I will bring two examples from my personal life.  I got in to a “debate” regarding abortion with two of my room mates in college.  I presented them with a basic fact about the amount of time before a hearbeat can be sensed in utero.  I was arguing with someone who was taking some science classes, in the hope of one day going to school with a physicians assistant, and a hopeful environmental law major.  I am a communications major.  I was told that I could not possibly be correct, I was ignorant, and that I was an opinionated idiot.  I was yelled at for an extended period, while I calmly sat listening.  Then, before saying anything, I looked up the fact that I had cited, and showed it to them.  This infuriated them, “Why won’t you just leave me alone, I don’t want to argue with you!”  This despite the fact that they had just yelled at me for several minutes for my own beliefs.  They were allowed to lay out their own argument, but to respond was offensive to them.  

This happened to me again last night and this morning.  The question was raised “How could he possibly not believe in global warming?”  Would I be given an oppertunity to respond to this?  Of course not.  I could be told that I was dead wrong, by people who know nothing of the facts of the issue, one that I have researched at length.  I first stopped believing in global warming when I was in college.  I, like most people, was a staunch believer in the pseudo-scientific theory of global warming.  Then I went to a lecture, by a professor at the University of Michigan, that was made to lay out the proof of man-made global warming.  I did not stop believing while reading a piece by someone attempting to dispel the myth, I stopped believing in a lecture about the evidence of global warming by a professor at one of the most respected research institutions in the world.  But if you attempt to even broach the subject to a global warming zealot, it is not even worth their time to consider what you have to say.  People who simply do not care enough to delve in to the issue themselves, will continue to base the decision of selecting the leaders of the free world, largely based upon their assumptions.  With no rational thought behind their decision. 

This is a huge problem in America.  Yes, there is a political divide in this country NO it is not a bad thing.  A healthy debate once in a while will make you see the other side of the debate.  That is the point of this.  Arguments are a good thing.  Arguments are how decisions are made in a democracy, they are a fundamental part of their proper function.  But Americans today are scared to death to listen to someone who doesn’t agree with them, because they might change their mind on an important issue, but this isn’t a bad thing.  I know lots of casual conservatives and liberals unable to befriend people who don’t agree with them.  But some of my best friends are liberals.  And having an intelligent debate with a liberal is something that I relish.  And, believe it or not, my mind has been changed during arguments in the past.  But I am willing to make that change.  Try it some time, it might actually expand your mind a little bit.

Would you like a true conservative in the White House?  Someone who will run a better campgain against Obama than did John McCain?  Here is the man for the job, and this is the first step, so as to build name recognition.

Update:  I can admit when I am wrong.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15616.html

  I would like to open this post by congratulating president elect Barack Obama.  Whether or not you think the man was the right choice for president, the American people have once again made history by electing our first black president.  It is a step forward for race relations, indeed.  Although, on MSNBC I was assured by one pundit election night that we are still a bunch of racists.  But I digress, Congrats Obama, and good luck.

  Now I would like to address conservatives.  Some of you are wondering what has happened.  I know one of my readers believes himself to have happily escaped to Bangkok just in time.  I think that this is very good for conservatives.  Remember, we did not get Ronald Reagan when we were in power.  And the very conservative Republican revolution came under the watch of Slick Willy.  The GOP has truly become lost over the last 8 years, and it was time for a wake up call.

  Steve Laffey, a conservative who turned the city of Cranston, Rhode Island around after retiring from business, ran against Lincoln Chafee in the Rhode Island Senate primary, and was attacked by a Washington Republican establishment that had become obsessed with keeping more seats in the party, at any cost, even if it was a Senator in Linc Chafee who sits to the left of most Democrats on capital hill.  Laffey was threatened by Elizabeth Dole and Karl Rove, before being viciously and dishonestly attacked by ads funded by the National Republican Senatorial Committee.  

  Republicans on capital hill were told that if they spoke out against the president’s spending sprees, they would lose funding from the national party when they vied for re-election.  This was a Rovian strategy, the belief that the most important thing was short term political gains.  The problem was that Republicans lost sight of how they came in to power, after 40 years as the minority, in the first place.  In 1994, for the first time ever, candidates for the House of Representatives from one party ran wih a common platform.  The Contract with America was not about earmarks, or winning your district by making promises that would benefit only you, but was designed with the good of the country in mind.  Republicans won in a big way, gaining 54 seats in the house, and the policies of the Contract with America were conservative policies.  

