One Trillion Dollars

(orig)(Jonah Goldberg)

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Santelli Gets To Obama

Robert Gibbs, the partially sentient White House Press Secretary, lashed out in an ad hominem attack at Rick Santelli.

My, what thin skins these Obamians have.

Mr Santelli had the audacity to say that if the Keynesian multipliers were above 1.0, that is, if every dollar of government spending yielded more than a dollar in private sector growth, then why do we need to worry any more? Just keep spending, and spending, and spending as we have been, and everything would be fine.

But the fact that no sane policy maker would do that, shows that the "multiplier" is not above 1.0. Instinctively, we know that to be so.

In fact, the multiplier is not a constant number at all, but a variable depending on a number of factors we don't even fully understand, and cannot predict. The multiplier is a random function, rather than a constant. The effect of government spending is not linear, but decreases after some maximum point.

But Mr. Gibbs did not address that point. He merely attacked an American citizen who dared to speak out, to raise his head up from his miserable work to question the One.

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Of Envy and Admiration

Sometimes people are successful at what they do. Others are not. Sometimes people succeed, sometimes they fail. Having failed, we learn (or not) and try again.

When we see other people who are more successful, we have really only two options, though a third lingers: we can resent them, or we can emulate them. The lingering third is what most people end up doing, which is observing from afar and doing nothing. On some level we pass judgment, either in favor of or against the more successful. From the corrupt.org link above:

Some people assume that if any person they don't like is more successful than someone they like it is primarily or solely due to moral inferiority - a greater willingness to lie, cheat and steal. This mindset is common in underground subcultures, though some mainstream progressives also think this way. A more advanced version of this mentality adds the assumption that anyone who is successful in the "wrong" areas - for example dating or country music - must be a despicable and morally inferior individual.

There is a danger in giving up, in deciding that your sweat and diligence are no match for the world. But there is no higher virtue than working, being paid for it, and saving for a better future in which you no longer work for money, but money works for you. That, and not mere home ownership, is the American Dream.

When people decide that the only way they can get ahead is to lie, cheat, and steal their way to the top, they have one of two options: do it themselves, or vote for it. We call the first group criminals, and the second group liberals.

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Not that there's anything wrong with that.

W/t Gateway Pundit

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Fisking the White House Bailout of GM and Chrysler

President Bush has decided to give some number of billions of dollars of TARP money, which was supposed to be used for financial firms, to two failing car companies.

In doing so, he said ... well, let us fisk, shall we?

Bush said in normal economic circumstances

What are "normal" circumstances? Is there any set of circumstances that we could call "normal" that would cause companies the size of GM and Chrysler to fail, while other companies are not failing? Or would the fact of two of these companies failing be considered evidence that circumstances were not "normal"?

he would not intervene to save the automakers

Intervening is one word, "meddling in private business by Executive fiat to favor two companies over their competitors with an unconstitutional bill of attainder" describes it better. And saving the automakers may be what he says he's doing, but it's really his own image he's worried about. "Something must be done, this is something, therefor this must be done." These steps are neither necessary nor sufficient to save the automakers from anything except a painful, newsworthy Christmas. In these times of pain avoidance, Mr. Bush is just doing the expedient thing: borrowing money to loan to people who have no clear means to pay it back.

but "in the midst of a financial crisis

The financial crisis has very little to do with the automakers problems, except that their problems were caused primarily by the run-up in oil prices, making people unwilling to buy inefficient but high-markup trucks and SUVs that they had previously wanted as toys and status symbols.

To the extent that the financial crisis is a cause of the GM and Chrysler problems, it's because they have continued to make ever-more-expensive vehicles believing that people would continue to buy them on credit. When people suddenly became credit-wary, realizing the foolishness of taking a loan against a depreciating asset, the car makers were sunk.

But now that people have realized that it's foolish to pay interest on something which is losing value, no amount of Federal credit assistance is going to rescue the car companies.

"and a recession,

Again, would there ever be a car maker failure during some other economic phase?

