Vice President Joseph Biden has had two operations for brain aneurysms:

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/04/us/biden-resting-after-surgery-for-second-brain-aneurysm.html

There are more and more signs of a serious mental problem.  Following are his observations on the economy and the election.  Of course this is the same guy who has been talking about the SUMMER OF RECOVERY:

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/110535-biden-the-heavy-lifting-is-over

“We stabilized the financial system,” Biden said. We were on the brink of a depression … We avoided a total economic meltdown,” he said. “There are 3 million [more] Americans working today than there were before we took office.

“Barack and I are realists,” the vice president added. “Government is not the answer. But we also know we can plant seeds. These seeds that have been planted have generated whole new industries.”

With this kind of leadership, the Democratic Party is committing suicide.  The bottom line is that these guys are delusional.  Frankly if I was interviewing Biden and he said something this dumb my biggest challenge would be to avoid laughing out loud. 

Democrats are absolutely panicked.  They recently spent millions of dollars purchasing ad space for congressional district races.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/40127.html

 That is a sign of absolute desperation.   Virtually all of this money is spent defending Democratic seats considered by Democrats to be highly vulnerable.  No money was spent trying to remove Republicans and very little money was spent on open seats.  There is only one word to describe this decision.  PANIC!

TDM

According to this article from Investor’s Business Daily, the new financial regulations included setting up the Office of National Insurance:

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/540854/201007191905/Insurers-Set-Up-For-Next-Affordable-Crisis.aspx

This office “shall have the authority to monitor the extent to which traditionally underserved communities and consumers, minorities, and low- and moderate-income persons have access to affordable insurance products regarding all lines of insurance, except health insurance.”

If the Obama administration is successful in nationalizing insurance regulation, particularly with a goal of social justice, it could set off an economic disaster that will make the meltdown of 2008 look good by comparison.  During the Great Depression, the insurance industry did much better than the rest of the financial markets.  To protect the economy, in 1933 the Glass-Steagall Act restricted the ability of banks to get involved in risky investments; specifically, it prevented banks from going into the insurance business.

http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/g/glass_steagall_act_1933/index.html

The act worked well for 66 years.  But, banks were desperate to get a piece of what they considered to be the lucrative insurance industry, and in 1995 they gained a new powerful advocate in Robert Rubin, Treasury Secretary for the Clinton Administration. Robert Rubin was viewed with awe by the main stream media as a financial genius.  He is the one who proposed repealing Glass-Steagall because modern day banks were so much more sophisticated than the banks during the depression era. Those depression era financial restrictions were so yesterday.  In 1999, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealed Glass-Steagall and just may have set off the entire financial meltdown we have seen over the last two years.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Gramm-Leach-Bliley_Act

Shortly after he left the White House, Robert Rubin went to Citigroup, as their senior financial spokesman,  for a nice $15 million per year.  He brilliantly helped them take advantage of this great legislation to get into lots of exciting new investment opportunities, including the insurance business.  It was a disaster.  Ultimately, Citigroup was spared insolvency only after a $45 billion federal bailout.  Actually, if the following article is accurate, the true cost to tax payers is much higher than that:

http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/politics/3225-citigroup-bailout-retrospective

During the hearings in front of congress explaining this mess, Rubin was quoted as saying:

Almost all of us involved in the financial system, including financial firms, regulators, ratings agencies, analysts and commentators missed the powerful combination of forces at work and the serious possibility of a massive crisis.”

Duh, ya think?  Actually, a lot of people were warned about this, but no one was listening.

Today, very few people in the financial industry are interested in what Robert Rubin has to say, except for one place; the White House.  He is one of the people helping Timothy Geithner make all these great decisions, including the new and exciting Financial Reform Legislation.

The bottom line is this.  If this wonderful new government agency discovers that minorities and lower-income communities are paying more for insurance than, say…suburban white folks, they are going to try and fix the problem.  What this means is insurance companies will be required to offer coverage to people regardless of loss experience and the rest of us are going to be paying higher premiums as a result.

