A Bush "YES" man speaks

Don't worry. Be happy. So says Michael Novak.

U.S. output today is just about 40 percent higher than it was when President Clinton left office. The nominal GDP has grown from $10 trillion at the end of 2001 to $14 trillion at the end of January 2008. In other words, the U.S. has added to its national wealth an equivalent to the whole nominal GDP of China (in 2007, $3.25 trillion). The U.S. today is as big as it was in 2001, plus the whole GDP of China.

Oh really? Has it occurred to him that the value of the dollar has eroded about 40%? In January 2001 one $US bought 1.08 Euros. Today one $US buys 0.65 Euros. The US hasn't added anything but a case of near-hyper inflation.

He goes on to say

At the end of 2001, when President Bush’s economic policies were just beginning to take hold, total civilian employment was just over 136 million. At the end of January 2008, it was 146 million. Some ten million new jobs! Not the greatest, but not bad; certainly not “horrible.” During the last six months, the number of the employed is down 100,000 — not as huge a decrease as everyone has been imagining. The total employment in June was 145.9 million.

Where to begin on this one? First off all the end of 2001 was the start of the Fed's insane interest rate policy. That created millions of jobs in the housing bubble. Everything from realtors to construction workers (90% of whom are illegals of course and are a net drain on society), to title company workers etc. Give me free money and I'll create jobs too building up a Ponzi scheme.

But even setting that aside, 10 million jobs created over 8 years in a country as large as the US is not exactly impressive. The population in 2000 was 281 million. The population in 2008 is 301 million. That's a growth of 7.1% in the population. The number of jobs grew from 136 million to 146 million. That's a growth of 7.3%. WOW!! Job growth kept up with population growth. I guess that means Bush's face should be added to Mt. Rushmore ASAP.

So even with the Ponzi scheme knows as the housing bubble, the free money handed out to anyone with a pulse by banks, there was 0% job growth over this decade. Not that a proud Bush yes man would ever point these kinds of things out. No, just keep telling us everything is just super duper and all will be well. Just spend your stimulus check(s) like good little drones and don't worry about a thing.

Obama is the messiah

This just in:

Twice on Wednesday and again Thursday morning, Obama traveled to a lakefront apartment building near his Chicago home to work out with a friend at his gym. On Wednesday night, Obama also spent an hour at the East Bank Club, a mammoth exercise facility just north of the city's famous business Loop where he is known to play basketball.

A distinct lack of visible sweat on the Illinois senator triggered questions about whether he was actually exercising or using the gym visits as cover for conducting vice presidential vetting or interviews.

That view held credence among some of the photographers who regularly accompany Obama. They said that even when he shot hoops earlier this year with members of the University of North Carolina varsity men's basketball team, they didn't see Obama sweat.

Wow. Not only will he single handed save the world, but the guy doesn't even sweat when playing basketball. I mean holy cow, this guy's one small step from turning water into wine.

But wait, as they say, there's more. One of the overlooked paragraphs in this "Golly Gee look how awesome Barry is" piece said this:

On the former occasions, reporters accompanying Obama saw him get in and out of an SUV wearing a baseball hat, white T-shirt and black sweat pants.

WHOA! WHOA! WHOA! He got out of a what now? An SUV. Is this the same guy who said this:

"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,"

Yet another example of a liberal Democrat doing one thing and saying another. Just like Al Gore flies in private jets but lectures me about the environment. Just like Mr "Two Americas" John Edwards lives in a 20,000 sq ft house and gets $1200 haircuts lectures me about not caring for the poor.

But they have a "D" next to their names so the MSM says nothing.

Say It Ain't So

Nancy, Harry and Barry want to send out Tax Rebate Check Part Deux. Good god does nobody in Washington have even the basics of economics down? Can someone please send an econ 101 book to each and everyone on of these baboons? This is the reasoning for the Democrat push to spend more of my increasingly worthless tax dollars:

July 15 (Bloomberg) -- Congressional Democrats are considering a second round of rebates to taxpayers, saying the benefits of the first checks sent to more than 100 million households this year are being eroded by rising energy prices.

