Free Republic

Still haven’t got McCain off the Global Warming bandwagon.

Hear, Hear! I am blown away that this asshat, who demonstrates his lack of understanding of the way the world works with almost every column could get a Nobel prize. Does the Nobel committee have no understanding of economics?

Oh... never mind.

I own a Walther PPK, I sold my P99 recently. But I decided to go in to a dealer today, just to see something new with some more stopping power than the PPK.

Actually the Armorer suggests that the Walther has considerably more stopping power than the Beretta, especially when you add in a silencer. The Beretta is a fine ladies gun, but the Walther is used by the FBI and CIA. M insists that if you wish to stay in the double O section that you use the Walther. Sorry. Couldn't resist.

A $4000 tax credit for 100 hours service. $40 an hour. Can I do some service? For a forty hour work week, that’s $80,000 a year.

As for the rest, I can see a Republican Congress in no time flat if this stuff gets passed into law.

A big security problem with first line relatives in foreign countries is that said relatives could be kidnapped and held hostage. The American relative would have to choose between the life of his brother, grandmother, cousin etc and doing what the kidnappers demanded. Maybe not a problem for Obama since we know he already threw one grandmother under the bus. However, I know people who have been denied security clearance for this reason alone even though they were otherwise outstanding Americans!

I don't know to what extent things have changed, but my father got top secret clearance in the '60's/'70's despite the fact that his parents and siblings lived in East Germany and I had no trouble getting a secret clearance in the '80's despite having grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins in East Germany, and also admitting to having smoked pot. My fathers company was manufacturing critical components for electronic countermeasure systems for our fighters and bombers. The operational frequencies and the designs were classified. (if you knew the frequencies they operated at they could conceivably have been made ineffective, negating a HUGE advantage that American aircraft had).

I wonder how many other outfits sold out their know-how to other countries which resulted in loss of manufacturing jobs. Just to make it clear I am not a disgruntled laid off employee, I had left the outfit 10 years before it went broke.

Not only have companies sold the technology, often they have in effect given it away. In electronics, the firms manufacturing devices automatically get the designs. If you have a circuit board manufactured overseas you have to give drawings and parts lists. It is much easier to reverse engineer if you know the values of all the components.

I wrote this a couple of months ago, before the sh_t really hit the fan, but much of it is still relevant, especially to this article.

....In the '80's, the Reagan Administration was for easing the regulatory burden, cutting taxes and providing a sound currency. This proved a bonanza for our economy as capital flowed into the US. Bit by bit over the last 25 years, our overseas competitors have made their economies friendlier to investors, while bit by bit we have made ours gradually worse. Money seeks it best return on investment and, for a number of reasons, the real after-tax return for investments made in the US are no longer better than those in other economies. Low-risk investors can find safe investments in Europe and high-risk investors can find many options in Asia. As investors find better returns elsewhere, the demand for dollars drops. With no offsetting drop in the supply of dollars, the price of the dollar in terms of gold has skyrocketed. This has been a major factor in the change in oil prices. The markets are doing what markets do, trying to predict the future. The markets are betting that not only will the demand for dollars drop further, as anti-business, pro-tax, pro-regulation, pro-lawyer Democrats take complete control of the federal government, but they are guessing that the money supply will not be adjusted to offset this drop in demand. This is an easy guess, since some of the favorable business climate in the US was a result of the Bush tax cuts which are set to expire and unlikely to be renewed. The Federal Reserve is in no mood to tighten, because it has been dealing with the problem of subprime mortgages. It doesn't help that both presidential canditates are also proposing to add huge new costs to American industry in order to slay the mythical Global-Warming beast. The combination of these anti-business factors is causing investors to shun the US. All of this is made worse by lawmakers who clearly have no clue what to do and have platforms that would make things worse. When you are doing everything wrong, the solution is simple. Stop it. Since we are competing with other nations to get the worlds investors to supply our industry with capital, we need to provide an environment that convinces them that investing here will benefit them. If you invest long-term, you have to believe that you can both make a profit and will get to keep that profit. If regulations are so burdensome that they impact profits too strongly, the investment will be made where regulations are not so strict (or where regulators can be bribed). If the courts treat torts like a lottery and confiscate hard-earned profits to punish companies that are operating in good faith, this increases the risk of making investments in that country. If tax policy is confiscatory, capital will be invested where government takes a smaller cut. If a country debases its currency, other nations will not want to trade in that currency. So what should we do? We need to create an environment that encourages capital investment. The cost of doing business could be be lowered by reducing regulatory burdens on business. Tort reform could likewise lower risks and costs. Finally, reductions in corporate tax rates would increase return on investment. Finally, pegging the dollar to a gold-price target would convince investors that the return on their investments would not be made in dollars which are worth much less than the ones that made the investment. Until policy makers get this, it would probably be wise to short the dollar and buy gold and commoditites, art, and collectibles.

