Sunday, November 11, 2012

Hurricane Sandy Victims Search For Gasoline

In the Mad Max movies, it took an apocalypse to start the war for gasoline. In 2012 in New York and New Jersey it only took a Category 1 hurricane.

Oh yeah. We're so advanced.  

Republicans Lose Again Because They Offered No Conservative Alternative


Andrew McCarthy for National Review here gets it, even if I would quibble about the precision of his election results:

In truth, millions of Americans have decided that Republicans are not a viable alternative because they are already too much like Democrats. ...


Washington’s Republican establishment is progressive, not conservative. ...

[T]he Republican campaign called for enlarging a military our current spending on which dwarfs the combined defense budgets of the next several highest-spending nations. When was the last time you heard a Republican explain what departments and entitlements he’d slash to pay for that? ...


Republicans talk about limited central government, but they do not believe in it ... They look at a money-hemorrhaging disaster like Medicare, whose unsustainability is precisely caused by the intrusion of government, and they say, “Let’s preserve it — in fact, let’s make its preservation the centerpiece of our campaign.” ...


Truth be told, most of today’s GOP does not believe Washington makes things worse. Republicans think the federal government — by confiscating, borrowing, and printing money — is the answer to every problem, rather than the source of most. That is why those running the party today, when they ran Washington during the Bush years, orchestrated an expansion of government size, scope, and spending that would still boggle the mind had Obama not come along. ... No matter what they say in campaigns, today’s Republicans are champions of massive, centralized government. They just think it needs to be run smarter — as if the problem were not human nature and the nature of government, but just that we haven’t quite gotten the org-chart right yet.

That is not materially different from what the Democrats believe. ... Tuesday pitted proud progressives against reticent progressives; slightly more preferred the true-believers. For Americans who don’t see much daylight between the two parties — one led by the president who keeps spending money we don’t have and the other by congressional Republicans who keep writing the checks and extending the credit line — voting wasn’t worth the effort.

McCarthy thinks about 2 million fewer voters showed up in 2012 than in 2004, which is "staggering", except that his election math already looks just a little off. Today I'm showing 122.5 million total votes in 2012, and 122.3 million in 2004, eight years and two elections ago. Still, that is a staggering comparison when you realize that the population has grown by a net 21 million over the period.

Clearly, as McCarthy says, the voters in 2012 "shrugged", but the shrug was actually bigger in 1996 when Republicans again characteristically picked two other moderate losers in Bob Dole and Jack Kemp. Fully 8% fewer ended up voting in 1996 than in 1992 (1% fewer voted in 1988 than in 1984).

Starting with 1968 and ending with 2008, the average increase in total votes cast in the presidential from election to election has been 6%. 2012 compared to 2008 shows 6% fewer votes cast. The slightly smaller shrug over moderate Republicans Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan may reflect the distance in time and understanding from the debates over conservatism in the 1980s and 1990s.

The single biggest gains in total votes cast, incidentally, occurred in 2004 in Bush 43 v. Kerry (16% more votes cast than in 2000) when war in Iraq put patriotism center stage (just barely 51% voted for that despite buying off seniors with Medicare Part D in 2003), followed by 1992 in Bush 41 v. Clinton (13% more votes cast than in 1988) when the issues were breaking the no new taxes pledge (43% voted against that) and "that giant sucking sound" (19% voted against that).

Republicans still haven't learned how to put conservatism all together and wrap it in a bow.

Of 7000 Banks, 3500 Need Recapitalization, 2000 Need To Sell

So note various experts in this story by Stephen Gandel for Fortune, who concludes:

Mortgage rates are about one percentage point higher than they would be if we had more competition. Apply that to all mortgages, and that higher interest rate costs consumers about $100 billion a year in extra interest. Not to mention all those who can't actually get refinanced. I'd say that's pretty good evidence that we should figure out a way to keep small banks around.

The bottom line: Dodd-Frank will not go away because Obama is not going away, so up to as many as 6300 banks may go away, destroying what's left of free market competition in banking. The people are already the losers, and stand to lose even more.

Since the beginning of 2008, 460 banks have failed.

Larry Kudlow Slanders Christ On His Radio Program

Larry Kudlow, former Democrat, member of SDS, drug addict and alcoholic, and supposedly a Jewish convert to Christianity, slandered Christ in the final hour of his radio program yesterday. That's a lot of "formers".

