They say numbers don’t lie. However, numbers, in the context of time, can change in meaning. We all remember the economic boom of the Clint0n years. Everyone got real quiet while the numbers came in, and the money rolled freely. Everything was exploding in value and no one really knew why, or cared that much to know why. Then, shortly after the boom started, things started getting dicey. Depending on who you ask, it’s either a Republican cause, or a Republican cause, as to why things haven’t been so golden since 1998 or so. The #1 Democrat issue has been the fact that rampant profits haven’t existed since then. Although I’m sure others out there have the same thought I do, I thought I’d elaborate a little on what I think the problem we have right now is. First, let’s start with some numbers:
| 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | |
| GDP | 2.50% | 3.70% | 4.50% | 4.18% | 4.45% | 3.66% | 0.75% |
| Dow | 33.46% | 26.01% | 22.64% | 16.10% | 25.23% | -6.18% | -7.10% |
| Housing | -0.24% | -1.15% | 3.00% | 6.36% | 5.47% | 6.16% | 6.70% |
| 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | |
| GDP | 1.60% | 2.51% | 3.64% | 2.94% | 2.78% | 2.03% | 1.28% |
| Dow | -16.76% | 25.32% | 3.16% | -0.61% | 16.29% | 6.43% | -33.84% |
| Housing | 8.74% | 9.04% | 10.28% | 10.45% | -1.19% | -13.19% | -16.39% |
Now, the problem as I have seen it for a while is if you look at those numbers, something sticks out. In brief, from 1995 until the end of 2008, the Gross Domestic Product grew over 40%. The median price of homes grew over 34%. However, the Dow Jones Index grew at 110%. Something’s amiss here it seems. The Obama team is doing everything it can to address the credit issue. However, the housing issue in my opinion is correcting itself based on where it should be in relation to what the country is earning. It’s in line with what the country has been producing. However, that credit comes in the form of banks having certain assets to offset their lines of credit. They did this previously by issuing stock, trading stock, and using stock values as leverage. The big problem I see here is that in perspective to everything else, the stock values on the Dow are still way out of line with everything else. In other words, it needs to come down more, faster. Or, the GDP needs to grow faster. Delaying foreclosures or pressuring banks to change their lending practices does nothing to increase GDP. Doing nothing to increase GDP means the Dow should come down a LOT more in my opinion. If the Dow comes down a LOT more, then the equity and cash value from stocks will be greatly diminished. Given that, if Obama forces banks to hold onto bad loans, and the equity of the banks continue to decline rapidly, rather than propping up the industry as the bailout plan was supposed to do, it could actually be delaying the crisis only, and making it profoundly worse when it does collapse.
Rather than giving it to the banks, and forcing them to pursue even more bad loan practices, I think the remedy is to let the market correct itself, as painful as that sounds, and do whatever Obama can to get the GDP moving up faster. Working for a social service does not increase GDP. We need to be forcibly pushing domestic production. And, my perosnal pet would be to do it in new green technologies. Then, if we get the GDP moving up, and the market corrects itself, THEN those houses people were stuck with at way-over-inflated values will become affordable again and people will actually have the appropriate incomes to afford traditional mortgages.
As far as numbers lieing goes, does anyone really want another economic boom that fubars the economy for a decade afterwards? And, I still have to shake my head when Nancy Pelosi talks about Republicans not regulating industry enough. Look at those numbers for the late 90′s again. The Dow averaged 25% gains a year while nothing else came even close to supporting those numbers. Who was watching that? It’s just been adjusting since then to about where it should be. And, if you think the last year has been scary on the Dow, by my calculations, it should drop about another 2000 points if the economy doesn’t pick up.
That would put it about 1995 levels. And, given Obama’s socialist tendencies, I don’t think he’s willing to do what it takes to stop that slide.
13
Jan
Saw this headline courtesy of Zogby:
Obama Enjoys 60% Favorable Ratings and Modest Expectations For A Quick Economic Recovery
It came with this chart among others:
| Very Favorable | Somewhat Favorable | Somewhat Unfavorable | Very Unfavorable | Not Sure | |
| Obama | 41% | 19% | 15% | 22% | 4% |
| Totals may not add up to 100% due to rounding | |||||
Sixty percent’s pretty dang good. However, I am kind of curious. When George HW Bush won in 2000, he was accused of stealing the election because Al Gore got more popular votes and Florida was so close they had to fling lawsuits all over the place to get it cleared up. By the time Bush took office, the damage was done. His popularity when he took office was only in the upper 50′s.
