Monday, September 10, 2012
Sunday, September 9, 2012
The Line of the Day Award Goes to "Hope Needs More Time"
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.
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Since WWII, Stocks Have Done Much Better Under Democrats Overall
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| 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.
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.
Friday, September 7, 2012
Liberalism Can't Distinguish Radicalism Because They're Related
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| 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.
Thursday, September 6, 2012
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.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
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.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
In Case You Missed It, Liberal Karl Rove Hates Conservatives' Guts
It doesn't matter which party they come from, they are all alike.
He has since apologized.
The eruption was reported here.
Monday, September 3, 2012
The Number One Reason To Elect Romney Is That He'd Fire Ben Bernanke
"I would like to select ... a new person to that chairman position, someone who shared my economic views, someone that I thought was sympathetic to the needs of our nation," he said. ... "I don’t think QE2 was terribly effective; I think a QE3 and other Fed stimulus is not going to help this economy," he said. "I think that is the wrong way to go."
(Romney here August 23rd)
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