Target Acquiring

Spengler over at atimes.com strums the overture for the End of the World (as we knew it). I'm still waiting for him to be right. Is it this time?

Wall Street and the City of London rode an unprecedented wave of profitability by providing overpriced leverage to consumer and corporate markets. Led by the financial engineers at Lehman, the securities industry grew an enormous infrastructure of staff, systems, and financial exposure. They were so successful that when the music stopped, there was no way to liquidate this mechanism gracefully. It only could be allowed to collapse.

Our tax policies and regulatory policies encourage people to put their money in houses. This includes the mortgage deductions in our tax code. Obama policies will make this worse. When you raise the marginal income tax rate you make the mortgage deduction more valuable which will push more money into real estate. This will in no way help the average American since it will take that money from other useful pursuits while at the same time feeding the next bubble. But it will favor professional speculators while leaving people who buy homes to live in (what a silly notion) holding the bag for the results.

I can remember when families with five children lived in houses with three bedrooms. Now a couples with one child or no children live in houses with five bedrooms. And they are never home because they are at work. That's living your life according to the Tax and regulatory code.

Getting caught holding a bag of manure at the end is part of it, too. And because taxpayers feel they have been forced into this position, they feel a lot of resentment. It is up to our politicians to mobilize this resentment and point it elsewhere. Let's see, acquiring target now...

Hurricane Ike becomes a Pug with a Punch

Ike blew through this part of Ohio Sunday night and knocked out power during the Cleveland Browns/Pittsburgh Steelers game. It was nature's way of sparing us the sight of Cleveland's tenth straight loss to the Steelers. Trees were down all over the place and the power here went out for almost 24 hours. It was a little dose of what Houston swallowed.

What I was wondering is: could I put in for a FEMA grant for contents of the refrigerator? I had a couple of cases of lobster in the freezer that I'm scared to touch. And certain other delicacies, such as a dozen "Thousand Year Old Eggs" that went bad. Funny, they can last for a thousand years in swamp muck but cannot stand up to a couple of hours in my uncool refrigerator. Why, we can't even bake a cake with them now.

Do I have to provide receipts for this stuff? Or can I treat it like a $250,000 mortgage? I think I lost the receipts in the storm. The mortgage, too.

Uh-Oh

Here's what I just learned from CBS News:

The Sarah Palin Phenomenon Is Doomed --
The Media Live To Build You Up, Then Knock You Down

So. That's what they've been doing. Building her up. I wonder what their knocking her down will look like?

Put Congress on The No Call List.

OK. Time to face reality. This campaign is going to be totally Obama-Palin. No one (but the McCain Campaign) wants it to be that way. Yet apparently the Left Media is fated to attack her and the rest of us are fated to be amazed at their attacks. Yes, they are trying to help the country (by helping Sen. Obama win) but I ask: are their "street sweeping, Uzi spraying, take no prisoners" tactics actually achieving that end?

According to the Washington Post, we learn that as Mayor of Wasilla, "Palin Cut Own Duties, Left Trail of Bad Blood." Can't you just see the bad blood spurting from that cut in her duties? Apparently the Washington Post believes you can bring about "change" without reorganizing government or hurting anyone's feelings -- or at least the feelings of anyone in government. If you are in upper management in the Private Sector and lose your job, it's your own damn fault and you should have gone long ago. If you are a manager in government and you lose your job, it is the fault of the nearest Republican. Got it? Sen. Obama's change must be the sort Massive Bureaucracies can believe in.

Their attacks undermine the Obama Campaign in another way. They criticize Sarah Palin for getting money from the US taxpayer to help the People of her town achieve what they believe to be worthwhile ends. The National media appears to say the very act of making the request is bad, bad, bad. The Shame is on you for asking! But what is the premise of the entire Obama campaign? That they will take money and resources from one group of Americans and give it to another -- in fact, they will do that globally and on a massive scale. In this case it is good, good, good! The Shame is on you for even questioning!

In their way of telling it, Sarah could just call the US congress and, using her womanly wiles, whisper in their earmarks and ask them for money and those old guys were just so glob struck by her charms that they would cut a check. I wonder what those conversations were like. "Uncle Sugar, you are so big and strong and I am so small and vulnerable. Will Unkie Wonkie let little Sarah feel his big biceps? And will Unkie build little Sarah an itsy-bitsy Bridge to Nowhere." And Congress can't help itself. It just has to say, "Golly, Miss Sarah. Is 200 million enough, Pumpkin? How 'bout we make it 245, just in case?"

