Wee Weed Up

Fast-growing small marijuana plants? Kindergarten slang for being upset? Wild growth of dandelions? Pissing up a rope? A room full of bed wetters? Exactly what did Barack Obama mean when he used this unfamiliar street vernacular (or, rather, scatological term), "wee weed up" see Barack Obama speaks? Didn't Jack Paar lose his job in 1960 by using the tame English bathroom term "WC' (water closet). Now, we have a President who can obliquely refer to our urinating without any repercussion. Oh, well ... if, during his campaign, he can slyly give the one-finger salute to Hillary Clinton and to John McCain without a public ripple, I guess he can insult his current opposition by questioning their bladder control.

Turnabout Is Fair Play

Obama lied,

Granny died.

Protester's sign at Obama's Portsmouth, NH town meeting on revamping health care.

Robert Frost Favored Global Warming

"Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if I had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday dear Barry.

Happy Birthday to you.

Happy Birthday fearless leader.

Happy Birthday to you.

(kiss, kiss, kiss)

It's not Obama's 44th. It's his 48th.

Or is it? Maybe we need to see his birth certificate?

Big Brother ...

Be afraid. Be very afraid. The following is from the official White House website:

"There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can't keep track of all of them here at the White House, we're asking you for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov."

If this doesn't send a chill up your spine, you are not alive.

Cash for Clunkers

One obvious effect of the government getting involved in free enterprise is run-away price inflation. Over the last twenty years the three areas of our economy that have experienced the greatest price increases have been higher education, real estate, and medicine -- all three areas where the government has insinuated itself to "help" things out.

In higher education, easy-to-get student loans, government scholarships, and faculty research grants have fattened to coffers of colleges and universities while at the same time caused tuitions and fees to skyrocket. The (previous) rapid increase in home prices can be directly attributed to the $500,000 family exclusion of capital gains tax on primary residence sales and the government's coercion of banks to finance mortgages to sub-prime borrowers. And, in health care, the tax-deductibility of company-paid health insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, and government-guaranteed health care to all Americans has also caused this sector of our economy to experience escalating costs far beyond the Consumer Price Index.

Now the government is pumping the new car sales market with its $4,500 "cash-for-clunkers" program. After quickly running through the first one billion of our grandchildren's money to pay for this feel-good program, Congress is ready to ante up another $2,0o0,000,000. And I predict that this will not be the end of such give-aways. Surely, our Washington solons will try to buy their way back into to office next year by continuing to pour money into this program. With what results? I safely predict that, before too long, automobile companies and dealers will increase the prices of their cars to sop up every last cent of this government largess ... creating yet another sector of our economy with out-of-control price inflation. Enough!! Let's all go back and read "Atlas Shrugged."

Revered to Reviled

Are talk radio and cable TV causing our nation to spin, once again, out of control? Have we forever lost all sense of decorum? With such mania do we effectively give the rest of the world the go-ahead to disrespect us ... at the same time they look to us to solve their problems? What is it in our national psyche that causes us to demonize our Presidents shortly after they take office? I, myself, am surely just as guilty as these image makers. And yet I am not too contrite about it. I have been annealed in the oven of "take-no-prisoners" politics. Yet, still I feel a tiny bit guilty for being so partisan.

Or are such images legitimate political commentary for which a cure isn't necessary?

Talk About Racial Profiling

Come on Dog Days

With all this cool weather and rain I am looking forward to the dog days of summer ... and my lawn burning out.

A Global-Warming Denier

Pride and Prejudice

To exhibit prejudice one must "pre-judge" situations or people. Prejudice is not the forming of some generalizations after observing "n" people or situations. One can and does naturally form stereotypes in ones mind through our life experiences. This is often characterized by the unthinking as prejudice. But what is true prejudice is when one applies such a stereotype in the n+1st case. This is what is unfair and biased.

Now suppose that you have seen many rowdy English soccer fans on TV and conclude that English soccer fans tend to be hooligans, even dangerous. Then suppose next you meet an English soccer fan on a London bus. Can you assume that this individual should be avoided at all cost? Unless there is other damming evidence, I would clearly say "no" as this is exhibiting prejudice.

Now, last night President Obama made two unfortunate observations about the Cambridge police officer (Sgt. Crowley) who arrested Professor Henry Louis Gates in the contra temps at the Professor's home last week. Obama first said, "without knowing all the facts," that this police officer "acted stupidly". This may or may not have been the case. Certainly, he could have been a tad more diplomatic. But then Obama went on to say that there is a long history of blacks and Latinos being profiled by the police in this country ... implying that Sgt. Crowley was also profiling Professor Gates because he is black. I do believe that profiling probably does exist in this country to whatever degree (probably diminishing).

But President Obama's comment was clearly prejudicial because he applied what may have been his valid generalization to this n+1st case "without knowing all the facts." This is not the kind of nuanced behavior one expects to see in our President.

Health-care Rx

I'm beginning to believe (no, I know) that Congress and this administration are a bunch of doofuses ... witness their (independent of their political party) feeble and/or self-serving attempts to solve our health-care costs problem. First, I have an issue with the premise that our medical costs are "spiraling out of control." Fifteen years ago national heath-care costs represented 14% of GNP and today they are just over 17% of GNP. Wow!! Let's destroy our economy and our way of life for a three percentage point growth in health care costs over fifteen years.

But, OK, I will concede that we can't let this trend continue forever and therefore the major thrust of "health-care reform" should be cost containment and (hopefully) rollback ... not expanded standard health-care insurance coverage (which, by the fact that it inserts a government middleman into the existing process, is sure to be more expensive.)

There seems to me a number of obvious solutions for containing or reducing the cost of health care in this country:

1) Eliminate emergency room (E.R.) health care -- indigent outpatient clinics need to be opened in hospitals with appointments required, a minimum payment requirement (say $20?), and reasonable Medicare/Medicaid reimbursements. (This is the way it was 50 years ago.) Non-emergency medical treatment should not be permitted in E.R.s.

