Do these sound familiar?
1. Abolition of Private Property
2. Heavy Progressive Income Tax
3. Abolition of Inheritance Rights
4. Confiscation of Property from Emigrants and Rebels
5. A Central Bank
6. Government Control of Communication and Transportation
7. Government Ownership of Factories and Farms
8. Government Control of Labor
9. Corporate Farms, Regional Planning
10. Government Control of Education
The principles from the Communist Manifesto as defined by Marx and Engels are worth another look.
Does it frighten anybody else to read these again and discover how many of these have already happened in America, and that a major political party is seeking the power to implement the rest?
Monday, September 22, 2008
Thursday, September 18, 2008
The Death of Objectivity
The evidence is overwhelming. From Fannie and Freddie to Lehmann and AIG, no major news outlet has yet taken the time to investigate the root causes of the meltdown and report back to the American public.
Where are the multi-part investigative reports on the news that cover the history of Fannie and Freddie, the conditions that caused the mortgage mess, why they happened and who were the key players?
Has anyone answered to your or my satisfaction these basic questions? --
Why were mortgage brokers allowed to sell mortgages to unqualified borrowers?
What was the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the buying and selling of these mortgage-backed securities throughout the financial industry?
Who ran Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Since they were quasi-government institutions, who in the government was responsible for their oversight?
Was there anyone on Wall Street or in the Federal Government who saw this meltdown coming and tried to sound the alarm? If so, how did authorities respond? If not, how could that happen?
What Federal Agencies were responsible for regulating Fannie and Freddie? Did they discover the problem and try to do something about it? Or were they stopped by politicians higher up the ladder?
Instead of independent investigations giving the public facts on these and other questions, all we see is a megaphone handed to Obama with a slap on the butt and a "go get 'em tiger!".
And that's the answer to the basic question I've posed. If such an independent investigation were to take place by reporters who are willing to report the truth, no matter how it might reflect on one candidate or the other, it could kill the candidacy of their own favorite candidate.
Objective journalism appears dead, and with it American democracy. When the press becomes monolithically partisan and chooses to withhold the truth from the public if it might reflect badly on their chosen candidate, the dream that was America is lost.
Where are the multi-part investigative reports on the news that cover the history of Fannie and Freddie, the conditions that caused the mortgage mess, why they happened and who were the key players?
Has anyone answered to your or my satisfaction these basic questions? --
Why were mortgage brokers allowed to sell mortgages to unqualified borrowers?
What was the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the buying and selling of these mortgage-backed securities throughout the financial industry?
Who ran Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Since they were quasi-government institutions, who in the government was responsible for their oversight?
Was there anyone on Wall Street or in the Federal Government who saw this meltdown coming and tried to sound the alarm? If so, how did authorities respond? If not, how could that happen?
What Federal Agencies were responsible for regulating Fannie and Freddie? Did they discover the problem and try to do something about it? Or were they stopped by politicians higher up the ladder?
Instead of independent investigations giving the public facts on these and other questions, all we see is a megaphone handed to Obama with a slap on the butt and a "go get 'em tiger!".
And that's the answer to the basic question I've posed. If such an independent investigation were to take place by reporters who are willing to report the truth, no matter how it might reflect on one candidate or the other, it could kill the candidacy of their own favorite candidate.
Objective journalism appears dead, and with it American democracy. When the press becomes monolithically partisan and chooses to withhold the truth from the public if it might reflect badly on their chosen candidate, the dream that was America is lost.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Did you know?
These things about Obama -
Jeremiah Wright was his pastor until a couple of months ago?
Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers are his neighbors, political sponsors, and friends?
That he padded his resume?
That he's closely tied to a radical left voter-fraud organization known as Acorn?
Obama's stand on late-term abortions where babies are born alive?
That he interfered with negotiations to wrap up the war in Iraq?
That he got help buying his home from friend and convicted felon Tony Rezko?
Jeremiah Wright was his pastor until a couple of months ago?
Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers are his neighbors, political sponsors, and friends?
That he padded his resume?
That he's closely tied to a radical left voter-fraud organization known as Acorn?
Obama's stand on late-term abortions where babies are born alive?
That he interfered with negotiations to wrap up the war in Iraq?
That he got help buying his home from friend and convicted felon Tony Rezko?
Monday, September 15, 2008
In Search of a Clue
It's sobering.
