Republicans Shoot Themselves in Foot, with a Democratic bullet.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/29/saltsman.obama.song/index.html

I am a long time listerner and sometime fan of the Rush Limbaugh radio show. For practically as long as his shown as run on radio, he has frequently run parodies that poke a great deal of fun at politicians and celebrities. One of his most common philosophies is to "illustrate the absurd by being absurd".

One of the more recent "illustrations" was a parody/filk song created and performed by musical satirist Paul Shanklin who is frequently featured on the Rush Limbaugh radio show. This particular song, "Barack, the Magic Negro" was inspried by an similarly entitled article written by David Eherenstein for the LA Times which appeared on March 17, 2007. Now, I should expect that anybody reading this blog would clearly know that a) Mr. Ehrenstein is certainly no right-wing demagogue and b) that the LA Times is not exactly a champion of Conservative values. In fact, Mr. Ehrenstein's article clearly points out that Senator Joe Biden (who later was chosen to be Obama's running mate) expressed the opinion that people like Barack because he "articulate" and "clean" and that major figures in the Civil Rights movement are dubious about Barack Obama's "authenticity" as a black man. The major point of the article is that Barack Obama affords "white America" the chance to assuage their "guilt" of black repression by supporting a non-threatening less militant person of color.

The song by Paul Shanklin takes very liberally (and in some cases, very literally) from this article printed by a left-leaning newspaper and written by a left-leaning writer.

Nearly every time that Mr. Limbaugh has played this parody on his show he has reminded his viewers that this song isn't an expression of how Republicans or conservatives feel about the President-elect but about how long-time civil rights activists and commentators of the political left of this country feel about him.

And yet, we now have this current imbroglio where a contender for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee who distributed copies of this song to friends and acquaintances is now being held in contempt by his colleagues for encouraging "racist" views.

I'd like to remind all who read this blog to remember that in this particular instance, the song being pilloried was nothing more than a satire of the expressions of Mr. Ehrenstein and printed in the LA Times. Consider the source, folks. Consider the source.

Follow Up to the Previous Post... "Enough".

I've recently found a fantastic financial advice show on the radio. The host is Dave Ramsey.

His byline: "Where the new status symbol is a paid-off mortgage instead of a BMW."

I like it. :p

"Enough" Needs to Become Part of our Culture Again.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D958II200&show_article=1

The following excerpt is pulled from the article hotlinked above:

"Boy, it really looks ugly for the start of 2009," said Tom Kloza, publisher and chief oil analyst at Oil Price Information Service.

"It's really difficult to find something between now and inauguration time that says people are going to feel better, they're going to drive more, they're going to ship more packages," Kloza said.

What Mr. Kloza was referring to is price of oil on December 22nd, which closed at about $38.00 per barrel.

I had a very good friend by the name of Monty King who expressed one of the most profound aphorisms I have ever heard. We were talking about how perverted the use of the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution had become. Specifically, we use it to silence Political dissent but we use it to defend people spraying graffiti on other people's property or to publish smut. What he said was "Glen, we are killing ourselves with our liberty." Wow.

What he said is just as applicable here. Just read what Mr. Kloza said: "... going to feel better, they're going to drive more, and they're going to ship more packages...". What he is saying is that he wants Americans spending more of their money. What he is lamenting is that Americans are no longer exercising their freedom to spend borrowed money. We've been doing that for over four decades now. And right now, the American people and/or American lending institutions are speaking loud and clear by keeping their wallets closed.

Here's a stat: According this CCN/Money article, American consumer debt fell .08% in the third quarter of 2008. A large part of this was due to home foreclosures. It also is the result of jobs being lost in a shrinking economy. While people losing homes and jobs is never pleasant to consider or worse, to endure, we need to really think about what this means.

1. Americans and their Government have been spending like drunken sailors for over four decades. American household savings are at their lowest in the last century. Instead, we've been buying new cars and flat-panel tvs and home theater system and game consoles. Worse, much of this spending has been on revolving credit debt, which can easily spiral into 24% to 35% interest rates per year.
   
