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2008 Election prediction

admin — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:49:42 +0000

I think it’s going to come down to the number of electoral votes in Pennsylvania.

I see it as either McCain 276, Obama 262 (my preferred outcome) or McCain 255, Obama 283. Either way, I think Pennsylvania might be contested into November 5th, and possible even Indiana.

Bears Lair on the candidates and the economy

admin — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:56:28 +0000

Martin Hutchinson, writing at The Bears Lair, looks at the coming economic policies from either a McCain or Obama presidency. This paragraph illustrates my belief that we really don’t know who Senator Obama is:

The principal problem with Obama is his deliberate failure to define himself. The moderate Obama, with a University of Chicago economic advisor and a keen brain attuned to the free market system, would probably be a pretty good President, at least in the economic sphere. However there is also another Obama, possessor of the most liberal voting record in the US Senate and supporter of many of the more damaging schemes beloved by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the Congressional Democrat left. Finally there is the shadow of a third Obama, born and bred a street radical, friend of ex-Weatherman terrorist William Ayres and supportive parishioner of the highly anti-capitalist parson Jeremiah Wright. It is an interesting question whether Ayres-Obama or Pelosi-Obama would be more economically damaging – their prescriptions would clearly be very different – but there is no doubt that by relying on Moderate-Obama being fully in control throughout, we are taking a considerable chance

Don’t worry, Senator McCain’s whack-a-doodle economic ideas get examined, too.

Riding the wave vs letting the wave take you for a tumble

admin — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:34:45 +0000

Tomorrow is Election Day in these United States. I’ve already cast my ballot during Texas’ early voting. My vote’s cast and now I’m sitting back, riding out this election wave that’s gone on for far too long. Since the 2004 elections, we’ve been in a perpetual campaign mode in this nation. The 2004 elections segued right into the 2006 mid-terms and then into the current 2008 elections. I can’t help but think a large portion of American society has some sort of psychological addiction to politics. It’s as if people are on some sort of perpetual political information overload. Instead of riding out the wave, they’ve let the wave tumble them over and over and they’re gasping for air. God help them November 5th, when hopefully, this thing will be over.

Obama on “redistributive change”

admin — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:14:00 +0000

The Change we need? Here’s the audio from a 2001 radio interview with Senator Obama where he reveals his views on the redistribution of wealth.

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Stop the ACLU transcribed the interesting portion:

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.

The original interview, in its entirety, is available from Chicago Public Radio as a SMIL file (You’ll need RealPlayer to listen to it.)

My take is we see that Senator Obama isn’t questioning the need for “redistributive change”, that’s a given in his way of thinking. He feels that the courts(the Supreme Court in particular) had a chance during the Civil Rights era to bring that about but they stopped short of it. Senator Obama also displays an opinion that the Constitution has “essential constraints” around it that need doing away with in order to bring about this radical change.

This is who we’re about to elect President?

Is CNN giving up on the pretense of political objectivity?

admin — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 16:43:32 +0000

CNN’s Drew Griffin during his interview with Governor Palin:

GRIFFIN: The National Review had a story saying that, you know, I can’t tell if Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt or all of the above.

PALIN: Who wrote that one?

GRIFFIN: That was in the National Review. I don’t have the author.

Byron York, of the National Review, wrote:

Watching press coverage of the Republican candidate for vice president, it’s sometimes hard to decide whether Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt, backward, or — or, well, all of the above. Palin, the governor of Alaska, has faced more criticism than any vice-presidential candidate since 1988, when Democrats and the press tore into Dan Quayle. In fact, Palin may have it even worse than Quayle, since she’s taking flak not only from Democrats and the press but from some conservative opinion leaders as well.

What the hell, CNN?

“We’re gonna have an international crisis…”

admin — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:01:38 +0000

“Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

Had Governor Palin said something to the effect of, ‘if Obama is elected, he’s gonna face an international crisis,’ she would be lambasted on all media fronts as scare-mongering. But hey, it’s Biden, so nothing to see here…

McCain will lose this election

admin — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 18:19:58 +0000

Senator McCain will lose this election and he’ll have only himself to blame. After seeing him in two debates, I’ve come to this conclusion based the Democratic policies and tendencies he’s espousing. He’s a big-government Republican. There are a few key points in his plans that I believe are the reason for his poor ratings and for his imminent loss next month.

1) McCain wants the government to buy up bad mortgages, spending $300 billion of taxpayer dollars to do so. Billions of dollars are being spent to bail out people who made bad decisions. This is counter to Republican ideals of self-sufficiency and responsibility.

