Morons Leading

First of all, let me state my opinion.

Christopher Dodd is the worst kind of leader we could possibly have. What kind of chump takes a “sweetheart deal” from Countryside when he oversees that industry’s regulation (or lack thereof)? I know, I know, that’s the whole POINT of getting elected to Congress, to feed at the trough of graft. I get that. But, jeesh, Chris. Be a little more shamed, would you?

Now, he’s calling for the resignation of the head of GM as a condition of bailout.

Okay. Dodd and Obama say things like Obama did on TV today:

“The big three U.S. automakers have made repeated strategic mistakes,” Obama said. “They have not managed that industry the way they should have.” Any financial aid must be “conditioned on them making significant adjustments.”

Is he kidding? What business has he or Dodd ever run that he can make statements like that? Where did these geniuses, almost all of them in Congress there because they couldn’t make the kind of living they can get stealing from the taxpayers, relying on their business acumen or hard work in the private sector, get their business savvy?

What business do they have telling anybody anything? Wasn’t Dodd part of the oversight of the financial industry (hence, the kickbacks and sweetheart mortgages he got) that is melting down? Wasn’t he talking about how healthy it was when there were those ringing alarms about Fannie and Freddie, only to be beaten down and called idiots for their opinions that we were heading for disaster?

Christopher Dodd is a failed regulator, and should be given no oversight of anything more important than a mop, but I’m sure he’d screw that up as well.

Amazing.

Ron Paul Says Obama Admin More of the Same

U.S. Congressman Ron Paul told Russia Today recently that the G20 Economic meetings were just talk about more of the same, and that behind the scenes, the leaders of the world’s biggest countries were discussing one-world central banking, and managing a single fiat currency.

What would this mean? Disaster.

Keep these things in mind:

Every fiat currency in the history of the world has failed, as the dollar is set to do.

A “reversion to the mean” will not protect the United States’ wealth and the standard of living anywhere near what we have now. This whole thing means that the 20th Century was “The American Century.”

The 21st won’t be.

Editor’s note: Ron Paul was America’s best hope in the 2008 election, but the mainstream media decided to marginalize Dr. Paul, a long-time Congressman from Texas, because though he’s a Republican, Dr. Paul doesn’t seem interested in putting the needs of current one-party system rule (despite the farce the “Republicans” and “Democrats” want you to believe in) above the needs of the American People.

Link to Dr. Paul’s interview with Russia Today.

Hopeful Signs from Washington?

In these terribly troubled times, as I write this on Thanksgiving Day, 2008, at 3:35am (I’m an early riser), I am a little puzzled, but feeling some hope creep into my thoughts about the leader we elected earlier this month.

Since Ronald Reagan, the first Presidential candidate I voted for, casting that first vote when I was 21, the politics of who the Chief Executive surrounded himself with was at least as important as his own. Though I stress it’s still early, it looks like the far left, who thought they were electing an almost socialist radical got duped. President-Elect Obama is surrounding himself with a moderate to (shockingly) conservative cabinet and panel of advisors.

I have to admit, I’m intrigued and…OK…a little Impressed.

The left is…Well, pissed.

The appointment of Paul Volker to a panel of experts hoping to stabilize the economy is, though hopeless, a great choice. He should be the Chairman of the Fed again, but then any one of the cast of the television show Laverne and Shirley would be better than Ben Bernanke.

Retaining Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense is on the one hand an example of promise-keeping, as Obama said he’d have Republicans in his administration, but on a darker note, probably a reflection of what the President-Elect has learned since getting a big upgrade in the quality of his intelligence briefings. My gut tells me he’s heard things that rule out his changing horses at the Pentagon right now, and thought it could be as simple as the fact that we’re currently in two wars, it’s probably much more than that.

Making Hillary Clinton Secretary of State is, in my opinion, one of the boldest, most Machiavellian moves ever. Many wondered exactly why Obama would appoint such a bitter rival for the nomination that led to his election. What better way to eliminate Hillary from the game than to make her Secretary of State? To accept the job, which takes much, much more tact and finesse than Hillary possesses, she must give up her Senate seat. Hillary Clinton will fail at State. No one likes her, and that’s a problem. She’ll run, like a bull through a china shop, over allies and adversaries alike. To be Secretary of State, I would think you would need a huge reservoir of humility and empathy, traits that Hillary Clinton has famous shortages of. Once she’s gone from the State Department, she’s gone for good. Her Senate seat will have been filled. She’ll be out, unless the Governor of New York, David Paterson, replaces her with Bill. Nice.

Considering the Future

If you’re a regular reader, you probably have noticed a slowdown in the number of posts since the election of Barack Obama. Though I didn’t intend to slow down or stop posting, the events of November 4, 2008 have caused me to realize that the future of this website is uncertain. To be frank, I’m not sure about the direction (if any) I should take with it.

The American People have spoken, and what they said was “we choose the message of change Obama and his $600 Million in marketing has sold us.” Think about that. $600 MILLION dollars were raised and most of it spent to acquire the White House. These foolish, foolish people have elected a man no one knows that much about. It’s at times, very frightening.

But it’s done.

