Here's another fine mess we've gotten ourselves into

Nice economy, huh?  What a mess.  If 3 months ago you told me that airlines would be the strongest sector heading into the end of the year, I’d had to commit you to rehab.  Everything, literally everything, is crumbling at this stage.  Not only are investments getting wiped out, but industries are starting to dry up.  Retailers are going to have the worst holiday season in over 50 years.  You might have to bury your valuable in a coffee can out in the yard, that’s the only safe place these days.  It’s crazy.  The urge is so strong to ‘invest at these levels’, but then they drop to lower levels.  One almost feels like it’s throwing good money after bad.  It’s gotta bounce back, but the timing is all over the map, anywhere from ‘Q3 – 2009 to somewhere in 2011’.  That’s like the cable guy telling you he’s going to be by sometime between 8 and 5, you have to take the whole day off to accommodate, meanwhile, other stuff is put on hold.

Now that the big ‘CHANGE’ is coming, does this also mean that the automakers are looking for a little ‘spare change’ from the $700BB TARP to come their way?  Or do lawmakers simply let the market dictate and push them toward Chapter 11 (re-org)., Chapter 7 (liquidation) or into the arms of a stronger, better capitalized foreign buyer?  Arguments FOR and AGAINST are compelling.  One that stands out is the comparison to other industries, specifically steel and airlines.  While they were going through their bankruptcy periods, they had an opportunity to shed the uber-expensive pension programs and restructure their collective bargaining agreements.  This allowed companies to cut costs, resize their businesses to reflect the new demand, and implement improved technologies to supply it.  Weaker companies were either merged with stronger ones or allowed to cease. 

In the global auto market, competition creates opportunities for companies that are low-cost manufacturers.  Unfortunately for US auto makers, part of their costs are bumped up by antiquated laws that prevent them from importing fuel efficient models made overseas (where these same US automakers foreign divisions are to their markets what Toyota and Honda are here).  Figure that one out.  US auto makers are dying in their own domestic markets.  By relaxing some of the import laws, they could literally save themselves.  Too bad for the unions, who are going to get hit either way.  They can allow greater imports (made by lower paid workers overseas) or face a Chapter 11 reorganization where their contracts are re-written and thousands more are laid off.  Is this the fault of labor unions?  Not really, management carries equal blame for not implementing some of the same fuel efficiency used in their foreign subsidiaries here in America. 

And so, as a result of hundreds of bad decisions, big and small, we arrive, after a mind-boggling series of ‘left turns’ and ‘failed shortcuts’, at the point in our macro-economy where a full-scale crisis is closer to reality.  With millions of people preparing for retirement, and millions more waiting to move through the labor markets, it’s a veritable log-jam, and nothing moves (or barely budges).

Seizure, and the near complete absence of market velocity, is the true economy killer…good luck, Mr. Obama, you’re going to need it.

HACK

Looking ahead...

Of course this is an historic time.  No question all the statements about a change in direction for America, a new 'face', and all those other ghosts have been vanquished (?), but now after the soaring rhetoric (which all the same was very good, some of the best speech-making in decades), we're going to have to deal with the daunting task of leading a stumbling country out of expensive wars and a crippled economy.  Careful is the watchword going forward.

It would be delicious for the conquering Democrats to jam through their agendas, but it would serve them about as well as it served the Republicans.  Too much power to one party ultimately has a negative consequence for that party.  The best the Democrats can do is look at the collossal expenditure of political capital and goodwill by the Republicans over the past 3 years (and incredibly over just the past 45 days) to see a blue print for losing.  Bush & Cheney have done a stunning job of leading a nation and their party to a dead end. 

Is the war overseas on a path to victory?  It's arguable either way.  That uncertainty is a huge problem.  Comments by McCain about taking more time (decades) to 'finish' the job were too unclear for a populace that needs to have clarity. 

Will the economy recover?  Well, for some who are less than 3 years from retirement, it's not clear either.  Meanwhile, the current administration has essentially nationalized large portions of the financial services business.  Those who are close to retirement now have to rely more on bigger government to cover their retirement accounts and finances tied to companies that have received TARP dollars.  Scary.

