Mitt Romney Reaps What He Sows, Or Something

The liberal President Ronald Reagan once handed down an 11th Commandment: "Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican."

He learned this rule from his life among the Democrats, whence he came to the Republican Party after he realized his former pals were getting cozy with the commies. To this day it takes forever for the Democrats to abandon one of their own to the wolves, even when they deserve it. Recent cases include Charley Rangel and that wiener guy from New York.

But Republicans still haven't learned this rule, proving the other one about old dogs. One whiff of trouble and a fellow Republican drops you like a hot potato. Hence the Rep. Todd Akin affair, even whose money they've cut off and would cut off his nuts if they could (a little Rev. Jesse Jackson humor there). Mitt Romney, being more at home with liberal Democrats, waited while everyone else piled on Akin before he decided to do so. Not exactly a profile in courage. More like a man torn about what he believes and which party he belongs in. As a social liberal and a fiscal conservative, he really is a fish out of water, seeing that the Democrats are the former and the Republicans are neither.

So it's not a little amusing to see the Republican establishment and Romney's other would be supporters now crucifying Romney for his 47 percent remarks last May, only just recently made public. If anyone will be to blame for Romney's loss in a few weeks' time, it will be the Peggy Noonans, Bill Kristols and John Tamnys of this world, not the conservatives. Rush Limbaugh rightly points out the irony that the conservatives, Romney's fiercest critics during the primaries, are his defenders today against his critics who were his liberal supporters yesterday, who insisted at the time that Romney was the only candidate who could win.

Meanwhile the clerisy rallies round the redistributionist, under whom income inequality has only increased. Spreading the wealth around all right . . . among the wealthy.

Same as it ever was.

How To Test Gold For Purity

From Felix Salmon, back in March, here:

If you can weigh the bar accurately, then you can test for purity by essentially dropping it in a bucket of water and seeing how much the water level rises: a gold-covered tungsten bar will displace more water than a pure gold bar. Alternatively, for $3,000 or so you can buy a micro ohm meter, which is easily sensitive enough to tell the difference in conductivity between a pure gold bar and one which is largely tungsten.

Obama's 1998 Redistributionist Admission Goes Viral Overnight

This clip had about 302 views when I saw it last night.

Like I've said from the beginning in 2009:

"One who has yearnings for equal division of unequal earnings."

Rasmussen Moves New Hampshire Into Toss-Up Status For A Total Of Eight

Here.

The move takes New Hampshire's 4 electoral college votes leaning Obama and puts them into limbo.

Romney needs 74 more electoral college votes based on this map. If he wins every toss up state shown save Florida, he still comes up 4 short.

So the key to victory for Romney still involves Florida, or turning another leaner his way, like Nevada with 6.

Irrational Exuberance In Producer Prices Coincided With Housing Bubble

Once producer prices hit the 122 level on the index in 1999, they really didn't look back for nine years, reaching a peak of 205 in 2008, a rise of 68 percent, pretty much tracking the housing bubble.

The dramatic reflation of the PPI since the recent nadir around 169 in 2009 has not been accompanied by a reflation of housing prices, try as the Fed may.

"With the exception of a few thoughtful men, the whole nation again sang paeans." -- Andrew White, Inflation in France (quoted here)

When The Weekly Standard Says Romney's Not Conservative, You Know He Is

It's the right's "pot calling the kettle black moment" of the campaign:

Plenty of conservatives are pushing back against the worldview espoused by Mitt Romney in his "arrogant and stupid' [sic] remarks at a private fundraiser earlier this year.

When representatives of National Review, The Daily Caller, The American Spectator and The Weekly Standard agree that Romney has sinned, you know he's finally done something right.

Rush Limbaugh and Red State counsel Romney to pile it on because they know that most Americans agree with Romney that handouts through the tax code are wrong, even if they don't quite understand the arithmetic.

But the aforementioned conservative establishment fuddy-duddies rebuke him, here, where you will find not a single mention of the specific handouts which Republicans have used as a form of welfare for the lower tax bracket filers, namely the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit of the tax code. Taxpayers use those credits, which are refundable, to offset any income tax they may owe and receive any remaining balance in the form of tax refunds. Usually those "refunds" are substantial balances due because they file under the 10 and 15 percent tax brackets where they pay little tax relative to higher earners in the first place, amounting to hundreds and even thousands of dollars in tax "refunds" which are no refunds at all, just handouts. This is the slimy work of liberalism on display, capturing a definition and gutting it, demonstrating for all to see that the so-called conservatives of the Republican Party are no conservatives at all because they participate in the ruse.

When just 17 percent of the American people still use paper and pencil to figure their taxes, it is not surprising how little understanding there is on this issue. Most people hire a tax-preparer or use something like TurboTax, and consequently have no mathematical understanding for the reason they are getting so much money back. But if so-called conservatives really were conservative, they would be explaining this to you, and not little ole obscure me.

Gov. Mitt Romney Is Exposing The Liberalism Of Presidents Reagan And Bush

Gov. Mitt Romney is forcing us to consider seriously how Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush got carried away by liberal impulses and got us into troubles.

