward Perkovic
Richard Andrew Poplawski's lifelong best friend


“Crazy to me is going through the motions. Crazy to me is letting each day slip past you. Crazy is being insignificant. Crazy is being obscure, pointless."

Richard Andrew Poplawski
Killer of three Pittsburgh policemen on 4/4/2009

Capitalism: A Coat of Many Colors

"Etymologically, 'capitalism' implies no more than a system that stresses the accumulation and use of capital—and all forms of economic organization do that. Some free-enterprisers even shun the word because it was popularized by Karl Marx and other socialist thinkers as a name for a system that they were attacking, and it retains a pejorative flavor. Adam Smith never mentioned capitalism in any of his works; he preferred the term natural order.

Still, the essentials of capitalism are clear. The touchstone is private ownership of most industry. A necessary corollary is that most production and services are motivated by the drive for profit. That in turn implies a relatively free market—one in which entrepreneurs can enter any kind of business they wish, and private businessmen make most of their own decisions.

Capitalism is associated with a high degree of political and social freedom, but that is not a requisite; some economists argue that Nazi Germany was capitalist because most of its industry was privately owned. Yugoslavia, on the other hand, is still outside the capitalist camp because most of its industries are state-owned, even though they compete in a market economy.

Other countries vary widely, from relatively straightforward capitalism, as in Singapore, Canada and Argentina, through mixed economies where the government owns only key industries (oil in Indonesia), to nearly total government control of business, as in Cuba, Algeria and Hungary.

Read more about the different shades of capitalism...

Politics In Black And White

"I finally figured out this politics, it's like show business. You start with a big opening act, coast, and close with a great crescendo."

Ronald Reagan
1974

1975: Can Capitalism Survive?

Looks like this isn't the first time the doomsayers of Capitalism's demise have raised their collective voices. Here's a cover story article from the 7/14/1975 issue of Time.
---
"An angry god may have endowed capitalism with inherent contradictions. But at least as an afterthought he was kind enough to make social reform surprisingly consistent with improved operation of the system."

John Kenneth Galbraith

“…Capitalism, Marx reckoned, would pour out more goods than workers could buy with the paltry wages that the system paid them. Wages might rise during a period of expansion, but that rise would cut into profits, leaving capitalists with too little investment money to keep the boom going, and the machine would falter into a slump.

Big capitalists would seize the opportunity to slash wages, buy up the plants and machinery of their ruined brethren and get the boom going again, but the cycle would repeat itself, leading to a worse crash. Eventually, ownership of the means of production would be concentrated among so few capitalists that they would be ripe for overthrow by a proletariat driven by increasing misery into revolution.

Though the apocalyptic prophecy was spectacularly wrong, Marx did point out two highly vulnerable areas in the system. His theory of capitalist concentration anticipated the rising power of large corporations, which can stifle competition and raise prices even in periods of weak demand. More important, Marx heralded the terrifying and prolonged depressions of the 1870s and the 1930s, which classical economics said the self-regulating market would never permit. The nightmare of the 1930s for a while threatened to give Marx the final word.

Fortunately, the Great Depression also inspired the most significant theories of John Maynard Keynes, the British economist who has often been called the savior of capitalism. Keynes insisted that a government could get the free economy moving up again by pumping in purchasing power—through tax cuts, heavy spending and the outright creation of money. Then production would increase, generating more savings, which would be invested. His prescription worked—though it took Government spending on the previously unimaginable scale of World War II to end the Depression. (Keynes also said that tax increases and spending cuts could help contain inflation, but popularly elected governments have seldom been brave enough to follow this part of the Keynesian prescription.)

Since World War II, all capitalist governments have become enthusiastically Keynesian. None would dream of leaving a depression, or even a severe recession, to right itself. By winning acceptance for the idea that government is responsible for the health of the economy, Keynes promoted a degree of state intervention into the market that has helped transform capitalism in a way that Smith never anticipated.

Keynesian philosophy accelerated the trend toward progressive legislation, which had been building in the U.S. since the days of the early trust busters and Teddy Roosevelt, and inspired a bewildering complex of interventionist policies. U.S. companies and entrepreneurs, for example, are restricted by banking and stock market regulations, antitrust prohibitions, consumer protection and antipollution laws, "affirmative action" programs that aim at forcing the hiring of more blacks and women, to name only a few measures. The poor who cannot sustain themselves in the market get Medicaid, welfare payments, food stamps.

