This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Media

  • Speculation is speculation

    I don’t give investment advice anymore since everyone stopped paying me for my advice. But I used to give advice to people for a living, it was a tough living, though. Many people thought they knew more than I knew because of the popular culture of investing. In fact, I spent my evenings and weekends reading and watching the garbage on magazine racks and on the pop-culture CNBC to be able to counter prospective clients’ know-it-all-isms. Many (many, many, many) never became my clients because it’s nearly impossible to overcome the twaddle that passes as investment advice, especially in the 90s when the Democrat Administration announced that they’d done away with down strokes in the business cycle.

    The know-it-alls were buying stocks on their margin accounts, paying 9-13% in interest in hopes of turning a huge profit in stocks that were selling at 85 times earnings – the same stocks everyone else was buying. It was a fine strategy for a while, but then when stocks melted down in the Spring of 2000 and margin accounts came due, investors had to pay the accounts by cashing out stocks for which they had paid a lot more – which drove stock prices down even further.

    One of the first things I read about the history of investing was a story about how Joe Kennedy knew there was an impending stock market correction in 1929 because he listened to his shoe-shine guy running down the list of stocks the bootblack owned and many matched Kennedy’s portfolio. I guess the lesson is that you shouldn’t be investing with the crowd.

    For about four years now, I’ve heard about the “housing boom”. It became the barometer of the economy on pop-culture CNBC (yes I still watch it – for reasons that will become apparent, if they haven’t already) – the welfare of companies building multi-million dollar houses drove the excitement on those ridiculous programs. Ray Charles could’ve seen this one coming. When housing starts and existing home sales dipped last year, CNBC and $400 haircut guys warned that a new recession was coming. A few years before that, it was the consumer confidence reports that rocked the market (while we were inundated with reports from retailers) after years of pinning the hopes for the market to B2P (business to people sales) while the tech-boom had been tied to B2B sales.

    But this year, it’s the mortgage/housing market that is causing fear among investors. Bond yields have been fairly depressed the past several years and it was inevitable that yields would begin to rise pretty soon, especially since all of those “savvy” investors who listened to CNBC and used their homes like ATMs while they refinanced for lower variable rate mortgages – but what goes down (interest rates) must go up and the interest rate chickens are home to roost. Everyone was doing it, new mortgage companies sprang up overnight to handle the business. Didn’t they see it coming?

    No, they pooh-poohed the doomsayers in favor of the blatherskites who promised instant cash at low interest rates – especially the jabberwocky that CNBC was pushing on people daily.  

    The Wall Street Journal reports what happened in case you missed it last week;

    The drop in U.S. government bond prices this past week is expected to cause pain for some homeowners and mortgage shoppers, and bring fresh opportunities to income investors.

    The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which moves in the opposite direction to the price, jumped above the psychologically significant 5% threshold, ending Friday at 5.119%, up from 4.955% a week earlier. The 10-year’s yield is now at its highest level since July 2006.

    In fact, when the 10-year note jumped above 5.2% early Thursday morning, I actually heard Michele Caruso Cabrera squeal with delight on CNBC’s pre-7 am international market program (whatever clever moniker it has been christened this week).

    Well, anyway, it’s affected all of those savvy investors who re-fi’d their homes and spent the cash on remodeling their homes to improve the value – so they improved the value of a home that they can’t sell. Like owning millions of dollars of Confederate money or Enron stock. One mortgage company, Counrywide, had a default rate near 20% in April mainly from people who refi’d to varibale rate mortgages who’s payments creeped higher with interest rates.

    So here comes the Democrats. Hillary came out in March and called for a revision of government programs to bail out these “savvy” investors;

    The presidential candidate also said she will soon reintroduce legislation to modernize the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). Clinton said she also favors raising FHA loan limits for high-income areas to help more low-income home buyers.

    “I also propose a stop to prepayment penalties designed to trap borrowers,” Clinton said in a speech to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

    But the Bush Administration was already on the job;

    Federal banking regulators are negotiating with lenders to restructure high-interest rate mortgages given to home buyers with poor credit.

    The effort by the Office of Thrift Supervision is aimed at softening the impact of the housing market’s slowdown and bolsters the argument of lawmakers who say mortgage reforms may not be needed.