Less you think this to be fantasy, Californians are already paying more than necessary for their automobile insurance today because of this kind of thinking.  Proposition 103 was passed in 1988.  This prevented insurance companies from adjusting insurance rates based on zip codes.  The insurance industry fought this tooth and nail, because they thought it was unfairly discriminatory and definitely not a good idea.  But, after prodding by the ever brilliant John Garamendi, the courts finally ordered the insurance industry to implement this law in 2005.  It took the industry about five years to even figure out how to do it.  This year, it has happened and if it hasn’t hit your pocketbook yet, it certainly will in the near future.  For those of you interested in more details on how you are now subsidizing drivers in L.A., the following article does a good job of explaining the situation:

http://cainsurancesolutions4u.blogspot.com/2010/02/rural-californians-get-ready-to-pay-for.html

This probably already has your blood curdling, but that is not the major problem.  It is bad enough to pay too much for insurance, but it is even worse if idiotic regulation causes insurance companies to go insolvent.  The Obama administration does not seem to grasp the concept that profits are really necessary for companies to stay in business.  With the insurance industry, it is not just profitability, but solvency.  If the insurance industry melted down like the banks, the results would be even more catastrophic.  No one would ever be able to borrow money for a car, or a boat or a home or anything else without insurance.  No bank would loan the money without the security of an insurance policy protecting the collateral. 

Just in case anything thinks I am over exaggerating the problem, I refer you to the following article:

http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Daily-Reports/2010/July/22/Consumers-Union-Analysis.aspx

Now the same group of clowns who decided banks were too conservative want to help the health insurance industry do similar financial planning.  I was involved in a health care 501c9 trust where the managers decided they had too much surplus, so they gave a refund to participants. Several contacts from the health insurance industry warned me not to do that.  So, I met with senior management and literally begged them to not deplete the surplus.  They not only did not listen, I was criticized for daring to question their superior wisdom.  Three months later there was an adverse development in loss experience and the remaining surplus was all gone.  The trust literally had to borrow money to pay claims.  The same people who had criticized me earlier now were begging me for a plan of action to deal with the financial disaster they created.   We were able to fix it, but it took about five years to completely repair the damage that had been done in less than three months.   This was one small trust.  Making this kind of mistake with a major health insurance carrier would be beyond catastrophic.

There is only one good piece of news.  These guys are not that sharp and their world is falling down around their heads.  Even Democrats are starting to talk about extending those worthless Bush tax cuts.  As Lincoln said:

 You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

 Right now, they aren’t fooling anyone.  Here is your therapy session.  Just keep repeating the same phrase over and over and over again:

I CAN SEE NOVEMBER FROM MY HOUSE!

I CAN SEE NOVEMBER FROM MY HOUSE!

There!  Feel better?

This could be our last chance.

TDM

The attached article from the Mail online should be s source of strength and encouragement to us all.

The Cuckoo population has dropped by more than 20% in one year.  Think of the implications.  If we can duplicate that here in the United States, Republicans would be guaranteed to take over both the House and the Senate and real economic recovery would be on the horizon:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1295998/Fears-cuckoo-disappear-Britain-population-drops-fifth-year.html

TDM

Earlier I observed that the speed with which the Obama administration moved to get the 10 Russian spies out of town was suspicious.  This article provides some very interesting insight with regard to this issue.  I have no means of confirming this information, but if this is true, it is even worse than I thought.

 http://www.aim.org/aim-column/the-russian-agents-obama-and-the-cover-up/

One thing is certain, there is at least a potential that this involves national security issues.  For years the liberal left downplayed the threat of soviet spies in the FDR and Truman administrations.  We paid a terrible price for that mistake.  The Soviet Union was able to develop an atomic bond because of information gained from these spies.  Ironically the spies at that time were focused on stealing the information needed to develop a nuclear bomb.  It appears these spies were focused on getting us to just willingly destroy our nuclear arsenal.  Obama’s own policy in this regard seems to be remarkably consistent with Russian goals, just like some of FDR’s decisions were remarkably similar with Soviet Union goals.  Coincidence?