While the stock market plunges, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are absorbed by the government, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch fold or are absorbed into other giant financial mega-corporations, the presidential candidates seem to be completely clueless.
Instead of thoughtful and substantive ideas about what can be done to clean up this mess and get the American economy back on its feet, the candidates focus on the inane.
Obama: McCain's old. He doesn't even know how to use email. Palin is, well, so many distasteful and offensive things I can't even bring myself to print them.
McCain: Obama's a lightweight. He's no reformer, he's just a puppet of the Democrat/MoveOn machine.
OK, so I tend to agree with McCain. But he still can't seem to verbalize anything that makes any sense about his ideas for reining in this financial mess, other than something like "changing the way government works".
Funny, I thought congress created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, appointed Bill Clinton pals to run them, encouraged them to fund mortgages for the less fortunate (read: bad credit risks), then pretended to be caught by surprise when it all came crashing down.
Now they seem to support nationalizing everything. Fannie and Freddie - already owned by the Feds. Bail out Lehman and Lynch? So far it looks like the answer's going to be No (thank goodness). Bail out GM/Ford/Chrysler? Please let that answer be No.
How about some fresh ideas?
Get rid of Fannie and Freddie. Lenders should make loans based on the qualifications of their customers. Period. They will be more responsible if they are actually taking the risk for borrowers with bad credit.
Increase Energy Production. I'm an all-of-the-above person. Our economy is based on energy, despite the desperate hopes and dreams of leftists everywhere. Go get all the oil, gas, shale, wind, solar, hydro, non-food organic ethanol you can find. Stop messing around and make a deal with Iraq - we get to buy as much of their oil as we want at a discount, and we'll keep them safe from their enemies. Get us into a place where we're getting all of our energy either domestically or from countries that don't hate us.
Cancel CAFE standards on the Car Manufacturers. Let them build and sell any vehicles for which public demand is high, and stop telling them what they can and can't build.
Enforce Anti-Trust Law for a change. Competition is the way to get business booming. Stop letting the mega-corporations gobble up everybody so they can own their market. Let the companies that made bad decisions go bankrupt, then open up the market to start-ups who will compete with each other to provide better services to consumers.
Congress is clueless. The presidential candidates are clueless. The voters are clueless sheep.
I need to do something tonight to get away from this and get my spirits up.
While the stock market plunges, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are absorbed by the government, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch fold or are absorbed into other giant financial mega-corporations, the presidential candidates seem to be completely clueless.
Instead of thoughtful and substantive ideas about what can be done to clean up this mess and get the American economy back on its feet, the candidates focus on the inane.
Obama: McCain's old. He doesn't even know how to use email. Palin is, well, so many distasteful and offensive things I can't even bring myself to print them.
McCain: Obama's a lightweight. He's no reformer, he's just a puppet of the Democrat/MoveOn machine.
OK, so I tend to agree with McCain. But he still can't seem to verbalize anything that makes any sense about his ideas for reining in this financial mess, other than something like "changing the way government works".
Funny, I thought congress created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, appointed Bill Clinton pals to run them, encouraged them to fund mortgages for the less fortunate (read: bad credit risks), then pretended to be caught by surprise when it all came crashing down.
Now they seem to support nationalizing everything. Fannie and Freddie - already owned by the Feds. Bail out Lehman and Lynch? So far it looks like the answer's going to be No (thank goodness). Bail out GM/Ford/Chrysler? Please let that answer be No.
How about some fresh ideas?
Get rid of Fannie and Freddie. Lenders should make loans based on the qualifications of their customers. Period. They will be more responsible if they are actually taking the risk for borrowers with bad credit.
Increase Energy Production. I'm an all-of-the-above person. Our economy is based on energy, despite the desperate hopes and dreams of leftists everywhere. Go get all the oil, gas, shale, wind, solar, hydro, non-food organic ethanol you can find. Stop messing around and make a deal with Iraq - we get to buy as much of their oil as we want at a discount, and we'll keep them safe from their enemies. Get us into a place where we're getting all of our energy either domestically or from countries that don't hate us.
Cancel CAFE standards on the Car Manufacturers. Let them build and sell any vehicles for which public demand is high, and stop telling them what they can and can't build.
