Another Republican Administration, Another Economic Crisis

Wednesday night's economic panic address by Bush is only the latest example of yet another economic crisis during yet another Republican administration. The funny thing is America's #2 political party always wants to run the country, but then never seems to have a clue how to really use power once they are in charge, where their second rate ideology always seems to create a crisis of some sort, usually economic in nature.

But what can you expect from a party that's usually on the wrong side of economic issues important to the average citizen like supporting a minimum wage increase, or allowing workers to unionize for better working conditions, salaries, health or retirement benefits? Republicans even wanted to privatize Social Security, which would have ruined the retirement security of many Americans whose retirement funds would have been invested in the stock market. Stock values of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have soared downward from highs in the $60 dollar plus range to only a little over $1 today. And many other stocks are at only a fraction of their high values. The retirement security of millions would have been ruined if the Republicans got their way on this issue. But Republican John McCain is still advocating for this privatizing Social Security nonsense.

Mr. Bush's economic address seemed to conveniently ignore the fact that it was of course Ronald Reagan who argued that "government is the enemy" and deregulated the financial industry during his Republican rule in the 1980's, setting in motion excesses in the financial industries such as excessive salaries and other abuses that are a major part of this latest Republican economic crisis for the country.

Other great achievements of the Republican Reagan Administration included illegally diverting billions of dollars of Agriculture CCC funds intended for international disaster relief allowing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to build up a huge military and buy billions in arms from France and Brazil during the Iran-Iraq War. While the Soviets at least declared an arms embargo in the area in an attempt to dry up the supply of arms in the area in an effort to promote peace talks, Reagan allowed years of war to continue that took millions of lives and only encouraged Saddam Hussein to use chemical weapons on some of his own people such as the Kurds who were disloyal during this war. The other great Reagan achievement was of course sending billions of American taxpayer dollars to help build up the Mujahideen fighters network in Afghanistan of the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden and other extremist radicals to fight the Soviets during their invasion of that country. After Osama Bin Laden established terrorist bases in Afghanistan and Pakistan to fight the Russians, often with the help of American Reagan Administration funding, and the Soviets were defeated, then these terrorists only concentrated their efforts on promoting terrorism within the United States and elsewhere in the world. Simply brilliant Republican thinking.

However, when the Republicans aren't turning dictators like Saddam Hussein into regional threats or paying terrorists like Osama Bin Laden to senselessly kill, they're usually proficient at creating bank failures, economic slowdowns, recessions or depressions as history well proves.

1928-1932: Republican Herbert Hoover managed to take a prosperous American economy and drive it into ground and was the father of the Great Depression with massive bank failures where many American lost their life savings and many Americans began keeping their money in mattresses instead. American voters were just too prejudice to elect a Roman Catholic like Democrat Al Smith back in 1928, which allowed Hoover to sweep into office by a landslide and wreck the American economy. Thankfully Hoover ruined the Republican Party's reputation so bad that it wasn't until 1952 that Americans wanted to elect another Republican Administration so the economy could be wrecked again.

1952-1960: Popular moderate Republican war hero General Dwight Eisenhower was by all means a decent and honest man. But he was far better at defeating international villains like Hitler than at managing the strong domestic American economy built on the postwar manufacturing boom under Democrats Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman was turned to rust by Eisenhower's lack of economic understanding and recession resulted that helped to elect John Kennedy in 1960.

1968-1976: Americans once again yearned for more Republican mismanagement of the economy and Richard Nixon's continued Vietnam War efforts were an important key to creating serious inflation problems for the American economy. The U.S. dropped 300 pounds of bombs for every person living in Vietnam, and for every one dollar of damage in Vietnam it cost the American economy and taxpayers $10. More than 700 American aircraft were lost alone in this war. During 1965-1973 8 million tons were dropped on Vietnam and Mr. Nixon needed to print money like crazy to pay for all this bombing activity, leading to such bad inflation in the U.S. that Mr. Nixon had to declare wage and price controls similar to some of the old Roosevelt depression and war era economic stabilization efforts.

1980-1992: Jimmy Carter managed to become the only Democrat since the Great Depression to appoint ineffective economic advisors such as Alfred Khan to mismanage the American economy allowing Republican Ronald Reagan an opening to enact a lawless foreign policy of covert schemes to misuse funds to support a covert war in Nicaragua, prop up Saddam Hussein and pay terrorist like Osama Bin Laden to build up a worldwide terrorist network. The economy actually dramatically worsened for a while under Reagan and it was a rotten time to own a business during part of the Reagan years because many persons didn't have a lot of money to spend. It was only during the later part of the Reagan rule that the economy picked up enough that Americans allowed his Vice President Bush to rule for a term. But like father, like son, the senior Bush managed to create terrible economic times and allowed Democrat Bill Clinton an opening to create a big economic boom during his rule.

