The Cuban Missile Crisis at 50

A Russian Missile

For two weeks Kennedy and Khrushchev and their surrogates and supporters stared down each other while across the States lots of kids (such as I) were led in daily disaster drills to sit on the floor with our heads at our knees and our arms over our heads.  Like that would do much good if the Reds dropped a big one on top of us.  Some neighbors, more cautious or more pessimistic or more foolish or more sensible, built bomb shelters in their back yards. 

In a few short years, “missile gap”, “mutual assured destruction”, “ICBM”, and “U-2” popped into the common lexicon.  Sputnik had scared us and Khrushchev (and his shoe) had alarmed us, and then suddenly we discovered Russian missiles being positioned in Cuba – pointed our way.  They say now Kennedy’s earlier diffidence at the Bay of Pigs led the Ruskies to be bolder – apparently weakness is provocative to one’s enemies (hasn’t that just come up again recently?).  The blockade ensued and suddenly I found myself curled up under a desk for what seemed like hours on end.  It was, in retrospect, they say, the closest the Cold War ever came to becoming a hot one.  Then as suddenly as it began it was over.   

The two week Cuban Missile Crisis ended 50 years ago today.

 

John M Greco

El Alamein at 70 – “The End of the Beginning"

Memorial to the Australian 9th Division
at the El Alamein Cemetery

Today marks the 70^th anniversary of the beginning of the WWII Battle of El Alamein in the western Egyptian desert.  It was the first great successful Western Allied offensive of the war, and marked the turning point in Allied morale.  It placed Rommel’s famed German Afrika Corp on the run – for good.  It marked the first appearance in battle of the newest American tank, the Sherman, which would finally give the Allied troops a tank with which to counter those of the Germans.  The victorious British Eighth Army Commander Montgomery became "Viscount Montgomery of Alamein" when he was knighted after the war.   

Some years ago, eight to ten perhaps, on a long late evening flight from Los Angeles to Chicago I found myself sitting next to a small, quiet man who sat peacefully in his seat.  Somehow we struck up a conversation, unusual for me on such flights, where I preferred to rest or read.  We spoke quietly so as to not to disturb (much) our fellow passengers.  I discovered he was an Australian from Tasmania off to visit his son in Rhode Island, and was an avid sailor (like his son if I recall correctly).  Turned out he had been in the Eighth Army and served at El Alamein and later Italy, a courier or messenger as I vaguely recall.  His stories were remarkable, and I wish now I had a tape recorder with me.  We talked and talked and suddenly four hours later the plane was landing at O’Hare.  One of those remarkable little, memorable life experiences, so unplanned and so unexpected.   

Veterans of the battle, the few left, and others gathered at the British war cemetery in Egypt to commemorate the battle (link; link).  I can only wonder if my plane-ride acquaintance made it.   

About two weeks after the start of the battle a large American and British force would land in western North Africa and ultimately trap the Germans between the two advancing Allied armies.  Then on to Sicily and Italy and points beyond.  But it was about this protracted, bitterly fought, but ultimately successful battle, when all had been looking so grim for the Allies, that Winston Churchill famously said: "This is not the end.  It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."    

R Balsamo

Obama the Infanticide President

A friend writes and mentions that some liberal acquaintances of hers are in denial over Obama’s advocacy for infanticide – the deliberate killing of infants.  With the “mainstream” liberal media shielding Obama from this disgrace, and from many others, only political conservatives who get their news and information from non-liberal sources know the truth.

Obama played a leading role, when he was in the Illinois legislature, in blocking adoption of an Illinois law that would require doctors and nurses to try to save infants born alive after a failed abortion attempt, as they would try to save any other infants who required medical care.  Obama led the fight to preserve the practice of denying infants born alive after failed abortion attempts any medical care and simply putting them in a closet without food and water and medicines to die – in short, he fought to preserve infanticide.  Readers up on this subject are familiar with the stories of Jill Stanek, the nurse at Christ Hospital (of all names) in suburban Chicago who cradled and comforted in their final hours living infants left to die by Christ Hospital doctors in utility closets after being born alive.  Obama and his Democrat confederates, which included many Irish and nominally-Catholic politicians from Chicago, successfully beat back every attempt to outlaw this despicable and barbaric practice. 

Obama the radical abortionist won – a man so radical in his support for abortion, and so fearful that any restriction would threaten it, that he took a leadership role with fellow Democrats in the Illinois legislature to defeat a bill that would have outlawed the killing of living babies.   

As I have previously referenced on this site, here is Peter Kirsanow writing at The Corner blog at National Review Online in a series of posts from 2008: 

Obama's 2002 vote against the Induced Birth Infant Liability Act ("IBILA") [occurred] while he was in the Illinois state legislature.  IBILA would have extended the same medical care to babies born after surviving an abortion attempt as is enjoyed by all babies born alive. When a similar measure, the Born Alive Infant Protection Act ("BAIPA") was introduced in the U.S. senate not one senator voted against it. Even NARAL didn't oppose it…. 

