I’ve Long Said, “We Haven’t Seen Anything Yet...The Worst is Yet to Come”...and Peggy Noonan Explains WHY That’s Right...

When the Keynesian meddling in the U.S. mortgage market finally imploded the Housing Bubble and brought on a staggering Global Credit Crisis and an ongoing recession, I said and have since, that “We haven’t seen anything yet...the WORST is yet to come.”

I am more convinced of that than ever.

Since the previous milqtoast Keynesian left office, our current hyper-Keynesian-in-Chief has ratcheted UP the Deficit to a mind boggling $1.6 TRILLION...4X what it was at his predecessor’s highest, the National Debt has surpassed $12 TRILLION (approaching 80% of GDP) virtually assured of rising to over $15 TRILLION (or more) before the end of Mr. Obama’s first term.

Unemployment has risen to near 10% and despite the fact that economists are now claiming the Credit Crisis is largely behind us and the recession appears over, we aren’t merely in the midst of a “jobless recovery,” we’re actually in what might best be described as a “job-shedding recovery,” which would seem an oxymoron.

Here’s why I believe the worst is yet to come.

This recession is structurally DIFFERENT.

The government meddling in the credit markets have deeply, perhaps fatally eroded international confidence in U.S. investment vehicles.

Worse still, a new administration has approached a problem caused by Keynesian (big-government) economic policies and treated it as though it were a failure of a “too free market.”

The result has been that they’ve applied MORE Keynesianism, even hyper-Keynesianism to a Keynesian disaster!

What is ongoing right now is the settling of the crash...the building, or structure is down, but the dust hasn’t settled yet. None of us actually see how bad it really is.

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How bad is it?

Well, Wall Street is NOT, contrary to our over-optimistic reports “coming back.” It’ll probably never come back to what it once was. With it is gone tons of revenues that the local, state and federal government all depended upon.

To make matters worse, high tax, Blue states like California, New York and New Jersey are hemorrhaging people AND tax dollars. They will lose Congressional seats with the 2010 Census and Red States like Texas, Florida and Arizona are about to gain seats.

But that’s the least of our (“the people’s” problem, that’s a mere political shift), what’s staring those in places like California, New York and New Jersey in the face is a fiscal tsunami that no one appears to see coming.

New York state lost 1.6 million people between 2002 and 2008, New Jersey lost 800,000 between 2002 and 2006. These weren’t “the freeloading poor,” who left, these were retirees who could no longer afford the tax burdens on a fixed income, and the entrepreneurial class...these people took tens of BILLIONS (USD) in tax dollars away with them.

Those states all have mandates for things like Medicaid spending, Education spending and Municipal Pensions locked in by their state Constitutions. They can’t cut those things, so they’ll be forced to raise taxes even more...chasing even MORE of the most productive remaining people away from those states.

Massive public sector layoffs will ultimately and inevitably ensue and by the time that shock wave hits, the dire 1970s will look like the “Roaring 20’s” by comparison.

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With all this economic dislocation, those places will suffer a return to some of the worst levels of violent crime those locales have ever seen. This time, much if it may be fueled by “the rage of a once privileged class” – government, or public sector employees...or more aptly by then, former employees.

As Ms. Noonan remarked in her prescient column, “No one believes the bad time is over. No one thinks we're entering a new age of abundance. No one thinks it will ever be the same as before 2008. Economists, statisticians, forecasters and market specialists will argue about what the new numbers mean, but no one believes them, either. Among the things swept away in 2008 was public confidence in the experts. The experts missed the crash. They'll miss the meaning of this moment, too.”

She’s right. No one trusts “the experts” any more, in fact, fewer trust in government or Corporations either.

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Too many of us are convinced, after seeing the parade of dolts touted as “experts” sounding like utter nitwits, that “there are no real experts.” In short that “They’re all full of sh*t.”

Peggy Nonnan goes on, “The biggest threat to America right now is not government spending, huge deficits, foreign ownership of our debt, world terrorism, two wars, potential epidemics or nuts with nukes. The biggest long-term threat is that people are becoming and have become disheartened, that this condition is reaching critical mass, and that it afflicts most broadly and deeply those members of the American leadership class who are not in Washington, most especially those in business.”