Due to an extreme event, his popularity would soar. Within a couple of years, it would slowly decline to what it was when he took office. Over time, it would drop to horrendous figures that made most major media giddy.
Contrasting that to Obama taking office as the annointed one of all media, it surprises me his numbers are not much higher than Bush’s were. I’m tellin ya’, the reality of Obama is not what the media is telling you. Unless he has some very big successes in very short order, things could get real ugly real quick. Of course, it should be noted that the most unpopularly elected president was Bill Clinton, who entered office at 49%. He actually left higher than he got elected with. However, people liked Congress then too.
28
Oct
If you watch CNN and most other media outlets, this race is over. I’m not ready to go quite that far. However, if it is, I gotta wonder what we are electing. Obama just seems to collect baggage every day of late. Now we’re looking at credit card fraud, which I don’t think is enough to derail an Obama presidency, but it could prove to be a distraction. Add on to that this week’s other revelation, that he hangs out with terrorist sympathizers, and of course, his Marxist socialist philosophies. Toss in Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and a whole host of other fringe elements, and it seems to me that in addition to the very serious issues that will meet the new president in January, Obama’s going to have his hands full putting out completely unnecessary fires. What this reminds me of is Clinton coming into office in 1993 with a whole slew of personal and legal problems that hounded him the entirety of his presidency. It very often distracted from the message he was trying to push, and eventually crippled him his last two years in office. The dangers he warned us about Iraq ( yeah, IRAQ! ), were largely ignored as a desperate attempt to distract from his legal problems. George HW Bush came into office with basically no baggage at all, and the events of 2001 basically hijacked his entire presidency. I can’t imagine what things would have looked like over the last seven years if he had had numerous personal and legal questions hounding him the entire time as well. Whoever takes office in 2009 will have a popularity problem. The economy is perilous, Russia is becoming more aggressive and antagonistic, and the conflicts in the Middle East will continue unabated. It’s not a matter of how long we’ll be in Iraq, we’ll be in the Middle East for a long time. It’s just too dangerous to ignore. The social agenda of Obama will not be possible. It’s just that simple and obvious. If he attempts to raise taxes on anyone any time soon, The One will be crucified. There is no way with the out of control federal budget he can cut taxes significantly. With no additional revenues and no way of raising additional funds, any program he does try to create will either be unfunded or will take funding from other existing programs. And, I’m here to tell you, you don’t mess with social programs without suffering wounds. How long will people buy into “The One” without the big results he’s promised? Change can happen. But, it has to be done at the right time. The Democrat social agenda of the last two years is a big part of what’s gotten us into this mess. It’s not being written about much, but it is. Look at the stock markets since Pelosi took over Congress. Look at housing. Look at unemployment. Look at employment. It’s no coincidence it all tanked. They’ve added expenses to doing business and not given employers reason to hire. It’s that simple. With Obama’s message of spreading the wealth, that incentive to hire people will be under even more pressure. How long will people see the economy slide before they tire of it? How long will CNN and MSNBC protect The One when they start suffering from his policies as well? That is when Ayers, Wright, the credit card fraud, and the numerous other issues Obama carries with him will mean something. Additionally, following the natural cycle of politics, if the Democrats win big in 2008, expect the trend to start moving the other way in 2010. If that does happen, as it did to the wildly popular Bill Clinton in 1995, that’s when that baggage becomes a real issue. And, that baggage only makes it that much easier for the other side to reverse the trend. Toss in the real scary issue of the Obama people already censoring media, and you can expect a rather nasty public backlash from the people who protected The One.
It’ll be interesting to watch tho.
UPDATE November 21, 2008: The rather nasty public backlash is starting a lot sooner than I even expected. But, basically in line with what I did expect. I don’t like Kos so I don’t normally link there. However, Daniel Halper apparently does read it and has several quotes. As nasty as it’s already getting, I can’t wait to see what happens when Obama actually does name his cabinet.
