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Inflation Not In Our Future

Posted by Bill Crawford on Tuesday, June 02, 2009 10:08:35 PM
Here is something Paul Krugman has right: inflation is not upon us, and may not be for a while. So, while the alleged piles of printed money the Fed Reserve is holding to bail out the banking system are waiting to turn us into a hyper inflation hole that would make the late 1970's look like heaven, it ain't happening right now.
 
Why is that? The biggest reason is that the financial system here is in such fear (rightfully so) that all this money, if spent, would create a classic inflationary cycle. So, oddly enough, the guarantees serve to dampen the economy that Obama is trying to inject life into. Until we truly do turn into Europe, the notion in America is still that the economy is driven first by the private sector. The private sector turned the economy in the 1940's, working for the war effort. The private sector took off like a rocket when the government worked to get out of it's way after the JFK and Reagan tax cuts.
 
Inflation requires the printed money to get into people's hands through looser credit and chase after something. That is not happening right now.
 
If a government forces a tax cut without corresponding spending cuts, as it did in 1981 and 2002, you get deficit spending that may be a secondary factor to the new, freer money in the private sector. If you deficit spend just by raising spending, as we are trying to do now, the new money enters te economy only through means of governments choice- not the private investor. This is how Europe works now- the fastest and most consistent growth is in the government itself.
 
So, look at the European record after WWII, and see what the Obama future is. Decades of economic sludge, constant double digit unemployment, and college grads holding public sector jobs as employment of choice.
 
Is that what we want?
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I Own Part Of GM!

Posted by Bill Crawford on Tuesday, June 02, 2009 9:28:47 PM
And the stock issues of this once great company are in the same toilet as Citigroup: the broker commission fee is worth more than the share price. A good time to buy, if you think something may come of it.
 
For a President who declares so often that he doesn't want to be running companies, he seems to act otherwise.
 
The smarter people at Treasury, if they play their cards right, will do to GM what they are trying to do with Citigroup: gradually sell off pieces until there is nothing left. The viable parts first (the Hummer division has already been bought off), and then gradually everything, in a veritable fire sale at the end.
 
And then GM will eventually go the way of Hudson and Studebaker, stalwarts in their day, but museum articles and memories now.
 
Nothing is too big to fail in a working capital market. Unfortunately, GM may be big enough to live long enough to micromanage a large part of the American car market into the ground. This administration will try and use our majority ownership to retool it as a greener manufacturer, pushing smaller, alternative powered cars on a market that may not be willing to purchase them at face value.
 
And because we all have deeper pockets than a smaller pool of bond holders and investors, if the technology simply isn't there yet (and it isn't), they will bore in full steam ahead anyway. They will subsidize purchases like they subsidize Amtrak, using my money to keep a venture afloat that would sink like a stone otherwise.
 
But because they are committed to the future of green tech (that is to say, it is a good cause), they will regard throwing tax money into this hole as a good investment.
 
To paraphrase Woody Allen, if you can't do, teach. And if nobody is willing to invest in you teaching, get a government job and mandate the investment. Economically speaking, we have a government filled with gym teachers trying to show us how to make the market work. This has to stop, before we turn into France.
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America The Undertaxed

Posted by Bill Crawford on Saturday, May 30, 2009 2:32:14 PM
Nobel Prize Economist Paul Krugman is having at it again this week in the New York Times, the Grey Lady of the Night on 43rd Street.
 
He poses California the same way I do, a history of being some sort of bellwether that survives even today. I mean, there are many states that are losing population and are taxing those who remain to their limits and beyond. California is just better at it than anybody else.
 
He stresses that California has it's problems, but they could be solved in large part by getting past the limitations of the onerous Proposition 13 and passing a series of "manageable" tax increases. At least they would be manageable if they were passed out over the years, so all of the tax payer frogs could boil in peace because the taxes went to the stratosphere gradually, so they wouldn't notice.
 
Nothing is mentioned about the interesting priorities established from the spending choices in the Sacramento Legislature. Nada. Zilch. So for starters, health care and college tuition for illegal immigrants is, ipso facto, hunky dory.
 
