call your office. *

Cheers,
lance

Eeeeesh!
Does anybody else derive some joy in knowing these people will be miserable their entire lives?
This is one of the primary reasons I stopped dating leftist dames when I was about 23.

Capitalism is not a “cute theory” like communism. It’s reality.

This more or less explains why we Americans think we’re great and nothing bad can (or should) befall us:
Because we’re Americans! Like, duh!

I love the expression on the Big O’s Face:

… will they allow debato-prompters at the debates?
ht

What a slick way to stick the knife in and twist it … all with a smile:

“I get why she’s hot out there … Why she’s doing well.”
[…]
“People look at her, and they say, ‘All those kids. Something that happens in everybody’s family. I’m glad she loves her daughter and she’s not ashamed of her. Glad that girl’s going around with her boyfriend. Glad they’re going to get married.'”
[…]
“I like that little Down syndrome kid. One of them lives down the street. They’re wonderful children. They’re wonderful people. And I like the idea that this guy does those long-distance races. Stayed in the race for 500 miles with a broken arm. My kind of guy.”
[…]
“I get this … My view is … why say, ever, anything bad about a person? Why don’t we like them and celebrate them and be happy for her elevation to the ticket? And just say that she was a good choice for him and we disagree with them?”
*
… *

There must be much gnashing of teeth inside the O’s tent this morning.
cross-posted @ Cjunk

Did Wall Street miss a total meltdown by a hair?

The market was 500 trades away from Armageddon on Thursday, traders inside two large custodial banks tell The Post.
Had the Treasury and Fed not quickly stepped into the fray that morning with a quick $105 billion injection of liquidity, the Dow could have collapsed to the 8,300-level – a 22 percent decline! – while the clang of the opening bell was still echoing around the cavernous exchange floor.

There are two types of panic on Wall Street … panic selling and panic buying … we’ve seen both as of late. We can debate meltdowns and bailouts until the cows come home … but one thing is certain … Capitalism is going through an enormous test.
Or, is it really capitalism any longer, when 5 or so firms account for fully 50% of the trades on Wall Street and the people with their fingers on the trigger circulate through the same boardrooms … and those boardrooms have tentacles latched onto one, Barry Obama?

Barack Obama has a major Wall Street and Washington problem that the media so far is refusing to acknowledge or explore. He is in the pocket of the Wall Street firms and mortgage security companies that are at the center of the collapse of the real estate bubble. He is closely tied to at least two of the Fannie Mae principals. As Ricky Ricardo would say, “Barack, you got some splaining to do.”
Let’s start with the numbers. Why is a first term Senator pulling down almost $300,000 a year from Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, Countrywide Financial, and Washington Mutual? He has not even completed his fourth year in the Senate and received a total of $1,093,329.00 from these eight companies and their employees. (all data from OpenSecrets.org). John McCain’s numbers, according to OpenSecrets.org for the period 1990-2008 (i.e., 18 years worth of data) only collected $549,584.00. In other words, Barack is receiving $273,582.25 (and 2008 is not over) per year while McCain raised a paltry $30,532.44.

By the way, are you Long or Short Obama 2008?
cross-posted @ Cjunk

A real quick way to tell if there’s a bubble, of any sort, is to compare the price of the asset, versus the cash flows it generates. A stock’s “P/E” ratio is a classic example wherein you compare the stock price (p) versus that of the earnings (e).
Housing is no different in that you can compre the price of a house to the rents it generates, resulting in a similar “House Price to Rents Ratio.” The following chart is from the OECD and has indexed the House Price to Rents Ratios for both the US and Canada to 100 (to adjust for any international discrepancies).

I cannot claim to have studied the Canadian housing market as much as the US, but I found the figures surprising.

Would the financial crisis have happened if, instead of teaching kids “psychology” “phy ed” and making them take foreign language classes they’ll never use in their adult life, we required they take 1 full year of personal financial management?
Just wondering.

Chuck Norris doesn’t borrow at the Fed’s discount window. Chuck Norris LENDS at the Fed’s discount window.

Last Thursday a CBC crew undertook a dramatic chase-down of Gerry Ritz in an airport. The shaky camera footage and the out-of-breath questions suggested a scandal of government-toppling magnitude. Viewers unaware of the details could be forgiven for thinking Ritz was some international criminal finally caught on camera by the Fifth Estate, rather than someone who had used ill-advised gallows humour in a private exchange during a tense crisis.
The Ritz scandal was just the latest installment in an ongoing series. The previous weeks’ scandal began: “Oops again! Stephen Harper pulls his communications director after another false step,” accompanied by a helpful graphic – “Oops again” – and video footage of the *Elections Canada raid* from last April. After a brief bit about gas prices, it was back to business: over the graphic “Derailed,” Mansbridge alarmed: “The mistakes and apologies are piling up! Is the Conservative campaign in trouble?”
Recently the NDP, now that they’re emerging as a threat to the Liberals, has been getting that same treatment. Last Thursday the NDP dropped a candidate after a video surfaced of him taking illegal drugs; it’s the sort of thing that merits a mention, but The National saw fit to air, as top news, a lengthy “worst-of” compilation from the tape. So we saw Dana Larsen taking LSD on a beach, and smoking a joint in a car; it went on and on. The word “NDP” was repeated so gratuitously as to render the report a piece of of Liberal-strategy campaigning, a “think again” warning-piece directed at anyone who’d been considering switching from the Liberals to the NDP.
The CBC’s scandal-mongering is highly suspect for two reasons. First, the scandals are too frequently based on events that happened long before they are presented as breaking scandals. Gerry Ritz’s remarks were made two weeks before the “scandal” broke; the Dana Larsen video was eight years old when it was aired at length in the midst of an election campaign; the Tom Lukiwski tape became a scandal fully seventeen years after a tipsy Lukiwski jokingly made the remarks at a private party. Second, such scandals are often not the result of investigation on the part of CBC journalists, but rather the end result of dirt about non-Liberals being handed over, by individuals who remain unnamed, to producers and/or reporters who then run with it.
Greg Weston:

“With the media leak coming more than two weeks after the fact, and timed to do the maximum political damage to the minister, the PM and the Conservative campaign, there is one obvious question: Who shot Gerry Ritz and why?

