Obama saying he wouldn't be ready to run for POTUS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gexyfVpFMU
Mike Dukakis explaining Obama's significant accomplishments:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4Uvv9cVxBs
Biden saying that Obama doesn't have enough experience to be POTUS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lknTPvH1wSg
Kirk Watson on Obama's accomplishments:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj4VK9wVAi0
Biden being a racist:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM19YOqs7hU&
Biden telling a handicapped man to "stand up":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2mzbuRgnI4
McCain gaffes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRUhlws5TOI
McCain saying he wouldn't run in '08:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf_omg5tfi4&feature=related
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
The case against Barack Obama
Barack Obama will likely be the next POTUS. Congratulations to him and Joe Biden, I hope we only have to deal with them for four years.
Part of the reason why Obama will win is because President Bush and other Republican congressmen let Washington change them. Instead of advocating true conservative principles like smaller government, we've seen the federal government grow exponentially over the past eight years. Even so, I think Americans are giving Obama a free pass on too many issues.
First, Barack Obama will raise our taxes. His claims that he will provide tax cuts for 95% of working families is mularkey, but people believe it. Even if true, the top 5% of wage-earners who will see a tax increase under the Obama administration already pay 60% of the nation's federal income tax. Putting more of a tax burden on these individuals will not help the economy, but will rather slow job creation. Aside from the federal income tax, Obama will raise capital gains rates from 15% to somewhere between 20-28%, despite the fact that government revenues historically go up when the capital gains rate is lowered. He will raise payroll taxes and the business tax as well, despite the fact that our business tax rate is the second-highest in the world. Unfortunately for Americans, businesses don't pay taxes. Instead of paying taxes, these businesses will increase the costs of their products, effectively passing the increased tax to the consumer.
Barack Obama is also wildly inexperienced. Despite not having one significant achievement to his name (per a supporter, he did win the Democratic nomination, that must count for something, right?), Obama will be the leader of the greatest country on earth.
People forget that he voted "present" instead of "yea" or "nay" over 100 times in the Illinois state legislature, or that he proposed that we seek a UN resolution after Russia invaded Georgia (oops, turns out Russia can veto any resolution that goes before the UN), or that his running mate, who supposedly bolsters the foreign policy aspect of the ticket, proposed we partition Iraq into sections based on religion and ethnicity.
People also buy Obama's explanation ("I never heard any of those things said") for his twenty years of sitting in the pews of an America-hating church, listening to Jeremiah Wright say things like "God d*mn the USA" or "its the US of KKK," despite the fact that this same man married Obama and his wife and baptized their two children. People will overlook the fact that Bill Ayers, his next door neighbor and fellow Woods Foundation boardmember, bombed American buildings as part of the "Weather Underground," later saying he wished he would have done more. People will also give him a free pass on his dealings with Tony Rezko, a felon who gave Obama a sweetheart-deal on the lot next to Obama's house (but, but, but... Obama is a different kind of politician!).
Obama also is for meeting with our "enemies" without preconditions. Sounds like Jimmy Carter, to me. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, would probably see this as a sign of weakness and would welcome these meetings because it would legitimize him on the world stage.
If Obama signifies change, then I want nothing of it.
Part of the reason why Obama will win is because President Bush and other Republican congressmen let Washington change them. Instead of advocating true conservative principles like smaller government, we've seen the federal government grow exponentially over the past eight years. Even so, I think Americans are giving Obama a free pass on too many issues.
First, Barack Obama will raise our taxes. His claims that he will provide tax cuts for 95% of working families is mularkey, but people believe it. Even if true, the top 5% of wage-earners who will see a tax increase under the Obama administration already pay 60% of the nation's federal income tax. Putting more of a tax burden on these individuals will not help the economy, but will rather slow job creation. Aside from the federal income tax, Obama will raise capital gains rates from 15% to somewhere between 20-28%, despite the fact that government revenues historically go up when the capital gains rate is lowered. He will raise payroll taxes and the business tax as well, despite the fact that our business tax rate is the second-highest in the world. Unfortunately for Americans, businesses don't pay taxes. Instead of paying taxes, these businesses will increase the costs of their products, effectively passing the increased tax to the consumer.
Barack Obama is also wildly inexperienced. Despite not having one significant achievement to his name (per a supporter, he did win the Democratic nomination, that must count for something, right?), Obama will be the leader of the greatest country on earth.
People forget that he voted "present" instead of "yea" or "nay" over 100 times in the Illinois state legislature, or that he proposed that we seek a UN resolution after Russia invaded Georgia (oops, turns out Russia can veto any resolution that goes before the UN), or that his running mate, who supposedly bolsters the foreign policy aspect of the ticket, proposed we partition Iraq into sections based on religion and ethnicity.
People also buy Obama's explanation ("I never heard any of those things said") for his twenty years of sitting in the pews of an America-hating church, listening to Jeremiah Wright say things like "God d*mn the USA" or "its the US of KKK," despite the fact that this same man married Obama and his wife and baptized their two children. People will overlook the fact that Bill Ayers, his next door neighbor and fellow Woods Foundation boardmember, bombed American buildings as part of the "Weather Underground," later saying he wished he would have done more. People will also give him a free pass on his dealings with Tony Rezko, a felon who gave Obama a sweetheart-deal on the lot next to Obama's house (but, but, but... Obama is a different kind of politician!).
Obama also is for meeting with our "enemies" without preconditions. Sounds like Jimmy Carter, to me. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, would probably see this as a sign of weakness and would welcome these meetings because it would legitimize him on the world stage.
If Obama signifies change, then I want nothing of it.