2) Tort reform -- today many doctors pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in medical malpractice insurance. This money must be made up in patient fees and, often, in dubious other practices (non-required tests) which compromise the integrity of many medical practitioners. We also need to eliminate lawyers' advertising on TV (which once was the case prior to the tsunami of litigious medical bonanzas, such as John Edwards reveled in)

3) Pooled major-medical insurance -- there should be made available a centralized comprehensive major-medical insurance provider separated from standard medical insurance. It can be private (preferred) or public, but should be so large as to spread the risk of medical catastrophes over virtually the entire population of this country. It would be available for individuals to purchase, but HMOs and other health insurance companies could re-insure through this entity (at a cheaper cost) the major-medical portion of their existing coverage.

4) Huge pooled drug purchasing at cheaper prices -- separated from normal medical insurance. Can be done privately (preferred) or publicly (like the current Medicare/Medicaid drug offerings). HMOs and other health insurance companies could take advantage of this consortium to reduce the drug purchasing costs of their health coverage. We should also eliminate all prescribed-drug ads on television (like it used to be). This would help reduce the cost of drug marketing to the pharmaceutical companies which might help offset the gross margin pressure forced by the cheaper prices engendered by this pooled purchasing.

5) No elective medical procedures should be paid for by health insurance companies. The cost of such things a liposuction, breast augmentation, etc. should be entirely borne by the recipient. This would cut back on many of these self-indulgent medical costs.

6) More program options for standard (non-major) medical insurance coverage. Families of two person (such as retired couples) should not be forced into a "family" category with young married couples with higher premiums than are justified.

7) Cutoffs for the tax-deductibility of gold-plated medical insurance premiums -- companies (and government entities such as Congress) should not provide (and pay for) employees tax-deductible health insurance whose premiums exceed a maximum level (say $20,000 per year per family). Those plans exceeding that level would incur a tax liability to the recipient

8) Eliminate from Medicaid and Medicare coverage the following groups -- prisoners (2.3 million), illegal immigrants (12 million), Americans living abroad (6.6 million), and millionaires (40,000).

9) All non-major-medical doctor or hospital visits and prescription drugs that are covered by standard medical insurance should have a co-pay of at least 5% of the cost to the provider. This would encourage better economic decision-making (such as switching to generic drugs and eschewing non-required tests) on the part of insured recipients.

R.I.P.

Of the two famous brothers, Frank McCourt, the kindly teacher, patient mentor and compelling storyteller, and Malachy McCourt, the irascible blaggard, gold smuggler and unrepentant Communist, it was Frank who had to run out of oxygen first. Such is the pathos and fickleness of the Irish experience.

A Sotomayor Snippet

Yesterday, on a local talk show, a sincere-sounding woman called in with some first-hand experiences with Judge Sonia Sotomayor. I realize that her comments are anecdotal, but, to me, they struck home given what we already know about the judge.

It seems that this caller was, at one time, a federal prosecutor and had to argue a case in front of Judge Sotomayor. She was warned ahead of time by her compatriots that this judge was not easy on government prosecutors (usually favoring the plaintiff). Quite to the contrary, this prosecutor (with a Hispanic if not Puerto-Rican-sounding surname) was treated quite deferentially by Judge Sotomayor and prevailed in most of her points.

At the end of the day, in an unusual move, Judge Sotomayor called this lawyer to her bench and asked her quietly if she were Puerto Rican. This woman responded that no, this was her married name as her husband was Puerto Rican. After this exchange, Judge Sotomayor's demeanor changed 180 degrees and, in all future arguments in front of her, this prosecutor received the treatment she was originally expecting.

The Ayatollah is a Neocon?

Zbigniew Brzezinski was on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” for about the twentieth time since his daughter Mika took over as co-host (with Joe Scarborough). As always, he opined mainly about world geopolitics concentrating on, or course, Iran. During this pedantic pontificating he labeled the Ayatollah (or, as Obama calls him, "Supreme Leader") and his henchmen as “Iranian neocons” … not just once but numerous times. This sly semantics of the left unfortunately went unchallenged by the former Republican Representative from Florida, Joe Scarborough, and, more understandingly, the rest of this show’s mostly left-leaning talking heads (including Boston's erstwhile plagiarist, Mike Barnicle). Now, if the MSNBCers can get away with this linguistic slight-of-hand once, they will surely try to drum this notion into the heads of the few thousand viewers that they draw to their other left-wing propaganda podia-ists – Chris Mathews, Rachel Maddow, and Keith Olbermann. I also predict that we will eventually see this smear hung on the neocons by network television, CNN, and most of the print media. Now, here are the things that an alert Joe Scarborough should have said the first time Zbigniew uttered this insidious affront:

- our neocons did not impose a religious agenda on the U.S.
- our neocons did not brutally repress political speech or civilian assembly
- our neocons were freely elected … not governing as a result of a political coup
- our neocons had no private army (such as Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and the Quds)
- our neocons did not censor the media nor exile foreign correspondents
- our neocons did not sponsor worldwide terrorist activity
- our neocons did not threaten to annihilate Israel (or even the Axis of Evil)
- as far as I know, our neocons did not murder their political enemies

Finally, one should always remember that Zbigniew Brzezinski was our National Security Advisor under Jimmy Carter … when we made such a dog’s breakfast out of our relations with Iran. He just might still have a hidden-agenda reason to deflect criticism from his own historic failings.

See No Evil

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has killed a domestic spy satellite program that would have been used ”to provided federal, state and local officials with extensive access to spy-satellite imagery — but no eavesdropping capabilities— to assist with emergency response and other domestic-security needs, such as identifying where ports or border areas are vulnerable to terrorism.” See: No Eyes in the Sky To me, this is one more indication that the Obama administration does not have our nation’s security as its top-of-mind issue. Add this to the list of other administration backtracks that reduce our nation’s ability to combat radical-Islamic terrorism:

- the announced year-end closing of Gitmo,
- the release of top-secret terrorist interrogation memos,
- the relocating al-Qaeda Uighur terrorists to Bermuda and Palau,
- the reading of Miranda-rights to terrorists captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan,
- and Obama’s ho-hum attitude to a terrorist’s killing of an Army recruiter in Little Rock.

