Sarah Palin

Stuck on stupid: celebrating $1500 gold and the East Coast geniuses that made it possible

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Earlier Posts:  I. More education bubble stuff

Just after Barack Hussein Obama was elected in November, 2008, I was at an academic conference in Boston.  There was a Festschrift celebration for one my profs, at which I met a childhood friend of his–my prof grew up in the Boston area.  Once this elderly “gentleman” learned that I grew up in the state of Alaska, he became red-faced and angry, “What’s wrong with you people in Alaska?  Has the cold weather frozen your brains?”  Well, one could have asked the same thing of Boston residents that year–it was a distinctly cold November.  He continued, “That Sarah Palin is such an idiot!”  Well, I wonder whether Miss Manners would think it proper to talk in this manner with a new acquaintance.  I mean Sarah Palin enjoyed a very high approval rating in the State of Alaska and if I shared the view of the majority, then this East Coast snob was insulting me as stupid along with my fellow Alaskans.  Most of the people in that room held PhDs–so the gratuitous insults were uncalled for.  Well, I couldn’t really think of anything to say, but by this time I was pretty hot under the collar:  “Sir,” I said, “The our problem in Alaska is that when we are hungry and need to eat, we have to go outside and kill something.”

Then my new East Coast friend started to talk about Barack Hussein Obama:  “He’s so smart.  He talks so well.  I just know he’s going to be a better president than that idiot Bush.”

Then one morning in Grand Cayman at Christmas there was a “lady” sitting with me under the veranda at the pool of the hotel.  We began to discuss where she was from:  Washington D.C.  I told her about growing up in Alaska but that I now live in Canada.  “I am going to move to Canada,” she said, “If Sarah Palin ever becomes president.”  Wow.  Miss Manners where are you?  But this brilliant woman doesn’t understand the first thing about Canada Immigration or moving to another country.  It sometimes takes years to get your paperwork.  I know people married to Canadians who have taken over two years to get landed status, and this lady thinks she can just walk up here and live in Canada.  I hate to tell you this, but this is not the Viet Nam War era, and Pierre Trudeau is not the president of Canada anymore.

Well, to all you brilliant people on the East Coast who think you are smarter than us Alaskans who kill animals to put food on the table, I dedicate this post.  I love what your President and your Federal Reserve Chair have done to the value of my gold portfolio.  In the words of Mogambo Guru, “Whee!  This investing stuff is easy!”

In an earlier post I listed the East Coast schools of some the people responsible for $1300 gold.  I repeat that list here (Harvard, by the way, is in Boston):

Barack Obama, Columbia, Harvard

Ben Bernanke, Harvard, MIT

Alan Greenspan, Columbia, NYU

Hank Paulson, Harvard (MBA)

Paul Krugman, Yale, MIT

Tim Geitner, Dartmouth, John Hopkins

Larry Summer, MIT, Harvard

But some of us people who don’t enjoy PhDs from these schools where the genius go, don’t believe it is advanced economic theory that is going to help the economy, but common sense.  Yesterday, in a seminal article, Monty Pelerin summarized our main problems under five points:

  1. An Incompetent President – The President is inexperienced and incompetent. He is likely a fraud, as evidenced by his guarded and unknown past. He is incapable of leadership, honesty or management. Virtually every one of his policy initiatives has been harmful to the economy and country. His intentions are clear, the degree to which he will be able to drive us further down the Road to Serfdom is not.
  2. An Incompetent Political Class – The political class attained power via Santa Claus economics, providing gifts to constituents in return for votes. Both parties are guilty. Politicians have conditioned themselves and their constituents to “free-lunch” governance. Few know how to govern in any other fashion. Most are indistinguishable from prostitutes — vote for me and I will do “that” for you. Both parties want to preserve the welfare-warfare State, disagreeing merely on the means of doing so.
  3. An Incorrect Paradigm – The Keynesian model of spend and spend has been good for politicians but disastrous for the economy. Over time, it has encouraged loose credit, overspending and living beyond our means. The failures are obvious to all but Statists and so-called Keynesian economists.  The political class cannot stop “free lunches” without suffering severe political consequences. Hence, the abuses will continue until resources are exhausted. Like Rome of old, we will soon run out of bread and circuses.
  4. An Unhappy Ending – Current economic problems cannot be mitigated or solved without incurring another Great Depression. Whether it is preceded by a deflationary collapse or a hyperinflationary blow-off is moot. The ending is inevitable and as more people understand this ending, they take more extreme steps to protect themselves — spending ratchets back, savings increases and businesses refuse to engage in new investment or hiring.
  5. A Dangerous Prelude to the Ending – Government is insolvent. It would be bankrupt without Federal Reserve Quantitative Easing. As a cornered, wounded animal will do anything to survive, so will Government. Does that mean confiscatory tax rates, capital controls, IRA investments forced into Treasury Bonds, “excess profits” taxes, a national sales tax, etc. etc.? It could mean any or all of these and more. Government will not roll over. It will do whatever it can to continue, regardless of how illegal, immoral, unethical or harmful it may be for the country.