"allowing the U.S. auto industry to collapse

The collapse bogeyman, too big to fail, etc. If these companies cannot make it, they should be allowed to fail now before we dump huge amounts of money we don't have into propping them up. We will be paying the interest on the debt we incur propping up the failing companies long after they go under anyway.

"is not a responsible course of action."

Saying it doesn't make it so. The responsible thing is to let people face the consequences of their actions. Call it compassion, call it anything else, but responsible it is not.

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TPM Watch: Josh Marshall is half right

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo writes that Democrats may use their majority to do away with the filibuster in the Senate. I agree with Marshall that they should not do that, that having a minority with some power to act is good for the republic.

But then, there is this:

Finally, this issue now goes well beyond the fate of the American automakers. Senate Republicans are following this course for three key reasons -- first is payback against a major industrial union; second is payback against states like Michigan and Ohio who have been moving away from the GOP; third is the desire to advantage Japanese auto manufacturers who disproportionately do business in their southern states.

What even the White House can see at this point is that having one or more of these companies go under right now will rapidly accelerate the economic crisis, and in unpredictable ways.

I don't think Josh understands Republicans at all, or perhaps prefers his narratives to be untarnished with the stain of reality. There is no "payback" involved, either against a labor union or especially against the voters of any State. That's just stupid. Payback?

This is about Republican Senators standing up for capitalism and against socialism. If you want to be cynical, they're establishing their conservative cred -- pandering to the base, you would say.

And the last paragraph is a repeat of the false dilemma: the choice is bailout versus Chapter 11 restructuring, not going under.

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Capitalist Victory Over Unions, Obama, Bush, Detroit, Democrats and Media on Bailout

Despite strong support among Democrats in Congress and the media, Republicans led by Senators Corker and Shelby won a key vote Thursday evening, with support for capitalism showing renewed strength in the against the socialist forces led by lame duck President George Bush, former Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and Harry Reid (D-NV) in the Senate.

Both the United Auto Workers (UAW) labor union and the Detroit auto makers supported a plan by Mr. Bush and the Democrats to loan approximately $15 billion to the failing Detroit auto industry. The plan would have called for bankruptcy-like changes for the troubled companies, as well as the appointment of a government ombudsman or "car tzar" to approve all major decisions for the companies accepting the money.

Negotiations failed when the labor union, whose workers receive over $70 per hour in benefits, refused to take a pay cut to allow the plan to go forward.

The public was overall against the plan, despite intense support from the news media. Media reports portrayed the total collapse of the American automotive industry as the alternative to this plan.

Former Illinois Senator Barack Obama (D-Chicago), who resigned last month amid the corruption scandal which has so far resulted in an indictment against his close allies Antoin "Tony" Rezko and Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (D-Chicago) was not directly involved in the negotiations.

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Bush Forces Congress to Fail, Teases Them About It

Having once again outmaneuvered Speaker-In-Law Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), President Bush then took Congress to task for having been outmaneuvered.

Daniel Ikenson gives the backstory on the failure of the automaker bailout, describing how the Democrats are split between the trade unionists and the greenies, led by Henry Waxman (D-CA):

First, Treasury secretary Henry Paulson claimed he was unauthorized to allocate any of the $700 billion to the automakers under the TARP law. Congress didn’t challenge that interpretation too vehemently, and set out to rewrite the law to specifically authorize $25 billion for Detroit. But the White House indicated it wouldn’t sign that legislation, but that it would go along with a bill to redirect the $25 billion already authorized under the energy bill for Detroit to “retool” its plants to produce higher-mileage vehicles. This seemed the more workable political solution, until the Waxman faction objected and mobilized. Prospects for a deal went south after that.

Now the President, in his weekly radio address, chides Pelosi and Reid for failing to bail out Detroit:

The funds in question were originally limited to helping the carmakers develop energy efficient vehicles. The plan Bush favored would have removed those restrictions and instead provided the money as a straight loan to the auto manufacturers.

“This proposal earned support from both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill. Unfortunately, the leadership in Congress adjourned without even allowing this measure to come up for a vote,” Bush said.