  Today the GOP has truly lost its way.  Fiscal conservatism is out the window (a balanced budget bill was part of the Contract with America).  John McCain proposed that the treasury buy the mortages of individuals who could not afford to pay their bills.  The Treasury Secretary under President Bush asked congress for $700 billion dollars for himself, without oversight, to go and “fix” our economy.  The current attitude in America is: “If I can’t afford it, the government will buy it for me.”  It is estimated that the government will borrow $1.4 trillion this year.  Remember, this is a government that didn’t have a federal income tax for nearly it’s first 100 years, the first (3%) tax was to pay for the Civil War.  This tax was temporary, and eliminated 11 years later.  The first peace time tax in the United States (which was on less that 10% of the highest wage earners, and was only 2%) was passed in 1894.  In 1895, the Supreme Court actually found some types of taxes as unconstitutional.  But in 1913, we amended our Constitution to allow for a Federal income tax and have never looked back.

  Our current spending spree was not presided over by a “tax and spend” liberal president, but a “don’t tax, but spend a whole hell of a lot” Republican.  This election could just be the catalyst necessary to push the party back to its fiscally conservative ways.  The minority can fight against the spending of the majority, without worrying about ruffling the feathers of a Republican president.  

  I was also quite pleased with where the debate about many issues sits in America.  Obama ran on a platform of cutting taxes and cutting spending.  He was quoted saying that he had no plans to take peoples’ guns away.  Now, I know that there is a difference between what he says and does on these issues.  He supported the hand gun ban in DC, endorsed the Illinois handgun ban, and won’t cut business taxes, which needs to happen.  But the fact is this: conservatives have won the debate on these issues in America.  He had to say that he is going to cut taxes, cut spending, and let you keep your guns, he might not have won had he not taken these stances, and do not doubt these were stances he would take if he didn’t have to.

  Republicans lost, big.  But as a conservative, I honestly believe they deserved to lose big.  As it sits today, the GOP is not a truly conservative party.  In the indelible words of Dave Barry: “[The Republicans], once the party of small government, have become the party of war bungling, corruption tolerating, power lusting toads…” (of course he adds the other side of the problem, that the “Democrats are still, basically, the Democrats).  So, if you think as I do, there was not a good candidate to choose from in this election.  But I hope this drives the Republicans to nominate a better candidate in 2012.

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?
By Orson Scott Card

Editor’s note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.

An open letter to the local daily paper – almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President’s Men and thinking: That’s journalism.  You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn’t come out of nowhere.  It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan?  It’s a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor – which especially would help members of minority groups.  But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can’t repay?  They get into a house, yes, but when they can’t make the payments, they lose the house – along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it.  One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules.  The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans.  (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me.  It’s as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn’t there a story here?  Doesn’t journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout?  Aren’t you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal.  “Housing-gate,” no doubt.  Or “Fannie-gate.”

Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled “Do Facts Matter?” ( http://snipurl.com/457townhall_com] ): “Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago.  So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President.  So did Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury.”

These are facts.  This financial crisis was completely preventable.  The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was … the Democratic Party.  The party that tried to prevent it was … the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie.  Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What?  It’s not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?

Now let’s follow the money … right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate’s campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.

If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.

But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an “adviser” to the Obama campaign – because that campaign had sought his advice – you actually let Obama’s people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn’t listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.

You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.

If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.

If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.

There are precedents.  Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension – so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link.  (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth.  That’s what you claim you do, when you accept people’s money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie – that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans.  You have trained the American people to blame everything bad – even bad weather – on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth – even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that’s what honorable people do.  Honest people tell the truth even when they don’t like the probable consequences.  That’s what honesty means .  That’s how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one.  He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time – and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter – while you ignored the story of John Edwards’s own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all?  Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women.  Who listens to NOW anymore?  We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.

That’s where you are right now.

It’s not too late.  You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation’s prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama’s door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis.  You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe – and vote as if – President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats – including Barack Obama – and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans – then you are not journalists by any standard.

You’re just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it’s time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.

