The Treasury Secretary Who Cried Wolf

What happened to the urgency with which the $700 billion bailout needed to be passed?

If I recall, didn’t Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and President Bush come out and push for an emergency bailout package of $700 billion that just had to be passed immediately or the world as we know it would come to an end?

Then, if I remember right, didn’t the Republicans in Congress vote against the initial bailout bill, only to vote for it after another $150 billion in pork for things like rum imports from Puerto Rico were added to the bill?

Well, here we are almost a month later and are things any better for you and me? Hmmm…let’s see. The stock market is still falling, jobs are still being lost, homes are still being foreclosed, and the banks are not lending. In fact, banks are actually talking about using the monies they have received to pay dividends to their stock holders instead of using it to lend to consumers and credit card companies are threatening to reduce the credit lines for their cardholders (even those who have paid their bills regularly).

Yet, even with all this negativity, the world has not come to an end.

In addition, the original purpose of the bailout, which was to purchase bad debt (like the dreaded mortgage-backed securities) that banks had incurred, has basically been eliminated. It has been replaced instead by the notion of purchasing preferred shares in US banks that will pay dividends.

To date, only about $290 billion of the bailout bill has been used and Hank Paulson is now saying that he will probably not use the remaining $410 billion, which means that it will probably be saved for President Obama and his new Treasury Secretary to do with as they wish. So much for the urgency!

Now who knows what all that money will be used for? Maybe all the beggars like GM and Ford who are asking to be bailed out of their financial woes and city and state entities which have stepped forward with their hands out looking for a hand out will get what they want. All they need to do is wait for "The One" to take the oath of office and for him to get his fillibuster proof Senate in place and who knows.

I think I need to get in line. How about you?

Therein Lies the Problem

Yesterday, I had a conversation with the daughter of a friend of mine. Since she works in the housing industry, she has a different perspective on the housing market collapse than I do.

Everyone she knows in the industry from suppliers to contractors, from builders to real estate agents have been adversely affected by the housing market collapse. In addition, homes are not being built nor sold. To her, and her associates, the world is a very bleak place right now.

Living in a logging community, I, too, have seen the effects of the collapse. Our stores are having to cut back hours and employees due to business slowdown. In the two communities where our stores are located, logging companies and mills are cutting back due to the housing market collapse and lumber is uncharacterisically cheap. People on mainstreet who depend upon the housing market to make a living, and the people who depend on them, are hurting...really hurting.

During our conversation we were talking about the housing market collapse and the subprime lending fiasco. While we didin't agree on who was responsible for the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debacle, we both wholeheartedly agreed that greed was a major factor in the subprime lending problem and that many people were cohersed by predatory lenders into signing loans they didn't understand and would never be able to pay back. I mentioned that many of these were illegal aliens who have since left the country, leaving the banks with thousands of uncollectable loans with fake names. Her response to that statement was, "I don't care who was buying homes, just that they were buying homes."

Therein lies the problem...only on a much larger and national scale...no one who should have cared who was buying homes cared who was buying homes. Not the Clinton or Bush administrations, not the members of Congress, not the lenders, and not even the home buyers themselves. And look where we are now!

Gordon Smith Wasn't Conservative Enough?

I heard some exit polling results for the Oregon U.S. Senate race between Gordon Smith and Jeff Merkley which absolutely blew my mind. I am left scratching my head and wondering what goes through the minds of some people.

According to the exit polls, many conservatives in this great state of mine did not vote for Gordon Smith because he wasn’t conservative enough. Instead they either voted for Jeff Merkley or voted for no one; which is still a vote for Jeff Merkley.

So let me get this right, Gordon Smith is not conservative enough so you vote for a liberal Democrat like Jeff Merkley?

Gordon Smith is not conservative enough so you deliberately vote for a liberal Democrat and help Harry Reid get closer to his 60 Democrat, FILIBUSTER PROOF, majority in the Senate?

Gordon Smith is not conservative enough so you willingly vote for a liberal Democrat and virtually turn our country over to a bunch of far left liberal thugs?

Gordon Smith is not conservative enough so you throw conservatism under the bus and vote for a liberal Democrat, essentially giving President elect Barack Obama unfettered power to perhaps destroy this country with his radical…YES WE CAN….CHANGE WE NEED…socialist policies?

Yes, Virginia, COMMON SENSE IS DEAD!!!

How soon can I move to Costa Rica?