Pelosi and Reid wanted to give part of the $700 billion Paulson bailout to the companies employing the United Auto Workers, a key Democrat constituency. President Bush had Paulson decline. The hapless legislators tried to rewrite the bailout, but the President let them know he'd veto it. But he'd be happy to let them take the environmental strings off money they'd already promised the car companies.

But the auto makers shot themselves in the foot by showing, with their decision to fly three individual private jets to Washington, that they weren't doing all they could to help themselves. With that publicity, there was no way Congress would give them a handout, even one they'd already promised. President Bush knows how to swing a wedge.

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Soakitalism

What you get when government takes ownership in companies to "save" them.

w/t FrankJ

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Health Care Is Not A Right

If health care is a right, then anyone who knows you lack perfect health is obligated, on some level, to provide you with care.

Bad personal hygiene, grooming, and sexual repression are all negative health factors.

So if you need a haircut, manicure, or sex, any person who is skilled in the work of caring for you in that area is obligated to provide you with service.

"But", you say, "it's our right to health care, not that stuff you mentioned."

OK, so you know a doctor, and he knows you are sick. If health care is a right, he is obligated to provide it, for free. He is your health care slave.

"But no", you say, "he deserves to be paid".

How much? Minimum wage?

"Well, clearly, at least minimum wage."

Suppose he wants more, say, to care for your annoying case of tuberculosis than for my pleasant tinnitis.

"Why should he get more?", you ask.

Well, I suppose if health care is a right, he should be required to charge all patients the same.

So if he wants more than minimum wage, what are his options?

"He can petition the government for more money."

And if he finds he can make more delivering pizzas, should he do that?

"Well, I suppose he could do that."

But health care is your right, which he would be violating.

"Yes, he must be a doctor, and not a pizza man."

Suppose he wishes to sleep. You said he should get minimum wage, so should he also not have an 8-hour day, or 40-hour week?

"Yes, clearly."

What if a patient becomes ill and our doctor has worked his 8 hours. Should he treat the patient?

"Of course. The patient has rights."

What if he's worked 80 hours in a week already. Should he go home to bed?

"Not if there are patients to serve."

In that case, I think we must repeal the 13th Amendment.

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The $700 Billion Paulson Scam

The $700 Billion Henry Paulson claimed he needed to rescue the financial sector wasn't necessary. As proof, I point out that it hasn't been used.

This governmental manhandling of the economy is going to lead to nowhere good.

I agree with Maggie Gallagher: No More Bailouts.

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Socialist Democrats Feud With Marxist Democrats Over Power

News outlets are reporting a vicious fight in the wake of Democrats seizing power over Republicans in the recent US elections. The socialist wing of the party, led by the aging Steny Hoyer (D-MD), vows to defeat the marxist faction led by former homosexual pimp Barney Frank (D-MA) and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in order to keep the radicals from destroying the nation too quickly.

Hoyer, remaining alert at the twilight of his career, still boasted of his hold on the majority of newly elected Congressmen. Voters are more interested in implementing the ideas of Karl Marx in a practical way than in finding enlightenment through ideological purity, Hoyer noted. "The 33 new Members of Congress coming to Washington to swell our side of the aisle are pragmatic, not dogmatic."

It is not yet clear if Hoyer retains the ability or the will to stand up to Pelosi and powerful incoming Executive branch official Barack Obama (D-IL). During the campaign, Pelosi and Hoyer squabbled over the role superdelegates should play in selecting the Democrat nominee for Obama's position. The Hoyer camp eventually won out. As Hoyer urged, the superdelegates disregarded the popular vote to select Obama over defeated socialist wing candidate Hillary Clinton (D-NY).

Speaker Pelosi argued during the campaign that after being vital to his selection for office, she and her marxists would be more bipartisan and ally with the more conservative socialist wing in support of Obama.

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Obama Thanks McCain After Electoral Rout

Controversy continues to dog President-elect Barack Obama following a meeting with yet another vanquished and discredited political foe. Concerns that Obama will use a new Civilian Security Force to solidify and expand his regime continue grow, though fear of publicly criticizing the embattled Chicago politician is as strong as ever.