19
Sep
Barack Obama’s milking the current financial “crisis” for everything it’s worth right now on tv. I finally had to give up even trying to listen. According to him, it’s basically time to admit defeat and gut the entire capitolist base of our economy and replace it with a pure socialist model. That would solve all the problems since there would be no stock market to worry about. Speaking of which, since a lot of people are telling us this is the next Great Depression, I figured I would put this all in perspective. So, without further ado, here is where our great crash stands percentage wise in the history of the Dow Jones:
| Greatest DJIA Percentage Losses Of All Time |
||||
| Rank | Date | Close | Net Chg | % Chg |
| 1 | 12/12/1914 | 54.00 | -17.42 | -24.39 |
| 2 | 10/19/1987 | 1,738.74 | -508.00 | -22.61 |
| 3 | 10/28/1929 | 260.64 | -38.33 | -12.82 |
| 4 | 10/29/1929 | 230.07 | -30.57 | -11.73 |
| 5 | 11/06/1929 | 232.13 | -25.55 | -9.92 |
| 6 | 12/18/1899 | 58.27 | -5.57 | -8.72 |
| 7 | 08/12/1932 | 63.11 | -5.79 | -8.40 |
| 8 | 03/14/1907 | 76.23 | -6.89 | -8.29 |
| 9 | 10/26/1987 | 1,793.93 | -156.83 | -8.04 |
| 10 | 07/21/1933 | 88.71 | -7.55 | -7.84 |
| 11 | 10/18/1937 | 125.73 | -10.57 | -7.75 |
| 12 | 02/01/1917 | 88.52 | -6.91 | -7.24 |
| 13 | 10/27/1997 | 7,161.15 | -554.26 | -7.18 |
| 14 | 10/05/1932 | 66.07 | -5.09 | -7.15 |
| 15 | 09/17/2001 | 8,920.70 | -684.81 | -7.13 |
| 16 | 09/24/1931 | 107.79 | -8.20 | -7.07 |
| 17 | 07/20/1933 | 96.26 | -7.32 | -7.07 |
| 18 | 07/30/1914 | 71.42 | -5.30 | -6.91 |
| 19 | 10/13/1989 | 2,569.26 | -190.58 | -6.91 |
| 20 | 01/08/1988 | 1,911.31 | -140.58 | -6.85 |
Pretty amazing huh?
What’s that you say? You don’t see this week?
That’s because it didn’t make it.
What people are failing to put in perspective is although the nearly 500 point loss would put this week in the tops along with 9/11, the fact is the market value wasn’t even remotely close to what it is now in very recent years. A 500 point loss just isn’t what it used to be. To put it in perspective, if the market had crashed like it did in 1929, it would have lost 1,798 points in one day.
Second clue about this “crisis”, the Dow Jones, which was hammered by AIG, will post a gain by the end of this week.
Now, what’s happening is an industry which built itself on a house of cards that was incredibly risky is collapsing in on itself. It is being absorbed by, get this, traditional lending institutions that do their very best to be risk averse.
In other words, the market is correcting with an assist from the federal government.
I think this is a win-win situation in most cases.
Now, a lot of conservatives are peeing in their pants right now because of the assist from the government part. I expect certain things to happen in order for this to have been handled as well as it could have. I expect over a period of time, just the Resolution Trust Company did, that once the situation has corrected itself, the RTC will divest itself of assets and cease to exist. People are whining about the bail-outs as hand-outs. I don’t see that as the case. I see it as coming with a heavy price for those who once owned products or stock in AIG and Bear Stearns and……. The dissolution of AIG will be ugly and done without mercy. Dow Jones has already forgotten about AIG and replaced them with a cheese maker. This is simply greasing the gears for the next financial boon that will be built on a much more solid house, over a much longer time, than what we had before. And it seems to be working. The Dow at this time is up over 400 points. Time for CBS to start touting the second Bush miracle! ( Cool out folks, 400+ points in one day won’t make the top 20 all time gains either. )
And, IMHO, it should lay to rest once and for all whether or not times were really all that great during the Clinton boon. That boon is what we have been paying for since then. Some of the growth was real, but a lot, as is evident right now, was not. It was never there in the first place. It was simply borrowed.
29
Aug
Now, my peeps here know how I feel about Condi Rice. So, I think, smarting from the Obama/Hillary dustup, Anderson Cooper decided to try and turn the wheels on McCain by planting the seed of discontent in folks like me over McCain “snubbing” Condi in the manner of Obama snubbing Clinton. Two serious differences here that should have been blatantly obvious to Cooper:
- Condi never showed any interest at all by attempting to run for president.