I wonder how much more dismantling is still to occur to the anti-terrorism battlements that were erected by the Bush administration. And this bothers me … it bothers me quite a bit.

Boondoggle Glitch

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has been quarantined in China after being exposed to the swine flu. See: Asian Boondoggle. Why do mayors and their entourages (too often including wives) indulge themselves in these obviously fake economic missions? (Boston’s mayor ,“Mumbles” Menino, has also had his share of expense-paid vacations, see Menino Italy Trip and Menino S.A. Trip ). Mayor Nagin will be out of office within the year. See: Last Days. Therefore, I suspect, any possible benefit that he can squeeze from his current boondoggle will be quickly dissipated once he is gone.

Perhaps, if the main-stream media were doing their jobs, they would grill these pols upon their return from such expensive “economic missions” to ascertain exactly what had been accomplished ... and then do follow-up stories.

Dr. Spock

Many of my dewy eyed friends, raised on Dr. Spock’s permissive, non-judgmental teachings, believe that Barack Obama has the magic formula for world peace (as demonstrated in his Cairo speech – all nations are created equal, kind words will conquer all, and nuclear weapons, especially in the hands of the U.S. are a menace.) This passivity contrasts with Ronald Reagan’s active message of “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” This difference is especially telling when one compares Obama governing style with his rhetoric. He said in Cairo (and pledged on the campaign trail) that governments should be transparent, yet the opaqueness and reach of what his regime is actually doing is stunning. He also said there that “any world order that elevates one nation over another will fail”. This is the ultimate in non-judgmental pap … and a very dangerous notion that mirrors his (and many other liberal's) knee-jerk, hate-America-first attitude. To have thought that we were no better than Germany during World War II would have eliminated any incentive for us to stop this totalitarian menace. And to think that the United States is today on an equal moral footing with North Korea is nothing more than bubble-headed sophism.

For a man, with such rhetorical gifts, to have such anti-American and deep-seated Spockian ideals is truly dangerous … particularly when he lives in the White House.

Don’t Do as I Do ...

Barack Obama was recently interviewed by the BBC in which he said, "The danger I think is when the United States or any country thinks that we can simply impose [our] values on another country with a different history and a different culture," I, for one, think this statement is exquisitely ironic considering the fact that Obama feels no compunction about imposing his far left-leaning values, born of a different culture and history, on his own nation. See: Pravda

My Hero, Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter has pretty much headed my manure list for quite a few years ... but this week he went a long way toward redeeming himself. He testified in front of John Kerry's Energy Committee. After a bit of typical self-engrandizement and boring side trips, he said a few things that caused me to sit up and smile:

1) He was and is in favor of the nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain
2) He is very much in favor of nuclear power plants as the chief hope in solving our future energy needs
3) When he commanded a nuclear submarine, they had to replace their nuclear fuel every few years. Now the nuclear carrier George H.W. Bush can go its entire life without replenishing its nuclear fuel. This advancement in nuclear technology bodes very well for the efficiency of any future nuclear power plants [which we may yet have the good sense to build -- my add].

I Googled for these remarks and found this article in the Washington Post by Dana Milbank. Take a gander and see if you can find this info anywhere cited ... as another example of main-stream media bias: MSM Bias

I also was visiting Los Alamos, NM this PM and discovered the following facts:
- If you live within 5 miles of a coal powered power plant, you will receive about 0.3 rems of radiation exposure per year (out of a total average exposure of about 200 rems per year)
- If you live within 5 miles of a nuclear powered power plant, you will receive only about 0.1 rems of radiation exposure per year!
- The greatest contributor of radiation exposure to the average person is medical and dental x-rays ... followed by radon gas.

It’s Easy Being Green

Kermit the frog was wrong. It’s easy (and profitable) being green. Witness the $75,000 fee that Tom Friedman of the NY Times pulled down for spouting the Gore text recently in San Francisco. See: Green Fee. Even Al Gore himself has turned being green into greenbacks … his speaking fees of $150,000 per sermon … his half of the $1.5 million Nobel Prize … his movie and book royalties. See: The Money Spigot. Surprisingly, the money-grubbing Clintons have had to take backstage to Gore’s post-administration greenmail juggernaut. Gore even has effortlessly transitioned from profiting from his investment in big oil (Occidental Petroleum) to his insider dealings with the greenies. See: Gore’s Investment Portfolio

But this is just a start. There are enormous monies to be made messaging the egos of eco-friendly plutocrats who want to hide their profligate energy-consumption ways behind the purchase of carbon credits. See: Carbon Credit Scams. And climate researchers have learned that, in order to get project funding, it is more sensible to hype some new calamity that is to befall the world unless we stop spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. See: Science Funding. And to top this all off, governments are also desirous of fleecing this same golden sheep by imposing a cap and trade policy … basically an enormous tax on corporate and individual activities that used to be freely practiced.

Union Suit

It is perfectly natural that this country’s unions would expect favors from Barack Obama and other Democrat politicians. After all, these same unions donated over $100 million last year to get these same people elected (see: Union Donations). But the actual quid pro quo seems to me to be getting a little rich, viz:

1) In bankruptcy, Chrysler Corp. debt holders (hedge funds, etc.) have been offered by the Obama administration approximately 33 cents on the dollar of the money owed to them … whereas the United Auto Workers are to receive 100 cents on the dollar for what Chrysler owes them (see: UAW Windfall). The consequence of this government cram down (see: Cram Down) is that the UAW will end up owning about 55% of the resultant Chrysler company.

2) Obama is strongly committed to eliminating the secret ballot in voting for union shops. This is called the Employee Free Choice Act (or "Card Check") but would result in exactly the opposite since employees would be consequently coerced into voting for the union (see: Employee Coercion)

3) The current Democrat administration is in the process of rolling back union disclosure requirements that have helped to quell union corruption (see: Stopping Union Disclosure)

4) The recently-passed $787 billion Stimulus Bill (the one no one read before they voted for it) has a provision that any construction project of $25 million or more MUST go to an union shop (see: Stimulus Bill Stipulation)

And, I'm sure, many more goodies.