But wait, it gets worse. Mr. Laureate Krugman holds repsponsible for all this sorry state of affairs the evil Rush Limbaugh Republicans, who berely have the numbers to maintain a veto power over new taxes, a la Prop 13, which requires a supermajority. Which drives home his point doubly: the problem is not the spending. We just aren't paying our fair share of taxes. Paul is careful to point out that we still don't pay out what they do in Europe.
 
So that is our goal in life? To tax and spend like they do In Europe?
 
But it's nice that we get past the swing voter driven generalities and get down to brass tacks what the Community Organizer's agenda is.
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Threatening L'il Kim

Posted by Bill Crawford on Saturday, May 30, 2009 1:11:39 PM
The megalomanaical midget has obviously decided to ratchet it up to really, really irresponsible. So irresponsible that even China and Russia have to yammer their way through competing Security Council statements.
 
Obama is in a hard place with this, because recent history has shown that nothing really deters these morons. China has more influence than anybody with them, and I doubt that even they could rein them in at this point.
 
Lesson number thirty seven in world diplomacy, Mr. Community Organizer: if you aren't prepared to do a military strike and you don't have anything else in your quiver, shut the hell up. If you and your Sec State trot out to a lectern and start with a series of "you better not" statements, what purpose does it serve than to show the rest of the planet how you have nothing in your hand except....well, you know the rest of that saying, right?
 
That is what got Europe into so much s**t over Bosnia in the mid- nineties. Time after time, they would pose moralities to them over their genocidal antics, and were obviously not prepared to act on any of them until we showed up a few years later. When the despots laugh at you, the people under them suffer more. Why? Because the despots know the tyranny puts them in a stronger position, and maybe they even enjoy it.
 
There is a long line of irresponsible and naive leaders of democracy leaders who make the world a shakier place every time they open their mouths. Appeasers. The ignorant and naive. Hillary was supposed to be the Democrat who was dipped in realpolitick during her East Wing stint in the '90's- what happened to that?
 
We elected the most inexperienced President in our history. He is of a movement that either has little knowledge of or much trust for the projection of military power. What do you expect?
 
As with Bill Clinton after the end of the Cold War, my tut-tutting detractors spent the campaign season talking the danger down in the world, attributing the relative stability in the world around them to a natural state, rather than the end result of a previous projection of military power. Differing premises and views of cause and effect.
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The Hubble And Beyond

Posted by Bill Crawford on Thursday, May 28, 2009 12:47:45 PM
We just spent almost a billion dollars repairing the Hubble telescope once again. From the stand point of pure science, I can't think of a better investment. That device has been a godsend to physics research since it went into action around 1990, and it has been improved even more by the last Shuttle mission.
 
It has provided us with more information about the origins of the Universe and the nature of missing or "dark" matter than any terrestrial super collider can give us.
 
This is not a trillion dollar super collider, smashing particles together at near light speeds to imitate early Unverse conditions and try to match theory. This is real time, real world. It has done more to get us closer to Einstein's vaunted Unified Field Theory than all the humans who have tried since Albert died in 1955.
 
 This is Hubble's last gasp, the five to ten years it will grace us with, until the even more powerful James Webb telescope is launched into what essentially will be a solar orbit beyond the Moon.
 
On to other things topical. The Shuttle will soon be retired, and it can't happen fast enough. It's capacity served us well over the last twenty years, but it was based on a few misnomers. First, that a fixed wing craft that could land on a runway would make it into a utility vehichle that would run a regular schedule. Second, that there was ANY constructive notion that humans should be launched in any configuration save top of the stack, in case of problems in the boost phase (as the Challenger astronauts learned the hard way). Third, that the glue holding the heat shield tiles on should be scrapped and replaced with something more environmentally friendly, which did in another unlucky seven.
 
