bloviators.net BloviBlog

 
Okay everyone – The Bloviator has to formally apologize for the utter failure to post, well, anything on the blog here.  I could use the excuses of being busy, visiting some family, traveling on business – which are all true – but really, The Bloviator has been tired.  Tired of the election, tired of where it seems that our nation is heading, and utterly tired of hearing about Barack Obama.

One quick comment, and then hopefully I can resume the normal posting schedule of at least an article every other day or so, including resuming the normal Weekly Wrap-Up schedule tomorrow.

The quick comment – what the hell is with Obama standing in front of signs stating “The Office of the President Elect?”  Yes, he won the election, but it didn’t take very long for Mr. Presumptuous to start milking the “I’m the f-ing President” angle, did it?  And did you notice, his Presidential seal is back on those placards?  

Here’s an image to illustrate the point – and again, more to follow in tomorrow’s Weekly Wrap-Up…

 
As you no doubt are now aware, the US House of Representatives voted down the mortgage bail-out bill yesterday afternoon by a vote of 228 against, 205 in favor.  The Bloviator sees many reasons for the failure of this bill, not the least of which being the huge popular uprising against the measure.

What the heck happened?

Our congressional leadership spent the last week and a half meeting behind closed doors, supposedly negotiating the details of this package.  If you listened to the pundits yesterday after the failed vote you must have heard everyone involved blaming everyone else.  The finger-pointing was rampant.  Republican congressmen blamed Speaker Pelosi for her needlessly partisan comments just prior to the vote in which she placed the blame for this whole mess on the President’s policies.  The Democrats blamed the Republican congressional leadership for not bringing enough votes to the table from their side – although Speaker Pelosi allowed members from her side to vote against the measure, including 5 of her senior committee chairmen and 13 junior congressmen from swing-states where they might be in jeopardy of losing their seats.

Barack Obama parroted the Speaker’s comments, placing blame on the Republicans and their “failed policies” of the last 8 years.  Senator John Kerry appeared on the O’Reilly Factor last night to blame the “greed” of the Republicans, and Senator John McCain gave a speech yesterday afternoon where he placed the blame on Speaker Pelosi and Barack Obama for needlessly bringing partisan politics into the mix.  Senator McCain at least said that “Now is not the time to fix the blame; it’s time to fix the problem.”  The Bloviator agrees with this assessment – now is the time to fix the problem, however I do not believe that the bill sent to the floor yesterday afternoon was the solution.

Enough is Enough.

We are in a situation where the deaf are leading the blind, and unfortunately, no one is listening to the American people.  The Bloviator has a great respect for the congressmen and women that voted against this package yesterday knowing that we would be potentially facing the worst financial situation in this country since 1929.  It takes courage to stand up for what the people want in the face of staunch opposition; from the President on the right to Speaker Pelosi on the left.

The markets reacted yesterday, and not in a positive way.  You could say the markets also voted – and their vote was in favor of the bail-out.  There is, however, a right way and a wrong way to do everything.  The Bloviator thinks we, as a collective of American people, need to say enough is enough.  We cannot continue to solve our problems by passing the buck to our children and grandchildren.  This has been to solution to far too many of our nation’s problems over the years, and I, for one, and ready to dig in my heels and stand firm on this one.  We can work together to create a package favorable to both the markets and the American taxpayers if we check our politics at the door and actually work on the problem, not on the press releases attacking the other side of the aisle or placing blame.  

Yes – the markets will likely react negatively.  Yes – it will weaken America’s position in the world, and potentially weaken the rest of the world with us.  Yes – it will mean that the average American is going to feel a pinch, and yes – we would likely head into a recession.  But – we would have actually solved something.  

The Bloviator calls on the American people to stand together and agree to draw a line in the sand.  As Senator McCain said, we can work out all the blame later on.  Right now we need to stand togehter and work on the solution – a solution that is fair to all parties.  At some point we need to refuse to simply pass the buck to the next generation and hope for miracles.

 
I’ve been paying close attention to the polls this past week, including polling related to Friday night’s debate.  It is becoming painfully obvious to The Bloviator that a majority of the public in the United States today want some sort of a change.  It, however, is becoming equally obvious that a majority of our population is painfully under-informed about this process.

Will The Real Barack Obama Please Stand Up!

The Bloviator is smart enough to read the tea leaves.  People in America have, in large numbers, abandoned their support for President Bush.  This is evidenced in his approval ratings, which have been hovering around the 30% mark for more than a year now.  So, enter Barack Obama, a junior Senator from Illinois with so little experience, and subsequently, a very short record to use against him.  