2. The one factor buoyed our economy for the last ten years is the housing sector, specifically new house construction. These houses were being 100% financed using risky lending products (ARMs, sub-primes and interest-only loans) to buyers who were not being scrutinized with regard to their ability to satisfy their loan agreement. Hence, when ARMs started increasing or house values started dropping and people suddenly saw that they were in a negative equity position they simply walked away from their house loan because they had no real interest in the house.

Like all major events that occur in our lives this crisis will leave an effect. Banks and other financial institutions are now requiring a sizable down payment on house loans and proof of employment before a loan will be approved. Cars are a different matter. It sounds like we will continue to see 0% interest loans for some time, but I believe that we will continue to see a tightening in the approval process as banks require that the borrower prove that they can pay back their loan.

The larger question facing our nation is: Do we really need a new car every three years? Do we really need three flat panel TVs in the same house? Do we really need our houses to stay at 72 degrees all year long? Our whole economy and in fact our culture is based on who has the newest most expensive things. As an example, when I bought my house in Phoenix Arizona because of a relocation in 2007, the real-estate agent and the loan officer kept pushing me towards $500,000 houses when I only needed three bedrooms and two bathrooms. In other words, my wife and I made the decision that a $280,000 house was enough. Now, with home values plummeting the fact that I put 20% down and that this house is only 8 miles from where my wife's office is, I am thankful that I stuck to my plan.

Our generation (and the one before it) are now harvesting the crop we sowed for ourselves when as a nation we forgot our history (the Great Depression) and abandoned fiscal common sense. I can only hope that the youth of today will remember this crisis, that they will change their own personal policies towards financial discipline and FAR more importantly demand that the U.S. Federal Government does the same.

The true tragedy would be that after having experienced this crisis, that we would listen to people like Mr. Kloza who lament that we aren't spending more of our money driving or sending packages. Through our freedom to borrow money we ought not to spend on things we don't really need, we have been forging chains of indebtedness that will hold us thrall to our national debt, foreign investors and our own banks for decades to come.

Trump, Madoff and Greed

I don't like Donald Trump. He's not a nice person. But he's a darn shrewd business man and has done extraordinarily well in the hotly contested New York real-estate market because people trust him and he delivers.

So when "the Donald" calls a guy like Bernard Maddoff (Investment scammer who bilked nearly $50 billion from people) a "scumbag" I think that he's right on the money.

"The Donald" also had a word of warning. When asked about people who had placed 100% of their investments, even mortgaged their houses to give Madoff more money to "invest", he had one word to describe them; "Greed". When asked what he thought of people that had completely trusted Madoff with 100% of their assets, he responded with "But when you think of a person putting up 100 percent of their net worth and even mortgaging their house, even though they had a lot of cash -- mortgaging their house to get more cash to this guy." and "The word is very simple. It's a word called "greed." Greed. That's all it is. People were greedy."

Yup.

Greed can inspire and motivate. But like so many other things in our lives, unbridled and uncontrolled greed will bring disaster.

Update On March 12, 2009, Mr. Madoff plead guilty to the charges of running a "Ponzi" scheme and bilking thousands of investors out of billions. There is a very real chance that he will be sentenced to enough time in prison that once he goes in, he will never experience freedom again. OK by me.

To the RNC. Stop Asking for Donations. You Aren't Going to Get Any From Me.

What follows is a not so cleverly worded letter describing the primary reasons the RNC aren't likely to get any donations from me. I mailed this letter in response to a request from "Laura Bush" to donate after thanking me for my "unwavering support" of Pres. Bush. Heh.

---

Date: 12/17/2008

To: Republican National Committee
310 First Street SE
PO Box 98206
Washington DC 20077-7561

Subject: Continued Support of the RNC

To Whom It May Concern:

Thank you for the kind letter dated November 28th which thanked me for my “unwavering support” of President Bush and his policies during the last eight years and requesting an additional donation to the Republican National Committee coffers.

Regretfully, I do NOT support President Bush on a wide range of issues. Most certainly my support cannot be categorized as “unwavering”. While I appreciate and am thankful for President Bush’s efforts and policies with regards to the defense of the homeland and tracking down Islamic fundamentalist terrorists wherever they can be found, very little else about his policies find a sympathetic ear from me.