Obama sits through testimony that babies born alive after an unsuccessful abortion are left to die alone in a utility closet. The babies are provided neither comfort, care, nor sustenance during their brief lives. When this practice was brought to public attention horrified citizens petitioned their legislators to address the matter. Proposed legislation is drafted, [but Obama votes against it]…. 

Obama supposedly questioned the constitutionality of IBILA…  Obama's rationale for voting against IBILA is questionable at best. What isn't questionable is that Obama, the constitutional law lecturer at U. of Chicago Law School, offered no amendments to cure IBILA's purported defect….  Rather, after voting against IBILA, the bill was referred to a committee he chaired where he killed it by never bringing it up again for a vote. (It's also worth noting that while Obama voted "present" 100+ times in the Illinois state legislature, in this particular case he bestirred himself to vote "no".)  

Another revealing aspect of the issue is Obama's mendacity in claiming that his vote reflected the purported absence of "neutrality language" in the Illinois state version of the Born Alive Act. It's been six years since his vote, there's irrefutable evidence that the state version was the same as the federal version, yet Obama persists in peddling his false explanation. He's probably judged correctly that the media won't call him on it….  Obama insists on calling living, breathing babies no longer in the womb fetuses; he refuses to call them persons.

I think it is possible for moral people to view abortion early in pregnancy as not immoral.  However, abortion late in pregnancy is another thing, especially when the fetus would be viable outside the womb.  And as for so-called partial-birth abortions, where babies are killed while partially outside the mother’s body, and as for infants who survive the “botched” abortion attempt and are born alive but left to die in utility closets beside dirty laundry – these practices are barbaric and disgraceful.  No moral person, either “pro-life” or “pro-choice,” could countenance such despicable acts.  But Obama does.  And the liberal media hides all of this.

John M Greco

Related Post here:

http://criticalthoughtsblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/notre-dame-betrays-its-principles-in.html

Related Links:

Life Lies – Barack Obama and Born-Alive (link)
Fathering More Lies – Obama's latest spin on Born-Alive (link)
When Obama Voted For Infanticide (link)
Obama’s Abortion Extremism (link)
Obama and Infanticide (link)
Clarifying Obama’s Vote On Born-Alive (link)
Why Obama Really Voted For Infanticide (link)
Obama’s Infanticide Votes (link)
Sean Hannity Interview of Nurse Jill Stanek (link)

Liberalism as Bossism, & the Obamacare Medical Care Rationing Board

I have long believed that the liberal/left/socialist assertion that equality -- numeric equality in economic, racial, gender, and sexual orientation outcomes -- is just a ruse to hide from the rubes the real driving force of the left's intellectual vanguard -- the insatiable desire for control.  Control over everything about you and me, control over us because the controllers believe that the rest of us are too stupid to make our own decisions properly, and they're smart enough to do it for us.  In fact, they convince themselves that it's a moral imperative that they make the "correct" decisions for us.  Their proof -- some people don't vote for them and so prove that these people don't know what's good for them.  All these elites want control, and they're content sometimes to publicly live modestly while expecting to have their private luxurious villas out of sight in the countryside.  Their bargain:  give us control over your life and we'll ensure radical equality for everyone like you, while taking our well-deserved cut to live extra specially.

A great example of this liberal/left belief in control by elites is the provision in Obamacare that creates an unelected "board" of bosses to ration medical care.  It's pitched under the ruse that it's there to identify and promote only that medical care that is really effective.  It's a lie.  The board is there to ration care so to limit spending on medical care and to ensure that money isn't spent on care for people who have outlived their usefulness, in the eyes of the liberal elite.  Turn 65 and need a hip replacement -- fuhgettaboutit.  Hit 70 and need cataract surgery to see -- tough luck.  Need life-saving heart surgery as a health 90 year old -- sorry, too expensive for someone your age.  Want to spend your own money to get that care even if Medicare won't pay for it -- Hahahaha -- think the controllers, the bosses, will let people with money escape their grip and let you get medical care they're denying for a person without money?  Not a chance.  Death Panel indeed.

From Elizabeth Price Foley posting today at Instupundit (link) about that Obamacare rationing board, which goes by the wonky and innocuous-sounding "Independent Payment Advisory Commission (IPAB)" and will probably have an office right next door to the "Ministry of Truth":

....[T]wo extremely bizarre aspects of IPAB that get far too little attention:
(1) The IPAB itself can be disbanded only by a 3/5 supermajority of both houses of Congress, AND
(2) only if the resolution to disband is introduced between Jan. 1- Feb. 1, 2017, and approved (by 3/5) before Aug. 15, 2017. That is a maximum 8.5 month window. After this time period, any attempt at disbandment is not allowed under the statute.