I think Romney was not a fan of Ronald Reagan in the 1990s because he realized Reagan's program was fiscally irresponsible, cutting taxes while increasing military spending to defeat Soviet Communism. The result was the largest increase in the US public debt since WWII. As a business man who can read a spread sheet, Mitt Romney can recognize fiscal insanity when he sees it.

Now a leaked video of a private fundraiser Romney addressed in Florida in May is being attacked by the left in recent hours. It shows Mitt Romney not too happy with the liberal consensus which uses the tax code as a form of welfare, primarily through the mechanism of tax credits combined with statutory tax rates which nullify income tax liability. This was not a bug in the law. It was a feature intended all along. Romney is signaling that he's not entirely on board with this form of liberalism.

The idea of getting people off welfare was an ingenious one under Reagan, effectively rebating their Social Security contributions when they went to work, instead of collecting a check directly from the federal government while unemployed. But it was fundamentally a compromise with liberalism, and the Earned Income Tax Credit later took on a life of its own, being notably expanded under Bill Clinton and under George W. Bush. Combined with the Child Tax Credit, the two credits represent transfer payments far in excess of the cost of the mortgage interest deduction, the drumbeat against which gets louder by the day. To take away the mortgage interest deduction would yield the government about $80 billion a year in new revenue. But eliminating the two tax credits would end a direct federal government expenditure in excess of $110 billion a year.

If you want to know in what world liberals like Nancy Pelosi under a liberal president like Barack Obama would find it thinkable to consent to a deliberate underfunding of Social Security, liberalism's signature program, by rolling back payroll taxes to help the working poor during the Great Recession, look to Ronald Reagan, who did basically the same thing for poor people through the EITC way back in the 1980s. In making Social Security contributions rebateable to the working poor, Reagan was nothing if not a liberal trendsetter.

Another innovation and accommodation with liberalism by Ronald Reagan was EMTALA, part of the tax reform of 1986, which made it the law that emergency rooms had to provide services regardless of ability to pay. That unfunded mandate costs approximately only $50 billion a year today. I say "only" because lying about the severity of that problem became the heart of the healthcare debate which gave us ObamaCare. The Heritage Foundation may have authored the idea of the individual healthcare mandate in 1989, but once again it was Ronald Reagan who paved the way and provided the cover for accommodating what eventually became ObamaCare's liberal tyranny.

Romney's remarks also question George Bush's two-state solution to peace in Israel, which is nothing but another unrealistic aspiration of liberalism which thinks you can put a chicken and a hungry snake in the same pen and enjoy a quiet Sunday afternoon. To this Romney wisely prefers the unsteady truce of the status quo. In doing so his realism is shining through.

Mitt Romney's looking better all the time, and conservatives should reconsider whether voting for him is such a bad idea after all. 

To Be An American Liberal Means You Think You're Superior, Especially To The White Homelands

"No European country would have elected a black man. I can't believe it happened. I think it's fantastic, like a step on the moon."

-- Randy Newman (here and here)

(Hey honey! What's that smell?)

Chicoms Have Biden's Back: "The guards too of a king are citizens, a tyrant's foreigners."

So says Aristotle in the Politics.

And Medvedev has Obama's back.

Housing Values Gained Most Under Clinton, Lost Most Under Obama Since WWII

"I honor you. I do!"

The following shows the percentage gain or loss in the Case Shiller Home Price Index values December over December for the presidents since WWII, ranked best to worst.

The overall gain or loss is calculated from the December of the election year to the December of the year leaving office, which then is divided by either 4 years or 8 years to arrive at an annualized score. In the case of Obama performance is calculated over 3.5 years (through June 2012).

Factoring out the housing bubble which built under Clinton and collapsed under Bush/Obama would give best performance to Reagan and worst to Bush The Elder, but it is what it is. Slick Willie rides again!

Clinton                    +2.22 percent

Reagan                    +1.43 percent

Carter                      +1.28 percent

Truman                   +  .92 percent

Bush The Younger +  .87 percent

Eisenhower             +  .78 percent

Nixon/Ford             +  .05 percent

JFK/LBJ                  -  .57 percent

Bush The Elder      - 2.72 percent

Obama                    -3.69 percent

Even The Pollsters Hate Your Mortgage Interest Deduction

Seen here at RasmussenReports.com.

Case-Shiller Home Price Index Updated For 2012 At Multpl.com: Dead Cat Bounce

The Case-Shiller Home Price Index at multpl.com has been updated for Q1 and Q2 2012, showing the housing nadir at 124 in March 2012, from which as of the end of June the increase is 6.8 percent to 133.

See the chart and tables here.

I don't believe it is anything but a dead cat bounce, which may indeed go higher because of QE3, but it is not the sign of a fundamental change like the one which occurred in 1997, nor for that matter like the one in the immediate aftermath of WWII. Housing values remain in the high range of historical post-war experience and need to fall further.

Obama has had no commitment to fixing housing, playing around the edges of the issue, and Romney plans to do nothing but let the market fix it, which is probably the best thing to do, as long as he doesn't fiddle with current tax arrangements affecting housing.

The tax changes introduced in 1997 need to find their equilibrium without more interference. The federal government needs to firmly express its commitment to all current tax arrangements affecting housing, including the mortgage interest deduction, in order to calm the housing market and give homeowners, buyers, sellers and financiers the confidence to move forward on a solid basis.