This article first appeared in The Rhinoceros Times of Greensboro, North Carolina, and is used here by permission.

“Bankruptcy punishes those who took excessive risks while preserving those aspects of a businesses that remain profitable.

In contrast, a bailout transfers enormous wealth from taxpayers to those who knowingly engaged in risky subprime lending. Thus, the bailout encourages companies to take large, imprudent risks and count on getting bailed out by government.”

AMEN

The Democrats, like I said, have come to the defense of Freddie Mae in the past, when Republicans knew there was a problem, and tried to fix it.  Perhaps existing regulation should be applied and enforced for Fannie and Freddi?  Instead of creating a bunch of new regulation.  In this, Republicans ask for a regulatory body to enforce the rules on Fannie and Freddie that the Dems of Congress fought to shield the organizations from.

  The debate between John McCain and Barack Obama highlighted many of their differences. For starters, just look at how each candidate describes spending: John McCain, drawing from what must be Olde English described a spending bill as “Festooned with Christmas ornaments,” while Obama, appealing to a younger crowd, described a “spending Orgy,” under Bush. There were no knock out punches, and no votes were won. That is largely because of a lack of knowledge that many have people about foreign affairs. Obama is lucky for that, since he doesn’t seem too up on the topic himself, nor was his characterization of the current financial crisis facing the United States nearly correct.

  One topic where Obama’s knowledge seems to be woefully inept is that of the situation faced by Pakistan’s president. McCain kind of sort of jumped on Obama for this, saying that he doesn’t seem to know that Pakistan was a failed state when Mushareef took control. McCain was right, but it goes much deeper than this. Mushareef had little control over the country, and certainly none over the mountainous region that borders Afghanistan. If he had ordered his generals to march in to that region, they would have refused, and likely staged a coup (something that has happened many times in Pakistan). If, by some miracle, they listened to him, his military would be slaugtered. All of a sudden, it is like Obama wants to sound like a hard liner, but he isn’t a very good one. He threatens countries like Pakistan, and talks about sitting down with the President of Iran. This entire exchange demonstrates a breathtaking lack of understanding about foreign powers on the part of the Democratic nominee.

  Obama has also tried, along with other Liberal pundits, to blame the current financial crisis on a lack of regulations. Let’s get a couple of things straight right now. If it was a lack of regulations causing this, then why are European banks, strapped down by regulations, facing the same problems? In fact, it was Clinton administration pressure on banks which forced Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to create the market for sub-prime loans. Launching an investigation in to the two companies, claiming they were racially discriminatory, the administration pressured them to move much of their portfolio to mortgages aimed at lower income families (recommending that 50% of mortgages be to lower and middle income families). Then Freddie Mae was taken over by one of the White House Budget directors under Clinton, Franklin Raines.

  He was able to continue this Clinton Administration social experiment, create the disaster that we now face, and leave with $100,000,000 in his pocket. He was also able to line the pockets of other Clinton officials, including Jaime Gorelick (an aide to Janet Reno), according to a September 15 Investor’s Business Daily article . And now that Clinton Administration regulations, in the form of an expansion of Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act, have caused a meltdown of the credit industry, liberals are saying: “Proof we need more regulations!”

  Also of note, a New York Times article article written in May of 2001, said that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were being attacked by Republicans, but were being bravely defended by Democrats. Thanks guys! The aforementioned Clinton Administration regulations were recognized as creating a market doomed to fail. This was pointed out by a Bush aide, Gregory Mankiw. At that time, Capital Hill Republicans were trying to fix this, once again, this was over 7 years ago, but the same Democrats that are slinging blame in this crisis today, prevented any action from being taken!

  Obama is wrong. He is wrong about regulation. And he is wrong about Pakistan. And we are talking about being wrong on a scary level. But in the words of the Great Communicator, Ronald Reagan: “Never underestimate the intelligence of the American people, nor overestimate the amount of information they have.” I have complete faith that the American people, as they are presented with more and more information about him, will refuse to elect Barack Obama.

  For those who don’t keep up on Spiegel.de, the German newspaper has declared that the foundations of American capitalism are shattered!  And you can see what they mean.  An executive branch run by a Republican president (once the party of small government in America) has bailed out two giant lending firms and a large insurance firm, now Bush is expected to announce a plan to bail out more banks that are holding bad loans.  And John McCain is one of the few actually speaking out about it, I don’t usually agree with the man, but by God, he is right.