So if I understand correctly Nancy, Harry and Barry want to send out checks because oil is expensive.

Those $1200 checks sent out are no different than if the government had printed $1200 in new
bills and sent it out instead. It was a bad idea. No I take that back, it was an awful idea. It's simple really. The more dollars that are printed, whether physically or electronically, the less each dollar is worth. Your basic economics lesson of supply and demand. Oil is priced in dollars. So the less the dollar is worth the more oil costs. The higher the price of oil, the more gas costs. The more gas costs the more everything costs since everything is shipped from point A to point B at some point in time. And the more everything costs the more wages workers demand to buy the products. And the more wages workers demand leads to companies having to raise prices on their products to afford to pay their workers the higher wages they demand to buy the more expensive products. And on and on it goes until you get to a vicious circle of hyperinflation. Not unlike was is happening today in Africa

Zimbabwe will soon run out of the paper it uses to print its increasingly worthless currency, thereby setting the stage for what the Los Angeles Times describes as "economic paralysis -- and potential collapse."

So far in less than 6 months the government will have printed close to a trillion dollars in various stimulus and bailout schemes. That 1000 billion dollars. To put such a large number in the context where most Americans can understand...it's like more money than Hannah Montana has. Yeah dude, it's that much. $150B for stimulus 1. $150B coming for stimulus 2. $300B for the Countrywide Chris Dodd written bailout bill. $30B for the Bear Sterns bailout. $30-50B for the Fannie and Freddie bailout. And now another $150B for stimulus #2.

That's about the cost of Iraq give or take. Democrats scream about wasting money there. But they don't bat an eye when an equivalent amount is squandered here.

But why should I complain, I hear Best Buy is having a big sale and will give me an extra 10% if I cash my check there. Another plasma TV baby! Oh wait, never mind I'm too rich to qualify for the full stimulus and I have no kids. So I'll be lucky if I get a $50 check. But the illegal alien down the street who pays no taxes will get his full $1200 rebate along with his welfare check, his wife's WIC check, his low income housing assistance check and of course his free health care.

America. What a country, by which I mean what a joke.

United States of Corrupt Socialism

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Federal Reserve and the Treasury announced steps Sunday to shore up mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whose shares have plunged as losses from their mortgage holdings threatened their financial survival.

In other words use tax dollars to buy up shares in the bankrupt companies. One of the companies - Fannie Mae - was until recently run by one of Obama's advisors, Mr. Jim Johnson. And holy cow surprise surprise, Obama is all for the bailout. The bailout was orchestrated by Henry Paulson. Before becoming Secretary of Treasury, Paulson was CEO of Goldman Sachs. And who was CEO before him you ask? John Corzine. Ring a bell? It should. He is the current governor of NJ and former Senator from NJ. Doesn't matter anymore. Democrat, Republican, same incestuous pigs at the corruption trough.

After swearing up and down that the bailout of Bear Sterns was a one time only event, Bush, Paulson and the rest of the crooks in Washington are bailing out Freddie and Fannie as well. And when Wamu or Bank of America is on the brink, a few hundred billion of your dollars will be ready as well.

This kind of shit is to be expected in African countries. It's to be expected in Mexico. It's to be expected in Eastern Europe. It's not to be expected in the USA.

Stupid White People

This kind of myth is prevalent in the media

Last month’s Newsweek poll put Obama ahead of McCain 51 to 36 but in this month’s poll the gap has closed to Obama 44 McCain 41. The McCain camp can take further encouragement from the fact that 85 percent of undecided voters are non-Hispanic whites and the vast majority of these voters do not have a college degree; Obama has had real difficulty in gaining traction among this demographic.

Right. I see. People without a college degree are morons. And morons vote Republican. Check.

Except they don't, at least not according to 2000 and 2004 exit polls which showed that those without a college degree voted for Gore and Kerry. Those without so much as a high school diploma voted for Gore and Kerry as well. Those with a college degree or some college, voted for Bush both times.

