Read This

[Jccarlton]

An open letter to the president:
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysi ... Obama.aspx

[Diogenes]

An open letter to the president:
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysi ... Obama.aspx

Good letter. Won't do any good though. A large chunk of the voting population is irrecoverably ignorant, and lacking in wisdom.

[JLawson]

Wisdom comes from experience, usually associated w/pain. And what's going on now is painful enough that a lot of folks are going to get wise pretty fast...

There's a guy in the shop that was really hot for Obama (in a decent, manly way) before the election - wouldn't hear anything bad about him when I tried to point out what he was missing.

He started getting disillusioned a few months after the inauguration when (in his own words) "He can stop campaigning now." Shortly after that, with the Stimulus bill, and Cash 4 Clunkers - he couldn't believe they were so inept. (I didn't rub it in when he said one day, very quietly, "You were right.") About a year back he had a son who was born profoundly deaf - and our insurance covered a cochlear implant so his child could hear.

Obamacare? According to him, it doesn't even touch it. And Obama's been screwing with the economy so much... well, my formerly Democratic colleauge is now rabidly anti-Democrat. You know how the ex-smoker is usually the most anti-tobacco? Caught him reading a PDF of 'Atlas Shrugged' a few days ago... said it was something he'd always been meaning to read.

Reality has slapped him hard, and he's paying attention to what's going on in Washington like his future depended on it. And that's one thing the Democrats can't stand.

I expect an invite to a tea party function from him before the election.

[Diogenes]

Wisdom comes from experience, usually associated w/pain. And what's going on now is painful enough that a lot of folks are going to get wise pretty fast...

There's a guy in the shop that was really hot for Obama (in a decent, manly way) before the election - wouldn't hear anything bad about him when I tried to point out what he was missing.

He started getting disillusioned a few months after the inauguration when (in his own words) "He can stop campaigning now." Shortly after that, with the Stimulus bill, and Cash 4 Clunkers - he couldn't believe they were so inept. (I didn't rub it in when he said one day, very quietly, "You were right.") About a year back he had a son who was born profoundly deaf - and our insurance covered a cochlear implant so his child could hear.

Obamacare? According to him, it doesn't even touch it. And Obama's been screwing with the economy so much... well, my formerly Democratic colleauge is now rabidly anti-Democrat. You know how the ex-smoker is usually the most anti-tobacco? Caught him reading a PDF of 'Atlas Shrugged' a few days ago... said it was something he'd always been meaning to read.

Reality has slapped him hard, and he's paying attention to what's going on in Washington like his future depended on it. And that's one thing the Democrats can't stand.

I expect an invite to a tea party function from him before the election.

You are right about the pain, and it is an issue that I am constantly railing on about. MSimon often talks about the government trying to legislate morality, and I keep trying to get people to see that THEY ARE LEGISLATING MORALITY, just not overtly, and not a good form of morality.

The government is shielding the irresponsible from the consequences of their bad (immoral) behavior. They do it through Welfare, and they do it through Housing policy. The morality they are reinforcing is BAD MORALITY.

Here's an example of what I'm talking aobut:

“Watching the Treasury conference on housing finance earlier this week, I was struck by the gloomy thought that we will never get out of this housing mess until we are ready to face facts. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s remark that the demise of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was caused by their pursuit of short-term profits was not a constructive contribution to the resolution of the major issues before us. In reality, Fannie and Freddie were doomed by a badly designed government housing policy, and government efforts to disguise its responsibility with a false narrative will only make a solution more difficult. . . . When in 1992 Congress dragooned Fannie and Freddie into lowering their underwriting standards, it confused the economic goal of creating a viable national mortgage market for good quality mortgages with the social policy of increasing home ownership by making mortgage credit available to low-income borrowers. The added benefit for Congress was that it could achieve the social goal without budgetary consequences; the operations of Fannie and Freddie were and still are off-budget.”

http://american.com/archive/2010/august ... ial-policy



Likewise, the social security program created the belief in many Americans that they didn't have to worry about their retirement, and thus undermined the good morality of THRIFT and PRUDENCE.