Citigroup, ticker symbol C, plunged 20% today, on massive volume - 1 billion shares traded hands today alone. Wow. I'm sure it's happened before, but I've never seen a stock trade one billion shares in one day.
Typical volume on the entire NASDAQ is usually 2 billion shares trading hands, for ALL companies listed on that exchange. (C trades on the NYSE, which has higher daily volume, but still.)
Citigroup stock is down almost 90% in one year. So much for buy and hold.
From the WSJ:
Meanwhile, Citigroup plunged to levels not seen in 15 years as investors lost faith in the Treasury Department's efforts to stabilize the banking system. Traders say the Treasury's decision last week not to buy distressed assets abruptly changed the outlook for banks.
THE Evil oil speculators, who only months ago tried to bring the world to ruin by raising oil prices, have now shown mercy on us all and have lowered prices. And Big Media have been hailing their heroic efforts to save the world by bringing down the price of a barrel of oil. I mean headline after headline, the endless news cycle on TV, about how good and beneficent these speculators are now.
Left to its own devices, oil would have stayed sky high. Fortunately for us, the speculators decided to lower the price, arbitrarily.
And if you believe all that...
Look - when the price of something skyrockets or plummets there is no guarantee to anybody that the trend will continue. Speculators are putting their money at risk to try to correctly bet where the future price of oil will be. And you bet a lot of these folks lost their shirts when the price of oil collapsed - from about $150 to $50. Yes, it shrank to about 1/3 the price in a matter of months.
But why are we not now praising the speculators for bringing down the price of oil, if it was their fault for making it go up? Because it wasn't their fault to begin with.
Think of what would happen if these speculators didn't exist as such, and there were no formal oil trading markets. Years ago, operators in China would have bought up the entire current world's supply of oil, knowing that their country needed it for energy for the rapidly expanding economy and industry. So a select few would have gobbled up all the oil, creating panic in the world. And now, of course, those few would have been heavy laden with all those barrels sitting in warehouses, worth a fraction of what they paid.
This same thing has essentially happened in the oil markets, but in a more orderly way. One could probably make the argument that markets make commodities more easily traded, and thus more volatile in price. But this kind of crazy volatility comes from human nature, not merely oil speculators per se. Home prices, cabbage patch kid dolls, oil, tech stocks, gold, you name it, it's all subject to the whims of human activity, whether that be greed, desire, objective prediction, panic, or mild concern.
In hindsight there is little mystery, just the latest affirmation that the most basic aspect of economic theory still prevails. Yet between oil's price ascent and descent, a very interesting morality play unfolded.
As economist Milton Friedman pointed out, it is human nature to ascribe to our own abilities the positive things that happen. It is equally so to attribute the negative things to others' faults. Enter the speculator. These unnamed actors were claimed to have participated in an action undefined beyond their own greed.
What is speculation? Is it simply presuming prices will move in one direction and seeking to make gains on this insight? What investor doesn't do this? Is it done in such a way that the market moves in a desired direction? If so, it apparently did not work.
• If speculation was a problem then, why is it not a problem now? If speculators were responsible for the price rise, why are they not liable for the price decline?
While it is human nature to take credit for the good and shift blame for the bad, neither is necessarily descriptive of reality. The laws of economics work, regardless of how we or government seek to constrain them or refute them. There is no mystery or conspiracy in them.
In the case of oil, they conspired to create a price we did not like. And it was a price that was the result of policymakers who had constrained supply and allowed it to be so outstripped by demand.
"I think I'm not as informed as I thought I was... but I still don't think I would change my vote." - Obama supporter
The filmmaker who made this film commissioned a poll from Zogby, a major poll company. So his point is that his film, though showing a small sampling of Obama voters, corroborates the poll of over 500 people.
The results are astonishing, but not surprising. The film shows a number of Obama voters who are totally ignorant about politics in general - they new almost nothing of the democratic leaders - but who can recite the common slurs regarding Gov. Sarah Palin. They had no idea about any of the misgivings about Obama.
The point is, people really are influenced by that far-left, major media. The major media are controlled by people who are about 90% democrats. Watch as the interviewees say that they get their news from PBS, NY Times, CNN, MSNBC, Jon Stewart, Colbert Report, etc.
Here is the data from the Zogby Poll----------------
97.1% High School Graduate or higher, 55% College Graduates
Results to 12 simple Multiple Choice Questions
57.4% could NOT correctly say which party controls congress (50/50 shot just by guessing)
71.8% could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing)
82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)
88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing)
56.1% could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing).