Sarah Palin the Scapegoat

John McCain’s campaign staff needs to stop using Sarah Palin as a scapegoat for the Republican ticket’s loss. Anything that happened behind the scenes…if indeed anything did happen…did not come across at the rallies or in her interviews. Sure, her interview with Katie Couric was a disaster, but she came out and said she regretted her behavior. You also have to take into account that the interview was edited to make her look worse than she probably was. I believe Sarah Palin came out and fought 100% for a John McCain victory.

The McCain campaign staff also needs to remember that, as my mother used to say, “When you’re pointing a finger at someone else, there are always three fingers pointing back at you.”

The McCain campaign was probably one of the worst run campaigns I have ever seen from the Republican Party. I kept wondering who the heck was running the show. It certainly wasn’t Carl “the Architect” Rove…that was obvious.

They kept Sarah Palin cloistered away from the media…even the friendly media…for too long after the Republican convention. She should have been doing interviews with the conservative friendly media first and then the liberal media, not vice versa. Then, when she was giving speeches at her first dozen or so rallies, she looked uncomfortable. They had her trying to be a John McCain “Mini Me” instead of Sarah Palin. It wasn’t until several people, including myself, from the conservative community website Red States.com wrote e-mails to the McCain campaign demanding that they let Sarah be Sarah that she started looking like she was on fire. That was when she looked the most comfortable and alive. That’s when she started looking like the conservative she is and that’s when she started attacking the Obama campaign for its inconsistencies, lies and missteps.

Then there’s poor John. He made such a moving speech at the Republican convention, and then he just sort of fizzled. He looked so lifeless and lost for many of the rallies. He was trying so hard to be a conservative to appeal to the conservative base, while also trying to be a moderate to appeal to the Republican moderates, Independents and Hillary Democrats. It was almost neurotic in a way. There were so many changes in direction it made my head spin. John McCain came off looking weak and unsure of his positions. He didn’t start looking alive until the last two or three weeks of the campaign. I kept saying, “Where has this John McCain…the John McCain from the convention…been all this time?” By the time he woke up it was too late.

The McCain campaign, like many in the Republican leadership, looked like it was continually trying to find an identity. John McCain is not a conservative…he is a moderate; while Sarah Palin is not a moderate…she’s a conservative. It’s obvious that when you try to be something you’re not, and you don’t have experience at deception, you struggle.

If the Republican Party does not return to its conservative identity, ideology and base; it is destined to loose even more power and be out of power for a long time. They need to quit listening to the pundits who say Republicans need to be more moderate. They have been doing that ever since they regained control of Congress in 1994 and look at where they are now…out of power after only twelve years and floundering.

I truly believe that this country is hungry for conservative leadership; but in its absence, they are willing to turn to people who pretend to have conservative values…even when their record shows the exact opposite. Just look at this last election…need I say more?

Thank Goodness It's Over

The election is over...the uncertainty is over. We now know the probable fate of our nation. President elect Barack Obama has been chosen by 52% of this nation to be our 44th president. So be it. It is now time to move forward.

I am quite surprised at how at peace I feel. I thought for sure that I would be livid if Obama won the presidency. I thought for sure I would run right out and lower my flag to half staff. But I’m not and I haven’t. As soon as I knew for sure that he had won I was at peace. I knew that I had done all I could, and even though it wasn’t enough, the Lord let me know that it would be okay.

As a citizen of this great nation, I will support President Obama when I feel he is right and I will vehemently oppose him when I think he is wrong. I pray that I will be able to support him more than I will have to oppose him, but I don't hold out much hope.

Now that the election is over, there are a few people I would like to thank.

First, thank you Senator John McCain, you put up a valiant fight. Unfortunately, you had a tough row to hoe.

To be honest you were not my first choice, nor the first choice of many conservatives, to be the Republican nominee. However, I have a lot of respect for you and your service to this nation. I eventually came to believe that, despite our differences, you would have made a good president. I know you would have put “Country First” as you have done all your life.

It was unfortunate that you ran up against some insurmountable odds in your quest for the presidency:

• Who could have predicted the collapse of the housing institutions, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the economic disaster such a collapse would cause? Oh wait, you and President Bush did when you both fought so hard to get them regulated. Wasn’t it convenient that they collapsed just when you were up significantly in the polls? This collapse was followed by a few very large financial institutions and then the stock market. The Republicans were unfairly and unjustly blamed for this collapse by the same people who actually helped cause it.
• Your opponent was able to put you at a substantial campaign finance disadvantage by convincing you to pledge to accept public financing. Once he got you to sign on the dotted line, he then backed out on his own pledge, thus allowing him to raise millions and millions of dollars from anonymous sources, possibly from overseas. I commend you for being a man of your word and sticking to your promise. You were the bigger and more honorable man.
• How can you beat an opponent who has followers that believe, as one woman stated at an Obama rally, "I won't have to worry about putting gas in my car? I won't have to worry about paying my mortgage?" Won’t she get a big surprise? I can’t wait.
  