2000-2008: By 2000, Americans grew weary of the pants down antics of Democrat Bill Clinton, and it seemed to hurt Vice President All Gore just enough to allow the former drunk and cocaine abusing son of George Bush to win the election which didn't make a lot of sense. In addition, Bush seemed like a major league dumb-crap as well. Voting for him over the highly intellectual Al Gore was like choosing Gilligan over the Professor. And whenever Gilligan got involved, you knew that bad stuff would happen. And indeed it did. The Bush years have been characterized by near nonstop foolishness or problems of some sort. And now the nation is looking at possible bank failures and the most serious economic problems since the Great Depression unless it spends $700 billion to bail out the economy thanks to this latest Republican Administration that makes the Three Stooges look like professionals by comparison.

How much is $700 billion. Why it's only about $4,780 for every American taxpayer. It would build 1,077 Chicago Trump Towers. It would be the second highest government expense after the $738 billion dollar cost of the Iraq War and all national defense combined.

Amazingly, after this serious economic mess, the Iraq War fiasco, and numerous other Bush Administration mishaps and other crazed acts of downright foolishness, Republican John McCain runs close in the polls where some voters are wary of electing the first African-American Democratic President. But in 1928, many voters were just too prejudice to elect a Roman Catholic, so you can judge whether this is some measure of turtle-slow social progress in the U.S. or not that an African-American candidate now has an even chance of being judged as any other candidate would be and winning the presidency after Republicans have made a complete mess of the country once again.

Given their simply horrid economic performance history since Herbert Hoover, it seems like it takes half a mind to keep giving Republicans more chances to botch up the nation and drive the economy into ruin. But history books must be like kryptonite to many Americans, and a real safe place to hide your valuables, because so many don't look at history and realize what a screwy history of economic leadership the Republicans always seem to leave behind whenever they rule. Sometimes when you're the number two American political party it is for a good reason. Real second rate economic leadership is a large part of this.

Ohio Likely To Choose The Presidential Winner Once Again

In every presidential election since 1964, Ohio has voted with the winner and the vote has similarly reflected the national vote percentages as well. For this reason Ohio remains as the most important test-lab state in clues as to how the actual election will turn out. Right now, Barack Obama narrowly trails John McCain in Ohio, so a win by either candidate in this state is highly likely to determine the overall winner of the election.

Despite a formerly strong factory economic base in Ohio where many factory jobs are now challenged, Obama's narrow trailing indicates that he still needs to shore up his support among those blue collar voters and convince voters that John McCain only represents more of the same old George Bush economics.

Friday night's debate will be a critical head-to-head test of both candidates ability to cement themselves in the minds of voters as a credible choice as president. The subject will be foreign policy. Barack Obama needs to appear to voters that he has the judgement, credibility and toughness to deal with any foreign policy challenge, as well as a decent understanding of any international issue. McCain's challenge will likely be not to appear as too quick to use military force around the world as well avoiding erratic answers where voters become wary of his role as Commander-In-Chief will be very important. McCain sometimes gives frightening answers where he seems too likely to use military force against rogue states like Iran.

Later debates dealing with economics may give Obama a grounds where he can make the strongest case for his campaign. But the biggest challenge for Obama is likely to appear to be a credible alternative to McCain on foreign policy issues where McCain might be able to make his strongest case. If either McCain or Obama stumbles in this first debate, and fails to move numbers in their direction, then it may be difficult for the other candidate to reverse that trend. It might also be to Obama's advantage that the economics debate will be coming closer to the election. If Obama is to possibly draw or even lose any debate, the foreign policy one might be the only one he can afford to.

But every debate will be vital to both candidates to make their best case to close the deal with the voters. It will be interesting to see how the poll numbers move after the first debate. If one candidate starts moving numbers in their direction, it may be a good sign that they are indeed closing the deal with voters and are likely to win this election.

After the debate, it will also be interesting to watch the polling numbers coming out of Ohio. Whoever gains traction and carries this state is also likely to win the election as well. I fully expect the state of Ohio to vote with the winner once again and by a margin that closely represents the actual national vote as well.