And yet.....
Only 13.7% failed to identify Sarah Palin as the person on which their party spent $150,000 in clothes
Only 6.2% failed to identify Palin as the one with a pregnant teenage daughter
And 86.9 % thought that Palin said that she could see Russia from her "house," even though that was Tina Fey who said that!!
Only 2.4% got at least 11 correct.
Only .5% got all of them correct. (And we "gave" one answer that was technically not Palin, but actually Tina Fey)
"They clearly have enough material for a bomb," said Richard Garwin, a top nuclear physicist who helped invent the hydrogen bomb and has advised Washington for decades. "They know how to do the enrichment. Whether they know how to design a bomb, well, that's another matter."
This is simply unbelievable. We, the world, have watched as Iran defiantly told the world they were pursuing nuclear technology, and have watched ever since as the centrifuge sites have proliferated, and Russia has enabled them by selling them the necessary technology. And now, we watch as the International Atomic Energy Agency tells us that Iran has has enough enriched uranium to make a bomb. Don't worry, though, they say. They probably can't make a bomb out of it. Yet.
Whew. That's a relief.
Israel will have no option but to bomb all of these facilities and the craven world will sit back, watch, publicly show outrage and censure Israel, and then under their breath thank Israel for saving the world. Such is the state of the brave, clear-headed leaders of the "free world".
Iran has now produced roughly enough nuclear material to make, with added purification, a single atom bomb, according to nuclear experts analyzing the latest report from global atomic inspectors.
The figures detailing Iran's progress were contained in a routine update on Wednesday from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been conducting inspections of the country's main nuclear plant at Natanz. The report concluded that as of early this month, Iran had made 630 kilograms, or about 1,390 pounds, of low-enriched uranium.
Siegfried Hecker of Stanford University and a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory said the growing size of the Iranian stockpile "underscored that they are marching down the path to developing the nuclear weapons option."
"They have a weapon's worth," Thomas Cochran, a senior scientist in the nuclear program of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private group in Washington that tracks atomic arsenals, said in an interview.
He said the amount was suitable for a relatively advanced implosion-type weapon like the one dropped on Nagasaki. Its core, he added, would be about the size of a grapefruit. He said a cruder design would require about twice as much weapon-grade fuel.
How many Barack Obamas will be aborted during Barack Obama's presidency? We'll never know, because they won't live out their lives for us to find out.
The truth is, electing Obama into the office of the president must be a dream come true for the hate-filled white supremacist crowd. Imagine a plot to kill off thousands of African Americans. And not just in one decade or even in one year. How about every day? Even if all white supremacists took up arms and went on a collective rampage, there's no way they'd even come close to killing 1,000 people in one day.
Yet somewhere around 1,400 African Americans will lose their lives every day of the Obama presidency due to abortion. If he serves two terms, that will be about 4 million African Americans killed. Out of a total of 12 million people.
With Barack Obama as president, we'll likely get two replacement ultra-liberals on the Supreme Court, replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg (75), and John Paul Stevens (88).
No doubt McCain wouldn've appointed orginalist judges who'd correctly see that there is nothing in the constitution as regards a "right to choose" abortion, and turn the matter over to the states of the union.
But now, that hope is gone - and maybe for a generation or more.
Who in this election did not know that the President would be choosing Supreme Court justices? Everyone knows this.
The statistics on African American abortions are shocking. Even though African Americans are only about 13 percent of the U.S. population, one of every three abortions in the United States is performed on a black woman. Three of every five African American women will abort a child. Some 1,452 African American babies are killed each day in abortions. Let’s compare these statistics to the number of African Americans who have been killed by crimes of racial violence. Statistics show that between 1882 and 1968, 3,446 blacks were lynched in the United States. That number is bypassed by the number of African American abortions every three days. Let’s project the favorable consequences had the aborted babies been allowed to live. Had the 13 million babies aborted since Roe v. Wade in 1973 been allowed to live, today’s African American population of 37 million could reasonably be projected to exceed 50 million today. In other words, today’s potential African American population has been reduced 25 percent by abortions. And the 13 million African American abortions are estimated to have enriched the U.S. abortion industry by some $4 billion since Roe v. Wade.
They've stopped executions of murderers in California because those involved thought putting them to sleep first was cruel and unusual. Cruel and unusual: look up how abortion procedures are carried out - on human beings that can feel every bit of pain that we can - and see if you think it's cruel and unusual.
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Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State? You've got to be kidding me.
And what experience, besides her husband's connections, does she bring to that job? Not much. Some overseas trips, during which she indeed was not shot at, and that's about it.