According the the Associated Press, Obama and Senator John McCain (R-AZ) today plotted "to fix up the country", as Obama offered "thanks to Sen. McCain for the outstanding service he's already rendered" during the campaign and even before it began.

While some may point to McCain's opposition to Obama during campaign debates and McCain's reluctance to endorse publicly the former Illinois Senator, few challenge the ready ease with which Obama swept aside the maverick Republican moderate. The victory over the representative of the centrist wing of the GOP was so complete that after his election Obama met with McCain even before a promised meeting with community group ACORN.

After the meeting, McCain appeared to endorse and expanded role for government intervention in the economy, which during the campaign he had given token opposition. "We hope to work together in the days and months ahead on critical challenges like solving our financial crisis, creating a new energy economy, and protecting our nation's security."

McCain gave no indication whether he would change to the Democratic Party or remain a Republican.

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Typical Bush Derangement Syndrome at Salon

Somehow managing to type wearing a helmet and drool bucket, David Sarota writes:

It wouldn't be the George W. Bush we all know if our shamed president didn't spend his remaining White House days in a final fit of polarization.

Wha? Talk about paranoia! Mr. Bush wants the Columbia Free Trade deal to go through, and knows that it's union opposition which makes Obama also oppose it. And why are the Democrats so in favor of an auto maker bailout? The unions want it, to keep their fat, blood-sucking lifestyle going.

But Sarota harkens back to NAFTA, managing to blame Bush41 for forcing it on Bill Clinton, which in Sirota's alternate reality caused the unions to skip voting in 1994. Those things must all be Known Facts on the Left, but having lived through that era I could have sworn I heard the centrist Bill Clinton championing NAFTA. And the 1994 elections were all about conservatives rallying behind conservatism as expressed by Newt Gingrich.

In Sarota's fantasies, George Bush is some kind of Machiavellian mastermind, rolling the dice with the world's economy in order to depress voter turnout in 2010:

Therefore, if Bush successfully uses the economic emergency to hustle a faction of Wall Street Democrats into supporting the deal, he will have potentially engineered 1994 redux: Democratic infighting, a demoralized progressive base, and these newly elected fair-trade Democrats humiliated — and thus electorally endangered — by their own party's standard bearers.

Dude. No one will vote, or not vote, two years from now based on whether there is a free trade agreement with Columbia. Lots of union members may not have jobs without one, but what do they care? They have the One.

Update: I think I like Kim Strassel's take better.

If there was a moment that highlights to what extent the Democratic Party has become captive to its special interests, this might be it. Mrs. Pelosi and Harry Reid have spent this week demanding that Washington stave off a car-maker collapse. What makes this a little weird is that Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Reid are Washington. If they so desperately want a Detroit bailout they could always, you know, pass one.

w/t Yid With Lid

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Would Someone Please Tell Michelle Catalano That She is an Idiot?

Writing at PJM, Michele Catalano struggles valiantly against her horrible straw-foe, the idea that community service is the same as slavery, or variously, Marxism.

Another name for slavery is "involuntary servitude". Is "compulsory service" the same thing?

"Involuntary" is clearly a synonym for "compulsory".

Do I need to explain the link between "service" and "servitude"? I think I do, because while the root word is the same, the meaning is different, and it has confused you.

"Service" in this context means two things: performing duties at the behest of the government and for the benefit of someone who (it is hoped) will be helped by those duties. A connotation of service is one of learning by humility the positive blessing of helping others.

But learning by humility implies that a person lowers himself to perform some action or to be receptive to a teaching moment. That is not possible, or at least is contraindicated, when an outside force such as the government is mandating the action. Context in this case is indeed king.

Compelling service is also making the same mistake as when we take the personal virtue of liberality and apply it to government. Liberality is seeing the best in others and giving to them regardless of their worthiness, in the hopes that our selflessness will improve them, or at least show our own goodness and lack of greed. When government does it, the virtue is lost, if only because giving requires the government first to take.