ANGST!

Perhaps it is because of a need to fill the 24/7 news cycles of cable television but it seems to me that there is a growing number of stressful situations that are gripping the news reporting in this country. What once might have been a column on page B22 of the NY Times is now the hysterical lead on many internet blogs and cable TV talking-heads shows.

For instance, to mention but a few:
- Swine flu (or H1N1) -- In a normal year about 35,000 people die in this country from the flu. So far one person has died here from the Mexican swine influenza “pandemic” and yet our citizens are in a media-induced panic. Go figure.
- War in Afghanistan/Pakistan – Barack Obama has made this war a centerpiece of his '“Overseas Contingency Operation” (no longer “War on Terror”). So far we are not getting the daily casualty reports and dovish hysteria like we once did in Iraq under Bush. But I predict that, within 6-12 months, this conflict will be just as media assaulted.
- Somali pirates – This nuisance, it seems, could be wiped out with a few Predator drone strikes, but frustratingly lingers in the cable news cycle like a bad case of teenage acne.
- Banking crisis -- Since last October, this has been a headline grabber with the latest worry being the “stress test” which all banks recently passed (maybe not?).
- Unemployment – the media’s focus on the unemployment rate started under the Bush administration, but now the Labor Department's breathless monthly update has become a reason for the stock market to swoon.
- Nuclear proliferation in Iran/North Korea – The media is more than happy to go partners with Amadinajab and Kim Jong Il to keep their audiences in a perpetual state of angst over when and where these tin-hat dictators are going to drop the big one on the civilized world.
- Torture – the only thing more tortured than a water-boarded terrorist is the hypocritical rhetoric fanned by the American fourth estate.
- Disappearing U.S. auto industry – daily hand-wringing is the recipe for this naturally occurring bit of financial capitalism.
- Global warming – ‘nuf said.

Svengali

Al Gore is and has been playing a very high-stakes game … and so far has been winning (an Oscar, Nobel prize. etc.). His clarion calls for the reduction of man-made carbon emissions to stop the march of global warming, sea-level rising, and species extinctions has captured the imagination and slavish following of scientists, politicians and other naïve children worldwide. He, along with Barak Obama and Nancy Pelosi, have called for the elimination of all fossil fuels as the basis for our country’s energy production … to be replaced by wind, solar and other “renewables” … but, strangely, not nuclear. (One might even say that these three alarmists are quite quixotic by both literally and figuratively tilting at windmills.)

But, I am not here to argue the pros and cons of global warming but rather present some questions about Al Gore’s future emotional stability. Popular opinion in favor of man-made global warming has begun to wane in the light of increasing scientific skepticism and a willingness to question the Gore and UN dogma (see Climate Debate ). This has shifted our former Vice President and inventor of the internet into high gear. He has recently come back to his congressional playpen to pontificate some more on his emotional environmental crusade (see Gore Testifies and Alone). Now, as Al Gore sees his audience slipping away, he seems to be getting more and more frenetic (“The Earth has a fever!”) And, what will Gore do if and when his preachings about our ecological demise are finally and fully debunked? One might hope for his mental health that, like Malthus’s crackpot ideas about world over-population, this day of his reckoning does not happen until he has left this Earth … to its own self-regulating devices. At which point his place in history, IMHO, will become a very sad footnote.

Earth Day

Let's all celebrate ... like sending a recycled paper e-mail message to Al Gore.

No Sulphur Smell Now

An enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Coast Guard

Al Sharpton has done it once again. He has called the Somali pirates a “voluntary Coast Guard”. See: Al Sharpton’s fantasy. Now, as if making up multiple media lies about Towanda Brawley, castigating the Duke University soccer team with racial invective, and standing by in 1995 while a Harlem crowd was urged to “Burn down the Jew store” which killed seven of its employees … was not enough. Now Al baby is yanking another warped fantasy out of his twisted mind. Why this man has one second of time on any cable news program is indicative of the degree to which TV producers will sell their souls for ratings.

Or are the Somali buccaneers “ecological warriors” as quoted in the Huffington Post (read further in the above hyperlink.) I guess they must just be trying to mitigate global warming? And we killed three of them for heaven's sake!

Chicken Hawk?

Since Barack Obama has never served in the U.S. armed services and since our current President also courageously gave the direct order on Saturday morning allowing the U.S. Navy to use deadly force if Captain Phillips (being held by the Somali pirates) was in imminent danger and since professional Navy Seal snipers shot dead three of these pirates on Sunday morning and since the Somali pirate organization has sworn future revenge on U.S. nationals for this action … can we now call President Obama a “chicken hawk” … like we did to so many non-veteran higher-ups in the previous administration who dared stir up the Islamic terrorist wasp nest? (Just to keep things balanced.)

Atomic Ant

Barack Obama has made a dramatic commitment to “alternative energy” to combat that bubble-headed bugaboo “greenhouse gasses.” Apparently to him this only means solar and wind energy (and possibly geothermal) methodologies. He has also vowed to put out of business the utilities that burn coal for electricity (see Bankrupting Coal ). He also said in his campaign that he would “consider” expanding our nuclear electrical generating capabilities. We currently get about 20% of our electricity from nuclear power plants (see: United States Nuclear) whereas France (see: French Nuclear) gets over 75% and Japan (see: Japan Nuclear) gets over 35% of their electricity from same. And many of our nuclear power plants are getting quite old and do not take advantage of many of the advances made in this technology over the last twenty years.

But two other facts have recently been revealed to me (on CSPAN this past weekend) that show that Obama may have briefly considered expanding nuclear energy … but he has just as quickly rejected it. Witness:

- The recent $789 billion Stimulus Bill contains no governmental loan guarantees for building more nuclear power plants. Because of the incredible high capital investment required, without these guarantees, it is quite unlikely that any new nuclear plants will be built during Obama’s tenure.