And these are the folks who will dispose of extra trillions of dollars of new spending in an Obama Administration. And dispose of it they will. Yup.

So let us take the media portrait of Congress collapsing before the onslaught of mayor Palin's charms as a true representation of reality. Isn't Congress like the old retired guy who will buy power tools he don't need with money he don't have from telemarketers without scruples just because he can't say no? And won't that guy's wife and kids cut up his credit cards and put him on the "no call" list? Can we do that for Congress? Apparently, they can't stop spending so it is up to us to stop asking.

Of course there is a difference between Congress and that old guy. Congress can raise its own debt limit and print its own money. Yup. Trillions of dollars spent and we won't even want to keep the change.

The Gibson-Palin Smack Down.

Palin pressed hard in ABC interview -- baltimoresun.com

Like Thursday's interview on World News, rounds two and three also went to Gibson, who gave voters a much better sense of Palin's limitations than they had before he and she sat down to chat.

Funny, I didn't realize I was watching a championship bout between hostile contenders. I sensed it but I did not know it.

I think Charlie Gibson did Gov. Palin a favor. He put her under a lot of pressure and she handled it well. Most people are probably more confident that if called upon, she could step into the job of president and see the country through the next election -- which is the VPs job. If she seems uninterested in launching sweeping new intiatives should those circumstances occur, so much the better.

I'm Drownding, I'm Drownding. How do you spell Drownding?

I only got to see 35 minutes of the Gibson-Palin interview last night from here in Galveston, Texas. Alright, I'm not in Galveston, even though facing certain death from a 25 foot wall of water sounds intriguing. Apparently, many of the citizens of Galveston feel the same way. But I'm in Ohio facing certain rain. I thought if I say I'm in Galveston it will help blog traffic. But then people will come to the blog and find that I am not in Galveston facing certain death (it's wet, I'm wet, I'm drowning!) and be disappointed. And they don't even know me! Where was I?

Right, I was thinking the whole Sarah thing has peaked. She did not commit a gaffe and Gibson put enough pressure on her to show she does not easily shake. She'll be a fine vice president. She does not seem to believe that the answer to every problem is in DC, and I like that. Of the "three things" they would do different from Bush, getting the regulators in Washington to function on a rational and sound economic basis is mighty important. The whole subprime mortgage mess was a gift from Washington, set in motion back in the 90's by changes to make mortgages more accessible to those who probably shouldn't have one. Regulatory reform is boring, but if they could actually do that, it would be a boon to the economy.

Interestingly, in the discussion afterwards Democrat Dee Dee Meyers refused to go after Gov. Palin. That can only be because their attacks have backfired badly. So look for Gov. Palin to fade from the news while the media and the Democrats nurse their wounds.

On the Democrats Umbrage to nowhere -- I'll point out Senators Biden and Obama voted for funding the Bridge "to nowhere" and the media acts as if they had no other choice. Somehow, it's all the fault of the Governor who cut it from the state budget while the Senators spending the money are like innocent bystanders. So being a Senator is a lot like being a small town mayor except you don't have to take responsibility for anything.

Our national media pretends to be the watch dogs of the people when they are really the guard dogs of the Washington Political Establishment.

Finally they got something on Palin.

A shocker that will kill the McCain campaign with the base.

But in her 21 months as governor, Palin has taken few steps to advance culturally conservative causes. Instead, after she knocked off an incumbent amid an influence-peddling scandal linked to the oil industry, Palin pursued a populist agenda that toughened ethics rules and raised taxes on oil and gas companies.

And she did so while relying on Democratic votes in the Legislature.

Yes, the legions of investigative reporters have uncovered the fact that -- "Palin governed from the center!"

My God, they are throwing everything at her including the kitchen sink. In fact, they started with the kitchen sink, stove and refrigerator. Then they tried to make dinner. Now they have sent out for pizza. Stay tuned.

Should I invest an hour watching Charlie Gibson try to trick Gov Palin tonight? I think the folks who waited for the manuscript of last nights interview did a better job dissecting it then I did (I mean if accuracy counts). But I was just winging it, which don't take as much time.