2) His vote for the pork-ladened bailout. McCain talks a good game regarding earmarks, saying he’s against them. Nevertheless, he voted for the bailout bill that grew from a three page proposal to over 450 pages in the final bill.

3) McCain’s failed immigration bill from 2006. Many Republicans still remember this and his silence on it since becoming the Republican candidate is unsettling.

4) He’s too polite when it comes to Obama and Congress. McCain’s blown so many chances to take on Congress over energy, earmarks, and a documented history of obstructing reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. When it comes to Senator Obama, he hasn’t been able to put together a coherent argument regarding Obama’s lack of experience and questionable associations.

Republicans are unhappy with the lack of principles in the current crop of political leaders. Congress has the lowest approval ratings ever, and having both presidential candidates being members of this cesspool is unsettling. I think this is part of the reason Governor Palin’s joining the ticket sparked so much excitement among Republicans. She’s the outsider, untainted by the Beltway. She’s not enough to bring about a victory, though, since she’s on the lower half of the ticket.

This election is a lose-lose for Republicans. It’s the skinny Chicago Marxist on the one hand, and the big-government Republican on the other.

Pelosi’s House in disorder

admin — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 04:26:48 +0000

Barney Frank, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said this today, after the $700 billion bailout failed on the House floor:

We also have — as the leader will tell you, who’s been working with them — don’t believe they had the votes, and I believe they’re covering up the embarrassment of not having the votes. But think about this. Somebody hurt my feelings, so I will punish the country. That’s hardly plausible. And there are 12 Republican members who were ready to stand up for the economic interest of America, but not if anybody insulted them.

I’ll make an offer. Give me those 12 people’s names and I will go talk uncharacteristically nicely to them and tell them what wonderful people they are and maybe they’ll now think about the country.

Representative Frank, who in 2004, didn’t believe there was anything wrong with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, would do well to start combing through the list of 95 Democrats who also voted against the “crap sandwich” bailout bill. Some of those Democrats are prominent in the party, like Lynne Woolsey, John Salazar and Barbara Lee. There are also at least four Democrat committee chairs and five Democrat sub-committee chairs on the list. Oh! There’s also the Obama National Campaign Co-Chair on the list in the “No” column.

John Conyers, Chairman, Judiciary voted no.
Collin Peterson, Chairman, Agriculture Committee, voted no.
Bob Filner, Chairman, Veterans’ Affairs Chair, voted no.
Bennie Thompson, Chairman, Homeland Security, voted no.

Barney Frank could look in his own committee, the House Appropriations Committee, and he’d see Jose Serrano, Chairman, Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government. He voted against the bailout. So did:

Gene Green, Chairman, Subcommittee on Environment & Hazardous Materials
Pete Stark, Chairman of the Ways and Means Health Subcommittee
Peter DeFazio, Chair of the House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit

The Obama National Campaign Co-chair? Jesse Jackson Jr., of Illinois. He voted against the bill. Guess he didn’t hear Senator Obama’s position on the bill. Oh wait, who did? I didn’t see the Senator take a stance on the bill one way or the other till it failed.

I just listed 12 prominent Democrat Representatives who could have toed their party line and voted on this bill. If it was such a dire emergency that we pass this, why didn’t the Congressional leadership pull in their own party members? Why didn’t one of Barney Franks subcommittee chairmen vote the party line? I’m sorry, refuse to believe this is a real emergency when the leadership of the Congress can’t act like it’s one. I’m not buying the line of crap.

Who is ACORN?

admin — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 14:54:37 +0000

From the Detroit Free Press:

Several municipal clerks across the state are reporting fraudulent and duplicate voter registration applications, most of them from a nationwide community activist group working to help low- and moderate-income families.
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The majority of the problem applications are coming from the group ACORN, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which has a large voter registration program among its many social service programs. ACORN’s Michigan branch, based in Detroit, has enrolled 200,000 voters statewide in recent months, mostly with the use of paid, part-time employees.

“There appears to be a sizeable number of duplicate and fraudulent applications,” said Kelly Chesney, spokeswoman for the Michigan Secretary of State’s Office. “And it appears to be widespread.”

In Cleveland, a month ago, ACORN gets probed over fake voter registrations:

CLEVELAND — A national organization that conducts voter registration drives for low-income people has curtailed its push in Cuyahoga County after the Board of Elections accused its workers of submitting fraudulent registration cards.

The board is investigating the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Results of the inquiry could be turned over to the county prosecutor.