In 2004, President Bush presided over the single largest expansion of the Medicare/Medicaid system when they pushed through the prescription drug benefit program. This was a benefit that was written primarily by pharmaceutical companies for the benefit of the pharmaceutical companies.

Under President Bush, although a commitment to control the southern border of this nation has been made we have less than 100 miles of electronic or physical barriers to illegal entry into our nation. We have anywhere from 12 to 20 million persons living in this country whom we no nothing about. These illegal immigrants perpetrate much of the crime in my home state of Arizona. Of the last eight peace officers lost in the line of duty in Maricopa county, six were slain by illegal immigrants who were either suspects of a crime or in the act of committing a crime.

Connected to the situation above, both President Bush and John McCain supported the 2006 Immigration Reform bill. This bill’s intention was quite clear. Provide amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants while hundreds of thousands of other immigrants who have been patiently working towards naturalized citizen status continue to wait, wait, wait. I have a Canadian friend who has been working towards U.S. citizenship for over 8 years. He is highly skilled, college educated with a good paying job in this country. Need I tell you how he feels about the millions of illegal immigrants who have “jumped the line”?

While “No Child Left Behind” was a great concept, the President failed to produce the necessary pressure to properly fund it and in my opinion this program has failed miserably in meeting it’s projected goals.

To this date the general public has not been given a satisfactory answer concerning the massive intelligence failure that lead the United States and the “Coalition of the Willing” to invade Iraq, a sovereign nation. As you are doubtless aware, almost none of the evidence presented by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell to both the United Nations and the American people has been uncovered after more than five years of occupation by Coalition forces in Iraq. As a brief list to remind you; No mobile chemical weapon development labs, no evidence of nuclear weapons development after 1991, no large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons and no real evidence of Al Qaeda links to Iraq prior to the invasion. While I am not at all unhappy about the liberation of the Iraqi people from under the heavy-handed tyranny of the Ba’athist Party and the removal of Saddam Hussein from the Iraqi government, I am most unhappy that the those who provided clearly incorrect (dare I say falsified?) intelligence that prompted us to go to war have never been publicly sanctioned or otherwise prosecuted.

It is my belief that because of the focus on Iraq that we have lost critical progress in the Afghanistan theater. I further believe that the invasion of Iraq, now that the pre-war intelligence has been proven mostly false, squandered much of the good will that the world felt towards the United States in the immediate aftermath of the September 11th calamity.

United States unilateral attacks against targets of opportunity in Pakistan are further undermining our position in the world’s eyes. The United States must work with the Pakistani government, which up until now has been moderate towards us. These attacks are killing as many civilians as they are terrorist leaders are building resentment which threatens to push Pakistan completely against us.

While the mortgage lending crisis has been building for many years and whose genesis exists in the Clinton administration, the President as well as the Republican Congressional leadership failed to properly expose the danger to our general economy. I will give John McCain and Mitch McConnel credit for trying to expose Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but they didn’t do nearly enough. The “ebullient exuberance” of unrealistic property values, risky lending practices to those who could not be reasonably expected to repay their loans has generated the greatest financial crisis this nation has faced since the 1930s.

Under President Bush, the Federal Government has become bloated. Under his leadership at the helm of the Ship of State, the Republicans lost their way. Even if one accounts for the necessary increase in expenditure for Homeland Defense and the wars we are fighting abroad, government bureaucracy is larger today than ever. The deficit, even prior to the financial market collapse in 2008, was exploding. The Republicans have completely lost their credibility with regards to fiscal and financial discipline. For this reason, more than any other, I cannot in good conscience continue to donate to the RNC until fundamental changes are made to the basic platform that once distinguished the GOP from the leftist Democratic party. I doubt that this letter will ever be read or a response made to it, but please understand that until the Republican Party once against stands for smaller Federal government, less regulation and interference in the lives of individual citizens, I will not support the RNC in any other manner than occasionally donating to the election campaign of a candidate that opposes a leftist.

Respectfully and with much regret,


Me

So are Low Gas Prices Bush's fault too?

Hey! Mr. Lefty Liberal Bush-haters!

