I Don't Get It

My puny portfolio has taken a beating.  The value of my home has dropped by approximately 20% -- according to the reports on the financial sites.  Jobs are vanishing with a swiftness not seen for seventy-plus years.  Things don't look good, and the news media is saying positively that things are bad.

Then I go to the gas station, and although I watch on the internet as crude oil drops day-by-day, my local gas station prices just went up a nickle per.  I go to the stores and prices are up for everything.  Walmart's prices are up.  Even the Subway in Walmart is now charging $1.60 for the bag of popcorn that was just recently one dollar even.

My taxes are bound to go up, seeing as how the new president is doubling down on Mr. Bush's unwise and ineffective approach to the economic woes.  Local government is cutting back on services and putting the hourly help on shorter hours (but paying the commissioners and the salaried people - the supervisors - the same money!).

If we are in a recession, shouldn't something other than my income and my investments recede? 

Hey business guys!  If you want more business from a shrinking money pool, raising your prices is the wrong approach.  Try charging less.

Sounding Eerily Familiar

Drudge Report has a headline story about Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi holding forth on how birth control will help the economy.

It has been clear that the pro-choice lobby is anti-human, and anti-life, but now one of the leading democrats has taken the position that people are a problem, and has come one step closer to government mandated birth control. It is a small step from pointing out how extra children are disadvantageous to the economy and regulating the number of permissible children in a family - as China has done, for example.

Spooky!

Here We Go!

We have the first signs. The President refuses to answer reporters' questions. His surrogates decline to answer certain questions. The "drive-by" media scarcely takes notice.

Now we have 'The Media' uncritically accepting false claims because they target the right. Right Here. We have a difficult time ahead when the watchdogs are not only asleep, but are helping those they are supposed to be watching.

Welcome to the New World

I avoided the coverage of the inauguration.  I wasn't able to totally avoid it, but most of it passed me by silently.  Since then, the little news I have permitted into my world has confirmed my suspicions that what was once called "The News Media" is now simply a propaganda apparatus frantically trying to hide the truth and disguise reality.

I have read several comments about how the election of Obama was the fulfillment of the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr., that a man would be judged by the content of his character rather than the color of his skin.  Senator Clair McCaskill of Missouri - a member of the Obama campaign team - even stated that it was denigrating the president to focus on his color or ethnicity.  He was elected because of who he is and because of his ideas.  Well, at least that was her take on it.

And it was egregiously dishonest.  Obama was not elected on the basis of the content of his character.  The media did all that it could to hide what little about Obama and his character leaked out.  Far from denigrating the president, Obama's identity and chief campaign issue was his race.  No one else talked about it, but he was campaigning constantly on the claim that everyone else would talk about it, point to it and try to make the public uneasy.  Any debate surrounding the few words that slipped out of Obama's mouth during the campaign was attacked as "racist" by his shills in the party and in the main-stream media.

Everybody says, "give him a chance".  Honestly, we don't have any choice there.  He is the president.  He has at least four years.  The first two will be with the most partisan and least rational Democrat majorities in both houses of congress.  We will see what he will be.  Everyone hopes that he is good for the country - for the economy, for our national security, for our future.  I share that hope.

But the man has promised to do things I believe will not work well for our economy, or for our national security, or for our future.  My fondest hope is that when Obama has finished his work, the United States is still a free nation, and not a newly minted third-world country with a struggling economy and gravely distressed national security.

Here's to our 44th president, Barack Hussein Obama.  God help us, and give him wisdom.