Markets hate uncertainty about rules! 

US Gross Public Debt Grew Most Under Reagan, Least Under Truman Since WWII

The record of Ronald Reagan for increasing the US gross public debt is so bad in the post-war era it is a veritable outlier compared to everyone else.

It represents the price this country paid for hefty tax cuts at the same time defense spending was increased to defeat the Soviet Union in the Cold War. Conservatism as understood by Ronald Reagan was primarily anti-communist, not fiscal. This is more in keeping with the Democrat Party of the time which he abandoned as communist influence over it grew through the labor unions. Along with the rest of his record, it is arguable that Ronald Reagan out-liberaled the liberals in many respects, making the Republican Party the home of liberals while the Democrat Party got radicalized by the so-called progressives.

Maybe Mitt Romney had a good reason not to think of himself as a follower of Reagan back in the 1990s. This country could use a Republican in the mold of Eisenhower again to restore some credibility to the Republican Party from the fiscal side.

The 170 percent increase in the public debt metric over an 8 year period under Reagan makes his predecessor Jimmy Carter look almost moderate by comparison, who racked up a 40 percent increase in 4. And Bush The Younger was actually in the very mold of fiscally liberal Ronald Reagan, cutting Clinton's tax increases and increasing spending on The War On Terror as well as Drugs For Seniors. Bush The Younger's 99 percent increase in the debt over 8 years comes out to roughly 12.38 percent per year, but it must be remembered that some of Obama's emergency spending in early 2009 became part of Bush's fiscal record, which ended October 31, 2009, another price of electoral defeat. The winners write the history.

Harry Truman narrowly beats out his successor Dwight Eisenhower for being the king of fiscal rectitude, posting an 11 percent increase in the debt in 4 years with Ike logging 23 percent over 8 years.

The numbers on which I relied for the following come from usgovernmentdebt.us, but not for Barack Obama, for whom I relied on the very latest figures available from treasurydirect.gov, which regrettably go back only through 1993. The percentage average annual increase in the debt shown below is for illustration purposes only since the percentage increase in the debt is calculated from beginning of the fiscal period to the end, not for each individual year. Multiply by 4 or 8 to get the actual figure for the term of office (but shown values are rounded, and Obama's record will not be complete until October 31, 2013, over a year from now, in which case multiply by 3).

Reagan                     21.25 percent

Bush The Younger  12.38 percent

Nixon/Ford              11.75 percent

Obama                     11.64 percent

Bush The Elder       11.50 percent

Carter                      10.00 percent

Clinton                      4.50 percent

Kennedy/LBJ           4.38 percent

Eisenhower              2.88 percent

Truman                    2.75 percent

Over time, Republican presidents have averaged a 12 percent annual increase in the debt while in office, while Democrat presidents have averaged almost 6 percent per annum.

Neither record is good, but things are not what they seem in the Republican Party, so-called home of the fiscal conservatives. 

Inflation Was Worst Under Carter, Best Under Eisenhower Since WWII

Average of the annual inflation percent change December over December using CPI from here, with Obama's 2012 August over August (1.7 percent) counted as the fourth full year:

1948-1952 Truman                   2.65 percent

1952-1960 Eisenhower           1.4 percent

1960-1968 Kennedy/LBJ           2.2 percent

1968-1976 Nixon/Ford               6.4 percent

1976-1980 Carter                   10.4 percent

1980-1988 Reagan                    4.3 percent

1988-1992 Bush The Elder        4.2 percent

1992-2000 Clinton                     2.6 percent

2000-2008 Bush The Younger   2.4 percent

2008-2012 Obama                     2.2 percent.

Democrat presidents do slightly better on inflation than do Republican: 3.55 percent per annum vs. 3.69 percent, which is about 3.8 percent better on average.

But this isn't saying much, except that when it comes to your money, there's hardly a dime's worth of difference between the two political parties. Both have agreed on policies to trash the buying power of the dollar. That's the real enemy: the liberal consensus to impoverish the people through monetarism.

On average, post-war presidents have done a terrible job managing inflation, which is up 841 percent in the 64 years between 1948 and 2012. You might even say that inflation is their policy. By contrast, inflation jumped 146 percent in the 35 years between 1913 and 1948. The post-war liberal consensus has been nearly 6 times harder on the American people than the prior period.

Both parties need to be neutered. 

Obama Ranks Worst For GDP, Kennedy/LBJ Best Since World War II

Average of quarterly reports of annualized GDP, November on November (Obama to date):

1948-1952 Truman                    4.9 percent

1952-1960 Eisenhower              3.2 percent

1960-1968 Kennedy/LBJ          5.0 percent

1968-1976 Nixon/Ford              3.1 percent

1976-1980 Carter                       3.0 percent

1980-1988 Reagan                     3.6 percent

1988-1992 Bush The Elder        2.2 percent

1992-2000 Clinton                     3.9 percent

2000-2008 Bush The Younger  2.0 percent

2008-2012 Obama                     0.8 percent   

Obama Ranks Fourth Best For Stock Market Since WWII, George W. Bush Worst

November on November of term (Obama to last data available), dividends reinvested in the Standard and Poor's 500 Index, adjusted for inflation, annual rates of return:

1948--1952 Harry S. Truman  17.84 percent

1992--2000 Bill Clinton           15.27 percent

1952--1960 Eisenhower           13.54 percent

2008--2012 Barack Obama      12.66 percent

1988--1992 Bush The Elder     10.76 percent

1960--1968 Kennedy/LBJ          9.40 percent

1980--1988 Ronald Reagan        8.98 percent

1976--1980 Jimmy Carter           2.60 percent

1968--1976 Nixon/Ford             -3.09 percent

2000--2008 Bush The Younger -6.12 percent.

