“Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” — Patrick Henry, 23 March 1775

“The great principles of right and wrong are legible to every reader; to pursue them requires not the aid of many counselors. The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.” —Thomas Jefferson

If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?" –Will Rogers

“Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors – and miss.” – Robert Heinlein

Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing, and that was the closest the country ever came to breaking even. –Will Rogers

"Democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always falls under loose fiscal policy." -- Sir Arthur Francis Tyler

Wonder Woman Sarah Palin

After the big gamble on subprime mortgages that led to the current financial crisis, is there going to be an even bigger gamble, by putting the fate of a nation in the hands of a man whose only qualifications are ego and mouth?

Barack Obama has the kind of cocksure confidence that can only be achieved by not achieving anything else.

Anyone who has actually had to take responsibility for consequences by running any kind of enterprise-- whether economic or academic, or even just managing a sports team-- is likely at some point to be chastened by either the setbacks brought on by his own mistakes or by seeing his successes followed by negative consequences that he never anticipated.

The kind of self-righteous self-confidence that has become Obama's trademark is usually found in sophomores in Ivy League colleges-- very bright and articulate students, utterly untempered by experience in real world.

The signs of Barack Obama's self-centered immaturity are painfully obvious, though ignored by true believers who have poured their hopes into him, and by the media who just want the symbolism and the ideology that Obama represents.

The triumphal tour of world capitals and photo-op meetings with world leaders by someone who, after all, was still merely a candidate, is just one sign of this self-centered immaturity.

"This is our time!" he proclaimed. And "I will change the world." But ultimately this election is not about him, but about the fate of this nation, at a time of both domestic and international peril, with a major financial crisis still unresolved and a nuclear Iran looming on the horizon.

For someone who has actually accomplished nothing to blithely talk about taking away what has been earned by those who have accomplished something, and give it to whomever he chooses in the name of "spreading the wealth," is the kind of casual arrogance that has led to many economic catastrophes in many countries.

The equally casual ease with which Barack Obama has talked about appointing judges on the basis of their empathies with various segments of the population makes a mockery of the very concept of law.

After this man has wrecked the economy and destroyed constitutional law with his judicial appointments, what can he do for an encore? He can cripple the military and gamble America's future on his ability to sit down with enemy nations and talk them out of causing trouble.

Senator Obama's running mate, Senator Joe Biden, has for years shown the same easy-way-out mindset. Senator Biden has for decades opposed strengthening our military forces. In 1991, Biden urged relying on sanctions to get Saddam Hussein's troops out of Kuwait, instead of military force, despite the demonstrated futility of sanctions as a means of undoing an invasion.

People who think Governor Sarah Palin didn't handle some "gotcha" questions well in a couple of interviews show no interest in how she compares to the Democrats' Vice Presidential candidate, Senator Biden.

Joe Biden is much more of the kind of politician the mainstream media like. Not only is he a liberal's liberal, he answers questions far more glibly than Governor Palin-- grossly inaccurately in many cases, but glibly.

Moreover, this is a long-standing pattern with Biden. When he was running for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination back in 1987, someone in the audience asked him what law school he attended and how well he did.

Flashing his special phony smile, Biden said, "I think I have a much higher IQ than you do." He added, "I went to law school on a full academic scholarship" and "ended up in the top half" of the class.

But Biden did not have a full academic scholarship. Newsweek reported: "He went on a half scholarship based on need. He didn't finish in the 'top half' of his class. He was 76th out of 85."

Add to Obama and Biden House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and you have all the ingredients for a historic meltdown. Let us not forget that the Roman Empire did decline and fall, blighting the lives of millions for centuries.

More by Thomas Sowell

10/31/2008: Don't Just Do Something. Stand There By RUSSELL ROBERTS

People ask me if the current mess feels like 1929. But the right comparison is 1932, when Herbert Hoover was desperately trying anything, anything at all, to get the economy going. The stock market had crashed. The economy was starting to follow it down. So what did Hoover and his fellow policy makers do?

In 1930, Congress passed a massive tariff increase, in hopes of protecting American jobs. Hoover signed it. But it simply accelerated the economy's slide. The Federal Reserve contracted the money supply, taking a recession and making it into a depression. By 1932, real GDP was 25% lower than three years earlier.

Hoover increased federal spending steadily, including an increase in real terms of about 40% in 1932. At the same time, fearful that deficits were harmful, Hoover raised income taxes.

Nothing worked. So Franklin Roosevelt came into office pledging stronger medicine. Enter even bigger increases in government spending. Government nationalization. Bigger deficits. Destruction of crops and livestock in the name of raising prices. Government-organized cartels. A greater empowerment of unions. It was a whirlwind of activity without any real plan.

It worked for a while, but then, in 1938, the economy turned sour again. Unemployment, which had been falling, spiked again, reaching 19%. Consumption didn't recover to its prewar levels until 1945.

Today, President George W. Bush plays the role of Hoover, the so-called free market ideologue who is trying anything to avert disaster. He signs a $700 billion bill putting Treasury in charge of buying troubled assets. A week later, the money is used to partially nationalize the banks. Some companies, like Bear Stearns, are bailed out. Others, like Lehman Brothers, are not. Some companies are sold. Some are allowed to fail. There is no plan, no rules, nothing to count on.

