This is the Obama voter gene pool …

One of the best laughs I got all year was watching a Howard Stern video on youtube that got a ton of voters to agree with basically everything John McCain had said and done–including the choice of Sarah Palin for VP–simply by ascribing it to Barack Obama.  The video I posted below is along that vein but isn’t meant for humor.  It shows the level of knowledge present in many Obama voters.  Be afraid, be very afraid.

Several times during the last few weeks, I had a very dear friend of mine send me this list of what they considered ‘notable’ things so that I would just suddenly realize that none of the problems that I had with obama were based on anything but my refusal to admit I’m a closet bigot.  The first time I read it, I thought it was a joke, much the way that I thought the Howard Stern thing was a joke.  When I got it the second time with the question that I really hadn’t pondered Sarah Palin’s qualifications for vp in all my blogging threads, I realized it wasn’t a joke.  I had a difficult time coming up with a response because, again, my first reaction was you’ve got to be kidding me. 

So, tell me I’m not the only one that thinks that having your family up on stage with you, including your pregnant unwed daughter is no big deal.  Why is it considered ‘parading’–an obviously prejorative word?  All candidates appear on stage with their family.  What difference would it make if it were Obama instead of Palin?  The list just gets nuttier and nuttier.  Who cares if you make a living being a beer distributer?  Running illegal booze during prohibition certainly didn’t hurt the Kennedy family.  People get addictions to all kinds of things all the time … that knows no racial boundaries?  Many past first ladies had problems with alcohol and drugs.  Why would it make any difference to me if it were Cindy or Michelle?  Goodness no!

I really laughed hard at the Keating Five thing since I will still point out to the THREE advisors (including Pritzker) on the Obama board that were major players in this current financial crisis.  If the Keating five thing disqualified McKain, then the current problems of FNMA, Freddie Mac, and the investment banks should’ve disqualified Obama.  Let’s not even go into the Rezko thing and his two ‘religious advisors’: Wright and Pflager.

The Obama supporters I know felt Palin to be completely unqualified to be VP but never addressed my issue of why they think Obama was qualified to be president?  I always hear the Harvard thing, but he was a legacy, just like Dubya.  Since we never have seen any of his transcripts or scores, it’s difficult to say he did anything more than graduate.   Even George Bush managed to graduate from Harvard.  It has a longstanding reputation as the hardest school to flunk out of and you know that if you’ve ever been privvy to university jokes. 

So I finally sent my response back to my long time friend saying I found this list of things to ponder pretty ridiculous.  I also felt that it came from some one suffering from severe holier-than-thou syndrome that is typical of the delusionally religious.  I was not interested in folks divorces, addictions, and bad boy behavior in college.  Finally, the charismatic, eloquent speaker thing only happens when there’s a teleprompter around, in case you hadn’t noticed.

But then it occured to me, how could any of these folks actually notice any of this?  I’d bet none of them read papers and magazines other than maybe USA Today and People.  They probably get what little news the read from the AP wire in their local newspapers and the same feed to their local news stations.  So, when they get all haughty about Palin, ask them what they read?  Ask them if they know who controls congress, who is the speaker of the house and the senate majority leader?  Ask them what they think of the Bush Doctrine?  My guess is that unless they’re out here in blog land with a few of us, you’d better switch to asking football questions if you really want answers.

 

Ponder the following:
 
What if the Obamas had paraded five children across the stage, including a three month old infant and an unwed,  pregnant teenage daughter?
 
What if John McCain was a former president of the Harvard Law Review?
 
What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?
 
What if McCain had only married once, and Obama was a divorcee?
 
What if Obama was the candidate who left his first wife after a severe disfiguring car accident,  when she no longer  measured up to his  standards?
 
What if Obama had met his second wife in a bar and had a long affair while he was still married?
  
What if Michelle Obama was the wife who not only became addicted to  pain killers but also acquired  them illegally  through her charitable organization?
 
What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?
 
What if Obama had been a member of the Keating Five? (The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger   Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s.)
 
What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?
 
What if Obama was the one who had military experience that included discipline problems and a record of crashing seven planes?
 
What if Obama was the one who was known to display publicly, on many occasions, a serious anger management problem?
 