Board employees said ACORN workers often handed in the same name on a number of voter registration cards, but showing that person living at different addresses. Other times, cards had the same name listed, but a different date of birth. Still another sign of possible fraud showed a number of people living at an address that turned out to be a restaurant.

That same story also mentions an investigation in 2006 where 500 possibly fake registration cards were turned over to the county prosecutor. Also in 2006, four ACORN workers were indicted in Kansas City for bogus voter registrations:

ACORN and Project Vote recruit and assign workers to low-income and minority neighborhoods to register people to vote.

The Kansas City Election Board told KMBC they found suspicious forms, such as seven applications from one person and an application for a dead man.

“There is some motive behind it — this is not accidental,” said Ray James with the Kansas City Election Board.

ACORN also got into trouble in Seattle in 2007 where charges were filed over “the worst case of voter-registration fraud in the history of the state of Washington” according to Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed.

The announcement of criminal charges came after the King County Canvassing Board revoked 1,762 allegedly fraudulent voter registrations submitted by ACORN employees.

Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Stephen Hobbs told the board that six ACORN workers had admitted filling out registration forms with names they found in phone books last October. The canvassers filled out the forms while sitting around a table at the downtown Seattle Public Library, Hobbs said.

There are also cases in Colorado, Wisconsin, and Ohio involving Acorn and voter fraud during the past few election cycles. Is it an orchestrated scheme concocted and managed from the top by some nefarious Blofeld-type character? Not likely. It’s likely a distributed effort, where each group operates independently of the others towards the same end-result. Think flash mobs or distributed computing. SETI-at-home, if you will.

But in these instances, the goal is a nefarious one: to overwhelm the voter verification system by producing mounds of bogus entries. It will be impossible to check them all, so some of the fake ones slip by and in elections where the margin is slim, it only takes a few to tip the race.

Can we please have voter-id checks?

Roots of this financial mess?

admin — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 04:04:38 +0000

What caused this financial mess we’re in? Why have Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Bear Sterns, and other banks gone belly-up? Google this: “Community Reinvestment Act 1995.” Look around at some of the links. One of them leads to an article written in April of this year at the Mises Institute by Thomas DiLorenzo. He summarizes a bit of history for us:

When the CRA was created during the Carter administration, the administration also funded with tax dollars numerous “community groups” that have helped the Fed, the Comptroller of the Currency, and other federal regulatory agencies to enforce the act. Under the CRA, if a bank wants to make virtually any change in its business operations — merging, opening up a new branch, getting into a new line of business — it must first prove to regulators that it has made “enough” loans to the government’s preferred borrowers. The (partially) tax-funded “community groups” like ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) can file petitions with regulators that stop the bank’s activities in their tracks, perhaps defeating them altogether. The banks routinely buy off ACORN and other “community groups” by giving them millions of dollars as well as promising to make even more dubious loans.

In order to try to diversify the risk of these loans, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Company (”Freddie Mac”) pioneered the “securitization” of bundles of these high-risk loans so that they could be sold on secondary markets. Such “securitization” exploded during the 1990s as a result of government regulation. As Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke himself stated in a March 30, 2007 speech entitled “The Community Reinvestment Act: Its Evolution and New Challenges” (published online by the Fed),

Securitization of affordable housing loans expanded, as did the secondary market for these loans, in part reflecting a 1992 law that required the government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to devote a large percentage of their activities to meeting affordable housing goals. (p. 3)

The government also “streamlined” the regulatory requirements for CRA loans in 1995, allowing — and indeed pressuring — banks to make such loans without the benefit of many traditional credit-worthiness criteria, such as the size of the mortgage payment relative to income, savings history, and even income verification! Instead, the Fed told banks that participation in a credit-counseling program, many of which are federally funded, could be used as “proof” of a low-income applicant’s ability to make his mortgage payments. In other words, federal bank regulators required banks to make bad loans based on nonexistent credit standards.

Who backed this in Congress? This video helps paint the picture. It’s from hearings in 2004 when the Republican-led Congress tried to reign in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Maxine Waters, Democrat: “We do not have a crisis in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

Gregory Meeks, Democrat: “There’s been nothing that’s indicated that is wrong.”

Lacy Clay, Democrat: “This hearing is about the political lynching of Franklin Raines.”

Barney Frank, Democrat: “I don’t see anything in this report that raises safety and soundness problems.”

Now these same Democrats are out in front of the cameras blaming everything under the sun but their own actions and words in the past for the failings of these banks and mortgages.

Why am I not surprised?