The US Banking System Is in Trouble (John Mauldin)

Thoughts from the Frontline Weekly Newsletter
It’s more than Fannie and Freddie
by John Mauldin
August 22, 2008
In this issue:
It’s More Than Freddie and Fannie
The US Banking System Is in Trouble
$500 Billion and Counting
Fannie, Freddie, and the Credit Crisis
Baltimore, La Jolla, and South Africa

Yet another crisis confronts us, as we will have to deal with the aftermath of a rather large number of bank failures over the next year, which is likely to overwhelm the ability of the FDIC to insure your bank deposits. Today we look at the banking system, the FDIC, and Freddie and Fannie. It’s not pretty, but as realists we must know what we are facing.
But first, I just want to say I am glad that Richard Russell is doing fine. For those who do not know, he suffered a mild stroke last Friday. I talked to him yesterday, and he was a little tired but doing better. He has decided to cut back his writing schedule and relax a bit more, which is a good thing. At 84, he has written a daily (and sometimes lengthy) commentary and has been writing the monthly Dow Theory Letter since 1958. He is the dean of newsletter writers. He has forgotten more than most of us will ever know about the markets.
His doctor told him he needed to seek some balance in his life and cut down on the stress. I know how much it takes to write my one letter each week; I can’t imagine what it takes to write five. Basically, his plan is now to post his stats and only write about the markets when something important is happening, about every two weeks. I hope he sticks with that plan, as I want to be sharing dinner and drinks with him for many years to come. I am sure you join me in wishing him and his lovely wife Faye all the best and a healthy and quick recovery.
The US Banking System Is in Trouble
A few weeks ago when I was in Maine, I met Chris Whalen. Chris is the managing director of a service called Institutional Risk Analytics, whose primary business is analyzing the health of banks and financial institutions. If you are one of their clients, you can go to their web site and drill quite deep into all aspects of every bank in America. And what they have done is come up with various metrics which compare how well-capitalized a bank is, how much risk it is taking, and what kind of losses (or profits) it can expect. It is a one of a kind firm, and the data gives Chris a very special perspective on the US banking system.
And what he sees is not pretty. There is a crisis brewing. He expects 100 banks to fail between now and July of 2009. Most of them will be small, but there will be a few large banks. The total assets of those banks he estimates to be $850 billion (not a typo!). Those are the assets the FDIC is going to have to cover when they take over the banks.
Take Washington Mutual as an example. There are problems there. Their debt now trades at 20%, which is worse than junk. There is no way they could issue preferred stock to recapitalize their business. And they are going to need more capital, as they have writedowns in their future due to the slowing of the economy. Any common issue would have to seriously dilute existing shareholders almost to the point of nothing. There are circumstances in which they can survive, but it would take a remarkable recovery for the US economy, which is not likely. Maybe management can pull a rabbit out of the hat, but it will need some strong magic to get the capital they need at a cost they can live with.
The FDIC has about $50 billion. These reserves have been built up over the years from deposit insurance paid by banks that are part of the program. They are going to need an estimated $20 billion just to cover the failure of Indy Mac. The FDIC will have to cover only a small percentage of the $850 billion, as some of those assets will surely be good. But if they have to cover 10%, then the FDIC would need another $50 billion. Does that sound like a lot? Chris thinks a more conservative number for planning purposes would be 20-25% potential losses, and you hope it does not get there.
Sometime in the next few quarters, Congress and the President, either the current group or early in the term of the next President, are going to have to address that potential shortfall, before we see bank runs as people fear that FDIC insurance reserves may not be enough. The very sad fact is that taxpayers are going to be on the hook for some time. What is likely to happen is that a loan facility will be made to the FDIC so they can borrow as much as they need, and pay it back from future bank insurance payments.
You can’t make up the shortfall just by raising fees. Chris points out that raising fees right now is not really a winning option, as that just makes the financial books of marginal banks even worse. You can raise rates as the banking system returns to health.
If Congress and the President wait too long, there could be a very serious problem, as depositors could start moving their funds under $100,000 (the insured amount) to what they perceive may be a safer bank than their current bank. Rumors could run rampant. This is something that needs to be addressed now. Frankly, this should be addressed right after the elections AT THE LATEST, in consultation with Congress and the new President.
If you are worried about your bank, you can go to Chris’s web site and pay $50 for a brief analysis of your bank and an update for the next four quarters. If you have less than $100,000 in your accounts, you should not worry. But for businesses with large deposits and cash flows, it might be worth checking on the health of your bank. The link is http://us1.institutionalriskanalytics.com/Cart/Request.asp?affiliate=bmg123.
You can click on the link that says “Click here for the free samples” in the lower right corner of the page to see if the format of what they offer is something you would find useful.
$500 Billion and Counting
We have seen some $505 billion in bank write-offs so far in this credit crisis. It is serious naiveté to assume that this will be the extent of it. Most of the write-offs have been mortgage-related. We have not yet seen the write-offs that will come as consumers start defaulting on credit cards, auto loans, and other consumer debt. Neither have we seen the losses that will come from commercial real estate or corporate loan as the recession progresses. You can’t write off something until it goes bad, although you can increase your loan loss provisions. This of course hits earnings and your stock price and thus your ability to raise new equity. It presents a very difficult dilemma for bank managers and investors deciding whether to invest or go away.
Sober-minded analysis from the IMF suggests that the total write-offs by all banks may be $1 trillion. Dr. Nouriel Roubini is much more alarmed and puts the potential losses at closer to $2 trillion. That means that banks over time are going to have to increase their loan loss provisions, hitting both earnings and capital. And that means they will have to raise more investment capital and equity at a time when their stock prices are low.
It is a vicious spiral. Banks have less capital, so they are able to lend less to the very businesses that need the money; and without said money the businesses will be less capable of paying their current loans, which means that banks have less capital. Rinse and repeat.
That only prolongs the recession and Muddle Through Economy, which hurts consumers and corporate profits, which in turn puts more pressure on banks. Ultimately it means that banks are going to have to raise a lot more capital than anyone who is buying financial stocks today imagines. And it is largely going to be expensive capital. Look at this note from Bennet Sedacca of Atlantic Advisors:
“Financial entities like banks, broker/dealers, regional banks, finance companies, and insurance companies need credit at reasonable rates in order to finance themselves. I have been concerned for many years that the door would finally shut on banks, brokers and others to raise new capital in the debt markets.
“For many regional banks like KeyCorp, Zions, Regions, and National City, the door has already shut on them–if they wanted to raise capital in the debt market at levels where their outstanding issues regularly trade, they would have to pay 12-15%, hardly economic levels. GM bonds trade near 27% yields. Washington Mutual trades north of 15%.
“Then there are the ‘good banks’, like J.P. Morgan and Wells Fargo. J.P. Morgan recently sold $600 million of preferred stock at 8 3/4 % and Wells Fargo sold $1.3 billion at 8 5/8%, plus underwriting fees.
“Below I offer up a few guesses of what other issuers would have to pay to issue preferred stock.
Lehman Brothers–11-13%.
Merrill Lynch–11-12%.
Morgan Stanley–9-10%.
Citigroup–9 1/2-10 1/2%.