Oil Up Over $15 A Barrel During Monday Commodity Trading

Oil prices were up over $15 a barrel on Monday's volatile commodity trading markets. As late as last week, oil prices dipped well below the $100 a barrel mark largely due a confidence fall among all stocks and commodities due to an investor loss of faith in nearly all markets except gold last week. At one point last week, an awful lot of persons were nearly tempted to pull all their cash out of stocks, bonds and banks and stuff their assets under a mattress. Things were just that bad. Then the surprise news of the bipartisan efforts to rescue the economy and bail out some select troubled industries such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and insurance giant AIG emerged.

While the Republicans have grabbed on to the "oil drilling" issue for this election, it is mainly only to neutralize any Democratic advantage on this issue. The fact of the matter is that OPEC controls both the world output levels as well keeps the prices high. And although oil has been far harder to access since about 1977, where even in Saudi Arabia the giant Ghawar oil field requires millions of barrels of seawater to be pumped in each day to raise the oil level to the surface. Many other world oil wells have witnessed lower output levels over the years since 1977. But at the same time there has to really be little real interest among American oil companies to want to actually see oil prices dip much below that $4 level or to spend nearly 10 years and a lot of cash on a process on getting permits, oil exploration, building new drilling sites and new refineries to harness new oil supplies in the U.S. territory when plenty of oil can still be bought on world commodity markets from close neighbors such as Canada or Mexico.

The fact of the matter is that oil prices which includes home heating oil are just starting to rise again, largely due to role of oil market speculation that really has little to do with actual supply levels. Homeowners are going to see higher heating prices than last Winter and motorists will likely soon see gas prices as high as ever soon again. Commodity market speculation more than any variable is driving the price of oil.

Home Foreclosures & The Penthouse Pet

A former September 2008 Pet Of The Month, Kayden Kross, 23, who is also a popular adult film actress with her own website and a large loyal fan base has fallen into a little legal problems in the state of California for her role in a claimed illegal home foreclosure scam.

It seems that Kayden Kross is accused by the state of California in a home foreclosure scheme in which homes that were in the foreclosure process would be bought out by Kayden and other co-investors while the residents were still in the homes, then the homes then rented out to these persons with a later option for them to buy back the property. The problem is that this scheme is illegal under California law. And whether this was a sincere attempt to help people struggling with a foreclosure crisis to eventually reown their home or just a scam that took advantage of vulnerable persons in a difficult crisis is an issue that will likely have to be resolved in a criminal trial.

Kross, former senior at California State University has seen a rocketing career of fame and wealthy since just 2006. She was even featured on an episode of Gene Simmons' FAMILY JEWELS as well since she became a major celebrity in the adult entertainment industry.

According to the attorney for Kross, Jon-Paul Valcarenghi, Kross was only 20 years old and "financially inexperienced" when she and another woman were "victimized by mortgage professionals" who encouraged her to invest with them. The attorney plans to investigate and prove her innocence in any scheme to defraud persons victimized by this foreclosure scam.

Kross started out as a stripper at the age of just 18 as a means to pay for her college education, and was no doubt looking for honest investment opportunities to harness her rapidly rising income once she became a top 20 six-figure income adult industry model and actress.

It is highly likely that this young woman was only looking for some legitimate opportunities for investments and given very poor investment advice by some mortgage scammers with an illegal home foreclosure investment scheme. But it is another example of the widespread problems that run all through the mortgage industry right now and how this current foreclosure crisis is a deep and complicated problem. It is also true that some persons sometimes take advantage of economic bad times with schemes as well.

On October 14, Kross is expected to be arraigned on some criminal charges that are not yet publicly known. And her attorney will seek to sever her case from the mortgage professionals who lured her into these deep legal problems and prove that she is only a victim in this home foreclosure scheme case as well.

In August 2008, during a huge biker organized Boobs On Parade event in New Zealand where a crowd estimated at 100,000 lined up to watch women who were often topless riding on motorcycles, a drunken parade goer punched Kross in the face. But the latest legal problems for Kross are a real problem by comparison as well as the latest strange story to emerge from the home foreclosure mess.

U.S. Economic Crisis Increasing Suicide Hotline Calls

The current U.S. economic crisis is creating an increase in calls to suicide hotline centers as families struggle with job layoffs, home foreclosures, stock collapses, possible bank failures and numerous other problems. In Portland, Oregon for example the local suicide hotline is currently working on a new program to train 30 more persons to work as online counselors to deal with the public depression over economic failures and troubles.

The fact of the matter is that this is yet another Republican Administration that has brought serious economic troubles to the United States once again. Ever since 1932 with Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression, nearly every Republican presidential administration has been characterized by some sort of economic slowdowns or troubles, while under most Democratic administrations the American economy has often boomed with record output levels at times. Only during some portion of the Reagan Administration, did a Republican administration have a short period of boom times, but that was after following some serious economic slowdown times including the sacking of supply-sider David Stockwell.

