The Kroog On Fairness

And who gets to pay for it all.

Calculated Risk looks at the latest plan floated by the Treasury — to make low-interest, non-recourse loans to private investors who buy bad assets — and immediately gets it: this is a plan to drive up the prices of toxic assets by creating a lot of moral hazard.

By offering low interest non-recourse loans, these public-private entities can pay a higher than market price for the toxic assets (since there is no downside risk). This amounts to a direct subsidy from the taxpayers to the banks. It is amazing how many different ways they’ve tried to recycle the same bad idea.

Indeed. Every plan we’ve heard from Treasury amounts to the same thing — an attempt to socialize the losses while privatizing the gains. We’re going to buy up all the bad assets at premium prices; no, we’re going to offer the banks guarantees against losses; no, we’re going to let private investors buy the stuff, but offer them de facto guarantees against losses in the form of non-recourse loans.

And until that changes, nobody's going to take Timmy The Invisible Boy seriously. The "confidence in the stock market" problem is Timmy's baliwick, and until he and Helicopter Ben come up with a plan that doesn't boil down to "let the banks get trillions from the taxpayer as a reward for screwing up" then there's no real hope.

They're making it up as they go along, trying to find a plan where we don't catch on to the swindle. At this point, Obama needs to be looking for a new SecTreas.

Timmy is a fool.

Helicopter Ben, He Is Our Hero Of The Sky

Helicopter Ben apparently wants more money to throw out of his Helicopter Ben Helicopter! That's his superpower, you see.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said policy makers may need to expand aid to the banking system beyond the $700 billion already approved and take other aggressive measures even at the cost of soaring fiscal deficits.

“Without a reasonable degree of financial stability, a sustainable recovery will not occur,” the Fed chairman said today in testimony prepared for the Senate Budget Committee. “Although progress has been made on the financial front since last fall, more needs to be done.”

Bernanke’s comments suggest he sees a role for bigger federal outlays as the Obama administration seeks congressional approval for a budget of $3.55 trillion for the fiscal year beginning in October. President Barack Obama has already signed into a law a $787 billion economic stimulus package of tax cuts and government spending.

Obama’s first budget seeks standby authority for as much as $750 billion in new aid to the financial industry. Whether those funds will be needed “depends on the results of the current supervisory assessment of banks” and the evolution of the economy, Bernanke said.

Bernanke said policy makers would have “preferred to avoid” what is likely to be the largest ratio of federal debt compared with gross domestic product since the end of World War II, and he urged lawmakers not to lose sight of fiscal discipline.

Up in the sky above Wall Street! It's Helicopter Ben, and his faithful sidekick Timmy The Invisible Boy!

In a rare outing in public, he's on Capitol Hill today, and we learn from the WSJ that

No decision has been made on the final structure of what the administration is calling a private-public financing partnership, but one leading idea is to establish separate funds to be run by private investment managers. The managers would have to put up a certain amount of capital. Additional financing would come from the government, which would share in any profit or loss.

The Dow is cratering; they've had months to come up with a plan, but they're still having a seminar. The gist of Noam Scheiber's piece on the Treasury Department is that they're too scared to seize the banks temporarily for political reasons, and too skittish to run the banks even for a short period of time. But staggering on for years slowly bleeding money to the banks ... that's just political heaven, isn't it?

But...he has a helicopter and the other guy's invisible! Clearly we have the right superheroes for the job. After all, Really Really Competent Man and Power Of Attorney, Attorney At Law are busy saving school buses full of nuns or something.

New tags for these idiots. Too scared/lazy/stupid to do the right thing, but they're perfectly OK to see the Dow die a death of 1000 cuts.

Al Versus Norm, Part 386

Norm Coleman, sick of losing, is now asking Minnesota's three-judge election panel to throw out the election and hold a new one, stating that Minnesota's election system is fundamentally flawed.

Coleman's team rested most of his case Monday in the U.S. Senate election trial after more testimony underscoring problems with the election system. Under questioning from the Republican's lawyers, Minnesota's elections director acknowledged inaccurate data in the registration system that could exclude otherwise qualified people from voting.

Now Al Franken's team will try to convince judges that things aren't so bad after all.

Franken lawyer Marc Elias said the team will begin a case today that will include evidence "about the good job that the state of Minnesota did ... that the hardworking auditors and election night officials did. How the system worked, by and large."