CIT Group–12-15%.
Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac—15%
Keycorp–11-13%.
National City–13-15%.
Wachovia–10-12%.
Zions Bancorp–13-15%.
GM/GMAC–not possible.
Washington Mutual–not possible.
Ford–not possible.”
Bennet does note a good point. Banks that conserved capital and managed their risks well will be in good shape to take over weaker brethren. They will have access to the capital markets for the money they need for expansion. My own bank was acquired recently by another small regional bank. Deals are getting done.
In another note, and to illustrate this point, Sedacca points out that it is not just Freddie and Fannie. Besides Washington Mutual, mentioned above, “RF (Regions Financial) needs to raise $2 billion says Sanford Bernstein. Let’s see, what are their options? They can sell debt. The problem here is that you couldn’t sell debt if you wanted. The last reported trade in RF paper was 2 weeks ago nearly +700 to the 30 year or close to 12%. Their preferreds trade at 10% and the stock is now a ’single digit midget’ near $8 a share. So if you could even get a deal done, shareholders would get a 50% haircut.”
Fannie, Freddie, and the Credit Crisis
Let’s turn to Freddie and Fannie. There must be some people who think there is some way that the shareholders of Fannie and Freddie will not lose everything, as their shares actually trade. This just simply goes to show that you can fool some of the people some of the time. And as we will see, some of those people are very serious institutions.
It is almost a forgone conclusion that the US Treasury will have to step in and for all intents and purposes nationalize the two government-sponsored enterprises. The estimated losses in these two firms are far beyond what they could raise in a traditional market. And the longer the government waits, the worse the situation is likely to get.
Moody’s downgraded the preferred stock in these firms to almost junk level because of the increased likelihood of “direct support” from the US Treasury, which, depending on the nature of the support, could wipe out both the holders of the common and the preferred. The preferred shares have already lost half their value since June 30 on speculation that an intervention would mean a stop in dividend payments (highly likely) and issuance of new preferred that would take preference over current preferred.
Interestingly, this would put more pressure on the banking system, as many banks hold the GSE preferred shares as assets, choosing to get a little extra return over traditional and more conservative assets. But then of course, Fannie and Freddie preferred were considered safe just a few months ago, with the best ratings from Moody’s.
“Regional banks including Midwest Bank Holdings Inc., Sovereign Bancorp and Frontier Financial Corp., may have the most to lose. Melrose Park, Illinois-based Midwest has $67.5 million, or as much as 23 percent of its risk-weighted assets, in the preferred stock, while Philadelphia-based Sovereign owns about $623 million and Everett, Washington-based Frontier about $5 million.” (Bloomberg)
It is doubtful that banks which hold these assets have written them down yet, but with a downgrade they will almost certainly be forced to do so in the near future. For the record, Fannie Mae has 17 classes of preferred stock, with more than 600 million shares outstanding. Freddie Mac has 24 classes of preferred stock, with about 460 million shares outstanding. The existing shares are trading worse than junk bonds, paying 17-19%.
And it may be a total write-off. It is hard to imagine how Treasury Secretary Paulson, or a new Treasury Secretary next year, could put US taxpayer money into the companies at  risk without wiping out the current common and preferred shareholders. The justified outrage would be huge.
The basic problem is that without Freddie and Fannie the US mortgage market would go from crippled to moribund, if not dead. We have created a system that could not function in the short term without them, and the pain of allowing them to collapse would be another 1930s-style Depression, the era in which these firms were first created. They were never designed to take on the huge leverage they did, or to use hundreds of millions in lobbyist money and campaign contributions to create a massive payment scheme for management and shareholders. Congressional estimates are that this could cost US taxpayers $25 billion, a significant multiple of their current market caps.
Fannie and Freddie will not be able to raise capital on their own. At this point, why would any rational investor put that much money into a company with such a convoluted preferred share scheme, without government guarantees? That estimated loss assumes that the housing market does not get worse from this point. Losses could be much worse, or things could get better. Who knows? Why invest in something with so much uncertainty?
But there are more problems. You can’t just take someone else’s property, and that is what stock is, without some serious reasons. You almost are forced to wait for a crisis, otherwise shareholders would sue, saying that they suffered unnecessary losses. You can certainly expect the preferred shareholders to sue. That is why Paulson hired JP Morgan to figure out how to recapitalize the banks. I don’t envy the people who are working on that one. Maybe there is some magic somewhere, but as we saw with Bear Stearns, at the end of the day it is all about adequate capital.
The GSE companies should be adequately capitalized and broken up into much smaller firms that would not be too big too fail in the future, and put under a regulator that would enforce reasonable leverage limits, with the profits going to pay back the US taxpayer before any profits or dividends are paid to any other future owners.
That is, if the government takes the two GSEs and puts capital (probably in the form of loans and guarantees) into them, which puts taxpayers at risk, then allows a public offering of the smaller entities to raise capital to repay the loans, any shortfall should be made up by the issuance of preferred shares, and the common shareowners would wait until the government loan was repaid before they would be eligible for a dividend.
And the people responsible for creating the leveraged systems, the board, et al., should be forced to resign. New top management all around.
The ultimate goal should be for taxpayers to get their money back and any guarantee, implicit or explicit, to be removed. No mortgage bank should ever again be allowed to be too big too fail.
Now, taken as a part of the total credit crisis, which will run to over $1 trillion (at least), $25 billion may not seem like a lot. But I hope this is a wake-up call for better regulations and safeguards.
And before I go, let me reiterate my call for regulators to force banks to move their credit default swaps to an exchange. The potential for a blow-up is serious, and it could dwarf the current credit crisis. I am not saying it will happen, just that it could. Even a low-risk event should be protected against. Credit default swaps are legitimate business transactions. They are very useful. They should just be put on an exchange, like futures or options, where there is 100% transparency as to counterparty risk.
Baltimore, La Jolla, and South Africa
I am home for a few weeks, enjoying the tail end of summer. On September 6, Tiffani and I will head to Baltimore to be with Bill Bonner, founder of Agora Publishing, and a host of friends, to celebrate his 60th birthday. It is hard to believe that we have known each other for 26 years. What an incredible business model he has created. He has adapted with the times, letting his business evolve into a multi-hundred-million-dollar enterprise. I remember first going to his offices in Baltimore, which were definitely in a very bad part of town. I was nervous just walking two blocks in broad daylight; but the offices were inexpensive, I suppose.
He is the one of the best pure writers I know. You can read some of his essays and subscribe to the free Daily Reckoning (be warned: Bill is quite bearish) by clicking on this link: http://www.dailyreckoning.com/rpt/mauldin.html.
Tiffani and I will then be going to La Jolla September 15 to meet with my partners at Altegris, and meet some new potential associates. Right now, drinks with Richard and Faye Russell is on the calendar, and I really look forward to it.
Then a few weeks later I will head off on a quick trip to South Africa, where I will be speaking for an investment group in Cape Town, then maybe stop off in London for a day and then hurry home in time to do my regular letter.
That is enough to make me tired, so I think I will hit the send button and go home and see who is there. Have a great week.
Your needing to seek my own balance analyst,

