BloggeRhythms 5/24/2012

It seems that every day now there’s another confirmation in the news of my belief that the best thing Mitt Romney can do for his campaign is to stay low key and let the POTUS keep burying himself. However, today’s item’s far beyond the scope of anything I imagined.

According to Fox News on-line, House democrat leader Nancy Pelosi -of all people- “just pulled her caucus well to the right of President Obama, as she dramatically broadened the scope of her proposal for extending the Bush-era tax cuts.”

Fox says “The White House, since Obama took office, has called for those tax rates to be extended only for households making less than $250,000 a year. The president wants the rates to expire for everybody else.” However, in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, Pelosi upped that threshold to $1 million, urging Boehner to schedule a vote "as early as next week" to extend the "middle-income tax cuts" which she apparently is defining as those affecting households that make less than $1 million.

I mention this today because, although I still think Pelosi’s one of the dumbest people on earth, she’s been a politician long enough to learn what needs to be done to survive in office. She’s also one of the most consistent party hacks there is and I doubt there’s much she wouldn’t do to promote her party line -up to and including vehemently touting the abominable health care bill she loved, though never even bothering to read it. Therefore, if she’s bucking her chief, she obviously senses he’s cooked and thus, won’t be around to get even after November. And I don’t think one could find a better predictor than that.

Along the same lines, but much a more subtle indication, Daniel Halper of the weeklystandard.com writes that the president’s campaign announced he’d headline a reception for 700 at the Hyatt Regency Denver at the Colorado Convention Center yesterday. General admission tickets started at $500 apiece, though a selected number of Gen44 and Grassroots tickets were available for $250. However, the campaign now says that only 550 people showed up.

So here we have two more indications of a presidential campaign that seems to be bleeding a little more each day although the election’s still six months away. Because despite that things haven’t even begun to heat up, the White House is already slinging as much mud as they can find. Meanwhile, the opposition hasn’t even really started to get nasty. Consequently, my guess is that by the time things truly count in the future, there isn’t going to be much of the POTUS left for Mitt Romney to go after. And to prove my point, you can go ask Nancy Pelosi, but I suspect we already know what she thinks.

That’s it for today folks.

Adios

BloggeRhythms 5/23/2012

Scanning channels yesterday, I came across an interview on Fox News of Mitch Daniels, Republican Governor of Indiana. He was in New York to receive the conservative Manhattan Institute's Alexander Hamilton Award because, according to them, “The institute selected the governor for his achievements in state government, including health-care improvements, landmark education reforms and fiscal responsibility."

Later in the day, Daniels caught my eye again as he was chatting with Stuart Varney of Fox Business News. And although I’d seen him in the past, he was another person I really didn’t know all that much about, so I looked him up on the web and here’s what I found out:

He began his first four-year term as governor on January 10, 2005, and was elected to his second term by an 18-point margin on November 4, 2008. Previously, he was the Director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget under George W. Bush. He was also formerly Senior Vice President of Ely Lilly and Company, Indiana's largest corporation, in charge of the corporation's business strategy and was widely speculated to be a candidate for President of the United States in 2012 before choosing not to run.

However, what interested me most was hearing his philosophy on extremely important subjects such as unemployment whereas his state was the number one job creator last month. And according to him, one of the most important aspects of his economic success was keeping taxes low. In fact, Indiana citizens will soon be getting a rebate because such a good job was done at managing to the budget.

And while talking with Varney, he also said, “The record of economic history is very clear. The countries that have rebounded the most swiftly from a bad situation, debt situation, did it by reducing spending, not by raising taxes. And the so-called stimulus experience we’ve just been through here, (is a) complete and abject failure by any measure, as if we needed any fresh evidence.”

I wanted to mention him today because here’s a highly successful business person who went out and applied his knowledge to trying to help his state. And by employing proven economic techniques and strategies he’s done exactly that. Consequently, his state’s growing rapidly while the federal government’s going backwards and wallowing in continually growing debt.

But, the most glaring example to me of total incompetence is that right after Governor Daniels interview wherein he carefully explained the proven rationale for governmental success; I saw a flash of Joe Biden on another channel. The VP was telling an audience of stooges that Obama’s good and Romney’s bad and he thought that’s all they needed to know which came across to me as so inane it’s far beyond pathetic. But, I guess, it’s just about all a dunce like him can grasp.

That’s it for today folks.

Adios

BloggeRhythms 5/22/2012

I went through an odd few days, beginning on last weekend when a friend sent me a YouTube link to a speech made last December by Cory Booker, Democrat Mayor of Newark, New Jersey. In it, Booker was addressing a group of folks about the holidays and I thought came as across as bright, articulate, witty and extremely well-informed. And I must admit, I’d never seen nor heard of him before and was very impressed, especially because I sensed he might indeed be a harbinger of future politicians who actually care about their constituents.