A free market approach to the financial crisis
A free market approach advocated by Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/29/miron.bailout/index.html
The source of the problem: The current mess would never have occurred in the absence of ill-conceived federal policies. The federal government chartered Fannie Mae in 1938 and Freddie Mac in 1970; these two mortgage lending institutions are at the center of the crisis. The government implicitly promised these institutions that it would make good on their debts, so Fannie and Freddie took on huge amounts of excessive risk.
Worse, beginning in 1977 and even more in the 1990s and the early part of this century, Congress pushed mortgage lenders and Fannie/Freddie to expand subprime lending. The industry was happy to oblige, given the implicit promise of federal backing, and subprime lending soared.
This subprime lending was more than a minor relaxation of existing credit guidelines. This lending was a wholesale abandonment of reasonable lending practices in which borrowers with poor credit characteristics got mortgages they were ill-equipped to handle.
Once housing prices declined and economic conditions worsened, defaults and delinquencies soared, leaving the industry holding large amounts of severely depreciated mortgage assets.
Solution: The fact that government bears such a huge responsibility for the current mess means any response should eliminate the conditions that created this situation in the first place, not attempt to fix bad government with more government.The obvious alternative to a bailout is letting troubled financial institutions declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy means that shareholders typically get wiped out and the creditors own the company.
Bankruptcy does not mean the company disappears; it is just owned by someone new (as has occurred with several airlines). Bankruptcy punishes those who took excessive risks while preserving those aspects of a businesses that remain profitable.
In contrast, a bailout transfers enormous wealth from taxpayers to those who knowingly engaged in risky subprime lending. Thus, the bailout encourages companies to take large, imprudent risks and count on getting bailed out by government. This "moral hazard" generates enormous distortions in an economy's allocation of its financial resources.
Counterargument: Thoughtful advocates of the bailout might concede this perspective, but they argue that a bailout is necessary to prevent economic collapse. According to this view, lenders are not making loans, even for worthy projects, because they cannot get capital. This view has a grain of truth; if the bailout does not occur, more bankruptcies are possible and credit conditions may worsen for a time.
But... Talk of Armageddon, however, is ridiculous scare-mongering. If financial institutions cannot make productive loans, a profit opportunity exists for someone else. This might not happen instantly, but it will happen.
Further, the current credit freeze is likely due to Wall Street's hope of a bailout; bankers will not sell their lousy assets for 20 cents on the dollar if the government might pay 30, 50, or 80 cents.
Bottomline: The rush to pass a bailout bill and the fears associated with not passing it looks to me like scare-mongering. Instead of trying to fix the situation with more government, there should at least be some debate about eliminating the conditions that put us in this mess by removing government intervention from the picture.Against the $700B bailout
Over the past week, our beloved Congress and President have attempted to pass a $700B bailout package under the guise of saving the country from sure economic ruin.
I don't buy it.
First, over 40% of Democrats and over 60% of Republicans voted against the bill. Not surprisingly, Democrats who did vote for the bailout bill have received 51 percent more in campaign contributions from sources in the finance, insurance and real estate industries over their congressional careers than Democrats who opposed the legislation.
Second, big Government is not the solution. Government intervention in the free market got us into this mess in the first place. In 1999, a New York Times journalist wrote "Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits. In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on signficantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's."
Fannie and Freddie had an incentive to issue risky loans because the government backed the loans. In other words, the Government's meddling in the market produced a housing bubble, which in turn has led us to where we are today. Now, the same individuals who caused the mess are demanding $700B to "fix" the situation. When is the last time Government actually fixed something? Our Government sent our troops into Iraq with insufficient armor, raided the Social Security "lockbox", and couldn't get aid to Louisiana in an efficient manner after Katrina. And some say more Government is the solution?
Before voting on the Financial Crisis bill on Monday, Nancy Pelosi praised Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) for his extraordinary leadership during these troubling times. This is the same Barney Frank who two years ago, when the Bush administration attempted to impose stricter regulations on the ability of Freddie and Fannie to purchase subprime loans, said, "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." (http://www.usnews.com/blogs/sam-dealey/2008/9/10/barney-franks-fannie-and-freddie-muddle.html)
The bottomline: Government intervention is not the solution, but rather the problem.
I don't buy it.
First, over 40% of Democrats and over 60% of Republicans voted against the bill. Not surprisingly, Democrats who did vote for the bailout bill have received 51 percent more in campaign contributions from sources in the finance, insurance and real estate industries over their congressional careers than Democrats who opposed the legislation.
Second, big Government is not the solution. Government intervention in the free market got us into this mess in the first place. In 1999, a New York Times journalist wrote "Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits. In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on signficantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's."
Fannie and Freddie had an incentive to issue risky loans because the government backed the loans. In other words, the Government's meddling in the market produced a housing bubble, which in turn has led us to where we are today. Now, the same individuals who caused the mess are demanding $700B to "fix" the situation. When is the last time Government actually fixed something? Our Government sent our troops into Iraq with insufficient armor, raided the Social Security "lockbox", and couldn't get aid to Louisiana in an efficient manner after Katrina. And some say more Government is the solution?
Before voting on the Financial Crisis bill on Monday, Nancy Pelosi praised Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) for his extraordinary leadership during these troubling times. This is the same Barney Frank who two years ago, when the Bush administration attempted to impose stricter regulations on the ability of Freddie and Fannie to purchase subprime loans, said, "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." (http://www.usnews.com/blogs/sam-dealey/2008/9/10/barney-franks-fannie-and-freddie-muddle.html)
The bottomline: Government intervention is not the solution, but rather the problem.
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