The upcoming Orion series is reusable and all of it, including every non-escape velocity staging device, is capable of re-entry and chute retrieval. It may just cover the gap and keep us going into orbit until the final answer is achieved before the end of the century: elevator cables running up to a platform in geosynchronous orbit.
 
The plan is to return to the moon eventually. As with Mars, the search will be on for water sources. Where there is water, there is air, drinking water and fuel. Water is the key.
 
 
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Supreme Hubris

Posted by Bill Crawford on Wednesday, May 27, 2009 10:28:11 PM
"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the riches of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." -Sonia Sotomayor
 
What can I say? If Sam Alito had said something like that- even into an open cell phone at a family barbeque, he would not be on the Supreme Court today. Judge Sotomayor, however, will joining Alito this October. Is there any clearer evidence of a double standard in our society today?
 
This is not to say that she does not belong there. While I categorically disagree with her approach to law and especially the interpretation of our Constitution, the path to the Supreme Court for her has been greased by the decisions made by the voters in the last two national election cycles, and this is as it should be. She is Obama's nomination, and he has the votes to bring her.
 
That doesn't mean that the great culture war and it's aspect of competing views on the law should go away. I have a view of jurisprudence that can be labeled as "originalist" and if my compatriots don't speak their piece this summer, democcracy is not served well.
 
As far as alienating Hispanics, how much more damage can be done? If they want to hide her behind her racial roots, I'm too stupid to shy away from throwing ideological darts anyway. From a political perspective, rolling over for the likes of her will not serve to pick up any votes in 2010- that has to be done CD by CD on the campaign trail.
 
This is another reason why I didn't cry over the loss of Arlen Specter. He would be intimidated by this. I am a color blind conservative. In ten years, the Repblican party will be dominated from top to bottom by color blinds, and we will try our level best to show this racial warfare to be the crass stupidity it is. When enough people point out that Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are clowns, the racial divide will begin to close.
 
Not until then.
 
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Hey...Want A Government Car?

Posted by Bill Crawford on Sunday, May 24, 2009 8:32:30 PM
If I have to buy a car in the next few years, you can bet your sweet patooty it will be a Ford. The Big Three here are all treading water because of their baggage, not because they build lousy cars.
 
I am driving a fifteen year old Taurus L. It was a damned good car when it was new, and it is a good car now. I can't wait to see what happens when the White House gets through combing through the wreckage of GM and Chrysler and they finally get done deciding what is "fair". As with the results of the reorganization of GM, I'll bet the bulk of what is "fair" ends up in the lap of the UAW. Imagine a manufacturing company where "it's not what you know, it's who you know" carries the day.
 
So the government wants to build cars for us? Why the hell would you want to buy them? Because they mean well? I'm thinking about the EPA and their laudable goals to lower pollution a decade ago by adding MTSB to the gasoline in the cold months. It creates delays in delivery because there are different mixtures for every region of the country? But it's for a good cause. It raises the price per gallon and lowers mileage? Sorry. It turns out to be a carcinogen? My bad.
 
THAT'S the corporate management you want to take out a four year loan to support?
 
Here's another one for you: the companies have to average 35 MPG in a decade? Reality check: it ain't worth pouring money into the vehicles to make that happen unless your gasoline goes back to over $4.00 a gallon. So it is in the government's best interests for your fuel prices to skyrocket again. This is why Obama commented on the high prices last year by saying that the rise was not bad in iteself, just that it "happened too fast".
 
THIS is the "change we can believe in"? You must be out of your mind. This is a ticket to an enduring recession. FDR and his New Dealers took whatever recovery that was starting in 1934 and created a recession that lasted until WWII. Check the numbers on unemployment and GDP growth in the 1930's- it's all there, folks.
 
 
 
 
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Brave New World

Posted by Bill Crawford on Friday, May 22, 2009 12:33:28 PM
Act II has begun. The evil Bush people have left the stage, and the new standup routine, Obama, Hillary and the "reboot" team have taken over. Obama has announced that we are not going to torture anymore, we are closing Guantanamo and we are open to talking to any Muslim who wants to reach out to us.
 