- The Energy Department, under Obama, has recently stopped construction on the long-term nuclear waste storage facility being built at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Storing nuclear waste has one of the primary barriers to our expansion of nuclear power generation.
-
To put this problem in its proper perspective, take some time perusing the following table of energy consumption trends in the United States (see U.S. Energy Consumption. Print it out and put it on your refrigerator). Now these are numbers put out by the U.S. Government … so they are not more smoke being blown up our rear ends by Sierra Club tree-huggers. From this table it is very clear that, for coal generation of electricity to be replaced by solar arrays, wind farms, and geothermal energy, it would require an expansion of these latter three sources by over 30,000 %. This is pure fantasy. (Again, please, please take the time to study this data.) Are Obama and his advisors reading this data? If they are and if they persist with their fairy-tale green energy policies, then they are pulling the biggest scam in political history. And this is a scam that may well cost our economy its future and cause our future generations to retreat to cave-dwelling.

One last thought – how come Iran can pursue nuclear power generation (even if just a chimera) with liberal assent … while we are denied this option?

The Enabler

I do give President Obama credit for his good intentions toward Old Europe. (God help us if he were making these mistakes on purpose.) But, it doesn’t take much to view Old Europe as a pack of spoiled children. On his G20/NATO swing Obama has kissed the cuffs and hems of all the leaders of Old Europe and, other than fawning and adoring groupie audiences, what has he gotten in return? -- certainly no real help in Afghanistan, continued tut-tuting about America’s role in the world’s financial crisis, and an opportunity to surrender U.S. sovereignty to a bunch of Brussels bureaucrats who want to tell our financial institutions how to operate. Excuse me … it is not like the European banks did not swallow the financial-derivative bait with as much gusto and avarice as their American counterparts … only to be bailed our by the U.S. taxpayer (with the AIG pass-throughs). Obama said recently in Strasbourg, France that we Americans have been “dismissive, even derisive" of Old Europe. To my mind we have not been “dismissive, even derisive" enough.

Twice in this last century the United States has spent considerable blood and treasure to stop Europe’s self-annulations. Then we helped them rebuild after the Armageddon of World War II. We watched in painful silence as they dismantled their national defenses and forced the United States to become the world’s policemen and the only counterparty to Communist threats. (This alone permitted them their numerous self-indulgent social engineering experiments.) We tolerated their (and the Far East’s) thumb-on-the-scale trading practices that helped deplete our monetary reserves. We have bowed to their snobbish cackling about the threat of global warming and are poised to allow them even to tax our domestic energy usage. We have put up with the monstrous graft and kickback schemes between their politicians and the dictators in the Middle East and Africa. We have squirmed as they let NATO go sickly and they have done squat to help us stop the spread of nuclear technology to Iran and North Korea. And we have borne their pompous preachings on how really awful we have been in trying to protect them and the rest of the world from Islamic extremism.

Posh! Enough of this enabling of European effetism! I sincerely hope that this G20/NATO trip will cause the scales fall from Obama’s eyes and he will finally start encouraging the United States to act more in its own self interest … that is, at least until such time as Old Europe grows up and a pair.

The French Connection

The above is a view from Germany looking over the Rhine River to Strasbourg, France and seeing the results of the anti-everything riots that are taking place during the NATO summit meetings there. Now France has been reluctant to commit anything meaningful to NATO’s efforts to stop the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan … much to President Obama chagrin (see French Reluctance). However, to me, this rioting by Code Pink or Act Up rowdies or whatever provides to France the perfect opportunity to kill deux oiseaus avec l’un rocher.

The answer: Send in droves of riot police and round up these radicals by the hundreds or even thousands. Then try them quickly and give them the option of 30 years in prison (for aiding and abetting felonious arson) or joining the French Foreign Legion. When most chose the latter course, assemble this ragtag mob into crack units of mercenaries by training the soles off their feet. Then send them to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban. If they refuse to kill their soul mates, then court-martial them and, like Laurel and Hardy in that French Foreign Legion movie, shoot them at dawn. After a few of said punishments, we should then have a real committed French fighting force to aid our GIs in their Afghan mission. And we might also start to like the French other than for their cuisine.

Do I seem too harsh?

Never Mind

Gilda Radner once played a character on “Saturday Night Live” called Emily Litella. This Emily Litella generally would sit with another news anchor on “Weekend Update,” and would read a seemingly serious editorial. She invariably misunderstood some word or issue in this editorial and would go off at length on this misunderstanding … bringing up irrelevant nonsense after irrelevant nonsense. Finally her co-anchor would tell Emily Litella that her original jumping off point was in error … at which point Emily Litella would shrug and say, "Never mind.”

Yesterday, I wrote a bit of a puff blog on Barack Obama, complementing him on his contribution to the convivial nature of the G20 economic summit in London (see: New World Order). Now, today we see Obama has given a speech in Strasbourg, France (see French Town Meeting) in which he went out of his way to disrespect the country over which he governs. He said that the United States:

- had often behaved arrogantly towards Europe, and had been “dismissive, even derisive",
- “shares the blame [for the world economic meltdown] ... we've just emerged from an era marked by [our] irresponsibility".
- “now embodies [in him] the new idealism and the new fight for progress … on climate change, on clearing up the financial and economic mess left by his predecessors, and all the other mega-problems.”
- has shown “a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world."
- "made a mistake by allowing the Taliban to reemerge [in Afghanistan] during the height of the Iraq war."

So, Obama still can’t resist, on foreign soil no less, in berating the United States for its flaws and in believing that he will lead our country back on the path that Europeans will find more palatable.

Re: my new respect for Obama’s leadership, “Never mind.”

New World Order

It appears President and Michelle Obama have helped create a new conviviality among world leaders. See the G20 Results. Michelle Obama snookered up to Queen Elizabeth in a very forward but seemingly accepted manner. See Hug a Mug. And Barack Obama unexpectedly bowed to the king of Saudi Arabia. See Your Highness. But these gaffs aside, our President did help calm the waters between China and France over dealing with financial tax havens (see “G20 Results” reference). Even Dmitry Medvedev of Russia hailed Obama as “my new comrade” (at once, both a fraternal and frightening appellation.) But, giving Obama the benefit of the doubt, the G20 world economic summit seems to have been a winner for the good ole U.S.A.