"Obama Economic Agenda Failed Not Because It Was Stopped But Because It Was Passed"

Rep. Paul Ryan, here, throws us some red meat:

"It is true that President Obama, he had a lot of problems not of his own making.  But he also came in with one-party rule and the chance to do everything of his own choosing.  The Obama economic agenda failed not because it was stopped, but because it was passed." 

Republicans Vote To Continue Spying On Americans, Trashing Fourth Amendment

Wired.com has the story here.

The so-called conservatives, Republicans on Wednesday voted once again to subvert the constitutional principles for which they forever protest they stand.

Why is it that the loudest yelps for the constitution are heard from the chief abusers of the Fourth Amendment?

What The Greatest Generation Has Done: Eaten Their Own Children, Modeling Abortion

I'm hungry! Give me a baby!

The old impoverish us all with high taxes in the form of Social Security and Medicare. Last time I checked, the average senior citizen in the good ole USA gets a transfer payment of $30,000 annually.

If you made $100K a year for 40 years in a working life, WHICH YOU DIDN'T!, and if you paid 6.25 percent per year in said taxes, WHICH YOU DIDN'T, you would have contributed $250K, BUT YOU DIDN'T, it would take just 8 years in retirement at $30K per year to eat it all up. WHICH YOU WILL, AND A WHOLE LOT MORE. This is why Gov. Rick Perry of Texas called Social Security a giant Ponzi scheme. WHICH ANY IDIOT FROM A FREAKING COW COLLEGE COULD FIGURE OUT, EVEN WITH A FREAKING C AVERAGE.

They take all this money and go golfing, traveling to exotic locales, vacationing in lavish time shares on which they lose a bundle, getting knee replacements, hip replacements, coronary bypass surgery, cataract surgery, yada yada yada, generally enriching themselves at our expense all the while promoting the notion that they're the greatest while we can't afford even to have children of our own, whom we abort with their encouragement.

Consider this story, emphases added:

In August, according to the Social Security Administration, there were a record 8,767,941 American workers collecting federal disability payments, and also 2,018,569 spouses and children of disabled workers collecting benefits. Additionally, in August, there were a record 45,505,287 retired workers, their spouses and dependents receiving Social Security benefits.

That made for a record 56,291,797 people in the United States in August taking Social Security or disability benefits. That was up from the previous record of 56,188,736 set in July.

Rhymes With Osama! Huuuuh!

Obama's Best Unemployment Number Ever: Initial Claims At 297K

Initial claims for unemployment, not-seasonally adjusted, has fallen below 300,000 for the first time ever in the Obama presidency.

Obama should be crowing this from the rooftops, but apparently his administration is too stupid to understand the significance, or it views this as bad news in the broader mission to destroy the middle class on the way to a transformed America. He has now racked up 7 weeks in a row below 320K.

Elsewhere Rick Santelli has predicted unemployment at 7.9 percent by election day. He doesn't know how right he is.

The latest weekly report is here.

Obama Bungles Mideast Worse Than Jimmy Carter In 1979, Gets Ambassador Killed

Hot Air, here, has that old weird feelin':

Once again, we had an American government encourage the “democracy” movement run by radical Islamists in chasing our ally out of power.  Once again, we seem surprised when the radical Islamists put radical Islamists in power.  And once again we have “students” assaulting our embassy in the capital, this time Cairo, without so much as an apology from the radical Islamist government now running the nation. ...

Qaddafi had at least been somewhat more cooperative since the fall of Saddam Hussein, and the West’s military attack on Qaddafi that caused his fall — led by the US initially — sent a big message on the futility of cooperation with the US and the West to all of the other governments in the region.

Slum Lord Obama: Lower Class Self-Identification Grows 28 Percent Since 2008

Story here.

Is Obama intentionally impoverishing the middle class as a means to overthrow the constitutional republic? You don't have to be a Marxist to think so.

"When there is a want of a proper number of men of middling fortune, the poor extend their power too far, abuses arise, and the government is soon at an end." -- Aristotle's Politics

As McCain Failed To Seize On TARP, Romney Is Failing To Seize On ObamaCare

Conservatives all across this country were revolted by the very thought of TARP, which became the focal point of the financial crisis in September 2008. John McCain suspended his campaign to go to Washington to . . . vote for it. He was already finished, there and then.

The reaction to the passage of ObamaCare in March 2010 among those same conservatives galvanized the mid-term elections in November 2010, giving Republicans an historic victory in the US House. It should give them the White House now. But Mitt Romney hasn't just failed to ride that wave, in recent days he's decided to join the busted trumpet club and openly broadcast agreement with key elements of ObamaCare, a bill a clear majority of voters have opposed from the beginning. He is already finished, and threatens to finish conservatives who are depending on his coattails. Romney won't have any.