- Condi flat out said she was not interested in pursuing politics of any sort after she serves her time in DC. She’d rather be the NFL commissioner.
Bottom line, it was never an option. Now, the media put a lot into the “vetting” process. Some people claim that Condi was never even vetted ala Clinton never being vetted. Who the hell would see a need to “vet” either one?
I would have loved to have seen Condi on the ticket. However, as I posted a long time ago, I knew it was never an option. She’s just too smart to put up with dictators and political thugs for more than her time demands. In order to run for office, she’d have to knock her IQ down another notch or two. I just don’t see her ever doing that, or having a need to. Think I’m stretching the sarcasm a bit? Check out the comments on Cooper’s post. Check out how many of those people think Alaska has a population of 8,500. Check out how many of those people are basing their “informed” decision based on the fact she has never done anything but be a mayor of a small town. Check out how many think she’s never been out of the country before. Then, check this out:
Palin in Kuwait
That’s not Alaska, that’s Kuwait. Finding that pic took about five seconds. When people make up their mind, they’re not going to spend that five seconds to validate their opinion. It’s just made up and that’s that. In their mind, she has never been to Kuwait, the pictures don’t mean a thing. In their mind, either Alaska has 8,000 or so citizens, or she’s never been governor. Facts are irrelevent. They’ve made up their mind.
Alaska has 300,000 or so citizens, state employees, and a budget that makes most states look simple. Senators have small staffs, no real budget to manage, and are directly responsible for no one citizen. So yeah, the comments on Cooper’s post are sad. Real sad. Really about the only “support” most gave was she was not Joe Biden.
Condi’s too smart for politics. That is the ugly side of democracy. And, given her abilities, I don’t blame her.
Just a personal note to Anderson Cooper. I make it a point to challenge all statements made on my blog. If I get overwhelmed with comments, I close them until I can catch up. Sure, I’m biased, but not in what either party is usually offering me today. I can not understand how a “professional” like Cooper and others can honestly look at the tripe being thrown into their domain and just let it sit there. There are some incredibly stupid comments that are there for eternity testifying the level of intellect that is the Anderson Cooper reader. I couldn’t live with that. I don’t live with that. Someone says something wrong here, I correct it. If it’s right, I acknowledge it. If it’s intentionally inflamatory, I delete it. But, what I am not going to do is make the other readers here feel stupid by letting the quality level drop to sub-zero. You better think here. If not, CNN’s more than happy to accept it.
Due to not really being terribly glued to the tv over this election, I gotta admit I have been fairly clueless to guessing VP picks. The media throws so many names out so fast, then criticizes the names they threw out themselves, and then writes off the names they threw out themselves. So, the whole thing is pretty much a waste of my time. However, the three top dogs that I expected to be in the mix, Bobby Jindal, Mitt Romney, and Time Pawlenty, all stated they were not going to be the VP. My personal suggestion, Condi Rice, never seemed to get any traction. However, over the night, another name has exploded to the front. There are very valid reasons to expect this person is making some kind of move. You just don’t fly from Alaska to DC overnight for chucks and giggles. This is sorta what they look like:
That folks, could be our next Vice President.
Now, granted, that pic is a little dated.
Sarah Palin has some things definitely going for her that I like:
- She’s apparently tough as nails. She got her position by taking out well established heirarchy.
- She was a star athlete in high school. Played basketball. Without going into too much detail, I’ve had a thing with basketball players in the past. Let’s just say they know how to handle the ball and run a lot.
- She’s a hunter. Now, Obama claims he shot a gun once. Biden I trust with a gun a lot less than Cheney. Both would prefer to just outlaw them completely. Palin hunts moose. Nuff said?
- She’s pro-life. Now, this is an issue that I really don’t think belongs on the federal level at all, and, I’m pro-choice. But, it will re-assure conservative Republicans that McCain won’t sell them out on the issue. And, since neither ticket can actually do anything tangible about the issue, being pro-life just makes my guy more electible. I think he knows that.
- She’s pro-education. Her father has been a life-long educator.
- She’s apparently incredibly politically savvy. She took out a very popular governor, and it wasn’t all that close by the time she got through.
- She’s anti-oil in the right way. She doesn’t seem to see any logic in punishing an existing industry for supplying a product the US demands, and has helped them become more efficient. She however, has strongly pushed alternative energies and has forced existing oil policies to be more greenhouse efficient.