QUOTENo plan that does not solving the underlying problem, that is, get rid of the Community Reinvestment Act that allowed “community organizations” like ACORN headed by “community organizers” like Obama bully lending institutions into making loans to people with no means of repayment.UNQUOTE

They can't bully them into making loans that don't meet underwriting standards if those standards are being enforced, and there will be no money for bad loans (hell, there is no money for good loans right now) if banks can't sell off their loans to the bond market, which they likely won't be able to. Furthermore, it is very unlikely that there will ever be a situation where the bond rating companies will rate bad mortgage paper bundled into securities as AAA. IF we get thru this without tanking into a Depression, I am certain that it will be a long time before anyone tries to push the idea that people who aren't credit-worthy should get credit just to make things "fair".

Down’s syndrome is genetic and therefore totally unrelated to pre-natal care. This shouldn’t come up at all. It is only raised by those trying to damage Palin politically. What jerks.

Do you think Sarah Palin has the experience to be a pediatrician? Which of the four candidates on the major party tickets has the experience to be a pediatrician? If they aren't smart enough to be a pediatrician, how can they run a country whose population has the understanding of civics and economics of a three year old?

We are so doomed.

he needs to start tieing pelosi and reid’s LACK of oversight to these financial problems

Politically, maybe. In the end, I am not sure how much I want or trust Congressional oversight of the markets. In fact I believe that the more there is, the more corruption likely.

Greed is good.

If McCain wants to put our financial house in order, he needs to repeat this mantra. Reduce wasteful government spending! Reduce taxes! (especially on capital) Reduce the burden of government regulation! Maintain a stable currency! Foster low energy prices!

Push these policies.

Sure you need to punish fraud and cheating on Wall Street, ie. criminal activity. Don't simply punish success or luck.

Do these things and you will see a boom that will erase the housing bust and eliminate the credit crunch as investors both here and abroad regain confidence that they will be able to actually earn a decent rate of return on their money here.

On the flip side, if you increase regulation, let the Bush tax cuts expire, increase taxes on business ... in other words, the Obama plan, you will see a continued flight from the dollar and our markets and the housing bust will cause a banking crisis that will bring our economy down around us.

I’m amazed that “Time” did such a good job of reporting...I think it’s been so long since I’ve read a piece of journalism that wasn’t propaganda that I’d almost forgotten what it looked like

Thanks for this comment. I wasn't gonna read the article cause I saw the Time byline and assumed it would be a hit piece. I figured I get a better read form the freeper on this thread. I'm shocked to hear of actual journalism going on. Something has slipped at Time.

Well, Ed, it’s a good thing NY didn’t have a wimp like you as mayor during 9/11.

Ed was a combat infantryman in WWII.

In general, he's a throwback to an earlier era, before total commies and enviro-nutjobs took over the Democratic party. You could talk to them back then. We all seemed to want the same things for America, we just disagreed with how to achieve those goals. Now we seem to want have completely different visions for America's future.

He's wrong about Sarah, but I give him a pass on being a wimp.

Let me explain to Mr Biden why he and Barak have been WRONG. We could have set the battleground against the Taliban and Al Quaeda in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. By doing so we would be fighting in the worst possible terrain. Our losses would have been horrifying. Instead we chose to force the Islamofascists to try to stop the creation of a successful representative government in Iraq. Under favorable military conditions, our forces have devastated them. However much the left wants to compare Iraq to Vietnam, the only comparison is that if we let a traitorous press force a withdrawal, our men will have died for nothing on the very brink of victory and American interests will be hugely damaged. When I see Biden pontificating I wonder why I am not a Senator, if idiots like this can keep getting elected.

Personally I am waiting for the MSM to tell me what to think

If you read the article, they claim that “She is practicing the same slash and burn politics of division of the Bush years.” What the hell is this guy talking about?!?!? The Bush administration has been a failure because it was too civil, smiling and offering a hand of friendship to an opposition that called them war criminals and compared them to Hitler and whose mantra was “Bush is dumb”. I welcome someone on the ticket with brass ovaries willing to fight back. This isn't the same politics of division, where conservatives smile while being insulted. I am glad to see the whole kindler gentler reach across the aisle go out the window.

Exactly! I keep hearing about fulfilling America’s promise, but America’s promise was always about freedon and the Demaocratic Party since about 1970 has been about expanding government control. As a child I always thought that America’s promise was that if you kept your nose claen and worked hard you could build a decent life for you and your family. If the other guy did the same thing, we would all be able to get along nicely. It was never about what the government would do for you.

These were obviously just aspirational on Ben's part.

Indeed. In his autobiography he relates how he carried a little chart wherein he marked down the number of times he failed at each of the virtues on a daily basis. He found that by noting and reflecting on his failings each day he was better able to strive for moral perfection. Strive for. No achieve. He was wise enough not to expect to be able to manage that.

I said:I wonder what is the standard?

You said:Based on what’s been reported so far, I’d say there is none. I hope this prosecution makes more sense when we’ve heard about the whole day’s testimony.

My thought: If there is nothing more to this, I find it disgusting that this soldier is even being investigated.

You said:BTW, I also agree with your tagline—and he can bring the Del-Tones with him

My thought: The Ventures finally made it this year (the 23rd induction ceremony), so there may be some hope. I read that Dick Dale is battling cancer again. He was to have surgery in April. I hope all is well with him. He is one of a kind.