 TDM

Obama visited West Michigan.  No one was impressed.  He brought alone the worst Governor in the United States, presiding over the worst economy, to brag about her great performance.   (That is like bringing Bill Clinton along to a family living conference to explain how he learned to resist temptation).  He gave millions to a Korean company and then insultedlocalCongressman Peter Hoekstra, who despises Obama, but attended out of respect for the office of President of the United States.  The real Obama is being exposed on a daily basis and the stench is too ugly to ignore.  

http://www.detnews.com/article/20100715/MIVIEW/100715001/1467/opinion01/He-camehe-sawhe-insulted 

The financial reform package is a disaster, for Democrats.  The last thing we needed was another layer of unnecessary regulations designed by incompetent fools as cover for more handouts to unions and activists.  The backlash will be instant, obvious and severe.  If you think it was difficult to get a loan before, it will become impossible now.  Except that if you are an illegal alien, or better yet, black, then you move to the front of the line.  This President is overtly racist.  He is catering to the unions, the community activists, the gay rights community and muslims.  But, here is the problem.  None of these groups are capable of creating jobs.  Regardless of your personal opinion with regard to gay rights, gay couples are not even effective at producing offspring.  It may feel good to a hard core socialist to do wonderful things to these special interest groups, but eventually you run out of money. 

Barack Obama is out of money.  Wall Street is in open revolt.  Contributions to the Democratic party are down more than 50%.  Even Hollywood is showing signs of cutting off the purse strings.  Big business is openly funding the opposition.  Small business never did buy this crap.  There is no more money to borrow.  Now he is about to let the Bush tax cuts expire, which will result in the largest increase in taxes on the lower income working class in the history of this country.  Bush reduced the lowest rate from 15% to 10%.  That was a 33% decrease, but eliminating it is a 50% increase.  

The financial reform act was a desperate move by incompetent fools out of ideas.  It not only won’t work, it will be an obvious disaster from day one.  Democrats will spend most of the fall trying to pretend they voted against it.  Democrats really think they can reverse the political disaster awaiting them in November by campaigning on this legislation.  The opposite is true.  This is like the drowning man who tries to stay afloat by grabbing a bag of bricks.  The only think he accomplishes is a faster more certain route to the bottom.

While Barack Obama has been busily implementing policies guaranteed to destroy the country, ironically he may save the country by destroying the Democratic party in the process.  Perhaps he should ponder this while enjoying the lobster on his seventh vacation.

TDM

We do not know much about Obama’s academic performance at Harvard, but there is solid evidence of major Kool Aid consumption.  While the Annointed One was President of the Harvard Law Review he approved an artile by Lawrence A Tribe entitled>  THE CURVATURE OF CONSTITUTIONAL SPACE, WHAT LAWYERS CAN LEARN FROM MODERN PHYSICS.  The following article describing this masterpiece is from the American Thinker:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/07/barack_hussein_einstein_at_har.html

Just in case you think this is just a silly joke, here is the link to the actual Harvard Law Review article published in 1989:

http://www.jstor.org/pss/1341407

Here is the good news.  Some people worry that Obama is some sort of evil genius.  Evil maybe.  Genius, never.  This is utter nonsense and anyone who gave this more than 10 seconds of consideration is either high on drugs or really really gullible.  When you hear someone describe Obama as a constitutional lawyer, keep this article in mind.  It certainly puts that into perspective.  I guess this does explain why Elena Kagan is so attractive as a Supreme Court Justice to Obama.  It also explains why anyone appointed by someone who concurred with this nonsense is, by definition, unacceptable.

This is why Obama is failing and will continue to fail.  Some people see the world as it is and wonder why?  Others see the world as it is and wonder why not? (I am not sure who said that, perhaps Robert Kennedy)  Obama can’t see the world at all and is clueless.  He is incapable of even recognizing reality, which is why he is incapable of making good decision.  

One of my favorite bumper stickers read:  “Visualize Whirled Peas.”   That has more merit than Obama’s view of constitutional law.

TDM

For a while it appeared like I was the only one who noticed the speed with which the Russian spies were shuffled out of the U.S.  Well at least one Republican has noticed and this story may have more legs than I thought:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/13/spy-swap-puts-halt-to-fact-finding/

Baring a miracle, the Republicans are going to win in a walk this fall.  That moves on to the next fear.  Hillary Clinton is already gearing up for a run in 2012.  Watch for her to resigned from Secretary of State before the end of the year.  The report by Erskine Bowles, a longtime Clintonian, skewered Obama.  I personally think the 2012 Hillary Clinton for President campaign has already begun. 

That is why this story matters.  The Clintons have a long record of corruption, particularly with regard to large campaign contributions from suspicious sources.  Of course the MSM has just ignored this.  Right now a lot of polls show that Hillary would win against any Republican.  We can survive the Obama Presidency, particulary after Republicans take over this fall, but I am not sure we could recover from an Obama Presidency followed by a Clinton Presidency.