So even if we grant as totally positive the nature of the actual services to be performed, and ignore any possible negative consequences or side effects of this massive undertaking, being forced to give service to others is involuntary servitude, slavery by another name.

But here is some really sloppy thinking from Michelle Catalano:

It’s interesting how many right-leaning blogs are frowning upon the community service idea, though some are being thoughtful about it. Generally, people on the political right tend to belong to churches, and churches are big proponents of community service. So why the negativity? Many blogs are also equating Obama’s community service pitch with Rahm Emanuel’s:

When you choose to serve — whether it’s your nation, your community, or simply your neighborhood — you are connected to that fundamental American ideal that we want life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness not just for ourselves, but for all Americans. That’s why it’s called the American dream.

This is not socialism. This is not Marxism. This is the mark of a country that knows it needs to rely on those who can to help those who can’t. It’s the mark of a country that knows it needs to depend on its citizens to make their communities flourish. It’s taking the “ask not what your country can do for you” attitude and transforming it into smaller clusters, where we ask what we can do for those we live with and around, instead of waiting for people to do for us. It’s how communities become stronger, how they grow, and how a strong, giving community makes for a strong, giving nation.

So because we want churches to do it, we should be okay when the government does it? That is exactly the problem! We want churches and individuals to do community service, on their own, without the government being involved. If the government starts funding community service, no one else will do it. And individuals, of their own sense of charity and liberality, are the best judges of who should get the help -- and who should not.

Repeating: we like community service. We don't like the government to fund it.

As for the equivalence of paid community service and Marxism, let's first establish one thing: under Marxist/socialist regimes, there is universal paid community service. Under some hypothetical minimalist, libertarian anti-Marxist government, there would be no paid community service.

Rahm Emanuel pitches community service as the way to ensure the American Dream, but it's a total non sequitur. The American Dream is the any of us can start with nothing and succeed by our own merits, without the government's help. We don't need the government.

Needing the government is what Marxists do.

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No more bailouts.

Writing at Redstate, Francis Cianfrocca analyzes the proposed (or wheedled) bailout of GM, saying a bunch of smart things, including this:

If I were handling this for the US Treasury, I’d insist on a total wipeout of GM’s shareholders and management, force them to liquidate assets over perhaps a two-year period, and take a slug of preferred stock with a very large annual interest rate. Because you know there will be no possibility of making money on this bailout. The auto industry has too much of the wrong kind of production capacity, and it needs to disappear.

If I were in charge of handling this for the Treasury, I'd either say "We don't do this, or I walk."

The government has to stop meddling in the economy. People argue that something must be done to keep the economy moving, and I say: No! We've been spoiled by 20 years of good economies, except for hiccups, to the point where we think we've figured it out.

We can't outlaw pain. Attempts to try are leading us to a situation in which the government, soon to be led by a Marxist, controls the strategic direction of our biggest industries.

I have no doubt that GM failing would have a ripple effect on the rest of the economy. I also have no doubt that some of that effect would be seen as positive, especially by those at Ford and Chrysler.

Something has to be done all right. Something needs to be done to turn around this notion that our elections are about the economy. Something needs to be done to separate government and business. Something needs to be done to return us to the understanding of success as the result of repeated failure, that learning from mistakes doesn't happen unless we are forced to deal with the consequences of those mistakes.

GM has become too big to move quickly in response to changing market conditions. Their union membership, including retirees, is so large as to be its own voting bloc, exercising inertia of its own. Some say they have become too big to fail; I say they have become too big to succeed.

Pluck the cancer? That's the wrong metaphor. The proper one is to let the students succeed or fail based on their abilities, not slip them answers to the test so they don't fail.

Because in the end, none will study as hard or pay attention at lecture if they know that the teacher will bail them out in the end.