I’m not writing right now, because the future is getting so terribly dangerous for Americans, who are mostly asleep. But an abrupt wakeup is coming. It will probably begin not long after the first of the year, after the worst retail holiday season ever, as in the cold, harsh light of the winter of a new year, companies begin their fiscal years gutted from layoffs. In many, many companies across the country, only essential employees will remain. Layoff news stories that will begin in early January will be shocking, and mind-numbing as they roll over us like a tsunami. Chicago Mayor Richard Daly calls it “frightening.”

“We never experienced anything like this except people who came from the Depression,” Mayor Daley said. “When you have that many layoffs early – and they’re telling me this is only the beginning of their layoffs – that is very frightening.”

I believe some of the darker predictions of Kunstler, Panzer and Orlov will come to pass in 2009. I do not believe there is much we can do to stop it. For ourselves and our families, we can only prepare.

So, in that spirit, I’m spending my What Comes Next? time finishing up my special report What You Can Do to Protect Your Family and Yourself During This “Greater Depression.”

I’m also spending some time thinking about whether, as a family, we stay or we go. I’ve always rolled my eyes at those people who say “if so and so is elected, I’m leaving the country…” but this is different. It’s not so much Obama that I’m worried about (though I’m not at all comfortable with such an unknown quantity with his questionable background leading our nation), but the mentality of the people who elected him, whether its a culture of people who feel it’s time for payback of one type or another for one perceived injustice or another, or a culture of tv-fed, clueless liberal magical thinking sleepers who believe in this vague message of “change,” and may or may not soon wake up to realize they’ve brought about a change much different than the one they intended.

In short, my family may decide that it’s time to expatriate, and return to the land of my wife’s parents and my grandparents in the UK. My name will probably tip you off to exactly where that is. We’re currently evaluating the real estate situation in both Glenfinnan on the mainland and Portree on the Isle of Skye, as we consider where it would be best to continue raising our family. It’s kind of heartbreaking to be seriously researching this, rather than just fancifully discussing it as we have in the past, because we’re both proud and loyal Americans. But, day by day, I can feel the America I knew growing up changing into something very different, both structurally, politically and philosophically. It’s changing into something that increasingly, I feel I don’t understand, someplace that’s not really “home.”

President Obama

As expected, Barack Hussein Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States on Tuesday. His supporters are jubilant, his opponents bitter. I understand both emotions, but both are pointless.

To those who voted against Obama:

Get over it. I’m one of you, as once again, I had to hold my nose and cast my ballot. Four years ago, it was for John Kerry, who I didn’t agree with politically, but knew we needed to change course for both geopolitical and economic reasons. I was right. It’s all the more frustrating for me and those who believe as I do, because this year, we had Ron Paul, until the Media and Republican Party marginalized Dr. Paul, the only candidate who showed he knew “his fanny from first base” as my father would say.

I understand if you want to bolt for the exits, I’m considering how best to do the same thing, but it has nothing to do with our pick for President. It’s economic, and there’s very little that President Obama will be able to do about it, except make it worse, and create for us a longer period of suffering. That, I fully expect. To those rabid opponents, you definitely need to get over it.

By all means, do what you can to get his birth certificate and make sure he hasn’t knowingly misrepresented his constitutional qualifications to be President, but I do not believe he is Muslim, a foreign agent or the Anti-Christ. At the worst, I believe he is an aggressive, ambitious politician, and I don’t mean that as a compliment. When he talks, assume what he says about “service” is more “acquistion of power.” I believe his lack of a track record (all those “present” votes) were more about his using his office not to serve his constituents, but instead his political ambitions, than it was about his being a mysterious servant of Islamic terrorists, a new Socialist/Communist/Fascist “strongman” or anything else the breathless conspiracy theorists hint at. Again, Republicans, get over it and start rebuilding the Party.

To those who voted for Obama:

Calm down.

Smoke a cigarette (even if you’re a non-smoker). He’s not the messiah. The world is not going to magically change on January 19th, and the higher and more you euphorically embellish just how awesome life will be when the Bush family moves out of the White House, the quicker and more massive the backlash will be when you realize you will still have to get up in the morning, go to work, do what your boss says, pay your bills and worry about pretty much the same things you had to worry about before. I especially pity the person, and there will be many of them, who focused their life over the past year, on getting Obama elected, but will find themself getting laid off next week, next month, or early in January. That story will be told many, many times.

George W. Bush didn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, help the economic situation we’re in. But he didn’t create it, either. No one person did. The biggest share of the blame goes to a Congress who, not understanding the economics of what was happening, did nothing to rein in those who were playing fast and loose with the rules to take incredibly dangerous long-term risks (to all of our financial futures) in the hopes of fabulous short-term profits. I have to admit a little pity for Obama, too. Why he and McCain wanted this job is beyond me.

For the President-Elect, life is going to be difficult when his supporters, no longer united by a common enemy (the Republican Party), will look at each other and realize that what they all had in common was the desire for change. But, they will soon find out that they all have very different ideas about what that change should look like. At that point, they won’t be united anymore.

Where we go from here.

I agree with Obama when he says we need to come together to fix the problems our nation faces. But, I must admit, when he talks about us always being the “United States of America,” I had to wonder, really?. The developing economic problems we’re facing here will do more separating than bringing together. I hope our Republic can survive it.