He did so while attacking Paul Krugman for advocating that the Bush tax cuts be allowed to expire as a remedy for the fiscal cliff, ridiculing the idea with the ever popular provincialism "for Christ's sake".

Obviously the defeat of Mitt Romney has pushed all of Kudlow's buttons at once. He began the program with a full-throated denunciation of the Pat Buchanan wing of the Republican Party and its anti-amnesty stance on illegal immigrants, saying it must be "crushed".

You can take the man out of the SDS, but you can't take the SDS out of the man.

You can not hear a podcast of Kudlow's program anytime you don't want to, here.

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Larry Kudlow Declares War On Pat Buchanan Wing Of Republican Party

Just now on the radio show, saying the anti-amnesty wing, the Pat Buchanan wing, of the Republican Party must be defeated and "crushed".

Two back to back defeats of liberal/moderate Republican candidates for president continue to be misinterpreted by the fifth column on the right.

They should join the Democrat Party once and for all.

David Frum Loves The 47%

Here

"To be a patriot is to love your country as it is. Those who seem to despise half of America will never be trusted to govern any of it. Those who cherish only the country's past will not be entrusted with its future."

David Frum should know a thing or two about patriotism. He's from Canada.

Did the Founders love England as it was, or any of the huddled masses yearning to be free love the hellholes they came from as they were?

Gold To Oil Ratio Skyrockets to 20.11

The sale on oil relative to gold just got much better.

The action, however, is mostly on the side of gold, which is movin' on up because of Obama's re-election.

He aims to tax and spend, but the US House stands in the way of that, which takes some of the pressure off the need to borrow money or print it, which is negative for gold. But with Ben Bernanke serving at his pleasure at the Fed, dollar devaluation through quantitative easing is still positive for gold and negative for the dollar.

Gold doubled under Obama's first term, from $850 the ounce to $1,730 today. I wouldn't be surprised to see that happen again.

$3,400 the ounce in 2016?

Just the thought of it makes my nose bleed.

Friday, November 9, 2012

Don't Blame The 47%

Don't blame the 47%.
  • The percentage which Romney said wouldn't vote for him in the general (the takers)
  • The percentage which did vote for him in the general (the makers)
  • The percentage which didn't vote for him in the Republican primaries (the achers)
Instead, blame Romney (the faker).

Obama Spotted Repairing Power Lines In New Jersey


























h/t Nita

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Why It's Too Early To Evaluate Election Turnout

Election turnout in 2012 as of right now is 117.5 million, dramatically lower than 2004, let alone 2008.

Turnout in 2008 was 131.5 million, in 2004 122.3 million, and in 2000 105.4 million.

Hurricane Sandy badly disrupted voting in densely populated areas of the eastern seaboard, especially in hard hit New York, namely in Queens, Long Island and Staten Island. The difference in New York alone between 2008 and 2012 to date is 1.6 million, and 600,000 in New Jersey.

Add to this the late voting arrangements for voters in New Jersey, and the absentee and military vote being tabulated after election day and the turnout numbers for 2012 could yet change significantly, even if relatively few races might be impacted by the outcome.

It's still too early to draw sweeping conclusions about the meaning of the turnout until we know more exactly what it is.


Rush Limbaugh Is Grasping At Straws To Explain Romney's Loss

Yesterday Rush informed us that maybe Romney lost because there are now more of "them" than of us.

In other words, we on the right are now demographically outnumbered by Democrat Hispanics, Blacks, etc. and won't be able to win anymore without more of "them" in the Republican Party. That is the reflexive interpretation of the Republican Establishment, as reported here:


"It's not about geography anymore with the Republican Party," said Margaret Hoover, a Republican strategist and CNN contributor. "It's about demographics, and we've got to start thinking about growing the party."


Today he's changing his tune. Today he's blaming . . . the white or conservative or Christian Republican base!

In other words, because Romney may have underperformed McCain's turnout (by 2.8 million) therefore Republicans didn't turn out for Romney.

Well, how does Rush know they were Republicans? What if they were independents?

I don't know how you can blame the base when for the first time ever I had to wait in line to vote on Tuesday, in deep red semi-rural Michigan, like many others all across the country.

And I don't know how you square that with the fact that it wasn't even close in South Carolina, ground zero for Tea Party antipathy toward Mitt Romney. The right everywhere held its nose and turned out, not for Romney it is true, but to defeat Barack Obama.