TDM

The Obama Presidency is now a complete failure.  It turns out that even the most liberal lefties have recognized that Obama is leading us toward economic disaster.   When your a left-wing radical liberal and you’ve lost Barbara Streisand, the end is near.   They will quickly switch over to their other dream candidate, Hillary, but they have deserted Obama:

http://noisyroom.net/blog/2010/07/11/big-democrat-supporters-now-reject-obama/

In addition, his source of funds has been shut off.  There are numerous reports that contributions by Wall Street to the Democratic Party have been cut in half.    Today the Democratic Governors challenged the White House with regard to the lawsuit against Arizona

The Democrats are deserting the ship.

He is in far more trouble than is being reported in the press, including Fox News.  Republicans and Conservatives are afraid to report the truth because they don’t want to jinx it.  But it is becoming more difficult for them to restrain their glee.  Democrats are close to desperation.  They fear a wipeout in November, but they can’t bring themselves to admit it.

Currently Obama’s approval rating are in the 40% range.  It won’t be that high by November.

Right now the only thing the Republicans need to do is to sit down, shut up and vote no.  They need to stop the Kagan nomination and stop anything proposed by Obama.   At this juncture, just saying if it is acceptable to Obama it is not acceptable to me, is more than enough.

One more thing.  If you think Obama is in trouble now, just wait.  It is going to get worse, much worse.

TDM

I just received notice of a class action settlement against Expedia.  Wow!  I get a coupon for $11.79 in the form of an Expedia coupon.  What a deal.  I may not sleep for weeks.  This is about the third similar class action settlement notice I have received this year.  The others were not nearly this valuable.

 But, these class action settlements are great…for the attorneys who file the lawsuits.  While individual settlements are very small, the attorney fees are really cool.  They made $10 million.  Isn’t that great?  I am so proud of this country.  Of course these attorneys will give back to society by contributing millions of dollars to political candidates, like Barack Obama, who will fight tort reform to the bitter end. 

 By the way, Expedia will just increase rates to cover the cost, so in the end the coupon will be nothing more than the return of an overcharge.  

 Now you know why Malpractice Liability reform, which is acknowledged by everyone to be essential to reducing healthcare costs, was not even considered by the Obama administration.

 TDM

I wonder if anyone noticed the incredibly stupid logic used by Rahm Emanual to explain the thinking behind the Russian spy fiasco. 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/08/rahm-emanuel-obama-signed-spy-arrests/

What a great idea.  If you come over here and spy for a foreign country, we will watch you for, say ten years, then put you in jail for about a week and then give you a free ride home.

When you think about it, this is brilliant.  There are other areas were we can use the same strategy to solve problems:

We can reduce speeding by lowering the fines and giving more warning notices.  Honestly, wouldn’t you be more likely to slow down if you knew there would be no punishment for speeding?

We can stop bank robberies by reducing the maximum sentence to six months.  Currently bank robbers go to prison for years if they are caught.  That causes them stress.  With this approach, they can quickly return to society, having learned their lesson that nice people don’t like to be robbed.  Crime rates are sure to decline!

We could have a major impact on sexual assault statistics.  Just let rapists off the hook if they plead guilty and apologize.  That would make them think twice before raping someone else!

I am shocked that no one thought of this logic before.  Oh wait.  They did!  They did!   This is just like our Rules of Engagement in Afghanistan.  Our troops are being trained to fight nice and can’t  fire back if there’s any potential for civilian casualties.  We even give a reward for “Courageous Restraint.”  (Usually a posthumous award)

Of course we can’t be this generous for everyone.  After all, all spies are not created equal.   If you spy for Israel, well that is a different matter:

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/u-s-jew-indicted-as-possible-israel-spy-1.265740

This man allegedly faces a potential death sentence because of the threat of a nuclear attack on the United States by Israel.   Seriously!  It seems like the Obama administration has a little problem with enemy identification.

http://cicentre.net/wordpress/index.php/2010/01/05/delay-for-start-of-dc-spy-trial-of-stewart-david-nozette/

Here is where Nozette made his big mistake.  If he had only realized that spying for Russia is much safer than spying for Israel, he would probably be celebrating his freedom while sipping vodka in Moscow rather than being stuck in a prison cell.  This is the real lesson.  If you want us to treat you nice, become our enemy.  If you want to be treated like crap, then be our friend.  Brilliant!  Absolutely brilliant!

TDM