    While it may also result in accounting charges on quarterly earnings reports of public companies with mortgage lending units later this year, it could limit any broad economic damage from the risky mortgage practices of the past few years.

    So, homeowners might get a break from the government for being so damn stupid that they they listen to the morons on CNBC. They don’t deserve it. Easy money is never easy forever.

    Not that he gave any advice to invest in mortgages, but why anyone listens to that Jim Cramer, I’ll never know. He had as much to do as anyone to do with the losses from Enron’s collapse. Still thousands invest using his one-size-fits-all prattle everyday.

    But, here’s the only investment advice I’m ever going to give you. Print it out if you need to remember it; there’s no easy way to make millions, unless you’re a crook (ex. Hillary Clinton, Terry McAuliffe, Kenneth Lay). Invest only that which you can afford from your earnings  (notice I didn’t say savings) and don’t chase returns. Slow and steady wins the race; develop an investment strategy (with a professional if you need one) and stick to it – avoid investing in trendy investments. With a proper diversification of your portfolio, you’ll be in the “trendy markets” before everyone else. Keep your savings separate from your investments – that’ll keep you from dipping into your investments at inopportune times.

    And most importantly; borrowing money is never any part of sound investment strategy.

  • Cities want to lead global warming fight

    Today, the Washington Post’s front page story is about “Cities Take Lead On Environment…” as if that’s a bad thing that the Bush Administration hasn’t done enough to curb “global warming” Now I’m not going to discuss whether or not global warming is real – I’m not a scientist, but I have my own opinions on it. What I’d rather point out is that this should be local issue and not a job of the federal government. It’s the essence of what separates the Left and the Right.

    The WaPo piece, excerpted;

    To the long list of evils being blamed on global warming — hurricanes, heat waves, melting ice caps — tack on the smaller interior of Steve Benesoczky’s cab. Inside, his passengers can already feel the squeeze of climate change in their knees.

    “Of course it’s less comfortable. Look, there’s less leg room,” said Benesoczky, 55, as he pointed to the back of his new taxi — a hybrid Ford Escape.

    The company Benesoczky works for has started complying with a new directive ordering New York’s entire fleet of 13,000 yellow cabs to go green over the next five years — part of an effort by the nation’s largest city to cut its carbon emissions 30 percent by 2030.

    Most taxis here are now roomy-if-gas-guzzling Ford Crown Victorias. But hundreds of boxy hybrid cabs have already hit the roads, gradually altering the autoscape of Manhattan’s glittering byways.

    “Some people are complaining — especially the tall ones — but most are saying, ‘Finally, you’re doing something for the environment,’ ” said Benesoczky, a Hungarian émigré and New York City cabbie of two-and-a-half decades. “Look, people will make a little sacrifice if they have to. They already are.”

    New York is among a faction of U.S. cities from Boston to Portland, Ore., that are racing ahead of the federal government in setting carbon emission targets and developing concrete strategies to deal with climate change. Their solutions are already beginning to alter the fabric of life for millions of urban dwellers.

    It is a direct consequence, municipal officials and analysts say, of the growing perception inside city halls that the Bush administration has largely ignored an issue that has reached a tipping point in American culture.

    Well, that’s the way it should be – if local government doesn’t think the Feds are doing enough for their communities, they absolutely should take the lead. The same with unemployment and welfare and the whole myriad of issues facing individual communities. Why should they sit around and wait for some fat bureuocrat to make a sweeping decision that should only be applied to a small area instead of the whole country?

    Why should a family in Arkansas pay for the environmental cleanup of Onondaga Lake in Syracuse, NY? Why can’t the Feds push responsibility down to the people who have the greatest stake in their local environment? And it gives locals a greater say, and more political control, in what the priorities should be on local problems instead of waiting for a years-long administrative process waiting for the feds to make decisions?

    How realistic is it for the Feds to declare that taxis should all be hybrid cars when it doesn’t make sense for a guy driving a country hack in Backwoods, Idaho or Turkeyfoot Hollow, West Virginia? If these local governments want to regulate their citizens, they don’t need the feds’ blessings. That’s what this government is all about, any-damn-way.