But Franken lawyers will walk a tightrope with that strategy, because they also plan to call on voters to testify that their absentee ballots were wrongly rejected. While Coleman seeks to count 2,000 rejected ballots, the DFLer has a list of 804 rejected ballots he wants reconsidered. Elias said more than 100 voters could be called to testify, including more than a dozen today.

Coleman rested the bulk of his case as the trial entered its sixth week. Franken's side of the trial is likely to last two to three weeks, Elias said. Franken holds a 225-vote lead that he gained after the state Canvassing Board, on Jan. 5, certified the results of a recount.

The judges will rule before the end of the month, and Coleman will certainly appeal to the US Supreme Court, meaning it may be months before this is decided. What Coleman is ultimately trying to do is assure that a standard, national vote qualification procedure is created by the Supremes that favors Republicans. I'm betting the Supremes will leave it to the states, or to the Democrats in Congress.

Dear America:

"After six weeks of the Already Failed Obama Presidency, it is clear to us that the Already Failed Obama Economy is purely 100% Barack Obama's fault and we are tired, I say tired, of his excuses for not having fixed it with tax cuts yet. It's been six whole weeks already and he hasn't fixed the stock markets yet. The Dow is all the proof we need to declare Obama's era over and done with. Clearly the markets have resoundingly rejected the failed policies of the Already Failed Obama Presidency. What a loser. Bring the other guy back. Now. So sayeth we all."

--The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board

Polls Are In The Eye Of The Beholder

Greg Sargent takes Rasmussen Reports latest health care poll to task:

Well, this week brings a new example. Here’s the headline on Rasmussen’s latest press release touting its poll on health care:

49% Say Obama Should Delay Health Care Reform Until Economy Is Better

And it’s true that the Ras poll found this. But if you dig down into the poll, you find that it also found another number that’s just as newsworthy, if not more so. From the Ras release:

Seventy-eight percent (78%) of voters acknowledge, however, that reining in health spending is at least somewhat important to improving the nation’s economy. That includes 46% who say it is Very Important.

That’s a striking, headline-worthy finding. An enormous majority — nearly 30 points more than the number who said Obama should delay health care reform — believes the central argument being made for reforming health care right now.

But, Rasmussen is only interested in giving Americans a loaded question, which needs to be fixed right now, health care or the economy? In that zero sum game, of course the overall economy is more important.

The answer, as an overwhelming percentage of voters -- seventy-eight percent --say, the answer is clearly both. Fixing health care will help to fix the economy and nearly 4 out of 5 Americans believe this. But Rasmussen would have you believe half of Americans are instead against Obama's health care reforms, period.

The wingnuts are already jumping on this poll as proof Americans are now against Obamacare, when the truth is they want to see both the economy and health care significantly reformed.

Containment Breach

As John Cole points out, the one thing that would serve to put a leash on Rush Limbaugh's power is the Fairness Doctrine, and right now the man in the GOP with the biggest, loudest, microphone reaching millions of GOP primary voters for 4 hours, 5 days a week is El Rushbo himself.

You'd think the people who want Obama's job in 2012 would want that kind of exposure too (and get paid for it.) But hey, the Fairness Doctrine is a fascist, unconstitutional law that would limit Rush and his near total fascist control of the GOP.

Conservatives Are Stupid At Times

As Instamoron "Heh indeeds" his way into yet another basic fallacy about the US tax system.

UPDATE: Can you say “going John Galt?” Upper-Income Taxpayers Look for Ways to Sidestep Obama Tax-Hike Plan. “A 63-year-old attorney based in Lafayette, La., who asked not to be named, told ABCNews.com that she plans to cut back on her business to get her annual income under the quarter million mark should the Obama tax plan be passed by Congress and become law. So far, Obama’s tax plan is being looked at skeptically by both Democrats and Republicans and therefore may not pass at all.”

Dear idiotic Conservatives: please look up the definition of MARGINAL TAX RATE. You know what that means? It means you only pay the higher tax rate on the income above $250,000. If you earn $270,000, you only pay that highest marginal tax rate on that last $20,000. That higher tax rate would be a couple of points higher, to the Clinton era rates of 1994, 39.6% for everything above $250,000. It would not change your entire taxation rate to that maximum number, only the margin above $250,000. That is why it is called a MARGINAL TAX RATE, you MORONS.