Then, the very next day, I came across Booker again, this time due to his appearance on Meet the Press wherein he chastised the president's reelection team over its ad campaign attacking Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital. Booker said, “I just have to say from a very personal level, I'm not about to sit here and indict private equity," referring to the ad which spotlighted the story of a Kansas City steel company that went bankrupt after Bain Capital's involvement. "If you look at the totality of Bain Capital's record, they've done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses. And this, to me, I'm very uncomfortable with."

He went on to state that, "This is not about what happened at Bain Capital. Heck, I've reduced the employees in my city 25 percent because it's the only way my government would survive. Call me a job-cutter, if you want."

In fairness, he also criticized a now-scuttled Republican proposal to run ads once again tying the incumbent to his controversial former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, as well as the Bain ad. And in that regard, Booker stated, "This kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides. It's nauseating to the American public. Enough is enough. Stop attacking private equity. Stop attacking Jeremiah Wright. This stuff has got to stop, because what it does is it undermines, to me, what this country should be focused on. It's a distraction from the real issues."

So, here I was reading the words of a guy who came across as a breath of fresh air amidst the lowest life forms on earth, politicians, and was actually looking forward to tracking him in the future to see what kind of career he’d build for himself. And then, that very evening, my whole pipe dream fell apart because someone in the White House must have gotten to him.

 Because later that same evening, Sunday, according to the Associated Press, Booker released a YouTube video in which he said it is "reasonable" for the Obama campaign to examine Romney's business record since Romney himself has made it "a centerpiece of his campaign."

Thus we have someone here, Booker, who for a very short span came across as someone I’d vote for in a heartbeat, regardless of party because of his even-handed approach and especially realistic outlook on business. And then in the very same day, he bows to pressure applied from his party leaders and turns himself into just another political hack. So I guess that even for the very best in office, you can take the guy out of the party for a moment, but you can’t ever take the party out of the guy.

That’s it for today folks.

Adios

BloggeRhythms 5/21/2012

It seems to me that the Dem's may have made a critical mistake by attacking Mitt Romney’s career at Bain Capital. And I believe they did it for one of two reasons. Either they’re assuming that most of the public, and especially their own constituents, don’t know what venture capitalists do, or perhaps don’t understand venture capitalism’s function themselves. And that’s why the Dem’s are playing with fire.

Because venture capitalism is all about developing and growing businesses to their maximum potential, thereby increasing productivity and revenue, and most often -creating jobs. All of which are what the nation needs desperately at the moment and the complete reverse of the Dem mantra of regulate, tax and inhibit business success.

Consequently, I believe the best thing the Romney campaign can do for itself is to educate the voting public as to what venture capitalism is, how it works and the boon it is to economic productivity. And that can be done by pointing out in the simplest of terms that venture capitalists invest their funds, support, and skills across a variety of businesses they select for various reasons. And naturally, if and when any of these entities succeed, the capitalists are usually rewarded for their gamble with equity of some sort in the venture. And in that way, significant numbers of new, struggling or undercapitalized entities survive to prosper via this win/win risk-filled approach.

Now certainly, although venture capitalists may be very astute business folks and highly experienced as well, none of them have crystal balls nor can they predict the future with guaranteed accuracy. And that’s why significant numbers of businesses in which they take risks ultimately fail. In fact, as I recall the rate of failure for new businesses in general is somewhere around 80% in their first year of existence. And that’s why many of these aspiring operations indeed do close. However, without the invested capital behind them, they’d have no chance at all.  

And now we come to another point, which may be the most important of all. As mentioned on Fox News Sunday, Paul Ryan, Congressman from Wisconsin pointed out that "What Bain did is they used private capital to try and help struggling businesses. What President Obama's doing is he's gambling with taxpayer money and giving money to corporate contributors like Solyndra, and he's losing taxpayer money." Ryan said this in reference to what he called the "crony capitalism" of taxpayer-backed loans to well-connected firms like Solyndra, the solar panel company that filed for bankruptcy after receiving nearly $530 million in taxpayer loans.

So, as I said at the start today, perhaps the Dem’s should rethink about targeting an opponent who spent his career actually trying to help businesses grow and prosper…because their leader’s done the complete reverse. And if the voting public really does learn the tremendous difference between the ways that these two men think and actually perform, the incumbent hasn’t a chance of reelection.

That’s it for today folks.