    What does the Labor Department in Washington, DC know about training unemployed workers in Eugene, Oregon? Why does it make sense for Congress to mandate a minimum wage that’s applied nationally, despite the varied cost-of-living across the country? A business trying to pay the minimum wage in DC wouldn’t have any employees since even McDonald’s starts workers a few bucks-an-hour over minimum wage.

    A national environmental policy is just as useless. It’s about time States and municipal governments did their job instead of passing stupid no-smoking bans and cell-phone-usage-while-driving laws. The Code of Federal Regulations’ biggest titles are the Environmental Protection and Public Health series – maybe we could cut Federal taxes if more local governments took up leadership on these two problems that aren’t even mentioned in the Constitution as Federal government responsibilities.

    Oh, and if global warming is such a serious problem, why is the Federal government still working under the same regulations as the Clinton-GORE administration? Did it just become a problem when this administration moved to Washington?

    And if people are so ready to make sacrifices, why haven’t they? Governments wouldn’t have to regulate if that statement were true. Where are the hybrid cars on the road?

    And it’s a little bit funny that almost the whole country mandates recycling, except the residents of Washington, DC don’t. I haven’t seen fewer cars on DC streets or an increase in public transportation use here.

    I guess it’s the responsibility of the rest of the country to make sacrifices for the denizens of DC. That would explain the “do as I say, not as I do” attitude here.

  • The big “Duhs” of the week

    I love it when brainiac journalists make what they think are stunning discoveries, but those discoveries are just accepted facts for the rest of the planet. The two that really struck me today were one from Joe Klein (Time Magazine) and the other from Dave Balz (Washington Post). Both articles deal with the super-polarized political scene, but different aspects.

    Joe Klein is shocked, shocked I tell you, that the left end of the blogosphere is;

    …a fierce, bullying, often witless tone of intolerance that has overtaken the left-wing sector of the blogosphere. Anyone who doesn’t move in lockstep with the most extreme voices is savaged and ridiculed—especially people like me who often agree with the liberal position but sometimes disagree and are therefore considered traitorously unreliable.

    But, of course, it’s not their fault, according to poor little victim Joe;

    …the left-liberals in the blogosphere are merely aping the odious, disdainful—and politically successful—tone that right-wing radio talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh pioneered. They are also justifiably furious at a Bush White House that has specialized in big lies and smear tactics.

    Yep, it’s Rush Limbaugh’s and the Bush Administration’s fault. Poor little leftists forced to “ape” those evil Republicans. Before the Bush Administration even got into office, there were political ads in Missouri that warned citizens that electing Bob Dole to the Presidency would result in more church burnings.

    There were political ads in Texas that accused then-Governor Bush of being responsible for the dragging death of James Byrd because he wouldn’t sign “hate crime” legislation. Who was it that accused Republicans of wanting to starve the children and elderly in the first months of the Republicans’ reign of terror in Congress back in 1995?

    Who accused Republicans of wanting to poison the air and the water – hell, as recently as 2001 when the Bush Administration yanked back regs that imposed impossible arsenic on communities that hadn’t done any damage in the previous eight years of the Clinton Administration – and your side used that as evidence that Republican were evil beings setting out to destroy the world. Remember that, Joe?

    Who’s side went to Iraq on the eve of our war and stood on the terrace of Saddam Hussein’s palace and declared that Hussein was more trustworthy than our own President?

    Hell, I got banned from the Democratic Underground on my very first post back in 1999 – and all I asked was “You guys don’t really believe this do you?” That was it and my account was flung off into the cybertrash. That was certainly before the Bush Administration did all of the nasty things you and the others claim they’ve done.

    I got named “Idiot of the Week” by some Leftist website I’d never heard of – in fact google my name and you’ll see how my fame that week was spread out to several websites as they repeated the honorary title (I think it was really less than a week, though – which is false advertising – there was a new idiot up there within a few days). My point being – I don’t call people names from other blogs. I’ve called politicians idiots and morons, but not someone on another blog, randomly. OK, William M. Arkin, but he doesn’t really count – he’s paid to blog by some small newspaper on 15th and Eye Streets here in DC.

