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Friday, September 26, 2008
Which Obama Do You Believe?
In tonight’s presidential debate, Senator Obama denied that he ever had countenanced committing a unilateral act of war against Pakistan.
But he sang a different tune in August.
Foreign Policy • (4) Comments
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Thomas Sowell Opines on the Bailout
Read A Political “Solution”: Part II, by Thomas Sowell.
Key quote:
But bailing out people who made ill-advised mortgages makes no more sense that bailing out people who lost their life savings in Las Vegas casinos. It makes political sense only to people like Senator Dodd, who are among the reasons for the financial mess in the first place.
People usually stop making ill-advised decisions when they are forced to face the consequences of those decisions, not when politicians come to their rescue and make the taxpayers pay for decisions that the taxpayers had nothing to do with.
The Wall Street Journal, which has for years been sounding the alarm about the riskiness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, recently cited Senator Christopher Dodd along with Senator Charles Schumer and Congressman Barney Frank among those on Capitol Hill who have been “shilling” for these financial institutions, downplaying the risks and opposing attempts to restrict their free-wheeling role in the mortgage market.
As recently as July of this year, Senator Dodd declared Fannie Mae and Freddie “fundamentally strong” and said there is no need for “panicking” about them. But now that the chickens have come home to roost, Senator Dodd wants to be sure to get some goodies from the rescue legislation to pass out to people likely to vote for him.
Let’s hope that some good for the whole nation comes from this fiasco. Number one on the wish list is a return to the ethos that prevailed in the United States from the early 17th century into the early 1960s: the understanding that everyone must work and save before buying and that debt is to be avoided like the plague.
Economics • (10) Comments
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Thursday, September 25, 2008
Thought For The Day - September 25, 2008
Whether the proposed $700 billion bail-out for holders of troubled loans is a good thing is almost impossible for those of us in the general public to assess. We do not have all the information available to the Treasury and to the Fed.
A large portion of the public, however, condemn the bail-out on the grounds that we should let the financial markets collapse to punish the Wall Street titans who created the mess.
That’s rather like damning the fire department for struggling to save some of your home when it’s in flames, demanding instead that the firemen pursue the purported arsonist.
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Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Blame Fannie Mae and Congress For the Credit Mess
Economics • (8) Comments
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Monday, September 22, 2008
Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism In Schools
Senator Obama, probably the only editor of the Harvard Law Review ever to lack the credentials to clerk for one of the nation’s prestigious Federal judges, went instead into liberal-progressive-socialist activism aimed at radicalizing young students and fomenting discord in low-income neighborhoods.
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NATO’s Uncertain Future
Confronting a newly aggressive Russia, Barack Obama’s reaction would be to go humbly to Moscow, with no preconditions, set up his teleprompter on the coffee table between himself and Prime Minister Putin, and read him a soul-stirring speech about coming together, then leave the problem in the UN’s hands.
Jeff Lukens looks at the reality of the situation.
Foreign Policy • (1) Comments
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Sunday, September 21, 2008
The Next Great Depression
If Senator Obama is elected and if he follows his announced liberal-progressive-socialist policies of high taxes, massive increases in regulation, vilification of business, and large new welfare program spending, the United States will enter a period of stagflation or a prolonged, FDR-style Depression.
Read Amity Shlaes’s assessment.
Economics • (4) Comments
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Saturday, September 20, 2008
Senator Obama’s Liberal-Progressive Orthodoxy Fails the Test in Emergencies
Media & Opinion • (1) Comments
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Campaign Vigorish More Important to Liberal-Progressives than Financial Prudence
Bush proposed tighter regulation of Fannie and Freddie five years ago; Democrat/Socialists opposed it.
Welfare-State Socialism • (7) Comments
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Chicago-Style Politics Goes National
Senator Obama’s purported ability to bring people of all political persuasions together in the peace and harmony of socialism, under the collectivized political state, is now revealed as a rapidly crumbling faux front. Senator Obama’s handler David Axelrod, veteran of Chicago’s dirty-tricks politics, sharpens the knife.
Read Peggy Noonan’s Why It’s Getting Mean.
Lots of signs of the new darkness. Mr. Obama’s army is swarming, blocking lines when Obama critics show up for radio interviews. A study out Thursday said the Obama campaign has become more negative than the McCain campaign. There is the hacking
Posted by Thomas E. Brewton on 09/20 at 12:40 AM
Media & Opinion • (1) Comments
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