....[A]side from [the constitutionality of these provisions in Obamacare], the salient point is this: Progressives adore “expert” panels like the IPAB because they believe they are better able to make tough decisions about how to cut Medicare spending than our elected representatives. And they love these unaccountable expert panels so much that they attempt desperate measures like “entrenching” them statutorily, writing language that purports to make these boards hard to repeal–and impossible after a very narrow window. This isn’t very “progressive” at all, because such entrenchment presumes that future generations can’t govern/decide for themselves, and nothing can ever be altered or improved. Typical hypocritical, control-freak progressivism.

John M Greco

Obama -- "Piss Christ" OK But Don't Piss on the Prophet of Islam

Ultraliberal and one-time Muslim Barack Obama recently (link):

"The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. But to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see in the images of Jesus Christ that are desecrated, or churches that are destroyed, or the Holocaust that is denied.”

Jesus Christ is just Jesus Christ, but Muhammad is "the prophet of Islam".

So how about this award-winning "artistic" creation of an ultraliberal artist supported by United States government funds, which came from United States taxpayers courtesy of liberal Democrat lawmakers: "Piss Christ" (link; link)?  It's about to open for display at a NYC gallery.  Wikipedia states that "[t]he piece was a winner of the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art's "Awards in the Visual Arts" competition,^[1] which was sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, a United States Government agency that offers support and funding for artistic projects."

"Obama Silent Over Calls to Denounce 'Piss Christ' Artwork":

Religious groups are blasting President Obama for not condemning an  anti-Christian art display set to appear in New York City and one Republican lawmaker said he is “fed up with the administration’s religious hypocrisy.  “Piss Christ,” once branded as a “deplorable, despicable display of vulgarity,” will be displayed ... in Manhattan.... The artwork features a “photograph of the crucifix submerged in the artist’s urine.”  Religious groups and some lawmakers have already started sounding off – and making comparisons to the controversy over a recent anti-Muslim film. The low budget movie “Innocence of Muslims” sparked violent and deadly clashes across the globe.  It also brought strong rebukes, condemnations and apologies from President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a host of administration officials.

The Obama Administration last week arrested the maker of the allegedly anti-Muslim film in Los Angeles on trumped up charges unrelated to the film, no doubt to appease the global Muslim community, American principles of free speech be damned, and not a peep out of American liberals.  Meanwhile, the US government-funded "Piss Christ" is on display in New York, and the "artist" is still at large.  Think we'll see a "Piss Muhammad" anytime soon, funded by the United States government, no less, and winning awards from culturally self-loathing liberals?  Me neither.  If Christians and Jews would lop off a few heads now and then, as Muslims do, then they would be feared and thus respected by the hateful and godless ultraliberal American elites.

John M Greco

Lyric Opera at Millennium Park

Lyric Opera at Millennium Park in Chicago on September 8, 2012.  Performers included Susanna Phillips, seen as Lucia last fall at the Lyric, and the Lyric Orchestra and Chorus.  A beautiful evening under the stars, and the rain waited until the concert was over.  Lots of Verdi – the rousing “Va pensiero”, Act One of La Traviata, and a selection from Don Carlo.  Also selections from Cavalleria Rusticana and Act Four of Carmen, and something from that German fellow with all the long operas.    

Cordiali saluti.  R. Balsamo

Why Do Some Voters Like Socialist Politicians?

Jem From the Web = Jay Nordlinger at "The Corner" at National Review Online:

How do you explain the success of socialist politicians against free-market politicians in democracies all over the world, despite the manifest failure of socialism, and the manifest success of a free economy? 

I remember an answer that Jeane Kirkpatrick once gave.  Their rhetoric is better than ours, she said.  More appealing. They talk of “fairness,” “community,” “solidarity” — “We’re all in it together!”  They also promise to solve your problems by demanding more of others, namely the “rich.” (But the problem with socialism, as Margaret Thatcher noted, is that sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.)

Free-market types, by contrast, talk about “self-reliance,” “entrepreneurship,” “independence” — which, frankly, are words and concepts that scare the hell out of a lot of people.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/316089/matter-rhetoric-jay-nordlinger

Free stuff that other people pay for -- what's not to like?  And you need malleable, sheep-like voters -- Sheeple.

JM Greco

Income Taxes & Fair Shares

Years ago I was driving to the airport in LA and was listening to a talk radio show in which the host played a tape of street interviews with random passers-by, asking each what percent of all federal income tax was paid by the filers with the top 10% of income – i.e., the top 10 percenters.  The results were astounding.  Most people thought well below 10%, and many were in the 1-2% neighborhood.  That is, most people thought that the top 10% of earners paid far less than 10% of all taxes – that they paid far less than their fair share.

