Scenario for Obama winning in 2012

Thought exercise: Nov 2012. Election. Polls are now beginning to show the magnitude of folks’ unhappiness with the guy. If the economy doesn’t turn around fairly strongly, then it’s likely that he will lose and possible that he will lose like Carter in 1980–by that much.

Was discussing with my brother the other day, a thought I had. I have not read this anywhere (see Rag readers? We have some original stuff here), and the thing is this: Europe. It melts down in the next few months. Greece leaves, run on the banks in Italy and Spain. It burns all the way back to Germany in short order, and the Germans have to decide whether to be Atlas and try and hold the whole Socialist house of cards and borrowed and printed money together, or let it burn and take their chances on the other side of that.

Major global crisis erupts. Major fear grips the whole world–even places normally insulated from fear. Now there’s a thing in political science called “Rally Around the Flag”. That’s when a major threat, usually from outside the borders; usually war or close to it, happens. When that happens, party lines temporarily dissolve. Folks rally to their institutions; to their President, no matter what party. If this happens and the timing is right, I am positing that it could carry BHO to another 4 years. FDR, who would probably still be running for president if he didn’t die, ran in 1940 on the concept of “don’t change horses midstream” with all the stuff going on in the world ie Japan in Manchuria and the Germans running rampant in Europe. Think it worked? Think we’ll hear that very same thing?

Along these same lines is an Israel vs Iran deal that could go down in Sept-Oct-Nov. There’s also always a basic probability that a terrorist attack could be carried out in the USA. These are the types of events I’m referring to that might trigger a well-timed, “rally around the flag” deal. Would a rally even have saved Jimmy Carter in Fall of 1980? Dunno. Just sayin.

And yes, your money should be out of the market entirely right now imo. If you feel bold, when stuff really begins hitting the fan, if it hasn’t already, you can play a little TVIX. It’s a closed end volatility fund. It does well when fear in the market is highest. But WARNING: If not timed right, it will shred your money! Only play what you can afford to lose. Sitting on the side is a much better play, but if you must play the dark side, that’s an easy way the home gamer can do so. Please, please, please be careful!~

Misinformation on O’Reilly re price of oil

Tired of it. Bill O’Reilly gets a lot of stuff right, but he is wrong on this item and is spreading complete populist hooey on the price of oil.

He says that “Speculation drives up the price of oil”. That’s wrong. It can NOT drive up the price of oil. It both drives it up AND DOWN equally. Speculation WORKS BOTH WAYS. It can not ONLY work in one direction. For every price increase it causes, it will cause a price decrease at some point. The difference? You won’t hear folks like O’Reilly talking about the price GOING DOWN! It’s a built in bias. It’s not news.

So O’Reilly: STOP spreading this hooey! You’re completely 100% wrong. The idea that the government needs to step into the free market to somehow curtail speculation is a disaster. Keep the government away from the free market wherever possible, and you’ll have better outcomes.

He also happens to be wrong about our “exporting” oil to China. He even had Rove on who explained to him, on his own show, how he was wrong. We refine it and reship it. But we are NOT a net exporter of oil. Stop misinforming us Bill.

And no sooner do I see a commercial on O’Reilly and it’s a Volt add and it’s lying through it’s teeth about the myth of the electric car. The guy in the spot ends with the big finish line that he, “…rarely puts gas in his car”.
Is this a lie? Narrowly? No. Not necessarily. But what he doesn’t say is that he plugs his car in. That makes his electric bill go up. And it goes up about the same as if he was buying gas. And that electricity is generated overwhelmingly by burning fossil fuels. But we aren’t supposed to talk about that. It’s a big lie.

People are so misinformed about things and we end up with idiot congress and senate people trying to write bills that manage hopelessly complex things and we wonder why we are broke. Sad.

President 2012: Gingrich, NOT Romney

Let’s talk politics. First let’s get some facts lined up:

FACT: The Liberal media provides millions of dollars of free tailwind and headwind to the candidates that they like/don’t like. In 2008, they got John McCain the GOP nomination because he was the closest thing to a Democrat running on the GOP side, and he was the most beatable candidate.