It's just like the New Deal: a massive accumulation of power in Washington justified by the need to do something. There is every reason to think this trend will accelerate regardless of whether Barack Obama or John McCain wins the election.

Back in March, Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke and the experts assured us that Bear Stearns had to be propped up. If not, the whole system could come crashing down. It is crashing down anyway. Just as in the 1930s, there is no evidence that the policy makers have any understanding of what they are doing. They need to make way for the natural forces of repair.

They need to let housing prices fall. They need to let firms go bankrupt. They need to let firms that are healthy thrive. They need to let healthy firms buy the sick firms. It is time to let the imprudent fail and the prudent pick up the bargains.

A recession is coming (or has already arrived) no matter what happens in Washington. The question is whether the attempt to forestall it is going to make it worse and turn it into another Great Depression.

By acting without rhyme or reason, politicians have destroyed the rules of the game. There is no reason to invest, no reason to take risk, no reason to be prudent, no reason to look for buyers if your firm is failing. Everything is up in the air and as a result, the only prudent policy is to wait and see what the government will do next. The frenetic efforts of FDR had the same impact: Net investment was negative through much of the 1930s.

The next administration is unlikely to do any better. Mr. Bernanke is perhaps the greatest living authority on the Great Depression, yet he has failed to stem the damage. Messrs. Paulson and Bernanke are confronted with a sick patient. They have antibiotics. They have a scalpel. But is there any evidence from the last seven months that they understand the underlying cause of the illness, or how to cure it?

Worst of all are the political incentives that are unleashed when Washington promises to spend a trillion dollars (and counting). No one can spend such money wisely even if they want to. The information about who needs to be bailed out and who needs to fail is too complicated. Inevitably, such decisions will begin to be more about politics than economics.

The banks were first. Then the insurance companies. The car makers are getting a cut. Who's next? The governors, probably. Homeowners are waiting. Then there will be the hedge funds. Once the line forms, companies will stop trying to save themselves and focus on being saved by Washington. The resulting spiral will be devastating.

Unfortunately, there is no consensus about a preferable alternative. The economists are almost as clueless as the politicians. At such a time, inaction may be the wisest course of action.

Mr. Roberts is a professor of economics at George Mason University and a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. His latest book is "The Price of Everything: A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity" (Princeton University Press, 2008).

10/31/2008: Spitzer and Sarbox Were Deregulation? By JAMES FREEMAN

In this fall's first presidential debate, Barack Obama analyzed the causes of the credit meltdown. "Now, we also have to recognize that this is a final verdict on eight years of failed economic policies promoted by George Bush, supported by Senator McCain, a theory that basically says that we can shred regulations and consumer protections and give more and more to the most, and somehow prosperity will trickle down."

In the second debate, Mr. Obama offered a similarly vague diagnosis: "I believe this is a final verdict on the failed economic policies of the last eight years . . . that essentially said that we should strip away regulations, consumer protections, let the market run wild, and prosperity would rain down on all of us."

Could Mr. Obama really believe that the era of Sarbanes-Oxley was about letting "the market run wild"?

One had to look far and wide in the spring of 2002 to find anyone who thought the Sarbanes-Oxley law was an experiment in cowboy capitalism. For example, on its front page of April 25, 2002, the New York Times reported: "House and Senate negotiators agreed . . . on a broad overhaul of corporate fraud, accounting and securities laws aimed at curbing the rampant abuses that have shaken Wall Street . . . Some lawmakers called it the most sweeping securities legislation since the 1930s." The Times added that "business and accounting industry lobbyists had tried in recent days to soften the measure, but they got nowhere."

Of course, in the years since this sweeping securities legislation was enacted, its costs -- borne by public companies, and therefore by investors -- have been many times official estimates. And with the benefit of time, even liberal Democrats such as New York Sen. Charles Schumer came to realize that the regulatory monster created by Sarbanes-Oxley had to be tamed.

Mr. Schumer was so concerned about the migration of business from Wall Street to London, Hong Kong and even Dubai that he joined New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in commissioning a study of the problem and potential solutions. When the study was released in January 2007, Messrs. Schumer and Bloomberg wrote in an accompanying note that "our regulatory framework is a thicket of complicated rules." They warned that without reform, "we will no longer be the financial capital of the world."

As heavy as was Washington's hand upon the financial markets beginning in year two of the Bush era, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer may have imposed even greater costs on Wall Street. Dusting off the 1921 Martin Act -- an antifraud statute so broad that it does not even require prosecutors to demonstrate criminal intent -- Mr. Spitzer forced a series of costly settlements that made Wall Street's traditional business of underwriting stock offerings much less profitable.

The excesses Mr. Spitzer sought to prevent were clear at the time; only later did the collateral damage to America's markets become manifest, as New York lost business to London and elsewhere.

In a 2004 Slate column, Daniel Gross described the initial impact when Mr. Spitzer targeted the insurance industry. "In response, the stocks of the biggest players implicated, Marsh & McLennan and AIG, have tanked, losing a combined $38 billion in market capitalization. More alarming for the insurers, Spitzer signaled this was just the beginning of an industry-wide investigation. For when he finds a few bad eggs, Eliot Spitzer cleans out the entire coop and changes the way it is run, as Wall Street's investment banks and mutual funds have learned to their dismay."