And once again, absolutely RIGHT!

Actions and inaction have consequences.

The previous administration’s inaction in the realm of enforcement (taking, or at least leaving the teeth out of the SEC and the CFTC) allowed Derivatives markets to run amok, and for schemes like the “Credit Default Swap” to come into incredible overuse, while it’s actions (ponderous overspending and regulation – Oxley-Sarbannes was one of the most expensive and far-reaching pieces of financial regulation in decades) put a four-anchor drag on an already slowing economy.

And today, the Liberal Democrats have pressed down on the Keynesian throttle, which is heading us toward a seizing of this incredible engine of prosperity.

How?

How about this from Peggy Noonan, “Rep. Barney Frank had just said on some cable show that the Democrats of the White House and Congress "are trying on every front to increase the role of government in the regulatory area." The executive said of Washington: "They don't understand that people can just stop, get out. I have friends and colleagues who've said to me 'I'm done.'" He spoke of his own increasing tax burden and said, "They don't understand that if they start to tax me so that I'm paying 60%, 55%, I'll stop."

Yes, “THEY” will stop.

The producers CAN and WILL ultimately stop, once the rewards are set too low and the costs and risks too high.

And what THAT would do would be to make what’s about to happen to hapless locales like California, New Jersey and New York a nationwide phenomenon.

Imagine a government without the revenues to take care of its most basic mandates, let alone fulfill the incredible and unrealistic promises it’s made over most of the last century? Imagine the massive jettisoning and cuts in once untouchable programs, like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the myriad anti-poverty programs, just as the private sector gasps, in gacking up even more jobs, while government at EVERY level shedding personnel in a panicked attempt to balance the books to repay the mere interest on a debt it can no longer even finance! Imagine sky-high interest rates (25% and more), massive unemployment (over 20%) and inflation we haven’t seen in decades (15% or higher)...with literally no place to turn!

Ms. Noonan knows this all too well as she concludes her piece, “We are governed at all levels by America's luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they're not optimists — they're unimaginative. They don't have faith, they've just never been foreclosed on. They are stupid and they are callous, and they don't mind it when people become disheartened. They don't even notice.”

So, THIS is that “long winter of discontent” that we now face, this is the nightmare that awaits.

There’s no question about it’s coming, the problem and our disaster right now appears to be that NONE of us have either faith or the moral courage to believe in and realize that freeing the individual (economic freedom) and unleashing the innate ingenuity of free men is not only the best, but the ONLY path back toward prosperity.

Such freedom is out of vogue today, because it’s been proven so “UNFAIR.”

See Peggy Noonan’s entire Op-Ed in today’s Weekend Wall Street Journal (10-31-2009) at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703363704574503631430926354.html?mod=djmr_octuse6npurl2

Why The GOP May Have Screwed New Jersey AGAIN!...

I was among the many Conservatives disappointed YET AGAIN, by the Garden State’s elective malfeasance when that state’s GOP got behind Party hack Chris Christie instead of the true Conservative, Steve Lonnegan in this year's GOP Primary.

I was disappointed, but NOT surprised. I used to look longingly across the Hudson, not much, and for a long time now...New Jersey is every bit as corrupt, over-taxed and over-regulated as New York is.
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Last time around, they virtually tanked the Governor’s race by pushing another ill-conceived and ill-considered political hack, Douglas Forrester, over the maverick, Libertarian/Conservative Brett Schundler, who’d transformed Jersey City, winning in a town with a Democratic registration edge of better than 4 to 1!
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The GOP’s backing the more Moderate and politically connected Christie over Steve Lonnegan may yet come back to haunt that star-crossed Party. That state’s PRIMARY issue is its property tax burden, the highest in the nation and yet Christie seems to have NO PLAN on how to exactly deal with that.
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As Phil Mulshine of the Newark Star Ledger recently wrote, “New Jersey's constitution gives the state legislature the power to distribute proceeds of the state's income tax to aid local education and partially relieve the burden of property taxes. But in a succession of school-funding cases over the years, the state Supreme Court has taken control of the $11 billion Property Tax Relief Fund.
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"The result is a perennial property-tax crisis. The court sends more than half of the state aid to 31 largely urban "special needs" school districts, the special needs of which were for the most part created by decades of Democratic mismanagement. The remaining 554 largely suburban towns fight over the rest.
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"Perhaps the best example of the court's profligacy is Asbury Park. With beautiful beaches and historic downtown served by a train line to Manhattan, the city could rank among the most desirable destinations on the coast. But a succession of corrupt and incompetent administrations turned the town into a wasteland.