How is it possible then, that a cadre of Muslim fanatics would want to buy enough C-4 to blow up a couple of synagogues in New York City? Haven't they read the new script?
 
Or is it possible that the radical Muslim problem with us is deeper than that ,and Obama's antics don't mean a damned thing to them?
 
Here's another one for the reboot wizards: this cell is reputed to be American, turned to their Muslim beliefs in the American prison system. Those of you in the State Department looking to go to Plan B and bring the terrorists in Cuba into our Maximum Security sysytem, are you planning to keep them isolated from the population to keep THAT from happening again?
 
That issue is preceded, of course, by the reality that as soon as these thugs land on American soil, there will be lawyers lined up to file writs of Habeus Corpus in their behalf. The time it will take for that to happen will be measured in seconds.
 
There is no end to the unpatriotic stupidity that some Americans are capable of here. The ACLU types are so predictable that it is like taking candy from a baby to make these prognostications.
 
Oh, I'm sorry- did I use "ACLU" and "unpatriotic" in the same paragraph? That was a mistake. It should be the same sentence, to be fair. The ACLU is an unpatriotic oganization. Yes, that's better.
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Cheney vs. Obama

Posted by Bill Crawford on Thursday, May 21, 2009 9:34:52 PM
We had the dueling banjo thing going today- Obama and Cheney talking simultaneously. For those of you who think this was a Cheney machination, Dick's speech had been scheduled for a while. Obama chose to talk at the same time, for whatever reason he thought  was necessary.
 
Obama laid out what he thought was a fair and meticulous path to his version of national security. Typically, he painted his picture of fairness and accuracy by omitting what was inconvenient.
 
For starters, he justified the release of the CIA interrogation method and their attendant security issues by announcing that he had "banned" any future use of any such methods. But if you read his Guantanamo memo, it allows the intelligence community and the White House to re-carve any exceptions it wants, if the circumstances are dire enough. In other words, as with McCain's condemnation of this stuff last year, Obama realizes that handcuffing himself may turn into a homeland nightmare. But for the sake of moralizing, he leaves this out.
 
He also continues to paint a picture of the world that equates world cooperation with us in this war on our moral posture. He is as wrong as he can be on this. The world cooperates with us (or doesn't) because of fear. Many countries cooperated wiith the Soviets rather than us during the Cold War because they feared the Soviets more than the Americans. The Europeans don't cooperate with us in the War on Terror because their biggest fear is the large Muslim populations among them in their own countries. All of our efforts to clean up Guantanamo will not change this.
 
And whatever Muslim extremists we manage to capture and neutralize will not begin to cooperate with us if we stick to the Army Field Manual, because they know they will have nothing to fear from their interrogators..
 
Dick Cheney understood this, and so did Bush. The only difference between the two is that Bush seems to be comfortable in letting history be his judge, and Cheney is more perturbed ay letting Obama rewrite the history of the last eight years without spekaing up himself.
 
There is the rub. Obama is not content changing course, which, as a duly elected President, he has an absolute right to attempt. He insists on showing, by comparison, that his road is the only high road around and all those who disagree are some sort of moral reprobates.
 
If you dissect Cheney's words, he allows for diagreement. You may not agree with what we did, he says, but here is why we did it. He also points out how they got approval for everything they did, and he dares anybody to challenge them legally. Which, curiously, many on the Left have threatened but none have tried to actually do.
 
Which is why mpeachment was bandied about at so many cocktal parties in the Beltway, but nobody ever signed on to co-sponsor John Conyer's H.R. 635, 636 and 637, which sat in Committee and died. If the Bush administration actually dd what they were accused of, this libertarian would have gone along with them in impeachment in a heartbeat.
 
My advice for Obama: stop running for President, and act like one. You don't need to continue makinjg comparisons to the past administration to be Presidential. You got 55% of the vote, big guy. Run with it.
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California At It Again

Posted by Bill Crawford on Wednesday, May 20, 2009 9:35:37 PM
Let me see if I've got this straight: the largest state in the country has the largest share of trouble. 12% unemployment, a $47B state deficit, the higest foreclosure rate in the country, the biggest fall in housing prices over the last five years, the highest personal tax rates in America and already paying for college for many illegal immigrants.
 