What if Michelle Obama’s family had made their money from beer distribution?
 
What if the Obamas had adopted a white child?
 
You could easily add to this list.  If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are?
 
This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a  color difference.

Just Cast my Puma Vote!

Those of you that know me, know I live in the ninth ward in New Orleans. I live in the inner city and we have the usual inner city problems including gang violence, a lot of drug-related crimes, and not enough money to rebuild our infrastructure and schools just for regular wear and tear. Let’s not even go  into the Hurricane Katrina wear and tear. My neighborhood is close to the river, so when the city filled up, we stayed high and dry.  However, they still haven’t rebuilt our police station.   We also don’t have banks or grocery stores any more.  That’s the upper ninth.  The lower ninth has less, if that’s possible.

I vote in the local fire house.  It was built in the 1920s and the old stables that used to house the horses that pulled the street car named desire and the fire carriages stand silently next to it.  There are two precincts that vote in this building.  I see the same little southern church ladies each time I vote.  The know me because I vote in every election–even the odd ones with just a charter change or replacement for the latest politician caught up and drug off to jail.  That’s the thing that makes me most sad about where I live at the moment. 

 My state senator just resigned for laundering money.  Two school board members and a popular city councilman at large are sitting in jail for bribery.  The entire country knows about Congressman Dollar Bill Jefferson.  He looks like he’ll be re-elected pretty much along straight racial lines.  Black folk seem to be mighty forgiving down here. It seems they’ll take any black face over a Hispanic, white or other face no matter what the circumstances.  The mistrust of white hegemony makes me feel like the Jim Crow Laws disappeared just yesterday. Black politicians get a wide berth. I’ve learned that lesson over and over down here.  In fact, our Mayor Ray Nagin lives more in Dallas than he does here. He comes in late on Monday and is out of here by Thursday night.  That says something about the living conditions in your city when your own mayor won’t live in it full time.  I have to say that I voted for him the first time, but I didn’t make that mistake again.  We call him Mayor Na-GONE for a very good reason.  I also think that he’ll eventually run for the Jefferson seat once the federal court finally throws the book at Ol’ Dollar bill.  My guess is he’ll be just as worthless of a congressman as he was as a mayor until they wind up having to redraw the state of Louisiana to eliminate one congressional district.  Then it might be another ball game. 

Until then, we’ll suffer because very few of our leaders actually care about the city or the state it is in.  They care about their political career and ability to live large.  We’ll also suffer because a lot of the electorate thinks the only qualification one needs here to be effective is the right demographic.  It has got me questioning the nature of racism these days.  I think it’s all about who is in power and abusing that power for the benefit of ’your own’.  I now see that folks that once suffered from this can inflict it without much thought.

It makes voting disheartening when you’re actually interested in good government.  I get tired of watching one person after another get hauled off to jail.  I guess ex-Governor Edwards is getting a lot of new company.  There’s plenty of folks from the various Louisiana political machines still running for office as well as sitting in jails right now.  If you’ve never lived in a realm of political machines, there is no way you know what that does to the folks on the outs.  It’s thuggery plain and simple.

Thuggery, abusing racial identities, and machines brings me to the topic of voting in the National Election for obvious reasons. I wore my orange sweater to show my unity with Pumas voting all over our country.  I was really surprised that I didn’t have to wait in line.  There were only two suprises awaiting me.  The first one was this:  after voting election after election, the church ladies had this conversation before I entered the booth.  The one whose job it always is to clear out the previous vote, turned to the others and asked:  “Should I ask her the question?’  Since voting here has become extremely routine, this gave me a bit of a jolt.  The ladies nodded and I was asked “Democrat or Republican”?  Since there are not two seperate ballots for this election, I found this a very odd question but smiled and said “Democrat”.  I secretly smiled and thought, if you’re asking me if i voted Democrat at the top of the ticket, the answer would’ve been no.  I guess folks are still thinking we will vote along party lines.

