Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion

Great new song by singer Kathleen Stewart, "It Ain't Your Money To Spend." You can listen to it here.

Here the partial lyrics:

IT AIN'T YOUR MONEY TO SPEND
© 2009, Words by Steve Jones, Music by Kathleen Stewart

Don't spend my grandson's paycheck.
He's only two years old.
With Obama in the White House,
His future's bought and sold.
Stop this immoral spending spree.
Stop assaulting our liberty.
Let me help you comprehend:
It ain't your money to spend.

Born and bred for freedom.
Got me a lot of rights.
They're all but disappearing
Before your fiscal appetites.
You're taking the fruit of my labor
To give your next-door neighbor.
I'll say it from beginning to end:
It ain't your money to spend.

It ain't your money to spend.
You're acting like a bunch of jerks.
I'm the one who earned it.
I'm the one who works.
Your income redistribution
Doesn't jibe with the Constitution.
So I got a little message to send:
It ain't your money to spend.

From the halls of social science, a theory: "Sex Appeal May Have Hurt Sarah Palin."

The conclusion is based on interviews with 122 undergraduates. Basing anything on interviews of undergraduates is suspect to me. This is research?

"We hypothesize that focusing on a woman’s appearance will promote reduced perceptions of competence, and also, by virtue of construing the women as an “object,” perceptions of the woman as less human."

I prefer this explanation, written from a male perspective:

Palin exudes sexual confidence and maternal authority, which in a relatively conservative culture like ours is the most recognizable and viscerally comprehensible form of female power. It makes a lot of men uncomfortable, but that’s because it’s the kind of female power they are most often subject to, and most often fail to successfully resist.

Or this, from a female perspective:

Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.

Sarah's persona -- her good looks, her America-is-great attitude, her happy marriage -- was a threat to many in the Democratic / liberal / academic / women's movement world at many different levels. You don't need to be a freaking social scientist to figure that out.

Regardless, a good excuse to run a picture of Sarah.

Jim Cramer, the television investment personality, has been in the news recently since he criticized Barack Obama's economic plans as a destroyer of wealth. The petty White House reaction to Cramer has put Cramer on the White House enemies list, along with Rick Santelli and Rush Limbaugh.

Cramer gives his "response" to the White House's sniping on his website. I agree with most of what Cramer says about Obama's ill-conceived hostility to the markets, and Obama's failure to understand the relationship between the markets and the economy. I also appreciate Cramer's willingness to go public in his opposition.

So I will fight the fight against that agenda. I will stand up for what I believe and for what I have always believed: Every person has a right to be rich in this country and I want to help them get there. And when they get there, if times are good, we can have them give back or pay higher taxes. Until they get there, I don't want them shackled or scared or paralyzed. That's what I see now.

If that makes me an enemy of the White House, then call me a general of an army that Obama may not even know exists -- tens of millions of people who live in fear of having no money saved when they need it and who get poorer by the day.

But buried in Cramer's response is a not quite "I'm sorry" mea culpa, which echo's David Brook's lament that Obama is not who Brooks thought he was:

I am proud to have voted for the Obama who I thought understood the need to get us on the right path, and create jobs and wealth before taxing it and making moves that hurt job creation -- certainly ones that will outweigh the meager number of jobs he's creating.

Why are you proud you voted for someone who you say is a destroyer of wealth and whose policies you compare to Lenin?

Just admit you made a mistake. You will feel better once you say it. Obama was not who you thought he was, and you were duped by one of the slickest salesmen "in my adult life." Repeat after me:

I am sorry I voted for Obama. It was a mistake. I was not as smart as I thought I was. I drank the cool-aid. Did I say I'm sorry? Well, I am. Please forgive me. I'm not a bad person. I just wanted everything to be cool.

If David Brooks can do it, so can you.