Mr. Spitzer would ultimately drive the CEOs of both Marsh and McLennan and AIG from office, with disastrous consequences for shareholders. In the case of AIG, the staggering extent of the disaster has lately been revealed.

The combination of Mr. Bush's enactment of Sarbanes-Oxley and Mr. Spitzer's Wall Street prosecutions contributed to America's significant market-share loss of initial public offerings -- and the U.S. is yet to return to pre-Bush levels. While government reduced the profit-making potential in Wall Street's traditional bread-and-butter business, it was simultaneously encouraging investment in the housing sector. Neither activity constituted deregulation.

Perhaps Mr. Obama is looking beyond the financial markets and taking a broad view of the economy in concluding that Mr. Bush was a deregulator. If so, it's hard to find evidence to support this conclusion.

Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute tracks regulation across the entire federal government. He reports that the Bush administration set an all-time record in 2004, when it published more than 75,000 pages of proposed and enacted rules in the Federal Register.

Leftists might assume that many of these rules were actually watering down earlier standards -- but where's the evidence of declining compliance costs? Lafayette College economist Mark Crain estimates more than $1.1 trillion in federal regulatory costs for 2004, up an inflation-adjusted 16% from 2000. Overall agency enforcement budgets have increased each year since 2004.

A recent report, "Regulatory Agency Spending Reaches New Height," from Washington University's Weidenbaum Center puts Mr. Bush's regulatory activity in historical context. Co-authors Veronique de Rugy and Melinda Warren say that when it comes to spending on regulatory agencies, our current president is almost in a class by himself, with an increase of almost 68% during his two terms. In constant dollars the Bush regulatory budget increases vastly exceed those of predecessors Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, Nixon and, yes, Lyndon Johnson.

Looking at regulatory spending in percentage terms, Mr. Bush's staggering 2003 increase of more than 24% was the largest in the last 50 years. If Mr. Obama considers this a record of deregulation -- and if current polls hold -- America's economy could be in for a very long four years.

Mr. Freeman is assistant editor of the Journal's editorial page.

10/26/2008: If Larry and Sergey Asked for a Loan ... By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

The hardest thing about analyzing the Bush administration is this: Some things are true even if George Bush believes them.

Therefore, sifting through all his steps and missteps, at home and abroad, and trying to sort out what is crazy and what might actually be true — even though George Bush believes it — presents an enormous challenge, particularly amid this economic crisis.

I felt that very strongly when listening to President Bush and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson announce that the government was going to become a significant shareholder in the country’s major banks. Both Bush and Paulson were visibly reluctant to be taking this step. It would be easy to scoff at them and say: “What do you expect from a couple of capitalists who hate any kind of government intervention in the market?”

But we should reflect on their reluctance. There may be an important message in their grimaces. The government had to step in and shore up the balance sheets of our major banks. But the question I am asking myself, and I think Paulson and Bush were asking themselves, is this: “What will this government intervention do to the risk-taking that is at the heart of capitalism?”

There is a fine line between risk-taking and recklessness. Risk-taking drives innovation; recklessness drives over a cliff. In recent years, we had way too much of the latter. We are paying a huge price for that, and we need a correction. But how do we do that without becoming so risk-averse that start-ups and emerging economies can’t get capital because banks with the government as a shareholder become exceedingly cautious.

Let’s imagine this scene: You are the president of one of these banks in which the government has taken a position. One day two young Stanford grads walk in your door. One is named Larry, and the other is named Sergey. They each are wearing jeans and a T-shirt. They tell you that they have this thing called a “search engine,” and they are naming it — get this — “Google.” They tell you to type in any word in this box on a computer screen and — get this — hit a button labeled “I’m Feeling Lucky.” Up comes a bunch of Web sites related to that word. Their start-up, which they are operating out of their dorm room, has exhausted its venture capital. They need a loan.

What are you going to say to Larry and Sergey as the president of the bank? “Boys, this is very interesting. But I have the U.S. Treasury as my biggest shareholder today, and if you think I’m going to put money into something called ‘Google,’ with a key called ‘I’m Feeling Lucky,’ you’re fresh outta luck. Can you imagine me explaining that to a Congressional committee if you guys go bust?”

And then what happens if the next day the congressman from Palo Alto, who happens to be on the House banking committee, calls you, the bank president, and says: “I understand you turned down my boys, Larry and Sergey. Maybe you haven’t been told, but I am one of your shareholders — and right now, I’m not feeling very lucky. You get my drift?”

Maybe nothing like this will ever happen. Maybe it’s just my imagination. But maybe not ...

“Government bailouts and guarantees, while at times needed, always come with unintended consequences,” notes the financial strategist David Smick. “The winners: the strong, the big, the established, the domestic and the safe — the folks who, relatively speaking, don’t need the money. The losers: the new, the small, the foreign and the risky — emerging markets, entrepreneurs and small businesses not politically connected. After all, what banker in a Capitol Hill hearing now would want to defend a loan to an emerging market? Yet emerging economies are the big markets for American exports.”