Why on earth would anybody hold public office in a place like that and offer a public referendum on raising taxes? What kind of answer do you think you would get? But they did.
 
SIx of them. Five of them went down in flames. The only one that passed was a provision that public officials would not be allowed to vote themselves a raise during a recession.
 
The public and corporate sponsors of these outspent the opponents ten to one. It speaks volumes that it's biggest cheerleader, the Guvernator, was in Washington DC begging for money on the day of the vote. He had enough sense to stay out of town.
 
Look carefully, Mr. President: this is your state. You carried it easily last year. Does this tell you anything about raising taxes on snack foods and soda to pay for your health care?
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Baby Boomers- The Drug Trip

Posted by Bill Crawford on Monday, May 18, 2009 9:40:13 PM
I am part of the younger end of the Baby Boom. I missed out on the Haight & Ashbury revolution and the Summer of Love (1967, when I was in Elementary School). None of my friends who did drugs (and there were many) did so to "expand their consciousness", or "reach a higher plane".
 
As a result, there is no raging debate in the younger end when their children ask them about smoking marijuana. Only a 60 year old would think something like, "Should I tell them about the first doobie I smoked when I saw the Dead in New Haven, or just about the short term memory loss?" My comtemporaries viewed it as little more than a habit. A fun and expensive habit, as was cocaine, but nothing more. I don't even have that problem with my own kids, being that I never had time for anything more than beer.
 
I like to drag out the tale of Pink Floyd. An interesting group, even when they were up and coming rockers from London. They were led by a wacko named Syd Barrett, who gave them their unique sound and their first hit singles. He graduated to LSD, and used so much of it that he was no longer viable on the concert stage. They broke off from him, and tried writing their own singles, which they were not anywhere up to as much as Syd was on his best behavior.
 
So they regrouped, and decided to record a thematic album, which was not somthing fully realized by anybody at the time. And in 1971, they recorded Dark Side Of The Moon. We all know where that went.
 
Four years later, they were recording Wish You Were Here and Syd showed up, so fat and out of it that they were shocked. The title of the new album was a paen to Syd, who they only went away from because he gave them no other choice. They were always grateful for what he started, but now he was a walking vegetable.
 
Therin layeth the lesson: the legions of recreational drug users always laugh at the reruns of "Reefer Madness", but the victims of overdose kept piling up. The ones that survived and still do the reunion tours are relatively clean now, and they find a batch of studio people and the like to replace their Keith Moons.
 
And it's still presented by the Boomers as all good fun. Yeah, it's for "medicinal purposes". And Junior is off the Honor Roll now, but he's still going to graduate, so what's the big deal? 
 
I pass. My kids 'won't have any time' for it, either. The Methadone clinics of the world are filled with people that could have been something special, if their parents only kept them in the game when they still needed the guidance.
 
Then again, I could be living in California, where this mentality has practically taken over the State. Parts of this country are just so dog nuts that it boggles the mind.  
 
That was where the comedians missed the point on "Just Say No" from twenty years ago. Of course someone on a gram a day habit wasn't going to be able to "just say no" and walk away. It was their parents who were suposed to say "no" for them.
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Pelosi Backs The Bus Onto Herself

Posted by Bill Crawford on Monday, May 18, 2009 9:02:43 PM
The Esteemed Congresswoman from California stepped into a pile deeper than she can talk her way out of. In the effort to regain a footing worthy of all the moral posturing she has done over the last four years, she ended up accusing the representatives of the CIA of lying to Congress- which is a federal crime, folks.
 
And the pals that stood with her all this time, declaring Bush and Cheney as the equivalent of the East German Securidat are now all of a sudden not free to throw rocks from outside the lines, but are in positions of power and actually responsible for silly things like.....national security. Hence the unambiguous denial of wrongdoing by the likes of Leon Panetta. Not a finger lifted from the White House, even though candidate Obama was with her on this stupidity on the campaign trail.
 