The next thing that happened when I walked out of the fire station was also unique for me.  I was asked to fill out an exit poll form for the news agencies.  I never vote really early in the morning as a rule but I was trying to avoid lines so I got out the door the minute I’d walked the dog.  It was a simple one sheet form with the logos of nearly all the news affiliates across the top.  I was asked the usual demographic questions, age, sex, religion, income level, party affiliation, and education level.  I was also asked which issues most concerned me ( I said energy policy) and when I made my decision to vote (within the last three days).  I was asked to rank what I thought of the George Bush presidency. (Disaster wasn’t available so I had to settle for saying I was extremely dissatisfied). I said I was very worried about the future of the economy–another situation I had to rank.  There were also the candidate listing of President, Senator, and House Rep. I put McCain, Landrieu, and Moreno.  So when they are slicing and dicing the last minute voters … and they find the democrats for McCain in the exit polls, you will find me in that number.  I hope you find me representin’ in the ninth ward for a lot of you out there.

Dead Cat Bounce or a Hint of Bull?

The equity markets some times experience good days even in the worst of bear times.  These up days are frequently just the dread dead cat bounce.  This label comes from the saying that even a dead cat bounces if you throw it.  You’re going to hear two things from me today; probably in two different posts.  The first is just a line by line look at the Obama and McCain approaches to the economic panic.  The second is the Paulson announcement to make $250 billion available to banks to help them recapitalize.  I’m watching some of the interbank lending markets unfreeze, so it might be more than a dead cat bounce.  There might be a hint of the bottom which would be something to celebrate.

I was trying to read this last night as well as a some literature on the Bank Capital Channel of Monetary Policy (something only an economist could love but is important in terms of looking at the possible outcomes for this move).  I unfortunately chose to do it at my local bar and became the immediate target of the shriek of the Obamatrons and all the usual stuff:  “racism, Palin is a c*nt, it’s okay for us to call her that because McCain called his wife that, no Obama NEVER said women get third trimester abortions because they’re blue, do you get all your information from fox news? racism, racism, racism.” I’m beginning to wonder if they hand out an instruction card with the koolaid on how to insult the unindoctrinated? 

Sigh, so I’m working on this for your this morning instead.  You’ll have to give me a wide berth as I try to do this in the peace and quiet of my house over coffee instead of red wine.  Oh, also, just so you know I am now Miss Perfect and Miss Know it all.  It felt like high school ALL over again.  I think they were trying to ensure that the other two ex-Hillary supporters who were resigned to voting for the “ONE” would not leave the fold with anything as meaningless as facts and the truth.  There was also a Republican and a Ron Paul supporter in the room to make things nice and interesting.  For some reason, I got the brunt of the abuse. I can’t tell you how many times I was told to just get over Hillary.

So, any way, here goes the girl with the glasses again.  While the market chews on the Paulson plan, I’ll start with my take on the McCain and Obama crisis plans in this post.

Obama’s plan seems centered on unemployment.  This is a bit odd because the problem at the moment is not unemployment for most of the country.  The only thing I can figure is this, combined with his plan to double the government’s loan guarantees for automakers, is a pander for votes in places like Michigan.  Since the rust belt is important to winning the election, and the rust belt is the only place where unemployment is above normal at the moment, I have to cynically say this has nothing to do with financial crisis but everything to do with the electoral college.

I think giving employers a $3,000 tax credit for each new hire to encourage job creation is a good economic policy.  At the moment, however it is not necessary and expensive.  Until it looks like unemployment in the country as a whole is going to be a problem, I’m sticking with my view that this is just a pander to folks in important swing states in a not so subtle disguise.

His second idea is just plain awful and would create incredible long term problems.  This is the idea that you should allow Americans of all ages to borrow/withdraw from retirementsavings without a tax penalty.  One of our biggest problem right now (long and short) is that folks are NOT saving enough for retirement. Pulling anything out right now ensures those folks will be worse off in the future.  Also, withdrawing funds from these accounts at the bottom of the market is like stealing future life style from people.  People that do not need to do this will be encouraged to do so and it will make their lives worse in the long run.  This is a stinker and I hope folks don’t follow through with it.  If you’re thinking about doing this, please, please don’t.

