Dumb or Smarter Than We Want to Admit?

Sarah is back in the news! You all know Sarah, Sarah Palin, the plain spoken Alaskan that would be Vice President if McCain would have been elected. The women that was interviewed by CNN, Fox and ABC while she was fishing for Salmon over the 4th of July weekend, come on, you know her …the 'Dumb' one that David Letterman, John Mahr and others make fun of ….. right?

Joe Bidden was back in the news! You know Joe, good ole Joe. The one that was an ‘also ran’ until he was picked by Obama to be VP. The one they call the Gaff Master. The one that rode AmTrack all those years and had breakfast ‘every morning’ at place that had been closed for more than 20 years. Yes, that Joe! Good Ole Joe!

Both sides say these people are dumb. Dumb as rocks and noone can seem to understand why they are on the public stage. Watch the bloggers, they tear these people apart. ABC, NBC, et-al rip Sarah Palin apart. “She’s naïve,” “She’s inexperienced,” why…”She didn’t even go to an Ivey League school!”

Then there the bloggers on the other side of the aisle that say Biden doesn’t know when to shut up. They are not sure if he’s honest, or stupid or just to backwards to know when to be honest or play dumb.

Well here’s what I think, and you knew this was coming….

Whether it’s George W Bush (43) or Jesse Ventura (Wrestler that made it to governor), or whether its Al Franken (former comedian turned Senator) or Arnold Schwarzenegger (nuff said), these people are not dumb! So they mispronounce words, have accents or seem to take simpler views of what the media claims are complex problems. So what, maybe they have a different perspective and maybe it’s time we all sat up and listen.

Here’s my proof and my point that they are not stupid. Becoming the Governor of a State in the USA makes you the leader of what amounts to a small country. Some states are in the top 10 economies in the world beating out even advanced nations in Europe.

Becoming number two in line for the presidency is no small task. There is a lot of maneuvering that goes on to obtain that goal and becoming president is an even harder task. Some will argue that it’s other people’s smarts that propel these ‘dummies’ to those levels, but I have to ask, who’s smarter? The one who hired the smart people to perform the appointed task or the people doing the work?

The answer is simple. The one doing the hiring is the smart one. They are smart enough to understand their strengths and leverage them. They are smart enough to understand their weaknesses and hire others to overcome them …. and watch …. in some cases you’ll see they are smart enough to even use their weakness to their own advantage.

I believe these people are smarter than we all know. If you think you are smarter than say Sarah Palin, I challenge you to accomplish what she has. An 86% approval rating for a Governor is virtually unheard of, how smart do you have to be? Pretty damn smart.

As for her recent move to resign as governor, watch, read and learn. It was a smart move. As it turns out, the state of Alaska has an ethics law that is the toughest in the land. Any one can bring an ethics complaint for any reason. Also, it is an ethics violation for an elected official in Alaska to use government time and resources to promote a National agenda that benefits themselves.

(of course the talking heads on TV that 'say' the news don't do any investigative reporting any more so something as simple as this will never be reported!)

That’s why she quit, she was so busy defending frivolous ethics claims and had so many offers to be on the National stage that she HAD to quit. It was a SMART decision and it was an ethical decision. Doubtful that the mainstream media will ever get that.

And there in lies another great point about her intelligence. She’s smart enough to know that the media won't get it and it will keep her in the news. She has manipulated the media from day one and has stayed in the spot light. She even knocked the death of MJ off the front pages for a day!

Palin dumb? Biden dumb? ‘W’ et-al …. Dumb? They don’t mind if you or I think they are because it works to their advantage. How smart is that?!

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/sarah-palin-is-smarter-than-the-media-think

Up In Smoke! Picking Winners & Loosers Again...

There is not doubt in my mind that there are winners and losers in every aspect of life and a person’s free will and ability to choose can determine whether they are a winner or a loser. We all have a choice. There is a point when we grow up and we can choose to good or bad, right or wrong, left or right.

I believe that the reason America is so strong is because our government was designed to allow this free will to exist. You can choose good and be rewarded or you can choose poorly and be punished.

That punishment can come in many forms. Some choices mean that you, the individual making the choice, are left out of the social or economic growth experienced by others. For instance, choose to sleep in every day and show up to work late and you’ll be unemployed. Bad!

However, choose to get up early, get to work on time and be productive and you will be rewarded! Good!

Choose to break a law and go to jail, choose to do the right thing and stay out of jail. I think you get my point and here’s where I’m going with all of this. It seems that lately we Americans have lost sight of the fact that allowing a winners and losers to be created in society through free will is much better than having a nanny state determine who the winners and losers are.

Now we seem to applaud the government for their daring efforts to save the banks. We MUST save the auto industry and now we’ve done it again. In an attempt to save people from themselves and their choices we have finally instituted stricter regulations on tobacco products.

An unintended consequence of this regulation is that it will establish one company above all others as the leader in the industry and may solidify them in that position for ever. As a matter of fact, Phillip Morris (the company destined to hold the top spot) actually lobbied FOR the regulation! http://www.marketwatch.com/story/under-fda-rule-big-tobacco-could-get-bigger?link=kiosk

So now we have the Government choosing winners and losers again! When does it all stop? If you think this is a good thing then ponder this. What happens when the government decides that the company that competes with the one you work for is more important than yours? What happens when you are on the losing side and you get laid off or see your sales drop so drastically that the company is shut down?

In the end having a government that chooses winners and loser can only lead to ruin. Look at the Soviet Union, Facist/Socialist eras in France and other Eastern European states during the 80’s. Is that what we want America to become? I thing not … and if it does, anyone up for sharing a plane ride to Australia?

