Stock Market and Political Commentary

How Long Does It Take?

After a clueless lightweight is elevated to the Oval Office, whose primary skill is reading the same tired speech day after day from a teleprompter with only minor variatons, how long does it take for the bad actors of this world to dare him to do something about their provocative and illegal behavior?

Before we answer this question let's consider how the world actually works.  Those of you who have cable or satellite TV should watch the series call "Planet Earth".  It is very instructive about the realities of our world.  What are these realities?

One reality is that weakness invites attack and death.  The other night in scene after scene the animal hunters looked for the weak target; the young, the injured, the slow, and the foolish.  Weakness invited attack.  They avoided attacking the strong whenever possible.

A pride of hungry lions wanted to attack a herd of elephants but didn't do it.  Why?  Because the lions were no match for the strength and might of mature elephants when they were banded together and on alert.

So what did they do?  They waited until a small elephant came along that had foolishly or unfortunately been separated from the herd and instead of attacking with one or two lions all 30 of them attacked.  In other words, they were emboldened by weakness.  When they saw it they attacked.

Now let's consider what has happened in the last 4 months since King Obama took the throne. He told us while campaigning that all you had to do is talk nice to these bad eggs around the world, show them how nice we really are, and presto! everything would be fine.  These conflicts around the world are all just a big misunderstanding you see.

But what has actually happened with this diplomatic genius in office? 

Well a couple of months into office he took a trip overseas to visit with the Europeans among others. He asked them to take some of the Gitmo prisoners and they laughed.  He asked them to provide some combat troops for Afghanistan and they told him to take a hike.  And just as he was about to make a historic speech about peace, if his teleprompter would cooperate, a long range missile test was conducted by Iran at the precise time necessary to make it clear they are spitting in the face of Obama.

Now you have North Korea launching missiles at will and detonating nuclear bombs against all the UN treaties  All you UN lovers, did the resolutions stop North Korea from doing whatever they wanted to do?  No.

But here is the dangerous part.  Weakness invites aggression.  They correctly perceive Obama to be an arrogant man who has accomplished nothing of substance beside being elected to office and knows little without his teleprompter... translation; he is a weak target and this weakness should be exploited.

So North Korea has now said they are denouncing the cease fire reached in 1953 and anyone who tries to stop their ships will be attacked.  Now they may or may not try to back up their threats.  But if they do this could lead to a major war.  We are dealing with a madman in North Korea who has been emboldened by Obama taking office and is now determined to show aggression at least through illegal testing activities.  Any miscalculation or accident could lead to more people being killed in a few days than have been killed in Iraq in 6 years.

Biden was right for once in the last 35 years when he said that Obama would be tested in his first 6 months in office. So far he is dealing with it by continuing to fly around the country to read from the teleprompter by day and by attending parties at night.  Recently he threw in some fundraising for Senator Harry Reid.

So to sum up, the foreign policy of this administration so far is to:

    a.  ask Israel to commit suicide by allowing Iran to get nuclear weapons even though their President has said on many occasions they plan to wipe Israel off the map.

    b.  Get little or no support from the allies even when directly requested by the King himself.

    c.  Embolden the madmen of this world to begin full scale testing of weapons systems without fear of consequence.  As an example, when Iran launched their missile during Obama's speech he came out and said there would be serious consequences.

Well, what were the consequences to Iran?  There were none.  He couldn't even get the UN to issue a statement condemning the illegal act.  So he shoots off his ignorant mouth, but doesn't have what it takes to back it up.  These guys must be belly laughing day and night at this airhead.

Only time will tell how all this plays out, but if you believe weakness and inexperience are the keys to peace then you are probably a modern day liberal as they almost always are 180 degrees out of phase with reality on the blue planet.

J. Cogburn

Photos Reveal Empty Skull

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.  In this case photos confirm that Obama is an absolute airhead that should have never been allowed anywhere near the oval office.  Let's examine why this is true.

"WASHINGTON – In a reversal, President Barack Obama is fighting the release of dozens of new photos showing U.S. personnel allegedly abusing prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, a White House official said Wednesday.

Not long ago King Obama released classified information regarding our very mild and limited techniques used to obtain information from enemy combatants captured on the battlefield since 9/11.  Liberal minded folks call these techniques, such as putting a harmless caterpillar in the room with the prisoner, torture.

But these same folks protest vigorously to have innocent and healthy Americans in their early stages of life die a horrible death at the hands of their mother, to include partial birth abortion which entails punching a hole in the skull of an innocent human being and sucking out its brains before removing him or her from the mother's womb and throwing them in the trash.

In other words, they will stand in the rain to protest and stop a capital punishment sentence being carried out for a serial killer and will stand in the rain to protest making the captured terrorists uncomfortable in any way for any reason.

But these same people will also stand in the rain to support abortion on demand for healthy and innocent human beings who are not a threat to anyone.  That's just one reason why true liberalism as defined in modern times is accurately described as a mental disease.

