Barrel Strength

In this election, US has two primary choices with the following attributes.

McCain: old, experienced, upstanding character, centrist with a relatively inexperienced VP candidate.

Obama: a dabbler who has never held the same job for more than three years, only limited executive experience was deemed to be a failure by others, socialist, wouldn’t pass security clearance due to association with radical friends, coke head, murky background given the reluctance to release background information, gangsta approach to politics, member of a racist church and an inflated ego.

Given the above, your correspondent endorses Obama for the following reasons.

The polling numbers do not accurately reflect the weakness of the Republican party and its ideology. They are about to lose a substantial number of seats in the Congress and a few Senate seats, some of which, as noted by your correspondent earlier this year, was inevitable due to significant number of retirements on part of the Republican incumbents. Even in its current form, the party is so weak that it was unable to fend off charges that they are the party to blame for problems with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  The marginal political strength that the party enjoys, masks immense weakness in the broader society.  Where are the conservative community organizations? Where are the conservative newspaper-of-record?  Where are the conservative trade unions?  Where are the conservative art organizations?  How is it that Obama can decline to be interviewed by Fox till well into the campaign, yet Palin has to immediately report for an interview with ABC and CBS?  The government is the tip of this base and the liberal/left/progressive have over the last 30-years, without any significant opposition, taken control of or neutralized virtually every cultural, political or civic organization in US.  Outside the political sphere, the ideology of the Republican party is non-existent.   A win by McCain will lead to further false sense of security and once again delay the necessary soul-searching.  How did it come to be that a sign of patriotism, as stated by Joe Biden, is the amount of tax one is willing to pay?  The Republican grassroots is better off rolling back this leftist tide than enjoying the perks of a Republican White House as it will more beneficial over the long term.

Another reason it is best if Obama wins the presidency, is that the current crop of economic problems, the most pressing of which is the deleveraging cycle, will lead to a recession that is deeper than the ones previously experienced.  The current set of problems are difficult to address in the best of times, but they will be further compounded by the poor policies, that are being implemented and will be implemented under a socialist president, with unfettered control of Congress and Senate.  These policies will further exacerbate the problems and underline the obtuseness of current policy choices.  Republicans will be unable to fend off charges that they are to blame if McCain is the president.  Additionally, it will be good if people such as this, face the reality after hearing a constant stream of overblown rhetorical nonsense that has emanated from BHO.  And to think that Mandela only promised a free washer and dryer.

So let them march.

Fouad Ajami, a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies provides an Arab perspective on the mass hysteria and BHO in a WSJ article.

There is something odd — and dare I say novel — in American politics about the crowds that have been greeting Barack Obama on his campaign trail. Hitherto, crowds have not been a prominent feature of American politics. We associate them with the temper of Third World societies….

On the face of it, there is nothing overwhelmingly stirring about Sen. Obama. There is a cerebral quality to him, and an air of detachment. He has eloquence, but within bounds (of a functioning teleprompter – AG). After nearly two years on the trail, the audience can pretty much anticipate and recite his lines. The political genius of the man is that he is a blank slate. The devotees can project onto him what they wish….

Save in times of national peril, Americans have been sober, really minimalist, in what they expected out of national elections, out of politics itself. The outcomes that mattered were decided in the push and pull of daily life, by the inventors and the entrepreneurs, and the captains of industry and finance. To be sure, there was a measure of willfulness in this national vision, for politics and wars guided the destiny of this republic. But that American sobriety and skepticism about politics — and leaders — set this republic apart from political cultures that saw redemption lurking around every corner…

America is a different land, for me exceptional in all the ways that matter. In recent days, those vast Obama crowds, though, have recalled for me the politics of charisma that wrecked Arab and Muslim societies. A leader does not have to say much, or be much. The crowd is left to its most powerful possession — its imagination.

From Elias Canetti again: “But the crowd, as such, disintegrates. It has a presentiment of this and fears it. . . . Only the growth of the crowd prevents those who belong to it from creeping back under their private burdens.”

The morning after the election, the disappointment will begin to settle upon the Obama crowd. Defeat — by now unthinkable to the devotees — will bring heartbreak. Victory will steadily deliver the sobering verdict that our troubles won’t be solved by a leader’s magic.

At least they will have free medical care to tide them over when reality strikes after the victory.  As for the now unlikely defeat, bureacrats might consider doubling up shifts on suicide hotlines.

… this time without that thing about the Jews.  A recent survey in Germany put forth some interesting views.

The overwhelming majority of Germans would welcome the nationalisation of large segments of the economy, including its energy, transport and financial infrastructure, according to a new opinion poll that underlines the strength of popular opposition to free-market liberalism in Europe’s largest economy.

…77 per cent of respondents thought the state should take large equity stakes in German energy companies while 64 per cent said financial institutions should be at least partly nationalised.  Another 60 per cent said Germany’s former state monopolies – Lufthansa, the airline, Deutsche Post and the Deutsche Bahn railway operator – and their private-sector competitors should either come or stay under state ownership…. A large minority of 40 to 45 per cent said nationalisations or partial nationalisations should extend to the telecommunications, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and farming sectors.

Sometimes it is not the idea, but the execution, the survey responders seem to be saying.

As per Dalwhinnie’s post below, it seems that Obama is already providing boost to the US economy with some sectors reporting increase in sales of 10-30% just this month.

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As I write, an early snow storm has covered Ottawa in white, though some leaves are still greenish yellow. Welcome to the new Ice Age.

