Blogs For Victory

Not too often that a President has to make this sort of effort:

Trying to tamp down an uproar over race, President Barack Obama said Friday he used an unfortunate choice of words in commenting on the arrest of black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. and could have “calibrated those words differently.”

The president said he had telephoned the white policeman who arrested Gates, and he said the conversation confirmed his belief that the officer was a good man and an outstanding officer.

Then again, its not too often that a President makes such a bone-headed remark. The answer to the question, Mr. President, was “while I’m concerned about any incident which may be the result of racial profiling, I believe we should all suspend judgment on the Gates case until all the facts are known”. If your cracker-jack White House staff finds itself incapable of providing you with such answers, I suggest firing them all. In the interests of patriotism, I will volunteer, as need arises, to help you figure out answers to the really, really simple questions.

Municipal bankruptcy – via Mish’s Global:

Detroit’s financial picture is grim, but Mayor Dave Bing says a complete overhaul of city government by 2010 could help the city avoid the appointment of an emergency financial manager or the filing of municipal bankruptcy.

Bing said Thursday there are no more creative moves to make — those budgetary tricks were all tapped by previous administrations — and the city is up against a wall financially. The only answer, he said, is to change how the city functions.

The time frame is pressing — Bing said the city could run out of money by the start of the second quarter, Oct. 1 — if a $20-million to $25-million hole is not plugged.

“There’s a reality that we all have to live with, and the reality of the City of Detroit is that we are broke and we are in a financial crisis,” Bing told the Free Press on Thursday.

What is clear to Mayor Bing, among other things, is that the government workforce is going to have to shrink – either in numbers, pay or a combination of these two things. The unions, of course, are mindlessly opposed to this – I guess figuring that Obama will come to the rescue, when push comes to shove. This should not be counted on – a very large number of America’s municipalities are on the brink of financial disaster. Shrinking tax bases and rapidly rising costs of government employees (especially in the areas of health care and pensions) are putting cities, as Mayor Bing says, up against a wall. Obama will not be able to get a generalized State and local government bail out through Congress – there might be a one-time shot for some places, but most are going to have to sink or swim on their own…and a lot of them will sink.

The real problem here – for the economy and Obama – is that a very large proportion of the new jobs we have are in government or government-subsidized entities. Obama, naturally, will not cut off the spigot for federal jobs, but what the Obama gives with one hand, economic reality will take away with the other. Very rapidly now, government employees around the nation – high paid and living pretty good lives – are going to suffer pay cuts and/or job losses. With that will go the very last prop to home sales, car sales and investment. Expect another rise in foreclosures, another financial collapse as financial institutions have not put aside sufficient reserves for this sort of thing and, as it were, the “second dip” of our “double dip” recession (we’re still in the “first dip” – we might have allegedly positive growth in the fourth and first quarters which will officially end the recession; and just watch as the Obamaniacs proclaim their man a sheer genius over this…but such celebrations will be very short lived).

Our liberals will say that I’m just talking down the economy and hoping for disaster. I’ve reviewed this and come to the conclusion that I’d rather not have this happen – I work for a bank and am not prepared, at this moment, for a career shift. I’d like to keep this job at least in to 2010…but as time goes on, I think there might be a rather nasty lump of corporate coal in my stocking this upcoming holiday season. So, I’d rather we avoided this – but liberal polices up and down the line are tailor made for it. In fact, if you wanted to deliberately sabotage an economy, just following the Obama model would do the trick. Its going to happen, sure as night follows day.

The answer to the “if you don’t want Obamacare, you want people to die” sort of liberal argument:

Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. – Frederic Bastiat

Wonderful:

Local MoveOn.org members had penciled in on today’s schedule a protest in front of Senator John Cornyn’s Spring Valley Road office, during which they had hoped to pressure the senator to support President Barack Obama’s public health care legislation. But when Paula Anderson, a MoveOn.org member and spokeswoman, showed up at 11:30 a.m., she found another contingent had beat her to the proverbial punch: A large number of Dallas Tea Party members were already set up, voicing their opposition to the proposal.