And now Rush is blaming US!

Gee, thanks Rush. You've just given the Establishment another reason to exclude conservatives from the Republican Party, and it isn't even true.

Turnout yesterday won't be precisely known for weeks, and it is important to wait, not just to learn the Republican turnout, but the Democrat contrary to what Rush is saying today.

In 2008 McCain slightly underperformed Bush in 2004 in the swing states, but in 2008 Obama way outperformed John Kerry from 2004, by 3 million in the swing states if I remember correctly. Obama won in those states by a margin of only 1.4 million. A half million Republicans weren't to blame for that.

   

"The Electorate Always Gets Things Right", Illustrated From The Bible


"The wisdom of crowds", according to Jude Wanniski, John Tamny and the libertarian quacks of Forbes Magazine, illustrated from the Bible:

"And all the people brake off the golden earrings which [were] in their ears, and brought [them] unto Aaron. And he received [them] at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These [be] thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." -- Exodus 32:3f.

Hours After Re-election, Obama Moves Against Arms Industry

Obama's way of attacking our Second Amendment check on tyranny isn't overt. He takes the circuitous route by attacking capitalism generally and specifically the arms manufacturers, who thrive on trade.

Hours after re-election he's back in negotiations over the UN treaty which would control trading of arms. His Democrat-controlled Senate could ultimately ratify this treaty, thus by-passing the politics of the issue in the Republican-controlled US House.

Better stock up. Once he ruins a few companies here, and limits the import trade, guns are going to get harder to come by.

This is what giving Obama more time meant during the campaign season. And Republicans had a candidate who never brought it up or made it an issue.

Too late now.

Reuters reports here:


Hours after U.S. President Barack Obama was re-elected, the United States backed a U.N. committee's call on Wednesday to renew debate over a draft international treaty to regulate the $70 billion global conventional arms trade.

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Hey John Tamny! Did The Electorate Get It Right Last Night?

The invisible hand of the electorate and the invisible hand of capitalism cannot be falsified by anything, because they are, well, invisible, here:


Put plainly, Wanniski argued that the electorate always gets things right, or in his words:

“…the electorate as a whole is wiser than any individual member in understanding its interests, it is wiser than any economist or group of economists.”

No doubt many readers are scratching their heads in response to the above, but as Wanniski put it to the late William F. Buckley (paraphrase), “You’re likely smarter than every individual inside a packed football stadium, but collectively those individuals are smarter than you are.” The wisdom of crowds….


We may not have always liked the end result, but the electorate has always been right. ...


The electorate unhappily gave [George W. Bush] another shot; one it presumably came to regret. ...

Obama ... [i]s as a result presiding over a sick economy that should be strong, and as the electorate dislikes failures, Obama’s days in the White House are numbered. ...


The electorate is dying to fire Obama, history says it will given its aversion to failures, yet Romney’s timidity with regard to policies actually meant to grow the economy point to a close win for Romney when it should be a rout. Wanniski’s electoral model says so.

The libertarians are as bat-shit crazy as the Keynesians.







Why WI Senator Elect Tammy Baldwin Loves Football

Presidential Aspirant Rep. Michele Bachmann Narrowly Re-elected In MN

Results here.

Her stand on many of the issues approximated real conservatism, but her district appears less inclined to vote for her after the presidential run. 

Romney's Path From 206 Ended At 266

Romney was competitive only in Florida with 49.3% (29), Virginia with 47.8% (13) and Ohio with 48.2% (18), with no evidence beyond that suggesting a path to victory, just hope (!) for the best.

Where've we heard that before? From a real liberal, Barack Obama. The opposition could smell our weakness in our imitation of them. And the voters wisely recognized that faux liberalism is no substitute for the real thing. Republicans didn't offer the country a clear alternative to Obama, just a facsimile.

This suggests money spent in places like Michigan was a big mistake, where Obama finished with 53.5% to 45.6%. And believe me, I received numerous robocalls and a fair number of live calls from Republicans trying to win the presidential here. Romney should have arguably allocated more time and money in places like Pennsylvania and Colorado.

Wisconsin Sends Rep. Paul Ryan Back To The House

Results here.

Have a nice time compromising some more with liberalism, Paul. You're good at it.

Thanks A Lot, Republicans: Liberalism Is No Match For Radicalism

Thomas E. Dewey
Thomas E. Romney

Tuesday, November 6, 2012