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Here is a compilation of Cramer clips from Media Matters, the Democratic "watch [attack] dog" organization which did us a favor by putting Cramer's comments in one place:

I shudder to think of what would have happened if he failed to put the seat down:

MOSCOW, March 4 (RIA Novosti) - A woman in central Russia's Penza Region has been sentenced to 15 months behind bars after stabbing her husband in the eye when he refused to peel potatoes, the pnz.ru news website said on Wednesday.

The woman, from the outskirts of the city of Penza, stabbed her husband in the left eye with a kitchen knife. She had earlier served time for murder, and had met her future partner immediately after her release from jail, according to assistant to the regional prosecutor Irina Alekseyenko.

The victim waited three days before going to see a doctor. He initially claimed he had injured himself, but then admitted the truth. The man is now almost completely blind in the left eye.

"The victim begged the court to be lenient with his wife," Alekseyenko said.

(h/t Astute Bloggers)

From Moscow News, this explanation of history:

In this sense Russia has always differed from the West. Western countries regarded themselves as more developed and generally more advanced, while Russia was seen as backwards, barbaric and foolish. In spite of this negative view of Russia, our approach has proved surprisingly effective over the centuries.

Backwards, barbaric and foolish -- and proud of it. It's worked great so far, so why stop now?

Back in the day, when the alpha male Clinton roamed the White House, the high tech stock bubble grew, and grew, and grew. That bubble began to burst in March 2000, nine months before "W" took office, and caused the S&P 500 to head almost straight down for another 30 months. You don't hear much these days about the tech-wreck, only about the great economy under Bill Clinton, which wasn't so great, just a bubble waiting to burst.

If the Barney Frank - Chris Dodd hide-the-ball on Fannie Mae crowd sowed the seeds of the current housing bubble (which led to the current financial crisis), then the seed-sowers of the high tech bubble were the "analysts" who developed new paradigms for investing such as "eye-ball" clicks. None of these analysts was more famous or more infamous than Henry Blodget.

The problem was, people like Blodget were telling the public to "strong buy" stocks that they called "POS" in their internal e-mails. The kept saying "strong buy" as the high tech stocks tumbled, leading millions of investors to buy crap stocks and to hold onto the crap stocks they already had bought.

The regulators charged that, among other things, Blodget, of New York City, issued fraudulent research under Merrill Lynch's name, as well as research in which he expressed views that were inconsistent with privately expressed negative views. Blodget's conduct constituted violations of the federal securities laws and NASD and NYSE rules, which require that, among other things, published research reports have a reasonable basis, present a fair picture of the investment risks and benefits, and not make exaggerated or unwarranted claims.

Here's a part of a chart showing some of Blodget's more egregious lies:



Which is why I got a good laugh when I heard the other day that Blodget was warning that the stock market has further to go before it bottoms out. It seems that bubble-boy Blodget has spent the last several years reinventing himself as an "honest" commenter on the market since he already had been caught being a "not honest" analyst. Whom better to trust than someone you already know will lie?

Blodget blogs over at the Huffington Post, and has this to write:

On days like today, it helps to look at the silver lining. Here it is: The farther stocks fall, the cheaper they get -- and the higher the expected long-term return becomes. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean we don't have a long way to go on the downside.
There were four massive stock bubbles in the 20th Century: 1901, 1929, 1966, and 2000. During each of these bubble peaks, the S&P 500 neared or exceeded 25X on professor Robert Shiller's cyclically adjusted P/E ratio. After the first three of these peaks, the S&P 500 PE did not bottom until it hit 5X-8X. We're still in the middle of the last one.

So the loss of over 50% of market value has a silver lining? Isn't this what Obama said the other day?

"On the other hand, what you're now seeing is profit and earning ratios are starting to get to the point where buying stocks is a potentially good deal if you've got a long term perspective on it."

Another 30% off the S&P 500, and this market will be a screaming buy. Silver lining indeed.