"The public schools produce dismal test scores. Yet thanks to the court they are subsidized at almost incomprehensible levels. The city gets $29,895 per-pupil annually in education aid from the state. The total per-pupil cost exceeds $35,000 annually— enough to ship the kids off to prep schools where they would get top-notch schooling and room and board. The average per-pupil cost across the state is about $18,000.
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"It's impossible to solve New Jersey's property-tax problem without addressing the imbalance in state education funding."
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That’s been the problem for the New Jersey GOP and, for that matter, for the entire Northeast’s GOP – the Moderate Republican hierarchy can’t make effective arguments for Reaganism and Conservatism. They’ve mistakenly come to believe that such arguments can’t be made (“Well, if we can’t make them...”) but truth be told, it’s merely a matter of their being unable to make an argument for an ideology they don’t really subscribe to or believe in.
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Brett Schundler PROVED that such arguments CAN be made and in the heart of liberal Democratic urban areas. But does the northeast GOP support and recruit the likes of Brett Schundler?
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No, they revile them.
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For that reason, the northeast’s GOP has become a cancer on the body politic and a blight on the national GOP.
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The GOP's RINOs are BOTH moral cowards and people devoid of any real ideas.
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That was clearly on display today in the “ACORN Republican,” Dede Scozzafava abandoning the GOP slot in the race for New York’s 23rd District, allowing Mike Steele and Newt Gingrich to save a little face by belatedly jumping on the surging Hoffman bandwagon.
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The National GOP acceded to the NYS GOP in endorsing Ms. Scozzafava, claiming it was “safer to go with a Moderate” (and by “moderate” they mean a card check-supporting, ACORN-loving, big-government tax and spender)...yeah that sounds about right.
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Look, the National GOP desperately NEEDS to take stock of itself. Haven’t the Moderates, the Rockefeller-wing of that Party humiliated you guys enough?!
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Either straighten those dopes out or simply excommunicate them from your Party. They’re KILLING YOU!
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So, by comparison, just how bad are things in New Jersey? Well, again, according to Mr. Mulshine, “Suburban property taxes are high because the state Supreme Court has turned the property-tax system into a massive scheme to transfer wealth from the suburbs to the cities.
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“Thanks to the court's meddling, Mendham gets back in education aid a mere 4% of the tax dollars paid by its residents to the state. That's typical for a suburb. Asbury Park gets back 800% and Newark 600%. “During the spring primary race, both of Mr. Christie's opponents said they would confront the court to win equal funding for the suburbs. Both also said that, with four openings expected on the court in the next governor's term, they would use the opportunity to remake the court.”
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Why?...WHY?...WHY???

Why does ANY Republican support this inane kind of “FROM each according to his abilities or worth and TO each according to his needs or wants?”
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That’s NOT a winning strategy at all. Besides, when voters are faced with a choice between a tepid Liberal (“moderate” Republican) and a confident, full-blown liberal ("progressive" Democrat), they’ll choose the REAL liberal (the Democrat) EVERY time! At least THAT candidate is adhering to some set of "core values."
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The GOP can’t afford to offer “Liberalism-Light.” Simply put, no one wants that. They’re faced, for better or worse, with offering Conservatism, or nothing at all.
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Think I’m wrong? Guess again. As Mr. Mulshine concludes, “Meanwhile, independent candidate Chris Daggett has proven how potent property tax reform is. He proposes expanding sales taxes and using the proceeds to fund a 25% property-tax cut. It's not a great plan. But with it Mr. Daggett, a 59-year-old former Republican who served as an environmental administrator under President Ronald Reagan, climbed to double digits in the polls.
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“Most observers believe Mr. Daggett's following is at Mr. Christie's expense and could pave the way for Mr. Corzine to win re-election with much less than 50% of the vote. A race that was supposed to be a Republican runaway is now too close to call. The Republican's reticence on what should have been his strongest issue may end up costing him the governorship.”
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Read it and weep you northeast RINOs.
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See Phil Mulshine's full article in the Weekend Journal (10-31-09) at

