Barrel Strength

June 3, 2008.  Obama’s remarks for a political rally:  The journey will be difficult. The road will be long…. I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.

March 30, 2009.  Obama’s remarks on U.S. car industry:  Your warrantee will be safe.  In fact, it will be safer than it’s ever been. Because starting today, the United States government will stand behind your warrantee.

Red meat for hungry lions.

A good start for Randy Hiller. Check out his platform, which is enough to cause wets to wet themselves. A Freeedom of Association and Conscience Act? The pity is that such an act is needed.

Yes! Workers who faithfully obey the program can go to the People’s Bank and apply for the waiting list!  Why must only the bloated plutocrats have the means of swift movement from place to place?  Soon, under the financial and automotive guidance of The One Leader, any worker will aspire to be able to wait for wheeled transport of some sort.

Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard economist, commenting on Obama’s upcoming trip to Europe: “The rest of the world is yearning for him. On the one hand, they’ll all be criticizing him, and criticizing the American model. But they all want to hear that he does have a miracle to deliver.”

One of the thoughts that was repeated often during the ascendancy of one Barrack Obama, was the he was unlikely to be able do much harm, because of checks and balances inherent in the US constitution.  As Mark Styen notes “The Economist is the latest of the smart guys to notice that President Obama is proving strangely unlike the guy they told us he was back in late October.”

Putting that obvious fact aside, it is interesting to note the recent spate of attacks on the Supreme Court.  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid  said on Friday that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. lied to Congress during his confirmation hearings by pretending to be open-minded about his judicial philosophy.  Similarly, Sen. Barney Frank (D), whose sole private sector experience consists of the fact that his Washington residence was once used to operate a male-escort service by his live-in boyfriend while he was on Capitol Hill, attacked Justice Scalia for being a homophobe.

Is this an attempt by the executive and legislative branch to gang up on the judiciary and try to reduce its effectiveness, as it is the only branch of government that is not controlled by the Democrats?

Atlantic magazine’s gynecological sleuth and blogger Andrew Sullivan, notes the following in his post on the current financial crisis.

For the last 21 years, we have been following a similar social experiment between different styles of capitalism: more regulated and less regulated. Several western countries including Ireland and Iceland, as well as some of the Baltic countries, got rid of many regulations, particularly regulations regarding finance. For a while, their economies were shining stars, but now they are a mess. The US and Britain, the least regulated large economies, are now suffering greatly as well from the financial bubble. While Old Europe (to steal a phrase from Don Rumsfeld) is not nearly as affected by the recent debacle.

Are we beginning to learn another one of history’s lessons?

Let us take a look at some history.

Oct 14, 2008  Banking bail-out: France unveils €360bn package
Oct 22, 2008  German bailout deal complicated by election-year politics
Nov 9, 2008  Italy next to bail out banks

History lesson indeed!  Perhaps Randy-Andy should focus his efforts on gynecology.

The knock against Bush was that he was “intellectually uncurious”.  Well it is good to see that at least we have intellectual curiosity during this financial crisis!  A NYT article states an interesting fact in this regard.

Other studies have confirmed the general sense that expertise is overrated. In one experiment, clinical psychologists did no better than their secretaries in their diagnoses. In another, a white rat in a maze repeatedly beat groups of Yale undergraduates in understanding the optimal way to get food dropped in the maze. The students overanalyzed and saw patterns that didn’t exist, so they were beaten by the rodent.

Along similar lines, WaPo article about the current financial crisis states the following first-hand experience.

Negotiating with Argentina’s top officials during their multiple financial crises in the 1990s was always an ordeal, and sparring with Domingo Cavallo, the country’s Harvard-trained finance minister at the time, was particularly trying. One always had the sense that, despite their supreme arrogance, the country’s leaders never had a coherent economic strategy and that major decisions were always made on the run. I never thought that was how policy was made in the United States — until, that is, I saw how totally at sea Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson and Timothy F. Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke have appeared so many times during our country’s ongoing economic and financial storm.

For the record the alma mater of these three esteemed individuals is Dartmouth and Harvard, Dartmouth and John Hopkins, and Harvard and MIT respectively.