Now, having said that, marginal tax rates during the Great Depression were 63% in 1931 to 90%+ by the time WW II was ending in 1945. By comparison, 39.6% is downright reasonable. However doing this is "punishing the most productive members of society." After all, it's not like the rest of America isn't being punished right now by these trillion dollar losses these "most productive members of society" made. It's not like Bernie Madoff conned this society out of $50 billion.

So no, we should reward these idiots instead. Let's cut taxes on them! Our financial system is in ruins and the country is in a death spiral because of the decisions the wealthiest people in the country made, but the best way to get out is to cut taxes on them!

When the wealthiest 10% in this country control over two-thirds of the wealth in this country, there's a problem. They lost it because they got greedier for more. Time to pay up.

StupidiNews!

• More people are showing up at California's food banks in 2009.
• Obama may offer to scrap US missile shield plans in Europe in exchange for Russia's help on Iran.
• A new alliance of Pakistani militant groups could ignite tensions in Afghanistan.
• JP Morgan Chase reportedly made $5 billion in profit from the derivatives trade last year.
• Rural broadband internet still has a long way to go in the Southern U.S.

Sympathy For The Devil

Over at The New Republic, Jon Chait argues that Rush Limbaugh is right:(emphasis moi)

Rush Limbaugh is drawing some ridicule for saying, "One thing we can all do is stop assuming that the way to beat [the Democrats] is with better policy ideas." But I think he's basically right. Good ideas are meritorious. But being meritorious isn't what wins elections. Most voters have only the faintest idea what policy ideas candidates advocate when running or implement when in office. External conditions (such as the economy, but war and scandal matter also) have much more influence over which party wins.

A few years ago I made a more extensive argument against the idea that "new ideas" were the key to a Democratic resurgence. It was written in the wake of the 2004 election, when there was near-total agreement on right, left and center that Democratic Party's electoral defeat was a result of its intellectual defeat. My argument drew a lot of ridicule, mostly from people who didn't understand the distinction between the public value of good ideas (high) and the political value of good ideas (low)--see Jonah Goldberg and Kenneth Baer and Andrei Cherny. Baer and Cherny wrote:

Now, it is progressives that have a choice. Most of the voices inside Washington believe that conservative errors and overreaching--along with more effective voter targeting and door-knocking by Democrats, more compelling TV ads and new "frames" for old policies--will yield enough votes so that in a closely divided nation, Democrats might eke out a victory and regain power.

We disagree.

I think it's pretty clear that the Democratic comeback since then has had next-to-nothing to with developing "new ideas" and almost everything to do with Republican failure, the state of the economy, and a really effective presidential nominee. yes, Democratic ideas proved more popular, but they really were the same basic ideas the party had advocated for years.

In other words, the public is misinformed and stupid, policy is useless, and the Republicans lost the election (not that the Democrats won).

This argument fails on two basic points. First of all Clinton was the candidate of the same ideas Democrats had, not Obama. Democrats clearly chose Obama, although it was close. People went out of their way to learn about candidates' positions in 2008. Obama won precisely because he had better ideas. So many people said that issues didn't matter, that a black man could never win an election for President. They were wrong. Issues decided the primary, and in turn they decided the election as well. After eight year where policies were dictated and not debated, Americans were hungry for more, hungry for a process that worked. They got involved. They voted in record numbers. They voted on issues and policies.

Second, it was the Republican policies of the last several years that caused the problems they had. Policies on the markets, policies on Iraq and Afghanistan, policies on science, all the problems with the Republican party were problems with Republican policies. It was those policies that have put us in the mess we're in now. These policies failed, and America rejected them. They also rejected much of Clinton's playbook too. The result was Obama's new ideas and radically different policies.

That's the bottom line. Policies decided 2008 from beginning to end of the campaign.

All Fall Down

Dow closed down nearly 300 points to under 6,800 as AIG's record loss simply crushed the life out of the market. This is not a good sign, folks. I think we're headed down a nasty slope here and we're back into freefall mode. At this point, even Nouriel Roubini is scared.