And the Republican party is in shambles.  Nobody wanted anything to do with Bush or anyone in his administration, most of whom will limp back into the private sector with a big scarlet letter on them.  Good like finding the kind of lucrative post-government gigs to which your Clinton administration predecessors transitioned.  And so one question one has to ask is whether the 2nd term was actually 'worth it' for Bush & especially Cheney.  This is really it for them.  There is really no other function they'll serve that will have much impact on America, and yet the incredible mess that was Bush Jr.'s second term is nothing less than a complete collapse of leadership.

And now the person elected to be the change agent, who is very eloquent but short on experience, will be pressed to clean up the mess.  No wonder he said it will take maybe a term or more.  Here's hoping that he selects a strong and capable team of experienced and talented Cabinet members and department heads who are able to plan and mobilise the correction America needs, and then has the guts to let them do their jobs. 

---Hack

Bachmann takes a page from the 1990 Boschwitz

The now easily beatable congress person from MN’s 6^th district has walked the same path as former US Senator Rudy Boschwitz, and in a way has stepped into the same cow pie.  Stating that current candidates for office may be un-American has to be on par with the stupidity of then Sen. Boschwitz stating that upstart Paul Wellstone was somehow not ‘Jewish’ enough.  How do INCUMBENTS, an ingrained group who, if they simply say nothing stupid, can be re-elected for 30 + years (Martin Sabo, Jim Oberstar), be THAT DUMB to make such unsubstantiated statements about other candidates? 

It’s clear that Ms. Bachmann has, in her brief 2 year hitch, taken to believe her own party hubris, not to mention her own importance.  Only someone who blindly believes they alone are right would come out so boldly with such preposterous statements.  Of course, the backpedaling is equally astounding, and shows an inability to be accountable for what one says as well as for having no knowledge of MN political history or even having decorum.  These are not the traits of a person who is supposed to be the voice and leader of a congressional district in any part of America. 

It really is important for Minnesota, and the 6^th district, to remove this person on election day.  Just as Rudy Boschwitz paid for his hubris back in 1990, so must the dingbat from Stillwater.

HACK

sliding into the final turn...

Now that the DNC / RNC festivals are behind us, it’s time for the candidates to separate themselves.  The separation can be from their opponent, their past, their party, their constituents, or common sense.  At the DNC, it seemed to be a separation from their past (Clinton Democrats were reduced to the ‘B’ list with Barak Obama officially took the party leadership; Bill and Hillary are seething still).  At the RNC, the separation from the current sitting President was aided by weather, local cops, and bolt from the blue (the blue ice of Alaska).  The Presidential race will be historic, but probably will nothing special 100 days into the next term. 

Meanwhile, the race for the Senate seat in MN is shaping up to be a case of history repeating itself.  Remember Ann Wynia?  Not really?  That’s OK.  She got hit by the ’94 Republican steam roller, a gigantic machine that attracted all sorts of ‘bandwagoneers’ like Rod Grams.  Remember Rod?  He was astute enough to hopscotch his empty suit from Congress to Senate, catching the ’94 wave juuuust right.  Too bad for him MN found out what a complete empty suit he really was and tossed him out (in favor of Mark Dayton, one of the emptiest suits EVER). 

Well, anyone who was bothering to look back in ’94 would have seen Grams for what he was, and dismissed him right away.  Unfortunately for the DFL, they picked some who had NO business running for that office, and lost a very winnable election.

Now let’s look at Patty Wetterling, another political ‘super-flyweight’ who ran, and lost, to another mind-bogglingly beatable hack, Michelle Bachmann.  How is this possible?  For the DFL to REPEATEDLY nominate political stiffs to run against VERY beatable opponents is the political equivalent of a championship-caliber sports team playing down to the level of their competition, and losing.