There's no way. No way Obama could trust her, no way it could work.
This is Obama's attempt to placate all the Hilaryites who are mad at him for not even vetting her for the Veep slot. Well, now he's vetting her. Happy?
Dick Morris on FoxNews had some astonishing things to say about this - about how Hillary is the one who leaked this - not the Obama camp. How Bill has taken in $130 million from one foreign government alone for his library. $130 million??? That should buy a lot of books and Clinton memorabilia I would think. Especially after he's already raised tens of millions elsewhere. Must be some library.
Think of all the fun Hillary would have missed if she really had stayed home and baked cookies. And who can forget that moment... Ah, I miss the chubby version of Bill Clinton...
The top US military officer said Monday he was "stunned" by the reach of the Somali pirates who seized a Saudi supertanker off the east coast of Africa, calling piracy a growing problem that needs to be addressed.
But Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there were limits to what the world's navies could do once a ship has been captured because national governments often preferred to pay pirates ransom.
Hmm, more piracy after craven national governments hand over money to them. Heads up, you liberals who prefer to not understand economics and human behavior - when you provide a strong financial incentive for something, you usually get more of it. Just a lesson as we watch the coming administration pass out goodies to its supporters and punish investment and business creation.
Here's a close-up of a map of the Horn of Africa (on its east coast)...
And here is a snapshot of a live piracy map. No kidding. From these guys:
"These boys might be old men before this current war is over. Their fathers were born during an earlier phase of it. It is hard to imagine how the nicer parts of their culture can survive a multi-generational war, and how the country can advance when its resources go to basic self-defense. Yet here they are, seemingly ready for change. The British tell me it will take 10 years to “win” the war. Some Americans say 25. Both seem like gross underestimates. Perhaps the fighting will end. But it will take a century for Afghanistan to become modern. Today, Afghanistan is spiraling into the abyss. To us, progress is a given. To others, it is an elusive dream, if they dream at all. Here, the march of time can go forward or backwards."
Yon is an independent journalist in the truest sense, and you can support him directly by either donating or buying his eye-opening book about the war in Iraq.
Here's a sample of photos from his site, taken in Afghanistan recently...
Why do we live with these people? Why do we allow our lawmakers and legal system to keep churning out repeat sex offenders?
Here's one gem of a guy living close to my old home town...
Fortunately, he was busted for this - threatening people itself is a crime.
If you want yourself and your children to continue to be exposed to these kinds of gems, then by all means keep putting politicians in office who are soft on crime. Your choice. Your life. Your society.
Yes,the civilized world is still fighting pirates. But they're not the funny kind that say, "Har, mate-ee!" Probably no eye patches or hooks for hands either.
Pirates caught redhanded by one of Her Majesty’s warships after trying to hijack a cargo ship off Somalia made the grave mistake of opening fire on two Royal Navy assault craft packed with commandos armed with machineguns and SA80 rifles.
The Ministry of Defence said the Marines circled the pirates’ boat to try and persuade them to stop.
As they approached, however, several of the pirates, a mixed crew of Somalis and Yemenis, swung their assault rifles in their direction and opened fire. The MoD said the Royal Marines returned fire “in self defence”, and then boarded the dhow — a stolen Yemeni-registered fishing vessel.
[awesome poster from LGF] "Thanks" will never be enough to convey the debt of gratitude we owe our men and women who have fought and died for our freedom.
But that's how we say it in our language, so THANK YOU, VETS!!!!!!!!!
I could not be more proud of our military. I dare say never in the history of man has such a prosperous nation produced such an accomplished and powerful all-volunteer army.
Can't wait for that awesome government-run health care. Canadians are having a great time dying, literally, in their emergency rooms.
Imagine the Post Office, or your local Department of Motor Vehicles running your health care. You know, those productive not-paid-for-performance government employees.
[hat tip: anncoulter.com]
Emergency-room nightmares spur calls for action
LISA PRIEST From Monday's Globe and Mail
Emergency wards are so overcrowded, patients have had heart attacks, miscarriages and, in at least one case, even died while in the care queue, prompting doctors to call on provincial governments to implement waiting-time targets and to stop using the hospital department as a patient "dumping ground.
For now, we have a new president-elect. In the spirit of reaching across the aisle, we owe it to the Democrats to show their president the exact same kind of respect and loyalty that they have shown our recent Republican president. - Ann Coulter
“Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.” - President-elect Obama, Victory Speech
"[The Republicans] can go f*** themselves!" - President-elect Obama's second in Command, Rahm Emanuel
Choosing Rahm Emanuel as his right-hand man - one of the most partisan and divisive figures in the country - is an interesting first step of President-elect Obama.