In the Democratic primaries Obama was running to the left of Senator Clinton to ensure he won the support of the far-left organizations such as MoveOn.org.  This, combined with the fact that the media failed to fully vette Senator Obama and rather fell in to blindly endorse and support him, allowed him to defeat Senator Clinton and received his party’s nomination.  Do you honestly think, had the media or Senator Clinton’s campaign discovered his associations with Reverend Wright, William Ayres, the Countrywide scandals and the like, before ‘Super Tuesday’s’ elections Obama would have taken so many states?  Remember, once those stories broke (after ‘Super Tuesday’) Senator Clinton began to cream him in the remaining primary elections.  Unfortunately, there were just not enough delegates left for Senator Clinton to recover the deficit.

Once Senator Clinton suspended her campaign and Senator Obama became the presumptive Democratic nominee he began to move – rapidly – towards the center.  In the days following Senator Clinton bowing out of the race Obama began to adopt the very positions he attacked his former rival for just days before.  He moved to the center on his timetable for the troop pull-outs in Iraq (although quickly moved back to the left when an internal outcry broke out from the far left).  He moved towards the center on the Supreme Court’s decision on the DC gun ban, saying he now supported the decision of the court even though he had supported the ban.  He began to alter his positions on energy and economics.  Senator Obama, in short order, essentially abandoned or modified every major point of his campaign up to that point in efforts to soften his “hard-left” image and appeal to the all-important independent voters who live in the center of this red state / blue state war we have been in for the last decade.

News Flash:  George W. Bush is NOT Running for President in 2008

As we’ve established, the American public wants a change from the policies and practices of George Bush so badly that they are turning to the opposing party.  We saw this two years ago when the Democrats took control of the House and Senate for the first time since 1994’s “Contract with America.”  The swing of power was not helped by the Jack Abramoff scandals either.  While Abramoff technically had illegal dealings on both sides of the aisle the Republicans took the brunt of the assault.

As I’ve stated a few times now, unless you have been living under a rock for the past several weeks you know doubt know that we are in a period of financial uncertainty.  The causes are vast and complicated, some recent and some stretch back to policies implemented over a decade ago in the Clinton administration.  The one sure thing is that there is plenty of blame to go around.  The problem is that the average voter has the memory of a goldfish.  If something didn’t happen within a relatively short period of time the average voter likely does not remember.  Case in point – when you voted last did you consider the mistakes made leading up to the 1987 financial crash?  Given the current market situation perhaps we should have.  

The point is that we, as voters, tend to blame the current problems on those who are currently in power.  An already unpopular President dealing with fall-out from the Iraq war makes a perfect scapegoat for the financial crisis – regardless of how much President Bush’s policies did or did not have to do with  anything.

The Bloviator is genuinely afraid, though, that the voter’s overwhelming desire to punish the Republican party for the error of their ways is going to end up installing Barack Obama in the White House along with Democratic control over both houses of congress.  Obama on his own represents a clear and present danger to the United States, but combined with control over congress (and perhaps, even, a filibuster proof Senate), the train to socialism will depart on the express track with no hope of stopping for at least two years.  Even two years of the far-left policies Barack Obama is proposing may cause damage to the country, our economy, and our overall mentality of government entitlement on an unrecoverable scale.  

These are definitely dangerous times we face.  Senator Obama’s policies represent his support of a clear and wide reaching redistribution of wealth.  To Senator Obama, everyone in the US deserves to be rich regardless of whether they worked for it or not.  Those who succeed, under Obama’s proposals, will be punished for their success and forced to give up to 50% of their hard-earned money to those who are not working for it.  Senator Obama calls this “fair” but The Bloviator calls this socialism.  Why would anyone want to work hard if they know they will just have to give up to half of their returns away?  Also, who would want to spend time working hard if the government will just give hand-outs for failure or apathy?  This Robin Hood mentality might sound good on paper at first, lifting the middle and lower classes to the same level as the wealthy, but at some point (which we are likely to rapidly reach) the wealthy can no longer support everyone else.  

It will be precisely at that point that the most dangerous side-effect of Senator Obama’s plan will come to fruition – full fledged class warfare in the United States.  Once we cross that line there is no turning back.  Ever.  

The Bloviator fears this outcome, but also warns you all now – elect Senator Barack Obama and you will get precisely what you paid for.  You all had better read the fine print before you buy anything.

 
It has now been a week since Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke came forward with the White House’s $700 billion Wall Street bail-out plan.  They told us we had to pass this package as soon as possible or the markets were going to crash, the world was going to end, and the sky was going to fall.  Paulson went on record stating only a “bazooka” was going to solve the problem.

A week has gone by now and the sun still rises every morning.  Nothing has been accomplished except the left accusing the right of derailing the process, and the right accusing the left of leaving them out of the process.

So what is really going on here?