This time, they’d like nothing better than Huntsman, because he’s basically a Democrat. But they know it’s not going to happen, so they are backing Mitt Romney (a man, who, I might add, could NOT beat John McCain last time!). They are backing him in the primary season. If he gets the nomination, expect that same Liberal media that backed him to POUND him on being a Mormon and on having enacted universal healthcare in Mass. Oh, and they’ll dredge up some other stuff. The tone will change ON A DIME–over night.

Romney is NOT a Conservative. He is a very liberal pol. Any Republican who can (a) win in Mass and (b) pass universal healthcare, isn’t Conservative. Oh, and, by the way, that universal healthcare is costing multiples MORE than he promised and that’s precisely how the Obamacare will go and why it is imperitive to repeal it–we simply don’t have the money. Forget that it’s bad law–we simply don’t have the money. It will break us. We borrow 42 cents of every federal dollar spent. To enact a monolithic entitlement program like that when we are borrowing so much money is as close to national suicide as you’ll ever see. It must go.

The candidates who will figure are now running thusly:
Cain, Romney, Gingrich, Bachmann. Paul is only a factor if he is dumb enough to run as a 3rd party guy and virtually ensure that Obama wins. Huntsman is not realistic. Santorum ditto.

Bachmann may do very well in Iowa and, as a Conservative woman with gravitas, she may be a viable veep candidate. I would applaud that as the Dems have a permanent 15% advantage with women and that is why they attack Palin and Bachmann so rudely and visciously: they are scared stiff of a woman on the GOP side pulling that number down. Their whole “party” rests on that. The other leg of the stool is minorities, and that explains the treatment that Cain and Clarence Thomas get.

Now originally I liked Cain. I LOVED that he was NOT ROMNEY! And that was the point to Cain. But for 2 reasons, I don’t want him nominated. The 999 thing is not the right thing right now. I want a candidate who won’t waste ANY political capital on a radical overhaul. The radical overhaul is REPEAL OBAMACARE. It must be the first and only thing focused on until it is done. So 999 is a distraction that could cost us dearly. It also introduces a national sales tax, and I don’t want Congress with any new taxes to play with. Once enacted, they only go up. The power to tax is the power to destroy!

The Cain scandals are not a bother to me. I believe they are 100% manufactured by Dem operatives. That’s how scared they are about Cain on the GOP side. (See my earlier comments). The best thing I’ve read about it is this–it’s a must-read for every American and you won’t hear these things in the mainstream media–that’s how it works.

The real reason Cain needs to step aside? He recently said on the record that China was seeking nuclear weapons! Even as a school kid, I knew that China had them since the 1960′s. You can’t win the general and be throwing this red meat to the media. He will lose. There is too much at stake.

If he was Joe Biden, he’d get a pass, but he’s the opposite of Joe Biden–every Liberal “journo” wants to nail him, and if it’s that easy, then buh-bye, Herman. I respect you; I like you; but you can’t do that and win. This is too important. I wish you all kinds of well. And thank you for a very important job well done–you exposed the hate machine that is the Democratic/Liberal Media complex, that is for those who look at it objectively and in good faith.

With Cain a disaster, that leaves only Gingrich to thwart the disaster that is Romney. I know, I know, he said some things that were head scratchers. The photo op with Pelosi and the Globaloney Warming comments. I get it. But he is so smart and so dang erudite under pressure that he HAS to be the nominee. He also understands as do NO OTHER CANDIDATES that he is not only trying to convince people to vote for his IDEAS, but that he is fighting a ruthless and dishonest enemy: the press. He routinely goes after the press and calls out their ridiculous Liberal bias! To me, this is now a REQUIREMENT of any Conservative candidate. You MUST fight back against the bias and not only is Newt the one best equipped to do that, he is the ONLY one who seems to understand that it must be done! I’m tired of the Bush’s laying back and allowing their enemies attack them with no fear of pushback. The ideas need to be put out there and Newt will do it.