"Emanuel" means "God with us."
But Obama may have gotten a little devil in Rahm Emanuel - Obama's choice for Chief of Staff at the White House.
If the President is the CEO of the nation, the Chief of Staff is like the COO. It's a key position in the administration in which one may be the senior adviser, policy creator, gateway to the President, negotiator with congress, manager of the schedule, and manager of all the white house staff - not the cooking and cleaning, but the policy makers.
Emanuel worked in the Clinton administration. So President Change has selected Partisan HotHead Washington Insider as his number 2 guy. And what a lovely little pussycat Emanuel is.
Here's a quote from newsmax.com:
Emanuel once sent a dead fish to a pollster who displeased him. In one meeting with his staff, Emanuel shouted out, “Since my kids are gone, I can say it: They [Republicans] can go f--- themselves!
And, wow, does Dick Morris have some interesting things to say about Rahm Emanuel. Morris was for a quite a while at the very center of the Clinton Administration, where Emanuel also served - so Morris is very familiar with Rahm Emanuel.
Clinton apparently couldn't even trust Emanuel, though Emanuel was on his staff. He chided Dick Morris for giving information to him, knowing it would leak to the press for self-serving purposes.
Some quotes from Fox News:
"Rahm is in business for Rahm".
"Clinton never told the truth to Emanuel. He constantly cut Rahm out, he was afraid of him, because Rahm was always in business for Rahm."
"He (Rahm) formulates the Democratic position."
"Obama is making a huge mistake in appointing this guy."
However, I do note that Mr. Emanuel is taking on a more conciliatory tone this weekend in The Wall Street Journal. Fox News also reported on election night that the Obama campaign analyzed the mistakes of the Clinton administration's first two years, and Obama's camp is determined to not overreach. Meaning, they want to do more, but they know the public won't let them.
I think Ann Coulter is right - Democrats on the national stage only win by running as Republicans.
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After watching this video here, I was able to find the secret Natanz centrifuge site in Iran. Centrifuges are used in nuclear technology to create powerful, "enriched" uranium. If you get good enough at them, you can make a nuclear weapon.
Here's how you can tour the facility yourself, from the sky:
And now, some pics (mine, from Google maps, and one from GlobalSecurity.org). I'm sure President-elect Obama is going to see plenty of pictures like these in the coming months...
click to enlarge any of these
This would be a good area to avoid, if you're going to vacation in Iran within the next two years... (the "A" symbol is where the centrifuge site is)
And, just for fun, here's a live map of the infamous Bushehr nuclear reactors... ("Bush error" is a very unfortunate name for this plant)
Imagine the world's worst terrorists having 30 to 60 crude nuclear weapons. That covers a lot of cities in the U.S. and Israel, for sure.
Bush has "kicked the can down the road", as they say, on this issue.
And Obama says "they're just a tiny little country!" Good thing he's got that "foreign policy expert" on his staff, you know, the VP-elect who wanted to give Iran $200 million after Sept. 11.
"Conservative by the time you're 35" "If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain." There is no record of anyone hearing Churchill say this. Paul Addison of Edinburgh University makes this comment: "Surely Churchill can't have used the words attributed to him. He'd been a Conservative at 15 and a Liberal at 35! And would he have talked so disrespectfully of Clemmie, who is generally thought to have been a lifelong Liberal?"
"Rum, sodomy and the lash" The only traditions of the Royal Navy are rum, sodomy and the lash. - -- Churchill's assistant, Anthony Montague-Browne said that although Churchill had not uttered these words, he wished he had.
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Al Franken, the loving liberal and senatorial candidate, has lost his Senate race in Minnesota by 221 votes in the latest count.
The latest count - and probably not the last. The suspicious thing is that somehow 100 votes were picked up in one of the several recounts, and all 100 went to Franken and Obama - of which Senator Coleman's (Franken's opponent's) campaign manager said was "statistically impossible."
The difference between Coleman and Franken, which stood at 725 votes in Coleman's favor Wednesday morning, has changed several times since then as county officials have checked results, and was 221 by Friday evening.
An election night worksheet from St. Louis County showed Franken with 406 votes from Precinct 1 in Mountain Iron. The revised totals Thursday night showed him with 506. Similarly, the vote total for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama increased from 469 to 569 when the final tallies were complete
"Obviously, this is highly suspicious. They found 100 votes, and it's statistically impossible that all 100 votes went to the two Democrats, even in St. Louis County," said Cullen Sheehan, Coleman's campaign manager.