This will not be an overnight thing, but she will not be Speaker for long, if that Party has any wits about them. The House Speaker is a sensitive position- it comes with the power. The Republicans backed Stenni Hoyer into a corner to fish or cut bait in defending her on the House floor last week, and his response was to act as if he didn't even know her.
 
You can be out of power and say stupid things without consequence, save being another five minute vignette on The Daily Show. When you hold the reins, words mean things all of a sudden. Obama falls down on this sometimes, but knows enough to make corrections. Biden still hasn't learned to shut his mouth, but he seems to be regarded as some sort of lawn ornament at this point. Pelosi is in no danger of losing her seat in San Francisco, but she will soon only wield the gavel as a guest of Speaker Hoyer.
 
This should be funny. Hell, maybe it will be in twenty years. Right now, it is so stupid and dangerous, it is tragic. Are they really THAT stupid on the West Coast?
 
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Health Care From Hell

Posted by Bill Crawford on Friday, May 15, 2009 1:19:26 PM
This issue is about as complicated as they come, so bear with me, folks. I'll try to keep it as simple as possible. Not because you may not understand it- it's that this subject can easily turn into a three hour C-Span discussion.
 
Obama Care is coming, and soon. The bipartisan party is holding Democrat only meetings on this every other day, behind closed doors. Talk to Henry Waxman about that one.
 
Already we are learning that the extra $650 billion from the "stimulus" package for health care is going to have to be augmented by a Senate proposal to tax non-diet soft drinks, juices and snack foods. This is stuff that only the rich consume, because Barrack was clear last year that the middle class would not see their taxes go up, "not one thin dime".
 
Obama is planning to insure the uninsured by expanding the federal entitlement pools, mostly through Medicare Part B, and then penalizing companies that don't provide the same level of insurance-to coerce them to dump their employees into the same pool. This is old news, and the details are in Tom Daschle's wonderful book, in case anybody is interested.
 
Then the real joke begins: Obama claims he is going to cut costs in the process. This will not happen, for a whole host of reasons.
 
Here are some realities that will prevent this from happening:
 
One: We have made a decision as a society that life is medically precious, and we will use the insured to subsidize a homeless man who gets dumped in the ER and needs $150,000 in services. This would not happen in ANY of the great single payer health care countries around the planet.
 
Two: If you don't solve the problem of the illegal immigrants among us, or even the millions who are woking here on valid visa's and have no intention of becoming citizens- if you dump them in the pool of newly insured and make us all pay for well care services for them and thier families, there will be hell to pay in both parties.
 
Three: We must come to terms with the McCain campaign notion that we should eliminate employer based health care and make insurance personal and portable. This will take the third party inflation factor farther out of the mix and will be the last line in controlling costs in any way. It will also force providers to compete more often and with millions of individuals instead of hundreds of companies.
 
Four: We need to face the fact that Doctors and Nurses are a finite resource and take three to twelve years to train out of High School. If we expand the patient pool immiediately, and the provider pool doesn't follow, how long do you think it will be before government rationing is called for?
 
Five: We have to face the fact that smokers do not pose the long term costs for the system they are reputed to. Smokers tend to develop problems and die relatively soon afterward. In the meantime, they fork over tons of tax money to fund all sorts of things. Obese people, on the other hand, get symptoms and cost money from childhood and go for decades. The numbers on Diabetes alone would boggle your mind. Here's a hint on that one: passing one of the most regressive taxes you can think of on soda and potato chips is NOT going to get them better.
 
Six: there will be no cost savngs at all until we engage in tort reform. Extra testing for lawsuit aversion ('Defensive Medicine') is a direct result of litigation-driven malpractice insurance costs. Ob/Gyn insurance routinely runs six figures a year, for gosh sakes. Who do you think pays for that? Do the Doctors starve their kids, or raise their fees?
 