You keep using that word … III. Investment

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Previous posts:  I. Consensus; II. Recovery.

The lamestream media loves Obama.  When it comes to this man, they lose all semblance of objectivity and their critical faculties, if they ever had any, get flushed down the toilet.  Consider Henry Blodget, stock analyst par excellent–though you have to catch him off the record if you want his real opinion–did a cynical piece yesterday saying that well both President Obama and Trig Palin should be disclosing their birth certificates publicly.  I like you Henry, I real do, but that’s really, really stupid.  Business Insider is a bit like the National Enquirer and Forbes magazine all combined in a single publication.

So when the media classifies Obama as a conservative and smart investor, it is really malpractice.  So MSN reported about candidate Obama during the presidential election had dumped some stocks of companies who had made contributions to his campaign:

The 50th-richest senator, with a net worth at the end of 2005 of between $1 million and $2.5 million, has most of his assets in bank and retirement accounts, owning only three publicly traded securities.

All three, two Vanguard mutual funds and a Nuveen closed-end fund, are partly or entirely invested in fixed income securities. Despite providing little opportunity for capital appreciation, they delivered combined returns of around 15% in 2006, only slightly less than theS&P 500 Index ($INX).

“The man is conservative and smart,” says Linda Gadkowski, a financial adviser with CFP Beacon Financial Planning in Centerville, Mass.

Sycophantic worship is what that’s called.  Obama has a lot of capital but a completely unimaginative portfolio that requires no research, no knowledge and no gumption.  And the media portrays that as conservative and smart.  Gimme a break.  But the man has shown that he knows little about investing when he said that “profits and earning” ratios looking enticing, recommending that Americans  invest in the stock market.  So there is no reason to believe that Obama has any knowledge of investing.

While his use of “investment” in the place of “spending” is a huge lie, don’t expect the sycophantic adoring media to ever call him on it.  You see government spending is lost, never to be recovered.  Investment on the other hand, looks to preservation of capital and a return on investment (“profits and earning ratio”, in Obamatalk).  When governments borrow money, they only rarely put the money into anything that will have a ROR.  Even its so-called “investments”, which are just subsidies, like ethanol and wind energy, are money losing ventures.

Reflexions on multiculturalism and Sarah Palin’s caribou (updated with video clip)

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The Left has insisted upon multiculturalism to the point of implementing political correct policies which instead of profiling terrorists require that TSA officers stick hands up the crouches of seniors and down the pants of small children, spreading infectious diseases and violating Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights.  Yet these politically correct Leftists see nothing wrong with ridiculing the culture of some people, such as when it comes to the American pioneer values that I grew up with in Alaska.

An article by Aaron Sorkin ranting against Sarah Palin’s shooting of a caribou is making its rounds on the internet;  Jason Dean writes in the Guardian:

West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin today gave Sarah Palin both barrels over her US TV reality show, accusing the contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination of shooting an animal “for political gain”.Sorkin, writer of the recent Facebook movie The Social Network, also accused the Fox News contributor of making a “snuff film” after the latest episode of Sarah’s Palin’s Alaska featured the politician going hunting with her father and shooting a caribou.

He described Palin as “deranged”, a “witless bully” and a “phony pioneer girl”. He also said The Learning Channel, the US cable network, “should be ashamed of itself” for broadcasting her “truly awful reality show”.

Dr. Craig Carter says that Leftists like Aaron Sorkin who support abortion rights, i.e. the killing of human babies, but who find hunting repugnant have lost their moral compass:

So all hunting shows are now “snuff films?” All hunters are morally evil? Well, rural America and Canada, now you know how the Ruling Class regards you. It sure explains a lot – like gun control for example. And here I was laboring under the misunderstanding that they wanted the gun registry because they were afraid people would be killed by guns. Turns out they were afraid you might sneak off and shoot a rabbit or deer. The horror!

I just think it is sickening to assert that there is something morally evil about killing an animal for sport. It betrays a lack of clear thinking about what makes killing evil. The human versus non-human distinction is vital to clear reasoning and moral evaluation. Once it is blurred all sorts of weird and contradictory conclusions are drawn by those who have lost their moral compass.