I am not the first to notice that the Internet has changed the power relationship between the people and the media. Two cases in point: Ezra Levant, about whom Barrelstrength readers all know, and Daniel Hannan, the British MP who recently told off Gordon Brown.

Ezra’s righteous jihad against the Human Rights Commissions of Canada and its provinces was the first time in this country that a story that the mainstream media refused to cover or ignored became a national story solely because of the blogosphere. Every person speaking in a blog or preaching in a pulpit, as Father Raymond de Souza reminded us, was going to be made vulnerable to the insidious spread of chilling fear. The Rights Commissions are in net retreat, whether temporary or not is open to question.

I quote Father de Souza:

“Ezra decided to fight it because it was the right thing to do. But he went a step further than most. He set out to defeat the HRCs by exposing their tyranny. Anyone who reads Shakedown will be convinced that their defeat is essential for the survival of liberty in Canada. We are not yet three months into 2009, but Ezra may well have written the most important public affairs book this year.”

Read the rest…

Institutions which deal with the public have to practise “diversity”, but the diversity hospitals practise is based on metrics of real differences, about which no politically correct squeamishness can be tolerated. In an environment where people’s lives are at stake, little allowance can be made for pride, prudery, or excessive sensitivity to bodily functions.

Hospital staff is generally locally-hired and of the dominant culture. Patients can be anybody: immigrants unskilled in either offical languages, or natives of different, unassimilated cultures. How different? And how is it handled? The answers are fascinating because they illustrate how an institution must deal with the realities of cultural and racial differences, in a time when political correctness would deny their existence or their significance.

Read the rest…

A lynch mob has been unleashed in US and institutional advisers have taken note.

“Let’s go hang ‘em.”

American history is replete with examples of lynch mobs taking control of a situation and inflicting injustice.  In the end most lynch mobs have dealt harmful blows to society….

At Cumberland, we are advising institutional clients to take great care when engaging in any form of activity with the federal government.  Simply put: a lynch mob can turn on you in a second and cannot be trusted.  The risk is now very high.

Other firms that are already acting with TARP monies, or other federal monies for that matter, are seeking ways to deleverage and exit.  In the entrepreneurial and risk-taking business and financial community the universal response to this act by Congress is outrage and distrust and disgust.

ACORN has taken this opportunity to fund protests at the homes of AIG executives and across the pond anti-capitalist have attacked the home of ex-RBS boss.  In 1930s FDR displayed “astonishment that wealthy Americans would deliberately arrange their finances so as to lower their tax burden [which] seems almost quaint to us today”.  It seems similar lesson will have to be learned again.

Obama has been silent on lynch mobs, but then that is not a surprise.  After all this is the administration that verbally attacked a private citizen, one Rush Limbaugh, and represents a party that has decoupled itself from the private sector.

Update: The Swiss hide.

Switzerland’s private banks have started to ban their top executives from travelling abroad, even to neighbouring France and Germany, because of fears they will be detained as part of a global crackdown on bank secrecy.

Now you can earn $100 for pretending to be poor and indigent.

Because… you.. know… youwantto:

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They’ve replaced an intellectually dishonest rationale for raw imperialism with a loopier and shallower one.

Looks like the bus has backed up over Francis Fukuyama for yet another run.

An urban terrorist and presidential mentor rides to the rescue of a jihadi shill and reality show pseudo-star, AKA Bill Ayers defends George Galloway.

The Independent

The new religion of environmentalism

There is good news for employees who hold strong opinions about climate change and the environment. If your colleagues fail to respect your views (obliging a waitress to serve meat in a restaurant, for example), you will be able to seek redress in law.

The case of Tim Nicholson, an executive made redundant by the property firm Grainger, has established a curious precedent. Under law, environmentalism is no longer a matter of fact and science, but is essentially a religion. Mr Nicholson, whose fear for the future of humanity is passionately and pro-actively held, believed that, like many firms, his employers were talking green while acting greedy.

This position, according to a pre-hearing review, placed him within the Employment Equality (Religion and Belief) Regulations. “In my opinion, his belief goes beyond mere opinion,” said the judge.

But why stop with employment? If environmentalism is now a religion, what more flagrant act of faith hatred could there be than expanding an airport?