UNFORTUNATELY, the DFL is doing it again with Al Franken.  Think about what the DFL is doing.  If you, as a thinking person who is interested in removing Norm the Crappie from office, were to imagine your best candidate to do the job, would you envision Al Franken?  Would you immediately think if Mike Ciresi?  Honestly, who would you think is the best, THE BEST candidate to run for that office?  I think with some digging, you would come up with at least 5 names (OK, why isn’t Betty McCollum not considering the senate?  Isn’t there anybody in the MN state legislature who is ready?  I bet there are).  Instead, we have Al, who takes his policy directives from others (Oberstar, somebody out in Hollywood, the Clintons, who knows, it sure isn’t Al’s policies, just like it wasn’t all Al’s words his books).

So now we have Al playing the part of Ann Wynia and Patty Wetterling.  A foil that will be beaten in November by a weak candidate who should be sent back to the private sector.  One of these election years, maybe the DFL will put on their collective thinking caps and imagine, then secure, a candidate who will win.

Hack

Clinton Nixed 'Values' Advice on Obama to her own peril

AP - posted: 8-12-08

WASHINGTON (Aug. 12) -- Hillary Clinton's top campaign strategist advised her to cast presidential rival Barack Obama as having questionable "roots to basic American values and culture" and use the theme to counter the image that his background is diverse and multicultural.

"I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values," Mark Penn wrote in a March 2007 memo to Clinton.

Clinton did't take the advice, revealed by a report in the September issue of The Atlantic magazine.

The article says Clinton's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination went from front-runner status to failure for a number of reasons, from badly managed money to blistering warfare between advisers. Clinton, the candidate who said she was ready to lead on Day One of her administration, did little to quell the infighting.

Clinton grew angry during a conference call with her senior aides about how to recover from her loss in the Iowa caucuses. She found herself doing most of the post-mortem, to near-silence on the other end of the line.

"This has been a very instructive call, talking to myself," Clinton snapped, and hung up, the magazine reported.

Mostly, the disputes were over whether to go negative against Obama, a half-black, Harvard-trained lawyer with a gift for soaring rhetoric and big themes.

Penn advised going negative.

Obama's background -- he grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii -- was a "lack of American roots," Penn wrote. Also a weakness, he added, was the divisive rhetoric of Obama's controversial pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who cursed America during a sermon.

"Won't a single tape of Wright going off on America with Obama sitting there be a game-ender?" Penn wrote in a March 30 memo.

Penn's memos also contained prescient advice. The memo from March 2007 talked about the importance of a key voting bloc he called "the invisible Americans" -- women and lower -- and middle-class voters.

Those groups helped Clinton beat Obama in key states before she quit the race in June.

Hillary's Politics of Entitlement

HRC has finally acknowledged she's done. It was a few months coming, but
congrats to her for 'Moving On <http://www.moveon.org> ' so Democrats can
unite for the November general election. Unfortunately, she and many in her
camp feel it's some kind of 'right' she's earned to be considered for the VP
post. This could not be further from the best plan for Sen. Obama. The DNC
is no longer about the Clintons. They have lost, the DNC is no longer their
baby, and they need to allow the process (one they helped create) to select
a candidate (that isn't them). Grow up Hillary, it was a good fight, but
it's over, and trying to remain in the spotlight will harm the party's
chances. Sen. Obama can do well to consider several much better choices for
a running mate: Joe Manchin, Mike Easley, Chris Gregoire, Jim Doyle, Gary
Locke, Jim Webb, Phil Bredesen, Ted Kulongoski, Tim Kaine, Ed Rendell.

Any of these possible choices are very capable and could potentially deliver
voters from a demographic with which Sen. Obama might not otherwise have
previously successfully connected. It's not necessarily the case that it
would require a male, Ms. Gregoire is one of the possibilities, but also
unique (for instance, Mr. Locke is of Chinese-American descent, certainly a
further move to show the world that America is truly embracing the kind of
transformative change espoused by the presumptive Democratic candidate.
It's noteworthy that this list includes less polarizing and megalomaniacal
personalities who represent something of politics as usual. Ms. Clinton,
you can take up the torch 'Old Kennedy' is preparing to pass, and could be
an elder states-person for as long as you want.