Nothing quite like insulting our closest ally. Great job. Britain's mistake was sacrificing its soldiers to help us in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gordy should have seen it coming once Obama sent back the statue of Winston Churchill. If Gordy wanted the red carpet treatment, he should have spent more time bad mouthing Bush and complaining about the "imperfections" of America.

From The Telegraph newspaper blog in Britain.


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UPDATE: This piece in the Washington Post describes the insult quite well:

Our British cousins are getting the feeling that the new administration doesn't fancy them....

And the alarm bells really went off when Brown's entourage landed at Andrews Air Force Base on Monday night. Obama, breaking with precedent, wouldn't grant the prime minister the customary honor of standing beside him in front of the two nations' flags for the TV cameras. The Camp David sleepover that Blair got on his first meeting with Bush? Sorry, chaps....

For the president -- beloved by the world largely for the fact that he is not Bush -- it was a surprisingly cool reception for an ally....

Somewhere in the British Embassy, a bronze bust of Churchill was turning in its storage crate.

Barack Obama sent a letter to the Russians offering to halt the European missile shield in exchange for Russian help in stopping Iran's nuclear development. The Russians said thank you for agreeing to halt the missile shield, but we don't haggle, so you get nothing from us.

Will someone teach Obama some basic rules of negotiating, please. Here are two rules that Obama could find with a simple internet search:

Rule: Don’t negotiate against yourself. Obama violated this rule by offering to halt the missile shield before the Russians had agreed to assist on Iran. By framing the offer as he did, Obama gave the Russians no reason to bargain since they had achieved what they wanted, a halt to the missile shield.

Rule: Never give a concession away without receiving one in return. This is a corollary to never negotiating against yourself. Obama having signaled a desire -- publicly -- to halt the missile shield, there is no reason for the Russians to give a concession:

Giving a concession without getting one in return establishes a precedent that can soon become a pattern. Later if you decide your concession are costing you too much, when you attempt to refuse future requests you’ll look like the “bad guy” in the negotiation.

I fear this is what the future holds:

Obama: Cooperate on Iran, and we'll suspend aid to Georgia.
Putin: OK, thank you for suspending aid to Georgia.

Obama: Cooperate on Iran, and we'll return Guantanamo to Cuba.
Putin: OK, thank you for agreeing to leave Guantanamo.

Obama: Cooperate on Iran, and we'll suspend all oil drilling in Alaska.
Putin: OK, but when are you going to return Alaska?

Obama: Cooperate on Iran, and we'll put pressure on Israel to return the Golan to Syria.
Putin: OK, I'll call Assad right away to let him know.

Obama: Cooperate on Iran, and we'll pay you for allowing us to resupply our troops in Afghanistan.
Putin: OK, here's my bank account number.

Obama: Cooperate on Iran, and we'll close our base in Kyrgyzstan.
Putin: Been there, done that.

Obama: Cooperate on Iran, and I'll stop using the term "czar" for people in my administration.
Putin: OK, but only if I can start using the term to describe myself.

Obama: Cooperate on Iran, and we'll agree to mutual removal of presidential term limits so that we can continue our negotiations forever.
Putin: Deal.

If the missile shield letter is what Obama meant by engaging in aggressive diplomacy, we are all in trouble.

David Brooks, columnist at the New York Times, announces that "Barack Obama is not who we thought he was." Thanks for nothing, Mr. Brooks. You cheered Obama into office along with all the other enlightened "moderates" and now you tell us this:

But the Obama budget is more than just the sum of its parts. There is, entailed in it, a promiscuous unwillingness to set priorities and accept trade-offs. There is evidence of a party swept up in its own revolutionary fervor ...

Where the hell were you when it mattered? Remember your expression of love for Obama just after the election:

I have dreams. I may seem like a boring pundit whose most exotic fantasies involve G.A.O. reports, but deep down, I have dreams. And right now I’m dreaming of the successful presidency this country needs. I’m dreaming of an administration led by Barack Obama, but which stretches beyond the normal Democratic base. It makes time for moderate voters, suburban voters, rural voters and even people who voted for the other guy....