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703574604574499722466073690.html

A Tale of Two Rape-Tortures...

What an odd juxtaposition of events.

Ironically enough, on the very same week that Megan Williams (pictured above, left), the black West Virginia woman who was the center of a media sensation trial in 2007, one that resulted in seven alleged attackers all being convicted and sent to prison for kidnapping, rape and torture, recanted her story, now claiming she made up the kidnapping, torture story because she was mad at a boyfriend who’d beat her, four arrests were made in a savage gang rape (unlawful imprisonment and rape-torture) at Richmond High School, right outside San Francisco.

In the case of Megan Williams recanting her story, the Associated Press reported, “An attorney for a black woman who claimed torture by a white group in West Virginia says his client fabricated the story to get back at a boyfriend who had beaten her up.

“Megan Williams' attorney, Byron Potts, said at a news conference Wednesday that Williams came forward because she no longer wants to live a lie. Potts encouraged West Virginia authorities to re-evaluate the case.

“Williams told authorities in 2007 that she had been beaten, raped, forced to eat animal feces and taunted with racial slurs for days. She now lives in Columbus.”

As for the Richmond gang rape, the AP reported, “Four teens could appear in court as early as Thursday after being charged in the alleged gang rape of a 15-year-old girl outside her high school homecoming dance in Northern California.

“The four — ages 15, 16, 17 and 19 — were charged Wednesday with rape and enhancements that they acted in concert, which could make them eligible for life in prison."

Something's very DIFFERENT in the coverage of those two cases...hmmmm, what could it possibly be?

Can you see the difference?

In the first story, about a black victim who is recanting her accusations, the race of BOTH the alleged “victim”/false accuser AND her alleged attackers is made known (as were BOTH races mentioned in all the original reports back in 2007)...in the second, in which a white 15 y/o girl was raped and tortured (“Besides rape, the 19-year-old, Manuel Ortega (pictured above, right) of Richmond, was charged with robbery and assault causing great bodily injury...The other three face one count each of felony rape with a foreign object...” – that’s “TORTURE”) NEITHER the race of the victim OR the alleged attackers was made known.

You know, if it weren’t for the very passionate protestations from the press claiming that “we’re always careful in protecting the identities of both victims and suspects in such highly sensitive incidents,” you might easily get the idea that maybe there’s some deliberate policy with America’s news media that allows black victims of white attackers to be treated different/BETTER than white victims attacked by racial minorities.

Of course, I’m sure anyone in the news media would quickly assert how silly such an assumption would be...right?

Moreover, in that second case, “Police believe as many as 10 people ranging in age from 15 to mid-20s attacked the girl for more than two hours in a dimly lit area. As many as two dozen people witnessed the rape without notifying police.” Apparently a white teenaged victim merits about as much sympathy in “the hood” as she’s likely to get in, say, your average American newsroom.

Something I saw, this same week on Lawrence Auster’s GREAT blog, A View From the Right (http://www.amnation.com/vfr/) really puts some of this into a clearer perspective. Perhaps nothing I’ve read recently hast better put into perspective the sense of the innately pernicious nature of modern liberalism than THIS, from one of Lawrence Auster’s readers, Kevin V., who wrote;

“As I've told you, as a young man I was a very earnest left-winger. I attended Cal and was active in left wing politics as an undergrad, primary with the Socialist Worker's Party and, later, with Michael Harrington's Democratic Socialists of America. For most of this time I lived in the city of Albany, California, which, if you look at a map of the East Bay on Google you'll find nestled between Berkeley and Richmond, with San Pablo Avenue being a main thoroughfare through all three cities.

