Month: March 2009

Editorial: The psychos are running the nuthouse!

Originally published over at my column at NolanChart.com:

It has been a while since I have written an article for my column; with all my days spent blogging about the political happenings post-Obama election, I just have not had the time to sit here and hammer out a good column.  I have not forgotten to write, I just have not had the time to sit down and gather my thoughts and put my opinion to the current matters.

President Barack Obama has not been in the White House for 100 days yet and already it seems that our Country is headed for either one of two things; either economic disaster or outright European socialism.  Although I tend to believe that one will follow the other, I do firmly believe that capitalism is in grave danger.  I also believe that our Nation is going to be one that is going to become a society that rewards failure.

This applies in the area of the home mortgages; since when do we bail out people who have gotten in over their heads in debt?  To be clear, I do understand that there were those who were victimized, and those who did this, to innocent people, should be prosecuted.  However, those who knowingly got into mortgages that they knew they would not normally be able to afford, I have zero pity for.  You make a stupid mistake you pay the consequences.  That is how a free and democratic society works.  You have to responsibility for your own actions.

Let me give you a personal example.  When I was 19 years old, Discover Card sent me an application for a Credit Card.  My parents came on as co-signers. Between the time that I first received that card and the time in 2004, when I finally filed for bankruptcy, I was over 14K in debt.  Conversely it was over 18K of debt with the new truck that I bought, that I could not really afford; however because I had a job, I could make payments.  One day the unthinkable happened, I lost my job; the gravy train stopped and threw me off.  Those gravy trains never were known for their cordialness.  After doing the obligatory and quite painful grunt and skid across the debt parking lot.  I decided I had better go see a bankruptcy lawyer.

What does this have to do with what is happening now in the United States Government?  It has quite a bit to do with it actually.  Did the United States Government come in and offer to pay off my debt?  No.  Did the United States Government offer to come in and give me any kind of relief on my truck payments?  Nope!  I ended up losing that truck someone else owns it now.  In other words, I was not rewarded for making stupid decisions, like going over my head in debt.  Which by the way, was my own fault, I am the one that charged items on my discover card and got over my head in all that debt not anyone else, not that American taxpayers, but me.

Another way that the United States Government is rewarding failure is by losing their ever-loving minds over bonuses that were contractually awarded to employees of a company.  Now I understand the reasons why people are upset about the bonuses.  The problem is, the people on the left, or the Democrats are looking at this from a rather idiotic point of view.  If the Democrats in Congress are so mad about these bonuses, then why in the heck did they vote to prop up these banks in the first place?  The bonuses were a drop in the bucket to what we spent to take ownership in these companies.  Why nationalize a company and then gripe about a bonus?  It makes zero sense to me.

Again, even bailing out these companies in the first place is rewarding companies for failure.  Sorry, I do not buy the notion of a business being too big to fail, that is simply stupid political double talk for a nationalization argument.

Let me give you another personal example of why I think this propping up a business is just simply stupid and why it teaches that it is okay to have a bad business model.  I used to run a small electronics out of my house here.  I would never buy more than one or two items at the most. I would always tell my customers, you want something, you pay up front, and I will order the item.  I would get the money and order the item, and whatever I had left over, I kept for profit.  That is called responsible business practices.  However, what if I went out, got a loan for say $500.000, and bought a bunch of inventory and then the market fell out in the electronics business or what if I just did not bother to advertise?  I would be stuck with a bill for the loan and a bunch of inventory that I could not move.  Now would it fair for me to want the United States Government to bail me out of that situation?  I think not.  Nevertheless, that is what the Government is doing; they are essentially saying that some businesses are just too big to fail.

Not only this, but we are bailing these banks out with money that we do not even have.  We are using money that we are borrowing from china, money that is not even ours.  What we do not borrow from China, we are printing ourselves, which will devalue the dollar.  It is as the title of this column says a case of psychos that are running the nuthouse.

Heartache: Internet Advertising is not working

It’s a good read over at TechCrunch:

Why Advertising Is Failing On The Internet.

Not to worry, I am not taking my banners down. The recession has got to end sometime! 😀

Seriously; I believe this recession will mostly get rid of surplus in the advertising Market. As much as I hate to admit it, there has been a great deal of overkill in that Market. Not to mention in the blogging world! I think the recession might clear out the clutter and allow we full time bloggers to flourish and get noticed.

I noticed before the downturn in the economy happened, the online advertising market seemed to be saturated. It now seems that the 12 inch pipe of flowing water has now shrunk to a faucet trickle. This will be a good thing, in some respects.

I just hope I am right! 🙂

(H/T Twitter)

Cry me a river!

Scott over at power line Blog is depressed because the Liberals are running the country.

Sorry dude, but I have zero pity for you or the Republican Party. They could have chosen a real Conservative candidate; but instead they ran a rich Mormon asshole, a crazy hick preacher, a half asleep old man who stumbled and cleared his throat alot and finally a senile old man, who really wasn’t even a Republican, but rather a RINO.

