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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

Watching the Vice President Debate last night, I was struck at how (almost) pointless this campaign is, and just how out of touch these people are. There was so little of serious consequence debated last night, I wondered if anyone up there truly grasped the danger of the economic situation, or realized more and more, everyday Americans are beginning to understand it. There’s worry out here, and a rising sense of anger over it. With the exception of Sarah Palin, everyone in the race is a complete Beltway Insider. I’ve lived and worked inside the Beltway, and I know insiders when I see them.

That term, “Beltway Insider” gets bandied about a lot. The interstate system that encircles Washington, DC, running through Virginia and Maryland, is a system I avoided as much as possible. My wife and I lived first in Arlington, then Vienna, both in Virginia. Arriving in the Nation’s Capital not long after Bill Clinton’s election (don’t read anything into that – purely coincidental), I quickly realized that when you came to Washington, you were either a Virginia or a Marylander, and you figured that out pretty quickly. Most never change sides. Sure, a few people end up living in the District, but that’s usually either ghetto or uber-upscale real estate. Neither for me, thank you.

Living in Arlington was subtly different than Vienna. Vienna is a nice little community barely a mile outside the beltway on I-66. There’s a Metro station at the edge of town, but my work hours (I’m writing this at 4:29am) kept me in the car, driving across the Chain Bridge, or else around the circular off-ramp that provided a magnificent view of the Iwo Jima Memorial as I left I-66 to drive through Arlington and across the Key Bridge into Georgetown.

Living in a high-rise in Arlington was a much more urban, inside the beltway experience. I loved it, though. We lived in a building just across a small plaza from the National Science Foundation, so between that, and my work in the media, there was a lot of contact with the “insiders.” When you’re inside, it’s almost like you’re in a “cone of acceptance,” and belong there. More than once, on a coffee-break we bumped into Chelsea Clinton and stopped and talked for a couple seconds outside Starbucks with her and her surly girlfriend/Secret Service protection. The “surly” was in a high school girl way, not a Secret Service Agent way, but she still could have probably kicked my ass in a heartbeat, even though I’m 6’2″ and on the day we first met, was wearing a long Aussie-style raincoat and a “USS Ronald Reagan” baseball cap (the ship hadn’t been launched yet, but I have Navy connections that got me a “Gipper” cap not long after they laid the keel), but they showed no concern. I figured my much more friendly looking staff, one metro-sexual male and a pretty 30 year old female “softened” my look. I was a little surprised that high school girls did lunch at Starbucks (it was only the middle 90s, and I don’t think the Frappacino had made its debut yet) – her school, Sidwell Friends – was down the street, but that’s the District. Things are just a little ahead of the rest of the country, like the East Coast, but in a subtler way.

Once we moved to Vienna, we got away from a lot of the “total government” people and more into the high tech and government support industry community. Sure, there were still insiders there – our next door neighbors, still friends to this day, were an Air Force Captain (now Colonel) at the Pentagon, and his government contractor wife. But Vienna residents seemed more down to earth.

We occasionally would run into insiders outside the Beltway, but it was rare. There was a salad bar we frequented, a mile or so further outside the Beltway from where we lived, where we would see and chat with ABC (now Fox) anchor Brit Hume and his wife Kim, Washington Bureau Chief for Fox. Really nice people, and when we first met them, my quick introduction (I was a voice in DC, not a face) warmed the meeting up, and while I wouldn’t say we became close friends over infrequent salad bar meetings, it was a much more comfortable knowing each other than you would normally experience two miles further east, inside the Beltway. That’s the nature of the region. Every two or three weeks I would have my hair cut at Okyo Salon in Georgetown, almost always sitting next to, or not far from, Larry King, who was (maybe still is?) there every day having his hair blow dried (I know…but that’s what he was there for – he’d walk in, hair a mess and leave the perfectly coiffed Larry we all know and love, thanks to Bernard, who cut my hair a couple times and he’s GOOD). We never talked. And I have nothing against Larry King, in fact early in my career he was someone I learned a lot about being a talk show host from, but it was not a friendly media-people meeting. Neither was my almost daily passing on the sidewalk of Jim Leher, of PBS, even though on that walk I was usually with my very well-known radio news anchor. We were inside the Beltway, and it’s a different environment.

