CAUTION!

If it came down to a election contest between Newt Gingrich and Barack Obama, I would without hesitation pull the "R" lever ... since I believe that four more years of The Barry would probably damage this country almost beyond repair.  However, I would prefer Mitt Romney instead of Newt Gingrich for no other reason than I believe that he can and will heal our economy.  At the moment all other considerations pale by comparison in my mind.

But recently Gingrich said that he would give the $1.4 million dollars back to Freddie Mac (money he got for his giving it "historical perspective" shortly before the sub-prime mortgage crisis) if Romney would give back the money that Bain Capital (Romney's former venture capital firm) got  from “bankrupting companies and laying off employees.”  Now, I have dealt with a few venture capitalists in my life time and I can't imagine that any of them has ever made an investment with the objective of bankrupting the company they just gave their money to.

This is nonsensical Newt.  So please stop playing fast and loose with such pejorative utterances (you too, Mitt).  And, if you do get the nomination, please erect a "Caution, Slow Down" sign between your fertile brain and your voice box.

"Just the Facts Ma'am"

Jack Webb

As is often said, there are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics ... particularly when uttered by politicians.  Debbie Wasserman Schultz, (D, Florida and Chairman of the Democrat National Committee) recently justified this aphorism when she said that unemployment had not gone up under Obama (see: Schultz Spins).  So, I have gone back to my source, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, to see if this were the case. The actual series (A-1) facts (see BLS.gov) are reprised below.

To update from my previous Fact Check, when The Barry took office the civilian non-institutional population (CN-IP) of the United States was 232.6 million and the seasonally-adjusted number of people employed was 142.2 million (after the shock of the sub-prime mortgage crisis in late 2008). As of the end of November, 2011, the civilian non-institutional population was 240.4 million (up 7.8 million) whereas the equivalent employment number was 140.6 million (down 1.6 million). More interestingly, the percentage of the CN-IP that had jobs when The Barry took office was 61.1%; whereas today it is 58.5% (down 2.6 percentage points.) 

Or, if the employed percentage of the CN-IP had stayed the same as when Obama took office, then this country's employed labor force would total 146.9 million jobs ... up 6.3 million jobs. To fully recover from the shock of the sub-prime mortgage crisis (a loss of 3.0 million jobs as of January, 2009), President Obama's economic cabal would have had to cause allow 9.3 million jobs to be created ... let alone give  permit us any true job growth.

So, as we used to say when I was much younger dude, Debbie Wasserman Shwartz appears to be blowing smoke up our collective arses.

Addendum:  Don't forget that, to figure the grand total job creation shortfall under Obama, you need to add his actual jobs decline of 1.6 million to the above 6.3 million normative figure to get a 7.9 million deficit ... or a 10.9 million shortfall if one factors in the sub-prime job losses under Bush (again, before any true job growth.)

Tempo

This blog is written by an old fogey ... by necessity ... for young people may well not notice nor care about the increasing tempo of everyday life.  Much how Charlie Chaplin noted the frenetic pace of activity 75 years ago in his movie Modern Times, I too am feeling that the clock has been sped up dramatically.  Whereas Chaplin's culprit was mechanization, my bogyman is computerization.  (Not that there is anything wrong with that.)  As an example of this time compression, there is something called Rapid Rescore that allows real estate agents to use modern technology to upgrade potential buyers' credit ratings (temporarily) so that they can qualify for a mortgage on a home they probably can't afford (see: Rapid Rescore).  This was one of the basic bricks in the outhouse that brought the sub-prime mortgage miasma onto our economy ... but, even more suprisingly, it still exists!  Yikes!

Also, now day traders (mostly hedge funds) use ultra-fast computers to uncover price movements in the stock markets, commodity markets, and currency pits that foretell other price changes and, in milliseconds, take advantage of this information to make a small profit (see: High Frequency Trading).  But adding up hundreds and thousands of small profits makes (sometimes) big profits.  These traders have been using faster and faster computers to win out over the others doing the same thing.  And now the NASDAQ stock exchange is allowing certain traders to move their computers into the same building as its computers that resolve NASDAQ trades. This shorter and therefore much faster speed-of-light communications cuts even more time off these trading delays.  (We're now talking microseconds, if not nanoseconds, of competitive advantage.)