Is it all just a dream? I hope not. In any case, please be quiet and let me have my moment.

Don't insult us now with your misgivings. You had your moment, while the "right wing" bloggers you disdain were warning of what was to come. Just grin and bear it. You brought it on yourself. You were an apologist from the get-go:

He doesn’t have F.D.R.’s joyful nature or Reagan’s happy outlook, but he is analytical. That’s why this William Ayers business doesn’t stick. He may be liberal, but he is never wild. His family is bourgeois. His instinct is to flee the revolutionary gesture in favor of the six-point plan.

And please don't insult us again with your need to criticise Republicans even as you sound the alarm on Obama's agenda:

The only thing more scary than Obama’s experiment is the thought that it might fail and the political power will swing over to a Republican Party that is currently unfit to wield it.

Get lost. And don't come back, while the rest of us work our ways through the problem you helped to create.

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Good post and links on this topic at the other (not-moderate) McCain and NewsBusters.

And this from Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit:

Actually, it’s the same Obama it always was. Brooks, and others, were just so excited at the idea of a black President — or, more specifically, at the idea of themselves, voting for a black President — that they suspended all critical faculties. Now it’s buyer’s remorse. We’ll be seeing more of that.

I saw a reference at Brian Leiter's Law Report blog touting an article that might be "perhaps the best thing to happen to law schools since U.S. News?" Others are citing this potentially ground-breaking piece, including the Wall Street Journal law page, and the TaxProf Blog.

U.S. News. That's like dragging red meat in front of law professors, so I clicked the link.

I love the short article, entitled A Derivatives Market in Legal Academia (you can download it for free here), by Paul H. Edelman of Vanderbilt. It's one of those tidy little exercises in intellect that probably will have people talking. But it's a set up. Keep reading.

Here's the "abstract" of the article:

Building on the success of derivatives markets in the financial arena, I show how similar markets can be used to hedge risk in legal academia. Prudent use of these markets will generate cash, mitigate errors in hiring, and increase the academic prestige of law schools. In short, they can do for legal academia what they have already done to the financial world.

My first reaction was, what the .... The "success of derivatives markets"? I then downloaded the article, and saw that the author was a professor of law and mathematics. That worried me. Maybe the author is so smart, that I'm just not getting what he's saying.

So the article lays out "puts" and "calls" on legal scholarship. I never really understood options, so maybe the author knows something I don't. But still suspicious.

The first solid clue that the author was writing tongue-in-cheek came in a footnote (which is where the good stuff is in all law review articles):

"You may wonder about the wisdom of introducing derivatives in this market given their less than stellar reputation in other areas of the economy. In response I will remind you that all the great cutting-edge insights in legal academia arrived many years after they had been repudiated in their fields of origin."

Repudiated indeed! Like the entire body of critical legal studies. If derivatives did to law schools what derivatives did to the financial markets, this proposal would be a formula for destruction.

So is this a real proposal for a derivatives market in legal academia, or is the author engaging in a witty but none-too-serious intellectual exercise? Surely he must be jesting.

You already have a million hits. Is this really necessary?

Leave some for the rest of us.

Obama's fear mongering is well documented. Crisis, catastrophe, "since the Great Depression" and similar terminology are part of the plan to push through Obama's agenda. But do the words cause economic harm, or are the words merely a reflection of a declining economy? In other words, which came first, the economic chicken or Obama's policy egg?

The evidence is in. Obama's fear mongering is part of the problem, not part of the solution. There is no lack of money in people's pockets, but people are saving the money not spending it.

This from a Marketwatch summary of the Commerce Department's January 2009 report showing that disposable incomes are at a 14-year high even though total income is down:

U.S. households socked away most of the extra income they got in January from annual cost-of-living raises, boosting the personal savings rate to a 14-year high, the Commerce Department said Monday.

