So...

That's odd. It seems as if the Russians haven't gotten the Hope (TM) memo and Changed (TM) their mind about their belligerence.

Have fun. :)

Youtube video in which Obama speaks, rather gleefully, apparently, about imposing bankrupting the coal industry.

Of course, The One doesn't seem to consider the fact that the US has a great deal of coal reserves (about 28% of the world's stores, according to one report), that it generates about 49% of the country's electricity, that there are clean[er] coal technologies that are better for the environment but that don't require throwing the baby out with the bathwater, either, and that people work around it and have jobs in plants and mines and things which they kind of need (jobs are, after all, a nice thing to have) . That's interesting.

Oh, well. I guess forcing out thousands of jobs and trying to eliminate an important source of power for the country will be a nice CHANGE(TM), won't it?

'Bamanomics are not a good idea.

I apologize for not being around to blog during this crucial time; I've been busy, and haven't had much time to get anything written down. However, there is information that I feel people need to be pointed to - mainly (for a start) about Obama's dreadful economic policies.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=10a_1224860557

(As a moderately right wing Canadian, I like the first part of that video, and find it ironic that Obama speaks of "coordinating with other countries" by bringing in much more left wing fiscal and welfare policies, while many of those "other countries" are shifting to the right because they've found that overly left wing fiscal/welfare policies, on issues like health care, for one, can often be absolutely disastrous.)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122495462887469571.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122480790550265061.html

I hope to have a chance to talk about this in more detail, but here's a lowdown as I've understood the situation. Obama hopes to bring about "economic justice" by taxing wealthier people and businesses earning over $200,000 or $250,000 in order to finance massive increases in government spending (which, as one of those Wall Street Journals points out, he may still not be able to afford). That sounds nice - it sounded nice to me too, for about one second until I actually started thinking about it. Then, after 1.1 or so seconds had elapsed, it occurred to me that $250,000 is really not a very high threshold at all for a medium sized business. 'Joe the Plumber' was on to something when he tried to question Obama about whether raising taxes would hurt a plumbing business that might, theoretically, pass the magic threshold in terms of its income. That's not inconceivable. The contractor whom we often engage to work on our family's house was running a larger construction business and employing 45 guys up until a few years ago, when he started getting older and easing into semi-retirement. A construction business employing 45 people could easily cross that threshold - and we're talking about an ordinary, though successful, individual entrepreneur, not the Starbucks or McDonalds or Wal-Mart corporations, which are easy to villify.

Why should anyone care about whether Starbucks, Wal-Mart or even just your ordinary-but-successful individual entrepreneur have to pay somewhat higher taxes? They can afford it no sweat, right? Well, no. Not necessarily. One should care because small, medium, large and huge businesses create jobs for people. When Obama says that most small businesses do not cross his magic threshold and do not see more than $250, 000, he is telling the truth. However, in implying that raising taxes on businesses dealing with larger amounts of money will not affect many people, he is not telling the truth at all. Small businesses that are well under the threshold create significantly fewer jobs than medium or large businesses that make more than that. When a government hits businesses with taxes and makes it harder for them to do well - especially if 'doing well' is already becoming increasingly difficult due to bad economic times like these - those same businesses either raise prices for their services, or lay off workers, or some combination thereof. Laying off workers obviously affects more people than just the business owner. Moreover, increased prices affect just about everyone. Let's take a very concrete example. If Starbucks sees a substantial hike in its taxes, it will either get rid of some of those young people (many of whom are Obama supporters) working in Starbucks stores, or it will start edging up the prices of lattes, or both. As prices of its products start to rise, consumers will, by and large, start trying to get by with less. That's easy with Starbucks lattes - we can all live with only one a week instead of two. (That's not the case with, say, bread, or gasoline, or other truly important goods.) However, the subsequent reduction in consumer spending will hurt Starbucks and other businesses even more, possibly prompting even more lay offs or store closings.

Obama does not seem to have thought about things like this. Maybe he just doesn't know, as he does not seem to have ever run a corporation or a small business or a lemonade stand, either. However, voters would do well to remember that although the economy is in lousy shape now, it stands to get much, much worse under Obama.