In a “Twilight Zone” like scenario, we have a Republican president and administration proposing one of the largest single spending packages in the history of the country – whose only support at the moment is from House and Senate Democrats.  More specifically, the package is supported by the very same congressmen that helped cause the problem in the first place:  Senator Charles Schumer, chairman of the Senate Finance committee, and Congressman Barney Frank, who chairs the same committee in the House.  Incidentally, both of them voted against reforms of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2006 – a bill supported by John McCain.  That is a topic for a different post, however.

After a week we still have the President calling for the bill to be passed quickly.  We have the intense negotiations between both parties from the House and Senate trying to work out some sort of deal.  John McCain flew into DC to jump into the process, and Barack Obama is “phoning it in” by speaking “every day” to Paulson, Bernanke, and democratic leadership.  All of this in support of a bill that will essentially reward the excessive risks and unsound business practices of many financial institutions…all on the taxpayer’s dime.  In some cases it seems that these banks were lending out $30 for every $1 they actually held in capital.  If you play poker, you have about a 30-1 chance to be dealt three of a kind in any given hand.  Would you bet your company’s future, along with the financial well-being of your stock & stake-holders, on being dealt three of a kind on every hand?  If that were possible The Bloviator would be in Vegas right now.

Are Americans Revolting Against Wall Street?

It seems that, at this point, our only hope as American taxpayers lies with the House Republicans.  The Democrats have control of both houses of congress, so they could go ahead and pass any version of the bill they want.  The President is unlikely to veto the bill, seeing as it came from his office to begin with.  The Democrats are deathly afraid of moving ahead without bipartisan support – they need the Republican support as an insurance policy in case this bail-out does not work so the blame could be spread around.

Everyone in Washington seems to agree on the basic principle that something needs to be done about the crisis, the disagreements begin to come out around the details of how to do whatever the something is.  We go back to a blog post from a few days ago where I drew the comparison between this crisis and a burning house, however now instead of arguing over how to build a more fire-proof house we’re bickering ove where we should get the water from.  Should it come from a public fire hydrant, a private lake, or should we just wait and hope for rain?

It now seems like the only remaining opposition to passing some version of a bail-out bill is the American people.  Recent polling shows just 25% of Americans actually support a bail-out, with between 37% – 45% of Americans opposed to the idea.  The same polls show about a 30% to 30% split on Americans who think the bail-out will help the economy versus those who think it will do economic harm.

That is nearly half of the American people who would rather see these companies and banks pay the price for their own actions rather than have to foot the bill with tax dollars.  

The Bloviator thinks that is a pretty big problem.  While I went on record a few days ago reluctantly supporting the bill I find myself having second thoughts tonight, and thus I now fall somewhere in the middle.  On the one hand I feel I have to trust the chairman of the Fed and the secretary of the Treasury, but on the other I still have real concerns that we could proceed with this process a) not fix a thing, b) not change a thing, or c) make things worse.

With such staunch opposition at this late stage of the process The Bloviator would like to see his government “leaders” explain more of the details of this plan before we spend enough money to fill every gas tank and pay every heating bill for America for the next year.

Wednesday afternoon Senator John McCain announced that he intended to suspend his campaign and return to Washington to do his part in assisting the $700 billion bail-out package to pass.  Specifically, McCain knows that he is crucial in delivering the the House republicans’ votes.

So – do we need McCain’s help or not?

If all you listen to is NPR, CNN, and MSNBC/NBC News, you might think we were close to a deal yesterday afternoon before McCain arrived for the meeting with the President and house & senate leaders.  Majority leader Harry Reid came out and made a statement that Senator McCain’s assistance was not needed and that he would only hurt the process.

However, less than 24 hours before Senator Reid made that comment he had personally called Senator McCain and explained to him how important it was going to be to have his support on the legislation.  So – which is it?  This perplexes The Bloviator, and it usually takes a lot for my eyes to cross.

McCain’s annoncement to suspend his campaign to, well…to do his job as a United States Senator, was brilliant.  Whether you believe it was a political move or not is beside the point.  He is the leader of the Republican party and is doing his job as a US Senator by returning to Washington to help work on this package.

That announcement came around 2:30pm ET on Wednesday and from that point until the Gallup daily tracking poll came out the next morning McCain had not only closed the gap in the polling, but had tied Obama at 46% each.  It would appear that many undecided voters did not think this was a political move.  In fact, the only playing of politics The Bloviator has seen was when Harry Reid announced that a deal was imminent on Thursday around noontime and McCain was not needed.  That, combined with the majority leader’s comments today speaking about a ‘nameless senator who flew in to town’ that caused the deal to fall apart, are clearly partisan moves trying to discount the role McCain is clearly playing in this process.  Senator Reid’s statement that we were anywhere close to a deal was inaccurate at best, and at worst a lie designed with the sole intent of attacking McCain.  There has been nothing constructive in anything Senator Reid has said this week, on any topic.

Senator Obama phones it in…

Senator Reid had to say something negative to try and derail McCain, especially since Senator Obama’s only plan (until the President called him to come to DC) was to be “on call.”