    So, Joe, you tell me who the mental midgets (most of whom can’t spell and have trouble with the “Caps” key, too – speaking from experience) on Left are “aping”.

    Now, let’s get to Mr. Balz;

    The collapse of comprehensive immigration revision in the Senate last night represents a political defeat for President Bush, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), the bill’s most prominent sponsors. More significantly, it represents a scathing indictment of the political culture of Washington.

    The defeat of the legislation can be laid at the doorstep of opponents on the right and left, on congressional leaders who couldn’t move their troops and on an increasingly weakened president and his White House team. But together it added up to another example of a polarized political system in which the center could not hold.

    Yep, that’s who we’ll blame – the President and John McCain (then we’ll mention Fat Teddy just to seem bipartisan in the blame). But if you bother to scroll down the story, you get to this part;

    House Democratic leaders were tepid in their support, demanding that Republicans bring at least 60 to 70 votes so that freshman Democrats from marginal districts would be able to vote no.

    Um, excuse me? We’re going to blame a lack of bipartisan cooperation, the weakness of the President – and that cooperation includes Republicans helping Democrats get elected? 

    What planet is this? Since when do Republicans have a duty to the country to help “marginal” Democrats get reelected?

    But that’s hardly my point, Dan Balz’ whole contention is that Washington is polarized. As if he’s the only person who noticed. I didn’t see Dan balz writing stories about Jane Harmon being frozen out of a committee chair because she placed our national security above her party’s seat gains. Did you , Danny? Funny I searched your writings over the last six months and found nothing. When Democrats sent a broke-dick, half-assed, pork-laden, cobbled-together defense budget to the President because their whacko anti-war base were crying crocodile tears daily outside their offices – what did you write about their blind partisanship?

    Yet, when there are “Republicans responding to their base” somehow that’s wrong and indicates a “failure of leadership”.

    Then you wonder for the rest of us to read;

    If Washington cannot produce a solution to the glaring problem of immigration, they will ask, what hope is there for progress on health care, energy independence, or the financial challenges facing Medicare and Social Security? Iraq is another matter entirely.

    All of those issues are being blocked by Democrats who refuse to compromise even a little. Republicans have offered solutions to each of those problems and what do we hear from the Democrats – their only solutions are “raise taxes on the wealthy”, “roll back the Bush tax cuts”. That’s it. That’s all they have.

    I know you’re trying to excuse Democrat behavior, but anyone who has had their eyes even partially open since 1995, and is intellectually honest would admit it’s not a failure of leadership – it’s a failure of upbringing.

  • How can ethical Democrats be split on Dollar Bill?

    In the Politico this morning, Josephine Hearn writes that Democrats are split on whether they should even investigate Willam Jefferson, the Congressional Democrat from Louisiana who was discovered to have 90 large in his freezer after being filmed taking a 100 grand for a bribe. This is after the two other people on the same film have already pleaded guilty and have been residing in the local hoosegow for more than a year.

    Ms. Hearn writes that;

    The simmering divisions were evident in the results of a vote Tuesday night, calling on the House ethics committee to investigate Jefferson and report back on whether he should be expelled from the House. Eighteen caucus members supported it, 13 opposed and three voted present. The resolution passed overwhelmingly, 373-26.

    Everyone was writing about Jefferson a few days ago which is why I resisted. Given my limited time to spend on this blog, I figure that I should concentrate on things other people might miss, but, Holy Moley…26 people in Congress – all Democrats – didn’t think there should even be an investigation? 16 people in the House Ethics Committee either voted against the measure or weaseled out with a “present” vote.

    Even a Republican-controlled Ethics Committee voted to investigate Tom Delay, f’Pete’s sake – with no real evidence that Delay even broke the law. But nearly half of the committee voted to not investigate a man caught on video accepting a bribe? Who can believe their lyin’ eyes?

    But, this is how Democrats “drain the swamps” I guess. So what possible reason could anyone have for not voting for the investigation?

    House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.), one of Jefferson’s strongest congressional supporters, voted against the resolution. Asked about it Wednesday, he seemed to allude to the civil rights concerns.