I responded to Carter:  Even many hunters find it morally repugnant to kill merely for sport. But Palin is exonerated since, as many have reported about the show that I didn’t see, she has duly packaged the meat and placed it in her freezer for later consumption. That hunting is thrilling is only a bonus. Many hunters have a deep respect for nature, for the animals and for the need to be stewards of these resources. What our poorly-educated liberal elites like Mr. Sorkin don’t understand is that the subsistence culture is still very strong in Alaska. Agriculture is very poor in Alaska, and so most food must be imported. The rich supply of game meat and fish that can be harvested thus is a traditional part of Alaskan culture, beginning with the natives (of which Palin’s husband is 1/4) and also the pioneers (Sourdoughs). I grew up eating far more venison than domestic meat. As a child I preferred the softer, milder beef to moose, but my parents gave us no choice in the matter.

The left elitists can’t see this as cultural difference between us and them and it proves that they are snobs who have no appreciation for other cultures. So much for multiculturalism that they preach!  I’ve argued elsewhere that the American pioneer is extinct, having died when our friend Sourdough Jim crashed his Piper in 1979–yet when vestiges of that truly American culture survive, the elite want to destroy it.  Those who preach tolerance are among the most intolerant.

UPDATE:

The Palin shooting of the caribou can be seen here.  In my mind, Sorkin has blown it completely out of proportion.  I am particularly impressed by Palin’s emphasis on how she learns hunting from her father.  This is a great example of how to pass on values and skills to the next generation, and she shows humility, that even though middle-aged, she still has a lot to learn even from her own dad.  What I don’t understand is why the caribou didn’t run in the opposite direction when she missed.  Perhaps this is Darwin’s survival of the fittest at work.

Sarah Palin’s dead lake: her god-like ability to influence things before she was born

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N.B.:  I was having this discussion at City of God with Sarah-Palin detractor who has taking aim at Craig Carter, a friend and one of my favorite bloggers. I was doing some research and found this:

Gov. Sarah Palin, former mayor of Wasilla, killed Lake Lucille.  This is according to piece by Salon’s founder David Talbot, covering the 2008 presidential campaign, “Sarah Palin’s dead lake: By promoting runaway development in her hometown, say locals, Palin has “fouled her own nest” — and that goes for the lake where she lives“);  as evidence, he cites a local assembly member:

“Lake Lucille is basically a dead lake — it can’t support a fish population,” said Michelle Church, a Mat-Su Valley borough assembly member and environmentalist. “It’s a runway for floatplanes.”

I grew up in Anchorage.  We passed Lake Lucille hundreds of times on our way to our cabin at Crooked Lake which is only about 30 minutes from Wasilla on South Big Lake Rd.  Assembly woman Michelle Church describes an all-too familiar scenario, a lake with lousy fishing, and suggests that that it is directly caused by float planes.  Our own Crooked Lake 40 years ago was by no means crowded with float planes; but the couple dozen families with cabins there fished it regularly with hardly any success.  Some lakes just don’t have good fishing.  We also used to fish Upper Russian Lake near Cooper Landing.  Now that was heaven for Rainbow Trout fishing.  Upper Russian Lake, situated between mountains is deep, cold and rocky, with little vegetation.  It avoided over-fishing because its access was by float plane or by a 12-mile hike through grizzly country.  Crooked Lake is warm and shallow with a lot of vegetation and sticklebacks, but trout only thrive in cold, highly oxygenated water.  One summer at Ontario’s Lake Opeongo I caught a 2 pound trout from my canoe but only after letting out hundreds of feet of line–I’ve never repeated that again.  Most summer trout fishing south of Alaska requires special rigging which holds the line 90 or so feet below the surface where the water is sufficiently cold.

Did Sarah Palin foul her nest (a distinctly misogynist slight) and make it impossible for fish to live in the lake?  Here is an excerpt from a 2009 article that explores a little bit of the history of the lake (Anchorage Daily News):

The state Department of Environmental Conservation has for several years called Lake Lucille an impaired water body because vegetation chokes the shallow pool and its decomposition robs the lake of oxygen.[snip]

According to an account published as part of a 1993 study by Anchorage engineering firm Hattenburg, Dilley and Linnell, rotenone, a poison, was added to the water in 1955 and 1963 to kill stickleback that had invaded the lake.

The treatments killed an estimated 25 million stickleback, along with 80,000 suckers, 450 rainbow trout and 235 silver salmon. A fish weir was added in the late 1960s to stabilize the lake levels and keep the stickleback population in check.

Measures have been taken to improve the lake’s water quality as well… [snip] But the lake is still choked by vegetation and doesn’t have enough dissolved oxygen.

Sarah Palin was apparently born in 1964, and her family doesn’t seem to have moved to Wasilla until 1972.  So she could be the cause of Lake Lucille’s death only if she has god-like powers to influence:

(1) the structure and nature of Lake Lucille, i.e., shallow with a lot of vegetation;

(2) events that occur before her alleged date of birth.

Perhaps she is an immortal alien from another planet or an überterrestial.  But it seems more likely that Salon founder David Talbot is not a journalist but a propagandist.  It took me less than five minutes of internet research to debunk his tendentious article.