It's as if Republicans don't want to win.

"For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?"

   

Mitt The Mendacious Comes Out For Key Provisions Of ObamaCare

Quoted in the Tampa Bay Times, here:

"I'm not getting rid of all of health care reform," Romney said. "There are a number of things that I like in health care reform that I'm going to put in place. One is to make sure that those with pre-existing conditions can get coverage. Two is to assure that the marketplace allows for individuals to have policies that cover their family up to whatever age they might like. I also want individuals to be able to buy insurance, health insurance, on their own as opposed to only being able to get it on a tax-advantage basis through their company."

These positions represent government interference in the private and free market for health insurance, and therefore will drive up costs for everyone, not to mention making not growing up already an even bigger problem than it already is.

Mitt Romney doesn't have a limited government bone in his body.

Romney Is Blowing It On ObamaCare, And With It Blowing The Election

So should warn The Weekly Standard here, which thinks Romney still has time to fix this (hope springs eternal), but he doesn't:

[I]ndependents now oppose repeal by a margin of 9 percentage points (52 to 43 percent). By a 7-point margin they now think Obamacare is good, rather than bad, for the country. That's a 28-point swing on repeal, and a 34-point swing on whether Obamacare would be good or bad for the country, in just two months—among the voting block that will likely decide this election.

Rep. Michele Bachmann tried to warn Republicans during the primaries that repeal of ObamaCare was the sine qua non in this election, but the Republicans didn't listen. They picked the worst candidate on the issue, mostly because they didn't really have a convincing candidate on the most important issue, or on any issue.

The Republican Party is devoid of conservatives with gravitas on ObamaCare, or on anything else for that matter. In point of fact, the The Republican Party is devoid of conservatives.

Thanks Greatest Generation! Thanks Heritage Foundation! Thanks Ann Coulter! Thanks Sean Hannity! Thanks R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr! Thanks Fox! Thanks Savage Nation! Thanks RNC! Thanks Wall Street Journal! Thanks Drudge! Thanks Newt! Thanks Ronald Reagan!

Thanks to you all for whom Party comes before principle.

You've all done a wonderful job! How can we ever thank you enough for Thomas E. Dewey redivivus?

Moments later, as the discussion over Romneycare and Obamacare continued, Romney rebuked Santorum, saying, “First of all, it's not worth getting angry about.” 

America's Current Asset Allocation

Approximately $37 trillion to bonds (year end 2011): 54 percent.

Approximately $21 trillion to stocks (April 2012):      31 percent.

Approximately $10 trillion to cash (August 2012):     15 percent.

M2 Money In US Reaches $10.07 Trillion

This is basically the readily spendable cash, such as in checking accounts (demand money or M1, currently $2.3 trillion), plus savings in various vehicles like CDs and money market accounts.

US Bond Market Grows To Almost $37 Trillion For Year End 2011

Here:

Separate data about the US from SIFMA, puts the US bond market at just under $37 Trillion (including municipal bonds) as of the end of 2011 (a year later than the McKinsey data), and Bloomberg puts US stocks now (April 2012) at about $21.4 Trillion.

Total World Stock Market Capitalization $45.1 Trillion Year End 2011

So says the World Bank, here.

We're Still Free . . . To Disagree!

So Carl Cannon for Real Clear Politics, here:

In 1941 and 2001 – and in 1812, for that matter – the United States of America proved itself strong enough to withstand attacks on our soil while retaining our attachment to brass-knuckles domestic politics. To be puckish about it, if you can’t run a negative ad, the terrorists win.

Remember that the next time someone tells you that you can't criticize the commander in chief during a time of war. Tyranny isn't only a foreign phenomenon.

Full Employment Is A Socialist Myth: Socialism Needs Liberalism In Order To Grow

So-called conservatives who believe in full employment rightly deserve contempt. Full employment is a utopian concept. What better way to invalidate "capitalism" than to charge it with an impossible task, and then ridicule it endlessly for its failure to do what it never promised?

That the US Federal Reserve has been bullied into accepting full employment as one of its mandates is reason enough to shut it down.

Ron Radosh here:

America’s preeminent socialist leader in the 1980s was the late Michael Harrington, who carried on as the spokesman for social democracy, a post he inherited from his predecessors, Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas. Harrington was well-aware that the path to socialism, in which he ardently believed, was through continued extension of the American welfare state. He became a vigorous supporter of a meaningless bill passed by Congress in 1978 called the Humphrey-Hawkins Act, which stated that it was the policy of the United States to strive to attain a full employment economy.

Testifying before Congress in defense of the act, the dying Senator Humphrey asked Harrington: “Is my bill socialism?” The socialist leader responded, “It isn’t half that good.” His point was that socialism needed liberalism as a focal point from which to grow. As Harrington argued at the time, by laying out the principle that it was the duty of the state to create full employment, socialists could build upon that to move liberal supporters to advocate more extensive social-democratic programs that would challenge the hegemony of capitalist social relations, making it easier to advance real socialist measures at a future moment.

The World's Second Largest Economy Is In Turmoil: The Rats Are Jumping Ship

The Chinese Year Of The Rat

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard for the UK Telegraph, here:

The worry is that the transition [of power in China] could go badly awry as 70pc of top cadres and the military are replaced, the biggest changeover since the party came to power in the late 1940s. "That is what is causing capital flight. All the top officials are trying to get their money out of the country," he said.