Time will, of course, tell. But at least it appears that the world has endorsed our smiling savior as its new matinee idol. And I will acknowledge that this group embrace is a dollop of gravy on an otherwise dreary meal of economic gristle.

G20

The G20 economic summit is meeting tomorrow in London and there are considerable protestations … marching, breaking windows and invading buildings. Here is a sample of the kind of demonstrations that are taking place. But, there is one problem. It is Socialism and Communism that means not working. But, Capitalism means working your tuckus off. Somebody should really clue these radicals in. By the bye, I wonder how many of these extremists have real jobs?

Mr. Goodwrench

President Obama has unilaterally guaranteed the warranties on the autos sold by General Motors and Chrysler. See U.S. Auto Warranties. Now this is a pretty far-reaching commitment of taxpayer dollars for not having any public or Congressional input. To see how profound this might be consider the following: these two U.S. automakers sell roughly eight million cars a year (some years more, some years less) and I estimate the effective cost of a three-year warranty on a new car to be about $1,000 per car. So Obama has committed the U.S. taxpayer to $8 billion of cost per year in the first year and accumulating up to $24 billion per year in year three (after layering each new model year). Once these two car companies went under, this guarantee would theoretically last for at least three years after they disappeared under the waves. Now this is just problem one. There are two more serious issues:

1) What about Ford Motor? How can they compete with GM and Chrysler when these latter two companies have free access to the U.S. taxpayer’s wallet from which to extract even larger amounts of pelf.

2) What about foreign auto makers? Can they not now claim unfair trading practices for this U.S. warranty backstop? In fact, just the current Obama loan guarantees to GM and Chrysler could also be construed to be the start of an auto-industry world trade war. We know that the degeneration of world trade was a major contributing factor to the great depression. Have we just let this genie out of the bottle once again?

The Obama administration is moving so fast in its attempts to improve our economy that I am concerned that it has not spent enough time worrying about unintended consequences. Maybe they need to follow that oft-used phrase from the Clinton administration and "stop and take a deep breath".

Good Riddance

George W. Bush is comfortably ensconced back in Texas … making Laura’s morning coffee and licking his wounds. And I say, “Good riddance!” Clearly, our worst President can no longer run up huge budget deficits which our children and grandchildren will have no hope of repaying. He no longer can escalate military offenses in far away lands where American sons and daughters will go the die or lose their limbs. He can no longer gaff his way through unscripted press conferences and photo ops. He can no longer try to reward all this nation's illegal aliens with citizenship and Social Security benefits. He can no longer nominate people to his administration who are tainted with malfeasance or unethical pasts. He can no longer sully America’s standing with our foreign friends and enemies alike with his naïve diplomatic judgments. He can no longer reward his supporters with larded-up government spending. He can no longer ruin our economy with his constant doom and gloom predictions. He can no longer wage his petty “war on terror.” He can no longer endorse steps to alleviate global warming. He can no longer keep Guantanamo open so that peace-loving Islamists are constantly tortured and kept in subhuman conditions. And he can no longer fiddle-fart around while Rome burns.

Thank God for the wisdom of the American electorate.

The Piker

U.S. DEFICITS BY YEARS

Yes, George W. Bush took a budget surplus from the latter part of the Clinton administration and turned it into a deficit. This was the result of the bursting of the dot-com bubble, the 9/11 terror attack with its resultant financial meltdown, and then the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was not the result of the Bush tax cuts as these did nothing but encourage economic growth and vigorous employment expansion up until the time of our current financial freeze-up (the reasons for which I will not argue here). But Bush was a piker when it comes to fiscal irresponsibility. As one can see from this chart, the Obama administration, under Rahm Emanuel’s leitmotif that “we should never waste a good crisis,” is pushing social spending and our federal deficits to undreamed-of levels … and this will occur despite a planned gutting of our defense budget. This chart shows the dramatically growth of deficits under the current Obama/Emanuel plan as projected by the White House and also the impartial Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

One picture is worth a thousand words.

The Face of American Politics

- Friend of Angelo (mortgage rate payola)

- Refusal to release mortgage paper trail
- Wife involved with AIG (on board of IPC)
- Flip-flopper on AIG bonus provision (fessed up) - Waitress "sandwich" maker w/Ted Kennedy

- Irish vacation home shady self-enrichment

- John Huang 1996-97 Chinagate scandal

- Cozy relationship with Fannie Mae

And to think, he might have been the Democrat nominee for President ...

Turd on the Table

A boss of mine once derided me for leaving him a “turd on the table.” In other words don’t bring him a problem without bringing him a solution. I guess I’ve done just that with “The Camel's Nose” blog entry. So, I will try to solution things. Unfortunately the riposte isn’t easy. The answer needs to rein in excessive executive compensation without the heavy hand of government which, if we have been awake these last twenty years, invariably brings with it more problems than it solves (witness the “Community Reinvestment Act” of 1992 which is the genesis of our current economic meltdown.)

Since the Board of Directors and the Executive Compensation Committees of corporations are where these problems start, this is where the solution must also begin. Therefore, I suggest the following remedies be enacted into law:

1) All senior executives and Board of Directors members must disclose annually in each company’s Annual Report and 10K what other corporate boards they sit on, what all their compensations, perks and considerations are from this company, and what conflict of interests they might have or have had to the financial well being of said company or to the benefit of some other entity. (For instance Edward Liddy, CEO of AIG would have to disclose that he previously sat on the Board of Goldman Sachs to which AIG funneled $12.9 billion of federal bailout monies.) These disclosures must be made fully, without obfuscation, and under the threat of severe penalties from the SEC and/or the civil justice system. I might even consider a special federal tribunal being set up that overarches state courts in these specific cases.

2) No Board member or corporate executive of a public company may also be involved, either directly or indirectly, in the political arena whatsoever.

3) All members of the Executive Compensation Committee must be outside Directors, must have had experience in constructing executive compensation packages, and the majority must come from entities which have meaningful investments in said company. They must state in writing in the 10K the specific reasons for each executive’s compensation package and disallow any variance from the terms of these packages. The SEC and general public would have the same redress options for failures under these terms as in #1) above.