But why let facts get in the way of a good old fashioned liberal myth?

Indywhatnow?

Indymac is no more. Kaput. Adios. See ya later. Except most people reading about it probably are thinking what the heck is an Indymac? Is that like a special Big Mac that they serve in Indiana? This on top of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac stories. It's almost like an Onion joke or something wit these names.

Nonetheless a big bank has failed. The bank failed because it made bad loans to home "owners". These weren't subprime loans. They were Alt-A loans. These are loans that are deemed less risky than subprime but in reality aren't. An Alt-A loan is basically someone with ok credit who states their income but does not document the income. These loans are also called liars loans because as any reasonable human could tell, if you can't document your income, you're lying about your income. San Francisco was and is sometimes referred to as Alt-A by the Bay since such a huge proportion of loans there were Alt-A. Your typical software engineer making $125K a year getting a loan for $675K with a stated income of $250K.

The media has been calling this a subprime issue for years now. I have said on numerous occasions it is not about sub prime at all. It is about people of all income levels taking out too much debt. The failure of Indy proves that point once and for all. And all those McMansions and high end condos foreclosing by the truckload on a daily basis will be the end result of this mess.

Now of course the Fed will bail out everyone involved just like it did with Bear Sterns. The Indy executives who ran the bank into the ground will get their multi-million dollar bonuses. Wouldn't be surprised to the Indy's CEO in the Obama administration. Maybe Sec. of Treasury. Why not? Obama did hire the ex-Fannie Mae CEO to find a VP.

And yet even with all this going on, the MSM is still printing stories like this claiming now is the time to buy a home.

Phil Gramm for Prez

It was nice to the good Senator call a spade a spade. Americans are a bunch of whiners. He hit the nail on the head. But of course that is a cardinal sin for a politician. The second those words came out of his words, the MSM went into hissy-fit mode and now he's the worstest person in the world.

Americans have gone from a country full of independent thinkers to a country full of people with their hand out waiting for the government to throw them some money. Take out a $480K loan on a $20K salary? Not your fault. You want a government bailout. Weigh 300 lbs, smoke and eat at McDonald's every day? Not your fault you're in piss poor shape. You demand the government pay for your health care. Drop out of high school and now make $7 an hour at Walmart? Not your fault. You try to unionize and destroy the one company that will pay you anything for your "skills" which amounts to breathing. You drive an F-250 and can't afford to fill it up? Why it must be someone else's fault and you complain about the big bad oil companies.

Pathetic.

Idiot of the Weeks

Grandma loses her house. Boo hoo says the MSM. To hell with her say I.

Only weeks after moving into their first home in 2006, Margarita Rios celebrated Christmas with her two daughters and their families. They finally had the room to do it right, with decorations outside the Valley Stream, N.Y., house and a nice tree surrounded by presents inside.

In February, faced with an unexpected jump in her monthly mortgage bill, Rios stopped making payments and abandoned the home, shattering her life and scattering her family.

Despite relatively meager earnings - she makes $25,000 a year at the factory - she managed to save $20,000 for a down payment. Careful use of credit cards helped her establish a good credit history.

Soon, Rios was the owner of a $489,000 four-bedroom home with a monthly mortgage payment of $4,100.

So let me get this straight. This woman bought at the peak of the bubble. Stupid move #1.

She bought using an adjustable mortgage. Stupid move #2.

She bought a house with a payment of $4,100 on a salary of $25,000?!?!?. Stupid move #3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.....99, 100, 101...1000, 1001.

And now I am supposed to feel sorry for her because she is literally too stupid to survive on her own. I don't care if you are the most financially unsophisticaed person in the world If you sign up for a $4100 mortgage when your gross income is $2000 a month you are indeed the stupidest person alive.

And yet Juan McObama wants to bail people like this out with my tax dollars.