Not all of this Government intervention has been beneficial, of course, and some of it has been downright harmful. The operations of federal transportation-regulation agencies, in particular, have often propped up prices and restricted competition. But this complex of laws has on the whole made capitalism both more humane and more effective…”

Read the Time cover story from July 14, 1975.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

"You let a Senator get some million dollar contribution behind him and you can't tell me that he wouldn't command some respect and that is what we have got to get back in our Senate that has been lost -- respect!"

Will Rogers

It's All About Decimal Point Placement

Political debate always sends me back to the history books. I was doing a little research on what was happening in and around 1976 and found some interesting quotes that show the debates is the same only the numbers have changed.

Recently a guy at the bar told me "When you were a kid, would you have ever thought that you'd be paying $150 for a pair of tennis shoes?"

I asked the guy who was in his mid-50s (my age), how much he paid when he was a kid. He said $15.

I asked him, "When you were a kid paying 15 cents for a medium come at the Dairy Queen, did you ever think you'd be paying $1.50 someday for a medium cone at the same Dairy Queen?"
---

"The fact is, we'll never build a lasting economic recovery by going deeper into debt at a faster rate than we ever have before. It took this nation 166 years until the middle of World War II to finally accumulate a debt of $95 billion. It took this administration just the last 12 months to add $95 billion to the debt. And this administration has run up almost one-fourth of the total national debt in just these short 19 months."

Ronald Reagan
March 31, 1976

"As a matter of fact, the Treasury Department just published a prototype consolidated financial statement last month, based on fiscal 1975 figures. It estimated that the deficit in fiscal 1975 was $152 billion, instead of $43 as the final budget figures for that year showed. So, we are really talking about more than a $160 or $165 billion deficit—far more—but even if it were only $165 billion, such a figure would be, and is, fraught with the most serious of implications."

Congressman Phillip Crane 1977
former Illinois Congressman from 1965-2005



"The 1976 Democratic Platform might well add another $200 billion in annual government spending and could, if implemented, create serious and protracted economic problems. The costs in the platform could amount to nearly $1,000 in new federal spending for every man, woman and child in the United States and would create real risks of a return to double-digit inflation which would rapidly erode the savings, earnings, and economic security of all Americans."

William Simon
Treasury Secretary under Nixon

Read more @ Imprimis.

An Unbalanced Check

"You see, in Washington they have two of these bodies, Senate and the House of Representatives. That is for the convenience of visitors. If there is nothing funny happening in one, there is sure to be in the other, and in case one body passes a good bill, the other can see it in time and kill it."

Will Rogers

Ignorance Begets Confidence

"It has often and confidently been asserted, that man's origin can never be known. But ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."

Charles Darwin



"Darwin didn't know 99 percent of what we know, but the 1 percent he did know was the most important part."

Francisco Ayala
University of California biologist

Congressman Paul Ryan -- The GOP's Future!

You read it here first...

Now that the adults have finally been purged from the Republican Party and knuckle daggers of the true conservative movement have taken over the junior high school, it's time for the fruit cake rhetoric to start surfacing.

Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) had its convention in Washington DC over the weekend and it looks like one Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan will be one of the rising stars of the conservative movement. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal inserted his credibility foot into his mouth, when told lies during his GOP response to Obama's speech last week. Sarah Palin is fading like the North Star in mid-June Alaska and the GOP Committee Chairman Michael Steele can't even explaining the difference between a job and work and whether or not work is a job.

So the GOP needs a fresh face and that looks to be Wisconsin's own Paul Ryan. Not only does he have the photogenic face, but he can use the words "Karl Marx" and "Ayn Rand" in the same sentence. I bet that sends a tingle up Shaun Hannity's leg...


"The Wisconsin Republican inferred that Obama's plan may sound familiar to those who follow political history. 'You see, what we have here is an update of [Karl] Marx's famous slogan -- 'From each according to their ability, to each according to his needs.' Now we have 'from the suckers who followed the rules, to those who borrowed beyond their means.'

Ryan says while Democrats want to impose a more intrusive state -- 'something out of an Ayn Rand novel' -- he is proposing an alternative conservative vision that involves "junking the tax code," cutting spending, as well as reforming health care, the federal budget, and the regulatory system."