Hack

Hey Barak, get used to it!

So Barak Obama got mad at the ‘attacks’ against his wife.  “Lay off my wife” was the message to Tennessee’s Republican Party.  Hey Barak, welcome to bare-knuckle politics.  By trying to presume that such ‘attacks’ are ‘low class’, he once again expresses a political naiveté that does not bode well for when things get really pressing.  If he cannot handle the potshots the inevitably will come, and exhibit such thin-skinned defensiveness, is he tough enough to handle the real barrage that comes to a sitting President?  Clinton, for all his personal faults, had a thicker Teflon shell than perhaps the original Teflon President himself.  Not many could have weathered the polarizing media that hit Bill Clinton, especially with his overwhelmingly polarizing wife.  How come Barak Obama seems to flinch over something that is essentially politics-as-usual? 

We’re already accustomed to spineless Presidents (Carter, Bush Sr., plus other 1-term wonders who won only to be politically impotent not even half way through their Presidency).  Does American really want someone who can’t weather the inevitable attacks? 

Probably not, and we’ll see more of this kind of response later in 2008. 

---Hack

watch out in times like these...

Be wary of people who think they’ve got it all figured out, that they have their finger on the pulse of things, and they over-use the word ‘quality’.  I can’t help but feel the need to be suspicious when people talk about all manner of subjects with equal authority and proclaimed ‘knowledge’. 

At a recent lunch, the term ‘quality’ was used over and over, from education to TV shows!  At one point, this observer had to ask for excuse to retreat to the restroom (fortunately the lunch didn’t come up for an encore).  When a person projects an air of authority and provides literally all the answers, it’s time to back away.  There’s usually no insight into individual circumstances or awareness of much outside their little corner of the universe.  When that gets projected to a variety of seemingly unrelated topics, one has to regard such people as arrogant, obtuse, and decidedly self-important.  And not worthy of much future contact.

More Clinton amnesia...Have we had enough yet?

Caught this brief snippet in an article in the StarTribune:  Mrs. Clinton, when asked by a Union worker in PA, about NAFTA and that her husband was responsible for enacting it, replied that her “…husband is an otherwise smart man who made mistakes” regarding NAFTA. 

She continues to want to have things both ways, and continues to say anything to garner votes.

PA will be the last stop for Mrs. Clinton, she will concede, then go back to her job-for-life in the US Senate, along side ‘Old Kennedy’ from MA, and they can live to an old age, clogging the legislative process, and getting bridges and parks named after them.

---HACK

transportation follies, now on a National scale

What we have endured here in MN is potentially going National.  What is it, you say? 

It’s the inexplicably bizarre stance Republicans have toward transportation. 

I’ll explain.

 

In what was originally framed as a ‘cost saving’ move, after the Republican candidates were elected to lead MN, they decided it would be fiscally responsible to use the formerly (and some would say, still) ceremonial and nearly useless position of Lieutenant Governor to also lead the state department of transportation (MNDoT).  I won’t go through all of the well documented string of poor decisions that came hence, suffice to say the chickens finally came home to roost on August 1, 2007, and suddenly the choice doesn’t seem so fiscally responsible.  Now we have all sorts of infrastructure issues, some of them quite suddenly ‘urgent’, and there’s no denying that the money we MN citizens ‘saved’ 5 years ago is more dear now, and must be spent to do what should have been a while ago.  (Recall the old TV ads for Fram Oil Filters:  ‘Pay me now or pay me later’, well, we’re paying, for sure).

 

Now Sen. McCain, in a move that’s clearly one of ‘buying our vote’ and full of sound-bite value, proposes to smite down the ugly Federal gas tax.  By doing so, we can have more disposable income to pull our economy out of the doldrums.  So we get 18 or so cents for every gallon we buy that will be eliminated.  That amounts to roughly $2.70 per fill when I top off the Ford.  Whoopee!!!  Gassing up every week, that means in a month I’ll save about $11.  Hey man, cutting taxes is OK in my book!  But this is tiny-small and inconsequential from a purchasing power perspective.  How utterly short-sighted, trivial, and dangerous!