And now, from our "What Media Bias?" department...
The historic meltdown of MSNBC continues.
Chris Matthews, host of the softball for dems/hardball for conservatives show, believes it's his job to make this presidency work. Not investigative journalism. Not talking with all sides of the spectrum to get their take and ask probing questions so that viewers have enough information to decide. His job is to make the Obama presidency work. That's more like the ministry of propaganda, isn't it? At least his coworker calls him on it.
"I want to do everything I can to... make this new Presidency work. Yeah, that's my job."
He's accusing Obama of selling out - this is a guy, Nader, who lives in an ultra-rich neighborhood, but thinks he can identify with poor people. He's irrelevant and and a sore loser (you probably didn't even know that, yes, he was a presidential candidate this year). Bye, Ralph.
Now, when have the monolith ABCCBSNBCBNEWYORKTIMES crowd EVER stood up for Bush in the face of all of those unhinged crackpots (and even those that aren't in congress)?
But Fox News can stand up for Obama in the face of undue criticism and epithets.
I quoth Ralph:
"His choice is whether he's going to be Uncle Sam for the people of this country, or Uncle Tom for the giant corporations."
It's very interesting to note that RealClearPolitics was very accurate in predicting this election.
Though I disputed some of their poll formulas (the Pew poll had Obama by about 15, which was ridiculous), their number seems to be very close. Towards the end they were showing Obama up by about 7%-6%, which is about where the tally stands. Also, their electoral map was pretty much dead accurate.
They take many national polls and state polls, and average them, then show that result and apply it to an electoral map. Very helpful. I created this custom map below to reflect the final results:
News agencies are reporting that Senator Coleman retained his US Senate seat in Minnesota, but only by about 700+ votes, beating comedian Al Franken. Maybe if Franken would've again called Rush Limbaugh "a big fat idiot" it would've helped?
Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken are going to have to wait a bit to declare themselves the victor in the Minnesota Senate seat after the 727-vote margin in the race fell within the state's mandatory recount law.
That law requires a recount any time the margin between the top two candidates is less than one-half of one percent.
The Associated Press pulled its call for Coleman after reporting him the winner. Franken told FOX News that he is not conceding. He told supporters it'll be "a little while" before Minnesotans know the results.
The margin is well within the threshold for an automatic recount that could drag into December. Franken could have waived the recount, but he said he wouldn't.
From Serious Journalism that rivals the mainstream media, The Onion...
WASHINGTON—African-American man Barack Obama, 47, was given the least-desirable job in the entire country Tuesday when he was elected president of the United States of America. In his new high-stress, low-reward position, Obama will be charged with such tasks as completely overhauling the nation's broken-down economy, repairing the crumbling infrastructure, and generally having to please more than 300 million Americans and cater to their every whim on a daily basis. As part of his duties, the black man will have to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind. The job comes with such intense scrutiny and so certain a guarantee of failure that only one other person even bothered applying for it. Said scholar and activist Mark L. Denton, "It just goes to show you that, in this country, a black man still can't catch a break."
"I've always believed that America offers opportunities to all who have the industry and will to seize it. Senator Obama believes that, too.
But we both recognize that, though we have come a long way from the old injustices that once stained our nation's reputation and denied some Americans the full blessings of American citizenship, the memory of them still had the power to wound.
A century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt's invitation of Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House was taken as an outrage in many quarters.
America today is a world away from the cruel and frightful bigotry of that time. There is no better evidence of this than the election of an African-American to the presidency of the United States.
Let there be no reason now for any American to fail to cherish their citizenship in this, the greatest nation on Earth." - John McCain, Concession Speech, Nov. 4, 2008
If Obama gets elected, he's going to help this woman with her gas and her mortgage. Or so she believes.
I guess all you need is more than 50% of voters who believe they'll receive government largess, and you can get elected. Right now, today, we're close to having 50% of taxpayers pay no tax, but voting for how much that other half will pay.
From RealClearPolitics, here is the last look at the polls and electoral map for this election...
So much for the polls tightening. It looks like a blow-out for Obama. Obama leads well in nearly all swing states.
One can only hope Rush Limbaugh is right: if Obama doesn't have a 10-point lead in the polls, he's not going to win this thing. Here's hoping and looking...
Start close to the middle of the video to get the good quotes.
"I am not going to license or encourage coal that's dirty... Right now we're not quite there yet."