Don’t get me wrong. I am not criticizing the decision to shore up the banks. And we must prevent a repeat of the reckless bundling and securitizing of mortgages, and excessive leveraging, that started this mess. We need better regulation. But most of all, we need better management.

The banks that are surviving the best today, the ones that are buying others and not being bought — like JPMorgan Chase or Banco Santander, based in Spain — are not surviving because they were better regulated than the banks across the street but because they were better run. Their leaders were more vigilant about their risk exposure than any regulator required them to be.

Bottom line: We must not overshoot in regulating the markets just because they overshot in their risk-taking. That’s what markets do. We need to fix capitalism, not install socialism. Because, ultimately, we can’t bail our way out of this crisis. We can only grow our way out — with more innovation and entrepreneurship, which create new businesses and better jobs.

So let’s keep our eyes on the prize. Save the system, install smart regulations and get the government out of the banking business as soon as possible so that the surviving banks can freely and unabashedly get back into their business: risk-taking without recklessness.

The hardest thing about analyzing the Bush administration is this: Some things are true even if George Bush believes them.

Therefore, sifting through all his steps and missteps, at home and abroad, and trying to sort out what is crazy and what might actually be true — even though George Bush believes it — presents an enormous challenge, particularly amid this economic crisis.

I felt that very strongly when listening to President Bush and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson announce that the government was going to become a significant shareholder in the country’s major banks. Both Bush and Paulson were visibly reluctant to be taking this step. It would be easy to scoff at them and say: “What do you expect from a couple of capitalists who hate any kind of government intervention in the market?”

But we should reflect on their reluctance. There may be an important message in their grimaces. The government had to step in and shore up the balance sheets of our major banks. But the question I am asking myself, and I think Paulson and Bush were asking themselves, is this: “What will this government intervention do to the risk-taking that is at the heart of capitalism?”

There is a fine line between risk-taking and recklessness. Risk-taking drives innovation; recklessness drives over a cliff. In recent years, we had way too much of the latter. We are paying a huge price for that, and we need a correction. But how do we do that without becoming so risk-averse that start-ups and emerging economies can’t get capital because banks with the government as a shareholder become exceedingly cautious.

Let’s imagine this scene: You are the president of one of these banks in which the government has taken a position. One day two young Stanford grads walk in your door. One is named Larry, and the other is named Sergey. They each are wearing jeans and a T-shirt. They tell you that they have this thing called a “search engine,” and they are naming it — get this — “Google.” They tell you to type in any word in this box on a computer screen and — get this — hit a button labeled “I’m Feeling Lucky.” Up comes a bunch of Web sites related to that word. Their start-up, which they are operating out of their dorm room, has exhausted its venture capital. They need a loan.

What are you going to say to Larry and Sergey as the president of the bank? “Boys, this is very interesting. But I have the U.S. Treasury as my biggest shareholder today, and if you think I’m going to put money into something called ‘Google,’ with a key called ‘I’m Feeling Lucky,’ you’re fresh outta luck. Can you imagine me explaining that to a Congressional committee if you guys go bust?”

And then what happens if the next day the congressman from Palo Alto, who happens to be on the House banking committee, calls you, the bank president, and says: “I understand you turned down my boys, Larry and Sergey. Maybe you haven’t been told, but I am one of your shareholders — and right now, I’m not feeling very lucky. You get my drift?”

Maybe nothing like this will ever happen. Maybe it’s just my imagination. But maybe not ...

“Government bailouts and guarantees, while at times needed, always come with unintended consequences,” notes the financial strategist David Smick. “The winners: the strong, the big, the established, the domestic and the safe — the folks who, relatively speaking, don’t need the money. The losers: the new, the small, the foreign and the risky — emerging markets, entrepreneurs and small businesses not politically connected. After all, what banker in a Capitol Hill hearing now would want to defend a loan to an emerging market? Yet emerging economies are the big markets for American exports.”

Don’t get me wrong. I am not criticizing the decision to shore up the banks. And we must prevent a repeat of the reckless bundling and securitizing of mortgages, and excessive leveraging, that started this mess. We need better regulation. But most of all, we need better management.

The banks that are surviving the best today, the ones that are buying others and not being bought — like JPMorgan Chase or Banco Santander, based in Spain — are not surviving because they were better regulated than the banks across the street but because they were better run. Their leaders were more vigilant about their risk exposure than any regulator required them to be.

Bottom line: We must not overshoot in regulating the markets just because they overshot in their risk-taking. That’s what markets do. We need to fix capitalism, not install socialism. Because, ultimately, we can’t bail our way out of this crisis. We can only grow our way out — with more innovation and entrepreneurship, which create new businesses and better jobs.

So let’s keep our eyes on the prize. Save the system, install smart regulations and get the government out of the banking business as soon as possible so that the surviving banks can freely and unabashedly get back into their business: risk-taking without recklessness.

10/26/2008: A happy photo sent to me by a happy person...

10/23/2008: Today on my way to lunch I passed a homeless guy with a sign that read "Vote Obama, I need the money." I laughed.

Once in the restaurant, my server had on a "Obama 08" tie, again I laughed as he had given away his political preference--just imagine the coincidence.

