Got this from Tertium Quids.  This is REALLY GREAT!  What is shocking is that CNBC let this guy keep going.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1039849853

A glimmer of hope.  Watch it before NBC takes it down.

Thank God Al Qaeda doesn’t represent the Muslim world, I guess.

You know this isn’t the first time I’ve seen the phrase (or a reasonable facsimile):

…[P]olls show [Obama] is well liked throughout the Muslim world.

First, where are these polls? And second, what do any of these “Muslim World” respondents really know about Barack Obama, other than he has a name that more closely resembles theirs.

It would be almost like, if ten months ago, someone did a poll in the U.S. which said:

Whom do you prefer?

* Osama bin Laden
* Joe Smith

Who would win that poll, you think?

Some things NEVER change.

An interesting comparison between the new president elect and the current president of Taiwan, Ma Ying-jeou.

1. They are intelligent, smart and knowledgeable but often lack sound judgment, which comes with rich experience and repeated tests by trials of life.

Very Asian. Worth a read.

In Barack Obama’s cabinet.

My take: He’s way overqualified.  We need great minds doing science, not minding the bureaucracy.  It is a loss for academia, and may or may not be a gain for our government.

Obama’s best pick thus far, politically, by a long shot.  Much more outside of the box than, say Bill Richardson.  It is likely that Chu will not be making as much money at Energy as Blagojevich implied.  Again, politically, it is an amazing pick.  Time will tell how effective a brilliant mind like Chu can handle a mundane bureaucratic job like a cabinet position.

For attempting to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat. Wow! I’m apt to think this kind of thing happens all the time, has always been illegal, and never been prosecuted. The cynic in me wonders why, exactly, is it being prosecuted this time. One explanation is that Barack Obama wasn’t asked who his successor will be. This should grease the wheels for Jesse Jackson III in the Senate. Chicago style politics now has the authority of the FBI and Blagojevich forgot that the money goes up and the crap comes down.

At any rate, if this becomes prosecuted equally, then I have no problem with it and am glad that pay to play schemes are getting some much needed sunlight. Color me skeptical that that would happen.

Update:  Really looks like Blagojevich pressed his luck, and finally got a whammy.  The Chicago Tribune, which is about to go bankrupt, on Blagojevich.

UPDATE 2:  Yes, this may have paved the way for Jesse Jackson III.  That is, unless Jackson is implicated in agreeing to raise funds on behalf of Blagojevich.  Then I guess this would have the opposite effect.

One of the most valid complaints about the current administration is that it is woefully inadequate in communicating to the people. Granted, any GOP administration will have this problem ad infinitem, but there are some unmistakable lapses that any objective observer and even GOP partisans could notice.

“Mission Accomplished”?

One of the key themes of this administration has been to govern via crisis. If we didn’t attack Iraq soon we’d have cities under mushroom clouds, etc. Meanwhile, a real crisis starts hitting the country as early as 2007 and the response of this administration, and Ben Bernanke, has been to not register or acknowledge the problem in any meaningful way. Then, “BOOM”. CRISIS! Cue the Bullhorn, this time for Henry Paulson.

What kind of advice can a drug-addled lunatic like Raven give to Paulsen? Turns out, quite a lot. Raven is a wrestling savant, which is kind of like an idiot savant except far more idiotic, but with a knowledge of wrestling, and more importantly, conveying a life or death situation for a hero to an audience. Now that we know it’s fake, the wrestler must work that much harder to be convincing, that for maybe one second, this guy really is in danger…and that these guys really do hate each other, and that maybe I don’t know who will win this thing and which way will it go?

Here’s what Scott Levy (AKA: Raven) wrote about the wrestling business earlier this year; for a little context, the letter is part of a dialogue between Raven and another wrestler about how young wrestlers don’t “sell”, as in, when any move is performed, they act like it never happened.

He stated that these IWFs (Internet Wrestling Fans) are hurting the business and goes on to elaborate, that it is because they champion these non working cruiserweights who don’t sell and kill credibility. He claims they sell for eight seconds and stop, but I would venture to say that he is being exceedingly generous and three or four seconds is more likely. He also misses the boat by not mentioning that this supposed “selling” that they are doing is not actually selling. When they do stop running around, they go from registering to dying.

There is a whole entire range of emotion and body language on the selling scale that could be encapsulated let’s say for babyfaces as simply as 1)no selling, 2) registering, 3) selling a little, 4) selling some more, 5) selling a lot, 6) selling to the point of hopelessness for the fan that you will ever recover, 7)no hope of recovery,8)signs of life, 9)more signs of life, 10) the possibility that with enough fan encouragement, you can possibly turn this thing around, 11)fire, 12) more fire, 13)fighting back, 14) comeback, 15)the post comeback, pre-finish full body fire to signify to the people that you are back in control and the heel is gonna pay.