My point in all this, is that being inside that Interstate system, the air is different. When people pass through the invisible boundary they are changed. What goes on outside the Beltway becomes more academic, and less personal to you. And when I say “you” I can’t say that I was exempt. When you’re regularly inside, you are part of a social system that makes you want to continue to belong to it, and be true to it. I can’t explain it better than that. Moving to Vienna, outside, albeit barely outside, changed that. Again, I can best describe it this way: The air is different.

So, when I watched the VP debate last night, I was startled, more than anything, by the contrast between the accomplished insider, Joe Biden and the massively outsider Governor Sarah Palin. Gov. Palin brushed by a topic I would have pounded, that Biden, in his Democratic Primary race against Obama mercilessly hit Obama with the charge that he’s in no way ready to lead. Much like George Bush Sr. in the 1980 Republican Primary campaign, where he slammed Ronald Reagan so hard, it was shocking to see Reagan pick Bush, the elder, as his VP candidate, it shocked me when these Democratic candidates hooked up to campaign.

But that’s the way it works inside the Beltway, and I realize John McCain is an insider. But, it’s why, when I watch Sarah Palin I can’t help but think we need many, many more like her. Candidates who simply reek of outside the beltway. We need them. The same old insiders have put us in these troubling times. The interesting misconception about Washington is, that we think we need these experienced hands to run government. Not so. Staffers run the place. Sure, the higher up you go, the more partisan the players, but on the administrative level, the people that do a lot of the real work are the people who take public transportation to work, answer the phones, word process the paperwork and handle the day to day stuff of running the government. Even partisan staffers aren’t nearly as tied to their party affiliation as we tend to think. Much like Judd Nelson’s character in St. Elmo’s Fire, staffers sometimes jump parties for better job. Heck, didn’t Dick Morris do just that? Not even going to mention Joe Lieberman.

And after all, let’s face it. We are called “The United States of America” for a reason. We are an association of States, not a single centrally-run organization. Remember when the Government shut-down in the winter of 1995? I was there. Between the snowstorms that shut down the District (don’t even get me started about Marion Barry and his “80 snow plows at work,” he had maybe 2 running) and the budget crisis that sent Federal employees home for a few days, despite the worry, American still ran just fine. Better, according to some! I ferried our private industry employees to and from work through waist high snowdrifts in the District and Maryland in my Jeep Cherokee – We Virginians are just much more hardy souls The government employees stayed home on paid vacations.

The insiders must go. Please do not vote for them. I will hold my nose and vote for McCain, because it seems like someone involved at a high level of the McCain campaign understands this. If I thought it would make a difference, I would write-in Ron Paul. I will continue to help him in any way I can, because we truly need Dr. Paul. We need Congressional candidates of his like elected for the next Congress.

Let’s find them, and elect them.

Here’s my bet.

Yes.

I think the outpouring of angry comment from the constituents of the 435 House members, all of whom are up for reelection in November, will convince a big enough number of them that if they want to keep their jobs (for whatever that will be worth in the post-crash United States), they will vote against the bailout.

The American people are angry. They have a right to be. They’ve been manipulated, lied to, drugged with cheap credit, cheap mass media “entertainment” rich with endless hours of inane reality TV, ridiculously expensive popular culture retail fluff and the American Panto of loundmouthed talking head news/debate shows. They’re waking up from the American Dream, which is starting to look like a night’s restless sleep brought on by a huge malt liquor bender, their head hurts and they’re pissed.

Con Artists like Barney Frank, Christopher Dodd and the like are still trying to shove this pork-infested rescue of their rich patrons, getting progressively more strident in their swearing the bailout is necessary to keep the U.S. from plunging into a depression.

I, for one, am already depressed! I’m depressed that those who profess to lead our nation don’t feel they’ve stolen enough, that they have to take what’s left before fleeing town themselves. Then again, I think it’s possible that the thieves who have put us (with our distracted and at times unconscious help) in this precarious position may well have thought their gravy train would continue indefinitely. Is it possible their panic is more caused by their sudden realization that the income derived from their stealing may be at an end, too? Could it be they’ve overreached, and are about to kill their own golden goose?