Well, according to the 2008 IRS data using adjusted gross income, the top 10% of filers had almost 46% of all income, but paid, not 1-2%, or even 20 or 30% of all income taxes.  With 46% of the income, they paid 70% of the taxes.  The top 1% of earners has 20% of the income but pays 38% of all taxes. 

Now, let’s say 100 people need a road and they build it for $10,000.  Each uses it equally.  Should each contribute equally and pay $100 each?  Would that be fair?  But let’s say these 100 people have different incomes.  So, what if we require each to contribute a fixed percentage of income, so that the higher the income the greater the contribution to the cost of the road.  What if a tax of 10% on everyone’s income paid for the road, with some people paying very little and one person paying 20% of the entire cost.  Would that be fair to everyone?

Let’s take one more step.  What if some people insist that those with higher incomes pay even more than a flat 10% rate for all, which already would have higher earners paying more than their equal share of the road.  Let’s say these critics say that as a person’s income goes up, the percent of income he or she pays for the road should go up progressively, so that the top earner has 20% of the total earnings but should pay 38% of the entire cost of the road, while almost half of the people, who, remember, use the road equally, pay almost nothing.  Now, would that be “fair”?       

Would it be fair if, of all people equally using the road, one person, through his or her hard work and thrift, has 20% of all earnings but foots 38% of the cost of the road?  Finally, what if in fact that was the case, but that one day those paying little to nothing demanded that that the one high earner pay even more than 38% of the cost of the road?  Boy, would that be “fair”?  What if the 55 lowest earners, with 55 votes of the 100 total, voted to make the top 5 earners pay the entire cost of the road?  Would that be fair?  What would be a fair percentage of the road that the top 5 earners should pay for?

Once we move past an equal dollar share paid by all who use the road equally it get a little cloudy.  Once we move past an equal percent of income share paid by all, it gets very murky.  Is “fair” whatever a majority decides?  Is there any limit to how much of the road the top 5 or 10 earners should be made to pay for?

What if at some point the top 10 earners stopped using the road and moved elsewhere.  Would that be fair to those who remained?   

 

 

 

John M Greco

Mean & Vicious Democrats on Convention Display

At the Democratic Party convention this week, which is not even over yet, among other inanities we've seen:  multiple episodes of Dems analogizing Republicans to Nazis (while decrying the lack of civility (link) in politics, no doubt); one Dem delegate publicly saying (link) she'd like to "kill" Mitt Romney; a Dem county chair from Florida, a Jewish man, saying (link; link) that Christians want Jews slaughtered; an ode to the late Sen Ted Kennedy on Women's night (the only politician with a confirmed kill in the War on Women, as the quip goes); campaign buttons which proclaim "Once you vote black, you never go back -- Obama 2012" (link) (boy that sounds racist); the Dem party national chairwoman Congresswoman DWS caught lying (link; link) about what the Israeli Ambassador said about Republicans (and smearing Republicans in the process); and a night-long joyful celebration of abortion.

And then there's been the stunning fiasco (link) about getting caught taking reference to God and Jerusalem out of the party platform, multiple Dem leaders lying about whether it was true at all and then about how and why it happened, and then the crowning event, the haphazard convention floor voice vote, taken three times, in which clearly the required 2/3 vote was not obtained to reinsert the language but where the convention chair declared the vote successful anyway.

And remember that just a couple of weeks ago Vice President Joseph Biden told a mostly black audience in Virginia, once a slave state, that the Republicans want to "put ya'll back in chains".

They're mean, angry, and vicious.  Not your father's Democrat Party.  Not by a long shot.  What has happened to them?  What have they become?

John M Greco

More on Ryan versus Obama on Plans for Medicare

A response to John M Greco’s recent post:  Romney-Ryan versus Obama on Saving Medicare (link):

The economic solutions to Medicare are complicated.  Neither side has something easy to understand for the average person without serious study and probably education in economics and public policy.  I doubt that the question of whether Obama’s plan or Ryan’s plan would take more from the system is very relevant to them.  What is maybe relevant is that Obama's reductions would not be very directly visible to the end user.

People recall George Bush's desire to privatize social security just prior to the collapse of the stock market.  Some people also don't listen well and don't spend a lot of time trying to understand things they are confused by, but they may very well recall an impression they had that someone wanted to reduce their security, while perhaps orchestrating an enormous, unprecedented “giveaway” of their money from government to the wall street private sector.  Ryan’s plan may, rightly or wrongly, bring back such thoughts.

Some people can be greedy.  I heard an interview recently with some Medicare people reveling in the fact that they got hundreds of thousands of dollars health care though Medicare but didn't have to pay anything for it.  They didn't see this as generous or lucky, but rather as well -deserved and not to be disturbed for themselves or their children. They don't want to pay more for it.  Some said they were Democrats, but some also said they were Republicans.

The elderly, people on Medicare, constitute an enormous, motivated voting block with a lot of time of their hands.