Listen To The Hand, Listen To The Dot: Irrational Exuberance Was First Noted There, Then

Speaking Of Pot, Now We Learn It Makes Your Nuts Fall Off

Story here.

Obama Proves Again That Pot Has Made Him Stupid

Video here.

The Line of the Day Award Goes to "Hope Needs More Time"

The line of the day award goes to the ever-incisive Steve Huntley for The Chicago Sun Times, here:

Hope needs more time. That was President Barack Obama’s message in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention Thursday night. But a country that was forced to live on hope for four years and rewarded with dreary unemployment, falling middle class income and depressed home values may not be ready for another dose of lofty national goals based on nothing more than oratory.

Hope is the very stuff of ideology, whether political or religious.

Religious ideology makes life tolerable by offering faux rewards in the forms of community, sacraments and liturgy with hope of eternal life deferred to the next one. Forgiveness in the here and now goes with all that, a sort of foretaste of the salvation to come. Or it offers assurances of the imminent in-breaking of the kingdom of God with the second coming of Christ, a recrudescent hope which litters the historical landscape since the time of Jesus. Such assurances are often accompanied by religious experiences of being "born again", or of so-called miracles, which require new exempla over time to validate the ideology as the second coming fails to materialize and the experience flattens. Certain Jews say year upon year "Next year, in Jerusalem." Muslims await the last imam, fourteen centuries after Muhammad.

But political ideology promises, promises and promises, with not much to show for it even in democracy, which promptly turns it out when it is still healthy enough to do so. The American record in this regard is mixed. Woodrow Wilson was not turned out. A terrible, costly and demoralizing war was the consequence. FDR was not turned out. Another terrible, costly and demoralizing war was the consequence. But LBJ was turned out, in the throes of a period when first principles were readdressed selfishly under what was decided was an existential threat to the next generation. Say what you will about the '60s generation, war in America stopped being involuntary. 

Ideologues sometimes become dictators, in which case they just go on promising. FDR did this but in the extenuating circumstances of global war, flaunting the long-standing American tradition that presidents serve but two terms. A free people finally came to its senses and put a stop to that with the 22nd Amendment, but not until after the fact.

In other times and other places dictators install themselves permanently, as was the case with one Robert Mugabe. Barack Obama has made no secret of his admiration of such like, openly expressing his dissatisfaction with the constraints placed on him by our form of government at the same time he voices his admiration for the lack of such constraints in places such as China. Are Americans wrong to be disquieted by this?

Hope needs more time. But for what, exactly?    

What Obama and Granholm Have In Common: Forward To State-Capitalism

Shikha Dalmia calls what former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm did in front of God and everybody at the Democrat National Convention a "political pole dance", for Reason.com here:

But even more bizarre than Granholm’s convention appearance was that she was invited to make one in the first place. She was arguably the worst governor of her time who, during her eight-year term, took Michigan’s teetering economy into her firm hands and gave it a good, hard push off the cliff.

On her watch, the state's ranking in per capita GDP plummeted to 41st place from 24th. Michigan became the only state to suffer a net out-migration during the past decade, and its credit rating was repeatedly downgraded.

But since unemployment is the topic of the day, how was Granholm’s job-creation record? Worse than Katrina-struck Louisiana’s. Unemployment jumped from 6.8 percent when she was elected to 14.1 percent at its peak in 2009 – although some believe it reached as high as 15.2 percent. 

Granholm has never looked more marvelous, but pace Dalmia, Granholm's appearance wasn't bizarre.

There has been much commentary saying as much, as if Granholm's performance was like some sort of meltdown, something almost crazy and beyond the realm of understanding, not unlike Howard Dean's a few years ago.

But from the point of view of ideology her selection and presentation made perfect sense. Like the true believer of a religion, Granholm's emotional display was characteristic but superfluous. It was the content of her remarks which were significant because they were entirely in keeping with the blindness of the ideological mindset of the new old liberalism which calls failure success. Indeed, today's liberalism thrives on failure in order to succeed, and the more failure it has the more success it has. The rightness and success of the bailout of GM, the substance of Granholm's paean to Obama, isn't a bug of this new old ideology, it's a feature. Obama himself has said so. And he's now on a mission to spread the government control of business around, not just the wealth:

“I said, I believe in American workers, I believe in this American industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back,” he said. “Now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry.

Therefore consider Jennifer Granholm as the prophet of the new religion, and indeed its forerunner.

Like Michigan's devastated GDP under Granholm, America under Obama has settled into dramatically lower GDP compared to the post-war average. It has descended to almost European proportions, which evidently was the whole point of Obama's 2009 European apology tour. It was as if he were announcing that under his leadership America was going to stop being the leader of the free world and become just like them, anemic and dependent social welfare states. At 1.7 percent currently, GDP in America has indeed been cut down to size, to less than half of the decades-long average of 3.5 percent. Meanwhile nearly one in six Americans are classified as poor, and almost half of all households receive some form of direct government assistance. Is it any wonder Europe wants Obama reelected?