 
Adios

BloggeRhythms 5/20/2012

In keeping with my continuing commentary on the dismal status of education in our nation, and then applying that premise to the tactics of the Democrat party which feeds on the lack of knowledge among its core constituents, there’s another glaring example of both factors in today’s news.

It seems that Austan Goolsbee, a former Obama economic adviser, told Fox News today that “Romney's record at Bain ought to be thrown open for the public to examine, considering he cites his business experience as a chief qualification to be president.”

Then, he went on to state that the incumbent “believes that the main driver of the economy is the middle class," accusing Romney of pushing a tax-cuts-for-the-wealthy view premised on the "George Bush budget." Finally, he asked, "If that was a magic elixir, why did we not have phenomenal growth?"

Well, the answer happens to be quite well known by anyone having the capability to read, along with the most simplistic understanding of how our government works. Because the nation was indeed doing quite well under Bush’s leadership until his last two years, when a newly elected Democrat congress made every effort to undo his successes, and ultimately did exactly that.

And then there was the debacle of the real estate market causing a global financial meltdown, caused to a great extent by the forced lending to unqualified mortgagees which in turn greatly harmed just about all banking institutions nationally. And who were the driving forces behind that financial disaster? Gee whiz! The present incumbent himself -along with Chris Dodd.

So, here we have a Democrat economist, Goolsbee, parroting party rhetoric that relies on the knowledge that its core constituents are basically unaware of what goes on around them, unless it appears on some brain-dead reality show or a production that avoids big words and requires no thinking.  

Nonetheless, as can be seen in many recent polls, folks don’t seem to be buying the factual distortions and pure untruths as readily as they may have done before, which doesn’t bode too well for the incumbent. Because before this campaign’s over, my bet is the real record will be exposed –and in that case I think most Dem’s can start packing now.   

That’s it for today folks.

Adios

BloggeRhythms 5/19/2012

Another day, another protest. This one’s about the G8 summit meeting the president’s presently holding at Camp David. And the most interesting thing about it all is, nobody seems to know what the protestors really want.

It seems there are people all over the nation, carrying signs, sleeping in tents and cooking food over fires in trash cans, but for what reason? For example, I saw a woman reporter on TV this morning who said she lives in an apartment on Wall Street and that there are still folks encamped there. But, except for the local merchants who are losing business due to the pains in the neck who are pestering those that pass by, nobody else cares a whit about their presence.

As for me, as I’ve written many times in the past, that as long as these sign-toting dregs aren’t anywhere near me, I think they’re great for the nation and hope their numbers keep multiplying. Because with unemployment remaining doggedly high and so many folks unable to find jobs, I believe it’s a very good thing that these protestors have taken themselves out of the work force leaving more room for others who actually need to work.

But then again, since the only thing the protestors seem able to do is walk in a circle and carry misspelled signs, what else are they really qualified to do should they ever actually try to find work? About the only thing I can think of that takes no ability whatsoever is the presidency itself, and at the moment the position’s filled.

That’s it for today folks.

Adios

BloggeRhythms 5/18/2012

As I’ve mentioned quite often lately, I think the wisest approach for Mitt Romney toward winning the presidential election is to sit back, say very little and leave the current administration alone. Because each passing day the incumbent continues to make significant mistakes due to inexperience, naiveté and highly undeserved taking of credit for others accomplishments due to deluded self-importance.

The latest gaffe concerns the focus on JP Morgan caused by its loss of more than 2 billion dollars and the attempts now being made to take the bank, and its leader, Jamie Dimon, to task in congressional hearings where Democrats hope to further clip the institution's wings.

However, although the amount concerned is huge, the funds belonged to the bank itself, not its depositors, and were lost in the normal course of business arising from bad decisions regarding a credit derivative trade. But nonetheless, with urging from the White house, it’s likely that more regulations and governmental oversight regarding banking will be forthcoming soon.

Now, on the surface that may sound like a good idea to many who think the largest banks in the world should be closely monitored, if not totally controlled, by government. But in the long run, that’s a tactic that really doesn’t work because while it may provide some degree of protection against losses, it simultaneously inhibits most types of risks. And as far as risks are concerned, they exist to some degree in every single loan.

Consequently, in attempting to curtail particular banking activities, lawmakers now chance inhibiting business growth because, as usual, they’re unable to understand the particulars of the problems they’re trying to solve. Therefore the end result will be more curtailment of business activity which will, in turn, further reduce the incumbent’s chances of reelection.

Which is why I suggested at the start of this entry that the best thing Mitt Romney can do toward being elected is to leave the incumbent absolutely alone, because as each day goes by he finds new ways to sink himself..

That’s it for today folks.

Adios