I keep seeing people talk about how the US economic issues are dragging down the rest of the world, and it sucks, because it the fault of the US. Well yes and no. Other countries made the choice to be economically tied to us. If they thought there was risk there, then they shouldn't have bought in, but they did, and you can't blame the US for decisions other countries made.

One thing libertarians like myself like to harp on is all the unintended consequences of various government actions. Most entitlement programs create perverse incentives that are fairly obvious, but let's look at a program that most people would probably think is entirely a good thing: student loan programs sponsored by the Federal Government. At first glance, you think, hey, how bad could it be, the government is helping people who can't afford it yet to go to college on a low interest loan. The problem here is that once schools saw the easy availability of loans for college age kids, they realized they could raise their tuition rates.... And they just keep on rising, because Federal loans keep on rising to meet the higher tuitions. So more and more people are forced to get Federal loans to go to college because the rising tuitions lower the numbr of families that can afford to send kids to college without loans. And now we have ridiculously high tuitions that far outpaced inflation, and millions of people in their 20s and 30s who have many tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt. Just another unintended consequence of the government trying to help people.

This is interesting in an ironic kind of way. The sum it up, Obama has reached out to a Republican, former congressman Jim Leach, to be one of his reps at the upcoming G20 Economic conference. The ironic part is that Leach was one of the prime movers behind the Gramm-LEACH-Bliley legislation that broke down the wall between commercial and investment banks. This is the exact bill that many of Obama's commercials point to as the reason why the economic crisis is happening and why deregulation is bad, bad, bad. If it was really so bad, then why is he using one of the act's authors in his administration? Seems like if that bill caused all the problems Obama said it did, he would want to stay as far away from the people involved as possible, and certainly not let those people have any hand in forming economic policy. Does this mean Obama was lying all that time, and he knew, like anyone who slightly understands economics, that the bill, if anything, helped the country in the current crisis?

Obama has won. I wish him the best, and I truly hope that everything works out just wonderfully. Of course, I am skeptical, but I wouldn't be able to call myself a true patriot if I wanted to see my President fail.

I saw an article this morning entitled, "The End of Racism?" I haven't read the article itself yet, but there's plenty to think about in that title. It's certainly not the end of racism. The actual racists out there are still going to be racist. What it might end is the tendency to try to align any disagreement along racial lines, and make racists out of people who simply have a differing viewpoint. I don't find this likely, however. If things said during the campaign continue, then criticism of Obama and his policies while in office will often be met by charges of racism rather than rebutting the actual substance of the criticism. We'll just have to wait and see how it plays out.

From the Crossfit website


World-Class Fitness in 100 Words:
Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat. Practice and train major lifts: Deadlift, clean, squat, presses, C&J, and snatch. Similarly, master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, dips, rope climb, push-ups, sit-ups, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds. Bike, run, swim, row, etc, hard and fast. Five or six days per week mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense. Regularly learn and play new sports.

Looks like I have a lot to work on...

Cynthia Tucker's column discusses the voter registration fraud being perpetrated by ACORN, and comes to the conclusion that those upset are a bunch of whiny Republicans. I don't understand how it's not a problem, however. If ACORN registers 12 fake names at 12 different voting centers, and gives me a list of those names, there's no reason I can think of that I couldn't go and vote 12 different times. There's no ID requirement, right? And there would be no proof of voter fraud after, because they were all registered names. I can't see how this isn't a huge problem, and I can't understand how someone like Tucker isn't upset by this.

This Joe the Plumber thing has gotten out of hand, and is a perfect example of how the left will rule when in power. Joe was just a guy who was around when Obama did a campaign appearance, and Joe was randomly grabbed from the crowd to ask Obama a question. He wasn't a plant, he was just a normal guy who was grabbed by Obama's flunkies. So he asked a question. Unfortunately for him, it wasn't the kind of question Obama wanted to answer. Obama did answer it, and revealed to the world his socialist leanings when saying, "I want to spread the wealth around," which means he wants to take more money from people who earned it to give to people who did not. So what happens to Joe, a normal guy that Obama randomly picked?

Joe gets hammered by the national media and by the left wing, he gets pilloried on blogs, on TV, in newspapers, even at the water cooler. Almost no one actually talks about the substance of what he asked, or Obama's answer, they just bash him in any way he can. They say he's a liar because his name is really Samuel (he goes by a shortened version of his middle name, Joseph, oh horrors, what an evil man), they say he's not really a plumber because he doesn't have a license (you don't need a license if you work for a licensed company, besides it's not like journalists and bloggers have licenses), they say he's a plant for the GOP (Obama picked him randomly, how exactly is that a plant?), and, perhaps worst of all, someone on a very popular left wing blog published his hime address on the internet for all the left wing haters to see. He's probably getting death threats by the thousands in his mail today.

So watch out, this is how it's going to be when Obama is elected. If you ask any uncomfortable questions, the left wing will make you regret it. They will stifle any dissent, they will refuse to talk about the substance of what you said, instead they will attack you character, they will punish you, they will threaten you, they will give out your private information to the poublic so that random left wing activists do the dirty work and keep the politicians out of it, and, as we saw from Obama, he will support this all the way.

They said if Bush was elected, we would see censorship, but we never did. Obama hasn't even been elected yet, and we're already seeing signs of it from his followers.