Juan McObama speaks to LULAC

Both of these amnesty pushers spoke to LULAC recently. LULAC is La Raza with a longer and kinda funnier name. It is yet another Hispanic victimology group which both candidates were bending over for.

One of the following two quotes is by Obama. The other is by McCain. Try to guess who said what.

"We have to finally bring undocumented immigrants out of the shadows. And they should have to pay a fine, and learn English, and go to the back of the line. That's how we'll put them on a pathway to citizenship," he said.

"we will address the burden U.S. employers are enduring by creating a temporary-worker program, so employers can hire and people can have jobs. And as important, we will be sensitive to the immigrant workers and their families who are doing the work that must be done," he adds."

Indistinguishable to me. Which makes sense since both McCain and Obama are liberals who support amnesty for illegals. At least Obama is consistent. He has always supported amnesty and doesn't back away from that support. Juan McCain on the other hand was for it then against it, then didn't know what it was, then thought he heard someone say something about it, and now looks like is right back on the amnesty bandwagon.

What is ironic is that both of them used the majority of their speaking time to focus on the economy. Both talked about how families are hurting, jobs are going away, blah blah blah. And yet given this background both of them want to import 20 million, non-English speaking, unskilled, uneducated peasants from Mexico. Can someone please explain to me how doing so will help any of these people that are suffering?

As for this getting to the back of the line business. Bunch of nonsense. Juan McObama thinks there is some giant queue out there for immigrants who are processed one by one by their spot in line. In fact there are about 100 different lines based on different visa categories. There are business categories and family categories. And within family there are different lines for people who have relatives that are citizens and people who have relatives that are permanent residents. And within those lines there are sub lines for kids and adults. Spouses and fiances. Brother and sisters. And within those lines there are sub lines based on where you're from. And then there is the line for a temp worker visa. Which is actually about 25lines since there are 25 or so temp worker visa categories. And sub lines within each of those based on your skills, your employer's size and your country of origin. The number of forms available from the USCIS (what the INS is called these days) rivals the number of forms available from the IRS.

So exactly which line will these illegals get to the back of? Will it be the line for business temporary farm workers? Or business temporary non-farm workers? Or maybe temporary workers via an H1-B? But then will it be the 3 years or the 6 year version of the line? And what if you're from Mexico but have lived here for 5 years? Well then you can get in the line that says you have a fast path to getting a green card? But then you'll cut in line ahead of someone from India who has been patiently waiting LEGALLY for 3 years to get a visa. And what if you have an uncle in the US? Do you get into the family line or do you get into the temp worker line?

And let's assume that they do all get to the back of some line. So what? That means that the next person who wants to immigrate legally now has 20 million more people in front of him. It still punishes those who do things legally and rewards those who break the law. And neither one of these dumb asses can figure this out.

In reality what will happen is simply a new line will be formed just for illegals. And the first person in that line will be on par with someone who has waited in one of the other lines for years, in some cases decades. And it will be a slap in the face to every single LEGAL immigrant that has ever done things the right way.

VIVA JUAN MCOBAMA!!

Time to ban knives

Imagine you read a story that went like this:

NEW YORK (AP) - The tabloids are calling them the "Tarantino murders."

The two young Frenchmen, promising research students at one of America’s top universities, had been bound and shot repeatedly in the head, neck and torso before their bodies were doused in fuel and set alight. A senior FBI detective said their wounds were the worst he had ever seen.

Even for a city assailed almost daily by reports of gun crime, this was shocking—a seemingly burst of brutality reminiscent of a Quentin Tarantino film. No one has been charged in the June 29 deaths that horrified people on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean prompted some French journalists to depict New York as a city of mean streets, rampant crime and "no-go" areas.

What would be the reaction of the MSM and its allies in the anti-gun movement? It would be yet another call to ban guns of course.

But what if the story goes something like this instead:

LONDON (AP) - The tabloids are calling them the "Tarantino murders."

The two young Frenchmen, promising research students at one of Britain's top universities, had been bound and stabbed repeatedly in the head, neck and torso before their bodies were doused in fuel and set alight. A senior Scotland Yard detective said their wounds were the worst he had ever seen.