John Mauldin
John@FrontLineThoughts.com
Copyright 2008 John Mauldin. All Rights Reserved

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National Debate on Alcohol Prohibition

The college presidents said they wanted a national debate on the 21-year-old drinking age. They got it.

For years, former Middlebury College President John McCardell has been criticizing the law, saying it only encourages binge drinking and pushes alcohol into the shadows.

But then McCardell quietly enlisted about 100 college presidents in a campaign calling for the drinking age to be reconsidered. After The Associated Press reported on the effort this week, the issue erupted into the biggest discussion on the subject in years — in blogs, over e-mail, in newspaper editorials and around office water coolers.

College presidents usually avoid contentious topics because alienating alumni and politicians poses big risks and offers few rewards. So it was big news when so many leaders of the nation’s best-known institutions signed on to McCardell’s “Amethyst Initiative,” named for the Greek gemstone said to ward off intoxication.

Supporters included presidents of private universities such as Duke, Dartmouth and Johns Hopkins, and public schools including Ohio State and the University of Maryland.

“No matter where you stand on this issue, it’s impossible to look at what has happened over the last three or four days and say this is a settled question,” McCardell said Friday in one of nearly a dozen scheduled media interviews.

“It’s also impossible to say the public isn’t ready to participate in the debate the presidents are calling for.”

Critics led by Mothers Against Drunk Driving got their view across, too, accusing the presidents of seeking to avoid the unpleasant work of cracking down on campus lawbreakers.

MADD marshaled critics, including the acting chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, who called changing the law “a terrible idea” that would “jeopardize the lives of more teens.”

Amid the backlash, two presidents — Robert Franklin of Morehouse College and Kendall Blanchard of Georgia Southwestern State — withdrew their support.

“We welcome an honest discussion and that begins with a clear discussion of the science,” MADD CEO Chuck Hurley said. “We are hopeful that that will be the focus going forward.”

More presidents join group
But at least 20 presidents have added their names this week, including the presidents of Montclair State in New Jersey and the University of Massachusetts system, bringing the total to at least 123.

“We’re not burying our head and trying to hide behind laws,” said Father Paul Locatelli, president of Santa Clara University in California, who meets personally with every student written up for alcohol infractions. “We’re trying to say, ‘What is the best way to approach this issue?’”

 

Dillion M134 Gatling Gun

Obama at the Saddleback Forum

To the question of when a child is considered human, Obama replied, “[The answer to that question is] above my pay grade.”

You want it succinctly?

Many people would respond to that by saying:  “Yes, and so is this job you’re applying for. Good day.”

A Catholic Case Against Barack (Pat Buchanan)

In the Pennsylvania primary, Barack Obama rolled up more than 90 percent of the African-American vote. Among Catholics, he lost by 40 points. The cool liberal Harvard Law grad was not a good fit for the socially conservative ethnics of Altoona, Aliquippa and Johnstown.

But if Barack had a problem with Catholics then, he has a far higher hurdle to surmount in the fall, with those millions of Catholics who still take their faith and moral code seriously.

For not only is Barack the most pro-abortion member of the Senate, with his straight A+ report card from the National Abortion Rights Action League and Planned Parenthood. He supports the late-term procedure known as partial-birth abortion, where the baby’s skull is stabbed with scissors in the birth canal and the brains are sucked out to end its life swiftly and ease passage of the corpse into the pan.
Partial-birth abortion, said the late Sen. Pat Moynihan, “comes as close to infanticide as anything I have seen in our judiciary.”

Yet, when Congress was voting to ban this terrible form of death for a mature fetus, Michelle Obama was signing fundraising letters pledging that, if elected, Barack would be “tireless” in keeping legal this “legitimate medical procedure.”

And Barack did not let the militants down. When the Supreme Court upheld the congressional ban on this barbaric procedure, Barack denounced the court for denying “equal rights for women.”

As David Freddoso reports in his new best-seller, “The Case Against Barack Obama,” the Illinois senator goes further than any U.S. senator has dared go in defending what John Paul II called the “culture of death.”

Thrice in the Illinois legislature, Obama helped block a bill that was designed solely to protect the life of infants already born, and outside the womb, who had miraculously survived the attempt to kill them during an abortion. Thrice, Obama voted to let doctors and nurses allow these tiny human beings die of neglect and be tossed out with the medical waste.

How can a man who purports to be a Christian justify this?

If, as its advocates contend, abortion has to remain legal to protect the life and health, mental and physical, of the mother, how is a mother’s life or health in the least threatened by a baby no longer inside her — but lying on a table or in a pan fighting for life and breath?

How is it essential for the life or health of a woman that her baby, who somehow survived the horrible ordeal of abortion, be left to die or put to death? Yet, that is what Obama voted for, thrice, in the Illinois Senate.