Meaning, there will be no new coal plants unless they use "clean" technology - of course, this will be whatever Obama's definition is of "clean". It could also mean, as Obama said in San Francisco, that even current coal plants couldn't get a license until they are "green".
Also note that, as he's said many times before, these carbon credits that coal and other companies will have to purchase will generate funds for green tech. How? That must mean that the federal government will OWN the credit system, companies will pay the federal government for the carbon credits, and then the government will pass out those funds to whatever companies it wants. DANGER, WILL ROBINSON!!!!
"We're going to have an aggressive cap and trade system. What that means is that, any industry that wants to burn any kind of energy, it's going to have to pay for any greenhouse gases it releases. By the way, that will generate billions of dollars in revenues that can be invested in green technology."
This is nothing more than a massive tax increase on everyone, with billions being funneled to green tech companies.
Please post a comment below if you're still voting for this guy.
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C-SPAN is great during the election season. You can get a lot of information unfiltered - raw, with no sound bites. Here's a great debate with Steve Forbes, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Alan Colmes, and others. Serious issues are discussed, but the conversation is always civil and even very polite, and all sides are heard. Why can't presidential debates be like this????
Check out this outrageous statement by Alan Colmes:
"We have a right to know (about Sarah Palin), and I think the press did its job by asking hard, tough questions about (Sarah Palin)... But we know pretty much about Barack Obama, who has been fully vetted. And also, by the way, his executive experience - he ran a campaign that did pretty well. That's a budget, that's executive, that's running something..."
Obama has been "fully vetted"???? How can he even try to pull off this lie? The liberal Kool Aid has finally toasted all of his reasoning skills. If there is one thing Barck Obama is NOT it's "fully vetted". Most people know nothing about his political and ideological formation (unless they've been watching Fox News).
And this crud about running a campaign qualifies as executive experience?!?!? Mr. Colmes, what you are saying, then, is that anyone who has ever run for any public office is qualified for that job on the basis that they ran a campaign. Outright stupidity. And, he takes this right out of Barack Obama's talking points. Obama came up with this point out of desperation, because he has absolutely no real qualifications for the job other than charisma - which is not a qualification per se, but a trait of electability. AND, Obama doesn't directly manage that campaign itself - that's what campaign managers do, so I guess Obama's campaign manager is more qualified for the presidency than Obama.
MORE HIGHLIGHTS (my comments in italics):
14:00 - Mike Huckabee gives a stirring and eloquent presentation of how conservatives view the abortion issue - it gets back to what our founders said - "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights". It's not about the politics, Huckabee says, it's about the intrinsic value of that life and all life.
22:00 Steve Forbes The fundamental reason for our current economic problems is the weak dollar. Obama's proposals total about 4 $TRILLION - about $50,000 to $60,000 for each family of 4. "When you lower the price of good things, like risk taking and success, you get more of them." Our crazy tax code - get rid of it and start over. 6 billion hours spent a year on taxes. Unions - the Dems want to do away with secret ballots for unionization.
Donna Brazille (Campaing Mgr. for Gore, senior Democratic Strategist)
"This economy will call for more sacrifices." "We all are in this together, and we have to share..." "This will require us all to come together as Americans".
Man, I'm so tired of the liberal mantra, "we all have to come together". I always thought they meant solving solutions with consensus and only by consensus. But now I understand that they mean - "we have to take from those that have and give to those that we the Democrats need in our power base."
"It's time we look out for one another."
Does she really believe this? Because the policies she advocates are not about brother taking care of brother - they're about brother giving to Big Brother, and Big Brother deciding who receives government largess. If Ms. Brazille really believes what she says, she'd advocate for complete privatization of all charity programs - food stamps, welfare, assistance, etc. Clearly the best way to do this is to put it in the control of individuals who have only in their mind the interest of the people in need. Government bureaucrats can never do this well, if at all.
32:30 Rick Santorum (former Repub. U.S. Sentator)
"Whoever is elected had better know who our enemy is - and right now I'm not convinced Barack Obama does." "No one person in this audience could have predicted on Sept. 12, 2001, that we'd be sitting here today without another terrorist incident. That is not a mistake. The party in power gets absolutely no credit for making our country safer, and in fact making the world safer."
38:00 Geraldine Ferraro Often charming and humorous, but what a blow-hard. She obviously views herself as the sage and having the right to blather on endlessly, which she often does during this debate.
48:00 Steve Forbes "Can you cite any period in American history where the reduction in tax rates at the federal level did not result in an increased economic activity and more federal revenues?
