The repository of one hard-boiled egg from the south suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (and the occassional guest-blogger). The ramblings within may or may not offend, shock and awe you, but they are what I (or my guest-bloggers) think.
(H/T – Jim Treacher’s Twitter stream)
Jake Tapper caught Vice President Joe Biden having a microphone “malfunction”. It seems somebody left a microphone pointed at Biden on when he unleashed what Tapper calls his ‘standard reply’ (reconstituted from the family-friendly ABC News site, so those with sensitive eyes may want to depart now) – “Gimme a fucking break”.
Two things:
– Yes, the fuck does really mean fuck.
– We now know why Biden was picked to be VP; he is at heart a Chicago pol.
(H/T – Instapundit)
I believe that Dad29, Asian Badger, Shoebox, and I have been warning about this for a while. The AP reports that China’s Premier, Wen Jiabao, is getting a bit queasy about his country having half its $2 trillion in currency reserves be US government debt. Wen said this at a news conference after China’s annual legislative session – “We have made a huge amount of loans to the United States. Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. To be honest, I’m a little bit worried…. I would like to call on the United States to honor its words, stay a credible nation and ensure the safety of Chinese assets.”
The Obama administration is hoping to finance its massive increases in spending through continued sale of those instruments. There’s two problems. First, the publicly-held portion of the debt is expected to double to something north of $22 trillion in the next 10 years. Given the expected anemic growth in the economy, that would put the debt over 100% of the GDP. Second, Social Security is expected to start running in the red inside of 10 years, which means all that loan paper that makes up the Social Security “Trust Fund” will start to be called to make up for the shortfalls. Meanwhile, nothing’s being done about it.
That isn’t exactly a recipe for guaranteed payback of issued debt. It’s a sad day when Communists understand the debt market better than the Gorons in DC.
Dan Collins has decreed today to be National Iowahawk Day. That’s right; we’re celebrating the best humor on the Web.
Some other people are able to at least try and match Iowahawk’s genius; I simply marvel at it. If I were healthier, I’d probably make my way to Meier’s Tavern in Glenview, IL at 8:30 tonight.
Earlier this week, President Obama said that the United States should open discussions with the Taliban. You know, the folks who find honor killings and the mutilation of women fun sport. Today, Vice President Joe Biden attempted to explain the Administration’s new view on the Taliban:
Biden makes his insight sound as if it’s new, unique, somehow profound. However, we know Joe is a consummate plagiarist, prone to taking other people’s ideas and stating them as his own. His Taliban position is just another such plagiarized thought. Note here how way back in 1977, John Landis and David Zucker first submitted the idea of segmenting your opponents into identifiable groups:
I wonder if Joe Biden will be able to get the Taliban sorted into the right groups? My bet is that he’ll find some that “care” and “bomb” sorted into the wrong group, at least on his first try.
Some of the blogs I read, like Hot Air, Sister Toldjah, Melissa Clouthier and The World According to Nick, have set up a “headlines” section, where they post headline links to news stories and articles they find interesting, but don’t necessarily have the time to do a full-blown post. Since the lengthy Scrambles are just too much work, I have been mulling using a “headlines” section as a replacement.
I want to be able to have comments on those headlines, so using a third-party service like Nick does is pretty much out. For a couple of technical reasons, I don’t really want to put the headlines into the same database as the rest of the blog content, so I wanted to have it as its own blog like Hot Air. One of the neat tricks that Hot Air does is allow a single login for both the main blog and the headlines, and that’s where I started running into problems.
I attempted to tie the user tables of the nascient “headlines” blog to those of my test blog (which, while being on a subdirectory of this place, is on a different database), and I just couldn’t get that to work properly. I ended wiping out that blog and the tables it created in the test blog database. At the same time, I was trying out a different mobile theme plugin on the test blog. Between the two things I was trying to do, I somehow hosed that blog, with that mobile theme being forced in IE even after the “force theme” checkmark was unchecked (necessating a cookie/cache clearing), and then all the page/post links attempting to find its equivalent here. That got fixed through brute force (i.e. an elimination of that plugin and then a reinstall of the WP files).
However, as that got fixed, Shoebox and I both lost access to the admin pages here. There was nothing that should’ve been affected on this blog, as the test blog is in its own directory and its own database. After failing to find a more-elegant fix, I had to reinstall the WP files here as well.
Oh well; life goes on.
I’m still well under the weather, so all I’ve got is some rare acoustic Jimi Hendrix…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-4NuPDpvgc[/youtube]
There’s enough out there, so please share with the class.
