Say Anything Blog

I am watching the markets, unemployment, oil prices, housing crisis, election, hurricanes, Fannies Freddies, deficits, Leaman Brothers, WaMu and smell the emergence of a new bubble.  I called the Oil Bubble right on time. I called the Grain Bubble earlier this year.  If you had the guts you’d be rich now.  You would have had to keep your guts, but you’d be rich.

Now we are in the deep deep pessimism that means only one thing.  It’s time to look for deals.  They are everywhere.  And you don’t even need a lot of money.

Pessimism is your friend.

I’m not the only one saying this.  Warren Buffett who knows more than I do says so.

So, welcome the doomsayers.  They are creating a wonderful world of opportunity that may not come our way again soon.

I’m not going to link to anything.  My Opinion is based on 35 years in the market.  I am my own link.

The big bail out of the Freddie and Fannies, bailouts of Investment banks and yes the war debt will cost us severely in years to come.

The huge national debt will not be paid by higher taxes or a growing economy.

The government NEVER pays off debt.  Clinton didn’t.  I won’t explain, but it was smoke and mirrors.  If you want to understand it all go get an economics degree, maybe you will.

All debt nearly always is paid off by Monetization. Printing money.  Inflation. 

We are in for another round of that.  It will be painful.  We just came thru it.  That’s how the debt was reduced a bit in the 90’s.

That’s why the average price of a new car in 1966 was $3800 and is $38,000 now.  That average wages in 1966 was $4800 and is now $48,000. 

Our national debt as it is monetized into relative oblivion will be laid on all of us equally as inflation, slow, creeping inflation. A hidden unrepresented unseen tax.  A true tax without representation.

If you doubt me, put a hundred bucks in a sock today and come back and try to buy with that hundred bucks buys today in 10 years.  You will have a ten dollar bill in your hands.  Where did the rest go?  Tax.  They just took it.

This is going to be tough.  Growing the economy helps, but the debt will be monetized away by inflation till it doesn’t matter for it’s reletive small size.

Except it will matter to your kids and your kid’s kids.

I am against all these bail outs.  I am not against the war.  We can’t have both guns and butter.  Let’s have the guns and skip the butter.

The argument was that we had to do this to keep people investing in a sound economy like the USA.

That’s OK if it didn’t mean that we are about to plunge ourselves into long term pain to avoid short term that might make a few people suffer.

I’m waiting for that Perp Walk out of Fannie Mae like we saw after World Com and Enron.

Ken Lay died for nothing.  Bernie Ebbers rots in prison for false charges compared to this.

I was critical in spades of the prosecution of those men.  I still am.

I would not be critical if the crooks in The Fannies and Freddies were led away in shackles.

I wish we could stop the bail outs.  We can’t.  Better to stick it to the next generation.

Just in case anyone in all the euphoria thinks this thing is wrapped up.  It ain’t.

We must win this thing.  And it’s uphill all the way.  If Obama gets in with the congress as it looks like it is shaping up, look out.

To an old dear friend of mine, Claire Hudson, “Never Made a Payroll” was the division between a real man and one who was a poser.


I know what he meant. The man who owns or operates an Enterprise and an executive is made of different stuff and has different decisions, responsibilities and burdens than a person who draws a salary at a job.


It doesn’t demean wage earners, it however in Claire (and my) opinion means we hold them in higher esteem when they have had real responsibilities for net end results that affected others.


I am one of those. I have made (and almost) missed making payroll many times. I have gone without to see to it others were OK. It’s a challenge. It takes foresight and sacrifice.


It also means that I always have paid double for my social security, paid all of my own health insurance and fought harder with the government to get the deductions a wage earner gets more easily.


As a person who “makes Payroll” I have had to fire, hire, demote, promote, reprimand, place, move around and encourage someone to find a new career.


That’s the nature of a person with real executive experience. In my life time I have without hyperbole probably hired or fired 400 people. In one case almost 100 at one fell swoop in a reorganization in Germany.


I was criticized, tears were shed, accused of being cruel even sued. But, in the end despite the pain if I was going to be responsible as an executive I had to do what is right. I have learned to look it in the eye and do it.


So has another person who has been on our minds. Sarah Palin.


She had ultimate responsibility. She had to hire and fire to meet predetermined goals.


When a Librarian was difficult she fired her. A few days later she hired her back but with the understanding who was in charge there.


When a former brother in law acted far out of the range of acceptability, she saw to it he was sidelined. Not out of spite, out of executive decisions.


She fired many people. She hired others. That’s what a person who meets a payroll does. She is a decision maker and makes them in spite of the threats to her personally.


Barak Obama has NEVER EVER hired or fired anyone ever. He has never EVER made a payroll. He has never EVER had to make bottom line decisions that directly impacted lives, sometimes in negative ways.


He is a go along to get along wage slave. He has made his full life living off other people’s money.


I have to agree with my old friend Claire. I don’t respect someone applying for a job where bottom line decisions have to be made who NEVER MADE A PAYROLL.