I don't pretend to have the answers for this. It's a complicated issue. All I am saying is that the present system here is better than many are making it out to be, and if you overhaul it the way Obama is soon going to propose, all hell will break loose.
 
Fortunately, it will be politically unpalatable, and Maureen Dowd will be singing her laments later this year about it. If she gets a heart attack in the process, I'd like to see if she would rather be treated in Ottowa.
 
You can guess where my betting money is on that one.
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The Ghost Of Cheney Reappears

Posted by Bill Crawford on Friday, May 15, 2009 12:40:29 PM
The time honored tradition of fading into the background and allowing your successors to work in the White House was broken long ago. Jimmy Carter poked his fingers through the dam in the early 1980's. Bill Clinton, who never did learn how to shut up, busted the dam wide open, starting with his second farewell speech in Washington D.C.- which took place the same time as the first of Bush's inaugural balls were starting.
 
So what brought Cheney out? What started the torments anew at the editorial boards of most of our urban newspapers?
 
I'll tell you why. Obama's people decided to make political hay out of a national security issue. Let's declassify the interrogation memos from 9/11- releasing to the world exactly what our techniques were, in case Al Queda wants to train themselves for us in the future. Let's hold back the results, though. We'll just send out the parts that make the old guys look bad.
 
So the ex-VP called them on it. In for a penny, in for a pound. You've already dumped the most sensitive part into the mainstream, so finish the job. Release the rest, he said. Show them what we got out of it. And surely if there was nothing to that, that would have been part of the original dump- you can bet your Rahm Emmanuel on that.
 
Look folks, I understand there are a certain percentage of you that think this war was inappropriate from the start. And another percentage that  thinks that it has gone into some sort of remission. I am part of the smaller group that realizes that not only is this war not over, it has yet to see it's worst days.
 
So fight it we must. I will not bear my children any other future. I'll be happy to fight it for your children for you, too- even if I get nothing but derision and ingratitude from the likes of you.
 
We still are surrounded by two large oceans, and it allows many of us to maintain some sort of ignorance about how most of the rest of the planet was shaved by a drunken barber. I can understand that.
 
You'll excuse me if I don't go along. If you wish to define Dick Cheney as void of conviction and pose him as some sort of rabid lunatic, there is nothing I can do about that, either.
 
But if Republicans get back into power and you ask them (again) to "reach across the aisle" and their only reaction is to urinate on your pants leg, let's just say that you asked for it.
 
This must be the "postpartisan unity" that Obama promised so fervently. Yeah, I see it.
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Deer In The Headlights

Posted by Bill Crawford on Friday, May 15, 2009 2:39:39 AM
I had a bad dream today. I was driving home from work, and I had to slow down for a deer in the road. I ended up braking to a crawl, honking my horn, flashing the brights and finally waving frantically to get the damned thing to move off to the side. It just sat there, not knowing what the hell to do, looking scared as hell.
 
...Then I woke up and I was watching Nancy Pelosi at the microphone, stammering and stuttering her way through her lying a** version number seventeen of her experiences on the House Intelligence Committee. It was so pathetic, I almost felt sympathy for her. This, however, is a grave she dug for herself.
 
Mind you, if she were a pro at lying on television, like the President (and his Democrat predecessor), she would be able to sprinkle salt on the stage and soft shoe her way through the questioning. But she ain't. Truth be told, if her party had any idea they would be taking the House majority in 2006, they never would have elected her Minority Leader- Stenni Hoyer would be doing that now. But they dug that grave for themselves.
 
After all the moralistic posturing she has done in the last few years, she deserves every bit of this. She felt the heat from the 9/11 attacks like the rest of us, and she signed off on the reaction. Now she is taking the offensive (she doesn't have a choice), and is going past the powers that be "misleading" her. Now she says they "lied" to her.
 
Well, there you go, Madam Speaker. Your chips are on the table. I call. Let's see your hand.
 
The Speaker is a schmuck. Live with it. She represents San Francisco, and that town is full of schmucks, so she won;t lose her seat. Democrats: do we really need her to be third in line for the Presidency?
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