Is this fair?  Probably not ... but that is not the thrust of this narrative.  What I am trying to point out is that the tempo of everyday life is increasing to the point where much of the important things and, yes, even the aesthetic nuances of life are lost.  Even fast thinkers and/or glib talkers seem to have an edge in the media or politics ... how about Rush Limbaugh, Ron Blagojevich, David Letterman, John Stewart, Newt Gingrich, James Carville, etc.?  This suggests that the overdrive living pace today is affecting people's media preferences and performances.  And this faster tempo is often driven by the technologies we surround ourselves with ... Twitter, FaceBook, et alia.  Do I really need to know that cousin Clyde just saw Clint Eastwood walking through LAX ... or that sister Susan's gerbil just had gerbilettes?  Not really. 

And so this increased speed is also cluttering up our lives with data noise which I think is crowding out the more meaningful information that everyone should know.  Have you ever watched any episodes of "Jay [Leno] Walking"?  The factual stupidity of the average American is dumbfounding ... and yet we encourage everyone to get out and vote.  Are we nuts?

Yes, there is no holding back this tide of technology.  But just realizing what is happening to us is a small step forward.  And I hope that this critique might encourage others to understand better these fast-paced circumstances ... and take a little more time to think through your reactions ... particularly in response to more methodical minds and vocalizers (such as Mitt Romney.)  Remember, the laconic Will Rogers was a superstar even during the Roaring Twenties.

Strained Metaphors

Obama has a penchant for casting long, strained, and often silly metaphors to paint a pitiable picture of his Presidency:

I- describe us…as…I'm the captain and they're the crew on a ship, going through really bad storms. And no matter how well we're steering the ship, if the boat's rocking back and forth and people are getting sick and…they're being buffeted by the winds and the rain and…at a certain point-- if you're asking, "Are you enjoying the ride right now?" Folks are going to say, "No." And are they going to say, "Do you think the captain's good—doing a good job?" People are going say, "You know what? A good captain would have had us in some smooth waters and sunny skies, at this point." And I don't control the weather. Obama, coming up soon on 60 Minutes

Obama compared the country to a car Republicans drove into a ditch, "a deep ditch, muddy and hot, with lots of bugs." Democrats, Obama said, including him and Oregon's congressional Democrats, piled into the ditch and began pushing the car out. "We look up and Republicans are just standing there watching. We say, 'come on down and help''' Obama said. "But they just stand there and say 'you're not pushing hard enough. Finally, we get the car out of the ditch and the Republicans tap us on the shoulder—they want the car," Obama continued. "But we tell them you can't have the keys because you don't know how to drive." Then in his best laugh line of the night, Obama observed, "if you want to go forward in a car, you put it in 'D'; if you want to go backward, you put it in 'R.'" from the Willamette Week, 12/9/10

…We have gone above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement. All the stuff they asked for, we've done. But even though we've answered these concerns, I suspect there will be some who will try to move the goal posts one more time. They said we need to triple the border patrol. Or now they’ll say we need to quadruple the border patrol. Or they’ll want a higher fence. Maybe they'll need a moat. Maybe they want alligators in the moat! They'll never be satisfied, and I understand that. That's politics. But the truth is the measures we've put in place are getting results.  Obama in El Paso, Texas

Mr. Obama also tried out a cleaning metaphor, accusing Republicans of acting like fussy supervisors who refuse to lift a finger to help the crew.  “We’ve got our mops and our brooms out here, and were cleaning stuff out and they’re sitting there saying, ‘Hold the broom better; that’s not how you mop.’ Don’t tell me how to mop! Pick up a mop! Do some work on behalf of the American people to solve some of these problems.’’ from the New York Times, 5/13/2010

.