When the bill came I decided not to tip the server and explained to him that I was exploring the Obama redistribution of wealth concept. He stood there in disbelief while I told him that I was going to redistribute his tip to someone who I deemed more in need--the homeless guy outside. The server angrily stormed from my sight.

I went outside, gave the homeless guy $10 and told him to thank the server inside as I've decided he could use the money more. The homeless guy was grateful.

At the end of my rather unscientific redistribution experiment I realized the homeless guy was grateful for the money he did not earn, but the waiter was pretty angry that I gave away the money he did earn even though the actual recipient deserved money more.

I guess redistribution of wealth is an easier thing to swallow in concept than in practical application.

10/23/2008: Who? McCain, Obama, Palin, Biden, etc...easy choice: If, as Joe Biden suggests, the U.S. is likely to be tested by a foreign enemy next year, who of the following would you rather have dealing with it in the Oval Office: McCain, Obama, Nancy (of Damascus) Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Edwards, Joe (the U.S. drove Hezbollah out of Lebanon) Biden, Mike Huckabee, Geraldine Ferraro, Tom DeLay, Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden or Sarah Palin? My pick? Governor Palin is surely the most grounded, common-sense person on that list of prime-time politicians.

10/23/2008: A Vote for Obama is a vote for socialism NOW; a vote for McCain is a vote for continuing our slide into socialism. Once again, the Republicans are just like the Democrats with a slight discount, allowing us to descend into socialism just a little bit slower.

10/22/2008: (on the WSJ's Real Time Economics Blog) Criticizing Economists: On the EconLog blog, Arnold Kling blasts other economists. "I am shocked at the behavior of my fellow economists during this crisis. They are claiming to know much more than they do about causes and solutions. Rather than trying to understand and explain what is going on, they are engaged in a fierce battle over narrative... My main beef with economists is that standard macroeconomics does such a poor job of describing what is going on. The textbooks models are pretty much useless. Where in the textbooks is "liquidity preference" a demand for Treasury securities? Where in the textbooks does it say that injecting capital into banks is a policy tool? Graduate macro is even worse. Have the courses that use representative-agent models solving Euler equations been abolished? Have the professors teaching those courses been fired? Why not? I have always thought that the issue of the relationship between financial markets and the "real economy" was really deep. I thought that it was a critical part of macroeconomic theory that was poorly developed. But the economics profession for the past thirty years instead focused on producing stochastic calculus porn to satisfy young men's urge for mathematical masturbation. Economists ought to admit that we do not know much about what is going on today. Neither do the Fed Chairman and the Treasury Secretary. Of course, the market demand is for "strong" leaders and for "strong" economists, who can fool the public into believing that they have great knowledge. The ones who do this best are those who have fooled themselves." Compiled by Phil Izzo

OBAMA's TAX PLAN - Penn & Teller and gang return to comment on Barack Obama's socialist plans to turn the United States into a Marxist wasteland! ** FEATURING Plumber, Joe Wurzelbacher. *** Vett Barack Obama, NOT Joe the Plumber! ***

10/20/2008: Biden: If Elected, The World Will Test Obama With A Crisis by Aaron Bruns

SEATTLE, WA — Joe Biden says he’s certain that if Barack Obama is elected president, there will be an international crisis to test his strength within the first 6 months of his presidency.

“Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America.” he told a fundraising crowd in the Pacific Northwest on Sunday. “Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

“He’s gonna have to make some really tough - I don’t know what the decision’s gonna be, but I promise you it will occur. As a student of history and having served with seven presidents, I guarantee you it’s gonna happen.”

The Delaware Senator made similar remarks at a San Francisco fundraiser the day before. “We’re going to face a major international challenge. Because they’re going to want to test him, just like they did young John Kennedy. They’re going to want to test him. And they’re going to find out this guy’s got steel in his spine,” Biden said. He told the crowd to continue to stand by Obama and know they made the right choice even when the going gets tough.

The Democratic VP nominee has talked about the difficult environment the next president, no matter who he is, will step into — calling it the toughest since the Great Depression — but never before suggested that Obama in particular would be tested because of who he is.

[Read more; listen to Biden's remarks]

10/20/2008: Real & Rational...Cute T-Shirt for Math ]

10/17/2008: Bill Ayers, Scum

[What puzzles me is not the relationship Obama has with William Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, two unrepentent terrorists. They are merely fellow travelers on the road to socialism. What puzzles me is that Ayers and Dohrn and countless other murderers from the sixties and seventies are not in prison for life...or perhaps buried after being electrocuted, hung, or shot by a firing squad...my personal favorite for communist terrorists. No doubt as an educator he attempts to indoctrinate children with his communist ideology and, for that alone, he should not be allowed to teach or work anywhere where public money (i.e., tax dollars) is accepted. He was just another spoiled brat.]

Paul Berman always commands attention and respect. He has published here many times. And his measured Daily Beast posting on Bill Ayers [see below] is definitive: just, textured, and in the end unrelenting. Ayers was a wannabe muderer and not just a criminal type. If you want to find a comparison to other idealogically motivated killers of the same generation you can just repair to the gangsters who slaughtered Emmet Till, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and the three little girls who died in the burning church that Condi Rice later attended. The Weatherman Underground faction of the S.D.S. was no different than the men of the Klan and other white supremacy organizations who terrorized the black south. In fact, the oh, so idealistically inclined southern populists inspired by Tom Watson broke the necks of blacks, young and hold, and hung them from a tree for all to see. Idealism can be a dangerous phenomenon. It can blind from the evil that people do on behalf of what they are sure is good.

