Blame Bush, It Works

Divide the Country

President Obama continues to campaign hard by shifting the focus from his record to issues unrelated to anything important about governing the country. His Blame Bush philosophy works to soothe the souls of voters who have buyers remorse, but don’t have a plausible argument. Bush haters are so adamant about Bush that any argument about Obama’s record becomes “anything but another Bush.”

Bush haters blame him for the wars, and for the crash of the economy. Let me give you my take on those arguments.

1. Wars. Yes, Bush started two wars, one in Afghanistan and the second in Iraq. The effort in Afghanistan was necessary to kill Al Qaeda and to stop the Taliban from providing a safe haven for the same. Since Obama killed Osama Bin Laden and reduced Al Qaeda to that of a bacterial infection almost eliminated, we seem to want to leave and let the infection re-establish itself.

The war in Iraq was a gamble which we lost. Saddam Hussein buffed our government into thinking he had weapons of mass destruction. He didn’t, and in retrospect, the war was unnecessary. Once we destroyed an entire country that happily lived under a ruthless dictator, we felt it our obligation to rebuild the place. The cost became a major issue with voters. It was with me too.

2. Economy, blaming Bush for the bad economy is stupid. The root-cause of the housing bubble collapse is a law enacted by Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Lyndon felt so guilty about the way white people treated blacks he wanted to give them all a free house to realize the same American Dream white people enjoy, i.e. without the mortgage. Johnson’s plan wasn’t working fast enough for Bill Clinton, so he pushed through a law to revitalize the Great Society with the Neighborhood Re-investment Act. Things really got rolling with that one. Evil banks are redlining neighborhoods in order not to make bad loans, and  the new law got on their case for that. The government pushed their robot companies Fannie and Freddie to change things with illegal, under the table assurances that the government would cover their asses on bad loans. Money flowed. People learn to make big money by giving buyers who cannot afford a mortgage a loan. Housing began to escalate in price because of the new demand. The increase in prices taught the lenders a new trick, i.e. lend people money based on the paper equity gain on the house. Lenders gambled that borrowers would have enough equity in a house within five years to re-finance and get a mortgage that actually paid back the loan. Many borrowers went to closings to take a new house and a pile of cash at the same time. They did not make a down payment, they had an interest only loan, and they received a cash settlement for the paper equity value the house gained between the time they bought it and the time they closed on it.

The cash flowed so freely, that investors got in on the action and began to buy houses with no money down so they could resell them in a short time to make a profit. The easy money spread like a tumor running wild. New home sales spurred the economy further. Construction was one way, but equipping new homes with appliances, furniture, and such further stimulated business. We all benefitted; some of us with good jobs, some with investments, some selling mortgages.

While this is all going on, Wall Street is making out. That is what they do. If they don’t make money guys like me who depend on them for retirement complain a lot. Fannie and Freddie  invent ways to hide bad loans within bundles of good loans so Wall Street can sell them to the world. After all, the loans supported by the U.S.Government are good. Who is the U.S. Government? It is a democrat congress pushing a socialist agenda against a republican president. The crap rolls down hill further and winds up in our laps in the form of higher taxes to pay the bill for government sins.

Come along good old George Bush. He learns of the problem and goes to a democrat controlled congress to ask for some help. Good old boys Barney Frank and Chris Todd, who should know what is going on fan the flames a little higher by denying any problem. In walks Barack Obama just as the bubble is exploding. Being a really strong socialist democrat, he supports all democrats like Frank and Todd, Fannie, Freddie and his only defense is to blame his predecessor.

Has anyone in the Congress or the Executive branch taken any responsibility for any of it? Nope, but they do blame Bush, evil banks, evil Wall Street, evil capitalism, and gun-toting Americans.

So that my friends is why Obama blames Bush, because he can’t take any responsibility for anything he and his democrat friends have accomplished because that would be admitting their policies don’t work.

Ed Says I’m A Sewer Rat

English: Ed Schultz

Image via Wikipedia

I just read an article about some guy named Ed Schultz who calls Tea Party Patriots sewer rats. He claims that Tea Party Patriots  can’t relate to anyone but themselves so they are like rats who congregate in sewers.

Yes, I am a Tea Party Patriot, and yes, I am a sewer rat.

If being in favor of a country that gives people the liberty to think for themselves makes me a sewer rat, so be it.

If believing that a free-market economy has freed more people from poverty on planet earth than any socialist economy ever has, or ever will, makes me a sewer rat, so be it.

If believing that government regulation strangles the economy and stifles a person’s liberty, makes me a sewer rat, so be it.

If wanting to take care of myself without Uncle’s interference makes me a sewer rat, so be it.

If believing that big government is evil makes me a sewer rat, so be it.

If believing that every working citizen who has to support a non-working citizen is a form of slavery makes me a sewer rat, so be it.

If believing that Ed Schultz has a first amendment right to speak his mind on radio and insult his fellow Americans makes me a sewer rat, so be it.