Even for a city assailed almost daily by reports of knife crime, this was shocking—a seemingly burst of brutality reminiscent of a Quentin Tarantino film. No one has been charged in the June 29 deaths that horrified people on both sides of the English Channel, and prompted some French journalists to depict London as a city of mean streets, rampant crime and "no-go" areas.

This actually did happen in London. That's London in England where all handguns were banned 10 years ago. And also where crime of all sorts including savage murders like these have skyrocketed since the gun ban.

So of course now the only rational thing to do is ban knives in the UK. Using the logic of the anti-gun crowd that is the right course of action.

Katie says...

Oil is in the mother of all bubbles prediction and will crash. Still sticking to that prediction. I bet on it crashing by late July. So far that bet has been a bad one, and I will lose some money. No, I take that back, I will lose a lot of money. Can't win 'em all and what the hell, you need a nice solid kick in the ass every now and then just to keep you humble. Oil, you have kicked me and kicked me hard. Thank you sir, may I have another? And just to show that I am just a little loco, I have more or less gone double or nothing on oil crashing by buying October puts.

I have also been buying up some SPY and QQQQ. These indexes have been whacked badly. I've been buying this stuff into my IRA and SEP. So it's long term. I may well miss the bottom but I figure 20% down is good enough for a 25 year horizon. And it's also part of the 'if they say sell I buy and vice versa' strategy that's been working fairly well for me over the past couple of years.
For housing that capitulation has not come yet. The so-called experts have been calling bottoms forever. I have yet to see a consensus that buying real estate is a bad idea, period. That is kind of the consensus now with equities. Not universal, but the MSM is saying it and that's good enough for me. Juan 6-pack listens to what Katie Couric tells him. And right now Katie is very bearish on stocks. Katie however still thinks housing is the greatest investment ever, and hence I am still not ready to buy real estate. Probably another 9-12 months until Katie gives me the green light to buy, buy telling Juan not to buy.

OK. Now it's serious.

If the housing crash wasn't proof enough. If GM's stock at a 50 year low wasn't proof enough. This should finally be enough proof to the perma-bulls that the economy is in the shitter;

No tourist resort can afford to lose its buzz. Yet the slump now runs so deep it's starting to hurt even the town's Elvis impersonators, wedding chapels, and sex industry. When money's tight, the prospect of stuffing another $20 bill into a lap-dancer's gyrating stocking-top somehow doesn't seem quite so enticing. "This year already we've seen the Minx closing, the Mensa club closing, and the Crazy Horse closing," says Dolores Eliades, owner of the OG, the second biggest "adult cabaret" venue in the world. "By another 12 months from now, I expect another two or three major venues will have gone.

The demise of the Las Vegas "sex-industry" (which entails topless dancers only and despite what most people think still does not have legalized prostitution) is a perfect nation-wide representation of the boom and bust of the 2000s. While I lived in Las Vegas for 5 years, it was a bit of a fantasy world. And not because of the Strip and the silly hotels on it.

No, it was the fact that in a town where the median income is $45K a year, every 2nd car on the road was either a BMW, Hummer or Escalade. And I'm not exaggerating. You'd go to $600 a month apartment complexes and see multiple $50K care in the parking lot. You'd go to a middle class subdivision and see boats, tricked out Harleys, customized pick-ups in the driveways. You'd go to a Best Buy on a Saturday and there would be a line of people coming out with $4,000 TVs which of course would be loaded into the $50K SUV. And strip clubs as well as nightclubs were wall to wall people week in and week out. Not that I ever went to one myself, it's just what I heard from a friend of a friend who new a guy whose brother went to a strip club once. Uhm yeah, that's it.