    “I came out of the sit-ins, where you were guilty until proven innocent,” he said. “Let’s let justice run its course.”

    So because of what happened in this country more than 40 years ago, the race-baiters use it an excuse to tolerate corruption. Again, who can believe their lyin’ eyes? But Hearn writes that the Congressional Black Caucus doesn’t agree on what course to take;

    “This caucus has spent a lot of time talking about the culture of corruption and holding members of Congress to a higher standard,” said Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.), who supported the resolution. “You have to act on your rhetoric. There’s a separate question (from the Justice Department investigation) of whether he misused his office.”

    Oh, no kidding? The Democrats understand that actions speak louder than words? Since when?

    Speaking of ethics, the Washington Post front page was covered in daily non-stop Delay coverage during that dust-up that led no where, so where are the stories in the Washington Post about Jefferson’s 16 charges and the 1/2 million bucks in bribes? Today’s WaPo has one tiny little story in Paul Kane’s story about how this is a splendid opportunity for some other no-name Democrat to get a slot on the Homeland Security Committee. Huh?

    Everytime the Washington Post goes after this administration or the Congressional Republicans, it’s front pages for weeks. Now the biggest Congressional bribery case in the history of Washington, and the Post can’t be bothered with the story. Instead we get Immigrant Measure Survives Challenges and They Know How to Caucus instead of a front page layout on how the most ethical Congress is about as ethical as a pirate.

    But if you use the search feature on the Washington Post and search on “Libby” you find 25 DIFFERENT articles and opinion pieces in the last two days in the Post.

  • Condie vs. Hugo

    (Photo from Venezuela Llora, Venezuela Sangra) 

    In my favorite city in the world (Panama, RP), my favorite Secretary of State dueled with my favorite villains, the Venezuelan government according to Carmen Gentile in the Washington Times;

      Miss Rice hurled the first salvo, saying freedom of speech is not a “thorn in the side of democracy,” a direct reference to the shutdown of RCTV by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez because of critical reports about his government.
        “Freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of conscience are not a thorn in the side of government. They are the beginning of justice in every society,” Miss Rice said during her opening remarks to OAS foreign ministers.
        “Disagreeing with your government is not unpatriotic and most certainly should not be a crime in any country, especially in a democracy,” she said.
        Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro struck back, saying, “Venezuela demands respect for its sovereignty.”
        He sought to turn a critical eye on the United States, saying the OAS should conduct an investigation of how the United States treats detainees at U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, instead of concerning itself with the closure of a Venezuelan TV station.
        After his address to OAS leaders, Miss Rice asked for and received an opportunity to rebut the Venezuelan minister’s remarks.
        “As to issues in the United States of human rights, of how we fight the war on terror, the detention of unlawful combatants at Guantanamo, on immigration policy, on any issue, I am quite certain that it would be difficult for any commission to debate more fully, to investigate more fully, to criticize the policies of the United States government then is done every night on CNN, on ABC, on CBS, on NBC and on any number of smaller channels in the United States,” Miss Rice said.

    Now, Ms. Rice should’ve mentioned Chavez’ prisons and the conditions there as compared to the facility at Guantanamo and she shouldn’t have walked out so that the Venezuelan could describe Guantanamo unchallenged;

    The Venezuelan foreign minister said Guantanamo was akin to”something monstrous, only comparable to the Hitler era.”

    I’m pretty sure that any of Chavez’ political enemies aren’t as well-treated as the monsters in Guantanamo. I’d like Chavez to prove otherwise – like where are the 200 demonstrators he arrested last week being held and in what condition?

    According to the Associated Press (via Washington Post), Rice called for the OAS to get involved;

    At the meeting, she urged the OAS to send its secretary-general, Jose Miguel Insulza, to Venezuela to look into the closing of the station and deliver a full report on his findings.

    Maduro struck back, waving a couple of red herrings, like the Left tends to do;

    Maduro, speaking after Rice, reacted angrily, saying her comments were an “unacceptable intervention is the internal affairs of a nation, and that is why we reject it.”

    “Venezuela is asking for respect,” he said. “We demand respect for our sovereignty.”