Ayers has lived an especially privileged life, right off the system he disdains and wants to destroy. He should not be declared "innocent" of any of his crimes. By anyone.

[Read more]

10/17/2008: Bill Ayers Fan Club by Paul Berman

Over 3,000 fervent supporters have signed a statement emblazoned "Support Bill Ayers," describing the former leader of the Weather Underground, Chicago educator and Obama associate William Ayers as a victim of McCarthyite slurs by the McCain campaign. The naivete and self-delusion of the signatories heats up the already boiling Ayers issue on the day of the final debate between Obama and McCain.

...By the time Ayers became prominent in the organization, SDS could claim 100,000 members. Ayers rose among those 100,000 because he came from an extremely wealthy background, which gave him an aura of command. He was also several years older than most of the members, which allowed him to manipulate his younger followers unscrupulously. By the time he and his faction were done, they had dismantled SDS in favor of their own mini-organization, the Weather Underground, which called itself "revolutionary communist." And Ayers and the Weather Underground launched a Che Guevara-type war in the United States, than which nothing could be more idiotic...

[Read more]

10/17/2008: (from the December 2008 Issue of Liberty Magazine)

...CDSs and CDOs were a kind of investment insurance. But, despite their claims, Wall Street firms have never been good at risk assessment. They are dominated by the trader’s mentality, which values the adrenaline rush of doing deals over the cautious work of actuarial analysis.

When you write insurance, you get a lot of people to pay you a little more than their share of what it could cost if a bad thing happened to one of them. Then, if the bad thing happens, you pay the injured person back. You need to have money available to pay people who have been injured. Or there will be trouble.

What happened with the CDSs is that traders and investors made bad (that is, favorable to them) assumptions. They jumped at the cash flow that the investments offered and ignored the potential losses that would result if the mortgages underlying the derivatives actually defaulted.

An insurance company succeeds if its premiums are lower than its competitors’ but still higher than its actual cost of claims [and expenses]. When it comes to structuring health, home, and car coverages, actuaries calculate the relevant risks and make sure that insurers keep enough money on hand to pay expected losses. In the Wall Street version of insurance, no one was making such informed analysis. Why not? Because the “insurance” wasn’t covering actual mortgages or even simple mortgage-based securities; an actuary could analyze the default risks of those, based on relevant local market data, loan-to-value ratios, etc. Instead, the “insurance” was covering the default risk of derivatives like SIVs and CMOs — that had been designed to obscure risk factors.

Through the go-go years of the early- and mid-2000s, CDSs and CDOs were traded like stocks or other simple investments. They changed hands dozens or scores of times, growing in value with each trade. Some of the firms that traded swaps — effectively insuring billions (or tens of bil- lions) of dollars in subprime loans — only kept a few million dollars (or less) in cash on hand to cover any losses.

Similar things had happened in insurance circles before. In the 1990s, Lloyd’s of London suffered what its executives would come to call a “risk spiral.” The combination of insured losses related to storm damage to some offshore oil rigs in the North Sea and asbestos liability lawsuits in the United States had much-worse-than-expected effects on Lloyd’s investors. These investors — called “names” in Lloyd’s jargon — functioned just like the counterparties to CDO and CDS contracts. They bought into “syndicates” which essentially paid them to be standing by with checkbooks ready in case of major losses.

Some of the “names” had been making money this way for so long that they’d forgotten about the potential liability. They expected to keep getting distribution payments . . . forever. When the losses mounted and they had to pay money into the syndicates, many weren’t prepared. The resulting shortfalls almost wiped out Lloyd’s of London.

Lloyd’s survived. But it had to turn to the British government for financial aid. And it had to restructure its syndicates, demanding more formal capital investment and clearly-written liability agreements with its “names.” ... [Lots more]

10/17/2008: Best of the Web

Two Papers in One!

• "In Wednesday night's debate, John McCain warned that a group called Acorn is 'on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history' and 'may be destroying the fabric of democracy.' Viewers may have been wondering what Mr. McCain was talking about. So were we." --editorial, New York Times, Oct. 17

• "Several F.B.I. offices are reviewing reports of fraudulent voter registrations submitted by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn, a liberal community organizing group that has been under fire from Republicans." --news story, New York Times, Oct. 17

...In a statement, Acorn said it had not been contacted by federal law enforcement agencies, and the group’s leaders expressed confidence that “any legitimate review of Acorn by any law enforcement entity — be it local, state or federal — will determine that the organization has conducted itself properly.”

Acorn’s top management is separately facing questions over its handling of the embezzlement of $1 million of its money by the brother of the group’s founder...

We Blame Global Warming, or Not

• "Alaska Glaciers Grew This Year, Thanks to Colder Weather"--headline, Anchorage Daily News, Oct. 14

• "Federal Report: Arctic Getting Warmer and Warmer"--headline, FoxNews.com, Oct. 16

10/16/2008: Buy American. I Am. By WARREN E. BUFFETT
Published: October 16, 2008 – Omaha [Nebraska]

THE financial world is a mess, both in the United States and abroad. Its problems, moreover, have been leaking into the general economy, and the leaks are now turning into a gusher. In the near term, unemployment will rise, business activity will falter and headlines will continue to be scary.

