An Obama win next Tuesday, but how big?

Here are my predictions of what will happen next Tuesday:

Obama will win pretty easily. Early returns in Virginia will inform us how the night will go for McCain – a close loss or blow out. Right now, somewhere between 270 and 340 electoral votes seems likely.

The Democrats will pick up 25 or more seats in the House, but probably not more than 30.

The Democrats will not reach a 60 seat, filibuster proof Senate. However, it won’t matter because the GOP “leadership” in the Senate will pretty much cave in and go along with whatever Obama wants out of fear.

The Democrats will completely rule the roost for the next two years. My guess is that the GOP will remain in the wilderness even longer because there isn’t any Newt Gingrich on the horizon who can lead a GOP revival in 2010, no matter how crazy the Democrats get.

The GOP has screwed up big time over the last 8 years by losing site of what they allegedly stood for. They have been completely corrupted by power and have become worse than the Democrats on almost every single measure. Thanks to Bush, the GOP has now reverted to their pre-Reagan status as an irrelevant minority party parroting their pitiful “me too” liberalism.

The GOP deserves what is coming to them. Unfortunately, many of us don't deserve what we will get as a result.

Unbelievable

So, who is going to worry about putting gas in her car and paying her mortgage??? You and I -- the lowly hard working tax payers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6ikOxi9yYk

Spread the wealth... and broaden the misery…

Bush Police State Update

I’ve written quite extensively about Bush’s reckless spending, ill-premised war, and growing police state apparatus. Now, we have the Army Times reporting that for the first time an active duty Army unit has been deployed to a dedicated assignment on American soil -- "to help with civil unrest and crowd control." Of course, this has been against the law since the Posse Comitatus Act was enacted in 1878. The act prohibits the military, including the National Guard when they are under federal control, from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States.

Here’s a warning to all of you so-called "conservatives" who cheered every time Bush corrupted our civil liberties in the name of fighting “terrorism”: Bush’s Police State apparatus will still be in effect when Obama takes office in January. One can only image what he might do with it to control those who don’t want their “wealth spread” among Obama’s special interests.

Bush: Union of Socialist States of America

It was bad enough when Bush announced that the government would “invest” in banks. Now, they’ve outdone themselves by “considering” so-called “investments” in insurance companies.

In the land of the free and home of the brave, the government is nationalizing industries faster than Vladimir Ilich Lenin ever thought was possible.

The government is haphazardly destroying our way of life and we sit here and do nothing.

Remember what Ben Franklin said: “Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither."

We deserve exactly what we'll get.

George Bush: Socialist Nincompoop

This morning as I was getting ready for work, I watched in horror as George Bush explained how the government “investing” in banks is somehow not socialism.

There are three important points to make here:

First Bush claimed that this was only temporary and that at some point the future, government would sell their “investments” and all would be back to normal . Sorry Georgie but to paraphrase Ronald Reagan: the closest thing we’ll ever see to eternal life on earth is a government program. These “investments” will only grow in time to the point where the government will eventually have nationalized the entire financial system.

Second, Bush claimed that these “investments” are part of a well thought out plan. What a joke. A few weeks ago, the Bush administration was arguing against a similar British plan. Here’s the problem: the stock market had its worst week ever after Bush signed the $700 billion bailout bill that the administration claimed would calm people’s fears. Now they are just twisting in the wind. There isn't any plan. They are making things up as they go along, and spending your money in the process.

Third, by definition government ownership is socialism.

I’ll say it again, the Bush family has ruined the Republican Party that Reagan built. Now they are ruining the country. Enough is enough. I’m not the only one who understands this. Christopher Buckley, who is the son of the late William F. Buckley, the founder of the modern conservative movement, has now also abandoned the GOP, resigned from the magazine his father founded, and endorsed Obama. This is what he said:

While I regret this development, I am not in mourning, for I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for. Eight years of “conservative” government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case.

So, to paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven’t left the Republican Party. It left me.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Wall Street Bailout: Welfare for the Wealthy

Sorry that I’ve been away for a while. I’ve had my own challenges at work which have occupied most of my time recently.

I felt that I needed to take some time today to comment on the Wall Street Bailout bill. My view is that the bailout will only make things worse. Quite frankly, it could be a potential disaster that could push us into another depression.

The main thing to remember is that the government created the mess that we’re in today. Here's how they did it:

First, the government passed legislation to pressure Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to provide home loans to people who couldn’t afford them. Remember, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are quasi public companies that were created by the government. Most of the debt problems in housing market can be traced to government interference in the mortgage market.

Second, the government has greatly inflated the money supply over the past decade to artificially lower interest rates. The artificially low interest rates have caused an unprecedented amount of reckless borrowing and spending.

Third, the government itself has gone on a drunken orgy of spending over the last 8 years. In the process, they've turned a $155 billion annual surplus into a $500 billion annual debt. The national debt has doubled over the last 8 years to a whopping $10 trillion. That $10 trillion does not include the unfunded liabilities in the Social Security and Medicare systems that are ready to hit us in a big way as the baby boomers start to retire.

So, the financial crisis is all about bad debt caused by the government promoting excessive borrowing. The $700 billion bailout will only make matters worse because the government doesn’t have $700 billion to spend. The government is already running a $500 billion a year deficit. The government will have to borrow more money and incur more debt to fund this program. This time, the Chinese and Japanese aren’t going to fund the borrowing by buying T-bills. The money is going to come right from the Federal Reserve further inflating the money supply, which will very likely lead to Jimmy Carter style inflation and interest rates. The wholesale price index has already increased by over 9% in the last year, which is the worse inflation in 27 years. It's only going to get worse.

The end result could be another Great Depression along with hyperinflation. Remember, that’s precisely the scenario that led to Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. In my view, the government has already put many of the mechanisms in place to support a dictatorship in the name of fighting terrorism.

So, what should the government really do??? Here is my four point plan for getting us out of this mess:

First, immediately cut government spending and balance the budget. If the government gets out of the credit markets there will be plenty of credit left for the private sector. Remember, we had a balanced budget in 2000. It’s not that hard to get there again. It only takes some political will to do so.

Second, reign in the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve helped cause the Great Depression. They’re doing it again. There are a lot of approaches that can be taken to do this. Regardless of which approach is taken, one thing is certain -- we can no longer allow faceless, unelected bureaucrats to have absolute and largely secretive decision making power over our money supply.

Third, we have to make America the best place to invest and innovate once again. The first thing that we need to do is streamline our Byzantine tax and regulatory systems. A much harder task is fixing our abysmal government monopoly school system, which is protected by cowardly politicians who’d rather destroy our kid’s future than stand up to the teachers’ unions.

Fourth, don't try to block the recession. What is a recession? It’s a corrective period where bad investments and debt are discounted or liquidated. Doing this frees up resources for other, more productive economic activities. Attempts by the government to prolong the inevitable will only make things worse. Much worse. So let it happen. It will be quick. Let’s come out of it with a more rational fiscal and monetary environment to get the country back on track.

Anyway, politicians of both parties have created this mess. Anyone who thinks that these same people will fix it is not living in the real world.