    Maduro defended the decision not to renew RCTV’s license as “democratic, legal and fair” and accused the United States of repeated violations of human rights, including at the U.S.-Mexico border where immigrants “are chased and hunted like animals” and at Guantanamo Bay, where he said terrorism suspects are being “held hostage.” 

    Too bad Nancy Pelosi was busy trying to decide how to keep her fellow Democrats out of jail or she could’ve taken the opportunity to support Venezuelans.  

    In the meantime, I learned from Pheistyblog that RCTV has three daily news broadcasts on YouTube. It’s the #1 subscription on YouTube for the week – #2 for the month at this writing.

    In the meantime Daniel at Venezuela News and Views reports that Chavez’ forces are denying entry into Caracas of bus loads of young people, while students have taken to the High Court to defend their right to protest Chavez. from Daniel’s link to El Universal;

    Thousand university students walked Monday up to the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ) to file a petition in the collective interest, on behalf of their rights to demonstrate.The students planned to request TSJ to ensure their right to hold demonstrations across the whole city. Last Friday they were not allowed to go to the National Assembly (AN), downtown Caracas.”The idea is to secure the right to protest. And we asked also the opportunity to take the floor at the Parliament. Sovereignty resides in people and people delegate it to the National Assembly,” said Stalin González, the president of the Federation of University Student Councils (FCU) at Central University of Venezuela (UCV), AFP quoted.

    Unfortunately, the courts have no power over Chavez since the Venezuela Legislature gave him unlimited power to rule by decree back in January as we were warned by Fausta Wertz.

    In other news from Latin America, the Today Show is broadcasting from Havanna this week and the Babalu Blog has a Blog Burst going on for questions Matt Lauer should be asking the Cuban government while he’s there. Henry “Conductor” Gomez also critiques Wolf Blitzer’s interview with Ricardo Alarcon, Cuba’s president of the National Assembly pronouncing Wolf Blitzer a dolt. So I guess it’s unanimous now.

  • WaPo’s Cohen: Thompson is no Reagan

    I have nothing good to write for almost all of Washington Post’s columnists, well except maybe Novak and Krauthammer, but this clown Richard Cohen really writes some stupid crap sometimes. Take today’s column for instance; Can He Find His Motivation?

    Cohen, who also wrote “Wasted Lives“, in which he said our troops were dying for nothing in Iraq and I criticized back in March, claims in this piece that Thompson shouldn’t be allowed to be President for this reason;

    If Thompson’s name came up in some sort of free-association game, he would be a genuine stumper: Thompson and what? There is no Thompson Act, Thompson Compromise, Thompson Hearing, Thompson Speech or Thompson Anything that comes to mind. No living man can call himself a Thompsonite. Instead, Thompson came and went from the Senate as if he were never there, leaving only the faint scent of ennui. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life up here,” he once said. “I don’t like spending 14- and 16-hour days voting on ‘sense of the Senate’ resolutions on irrelevant matters.” As a call to action, this lacks a certain something.

    So because a man doesn’t want to be a career politician, he shouldn’t be allowed to be president, apparently. Cohen loves Obama, the man who has just two years in the Senate and doesn’t have any bills or compromises named for him, either. In fact, the only reason Cohen likes Obama, according to his column back on March 6th;

    …it’s that he had something very important to say to black America. It has to do, I think, with the extraordinary promise of his candidacy.

    Extraordinary promise. Thompson doesn’t have extraordinary promise, apparently. Only people who’ve been in the Senate two years have extraordinary promise.

    Cohen continues on about Thompson;

    Yet he indisputably lacks the passion, the concern, the fire-in-the-bellydom that Reagan had — not just for winning but about issues themselves. Thompson never showed that he was out to change matters, to right some major wrong, to fix the god-awful mess the country is in. I contrast him with a senator I recently chatted with who took virtually childlike delight in being a senator — being able, as he said, to be a player. He savored his power — as one of only 100. What a difference he could make!

    The presidency is where a person can make the most difference. But the emergence of Thompson shows that a fatigued Republican Party is not interested in making any difference at all — just in hanging on. What commends Thompson to the presidency — the only thing anyone ever mentions — is his TV fame. If that’s all it takes, Thompson can look forward to being more than a president. He’ll be an American Idol.