This is a clear sign of another observation I've seen over the years regrading the truly liberal mind; they can't distinquish between the guilty and the innocent and how the rules should apply differently to them.  Like almost everything else they get the correct answer exactly backwards without fail.  It's uncanny how they are able to do this so consistently.

Now back to the photos.  You see Obama rushed into releasing the classified information regarding our interrogation techniques without thinking the whole thing through and what the consequences might be for this action.  Then without thinking some more he said they would release the photos too.  But now he is suddenly realizing this could be a big mistake and could put those who are trying to protect us in danger plus have very negative long term consequences too.

So he is trying now to stop the release of the photos. But you see this is exactly how an airhead operates.  They don't think things through.... or as the saying goes they don't think 6 inches in front of their nose.

Another example of this was when he signed an executive order on his second day in office to close Guantanamo.  This was without doing the planning to determine where the prisoners would go. Now the other countries say they don't want them and so they don't really know what to do with them; it's been a total embarrassment.

Eventually they may end up in our neighborhood because the airhead makes executive decisions without thinking them through as to what all the implications of those decisions are.  But what should you expect from a person who had never been an executive before in his life who suddenly finds himself in the highest executive position in the land.

Now he is pushing the idea that a government run health care system will save us all money!  This despite the fact that medicare is costing way more than budget projections and is literally threatning to bankrupt the country through trillions in unfunded liability for the taxpayers.

His little speech today makes it sound like government health care is simply free to businesses and individuals.  If that were true I would be for it.  But what he leaves out is that we will all pay for it through higher taxes of various types.  That is why he is pushing taxes on cigarettes, sodas, utilities through Cap and Trade, and every other thing they can think of as a way to raise your taxes.

Facts like these simply bounce off the liberal mind.  In other words, they have clearly demonstrated through this limited government health care program that the costs will be much higher for a given amount of care and doctors will hate it because of the bureacracy of government programs.  But what is their conclusion?  Let's have more of this, it's great!

Bottom Line:  These airhead actions and ideas will totally transform the United States in the coming years.  Look for higher taxes, higher interest rates, higher inflation especially for basic costs of living, and a lower standard of living.  Also look for many of the promises that have been made regarding social security and health care to be broken.

You will not be able to draw social security as early as promised and when it comes to that expensive medical procedure you need after you get old... forget about it!  Uncle Sam will simply not be able to afford it and you won't either.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_pentagon_abuse_photos

J. Cogburn

Budget Basics

Most people have no idea what a 2 trillion dollar deficit in a single year means to the financial health of US citizens in the future.  So let's put it into terms the average person can more likely comprehend.

Suppose you are an average family and have an income of $50,000 per year.  Now let's suppose you already had quite a bit of debt, but in 2009 decided to go on a spending binge and ran up an additional $50,000 on credit cards.  Do you think this might cause financial hardship in the future for your family?  You know it would.

You say the federal government is different because they can simply print money.  Yes that's true, but do you think that just printing money has no negative consequences?  If it doesn't I'm all for it.  We'll just print all the money we need and nobody will have to be productive anymore... that's "work" for all of you who are not familiar with what the concept of what "productivity" means.

King Obama has decreed that the huge debt created over the last couple of hundred years was not enough so he is pushing to add all kinds of additional spending such as "stimulus packages", free rides to college, health care for everyone, and as many pork projects as the democrats, and some liberal republicans, can dream up.  The more the better... got to stimulate this economy he says.

Our total output of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for 2009 is estimated to be about 14.2 trillion dollars.  With this new debt, combined with all debt accumulated over the last century, our total debt will be near the total output of the US economy for a single year.  The only time in history this occurred was at the end of World War II.

But here is the key.  The US government only takes in about 2.1 trillion a year.  Consider this our income like the $50,000 of income for a family.

Yet with all of our government spending our additional debt this year will be near the 2 trillion figure.  In other words, we are taking on as much debt in a single year as our income.

This will have serious consequences.  It could lead to much higher inflation and interest rates in the best case.  In the worst case it will lead to the collapse of the dollar and defaults by the US government on its obligations.  This will have a devastating impact on our standard of living in the United States.

Think of it this way.  With a 14 trillion dollar debt our interest payments alone would go to 1.4 trillion if interest rates begin rising again and go to 10%....under Jimmy Carter they topped out at over 20%.

But at 10% the 2.1 trillion in income minus the 1.4 trillion in interest leaves 0.7 trillion to run all federal government operations.  How far do you think this is going to go given that the baby boomers are getting ready to retire and start drawing social security and medicare?

Taxes will likely skyrocket in an attempt to gain more revenue.  But higher taxes further weaken the economy which produces less revenue.  It's a vicious circle when the rates go above a certain level.

So all that is required to light the fuse on this ticking time bomb is high interest rates. 

Bottom Line:  The federal government had already made promises it can't keep before King Obama took the throne.  In his first 100 days he has made promises we couldn't keep if we were debt free when he took office.  Somewhere down the road the piper will have to be paid and I'm afraid won't be as easy as simply printing more money.  Look for the $25 hamburger in the next few years... if you can get one for that!

http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/

J. Cogburn