So, I think lots of people on Medicare who get out to vote will not vote for Romney/Ryan because they think Republicans want to do away with their current security, even if they could save the system for someone else after they are dead.  It won't take much of a shift for this kind of thinking to influence the election results.  People may be disgusted with Obama, be tired of him and disappointed, but they have little real reason to trust the other side with their security.  The Democrats are bent on giving away government (my) money like drunken sailors, but many elderly suspect the Republicans will too, just to different people. 

The Good Doctor

NBC News Airbrushes Out Black Republicans & Other Ongoing Liberal Racism

The ultraliberal media continues to smear Republicans with the race card, which apparently is just about all they can think of to do at this point -- their policies in the Obama years have utterly failed and they have no new ideas.  Their basic pitch -- soak the rich, give people like us more control, and all Republicans are rapacious racist, sexist, violent homophobes.  Since ideology is everything to them, their further corrosion of what little standard of decency remains is of no matter to them -- they've already shredded it down to gauze.  And oh yes, I know they'll say both sides do it, but when one side is responsible for 98.6% of the gross incivility, the canard becomes just an evasion and a character-revealing quarter-truth.

From the liberal website Politico (link):

Yahoo News has fired Washington bureau chief David Chalian [JMG: formerly of ABC News] after he was caught on a hot-mic during an online video broadcast saying that Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, had no problem with African Americans suffering as a result of Hurricane Isaac....  "They're not concerned at all. They're happy to have a party with black people drowning," Chalian said over a break during the ABC News/Yahoo News webcast, in reference to the fact that the GOP convention in Tampa is taking place as Hurricane Isaac makes landfall on the north Gulf coast.

Think Chalian is some minor hack?  Think again.  He defines the mainstream liberal media.  He is on the faculty of the Georgetown U. School of Continuing Studies Journalism Program (link); his bio there states: "He previously served as the political editor for PBS NewsHour, managing the editorial content from the NewsHour's congressional, White House, and Supreme Court beats...   Prior to [that], Chalian was the political director for ABC News. In this role, he helped oversee the editorial content of all political news...."  Think any of his vicious views biased any of his work?

One reader commenting at National Review Online:  "Yahoo hired Chalian after he produced the Charlie Gibson interview of Palin. How does his comment about the Romneys deviate in any way from his work there?".  Yahoo may have fired him just for being stupid enough to get caught on an open mic.

Meanwhile, NBC News is airbrushing any coverage of the two black politicians who spoke yesterday at the Republican National Convention.  From National Review Online (link):

The NBC News page for “Tuesday Night’s RNC Speeches” does not include Mia Love or Artur Davis. Apparently remarks by a former Democratic congressman who seconded Barack Obama’s nomination at the 2008 Democratic Convention is not among the “notable” speeches from last night. It’s enough to make Glenn Reynolds ask: “Is NBC racist? Looks that way. I mean, they’re airbrushing out the black people!”  Then again, MSNBC didn’t air the Love or Davis speeches either, nor that of Senate candidate Ted Cruz [JMG: who is Hispanic].

The ultraliberal and deceptive NBC News is desperate to preserve the media lie that there are no "genuine" blacks and Hispanics in the Republican Party.  And when they show up quite publicly, and quite inconveniently for NBC, they must be airbrushed away, just as Stalin would airbrush out of old photos people with whom he fell out.  For NBC News, it's as if they never existed, and all that's left is the lie.

John M Greco

Obama is Narcissist-in-Chief

Is there any limit to this man's narcissism?

From Drudge Today:

Here's the picture of Obama as the Obama tribute (link) to Neil Armstrong; the Daily Caller asserts that "This is not a Photoshop. This was actually posted on Obama’s official Tumblr page:"

Romney-Ryan versus Obama on Saving Medicare

I’m happy about Romney’s pick of Paul Ryan as his running mate, thinking his knowledge, earnestness, and experience (7 term Congressman), particularly on budget issues (current chair of the House Budget Committee), will help the ticket’s chances in November.  My only concern about Ryan on the ticket has been the willingness he and Romney would show to proactively and aggressively rebut the Democrat smear that his thoughtful approach to Medicare reform amounts to “pushing granny off the cliff”.  I have thought that Romney and Ryan can win the argument on Medicare reform, but only if they are willing to confront the issue head-on and not be reactive to Democrat smears and distortions.

 

Happily, Romney and Ryan are doing just that – taking the argument to voters and getting favorable responses (link).  The simple reality is that the current Medicare program is financially unsustainable and that the Ryan reform plan only affects people now under 55.  Obamacare, on the other hand, already law, takes a huge chunk of money out of the current Medicare program, affecting seniors right now on Medicare – a chunk estimated by the government at about $450 billion when the law was first enacted and now pegged by the Congressional Budget Office at over $700 billion (link).  That’s it -- Obamacare takes out over $700 billion from the Medicare program seniors are currently on.  On top of that, throw in Obamacare’s new rationing board and the current law, enacted entirely by Democrats with no Republican support, dramatically affects seniors right now.  Once these facts sink in to more people it’s Obama who will be rightly seen as pushing granny off the cliff.