The Bloviator isn’t allowed to “work from home” so why should we pay our Senators more than $160,000 per year to not even go to the office?  Senator Obama basically told the country “Hey…I’ve got a campaign to run, so call me if you need me,” whereas Senator McCain said “Hey…this crisis is much too important for me to be focusing on my campaign, so I’m going to do my job.”

Were it not for President Bush calling on Obama to join the meetings on Thursday he would have remained in Clearwater, FL preparing for Friday’s debate.  Wait…didn’t Obama tell us a president was supposed to be able to multi-task?

With the reports of the deal falling through last night Senator Obama took the opportunity to make an “I told you statement” when he said that was what he hoped to avoid by not bringing presidential politics into the argument.  That is a silly argument in and of itself as either McCain or Obama is going to have to deal with the fall-out from this mess as president.  Any rational American would assume the next potential presidents would want input into the policies they are going to have to manage in just a few short months.

To Debate, or Not To Debate…that is the debate.

As part of Senator McCain’s plan to suspend his campaign he called for a delay in tonight’s presidential debate in Mississippi, citing concerns over the rocky debate of bail-out package.  Senator Obama immediately stated that he thought the debate should continue, and The Bloviator actually found himself agreeing with Obama on something.  The debate tonight is crucial, and based on past track records, will likely help McCain anyway as Senator Obama has not traditionally performed well in situations without a teleprompter to tell him what he thinks about something.  Do you remember the abortion question at the Saddleback Church forum?  I wonder what questions tonight might be ‘above Obama’s pay-grade.’

As of a little after noon Eastern time it appears the debate over the debate is over as McCain’s campaign announces they are resuming all activities and that McCain will attend the forum this evening.  The senator does intend to return to DC following the debate to review the final versions of any agreement that is reached.  It is widely perceived that any bill will not pass without the support of the House Republicans, whom which McCain can deliver.  While the democrats have the votes to pass the measure they do not dare do so without a wide base of republican support for fear of being held responsible if the package fails to fix the problem…or worse yet if the crisis intensifies as a result.

The Bloviator is sure he will not be able to contain himself during this evening’s debate, so look for posts hitting the blog in near real-time as the canidates meet for their first showdown.

  
Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson appeared on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace this morning, and was asked some hard questions about the White House’s plan to bail-out the financial sector.  Believe it or not, some of those questions directly addressed some of the ideas put forth in yesterday’s blog entry posted right here in the BloviBlog.  The Bloviator took copious notes during the interview, and here are some of the more important points:

Will we, the taxpayers, get a piece of the action?

In what we consider the be the most important question of all, whether or not the taxpayers will be rewarded in any way for assuming the risk of what could be a $700 billion “blank check,” Secretary Paulson’s political skill showed through as he tactically evaded the question.  His silence on this point speaks louder than words could, offering a resounding no on the question…especially as he indicated that when those loans we are buying are sold off later the funds would be returned to the federal treasury.  Sounds like you and I are going to be left holding the bag on this one – but did you really expect different from our government?

Will there be any sort of mortgage relief included in the package?

Secretary Paulson was also vague on any details pertaining to potential mortgage relief to those who are struggling to make their payments, but seeing as how the entire White House proposal is only three pages long I think it is safe to assume it may be vague on more details than that.  $700 billion bucks in just three pages, that might be a new record!  Doesn’t it make you feel better to know that a three page proposal is the best we have come up with to address a problem as complex as the financial melt-down we are facing?  It gives The Bloviator a warm-fuzzy feeling inside.

What effects will the package have on the US economy, the debt, and the strength of the dollar?

When questioned by Chris Wallace about the potential negative side-effects of the bail-out legislation he stated that “this is the least costly way, to the economy, to the American people” to attempt to correct the crisis we are facing, adding that “this is a humbling time for the United States.”

However, on March 18th of this year, Secretary Paulson went on record, stating “I have great confidence in our markets and in our financial institutions,” begging the question of whether or not we should have acted sooner.  Secretary Paulson stated that there was “no way we could have gone to congress” to inject capital unless there was already an urgent crisis such as the one we are now in.

The Bloviator disagrees with this analysis, however, believing that the solution to the core problem is not to offer a bail-out in the first place, but instead to allow those organizations and institutions who made poor and overly risky decisions to fend for themselves.  This is a classic “you made your bed, now sleep in it” scenario.

What guarantee do we have that our investments are safe?

Secretary Paulson used the opportunity posed by this question to state the obvious, mentioning things like FDIC insured accounts are 100% safe (up to $100k, of course).  He, however, stopped well short of offering any assurances at all as it relates to the bail-out, instead stating there are “no guarantees” that this is even going to work, only that “we’re going to work through this problem.”  Another warm-fuzzy feeling for The Bloviator.