    I know this is a foreign concept to Democrats and Liberals who are looking for the “drama” of politics – Democrats who are always “fighting for” me, the little guy, the working man. Democrats who promise that they’ll “do the People’s work”. But maybe America is tired of all of those empty promises the Democrats are selling.

    George W. Bush was elected because he was a leader, in the military, in business all before we went into politics – and given any situation, his reaction is fairly predictable because he has told us what he believes – and he does what he says he’ll do. That’s why Conservatives get mad everytime the president starts talking about something they oppose – they know he’ll do what he says he’ll do.

    That’s what America needs – a leader – not some ridiculous figurehead who we can lift up as the First Black President or the First Woman President or the First Peace President. Yeah, I know how important empty symbols are to the Democrats – empty symbols of empty promises. But to the majority of Americans, we’re tired of the drama – we want a president who can lead the country effectively, not a symbol of our diversity or whatever idiotic platitude we’re regurgitating this election season.

    That’s all Ronald Reagan did – he led the country effectively. The only time the actor in him came out was when he had to deal with partisan idiots like Cohen.

    Another point in Thompson’s “plus column” is that he’ll probably never cheat on his wife;

  • Washington Post: Americans dissatisfied with country’s direction

    Today’s Washington Post analyzes it’s latest poll on Americans’ perception of the direction of the country. Of course, by direction of the country, the Washington Post means what Joe Sixpack thinks our strategy in Iraq should be;

    Growing frustration with the performance of the Democratic Congress combined with widespread public pessimism over President Bush’s temporary troop buildup in Iraq has left satisfaction with the overall direction of the country at its lowest point in more than a decade, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

    Almost six in 10 Americans said they do not think the additional troops sent to Iraq since the beginning of the year will help restore civil order in that country, and 53 percent — a new high in Post-ABC News polls — said they do not believe the Iraq war has contributed to the long-term security of the United States.

    Of course, this decision is asked from the public an entire weekend after US forces arrived in theater to complete the “surge” as reported in the World Tribune Friday;

    The U.S. military has completed its troop surge for the new counter-insurgency strategy in Iraq.

    Officials said the fifth and final brigade of the troop surge has arrived in Baghdad. They said the brigade would be fully operational by mid-July for the counter-insurgency mission in the Iraqi capital.

    “We are starting to see a shift in momentum that comes with having additional forces on the ground,” Brig. Gen. Perry Wiggins, deputy operations director at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said according to Middle East Newsline.

    So, since all of the troops have arrived in Baghdad, the Post expects an immediate improvement in operations in Baghdad that would be reflected in an opinion poll from a public that has listened to the media call iraq a quagmire since the first sandstorm on the second day of operations there. I wonder if the Post thought aboout running a story like this one from the Boston Globe;

    US troops battled Al Qaeda in west Baghdad yesterday after Sunni residents challenged the militants and called for American help to end furious gunfire that kept students from final exams and forced people in the neighborhood to huddle indoors.

    Backed by helicopter gunships, American forces joined the two-day battle in the Amariyah district, according to a councilman and other residents of the Sunni district.

    The fight reflects a trend that US and Iraqi officials have been trumpeting recently to the west in Anbar province, once considered the headquarters of the Sunni insurgency. Many Sunni tribes in the province have banded together to fight Al Qaeda, asserting the terrorist group is more dangerous than American forces.

    Lieutenant Colonel Dale C. Kuehl, commander of First Battalion, Fifth Cavalry Regiment, who is responsible for the Amariyah area of the capital, confirmed the US military’s role in the fighting. He said the battles raged Wednesday and yesterday but died off at night.

    Although Al Qaeda is a Sunni organization opposed to the Shi’ite-dominated government, its ruthlessness and reliance on foreign fighters have alienated many Sunnis in Iraq.

    Maybe if the Post took a moment and wrote about the real results of the surge, they wouldn’t have to bother reporting on lowered morale in the country. If they’d join the fight against Islamofacists instead of enabling and enboldening them, we wouldn’t need their stupid polls and their stupid advice what to do after the surge.