 

The Democrat response to this unpleasant reality – more smears and lies.  Yuval Levin at National Review Online (link): 

Last week I spoke with a journalist who covers health care who was marveling at the trouble the Democrats had allowed themselves to get into on Medicare — thanks to Obamacare on the one hand and the Romney-Ryan plan on the other, it’s suddenly Democrats who would cut the program for current seniors but would fail to save it from collapse and Republicans who would leave current seniors protected and stand a real chance of saving Medicare (and the federal budget) in the long run.  In their attempt to run away from this new reality, the Democrats have found themselves pushed into a series of increasingly implausible and unserious defenses and seemed to be losing ground on Medicare, which they had hoped might be their strongest issue this year.  

“So what will they do?” I asked him. He didn’t hesitate: “They’ll just lie.” He thought they would revert to the same story they have told for years — Republicans will increase seniors’ costs and destroy Medicare and Democrats won’t — and assume that people will just believe it.  That certainly made sense, and we now know he was right. On Saturday, the Obama campaign released this ad attacking the Romney Medicare proposal. The ad doesn’t walk some sort of narrow line between misleading and deceiving, it’s just simply a pack of lies from top to bottom.... 

....Those are all the claims in the ad, and they are all false. At least as striking, though, is what the ad doesn’t mention. It doesn’t mention that the Romney Medicare proposal would leave current seniors entirely unaffected or that it would provide a guaranteed comprehensive benefit to future seniors through a premium-support system. It doesn’t mention that the Democrats cut $716 billion from Medicare in this decade to spend on Obamacare, and did so largely through increased price controls, which are the most counterproductive way to reduce short-term costs since they tend to drive up long-term costs and undermine efficiency, quality, and access. It doesn’t say that Obamacare subjects Medicare to a board of 15 rationers who will decide which benefits are worthwhile and which are not — for both current and future seniors.  In other words, the [Democrat] ad pretends Obamacare does not exist, ignores the reality of the Romney Medicare proposal, and presents a series of flatly untrue claims in its place.

Now, people can debate the Ryan proposal and whether it would ultimately save Medicare or not, or suggest (implausibly) that in the long run it will take as much out of Medicare as Obamacare now does, but one cannot deny that Obamacare is taking $700+ billion out of Medicare as we speak.  Florida will be the laboratory this election on whether Obama, Slow Joe Biden, and the other Democrats can piss on seniors and convince them that it’s a sun shower with a rainbow at the end. 

John M Greco

Real Liberal “Chicago Values” in Action = “19 People Shot in Overnight Shootings Across Chicago”

Chicago’s hardball Ultraliberal Mayor Emanuel’s now infamous “Chicago Values” (link) on display:  “19 People Shot in Overnight Shootings Across Chicago” blares the Chicago Tribune web page headline (link). 

 

Since the ultraliberal took over, and hired as police chief an east coast guy who promptly took a puzzling, gratuitous, but nevertheless character-revealing swipe (link) at Sarah Palin, Chicago’s violence has skyrocketed, mostly in black and to a lesser extent Hispanic neighborhoods, though with notable instances of roving bands of minority youths violently flashmobbing in tonier spots.  By one measure, Chicago is, after years of despotic control by the Democratic Party, the "deadliest global city" (link).

All this in a city with some of the most restrictive gun control laws in America.  Despite the plain facts that much of the mayhem in the city over the years has been committed with knives, bats, and other non-projectiles, mostly by fatherless young men sustained by the loose requirements of the welfare state, and the relative dearth of gun violence in rural areas where many more people have guns, the reflexive liberal response to all this violence is to march (link) for more gun control and shout down critics who think that addressing a poverty of culture is part of the solution. 

Gotta keep those folks in the hoods fearful that Republicans are “gonna put them all back in chains”, as Vice President of the United States Joseph Biden recently told a largely black audience in Virginia, so they’ll keep voting for Democrats.

 

John M Greco     

After Ryan Pick, By Agreeing to Ultra-Liberal Debate Questioners Romney Rejoins the Stupid Party

After a courageous choice of Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate, which will test the electorate's ability to think like responsible adults, Mitt Romney got very stupid very fast.  He agreed to a series of three debates with ultra-liberal questioners (link).  Obama will get asked questions like "Are you surprised how difficult it has been to get needed reforms past racist, homophobic, sexist, stupid, selfish, and evil Republicans?", while Romney will get asked questions like "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" 

He could have insisted on two questioners for each debate, one picked from each side, or insisted on a predetermined set of questions that eliminated the questioner all together.  Or he could have insisted that at least one of the three questioners be a conservative.  But no.  He agrees to all ultra-liberal interrogators.  My guess is that that stupidity will cost him one to two points in swing states.   

