Say Anything Blog

Let the explosion of heads commence! I honestly think this is a pretty strange pick given Obama’s brief tenure and lack of achievements in the peace arena but it is an interesting comment on how many in the World have been viewing the development of American foreign policy over the past decade.

I had a good laugh at this video linked by Jonathan Turley. The clip is from the Canadian tv program, Just For Laughs Gags.

I’ve been poking fun at those who complained about Obama’s speech to the school children of America to be delivered tomorrow. Having skimmed through the text which was posted earlier today, I didn’t find anything too controversial…stay in school, work hard, expect a lot from yourself and your teachers, etc. It wasn’t until I recorded myself delivering the speech aloud and then playing it backwards that I fully comprehended the evil genius that is Barrack Obama.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it.

became PROPERTY IS THEFT! YAH YAH YAH.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education –and to do everything you can to meet them.

became FOLLOW THE ONE! OBAMA ALONE KNOWS. OH BABY OH BABY

So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do.

became INITIATIVE AND SELF-RELIANCE ARE FOR DOPES! JOIN THE FAMILY. DO WAH DOH DOH.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

became GUNS ARE BAD! RAISE TAXES! LOVE THE U.N.

Shocking stuff and all the more insidious because so many will simply riff off of the written text or a conventional listen to the words. I scoffed at those who predicted this and I was wrong. I have learned the lesson that paranoid ranting and the nutzoid echo chamber are truly in the eye and the ear of the beholder.

They’re on the agenda according to Jerome Corsi writing on World Net Daily. Although the bill apparently doesn’t specifically include the camps, the vague language contained therein opens the door to their use by any regime fascist enough to do so.

Is the John Birch Society still around?

It had me wondering.

Ezra Klein pens an interesting piece in today’s Washington Post in which he compares and contrasts Obama’s healthcare proposals with those of Bill Clinton in the 1990’s. One of Kleins claims jumped off the screen at me:

But then a funny thing happened: Managed care came anyway. By last year, only 7 percent of American workers were in “traditional” indemnity health plans, while the rest of us—or at least those of us fortunate enough to have insurance—were swimming in the alphabet soup of HMOs and PPOs and HDHPs.

A common objection to public healthcare is the creation of and intrusion by a bureaucracy into an individual’s plan of care. Why should the government tell me and my doctor what type of care is appropriate? If Klein’s 7% figure is accurate or even in the ballpark, then why would it be better for me to have my healthcare rationed by insurance companies rather than the government?

I laughed but it certainly makes the obvious point.

An American conservative wouldn’t fib about an Obama judicial nominee, would he? An aberration I’m sure.

Clusterstock points us to a couple of excellent articles on why the Obama Administration’s Public/Private Investment Plan is a bad deal for taxpayers and may not work anyway. Money manager David Kotok uses coin flipping to illustrate why the deck is stacked while Nassim Taleb decries the latest version of the Privatise the Profits/Socialise the Losses exercise which always benefits the usual suspects.

The Obama gang just can’t shoot straight on this one.

Did you know that Tom Jones recorded Black Betty? I didn’t and I sort of wish I’d never found out.

Canada breathed a sigh of relief as the host of FNC’s Red Eye apologised for last week’s satirical segment on Canada’s military and its efforts in Afghanistan. Timing in comedy is everything and Canadian hackles were raised by the sketch’s appearance in a week that saw four Canadians killed while in service against the Taliban.

I don’t think Canadians were aware of the program’s existence before now…probably a lot of Americans were similarly in the dark. In normal circumstances the issue might have garnered 20 seconds on the news and would have been treated as simply another example of Fox ineptness or lame late night comedy but the timing…timing is everything after all.

At any rate, the issue is already dying down and my American friends need not fear a repeat of the 1812 shellacking…your White House is safe.

Back to hockey.

If I was a Say Anything reader wanting to play Yahoo fantasy baseball in a Head to Head format and if I was looking for a league that needs just one more team then I would send me a private message.

Just saying…

Governor Bobby Jindal comes out firmly against governmental interference in volcano monitoring but Rush says he’s smart so cut him some slack…or something like that.

I know that belief in limited government is honestly held and I for one believe that too much government is not a good thing but at some point the Republican party is going to have to look beyond the contemporary conservative echo chamber if it wants to seriously entertain the prospect of effective opposition and an eventual return to government.

Martin Wolf has an interesting article in the Financial Times where he highlights the similarities and differences between Japan then and the World now.

The good news is that the asset price bubbles themselves were far smaller in the US than in Japan (see charts below). Furthermore, the US central bank has been swifter in recognising reality, cutting interest rates quickly to close to zero and moving towards “unconventional” monetary policy.

The bad news is that the debate over fiscal policy in the US seems even more neanderthal than in Japan: it cannot be stressed too strongly that in a balance-sheet deflation, with zero official interest rates, fiscal policy is all we have. The big danger is that an attempt will be made to close the fiscal deficit prematurely, with dire results. Again, the US administration’s proposals for a public/private partnership , to purchase toxic assets, look hopeless. Even if it can be made to work operationally, the prices are likely to be too low to encourage banks to sell or to represent a big taxpayer subsidy to buyers, sellers, or both. Far more important, it is unlikely that modestly raising prices of a range of bad assets will recapitalise damaged institutions. In the end, reality will come out. But that may follow a lengthy pretence.

Pretences are rarely good things.