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ObamaCare Will Fail, Because It Is Supposed to Fail

First, an aside:

Health care costs have skyrocketed over the last several years because

1. We have separated the doctor from the patient, inserting the insurance company between them
2. Government spending on health care has injected large amounts of taxpayer money into the system
3. Medical malpractice lawsuits have forced all doctors to obtain medical malpractice insurance, practice defensive medicine, and fail to delegate medical decisions to less-trained personnel

Why is medical insurance necessary? To amortize the medical expenses. Yet amortizing those expenses is necessary in part because of medical insurance: it costs only a few dollars in materials and 10 minutes of labor to set a broken bone. Yet because the doctor cannot risk doing it incorrectly, the patient (or his insurance company) may have to pay hundreds of dollars.

Back to ObamaCare.

Obama plans to create or expand government health insurance, covering everyone who doesn't have insurance now. While he says that if you like your current plan, you can keep it, what he doesn't say is that a factor in keeping costs low for those existing plans is the presence of uninsured people. Insurance companies have to compete for business both with other companies and with the zero-cost plan: not having insurance at all.

Insuring the uninsured will raise the rates for the insured.

Obama says he will prevent insurance companies from overcharging for malpractice insurance. That means, of course that some doctors will not be insured at all, or that dangerous doctors will get cheaper insurance than they otherwise could afford. In essence, the plan is to subsidize bad doctors.

All of this will have the effect of raising medical costs. When that happens, wait for the sirens to blare for the government either to nationalize the medical insurance industry, to siphon off its customers, or to finally step in and employ the doctors directly.

What am I saying? That would be socialism.

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Will Someone Please Tell Robert Reich That He Is An Idiot?

Floundering in dizzying circles at TPM, Robert Reich says:

Absent consumer spending, businesses are not going to invest.

That is his full argument, minus an authority appeal or three in the attempt at explaining basic Keynesian economics, followed by some wishful swiping at straw men.

Businesses invest because that is what they do if they have money left over after paying their bills, labor, and taxes. They invest in the expectation of making a profit.

Reich does what is his apparent best to come up with arguments against some kind of new-New-Deal-bailout-f0r-everyone, and says that there are only two such (emphasis added):

Expect two sorts of arguments against this. The first will come from fiscal hawks who claim that the government is already spending way too much. Even without a new stimulus package, next year's budget deficit could run over a trillion dollars, given the amounts to be spent bailing out Wall Street and perhaps the auto industry, and providing extended unemployment insurance and other measures to help those in direct need. The hawks will argue that the nation can't afford giant deficits, especially when baby boomers are only a few years away from retiring and claiming Social Security and Medicare.

They're wrong. Government spending that puts people back to work and invests in the future productivity of the nation is exactly what the economy needs right now. Deficit numbers themselves have no significance. The pertinent issue is how much underutilized capacity exists in the economy. When there's lots of idle capacity, deficit spending is entirely appropriate, as John Maynard Keynes taught us. Moving the economy to fuller capacity will of itself shrink future deficits.

So it's economic growth based on government spending, an economic five year plan without a specified time frame.

More pointedly, the dubious Keynesian belief that government spending generates revenue obscures a key detail: it depends what you spend the money on.

Because you'll get more of whatever you fund and less of what you tax. Pay people to sit around, and more will sit around. Pay them to have bad mortgages, and more will enter into foolish mortgages. Pay them to go to college, more will.

Also, even granting, for the sake of argument, that government spending will increase tax revenue, it stands to reason that some areas of spending would be more efficient at increasing that revenue; indeed, one can accept the notion that some government spending helps the economy more to produce revenue while other spending helps less.

Building a bridge over some river makes trade possible over the river, even as it puts the ferryman out of work. On balance, some amount of bridge-building is in the long run positive in almost every way. That doesn't mean we need to have a bridge within walking distance anywhere on every river, however, since after a certain point there is no advantage in having more.

But paying people money directly is the worst sort of expenditure. For every person delivered from homelessness into productivity by a government check, another (or a dozen or a hundred others) will cash the check and demand the next one, so they don't have to pay their own mortgages. It's a giant money pit, throwing the maximum investment at the minimum return. When such spending is done with borrowed money, compound interest paid on it will soon dominate.