Roger L Simon writes (link):

I was appalled, although not surprised, to read the just announced list of moderators for the forthcoming presidential debates....  All liberals from liberal news organizations.....  I don’t have any idea why the tradition of allowing a biased media to run these events continues. It is a testament to the passivity of the Republican Party. We saw how it worked during the primary season. Now we are going to get a rerun during the main event, with more subtlety and ultimately more subversion.

Unbelievable.  After all the debate history obvious to all, this is Simply Unbelievable. 

John M Greco

Investing Solo – Leveraged Closed End Funds Still Appeal

I thought I would update my investment approach, since my last post on this was about a year ago.  Then, I thought the time was a sweet one for Closed End Funds (CEFs), and a year later I think that’s still true, maybe even a bit more than before.

My approach is one of investing in light of the intermediate-term market and economic macro picture.  I don’t think of this as market timing, as I don’t trade for short-term profit.  I think of my approach as one of strategic asset allocation.  Right now I think the intermediate-term macro picture is one of (1) substantial deleveraging at the state and individual level, and (2) the boomer reach for yield in the face of a long-disappointing stock market and growing skepticism of the “stocks for the long run” approach, as the lead edge of that demographic is now reaching retirement age. 

I think that consumer and government financial retrenchment combined with less demand for stocks as investments will lead to continued economic and stock market weakness for years to come, which in turn will result in low interest rates (as seen in Japan for the last 15 years or so) and reasonable demand for quality debt (“fixed income”) assets for many years.   One can only invest consistent with some assessment of market prospects, and that’s mine.  Whether the US economy is technically in a recession versus being in a very low growth state seems immaterial, other than for its potential psychological effects on investors and the possible government actions it provokes.      

As a result, I have gradually moved my portfolio even stronger into leveraged CEFs, which borrow at short-term interest rates and use those extra dollars to invest in more securities to generate higher returns.  The leverage is modest by financial wheeler-dealer standards – at most, one borrowed dollar for every one of investor equity, so that the maximum leverage as a percent of total assets cannot be greater than 50%, and usually is between 20 to 40%.  In this environment, as Bill Gross has said and written, why not act like a banker and borrow at low rates and lend at higher ones?

For me right now, the risk of a carefully-selected leveraged CEF that yields 6% to 9% is acceptable in this environment.  I don’t want to sit by earning 2% to 5% on a fully investment grade vehicle with inflation running, let’s say, 2%.  I’m willing to study my CEF options and take the risks, which I ameliorate somewhat, beyond ongoing due diligence, through diversification across types of funds and sponsors.  CEF portfolio managers have tools available (derivatives) that they can employ to cushion the effect of rising short-term interest rates, when that eventually begins to happen.

I now have a majority of my portfolio dollars in leveraged debt CEFs, earning a much higher return than I would without them.  Some of my largest holdings include: PFN and PKO (both Pimco) with diversified debt; KTF (DWS) and NEV (Nuveen) with tax-free muni bonds; TLI (Legg Mason) and JRF (Nuveen) with floating rate senior secured bank loans; FFC (Flaherty & Crumrine) and JPS (Nuveen) with preferreds/exchange-traded debt; DMO (Legg) with mortgages; and GBAB (Guggenheim) with taxable Build America muni bonds. 

The only CEFs I hold with equity are in the midstream energy/MLP space (i.e., pipelines and storage).  My largest positions are KYN and KMF (both Kayne Anderson) and NTG (Tortoise).         

A caveat: I thought these CEFs were good buys when I accumulated shares, and I still like them here at least as holds.  In recent months, CEF prices, and those of other debt instruments, have been bid up in the reach for yield, and as such most of my funds are trading at modest to moderate premiums right now.  Whether they are good buys right now, or at any time, and particularly relative to other CEF choices, is up to each investor to assess. 

Outside of CEFs, in light of my macro picture, I have by now exited all my floating-rate preferred securities, such as MET-A and MS-A, that I had begun accumulating in 2010 and early 2011.  Non-midstream energy MLP-related equities are now less than 10% of my total portfolio. 

Mike Parenti

Link to all Investing Solo Posts

Longmire on TV

I’ve been enjoying A&E’s new crime drama TV series Longmire, about the trials and tribulations of a Wyoming county sheriff.  Like so many such series, and movies as well for that matter, a big part of the appeal is the stimulant to the imagination, about life is such a place at such a time.  Sometimes the story lines can be secondary to what’s running through one’s mind eye.   

The writing and acting are generally pretty good, and I’m glad I took a flyer although I should say that I abandoned one episode (I later relented) because of head-shaking remarkable coincidences and excessive intertwining of the lives of the small number of major characters that so often fill TV series.   