And of course all this consumption was fuelled by easy credit. Easy credit for homes which turned into HELOCs which turned into cars. Easy credit for credit cards with 0% intro rates. Even easy credit for payday loans which allowed even the poorest of the poor to get in on the fun. On top of that Californians were swimming in housing bubble money drove the 4hrs up I-15 every weekend and plunked down a lot of $20 (or more) down those g-strings, further adding fuel to the consumption fire.

Well now the party's over. It has been over for quite some time. It's only now really starting to settle in. Las Vegas has been down before and it pulled itself back up. Which is something I really dug about the city. There is no real history there. As soon as a building becomes too old to make money, the building gets blown up and a newer, bigger and shinier one takes its place. And this cycle will repeat itself and the town will be great once again. But for now, things will probably get a lot worse before getting better.

It was a pretty cool ride though and I'm glad I was part of it.

So who won the cold war again?

US income tax rates currently:

Corporate: 35%
Personal: 15-35% (soon to be over 54.9% when Obama takes over and includes social security and medicare tax on top of the 39.6% highest marginal rate)

Now compare US rates to foreign rates. Most former Soviet Block countries, now have a low flat tax. Russia 13%. Romania 16%. Ukraine 15% . Bulgaria 10%. Slovakia 19%. Estonia, 22%. After 60 years of communism, those countries know to stay the hell away from it. Even Germany's top income tax rate is only 45%, less than what the top tax rate will be under Obama. And Germany has a lower corporate rate too. As Europe is moving away from socialism/communism, Obama, Nancy and Harry are taking the US in the opposite direction.And yes European countries have a fairly high VAT. But I would gladly trade a lower income tax for a higher sales tax.

I often hear liberals including Obama, bemoan the fact the US is not like Europe. Well, OK Mr. President-to-be, let's become more like Europe in this aspect. Let's lower income tax rates to a nice flat 15 or 20%. How about it?

'84 or '80?

McCain is in such dire straits, it seems possible he will lose Montana according to this poll. Granted Montana does have its fair share of the crunchy tree hugging types who will naturally vote for the messiah. But holy 1984 style wipe out Batman. I've read some articles claiming Obama could even win Georgia. I thought, yeah right wishful thinking. But now who the hell knows? Obama's commercials are pretty good. He comes across as an aw shucks, raised in the midwest, worked his way through college kind of dude. Anyone not paying attention will see those ads and believe it. The MSM won't ever tell the masses about the real Obama. So all they have to go on is the make-believe garbage they will be seeing the media for the next 5 months. And given that McCain has not made even the faintest attempt to attack Obama, the truth about him will never reach Joe 6 Pack.

If McCain can't even win Montana which is about as red-state as it gets, the only question left for November is this: will Obama's trouncing of him be like 1984, when Reagan won 49 states or like 1980 when Reagan won only 44? Add a nice solid 60 Dem Senators and probably a 50+ majority in the House and look out below.

Once again, good job GOP. You nominated an old liberal who will be trounced by his opponent. You passed on Giuliani because he wasn't extreme enough in hating gays and banning abortion. You passed on Romney because he was a Mormon. Well OK. You'll end up with Obama instead, a guy who will make Rudy look down right Bush-like when it comes to those precious social issues you care so much about. And get ready for 3 or 4 Ginsburg type Supreme Court appointees by Obama that will strike down just about everything you hold dear. 10 Commandments in the town square? You'll be fighting to keep those tablets in your churches once those judges get going. But at least they won't be Mormon and that's what counts, right?

Think about all this for the next 8 years. And if your party is still around in 2016 maybe you'll get your shit together then and get back to being a party of fiscal discipline and not so concerned with who can marry whom and who reads what bible.

Doesn't make sense

Washington DC has (had?) the most restrictive gun control in the country. So how can a "progressive" blogger get shot on a DC street? As a bona fide member of the "progressive" movement, surely he believes that if you ban guns, gun crime will go away. And yet here he is in the DC gun free zone and the dude gets shot. I'm at a loss for words.