The senile old fool won the beauty contest and went up against the most hip, the most cool, and the first ever black Presidential candidate ever…..and he lost.

Those are the breaks.

Of course, there was one guy, who had two first names, someone who went against the grain and did not fall in line, and you all treated him like a special education student; in fact, he had to go have his own party, because you all would not even let him speak at your convention.

Now America is being lead by a Neo-Liberal, who wants to take America down the path of European socialism, and eventually into the path of full blown Communism.

Indeed, America’s Chickens are coming home……to roost.

Others:

Gaius / Blue Crab Boulevard: Depression  —  No, not an economic one.  Not yet, at any rate.
Donald Douglas / American Power: The Folsom Cell Block National Culture
Victor Davis Hanson / Pajamas Media: Thoughts About Depressed Americans
Fausta / Fausta’s Blog: Am I depressed yet?
AJStrata / The Strata-Sphere: Obama Picks Dumb Fight With Most Powerful In America
Jules Crittenden: Not Safer!  —  That’s the word from Obama, who is advancing …
Stephen F. Hayes / Weekly Standard: Iran Responds: “Death to America”

Obama's Katrina Moment?

Seems that way to me!

The Video:

(Via Jim Treacher on Twitter)

The party is over for Obama among independent voters

Looks like the Independents in America have sobered up from the Hope and Change stupor:

In the new National Public Radio poll conducted by the Democratic polling company Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and its Republican counterpart, Public Opinion Strategies, 42 percent of the 800 likely voters surveyed March 10 to 14 said that if the next congressional election were held today they would vote for the Republican candidate; an identical percentage of respondents said they would vote for the Democratic one. For several years, Democrats held a substantial lead on this question.

Democrats still outnumbered Republicans in terms of party identification in this poll by 6 points, 45 percent to 39 percent. Democrats also favored their own party’s congressional candidates 83 percent to 7 percent. But voters who call themselves independents gave GOP candidates the edge by 14 points, 38 percent to 24 percent. And self-identified Republicans supported their own party’s candidates 85 percent to 3 percent.

via National Journal Magazine – Are Independents Hedging Their Bets?.

I recommend you go read the whole thing, as it is a very interesting read. The political climate in America is changing very fast. Most Americans do not want to see their children paying for some economic mess, that was not even of their own making; but rather was of some Democrat in Washington D.C.’s making. Now, in fairness, the Republicans could have stopped this mess in 2003, they tried and the people creating the mess played the race card and also denied that anything was even wrong.  However, if Jimmy Carter and later on Bill Clinton would have left well enough alone, this whole economic mess would have been avoided.

I do truly hope by 2010 that the poll numbers for the Democrats are so low that Republican Congress will be able to take back the majority and out of the hands of these crazy people who want to spend out country into bankruptcy.

More Coverage:

Susan Duclos / Wake up America: Independents Jumping Ship
Jennifer Rubin / Commentary: Flotsam and Jetsam  —  A thought provoking piece on whether …
Gaius / Blue Crab Boulevard: The Train Wreck  —  Charlie Cook has been looking at elections for a while now.
Moe Lane: National Journal reporting tie on partisan identification.

Yes, Iran does hate us and they have reasons too

This is one of those posts that will separate me from the rabid Neo-Conservative right.

The New York Times reports that Iran has rejected the overtures of the Obama Administration.

The reasons were given:

Khamenei enumerated a long list of Iranian grievances against the United States over the past 30 years and said the U.S. was still interfering in Iranian affairs.

He mentioned U.S. sanctions against Iran, U.S. support for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during his 1980-88 war against Iran and the downing of an Iranian airliner over the Persian Gulf in 1988.

He also accused the U.S. of provoking ethnic tension in Iran and said Washington’s accusations that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons are a sign of U.S. hostility. Iran says its nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes, like energy production, not for building weapons.

”Have you released Iranian assets? Have you lifted oppressive sanctions? Have you given up mudslinging and making accusations against the great Iranian nation and its officials? Have you given up your unconditional support for the Zionist regime? Even the language remains unchanged,” Khamenei said.

Khamenei, wearing a black turban and dark robes, said America was hated around the world for its arrogance, as the crowd chanted ”Death to America.”

While I will be the first to concede that much of this was done much before Obama’s time. The fact is that the United States has always treated that region as a pawn. A pawn in a game of “The Ends Justify the means.” and we are bearing the fruit of that now.

The Zionist remark can be described as simply this. The United States has never, ever, taken a critical tone with Israel and has mostly always blindly supported Israel’s acts of aggression in the region. All the while condemning anyone’s acts towards Israel. It is that policy that has people like those in Iran saying, “Death to America.”

Anyone that tries to tell you anything other than this, is selling you a line of bullshit.