  • JFK terror plot was Bush’s fault, of course

     

    As soon as I heard about the busted terror plot this last weekend, I shot over to Yahoo and searched for news stories. The only national network that had anything on the internet was CBS (shiver), but I went over to read the details. At the end of the story were readers’ comments. Every comment was about how this was a story planted by “BushCo” to scare the American people into submission. I should have screen-shot the article, but I figured “Well, it’s just a fringe”. People remember 9-11 sort of, these writers were just lunatics. I mean, someone must take these stories seriously besides Republicans, right?

    But, SisterToldja reports that the LA Times says that the plot wasn’t a big deal anyway. So the terrorists that BushCo didn’t really catch in the act, weren’t going to be successful anyway. Bloodthirsty Liberal takes the NY Times to task for similar treatment of the story.

    See, here’s the way I see it. Yeah, these four dimwits and the Dix Six were pretty incompetent and borderline retarded in their planning, but the fact remains that they were committed to killing scores, if not thousands of Americans on our own soil. Left to their own devices, sooner or later they would have been successful. Maybe not as successful as they’d have liked, but somewhat successful. Even one life lost would have been one too many.

    So why are these acts being marginalized in the media? Lord help me, the media still brags about Clinton’s awesome success at stopping the Millenium LAX bombing – which was just as half-assed as any of these. And Eric Rudolph’s Atlanta, Georgia bombing at the Olympics still killed 2 and injured 111 people – again a half-assed attempt by an incompetent moron. 

    Even the Murrah Building bombing was accomplished by a gaggle of want-wits who didn’t have a plan more complicated than the old infantryman’s demolition math (P=Plenty, for the uninitiated) and parking a truck in front of the target and skee-daddling. McVeigh couldn’t even do that right – driving down the interstate with no license plate on his car.

    All criminals are stupid – that’s why they’re criminals.

    And yesterday I heard rumors about John Murtha blaming Bush for these terrorists, but I wanted to see it for myself (I’ll be damned if I’m going to waste my Sunday morning staring at that idiot George Stephanopolis and his ridiculous 12-year-old schoolboy haircut).

    So this morning, sure as it rains, I find the video at Newsbusters and Flopping Aces. Murtha claims that if President Bush hadn’t attacked Iraq, those terrorist plotters wouldn’t have been tempted to bomb JFK airport (not that it would have been successful or that the terrorists really existed in the first place).

    One of them had been in this country, working and retired for 30-fricken-years. He just decided in 2003 that we needed to be attacked? And how about the attack in 1993? Was that because we attacked the Iraqi Army in 1991 while they barbequeing in Kuwait? How about the embassy bombings in Africa, the Khobar Towers bombing, the attack on the USS Cole – did those attacks happen because of something we had done?

    Murtha is cranky old fool and the Democrats had better put a lid on him before he becomes the face of their party. Or before someone takes a swing at his wrinkled old mug.

    Makes me agree with Brit Hume when he said a few months ago;

    Even the “Washington Post” noted [Murtha] didn’t seem particularly well informed about what’s going on over there, to say the least. Look, this man has tremendous cachet among House Democrats, but he is not — this guy is long past the day when he had anything but the foggiest awareness of what the heck is going on in the world.

    And that sound bite is naivete at large, and the man is an absolute fountain of such talk, and the fact that he has ascended to the position he has in the eyes of the Democrats in the House and perhaps Democrats around the country tells you a lot about how much they know or care about what’s really going on over there.

    Maybe if we put Murtha’s office in Okinawa he’ll have a better idea of what’s happening in the world.

    But, put him in the group of idiots like one of my own crackpots who emails me (because I won’t let him post here) this morning that since 17 of the 9-11 hijackers were Saudis we should have attacked Saudi Arabia instead of Iraq. That’s just simplistic and naive – can you imagine what the Democrats would be saying if we’d attacked Saudi Arabia?

    It also demonstrates the childishness of these morons. They’re convinced that our foreign policy should be based on pure, simple revenge – an emotion – instead of reasoned insight about who are our enemies and who wishes us ill because of who we are. The Saudis are fighting the same groups that we’re fighting – for the same reasons we’re fighting them. How does it make sense that we’d turn on the Saudis?

    But no one has ever accused the Left of being reasonable people.Â