Newt is experienced. He has the Contract with American and the very skill full dampening of the most Liberal part of the Clinton years after the ’94 congress. He understands Congress and how you get things done. He understands the space. He is pleasant and smart and steeped in historical contextual knowledge and what’s more: he can THINK and SPEAK ON HIS FEET!

He is, I believe, realistically Conservative. What does that mean? Well, it means he is smart enough not to waste his time tilting at windmills with stuff like 999 while the healthcare bill alone is holding back GDP by 2-3% per year right now just on fear alone! He knows what needs to be done in what order and he knows what is OBTAINABLE and in what time frame!

We are very close to having the Liberal media, once again, shove a very liberal, lightweight candidate down our throats. We have a very short window left with which to thwart this. Newt is the only choice and he’s a da*n good choice too!

Don’t blow this. Don’t be fooled by radical/unelectable Ron Paul or Cain. Romney is who your enemies want. Gingrich has the added sweetner of being HATED by the Liberals! A Gingrich presidency would rankle them monumentally; right up there with Palin or Bachmann or Cain. They were so scared of Newt in the 90′s that they put him on the cover of Newsweek:

You want to know who the Left fears? Watch who they ATTACK! And NO ONE was more attacked in the 1990′s than Newt.

Addendum: How can I prove the media is pushing Romney and tearing down everyone else? Well, there are many ways. Newbusters.org is a great daily source of objective, verifiable stuff, but it’s even simpler than that. Just go about your business and count up the times you hear a KNOWN Liberal say, “…Oh, Romney has already won” and add that to the number of times you hear: “…Cain CAN’T win” or “…Bachmann can’t win”, or “…Gingrich can’t win”.

They want you to think that it’s over; that Romney has already won; that there are no issues with Romney; that all the other candidates are deeply flawed. Just listen with half an ear and it’s obvious.

Last weekend I worked all weekend clearing trees and raking leaves and had my headphones on Bloomberg Business News and the Liberal bias on Bloomberg was just STAGGERING. It was a joke. It was either bashing Cain or pushing Huntsman the whole weekend. It was a cartoon. But remember, Fox News is biased, even though they can’t give specific examples; even though Shep is a Lib; Greta is a Lib; Juan Williams and Geraldo are Libs. You think there are any Conservatives at MSNBC? hahahaha.

Tell us: What did you do with the LAST TRILLION???

Obama is going to speak tonight and probably ask for another 300 to 400 billion for a “jobs program”. Well, he’s not going to actually “ask” but rather, say that this is what should be done and then add that those mean Republicans in Congress will prevent this and thus, the rest of the recession is “on them”.

First of all, we don’t HAVE this money.

We borrow 42 cents of every dollar we spend at the Federal level.

That’s insane.

That’s unsustainable.

That will collapse the dollar eventually.

So, if he were actually telling the truth, he would say, “…I want to borrow or print, another 300 to 400 billion”, because that’s what’s really happening.

If I were a Republican running for President, I would jump up and demand, at the top of my lungs, that he stand before the nation like a man, and detail for us what he did with the last 787 Billion dollars that he spent (that we didn’t have either). Where is it? HOW did we spend it? On what kinds of things? Obama himself said that his “shovel ready” jobs weren’t so shovel ready. Oh really? Tell us where this money went! Where are the jobs? If it was a success, Obama ought to have many, many examples of them.

I would say we won’t vote a single dime of new money until he gives us a full accounting of the last one. It’s what any leader would do at the beginning of any meeting in which he was coming back and asking for more money. You want venture capital? You better have a good business plan. You want MORE venture capital? You better be prepared to show what you are doing and did with the money.

I think that’s fair. I don’t think that’s harsh or partisan. It’s OUR money, err, it’s our names he’s ringing up this insane debt on. Stand and deliver, pal. I keep reading what a great orator he is–get up and tell us? Where did the money go? Why will it be different this time?