Former Fed Chairman, Alan Greenspan has been getting more and more vociferous in his defense that his easy interest policies, post tech wreck were not responsible for the housing bubble that led to our current wreck. In an article by Reuters, Greenspan said:
“Between 2002 and 2005, home mortgage rates led U.S. home price change by 11 months. This correlation between home prices and mortgage rates was highly significant, and a far better indicator of rising home prices than the fed-funds rate.”
and
Greenspan wrote that “it was indeed lower interest rates that spawned the speculative euphoria. However, the interest rate that mattered was not the federal-funds rate,” adding that U.S. mortgage rates’ linkage to short-term rates had been close for decades.
However, the article goes on to say that the Fed should have had some inkling that there was an issue as early as 2004:
The Federal Reserve became aware of the disconnect between monetary policy and mortgage rates when the latter failed to respond as expected to the Fed tightening in mid-2004, said Greenspan, who was the Federal Reserve Chairman from 1987 to 2006.
Wow, oh Al is certainly using some challenging language there. Let me see if I can decipher it.
If I put Al’s defense into straight English it would looks something like this:
Between 2002 and 2005 home price increases were driven by low mortgage interest rates. However, the low mortgage interest rates were not caused by the low fed-funds rate. Rather, mortgage rates had always been driven by short term interest rates.
My first response is Huh? Has Al finally crossed into the final mental frontier? What does Al believe drives short term rates? You guessed it, Fed-fund rates or a proxy for them, the prime rate.
Look at the attach graph. It’s rough but you’ll get the idea. I’ve plotted the average mortgage rate, the fed-funds rate and Treasury rates at three different maturities. The graph starts in January, 1998 and goes through February of 2009.
Here’s what you note:
Going into the tech wreck as interest rates hit their peak (late 2000), all of the Treasury rates had fallen below the Fed Funds rate. Note that this same phenomena occurs in the January, 2007 time frame also, nothing to see here. Note also that the mortgage rates were nominally above the fed-funds rate at both of these times.
Now, look at the trough between January, 2002 and late 2004. While the shorter term Treasuries dipped with the fed-funds rate, the 30 yr and the mortgages dipped far less. During this time frame there was a significant and unusual spread that lending institutions were making in that while they were borrowing at something close to the fed-funds rate they were lending at the much higher mortgage rate. This increased spread is what allowed significant money to be made in mortgages during this time. It was also this spread, additional profit to various institutions, that was used to allow aggressively bought down “teaser rates”, no payments for the first X months and other promotional offers to get people to purchase mortgages.
Another thing that changes during this “trough time” was the dramatic increase in sub-prime or Alt-A mortgages. These mortgages became a higher and higher percentage of all mortgages during this time peaking at 13.4% of total loans in 2006. These loans became available because the significant spread that lenders were making on loans allowed them to leverage it by taking on even riskier loans. The fact was that they were making enough on all the other loans, because the Fed had reduced rates, that it allowed them to take the additional risk. As you well know, these sub-prime loans are a big portion of the bubble pop that has us where we are at.
Finally, Greenspan’s notion that the housing prices weren’t driven by the fed-funds because mortgage rates follow short term rates and didn’t this time is nonsense. Think back during this time. If you wanted a mortgage, you were often waiting weeks if not months to get the mortgage completed. Why? Because the rates were low enough, as low as they had been for a generation, to get all the business they needed to keep busy. The mortgage rates didn’t need to go any lower than they were because they were getting all the business they could handle. They had found the perfect spot where in economic terms they were receiving the highest marginal value for each additional unit (mortgage) they produced. One may ask why, in a capitalistic system, there wasn’t competition to drive the rates lower when the margins were so high? The answer is that with Fannie and Freddie controlling 90% of the secondary mortgage market, there really isn’t true competition in the mortgage market.
Sorry Al. Just because you didn’t see the same trend as the historical trend doesn’t make it untrue. While I didn’t always agree with your actions, I do believe you were a public servant in the best sense of that phrase. Stop with the attempt at revisionism. You had a number of years of great success but in this case Al, you blew it.
Yesterday, the first committee hearing was held in the Senate. You can watch the video and see how the deck was stacked in favor of FOCA.
As a bit of an aside, why is it that the left demands choice when it comes to the killing of infants, removing oppressive dictators and spending taxpayer money but not when it comes to the thugery of unions?
I’ve always had an afinity for one of Rodney Dangerfield, maybe because like him, I “get no respect”. After watching the video, I was reminded of one of Rodney’s most memorable lines:
I went to a union rally the other night, and a Senate hearing broke out.