Colmes' only answer was that Reagan left us with a lot of debt - didn't directly answer the question. Forbes' retort was that the answer is tax revenues did increase under Reagan, but, as today, the congress spent the money and spent some more. Forbes:
"It's been compared, their spending proclivities, both Republican and Democrat, to drunken sailors, which is an insult to drunken sailors. Because they're spending their own money." "That is a spending problem, not a revenue problem."
53:00 Forbes, in response to Ms. Brazille asking "why don't you want to give tax cuts to 95% of the American people", says you have to do it the right way - by lowering the tax rates, which are a big burden, and not giving temporary rebates.
57:00 Rick Santorum asks the panel on the left if we should raise taxes because it's "fair", whether or not it increases tax revenues. The panel on the left never actually answered that point. Ferraro:
"Flat tax (as a policy) is gone!!" "You may like it, it's easy, but it's never going to go anywhere in this country."
Steve Forbes, after Ferraro said flat taxes don't work, pointed out that 25 countries have adopted it and it's worked everywhere it's tried.
1:08 Huckabee points out that corporations really don't pay taxes - the end-users - the public - does. The people who buy their product are the ones penalized.
1:18 The totally unbiased moderator from MSNBC had the temerity to ask if Gov. Sarah Palin was qualified (this question, of course, was asked of no other candidate). Santorum answered, "If Barack Obama's qualified, Sarah Palin is."
Ferraro said that there was "no comparison" between Palin and Obama, because Ivy League schools only pick the brightest, so that makes them better (not joking!).
Ferraro is wrong here, of course, because we already know of Michell Obama that she was let into Harvard via Affirmative Action criteria, not merit. So the very nature of that admission policy means someone else was not able to go to Harvard, because someone less qualified was admitted instead.I actually think she's right - there is no comparison between Obama and Palin - Palin has way more experience.
1:34 Awesome wrap-up by Rick Santorum.
"If in fact (Obama) is elected... you will see dramatic - and I underscore that - dramatic change... from an economic system, that from the days of Ronald Reagan was focused on wealth creation, to one that is focused on wealth redistribution." "The world has been stable and safe because America has been the leader, not because America has given up its leadership to international bodies..."
Brings up the point that Obama was the only one in the Senate who actually wants to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act - so get ready for the radical Gay/Lesbian political agenda.
"This is not just one man you're giving (the presidency and power) to... He's not going to write his health care bill. Ted Kennedy is going to write that health care bill. He's not going to write his tax bill - Charlie Rangel is going to write that tax bill. That's what we have to look forward to. Not the moderate..."
1:47 Steve Forbes. "Somebody said 'the end of the world can only happen once, and this is not it.'" Forbes' summary is just great - he sums up the conservative position on everything from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to health care.
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It's obvious that if Barack Obama is elected, that much more will come out of the skeleton closet. It's going to be like the Clinton years - times ten. Maybe not in the same scandalous and titillating nature of the Clinton stories, but certainly in the sheer volume of stories.
Alan Colmes, in a debate on C-SPAN, said something to the effect of, regarding Obama, "We know Obama, he's been fully vetted already." Absolute baloney - how could he really believe that? Yes, his network - Fox News - has hammered on Barack Obama. So that covers several million viewers, most of which are probably conservative. But none of that reaches the rest of the public, since the lock-step liberally entrenched Big Media will not allow it.
Do read VHD's entire article - it's awesome. Here are some quotes...
We’ve known for a long time — from various polling, and records of political donations of journalists themselves, as well as surveys of public perceptions — that the vast majority of journalists identify themselves as Democratic, and liberal in particular.
Yet we have never quite seen anything like the current media infatuation with Barack Obama, and its collective desire not to raise key issues of concern to the American people. Here were four areas of national interest that were largely ignored.
CAMPAIGN FINANCING For years an axiom of the liberal establishment was the need for public campaign financing...
In contrast, Barack Obama, remember, promised that he would accept both public funding and the limitations that went along with it, and would “aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.” Then in June 2008, Obama abruptly reneged, bowing out entirely from government financing, the first presidential nominee in the general election to do that since the system was created in 1976.
The story that the media chose to ignore was not merely the Obama about-face on public financing, or even the enormous amounts of money that he has raised — some of it under dubious circumstances involving foreign donors, prepaid credit cards, and false names. Instead, they were absolutely quiet about a historic end to liberal support for public financing.
For all practical purposes, public financing of the presidential general election is now dead. No Republican will ever agree to it again. No Democrat can ever again dare to defend a system destroyed by Obama.