LAST year, the debate over how long the recession will last was between those in the consensus who argued that it would be V-shaped — only about eight months long like those in 1990 to 1991 and in 2001 — and those like me who argued that it would last at least three times as long, 24 months, and be more than three times as deep as the previous two.

Today, as we enter the 15th month, it’s obvious that we are already in a painful U-shaped recession that has become global and will last at least until the end of the year — 24 months, the longest since the Great Depression. Even if the gross domestic product grows in 2010, it is likely to be no higher than 1 percent. And at that rate, with the unemployment rate rising toward 10 percent, we will still be substantially in a recession.

Even if appropriate aggressive policy actions were undertaken — monetary and fiscal stimulus, bank clean-up and credit restoration, mortgage debt reduction for insolvent households — the growth rate would not rise closer to 2 percent until 2011. So this recession may last 36 months.

And things could get worse. We now face a 1 in 3 chance that, if appropriate policies are not put in place, this ugly U-shaped recession may turn into a more virulent L-shaped near-depression or stag-deflation (a deadly combination of economic stagnation and price deflation) like the one Japan experienced in the 1990s after its real estate and equity bubbles burst.

A 36 month depression, meaning no real recovery until first quarter 2011. That's a terrifying thought, and it should be terrifying. Two more years is enough for the Dow to disintegrate back down to under 4k...levels last seen in 1995...or worse 3k, levels last seen when Clinton was elected in late 1992. We could be looking at 20 years of economic growth reversed in this country. That's a tremendous thing.

If we're really looking now at recession in 2011, it might as well be a depression. It's a word even the AP is throwing around at this point. If housing has another 20% to fall, then anyone who buys now is dooming themselves. If there's no housing stabilization, there will be no US recovery. No US recovery means no global recovery, and the whole thing could come crashing down. Americans are already trading down from steak to chicken. Ask your Great Depression era relatives about chicken sometime...there are some who refuse to eat it even today because they couldn't get beef or pork during the depression and didn't want to be reminded of having to eat a "poor man's food."

If you think it's bad now, just wait.

Marking Territory

How cute. Michael Steele gets all angry when somebody tells him Rush Limbaugh runs the GOP rather than, you know, Michael Steele, Chairman of the RNC.

HUGHLEY: You know what we do, we talk like we’re talking now. You have your view. I have mine. We don’t need incendiary rhetoric.

STEELE: Exactly.

HUGHLEY: Like Rush Limbaugh, who is the de facto leader of the Republican Party.

STEELE: No, he’s not.

HUGHLEY: I will tell you what …

STEELE: I’m the de facto leader of the Republican Party.

Sure you are Mike.

Sure you are.

[UPDATE] And Rush in turn tears Michael Steele a new one for daring to cross El Rushbo. Gotta love it.

Responding to criticism by recently-elected RNC chairman Michael Steele, talk show host Rush Limbaugh tore into the party's leader, contending that Steele is actually "not the head of the Republican Party," cautioning that the chairman is off to a "shaky start."

I'm not sure which is the more laughable proposition, Steele as head of the GOP getting his ass handed to him by a radio host, or that same radio host really being the de facto leader of the party.

"Michael Steele, you are head of the RNC," said Limbaugh. "You are not head of the Republican Party."

"I hope... he realizes he's not a talking head pundit," said Limbaugh on Monday. After telling him to go behind the scenes and do the work he's been hired to do, the radio host added, "He's off to a shaky start."

The first clue that Limbaugh would lampoon the GOP leader came in an e-mail to Politico.

"I’ll handle it on the radio," he wrote.

"Mr. Steele, if you want to lead the Republican party -- as you say you do -- you need to run for and win the presidency," said Limbaugh, adding that Steele isn't going to lead the party by being "cute" on cable news.

Since El Rushbo isn't going to take any crap from any Republican who is not in the White House, I say the GOP should enjoy the monster they have created. They're stuck with him for quite some time now.

The GOP is still taking marching orders from Rush, and they will continue to.

[UPDATE 2] And now, Steele has in fact apologized to Rush Limbaugh.

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele says he has reached out to Rush Limbaugh to tell him he meant no offense when he referred to the popular conservative radio host as an “entertainer” whose show can be “incendiary.”

“My intent was not to go after Rush – I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh,” Steele said in a telephone interview. “I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. … There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.”