Like Michigan's exodus not just of population but of businesses fleeing the dreaded "single business tax" under Granholm, the nation's only value-added tax, for the first time in living memory there has been a sudden appearance of wealthy "global" Americans actually renouncing citizenship to escape the growing worldwide reach of the Internal Revenue Service's Gestapo-like intimidation of foreign financial institutions, which no longer want the trouble of doing business with Americans. Talk of finding and going to a "back-up country" among the smart set is an alarming sign that the kind of people we need to attract the most in order to grow our economy are instead repelled by the political class' increasing repression of capital and its hatred of the rich.

Like Michigan's downgraded credit rating, America under Obama lost its gold-standard AAA rating, formerly probably the single most recognizable synonym for the country's reputation in the world as the one most likely to pay its bills.

And like Michigan's long period of unemployment under Granholm, America's 43 consecutive months of unemployment at 8.1 percent or higher under Obama speak for themselves.

One might even say that Jennifer Granholm in her eerie way prepared the way for the coming of the (slum) lord. It's only fitting that she should announce his second coming. 

All of this failure is success because it keeps Democrats in power. That's why Gov. Jennifer Granholm's appearance wasn't bizarre. Her governorship epitomized the failure of America under Obama.

And so the ideologues do rejoice, because it's all intended. Forward, to state-capitalism.

ObamaCare: So-Called Conservative Heritage Foundation Built That, In 1989

Since WWII, Stocks Have Done Much Better Under Democrats Overall

Doh!

The following table is compiled from data available here.

The results are annualized rates of return, dividends fully reinvested, adjusted for inflation. In other words, these are the real annual rates of return of the Standard and Poor's 500 Index.

Dates for each presidency are marked from November 1 of the year of election to November 1 in the year losing or leaving office. Truman's service before 1948 is excluded since it overlaps the war when he took over from FDR, who died in office. Kennedy's service is combined with LBJ's because Kennedy was assassinated in his third year. Ford's service is combined with Nixon's because Ford never was elected but finished the second term of Nixon, who resigned. Obama's performance is only to July 2012, the last available data.

2008--2012 Barack Obama        12.66 percent

2000--2008 Bush The Younger  -6.12 percent

1992--2000 Bill Clinton             15.27 percent

1988--1992 Bush The Elder      10.76 percent

1980--1988 Ronald Reagan        8.98 percent

1976--1980 Jimmy Carter           2.60 percent

1968--1976 Nixon/Ford             -3.09 percent

1960--1968 Kennedy/LBJ          9.40 percent

1952--1960 Eisenhower           13.54 percent

1948--1952 Harry S. Truman   17.84 percent

Real gains per annum under Democrats have averaged 2.06 percent for their almost 28 years in control of the executive. Real gains per annum under Republicans just .67 percent for their 36 years in control. How the gains were achieved is another matter, but clearly the Democrats have done three times better than the Republicans.

If You Bet On Bush, You Lost Over 6 Percent Per Year In Stocks 11/00-11/08

(source)

Obama Investors Have Done Very Well: 12.66 Percent Real Per Year Since 11/01/08

The Obama economy sucks, but the broad market in stocks has done very well for people with the courage to have bet on him starting November 1, 2008.

Even with the market crash in March 2009, the real rate of return in the Standard and Poor's 500 Index has been 12.66 percent per annum, dividends fully reinvested.

See for yourself here.

Obama Racks Up 43rd Consecutive Month Of 8.1% Or Higher Unemployment

View the chart here.

Total Non-Farm Employment Is Still At 2005 Levels

The data may be viewed here.

Liberalism Can't Distinguish Radicalism Because They're Related

liberalism leads to death

Liberalism can't recognize radicalism because they're related. Instead liberalism tries to squirm out of the uncomfortable fact by calling it anything else. Extremism will do.

So Peggy Noonan, who appears to feel like she needs a shower after witnessing the extremism of the Democrat Convention but doesn't quite know why. 

For The Wall Street Journal, here:

Beneath the funny hats, the sweet-faced delegates, the handsome speakers and the babies waving flags there was something disquieting. All three days were marked by a kind of soft, distracted extremism. It was unshowy and unobnoxious but also unsettling. There was the relentless emphasis on Government as Community, as the thing that gives us spirit and makes us whole. But government isn't what you love if you're American, America is what you love. Government is what you have, need and hire. Its most essential duties—especially when it is bankrupt—involve defending rights and safety, not imposing views and values. We already have values. ... The huge "No!" vote on restoring the mention of God, and including the administration's own stand on Jerusalem—that wasn't liberal, it was extreme. 

Who else but a liberal could say all that and still be comfortable having a nitwit like Joe Biden a heartbeat away from the presidency?

As for Joe Biden, I love him and will hear nothing against him. He's like Democrats the way they used to be, and by that I do not mean idiotic, I mean normal . . ..

Peggy is a liberal, and knows one when she sees one. Hence her short love affair with Barack Obama, whom she threw over for Republican liberal Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts in early 2010. The Democrats under Obama aren't liberals any longer, except in the sense that babies grow up and become adults who only faintly resemble the parents. The hapless Baby Boom can't hold a candle to the so-called Greatest Generation, yet Peggy would speak in their defense. If only their failures didn't suggest their parents weren't so great after all. The 20th Century may have been the American century, but our troubles now suggest a deeper truth, that war is by definition demoralization writ large.  