Such dewy drivel might play well to his adoring audiences, but now I think I understand why The Barry never wrote nor published anything when he was the Editor of The Harvard Law Review.

Free Markets Suck!

President Obama revealed a little more of himself than possibly his teleprompter writers intended on Tuesday when he spoke in Osawatomie, Kansas.  In essence he launched a backhanded attack on capitalism with "the free market has never been a free license to take whatever you can from whomever you can" (see: Speech Text around the bottom of page one).  This rhetorical flourish is clearly meant to imply that capitalism is, in fact, a free license to steal ... and the baby is now floating down the gutter along with the dirty bathwater. 

Interestingly enough, the New York Times neglected to mention this key dogmatic pronouncement in its write-up of this event (see: NY Times's Take).  Actually The Barry has said quite similar things in the past ... in particular at the Cooper Union in early 2010 ...  which went mostly ignored, I think, because he was still on his honeymoon with the American people (see: The Daily Kos Story). Now, I and many others on the right believe that this statement overtly manifests the key core value that Obama brought into the White House ... which had been taught to him on his anarchist mother's knee and reenforced by his many radical friends -- that capitalism is the source of all the world's evil.

And, despite his Elvis-like-intonings to the contrary, he also seems to view as anathema that bulwark of capitalism, the middle class.  He, after all, had signed his name to the Black Value System when he joined Reverend Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church which overtly states that "middleclassness" is to be eschewed (see: Black Value System Text, item #8).  (One could say, with tongue-in-cheek that, being the President of the United States, he clearly does live up to that disavowal.)  In essence his subtle but steady tilting toward Marxism seems to be the "change' he "hoped" to achieve when elected ... and he is doing a pretty good job of it ... by keeping the U.S. economy on life support and then by stirring the class-warfare cauldron with a vigor that would have been envied even by Norman Thomas.

Political Correctness Gone Ape

The Obama administration has reclassified the Ft. Hood massacre as "workplace violence" ... see: Ft. Hood Reclassification.  Yes, and then Treblinka and Auschwitz were just "retraining centers."

Cyber Warfare

RQ-170 drone aircraft

Recently, the United States lost its software "leash" to a drone aircraft over Afghanistan and it ostensibly (crash?) landed in nearby Iran.  This was an ultra-modern stealth drone, the RQ-170, which is now going to be reverse engineered by the Iranians, the Russians, or, more likely, the Chinese (see: A Lost Drone).  How did this happen?  I strongly suspect this is one of the latest manifestations of cyber warfare.  Was this in retaliation for the United States (or Israel) cyber attacking the Iranian centrifuges (making them spin out of control) that are being used to purify uranium for its atomic weapons?  I suspect so.

We have known for some time that the software controlling our drones has been hacked into (probably by the Chinese ... see: A Drone Virus) and, yet, we let this top-secret drone fly apparently without a backup self-destruct override if it were crippled by a cyber attack.  This is similar to the counter-espionage sloppiness we exhibited in the raid on the Osama bin Laden compound in Pakistan.  Here a stealth helicopter had to be left behind with critical parts not destroyed, again to be reverse engineered by the Chinese.  We have even had a minor cyber attack on a water treatment plant here in the United States which may have serious implications for more egregious future events (see: Hacked Water Treatment Plant).

Now, I am far from being an expert on cyber security, but I did work for a few years in the late 1970's at a Data General research center in North Carolina where a hack-proof computer (the FHP) was being developed ... and, as it turned out, too many years ahead of its time.  And I do know that, given the huge strides that have been made in the miniaturization and speed of computer chips since then, we surely should have been able to develop a super-secure computer/software combo.  The question is ... why haven't we?

6 More Questions ...

For Liberals (including that uber-Liberal in the White House)::

1) Why, while championing infrastructure spending, would you put the kibosh on the Keystone XL Pipeline?

2) Exactly how will extending unemployment insurance beyond 99 weeks ever create even one job?