“My life - education, work, socializing, leisure, political activity, going out to eat, everything - was centered around this part of Contra Costa County for six long years. Years that are, by far, the absolute worst years of my life. It was during this painful period that I experienced two life-changing realizations.

“First, the earlier, was that the type of society that my ideals produced was not one I wished to live in. Simply put, liberalism didn't work. Interpersonal relations were coarse, the culture low, the work atmosphere almost unbearable, the racial tension was hateful, government at all levels simply did not function properly, public transport was a dangerous shambles, and everywhere the result of this failed state of affairs was the de facto rule of the tough guy, the thug.

“That was hard enough to go through - the loss of one's ideals is no easy to take even if necessary - but it was the second realization that was the most painful of all. After spending a certain amount of time in Richmond and Berkeley I realized that it wasn't simply that liberalism is wrong-headed and does not work, but that it is actively evil. Interpersonal relations are coarse because liberals actively hate real people and are endlessly self-absorbed. The culture is low because the culture is evil, it actively works to debase, to debauch, to tear down anything having anything to do with beauty or truth, because it is a standing rebuke. The work atmosphere was unbearable because each person was concerned about his rights to an obsessive degree, with every simple request becoming an assault on a liberal's personhood and individual sovereignty.

“And, worse, that racial tension was high not just because of liberalism but because blacks and Latinos actively despise white people, they hate us, with a burning passion.

“And at the heart of this evil was the rancid city of Richmond, whose streets I had to pass through every night on the way home from work. Every night, the same whooping mob cheering on a 25-on-1 assault in a convenience store parking lot, the push-and-shove match between competing tribes of top dogs outside the bars and nightclubs, the barely understandable swear-word filled tirades of crying, out-of-control black women, the same beat-up squad cars responding to the same places dealing with the same people over and over and over again, night after night. The bars on the windows, the razor wire along business rooftops, the trash strewn about, the mocking laughter of packs of young men--always in packs.

“So, no, I'm not surprised. And I say this by way of explaining my initial reaction to the story: Any white parent who would send their daughter to school in such a place is beyond mere idiocy, beyond mere lunacy, beyond mere misjudgment. Such a person is an ideologue who is deliberately exposing their child to danger in the name of their ideology, because to do otherwise, to recognize the evil in the air there would bring their entire world view down around them.

“And I was once one of them, though, thankfully, not when I had children.”

(http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/014633.html)

Yes, that last bit might sound a little like blaming the victim, but it’s really blaming utopianist and irresponsible parenting, by (probably) well-meaning, but hopelessly naïve parents...THAT and all of ours failure to come to grips with the 800 pound gorilla in the room – non-white ethnic bigotry.

WHY???

Just a few things to consider;

WHY has the current administration, which promised CHANGE, followed the exact SAME economic course as the previous one...bailouts, non-stimulating stimulus packages and more than 4X the amount of reckless overspending? The Deficit has been quadrupled over the last year, and the National Debt has climbed to over $12 TRILLION well on its way to a staggering $15 TRILLION!

Given the 2008 Global Credit Crisis was triggered by the 0% down FHA mortgage that G W Bush signed onto, and the government pressing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy up/guarantee all those subprime loans, WHY has none of that been permanently been stopped BY LAW?

There’s been absolutely NOTHING stopping the Democrats from passing those laws.

Subprime loans are still legal to dole out and for Fannie and Freddie to package, the 0% down FHA loan has not been eliminated and why has Glass Spiegel, which everyone has lambasted as creating the “Too Big To Fail” scenario, NOT been restored by law? In fact, the subprime loan mentality is still on display with the “Cash for Clunkers” lunacy and the 0% loans for appliances.

In fact, if this administration sought to change course at all, then WHY are Larry Summers and Robert Rubin (Alan Greenspan’s two protégés), not to mention Rubin’s protégé Timothy Geithner continuing on in their duties as part of the Obama administration’s economic team?