Enforce Anti-Trust Law for a change. Competition is the way to get business booming. Stop letting the mega-corporations gobble up everybody so they can own their market. Let the companies that made bad decisions go bankrupt, then open up the market to start-ups who will compete with each other to provide better services to consumers.
Congress is clueless. The presidential candidates are clueless. The voters are clueless sheep.
I need to do something tonight to get away from this and get my spirits up.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Object Lesson in Propaganda
It's a very old cliche.
You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.
Obama used it in a speech to his adoring Democrat followers to describe John McCain's economic policies. The crowd clearly latched onto it as a backhanded slap against the GOP Veep nominee, who was famous for her joke about lipstick being the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull. Therefore the cliche drew a standing derisive ovation from the partisan audience.
The other campaign seized on this apparent slight with amazing speed and created a YouTube ad questioning the judgement and character of the Democrat candidate. Other leftist partisans managed to add fuel to the fire with overtly slanderous comments comparing Gov. Palin to Pontius Pilate against Obama's Jesus and suggesting her only qualification for VP was that she hasn't had an abortion.
So Obama decided to respond to the McCain campaign's response to his lipstick cliche with his own outrage, suggesting that they were unfairly characterizing an innocent comment. He angrily called out the opposing campaign as outright liars for making a campaign issue out of something that he claimed never happened (i.e. calling Gov. Palin a pig).
Obama's sycophants in the media immediately set out to echo his outrage, showing multiple politicians (all Republicans, of course) using the overused lipstick/pig analogy, ending with the piece de resistance, McCain himself using it.
The whole incident is rather comical, but more instructive in the fact that both parties seem to view the American public as a mass of sheep who are easily fooled. I mainly wonder how many were fooled either way.
The conclusions about the phrase itself are pretty easy for any objective person. Just take the facts:
Obama's statement clearly was referring to McCain's economic policies and never mentioned Palin, even tangentially.
The crowd obviously connected the lipstick on pig to the lipstick on pit bull, thus the derisive standing ovation.
Did Obama intend the linkage? Maybe not, but certainly he understood the audience's linkage. For him to pretend otherwise is disingenuous. The projection of outrage against the opposing campaign for feigning their own outrage is sort of an outrage itself.
The opportunistic ad run by the McCain campaign was pretty effective, if misleading. It was a great example of taking something out of context to convey a message completely different from what was actually spoken.
Guilty of propaganda? Both sides.
Did it work? Hard to say, but it might be safe to assume the true believers on each side believed their own side's version of the story. I wonder how many understand the whole story. Those who do won't find anything on either side worthy of their support.
You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.
Obama used it in a speech to his adoring Democrat followers to describe John McCain's economic policies. The crowd clearly latched onto it as a backhanded slap against the GOP Veep nominee, who was famous for her joke about lipstick being the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull. Therefore the cliche drew a standing derisive ovation from the partisan audience.
The other campaign seized on this apparent slight with amazing speed and created a YouTube ad questioning the judgement and character of the Democrat candidate. Other leftist partisans managed to add fuel to the fire with overtly slanderous comments comparing Gov. Palin to Pontius Pilate against Obama's Jesus and suggesting her only qualification for VP was that she hasn't had an abortion.
So Obama decided to respond to the McCain campaign's response to his lipstick cliche with his own outrage, suggesting that they were unfairly characterizing an innocent comment. He angrily called out the opposing campaign as outright liars for making a campaign issue out of something that he claimed never happened (i.e. calling Gov. Palin a pig).
Obama's sycophants in the media immediately set out to echo his outrage, showing multiple politicians (all Republicans, of course) using the overused lipstick/pig analogy, ending with the piece de resistance, McCain himself using it.
The whole incident is rather comical, but more instructive in the fact that both parties seem to view the American public as a mass of sheep who are easily fooled. I mainly wonder how many were fooled either way.
The conclusions about the phrase itself are pretty easy for any objective person. Just take the facts:
Obama's statement clearly was referring to McCain's economic policies and never mentioned Palin, even tangentially.
The crowd obviously connected the lipstick on pig to the lipstick on pit bull, thus the derisive standing ovation.
Did Obama intend the linkage? Maybe not, but certainly he understood the audience's linkage. For him to pretend otherwise is disingenuous. The projection of outrage against the opposing campaign for feigning their own outrage is sort of an outrage itself.
The opportunistic ad run by the McCain campaign was pretty effective, if misleading. It was a great example of taking something out of context to convey a message completely different from what was actually spoken.