- She flies her own airplane. That’s just cool.
- She was a sportscaster. That’s just cool.
- She was the one who effectively scuttled “The Bridge To Nowhere”, I’m sure that should appeal to some. I like pork tho.
- She publicly demanded that Ted Stevens come clean well before he was indicted. That along with strong ethics reforms in Alaskan state government have earned her a ton of respect with ethics advocates.
- She led the effort to ban gay marriages in Alaska, then forced legislation to allow partner benefits.
The list is huge. And, amazing in a lot of aspects when you consider she’s only 42.
Now, the major upside to Sarah Palin is white-light bright obvious.
- She’s a babe with balls that would make any man nervous.
- This should appeal to the femi-nazi Hillary supporters who felt cheated and abandoned with the Joe Biden pick. ( as they should have )
- There will be a certain segment of the population that will ponder the prospect of seeing her face, and supporting package, for the next four to eight years versus the mugshot of Obama/Biden.
- She appeals to the NRA, who is already anti-Obama/Biden and only moreso with Biden on the ticket. A questionable endorsement of McCain now becomes a slam dunk with enthusiasm.
- All the bogus “hunter” groups supposedly not excited with McCain will need to just shut down. I am quite certain Sarah has taken down more game than all those guys combined.
- Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid will have a real difficult time claiming they are the only people concerned with ethics as both McCain and Palin will have a history of attacking ethical issues while neither Obama or Biden will be able to make the same claim.
- Whereas Biden will struggle with his previous endorsements of McCain and stong criticisms of Obama, I seriously doubt you’ll find anywhere that Palin has ever endorsed Obama. And, from reading her history, criticized McCain.
- Her effort to ban same sex marriages will appeal to conservatives, but her forcing the state to provide benefits will moot the gay rights people, as neither Obama nor Biden have any history of supporting them at all.
- This will shatter the biased perception of the Republican Party.
I could go on a lot more but I think my opinion of Sarah Palin as Vice President are more than obvious. Some are saying it’s a done deal. I only hope so. This actually has gotten me pretty excited for the first time since it became obvious that Condi wouldn’t honor my wishes and run.
ONE HOUR UPDATE: IT IS PALIN!
Excellent! Slam Dunk! ( Had to get a basketball metaphor in there! )
He just sealed the deal.
Now, all McCain has to do is do what he does best, smile and let Obama and Biden keep digging their own holes.
Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters wonders how the John Edwards flap has affected the 2008 Presidential race:
Well, it’s not terribly clear to me. I like math. Math makes things black and white. However, when it comes to caucuses and primaries, math doesn’t always mean much. So, all we can do is guess at what might have happened. I’ll use the first primary, Iowa, as my example. Going into the caucuses, the polls were fairly split between the top three. Although the assumption in the article is made that Clinton and Edwards were appealing to a seperate demographic than Obama, the numbers don’t really support that. Obama was just beating them both straight across the board, not by a whole lot. So, in my opinion, if Edwards had been completely out of the race, Clinton and Obama would have simply split that voting block. The result of the vote however, did not reflect the polls. When it was all said and done, Obama got more delegates than Clinton and Edwards combined regardless of the parity of the polls and irrespective of the fact that Hillary and Edwards got more votes when combined. So, assuming Hillary got every single one of Edwards’ votes in Iowa, the delegate distribution is not guaranteed to have changed by one single vote.
After Iowa and New Hampshire, Edwards hung on for dear life. But, he was effectively done. The media immediately focused on Obama and the collapsing Hillary saga.
Now, this story also has added entertainment value in that Edwards has done this immediately before the Democrat National Convention. The only reason this has any importance at all is that Hillary has still not taken her name off the ballot. The only reason she would not at this point is hoping for some act of God to intervene. Could this be the act of God? Could this motivate all the Edwards delegates to jump to Hillary?
Even if they did, it wouldn’t change a thing.
Some Hillary supporters are making a deal of this. They need to just get over it and stop looking for some vast left wing conspiracy. Fact is, Obama ran a better campaign than Hillary and Edwards combined in regards to the primaries. Now, the intangible here as I see it is not that it would have changed the Democrat nomination process, but a bigger picture emerges. If you do toss in the Edwards peeps directly into the Hillary camp, it means Hillary would have beaten Obama nationwide by over one million votes.