Two points

First, an interesting Wall Street Journal discussing the "Fact Checking Fad".

Second, I would just like to point out that, in the debate last night, Obama implied that, somehow, the US's refusal to talk directly with Iran (presumably without any preconditions at all, like, I don't know, the condition that planning to wipe other countries off the map is not an appropriate plan or opinion to have) has allowed Iran to build up its nuclear program. One would do well to remember, however, that other Western nations such as the UN and European Union represented by its foreign minister, Javier Solana, have been negotiating very directly with Iran since at least 2006 or so (that I remember), trying to represent Western interests, including those of the US. It is while all these negotiations have been going on that Iran has built up its nuclear program. I don't see how having Bush or Condi Rice sitting at the same table throughout this period ,directly discussing the same packages that have not paid off, would have made a difference. Perhaps Obama would like to explain that?

Article about the recent US economic crisis

I will begin posting my own thoughts, comments, questions, etc, shortly, but for starters, here's Salim Mansur writing in the Toronto Sun about why the recent mortgage disaster is not an exclusively Republican doing (and why kicking Republicans out of office will in no way, shape or form address the problem, necessarily).

Salim Mansur on the mortgage crisis: "U.S. mess started with Carter"

The story of man's fall is in part the history of unintended effects of his initial actions.

Paris of Troy falls in love with Helen of Sparta that puts to sea a thousand Greek ships, and the Trojan War is unleashed. Gavrilo Princip, driven by his Serbian nationalist fervour, assassinates the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and it ignites the First World War. Neither Paris nor Princip calculated the unintended effects of his initial actions.

As the United States is rocked by the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and a deep recession or worse looms on the horizon threatening the global economy, politicians -- Democrats and Republicans -- have scrambled to work out a rescue package for the collapsing capital market.

But how could the U.S. government be unaware of the capital and liquidity crunch of such dimension building up over time so that a taxpayer bailout of Wall Street to the tune of a trillion dollars was urgently needed? How did this tsunami of bad loans come about in the first place?

The story is one of unintended effects. And politicians who unleashed it have remained in full throttle of denying responsibility.

The origin of the crisis goes back to 1977 when then president Jimmy Carter signed into law the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) passed by the Democratic-controlled Congress.

MORTGAGES FOR ALL

The CRA required, as the U.S. Federal Reserve Board notes, "depository institutions to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they operate, including low and moderate income neighbourhoods, consistent with safe and sound operations."

In other words, by law lending institutions were instructed to provide money as mortgages and commercial loans to underserved communities of mostly low income Afro-Americans and underprivileged minorities with poor credit history.

The reasoning behind CRA was to make housing affordable for that segment of the American population that could not meet credit tests of the financial industry. The CRA was civil rights action with roots going back to the Great Society push of president Lyndon Johnson's administration a decade earlier.

The CRA requirement brought loosening of underwriting standards by lending institutions, and the beginning of bad loans or the "sub-prime" mortgages. The two government-sponsored lending institutions -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- aggressively pushed sub-prime mortgages to high risk borrowers, and then covered the questionable mortgages by access to government-backed credit legislatively available from the U.S. Treasury.

In 1995 during Bill Clinton's administration, amendments to the CRA increased lending for home purchases and the bad loans piled up while a frenzy of buying led to a real estate bubble.

In 2003 President George W. Bush's administration sought a corrective overhaul of the lending practices and in 2005 Sen. John McCain pushed for reform oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

BUSH FIX DERAILED

On both occasions corrective measures were derailed in the Congress subcommittee hearings by the Democratic leadership led by Sen. Christopher Dodd in the Senate Committee on Banking and Congressman Barney Frank in the House Financial Services Committee.

The politics of affirmative action for affordable housing twisted sound financial practices, and over time it created a heated housing market that could not be sustained indefinitely.

A mountain of bad loans eventually crashed, and the U.S. capital market was frontally assaulted by the unintended effects of the CRA.