When a bill almost identical to the one Barack fought in Illinois, the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, came to the floor of the U.S. Senate in 2001, the vote was 98 to 0 in favor. Barbara Boxer, the most pro-abortion member of the Senate before Barack came, spoke out on its behalf:

“Of course, we believe everyone should deserve the protection of this bill. … Who could be more vulnerable than a newborn baby? So, of course, we agree with that. … We join with an ‘aye’ vote on this. I hope it will, in fact, be unanimous.”

Obama says he opposed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act because he feared it might imperil Roe v. Wade. But if Roe v. Wade did allow infanticide or murder, which is what letting a tiny baby die of neglect or killing it outright amounts to, why would he not want that court decision reviewed and amended to outlaw infanticide?

Is the right to an abortion so sacrosanct to Obama that killing by neglect or snuffing out of the life of tiny babies outside the womb must be protected if necessary to preserve that right?
Obama is an abortion absolutist. “I could find no instance in his entire career,” writes Freddoso, “in which he voted for any regulation or restriction on the practice of abortion.”

 

In 2007, Barack pledged that, in his first act as president, he will sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which would cancel every federal, state or local regulation or restriction on abortion. The National Organization for Women says it would abolish all restrictions on government funding of abortion.

What we once called God’s Country would become the nation on earth most zealously committed to an unrestricted right of abortion from conception to birth.

Before any devout Catholic, Evangelical Christian or Orthodox Jew votes for Obama, he or she might spend 15 minutes in Chapter 10 of Freddoso’s “Case Against Barack.” For if, as Catholics believe, abortion is the killing of an unborn child, and participation in an abortion entails automatic excommunication, how can a good Catholic support a candidate who will appoint justices to make Roe v. Wade eternal and eliminate all restrictions on a practice Catholics legislators have fought for three decades to curtail?

And which Catholic priests and prelates will it be who give invocations at Obama rallies, even as Mother Church fights to save the lives of unborn children whom Obama believes have no right to life and no rights at all?

---

Mr. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, “The Death of the West,”, “The Great Betrayal,” “A Republic, Not an Empire” and “Where the Right Went Wrong.”

Pelosi’s Politburo (CFIF)

No fair up-or-down votes on lifting Congressional bans on domestic oil drilling!
While the American people suffer from record-high gas prices, that is the message — loud and clear — from Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and her liberal colleagues!
In fact, Pelosi and Company are so dead set against alleviating the pain Americans are feeling at the pump that she hurriedly banged down the gavel, adjourned Congress and FLED from Washington for a five-week vacation.
And, when a group of conservative legislators tried to speak directly to the American people about the need for Congress to address our nation’s energy crisis before skipping town, Pelosi ACTUALLY turned off the microphones, shut off the cameras and turned out the lights!
Right now, many Americans can’t afford to go on vacation because of the high price of gasoline. But that didn’t stop Nancy Pelosi from taking her five-week summer recess.

In defense of her egregious actions, all she could do several days ago was rant:
“I’m trying to save the planet; I’m trying to save the planet. I will not have this debate trivialized by their excuses for their failed policy.”

“Trying to save the planet?” How many people will have to suffer before she declares the world safe?

And moreover, what “failed policy” is Pelosi talking about? President Bush and conservative legislators are calling for the REVERSAL of a 30-year policy of limiting domestic drilling. They are trying to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil by responsibly increasing our domestic supply.

How can a policy that hasn’t been implemented in 30 years be a “failed policy?” Is Pelosi that out of touch with the 70% of the American people who support more domestic drilling?
Well guess what? Pelosi and her minions might be able to run but they can’t hide (Members of Congress have fax machines in their district offices too).
And we’re not going to let Pelosi get away with her callous obstruction while Americans are suffering, in large part, because Pelosi objects to any and all new domestic drilling!

Despite what Nancy Pelosi may think, this is not the former-Soviet Union! Nancy Pelosi cannot single-handedly repress free speech and callously disregard the will of the American people.

She needs to be put in her place and told this is not the way things work in the United States of America!
President Bush has the power to call Congress back into session and Congressional leader have that power as well!

FW: Thanking You In Advance

 

A PAID POLITICAL ANNOUNCEMENT
BY SENATOR BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA (D-IL)
My fellow Americans,

As your future president I want to thank voters of all political stripes for their mindless support, despite my complete lack of any legislative achievement, my pastor’s ties with Louis Farrakhan and Libyan dictator Moamar Quadafi, and my blatantly liberal voting record while I present myself as some sort of bipartisan agent of change.

I also like how my supporters claim my youthful drug use and criminal behavior somehow qualifies me for the presidency after 8 years of claiming Bush’s youthful drinking disqualifies him. Your hypocrisy is a beacon of hope shining over a sea of political chicanery.

I would also like to thank the Kennedys for coming out in support of me.  There’s a lot of glamour behind the Kennedy name, even though JFK started the Vietnam War, his brother Robert illegally wiretapped Martin Luther King Jr., they both slept with Marilyn, and Teddy’s negligence caused the death of a young girl.  I’m not going anywhere near the Kennedy cousins, especially Michael Skakel.

And I’d like to thank Oprah Winfrey for her support.  Her love of meaningless empty platitudes will be the force that propels me to the White House.

Americans should vote for me, not because of my lack of experience or achievement, but because I make people feel good. White people who vote for me get some relief from their racist guilt.

I say things that sound meaningful but don’t really mean anything because Americans are tired of things having meaning.  If things have meaning, then that means you have to think.

Americans are tired of thinking.  It’s time to shut down the brain and open up the heart.

So when you go to vote in November, remember don’t think, just do.  And do it for me.

Thanking you in advance.