A dishonest god : Obama Miscellany

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Rush Limbaugh tells a joke:  What do God and Obama have in common?  God doesn’t have a birth certificate either.

I was at the Society of Biblical Literature last year in Boston and I met a childhood friend of one of my professors, who was being honored with a Festshrift.  The elderly gentleman, a longtime resident of Boston, found out I was from Alaska.  He then suddenly turned red-faced and angry.  “What’s wrong with you people?” He asked, “How can you have such a stupid woman as governor.  Are your brains frozen from the cold?”  I told him that I like very much Governor Palin and that our problem in Alaska is that when we are hungry, we have to go out and shoot something.  Then he went on to say how proud he was of Barack Obama because he was so intelligent, and he was just going to be such a good president.   Lee Carey, however, points out that Obama has a questionable work ethic, while others wonder aloud if he is just playing at being president.

Dreams of my Father Just some guy in my Neighborhood

Prof. Jack Cashill has followed up on his previous post at American Thinker with “Andersen Claims ‘Two Sources’ for Ayers’ Role in Dreams“.  He has interviewed the author and journalist Chris Anderson:

Andersen claims that the “hopelessly blocked” Obama turned to the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers to help him write his much acclaimed 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father.
When I asked about Andersen’s sources, Andersen said that he had two separate sources “within Hyde Park” but, understandably, would not elaborate.
Andersen, who was gracious throughout, insisted that he had made no claim that Ayers wrote Dreams but he did not deny Ayers’ deep involvement, conceding that Dreams is much the better book than Obama’s 2006 Audacity of Hope. This, of course, has to trouble the Obama acolytes who insist that Obama is a uniquely gifted writer.
Thomas Lifson concludes, as I have, that Obama has been unmasked as a fraud:

Now, thanks to Jack Cashill, the literary mask has been removed. Obama is a literary pretender. Case closed. The evidence is overwhelming that Bill Ayers ghost-wrote Dreams from my Father, the book which established Obama’s pose as a brilliant writer (and therefore a fine mind, in the estimation of many). The stylistic resemblance between the Dreams and Ayers’ work is stunning. Now we know, thanks to Chris Andersen’s new book,that Obama hit a brick wall trying to fulfill his contract to produce a book, and shipped off his notes and tapes to Ayers. That is the classic description of a ghost writer’s assignment. And it completely fits the theories Cashill had inferentially reasoned from the data of his literary studies.

Sarah Palin has finished her book, Going Rogue, early; unlike Obama, she has publicly acknowledged her use of a professional writer.  Yet the main stream media is still chanting the canard that Obama is a great writer.  Matthew Shaer writes:

Fair enough. November is holiday book-buying season, and Sarah Palin is a hot commodity. No reason to think Palin’s book won’t skyrocket to the top of the best-seller list. But let’s pause for a second: Did Palin really write “Going Rogue” all by herself? As MSNBC’s Chris Matthews noted back in May, “She’s got this book deal, she obviously is not gonna write it.”

Matthews was right. Palin had help.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that – unofficially, we’d estimate that 90 percent of the books published by politicians are heavily ghost-written. (A notable exception: Barack Obama, whose “Dreams from My Father” was considered by many critics to have real literary merit.) In Palin’s case, help came in the form of Lynn Vincent, a senior writer for the conservative Christian publication World Magazine.

Mr. Shaer, via the illustrious Chris Matthews, here implies that Palin has not been honest in acknowledging the use of a professional writer, as if that was ever in question; thus, he ironically tries to accuse her of the crime of which Barack I-actually-wrote-them-myself Obama is guilty.  Mr. Shaer writes for the Christian Science Monitor, but he obviously is a sub-par journalist, who is unaware that Prof. Jack Cashill has argued definitively that Bill Ayers had a major hand in ghost writing Dreams of my Father.  But don’t expect anyone in the mainstream media to deal with this story soon (except perhaps Glenn Beck), since they are incompetent.  The Associated Press will now even make up a quote out of whole cloth  if necessary to provide their tendentious version of the news.

Obamalatry Worshipping a Man
The Bible says that when Herod Agrippa was hailed by the crowd as a god,  “Immediately an angel of the Lord smote him, because he did not give God the glory; and he was eaten by worms and died “(Acts 12:23).  Yet many of Obama’s followers have become Obamalators.  Many noticed that there seemed to be a cult of Obama during the election, beginning with Oprah’s endorsement that he’s “the One”.  But this worship is intensifying in certain quarters, with public school children being taught to sing hymns to Obama and now a new video surfaced (hat tip Red State) in which a liturgy offers prayers to Obama (see below); Obama must reject this worship publically, lest he fall under the same divine punishment as Herod Agrippa.
And this meeting of the Gamaliel Foundation:
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