Gasoline is selling nationally for around $1.80 per gallon and oil (today) was trading for around $43.00/bbl. Since Bush is still in the White House, is it Bush's fault? Funny, I haven't heard a single libby source (CNN, DailyKOS, MoveOn, MSNBC, etc ad nauseaum) crediting the Bush Administration with lower fuel prices.

OK. I'm being a little capricious. I know EXACTLY why gas prices are down. It's because Americans (as well as people in other nations) are buying a LOT less fuel because of the economic melt-down.

But what really steams my taters is that when gas prices were high, nobody was blaming it on the true culprits, which were low supply, high demand from Americans driving cars that only get 12-17 mpg because they love their muscle cars, trucks, SUVs and big luxury sedans.

Americans have become so poorly educated that they are swallowing the swill being provided by the main media outlets without doing their own fact-checking or even using their natural ability to reason. The President, influential though he is, can no more control our economy than flap his arms to fly to the moon. CONGRESS has much more influence over economic policy. The President is, by design, our chief Law-enforcement executive. Other than by collecting fines for traffic tickets, since when did any law-enforcement agency ever contribute to our economy?

Lower Gas Prices: Can this be Bad?

http://www.patriotledger.com/business/x1881115149/Gulf-Oil-CEO-says-lower-gas-prices-ahead

According to the linked article, Gulf Oil chairman Joe Petrowski said that it's possible that oil could be trading for around $20 per barrel and that gasoline could sell for around $1.00 a gallon at the pump by "early" 2009.

While I would love to see gas go to a buck a gallon, it actually wouldn't be good for us, for the following reasons:

1) The US automakers (if they survive) are now heavily invested in alternative fuel cars. I believe it is in our best national interest to push these programs forward and offer these alternatives to gasoline or even diesel powered vehicles. Unreasonably low fuel prices will cause us to take our "eye off the ball" just like we did after the 1974 oil crisis. The United States needs to become a leader in economical vehicle construction. I should point out that the fleet MPG for GM is actually lower than the fleet MPG for Toyota. IN FACT, American-made cars made to sell in Europe compare favorably to their European counterparts. The problem is the American car-buyer wants a BIG car. On the non-automotive side, heating oil and gas being cheaper will be a welcome relief to people on fixed income, but at the expense of losing focus on developing alternative energy sources to augment what petroleum-sourced energy can provide. Solar, hydrogen, fuel-cell, wind, biofuel: All these can help reduce our dependence on petro-energy but none of them can replace it.

2) Americans are now seriously looking at alternatives to automobiles for daily transportation to-from work. Cheap gas will only encourage us to get back in our cars.

3) At $1.00 per gallon, we're not collecting enough in taxes. "What!?" you say? Glen is saying we need more taxes? Well, no. But I realize that for certain things, like infrastructure maintenance and growth, we need a certain level of taxation. Even with the taxes that were being collected when gas was $2.50+ per gallon we were unable to keep up with the maintenance needs of our existing infrastructure.

4) With oil generating significantly smaller profits for their producers, there will be less money to put into R&D for the very alternatives that we so desperately require.

So yes, $1.00/gallon gas is not as good for our economy as you might initially think.

Why isn't the rescue package working?

So even after almost 2.2 billion dollars in Federal taxpayer money being flooded into the financial sector, we are still hearing people complaining that the "credit market is tight", which apparently is a euphemism for "nobody can get a loan!" What!? After we've put over two billion dollars of Federal taxpayer money into the system?

Elizabeth Warren, the chairwoman of the oversight panel for the U.S. "bailout", complained about a lack of a coherent strategy to loosen credit. "You can't just say, 'Credit isn't moving through the system,' " she said in her first public comments since being named to the panel. "You have to ask why."

If the answer is that banks do not have money to lend, it would make sense to push capital into their hands, as the Treasury has been doing over the last two months, she continued. But if the answer is that their potential borrowers are getting less creditworthy with each passing day (empahsis by me), "pouring money into banks isn't going to fix that problem," she said.

I can tell you right now that just based on a couple of phone calls to some friends of mine in the real-estate business that the problem is more likely to be the latter rather than the former. According to an agent that works for Russ Lyon Realty in Phoenix, if you want to borrow to buy a house you better have 20% down (no more 100% financing) and prove that you can afford the loan (in other words, you have a steady job and that the mortgage won't represent more than 30% of your gross income).