Read more onenewnow.

Sunset On The Home Of The Brave

"It is still difficult for me to believe that I was abducted, hauled from one country to the next, and tortured in medieval ways -- all orchestrated by the United States government."

Binyam Mohamed
In the statement released by his attorneys at a London news conference



In accounts provided by his attorneys, Mohamed said that U.S. officials flew him to Morocco and that he was tortured there for 18 months. He said he was beaten and had his penis cut with a razor. He said he was then transferred to a CIA-run site in Afghanistan and was beaten there regularly before being transferred to Guantanamo in September 2004.


"The very worst moment came when I realized in Morocco that the people who were torturing me were receiving questions and materials from British intelligence. I had met with British intelligence in Pakistan. I had been open with them. Yet the very people who I had hoped would come to my rescue, I later realized, had allied themselves with my abusers."

Read more @ The Washington Post.


"A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we’re going to be successful. That’s the world these folks operate in. And so it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective."

Former Vice President Dick Cheney

Before & After: Stuck In The Middle With You

"This year marks the 400th anniversary of the year Galileo turned his first crude telescope to the heavens. Through it, he observed spots on the sun and shadow patterns proving that the moon had mountains and valleys. These visible "imperfections" helped overturn thousands of years of traditional belief that everything in the heavens must be smooth, perfect and unchanging...



One need not be religious to see that a cosmic perspective gives some universal meaning to our lives. We may be only a tiny part of a vast universe, but we are here, and, as a species, we have accomplished great things. We have created staggeringly beautiful works of art and music, we have performed acts of love and generosity that make even the most cynical among us quake with emotion, and we have developed mathematics and science that have enabled us to learn our place in the universe.

These are achievements of consequence. But the cosmic perspective also should teach us some humility, because the central lesson of Galileo's discoveries is that we humans are no more central to the universe than our planet or star. Future generations and alien civilizations may enjoy our human creations, but no one will come running to our rescue if we choose to destroy rather than to create.

Sadly, this lesson in humility seems not to have taken hold, despite the 400 years we have had to absorb it. Nearly everyone is now aware that we are not the center of the universe. But emotionally and behaviorally, our species still acts as though the whole of creation somehow revolves around each of us personally. How else can we explain tyrants and dictators? Or religious fanatics who believe that their God actually wants them to kill those who think differently? And before you let yourself off the hook, ask yourself honestly if you don't at least sometimes think that those who are poorer, sicker or otherwise less fortunate than you are also somehow a bit less central to the universe than you are..."

Jeffrey Bennett
Astrophysicist

Ray A Drop Of Golden Sun

"Music needs to make sense, needs to have order. From what some people consider the lowest stuff -- a cat in the middle of a cotton field shouting the blues -- to what's considered the highest -- a symphony or an opera -- it has to be structured...

...Blowing out notes in whichever way, whenever you please, paying no mind to the chord changes -- well, that doesn't hold me, doesn't make me want to listen. Far as I'm concerned, music should be beautiful, and the most beautiful aspect of music is its simplicity."

from Brother Ray
by Ray Charles & David Ritz

Join The Club

"At this point in my life I had long since lost respect for the law. I had already seen too much shit -- in the name of the law -- which made me sick to my stomach. I don't see the police as black or white. I see them as the law. And it was the law who I once saw, earlier in my career, pull a guy from his car in a parking lot outside a dance hall and scream in his face, "Nigger, didn't you see that goddamn stoplight back there?" When the man attempted to answer, the law slapped him upside the head with their billy clubs and said, "Keep your mouth shut while we're talking, nigger." That was the law. It's one thing to watch a bunch of hoodlums acting that way. It's another when the law is doing it."

from "Brother Ray"
by Ray Charles & David Ritz

Flag Pins In Black And White

"The more I saw, the more I realized how my own personal movement was limited. And the North was only a hair better than the South. Up there the hatred and prejudice was a bit more subtle, the hypocrisy a little slicker. You could change the lyrics, but the was still the same everywhere you went.

Don't get me wrong: I never blamed all the white people in America. I didn't fault all of any one group. Lots of white cats were afraid if they served blacks at their lunch counters or let blacks use the bathrooms in their gas stations, they might lose their whole business. After all, there were actual laws on the books against integration of any kind..."