That aside, if he wants to end the recession we’re in, he needs to do 2 things: Completely repeal the healthcare bill that is frightening business into sitting on cash. You rammed it down the American people’s throats out of a smoke-filled room. It’s 2000+ pages; you never read it. Nancy Pelosi ADMITTED she didn’t read it. It’s a budget buster. Businesses don’t know what their labor costs are going to be when this kicks in. Repeal it and businesses would breathe such a sigh of relief that it would be audible.

Cut spending. A LOT. Do it NOW.

These two things would send a signal to business that the government “gets” it. Then, they might take some risks. Until then? Nope.

Ultimately, our form of government has a major flaw in it. It will be our undoing unless it is fixed at the Constitutional level. Our system rewards politicians only for SPENDING MORE and never for spending less. Government will always grow, and that’s not a good thing. Spending will always grow and that’s about to destroy us. I think they called it “Bureaucratic Inertia” in my IR class in 1984: government always gets bigger–never smaller.

Since our currency is not backed by hard assets (and I’m not taking a position that is should or should not be), it is a “fiat” currency. It exists by government fiat ONLY. It has no other value other than “the government says so”. If politicians are allowed to deficit spend the stuff, AND to PRINT the stuff, then it will not end well. There has to be a hard limit tied to a verifiable metric like GDP, beyond which, the government can not spend. This must be an amendment to the US Constitution and it must be sacrosanct. Otherwise, sooner or later, it will not end well.

Don’t believe me? Your president will get on tv tonight and tell us we’re stupid if we don’t want to borrow and/or print another .4 TRILLION of the fiat dollars, so that he can spend them and tell everyone he’s a big hero. He’s already done this before.

Enjoy the game
–fog

Obama on the earthquake:

“…It’s centered on Bush’s Fault…”

The Healthcare Bill is the Malaise & the Elephant in the Room

I keep hearing and reading how the economy is a mess and no one really is sure why. Some talk of the crushing debt we are ringing up, and that’s part of it, but there’s another obvious elephant in the room that I DON’T hear: Obama’s Healthcare Bill.

Why aren’t pundits talking about this? If all systems are go and business won’t spend and hire and do big capital projects, then what is holding things up? Fear maybe? Fear that you can’t plan for your future because you have NO IDEA what your labor costs will be because of this completely insane and reckless 2,000 page bill that Nancy Pelosi said, “…we’ll know what’s in it when we pass it”.

Click here to read about all the waivers that have been granted because the legislation is so poorly conceived

The elephant in the room is simple; it’s this: You can’t plan large capital projects; you can’t go confidently forward when on top of all the uncertainty, you CAN NOT project one of your biggest costs out 12, 24 or 36 months into the future!

Since they can’t plan accurately and can’t trust that the government won’t just hold them up at gunpoint for this bad bill, they do the logical thing: Nothing. They sit and wait. And the economy enters the Malaise phase.

Make no mistake: The malaise was created by this administration. They are anti-business and this healthcare bill is just a ticking nuclear bomb over our jobs, our savings, our future. It’s bad, flawed legislation that was rammed down our throats in a back room–a smoke filled back room. There were no C-Span debates as Obama promised over 8 times in the campaign. There was no “transparency”. We were told, “you lost” and to “sit in the back of the bus”.

This issue should still be front and center in my opinion. You think we’re running up debt NOW? Just wait until this boondoggle kicks in fully. The debt will run away like Roger Bannister.

Business is scared and they should be. This healtcare bill is the main reason. It should be talked about EVERY DAY AND NIGHT until voters go to the polls in 2012, so that there is a chance to roll it back before too much MORE damage occurs. Yes, I said MORE. Because it is already doing a lot of damage.

If you want to design a state run healthcare system, do it on a small scale first and prove to me, that you have real costs that we can measure. It’s too big to take a tax-and-borrow-and-print-and-spend Democrat’s word for it. We don’t believe you. That’s why you had to lie to us and use tricks to ram the bill through. That’s why no one read it. That’s why you have grant waiver after waiver on it.

This is the elephant in the room. If this were repealed 100% tomorrow, the next day, the economy would start to rock and roll. It would be instantaneous.

How will the GW crowd make this The West’s fault?

Robert, Read This!