For my tastes, it’s hard to find a good series, with historical or geographic or scientific interest, that strikes an acceptable balance, for me, between main plot versus character backstories and subplots – I prefer when the latter is kept in check.  Sometimes a good series deteriorates into mostly character stories, like CSI (which I stopped watching a few years ago) and the third season of Deadwood.  Even American Restoration, an interesting reality TV show about a Las Vegas restorer of artifacts, antiques, and old objects, has been reducing the technical restoration-related content in favor of the personal inter-relationships among the characters; not a good development.

John M Greco

UChicago's Milton Friedman at 100

My dilapidated copy, purchased 1/11/1971

Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning long-time Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, would have been 100 years old yesterday.

His ideas and I were first introduced in a freshman Common Core Economics course at the University of Chicago, taught by a colleague.  One of the key book assignments was, of course, Capitalism & Freedom, which has influenced my thinking ever since. 

Fellow Nobelist and UChicago Economics Professor Gary Becker called Friedman "the most important economist of the 20th century.”  Friedman was a leader of the "Chicago School" of Economics, the principles of which he discussed in addressing the University's Board of Trustees in 1974 (link):

“In discussions of economic policy, ‘Chicago’ stands for belief in the efficacy of the free market as a means of organizing resources, for skepticism about government intervention into economic affairs, and for emphasis on the quantity of money as a key factor in producing inflation.  

“In discussions of economic science,” he continued, “‘Chicago’ stands for an approach that takes seriously the use of economic theory as a tool for analyzing a startlingly wide range of concrete problems, rather than as an abstract mathematical structure of great beauty but little power; for an approach that insists on the empirical testing of theoretical generalizations and that rejects alike facts without theory and theory without facts.”

From the UChicago Magazine (link) at the time of Friedman's death about 6 years ago:

That his ideas often met with criticism didn’t faze him. “Mr. Friedman loved to argue,” [Chicago] Graduate School of Business professor Austan Goolsbee wrote in the November 17 New York Times. “They say he was the greatest debater in all of economics.” In a 2000 PBS interview former Secretary of State George P. Schultz, a former Chicago colleague, recalled: “[T]here was a saying: Everybody loves to argue with Milton. Particularly when he isn’t there.”

Last I heard, the Becker-Friedman Economics Institute (link) at the University will be taking over the buildings long occupied by the Chicago Theological Seminary, across 58th Street from the Oriental Institute and kiddie-corner from the new Business School complex.  In this time of ominous growing government control over our economy and our private lives, his legacy is as important now as it has ever been.

Richard Balsamo

Related Posts:
Re: The "Stimulus": Economics As the Dismal Science -- Keynesians Say 1+1=3, Milton Friedman & Common Sense Say No Way

Democrat “Values”, Gays, Islam, Marriage, & Chick-fil-A

Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel and Boston Mayor Tom Menino, both Democrats, today jointly announced that they are instituting a Democrat “Party Loyalty” card, which they advise holders to carry with them at all times.  They stated that this development stems from their growing concern as mayors that many residents of their cities do not hold the proper “values”.  Holders of the wallet cards will also receive Party Loyalty car and window stickers, all of which, say the mayors, will help police and other city officials to better appreciate the civic loyalty of any residents who are stopped for violations or who need city services.  Eligibility will be determined by such factors as an individual’s record in requesting Democrat ballots in primary elections and Democrat Party ward committeeman recommendations.  The mayors stressed that Democrat Party Loyalty cards are certainly not mandatory.      

Veteran political observers say this move reflects these mayors’ growing desire to increase resident awareness of their declared city “Values,” which recently was evidenced in the Chick-fil-A flap, involving reaction to a company official’s personal view in support of the traditional definition of marriage.  Meanwhile, a smiling Boston mayor Menino, taking a short break from another ribbon-cutting ceremony at another new Boston mosque (link), told reporters that the mosque’s imam’s personal view that all homosexuals should be immediately stoned to death is part of the rich cultural heritage of Islam, which, as President Obama has recently said, has always been a part of the fabric of America.   

John M Greco 

Rahm Emanuel, Chick-fil-A, Democrat Corruption, Murder, & "Chicago Values"

Notwithstanding his recent cooperation with and praise for viciously anti-Jewish Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakahn, his former bosses Bill Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s positions in support of the traditional definition of marriage, the long history of profound and vile institutionalized corruption by his own ruling Democrat party in Chicago, and recent distraction due to the city’s staggering record-breaking murder rate since he took office, Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, of Jewish descent, condemned support of traditional marriage, the official position of the Roman Catholic Church and, at least, hundreds of thousands of Chicago citizens, as against “Chicago values”.

Perhaps Democrat Mayor Emanuel, the elected chief executive of a secular municipal administration in a diverse Republic, would care to expound to the benighted Chicago proletariat on other "Chicago Values" and the definitions of tolerance and diversity.

John M Greco