3) Why, since the Social Security System is on the fiscal ropes, should we extend any cuts to FICA taxes?

4) What does the U.S. do when Iran finally has the A-bomb and is about to (or does) use it on Israel?

5) Should the U.S. contribute even one dime to the bailout of the Euro (including through the IMF)?

6) What does the U.S. do if the relative peace in Iraq starts to unravel soon after we exit there?

Juxtaposition XXX

Republican's Barney Frank

Democrat's Newt Gingrich

Acknowledgment: Thanks for this idea goes to my wife, Jeanette.

The Long Knives

An assegai

W.C. Fields, as Egbert Souse' in The Bank Dick, claimed that the antagonist bank robber had attacked him with a long knife, an “assegai."  Fields loved to use strange-sounding words like this one (including such others as "Lompoc" and "Petaluma"), but claiming he was attacked by a long knife in this classic movie made him an accidental hero. 

However, I have been increasingly perplexed by the assegais that are being wielded by almost everyone in the media these days ... to reduce the ranks of potential Republican heroes, the aspirants to the Presidency.  First Michele Bachmann, then Rick Perry, then Herman Cain and now Newt Gingrich and yes, even Mitt Romney are being sliced up by the press for any verbal gaffs and/or minor character flaws.  It's as though those media personae want to make their bones by taking down the current Republican front runner in the Presidential sweepstakes.

Thinking back to the last Presidential election, I can remember dozens of Obama's verbal gaffs and, not minor, but major character flaws that were glossed over by these same members of the fourth estate.  Such media inconsistencies have always perplexed me.  It's as though there is a subconscious narrative written in the stars that is then followed throughout the campaign by these too-often-pompous talking heads.  Some call this a double standard, but, to me, it is much more insidious and puzzling than this.  How does this happen?  Why can politics become a blood sport one day while, at other times, candidates seem to be adoringly carried on sedan chairs into office? 

This morning on Morning Joe, Mitt Romney was being savaged for expressing his private displeasure to Brett Baier of Fox News's Special Report for his tough interviewing technique. To me this is a mere bagatelle. Actually, this MSNBC morning show had previously become one that I looked forward to watching. Now, its seems to be nothing more than a pissing contest ... besmirching each favored Republican candidate in turn with clever pejoratives, snorts, and sideways scowls. As a result, I have started to switch more often to Imus in the Morning (gasp!!)

Quote of the Day

Since you probably won't hear this in the Main Stream Media, I thought I would share it with you here.  New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie, was commenting on President Obama's reticence to get involved in the Congressional Super Committee's (failed) deliberations to reduce our government's deficit.  This was because Obama thought that this process was doomed from the beginning.  Christie said to The Barry, "What the hell are we paying you for?"  See: Politico's Take


By the bye, CBS News does have some weasel-words on this Christie broadside, but suggests that he might also be directing his comments toward the Super Committee.  See what I mean here: CBS's Take

Frankly dear ...

There is joy in Mudville ... Barney Frank is retiring from Congress next year.  There are few politicians who have done more to damage their country than this bloated poltroon.  Good riddance!  (Perhaps I am being too kind to him?)

Updated Aphorisms

Early to bed, early to rise … lets you watch Morning Joe

No news … means that Matt Drudge is out of business

Hope springs Obama into office

Beauty is only a skin-tuck deep

Actions speak louder than spin

Beware of Greeks bearing bonds

If you lie down with Occupiers, you wake up with fleas

Godzilla vs. Rodan

I'm not a Godzilla aficionado but I do know that these movies represented the struggles between titans.  My picking Rodan (out of 20 or more Godzilla foes) as this giant Japanese lizard's combatant is because it is the only one I remember.  Nevertheless, I have chosen this metaphor to represent the battle of ideologies that is currently taking place here in the United States ... a battle between the Tea Party and the Occupiers.  If I may, I think the Tea Party represents populous opposition to big government sprawl whereas the Occupiers resent the growing disparity between fat-cat CEOs/universities and their employees/students.  Unfortunately, many Occupiers have extrapolated these resentments into a unthinking condemnation of capitalism.