4) No corporate executive or Board member can be an officer or in any way benefit from the operations of a subsidiary or non-public entity of said corporation. In fact, all off-balance sheet transactions must be fully disclosed and accounted for in the 10K of said corporation.

5) All offshore subsidiaries of said corporations need to comply with these laws as though they were operating in the United States.

6) Corporations should stop indemnifying directors from bad decisions AND paying them the big fees, stock options and perks -- possibly one but not both.

This, at least, is a start … and relies as little as humanly possible on the government actually running things.

The Camel’s Nose

The House of Representatives this past week overwhelmingly passed a 90% income tax on bonus compensation for executives earning over $250,000 per year and working for companies receiving over $5 billion in TARP or other bailout monies. This includes companies like AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and possibly Citigroup and Merrill Lynch (now part of Bank of America). And, in the process, Congress is ignoring the thousand fold bigger issue of how these TARP and other bailout monies are being distributed. See my blog Golden Goldman).

Although I think this was misguided legislation and may be mollified in the Senate, still executive pay packages have been soaring into the stratosphere in recent years primarily, I believe, because the checks on such largess have all but disappeared. Company shareholders are now mostly mutual funds, hedge funds, and other amalgams of monies whose investment time horizon are very short and whose managers themselves have been caught up in the frenzy of mega-salaries. (When I was an investment analyst on Wall Street in the 1970s, a top pay package for this profession was a few hundred thousand dollars … now, for essentially the same work, it is many millions.)

So, into center stage steps President Obama who is now proposing to limit the pay packages of all corporate America independent of whether any government monies have been given to them. (See Executive Pay Limits). Now while I don’t take issue with the need to reestablish some sanity into the executive pay process, I do question if the Federal Government in the form of Chris Dodd and Barney Frank have the expertise and disposition to be the arbiters of this process. In fact such a development downright frightens me. The AIG executive bonuses uproar has allowed the nose of the government camel into the tent of corporate governance which, if I read the Obama administration’s intentions correctly, will be just the first of a series of baby steps with the ultimate objective of dismantling capitalism.

The road to Socialism is paved with camel’s noses.

Breaking the China

Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke announced yesterday that his organization will pump over one trillion dollars into the U.S. economy by buying up U.S. Treasury securities and mortgage-backed debt. (See Bernanke Buyback). This bold move has caused interest rates to plummet, the price of Treasury securities to rise, and the U.S. dollar to weaken around the world. It is now predicted that long-term mortgage rates will now decline to the 4% - 4.5% range. This buyback should include as much as $300 billion of long-term treasuries and cause the government printing presses to work overtime to print all the required dollars. Now, there may be an interesting wrinkle to this announcement. China has recently complained about its massive holdings of U.S. debt obligations (See China Complaint). It is estimated that they hold as much as one trillion dollars of U.S. debt and, if they were to decide to unload these holdings back to us, the price of such debt would plummet and U.S. interest rates would increase in step.

Now I have to wonder if these news stories are linked? Is Bernanke perhaps rubbing China’s belly by allowing it to sell a bunch of their U.S. debt holdings back to us under more favorable conditions? Isn’t it funny that effectively the same action (the Federal Reserve Bank buying back U.S. debt) can have totally opposite effects depending on who initiates the transaction? And, if my speculation turns out to be correct, then the U.S., under the wing of our International President, Hillary Clinton, clearly has blinked first.

Skin the Cat

Goldman Sachs is now making loans to its cash-strapped employees. See: Goldman Loans. This, most likely, is in response to the public outrage that has arisen over the bonuses that AIG recently gave to many of its managers. Like AIG, Goldman was also a recipient of taxpayer largess to the tune of $10 billion of TARP funds last fall PLUS a $12.9 billion pass-through of taxpayer funds from AIG (which I wrote about in my previous blog post). This loan program pretty much substitutes for what would be standard bonuses at Goldman. Instead, it is loaning its employees the money necessary to meet their internal capital calls.

Now the rub … I would be willing to bet a good steak dinner that many of these “loans” will be eventually forgiven by Goldman. Thus they effectively will turn out to be retroactive bonuses without the pejorative label. (And this legerdemain also allows recipients to defer income taxes on these payments.) So you see … there is more than one way to skin a taxpayer.

Golden Goldman

(Goldman Sachs Tower -- New Jersey)

American International Group (AIG) just released the ordered list of counterparty payments that it had made last fall from the taxpayers’ and the Federal Reserve Bank’s initial $115 billion in bailout money to this company. According to this morning’s NY Times, Goldman Sachs was second on this recipient list at $8.1 billion. However, since then, AIG has received an additional $58 billion from the U.S. Treasury and Goldman now tops the list at $12.9 billion in total bailout largess … presumably to make good on additional Credit Default Swaps or other financial derivatives that Goldman took out with AIG. (Other large benefactors from U.S. taxpayer’s and Fed’s money, via AIG, include Deutsche Bank @ $11.8 billion, Societe Generale @ $11.9 billion, Merrill Lynch @ $6.8 billion, Barclays Bank @$8.5 billion, and UBS @ $5 billion.)

Now, there are many questions surrounding such counterparty payments … such as:

- Did Goldman Sachs or any other counterparty buy these Credit Default Swaps at a discount and then turn around and sell them back to AIG at 100 cents on the dollar? (Question originally posed by Senator Shelby from Alabama in a recent Senate hearing.)

- Did AIG negotiate with any or all these counterparties to pay them something less than full par value for these CDSs as would be expected? (Question originally asked in a recent House hearing on AIG).

- Since Hank Paulson, the then Secretary of the Treasury under G.W. Bush, was a former Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO … were such pass-through payments to Goldman Sachs from the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve Bank a possible conflict of interest? At the time, was Paulson made aware of this seeming breach of faith?