It is hard to maintain the keen knife-edge of mental and spiritual combat  against the Forces of Darkness every waking moment of the day. Moreover, it is harder to be excited all the time about impending Doom. I refer both to Obama and to panic in the markets. Arran Gold recently attributed my calm in the face of Obama to getting a cushy job. This is true, as far as it goes. But how far does the prospect of a few years of financial security cause this apparent lack of concern? Not far at all.

To start: If I had a vote I would vote for McCain. I am not persuaded by Obama in the least.

I am, nevertheless, not predicting the overthrow of the Republic, the overturning of the Constitution, the permanent enthronement of identity politics and political correctness and the transformation of the United States into a socialist refuge for NDPers fleeing the Conservative reformation of Canada.

Read the rest…

Your correspondent posted an article in July ‘08 linking adulation for Obama with the mass hysteria seen at the Diana funeral.  The Examiner analyses this link in context of softening of America.

… then why are you going broke?  New York University Professor Nouriel Roubini, who predicted the financial crisis in 2006, said “We’ve reached a situation of sheer panic.  There will be massive dumping of assets and hundreds of hedge funds are going to go bust”.  Aren’t hedge funds and their associated advisors suppose to be the home of “Master of the Universe” with brilliant insights and analysis such as this?  Gregory Valliere, Chief Strategist at Stanford Group Company which provides its clients with a comprehensive breadth of private wealth management and institutional investment services,  at the 2008 BCA Investment Conference paints “Barack Obama as a seasoned Senator, unlikely to make the same mistakes as Bill Clinton did in his first two years in office, which were capped by a strong conservative backlash in 1994 led by Newt Gingrich.”

One assumes that it only takes one season to become a “seasoned Senator”.  For comparison, Bill Clinton was a Governor of Arkansas in 1978 and went on to become POTUS in 1992.  Perhaps the smart ones in that industry have moved on.

Your correspondent in an earlier post noted the link between ascendancy of BHO and the stock market.  This reality is beginning to dawn on a wider audience as noted here and here.  No matter who becomes the POTUS acute problems will remain but, as noted earlier, the concern with BHO is disturbing commingling of inexperience, socialist policies and the triumvirate of Pelosi-Reid-Obama.

What can be said of a man who apparently took more care to get his membership card in an actual socialist party than in obtaining a legitimate birth certificate?

And what of a man who rails against the brazen greed of others and somehow overlooks behaviour no less unethical or lucrative?

For some it is easy to make priorities… after dispensing with baggage like shame, remorse and genuine inner character.

And then you really do become what you have been waiting for.

Just as we were warming up to a few months of Elmer Fudd on the national stage, we’re stuck with Marvin the Martian, who has “vowed to work hard to protect the next leader of the Liberal party from the Conservative political attack machine.” Don’t hold your breath waiting for the earth-shattering kaboom, mon vieux.

Oh well, enjoy:

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Damian Penny tosses a can of gasoline onto an already blazing pile of stupidity.

The prospect of “gulags” under an Obama presidency is as farcical as what the Usual Suspects already believe about America under Dubbya. But it is foolhardy to ignore the Obamessiah’s strenuous efforts at promoting voter fraud and suppressing efforts to expose his record. You don’t have to be a Marxist cadre to attempt to rig elections and threaten opponents: being an old-school Chicago ward-heeler does quite nicely.

It comes down to the fact that the one time that Obama tried to manage a program, he not only failed miserably in accountability but perverted the ends of a public policy initiative. He has proven himself an incompetent dabbler fit only to climb the greasy pole of liberal politics.

And no one is threatening to take away Penny’s supposed membership in the conservative movement. If he is a martyr to anything, it is only to the cause of wooly-headed bandwagon-jumping pseudo-punditry.

… into a little over seven minutes:

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Your correspondent noted in February of this year, that Democrats were likely to make significant inroads, similar to post-Watergate era, in the House and the Senate, due to the large number of Republicans incumbents who were either retiring or deciding not to run again.  This reality is finally starting to dawn as to the significance of the changes as noted in WSJ.  The article notes

Though we doubt most Americans realize it, this would be one of the most profound political and ideological shifts in U.S. history. Liberals would dominate the entire government in a way they haven’t since 1965, or 1933. In other words, the election would mark the restoration of the activist government that fell out of public favor in the 1970s. If the U.S. really is entering a period of unchecked left-wing ascendancy, Americans at least ought to understand what they will be getting, especially with the media cheering it all on.

It goes on to note the following.

In both 1933 and 1965, liberal majorities imposed vast expansions of government that have never been repealed, and the current financial panic may give today’s left another pretext to return to those heydays of welfare-state liberalism. Americans voting for “change” should know they may get far more than they ever imagined.

The US GDP growth has historically exceeded the EU-15 growth rate by more than 1%.  Expect this gap to narrow as US moves closer to the European socialist model.  The stock market is already starting to adjust to this reality, as was noted earlier.  Will the combination of acute economic problems and Democrat policies lead to replication of economic consequences from 1929, when a recession was transmogrified into the Great Depression due to the policies of FDR?  Only time will tell but it is time to batten down the hatches.

CBC’s Susan Bonner reports that John McCallum is the leading contender to fill in when the Muppet takes his final bow on Monday:

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O Lord, we remain truly thankful.

Even the geek world is unsafe from the onslaught of dhimmitude:

Sony’s long-awaited and much-buzzed LittleBigPlanet will be delayed worldwide. All all copies sent to retailers are being recalled after audio samples from Muslim religious text the Qur’an were discovered in the game’s soundtrack, according to new reports.

No word yet on the highly anticipated riots over the DVD release of Hamlet 2 due to its production number, “Rock me Sexy Jesus”.