Guilty of propaganda? Both sides.
Did it work? Hard to say, but it might be safe to assume the true believers on each side believed their own side's version of the story. I wonder how many understand the whole story. Those who do won't find anything on either side worthy of their support.
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Government Mismanagement
The quasi-governmental Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by the Federal Government in an attempt to stop the bleeding in this major mortgage mess.
Following congress' strong desire to make home ownership more accessible to citizens, they actually created the monster that has so damaged the financial markets through massive mortgage defaults.
In an age of 100% home loans routinely made for borrowers that clearly had no ability to pay, congress has little right to point fingers at irresponsible lenders. They and their politically-appointed cronies at those government created monsters are at least equally to blame with the lenders and borrowers that simply took advantage.
I was thinking about my grandparents' generation. They lived through the Great Depression, and their remarkable frugality was often puzzling to me. Here were people who had, at least from my young perspective, plenty of cash and no debt. Yet they drove old cars, made sure no lights were on unnecessarily, were careful with their grocery budget, and would never consider buying luxury items.
We seem to have forgotten those lessons. The people and their government spend recklessly, don't save, and borrow as much as a lender will allow. So many people, including those making decent salaries, are leveraged so badly that if there is any lapse in income, they will face immediate bankruptcy.
Working with employers and seeing data on their employee's 401K retirement funds, I've been shocked at the high number of people who raid their retirement for more spending money. Many people participate to get the employer match, then take the maximum allowable loans so they can spend the money. For those people, there's no retirement nest egg, but a debt that must be repaid or they'll be faced with penalties and interest.
The government is no different. They spend way beyond their tax collections and borrow the difference. Now we have a federal budget that has to spend a significant amount of tax collections on debt service. Republicans were supposed to be the fiscally responsible party, but when they got control of congress, they somehow forgot. Democrats make no pretense of fiscal responsibility, but promise to raise taxes to cover their planned massive spending increases.
It seems our entire country is on the verge of bankruptcy, and there's nobody even close to doing anything to stop it.
Following congress' strong desire to make home ownership more accessible to citizens, they actually created the monster that has so damaged the financial markets through massive mortgage defaults.
In an age of 100% home loans routinely made for borrowers that clearly had no ability to pay, congress has little right to point fingers at irresponsible lenders. They and their politically-appointed cronies at those government created monsters are at least equally to blame with the lenders and borrowers that simply took advantage.
I was thinking about my grandparents' generation. They lived through the Great Depression, and their remarkable frugality was often puzzling to me. Here were people who had, at least from my young perspective, plenty of cash and no debt. Yet they drove old cars, made sure no lights were on unnecessarily, were careful with their grocery budget, and would never consider buying luxury items.
We seem to have forgotten those lessons. The people and their government spend recklessly, don't save, and borrow as much as a lender will allow. So many people, including those making decent salaries, are leveraged so badly that if there is any lapse in income, they will face immediate bankruptcy.
Working with employers and seeing data on their employee's 401K retirement funds, I've been shocked at the high number of people who raid their retirement for more spending money. Many people participate to get the employer match, then take the maximum allowable loans so they can spend the money. For those people, there's no retirement nest egg, but a debt that must be repaid or they'll be faced with penalties and interest.
The government is no different. They spend way beyond their tax collections and borrow the difference. Now we have a federal budget that has to spend a significant amount of tax collections on debt service. Republicans were supposed to be the fiscally responsible party, but when they got control of congress, they somehow forgot. Democrats make no pretense of fiscal responsibility, but promise to raise taxes to cover their planned massive spending increases.
It seems our entire country is on the verge of bankruptcy, and there's nobody even close to doing anything to stop it.
Monday, September 01, 2008
Theme Songs
I just realized that the easiest way to describe the choices between our candidates is in the theme songs of each candidate and their larger party philosophies.
McCain and the Republicans: God Bless the USA (Proud to be an American) - Lee Greenwood
Obama and the Democrats: Imagine - John Lennon
Listen to the two songs and perhaps you'll agree with me. Little more needs to be said.
McCain and the Republicans: God Bless the USA (Proud to be an American) - Lee Greenwood
Obama and the Democrats: Imagine - John Lennon
Listen to the two songs and perhaps you'll agree with me. Little more needs to be said.
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