- The new Obama administration, under which an additional $58 billion has been funneled into AIG (and, as a consequence, an additional $4.8 billion into Goldman Sachs) also seems somewhat cozy with Goldman Sachs. Robert Rubin, a transition team economic advisor to Obama is an ex-Goldman co-Chairman and, according to Wikipedia, "Goldman was the second largest donor to the Barack Obama campaign." It is estimated that Goldman Sachs execs gave close to a million dollars to Obama (see Obama Donors) including James Johnson, a Goldman Sachs board member and former chairman and CEO of Fannie Mae, and Bruce Heyman, Managing Director, Private Wealth Mgt at Goldman. Also Larry Summers, Director of the President Obama’s National Economic Council; and Tim Geithner, the new Secretary of the Treasury and last fall’s head of the NY Federal Reserve Bank are both former protégés of Robert Rubin.

As far as I am concerned the current kerfuffle about the $165 million in bonuses paid out to AIG executives is a mere distraction from the much bigger mega-scandal of over $170 billion of make-good payments that AIG is funneling into the world’s financial counterparty community. This is the true AIG, Federal Reserve Bank, and U.S. Treasury misfeasance that Barney Frank and the rest of his masked bandits in Congress need to be investigating with their typical grandstanding vigor … instead of trying to grab headlines with this AIG bonus sidebar.

Obey

My wife and I recently visited the new Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) museum, a spectacular cantilevered building overlooking Boston harbor. We spent at least 45 minutes waiting in a serpentine line of neo-hippies to pay an outrageous price (I think $12 @ plus expensive parking) to view, at best, a sparse and mediocre exhibit of “modern art” that rivaled the Rhode Island School of Design’s students’ exhibit in its schmaltzy glitz. (Note: the RISDI museum’s other standing exhibits, however, are well worth the entrance fee.)

The “highlight” of ICA’s current exhibits is the “Obey” section of graphic posters by “street artist,” Shepard Fairey, an iconoclast in the Andy Warhol genre from Los Angeles. See Shepard Fairey . Fairey is best known for his Andre the Giant posters and stickers (first created when he was at RISDI) and his recent “Hope” portrait of Barack Obama. This section is housed in 4 or 5 ICA exhibit halls and includes many posters filled with vitriol (greedy capitalism, George Bush as Satan) or adoration (Che Guevara, Angela Davis, Obama). These posters are so politically polarizing that it is difficult to judge their true artistic worth. However, grudgingly, they do show a modicum of creativity along with clever use of replicated computer-generated graphics.

But, I must also admit that I also foster an obsessive urge to return to the ICA with a few cans of spray paint hidden under my coat and tag many of Fairey’s more outrageous posters with my own political messages. I would continue this civil disobedience until I was hauled away in cuffs to spend the rest of my life in a Cambridge, MA gulag.

Closing observations:
- Of the many hundreds of attendees at this museum, we saw only one person of color (plenty of Asians though.) Strange?
- If you must visit ICA, spend some time sitting on the benches overlooking the serene Boston harbor (just before the “Obey” section). It will steel you for what is to come.

World’s Most Admired

FORTUNE Magazine has just published its list of the “World’s Most Admired Companies”. (Full disclosure: I was involved in the electronic publishing of this survey data for many years … when it was called “America’s Most Admired Companies”.) Even though this survey was done last Fall, it is quite revealing in which companies are leading in their industries and which companies are lagging:

Megabanks: Bank of America (#1, of all things! BAC stock now sells for $3.50))
Megabanks: Citigroup not even in the list of 7
Motor Vehicles: General Motors (#7, just ahead of Renault … stock sells for $1.60)
Computers: Xerox (#1, yes Xerox! When was the last time you saw a Xerox computer?)
Electronics: General Electric (#1, GE recently hit a 17 year low in the stock market)
Insurance: AIG, the world’s largest insurance company is no longer in the top 8
Infotech Services: IBM (#1, right ahead of Accenture)
Software: Microsoft (#5, behind Intuit, Adobe, Electronic Arts and Autodesk)

Now tell me that U.S. industries are not going through performance paroxysms.

Killing Capitalism

The stock market keeps going down hardly without a pause (see Market Plunge) … pretty much since it was clear that Obama was to be elected President. The nagging question is -- why? I have finally and reluctantly come up with my answer and it is not pretty – President Obama seems bent on killing capitalism. (Gasp!) What better way to slay the bourgeois notion of private ownership of the factors of production than to eliminate the shining symbol of this private ownership -- the stock market? Given what we learned about Obama’s friends and mentors during his campaign, I seriously doubt if this result would be inadvertent.

As a child in the 1940’s and 1950’s I remember that the Soviet Union would often use “Wall Street” as their bete noire representing the United States in their crusade to vilify and defeat us. So, someone who wants to “change” forever the fundamental character of this country might well first attack and eliminate this symbol. And Barack Obama seems to be performing creditably in his job one. For example, he has:

- continually talked down the economy and the stock market with his drum-beat doomsday pronouncements.

- systematically attacked U.S. industry groups with his plans for fundamental “change” – the pharmaceutical industry by planned drastic reductions in the government’s Medicare drug reimbursements; the coal industry by his threat to eliminate coal-powered electrical plants within ten years; the utility industry by his call for alternative energy sources without ever focusing on nuclear power and by his call for carbon “cap and trade” taxing; the health care industry by his thinly-disguised plans for the government eventually to be the sole health care insurer; the banking industry by his Treasury Secretary’s reluctance to spell out a workable rescue stratagem; the petroleum industry by backtracking on his party’s pre-election promise to begin more offshore drilling and by his eliminating tax incentives for new oil discoveries; the defense industry by his easy willingness to abandon our missile shield initiative and his implied coming draconian reductions in defense spending; the auto industry by making them effective wards of the state; and all industries in general by the crowding-out of future financing opportunities by the massive government borrowing that will be required to fund his stimulus bill (and other pork spending).

- shown little or no concern that trillions of dollars of wealth that has been destroyed by this stock market slide (reference Jim Cramer’s rants: Cramer Rants).

And apparently Jim Cramer and I are not the only people who think so. See also: Power Line and The Wall Street Journal

If this speculation of mine turns out to be true (and, believe me, we will know soon enough), it will be considerably ironic since it was many fat-cat Wall-Street capitalists who financed much of Obama’s campaign. (Sorry, no take-backs.)