I’m more hopeful about Obama’s suggestion of creating a mechanism to lend monies to cities and states with fiscal problems if this is done in a reasonable, thoughtful way.  We’d need to see that current Treasury work in the markets is helping the municipal bond function and we need to be careful about exactly how the funds will be used.  I’m afraid this could be turned into an expensive giveaway to interests rather than a real problem solver.  For this suggestion, the devil will be in the details.  This is my same take on his proposal to allow struggling small businesses to apply for loans from the SBA’s disaster funds to the tune of $5 billion.  This sounds good on the surface and could help getting much need operating loans to some of the hardest hit players.  I’d like to see the exact nature of the terms, however.  You need to know what the terms of borrowing are and what kind of things the funds can be used for.  Also, is this for existing businesses or new start-ups?  The new-start ups would be highly risky propositions and subject to fraud.

Obama rehashed the Hillary suggestion of a 90-day moratorium on most home foreclosures.  This would be geared to folks that are trying to make payments or partial payments.  This is a good start, but again, it has to be followed by some kind of way to renegotiate the foreclosures or it’s basically just a few months grace.  Some details are needed on what to do with the frozen mortgages.  My hope is those details may be forthcoming, but I’m not holding my breath.

All of the Obama suggestions are very costly and there are no funding suggestions.  At one time he was talking about windfall profits on oil companies but given the state of the economy now, I doubt there’s going to be any windfall profts on which to draw.  The gas around here is running less than $3.00 a gallon.  I can’t help but think the record level profits of the oil companies are not going to be around the next few quarters.  Oil futures are about $80 a barrel right now, so my guess is no windfall profits to tax.  So, another dimension of all Obama’s points is where is he getting the money?  I always liked Hillary’s plans because they came with funding sources so they were grounded in realism and not promises.

The McCain Plan was introduced today with the Hillary suggestion of the Treasury Departmentbuying troubled mortgages at face value and giving qualified homeowners instead government-guaranteed, low interest mortgages.  I’m already on the record supporting this in earlier posts since I firmly believe the short term solution is to bottom house prices.  The mortgages would be based on the residences’ reduced value.  We need to focus here on the details of ‘qualified’ homeowners because it does not need to be done with speculators or vacation properties.  McCain has said there would be two possible funds for the valuation differences so I’m not clear which one he’s going for or if it’s giong to be some combination of both.  Basically, either the taxpayer or the lenders would pay the difference.

Several other of his proposals are pretty typical of Republican approaches which focus on tax reduction.  They are targeted tax reductions which is something I’m particularly big on.  This is different than just throwing money at the entire market and hoping some of it trickles down and sidewise.  McCain’s first proposal focuses on seniors (an important voting group) and allows them to withdraw from the IRAs or 401k’s in 2009 and 2010 while reducing their taxes to a flat 10 percent.  Since this only applies to those over 59, there are no penalties so it’s different than the Obama plan.  This is okay, since these folks ARE retired and a worktime of compounding is not something they will need in the future.  This plan would cost about $36 billion and I’m assuming it will be financed with deficit spending because there are no specified funding sources.  This would giving a few years of buying power which would be stimulatory to the economy.  It also protects seniors from any unknown problems.  It’s probably partially motivated to get seniors into the McCain camp but it would impact the country as a whole.

There are three other tax measures put forth by McCain.  The first is a 50 % reduction in the capital gains tax on stock profits.  It is currently 15% to 7.5% for a period of two years.  This plan has a price tag of about $10 billion.  If any one is getting many capital gains right now, I’d sure like to meet them.  This probably only benefits the Warren Buffet type and is a nod to Republican business interests.  The more interesting plan is the accelerated tax write off for stock losses.  Americans will be able to deduct $15,000 in losses for the tax years 2008 and 2009.  This is a change from the current $3,000 losses.  He would also suspend taxes on unemployment insurance benefits for both 2008 and 2009.  These targeted proposals may actually help the little guy who is panicking right now and pulling whatever money he has out of stocks.  It would definitely help any one that does become unemployed also.  I’m not sure how big the effect of these would be, but they are not bad ideas.

So, you can chomp on this while I go work out on the details of the Paulson announcement and watch what appears to be a stablizing stock market.  I’ll also go check for bulls, bears, and any bouncing dead cats.  Also, some earnings reports are coming out today, so that should provide some good information to the market.