Shoebox wrote back in the immediate wake of the November election that there was no difference between 57 Democrats in the Senate and 60. Something that John Hawkins tweeted today reminded me of that: “The GOP’s leadership in the Senate is utterly failing. They haven’t stopped ANYTHING yet and Lamar Alexander voted for the Omnibus bill.”
I have decided to run with that and see just how big a failure that has been. The Senate has taken 96 votes in this session of Congress. There were 14 votes on items supported by the Democratic leadership (majority leader Harry Reid, majority whip Dick Durbin, vice chair Chuck Schumer and secretary Patty Murray) that required a 3/5ths majority, and thus could theoretically been stopped by the Republicans. Depending on the day, they needed not only their entire caucus that was present, but also between 2 and 8 “Republicans”. Let’s review the record:
As stated above, I consider one of the votes (vote 35) a bipartisan measure. Another 3 votes were essentially purely procedural (votes 1, 4 and 65). That leaves 10 meaningful places the “Republicans” could have stopped the Dingy One. 9 times, they failed.
So, who were the big failures? Specter and Snowe lead the pack at 9, but I give the edge to Specter for his attempt to make the total failure rate 100%. Collins isn’t too far behind at 8. Bond and Murkowski each bolted 4 times. Hatch and Lugar departed 3 times apiece. Alexander, who is supposed to be one of the “leaders”, was among the multiple offenders. In all, 29 of the 41 members caved at least once on a critical vote, and only 9 didn’t cave at all.
In early January, then-PEBO had his staff deliver a white paper to provide economic justification for the stimulus bill. As you might remember, one of the key issues for putting the stimulus in place was that it was going to dramatically reduce job loss. In fact, the argument was that the stimulus would not only reduce job loss but quickly put us into the position of lowering the unemployment rate. PEBO’s staff put together the following chart to show how unemployment with the stimulus would compare to unemployment if we just left things alone:
What you can see here is that in early January, PEBO believed that without the stimulus package, unemployment would peak at a bit over 9% and then recede. However, with the humungous, pork laden, we’ll pay for it forever stimulus package, unemployment would peak around 8% and make a rapid descent.
Today, American Pravda notes that 4 states have hit double digit unemployment rates. That’s not good. However, that’s not the important part of the article. Here’s the money line from the article:
Some economists now predict the U.S. unemployment rate will hit 10 percent by year-end, and peak at 11 percent or higher by the middle of 2010.
Barely two months ago, Obama and his ilk saw unemployment capping at 9% if they did nothing. Now that they’ve done a major something, they’ve pushed unemployment to a potential of 11%!
Obama had better hope that these economists are wrong. If not, the growing skepticism from all sides of the political spectrum, will quickly turn into a full scale rout!
You may not be aware of it but there is a global warming conference going on this week. The International Conference on Climate Change is in New York. You probably haven’t heard about the conference because it is specifically for skeptics of global warming. You know, the folks who also believe that the Earth is flat and at the center of the universe?
Ronald Bailey from Reason magazine is covering the conference and has a recap of the presentations here. Included in yesterday’s presentations was the following scientific data:
Reiter pointed out that many of the claims that climate change will increase disease can be attributed to an incestuous network of just nine authors who write scientific reviews and cite each other’s work. None are actual on-the-ground disease researchers and many of them write the IPCC disease analyses. “These are people who know absolutely bugger about dengue, malaria or anything else,” said Reiter.
Tropical North Atlantic SST [sea surface temperature] has exhibited a warming trend of [about] ) 0.3 °C over the last 100 years; whereas Atlantic hurricane activity has not exhibited trend-like variability, but rather distinct multidecadal cycles….The possibility exists that the unprecedented activity since 1995 is the result of a combination of the multidecadal-scale changes in the Atlantic SSTs (and vertical shear) along with the additional increase in SSTs resulting from the long-term warming trend. It is, however, equally possible that the current active period (1995-2000) only appears more active than the previous active period (1926-1970) due to the better observational network in place.
Goldenberg completed his remarks with:
“Not a single scientist at the hurricane center believes that global warming has had any measurable impact on hurricane numbers and strength,”
Yesterday, President Obama announced that he would be lifting the ban on Federal funding for stem cell research that had been implemented by President Bush. In his statement describing the reason for his decision, President Obama said:
But let’s be clear: Promoting science isn’t just about providing resources — it’s also about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about letting scientists like those who are here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it’s inconvenient — especially when it’s inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda — and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology. (emphasis mine)
I have to say, this is the first statement I can completely get behind President Obama on. We should allow science to operate “free from manipulation or coercion.” We should follow the facts and findings and “listen to what they tell us, even when it’s inconvenient.” That leaves me with just two questions for President Obama:
All animals created equally?