Now, the argument will be for unity at the Convention. And, there will be a certain amount of unity going into the fall. But a good percentage of people have a hard time supporting a candidate that just beat their candidate. Especially when their candidate won the actual war that it was all supposed to be about.
Getting a million more votes and losing the election rings some bells for a lot of folks my age. Seems like it happened not too long ago. Everyone knew the rules going in, and it still wound up in court and being drug out way longer than most people knew it should have been.
And, for the most part, those are exactly the same players that were involved in the election of 2000. All this speculation is doing is playing into their hands that the election was rigged for Obama the whole time, reinforcing their resolve to not vote for the guy who stole their election, again.
Now, given most media would NOT pursue Edwards during October of last year, I fully expect that same media to NOT pursue the bitterness a lot of Clinton supporters might be holding over the revelation that the guy who lost the race is the guy they are expected to support. But, we don’t have to worry about whether or not media decides to report on the results in November.
Just don’t act surprised.
That’s the teaser on CNN. Here’s some of the meat:
Now, Kent Conrad, as noted, is on the Senate Budget Committee. Legislation is controlled by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, two DEMOCRATS. The budgets come from committees, ALL CONTROLLED BY DEMOCRATS.
In simpler terms, if they don’t like the budget, they can change it. They can balance this budget right now if they so choose.
What are the chances Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are going to do anything about this fiscal irresponsibility other than blame the budgets they pass on someone else?
Zero.
When Nancy Pelosi took over the House, she promised to end this fiscal irresponsibility.
It’s only gotten much, much, worse.
However, if Harry and Nancy do dick around with the budget, which they say they’re trying to do, I imagine the economic downturn that coincides with their taking over the House and Senate will only get much, much, worse.
So, they’re kinda screwed. However, if CNN keeps ignoring them and instead focusing on people that recite the party line, Harry and Nancy will keep getting passes while things continue to get much, much, worse.
And if Obama does win, given his same rhetoric of fiscal irresponsibility, he will be so, so, screwed when he tries to stop Harry and Nancy from making things much, much, worse.
You heard it first folks. That’s really a shame too.
Scott Ott has been one of my favorite authors for quite some time. Here is yet another reason why:
Afghanistan is a convenient refuge for the moment for al-Qaeda and the Taliban. When our military secures it, and freedom’s song is finally sung among these long-tortured people, what then? Will the enemy surrender for lack of refuge? Is there nowhere else from which he can stage his attacks?
Our enemy is not constrained by geography or politics. His central command center is the human heart, so his places of refuge are legion. You can destroy his arms depots, level his training centers, interrupt his funding, pick off his lieutenants one by one. This we can, and must, do.
But to pretend that you can corner him in Afghanistan, and arrest him or snuff him out, is worse than naive. It’s a willful ignorance that will bring us into submission. This is the Obama Doctrine.
Now that is the heart of why I hate to hear the “Bush lied, people died” garbage. When John Kerry ran against Bush, it was the same argument. “There are no terrorists in Iraq”. It morphed to “There WERE no terrorists in Iraq until we got there”. Bottom line, there were terrorists in Iraq before we got there. IMO, that is a huge part of who we’ve been fighting since. Iraq was documented to have been involved with several terrorist organizations in 2000. Now, 200 is the year I picked because Bush wasn’t president yet. There was no overt political sentiment against Iraq even though Clinton bombed them. So, if there were all these terrorist groups operating IN Iraq and with Iraq’s support, why does Obama think Afghanistan is the central focus of the war on terror? Because there were no overt ties to Al Qaeda / Osama Bin Laden in Iraq. And, since Obama and Kerry were openly opposed to any military conflict, that was their out. We had no beef with the other terrorist organizations. So, Obama just needs to be more specific. In his words, the only terrorist organization we apparently have an issue with is Al Qaeda. The rest of the terrorist organizations get a pass.
That’s not very comforting to me. Now, Al Qaeda was basically a quiet bunch not doing too much since Russia collapsed in Afghanistan. We had helped Al Qaeda in their struggle with Russia. We were sort of friendly with Afghanistan. In very real terms, we should have been friends with these people. Then, for no real reason, and no real provocation, and with no warning whatsoever, our “friends” in Afghanistan decided to murder thousands of innocent “friends” just so they could say they could do it.