  If you are to believe Politico.com, this could cost $1 trillion.  You read that correctly a trillion.  That is a LOT of money.  So why are these businesses in such bad shape?  Let’s start with AIG, their situation is a little simpler than some others.  AIG’s current sticky situation is explained beautifully in an article at Fool.com, (“AIG’s Failure Is So Much Bigger Than Enron,” Sullivan, Andrew; September 17, 2008) but here are the Cliffs Notes: 

  AIG invested a large amount of money in the stock market, this isn’t neccessarily a bad thing, you can make a lot of money in the stock market.  And that is exactly what AIG did…for a while.  From 1998 until a short time ago, AIG grew at a backbreaking pace.  Meanwhile competitors such as Markel, Berkshire Hathaway, Montpelier, Traveler’s, and others grew steadily but much more slowly, investing mainly in a much more secure (and slower growing) bond market.  They operated under the idea that at any time, an insurance company should be ready to weather a storm of insurance claims (such as when a big storm hits).  AIG, it seems, operated under the assumption that it would never have to honor a large number of claims at once.  See why this might be a bad thing?  

  AIG also had an asset to equity ratio of 11 to 1, when the aforementioned insurance companies held no more than a 4 to 1 ratio, AIG simply was not ready for two things to happen at once: a disaster in the middle of a stock market slump.  They had too much debt for the amount of equity in the company. This is just a bad business plan for any insurance company.  If you don’t have the money to honor a large number of your claims, you are inviting disaster.  

  That ratio is referred to as leverage, and is a big part of why a lot of large lenders failed, as well.  That and a little mentioned, Clinton amdinistration action, which put Jimmy Carter’s Community Redevelopment Act in overdrive.  Many loans, that have been referred to as “predatory” by polticians, came about as a result of this policy, which created the market for subprime lending.  

  Then Clinton Administration officials helped to steer these companies in to the ground (ie Franklin Delano Raines, White House Budget Director turned Fannie Mae CEO) by taking on more and more of these high risk mortgages, in what was, plain and simple, a Clinton Administration social experiment.  On the bright side, Raines did OK, he left in 2005 with $100,000,000 in his pocket, he definitely deserved that compensation package, since we have seen that he set the company up for success well in to the future.

  All of this hit home at the same time.  And this has caused a panic among investors.  Resulting in a domino effect bringing down the rest of the market.  As a result, even good lenders and good insurance companies and good companies in every industry, have been abandoned by investors, driving down their stock value. (hint: that means it is a great time to buy)  But these companies, through sound business practices, were ready for this thrashing, and will come out stronger.

  This is the silver lining.  Much as we did at the end of the Great Depression, we will learn much from this crisis.  In the words of the Motley Fool’s Anand Chokkavelu and Brian Richards, “We’ve been through many financial crises together over the years, and we’ll get through this one. As Bill told us, mark this down as an ‘accidental victory for capitalism.’ There’s some cleansing going on in the markets. The dust will settle eventually. We don’t know when, or who the next headline-maker will be.”  And those companies that come out of this still intact will be those that had the most sound business practices. 

  This, however, can’t happen if the administration goes through with their current plan.  If the administration puts a band-aid on these companies, you can bet that this will happen again.  A cleansing of the market is what would actually prevent more of this in the future.  Look at Chrysler.  The government bailed them out when on the verge of bankruptcy.  What happened?  They have been poorly managed ever since, and the other Detroit auto makers followed suit…then asked for a bailout.  If Chrysler had been allowed to go under, do you think this might have been a wakeup call for GM and Ford?  I believe that was a big mistake, and has helped lead to the suffering of Michigan for years.  You create an incentive to take unneccessary risk when the government bails you out if things should go bad.

  So please, help the victims of bad insurance companies, who don’t deserve to lose everything because the insurance company they trusted had a bad CEO.  Just not the organizations.  But if you took out a loan you couldn’t afford, sorry.  I won’t cry for you.  And I won’t cry for chief executives who lined their own pockets through bad business practices.  And I know this is a stretch, but investors: for once, don’t panic.