Tom Petty Knew

Song lyrics politics. No I haven’t been drinking this morning, but maybe I should be . Right now is the perfect time for a Bloody Mary and a shot of bourbon.…

I was talkin’ with a friend of mine,
Said a woman had hurt his pride.
Told him that she loved him so,
And turned around and let him go.
Then he said, “You better watch your step”
Or your gonna get hurt yourself
Someone’s gonna tell you lies,
Cut you town to size

Don’t do me like that,
Don’t do me like that,
Baby, baby, baby,
Don’t do me like that.

So, there I was reading the morning news, baffled and befuddled by the seemingly unrelenting hypocrisy that spills form the headlines on a daily basis and then this song popped in my head. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are one of my all-time favorite bands so it’s only natural that I could associate the words of this song with the politics of our times.

Imagine you are the narrator in the song, the guy doing the talking and now imagine you are talking with your friends. Let’s say they are ultra conservative and every time you talk to them they warn you about the government and the hypocrisy of our politicians. No replace the ‘woman’ in the lyrics with any government official. Bingo, it’s the perfect warning.

What has me so riled up this time? Well it’s Ben Beranke, the Fed Chairman. I read in the paper today that he is now warning congress and the government that they need to immediately start creating plans to reduce the deficit or we’ll face huge problems down the road.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME! Now he’s saying this crap? What? When he’s been right at the forefront of printing money to buy our own debt essentially the creator of the ‘money for nuthin/’ scheme that has gotten us in the situation.

Talk about hypocrisy! Do these guys forget what they say from day to day? Isn’t Bernanke part of the old Three Stooges (Bush, Paulson & Bernanke) and the new Three Stooges (Obama, Geihtner, Bernanke) that said what we need to do is spend our way out of this recession and then set our government on a course to do just that!

Unbelievable! That’s all I have for you today, just freaking unbelievable.

I was talkin’ with a friend of mine,
Said the politicians had hurt his pride.
Told him that they loved him so,
And then they turned around and let it blow.
Then he said, “You better watch your step”
Or your gonna get hurt yourself
You guys gonna tell you lies,
Government’s power will cut you town to size

Don’t do me like that,
Don’t do me like that,
Obama, Giehtner, Bernanke,
Don’t do me like that…..

At least we still have the music, they can’t take that away can they? Can they? What? Oh Nooooo!

The GM Affect

Interest rates have gone haywire the last couple of days. You won’t hear it reported in the media though. Why? Because it would look bad for certain economic positions and actions taken by the current Administration …at least that’s my take on it…

The problem is that the bond markets are upset about the way the Obama Administration has handled the bond holders for Chrysler and fear the same will happen with GM. At the administrations urging, the judge in the Chrysler bankruptcy case forced the bond holder to take on more risk.

Usually bond holders are the first to be protected in a bankruptcy but this time it was other interests that were protected first. (think Unions) The bond holders took a back seat to almost every other concern.

Before you go saying those ‘evil’ bond holders (lenders) deserve it, think about this. Bond holders invest in companies by making loans to them because they are risk adverse. Investing in normal stocks is to risky for these investors. There reason? They are investing money from pension funds and insurance companies. This money needs to be invested in areas with very little volatility and steady returns with low risk to the money. (think about your pension, you want safety right?)

The way these bond holders are being treated is a huge change from how large restructuring like this normally takes place. And this sets a dangerous precedent going forward. So with a bankruptcy from GM looming on the horizon, the bond market got very, very nervous and everyone backed out of the market in one day!

I’m calling this The GM Affect because it was so awful. We saw rates jump 1% in less than 24 hours ….by the way… That is completely unheard of!

Rates have come back down today, but I don’t know how long that will last. Rates jumped up to 5.5% from a low the previous day of 4.5%. Rates today are back down to 5% but no one knows for how long.

With a very scary economic report just out about a 5.7% decline in GDP the first quarter of this year and about companies slashing inventories and jobs (approximately 2,000,000 more jobs lost) I’m not sure how much longer rates can stay this low.

So while the Administration rolls our their latest campaign touting the ‘good’ that the stimulus package has done and while they roll out the parties for the supposed 150,000 jobs that were created, our economy has had the second largest contraction since 1981. (By-the-way, only about $11 million of the $45 Billion that has hit the economy was for worthwhile make- work projects. The rest was for one-time payments for welfare and Medicare and for the extension of unemployment benefits.)

I know that this sounds like political commentary and I apologize because it is truly not meant to be a political view point. I'm commenting on my concern about the numbers The numbers don’t lie, and since they don't lie, then someone or something else is lying. Could that something be the government, maybe both parties? Some will point back to the Bush administration as an excuse to support Obama’s actions. Guess what? Bush was wrong as well!

All the economic tricks and gimmicks being tried today have been attempted before. We did here in the late 70's to early 80's. and it didn't work. Heck countries all around the world have tried what we are doing and they will tell you it doesn’t work.

Call it Keynesian Theory, call it Social Democratization, call it whatever you want but understand this. If it is illegal for you to 'kite' checks to cover your debt, then why do we allow the government to do it? (Kiting a check is when you deposit a check from one of your own checking accounts into another and then from that account back into the original account in a never ending circle just to cover checks that you right elsewhere, at some point it will catch up to you.

So why are we allowing our government to do a thing that we would be put in jail for doing? Because of some ‘theory’? Does this make sense to anyone?

At some point we will not be able to print enough money to buy our own bonds to fund our bloated and bureaucratic government. I’m hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. Here’s a link to a great article with the bad news/good news that can help you make up you own mind. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-gdp-revised-to-57-decline-in-first-quarter