As the saying goes, the definition of a conservative is a liberal who got mugged. I wonder if his views on concealed weapons will change at all. I wonder if he will have second thoughts on allowing criminals to get off with junk like anger management. Probably not since he has too much to lose by publicly admitting any of this. He will most likely come back and say something like "I told you banning guns is a good thing". Liberals, gotta love 'em.

Senile or just wishfull thinking?

McCain is under the impression he can win New Jersey. Reality says otherwise. And wasn't this one of the supposed strengths of McCain in the primaries? He could win blue states like NJ, NY, and even be competitive in California. Yeah right. The last poll in California has Obama leading by 20%. In NY it's also 20%. And on top of that he is losing Virgina and Colorado and barely hanging on in North Carolina. And in New Hampshire, the state with no income tax, no sales tax and the motto LIVE FREE OR DIE, he is down by 14% in the latest poll.

Good call Republicans. You've nominated someone who will lose New Hampshire and N. Carolina.

Who Killed The Electric Car?

I finally saw that documentary and was surprised by it. I was expecting a Michael Mooreesque far left, paranoid movie that proposed Bush and Cheney went to the electric car factory in the middle of the night and blew the place up. But instead it was a fairly down the middle portrait of what happened.

The story goes something like this: GM came out with an electric car in the mid-90s. This was done in order to meet the California law that mandated any manufacturer who sold cars in the state had to have a certain % of their sales in the form of 0 emission vehicles by the 2000s. But GM was also at the same time, lobbying hard against that law. The law was thrown out and with it went GM's electric car program as well. GM took back all the cars it had leased (didn't sell any) and destroyed them all. GM contends that this was because there was no interest in the car. The movie contends there was interest but GM didn't try to capitalize on it and even acted to sabotage its own products. It's a he said, she said kind of movie, presented I think fairly, even with the obvious skewing of the movie maker.

The movie claimed that the cost of electricity to run the car would be the equivalent of $0.60 a gallon. They never said exactly how that was calculated. But even if that number were doubled or tripled, it would still rock right about now. So there is something odd about GM getting rid of such a car. It really doesn't make any sense and does raise some interesting questions.

See for yourself.

A trip in the wayback machine

Larry Murphy, president of SalesTraq, reported similar numbers. His median new home price was $297,289, up 6.4 percent from October 2004. He has existing home prices at $285,000, relatively flat from $284,500 in September, but up 14 percent from a year ago. Murphy said there is no housing bubble in Las Vegas, nor will there be one in the near future. "Frankly, the vaunted housing bubble is just like Y2K-- a scary proposition put forth by people who do not understand the real estate fundamentals of this market," he said.
- Las Vegas Review-Journal 10/29/05

Las Vegas home prices, like many parts of the country, have continued to rise strongly. There has been widespread media coverage on the possibility of a housing market bust. However there have not been many statistics to support his theory. In fact the statistics reveal that there is very little danger of a housing bubble bust. In fact the latest report released by the Research Division of the National Association of Realtors shows that the local housing market is in excellent shape.
- Las Vegas Real Estate Buyer's Guide 12/11/06


CBS Marketwatch: Is there a housing bubble?

Toll Brothers CFO Joel Rassman: I don't think so.

- CBS Marketwatch 6/7/05



A zillow chart of Las Vegas prices over the past year and a half.

McCain the warrior

It's rather pathetic to watch McCain. Obama's henchman questions his military service and his rebuttal is essentially "please don't say that, it's not nice". What he should have said was something along the lines of "question my military service again and I'll stick the business end of an M-16 up your ass, asshole". He can't stand up to a McCain henchman in June and yet he will stand up and fight in October? Yeah that'll work out real well. McCain and the rest of the RINOs out there just don't get. You don't bring a knife to a gun fight.

As for questioning Obama's patriotism, not much to that either. He is patriotic using the modern definition. For the MTV crowd patriotism means blame your country for every ill in the world. It means being anti-military. It means assuming your country is always in the wrong and your enemies are in the right. It means deferring to the UN instead of Congress. It means allegiance to international law over US law. Using those modern measures, Obama will be the most patriotic president ever.