"...Then there were the pressures of their friends. If a white dude was nice to a black, his partner might scream at him, "You a nigger lover or something? Next thing you know your daughter will be fucking a coon!"

On the other hand, I understood that the big Supreme Court decisions which were changing the laws about segregated schools were being made by white judges.

Still, every day I began to see that we were just starting to talk about getting certain things -- freedom to go to school, to eat in a truck stop, to piss in a bathroom -- that should have been ours all along."

from "Brother Ray: Ray Charles' Own Story"
by Ray Charles & David Ritz

America's "Freedom Ride"

"In the summer of 1962, blacks remained frustrated by the slow pace of progress toward equality. Martin Luther King Jr.'s SCLC, SNCC, and other groups, with their strategy of direct action involving boycotts, civil disobedience, nonviolent sit-ins, and mass demonstrations, had succeeded in dramatizing American racial injustice in the South and in focusing the attention of the nation and the world on it. This caused considerable embarrassment for the Kennedy administration at the time when America sought to compete effectively worldwide with Soviet communism and other repressive ideologies. At the United Nations and in other international forums, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Cuban rulers Fidel Castro, and other Communist spokesmen pointed to the racial turmoil in America as evidence of American hypocrisy in human rights.

In the mind of the President, direct action, with in cycle of escalating black demands followed by increasingly violent white backlash, threatened to rend America's tenuous social fabric. Black and white Freedom Riders were attacked and brutally beaten, their buses sometimes burned, by angry white mobs wielding ax handles, bicycle chains, and baseball bats. Local law enforcement, authorities, sympathetic to the rabble, frequently stood by idly as the violence transpired or even conspired to bring it about."

from "Thurgood Marshall: Warrior At The Bar, Rebel On The Bench"
by Michael D. Davis & Hunter R. Clark



"We could be driving for hours and never find a gas station which would let us use the bathroom. If we stopped by the side of the road, we stood a chance of getting busted, so we'd open both doors of the car and piss between them. We could be hungry as bears and go half a day before we'd find a joint that would serve us. The race thing hit us where is hurt -- in the stomach and in the balls."

from "Brother Ray: Ray Charles' Own Story"
by Ray Charles & David Ritz

Americans Don't Want The Hole Thing

"I saw an article today that indicated Wall Street bankers had given themselves $20 billion worth of bonuses ($18.4 billion, actually, according to New York comptroller). That is the height of irresponsibility. It is shameful...Part of what we're going to need is for the folks on Wall Street who are asking for help to show some restraint, some discipline and some sense of responsibility. The American people understand we've got a big hole we've got to dig ourselves out of. They don't like people digging a bigger hole even as they're being asked to fill it up."

President Obama


"There will be a time for them to make profits and a time for them to get bonuses. This is not that time."

President Obama

There Ain't No Honey On The Moon

The "stimulus package" must have been a big topic of discussion this weekend. To non-related people basically hit me with the same question today. The Rush Limbaugh Parrot squawked that Obama is driving the national debt to a level where he can't sleep at night worrying about his kids' future. He said we are turning in European democracies -- Rush says this a lot. When I asked if he knew anybody who lives in Europe, he said he knows someone who lives in Canada. I pointed out that Canada is not in Europe.

Other person called me and said, "Look what you Democratic President is doing!!! Who's going to pay for all this?"

They both voted for McCain and Bush twice. I pointed out that they need to remember that McCain interrupted his campaign to fly back to Washington to help push through the first stimulus package. So far, Obama is responsible for nothing concerning budget deficits and national debt. It's a Bush thing.

Christ the only Presidents that have driven up the national debt since 1950 are Reagan, Bush and Bush. It's good to see that gaining a new President doesn't necessarily mean the facts are going to start being used. Both said that the problem with the Democrats is that they don't know how to live within a budget. Both are college graduates and, I believe, a little confused.

The budget is being drawn up now. It's easy to live with in your budget, if you make your budget big enough. The question is...is the outgo exceeding the income and, if so, how are you going to finance the difference.

I amazed Obama made it two weeks as President before the 2012 Presidential election started. After Reagan, Bush and Bush spent 20 Presidential years telling us about shrinking government and now the talk has stopped. The battle in the Republican Party will now be between the US House and Senate v. the Republican governors.