Barack Hussein Obama

One Brave Judge Resists Feminist Agenda

August 8, 2008by Phyllis Schlafly
A New Jersey judge recently confronted an issue that courts have been avoiding for years: are restraining orders constitutional? Accused criminals have “due process” and many other constitutional rights, but the feminists have persuaded many judges to issue orders that restrain actions of non-criminals and punish them based on flimsy, unproved accusations.
These restraining orders are issued without the due process required for criminal prosecutions, yet they carry the threat of a prison sentence for anyone who violates them.
Mr. and Mrs. Crespo were divorced and rearing their children in the same household when they had a fight, and Mrs. Crespo asked for a restraining order. Mr. Crespo was not charged with any crime, but the judge issued the restraining order, which banned him from his own house and thereby separated him from his kids.
Mr. Crespo made several good arguments that the New Jersey Prevention of Domestic Violence Act is unconstitutional. Judge Francis B. Schultz rejected most of those arguments, but he cited a long line of cases holding that “clear and convincing evidence” is required in order to take away fundamental rights (such as a parent’s right over the care and custody of his children).
The feminists are in an uproar about Judge Schultz’s decision and would like the New Jersey Supreme Court to reverse it. The feminists want courts to uphold a woman’s right to kick a man out of his home based on a woman’s unverified accusations.
Family courts are notorious for issuing restraining orders based on one woman’s unsupported request. The New Jersey Law Journal reported that an instructor taught judges to be merciless to husbands and fathers, saying, “Throw him out on the street, give him the clothes on his back, and tell him ‘See ya’ around.’ “
People have a better chance to prove their innocence in traffic court than when subjected to a restraining order. Too often, the order serves no legitimate purpose, but is just an easy way for one spouse to get revenge or the upper hand in a divorce or child custody dispute.
Once a restraining order is issued, it becomes nearly impossible for a father to retain custody or even get to see his own children. That is the result even though the alleged domestic violence (which doesn’t have to be physical or proven) did not involve the children at all.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently agreed to hear another case, U.S. v. Hayes, to decide whether an old misdemeanor domestic violence conviction can bar a man from ever owning a gun. Everyone agrees that convicted felons should not have guns, but misdemeanors are minor offenses that usually carry no jail time.
Under feminist pressure, most courts have interpreted federal law broadly to deprive millions of men of their gun rights. However, in the Hayes case, a 2-1 majority on the Fourth Circuit had the courage to stand up to the feminists and rule that Hayes had no fair warning that prosecutors would stretch the definition of domestic violence to include his minor offense.
Randy Edward Hayes had a dispute with his wife in 1994, pled guilty to misdemeanor battery, and served one year of probation. Ten years later, he was prosecuted for having a Winchester rifle in his West Virginia home.
Why are men with clean histories except for one domestic dispute punished like hardened criminals who mug strangers on the street? The answer is that the feminist agenda calls for domestic-violence laws to punish husbands and fathers above and beyond what can be proven in court under due-process procedures.
When Senator Dianne Feinstein voted for the federal law prohibiting a man from owning a gun if he has a domestic violence conviction, she stated, “It is an unfortunate fact that many domestic violence offenders are never convicted of a felony. Outdated or ineffective laws often treat domestic violence as a lesser offense…. Plea bargains often result in misdemeanor convictions for what are really felony crimes.”
In other words, Senator Feinstein wants to pretend a man is a felon even if he is not. That’s the feminist anti-male agenda.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this year in District of Columbia v. Heller that we all have a fundamental constitutional right to own and use a gun. We will soon see how serious the Court is in defending our Second Amendment right.
It’s time to restore basic constitutional rights to husbands and fathers by repudiating the feminist agenda that considers men guilty unless proven innocent.

“You May Be A Muslim if……”

  
  
 
1. You refine heroin for a living, but you have a moral objection to beer.
 
2. You own a $3,000 machine gun and $5,000 rocket launcher, but you can’t afford shoes.
 
3. You have more wives than teeth.
 
4. You wipe your butt with your bare left hand, but consider bacon ‘unclean.’
 
5. You think vests come in two styles: bullet-proof and suicide.
 
6. You can’t think of anyone you HAVEN’T declared Jihad against.
 
7. You consider television dangerous, but routinely carry explosives in yo ur clothing.
 
8. You were amazed to discover that cell phones have uses other than setting off roadside bombs.
 
9. You’ve often uttered the phrase, ‘I love what you’ve done with your cave.’
 
10. You have nothing against women and think every man should own at least one.
 
11. You bathe at least monthly whether necessary or not.
 
12. You have a crush on your neighbor’s goat.

Plausible Deniability

Obama’s attempts to inoculate himself from criticism that he lacks requisite experience to be POTUS ended in a backfire this week as McCain answered a local tv news reporter’s question of whether he thinks Obama is engaging in race demagoguery. McCain answered perfunctorily, “Yes, I’m sorry to say that he is and there is no place for that…” Obama quickly distanced himself from any notions that he was suggesting McCain is a racist and acceded the opinion that McCain is in fact not a racist.

If nothing else, this is a lesson of the power of insinuation:  In the case Obama was not confronted, he would have had the power of suggestion working to achieve his ends (of undermining his opponent). Since Obama was confronted, however, and since Obama was unwilling to come out and say that he thinks his opponent is of poor character,  Obama was able to take the plausible deniability route. Tom Daschle, in his apologetics this week on Chris Wallace’s Fox Sunday show, articulated the same. Namely, that Obama said no such thing and that he cannot be accused of launching baseless ad hominem attacks against John McCain.

Considering that Obama’s platform is supposedly a racially conciliatory one, the gesticulation and innuendo surrounding the dollar bill comment came across as intellectually dishonest and frankly, wearisome. Blacks are voting +- 95% for Obama. Therefore liberals don’t have a leg to stand on when decrying their favorite villain – i.e., white particularism.

Are Bloggers Pundits or Operatives?

Patrick Ruffini

Posted: 03 Aug 2008 10:15 AM CDT

The credentialing process by the RNC-COA and the DNCC couldn’t be a starker reminder of the differences between the right and left-blogospheres. While the Republicans are making a big deal about the blogosphere being on par with mainstream media, the Democrats are treating their bloggers like activists, seating many of them on the floor with their respective delegations.

In Minneapolis, the biggest hiccup is the eye-popping prices Qwest is charging for media/blogger hard wire access inside the hall (53 grand for gigabit ethernet anyone?). In Denver, it’s handing out credentials as if they were patronage positions.

The stereotype is almost perfect. Conservative bloggers are content to act like pundits, while liberal bloggers are activists.

I think everyone should know where I come down on this debate. I am a (proud) partisan political operative first, and a blogger second. For someone with the day job that I have, it would be problematic to claim journalist status, so I steer clear of it.

But I also think that these distinctions are starting to become meaningless.

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With personal communication technologies evolving so quickly, anyone can be a little bit of a journalist. Heck, members of Congress are journalists too. And the barriers to activism are getting progressively lower. As bloggers, that means we are going to have to be a little bit more of everything.