As Darth Vader once said, "Now your failure is complete." Rush completely owns you assholes. Both John Cole and Andrew Sullivan think Rush should just run for President himself himself in 2012. And why not? As Cole says, "It's Rush's party now." There's no way this can ever be walked back. The ads for the Dems write themselves for the next four years.

If it wasn't so pathetic, so indicative of the total failure of the Republican Party at this point (and I will argue with my last breath that a solid, intelligent opposition party is necessary for the functioning of America) it would be hysterical.

[UPDATE 3] Josh Marshall has the best line of the year so far:

Dems gloat after Rush awards himself sole custody of Steele's testicles.

The Oxycontinfather runs this town, bitch. You work for him, Mike.

House Of Cards

Over the weekend, Zandardad mentioned to me that he's really, really sick of seeing the stock market tank. In the last 18 months, the market has lost 50% off its October 2007 peak. We both agreed that there's little hope for a recovery until the housing market turns around. Eventually, Pops argues, Americans are going to decide to buy houses again. That's true to a point.

The problem is that it's much harder to get a mortgage these days. It's a reverse "Paradox of Thrift" scenario, call it the "Paradox of Lending." Banks don't want to lend long-term right now in this market. When the housing market is continuing to collapse, making a mortgage loan right now is good for the industry as a whole, but very bad for banks individually. Banks make money long-term on mortgages, and in the short-term they were making even more as home prices went up. If the person couldn't afford the mortgage, the home asset the bank would repossess would still go up in value. It was okay to make zero down payment mortgage loans because the market was going up, up, up.

But now, making a mortgage loan is a huge risk for the bank. They are demanding as much as 15%-20% up front as a down payment now, so the practical upshot is that the home that was out of reach at $300,000 and no down payment is even more out of reach at $200,000 and 30 to 40k up front. That turns into an even worse short term deal for the consumer should that home drop in price. They've sunk tens of thousands into a home up front that will probably lose another 25% or more in value. Good deal for the banks, but in today's job market a suicidal move.

Until the housing market bottoms out, it's not going to turn around. And it won't bottom out until people can buy. Banks want a big down payment now, one that people can't afford, and the irony now is for Americans tapped out in personal debt, and especially having lost a huge chunk of equity in their current home and in the stock market, it's harder to buy a home at these prices then it was in 2006, even though the total price is far less.

Still, home prices do have a ways to go. For the most part they are still too high, which shows you just how out of control the housing bubble got. At this point government intervention is the only thing that will get this housing market out of the death spiral it's in. Obama is at least taking steps to keep people in their homes, but Republicans continue to say keeping Americans in their homes is not the government's business.

Has it occurred to the Republicans that if the government doesn't do this, then the free market is incapable of doing so until home prices fall nationally to Detroit levels?

According to the Chicago Tribune, the median price for a home sold in the month of December 2008 in Motor City is Seven Thousand, Five Hundred dollars.

Let me run that by you again.

You can buy a house in Detroit for less than the cost of a used car. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what is in store for the rest of the country should this death spiral continue. Folks who bought mortgages in the 90's and early 2000's are in real, real trouble nationally. When home prices drop so low that they end up owing more on their house than the house is worth, the banks will jack up their mortgages. They will lose their homes. In turn, this will depress housing prices even more, and more people will leave and lose their homes...depressing housing prices even more until we get the Detroit Scenario all over. It's happening to a lot of other cities in the US right now too.

The country is slowly coming apart at the seams right now, one housing disaster at a time. The housing depression has reached critical mass, folks. We're on the edge of a complete meltdown in this country. Pray Obama can help fix it.

StupidiNews!

• Insurance giant AIG reported a staggering $62 billion loss this morning.
• A new study shows universal health care would cost six times less than the bank bailouts.
• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton takes a crack at Middle East peacemaker.
• Eastern European countries are concerned Obama may backtrack on regional security deals.
• Microsoft is getting into the t-shirt business and calling it "Softwear".

Cramdown Breakdown

Obama's mortgage fix plan revolves around getting Congress to update bankruptcy laws to allow judges to change mortgage rates, but banks and mortgage brokers are virulently against it, and have lobbied Congress hard to kill the measure.