If believing that Ed Schultz and all progressive, liberal, socialist’s like him are hungry to change America into a  communist state makes me a sewer rat, so be it.

If believing that Obama is the country’s worst President ever makes me a sewer rat, so be it.

If believing that the upper one percent have a right to keep their wealth makes me a sewer rat, so be it.

If believing the bottom one percent calling themselves Occupy Wall Street is a bunch of  communist thieves, makes me a sewer rat, so be it.

If believing the EPA does more damage to the world than it does good makes me a sewer rat, so be it.

If believing the Department of Education is creating generations of kids who read at the level of neanderthals makes me a sewer rat, so be it.

If believing that public sector unions are a contraption invented to enslave tax payers makes me a sewer rat, so be it.

You see Ed Schultz you are right, I am a sewer rat and a Tea Party Patriot who is going to raise the country back to the greatest nation on earth with one weapon. My vote. If that makes me a sewer rat, so be it.

I am going into the sewer to cleanse it of all the crap that resides there in the form of liberalism, progressivism, and communism, if that makes me a sewer rat, so be it.

Doubledy Talk

“A free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it,” Obama said to Wall Street. Evidently, taking big money is the sole responsibility of a socialist government. Obama didn’t flinch when he took nearly a million dollars in campaign contributions from Goldman Sachs employees.

POTUS was pushing his new proposal to reform Wall Street. He commented that the reform is much needed to prevent another financial melt-down. I wonder if this bill, just like the one for reconciling differences in budgets, will not be contorted into some other useful “ends justifies the means”  scenario at a later date.

Obama placed all responsibility for the housing crisis on the greed of Wall Street, and their drive to make money. I didn’t expect him to take responsibility for the government’s pressure on Wall Street to give everyone in the country a free house as the real reason for the bubble.

Leadership carries responsibility. That means you take the gas for things that go wrong, unless of course you are leading the greatest country in the world. If you are POTUS you make others take the gas, and never admit to doing anything wrong yourself. You do however, point fingers at the previous administration.

Obama Cooks!

In my business I learned about something called “root cause.” Whenever we were faced with the solution to a problem, we were to keep asking why, until we found the “root cause.” The concept sounds simple, but in the real world, looking for, and finding the root cause was not always easy. For the last two weeks, I have been looking for the root cause of the “bailout.” It hasn’t been easy, but slowly the facts surface and the source of the problem is emerging.

Back in the nineteen sixties Lyndon Johnson became President after John Kennedy was assassinated. LBJ wanted a legacy. He created the “Great Society.” He saw a world that  would be equal for all people, not just whites. His program was a response to the black civil rights movement. In nineteen sixty eight, with the support of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, Congress passed and enacted the Fair Housing Act (Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968). This law was enacted to eliminate discrimination within the housing market.

Tracing the path from the subprime mortgage failure to Barack Obama, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bill Clinton, ACORN, to LBJ is complex, but the underlying root cause of this catastrophic failure is the Fair Housing Act. Looking back on it, the act totally contradicts good business practices of free trading banks. It is a Federal givaway program to poor people across the country. We as a nation bought into this venture, and as long as everything was going well, we enjoyed the profits.

Several leaders involved in the melt down  enjoyed really big profits. I laugh when I hear the politicians speak about the “greed” on Wall Street.  The “greed” thing was being promulgated by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The leaders of these organizations were cooking the books to make a bonus. Thank God the mess finally exploded. Who are the greed mongers? Three men emerge as prominent thieves.

They are: 1.) Franklin Raines, CEO at Fannie Mae, he left with a golden parachute of $240,000,000.00.

2.) Tim Howard, CFO at Fannie Mae, His parachute is valued at $20,000,000.00.

3.) Jim Johnson, CEO at Fannie Mae, jumped with a $28,000,000.00 parachute.

All three of these guys should be incarcerated, instead they went out and found new jobs.

Guess where they work now?  All three work for BO as economic advisors. With these three guys in his pocket, imagine how  BO will cook the books of the United States Treasury?

Can we really trust him to guard the hen house when he has all the foxes working with him?

Back to my original point, the root cause of this mess, the Fair Housing Act (Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968) must be repealed before it destroys the world economy.

Kill the Goose

BO promises to tax the rich to feed the poor. Sounds like Robin Hood to me. He has told us that ninety five percent of us will get a tax cut. Really? Does he have his pants on backwards? Is his knowledge of economics, or worse yet, his common sense so lacking as to believe that we will be better off? Doesn’t he know that the five percent will merely pass their extra taxes down to us. We will see it in the form of higher prices on goods and services. BO will not acknowledge that as his problem, he will blame it on greedy Wall Street corporations, and therby absolve himself of all blame. Socialists do that. They are the root cause of many problems in the world, but fail to take responsibility for any of them. They always their own failures on the greed of capitalism. The USSR gave socialism a try for more than seventy years before they finally gave it up. We all know how screwed up they are. Do we want to be equally screwed?

By taxing the five percent BO will kill the goose that lays the golden egg.