So ... I’ve been buying American stocks. This is my personal account I’m talking about, in which I previously owned nothing but United States government bonds. (This description leaves aside my Berkshire Hathaway holdings, which are all committed to philanthropy.) If prices keep looking attractive, my non-Berkshire net worth will soon be 100 percent in United States equities.

Why?

A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. And most certainly, fear is now widespread, gripping even seasoned investors. To be sure, investors are right to be wary of highly leveraged entities or businesses in weak competitive positions. But fears regarding the long-term prosperity of the nation’s many sound companies make no sense. These businesses will indeed suffer earnings hiccups, as they always have. But most major companies will be setting new profit records 5, 10 and 20 years from now.

Let me be clear on one point: I can’t predict the short-term movements of the stock market. I haven’t the faintest idea as to whether stocks will be higher or lower a month — or a year — from now. What is likely, however, is that the market will move higher, perhaps substantially so, well before either sentiment or the economy turns up. So if you wait for the robins, spring will be over.

A little history here: During the Depression, the Dow hit its low, 41, on July 8, 1932. Economic conditions, though, kept deteriorating until Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in March 1933. By that time, the market had already advanced 30 percent. Or think back to the early days of World War II, when things were going badly for the United States in Europe and the Pacific. The market hit bottom in April 1942, well before Allied fortunes turned. Again, in the early 1980s, the time to buy stocks was when inflation raged and the economy was in the tank. In short, bad news is an investor’s best friend. It lets you buy a slice of America’s future at a marked-down price.

Over the long term, the stock market news will be good. In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.

You might think it would have been impossible for an investor to lose money during a century marked by such an extraordinary gain. But some investors did. The hapless ones bought stocks only when they felt comfort in doing so and then proceeded to sell when the headlines made them queasy.

Today people who hold cash equivalents feel comfortable. They shouldn’t. They have opted for a terrible long-term asset, one that pays virtually nothing and is certain to depreciate in value. Indeed, the policies that government will follow in its efforts to alleviate the current crisis will probably prove inflationary and therefore accelerate declines in the real value of cash accounts.

Equities will almost certainly outperform cash over the next decade, probably by a substantial degree. Those investors who cling now to cash are betting they can efficiently time their move away from it later. In waiting for the comfort of good news, they are ignoring Wayne Gretzky’s advice: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been.”

I don’t like to opine on the stock market, and again I emphasize that I have no idea what the market will do in the short term. Nevertheless, I’ll follow the lead of a restaurant that opened in an empty bank building and then advertised: “Put your mouth where your money was.” Today my money and my mouth both say equities.

Warren E. Buffett is the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, a diversified holding company.

A version of this article appeared in print on October 17, 2008, on page A33 of the New York edition.

10/7/2008: Long after she's dead people will wonder how she did what she did and was never put on trial. Some thought being married to Tom Haydn was punishment enough. Many thought there was no such thing as enough, nor was there anything like justice around.

Commie Traitor Jane Fonda

YES SHE WAS A TRAITOR..!!

In Memory of my brother-in-law LT. C. Thomsen Wieland who spent 100 days at the Hanoi Hilton

She really was a Traitor

A TRAITOR IS ABOUT TO BE HONORED KEEP THIS MOVING ACROSS AMERICA

This is for all the kids born in the 70's who do not remember, and didn't have to bear the burden that our fathers, mothers and older brothers and sisters had to bear.

Jane Fonda is being honored as one of the '100 Women of the Century.'

BY BARBRA WALTERS

Unfortunately, many have forgotten and still countless others have never known how Ms. Fonda betrayed not only the idea of our country, but specific men who served and sacrificed during Vietnam

The first part of this is from an F-4E pilot

The pilot's name is Jerry Driscoll, a River Rat.

In 1968, the former Commandant of the USAF Survival School was a POW in Ho Lo Prison the ' Hanoi Hilton.'

Dragged from a stinking cesspit of a cell, cleaned, fed, and dressed in clean PJ's, he was ordered to describe for a visiting American 'Peace Activist' the 'lenient and humane treatment' he'd received.

He spat at Ms. Fonda, was clubbed and was dragged away. During the subsequent beating, he fell forward on to the camp Commandant 's feet which sent that officer berserk

In 1978, the Air Force Colonel still suffered from double vision (which permanently ended his flying career) from the Commandant's frenzied application of a wooden baton.

From 1963-65, Col. Larry Carrigan was in the 47FW/DO (F-4E's). He spent 6 years in the 'Hanoi Hilton',,, the first three of which his family only knew he was 'missing in action'. His wife lived on faith that he was still alive. His group, too, got the cleaned-up, fed and get word to the world that they were alive and still survived.. Each man secreted a tiny piece of paper, with his Social Security Number on it, in the palm of his hand..