To me, the Tea Party is opposing the bigger danger, a government that insinuates itself into every alcove of our lives ... destroying institutions and democratic traditions that have worked so well during the last 235 years.  This over-reaching government strategy clearly is working under the current Obama administration. Our economy has ground to a virtual halt, I think, in opposition to a hostile government that feels it can pick economic winners and losers ... and our credit rating continues to slip as we pile up gigantic sovereign debt.

The Occupiers, beneath the gusto of youthful exuberance and monstrous irresponsibility, do still have a few points to make.  Yes, the executives  of many of our companies have stepped over the line of economic self-interest (read "greed" if you wish) to the point where they are clogging their company's arteries with plutocratic plaque.  And this is because much of their firm's ownership is now in the hands of mutual funds, hedge funds and exchange traded funds.  These financial entities are so short-term profit oriented that they care not if executive salaries spiral out of hand.  I have addressed this dislocation in the past in a blog titled Turd on the Table. 

Also colleges have become burdened with administrative bloat and therefore pass these costs on to their students with spiraling tuitions which then translates into student loans that are crushing their graduates.  I contend that this inflation is as much due to the heavy hand of government intrusion into the economics of education as it is to generic growth (see: "Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble").  This problem too can be solved without a national revolution as advocated by the Occupiers.  In fact I suspect that, if the Tea Party has its way and our federal government is reined in, this problem will disappear within a generation.

So who will win this B-movie struggle?  Let us hope that it is, like it always was on the big screen, Godzilla (the Tea Party).  But I also hope that Rodan's (the Occupier's) rising out of that mountain egg also teaches some key lessons ... even in its defeat.

Parade Rest

With my grandchildren romping about me this morn, I turned on the TV to see the preparations for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.  Suddenly I was transported back in time 35 years or so to when I used to take my children to vintage versions of this same procession.  We were living in Stuyvesant Town on the lower east side of Manhattan and, after breakfast, we would bundle our children up and I would walk them over to Broadway in the low twenties to get a front row spot for watching this extravaganza.

The parade always consisted of many marching bands, floats, and huge helium balloons held down by phalanxes of Macy employees dressed to match the theme of their balloon.  The balloons I remember most were Underdog, the Sesame Street characters, and Rocky and Bullwinkle.  Usually there were also lots of clowns and unicyclists handing out candy and trinkets to the children.  It was all right out of Miracle on Thirty-Fourth Street ... but without Margaret O'Brien.

And I remember that it was almost always bitingly cold ... so getting the kids to stay for the finale was generally a bit dicey.  But we usually did and when Santa Claus went by waving and Ho Ho Ho-ing we knew that we could then trudge back home and thaw out.  Entering our apartment, we were greeted with the wondrous smells of pumpkin pies cooling and the Thanksgiving  turkey cooking in the oven.  I would then generally have a cup of hot coffee and settle in to TV-watch some college football with Christmas music wafting out of the stereo.  What bliss it was!

Tebow Bows

Tim Tebow, the charismatic quarterback for the Denver Broncos, constantly and visibly thanks Jesus for his successes on the football field (see: Plummer Complains).  Now, there is a growing backlash among his team mates and some media personalities (in particular, Jim Braude and Margery Eagan here in Boston) for this religious "ostentation."  I do remember that one of Christ's teachings in the New Testament was that his followers should not wear their religion on their sleeves ... so there is some rationale for this Tebow dissing.  However, let's be frank, Tebow's critics would not think of criticizing Hasidic Jews for their sideburn curls (payos) or fur hats (kolpiks), or Rastas for their dreadlocks, or yarmulke-wearing Jews, or Sikhs for their turbans, or even Muslims for the public prostrations to Mecca.

So my advice to Jim and Marjery and other Tebow critics ... until you are ready to be consistent in your protestations ... chill out.