Anderson was stunned: “We really did not expect them to show up.” She estimated the crowd at about 130. “From our perspective we took names of everyone there, and we had about 30 people,” she told Unfair Park. “And I would assume they maybe had 100.” As it turned out, according to Jessica Sandlin, Cornyn’s Texas press secretary, Tea Party-hearties also showed up to health-care legislation rallies in Austin and in San Antonio…

The TEA Party movement will be in the driver’s seat at least through 2010, and perhaps all the way in to 2012. Ignore it at your peril – and that goes for both left and right politicians who wish to ignore it.

In the form of an AFP report on Honduras – adjustments to make it a true story are in italics:

Honduras’s de facto government has shot down a last-gasp deal to resolve the country’s global left’s political crisis, insisting ousted President Manuel Zelaya cannot return to office.

The return of Mr Zelaya as president was impossible, interim foreign minister Carlos Lopez Contreras said on CNN’s Spanish station, effectively killing hopes of a settlement an outsider-enforced coup.

Crisis mediator and Costa Rican President Oscar Arias has proposed a fresh plan for Zelaya’s return Wednesday, with concessions for the interim government, which backed ordered the army’s June 28 expulsion of the Honduran leader.

Arias’s plan called for Zelaya’s return to the country as president in a national unity government, until his term ended in January.

In return, the current de facto leadership would see sanctions against the country lifted, a limited amnesty for political Zelaya’s crimes and a bar on Zelaya seeking constitutional reforms designed to let him seek another term in office.

But negotiators for the de facto government returned to Honduras saying the deal presented in Costa Rica would not be signed by their leader President Roberto Micheletti.

“As I see it, it will be difficult for him to sign up,” spokesman Mauricio Villeda said…

… Hondurans remain deeply split over opposed to the possibility of his return. Many fear it are certain would provoke more violence after Zelaya’s spectacular first attempt left at least one protester dead in clashes with soldiers.

On that occasion, troops had blocked the runway of the airport where he tried to land.

Hundreds Tens of thousands of white-clad demonstrators on Wednesday protested against Zelaya’s return in the capital, where the situation has become increasingly polarized clear that Zelaya is not wanted.

“We don’t like you, Mel,” one banner read in Wednesday’s demonstration, using Zelaya’s nickname.

Of course, they are also acting like fraidy-cats:

Democrats are preventing Republican House Members from sending their constituents a mailing that is critical of the majority’s health care reform plan, blocking the mailing by alleging that it is inaccurate.

House Republicans are crying foul and claiming that the Democrats are using their majority to prevent GOP Members from communicating with their constituents.

The dispute centers on a chart created by Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) and Republican staff of the Joint Economic Committee to illustrate the organization of the Democratic health care plan.

At first glance, Brady’s chart resembles a board game: a colorful collection of shapes and images with a web of lines connecting them.

But a closer look at the image reveals a complicated menagerie of government offices and programs that Republicans say will be created if the leading Democratic health care plan becomes law.

In a memo sent Monday to Republicans on the House franking commission, Democrats argue that sending the chart to constituents as official mail would violate House rules because the information is misleading.

Democrats are scared to death that something other than pro-Obamacare propaganda will get out there. If they are so confident the GOP chart is bogus, then let us see their version of the chart, so that we can peruse it for accuracy.

This desperate desire to stifle debate on the part of our liberal fascists will be a large part of their undoing – “if ye be afraid to hear the worst, then let the worst unheralded fall on your head”. Democrats are heading for a fall, and it will come as a shock to them.

Last night, Barack Obama took a question regarding the incident at Harvard University involving black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., who was seen byneighbors trying to force his way into his home and then initially refused to provide to responding officers who arrived on the scene in response. My thoughts on Obama’s irresponsible comments are posted here.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: We can all be pretty certain the the professor was an Obama voter, but given that Cambridge gave 40,876 votes to Obama and 4,697 votes to McCain, it is very likely that everyone involved voted for Obama…this is just a very stupid move by Obama, mindlessly playing the race card from the bottom of the deck when even a cursory examination would show the chances of race playing a role here are nil.

Expect to hear that word, “experiment”, a lot more often:

With one word Monday, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele helped the GOP get back in the fight over health care and the entire Obama agenda. The word was “experiment.”