For that matter, WHY is the current administration continuing so many of the Bush anti-terror policies? Why the continuation of the NSA Surveillance Program when the current President had campaigned against it? Why no draw down in Iraq? Why the build-UP in Afghanistan, which again the current President campaigned on opposing? Why the increased use of rendition? Why hasn’t Guantanamo Bay been closed, when its closing was a focal point of the current administration’s campaign?

But the biggest question mark for me is the economic policies. Given that it was the Bush administration’s Keynesianism that started us off on the disastrous path that led to 2008, yes, over his last two years with a big assist from the Pelosi-Reid Congress, WHY has the current administration so fully embraced that failed Keynesianism and even gone so far as to retain three of the major architects of that disaster, Summers, Rubin and Geithner?

WHY???

A Whopping $60 BILLION/Year in Medicare Fraud...and THEY Want to EXPAND the Public Option?...

Three major facts are too often overlooked in the ongoing debate over healthcare reform in the U.S., the first is that America’s healthcare is the most expensive because it provides the MOST testing and the most advanced techniques to all, which is why Americans with early detected prostate and breast cancer have a virtually 100% chance of living for over 5 years compared to just 77% for second place England. The second is that one of the things crushing America’s healthcare system is the unfunded mandate that dictates that hospitals treat ALL regardless of their ability to pay or citizenship status. Those costs are not “eaten” by doctors and hospitals, they’re passed on...to you and me. And the third major fact that is too often overlooked is that “We already have a “public option” and it’s failing miserably!”

Medicaid is irredeemably broke and I mean flat busted, not just unworkable. It’s over $17 BILLION in the whole and growing AND the fraud and abuse, which is systemic in that system is even harder to ferret out than Medicare fraud, as Medicaid is apportioned and overseen by each state!

But a recent 60 Minutes piece chronicling the incredible $60 BILLION/year Medicare fraud problem proved just how pervasive the abuse of even that system has become!

SEE: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/23/60minutes/main5414390.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody


The federal government already controls about half of the U.S. healthcare market via Medicare and Medicaid and THAT “public option” is the part that’s failing the worst!

Why don’t more people notice that?!

Look, it’s one thing for dolts, like the one featured below this piece to pontificate about how a government-run health system would work better, but when people who should and DO know better fail to make the basic argument that goes, “Look, IF a government-run healthcare system, or "public option" COULD work better, why ISN’T IT? Why are our current public options failing worse than the rest of our healthcare system?”

Not only would Alan Grayson be unable to answer that, no one else could either, because there is no defense for that!

Only "ONE Fry Short of a Happy Meal?" TryMore Than a Few...

Freshman Congressman, Alan Grayson (D-Fl) has proven that what he suffers from is NOT merely some here-to-fore unknown and incredibly severe version of “foot-in-mouth disease, no, he’s full-on and over the line to certifiably insane.

Perhaps fellow democrat Anthony Weiner (D-NY) put it most charitably when he noted dryly, “Is this news to you that this guy’s one fry short of a Happy Meal?”

No, it’s not news, but sadly it’s impossible to ignore as well.

After being forced to apologize for calling America’s existing healthcare system a “holocaust,” and inanely claiming the GOP plan, which would allow insurers to compete across state lines, creating MORE price busting competition, was best described as “Die quickly.”

In his latest guffaw he’s called Linda Robertson, an adviser to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, a “K Street whore.”

He’s since apologized for the idiotic remark, but only after initially, lamely standing by it, claiming, "Let’s be clear about the context," he said. "The attack was on her professional career, not her personal life."

With Rangel’s tax woes and Grayson’s intemperate antics providing GOP cannon fodder, this couldn’t be worse news for Democratic Senators trying to hold onto their jobs next election – Nevada’s Harry Reid and Connecticut’s Chris Dodd have been trailing in the polls for months and though “a lot can happen between now and next November,” a LOT of that could also be BAD, meaning “worse” for these incumbents.