The second argument will come from conservative supply-siders who will call for income-tax cuts rather than spending increases. They'll claim that individuals with more money in their pockets will get the economy moving again more readily than can government. They're wrong, for three reasons. First, income-tax cuts go mainly to upper-income people who tend to save rather than spend. Most Americans pay more in payroll taxes than in income taxes. Second, even if a rebate could be fashioned, people tend to use those extra dollars to pay off their debts rather than buy new goods and services, as we witnessed a few months ago when the government sent out rebate checks. Third, even when individuals purchase goods and services, those purchases tend not to generate as many American jobs as government spending on the same total scale because much of what consumers buy comes from abroad.

The insipidity here is breathtaking. The highlighted sentence in particular marks Reisch as a fraud, because saving money is a good thing. Where do people save money? Either in banks or in investments. Money saved in a bank allows the bank to lend money -- precisely as Reisch would have them do.

And what does he conclude after his violation of the rules of logic? That government must spend, spend, spend.

Which, oddly enough, is always what he concludes.

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The Decision That Cost McCain the White House

Jennifer Rubin at Pajamas Media has a list of 30 things that cost John McCain the election. But she missed the top reason.

It was the bailout that did it. As Iain Murray at BeyondBailouts points out, the election was close in September, and

In short, it’s the economy, stupid. Surprisingly for a self-described maverick, it appears to have been Sen. McCain’s desire to cling to the self-serving nostrums of Wall Street and the Beltway that doomed him.

The signs were that Obama's radical past was catching up to him. Then McCain chose to suspend his campaign not to fight Washington, but to side with President Bush on a huge, pork-laden spending package of government interference in the economy. I emailed the campaign that he'd lost both my vote and my support, for what it was worth.

After the bailout, trying to label Obama for the Marxist that he is rang hollow, even as Obama made the Joe the Plumber mistake. Had he opposed the bailout, John McCain would have been our next President.

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Barack the Sophist Makes Personal Attack on Everyone

Quoth The One, alias Barack the Taxer:

"The reason that we want to do this, change our tax code, is not because I have anything against the rich. I love rich people! I want all of you to be rich. Go for it. That’s the America dream, that’s the American way, that’s terrific...

"John McCain and Sarah Palin they call this socialistic. You know I don’t know when, when they decided they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness."

In the first place, Barack the Insufferable Sophist misrepresents both his opponent's position and his own. He has repeatedly railed against "tax cuts for the rich". His case has been one of playing the dissatisfaction and envy of those who have less against those who have more. He knows he isn't going to make anyone rich by giving them $500 or $1000 of someone else's money. The point is "fairness", not the creation of wealth, and it makes a lie out of your claim to love the rich.

It would be far too cynical a reading of that statement to accept it in the only sense in which it could be true. Barack the Five Year Planner wants everyone to be rich so that he can tax them all.

But in the end it isn't to make someone rich that Barack the Disingenuous Windbag wishes to give them money; it's to make them dependent. Wealth comes from risk and work, and there is neither risk nor work when people vote themselves mammon from the treasury. There is only abuse of the democracy for the purpose of gaining and maintaining power.

Taking money from one group and giving it to another is socialistic. It just is.

Giving out checks is not the way to get people "rich", even as Barack the Slider variously tries to redefine richness down from $250,000 to whatever figure he needs at the moment. If by some perverted definition of richness he claims that he is bringing wealth to those who don't have it, he is engaging in a get rich quick scheme.

People get rich on their own, when the grubby little hands of government are kept out of their pockets.

But then comes the insult: Barack the Weasel implies that anyone who doesn't want to give him money to give to others is "selfish".

Government is not the best judge of how I should use my money. I am. Without Barack the Thief's stinking taxes, I would be in a much better position to give to others.

Barack the Tempter is urging others to be envious. Envy is a vice, not a virtue, and those who encourage others in vice bring peril on themselves. Better to have a millstone tied around one's neck, in fact. As Jeremiah Wright would say, "That's in the Bible."

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