Global Warming: To be taught in public schools: Click here to open in a new window 

Study: Ice growing in Greenland; Global Warming guys say: “…hey, the climate fluctuates” Click here to read in a new window

 

 

Sawdust Samwich

I tried to take some photos of the dust that gets generated from the sculpting process. Even though I’m nearer to the end, I’m still taking out a shopping bag of dust almost every night. These aren’t real bad scenes overall. When it gets bad, you don’t tend to want to stop and get the camera and take any photos. There have been one or two times when I’ve thought that I should take a photo because no one would believe it.

My favorite die grinder died yesterday. A Milwaukee, 1/4 inch, 4.5 amp job. The first big purchase I made back in 1992 or so do these large figures. I’ve changed the brushed numerous times and even sent it back to have the bearings repacked. I won’t send it out this time even though it cost over $300.00. The reason? The die grinder to the left with the orange handle is a cheap made-in-China job that goes for $50.00 and if it ever dies, I will toss it and buy a new one. Tools that I only dreamed of in the 1990′s are now so cheap they are virtually disposable. And that’s because of all those inefficient, polluting manufacturing plants over there in China that are not going to stop belching their carbon gases no matter what silly laws Arnold passes in California to hoodwink gullible and mis-informed taxpayers about the cause and solution to the current warming trend that’s in all the papers.

The Pinetar Three (Thanks for the Shirts, McBean)

In these times of Photoshop, where a skilled operator could easily put Dr. Zaius’ head on my body and make is seamless, you never know if you are looking at a real photo or a doctored one. I assure the readers that this photo is real. We really have the Pinetar shirts, his/hers/baby. They are compliments of a very silly man down in Atlanta, Georgia who likes to go by the name McBean. I don’t know what I like better, the gags or the 2nd row, behind-the-plate seats to the Red Sox (or Dodgers this year?). He’s a true old friend. In high school, we worked many jobs together; cleaning toilets, painting etc. Scarily, he can recite the lines to “Battle of the Planet of the Apes” almost verbatim and while doing it, he’ll crack himself up at the same time, perhaps out of embarrassment? One of the last times I was down at his house in Atlanta, we made deep fried twinkies. I have proof:

And yes, that’s a Norman (Chubby) Chainey t-shirt I’m wearing. Another of his creations. If you are goint to eat like Chainey, you need to honor him. Chubby would have like the twinkies.

***

Bonds game on: Already I have heard Charles Barkley on the radio being interviewed re Bonds and already he has played the race card FOR Barry Bonds. Has anyone heard of Martha Stewart? (Would it matter if they had?).

My initial thoughts on this were that if the feds take 4 years aim at you, you have nowhere to hide (cue the Barretta theme song), but now I think that Bonds and his attorneys will remain defiant and sling mud at MLB and the US DOJ, playing the race card and any other card they can play. The facts, as I understand them are this: Bonds took roids. He admitted to taking the roids. He DIDN’T admit to KNOWING they were roids. To prove perjury, they have to get inside his head and prove that a reasonable person would have KNOWN that they were taking roids all along and that to say he didn’t know would be a lie. As we have seen in the OJ case, even facts that cry out for common sense can be obfuscated to dopey jurors with racial agendas, pretty easily by lawyers. If they got the right people on the jury, they might be able to convince them that a priest doesn’t know what he’s doing when he’s consecrating the host in The Mass. In other words, it ain’t all about common sense. Put your political G-Suit on and get ready for all-Barry, all the time, particularly if it is a slow news day.

I would venture that within about 6 months, you’ll “know” more than you ever dreamed about Barry Lamar Bonds. Question is, “who will play Kato?”.

***

Babe Ruth statue goes on despite a wicked cold and sore throat I’ve picked up after having a flu shot at work. I’m never getting the flu shot again. I don’t think they do a damn thing and in this case, I think they pushed me over the edge into this thing I have now. Now I have to spend hours with my stuffy face in a mask that’s uncomfortable at best on a good day.

The statue is coming along and I’m excited about it. I just had a nice talk with the buyer and we are on track to get this thing installed when the Gaylord opens in January.