What’s Behind the Administration's War on Fox News?...

Liberals have railed against Fox News (FNC) for over a decade, apparently moving to open attack only when ignoring FNC proved futile, given FNC’s HUGE ratings advantage over the other 24-hour news stations.

What IS new is an administration openly going after FNC the way the Nixon administration went after the Washington Post.

The initial assaults focused on “Fox being Right-wing.”

Compared to what?

Yes, a Centrist news outlet looks “Right” when compared to a monolithic Left-of-center news landscape, but FNC has always been the best station at presenting both sides and labeling BOTH Conservative and Liberal hosts, something the left-of-center news outlets rarely, if ever, do, as though they see liberal guests as “moderates” or holders of a “prevailing view.”

In fact, according to the latest Gallup Poll, Conservatives outnumber Liberals by nearly 2 to 1 in this country, so if anything a Right-of-Center view would be more the “mainstream or prevailing view,” wouldn’t it?

As one liberal critic has put it, "If FOX News wasn't "right-wing", they wouldn't have an audience!"

Which is a fair point, one that highlights the fact that maybe if the other networks became more traditionalist and Center-Right, they'd pick up more of an audience as well, BUT ideology ISN'T the reason the current administration used to attempt to deny FNC access, they claimed they have a "Commentator-driven format," as if the other news networks didn't.

FNC's news people (Major Garret, Wendall Golar, Megan Kelly, Chris Wallace, Brett Baier, Harris Faulkner and Shepard Smith) are all straight-down-the-line news people.

Moreover, EVERY other news outlet runs pure commentary in their Prime Time slots, from CNN's Larry King (celebrity interviews), Campbell Brown (reliably Left), Lou Dobbs (Center-Right) and Soledad O'Brien (reliably Left), to MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow (ALL faaaar-Left)....all those "news" networks are ALL commentary ALL the Prime Time....same as FNC with O'Reilly (even more Centrist than Dobbs), Hannity (reliably Right) and Van Sustern (high-profile crime reporting).

As one would expect the other networks have refused to do any interviews or Press Conferences in which FNC is not allowed.

That's a wise move on their part, because they know that not only could this could spread to Republican and Conservative Pols doing likewise to networks they don’t favor, but even this administration going after some of the other networks should they run a story at all critical of the current administration.

Some critics have assailed Fox News’ “Right-wing agenda” and then claimed commentators not associated with Fox News as their targets!

As that same liberal critic put it, "Why are they even denying their Right-wing agenda?"

”For example, take this exchange between Limbaugh and Bush Sr. from the 8-1-08 Limbaugh show....” (a Liberal critic)

WHOOOPS!

Rush Limbaugh is a Clear Channel Talk Radio commentator and NOT associated with FNC, or News Corp in any way.

In fact, in their actual news reporting, FNC's news reporters do far LESS "in news story commentary" than do organizations like ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and the NY Times.

When FNC was recently excluded from a journalist's pool for an interview with Kenneth Feinberg, the other networks all rallied around FNC, rightly fearing that they could each be next should they run any stories this administration doesn't like.

IF those other networks really DIDN'T consider FNC an actual news organization (like themselves) one would've expected them to have embraced the administration's actions....but of course, they did not.

Fox’s critics wash ashore upon the shoals of ideological hypocrisy when they fail to have any problem at all with some of FNC’s even more ideologically tilted competitors. For instance, FNC is far more Centrist than MSNBC, which has countered Fox's Center-Right commentary position with its own far-Left commentary anchored by the likes of Olbermann, Maddow and Matthews.

Even comparing Fox News to the more “mainstream” of its competitors, is more or less like comparing the Wall Street Journal to the NY Times.

The NY Times WAS the news standard, it is no more.

The NY Times loses money, while the WSJ rakes in tons of cash.

The WSJ’s Commentary section is dominated by pro-market and Right-of-Center commentators, while the NY Times’ Commentary section is dominated by left-of-center, largely anti-market commentators.

The NY Times has been losing market share, while the WSJ has been gaining market share.