“Candidate Obama promised change,” Steele said in a speech at the National Press Club. “President Obama is conducting an experiment.” Steele went on to accuse Barack Obama of carrying out dangerous experiments with the nation’s health care, with the economy, with taxpayers’ dollars.

“Experiment” didn’t come from nowhere. “The term bubbled up from a set of focus groups we did with swing voters, independents, soft Republicans and soft Democrats,” says one strategist involved in an extensive RNC research effort nationwide and in key states like Virginia, Colorado and Florida. “It’s something that a vast majority of voters believe is true, that Obama is running what amounts to an experiment with our future.”

I’ve never seen so many people so incensed over a President’s plans – I’m getting calls out of the blue from friends who want to find out just what this man, Obama, is really up to. People are frightened that Obama plans to ram-rod through a series of changes where all the details will be worked out by him, behind closed doors, after the laws are in place…and we’ll then only have the Democrat-controlled Congress to call him on it (ha!).

Don’t think that the outrage over the mere thought of a 1,000+ page piece of legislation has died away…its simmering out there and eating away at the government’s credibility like acid. The closest analogy I’ve got to this is the way “global test” ensured that Kerry would never be elected President…in and of itself, it wasn’t that big a statement, but it ate away at his credibility relentlessly…so, too, are Obama’s actions eroding his credibility. If he doesn’t change course soon, he’ll be permanently down to “knee-jerk” Democrat support for the remainder of his term.

The final key to stopping Obama has been, of course, the GOP getting its act together. Steele’s statement is a good start, but its only a start and we still have a very large number of Beltway Barnacles in our party who really think that the people don’t matter – these people will try mighty hard to bail Obama out because, in the end, they prefer an elitist like Obama to the regular folks out there with their TEA Parties and unrealistic expectations of personal liberty, etc.

We can whack ’em, good people – the entire elite class, of all stripes. We can take our country back – in the end, Obama might be the best thing that happened to us. As was said in ages past, “the knowledge you are to be hanged in a fortnight concentrates the mind wonderfully”. Obama and the elites are building the gallows of American exceptionalism, and I think our minds are very concentrated, indeed.

Well, really, poem of the day:

The Convert

After one moment when I bowed my head

And the whole world turned over and came upright,

And I came out where the old road shone white,

I walked the ways and heard what all men said,

Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,

Being not unlovable but strange and light;

Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite

But softly, as men smile about the dead.

The sages have a hundred maps to give

That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,

They rattle reason out through many a sieve

That stores the sand and lets the gold

go free:

And all these things are less than dust to me

Because my name is Lazarus and I live. – G K Chesterton

Just in case any of you liberals were still rolling around in green shoots and chanting “Obama will fix it, Obama will fix it”:

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said a potential wave of defaults in commercial real estate may present a “difficult” challenge for the economy, without committing to additional steps to aid the market.

Bernanke, testifying before the Senate Banking Committee today, urged lenders to modify “problem” mortgages to avert defaults. Christopher Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who chairs the panel, told Bernanke that “some have suggested” the commercial market “may even dwarf the residential mortgage problems” in the U.S.

The state of commercial real estate was one of the most- asked-about subjects in questioning by lawmakers so far in Bernanke’s two days of testimony on the economy. Bernanke said today in the Senate and yesterday at the House Financial Services Committee that it’s too early to tell how effective the Fed’s main initiative in the area will be.

The Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, a Fed emergency program that lends to investors to purchase securities backed by consumer and business loans, began accepting commercial mortgage-backed securities as collateral last month.

Fed policy makers will extend the TALF, currently scheduled to expire Dec. 31, should they judge financial markets are still “some distance from normal operation,” Bernanke said today.

Given the number of empty store fronts I see in my drives around Las Vegas, it would not surprise me if a wave of commercial defaults are on the horizon. The question is just how big it will be and whether this will be the death blow to our already over-strained financial system (its either this, or the “second wave” of home foreclosures, or China’s impending collapse – any or all, and there’s nothing, really, we can do stop any of them…though we can paper over the cracks for a short while).

We’re going to learn our lesson, good people, and we’re going to learn it good and hard.

UPDATE: Via Mish’s Global, Moody’s is grim on commercial real estate.