With high interest in the political process and the vital role volunteers have played in political campaigns, the doors to activism have always been a little open. The net opens them further. But its effect is distinctly evolutionary. New people get involved to displace the old, and old-style operatives are quickly outsmarted. But the ethos is pretty much the same: winning at all costs.

The net’s effect on journalism is revolutionary. Doors that were only firmly shut are now wide open. We see this in the financial collapse of old media, and in new media operations starting to become profitable. We struggle with the question of “Who is a journalist?” in the endless debate over shield laws because it’s increasingly become impossible to define.

To me, the ideal role of a blogger — and the one that I strive for — is melding the first-hand knowledge of politics that comes from being a professional activist with the intellectual honesty and rigor we typically associate with good political analysis.

People who approach politics solely as observers and not practitioners tend to be a little bit more naive about the process. They tend to apply their own filters of good and bad without assessing the political realities. Sure, it would be a good thing to some if Jindal or Palin or even Romney were the VP. But the political realities largely preclude it (doesn’t need it; first-termer from Alaska; and didn’t win a primary outside his home states). Or, on the other side, they get morally outraged about effective and necessary ads like “Call Me Harold” or “Celeb.”

At the same time, you can’t be a shill. My blogging would be a whole lot less interesting if I were a total McCain hack. I’m not going to tell you things are coming up roses in November or all is well with the right now (though I’ll occasionally play the contrarian on this when events warrant).

I find that a good role for a blogger is that of an activist who is candid about the political realities and uses blogging as a tool to effect change, not simply to explain the present or regurgitate breaking news. I don’t blog unless I feel like I can accomplish some larger objective — whether it’s knocking down a meme I find to be hugely mistaken, creating an intellectual framework for the future of the party, or rewarding extraordinarily good works and hopefully elevating the good guys in internal party battles. There’s a reason why we call it The Next Right. It’s using blogging as a tool to lead in a specific direction, not a sarcastic look in the rear view mirror.

Man showed severed head to bus passengers

Aug 1 2008 Media Wales

A bus passenger calmly stabbed another man dozens of times and decapitated him, pausing briefly to display the head to horrified passengers, witnesses in Canada said.

Passengers fled the bus in panic, and police said later their quick evacuation may have prevented the killer from turning on others.

A 40-year-old man, who was not identified, was arrested for the murder on the bus, which was travelling from Edmonton, Alberta, to Winnipeg, Manitoba, police said.

Police apprehended the man when he broke a window and tried to escape from the bus by jumping out, a spokesman said.

Authorities declined to name the victim and provided little details about the stabbing.

Passengers said the attacker did not seem to know the victim, who appeared to be about 19 years old, and that he wore sunglasses throughout the attack although it was the middle of the night.

Passenger Garnet Caton said the victim was sleeping with headphones on before he was stabbed 40 or 50 times by the man sitting next to him.

“We heard this bloodcurdling scream and turned around, and the guy was standing up, stabbing this guy repeatedly, like 40 or 50 times,” Mr Caton said.

He said the bus stopped and the passengers scrambled to disembark while the suspect allegedly began methodically carving up the man’s body.

The attacker severed the man’s head with a large hunting knife and held the head up by the door for others to see.

“When he was attacking him, he was calm… like he was at the beach,” Mr Caton said. “There was no rage or, or anything. He was just like a robot stabbing the guy.”

He added that the attacker eventually tried to get off the bus, but that he, the driver and a passing trucker who had stopped to help, threw their weight against the door to prevent the man from leaving.

When the attacker appeared to be attempting to start up the bus and drive away, the bus driver went to the rear of the bus and disabled it, Mr Caton said.

Fellow passenger Cody Olmstead said the man “dropped the head and went back and started cutting the body back up.”

Greyhound spokeswoman Abby Wambaugh said 37 passengers and one driver were on the bus.

Obama Cannot Keep Running On Narcissism

By GEORGE F. WILL | Posted Friday, August 01, 2008 4:30 PM PT

As the presidential candidates enter the three-month sprint to November, Barack Obama must be wondering: If that did not do it, what will?

The antecedent of the pronoun “that” is his Berlin speech. The antecedent of the pronoun “it” is assuage anxieties about his understanding of the need to supplement soft power (diplomacy) with hard power (military force).

He spoke in Berlin at the bullet-scarred base — it was in the crossfire 63 years ago as Russian troops neared Hitler’s bunker about a mile away — of an 1873 monument to German militarism. To be precise, the monument celebrates the Franco-Prussian War and lesser triumphs of the militarism that would help ruin the next century.

Anyway, at that monument Obama exhorted Germans — does the candidate of “change” appreciate how much beneficent change made this exhortation necessary? — to be more willing to wage war, in Afghanistan. He was right to do so.

But polls taken since his trip abroad do not indicate that Obama succeeded in altering the oddest aspect of this presidential campaign: Measured against his party’s surging strength in every region and at every level, he is dramatically underperforming.

Surely this fact is related to anxieties about his thin resume regarding national security matters, the thinnest of any major party nominee since Wendell Wilkie’s in 1940. But the fact also might be related to fatigue from too much of Obama’s eloquence, which is beginning to sound formulaic and perfunctory.

Even an eloquent politician can become, as Benjamin Disraeli described William Gladstone, “a sophistical rhetorician inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity.”

John Kennedy said in Berlin, “Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.” That half-baked and badly written thought was either trivial because it was tautological (when one man is enslaved, not every man is free) or it was absurd (when one man is not free, no man is free).

That absurdity is dangerous because it makes a grandiose mission seem imperative, as in President George W. Bush’s second inaugural address: “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands.”

Sugary Rhetoric

Does Obama have the sort of adviser a candidate most needs — someone sufficiently unenthralled to tell him when he has worked one pedal on the organ too much? If so, Obama should be told: Enough, already, with the we-are-who-we-have-been-waiting-for rhetorical cotton candy that elevates narcissism to a political philosophy.

And no more locutions such as “citizen of the world” and “global citizenship.” If they meant anything in Berlin, they meant that Obama wanted Berliners to know that he is proudly cosmopolitan. Cosmopolitanism is not, however, a political asset for American presidential candidates.

Least of all is it an asset for Obama, one of whose urgent needs is to seem comfortable with America’s vibrant and very un-European patriotism, which is grounded in a sense of virtuous exceptionalism.

