Free Republic

I imagine myself a cracker-jack vulture capitalist in need of a dandy new investment to beat MARR and make my money work for me – not vice versa. You couldn't put a gun to my head and make me invest it in the manufacture of wheeled conveyances at US plants. It’s nice when a major corporation full of professional money managers agrees with one of my simple hunches. It tickles my masculine ego. Regrettably, that major corporation with $15Bn to invest was General Motors. The $15Bn they’ve decided to invest in Brazil, S. Korea, Canada and Mexico came from US...

I find it tough having to disagree with my own country and admit that we’re in the wrong. With that stipulated; I’m going to hate the next four years of the Obama Amatueristration with a green and bilious passion. After Janet Napolitano’s recent outburst of paranoid, wrong and retrograde thinking, my nation owes the Canadian government and people at least as sincere an apology as those we’ve offered up to Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega for our continued apostate existence on the face of the planet. Barack Obama has hired a Secretary of Homeland Security that reflects both the ideology...

Sometimes, despite the best of our intentions, the worst truly happens. Unacceptable and inexcusable evil strikes the innocent down dead. It does so for no reason, and it does so for nobody’s benefit. Evil, simply just is. Other times, the worst of consequences should and could have been prevented. Huntsville, Alabama teenagers Leigh Anna Jimmerson and Tad Mattle appear to have been stricken down by just such an act of unconscionable non-random malice. They were rear-ended by a drunken driver Friday night and killed. The drunken driver was obviously in our country illegally. I’ll repeat in a voice of outrage...

The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) experiment ended up being far more successful as a marketing gimmick than as a science project. The intrepid researchers never found the little green men. Perhaps that's because they never aimed their high-dollar radio telescopes at The Church of England. The Right Rev Richard Chartres made the following comments that suggest his familiarity with how affairs are conducted on the third planet out from Sol is nodding at best. He addressed reporters covering the Church of England's General Synod on the financial crisis."Sometimes, people seem to be relieved to get off the treadmill and...

It seems our new President is no fan of Rush Limbaugh’s radio program. It keeps him from getting things done. According to the latest catechism from Saint Barack, you can’t listen to the guy and find room for agreement with others. I know how poor Barack feels. When I tune in from time-to-time, I find myself laughing too much. Rush prevents me from blogging as well at work. That Limbaugh guy has just got to go. As Barack laid into El Rushbo, the question that popped into my mind had to be “So What?” Who freaking cares whether Senator Jim...

It was an early scene from The Matrix, but even Keanu Reeves began to figure out things had just gotten really weird. He discusses said predicament with his wasted buddy, Choi. Neo:You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're awake or still dreaming? Choi: All the time. It's called mescaline, it's the only way to fly. Wikipedia describes Mescaline as a naturally occurring psychedelic alkaloid that is used to enhance transcendental practices. Apparently, serving as Attorney General, in The Great State of California, offers the office holder opportunities to experience transcendence; even without the pharmaceutical props. At...

It’s official! OPEC will cut oil production by 2.2m Bbl/day in real terms. So far, this hasn’t re-inflated the price of oil. In fact, the current price on a Bbl of Light Sweet Crude has reached $40.06. Thus, despite a reduction in global production from the cartel controlling 40% of the world’s proven reserves, the price of oil fell 8%. This would remind Sherlock Holmes of the dog that wouldn’t bark. This drop in oil prices particularly baffles in the face of a collapse of value in the US dollar. Economist John Kemp offers his prognosis on the current health...

It doesn’t require a PhD in Male Bovine Scatology to detect the foul odor wafting from the following pronouncement by Professor William Ford.“This is really a great communications challenge,” said William Ford, a former Atlanta Fed chief who’s now at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro. “It is going to take some educational effort to elaborate on how these policy options would work” because “people don’t know how to interpret what they are talking about.” When it comes to the policies employed thus far to combat our current economic downturn, people don’t have to interpret very much. The policies have...

On Wednesday, the Big Three American automakers converged upon Congress- with their Christmas List of unjust demands. These would be the terms by which they would continue to produce sub-par merchandise, employ large numbers of Democratic Party loyalists and manage a pension and health care system that no one in their right minds would want to take over as part of a bankruptcy receivership. The blackmail cost was originally $25Bn, but has now gone $9Bn higher. It will now require $34Bn in emergency funding for The United States of America to pretend it still maintains a viable domestic automotive industry....

People manage to survive in Washington, DC while adding nothing to the commonweal, and sometimes doing substantial damage. They have the dirt on their rivals, they know who’s butt to kiss or they just have a canny instinct that enables them to artfully duck at the right moment. I’m not sure which describes Jamie Gorelick, but like Arnold Schwarzenegger at the end of a Terminator Movie, it seems you can predict that she’ll be back. This time, perhaps, as President Barack Obama’s new Attorney General. In revolutionary France, Minister Talleyrand had a similar career to Jamie Gorelick. He worked for...

