Obama vs. the Banks

Obama's plan to place draconian regulations on the banking industry spooked the markets last week. According to Investor's Business Daily:

The president last year proposed a series of measures to tighten the reins on financial institutions, and the House passed a bill last month. His announcement Thursday broadens those measures, particularly by endorsing a proposal by ex-Fed Chairman Paul Volcker to restrict proprietary trading by commercial banks. Such a limit would separate commercial banks from investment banks, a line that was blurred a decade ago by the repeal of the 1930s Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act. Without such regulations, Obama said, the financial system will continue to operate under the same rules that led to its near collapse.

He's just trying to pin the blame where it doesn't belong:

But Wall Street didn't cause the collapse — government did . And this call for tougher rules is yet another attempt to escape blame. All Glass-Steagall did was let bank holding companies buy into investment banks. What undermined the financial system was a fanatical application of rules aimed at getting banks to lend as much money as possible to facilitate homeownership among minorities.

It was the government, not Wall Street, that created the subprime market by compelling banks to make bad loans and urging Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to cash out the banks by putting more and more of the toxic mortgages on their balance sheets.

The more the government meddles where it doesn't belong, the more trouble we get. As Reagan so aptly put it: Goverment is not the solution; government is the problem.

Sheer Lunancy From the Left

Again, Robert Sheer, who once worked for the leftist LA Times, provides us with insight into the liberal mind. I commented on his 4th of July editorial, and he continues with his rants against sane, conservative polices with his usual irrational understanding of reality.

In his latest op-ed of Aug 20th, he spews forth more of his liberal talking points. His premiss for arguments are not based on facts. Let's look at some:

There you have it — in a capsule, the McCain campaign for president, an irrational melange of patriotic swagger and blindness to reality that is proving disturbingly successful with uninformed voters. How else to explain the many millions of Americans who tell pollsters they prefer a continuation of Republican rule when so many of them are losing their homes to foreclosure and the nation is bankrupted by out-of-control military spending.

The economy is in a downward spiral, the national debt is at an all-time high, the dollar is an international disgrace, and inflation in July had the steepest rise in 27 years, driven by oil prices fivefold higher than when President Bush invaded the nation with the world's second-largest petroleum reserves.

First of all, Sheer hates anything doing with patriotism, so he uses this quite frequently in his criticism of Republicans, and Americans in general, in this case "patriotic swagger and blindness." On July 4th, it was "patriotic bluster and beer swilling."

To us "uninformed voters," of course, being a liberal elitist, he doesn't believe we can choose for ourselves. That's one of the problems with America today -- we don't let the liberal elite run everything, you know?

He then leads you to believe that "so many" Americans are losing their homes to foreclosure, because you know, those damned neocons are cheating them out of their homes, you know. He doesn't say that, but you know that's what he means. But the fact is that these people are losing their homes because they made bad decisions. The government, many years ago, allowed lenders to lend to just about anybody -- didn't matter if they could repay -- so here we are with the consequences.

Then our national debt is due to out-of-control military spending. Oh? Really? Is it out of control? Or is it at the level we need to protect ourselves, unlike the attacks we suffered in the 1990s and on Sept 11, 2001? What's out of control is social spending, which has gone up much faster than military spending. But welfare programs, income redistribution, in fact, socialism is O.K.

Of course, the price of oil is Bush's fault. And since this is Bush's fault, our economy, inflation, etc is also Bush's fault. This is something I'm really tired of hearing. I just don't understand this Bush hatred, when any honest thinking human knows that all of our problems aren't the fault of one man.

Later in his editorial, while admitting to the victory in Iraq, Sheer has to disqualify it by bringing up our experience in Vietnam and that "victory is not all it's cracked up to be." Really? I guess victories, like World War II aren't important either. Or any of the other "victories" our military has managed to accomplish.

He reminds us of how Nixon rejected the neoconservative addiction to the cold war by his policy of detente with the Soviets and Chinese. Yet, Nixon really accomplished very little. The threat from these two communist regimes remained just a real as ever, and even more so to smaller countries, such as Afghanistan. Only when Reagan used neoconservative policies in the 1980s did he finally end the cold war.

And of course, our efforts against Islamic fundamentalists is "absurdly misdirected." We shouldn't spend more for national defense, oh no. This won't make us stronger. "Vote for McCain, and forget about funding to solve the Social Security, Medicare and subprime mortgage disasters or anything else that truly would make America stronger," he concludes.

Certainly, Mr. Sheer. Medicare, subprime mortgages and Social Security will certainly beat back the terrorists and other assorted bad guys from attacking our citizens, our properties and our freedoms.

This is dangerous thinking. Americans need to wake up and fight for the freedoms we have, because there are too many people willing -- like Mr. Sheer -- to give them away, or others who want to take them away.

Random Thoughts

A liberal would have written the headline above as "Random Musings." It sounds more intellectual. But simple words have an impact as well. Hemmingway and Stephen King wrote at the fifth-grade level.

The American Left keeps looking for institutions, organizations or people to blame for the rapid increase in energy prices. Who is it now? Ronald Reagan, of course. See Richard Cohen's column in the Washington Post. You can read it at IDB editorials; that way, you don't have to register if you don't want to, because the Post will make you register. Interesting quote from the column: "The worst part of Reaganism was its political success."

Somebody shoot me, ok?

Sometimes Liberal Logic doesn't compute. With Obama's lean toward the center, some on the left want to make sure we know that McCain has been flip-flopping on Iraq. The U.S. and Iraq are negotiating a security treaty, and the Iraqis want our departure as part of that treaty. This is great news, because the Iraqis are beginning to stand up for themselves. (I guess the surge worked, but I digress). But Jon Soltz at the Huffington Post wrote "There you have it. The Iraqis are basically telling the US that they endorse Obama's policy..." He continues with twists and turns to accuse McCain of twisting and turning. McCain is a flip-flopper because he hasn't come out immediately and say he'll support immediate withdrawal.

Somebody shoot me, ok?

Why is it that we have to cut our "carbon output" by 50 percent by some future date, but the Chinese, Indians and basically the entire third world get a free pass. Are they trying to spend us to death, like Reagan did to the Soviet Union?

Obama thinks we should be embarrassed because we (Americans) aren't all bi-lingual. Europeans come here and they can speak English, he says, but all we can say is merci beau coup (French for thank you very much, in case you're not bi-lingual). He says we should make sure all of our children speak Spanish. Obama is clueless. I lived in Europe for five years, and while many Europeans do speak English, many do not. English is the world-wide language of business, air traffic control, diplomacy, etc. If the world-wide language was French, as it was around the founding of this country, more of us would speak French, as our founding fathers did. If you're going to blame someone for the dominance of English, blame the British.

Nothing wrong with being bi-lingual, but I get the feeling the American Left would make it a requirement, enforced by government decree.

Leave Europe for the Europeans, America for Americans.

I'm I dead yet?