There’s a similar patter across the media landscape, the overwhelmingly Center-Right American people choose voices they like, voices that resonate with themselves.

They tend to like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal and Conservative Talk Radio and they tend to dislike left-of-center news outlets, the NY Times, local left-of-center newspapers and Air America Radio.

What’s going on now is that one set of ideas is triumphing in the marketplace. The people are speaking loudly and clearly about their own preferences.

There’s really nothing for government to do in this, it has no dog in this fight. Let the marketplace decides which ideas win favor and which do not.

Right now, those espoused by the likes of Fox News are winning out, which is why this administration’s dust-up with Fox News is a very poor strategy going forward in a predominantly Center-Right country.

A Great Documentary on the Mechanics of the Credit Crisis

It’s called The Warning and it’s a Frontline feature.

It tells the story of Brooksley Born, an attorney who’d been on Bill Clinton’s short list for Attorney General. Apparently passed over for Janet Reno, because Clinton found her “boring,” Ms. Born then became head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

She’d been a lawyer who’d specialized in Derivatives trading, so it was only natural that she came into that position alarmed at the stunning lack of oversight, even basic bookkeeping requirements for Derivatives Trading.

The Warning documents the incredible and naïve faith that Alan Greenspan and his two main protégés, Larry Summers and Robert Rubin (pictured above, left to right) in human beings being “basically honest” in their transactions. Ironically enough, Tim Geithner was Robert Rubin’s primary protégé. The result was that the triumvirate of Greenspan, Summers and Rubin blocked Brooksley Born’s attempts at getting some oversight into the derivatives market at every turn.

The ultimate result was the NOBODY knew what was going on in the derivatives markets INCLUDING the investors, who were told to “abandon your pens and pencils and laptops upon entering these Conference Rooms.” They were sold on 40% and higher returns, without even knowing what they were invested in!

Between a Derivatives Market without even the most basic of oversight protections and a government intent on expanding home mortgages to more low-income and poor Americans, the scene was set for “the perfect financial storm” that washed ashore here in September of 2008.

The Warning is a documentary well worth watching! Especially given the fact that much of the current administration’s HOPE and CHANGE...or perhaps HOPE for CHANGE rests on its current economic team, which includes Larry Summers, Robert Rubin and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who ALL played a HUGE part in the run-up to our current mess!

See:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/view/

More Bad News For Liberal Democrats....

According to Rasmussen;

Voters Trust Republicans More On 10 Top Issues

For the first time in recent years, voters trust Republicans more than Democrats on all 10 key electoral issues regularly tracked by Rasmussen Reports. The GOP holds double-digit advantages on five of them.

Incredibly enough, just a year after the worst fiscal disaster since the Carter administration, Republicans have nearly doubled their lead over Democrats on economic issues to 49% to 35%, after leading by eight points in September.

The GOP also holds a 54% to 31% advantage on national security issues and a 50% to 31% lead on the handling of the war in Iraq.

Even on the highly contentious issue of health care, voters now give the edge to Republicans 46% to 40%.

On tax policy, Republicans are now ahead of Democrats an astounding 50% to 35%, nearly doubling their September lead on the issue.

Voters trust Republicans more on Social Security by a 45% to 37% margin.

Republicans lead on the issue of education 43% to 38%.

Voters also trust Republicans more on the handling of abortion 47% to 35%.

Ethics is the one issue that voters seem less sure which party they trust more to handle government ethics and corruption, an issue that passed the economy in voter importance last month. Thirty-three percent (33%) trust Republicans more while 29% have more confidence in Democrats. Another 38% are undecided.

According to Rasmussen, Republicans even enjoy a seven-point lead on the issue of immigration.

Worse still for Liberals approaching 2010, according to Rasmussen's results, "The GOP advantage over Democrats increased from two points to five in the latest edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot. Forty-two percent (42%) would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate while 37% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent...and while "a lot can happen over the next twelve months," we seem to be headed in a very bad direction. I'm betting those numbers only trend worse for the Liberals over that period.
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SEE:

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/trust_on_issues