If the so called "cramdown" provision fails, Obama's mortgage fix is sunk. The Blue Dogs and Senate DINOs are strongly against the measure, and the Obama administration just doesn't have the numbers to pass the bill right now. A full-court press is on this week to get the votes, but it's going to be yet another long, hard slog of deal-making for this to pass -- and those objecting in Congress have their sights on deals to be made during budget time.

President Obama is in danger of losing the biggest stick in his foreclosure prevention arsenal.

The administration's plan to stem the housing crisis depends on Congress amending the bankruptcy laws to allow judges to modify mortgages, in particular by reducing principal to make monthly payments more affordable.

The so-called cramdown provision could put pressure on loan servicers to modify mortgages before borrowers file for bankruptcy.

A major critique of the voluntary modification programs is that servicers aren't doing enough to help struggling borrowers. But servicers will likely be more aggressive in working with homeowners if they know that the borrowers can turn to judges for relief.

"Reforming mortgage bankruptcy laws is the only remedy available that will provide the stick to go with the carrots that we have offered lenders to modify mortgages voluntarily," said Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C., who worked on the legislation.

But congressional Democrats, who first introduced a bill broadening judges' power two years ago, are running into trouble gathering the support needed to pass the legislation. The House postponed a vote on the measure until early this week after a group of centrist Democrats voiced concerns. And its future in the Senate remains in doubt with many powerful Republicans strongly opposed to the legislation.

This is the real test of Obama's political clout on the Hill. The stimulus had to pass, but cramdown has interests on both sides of the aisle waiting for the opportunity to kill it. If Obama can't get this through, the budget is pretty much DOA, as it will be a much, much harder fight.

Even the nuclear option of sliding this through as a Senate-filibuster proof budget amendement may not work. We'll see.

The Losing Side Didn't Lose Gracefully

Here's a chunk of the HBO documentary film "Right America Feeling Wronged" by filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi. She documented the crowds following McCain/Palin over the end of the campaign, and what she found is pretty disturbing, but shouldn't be surprising to any readers of this blog. The clip here (h/t Pandagon) includes some footage of folks from the part of North Carolina I grew up in and recently still lived in, Concord, NC, the heart of NASCAR country.

Alexandra asks folks at Lowes' Motor Speedway if they're ready for a black President. What do you think they said?



"When did this country get chickenshit?" one guy asks. That's what they see Obama as: the final nail in the coffin for their version of America. They're not too happy about it. They're going to continue to be unhappy about it. They want to be angry about it, as a matter of fact. Believe me when I tell you I can recognize mad-eyed righteous indignation used to justify racism, sexism, homophobia, religious intolerance, what have you from a mile off, and these guys are full of that.

They honestly do not believe they are doing anything wrong. They believe they are being honest about how the way the world has worked for decades. They believe that's how the world should continue to work. But Barack Obama scares the ever-loving crap out of them. He represents the end of the world working the way they have been used to seeing. That's a hard, hard thing for any human being to take, and the more narrow your worldview, the harder it is to see it ripped out and replaced by a new era where the President of the United States doesn't look like them.

So yes, they are easy targets for the kind of hatred and paranoia whipped up by El Rushbo, Coultergeist, Malkinvania, Hannity the Manatee and the rest of the hate radio all-stars. There's a reason why El Rushbo is the voice of the GOP in 2009. They've finally become the reactionary racist nationalist party we see in Europe. Obama represents the end of their power. Naturally, they hate him.

So now we're at a crossroads. The GOP doesn't want just Barack Obama to fail. They are driving a fundamental, elemental hatred for everything he represents. They want to destroy this country as a lesson to punish the majority of Americans who voted for him. It's the only way, after all, those deluded folks who voted for Obama will ever see what Pandora's Box they have opened by putting a black man in the White House.

Obama represents the total destruction of their worldview. Now, their worldview has shifted to the destruction of the worldview that Obama represents. It's not their America anymore. They don't care if it burns, in fact they see it as necessary to purge those who brought it about.

So when you ask yourself "Hey Zandar, are you serious about the GOP wanting to destroy the country?" then remember this clip. See the entire documentary (all 5 bits are on YouTube for now). They have decided that the country needs to be destroyed in order to save it. That's the goal driving everything the GOP does. We're all the enemy to them. We betrayed them because we elected Obama. We deserve the economic calamity as the price paid for it.

The war is just beginning.