I was hoping to get a few things done, like a “headlines” section and a slight redesign (necessary for said headlines section), in time for my 100,000th visitor (who came in just before noon), but I just haven’t been feeling too great. I do want to thank each of you who stumbled into this place the almost-2 years that I’ve been keeping stats, and the over-3 years total that I’ve been running it.
I’ve got a couple of ideas for posts floating around, but I need a clearer head to actually post on them. I haven’t decided quite what to think about CRG’s announcement of a Recall Doyle effort yet; I’ve heard some good arguments both for and against. I still don’t quite know what to make of Mark Verhalen’s write-in bid for Oak Creek mayor after he fell short in the primary. There’s also thousands of posts from hundreds of blogs in the overstuffed feed reader.
Oh well; I need something to eat, and then drink. See you at Papa’s.
Thanks to Fred for providing me the screen cap, and thanks to the gang at Blogs.4Bauer for giving me the keys to the place…
Last week President Obama ignored political decorum and basically ignored the leader of America’s greatest ally, Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister. The reason given for Obama’s lack of interest was unique in the annals of Presidential history: he was too tired!
But Washington figures with access to Mr Obama’s inner circle explained the slight by saying that those high up in the administration have had little time to deal with international matters, let alone the diplomatic niceties of the special relationship.
This weekend, it was announced that President Obama is now ready to open discussions with factions of the Taliban:
They are the sworn enemies of the United States – the fighters who openly support America’s enemy number one – Osama bin Laden.
And President Obama, who is now reviewing his war strategy in Afghanistan, says it may be time to talk to them.
Aboard Air Force One, he told the New York Times, we’re not winning now.
This is the same President who during the campaign last year stated that he would be willing to meet with Iran’s leadership without any preconditions.
Weird huh? A President who snubs his closest ally but is willing to discuss surrender with some of the vilest people on earth at the drop of a hanky?
Not really.
Chris from Racine posted on this article that makes the claim that Obama is a narcissist. The read is fascinating. See if any of this rings a bell?
– Have a messianic-cosmic vision of himself and his life and his “mission”.
– Sets ever more complex rules in a convoluted world of grandiose fantasies with its own language (jargon)
– Displays false modesty and unctuous “folksiness” but unable to sustain these behaviors (the persona, or mask) for long. It slips and the true Obama is revealed: haughty, aloof, distant, and disdainful of simple folk and their lives.
– Sublimates aggression and holds grudges.
– Behaves as an eternal adolescent (e.g., his choice of language, youthful image he projects, demands indulgence and feels entitled to special treatment, even though his objective accomplishments do not justify it)
I’ve worked with a couple of folks who were text book narcissists. One of their most destructive traits was the ability to treat the same person as complete scum or tolerable, depending upon whether they needed anything from that individual. Note this from the article:
Idealization or devaluation – The narcissist instantly idealizes or devalues his interlocutor. This depends on how the narcissist appraises the potential his converser has as a Narcissistic Supply Source. The narcissist flatters, adores, admires and applauds the “target” in an embarrassingly exaggerated and profuse manner – or sulks, abuses, and humiliates her.
A narcissist moves from complete disinterest or even humiliation of an individual that doesn’t feed their narcissist needs to near adulation or idealization of the individual who they believe can feed those needs. In Obama’s case, people like Gordon Brown, individuals who are already his ally, provide no feeding of Obama’s narcissistic need. However, in the case of Iran’s leadership and the Taliban, if Obama were able to score political points it would feed his narcissism in an immense way. The other reason I’m convinced that this explains the difference in how Obama has handled the varying foreign issues is this piece, the most troubling trait, from the article:
Ignores data that conflict with his fantasy world, or with his inflated and grandiose self-image.
In Obama’s mind there is no problem negotiating with terrorists because he has disassociated himself from the possibilityof bad guys causing bad things to happen. In Obama’s mind he nourishes his narcissism by simply making the attempt. To Obama its “Heads I win, Tails you lose!”
I hope you’ll indulge me a little “24” news, mostly because my Gravatar is Big Bad Bill Buchanan. He made the ultimate sacrifice so that President Allison Taylor would get rescued from General Juma and company.
Rest in peace, Bill.