Listening to the Rush Limbaugh show today, I heard the guest host (Rush was ill today) that banks reported an overall increase in their liquid cash holdings of between 14% to 18% since the previous year. How can that be unless they are not lending the money the Federal government has pumped into the system?

While this financial crisis is bad, it's nowhere near the level of calamity that befell our economy in the 1930's, where 30% of all banks failed, and 30% of our population were unemployed. However, with our citizens guilty of living a life of immediate gratification and failure to save for the future, it's impact is devastating to millions of households across our nation, not to mention the larger global community.

In 2002 I nearly declared bankruptcy. I won't go into the details, but in order to stave off bankruptcy I wracked up over forty-five thousand dollars in credit card debt. Since then, we have managed to pay down over 40% of that debt. That hasn't been easy. We are now trying accelerate that payoff and hope to have 60% of that debt gone by the end of 2009. That means no new cars, very few new clothes, and a virtual halt to our home improvement projects. But so be it. Fortunately, we have been paying into our retirements (401(k) mutuals, mostly) without fail. Even though our current "paper loss" is at about 30%, we are now buying stocks through our mutual funds for dimes on the dollar. When the market bounces back, as inevitably will, those who had the guts to stick it out are going to see a dramatic increase in their portfolios, provided that their holdings are diverse and not solely tied up in businesses that are going to fail.

So, knowing all of this, I checked my credit report and I also talked to a friend of mine in the banking industy. My Experian Credit score is good. Not great. Nope, you don't get to know my exact credit score. It's better than it has been in five years. However, having said that, if I wanted to buy a house the mortgage company would expect me to put at least 15% down and that would not earn me their best interest rate. If I wanted that, I would have to put down 20%, and I would also be better off going with a 20 year loan, not a 30 year loan. So even though I have held the same job for five years, the days where I could finance 100% of the value of a house purchase are over. In my opinion, good riddance.

But, it does mean that even though banks and other financial institutions have more cash on hand than they've had in the last couple of years, they aren't lending because they've tightened their lending standards (which is good) for people asking for loans to buy everything from houses to cars to electronics.

So, getting back around to the original question: "Why isn't the rescue package working?" The answer: Its because lending institutions are not willing to go back to the bad practice of financing 100% of a purchase for people who cannot prove that they cannot pay back the loans they are asking for. We don't have a credit-liquidity problem. We have a credit-worthiness problem. And all the money in the Federal Treasury (is there any money left in the Federal Treasury?) will not solve that problem.

America's Youth are more dishonest than ever.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=081201214432.rjut4n2u&show_article=1

Well, I'd love to say it ain't so but as a person who has served on the adult advisory councils of both a young men's and a young women's organization, I can tell you that I've known about this for years.

According to the hotlinked article, which reports the findings of the "2008 Report Card on the Ethics of American Youth":

1. 83 percent of all youth in public and private religious schools had lied to their parents about "something important", compared to 78 percent of those students in independent schools.
2. 30 percent students admitted to stealing from a store in the last year.
3. When asked if they had cheated on an exam, 64% of public schools students, 63% of religious school students and 47% of independent school students responded "yes".

This does not bode well for our next generation. These are the people that will be our political leaders, in the government bureaucracy, in our military in positions from enlisted to commanding generals, in our police and other law enforcement.

And yet we continue to support the NEA? What's worse, is that even in religious schools, cheating is up! Where are they learning this? Could it be that our culture's instant gratification and "gotta have it at any cost" mentality means that our children are putting material gain in front of any kind of firmly grounded principles. What has happened to the civic education of our children? I'll tell you. In my opinion, it is "moral relativism" that comes from not grounding what we teach our children in sound foundations of moral and ethical behavior. That means standards.

Our culture is spiraling out of control fast. I'd recommend any parent that is not actively involved with their children, or more importantly, they and their children are not actively involved in some kind of youth organization (may I recommend either www.demolay.org or www.iojd.org as suggestions?) that they are only contributing to the ever increasing slide of our culture into moral decay.