Knight_of_the_Mind's blog

Secretary of the Treasury, Hank Paulson, has wielded more power than anyone in Washington, DC since George W. Bush ordered General Patraeus to surge in Iraq. He has taken upon himself the unofficial title of Sugar-Daddy In Chief and, left the incoming maladministration of President-Elect Barack Obama a problem that I wouldn’t wish on one of Louis Farrakhan’s neighbors.

Dear President Bush,

As your 2nd term draws to a close and you leave the acrimonious atmosphere of Washington, DC, I wondered if you could please take on one more task?

It seems to me that “me” is a vital part of the US economy. I spend money, eat junk-food, pay taxes and require the services of several of the US of A’s outstanding medical professionals. That makes little, old over-worked and under-appreciated moi an engine of economic growth.

People manage to survive in Washington, DC while adding nothing to the commonweal, and sometimes doing substantial damage. They have the dirt on their rivals, they know who’s butt to kiss or they just have a canny instinct that enables them to artfully duck at the right moment. I’m not sure which describes Jamie Gorelick, but like Arnold Schwarzenegger at the end of a Terminator Movie, it seems you can predict that she’ll be back. This time, perhaps, as President Barack Obama’s new Attorney General.

In revolutionary France, Minister Talleyrand had a similar career to Jamie Gorelick. He worked for the dying Ancien Regime. Then, once the French Revolution culminated in the execution of Louis XVI, Talleyrand nearly faced disaster. Yet, he timed his defection to the revolutionaries with perfection, and conveniently arraigned a prolonged trip to England, on behalf of the Revolutionary government, during the Reign of Terror.

In a post entitled “Is This How The Era of Big Government Becomes Over?” I described how the continued evisceration of equity investment market value, in synonymy with the current difficulties in obtaining credit, had deleterious effects on the ability of State Governments to pay pensions. Now, as the rate of unemployment grows, the states find paying the promised unemployment benefits to workers an increasingly untenable task.

It was a while back in my chronological adulthood. I was under the delusion that I was cut out for professional sales. That delusion was a psychological adjustment to the fact that I had graduated from college amidst the 1991 recession, didn’t have credentials that would set the world afire, and couldn’t find much work outside the world of full commission sales.

So I took that sack of lemons and tried to make some beverage. I took a job selling water filters on straight commission and convinced myself that I would dominate sales. I read Napoleon Hill, I read Zig Zigler, and I read Og Mandino. I learned from my studies and became a better educated man. Actually selling a few water filters would have been icing on the cake.

Here's where I set myself up like the guy in the carnival dunking stool. Here goes my shot at predicting what will take place tommorrow on Election Day.

Real_Clear Politics has come out with their prediction. They go Obama (338-200).

The question then becomes: Just how wrong is RCP? I would submit that they are probably not as bad as I would like them to be, but still somewhat skewed left this cycle.

It seems that Barack Obama has concerns over Greenhouse Gas emissions. So much so, that he intends to take it out on certain sectors of the American industrial base. Actually, he intended to take his personal animus out on these portions of American Society and culture. The greenhouse gas issue just offers him a convenient pretext. People who dig the Earth, either to mine coal or to plant the crops, are well advised to think hard before pulling the lever for Senator Barack Obama.

One of the most disingenuous and smarmy mantras you’ll ever hear from an environmentalist is that business will pay the cost of new environmental regulations. We now have examples from both our country and from Europe that prove this line of reasoning to be totally dishonest. Only one income source ever gets the ultimate bill for a new government regulation: The Citizen-Taxpayer.

So when Chrysler can’t get their sinks to stop dripping, they call Joe the Plumber. When Chrysler can’t fund the required RDT&E effort needed to meet new EPA fuel economy standards, they call….Joe the Plumber.

Thanks to Bob Cesca, spittle-flecked, cretinous moorlock/blogger for The Huffington Post, I now know what I must do. I must join ACORN and acquire the right to vote seventeen times in next Tuesday’s election. Then, I must cast my multiple ballots, and Rocky’s and Bullwinkle’s multiple ballots as well, on behalf of Sarah Palin.

Coincidentally, that’ll help some guy named McCain. But then again, a great Democrat President, who would never win the nomination in today’s version of his party, did once opine that a rising tide does lift all boats.