It was a while back in my chronological adulthood. I was under the delusion that I was cut out for professional sales. That delusion was a psychological adjustment to the fact that I had graduated from college amidst the 1991 recession, didn’t have credentials that would set the world afire, and couldn’t find much work outside the world of full commission sales. So I took that sack of lemons and tried to make some beverage. I took a job selling water filters on straight commission and convinced myself that I would dominate sales. I read Napoleon Hill, I read Zig...

Barack Obama has sworn up and down that he can pay for every dime of his new proposed Federal spending. Alan Reynolds, of The Wall Street Journal must be a closet racist. He asks the rather mean-spirited question How's Obama Going to Raise $4.3 Trillion? On one side of the balance sheet, Reynolds lists the potential credits against which the US Treasury will have to issue outlays. About one quarter of this the Democrats can easily comprehend. It is, after all, ALL BUSH'S FAULT. (Again, I lament the lack of html sarcasm tags.)The new president, whoever he is, will start...

Ruth Marcus, Reporter for The Washington Post, is a fairly accurate barometer by which we can estimate how much our elite intelligentsia really understands the nation it condescends to and calls stupid. Cry the beloved country. Her latest reading shows us the presence of an intellectual low pressure system. Ramesh Ponnuru stands appropriately gobsmacked. Ruth Marcus writes, "McCain's angry denunciation of socialist wealth-spreading ignores the fact that the country has always had a progressive tax code." Not having vented her spleen enough through her slanders against John McCain’s campaign, Marcus then has to do violence to the history behind taxation...

A lot of people got really angry with a character named Joe the Plumber in recent days. He not only had the unmitigated gall to ask Barack Obama a question; he asked him a hard and rather loaded one. And that, according to the Martha Stewart Set, is not a good thing. So this low-brow, Chris Daughtry-looking plumber asks Barack Obama whether he wanted to raise his taxes or not. Silly Hillbilly – engaging in serious political debate is for the cool people. Presumably, arrogant, self-selecting, elitist creeps that the Joe The Plumbers-in-Training of the world badly want to stuff...

Presidential Elections often change direction due to factors beyond the control of the competing campaigners. Often, unpredictable events occur, or something beneath the surface "just clicks." No one really plans these events, they just beset candidates for office. Like the infamous Dukakis Tank Ride, Barack Obama's Joe the Plumber Dialogue may have just given the GOP a gift from the gods. After that delightfully funny tank ride by Democratic Nominee, Michael Dukakis, the Democrats became a lot more careful in how they managed the stage during Presidential Elections. The tank ride was not a planned ambush by the 1988 Bush...

Those of us who have read Ayn Rand can sometimes get too caught up in applying fiction to current reality. Yes, the state is overburdening, yes it will get larger and more obnoxious in the decade from 2010 to 2020. Finally, the man who would lead said state into a new era of statist dictates, doesn’t exactly surround himself with people who view America through a positive frame of reference. All of that stipulated up front, its enough to make paranoid people, well, more paranoid and more and more ready to Chuck the whole thing and light out for The...

The classicists argue as to whether Nero really fiddled while Rome burned. Yet the story is seen as apocryphal in the same way biblical parables and myths from Greek Mythology are often so viewed. That is because we all know people who have done just that sort of thing. It happens amongst us now – and on a grand and extravagant scale. Perhaps the most amusing recent examples of this sort of behavior come to us from both the business world and from our friends, the environmental movement. We begin with the detestable resort vacation taken by those corporate bums...

It seems James Carville and David Gergen just had to warn us before it became too late. They have to save America the same way Madame Royale had to save France. There would be “disturbances” if the “right” candidate didn’t win. David Gergen broached the topic with the customary subtlety of an advisor/hack from both Republican and Democratic administrations. "I think it's too early to declare victory, because Barack Obama is black," Gergen said Tuesday night. "And until we play out the issue of race in this country, I don't think we'll know and maybe (not until) late in the...

Americans are depressed about their current economic fortunes and in many cases their personal finances. In the case of some individuals who have invested/gambled more than they could afford to lose on real estate investments, the mordant pessimism may accurately reflect reality. However, those of us not familiar with the Fabius Maximus Blog, have not seen, felt or tasted the sense of doom that seems to permeate the air of Europe today like a dank, fetid humidity. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the UK Telegraph offers the following assessment of Europe’s economy. We face extreme danger. Unless there is immediate intervention on...

In less than one year since a German Environmental Minister, Sigmar Gabriel, referred to US President George W. Bush as a Neanderthal for not reducing US CO2 emissions more and sooner, the worm has now indeed turned. Gabriel opined in high dudgeon back in April of this year. In a statement called "Bush's Neanderthal speech," German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said: "His speech showed not leadership but losership. We are glad that there are also other voices in the United States." Sigmar is accurate that other voices exist. They may emit nonsense, but they do exist. Al Gore’s call for...