Otherwise, “citizen of the world” and “global citizenship” are, strictly speaking, nonsense. Citizenship is defined by legal and loyalty attachments to a particular political entity with a distinctive regime and culture. Neither the world nor the globe is such an entity.

In Berlin, Obama neared self-parody with a rhetoric of Leave No Metaphor Behind. “Walls”? Down with them. “Bridges”? Build new ones between this and that. “A new dawn”? The Middle East deserves one.

And Berlin was the wrong place to vow to “remake the world once again.” Modern Berlin rose from rubble that was the result of the last attempt at remaking “the world.”

Of course, from Obama, such tropes, although silly, are not menacing, any more than they were from Ronald Reagan, who was incorrigibly fond of perhaps the least conservative, and therefore the most absurd, proposition ever penned by a political philosopher, Thomas Paine’s “we have it in our power to begin the world over again.”

No. We. Don’t.

The world is a fact, and facts are indeed stubborn things. After eight years, if such there are, of an Obama presidency, if such there is, the world will look much as it does today — if we are lucky.

Swift and sweeping changes are almost always calamitous consequences of calamities — often of wars, sometimes of people determined to “remake the world.” Wise voters — polls might be telling us that there are more of them than Obama imagines — hanker for candidates whose principal promise is that they will do their best to muddle through without breaking too much crockery.

© 2008 Washington Post Writers Group

The Toughest Test?

By INVESTOR’S BUSNESS DAILY | Posted Friday, August 01, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Education: A private takeover of L.A.’s infamous Locke High may already be starting to turn it around. Success here would send a message to other failing schools: You’ve run out of excuses.

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Readers of these pages may recall Alain Leroy Locke High School, in the Watts area of Los Angeles. Now and then it’s in the news — we’ve mentioned it before — and invariably the news seems bad.

In 2005, a 15-year-old student was killed there by gunfire from a gang shootout. Earlier this year, Locke was the scene of a melee involving about 600 students, apparently sparked by a fight between rival graffiti gangs. Its dropout rate is among the worst.

One of Locke’s recent principals said he gave up trying to turn it around when he realized it was being used as a dumping ground for incompetent teachers from elsewhere in the vast L.A. school system.

You could hardly come up with a more dismal history or less-promising material for a turnaround. That’s why the private takeover of Locke, which officially started this summer, is potentially so important to the cause of school reform.

If Locke can be whipped into shape, probably any public school could be. And the public school establishment would have no more excuses for failure.

Green Dot Public Schools, a nonprofit group that operates a dozen smaller charter schools in L.A., won the right to operate Locke last year after parents at the school got fed up and demanded real change.

The takeover process wasn’t smooth. Green Dot, run by Rock-the-Vote founder Steve Barr, was opposed by the city’s teacher union, United Teachers Los Angeles, and had to wait until enough reform-minded school board members were elected to loosen the UTLA’s grip on the district.

The Locke takeover is significant not just because it’s such a challenge, but also because it could refute one of the last remaining plausible arguments against charter schools — that they “succeed” mainly through self-selection, by attracting the most motivated parents and kids.

Locke is a traditional public school. Students go there not because they choose it, but because they live nearby. It is the first such L.A. school to be taken over as a charter by an outside group.

So what is Green Dot doing to change things at Locke? One type of reform is structural. The school, which has about 2,600 students in all, is being reorganized into smaller academies of a few hundred students each to help ensure personalized attention and a safe environment.

On the teaching side, Green Dot has cleaned house. Of the 120 teachers at Locke in the past school year, only 40 are coming back. Others have left voluntarily or were asked to leave.

The new staff is unionized, but it’s not under UTLA. Green Dot teachers have their own union and their own contract that offers competitive pay and relatively small class sizes — but no tenure. It’s a deal designed for teachers who want to improve, not just hang on until retirement.

Then there are the little things, which may turn out to be not so little. Locke students wear uniforms. Rules on tardiness are strictly enforced. This summer, at least, the atmosphere is orderly and few of the students are challenging the new rules.

Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez visited the campus recently and talked with students and teachers who see dramatic change. One teacher showing him around campus “suddenly stops and points to something that can’t be seen. ‘Serenity,’ he says.”

Lopez also notes that the summer session, with only about 700 students, is a quieter time than the regular term. Come fall, Green Dot will get its real test. If it passes, the big-city school bureaucracy will have a hard time explaining why it can’t duplicate the winning formula.

Yes, Barr has some private money, from sources such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to augment the public charter-school funds. But the Gateses and other reform-focused philanthropists would jump at the chance to help any public school like Locke that is trying something that works. So money is no excuse.

Nor can UTLA dismiss Barr as a union-buster. The Green Dot contract shows that UTLA’s way isn’t the only way to fairly represent teachers. Any public school has the legal right to impose meaningful dress codes and enforce basic rules of order and discipline.

Why don’t they do so now? Good question. We hope Green Dot succeeds in forcing more schools to confront it.

 

Border Order

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, August 01, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Immigration: A new study showing fewer illegal aliens bolsters the case for putting enforcement first. What we’re seeing is the necessary first stage of reform.

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Americans have grown so used to hearing about the rising tide of illegal immigration that they may simply not believe the latest news on the subject — that the number of illegals in the U.S. appears to have fallen, and by quite a lot.

That’s the conclusion of a study released last week by the Center for Immigration Studies, which estimated that 1.3 million illegal immigrants have left this country since Congress gave up on a “comprehensive” reform bill a year ago. Many were deported, but the CIS says most went back home on their own.

The CIS has long pushed for tougher immigration law, and its study will be criticized by those who don’t share the think tank’s pro-enforcement views. But the CIS isn’t alone in noticing the downturn. The Pew Hispanic Center also sees evidence of an outflow, though it has not tried to gauge its size. Observers close to the border also see a shift in the tide.

A Tucson, Ariz., clergyman who delivers water to migrants making the trek across the desert told the Associated Press, “Without doubt, people have left, and without question fewer people are coming.”

As to the question of why so many people are leaving, the CIS makes the case that enforcement, not the economic downturn, triggered the trend. The center’s research director, Steve Camarota, explains: “The drop-off in illegal immigration seems to occur (in the data) before there is a run-up in their unemployment rate.”

If the CIS’ conclusions hold up, they will help vindicate the Bush administration’s turn to an enforcement-first policy, both on the border and at workplaces. This wasn’t the way the president was originally headed, but he and Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff deserve credit for taking their new mission seriously once they accepted it.