And so it goes...

Questions & Solutions

"By standing united, we offered hope to struggling families and small businesses across America looking to Washington for real solutions to the challenges they face. We also made good on our pledge that Republicans will not simply be the party of opposition, but the party of better solutions."

John A. Boehner R-Ohio
House Minority Leader


"The question we ask today is not how big or small our government is, but whether it works."

President Barack Obama

Snack Time In America

"Qu'ils mangent de la brioche."

Marie Antoinette

Translation: "Let them eat rich, expensive, funny-shaped, yellow, eggy buns."

On Wednesday, Congress passed the $825 billion economic stimulus plan that is aimed at putting people to work in what some call a new New Deal, a reference to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's public works program in the 1930s and '40s.

Banks, automakers, even states. Industries, retailers, consumers: Across the board, the nation is hurting economically. On Monday alone, major U.S. firms announced a total of 62,000 job cuts as companies close stores and plants.

Despite crippling losses, multi-billion-dollar bailouts and the passing of some of the most prominent names in the business, employees at financial companies in New York, the now-diminished world capital of capital, collected an estimated $18.4 billion in bonuses for the year. That was the sixth-largest haul on record, according to a report released Wednesday by the New York State comptroller.



“I have no confidence that they intend or desire to change. These bankers got away with murder, and it’s obscene that close to nothing is being asked of financial institutions. I get incensed at the thought that a bank that’s getting billions of dollars in taxpayer money is out there buying fancy new airplanes.”

Senator Charles Levin

Citigroup had plans to get a new $50 million corporate jet, the exclusive Dassault Falcon 7X seating 12, after losing $28.5 billion in the past 15 months and receiving $345 billion in government investments and guarantees.

Former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain justified paying out large bonuses because "“If you don’t pay your best people, you will destroy your franchise."

While cutting payrolls and laying off people, Thain was planning a $1 million remodeling job of his office. The remodel included curtains for $28,000, a pair of chairs for $87,000, fabric for a “Roman Shade” for $11,000, Regency chairs for $24,000, six wall sconces for $2,700, a $13,000 chandelier in the private dining room and six dining chairs for $37,000, a “custom coffee table” for $16,000, an antique commode “on legs” for $35,000, and a $1,400 “parchment waste can.”

"The businesses that are shedding jobs to stay afloat, they can't afford inaction or delay. The workers who are returning home to tell their husbands and wives and children that they no longer have a job and all those who live in fear that their job will be next on the cutting blocks, they need help now."

President Obama


"How will billions spent on school snack programs and repairs to the Smithsonian Institution stimulate the economy? How will $3 billion being spent for a prevention and wellness fund stimulate the economy? It is clear that this spending package has become a one-stop shop for every item on a spending agenda - a massive, unprecedented spending bill aimed to bypass the normal appropriations process and subsidize a broad range of existing and new government programs."

Congressman Joe Wilson
R-South Carolina


During our lunch walk discussion yesterday -- a time we dedicate to finding the answers to all things big and small -- the following question was raised:

"Why should my taxes dollars go to feed after-school snacks to some other parents' kid?"

Feel free to provide your answers to this question...

Conspiracy Anyone?

I've been having an e-mail chat with an acquaintance of mine who is hardwired to Rush Limbaugh. Although he constantly tells me that he is opened minded about all things political, the only thing he mentions concerning his information is what he hears on Rush's daily show. He takes his lunch out to the car so he can get educated to Rushdumb.

He told me the group ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is one of the most radical groups in the nation and play a key role in Obama's election victory. I told him "ACORN" is a word used by the White Right as a code word for Blacks...especially intercity Blacks. Since ACORN is a visible group working in the inter cities of most large American cities, the likes of Rush and Hannity and Glen Beck and others to strike fear in the hearts of White Americans in large voting population areas. It didn't work.

Doing a little Internet research, I found an interesting web site (Discover The Network) that tracks the great left-wing conspiracy. You will find out who the evil doers are who are trying take over the all-white country clubs or America and make their little White daughters sit next to little Black boys in elementary school and share stimulus package snacks after school while waiting for the bus.

If you know of a corresponding website the helps track the vast right wing conspiracy, let me know.


Discussion question:

Which group is more radical ACORN, ACLU or NAACP and why?