Henry Paulsen and the rest of this administration has gone from no selling to registering to dying. A few examples to illustrate:

On March 16th, here’s what Paulsen said,

“I have great, great confidence in our capital markets and in our financial institutions. Our financial institutions, banks and investment banks, are strong. Our capital markets are resilient. They’re efficient. They’re flexible.”

That’s an example of no selling. The banking system received a well deserved crack in the head, the government bails out an investment bank, and Paulsen runs around the ring doing cartwheels, saying how resilient the banking system is.

July 20th : “It’s a safe banking system, a sound banking system. Our regulators are on top of it. This is a very manageable situation.”

That is an example of registering. In July he acknowledges the problem, but dismisses it. That is like getting powerbombed, and being hurt for 10 seconds before getting up and doing the Hulk Hogan dance. It may be all fun and games for one night but it kills your long term credibility.

Because in this next quote Paulsen wanted and received $700 billion dollars in monopoly money, because, “I am convinced that this bold approach will cost American families far less than the alternative — a continuing series of financial institution failures and frozen credit markets unable to fund economic expansion,.”

And with that, he wants the fans, uh, rather, the taxpayers to bail him out. Previously, he wanted to reassure the fans that the American financial institutions were ok, they could handle this turmoil, because he and the administration felt this was a crisis of confidence, and to acknowledge any weakness would inspire a downward spiral. The media did no favors for GWB, that is true, but acknowledging some plain facts early, say, that banks are overleveraged, they could have gained some credibility. Instead, they chose to insult our intelligence and treat us like children. Any babyface (i.e. good guy wrestler) worth his salt would not ask the fans to step in and fight the heel (i.e. the bad guy) for him. But that’s exactly what Paulsen (and Bernanke) is asking us to do. And that is why, fair or not, the GOP is hurting so bad now. Their credibility is shot.

All this talk about Christians and Libertarians is window dressing. This arbitrary policy of not buying toxic assets, then buying all the toxic assets from Citibank, is part and parcel of what is wrong with this administration and the GOP in Washington.

“We don’t have a clue what to do, we’re making it all up as we go along. It’s a completely random crapshoot.  Literally, we just roll the dice or look at a magic 8 ball and pick.”

Unlike most everyone, who seems to buy into the hair on fire approach on this, I don’t think the American economy is at the “dying” stage.  Maybe at the “selling to the point of hopelessness” stage, but not dying, pin me, bail out all the banks stage.  Consider this, that 171 banks are troubled, at least according to FDIC.  Sounds alarming, but that is only 2% of the 8,384 banks in this country.  So there is still some fire left in this economy, to be sure.  Unfortunately for the GOP, Barack Obama (provided he doesn’t mess it up) will get all the credit for the “Signs of life” through the “Comeback” stage of this thing.  If he uses this crisis to enact onerous regulations on employment and increases wasteful government spending, it will be to his detriment, and push this economy further into the doldrums.  If he enacts modest banking reforms AND eliminates government guarantees of mortgage backed securities (he must do both or it won’t work) and brings home the troops on a good note, he may very well win reelection.  Moreover, he’ll deserve it.  Since is more prone to do the former, I will be stocking up on ammo and peanut butter.

If anyone yet doubts that Fascism comes from the left and not the right, one need look no further than the new Chief of Staff appointee for President-Elect Obama.  Rahm Emmanuel was quoted in 2006 as pushing for the same sort of “Civilian Force” that Barack Obama mentioned a couple of weeks ago that should be “just as well funded” as the military.

“Somewhere between the age of 18 to 25 you will do three months of training. You can do it at some point in your college time,” he said. “There can be nothing wrong with all Americans having a joint, similar experience of what we call civil defense training or civil service.”

Now those of you who think this is “fear-mongering” I will quote a prominent Democrat who recently said something along the lines of: “If it walks like a duck, and it talks like a duck…then it’s a Duck.”  And then please recall how this author’s position on the William Ayers’ association had nothing to do with Terrorism but instead with a radical view of the purpose of public education.

REQUIRING civil service from the youth of a country is a CORE TENET of Fascism, in EVERY CASE. Here’s the video:

Obama is of course “softening” the requirement on his “change.gov” website.  It used to read:

Originally, under the tab “America Serves,” Change.gov read, “President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in under served schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year,” the site announced.

But now the end of it instead reads:

“…developing a plan so that all college students who conduct 100 hours of community service receive a universal and fully refundable tax credit ensuring that the first $4,000 of their college education is completely free.”

So now instead of legally requiring students to participate, the Government would simply bribe them with cheaper education to participate.

Meanwhile, the FEATURED ARTICLE on Wikipedia today is the “anti-tobacco movement in Nazi Germany”.  This, of course, was the number one progressive chink in Mike Huckabee’s armor, so perhaps if he was the President-elect and started pushing for a no-smoking ban, then someone somewhere would be drawing similar comparisons, but nevertheless…there is no conceivable way for any Federal Agency to develop or enforce a “Civilian Defense Corps” without a MONUMENTAL and…yes…Fascistic, overreach in Government power and influence.  The obvious question is: what are they going to learn, and who is going to teach it to them.