“A high-ranking Conservative familiar with what happened on the conference call says no one really has any doubts the leak came from a disgruntled bureaucrat.

“A Tory insider points to previous damaging leaks about the Conservatives’ environmental plans, and cuts to cultural programs as similar push-back from ‘some people who don’t necessarily agree with us.'”

For too long the LPC has had their own public-relations juggernaut, massively funded by Canadian taxpayers, with which to campaign against the other parties. It’s time to stop forcing Canadians who don’t wish to support the Liberals to pay for it.

Just hours after a truck bomb created a monstrous crater and killed dozens of civilians at the Marriot Hotel in Islamabad, Muslims the world over took to the streets. Thousands marched in Turkey carrying placards that read … “not in the name of my Muhammad!”
In Canada, Muslim leaders were quick to condemn those who carried out the attack, saying that only fanatics and degenerates would carry out such an act in the name of Islam. Further abroad, in London, where many Pakistanis have immigrated, a throng of thousands marched in an act of solidarity with the victims of the blast.
From Saudi Arabia to Indonesia, Muslim leaders joined to distance themselves from this, and other, wanton acts of violence perpetrated in the name of the Prophet Muhammad.
When asked why the sudden outrage against terror, one Muslim women protesting in Paris exclaimed … “We need to show the world that Muhammad is the prophet of peace … not pieces!”
*

Shoot the bankers.

Jew hating Jews for Obama:

The organizers of the anti-Iran rally near the UN on Monday have decided not to allow Sarah Palin to speak. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the direct descendants of the court Jews who opted to protect their seats at court during the Holocaust rather than extend themselves one inch to save European Jewry – and instead actively opposed rescue efforts by other Jewish Americans – are still in the same cowardly, cringing mode. And if you go down the list, they are almost without exception liberal Democrats who support Obama. Little wonder that a Democrat who embraced Suha Arafat is kosher but a powerful Republican ally of Israel, and the next Vice President of the United States, is treif.
Under the circumstances, attending their event on Monday amounts to tacit approval of the Conference’s leftwing bias and congenital timidity. Make your own decision, but I won’t allow myself to be duped that way.

… more from Geller.
Update: On a tip from Me No Dhimmi … A Liberal monopoly on Identity Politics

Commentary located here for those interested (martini approved commentary!)

Political ad season is in full swing. Most ads are just variations on the same basic themes; there’s the openly low-blow approach, as in this Barrack Obama ad which takes one trivial verbal stumble by John McCain and uses editing tricks to make him appear not just infirm, but dangerously, ominously infirm, and then there’s the ol’ boilerplate ads in which a soothing voice reassures you, in a tone that’s a cross between a tampon ad and someone talking you off a high ledge, that you’re going to have a good life if you just choose the right political product.
Some ads take newer and more creative approaches and manage to pull it off. This inventive and oddly effective Conservative ad manages, through its use of music and images, to subtly, almost subliminally, evoke the biblical-scale sorrows of the last century, and the great wars, en route to addressing the prosaic issue of…tariffs. Truly an achievement.
The best ad I’ve seen this fall, though, is this one, in which John McCain offers his sincere heartfelt congratulations and best wishes to his rival on the occasion of his winning the Democratic Presidential nomination. At first glance, it’s nothing but pure sweetness and decency, a Hallmark Card of an ad replete with a tintinnabulating music-box soundtrack, but on further viewing its mildly sinister tack fairly rumbles and its edges become more apparent.
There is an understated but unmistakable “by-and-by” menace lurking beneath the forthright, kindly smile. McCain’s tone brings to mind certain Irishmen — and some Scots, depending on what part of Glasgow you’ve wandered into — who (and fire up your Irish accent as you read the following) even as they’re butterin’ ya up, and tellin’ ya what a wondrous creation you truly are, are also kinda…well, threatenin’ ya’ at the same time with those very same words. An unspecified, vaguely-alluded-to inevitability mixes uncomfortably with the most heartfelt reassurances that all inevitabilities will of course be comfortable, for such a wonderful person as yourself. Aye, you’re a big strong man. Congratulations on all your success, it’s all so well-deserved; I love to see your smile and your happy, confident ways. With any luck, we’ll surely be encounterin’ each other in the days and weeks and months and years to come, and what a privilege it will always be for me.
/Irish accent.
Its loaded tone, only parsable by a certain constituency, betrays a deeply-rooted, Northwest European approach to discourse in which a full genuflection is roundly delivered in the square middle of an unflaggingly formal “you’re-not-going-to-win-this-one” procedure.
A lot of elder Chinese, too, seem to take that same subtle approach. To see it in a political ad is strange; it has a certain…commutative bloom. It’s certainly a big change from the usual “my-ass-smells-like-a-pumpkin-pie-baked-especially-for-you” paeans to the All-American axe-murderer’s own self-image one typically sees in, say, American Congressional ads.
Watch it a few times — the music gets funnier with each viewing.

Cambodiastan gets the long overdue treatment:
Sept. 15
Sept. 12
Sept. 8
Sept. 5
Sept. 4
… lots more.

“…perhaps you New Yorkers out there could use a little consulting help from us hicks in Minnesota?”

I apologize if this has been referenced before, but if this isn’t proof some people on the left really do have mental problems, I don’t know what is.