Giving Thanks

This Thursday's trenchermen (trencherpersons?) would never sit still at our Thanksgiving table for me to enumerate all the things I am thankful for at this difficult time in our history ... so I will burden you, poor reader, with my list:

- a populous awakening in this country to many of the things that seem seriously awry ... as demonstrated by the Tea Party and, yes, even in their perversity, by the Occupiers

- all my beautiful grandchildren ... and the hope that I have for their bright and healthy futures (much of which I will probably never witness)

- all my children and their spouses who have produced these wonderful grandchildren and who are so carefully molding their lives within a creative and moral  template

- my wife, Jeanette, who has been such a great mother, grandmother, and life partner.  She has tirelessly toiled to create for me a wonderful home and make me a better person than I otherwise would have been

- the legacy that previous generations of Americans have left to us (in particular those who have given their lives) so that we can experience our national uniqueness and the best standard of living in history

- those (very) few politicians who had put their country ahead of their personal interests ... Ronald Reagan and Harry Truman, in particular, come to mind

- a leftover turkey sandwich bulging with stuffing, cranberry sauce, and lots of Hellmann's mayonnaise

Super Duper ...

Pooper Scooper

The Congressional supercommittee is coming up empty in its attempt to reduce this nation's deficit by $1.2 trillion over the next ten years.  See: Coming up Empty.  The 12 "bipartisan" members of this committee have come to predictable loggerheads over tax increases versus entitlement reform.  Expectations were low for this political artifice that had been created when the debt ceiling was raised this past summer.  This committee, however they did it, has managed to disappoint even this expectational nadir.  Our nation's $15 trillion debt has come about to cover a growing cradle-to-grave government that has being constructed by administrations of both parties over the last decade.  Apparently this suicide pact will continue for at least another year.

Now the blame game starts in earnest ... with the hope that such bicameral besmirching will affect the results of next year's elections.  Who knows if this mud-slinging will work ... but what I do know is that Washington, DC statesmanship is clearly dead and this augers poorly for the future of our "lazy" United States of America.  Perhaps the Occupiers will fix things?

Norman Rockwell Had It Right

For now, the Brookline, Massachusetts Town Meeting has kept the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance in the classroom.  But 76 chuckleheads in this meeting voted to ban this patriotic statement from sullying the lips of their children ... and 9 wimped out ... afraid to take a stand lest they be ostracized by their Marxist neighbors in this uber-liberal Boston suburb.  See: Small Win.  What is it that compels such lamebrains to campaign against such a simple oath?  One strained rationale put forward is that the children of non-citizens may be forced to pledge loyalty to a foreign country.  Such children (if and where they exist) can simply opt out of this recitation.  But my guess is that these tykes may be even more fervent in their love of their adopted country.  It is those 76 disaffected nihilists in Brookline who have inculcated their children with their spittle-sprayed hatred of this country ... and want to insure that their skulls-full-of-tofu keep their toes to the party line. 

It was not to happen this year. but eventually these poltroons will win ... and Norman Rockwell's vision of what patriotism means will be banished from one community after another in Massachusetts ... and then possibly in other states ... all in the name of respecting the diversity of ideas.  Can we instead call this the entropy of  devotion?  Then this country will no longer be a melting pot ... but, to use an appropriate metaphor ... it will be instead a fruitcake.  How sad it is!

Leaning Right

I was surprised to see that both lefties, Chris Matthews and Katrina Vanden Heuvel, this morning on Morning Joe appeared to be moving away from supporting President Obama and towards backing Mitt Romney in the next Presidential sweepstakes. (Mika Brzezinski is still a solid rump-swab for The Barry.)  And these are not the only paleo-turncoats I've noticed among Democrats.  Increasingly, Obama's support appears to be slipping within his previously-solid base.  This is surprising, even shocking, to me ... and the question is why?

All I can come up with is that, even though such people would prefer to have the U.S. become a Socialist (or even a Communist) country, they, nevertheless, still want to have a country.

Afterward: See Further Proof