Should we be scared?  Yes.  We should be.  This is where we have to start asking, “What kind of change?” A question that might have been asked more appropriately about 10 days ago.

I wish I was making it up.  Really, it sounds like a parody, doesn’t it?

The whoppers get pretty big, but I’ll try to dilute it with some reason.

Here’s the Thesis: The New Deal wasn’t big enough.

And the reason for F.D.R.’s limited short-run success, which almost undid his whole program, was the fact that his economic policies were too cautious.

This is quite flabbergasting, to be honest. The New Deal was a massive, massive undertaking.  Keep in mind Roosevelt had already raised taxes to 90% on the top bracket and doubled the national debt to unprecedented levels.  This is the first time I’ve read a serious economist say with a straight face that the New Deal wasn’t Keynesian enough, which is equivalent to saying the Nazi’s would have won the war if they only defeated France faster, or were more fascist.

Doubling the National Debt isn’t sufficient for economic recovery, for true progress you need to increase debt six-fold. This is Krugman’s argument. This is not a joke.

Krugman doesn’t elaborate because to do so would reveal how untenable his proposal is.  Krugman touts FDIC, and that is one positive aspect of the New Deal, but the package as a whole was a loser for the American economy during the 30s.

Of course I say that because I am part of a massive right wing think tank that is called Logipundit.  And, according to Krugman, that is enough to discount the argument.

Now, there’s a whole intellectual industry, mainly operating out of right-wing think tanks, devoted to propagating the idea that F.D.R. actually made the Depression worse. So it’s important to know that most of what you hear along those lines is based on deliberate misrepresentation of the facts. The New Deal brought real relief to most Americans.

Now, my brother would call that an ad hominem argument. One of those wacky think tanks is the economics department of UCLA. Let’s see how they “deliberately misrepresented the facts”.

Using data collected in 1929 by the Conference Board and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Cole and Ohanian were able to establish average wages and prices across a range of industries just prior to the Depression. By adjusting for annual increases in productivity, they were able to use the 1929 benchmark to figure out what prices and wages would have been during every year of the Depression had Roosevelt’s policies not gone into effect. They then compared those figures with actual prices and wages as reflected in the Conference Board data.

In the three years following the implementation of Roosevelt’s policies, wages in 11 key industries averaged 25 percent higher than they otherwise would have done, the economists calculate. But unemployment was also 25 percent higher than it should have been, given gains in productivity.

Their conclusion:

“President Roosevelt believed that excessive competition was responsible for the Depression by reducing prices and wages, and by extension reducing employment and demand for goods and services,” said Cole, also a UCLA professor of economics. “So he came up with a recovery package that would be unimaginable today, allowing businesses in every industry to collude without the threat of antitrust prosecution and workers to demand salaries about 25 percent above where they ought to have been, given market forces. The economy was poised for a beautiful recovery, but that recovery was stalled by these misguided policies.”

But let’s get back to Krugman…

What saved the economy, and the New Deal, was the enormous public works project known as World War II, which finally provided a fiscal stimulus adequate to the economy’s needs.

Whew, so the conclusion is WWII solved the depression. This is pretty much what I’ve heard growing up in history class and talking to the old folks. The thing is a war economy is not the same as a peace time economy. Building a new school or hospital, or roads, will not incite the passions of the citizens to allocate their wealth and energy accordingly as readily as 353 kamikaze pilots. FDR was as shrewd as he was totalitarian, if he could have had the political capital to expand the debt further without a war, he would have. Also, in a war economy, bullets, bombs, and bodies are expendable until one side wins. It is a real existential crisis that no one in Western Civilization in the last three generations can even fathom. You see, Ben Bernanke, Henry Paulson, and Paul Krugman don’t know what a real crisis looks like, and since this is the worst things look to them, so it must be a crisis.

Unemployment dropped in the forties because every man of age (and some a bit younger) was in uniform fighting for our very survival. They fought because we were attacked on our soil and we didn’t want German U-boats patrolling our coast and threatening our families. Nearly a half million died for that purpose, not to enhance Roosevelt’s legacy. The conceit of this man to cast WWII as a public works program, a mere extension of the WPA is intellectually bankrupt and morally repugnant.

Howard Dean comes from the Shaolin side of the tracks, and I’m more of a Wu-Tang Killah B, but I gotta give some respect to the guy.  He had used some fancy swordplay to inflict heavy damage on the Clinton candidacy and wrestle away the democratic party from the DLC.  I don’t admire the Shaolin and don’t agree with their ways, but I respect a sword drenched with warm blood.  Dean will be remembered as the Goldwater to Obama’s Reagan, provided it is a Bizarro Reagan that destroys rather than grows our economy.