Obama never has.

Late Night with David Letterman:

How about that Barack Obama? They are saying “for the first time he’s starting to slip in the polls. But don’t worry. He’s got a plan. He’s going to go back to campaigning in Europe.”

I’ll bet that’s not nearly as funny in BHO headquarters as Letterman thought it was. I’m waiting for a bumbling Barak to be shown in true context in the segment Letterman does called Great Moment in Presidential Speechifying.  Normally he just skewers Bush.  Now Obama is rising. (or falling)

If you remember the moment in the Man who would be King where the mountain people see that Sean Connery can bleed.  They turn on him and tear him to bits.

That is beginning to happen.

Not a moment too soon.

Remember Thomas Eagelton?  Became a problem for the Pres candidate?  Was dumped for a tradeup?

Biden is a Ghost from far Christmas past.  His hairplug fame has fleeted. (I know that’s not the proper use of the word, it’s just so much fun to say)

Biden was a major mistake.  Barry should have chosen someone with real VP credentials, like Hillary Clinton.

It’s not too late Barry.  Go for it.  You know how to throw folks under the bus.  Joe can go there too, (if there’s room).

Dump Biden, Select Hillary.  It’ll be great.  All the vaginal Americans will think it’s a great move.  You’ll win this thing.

At least that’s what I got from this piece in Politico. 

Show real leadership Barry.  It’s time for CHANGE!

In the early part of the decade of the 70’s I discovered Garrison Keillor. Prairie Home companion wasn’t even a radio show yet. It was a Morning Event on Minnesota Public Radio. This was even prior to Bill Kling if I remember right.

Garrison was funny, clever and refreshing. He was also young. I met him. Went to a few of his shows. When he came to Fargo to do his gig I attended.

Over the years I have changed and sadly so has he. I no longer listen as rapt as I once did. He is no longer funny, clever or insightful. Just cranky.

He was not inoculated fore BushDerangementSyndrome and suffers from a terminal case of it.

So, his latest pronouncements on all things electoral have become as irrelevant as that old man shouting “Get off my Lawn”.

Sad to see good men die young. Alas Poor Garrison, I hardly Knew ye............

Liberals are over the top nuts about the religious beliefs of Sarah Palin.

Never mind, Rev Wright, Mitt Romney, or Bill Clinton.

They had religious convictions.  BUT NOW, a real threat comes along.  Everything that she ever of does believe has become a huge issue.

And they want (the liberals) to toss overboard the constitution article 6, section 3:

“ ...no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.  ”

If you are a pagan or nominal Christian then a passionate follower of Jesus who happens to believe Jesus is Coming back soon or that maybe it’s OK to operate in the Gifts of the Spirit is a big threat.  If you do (speak in tongues or believe in the soon return of Jesus) then it’s NOT OK to have religious views.

Who is it that is destroying the constitution now - HMMMMM?

Pat posted this today. It says in Part:

She is one of us—and he is one of them.

Barack and Michelle are affirmative action, Princeton, Columbia, Harvard Law. She is public schools and Idaho State. Barack was a Saul Alinsky social worker who rustled up food stamps. Sarah Palin kills her own food.

Michelle has a $300,000-a-year sinecure doing PR for a Chicago hospital. Todd Palin is a union steelworker who augments his income working vacations on the North Slope. Sarah has always been proud to be an American. Michelle was never proud of America—until Barack started winning.

Barack has zero experience as an executive. Sarah ran her own fishing fleet, was mayor for six years and runs the largest state in the union. She belongs to a mainstream Christian church. Barack was, for 15 years, a parishioner at Trinity United and had his daughters baptized by Pastor Jeremiah Wright, whose sermons are saturated in black-power, anti-white racism and anti-Americanism.

Sarah is a rebel. Obama has been a go-along, get-along cog in the Daley Machine. She is Middle America. Barack, behind closed doors in San Francisco, mocked Middle Americans as folks left behind by the global economy who cling bitterly to their Bibles, bigotries and guns.

Barack has zero foreign policy experience. Palin runs a state that is home to anti-missile, missile and air defense bases facing the Far East, commands the Alaska National Guard and has a soldier-son heading for Iraq.

Barack, says the National Journal, has the most left-wing voting record in the Senate, besting Socialist Bernie Sanders. Palin’s stances read as though they were lifted from Reagan’s 1980 “no pale pastels” platform. And this is what this media firestorm is all about.

Sometimes a person needs to step back and take a look at what is really going on with some objectivity.

6 hours away that Objectivity comes at the hands of British Journalists.

James Bennet of the Telegraph UK says:

In short, far from being a small-town mayor concerned with little more than traffic signs, she has been a major player in state politics for a decade, one who formulated an ambitious agenda and deftly implemented it against great odds.

Her sudden elevation to the vice-presidential slot on the Republican ticket shocked no one more than her enemies in Alaska, who have broken out into a cold sweat at the thought of Palin in Washington, guiding the Justice Department’s anti-corruption teams through the labyrinths of Alaska’s old-boy network.