Second, thank you Governor Sarah Palin. You are priceless. You re-instilled faith in a disenfranchised electorate who has felt abandoned by its party leaders. You have shown us that there are still true conservative leaders in the Republican Party serving this country.

Don’t believe the idiot pundits on both sides of the political spectrum who want to blame you for the loss and say that you were a “drag on the ticket”…we don’t. Anyone who watched your campaign rallies knows that you were anything but. You brought energy and enthusiasm to a ticket that was floundering until you came onto the scene. Your presence on the ticket re-energized the conservative base of the Republican Party in a way that it hasn’t been seen for a good long time.

You have millions of conservatives who are looking forward to 2012 and a Palin run for the presidency. How about Bobby Jindal as your veep?

Third, thank you to the 46% of Americans who voted to protect this nation from the most liberal, least experienced candidate to ever be nominated by a major party. You saw through his “just words, just speeches” rhetoric and saw the real Barack Obama. You went beyond the “just words, just speeches” rhetoric and listened to, watched and read other sources to get the truth. You actually paid attention to what he said and what his record is or what he has done to discover the inconsistencies. We may have lost, but we are not going to stay down and we will not be silenced.

Fourth, thank you to the 52% of Americans who voted for Senator Barack Obama. You have finally put to rest the common, misconceived belief that racism is still alive and well in America…or did you? According to some African-American leaders, you didn’t. According to them, Obama is not African-American so therefore, he doesn’t qualify as the first African-American president, so your "white guilt” must continue. Yawn!!!

Be that as it may, America has finally elected its first black president. Let’s all celebrate? You have put a black man into the most powerful position in the world:

• Who has absolutely no experience whatsoever.
• Who was the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate. Yet, somehow many of you seem to think he will govern from the center. What makes you think so? Nothing he said during his campaigning says he will. In fact, just about everything he has ever said proves the opposite.
• Who, if he were the average “Joe”, would not qualify for even the lowest security clearance because of his past associations with radicals like William Ayers, Rashid Khalidi, Tony Rezko, and Bernadine Dohrn. But, because he is now the most powerful man in the world, he will be given the highest security clearance in the nation.
• Who has promised to bankrupt the coal industry which provides 49% of our nation’s energy, force Americans to conserve through skyrocketing electricity prices, “spread the wealth around” through higher taxes and tax credits to Americans who pay no Federal income tax, cut our nation’s defense capabilities, and surrender a war we are finally winning.
• Who has said that he will listen to everyone, especially when they disagree with him. Hmmm…let’s ask Joe "the Plumber” Wurzelbacher or Barbara West and WFTV, the Florida station she works for, after she asked Biden a tough question regarding Obama’s “spread the wealth around” tax plan or the three reporters who were kicked off his campaign plane during the last days of the race because they worked for papers that endorsed McCain.
  

Finally, thank you to the mainstream media who has proven once again that they are not to be trusted with accurate information. You were so biased during this election that it was disgusting. Once the new Congress, with an even bigger Democrat majority, gets the “Fairness Doctrine” passed, thus bringing an end to conservative talk radio, most Americans will have nowhere to go to get the other side of the story…or even the truth...except for those of us who will watch FOX. Those who won't, will be subjected to the Democrat propaganda machine which will hide everything and will tell them nothing. They will be made to believe that we live in a utopian world, while the opposite will be true.

Obamanonimics 101

I was listening to the Victoria Taft show on Friday night and she had a great idea on how to teach our youth about the Obama tax plan or as it is more commonly known, Obamanomics. Here's her plan:

1. Your doorbell rings.
2. You answer the door to the resounding words, "Trick or Treat".
3. You ask to look inside each child's bag.
4. You discover that one child has more candy in his/her bag than the rest.
5. You remove some of the candy from the child's bag with the most and you distribute it to the rest of the children.
6. You do not ask the child with the most how much longer he/she may have been out collecting candy or how hard he/she had to work for it, you just take it.
7. You then turn around and get your big bowl full of candy and tell each child that they can have one piece, except for the child who had the most because he/she had too much to begin with.

What do you think?