For those of you who weren’t paying attention, Amanda Carpenter got snapped up by The Washington Times. She posted her first The Back Story video today (you may have to scroll around; there isn’t a separate link for TBS yet), and she explains the Morton’s Fork that was thrust at Alaska Governor Sarah Palin – appoint either an envirowhacko or a supporter of infanticide to Alaska’s Supreme Court.
While the Left loves it when a plan comes together, I’m sure they hate it when things blow up.
If the 2nd Tuesday of the month is around the corner, it’s Drinking Right time. It’s at the usual time (7 pm, and that’s Daylight Slavings Time) and the usual place (Papa’s Social Club, 7718 W Burleigh in Milwaukee).
I should be completely sober by then, so be there or be nowhere.
I will be there at 8 o’clock Central. Will you? Did you remember to move your clocks ahead so you won’t run out of time?
One last bit of narcissism from me…
When will this place get over 100,000 visitors?
Up to 1 answer(s) was/were allowed
Total Voters: 2
Loading ...Conn Carroll of The Heritage Foundation runs the numbers on the cap-and-trade -tax scam that the Obama administration and the Spendocrats are pushing:
– $650 billion from carbon credit fees this year
– $150 billion of that going to “alternative energy production”
– $500 billion of that going to the return of welfare
Conn goes on to point out that it’s a low-ball figure. Under the less-expensive Lieberman-Warner scheme, the 8-year cost would be somewhere north of $1,622,848,000,000.
Don’t forget that both Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel have admitted that cap-and-trade -tax is meant to cripple the energy market to the tune of $700-$1,400 per family per year.
I don’t know what happened to Shoebox’s post on this, so I best fix that…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFpU5KSI3TU[/youtube]
(via House Republican Leader John Boehner’s YouTube channel)
It’s important to note that the secret ballot for unionization elections was put in place to protect the union organizers from retaliation by business owners. If it weren’t so serious, it would be funny that it is now the anti-union forces are the ones that need the protection of the secret ballot.
I wonder if the ObamiNation Economic Team has this as their theme song…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLBpLz5ELPI[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QGjhP5fcEs[/youtube]
I almost forgot how long these things take.
I figure today needs an epic…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZiDME3bajU[/youtube]
What’s better than an epic multi-part Scramble?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVS3WNt7yRU[/youtube]
Part two will be up shortly. I hope you left room for dessert.
Geithner is finally going after the plan I suggested here. With the time stamp, perhaps I could get the $420 Billion?
H/T Greg Mankiw
First, from Rasmussen Reports:
Thirty-one percent (31%) Strongly Disapprove to give Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of +8.
That’s the lowest approval rating yet for President Obama. Also noteworthy is that on the day of his inauguration, 40% of the population was “in the middle.” Today, that number has dropped to 30%. I can tell you that folks aren’t moving to the “Strongly Approve” category!
Then, there’s this, also from Rasmussen Reports:
Investor confidence has fallen to a new all-time low as expectations of future economic performance continue to decline.
while:
The assessment of current economic conditions fell 28 points between the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the inauguration (from 89.6 to 61.7). It has fallen another nine points since then to 52.3.
Seventy-five percent (75%) of investors now say the economy is getting worse. That’s an increase from 58% since Lehman Brothers collapsed last September to begin the financial industry meltdown. On the day that President Obama was inaugurated, 63% of investors thought the economy was getting worse.
So the current assessment has dropped by 9 points but the despondency over the look into the future has increased 12%. Somebody want to argue again how at least in investors eyes, President Obama isn’t making matters worse?
And finally, you know it’s bad when American Pravda begins to question who owns what part of the problem:
Although the administration likes to say it “inherited” the recession and trillion-dollar deficits, the economic wreckage has worsened on Obama’s still-young watch.
Every day, the economy is becoming more and more an Obama economy.
Yes, yes it is.
As Allan Sinai, chief global economist for Decision Economics, a Boston-area consulting firm notes in the AP article, we clearly have the right President and administration to handle our economic challenges:
At this stage, there is no easy answer, no easy way out. It’s a question of how we fumble through.
It would be hard to identify a single action the Obama administration has taken that has improved the lives of the people they were elected to serve. However, if excellence in fumbling will determine how we will come through the economic turmoil than I for one, will rest easy. Nobody knows how to run the fumblerooski better than Obama!
Update 9:08 AM – Hmmmm, I won’t take one day as a given however, President Obama’s approval rating acheived a new low in this mornings Rasmussen daily tracking poll. Any one day is subject to a myriad of issues. A high one day could be a low the next and vice versa. However, the trend is not PEBO’s friend at this time.
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