It is no surprise that many of the charges laid against her have come from Alaska, as her enemies become more and more desperate to bring her down. John McCain was familiar with this track record and it is no doubt the principal reason that he chose her.

Focusing on the exotic trappings of Alaskan culture may make Palin seem a quaint and inexplicable choice. But understanding the real background of her steady rise in politics suggests that Barack Obama and Joe Biden are underestimating her badly. In this, they join two former Alaskan governors, a large number of cronies, and a trail of enemies extending back over a decade.

They can at a distance see what we cannot.

I read the news today - OH BOY!

All of these are or were on Drudge in the last 24 hours.  Wonderful times we live in.

1. Hillary is out - pretending to support Obama but mostly rubbing democrat noses in that brown stuff on the floor.  Heh Heh

2. Obama is having trouble raising money. Bet he wishes he took the money he promised to take.

3. Obama sounds like a bumbling idiot without the teleprompter.  Can’t construct a coherent sentence.  I guess it’s hard to lie when you have no clue what you believe in other than communism.

4. Biden WHO?  Joe is redefining irrelevance.

5. McCain Palin up 20% over Obama Whatsisname with white women.

6. McCain Palin up 15% with independent voters.

7. The Ghostbusters have managed to keep all the slime off Sarah. 

8. McCain raises 5 million in Democrat Chicago overnight.

9. I have never seen a campaign self destruct in such short order.  I guess hatred and anger don’t sell like they used to.

10. AND to top it all off that the Mainstream Media has finally got it’s comeuppance once and for all.  Oh, like Bella Lugosi in a movie I saw, they won’t stay down, they in the light of a midnight moon will arise again from the crypt to suck blood.  But, I think Sarah has a stake in her purse.

Apoplectic is the word that comes to mind.

This is one of those left wing feminist rants about Sarah Palin that is a joy to read.

They are terrified at the sight of an honestly accomplished woman with real leadership in spite of her gender. 

Read this where she says:

It’s possible that Republican men, sexual inadequates that they are, really believe that women will vote for a woman just because she’s a woman. They’re unfamiliar with our true natures. Do they think vaginas call out to each other in the jungle night? I mean, I know men have their secret meetings at which they pledge to do manly things, like being irresponsible with their semen and postponing household repairs with glue and used matches. Guys will be guys, obviously.

But do they not know that women have been trained to resent other women and that they only learn to suppress this by constantly berating themselves and reading columns like this one? I’m a feminist who understands that women can nurse terrible and delicate woman hatred.

Palin was not a sure choice, not even for the stolidly Republican ladies branch of Citizens for a Tackier America. No, she isn’t even female really. She’s a type, and she comes in male form too.

I don’t know when I have watched a whole philosophy self destruct so completely.  Liberal Feminism has been shown for what it is. Oppression.

I was listening to a Talk Radio Call in Show (Medved) and he invited people to call in and explain why they didn’t like Sarah Palin for VP.

10 people called in.  All had the standard reasons why.  Nothing new.  Nothing creative.  Nothing interesting.

After that time it became clear what the landscape politically really looks like.  The numbers below are not exact for the purposes of this post are probably accurate:

33 1/3% are pro Obama and having him revealed as the Antichrist with horns a tail, a visible reincarnation of Adolph Hitler they are so Bushhatredderanged mentally they would vote for him.  The are irrelevant to the McCain Palin express.

33 1/3% are McCain Palin or perhaps more accurately Palin McCain.  Fired up and nothing anyone could say or accuser her or John of would dissuade this third of the voting public from voting for the Palin McCain McCain Palin ticket.  I confess, I am among this cadre.  I will vote and support them no matter what revelations come forth from here on out.  My mind is made up and I will not be deferred.  I am irrelevant to the Obama campaign.

THEN there is the last 33 1/3%.  Sometimes called undecided voters.  I would rather chase those who think they may be decided but are able to be swayed.  They vote one way or another because it just seems like a good idea, all their friends are, they were promised something, or believe truth or lie about one or the other candidate.  They are not tattooed with loyalty and could be persuaded to vote for Palin McCain.

It is this group that all the effort and strategy must be focused on from here on out.  The devoted McCain Followers will not vote for Obama, and the devoted Obama Followers will not vote for McCain. Irrelevant.

I will not waste my time or energies trying to convince the far left of the benefits in voting for Palin McCain.  You shouldn’t waste your time trying to convince me of the Benefits of Obama.  For us the election is already over.  We have elected.

We are lost to the other side and ain’t coming back.  If however you are in the middle, you are in the cross hairs.

So, to my friends who are uber Liberals and not prospects, I will say as we all do in Chicagoland bout this time of year -

HOW BOUT DEM BEARS?

And, remember if you are a liberal voting for Obama, the day to vote is Wednesday the 5th of November.  Write it down.  Or, if you don’t have time, too busy saving the spotted owl or protesting with code pink, just write your vote on the back of an envelope and mail it to me.  I’ll see to it your vote is entered appropriately.