When paraded before Ms. Fonda and a cameraman, she walked the line, shaking each man's hand and asking little encouraging snippets like: 'Aren't you sorry you bombed babies?' and 'Are you grateful for the humane treatment from your benevolent captors?' Believing this HAD to be an act, they each palmed her their sliver of paper. She took them all without missing a beat. At the end of the line and once the camera stopped rolling, to the shocked disbelief of the POWs, she turned to the officer in charge and handed him all the little pieces of paper.

Three men died from the subsequent beatings. Colonel Carrigan was almost number four but he survived, which is the only reason we know of her actions that day.

I was a civilian economic development advisor in Vietnam , and was captured by the North Vietnamese communists in South Vietnam in 1968, and held prisoner for over 5 years.

I spent 27 months in solitary confinement; one year in a cage in Cambodia ; and one year in a 'black box' in Hanoi My North Vietnamese captors deliberately poisoned and murdered a female missionary, a nurse in a leprosarium in Ban me Thuot, South Vietnam , whom I buried in the jungle near the Cambodian border. At one time, I weighed only about 90 lbs. (My normal weight is 170 lbs.)

We were Jane Fonda's 'war criminals.'

When Jane Fonda was in Hanoi , I was asked by the camp communist political officer if I would be willing to meet with her.

I said yes, for I wanted to tell her about the real treatment we POWs received... and how different it was from the treatment purported by the North Vietnamese, and parroted by her as 'humane and lenient.'

Because of this, I spent three days on a rocky floor on my knees, with my arms outstretched with a large steel weights placed on my hands, and beaten with a bamboo cane.

I had the opportunity to meet with Jane Fonda soon after I was released.

I asked her if she would be willing to debate me on TV. She never did answer me.

These first-hand experiences do not exemplify someone who should be honored as part of '100 Years of Great Women.' Lest we forget...' 100 Years of Great Women' should never include a traitor whose hands are covered with the blood of so many patriots.

There are few things I have strong visceral reactions to, but Hanoi Jane's participation in blatant treason, is one of them. Please take the time to forward to as many people as you possibly can. It will eventually end up on her computer and she needs to know that we will never forget. RONALD D. SAMPSON, CMSgt, USAF 716 Maintenance Squadron, Chief of Maintenance DSN: 875-6431 COMM: 883-6343

10/7/2008: The Real Obama by Thomas Sowell

Critics of Senator Barack Obama make a strategic mistake when they talk about his "past associations." That just gives his many defenders in the media an opportunity to counter-attack against "guilt by association."

We all have associations, whether at the office, in our neighborhood or in various recreational activities. Most of us neither know nor care what our associates believe or say about politics.

Associations are very different from alliances. Allies are not just people who happen to be where you are or who happen to be doing the same things you do. You choose allies deliberately for a reason. The kind of allies you choose says something about you.

Jeremiah Wright, Father Michael Pfleger, William Ayers and Antoin Rezko are not just people who happened to be at the same place at the same time as Barack Obama. They are people with whom he chose to ally himself for years, and with some of whom some serious money changed hands.

Some gave political support, and some gave financial support, to Obama's election campaigns, and Obama in turn contributed either his own money or the taxpayers' money to some of them. That is a familiar political alliance-- but an alliance is not just an "association" from being at the same place at the same time.

Obama could have allied himself with all sorts of other people. But, time and again, he allied himself with people who openly expressed their hatred of America. No amount of flags on his campaign platforms this election year can change that.

Unfortunately, all that most people know about Barack Obama is his own rhetoric and that of his critics. Moreover, some of his more irresponsible critics have made wild accusations-- that he is not an American citizen or that he is a Muslim, for example.

All that such false charges do is discredit Obama's critics in general. Fortunately, there is a documented, factual account of what Barack Obama has actually been doing over the years, as distinguished from what he has been saying during this election campaign, in a new best-selling book.

That book is titled "The Case Against Barack Obama" by David Freddoso. He starts off in the introduction by repudiating those critics of Obama who "have been content merely to slander him-- to claim falsely that he refuses to salute the U.S. flag or was sworn into office on a Koran, or that he was born in a foreign country."

This is a serious book with 35 pages of documentation in the back to support the things said in the main text. In other words, if you don't believe what the author says, he lets you know where you can go check it out.

Barack Obama's being the first serious black candidate for President of the United States is what most people consider remarkable but how he got there is at least equally surprising.

The story of Obama's political career is not a pretty story. He won his first political victory by being the only candidate on the ballot-- after hiring someone skilled at disqualifying the signers of opposing candidates' petitions, on whatever technicality he could come up with.

Despite his words today about "change" and "cleaning up the mess in Washington," Obama was not on the side of reformers who were trying to change the status quo of corrupt, machine politics in Chicago and clean up the mess there. Obama came out in favor of the Daley machine and against reform candidates.

Senator Obama is running on an image that is directly the opposite of what he has been doing for two decades. His escapes from his past have been as remarkable as the great escapes of Houdini.

Why much of the public and the media have been so mesmerized by the words and the image of Obama, and so little interested in learning about the factual reality, was perhaps best explained by an official of the Democratic Party: "People don't come to Obama for what he's done, they come because of what they hope he can be."

David Freddoso's book should be read by those people who want to know what the facts are. But neither this book nor anything else is likely to change the minds of Obama's true believers, who have made up their minds and don't want to be confused by the facts.

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