That would sure panic me!

In any event, as painful as it will be, our economy and political system needs an overhaul, a cleaning that will sweep away those we’ve foolishly allowed to lead us. Americans need to really read the Constitution and once again embrace this document. it’s still relevent and will save us.

If we let it.

***Update***

Clearly, I was wrong about the bill failing. I keep this post up because I don’t want to hide the fact that I was wrong in my optimism that the Executive and Legislative branches of our Government would listen to the will of their constituents. They did not. There reportedly hasn’t been a greater outpouring of opposition to legislation they were pushing in the history of our Republic.

They failed us. And should pay for this dereliction of duty with massive electoral change in the November elections. No member of the House, Republican, Democrat or Independent (all of whom are up for reelection, of course) who voted for this atrocious bill should be summarily release from service by being voted out of office. The same for any Senator up for re-election, though I would guess you will find a lower percentage of those, since only a third of the Senate is begging for their continued employment in November. Though I haven’t looked at the numbers, the water for this abomination was probably born by those who had another 2 or 4 years left in their term.

Cowards, crooks, thieves and liars. I am ashamed. It is time for change.

Money on our minds this Monday, as the White House predicts a $490 Billion budget deficit next year. Given our government’s fondness for spin and general economic incompetence, I’d say the truth is probably somewhere north of that figure, between $490 and $1 Trillion. Add in bank and FDIC bailouts that will be necessary in the next 18 months, and the larger of those two numbers is probably a lowball.

Too many people today read that news, shrug and say “Well, that’s the government. They can handle it.” What will be an even bigger story in ’09 however, is starting to sneak up on us and seep into the mainstream media. Listen to this segment of the Diane Rehm show (launches a Windows Media file) and you’ll see that dozens of states are under water budget-wise for 2009. This will mean problems with education, health care, police/fire protection, highway and infrastructure maintenance and much more. The resources we need on a daily basis will be strained.

As I write this, the DOW has tumbled already, and even Reuters is reporting that the Gold Futures market suggests that the metal will trade at $1,200/ounce by the end of the year. So, it’s no longer just Jim Sinclair making this claim!

Meanwhile, Jim Kunstler has a terrifically dark piece about a drive through New York State (where he lives), with some pointed, vivid and very compelling observations about the state of our society:

Hopelessness infects this landscape like a miasma. Whatever young adults remain in these places are not thinking about a plausible future, only looking to complete their full array of tattoos and lose themselves in raptures of sex, methedrine, and video aggression.

And that’s the lighter bit Seriously though. Kunstler’s views ring so true, even though regularly reading him, you start to get the idea he really, really dislikes tattoos. I believe though, that Jim will one day be seen as one of many visionaries whose dark futures often hit closer to the eventual truth than most. God help us.

Finally, in the “can’t wait for the future” hit parade, George Ure at UrbanSurvival.com unhappily predicts an “October Surprise” that involves a hidden hand, false flag and an attempt to disguise (if not avoid) the Greater Depression bearing down on us right now. I remember similar predictions (not from George) about the last of the Clinton days, where an event causes the White House to declare Martial Law and cancel the elections. Looking at history though, I have to admit it would be more in character for this administration than the last to attempt something like this.

Time will tell. Have a great week. Be watchful.

Jim reminds us that we get the government we deserve, and that:

As I mull over all this, I begin to think that Hillary is exactly what the USA deserves and, that should she manage to winkle away the nomination and get elected president, the outcome would be instructive and salutary. For one thing, she will be buried under an avalanche of political woe, beginning with the basic financial insolvency of everything in the nation except the Clinton family. Then she would proceed straight into an oil-and-gas clusterfuck that could take this society back to the eighteenth century economically.

Looking at the problem from this perspective, I can almost become a Hillary supporter. The political trouble she’ll bring on will bind and stall government. Not necessarily a bad thing. If I thought anyone currently viably in the race could win and accomplish something (Ron Paul), I don’t think I’d feel this way, but it’s obviously down to the three we see on television every day (if you watch television every day, that is).

Prepare. Like Jim Sinclair, I truly think this is it.