THE VP CANDIDATES We know now almost all the details of Sarah Palin’s pregnancies, whether the trooper who tasered her nephew went to stun or half stun, the cost of her clothes, and her personal expenses — indeed, almost everything except how a mother of so many children gets elected councilwoman, mayor, and governor, routs an entrenched old-boy cadre, while maintaining near record levels of public support.
Yet the American public knows almost nothing of what it should about the extraordinary career of Joe Biden, the 36-year veteran of the Senate.
By accepted standards of behavior, Biden has sadly proven wanting. He has committed almost every classical sin of character — plagiarism, false biography, racial insensitivity, and serial fabrication. And because of media silence, we don’t know whether he was kidding when he said America would not need to burn coal, or that Hezbollah was out of Lebanon, or that FDR addressed the nation on television as president in 1929 (surely a record for historical fictions in a single thought), or that the public would turn sour on Obama once he was challenged by our enemies abroad.
The respective coverage of the two candidates is ironic in a variety of ways, but in one especially — almost every charge against Palin (that she is under wraps, untruthful, and inept) was applicable only to Biden.
THE PAST AS PRESENT But in the case of Obama, we witnessed not a shift, but a complete transformation to an entirely new persona — in almost every imaginable sense of the word. Name an issue — FISA, NAFTA, guns, abortion, capital punishment, coal, nuclear power, drilling, Iran, Jerusalem, the surge — and Obama’s position today is not that of just a year ago.
Until 2005, Obama was in communication with Bill Ayers by e-mail and phone, despite Ayers reprehensible braggadocio in 2001 that he remained an unrepentant terrorist. Rev. Wright was an invaluable spiritual advisor — until spring of 2008. Father Pfleger was praised as an intimate friend in 2004 — and vanished off the radar in 2008. The media might have asked not just why these rather dubious figures were once so close to, and then so distant from, Obama; but why were there so many people like Rashid Khalidi and Tony Rezko in Obama’s past in the first place?
Imagine the reaction of CNN or NBC had John McCain’s pastor and spiritual advisor of 20 years been revealed as a white supremacist who damned a multiracial United States, or had he been a close acquaintance until 2005 of an unrepentant terrorist bomber of abortion clinics, or had McCain himself sued to eliminate congressional opponents by challenging the validity of African-American voters who signed petitions, or had both his primary and general election senatorial rivals imploded once their sealed divorce records were mysteriously leaked.
Questions arise, but were again not explored: How wise is it to exempt one out of every two income earners from any worry over how the nation gathers its federal income tax revenue?
A practical effect of socialism is often defined as curbing productive incentives by ensuring the poorer need not endanger their exemptions and credits by seeking greater income; and discouraging the wealthy from seeking greater income, given that nearly two-thirds of additional wealth would be lost to taxes. Surely that discussion might have been of interest to the American people.
The media has succeeded in shielding Barack Obama from journalistic scrutiny. It thereby irrevocably destroyed its own reputation and forfeited the trust that generations of others had so carefully acquired. And it will never again be trusted to offer candid and nonpartisan coverage of presidential candidates.
Worse still, the suicide of both print and electronic journalism has ensured that, should Barack Obama be elected president, the public will only then learn what they should have known far earlier about their commander-in-chief — but in circumstances and from sources they may well regret.
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Coal generates probably about half of the electricity in the United States.
Do you think your monthly energy bill will go up when Obama radically raises the price of coal production by trying to bankrupt the industry? Yes, it will.
This is where the libs just go crazy - Obama will try to bankrupt the coal industry, driving up energy prices, at which point the Democrats will cry "GREED!", and likely try to nationalize the industry - the only other option is to have expensive power.
A more likely scenario perhaps, if Obama is elected, is that America rebels after 2 years of this nonsense and elects Republicans back into Congress. One can hope.
Here's the audio of Obama, speaking right here in my neck of the woods - the bay area of CA.
“So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.” Obama said, “That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in wind, solar, biodiesel and other alternative energy approaches. The only thing that I have said with respect to coal, I haven’t been some coal booster. What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as a ideological matter as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it.”
Now, watch carefully. Here is where liberals have to lie in order to get elected. Another news article has the following quote:
The Obama campaign says the quote is being taken out of context and that Obama is actually from a coal state and is a strong supporter of the industry.
Listen to the audio yourself and see if it is taken out of context - it is not. This is yet another example of Obama and his staff lying to cover their tracks.
Once again, Obama says one thing to San Francisco liberals, and another to the rest of the voters.
He's lying about coal, he's lying about Ayers, he's lying about taxes. Lying. Still want to vote for him?
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