As for the current presidential contenders, the new data should help clarify the difference between John McCain, who has come around to backing enforcement first, and Barack Obama, who still opposes it.

But even Obama might soon realize that enforcement doesn’t get in the way of the comprehensive reform that he (like McCain) wants to see.

As we’ve said before, successful enforcement makes reform more achievable. It restores a sense of order, quiets hysteria on both sides and gives Americans hope that the problem can finally be solved.

 

Obamanomics Flunks The Test

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, August 01, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Election ‘08: Barack Obama the lawyer-organizer could use a crash course in economics. His economic plan’s assumptions, based on long-discredited Marxist theories, are wildly wrongheaded.

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IBD Series: The Audacity Of Socialism

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In arguing for a heavier mix of government, he assumes that capitalism unfairly favors the rich, almost exclusively so, and fails to spread prosperity.

“The rich in America have little to complain about,” he carps. “The distribution of wealth is skewed, and levels of inequality are now higher than at any time since the Gilded Age.”

Obama cites data showing a yawning gap between the income of the average worker and the wealthiest 1%. He thinks it’s government’s job to step in and close it — “for purposes of fairness” — by soaking the rich, among other leftist nostrums.

“Between 1971 and 2001,” he complains, “while the median wage and salary income of the average worker showed literally no gain, the income of the top hundredth of a percent went up almost 500%.”

But such a snapshot comparison would be meaningful only if America were a caste society, in which the people making up one income group remained static over time.

Of course that’s not the case. The composition of the rich and poor in this country is in constant flux, as the income distribution changes dramatically over relatively short periods. Few are “stuck” in poverty, or have a “lock” on wealth.

Obama would discover this if only he’d put down his class-warfare manuals and look closely at the IRS’ own data.

Take those megarich he vilifies — the top hundredth of a percent. According to a recent Treasury study, three-fourths of them in 1996 fell out of the group by 2005.

Meanwhile, more than half of those in the bottom income group in 1996 moved to a higher income group by 2005, with more than 5% leapfrogging to the richest quintile.

(It’s no fluke: The same high degree of income mobility is seen in prior comparable periods, as well.)

Some poor moved up through personal effort, while many rode an expanding economy. Real median incomes of all taxpayers rose 24%, but the poor registered the biggest gains of all.

President Kennedy understood that a growing economy is like a rising tide that “lifts all boats.” Obama, on the other hand, thinks some are lifted and others lowered, as if the economy were a system of locks operated by a cabal of evil capitalists.

He also fails to understand how taxes change behavior. He thinks raising taxes on the most productive members of society won’t “curb incentives to work or invest.” Even TV news anchor Charlie Gibson knows better.

During a primary debate, the ABC host took Obama to task for proposing a doubling in the capital gains tax. History shows, he pointed out, that raising the cap gains rate actually ends up costing the government revenues.

Obama just didn’t get it. “Well, Charlie,” he argued, “what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.”

Forget growth and revenues. Let’s just punish those “greedy” investors. It’s the same Marxist reasoning behind his plan to repeal the Bush tax cuts: The rich must be made to pay their “fair” share, Obama asserts.

Never mind that the top 1% of taxpayers already pay 38% of the total tax burden, according to recent IRS data, while the bottom 50% bear just 3% of the load.

Obama’s economic plan also calls for mandating a “living wage.” He plans to saddle retailers with a $10 minimum wage indexed to inflation, along with a mandate to provide seven days of paid sick leave to workers.

Obama assumes business owners will just eat the added costs.

But restaurants, the nation’s second-largest private-sector employer, already operate on razor-thin profit margins. Faced with such mandatory paid benefits, they’ll have no choice but to cut staff.

In fact, the last major minimum-wage increase cost the restaurant industry more than 146,000 jobs, the National Restaurant Association says, while restaurant owners put off plans to hire an additional 106,000 employees.

So Obama would get his wage-and-benefits mandate, but lose jobs in an industry that employs the very minorities Obama claims he’s trying to help.

“If restaurateurs had their way, every lawmaker would run a small business before starting to legislate,” the industry opined in a recent press release.

Lawmakers aren’t the only ones. Leftist presidential candidates also could benefit from such a mandate.

 

Politics on Autopilot

I have to admit I’m not very inspired by our choices for POTUS in ‘08, but I am motivated to vote by two things: 1. Fear and 2. Resentment.

I will vote McCain in November because:  1. I fear what an Obama Presidency will mean for this nation and for my future. 2. I resent the great and seemingly ever-increasing political pressure applied by the p.c. tools surrounding me.

It is beyond question that an Obama Presidency would result in two particularly noteworthy things: 1. A miscegenation explosion. 2. A great expansion of the powers of the federal government.

I’ll leave it up to you to decide the merits of either of these outcomes.

At any rate, this election is not about the issues (as stated or implied). It’s about what Baby Boomers think they can get away with. They think if they can use Red Herrings like environmentalism and Iraq and appeals to pathos such as using people without healthcare in America (oh yea, many of those are not citizens!) as pawns to lobby for Socialized medicine - because people really want to go to Europe or the Third World or Canada to see a doctor – they can avoid or derail any discussion about the unfunded entitlements crises with supercilious mocking or simply, hystrionics.

Ask nearly any Baby Boomer and they (sorry bad grammar) will tell you that they don’t have to deal with the fact that Medicare and Social Security can’t pay for themselves because they’ve paid into these programs their whole lives and they deserve their returns for the same. Unfortunately, the fact that Social Security is a ponzi scheme which will bankrupt my generation and reduce America to a second rate power before I become a grandfather is of no import to the Baby Boomers because they can’t be troubled with such minutia.

But this election is not about government budgets either. In fact, the one thing we never talk about in American politics is what [secretly] drives most if not all of our political decisions. The jobs market. Liberals want to enforce Affirmative Action, to seize power and oppress, vex and humiliate the white man into servile compliance, mocking and provoking him every step of the way. Conservatives want to be left alone to truck barter and trade – i.e., to get on with it.

Liberals want to make government bigger, bleed the white man dry (to take everything including his dignity – nothing is sacred) and enforce rules of political correctness (white compliance). Conservatives want to make government smaller and increase personal freedoms and thereby collective prosperity. I can’t think of much more to say on this matter without [caterwauling].