Families are once again living in economic uncertainty during Republican control of the White House. Again American families are suffering with economic policies that don't work.

The Bush Administration government came into power as largely an oligarchy government of oil industry and defense contractor interests whose main policy was to restart the old Gulf War in Iraq to gain some control over Iraq's oil supplies. Instead the result was sharply increased oil prices, up to 1.2 million Iraqi dead due to the cycle of violence and up to 2 million Iraqi refugees. And a U.S. economy sent into more problems after the economic problems resulting from 9/11.

It is little wonder that many persons are becoming depressed?

John McCain's Role In The $160.1 Billion Lincoln Savings & Loan Collapse

This morning in Green Bay, Wisconsin, John McCain, a former major figure in the 1989 Lincoln Savings & Loan Scandal and the $160.1 billion dollar collapse, with his running mate, Sarah Palin, under her own ethics investigation in her state of Alaska by the legislature over "Troopergate", gave an absurd and disingenuous speech calling for firings of some public officials and indictments for some other corrupt persons in business. Yet it is exactly these same sort of a personalities that McCain would either fire or indict that he was himself back in 1989 during the savings and loan collapse scandal that cost the American taxpayer $124.6 billion.

While the Senate Ethics Committee may have found McCain "not guilty" of any criminal conduct and only guilty of "bad judgement", McCain was the most personally involved of any of the "Keating Five" U.S. senators with Charles H. Keating, Jr., by far. Keating was eventually convicted of racketeering and other serious crimes and sent to federal prison for his trail of financial corruption in the scandal that bankrupted Lincoln Savings & Loan.

Interestingly, prior to his conviction as one of the worst white collar criminals in American history, Keating was best known as an anti-pornography crusader, most likely to mislead many that he was some sort of moral figure by fighting against dirty books, while being the most dirty businessman ever himself. But Keating's phony moral crusading was just part of his phony ruse to conceal all of his theft and corrupt financial dealings with crooked senators like McCain and the other "Keating Five" members.

Keating, and other close business associates hoped to use corrupt senators like John McCain to influence banking regulators, and had given McCain no less than $112,000 in political contributions over the five year period leading up to 1987. McCain's own wife, Cindy McCain and her father, Jim Hensley, were also involved in a shopping center business arrangement with Keating in 1986, in which they invested $359,100 in the business deal. In addition, the McCains had made no less than nine vacation trips at Keating's expense, often on Keating's own jet to a resort he built in the Bahamas. All of this acceptance of vacations, jet plane trips and McCain family business dealings with Keating led up to McCain and four other corrupt senators meeting federal banking regulators to hold off any federal regulators from a probe into Keating's conduct as head of Lincoln Savings & Loan using this company as his own personal piggy bank to fund his billionaire lifestyle. Only after Keating fell into legal problems did Senator John McCain make any attempt to repay Keating for all the vacations trips he and his family accepted from Keating, obviously intended to keep banking regulators from acting against Keating.

"Not indicted" or "not guilty" of any crime isn't really a very high standard to prove that McCain is an honest man. If anything, McCain's dealings with convicted savings and loan racketeer Keatings prove entirely the opposite.

Electing someone with a corrupt history of accepting Bahamas vacations on some criminals own jet plane in a resort paid for with money stolen from a business that McCain sought to protect from government regulators is like electing a fox to watch over the hen house.

John McCain is a perfect symbol of old time Washington corruption. And all of his phony rhetoric about being some sort of a government "reformer" is just pure political B.S. that McCain adopted after he nearly lost his seat in the senate because of his corrupt business dealings with racketeer Charles Keating. For a fact, McCain is part of the Washington problem, not part of the solution. Anyone who thinks the opposite is true is just not dealing with reality.

Obama's Secret Election Weapon

If the election remains close by election day, the Obama Campaign may be able to pull off a big election day turnout surprise by registering and turning out as many of the 55 million unregistered persons over 18 out to vote as possible, tipping many close states over to Obama.

Right now many of the unregistered 55 million adults in the U.S. are among some minority groups and younger persons, two demographics that strongly support Obama.

Both political parties are likely to closely organize efforts to turn out their voters in great numbers. But with superior donation numbers, the Democrats may hold an advantage in not only turning out their voters in big numbers but also registering many voters who are likely to support Obama and the Democrats.

And all of bad economic news from Wall Street is only likely to pull the poling numbers closer for Obama as well. With McCain representing basically a third Bush term for many voters, a wave of voters seeking change could send Mr. Obama to the White House.