That, Obama, is what you are dealing with. My biggest fear if Obama is elected is that he captures Bin Laden and executes him. That terrifies me because I know what the message will be when it happens. “Mission Accomplished, the War with Terror is now over”.
And, then, we’ll be stunned and shocked when the next 9/11 happens.
Via See-Dubya at Michelle Malkin’s blog, with an assist from Gasbuddy:
Apparently Nancy is finally starting to feel the heat. So, she came up with the ultimate solution her feable mind could produce:
Now, I’m going to make this as simple as possible. Basically she’s stating that by releasing 30 million gallons, we could drop the price of oil by five dollars a gallon. Here is why this is screwed:
- In 1990, the price of crude was about $23.00 a barrel. Dropping the price $8 meant a about a 33% drop in the price of gas. The price of gas at the pump dropped from about $1.27 to about $1.01. That meant something.
- In 2000, the price of crude dropped from $30.94 to $20.38. That meant something. THe price at the pump peaked at about $1.65, then dropped to $1.38 by the end of the year. Although a 16% drop, it was quickly erased within six months of 2001.
- In 2005, the problem was not a market issue, but rather a one-time event that disrupted the US’s ability to refine crude. By releasing the strategic reserve, it simply kept the supply going until the rigs and refineries could be repaired.
Now, the point is, 30 million gallons in 1991 supplied about 2 days of US average consumption. In 2000, it supplied about one and a half days. I don’t count 2005 because that was a very proper reaction to an extinuating event the strategic reserve is actually designed for. In 2008, it still is about one and one half days. In 1991, it had an impact on price. In 2000 it basically did not. What would be the difference? See if this makes sense:
| 2000 | 4.797 | 19.701 | 52.167 | 76.665 |
| 2001 | 4.918 | 19.648 | 52.836 | 77.403 |
| 2002 | 5.162 | 19.762 | 53.116 | 78.040 |
| 2003 | 5.580 | 20.034 | 54.002 | 79.616 |
| 2004 | 6.438 | 20.732 | 55.158 | 82.327 |
| 2005 | 6.721 | 20.802 | 56.129 | 83.652 |
| 2006 | 7.201 | 20.687 | 56.816 | 84.705 |
| 2007 | 7.578 | 20.698 | 57.267 | 85.543 |
| 2008 | 8.017 | 20.296 | 58.087 | 86.400 |
| 2009 | 8.420 | 20.339 | 58.999 | 87.758 |
That is a chart showing world consumption. In 2000, the US consumed about 19.701 million barrels a day. Projected for 2009, the US is about 20.339. Now, that’s not much of an increase. In 1991, it was about 16 million. Bottom line, the US isn’t using much more than we did in 1991. Taking into consideration the economic growth since 1991, the US is actually profoundly more efficient than it was in 1991. Now, that first column of figures about doubles in the last ten years. That folks, is China. The fourth column is the rest of the world besides the US and China. Now, where the problem is, is that in 2000, OPEC was a surplus supplier. They were producing more than they were selling. Now, the reverse is true due exclusively to the fact that China and the rest of the world are demanding more. Not the US. Does it get any clearer than that?
Apparently not to Nancy.
She still refuses to encourage any production that would offset the supply that OPEC can not meet. The result of OPEC not being able to meet that demand is skyrocketing crude prices. Even simple math should tell her that $8, being a 33% drop in crude that resulted in a 25% drop in gas price didn’t get the full value of the crude discount. There’s an 8% discrepency. So, doing the math, if she gets $8 on $145, which is 5.5%, and loses the same 8% of that, that would be a 5% cut on price. That folks, would amount to 21 cents on $4.15. The price of gas rose faster than that last week alone. And, given the world demand that we are so reliant on, I doubt we’d get even that because OPEC will simply sell that 30 million barrels to someone else, China or India I’m sure would take it in a heartbeat. And, then, we’d have to re-supply teh SPR at a much higher price anyway or risk complete collapse economically if another Katrina does occur.
Simple fact here Nancy, there are no magic bullets. We have to re-think and re-tool our supply mechanism before this goes away. And, until this goes away, we will not be in a position to shake down OPEC like we could twenty years ago.
Do I think Nancy Pelosi is truly that stupid? Yes I do. However, I truly believe there are a lot of people in this country that will buy her hrhetoric simply because they love to hate our President.