Disposable real incomes rose in January at the fastest pace since May as annual pay raises and cost-of-living increases took effect, the Commerce Department said. Real disposable incomes (adjusted for inflation and after taxes) increased 1.5%, despite the third straight decline in income from wages and salaries....

With disposable incomes rising faster than spending, the personal savings rate rose to 5%, the highest since March 1995. At an annual rate, personal savings rose to a record $545.5 billion....

In the past year, real disposable incomes have risen 3.3%, while real spending is down 1.6%.

In other words, people are saving more and spending less. Why would this be? Fear stoked by this administration.

We don't need massive government spending to get this economy moving. What we need is to invigorate confidence in the economy through rhetoric and policies which free up the private sector, and give people the confidence to resume normal economic life.

The Weekly Standard has reprinted a portion of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, written in 1835 and 1840. The words are eery in light of what is happening in this country under this new administration:

I want to imagine with what new features despotism could be produced in the world:

...So it is that every day [the sovereign] renders the employment of free will less useful and more rare; it confines the action of the will in a smaller space and little by little steals the very use of it from each citizen....

Thus, after taking each individual by turns in its powerful hands and kneading him as it likes, the sovereign extends its arms over society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd; it does not break wills but it softens them, bends them, and directs them; it rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one's acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which government is the shepherd....

Some things never change.

What is it with this President? Obama has an obsessive need to find enemies against whom to campaign. When Obama's presidency is over, hopefully in four years (but likely eight years) there will be two sets of psychologists: Those who provide therapy to the American population which has seen its life savings and economic system destroyed, and those who analyze the psychosis of the Demonizer-in-Chief.

During the presidential campaign, Obama singled out the wealthiest 5% of Americans as the object of his scorn:

The Obama campaign contended that the overwhelming majority of Americans would not see a tax increase under his plan, only the wealthiest 5% or so.

Time and again, the wealthiest 5% were singled out in Obama's campaign as an enemy against whom the rest of America could rally. It was a successful tactic mathematically.

Attacking the wealthiest 5% was enough to get Obama elected, but not enough to get most Americans to agree to socialize the economy by paying for free health care and education for everyone through college. So Obama needed to refine his attack to an even narrower subset of the population, the top 2%:

President Obama has laid out the most ambitious and expensive domestic agenda since LBJ, and now all he has to do is figure out how to pay for it. On Tuesday, he left the impression that we need merely end "tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of Americans," and he promised that households earning less than $250,000 won't see their taxes increased by "one single dime."

But even attacking the top 2% isn't enough to convince Americans to adopt a command economy, so now Obama has invoked the dreaded lobbyists:

... I know these steps won’t sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who are invested in the old way of doing business, and I know they’re gearing up for a fight as we speak.

My message to them is this: So am I.

Oh, please. Obama's multi-trillion dollar spending spree is a lobbyist's wet dream. More money will be made by more lobbyists divvying up this pork than in the collective history of the United States.

Attacking lobbyists is not the point of Obama's latest ploy. Rather, painting anyone who opposes him as a "lobbyist" is the point. In attacking the "lobbyists" Obama is doing what he did on the issue of race during the campaign: Anyone who opposes me doesn't just have a different opinion, they are evil and dangerous to the rest of you. This tactic simultaneously generates support among the majority and silences the minority.

Other presidents have been accused of using "enemies" as a political rallying point. Almost invariably, however, these enemies have been foreign (the "evil empire" and "axis of evil"). Obama is the first president "in my adult life" to set American against American, to create enemies at home as a political rallying point, to create a climate in which law-abiding American citizens are singled out as being worthy of attack.

Yep, Barack has met the enemy, and he is us.

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For more on this, check out my prior posts The Revolt of the Kulaks Has Begun, The Last Bull Capitulates and Not Too Early For "I Told You So".