Have you heard the news about ACORN? Probably not, since much of the media is ignoring the story. ACORN is a left-wing group that was definitely involved to some extent in causing the sub-prime mortgage mess, and also registers people to vote. For this election, they were paid $800,000 by the Obama campaign to register people, and of course they concentrate on people likely to vote Democrat. That's fine. The problem is that they are under investigation in like 12 different states for registration fraud. They've been signing up thousands, ten of thousands, hundreds of thousands of fake people. Some say, "What's the problem, it's just registration?" There are several problems. One, if it was a right-leaning group, the media would be calling foul big time and trying to pin it on McCain. Two, fake registrations open the door to fake votes, and if you can't make that connection, then you are a fool. Three, if states are spending all their time trying to sort out the fakes from the real registrations, will they have time before the election to process all the real registrations, or are some legitimate voters who sent in their registrations by the deadline not get to vote because their registration didn't processed in time? And there are probably other reasons, too.

Obama, by the way, used to represent ACORN as a lawyer in various bits of fraud they've been involved in. How many disreputable associates does a man have to have before people start thinking he might be disreputable himself?

The desire to purchase stock is supposed to represent good feelings about the future earnings of a company. Or you may think the price of the stock is overrated compared to the future earnings, and sell said stock, contributing to the price going down. Short sellers bet on the stock being overvalued, and often do a very good job at figuring out issues with a company that the SEC hasn't discovered. The ban on short selling is disallowing this sort of thing from happening, and that is helping to contribute to the volatility we are currently seeing. But I digress. Back to the future earnings of a company....

Is it possible that the current fall in the market isn't so much panic, or reaction to the bailout and/or credit freeze, but instead the market discounting basically every company because of a fear of an Obama presidency? At this point, I'd say there's a much better than even chance Obama wins, and the market knows what that will mean; a lot of new quasi-socialist programs that will create restrictions on the ability of corporations to raise their earnings in the future. Who knows, in 30 years finance textbooks may call this a correction based on the upcoming Presidency and years of government meddling that destroy value. Again, the market is supposed to be based on future earnings, not current earnings, so institutional investors are scared of the future. I am, too.

Here's a great little article. The synopsis: Things aren't great with the economy, but whatever problems you have, you need to fix them yourself. Don't depend on the government to fix it, don't think the new president will fix things. Candidates have always made lots of problems about the things they are going to fix, but do they ever actually fix something? No. Usually they just make it worse. Work for yourself, think about yourself, find a solution from yourself, and stop looking to the government to fix things. That attitude, more than anything else, is how we got in to this situation in the first place. The idea that the government can fix things is why social security is going belly up, it's why we're big time in debt to other countries, it's why the market is in such a fix now, and, if we don't get rid of that attitude, it's why this country will never regain the status it once had. America became the world's shining light not because of our government, but because of our people. You, me, and everyone you know. Not the people in Washington.

What do you think of the "negative campaigning" that has been going on recently? Normally I might have a problem with it, but not this time. Why? Because the media is ignoring a lot of things about Obama's life. The only way for people to know that stuff is for the McCain campaign to talk about it. And the kinds of people that Obama is friends with, that he associates with, those people are very germane to his candidacy, because those are the people he will look to for advice and to fill some positions in the government. And Obama's negative campaigning is just him fighting back, so I don't have an issue there, either.

Since the McCain campaign finally brought up Obama's association with Ayers, the Dems went on the attack and brought up McCain and the Keating 5. A quick history lesson.... The Keating 5 were five politicos said to be involved in the S&L scandal in the 80's. It was not a good thing for McCain to be a part of, but there are several differences. The Keating Five werre fully investigated and had their day in court 20 years ago, and McCain was found innocent, but said to have bad judgement, and he himself calls his involvement (which consisted of representing a constituent at a couple of hearings) the biggest mistake of his political career. Obama's relationship with Ayers, however, has barely been looked in to. Ayers does not regret his actions as a domestic terrorist who set off several bombs, nor has Obama said he regrets hanging with the unrepentent terrorist.

Obama may or may not be corrupt himself, but it seems an awful lot of his friends and associates have been involved in one less than honorable incident after another. You got Rezko, Dodd, Jom Johnson, Ayers, and that's just the obvious ones. And of all the things he's done in his political career, one thing he has NEVER done is go after corruption himself. Instead he looks the other way, since it's his friends that are frequently involved. Considering he came out of Chicago, a city with a notoriously corrupt political machine, there's probably plenty of dirt. It's a lot easier to hide your past if 85% of the national media is in the tank for you and perfectly willing to ignore the truth, twist the truth, change the narrative, etc. Heck, one media moron wrote a column accusing McCain of racism for bringing up the Ayers connection. I'm not sure how that works since Ayers is a white guy, but hey, whatever might hurt McCain is fair game, whether it makes any sense or not.

Obama- Bringing even more corrupt people to D.C.

I wish I could really get behind McCain instead of begrudgingly voting for him for lack of a truly good choice.

“These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis. The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”
---Democratic Congressman Barney Frank, 2003

Frank also used to have a boyfriend who was in charge of new lending initiatives at Fannie Mae. Among those initiatives were sub-prime mortgages.

Throw the bums out!

If the VP debate taught me one thing, it's that most people don't care about the substance of the answers, in fact most people don't know enough to judge the value of the answers, they simply care about the style the answers were delivered in. If they care about substance, they'd realize that Biden was confident and calm, and full of shit. Palin spewed plenty of crap, too, but she's getting called on it. People are mostly ignoring Biden's issues, of they even realize his mistakes in the first place. Both of them totally boffed the question of what does a VP do, but Palin was actually close, Biden was very far off. And Biden made that comment about Hezbollah that only makes sense in an alternative universe where events happened in a different way than here in our reality. But hey, Biden looked and acted "presidential," so who cares how many facts he got wrong?