That's the problem with liberalism. It can't properly name the enemy because to do so would indict the whole family. To liberals, Rep. Todd Akin is just as much of an extremist as the Democrat secularists, but that's all. Every family has its crazy uncle, shunned if not disowned. To people like Obama, however, Rep. Akin represents a mortal danger, an existential threat which must be eradicated, as in pulled out by the roots. He has to be disappeared by his minions because he blurts out the sordid reality which the radicals are in revolt against and ever seek to deny.

That's who Obama is, a radical, one who goes to the root of things and pulls them out by the roots. You know, like babies from their mothers' wombs. And if they happen to survive that, well, he has supported laws which would require a second doctor to come in and finish the job. But when human life begins is "above his paygrade." It sure is. We should be running this man out of the country, not running him for president.

People who get caught up in Obama's notion of transforming America forget Francis Fukuyama's timely phrase, "monstrous projects of social transformation". Death on a mass scale is its ultimate form, individual murders its particular. WWI, WWII, the Ukrainian "famine", the Gulag, Auschwitz, abortion. The vice president has seen and believed. He spoke of having learned of "the enormity" of the president's heart over the last four years. "The extreme scale of something morally wrong." You know that heart. It is the monstrous heart which orders drones to kill enemies who are on a list of his own making. American citizens have been victims of these crimes, in which he has acted as judge, jury and executioner. He shook hands with Qaddafi, and then had him killed. There was no intention of capturing Osama and making a spectacle of him, only of killing him. Who will be next?   

Liberalism has failed in explicating these things, whether it is a Democrat explanation or a Republican one. Rather it takes a conservative to understand them, someone who is trying to preserve the plant we call the constitution, not rip it out, like George Will for The Washington Post, here:

[Obama] is a conviction politician determined to complete the progressive project of emancipating government from the Founders’ constraining premises, a project Woodrow Wilson embarked on 100 Novembers ago. ... Progress, as progressives understand it, means advancing away from, up from, something. But from what? From the Constitution’s constricting anachronisms. In 1912, Wilson said, “The history of liberty is the history of the limitation of governmental power.” ... Wilson never said the future of liberty consisted of such limitation. Instead, he said, “every means . . . by which society may be perfected through the instrumentality of government” should be used so that “individual rights can be fitly adjusted and harmonized with public duties.” Rights “adjusted and harmonized” by government necessarily are defined and apportioned by it. Wilson, the first transformative progressive, called this the “New Freedom.” The old kind was the Founders’ kind — government existing to “secure” natural rights (see the Declaration) that preexist government. Wilson thought this had become an impediment to progress. The pedigree of Obama’s thought runs straight to Wilson.

You'll Notice Rep. Todd Akin Of Missouri Isn't Supported By The Fraudulent Senate "Conservatives" Fund

The Party Of No To God

God Splits Democrat Convention: Villaraigosa Fails To Call The Vote

It's pretty clear to God and everybody (oops) that the Dems assembled at their convention were split on including the hyphenation "God-given" in their platform language. The failed voice votes putting it back in should have resulted in calling the roll call on the floor. That would have been disastrous for the party, of course, to be seen actually voting on the issue, which would have communicated to the country that God is controversial in the Democrat Party. More disastrously the two thirds requirement might have failed even more demonstrably, making the Dems look even worse, forcing them to come out formally against God by adopting the existing God-less platform out of committee.

Villaraigosa, who gave the delegates two additional chances to dummy up and come out for including the language, declared the voice vote on the third try a two-thirds majority when it clearly was not, subverting the democratic process at the Democrat convention. Priceless.

But the Democrats have always been experts at subverting the democratic process, as we last saw most vividly with ObamaCare.

Too bad no one was paying attention. They might have fully appreciated the depth of their alienation from the values of America's most liberal party.

Video here.

Charles Gasparino Fingers Clinton For Housing Bubble But Misses Key Fact

Charles Gasparino fingers Pres. Bill Clinton for the housing bubble, here, pointing as many others have to the baleful influence of repealing Glass-Steagall and of expanding the Community Reinvestment Act and the role of the GSEs in housing. There is no question that these were enormously important contributing factors, except to ideologues.

What's still missing in the national discussion, however, is an appreciation of the important influence of the tax law changes in 1997 which effectively turned housing into money, the velocity of which shortly became a veritable storm rushing through the American economy when it became possible to sell every two years and pocket the capital gains tax-free. This goosed not just existing housing prices, but waves of new (over) construction, house-flipping, the home improvement mania and wide swaths of retail sector spending from giftware to landscaping to furnishings and durable goods, and especially the rapid expansion of financial products developed to exploit the trend. The housing bubble inflates just like a balloon in 1997 immediately after Clinton signed the provisions into law, passed by a Republican Congress still under the leadership of Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Tax law changes have always been potent instruments for altering financial behavior. In this instance the changes in behavior were not anticipated by the many, and consumers were sold only on the incremental benefits to them. Meanwhile the few who facilitated this financialization of the economy stood ready to profit handsomely, and they did. They have been reluctant to tell this story, and understandably resist doing so to this day. But the country desperately needs to hear it if we are ever going to think clearly about establishing our affairs on a sounder basis going forward.