Day Twenty-Six

President-Elect-So-We-Should-Just-Make-Him-President-Now Obama will announce his Foreign Policy team tomorrow. Actually, he’ll announce Bill Clinton’s policy team plus Bill Clinton’s wife as Secretary of State. You’ll notice the difference in terminology in the Obama Administration vs Bush’s.

Appoint a bunch of White House staff members who were there 8 years ago
Bush: Know-nothing hick governor needs people with experience to tell him what to do.
Obama: A great leader who will use a highly qualified team to enact his vision.

Pick advisors who have differing opinions from each other
Bush: Divided White House staff causing a war within the Administration.
Obama: Genius president using a “team of rivals” to provide all points of view.

Day Twenty-Five

Well, I’m sick as a dog today. I blame it on Obama. You see, good and bad stories are becoming intermingled as America’s time of resolve has come to an end. Will we blame or credit Obama before the Inauguration? So far, the media mentions when the stock market goes up when he announces another Clintonite to the economic team. They don’t mention the days the market is down and Obama rides around behind darkened glass fearing for snipers that Hillary Clinton was derided for.

In other words, I’m sick of Obama already.

Day Twenty-Four

Terrorists are really beginning to dupe the news cycle pretty well. Nothing like the one truly American Holiday and its slow news days to bomb a foreign city and kill Americans. Of course, India blames us. That way, they don’t have to justify their lousy security to their own people. Over seven years without an act of terror on this country under Bush. Let’s hope that Obama can even make half of that.

His team used the news lull to plant a story about the many threats on his life even before the election. I’m not going to argue with their fake numbers, but if they counted celebrity death threats, Bush would be far ahead of Obama.

Day Twenty-Three

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful that Iraq has agreed on a US military withdrawal plan that will allow the Iraqis to defend their own country. I am thankful that we have essentially completed the mission in Iraq and I am thankful that George W. Bush was the president during our nation’s darkest hour in a century.

I am thankful that I am more financially successful and occupationally settled than I have ever been at any other time in my life. I am also thankful that the people who tend to whine about everything will eventually settle on a political group that is all wrong anyway. And I’m thankful that I live in the greatest country on Earth, and not for the first time in my life, either.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Night 22

Remember when John Kerry used the stupid mantra “Hope is on the way” back in 2004? Selling hope is a favorite tactic of politicians. Hope in and of itself is a sale. You can have hope, but the circumstances surrounding it have to be conducive to making a difference. But hope is a strong word. Bill Clinton was the man from Hope. Of course, Mike Huckabee says Clinton was really from Hot Springs and Huckabee is the one from Hope, Arkansas. The trick is to mix hope with the outcome of hope, change. The candidate brings the hope and you use it to change.

Of course, hope sells best when people have no hope. You don’t see a lot of officeholders use hope in their reelection campaigns. No, you have to convince people that there is no hope right now. You sell lemonade when people are thirsty and you can sell more lemonade when you make people thirsty. You can sell hope when people feel hopeless.

The thing about hope is that it always comes with change. Hoping that things stay the same isn’t a good motivator. If things are really lousy, then change of any kind is what you hope for. So, change should provide hope and the hope is to have change.

Here’s the problem. One does not lead to the other. Change happens all the time in this world. And it happens because of desire for change, not sitting on the sidelines hoping for it. No one can give you hope. Hope is a fundamental component of the human spirit. Someone else can inspire hope, but the hope is inside all of us to begin with.

And as everyone watches the man of hope and change inspire little hope and bring about little change, remember this. If someone is trying to sell you something, you probably didn’t need it in the first place.

Day Twenty-Two

By announcing that he has picked even more multi-decade Washintonians for his economic team, Obama managed to slide in just under 1000 points below the Dow’s Election Day levels. In today’s press conference, he told a reporter that questions about his Cabinet appontments are off the topic for this announcement. Also, it turns out that he won’t just pick anyone for the sake of change. Expereince is the important thing. Lucky for him Americans don’t think that way.

John McCain and Sarah Palin blow away your expereince.

Day Twenty-One

The Federal government is planning $7 trillion in economic stimulus. That’s adding 70% to the National DEBT. Not the deficit, the debt. Our debt service is getting close to the entire annual budget of the United States.

Obama is putting the stimulus items above concerns about the deficit, putting off fiscal responsibility until the economy is fixed. Bill Clinton had no such problems and it took a slashed military budget, a hostile Congress and nearly a decade of economic growth in order to balance the budget in his last year. By the way, this is Step one from my list last night of the 5 steps to destroy the US.

Oh, and he’s keeping Robert Gates at the Pentagon past the Inauguration. No change there. One change is that military fatalities are down to 16 this month, or about 1/7,000 of the total deployment. That’s almost equal to the chances of an American IN AMERICA dying. In fact more than 16 American soldiers have been killed by faulty electrical systems built by KBR.

But only people like John McCain care about winning the war with honor.

Night 20

This was a comment I posted on Uppity Womana few days ago. This is a blueprint by which an Obama administration could (and likely will) mess up the US economy.

1. Balanced budget is dead. Running deficits to strengthen the military is considered a waste. Running annual budget sized deficits to buy private industry is considered a vital national interest.

2. Taxes on the rich will flourish. Since Bush lowered taxes on the top level of income, compliance has increased and projected deficits are lower. With the economic “crisis” as cover, even if tax revenues go down due to higher taxes, it will be blamed on the rich getting poorer. Which, of course, is a good thing in the socialist cookbook.

3. US debt may reach junk status on the world market. The national debt is now equal to the gross domestic product. Think about that for a moment. We would have to run trillion dollar surpluses for the next 20 years to pay down the debt. China owns a lot of our debt and we aren’t buying as much of their crap. When will they cash in?

4. The United States starts printing money. The only other way to cut massive debt is to deflate the currency. Prices will inflate. Obama may not just produce stagflation, we may get inflation squared.

5. Economic collapse. Did Russia have a black market because of all the criminals? They had a secondary market because of the worthlessness of their currency. The Arab world works this way as well. The US has a huge monetary system that is leveraged about 100 times the actual cash on hand. Gold is going to sound a hell of a lot better than the “full faith and credit” of the Treasury that doesn’t even care how much money we actually have anymore.

Day Twenty

Obama announced his economic team and plan, which amounts to very little. The Dow went up, so it’s only 1200 points below Election Day levels. It’s truly historic to have such a disastrous Dow performance after an election. It hasn’t really happened before.

I truly believe John McCain knows more about economics than the Pinhead.

Day Nineteen

My American car had some bizarre quirk happen today. I think it may have corrected itself. I don’t know how different it is with a Toyota or a Hyundai or some other non-Detroit car, but the anecdotal evidence is that other people have less of these quirks.

This is Detroit in the 70s. With strong unions and weak competition, American cars were crap. Foreign competition helped to rectify the situation, but union costs are getting impossible to pay now. This was also the problem with some of the USSR vehicles of the last century. If you’re not afraid of losing your job, the product suffers. Will the bailout happen? Probably. Will the unions have to give back more benefits? Maybe not. Does a manufacturer make a profit from selling a hybrid? Only barely, and much less than on an SUV. So, how much money will a Democratic Washington pour into the big 3? Unlimited.