 

These federal gas tax funds are used to pay for infrastructure, and by cutting these funds from the Federal budget, we’re doing, on a National scale, what went on in MN for the past 5 years.  With Sen. McCain choosing this unfortunate plan, is he consulting with Gov. Pawlenty?  This strategy could result in poorly funded infrastructure maintenance on a national scale.  Do we have to look out for another bridge incident?

 

I’d rather pay the extra $11 per month for my fuel if I could be confident that going over that bridge was going to be without incident.  I think any US citizen would pay it as well.

 

There are other ways to strengthen the economy.  How about strengthening the currency for starters?  We’re second-rate compared to the Euro, and the Chinese and Indian currencies are gaining fast against the dollar.  The Loonie (the Canadian Dollar) has also passed us by.  Combined with increased demand for commodities from developing countries, our greenback is in free-fall. 

 

Instead of hollow and trivial tactics that offer pittance relief but ‘sound’ good, why not make a more intelligent move to strengthen our global economic position.  These guys are asking for our vote, they should be smart enough to know how to do it.

---Hack

 

forgive, but not forget

OK, this is slightly peripheral to the MO of this site, but here goes:

We have a dustup compliments of the Golf Channel, of all places.  Apparently an anchor on said channel, one Ms. Kelly Tilghman, made a stupid choice of words to comment on the dominance of Tiger Woods, arguably the best golfer today and maybe in the history of the game.   She suggested some of the young tour players consider dealing with his dominance by "lynch(ing) him in a back alley," pretty dim witted, Ms. Tilghman. 

She later apologized.  In her statement, Tilghman said, "On Friday during our golf broadcast, Nick Faldo and I were discussing Tiger's dominance in the golf world and I used some poorly chosen words. I have known Tiger for 12 years and I have apologized directly to him. I also apologize to our viewers who may have been offended by my comments."

Woods' agent, Mark Steinberg of IMG, released a statement saying, "This story is a non-issue. Tiger and Kelly are friends and Tiger has a great deal of respect for Kelly. Regardless of the choice of words used, we know unequivocally that there was no ill intent in her comments. This story is a non-issue in our eyes."

Not according to the self-imposed protector of all African-Americans, Al Sharpton.  (By the way, he's referred to as Rev., but is he leading a church, or is this a moniker like "Colonel", as in the moniker used by Elvis' manager?)

He compared Ms. Tilghman to Don Imus (who made similarly ill-thought remarks about a college women's basketball team, but had no previous acquaintance of any sort with them).  And, as is the case with Imus, apparently Ms. Tilghman's head must now be removed and placed on a post in the public square, as an example to those who might make the same mistake, in spite of their immediate apologies for their transgression and pleas for forgiveness.

Mr. (Sanctimonious) Sharpton:  If you are indeed a 'Reverend', does your 'church' allow for forgiveness?  Is a public apology for stupid comments sufficient, or do we need to conduct professional 'genocide' to root out these evil commentators and forever banish them off airways, so this never happens again?  Would it be enough to rise above the hate, allow the 'sinner' to seek forgiveness, but remember still why the sin is a sin, and work to teach our youth about it?

He who is without sin may cast the first stone...

-hack

Come Back Kid, Part 2?

...said he can't believe the lies that come from the Clinton people.  In an interview with former (Bill) Clinton press secretary DeeDee Myers, he asked about when she thought Hillary became the front-runner.  to the amazement of every thinking person within earshot, D-D said Hillary was 'never the front-runner'. 

what color is the sky in Clinton's world?  never the front runner?  d-d is working spin, and she's not even on the payroll (far as we know).

this means Hillary is setting up for, "Come Back Kid, Part 2"?

what a bunch of BS.  Hillary's campaign is burning right now, and unless she calls in the real firemen (James Carville), it's just about OVER>

Hack